I think you are right, but your analogy isn't really fair. One reason you can't see the Empire State building from the Sears tower is that Earth is in the way. (Earth is roughly spherical, remember?).
The other problem with viewing objects near the surface of Earth is that when you look horizontally, you are looking through relatively dirty air. The problem is much less severe when looking up, because the air rapidly clears and thins as you ascend.
What we need to know is how bright is this thing going to be and what angle does it subtend from 600 miles away? A bright object can subtend a small angle (think supernova) and be visible, and an object which subtends a large angle can be dim, yet still be seen. I believe the moon and sun subtend about 30 minutes of arc, so I imagine anything that subtends, say, half a minute of arc would be considered visible (this is a guess) although if there were poor contrast (i.e., if the object is sky-colored), this wouldn't hold true.
At 600 miles, 0.5 minute of arc is approximately 460 feet. I couldn't read the article so I have no idea how big this baloon is, but I doubt it is 460 feet in any dimension. So to be visible at 600 miles, I think it would have to be bright (e.g., if it were low in the eastern horizon while the sun was setting, it might be quite bright.)
"But then again that may suck for people on a dial up connection."
Or for those who have neither a compiler nor administrative rights on their Solaris system.
But it's OK, because I don't have to use CDE. Since my desktop is a W2K box and we have the exceed xserver for W2K, I just telnet in (LAN) to the Solaris box and run the individual apps using my desktop as the display. My exceed is configured to start up each X app in a seperate native W2K window. This works for me.
As far as I am concerned, CDE is an ugly abomination. Perhaps there is a way to get it to have thinner (i.e., fewer pixels) window borders and to use colors which are not outrageously ugly together. If I were forced to use it I suppose I would have to investigate this.
The solution for the networks is obvious. They should just embed the commercials in the TV show, in the same way that movies do with product placement.
Then there would be no seperate commercial to fast-forward through.
Although, I have to admit that it is hard for me to see how the less interesting products (like laundry detergent and scouring powders) could be product-placed into an interesting plot.
The two-hour orbit really is slower. That's why they have to aero-break into it.
The average speed of an orbit can be taken to be the circumference of the orbit divided by the orbital period. Because of the physics of orbits, a 20-hour orbit has a much larger circumference than a 2-hour orbit. This difference more than makes up for the 18 hour difference in orbital period.
Another poster used a kinetic energy argument which sounded right, too, but a bit abstract.
This comes back to the issue which has been raised several times in the last few weeks on slashdot of forming a political action comitee (PAC), backed by MONEY, which fights for "geek" issues in our capital.
The EFF is not really a PAC, since they don't propose legislation and don't take senators and representatives (and their aides) out to lunch and dinner to convince them to vote a certain way. They also don't make campaign contributions. (as far as I know.)
While I think forming a PAC is a good way of getting our voice heard, I wouldn't know how to go about getting started. And it might become very contentious after some time. (A lot of geeks are anal, argumentative, idealistic and naive.)
But still if some one gets it started, I'll send some of my money in. Probably the rallying point should be free OS distributions, or just plain free software. If it gets in to any pro MP3 sharing or any other such bullshit it will loose credibility and patronage. (Note that I don't consider DeCSS to be part of "any other such bullshit.")
I doubt that the propagation in air is that different (factor of two) between 2.4 and 5 GHz. In fact, I think 2.4 GHz attenuates rapidly for the same reason that it is effective in microwave ovens. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if 5 GHz signals propagate better than 2.4 GHz signals.
You are of course right that the wavelength is roughly twice as long in 2.4 as it is in 5 GHz.
I hope you are not really an EE student. If you are, try to remember your physics, as you will need it eventually.
The speed of travel of electromagnetic waves of a particular frequency depend on the medium of travel. The fastest it can ever be is in a vacuum, where it is C (the famous constant). Furthermore, there is something called a mode of propagation which effects the speed of a signal in a waveguide (which fiber is).
