Obfuscant's reply may be a bit harsh in tone, but he does have a point. Your post, for example, uses certain words and phrases that indicate a lack of familiarity (or, at minimum, ownership) of firearms. (To wit: "Shoot to kill", "knife crime", and the stats you cite are all very problematic when discussing this issue.)
Still, it's certainly your right to live in a society that approaches these things as you deem best - even if I think it's a little nutty.
One last thing, though - If you ever get a chance to travel in the States, feel free to drop by a shooting range that rents submachine guns (or, to Europeans, "machine pistols"). Rent one and spend a half hour pouring lead downrange. Unless you've already been soured on the experience by military service, you'll wind up understanding at least part of the "American attraction towards guns". They are seriously fun.:-)
I could go on for pages with more reasons why guns are collectible for their beauty and history, worthy of study for their impact on society and mechanical engineering, and symbolic of certain (I believe) admirable traits of humanity. Rather than bore people with all that, though, I prefer to just take them shooting, first. Once people realize how much fun they are, objections tend to melt away.
And thank you very much for your thoughts. Yes, they do make sense, ie I do think I understand what you're saying.
I now realize that my original phrasing was rather clumsy. When I referred to traveling with firearms as "common", I didn't exactly mean that a majority of people do so. The number is probably less than the 10% you posit. What I really meant, I suppose, was "common enough that it shouldn't surprise anyone". There are all sorts of valid reasons to travel with a couple of pistols. I was simply surprised that so many of the respondents on that aforementioned travel board were completely ignorant of that fact and reacted so negatively.
But I find your opening sentence the most enlightening. Personally, I would have assumed that most Europeans who lived through those wars would have taken a lesson from the Swiss. That you assume they went the opposite direction (and that your assumption may, in fact, be true) is, to me, a puzzle of human nature.
...a lot of Europeans freak out at aspects of US gun culture...
Interesting.
A while back, I posted something on a travel board asking about how easy it would be to clear customs and what sort of procedures I would encounter when I fly into Prague with a couple of pistols (coming from the U.S.). I didn't feel it was necessary to explain that a major shooting competition takes place in the Czech Republic every two years so I didn't mention the reason for the firearms.
To me, this seems like a perfectly innocent inquiry. Isn't it common to carry a firearm or two with you when you travel?
I expected to receive a couple of polite replies concerning the layout of baggage claims, etc. What I got was a firestorm of angry and scared-sounding responses from people who reacted as if I were trying to smuggle weaponized anthrax.
So, what's the deal, anyway? Are all Europeans (well, not all; some attend those shooting matches I was trying to get to) so irrationally afraid of firearms? Why?
As a guy who grew up where half the pickup trucks parked in the student lot at the local high school had clearly-visible rifles in the gun racks, I find the response I received utterly mystifying. I'd love to hear from some Europeans (or anyone else) who could give me a clue what's behind these attitudes.
They agree that it's totally fair for government employees to retire a full decade before the rest of us, and they agree that only an idiot would rely on Social Security when you can vote yourselves nice pensions funded by the taxpayers.
Not really.
The "full decade before the rest of us" part applies in practice to people under the Civil Service Retirement System. That system stopped taking new members more than 25 years ago. If you're in the CSRS and you don't have a mountain of debt that encourages you to continue working for full salary, you can retire at 55. (You can retire even earlier, for a much-reduced pension, if your job is being RIF'd, aka Reduction in Force, the govt equivalent of laying people off. You can also retire after 20 years if you're in a law enforcement position and at least 55 years old.)
The last CSRS employees are starting to leave the government now. Mostly, they are hanging around past 55 because they can't afford to retire yet. Still, in 10 years, they'll almost all be gone. Any public debt load their pensions represent will then start falling as they die off.
For the last (nearly) 30 years, federal U.S. govt employees have been under the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS), a hodge-podge of a (very) small pension, a govt version of a 401k, and social security. Theoretically, when all three are added together, employees should be able to retire at 55 with a reasonable income. But such early retirements are never going to be common. In reality, every time most FERS employees look at their retirement options, they realize they're going to have to work a few more years than they hoped before they can afford to retire.
IOW, the vast majority of federal employees who have been hired in the last three decades are not going to be retiring at 55. Their retirement package, in total, sucks so bad they can't afford to. Some will be thrifty and save additional money outside of their job, then invest wisely. Those folks will be able to retire at 55. Those folks are also, in government and outside of it, pretty rare birds.
So, yeah, it's theoretically possible for govt employees to "retire a full decade before the rest of us." But the present-day reality is that it's quite uncommon; in the future, govt employees who retire at 55 will be vanishingly rare.
Good point. In my previous linked post, I gave just a couple of lines to explaining that. There is no *rational* reason to outlaw *mere* possession. However, we're dealing with the law, here. Laws often appear irrational.
In the case of CP possession, it was made illegal before the internet made it possible to distribute the stuff widely for free. Thus, if someone was in possession, they could lead LE to sellers if only LE had some leverage on them. The easy solution was to make mere possession illegal, thus giving LE some leverage to force consumers to give up suppliers.
Back then, this helped staunch the flow of CP from foreign mail-order outfits. For example, U.S. authorities could not prosecute Color Climax in Europe for producing and selling. They could, however, set up stings (mostly Postal Service stings) to bust collectors in the U.S., thus hurting the commercial suppliers sited outside the U.S.
