This is such a silly argument that I just felt compelled to respond to it.
Look, if there are things that people here in the U.S. don't want to do -- legal residents or citizens -- then it doesn't make it right to import illegal workers. What should happen, is the prevailing wage for that job should go up. I absolutely guarantee you, that Americans have no problem picking up garbage off the side of the road, just like there's no shortage of garbage collectors in New York City; they just want to get paid $60,000 a year plus full benefits.
What illegal immigrants do, is prevent the normal supply and demand forces from working the problem out, because they effectively create an infinite pool of disposable laborers.
They also prevent mechanical solutions from being developed for menial labor problems, like strawberry picking or litter collection, because until the labor costs rise, there isn't any motivation to develop mechanized alternatives. It's like cotton picking in the Southern U.S.: it wasn't until well after the end of slavery that mechanized cotton-picking machines were developed, and these machines probably wouldn't have been economical if large supplies of unpaid or poorly-paid labor had still existed.
So, in short, the "Mexicans do jobs that Americans won't" is complete bunk. There isn't a single job that an American worker wouldn't do, for some amount of money. Unfortunately, with a huge supply of illegal workers crossing the border, we'll probably never find out what they'd be willing to do the job for.
Illegal immigrants depress working-class wages, and act as a subsidy to large agricultural and manufacturing interests; they're not saving the 'average worker' from anything but better pay.
I think you're missing the point. The method of killing was obviously intentional -- nobody goes to that much work without thinking about it -- so what does it suggest? Not that they wanted to prevent him from giving up some key piece of information, because obviously he had time to sing like a canary on his deathbed.
So what's the benefit of killing someone in some excruciatingly slow, mysterious way? How about that it's scary as fuck? If you were someone in Russia, thinking about criticizing the Putin regime, the act that they managed to poison somebody who had basically defected and was living (ostensibly protected) in a Western country, ought to give you a lot of food for thought. It's basically saying "there's no place that you can run where we won't get you."
I don't see this killing as much of a threat to anyone outside Russia; it seems more like a way to scare dissidents within the country, by making it clear that they can't be protected by anyone on the outside.
I hate all these damned slippery slopes situations. It's annoying to have to explain to people why we can't fight child porn with every tool because those tools will then be (mis)used for other purposes.
While it may be "annoying" to you, if using some "tool" against child pornography makes it more likely to be used in other situations -- as seems quite likely, or at least highly plausible -- then there is an immediate slippery slope.
In this case, there's practically no question that these same barriers that are being used against child porn are going to be used, almost immediately, for other purposes, as evidenced by the motivations of the people pushing for this.
This isn't even a slippery slope, it's walking directly off of a known precipice.
I'm not painting the U.S. as a "paragon of freedom." On the contrary; when people are considering the Canadian arguments about jurisdiction, they should take the same argument and see if they still like it, when they imagine the U.S. making it, in its usual heavyhanded way. Because if you make this sort of logic acceptable for one country to use, then other countries -- countries you may not like or approve of -- are going to do the same thing.
If Canada starts claiming jurisdiction over U.S. sites, then the U.S. is going to claim jurisdiction over other international sites for "defaming" or "threatening" U.S. citizens or companies, and that's not a road that I think we want to go down. (Insofar as we haven't already.)
I think someone might notice when you call up United Nuclear and try to order 1,000 of their 0.1 uCi Polonium sources. (And I'm not even sure if 1,000 of them would be enough to poison someone. That's a really minute amount they're selling.)
>> I am a feminist bisexual Jewish pagan techno-geek with delusions of grandeur. > You don't want a pervert like that teaching your children grammar. Think of the children!
Yeah, with a teacher like that, they'll grow up never knowing the joys of the comma.
Trust us, comrade! There is nothing to see on any of the blocked sites. You don't want to go around asking questions like that; someone might think you're a pedophile or something, and we wouldn't want that, now would we?
Go back and have yourself a nice Molson and watch some hockey. You'll feel better...
Well, this whole issue got started because of a one guy's campaign against white supremacist groups and "hate speech," so I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that these sorts of laws are going to be used against more than pornography pretty quickly.