In air, with a direct (no bounce) link you should get vanishingly close to C, as the relative dielectric constant of air is close to 1. In fiber, you have to know both the relative dielectric constant of the fiber, and the mode of propagation to figure the effective speed of propagation, but it can only go down from C. (I'm not a fiber expert so I don't know which mode of propagation is used or what epsilon is for the fibers).
In typical printed circuit boards, the speed of propagation for inner layers depends on the dielectric constant of the board material. FR4 is a common material type, and it has a nominal dielectric constant of 4 (that's what the 4 in FR4 is for). In spite of this nominal value, the actual value is usually taken to be 4.2 for high-speed signals. And if you are not dealing with high-speed signals, then you probably don't care whether the constant is 4 or 4.2. This means that signals travel at slightly less than half the speed in an FR4 circuit board than they do in air.
Right. If I think both candidates are equally likely to take the country in a direction I don't support, then I am not necessarily being a bad citizen when I decide not to vote. I am, in effect, registering my disaffectation by not voting. And if voter participation falls low enough, the legitimacy of the resulting government might finally be called into question by a large number of people.
In fact, it might be my view that the two party system is keeping a lot of issues off of the table completely, at least at the national level. So how do I vote against the two party system? If I vote for Perot or Nader, all my friends will tell me that I am throwing my vote away.
Unfortunately, I don't know how we can effectively reform the system. Maybe, if we had a national referendum and initiative, as many states do, we could get the people more involved in politics. And I don't see what grounds anyone would have to object to it (especially the referendum). The trick would be to get the item on the agenda in the first place.
Yeah, _The Corruptor_ came to mind. But don't forget _The Bad Lieutenant_. While _The Bad Lieutenant_ didn't involve seducing a good cop into evil, there were still a lot of parallels between it and _Training Day._ Especially the ending. ("Hey, Cop!" ).
Don't get me wrong, _Training Day_ basically sucked (in spite of good acting by both principals), and _The Bad Lieutenant_ had a much better script (although it was unbearably depressing) but I still think that _Training Day_ borrowed a lot from the _Bad Lieutenant_.
I typed papers in highschool using microsoft Word. I graduated from highschool in 1985. Word was one of the very first IBM PC applications, along with Lotus123.
Well, no, not really. I mean, technically, we live in a republic. If the majority decides that we need laws allowing police to stop and search anybody any time, they are nonetheless blocked from enacting any laws to that effect by the bill of rights.
Some politicians might want to ban all firearms in civilian hands, but the bill of rights likewise prevents that. (This is a matter of some controversy since many people who don't like the idea of armed citizens say that the second ammendment really only applies to the National Guard, although that is revisionism in my opinion).
There are a variety of other things (involuntary servitude, for example) forbidden by the constitution and its ammendments. Of course, the constitution can be further ammended, and existing ammendments repealed, but such actions don't happen very often.
Overthrow Switzerland? Are you fucking crazy? No one is going to overthrow Switzerland in this day and age. No way.
Why, you ask? Because they are armed to the teeth and they know how to shoot.
The country could, of course, be destroyed from the air, but no state in its right mind would try to actually occupy Switzerland, and if it did try it would not succeed.
Thank you Tom, that does help. Do you think PAC's are taken more seriously than private citizens? How many people and how much money would the PAC need to represent before it would be considered worth talking to?
Your post, which I hope is a joke, is in extremely poor taste.
If it is not a joke then you are getting a little too wound-up over something that doesn't warrant it. No matter how much you don't approve of Microsoft and whoever is at 345 Park Ave in San Jose, death is out of all proportion to whatever wrong you think they did to you.
It could also be that you are just saying extreme things in the hope of provoking a response from other readers, in which case I guess I played right into your hands. Silly me.
You raise many good points. Especially the parallels in attitude between pre-dessert storm and now. And it is probably not fair to look to the Soviet experience, since the US was supporting Afghanistan against the Soviets. There will be no superpower pumping arms into Afghanistan if/when the US invades.
