who are you to tell someone what they can and can't do with their money after they die?
There are plenty of limitations on what you can do with your property. You cannot use it to kill people, for one thing (unless you are a government or a corporation, but even than it's usually illegal, it just gets swept under the carpet). Try buying a nuclear bomb with your money. Heck, try buying drugs.
So there are legal restrictions. Then there are moral restrictions. Let's say you want to buy an island full of people and have it just for yourself, so you buy it and sweep all the inhabitants into the ocean. Or send them off on rafts. Would you argue this is a legitimate use of your property? In fact, this kind of thing happens all the time, except with houses rather than islands. But governments have done exactly that with islands, too - google Diego Garcia.
The issue is emphatically *not* about whether there can or should be limits on using your property - because there always have been such limits, and for a good reason. The issue is only whether a particular new restriction should or should not be introduced. That can be decided on a case-by-case basis, not through groveling against your little property god.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
Your statement falls down, using your own example. The gambler makes MONEY that year. Cash, bucks, greenbacks, cabbage. Stock has zero value UNTIL you sell it.
Bull. You could just as well say that a loaf of bread has zero value until it is sold. If you can borrow against it, it has value - and a very precisely estimated value, at that.
The fact that it might become worthless overnight is an entirely different matter. You get taxed on what is, not on what might be at some later time. That loaf of bread *will* be worthless in two days or so, too.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
You really can't tax people on the value of stock, because it's nothing if it's not being sold. It could just as easily become worthless before that happens.
First, if you can borrow against it, it's not worthless. Quite the contrary, your broker and your bank will know exactly how much it is worth.
Second, see what happens when you walk into a bank and when Mark Zuckerberg walks into a bank. See the difference? Still think stock is just a worthless piece of value until it is exercised?
Third, where does "it could just as easily" enter into a tax scheme? You pay taxes on what is, not on what might be. You own stock at your personal risk, why should anyone else care or be poorer for it? If you're on a salary, you might "just as easily" get mugged and have it stolen from you on the payday. That is no reason to not tax your earnings, is it?
I am greatly amused to see all the whining, above and below, about how it is impossible to determine the value of "idle" stock and how a paper fortune might become worthless overnight. At the same time we are constantly brainwashed about how investing in stock is a good policy to safeguard your future, because it will - it must! - appreciate in value, long term, and we'll all be vacationing on the Bahamas when we retire.
(The article conveniently omits that one British court had already dismissed the guy's case, effectively saying he didn't commit a crime in the UK. Then another British court okayed his extradition to the US.)
Dictionaries do not decide what a term means. They record usage. If enough industry lobbyists, misinformed pundits and bribed politicians have used the words "steal" and "theft" to describe common copyright infringement - and they certainly have - then newer editions of dictionaries will record that sense.
That however still doesn't make copyright infringement legally or morally equivalent to theft. It's just a piece of propaganda we've been living under for a generation and many people have internalized it. "God is great" is another, or "Dear Leader is great" if you live in North Korea. Same thing, though not quite the same scale yet.
I don't, because it will either be an Adobe plugin, hence slow and a memory hog, or it will be written from scratch, hence not fully compatible and probably slow as well. Add to the mix all the potential security issues with active content in PDF documents. I disable all of it in Adobe Reader, now I'll have to disable it in Firefox as well.
PDFs should be treated like executables or archive files - saved to disk.
Other than that, I really don't understand why Firefox has to be aping Chrome instead of going its own way. What's wrong with the top-level menu that it had to be replaced with a single, hierarchical menu that's always harder to navigate? What was wrong with the well-established, intuitive tabbed interface metaphor, which Chrome managed to break so badly by disconnecting the tabs from their content?
And really, websites will be putting items on the tab context menus? Advertisers are already salivating. Good luck finding the "Close tab" command among fifty links to commercials.
Would you kindly expand on that comment? Because as it stands, it is a non-sequitur. In order to have oil, you need to buy it on an open market. Exactly where do the army, navy and air force come in here?
Unless you actually meant to say that in order to have oil, the US and UK must take it by force. Please clarify.