When Richard Warman asked the CRTC to order Canadian ISPs to block certain U.S. sites that allegedly threatened him, one of the reasons they refused was because of the "unprecedented nature of the relief sought in the Application."
If such blocking was more common, as it would if it was used daily against other sites, then the 'unprecedented action' defense wouldn't exist. Judges are unlikely to create new blocking systems where none exist already, but adding a site to an already extant one is a far lower standard.
It's naive in the extreme to simply assume that systems like this, regardless of the reasons for their creation initially, won't be extended to other ends. When you give someone a hammer, don't be surprised if they start looking for something to pound with it.
I completely agree with your comments on so-called "hate speech," but I think you're writing off the pornography argument too quickly.
I don't think that it is a big deal if the sites are nearly child porn. Ok, you can't masturbate to the images of adult women who are dressed up to look like children. Big loss.
Look at this issue from the other side; if you restrict "apparent porn," then you are saying that some women are criminals, just by putting on a particular set of clothes. Or perhaps not even that. What are you going to do about a woman who's well past the age of majority, but still has a particularly youthful appearance? You could easily deprive her of her right to work through anti-'simulated pornography' laws, just because some people think she "looks" too young. And it could easily become racial; Asian women in particularly are often perceived by Westerners as being younger than they actually are, and would probably be unfairly impacted. I could easily see the banning of "apparent child porn" as turning into a "human rights" issue on the part of people who are prevented from working in a legitimate occupation -- because nude modeling, regardless of what you personally think of it, is a legitimate occupation for those above the age of consent.
If you start to go down that road, you'd quicky end up with a situation where you've created a class of legal adult people who, by virtue of their appearance, can't take their clothes off without risking a "child" pornography charge.
Did you ever stop and think for a moment, that maybe -- just maybe -- it was attitudes like that, which got us into the mess we're in down here right now? Where a whole lot of people just blithely trusted the government, and a few years later it's like the place is in a handbasket, going southwards.
Your attitude reeks of "it can't happen here" arrogance, but history seems to indicate that if there is one single truth in government, it's that it can happen here, regardless of where "here" is.
Just in case anyone thought that this issue would remain just one of child pornography, it's worth reading the second linked article, which reveals that much of the current rulemaking was sparked by Ottawa's Richard Warman, a sort of Canadian answer to Jack Thompson, whose pro-censorship stance is centered mostly around "hate speech." His original petition to the CHRC was for censorship of U.S.-based sites that apparently threatened him, under the argument that by threatening someone in Canada, they came under the jurisdiction of the Canadian courts (think about that for a moment, particularly about how the U.S. could use it to grab 'jurisdiction,' and tell me that it's not a really dangerous idea).
The excuse for national censorship systems is undoubtedly going to be child porn, but it's absolutely naive to think that it won't be extended to other things. It's going to go from child porn, to "hate speech," to gambling and financial transactions ('when you gamble, you're financing terrorism!'), to downloading and copyright infringement. When you look at the motives of the people driving these programs, they are not going to be satisfied simply with ineffectually blocking some porn.
It's a power-level issue. The FCC allows unlicensed transmitters under Part 15; the maximum allowed varies with frequency. You can see the limits on this page. For example, above 960 MHz, unlicensed devices can transmit a field strength of up to 500 microvolts/meter, measured at three meters from the radiating device. (Those units seem a little odd to me, but that's what the table lists.)
but I feel I'm got punched in the face and the LoC is passing by and helpfully giving me a tooth back. What about all the other missing teeth?
That pretty much sums it up. I was thinking of it more like you just got the shit kicked out of you by someone, and the LoC was too weak to do anything to help you, but now that you're lying facedown in a puddle of your own blood he'll helpfully get you an ice pack.
These concessions are great, but they're like the Warden giving you an extra ration of food, when you're not supposed to be in jail in the first place. We shouldn't have to have these concessions granted -- all the things mentioned in the summary are common sense, and ought not be protected by copyright in the first place.