With possession illegal, the commercial producers could also be attacked by Customs; they could start confiscating any CP being mailed to a U.S. address, no matter the source and without having to make a case that any commercial transaction had taken place.
Note that Color Climax dropped kiddy movies from all their catalogs at about this time. Nowadays, no one at Color Climax will even admit that they got their start making and selling CP. The laws against mere possession, as silly as they seem today, had a positive impact in changing the way Color Climax and others did business back in the day.
Yes, the original justifications for outlawing mere possession were slight and under today's digital reality they are completely nonexistent. Nevertheless, nothing is going to change. Any politician who stands up for "free speech, even for pedos" will get killed in the next election.
Appealing to rationality on this issue is a political non-starter. Give it up. It ain't gonna happen.
So what is the logic behind the banning of child porn? I don't think there is any.
There was, once upon a time.
Historically, the ban on child porn directly influenced production. Fewer kids were raped as a result of the original ban. At the time, the ban was a good idea. Whether or not it should re-appraised based on the new reality of a world with advanced digital technology is a question that not many people are tackling.
There's a longer explanation here and in the follow-ups to that post.
I've looked for certain bits of media online, specifically firearms-related references, how-to vids, and software, and not found them. All these things are distributed on DVD but they haven't, as far as I can find, been pirated. A few well-known examples are egregiously overpriced, too, which makes this state of affairs all the more curious.
I guess the viability of producing such content hinges on knowing your audience and their culture. Some audiences just don't pirate the same as others.
More fundamentally, for child porn to be made, children have to be sexually abused.
Depends on the jurisdiction. In the United States, for example, there are people sitting in jail for child porn, directly related crimes, or derivative prosecutions for making or possessing pictures or videos where one or all the following conditions are true:
***The actors are kids but are never naked and no sex acts take place.
***The actors are verified adults portraying underage characters.
***The actors are nonexistent, animated characters.
Not really. There has to be a credible imminent threat. An identifiable victim isn't required.
If you say "I'm going to go postal at work" or "I'm going to take my rifle to the clock tower and have some target practice" or "I'm going to drive my car up on the sidwalk and run over as many pedestrians as I can at the festival this weekend", you may get reported even though you haven't specified a particular victim.
Of course, it's more complicated than that. The warning can only be issued if the therapist decides the threat is credible. The threatened actions must also cross an ethical line with the therapist. Most therapists, for example, won't turn you in to the police if you admit to smoking a joint. But if that, relative to your treatment and issues, hit some particular ethical hot button for that therapist, they could.
"I'm thinking about molesting kids" is a very, very tough problem for therapists. Finding one who won't sound the alarm isn't easy. Few are willing and trained to deal with such folks without panic. The ones that do expose themselves to liability for failing to sound the alarm if one of their patients starts acting out.
Therapists for potential sex offenders who have NOT been charged and who are NOT already in the legal system are scarce as all hell. If you look for one about the best you can come up with is stopoffending.com. (I think; I'm at work and filtered so I can't verify.) If you read over their site, you'll find that even they barely acknowledge the idea that someone who has not yet committed a crime may seek help.
God help you if you just waltz into a psychiatrists office and proclaim "I'm thinking about diddling kids. Can you help me?"
I'm worried about data access for someone who steals my computer. I'm not much interested in people who want to spy on what sites I browse. I'm single and old enough to not give a rat's ass about what people think, so if someone finds out that I occasionally visit youporn, my attitude is "So what?"
Now, other people may have more to hide. If I were in a country where talking about Tibet gets me imprisoned and looking for bare boobies on the net got me stoned, there's other things to do. Lessee, off the top of my head there are: never using an unencrypted connection when an encrypted one is available, proxying services that will take your money to help, open proxies that can be used (chain together one in Belarus and one in Venzuala and I sorta doubt that the U.S. feds will want to go to that much trouble for anything short of a realistic threat of a major terror attack), getting a shell account somewhere obscure and encrypting your connection to it before using it as your gateway to the world, TOR and other software and systems designed to make tracing hard, darknets like I2P and Freenet, and I suppose I could go on and on.
If I really had something to hide, I suppose I'd carry out as thorough an analysis of the threats I face as I could and then deploy whatever technical solutions seem reasonable.
As an aside, though, I don't think any of that should be necessary. Stuff like this should be turned on, by default, everywhere, all the time. ISPs should see nothing but encrypted streams flowing this way and that with no idea what's in them. But that hasn't happened. Until it does, there are solutions available to anyone who understands that they need them.
That's my answer to "Now, what?" Sound reasonable?
If you really want no noticeable performance penalty (I'm talking 1% or less), you can get your full disk encryption built into the drive hardware. Select a solid-state drive and it will most likely be far faster than whatever you're using now.
Here's a good example. Note that the datasheet (which may be outdated; I think they have a higher-capacity product now.) shows that a 256 gig SSD is available. It's a pain to type in your passphrase at the pre-boot login but it's only a small pain. The peace of mind is priceless.
I'm not looking for a free ticket from the feds. I've been a victim of a burglary, one of those things where they throw all your stuff on bed sheets and drag it out. I mean, cleaned out to the walls. Once you've been through that, your attitude toward personal security and privacy changes. At minimum, if someone gets my computer, I don't want them to have access to anything on it.