New York Times already runs on that particular business model. They sat for a year on the story about NSA's illegal (at the time) surveillance, came out with it only after the 2004 elections. No-one needs Wikileaks to provide services they already have catered for.
I've already said what I think about Kaspersky's views here and I won't be renewing my license but... do you have anything other than anecdotal evidence (your own)? I switched from ESET Security Suite (essentially nod32 + firewall) to Kaspersky specifically because it uses significantly less memory, less CPU, and its on-access scan is much faster. Still a relative hog, like all av software today, but not nearly as bad as other things I've tried.
And anyway, it's really beside the point how good (or not) their products are. The man has just lost me as a customer even though I *like* what he makes.
I was born in communist Poland, early enough to remember it well but like you, too late to have endured any particular hardships or to have faced tough political choices. So without judging or justifying Kaspersky either way, let's note than in Russia in the 70s there would have been precious few career avenues for a kid gifted in maths and cryptanalysis.
The views he's expressing today are a completely different affair. Today he really talks as if the KGB thinking is catching up with him. (Not that you won't hear US or EU officials express like sentiments!) I've switched just recently from nod32 (s-l-o-w on-access scan!) to Kaspersky AVP, but I don't think I will be renewing the license when it expires in under a year. Wish there was more I could do.
"Several" is a useful number, but I suspect the actual ratio would be inverse to what you suggest. Especially if you account for privatized armies such as Blackwater (now Xe) and the fact that they recruit abroad, e.g. in South America (Chile).
And let me tell you, here in Poland under communism you did not see a whole lot of defections during the martial law. It's not just that soldiers are trained to obey orders and not ask questions; it's also that the government expects the scenario you describe, and acts to minimize the risk, e.g. by relocating troops to far areas of the country - so that they don't feel they are ordered to fire on their neighbors.
Finally look at the torture scandal. It wasn't hard to find troops who found their jobs fun, was it?
Here's more. The new Marine One fleet was to be built not by Sikorsky, as has always been the case, but by an Italian manufacturer Finmeccanica. Apparently the bidding and selection process itself was suspect, and pilots objected. This may also be why Obama wants the project reviewed. The article below posits a particular theory about the apparently crooked deal with Finmeccanica, which may or may not be correct, but the facts remain regardless of their interpretation:
Maybe, but in assessing expected behavior it's often a good idea to look at the story so far. How many cities has Iran dropped bombs on in recent history? How many cities have other countries bombed during the same period? Looking at it that way, I don't think Iran is that big of a threat to anyone.
Thanks for that. From your explanation thoughn gather that there may be a pretty thin line between "skinning the jacket off and bending" a cable and breaking / clipping one while doing so, especially underwater. It would be something of a delicate operation.
This is not to say it's any evidence for tampering vs an inadvertent breaking by a ship's anchor, only that perhaps the tampering scenario is not altogether unlikely, either.
You are wrong. First, because yes, people will risk their careers to snoop on the privacy of total strangers, just because they can. Since they work in secrecy, it's even debatable if they feel their careers at at risk for doing so: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5987804
Second, because as alarming as the linked story is, privacy is ultimately not about the police reading your shopping list. It's always about money - the money someone is willing to pay to access personal data on a political opponent (to discredit her or him), a dissident group (to penetrate and spy on them), or a competing business (obvious).
Therefore, it's also about human rights.
Once the technology is available, it *will* be abused, and we know this, because such abuses have always happened. I don't know of a government (or a business) that had a technology available and decided not to use it because doing so would be unethical or even illegal. How many times must the same stories repeat before we learn?
Um, no. "Insecure people" are those who will not look at or acknowledge any facts that might contradict their worldview, no matter what evidence is available to them. "Insecure people", aka fundamentalists. When I see a fundamentalist, I see a wife-beater - don't you? They're insecure, they won't listen to reason, and they respond with violence to any challenge to their authority.
I am not saying Bush did 9/11, nor do I believe it. I am saying though, that your ad-hominem attack is entirely misguided and empirically wrong. After all, which is "scarier", if you will: 19 random hijackers killing your people or your own government killing your people?