Plus, these concessions are just three years. Since they're not permanent, if they're not renewed constantly, they disappear. That makes them hard to count on in the future. When the media lobby got its copyright extension last time, I can't help but notice that there wasn't an expiration or "lets revisit this in 5 years" date; it was permanent.
Agreed. Right now, you can do this (sorta) with Flickr; if you set up your phone right, you can have it automatically send the photos, via email, to a special address that posts them automatically to your Flickr photostream. It's pretty slick, if you don't use a carrier that charges you $0.25 or $0.50 a hit for the privilege of sending an attachment. Not long ago there was a (possibly fictitious) account of a guy whose phone was stolen, but kept right on posting photos to Flickr of the thieves because it was set up this way.
Doing this with video would be a lot harder, and probably require a lot more cooperation from the carriers (because you'd probably want to transmit the live stream as it was still being captured, rather than storing it and then sending it later, as with photos), but I think there'd be a huge market for this. Not just for keeping an eye on government, but just for the usual video-sharing and instant-blogging.
The other feature that I think it would be neat to build into a cellphone would be a "prerecord buffer." They have this on some high-end ENG cameras. Basically, it's a FIFO buffer that sits between the CCD and the tape (or memory, or whatever) that captures the last 30 s. of footage that the camera saw. By triggering the Record switch, rather than cutting in right then, it instead starts recording out of the back of the buffer. Effectively, it means you start the recording 30 seconds ago. I think if you put that on cellphones, it could be huge.
>> in the case of atheism, there is no religious incentive, these are humanitarian acts.
>It's called serving your own pride.
Welcome to the "Lincoln's Pigs" paradox. I'll give you the short version (the story is apocryphal, but the lesson is not). One day, future-President Lincoln was walking down the street around a small town. He walked past a farm, with a pig sty, and in the sty he spotted a small piglet that appeared to be drowning in the mud. Without heed to his expensive clothing, he climbed into the sty and pulled the piglet from the mud, saving it. On exiting the pen, someone exclaimed what a truly kind and generous person he was, to do such a selfless act. Quickly, he replied that his act was not selfless, but exactly the opposite: merely selfish. "Had I simply walked past and let the piglet drown, I wouldn't have gotten any sleep tonight, thinking about it. In order to make sure that I would, I had to save the pig. I did it purely for my own benefit."
The onlookers thought about this for a few moments, until someone said "But, Mr. Lincoln, that doesn't make sense. If you were as selfish a person as you say you are, then why would you care about the piglet at all, enough to have lost sleep over it, if you had just kept on walking?"
My point here, is that it doesn't really matter if the immediate motivation for a virtuous act is 'selfish,' such as alleviating one's own conscience, or stroking one's pride or ego. A truly selfish person wouldn't need to help others in order to have pride in themselves, or to sleep better at night -- they wouldn't care.
Seems like the easier solution, and the far less creepy one, is just to hook the police cars up with terminals that communicate with the drivers-license database, including its photos.
When you get pulled over, you'd either present your license, which they could then take back to their patrol car (or just note the number) and run into the system to find if it's suspended, or if you forgot your license, they could look you up based on name/address/DOB and using the photo attached to the record in the system, see that it's you. That also makes it harder to use a fake license, since it wouldn't come up in the system, or to use someone else's license, because the photo on the record wouldn't be you. It also lets the police use a much bigger / higher quality photo (on the screen) for identification, than the crappy one on the license itself.
That wouldn't require any more data collection than what they assumedly have already (assuming they use photographic drivers licenses and that the photos are digitized), and it doesn't involve sampling previously uncollected data from lots of people. Randomly fingerprinting people is tres creepy, in my opinion.
I've never really looked too hard at the systems in use here in the U.S., but I think that they work something like this. (The cities that have in-car computer systems, anyway.) I'm sure that whoever makes these systems would be happy to demo them in Britain.
They'll just invent some form of "implied consent" just like they do when you're driving a car.
Eventually it's going to get to the point where just by walking out of your house in the morning, you're going to automatically "consent" to being fingerprinted, having your DNA sequenced, your retinas scanned, and your anus probed; and if you don't, they'll invent some sort of punishment for noncompliance. Or just Mace the hell out of you and do it anyway.