If this protects me from malicious prosecution, too, then all the better.
As for the overhead, yes, it's an issue. But for normal people, computers (including the I/O) are already plenty fast to do whatever we need. For 99% of folks, the overhead would be unnoticed. I admit you have a point, though. I work in an environment where every machine has full disk encryption and I've been able to test extensively. I have found a few cases where the encryption noticeably slows a machine. But even in those cases, just spec'ing slightly zoomier hardware would have rendered the issue moot.
Whole disk encryption needs to become mainstream. There are many approaches. Here are a few useful links.
If you want your OS to encrypt everything, Fedora makes it easy. So does Ubuntu.
If you want an add-on software package, PGP works well. In a slightly more involved way, so does Truecrypt.
If you prefer a hardware solution, you can adapt regular, off-the shelf drives with an encryptor such as the Deskcrypt. Fully-encrypted hard drives are available from most vendors, too, but the ones I've found most generally useful (as in, "compatible with every other sort of hardware") are the Eclypt models from Stonewood.
I have owned and used all the products above and like them very much. If you feel different, feel free to Google things like "Momentus FDE" or "WinMagic" or "Guardian Edge Hard Drive" for other vendors and approaches. Take whatever path seems most reasonable and logical to you.
But for God's sake, would everyone please start encrypting your drives? That's not everything you need to do. It's just a minimal first step toward personal security. But it's a start.
I've had an opportunity to use public wi-fi a bunch of times lately. I got an ipad and for the last month I've been using it all the time, everywhere. Naturally, I've been curious about the possibility of doing so anonymously.
I'm pretty much convinced *anonymous* unsecured wi-fi doesn't exist. In every place I've used it, I've found that there's a surveillance camera nearby or such a low level of usage that any person who uses the wi-fi can be identified.
I've used it at at least 15 different McDonalds. In every case, there were only a few users at once (usually just me) and if any one of us were to do something illegal, it would be possible to match times to surveillance video to car license plates to faces.
At one McDonalds, it was possible to hook into the connection across the street at an unrelated business. But the connection was only viable when sitting at a couple of tables in the restaurant. In that case, not only would the surveillance data have identified me, it would probably have told investigators where I was sitting.
I've used it at truck stops; they all have cameras. I've used it at hotels; they give me a traceable access code. (OK, that's not "unsecured" but it's still illustrative.) I've used it at big hotels where it's completely unsecured in the lobby; they have enough surveillance cameras to walk the dog.
None of my neighbors have unsecured connections. I've yet to find one in an office building. I keep my iPad with me all the time and I'm simply not finding unsecured wi-fi in any location where I wouldn't be identifiable after the fact. In the one place that was busy enough that I might go unnoticed, a hospital emergency room, the network was so locked-down that nothing much could be done beside browsing news sites; nntp and torrent connections were specifically blocked.
So how does one go about finding and using this "unsecured wi-fi" in a way that enables the user to remain anonymous?
I'm sure I'm missing something. I'm new to this whole "mobile lifestyle" thing and perhaps someone can clue me in.
I tend to wonder when the pressure on normal people to get in line and shut up will go over the top and cause real action.
It's not just file-sharers. Anyone who simply wants to be left alone as they travel the net is subject to monitoring and, maybe, serious trouble.
How many meritless lawsuits will have to be filed, how many knocks on doors in the night must happen, before some package of technology comes into general use, a group of tools that creates a situation where ISPs see nothing but encrypted streams going this way and that, with no idea what's actually in them?
All the pieces exist. Some years ago, I would have predicted that we'd be to that point already.
But no. People just keep sending in the clear, writing all their important letters on the back of postcards unless the recipient forces them to put it in an envelope.
Is this weird? Or is my viewpoint skewed? I'd really like to know because I sure don't understand it.
To be honest I am not sure what he would think of all the new tools there are to take photographs.
He would love the new tools.
Toward the end of his life, Adams was interviewed and spoke about digital photography. (Yes, it existed back then.) The first pictures had come back from Mars and Adams expressed real excitement about the possibilities of the new medium.
Adams looked at all the new tools that came along and used whatever worked. For his photography, an 8x10 view worked best back then. It's still the best tool for the job today when you want high resolution (the equivalen of hundreds of megapixels) and a reasonably long tonal range in a form factor that doesn't require a pack mule to carry. For that type of photography, digital has never "gotten there" the same way 8x10 (and larger) view cameras did a century ago.
However, as we all see in our daily lives, digital technologies progress at an astounding rate. The idea of an 8x8 sensor that might actually sit in the back of a real honest-to-gosh full-size view camera gets me seriously pumped.
You clearly take a principled stand on these issues.
It's also clear that sexual harassment in large-organization workplaces is mitigated against, in this time, in the U.S., via means that are not highly principled.
On these things, I hope we can agree.
I believe there are subtleties, complications, and procedural matters you don't understand. If you did, you'd understand that things aren't as bad as I've made them sound. Yes, "the victim defines the crime" is still true but it's not engraved in stone; fake victims who make false accusations almost always wind up being found out.
As a trainer, though, I think I do something valuable by helping people understand how things work and how to avoid getting ground up in a process that they can easily avoid. I also believe I help keep things a little less crazy by reminding the powers-that-be that they should pay some attention to reason; those principles eventually come back to bite them. I've repeatedly argued that the "reasonableness" criteria should be inserted into the investigation process earlier. In training sessions, I've repeatedly covered the history of sexual harassment so that people understand that things weren't always this way.