You are making a mistake by conflating a lot of people, with lots of different opinions, into a single entity. They are not. And the issue of what physical forces caused the buildings to fall as they did is orthogonal to the question of who caused it to happen that way.
You go on to say "the (current) Bush Administration doesn't have people smart enough to pull a stunt like that"
I don't know about that. They Bush administration got exactly what they wanted in Afghanistan and Iraq, they got exactly what they wanted with the Patriot Act, the FISA bill, wiretapping, no-fly lists, they got exactly what they wanted on things like the bankruptcy bill, now they even got Poland and the Czech Republic to agree to the missile shield, even though it doesn't even work and in both countries the majority of the population are opposed to the project. In fact, Bush and his people have been getting pretty much what they wanted throughout the term, often with a little help from the Democrats (including the confirmation of all the far right nominations to the Supreme Court and elsewhere).
If you consistently get what you want for 7 years, that's not exactly incompetence.
You should join NIST. No really, they need this level of technical acuity.
Nobody disputes that "something bad" should have and did happen. The question (not that you don't know it) is about exactly what kind of direct and consequential damage would occur, especially to a structure supposedly built to withstand that kind of impact.
Slashdot Mirror
who are you to tell someone what they can and can't do with their money after they die?
There are plenty of limitations on what you can do with your property. You cannot use it to kill people, for one thing (unless you are a government or a corporation, but even than it's usually illegal, it just gets swept under the carpet). Try buying a nuclear bomb with your money. Heck, try buying drugs.
So there are legal restrictions. Then there are moral restrictions. Let's say you want to buy an island full of people and have it just for yourself, so you buy it and sweep all the inhabitants into the ocean. Or send them off on rafts. Would you argue this is a legitimate use of your property? In fact, this kind of thing happens all the time, except with houses rather than islands. But governments have done exactly that with islands, too - google Diego Garcia.
The issue is emphatically *not* about whether there can or should be limits on using your property - because there always have been such limits, and for a good reason. The issue is only whether a particular new restriction should or should not be introduced. That can be decided on a case-by-case basis, not through groveling against your little property god.
Your statement falls down, using your own example. The gambler makes MONEY that year. Cash, bucks, greenbacks, cabbage. Stock has zero value UNTIL you sell it.
Bull. You could just as well say that a loaf of bread has zero value until it is sold. If you can borrow against it, it has value - and a very precisely estimated value, at that.
The fact that it might become worthless overnight is an entirely different matter. You get taxed on what is, not on what might be at some later time. That loaf of bread *will* be worthless in two days or so, too.
You really can't tax people on the value of stock, because it's nothing if it's not being sold. It could just as easily become worthless before that happens.
First, if you can borrow against it, it's not worthless. Quite the contrary, your broker and your bank will know exactly how much it is worth.
Second, see what happens when you walk into a bank and when Mark Zuckerberg walks into a bank. See the difference? Still think stock is just a worthless piece of value until it is exercised?
Third, where does "it could just as easily" enter into a tax scheme? You pay taxes on what is, not on what might be. You own stock at your personal risk, why should anyone else care or be poorer for it? If you're on a salary, you might "just as easily" get mugged and have it stolen from you on the payday. That is no reason to not tax your earnings, is it?
I am greatly amused to see all the whining, above and below, about how it is impossible to determine the value of "idle" stock and how a paper fortune might become worthless overnight. At the same time we are constantly brainwashed about how investing in stock is a good policy to safeguard your future, because it will - it must! - appreciate in value, long term, and we'll all be vacationing on the Bahamas when we retire.
So which is it?
What you say totally makes sense but it may just be a thing of the past:
http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16148629
(The article conveniently omits that one British court had already dismissed the guy's case, effectively saying he didn't commit a crime in the UK. Then another British court okayed his extradition to the US.)
Dictionaries do not decide what a term means. They record usage. If enough industry lobbyists, misinformed pundits and bribed politicians have used the words "steal" and "theft" to describe common copyright infringement - and they certainly have - then newer editions of dictionaries will record that sense.