Furthermore, there can be no doubt that the Taliban is a totally corrupt regime bent on imposing its religious views on, eventually, the rest of the world. Meanwhile, they are exterminating or getting ready to exterminate all the Hindus in Afghanistan. In short, the Taliban is bad news.
But Afghanistan is not Kuwait. The terrain is vastly different and more difficult. And the Afghans are not the Iraquis. Unlike the Iraquis, they will be defending their homeland, so they will fight with much more desperation. And finally, the US will not be working towards the straighforward objective of forcing an army to retreat back to its place of origin, as in Desert Storm. Rather, in Afghanistan, the goal will apparently be to remove the Taliban from power. This is a much more difficult objective to achieve by military force, IMHO. This is probably one of the reasons why Powell is counseling the maximum use of non-military tools and the minimum use of direct force.
To reiterate, OF COURSE the US military can defeat the Taliban militias in a fight over external terrirtory. But that is not what I understand the US's goal to be. The US seems to want to enter Afghanistan, identify and kill or detain virtually all members of the Taliban regime, and place an internationally chosen government in place of the Taliban.
If I am wrong, and the real goal is to kill everyone in Afghanistan, then perhaps a full-scale invasion could succeed. Of course, that is genocide, and is morally repugnant. And it would also make it difficult to maintain a multi-national coalition of support.
No one has a right to violently kill even one innocent person, let alone thousands. But in the USA there is a right (in my opinion) to be free of suspicion and investigation until evidence is uncovered that suspicion is warranted. (has to do with right to be secure in your affairs or something like that). If immigrants are deemed to not possess this right, that is fine with me.
Anyway, keyboard sniffers will not work as well with serious criminals now that one has been employed in a high-profile case.
If they are done in software, then they can be detected by software methods, and if they are hardware, they can be detected by visual inspection.
You are certainly right that unconstituional laws can be struck down by the supreme court.
But even if a law is constitutional, it can still be undesireable in some way.
In any event, there is nothing wrong with getting in an uproar about a poorly-conceived law, regardless of its constitutionality. And giving written or spoken feedback to legislators about prospective new laws seems reasonable to me, too.
Finally, I think you should take a look at the practice of "asset forfeiture" particularly as it is applied in drug offenses, and tell me whether you think it is constitutional. I'm not asking about whether justice was served in particular cases (it *is* mostly used against drug dealers), but about whether it is reasonable for police agencies to take people's property based on suspicion and then not return it, even when charges are dismissed. This is perfectly legal and happens all the time. The police agencies get to keep the assets for themselves.
MM
--
Re:How to wage war aginst terrorism
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
Yes, yes, yes.
Just as the US has been galvanized and united by this attack, the Muslim world will be galvanized and unified (against the US) if we launch any kind of indiscriminate counterstrike.
The solution is to drive a wedge between bin Laden (and his ilk) and the rest of the Muslim world without any kind of real attacks. I don't think money gifts are the best way to do this, but if we could find a way to make the middle east a more equitable place, I think we might be on to something. Humanitarian aid to the non-Taliban Afghans would probably help, but I don't think that is practical (Taliban would just steal any aid that comes into the country) and I KNOW it is politically impossible.
Several of the countries you mention are avowed enemies of the US, so we would have to be careful there. But the basic idea of using the money to make the middle east a more equitable place where it's hard to recruit terrorists because people are basically happy. That is an idea. Of course, we will never ever do it because of Palestine and Israel. But it is an idea nonetheless.
But I have to say that the idea of having F16's flying around the borders of our airspace doesn't bother me nearly as much as the idea of police investigators routinely monitoring citizens' on-line and telephone conversations.
F16's are almost entirely useless for opressing the citizens of the US. And every country has the right (in my book) to police its airspace against foreign transgression.
It is the notion that every citizen is a suspected terrorist which is abhorrent to me.