But these subtle efforts are clearly insufficient and I've long since given up on actually changing things. This culture is imposed from above after various court decisions create a perceived need. While I can try to help people stay sane, my efforts aren't going to really change anything.
I'm looking forward to retirement, actually. As much as I love my job (and I really do love my primary work), I'm looking forward to doing something different. My freedom is just a short span of years away.
If any of the things that I plan to do after retirement turns out to be unexpectedly profitable, I figure my attitude toward my employees and sexual harassment issues will be quite a bit more human, reasonable, and grounded in simple respect than the ambiguously irritating world I now move in. At least, I certainly hope so.
Well, that's a whole 'nother subject. But since it has come up...
I think public unions are great mostly because they aren't really unions. Federal employee unions cannot strike. If a union can't strike, it's not really a union. It's a hired mouthpiece that provides structure for forcing management officials to listen to workers and agree on work rules.
A union that can't strike can make trouble, to be sure. But it can't cripple an organization the way the big private industry unions can. I think that federal worker unions strike a near-perfect balance of power between "doing the job" and "protecting the workers". Unionized federal workers are far, far less a public evil (if you think unions are evil, that is) than auto industry unions, for example.
Federal unions aren't organized against the U.S. population. That's just silly theoretical thinking. They are organized, like all unions, to put the brakes on management officials who want to be assholes just because they have a little authority. Fighting against that isn't fighting against the taxpayers in general; it's fighting for truth, justice and the American way.:-)
Then again, all the above is just my opinion and you're certainly welcome to yours.
But where you go really off-track is when you start quoting numbers. The unfunded pension obligations are no more unfunded than Social Security and are actually in better shape. And unlike SS, federal pensions are a self-correcting problem over the long term. The old Civil Service Retirement System ceased taking in new members over 25 years ago. Once those people are all retired, a process that will be mostly complete in 10 years, the unfunded pension obligations you're worried about will fade away. All younger employees under the Federal Employee Retirement System will be far less of a drain on the Treasury when they retire.
As for the "converting five years worth of vacation to pay in his last year so he can retire with 150k a year at 45 and then get another cushy government job", it's tough to know where to start.
--- No one has five years of vacation to convert. We're limited to 240 hours, max. We use it or lose it every year and can only carry over 240 hours. --- The vacation time doesn't convert to cash. It converts to time in service which only marginally bumps up retirement pay. --- Almost nobody retires with a $150K a year pension. Except for inside the beltway, executives, and high-level managers, employees who actually earn $150K a year are pretty damn rare. Their pensions are quite a bit less than that. --- Almost nobody retires at 45. The only way to do that is to lose your job to a reduction in force. You can, depending on the situation, sometimes take early retirement what that happens. But if you take early retirement before age 55, you get hit with big penalties that reduce your pension. --- Finally, "another government job" is mostly fiction. Except for military retirees who go to work on the civilian side, this sort of double-dipping requires the retiree repay their retirement fund from the previous job. Almost no one does that. No one can afford to.
In times past, the rules were different and some less overstated version of your complaints would have had minimal merit. Today, though, your complaints and impressions of the way things work in the public sector are about 30 years out of date.
It has happened to me, too. I volunteered to be a trainer in this area specifically because I have been placed on official warning for sexual harrassment. I know how it can hurt an innocent who is accused.
However, I also know that without a process to investigate, the damage is worse. If someone is going to accuse me falsely, I'm screwed no matter how baseless the accusation. At that point, there's no way to un-ring the bell. So which, then, is the better outcome? Having a process by which I can be exonerated, even though it technically appears on my record for 7 years (after which it is expunged)? Or simply be fired, straightaway, by some management official who's afraid that the accuser is going to make more trouble?
Would you rather defer to some management official with the power to say (immediately, at the initial complaint filing) "This complaint has no merit and is dismissed. Everybody get back to work."?
If you give any management official that level of power, then you're also giving them the power to allow their buddies to engage in obvious sexual harrassment without fear; the power to force a legitimate victim seek justice from outside, a ridiculous and dishonorable thing that results in "stress and time-wasting" for the victim.
Given the alternatives, I think that having a formal process is better. Checks and balances, y'know.
As for my "corruption" - you clearly misunderstand. I don't like things the way they are. I've said in other posts that it offends my sense of justice. I'm just saying that this is the way it is and, as painful as it might be, it's workable.
I think we're more alike than you realize. I'm willing to swill the koolaid in this job because I'm in a government agency that invents next to nothing, that has as its most important mission the uninterrupted, reliable delivery of vital services. That's not an environment where joie de vivre is the highest virtue.
In practice, my workplace isn't the same as the rectal probe manufacturer in "Joe vs. The Volcano". (Great movie, btw.) Neither is it American Apparel. I rather like the work/life balance we've achieved.
That being said, if I owned my own company, it would be a much more lighthearted place. It could be, because I wouldn't be responsible for, well, all the really basic, non-flashy, kinda boring but still really important stuff that my current employer must do.
Thanks for your comments; they're definitely worth pondering, especially by people who have not yet hired on. If I had understood beforehand the culture of my employer more fully, I'm not sure if I would have hired on. It's something that young 'uns should pay attention to.