Sure, they'll say, you don't have to consent -- you can just live inside your house 24/7. Just like, theoretically, you can walk everywhere instead of driving a car. By creating a totally impractical straw man, they allow you a "choice" to give up your rights, only without any other realistic option.
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This is such a silly argument that I just felt compelled to respond to it.
Look, if there are things that people here in the U.S. don't want to do -- legal residents or citizens -- then it doesn't make it right to import illegal workers. What should happen, is the prevailing wage for that job should go up. I absolutely guarantee you, that Americans have no problem picking up garbage off the side of the road, just like there's no shortage of garbage collectors in New York City; they just want to get paid $60,000 a year plus full benefits.
What illegal immigrants do, is prevent the normal supply and demand forces from working the problem out, because they effectively create an infinite pool of disposable laborers.
They also prevent mechanical solutions from being developed for menial labor problems, like strawberry picking or litter collection, because until the labor costs rise, there isn't any motivation to develop mechanized alternatives. It's like cotton picking in the Southern U.S.: it wasn't until well after the end of slavery that mechanized cotton-picking machines were developed, and these machines probably wouldn't have been economical if large supplies of unpaid or poorly-paid labor had still existed.
So, in short, the "Mexicans do jobs that Americans won't" is complete bunk. There isn't a single job that an American worker wouldn't do, for some amount of money. Unfortunately, with a huge supply of illegal workers crossing the border, we'll probably never find out what they'd be willing to do the job for.
Illegal immigrants depress working-class wages, and act as a subsidy to large agricultural and manufacturing interests; they're not saving the 'average worker' from anything but better pay.
I think you're missing the point. The method of killing was obviously intentional -- nobody goes to that much work without thinking about it -- so what does it suggest? Not that they wanted to prevent him from giving up some key piece of information, because obviously he had time to sing like a canary on his deathbed.
So what's the benefit of killing someone in some excruciatingly slow, mysterious way? How about that it's scary as fuck? If you were someone in Russia, thinking about criticizing the Putin regime, the act that they managed to poison somebody who had basically defected and was living (ostensibly protected) in a Western country, ought to give you a lot of food for thought. It's basically saying "there's no place that you can run where we won't get you."
I don't see this killing as much of a threat to anyone outside Russia; it seems more like a way to scare dissidents within the country, by making it clear that they can't be protected by anyone on the outside.
Whats next, comparing ibm x86 pcs to apple macbooks?
You should probably sit down; what I'm going to say may come as a shock to you.
If my hands were soon going to be unable to grab things, I wouldn't be wasting my time with video games.
I was assuming he already had the masturbation angle covered.
5. Profit!
Thought crime laws are always wrong - even when they might be passed with the intent of doing real good.
You summed it up more succinctly than I ever could have. If only we could somehow drill that into the heads of the folks in Congress...
I hate all these damned slippery slopes situations. It's annoying to have to explain to people why we can't fight child porn with every tool because those tools will then be (mis)used for other purposes.
While it may be "annoying" to you, if using some "tool" against child pornography makes it more likely to be used in other situations -- as seems quite likely, or at least highly plausible -- then there is an immediate slippery slope.
In this case, there's practically no question that these same barriers that are being used against child porn are going to be used, almost immediately, for other purposes, as evidenced by the motivations of the people pushing for this.
This isn't even a slippery slope, it's walking directly off of a known precipice.
I'm not painting the U.S. as a "paragon of freedom." On the contrary; when people are considering the Canadian arguments about jurisdiction, they should take the same argument and see if they still like it, when they imagine the U.S. making it, in its usual heavyhanded way. Because if you make this sort of logic acceptable for one country to use, then other countries -- countries you may not like or approve of -- are going to do the same thing.
If Canada starts claiming jurisdiction over U.S. sites, then the U.S. is going to claim jurisdiction over other international sites for "defaming" or "threatening" U.S. citizens or companies, and that's not a road that I think we want to go down. (Insofar as we haven't already.)