That however still doesn't make copyright infringement legally or morally equivalent to theft. It's just a piece of propaganda we've been living under for a generation and many people have internalized it. "God is great" is another, or "Dear Leader is great" if you live in North Korea. Same thing, though not quite the same scale yet.
I don't, because it will either be an Adobe plugin, hence slow and a memory hog, or it will be written from scratch, hence not fully compatible and probably slow as well. Add to the mix all the potential security issues with active content in PDF documents. I disable all of it in Adobe Reader, now I'll have to disable it in Firefox as well.
PDFs should be treated like executables or archive files - saved to disk.
Other than that, I really don't understand why Firefox has to be aping Chrome instead of going its own way. What's wrong with the top-level menu that it had to be replaced with a single, hierarchical menu that's always harder to navigate? What was wrong with the well-established, intuitive tabbed interface metaphor, which Chrome managed to break so badly by disconnecting the tabs from their content?
And really, websites will be putting items on the tab context menus? Advertisers are already salivating. Good luck finding the "Close tab" command among fifty links to commercials.
Would you kindly expand on that comment? Because as it stands, it is a non-sequitur. In order to have oil, you need to buy it on an open market. Exactly where do the army, navy and air force come in here?
Unless you actually meant to say that in order to have oil, the US and UK must take it by force. Please clarify.
New York Times already runs on that particular business model. They sat for a year on the story about NSA's illegal (at the time) surveillance, came out with it only after the 2004 elections. No-one needs Wikileaks to provide services they already have catered for.
As you said, the guy brought the gun in, and got arrested. This is the story:
Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun
http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/news/Ex-soldier-faces-jail-handing-gun/article-1509082-detail/article.html
I've already said what I think about Kaspersky's views here and I won't be renewing my license but... do you have anything other than anecdotal evidence (your own)? I switched from ESET Security Suite (essentially nod32 + firewall) to Kaspersky specifically because it uses significantly less memory, less CPU, and its on-access scan is much faster. Still a relative hog, like all av software today, but not nearly as bad as other things I've tried.
And anyway, it's really beside the point how good (or not) their products are. The man has just lost me as a customer even though I *like* what he makes.
> Security expert wants a more secure system. Freedom experts want a free system.
> Unsurprisingly these two views clash
And there are technical reasons why they do - that's fine, that's tough, we understand the constraints. This isn't the problem.
The problem seems to be that some (many?) "security experts" do not **value** freedom - at all.
When you hear a government or a corporate official say "security", think "control". It makes things much clearer.
I was born in communist Poland, early enough to remember it well but like you, too late to have endured any particular hardships or to have faced tough political choices. So without judging or justifying Kaspersky either way, let's note than in Russia in the 70s there would have been precious few career avenues for a kid gifted in maths and cryptanalysis.
The views he's expressing today are a completely different affair. Today he really talks as if the KGB thinking is catching up with him. (Not that you won't hear US or EU officials express like sentiments!) I've switched just recently from nod32 (s-l-o-w on-access scan!) to Kaspersky AVP, but I don't think I will be renewing the license when it expires in under a year. Wish there was more I could do.
"informal surveys show that many scientists would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space"
A one-way mission to Mars.
Space geeks.
Makeshift weapons.
Welcome to...
DOOM 4!
"Several" is a useful number, but I suspect the actual ratio would be inverse to what you suggest. Especially if you account for privatized armies such as Blackwater (now Xe) and the fact that they recruit abroad, e.g. in South America (Chile).
And let me tell you, here in Poland under communism you did not see a whole lot of defections during the martial law. It's not just that soldiers are trained to obey orders and not ask questions; it's also that the government expects the scenario you describe, and acts to minimize the risk, e.g. by relocating troops to far areas of the country - so that they don't feel they are ordered to fire on their neighbors.
Finally look at the torture scandal. It wasn't hard to find troops who found their jobs fun, was it?