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Obfuscant's reply may be a bit harsh in tone, but he does have a point. Your post, for example, uses certain words and phrases that indicate a lack of familiarity (or, at minimum, ownership) of firearms. (To wit: "Shoot to kill", "knife crime", and the stats you cite are all very problematic when discussing this issue.)
Still, it's certainly your right to live in a society that approaches these things as you deem best - even if I think it's a little nutty.
One last thing, though - If you ever get a chance to travel in the States, feel free to drop by a shooting range that rents submachine guns (or, to Europeans, "machine pistols"). Rent one and spend a half hour pouring lead downrange. Unless you've already been soured on the experience by military service, you'll wind up understanding at least part of the "American attraction towards guns". They are seriously fun. :-)
I could go on for pages with more reasons why guns are collectible for their beauty and history, worthy of study for their impact on society and mechanical engineering, and symbolic of certain (I believe) admirable traits of humanity. Rather than bore people with all that, though, I prefer to just take them shooting, first. Once people realize how much fun they are, objections tend to melt away.
And thank you very much for your thoughts. Yes, they do make sense, ie I do think I understand what you're saying.
I now realize that my original phrasing was rather clumsy. When I referred to traveling with firearms as "common", I didn't exactly mean that a majority of people do so. The number is probably less than the 10% you posit. What I really meant, I suppose, was "common enough that it shouldn't surprise anyone". There are all sorts of valid reasons to travel with a couple of pistols. I was simply surprised that so many of the respondents on that aforementioned travel board were completely ignorant of that fact and reacted so negatively.
But I find your opening sentence the most enlightening. Personally, I would have assumed that most Europeans who lived through those wars would have taken a lesson from the Swiss. That you assume they went the opposite direction (and that your assumption may, in fact, be true) is, to me, a puzzle of human nature.
Interesting.
A while back, I posted something on a travel board asking about how easy it would be to clear customs and what sort of procedures I would encounter when I fly into Prague with a couple of pistols (coming from the U.S.). I didn't feel it was necessary to explain that a major shooting competition takes place in the Czech Republic every two years so I didn't mention the reason for the firearms.
To me, this seems like a perfectly innocent inquiry. Isn't it common to carry a firearm or two with you when you travel?
I expected to receive a couple of polite replies concerning the layout of baggage claims, etc. What I got was a firestorm of angry and scared-sounding responses from people who reacted as if I were trying to smuggle weaponized anthrax.
So, what's the deal, anyway? Are all Europeans (well, not all; some attend those shooting matches I was trying to get to) so irrationally afraid of firearms? Why?
As a guy who grew up where half the pickup trucks parked in the student lot at the local high school had clearly-visible rifles in the gun racks, I find the response I received utterly mystifying. I'd love to hear from some Europeans (or anyone else) who could give me a clue what's behind these attitudes.
Not really.
The "full decade before the rest of us" part applies in practice to people under the Civil Service Retirement System. That system stopped taking new members more than 25 years ago. If you're in the CSRS and you don't have a mountain of debt that encourages you to continue working for full salary, you can retire at 55. (You can retire even earlier, for a much-reduced pension, if your job is being RIF'd, aka Reduction in Force, the govt equivalent of laying people off. You can also retire after 20 years if you're in a law enforcement position and at least 55 years old.)
The last CSRS employees are starting to leave the government now. Mostly, they are hanging around past 55 because they can't afford to retire yet. Still, in 10 years, they'll almost all be gone. Any public debt load their pensions represent will then start falling as they die off.
For the last (nearly) 30 years, federal U.S. govt employees have been under the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS), a hodge-podge of a (very) small pension, a govt version of a 401k, and social security. Theoretically, when all three are added together, employees should be able to retire at 55 with a reasonable income. But such early retirements are never going to be common. In reality, every time most FERS employees look at their retirement options, they realize they're going to have to work a few more years than they hoped before they can afford to retire.
IOW, the vast majority of federal employees who have been hired in the last three decades are not going to be retiring at 55. Their retirement package, in total, sucks so bad they can't afford to. Some will be thrifty and save additional money outside of their job, then invest wisely. Those folks will be able to retire at 55. Those folks are also, in government and outside of it, pretty rare birds.
So, yeah, it's theoretically possible for govt employees to "retire a full decade before the rest of us." But the present-day reality is that it's quite uncommon; in the future, govt employees who retire at 55 will be vanishingly rare.
Good point. In my previous linked post, I gave just a couple of lines to explaining that. There is no *rational* reason to outlaw *mere* possession. However, we're dealing with the law, here. Laws often appear irrational.
In the case of CP possession, it was made illegal before the internet made it possible to distribute the stuff widely for free. Thus, if someone was in possession, they could lead LE to sellers if only LE had some leverage on them. The easy solution was to make mere possession illegal, thus giving LE some leverage to force consumers to give up suppliers.
Back then, this helped staunch the flow of CP from foreign mail-order outfits. For example, U.S. authorities could not prosecute Color Climax in Europe for producing and selling. They could, however, set up stings (mostly Postal Service stings) to bust collectors in the U.S., thus hurting the commercial suppliers sited outside the U.S.
With possession illegal, the commercial producers could also be attacked by Customs; they could start confiscating any CP being mailed to a U.S. address, no matter the source and without having to make a case that any commercial transaction had taken place.