Imagine a country where every wanted person could be caught immediately because almost every conceivable act he or she performed created an identifying electronic event which could be used to locate and arrest him or her. This would be good in the sense that criminals would be caught fairly readily.
But now imagine that the government which controls this detection and detainment apparatus slowly grants itself more and more power at the expense of the citizen. When the time comes that the people are fed up and don't want to take it anymore, it is too late. If they complain they will be ignored by those in power, and if they rebel, they will be arrested instantly.
I can't speak for Stallman, but many people fear this precise scenario. Given the constant efforts of prosecutors and police to have more power to surveille anyone for any reason and to seize assets without due process, I don't find it entirely paranoid. I used to, but the paranoiacs are starting to win me over!
Oh, and another important point to keep in mind is that once you are under investigation, you are guilty, for all intents and purposes. The reason for this is that you will be threatened with enormous sentences for crimes that will be difficult to disprove (especially with your assets frozen) and encouraged to plea bargain. This explains why people may be fearful of becoming the subject of an investigation even though they may be innocent.
Try to keep an open mind. Remember, when the enforcement apparatus is complete, and they decide to take away your right to free speach, it will be too late to protest. (I don't think it will come to that.)
The whole point of the constitution and various ammendments is to provide safeguards which protect citizens from arbitrary action on the part of government. When you say that "they won't even do it unless they really think you're going to do some nasty stuff," you are essentially putting your faith in the good intentions of police and prosecutors instead of the safeguards.
While many police and prosecutors just want to bust bad guys, we have no guarantee that this will always be the case. Increasingly, I am seeing laws which give more power and discretion to police and prosecutors and remove whatever recourse we have when we think we have been treated unfairly. This is a system which can be used to enforce tyranny.
It is not that I have no faith in our current police and prosecutors. It's just that I don't want to create a system that relies entirely on their good intentions and the good intentions of their successors.
Anyway, think hard about it. Try to keep an open mind!
We have a firewall to the outside world, and they put all their faith in that. But inside, people use telnet and a variety of insecure protocols.
Strangely, SSH sessions are not allowed to pass out through the firewall, but telnet and ftp sessions are allowed out via a proxy. We do have some telecommuters who use some kind of VPN, but I don't know the details because I don't do it. I like to read slashdot when I'm at home, not work.
telnet and SSH attempts originating from outside the firewall do not pass through the firewall, of course.
But I don't think you have to be a liberarian to believe that people should be able to converse without worrying whether "the government" might be listening in and perhaps getting the wrong idea or whatever.
Besides, this is not the only law compromising our rights. Ultimately, between what this law allows and what other proposed laws allow, what we are talking about is creating a regime where law enforcement officials can listen to any conversation, on line or off, any time they want. Only when they have this complete freedom can they protect us, they say. Don't buy it!
In reality, this will not allow them to protect us, but it will, after a few decades, create a nasty monster too big to tame. People will be jailed on suspicion, all dissent will be considered terrorism, so anyone who complains or critisizes the regime will end up in jail.
I am not saying that the cops of today want to create a police state. Actually, I think they are mostly good people who want to catch bad guys. The problem is that if we allow cops to define and re-define "bad guys" on the fly, and remove all barriers to the apprehension and indefinite detention of "bad guys," the eventual creation of a police state is inevitable.
Senator Leahy, who expressed grave reservations about this law, is hardly a libertarian.
Besides, if you are not afraid of speaking your mind in an open forum and creating a trail, why did you post as an anonymous coward?
MOD this up. The original post claims that this is really no big deal, and it is up at 4 right now. This poster shows that the original post is wrong and Senator Leahy's fears are very real.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are right, but your analogy isn't really fair. One reason you can't see the Empire State building from the Sears tower is that Earth is in the way. (Earth is roughly spherical, remember?).
The other problem with viewing objects near the surface of Earth is that when you look horizontally, you are looking through relatively dirty air. The problem is much less severe when looking up, because the air rapidly clears and thins as you ascend.