I think someone might notice when you call up United Nuclear and try to order 1,000 of their 0.1 uCi Polonium sources. (And I'm not even sure if 1,000 of them would be enough to poison someone. That's a really minute amount they're selling.)
>> I am a feminist bisexual Jewish pagan techno-geek with delusions of grandeur.
> You don't want a pervert like that teaching your children grammar. Think of the children!
Yeah, with a teacher like that, they'll grow up never knowing the joys of the comma.
Trust us, comrade! There is nothing to see on any of the blocked sites. You don't want to go around asking questions like that; someone might think you're a pedophile or something, and we wouldn't want that, now would we?
Go back and have yourself a nice Molson and watch some hockey. You'll feel better...
Well, this whole issue got started because of a one guy's campaign against white supremacist groups and "hate speech," so I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that these sorts of laws are going to be used against more than pornography pretty quickly.
When Richard Warman asked the CRTC to order Canadian ISPs to block certain U.S. sites that allegedly threatened him, one of the reasons they refused was because of the "unprecedented nature of the relief sought in the Application."
If such blocking was more common, as it would if it was used daily against other sites, then the 'unprecedented action' defense wouldn't exist. Judges are unlikely to create new blocking systems where none exist already, but adding a site to an already extant one is a far lower standard.
It's naive in the extreme to simply assume that systems like this, regardless of the reasons for their creation initially, won't be extended to other ends. When you give someone a hammer, don't be surprised if they start looking for something to pound with it.
Look at this issue from the other side; if you restrict "apparent porn," then you are saying that some women are criminals, just by putting on a particular set of clothes. Or perhaps not even that. What are you going to do about a woman who's well past the age of majority, but still has a particularly youthful appearance? You could easily deprive her of her right to work through anti-'simulated pornography' laws, just because some people think she "looks" too young. And it could easily become racial; Asian women in particularly are often perceived by Westerners as being younger than they actually are, and would probably be unfairly impacted. I could easily see the banning of "apparent child porn" as turning into a "human rights" issue on the part of people who are prevented from working in a legitimate occupation -- because nude modeling, regardless of what you personally think of it, is a legitimate occupation for those above the age of consent.
If you start to go down that road, you'd quicky end up with a situation where you've created a class of legal adult people who, by virtue of their appearance, can't take their clothes off without risking a "child" pornography charge.
Did you ever stop and think for a moment, that maybe -- just maybe -- it was attitudes like that, which got us into the mess we're in down here right now? Where a whole lot of people just blithely trusted the government, and a few years later it's like the place is in a handbasket, going southwards.
Your attitude reeks of "it can't happen here" arrogance, but history seems to indicate that if there is one single truth in government, it's that it can happen here, regardless of where "here" is.
Just in case anyone thought that this issue would remain just one of child pornography, it's worth reading the second linked article, which reveals that much of the current rulemaking was sparked by Ottawa's Richard Warman, a sort of Canadian answer to Jack Thompson, whose pro-censorship stance is centered mostly around "hate speech." His original petition to the CHRC was for censorship of U.S.-based sites that apparently threatened him, under the argument that by threatening someone in Canada, they came under the jurisdiction of the Canadian courts (think about that for a moment, particularly about how the U.S. could use it to grab 'jurisdiction,' and tell me that it's not a really dangerous idea).
The excuse for national censorship systems is undoubtedly going to be child porn, but it's absolutely naive to think that it won't be extended to other things. It's going to go from child porn, to "hate speech," to gambling and financial transactions ('when you gamble, you're financing terrorism!'), to downloading and copyright infringement. When you look at the motives of the people driving these programs, they are not going to be satisfied simply with ineffectually blocking some porn.
It's a power-level issue. The FCC allows unlicensed transmitters under Part 15; the maximum allowed varies with frequency. You can see the limits on this page. For example, above 960 MHz, unlicensed devices can transmit a field strength of up to 500 microvolts/meter, measured at three meters from the radiating device. (Those units seem a little odd to me, but that's what the table lists.)