Note that Color Climax dropped kiddy movies from all their catalogs at about this time. Nowadays, no one at Color Climax will even admit that they got their start making and selling CP. The laws against mere possession, as silly as they seem today, had a positive impact in changing the way Color Climax and others did business back in the day.
Yes, the original justifications for outlawing mere possession were slight and under today's digital reality they are completely nonexistent. Nevertheless, nothing is going to change. Any politician who stands up for "free speech, even for pedos" will get killed in the next election.
Appealing to rationality on this issue is a political non-starter. Give it up. It ain't gonna happen.
Am I the only Slashdot reader old enough (and a porn consumer for long enough) to know the history of child porn laws?
It's amazing how many times I've needed to post something like: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1790178&cid=33671018
There was, once upon a time.
Historically, the ban on child porn directly influenced production. Fewer kids were raped as a result of the original ban. At the time, the ban was a good idea. Whether or not it should re-appraised based on the new reality of a world with advanced digital technology is a question that not many people are tackling.
There's a longer explanation here and in the follow-ups to that post.
I've looked for certain bits of media online, specifically firearms-related references, how-to vids, and software, and not found them. All these things are distributed on DVD but they haven't, as far as I can find, been pirated. A few well-known examples are egregiously overpriced, too, which makes this state of affairs all the more curious.
I guess the viability of producing such content hinges on knowing your audience and their culture. Some audiences just don't pirate the same as others.
Depends on the jurisdiction. In the United States, for example, there are people sitting in jail for child porn, directly related crimes, or derivative prosecutions for making or possessing pictures or videos where one or all the following conditions are true:
***The actors are kids but are never naked and no sex acts take place.
***The actors are verified adults portraying underage characters.
***The actors are nonexistent, animated characters.
Funny as all get out. Thanks, I needed that.
Not really. There has to be a credible imminent threat. An identifiable victim isn't required.
If you say "I'm going to go postal at work" or "I'm going to take my rifle to the clock tower and have some target practice" or "I'm going to drive my car up on the sidwalk and run over as many pedestrians as I can at the festival this weekend", you may get reported even though you haven't specified a particular victim.
Of course, it's more complicated than that. The warning can only be issued if the therapist decides the threat is credible. The threatened actions must also cross an ethical line with the therapist. Most therapists, for example, won't turn you in to the police if you admit to smoking a joint. But if that, relative to your treatment and issues, hit some particular ethical hot button for that therapist, they could.
"I'm thinking about molesting kids" is a very, very tough problem for therapists. Finding one who won't sound the alarm isn't easy. Few are willing and trained to deal with such folks without panic. The ones that do expose themselves to liability for failing to sound the alarm if one of their patients starts acting out.
Therapists for potential sex offenders who have NOT been charged and who are NOT already in the legal system are scarce as all hell. If you look for one about the best you can come up with is stopoffending.com. (I think; I'm at work and filtered so I can't verify.) If you read over their site, you'll find that even they barely acknowledge the idea that someone who has not yet committed a crime may seek help.
God help you if you just waltz into a psychiatrists office and proclaim "I'm thinking about diddling kids. Can you help me?"
Actually, about as often, they call him "mom's boyfriend".
I'm worried about data access for someone who steals my computer. I'm not much interested in people who want to spy on what sites I browse. I'm single and old enough to not give a rat's ass about what people think, so if someone finds out that I occasionally visit youporn, my attitude is "So what?"
Now, other people may have more to hide. If I were in a country where talking about Tibet gets me imprisoned and looking for bare boobies on the net got me stoned, there's other things to do. Lessee, off the top of my head there are: never using an unencrypted connection when an encrypted one is available, proxying services that will take your money to help, open proxies that can be used (chain together one in Belarus and one in Venzuala and I sorta doubt that the U.S. feds will want to go to that much trouble for anything short of a realistic threat of a major terror attack), getting a shell account somewhere obscure and encrypting your connection to it before using it as your gateway to the world, TOR and other software and systems designed to make tracing hard, darknets like I2P and Freenet, and I suppose I could go on and on.
If I really had something to hide, I suppose I'd carry out as thorough an analysis of the threats I face as I could and then deploy whatever technical solutions seem reasonable.
As an aside, though, I don't think any of that should be necessary. Stuff like this should be turned on, by default, everywhere, all the time. ISPs should see nothing but encrypted streams flowing this way and that with no idea what's in them. But that hasn't happened. Until it does, there are solutions available to anyone who understands that they need them.
That's my answer to "Now, what?" Sound reasonable?
If you really want no noticeable performance penalty (I'm talking 1% or less), you can get your full disk encryption built into the drive hardware. Select a solid-state drive and it will most likely be far faster than whatever you're using now.
Here's a good example. Note that the datasheet (which may be outdated; I think they have a higher-capacity product now.) shows that a 256 gig SSD is available. It's a pain to type in your passphrase at the pre-boot login but it's only a small pain. The peace of mind is priceless.
I'm not looking for a free ticket from the feds. I've been a victim of a burglary, one of those things where they throw all your stuff on bed sheets and drag it out. I mean, cleaned out to the walls. Once you've been through that, your attitude toward personal security and privacy changes. At minimum, if someone gets my computer, I don't want them to have access to anything on it.
If this protects me from malicious prosecution, too, then all the better.