What we need to know is how bright is this thing going to be and what angle does it subtend from 600 miles away? A bright object can subtend a small angle (think supernova) and be visible, and an object which subtends a large angle can be dim, yet still be seen. I believe the moon and sun subtend about 30 minutes of arc, so I imagine anything that subtends, say, half a minute of arc would be considered visible (this is a guess) although if there were poor contrast (i.e., if the object is sky-colored), this wouldn't hold true.
At 600 miles, 0.5 minute of arc is approximately 460 feet. I couldn't read the article so I have no idea how big this baloon is, but I doubt it is 460 feet in any dimension. So to be visible at 600 miles, I think it would have to be bright (e.g., if it were low in the eastern horizon while the sun was setting, it might be quite bright.)
MM
--
"But then again that may suck for people on a dial up connection."
Or for those who have neither a compiler nor administrative rights on their Solaris system.
But it's OK, because I don't have to use CDE. Since my desktop is a W2K box and we have the exceed xserver for W2K, I just telnet in (LAN) to the Solaris box and run the individual apps using my desktop as the display. My exceed is configured to start up each X app in a seperate native W2K window. This works for me.
As far as I am concerned, CDE is an ugly abomination. Perhaps there is a way to get it to have thinner (i.e., fewer pixels) window borders and to use colors which are not outrageously ugly together. If I were forced to use it I suppose I would have to investigate this.
At home I use enlightenment as a window manager.
MM
--
The solution for the networks is obvious. They should just embed the commercials in the TV show, in the same way that movies do with product placement.
Then there would be no seperate commercial to fast-forward through.
Although, I have to admit that it is hard for me to see how the less interesting products (like laundry detergent and scouring powders) could be product-placed into an interesting plot.
MM
--
No, no, no.
The two-hour orbit really is slower. That's why they have to aero-break into it.
The average speed of an orbit can be taken to be the circumference of the orbit divided by the orbital period. Because of the physics of orbits, a 20-hour orbit has a much larger circumference than a 2-hour orbit. This difference more than makes up for the 18 hour difference in orbital period.
Another poster used a kinetic energy argument which sounded right, too, but a bit abstract.
MM
--
This comes back to the issue which has been raised several times in the last few weeks on slashdot of forming a political action comitee (PAC), backed by MONEY, which fights for "geek" issues in our capital.
The EFF is not really a PAC, since they don't propose legislation and don't take senators and representatives (and their aides) out to lunch and dinner to convince them to vote a certain way. They also don't make campaign contributions. (as far as I know.)
While I think forming a PAC is a good way of getting our voice heard, I wouldn't know how to go about getting started. And it might become very contentious after some time. (A lot of geeks are anal, argumentative, idealistic and naive.)
But still if some one gets it started, I'll send some of my money in. Probably the rallying point should be free OS distributions, or just plain free software. If it gets in to any pro MP3 sharing or any other such bullshit it will loose credibility and patronage. (Note that I don't consider DeCSS to be part of "any other such bullshit.")
MM
--
I doubt that the propagation in air is that different (factor of two) between 2.4 and 5 GHz. In fact, I think 2.4 GHz attenuates rapidly for the same reason that it is effective in microwave ovens. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if 5 GHz signals propagate better than 2.4 GHz signals.
You are of course right that the wavelength is roughly twice as long in 2.4 as it is in 5 GHz.
Just my $0.02
MM
--
I hope you are not really an EE student. If you are, try to remember your physics, as you will need it eventually.
The speed of travel of electromagnetic waves of a particular frequency depend on the medium of travel. The fastest it can ever be is in a vacuum, where it is C (the famous constant). Furthermore, there is something called a mode of propagation which effects the speed of a signal in a waveguide (which fiber is).
In air, with a direct (no bounce) link you should get vanishingly close to C, as the relative dielectric constant of air is close to 1. In fiber, you have to know both the relative dielectric constant of the fiber, and the mode of propagation to figure the effective speed of propagation, but it can only go down from C. (I'm not a fiber expert so I don't know which mode of propagation is used or what epsilon is for the fibers).