Here's more. The new Marine One fleet was to be built not by Sikorsky, as has always been the case, but by an Italian manufacturer Finmeccanica. Apparently the bidding and selection process itself was suspect, and pilots objected. This may also be why Obama wants the project reviewed. The article below posits a particular theory about the apparently crooked deal with Finmeccanica, which may or may not be correct, but the facts remain regardless of their interpretation:
http://www.alternet.org/audits/127832/
"Iran can drop a warhead on any city worldwide"
Maybe, but in assessing expected behavior it's often a good idea to look at the story so far. How many cities has Iran dropped bombs on in recent history? How many cities have other countries bombed during the same period? Looking at it that way, I don't think Iran is that big of a threat to anyone.
Thanks for that. From your explanation thoughn gather that there may be a pretty thin line between "skinning the jacket off and bending" a cable and breaking / clipping one while doing so, especially underwater. It would be something of a delicate operation.
This is not to say it's any evidence for tampering vs an inadvertent breaking by a ship's anchor, only that perhaps the tampering scenario is not altogether unlikely, either.
"(we have nuclear submarines built specifically for the purpose of not tipping our hand when we tap undersea cables)."
Tap fiberoptic cables, too? Remotely, without splicing them?
You are wrong. First, because yes, people will risk their careers to snoop on the privacy of total strangers, just because they can. Since they work in secrecy, it's even debatable if they feel their careers at at risk for doing so: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5987804
Second, because as alarming as the linked story is, privacy is ultimately not about the police reading your shopping list. It's always about money - the money someone is willing to pay to access personal data on a political opponent (to discredit her or him), a dissident group (to penetrate and spy on them), or a competing business (obvious).
Therefore, it's also about human rights.
Once the technology is available, it *will* be abused, and we know this, because such abuses have always happened. I don't know of a government (or a business) that had a technology available and decided not to use it because doing so would be unethical or even illegal. How many times must the same stories repeat before we learn?
Not in this case. When you're a multibillionaire, you don't really need any more money. In this case, power IS profit.
Um, no. "Insecure people" are those who will not look at or acknowledge any facts that might contradict their worldview, no matter what evidence is available to them. "Insecure people", aka fundamentalists. When I see a fundamentalist, I see a wife-beater - don't you? They're insecure, they won't listen to reason, and they respond with violence to any challenge to their authority.
I am not saying Bush did 9/11, nor do I believe it. I am saying though, that your ad-hominem attack is entirely misguided and empirically wrong. After all, which is "scarier", if you will: 19 random hijackers killing your people or your own government killing your people?
"The real cover up is that the buildings weren't code to begin with, or rather David Rockefeller etc bent building codes to get them built."
And that is why Lucky Larry Silverstein hired the same structural engineer to rebuild WTC7. Because the guy's sure to get it right this time.
You are making a mistake by conflating a lot of people, with lots of different opinions, into a single entity. They are not. And the issue of what physical forces caused the buildings to fall as they did is orthogonal to the question of who caused it to happen that way.
You go on to say
"the (current) Bush Administration doesn't have people smart enough to pull a stunt like that"
I don't know about that. They Bush administration got exactly what they wanted in Afghanistan and Iraq, they got exactly what they wanted with the Patriot Act, the FISA bill, wiretapping, no-fly lists, they got exactly what they wanted on things like the bankruptcy bill, now they even got Poland and the Czech Republic to agree to the missile shield, even though it doesn't even work and in both countries the majority of the population are opposed to the project. In fact, Bush and his people have been getting pretty much what they wanted throughout the term, often with a little help from the Democrats (including the confirmation of all the far right nominations to the Supreme Court and elsewhere).
If you consistently get what you want for 7 years, that's not exactly incompetence.
"something really bad going to happen"
You should join NIST. No really, they need this level of technical acuity.
Nobody disputes that "something bad" should have and did happen. The question (not that you don't know it) is about exactly what kind of direct and consequential damage would occur, especially to a structure supposedly built to withstand that kind of impact.
Mods: why is a post that merely states two simple facts (no plane hit WTC7, BBC had announced its collapsed before it happened) modded troll?