As for the overhead, yes, it's an issue. But for normal people, computers (including the I/O) are already plenty fast to do whatever we need. For 99% of folks, the overhead would be unnoticed. I admit you have a point, though. I work in an environment where every machine has full disk encryption and I've been able to test extensively. I have found a few cases where the encryption noticeably slows a machine. But even in those cases, just spec'ing slightly zoomier hardware would have rendered the issue moot.
Whole disk encryption needs to become mainstream. There are many approaches. Here are a few useful links.
If you want your OS to encrypt everything, Fedora makes it easy. So does Ubuntu.
If you want an add-on software package, PGP works well. In a slightly more involved way, so does Truecrypt.
If you prefer a hardware solution, you can adapt regular, off-the shelf drives with an encryptor such as the Deskcrypt. Fully-encrypted hard drives are available from most vendors, too, but the ones I've found most generally useful (as in, "compatible with every other sort of hardware") are the Eclypt models from Stonewood.
I have owned and used all the products above and like them very much. If you feel different, feel free to Google things like "Momentus FDE" or "WinMagic" or "Guardian Edge Hard Drive" for other vendors and approaches. Take whatever path seems most reasonable and logical to you.
But for God's sake, would everyone please start encrypting your drives? That's not everything you need to do. It's just a minimal first step toward personal security. But it's a start.
I've had an opportunity to use public wi-fi a bunch of times lately. I got an ipad and for the last month I've been using it all the time, everywhere. Naturally, I've been curious about the possibility of doing so anonymously.
I'm pretty much convinced *anonymous* unsecured wi-fi doesn't exist. In every place I've used it, I've found that there's a surveillance camera nearby or such a low level of usage that any person who uses the wi-fi can be identified.
I've used it at at least 15 different McDonalds. In every case, there were only a few users at once (usually just me) and if any one of us were to do something illegal, it would be possible to match times to surveillance video to car license plates to faces.
At one McDonalds, it was possible to hook into the connection across the street at an unrelated business. But the connection was only viable when sitting at a couple of tables in the restaurant. In that case, not only would the surveillance data have identified me, it would probably have told investigators where I was sitting.
I've used it at truck stops; they all have cameras. I've used it at hotels; they give me a traceable access code. (OK, that's not "unsecured" but it's still illustrative.) I've used it at big hotels where it's completely unsecured in the lobby; they have enough surveillance cameras to walk the dog.
None of my neighbors have unsecured connections. I've yet to find one in an office building. I keep my iPad with me all the time and I'm simply not finding unsecured wi-fi in any location where I wouldn't be identifiable after the fact. In the one place that was busy enough that I might go unnoticed, a hospital emergency room, the network was so locked-down that nothing much could be done beside browsing news sites; nntp and torrent connections were specifically blocked.
So how does one go about finding and using this "unsecured wi-fi" in a way that enables the user to remain anonymous?
I'm sure I'm missing something. I'm new to this whole "mobile lifestyle" thing and perhaps someone can clue me in.
I tend to wonder when the pressure on normal people to get in line and shut up will go over the top and cause real action.
It's not just file-sharers. Anyone who simply wants to be left alone as they travel the net is subject to monitoring and, maybe, serious trouble.
How many meritless lawsuits will have to be filed, how many knocks on doors in the night must happen, before some package of technology comes into general use, a group of tools that creates a situation where ISPs see nothing but encrypted streams going this way and that, with no idea what's actually in them?
All the pieces exist. Some years ago, I would have predicted that we'd be to that point already.
But no. People just keep sending in the clear, writing all their important letters on the back of postcards unless the recipient forces them to put it in an envelope.
Is this weird? Or is my viewpoint skewed? I'd really like to know because I sure don't understand it.
He would love the new tools.
Toward the end of his life, Adams was interviewed and spoke about digital photography. (Yes, it existed back then.) The first pictures had come back from Mars and Adams expressed real excitement about the possibilities of the new medium.
Adams looked at all the new tools that came along and used whatever worked. For his photography, an 8x10 view worked best back then. It's still the best tool for the job today when you want high resolution (the equivalen of hundreds of megapixels) and a reasonably long tonal range in a form factor that doesn't require a pack mule to carry. For that type of photography, digital has never "gotten there" the same way 8x10 (and larger) view cameras did a century ago.
However, as we all see in our daily lives, digital technologies progress at an astounding rate. The idea of an 8x8 sensor that might actually sit in the back of a real honest-to-gosh full-size view camera gets me seriously pumped.
You clearly take a principled stand on these issues.
It's also clear that sexual harassment in large-organization workplaces is mitigated against, in this time, in the U.S., via means that are not highly principled.
On these things, I hope we can agree.
I believe there are subtleties, complications, and procedural matters you don't understand. If you did, you'd understand that things aren't as bad as I've made them sound. Yes, "the victim defines the crime" is still true but it's not engraved in stone; fake victims who make false accusations almost always wind up being found out.
As a trainer, though, I think I do something valuable by helping people understand how things work and how to avoid getting ground up in a process that they can easily avoid. I also believe I help keep things a little less crazy by reminding the powers-that-be that they should pay some attention to reason; those principles eventually come back to bite them. I've repeatedly argued that the "reasonableness" criteria should be inserted into the investigation process earlier. In training sessions, I've repeatedly covered the history of sexual harassment so that people understand that things weren't always this way.