In typical printed circuit boards, the speed of propagation for inner layers depends on the dielectric constant of the board material. FR4 is a common material type, and it has a nominal dielectric constant of 4 (that's what the 4 in FR4 is for). In spite of this nominal value, the actual value is usually taken to be 4.2 for high-speed signals. And if you are not dealing with high-speed signals, then you probably don't care whether the constant is 4 or 4.2. This means that signals travel at slightly less than half the speed in an FR4 circuit board than they do in air.
I hope you have learned something!
MM
--
Right. If I think both candidates are equally likely to take the country in a direction I don't support, then I am not necessarily being a bad citizen when I decide not to vote. I am, in effect, registering my disaffectation by not voting. And if voter participation falls low enough, the legitimacy of the resulting government might finally be called into question by a large number of people.
In fact, it might be my view that the two party system is keeping a lot of issues off of the table completely, at least at the national level. So how do I vote against the two party system? If I vote for Perot or Nader, all my friends will tell me that I am throwing my vote away.
Unfortunately, I don't know how we can effectively reform the system. Maybe, if we had a national referendum and initiative, as many states do, we could get the people more involved in politics. And I don't see what grounds anyone would have to object to it (especially the referendum). The trick would be to get the item on the agenda in the first place.
Well, that's my semi(at best)-coherrent $0.02
MM
--
Yeah, _The Corruptor_ came to mind. But don't forget _The Bad Lieutenant_. While _The Bad Lieutenant_ didn't involve seducing a good cop into evil, there were still a lot of parallels between it and _Training Day._ Especially the ending. ("Hey, Cop!" ).
Don't get me wrong, _Training Day_ basically sucked (in spite of good acting by both principals), and _The Bad Lieutenant_ had a much better script (although it was unbearably depressing) but I still think that _Training Day_ borrowed a lot from the _Bad Lieutenant_.
MM
--
I typed papers in highschool using microsoft Word. I graduated from highschool in 1985. Word was one of the very first IBM PC applications, along with Lotus123.
--
MM
Well, no, not really. I mean, technically, we live in a republic. If the majority decides that we need laws allowing police to stop and search anybody any time, they are nonetheless blocked from enacting any laws to that effect by the bill of rights.
Some politicians might want to ban all firearms in civilian hands, but the bill of rights likewise prevents that. (This is a matter of some controversy since many people who don't like the idea of armed citizens say that the second ammendment really only applies to the National Guard, although that is revisionism in my opinion).
There are a variety of other things (involuntary servitude, for example) forbidden by the constitution and its ammendments. Of course, the constitution can be further ammended, and existing ammendments repealed, but such actions don't happen very often.
MM
--
Overthrow Switzerland? Are you fucking crazy? No one is going to overthrow Switzerland in this day and age. No way.
Why, you ask? Because they are armed to the teeth and they know how to shoot.
The country could, of course, be destroyed from the air, but no state in its right mind would try to actually occupy Switzerland, and if it did try it would not succeed.
MM
--
Thank you Tom, that does help. Do you think PAC's are taken more seriously than private citizens? How many people and how much money would the PAC need to represent before it would be considered worth talking to?
MM
--
Your post, which I hope is a joke, is in extremely poor taste.
If it is not a joke then you are getting a little too wound-up over something that doesn't warrant it. No matter how much you don't approve of Microsoft and whoever is at 345 Park Ave in San Jose, death is out of all proportion to whatever wrong you think they did to you.
It could also be that you are just saying extreme things in the hope of provoking a response from other readers, in which case I guess I played right into your hands. Silly me.
MM
--
Ultimately, I disagree with you.
You raise many good points. Especially the parallels in attitude between pre-dessert storm and now. And it is probably not fair to look to the Soviet experience, since the US was supporting Afghanistan against the Soviets. There will be no superpower pumping arms into Afghanistan if/when the US invades.
Furthermore, there can be no doubt that the Taliban is a totally corrupt regime bent on imposing its religious views on, eventually, the rest of the world. Meanwhile, they are exterminating or getting ready to exterminate all the Hindus in Afghanistan. In short, the Taliban is bad news.
But Afghanistan is not Kuwait. The terrain is vastly different and more difficult. And the Afghans are not the Iraquis. Unlike the Iraquis, they will be defending their homeland, so they will fight with much more desperation. And finally, the US will not be working towards the straighforward objective of forcing an army to retreat back to its place of origin, as in Desert Storm. Rather, in Afghanistan, the goal will apparently be to remove the Taliban from power. This is a much more difficult objective to achieve by military force, IMHO. This is probably one of the reasons why Powell is counseling the maximum use of non-military tools and the minimum use of direct force.
To reiterate, OF COURSE the US military can defeat the Taliban militias in a fight over external terrirtory. But that is not what I understand the US's goal to be. The US seems to want to enter Afghanistan, identify and kill or detain virtually all members of the Taliban regime, and place an internationally chosen government in place of the Taliban.
If I am wrong, and the real goal is to kill everyone in Afghanistan, then perhaps a full-scale invasion could succeed. Of course, that is genocide, and is morally repugnant. And it would also make it difficult to maintain a multi-national coalition of support.
Just my $.02
MM
--
No one has a right to violently kill even one innocent person, let alone thousands. But in the USA there is a right (in my opinion) to be free of suspicion and investigation until evidence is uncovered that suspicion is warranted. (has to do with right to be secure in your affairs or something like that). If immigrants are deemed to not possess this right, that is fine with me.
Anyway, keyboard sniffers will not work as well with serious criminals now that one has been employed in a high-profile case.
If they are done in software, then they can be detected by software methods, and if they are hardware, they can be detected by visual inspection.
MM
--
You are certainly right that unconstituional laws can be struck down by the supreme court.
But even if a law is constitutional, it can still be undesireable in some way.
In any event, there is nothing wrong with getting in an uproar about a poorly-conceived law, regardless of its constitutionality. And giving written or spoken feedback to legislators about prospective new laws seems reasonable to me, too.
Finally, I think you should take a look at the practice of "asset forfeiture" particularly as it is applied in drug offenses, and tell me whether you think it is constitutional. I'm not asking about whether justice was served in particular cases (it *is* mostly used against drug dealers), but about whether it is reasonable for police agencies to take people's property based on suspicion and then not return it, even when charges are dismissed. This is perfectly legal and happens all the time. The police agencies get to keep the assets for themselves.
MM
--
Yes, yes, yes.
Just as the US has been galvanized and united by this attack, the Muslim world will be galvanized and unified (against the US) if we launch any kind of indiscriminate counterstrike.
The solution is to drive a wedge between bin Laden (and his ilk) and the rest of the Muslim world without any kind of real attacks. I don't think money gifts are the best way to do this, but if we could find a way to make the middle east a more equitable place, I think we might be on to something. Humanitarian aid to the non-Taliban Afghans would probably help, but I don't think that is practical (Taliban would just steal any aid that comes into the country) and I KNOW it is politically impossible.
Several of the countries you mention are avowed enemies of the US, so we would have to be careful there. But the basic idea of using the money to make the middle east a more equitable place where it's hard to recruit terrorists because people are basically happy. That is an idea. Of course, we will never ever do it because of Palestine and Israel. But it is an idea nonetheless.
MM
--
I feel your pain.
But I have to say that the idea of having F16's flying around the borders of our airspace doesn't bother me nearly as much as the idea of police investigators routinely monitoring citizens' on-line and telephone conversations.
F16's are almost entirely useless for opressing the citizens of the US. And every country has the right (in my book) to police its airspace against foreign transgression.
It is the notion that every citizen is a suspected terrorist which is abhorrent to me.