But these subtle efforts are clearly insufficient and I've long since given up on actually changing things. This culture is imposed from above after various court decisions create a perceived need. While I can try to help people stay sane, my efforts aren't going to really change anything.
I'm looking forward to retirement, actually. As much as I love my job (and I really do love my primary work), I'm looking forward to doing something different. My freedom is just a short span of years away.
If any of the things that I plan to do after retirement turns out to be unexpectedly profitable, I figure my attitude toward my employees and sexual harassment issues will be quite a bit more human, reasonable, and grounded in simple respect than the ambiguously irritating world I now move in. At least, I certainly hope so.
Well, that's a whole 'nother subject. But since it has come up...
I think public unions are great mostly because they aren't really unions. Federal employee unions cannot strike. If a union can't strike, it's not really a union. It's a hired mouthpiece that provides structure for forcing management officials to listen to workers and agree on work rules.
A union that can't strike can make trouble, to be sure. But it can't cripple an organization the way the big private industry unions can. I think that federal worker unions strike a near-perfect balance of power between "doing the job" and "protecting the workers". Unionized federal workers are far, far less a public evil (if you think unions are evil, that is) than auto industry unions, for example.
Federal unions aren't organized against the U.S. population. That's just silly theoretical thinking. They are organized, like all unions, to put the brakes on management officials who want to be assholes just because they have a little authority. Fighting against that isn't fighting against the taxpayers in general; it's fighting for truth, justice and the American way. :-)
Then again, all the above is just my opinion and you're certainly welcome to yours.
But where you go really off-track is when you start quoting numbers. The unfunded pension obligations are no more unfunded than Social Security and are actually in better shape. And unlike SS, federal pensions are a self-correcting problem over the long term. The old Civil Service Retirement System ceased taking in new members over 25 years ago. Once those people are all retired, a process that will be mostly complete in 10 years, the unfunded pension obligations you're worried about will fade away. All younger employees under the Federal Employee Retirement System will be far less of a drain on the Treasury when they retire.
As for the "converting five years worth of vacation to pay in his last year so he can retire with 150k a year at 45 and then get another cushy government job", it's tough to know where to start.
--- No one has five years of vacation to convert. We're limited to 240 hours, max. We use it or lose it every year and can only carry over 240 hours.
--- The vacation time doesn't convert to cash. It converts to time in service which only marginally bumps up retirement pay.
--- Almost nobody retires with a $150K a year pension. Except for inside the beltway, executives, and high-level managers, employees who actually earn $150K a year are pretty damn rare. Their pensions are quite a bit less than that.
--- Almost nobody retires at 45. The only way to do that is to lose your job to a reduction in force. You can, depending on the situation, sometimes take early retirement what that happens. But if you take early retirement before age 55, you get hit with big penalties that reduce your pension.
--- Finally, "another government job" is mostly fiction. Except for military retirees who go to work on the civilian side, this sort of double-dipping requires the retiree repay their retirement fund from the previous job. Almost no one does that. No one can afford to.
In times past, the rules were different and some less overstated version of your complaints would have had minimal merit. Today, though, your complaints and impressions of the way things work in the public sector are about 30 years out of date.
It has happened to me, too. I volunteered to be a trainer in this area specifically because I have been placed on official warning for sexual harrassment. I know how it can hurt an innocent who is accused.
However, I also know that without a process to investigate, the damage is worse. If someone is going to accuse me falsely, I'm screwed no matter how baseless the accusation. At that point, there's no way to un-ring the bell. So which, then, is the better outcome? Having a process by which I can be exonerated, even though it technically appears on my record for 7 years (after which it is expunged)? Or simply be fired, straightaway, by some management official who's afraid that the accuser is going to make more trouble?
Would you rather defer to some management official with the power to say (immediately, at the initial complaint filing) "This complaint has no merit and is dismissed. Everybody get back to work."?
If you give any management official that level of power, then you're also giving them the power to allow their buddies to engage in obvious sexual harrassment without fear; the power to force a legitimate victim seek justice from outside, a ridiculous and dishonorable thing that results in "stress and time-wasting" for the victim.
Given the alternatives, I think that having a formal process is better. Checks and balances, y'know.
As for my "corruption" - you clearly misunderstand. I don't like things the way they are. I've said in other posts that it offends my sense of justice. I'm just saying that this is the way it is and, as painful as it might be, it's workable.
It's far from ideal. But it's workable.
There is, I regret to say but know from long experience, incredibly insightful advice in the parent post.
Agreed. There's no "unlimited power" at play here. There are checks and balances. See this post.
I think we're more alike than you realize. I'm willing to swill the koolaid in this job because I'm in a government agency that invents next to nothing, that has as its most important mission the uninterrupted, reliable delivery of vital services. That's not an environment where joie de vivre is the highest virtue.
In practice, my workplace isn't the same as the rectal probe manufacturer in "Joe vs. The Volcano". (Great movie, btw.) Neither is it American Apparel. I rather like the work/life balance we've achieved.
That being said, if I owned my own company, it would be a much more lighthearted place. It could be, because I wouldn't be responsible for, well, all the really basic, non-flashy, kinda boring but still really important stuff that my current employer must do.
Thanks for your comments; they're definitely worth pondering, especially by people who have not yet hired on. If I had understood beforehand the culture of my employer more fully, I'm not sure if I would have hired on. It's something that young 'uns should pay attention to.