MM
--
Imagine a country where every wanted person could be caught immediately because almost every conceivable act he or she performed created an identifying electronic event which could be used to locate and arrest him or her. This would be good in the sense that criminals would be caught fairly readily.
But now imagine that the government which controls this detection and detainment apparatus slowly grants itself more and more power at the expense of the citizen. When the time comes that the people are fed up and don't want to take it anymore, it is too late. If they complain they will be ignored by those in power, and if they rebel, they will be arrested instantly.
I can't speak for Stallman, but many people fear this precise scenario. Given the constant efforts of prosecutors and police to have more power to surveille anyone for any reason and to seize assets without due process, I don't find it entirely paranoid. I used to, but the paranoiacs are starting to win me over!
Oh, and another important point to keep in mind is that once you are under investigation, you are guilty, for all intents and purposes. The reason for this is that you will be threatened with enormous sentences for crimes that will be difficult to disprove (especially with your assets frozen) and encouraged to plea bargain. This explains why people may be fearful of becoming the subject of an investigation even though they may be innocent.
Try to keep an open mind. Remember, when the enforcement apparatus is complete, and they decide to take away your right to free speach, it will be too late to protest. (I don't think it will come to that.)
;-)
MM
--
I beg to differ.
The whole point of the constitution and various ammendments is to provide safeguards which protect citizens from arbitrary action on the part of government. When you say that "they won't even do it unless they really think you're going to do some nasty stuff," you are essentially putting your faith in the good intentions of police and prosecutors instead of the safeguards.
While many police and prosecutors just want to bust bad guys, we have no guarantee that this will always be the case. Increasingly, I am seeing laws which give more power and discretion to police and prosecutors and remove whatever recourse we have when we think we have been treated unfairly. This is a system which can be used to enforce tyranny.
It is not that I have no faith in our current police and prosecutors. It's just that I don't want to create a system that relies entirely on their good intentions and the good intentions of their successors.
Anyway, think hard about it. Try to keep an open mind!
MM
--
We allow telnet, if not use it.
We have a firewall to the outside world, and they put all their faith in that. But inside, people use telnet and a variety of insecure protocols.
Strangely, SSH sessions are not allowed to pass out through the firewall, but telnet and ftp sessions are allowed out via a proxy. We do have some telecommuters who use some kind of VPN, but I don't know the details because I don't do it. I like to read slashdot when I'm at home, not work.
telnet and SSH attempts originating from outside the firewall do not pass through the firewall, of course.
MM
--
I wish I agreed with you.
But I don't think you have to be a liberarian to believe that people should be able to converse without worrying whether "the government" might be listening in and perhaps getting the wrong idea or whatever.
Besides, this is not the only law compromising our rights. Ultimately, between what this law allows and what other proposed laws allow, what we are talking about is creating a regime where law enforcement officials can listen to any conversation, on line or off, any time they want. Only when they have this complete freedom can they protect us, they say. Don't buy it!
In reality, this will not allow them to protect us, but it will, after a few decades, create a nasty monster too big to tame. People will be jailed on suspicion, all dissent will be considered terrorism, so anyone who complains or critisizes the regime will end up in jail.
I am not saying that the cops of today want to create a police state. Actually, I think they are mostly good people who want to catch bad guys. The problem is that if we allow cops to define and re-define "bad guys" on the fly, and remove all barriers to the apprehension and indefinite detention of "bad guys," the eventual creation of a police state is inevitable.
Senator Leahy, who expressed grave reservations about this law, is hardly a libertarian.
Besides, if you are not afraid of speaking your mind in an open forum and creating a trail, why did you post as an anonymous coward?
MM
--
The parent of this comment is a vital exchange that exposes this ammendment for what it REALLY is.
MM
--
MOD this up. The original post claims that this is really no big deal, and it is up at 4 right now. This poster shows that the original post is wrong and Senator Leahy's fears are very real.
MM
--