"He declines to be specific about what the writing says."
... so they figure all this out, and then they keep the writing secret? What's up with that.
WTF
Well, if they end up in Hell, Grand Cayman, that would certainly be a step up from Jersey. Hell, Michigan, probably not so much.
but I feel I'm got punched in the face and the LoC is passing by and helpfully giving me a tooth back. What about all the other missing teeth?
That pretty much sums it up. I was thinking of it more like you just got the shit kicked out of you by someone, and the LoC was too weak to do anything to help you, but now that you're lying facedown in a puddle of your own blood he'll helpfully get you an ice pack.
These concessions are great, but they're like the Warden giving you an extra ration of food, when you're not supposed to be in jail in the first place. We shouldn't have to have these concessions granted -- all the things mentioned in the summary are common sense, and ought not be protected by copyright in the first place.
Plus, these concessions are just three years. Since they're not permanent, if they're not renewed constantly, they disappear. That makes them hard to count on in the future. When the media lobby got its copyright extension last time, I can't help but notice that there wasn't an expiration or "lets revisit this in 5 years" date; it was permanent.
Agreed. Right now, you can do this (sorta) with Flickr; if you set up your phone right, you can have it automatically send the photos, via email, to a special address that posts them automatically to your Flickr photostream. It's pretty slick, if you don't use a carrier that charges you $0.25 or $0.50 a hit for the privilege of sending an attachment. Not long ago there was a (possibly fictitious) account of a guy whose phone was stolen, but kept right on posting photos to Flickr of the thieves because it was set up this way.
Doing this with video would be a lot harder, and probably require a lot more cooperation from the carriers (because you'd probably want to transmit the live stream as it was still being captured, rather than storing it and then sending it later, as with photos), but I think there'd be a huge market for this. Not just for keeping an eye on government, but just for the usual video-sharing and instant-blogging.
The other feature that I think it would be neat to build into a cellphone would be a "prerecord buffer." They have this on some high-end ENG cameras. Basically, it's a FIFO buffer that sits between the CCD and the tape (or memory, or whatever) that captures the last 30 s. of footage that the camera saw. By triggering the Record switch, rather than cutting in right then, it instead starts recording out of the back of the buffer. Effectively, it means you start the recording 30 seconds ago. I think if you put that on cellphones, it could be huge.
Netcraft confirms it ... BSD is dying, mortally wounded by a hamster with a laser pointer ...
>> in the case of atheism, there is no religious incentive, these are humanitarian acts.
>It's called serving your own pride.
Welcome to the "Lincoln's Pigs" paradox. I'll give you the short version (the story is apocryphal, but the lesson is not). One day, future-President Lincoln was walking down the street around a small town. He walked past a farm, with a pig sty, and in the sty he spotted a small piglet that appeared to be drowning in the mud. Without heed to his expensive clothing, he climbed into the sty and pulled the piglet from the mud, saving it. On exiting the pen, someone exclaimed what a truly kind and generous person he was, to do such a selfless act. Quickly, he replied that his act was not selfless, but exactly the opposite: merely selfish. "Had I simply walked past and let the piglet drown, I wouldn't have gotten any sleep tonight, thinking about it. In order to make sure that I would, I had to save the pig. I did it purely for my own benefit."
The onlookers thought about this for a few moments, until someone said "But, Mr. Lincoln, that doesn't make sense. If you were as selfish a person as you say you are, then why would you care about the piglet at all, enough to have lost sleep over it, if you had just kept on walking?"
My point here, is that it doesn't really matter if the immediate motivation for a virtuous act is 'selfish,' such as alleviating one's own conscience, or stroking one's pride or ego. A truly selfish person wouldn't need to help others in order to have pride in themselves, or to sleep better at night -- they wouldn't care.
You do realize that there is a Mac WoW client, right?
Seems like the easier solution, and the far less creepy one, is just to hook the police cars up with terminals that communicate with the drivers-license database, including its photos.
When you get pulled over, you'd either present your license, which they could then take back to their patrol car (or just note the number) and run into the system to find if it's suspended, or if you forgot your license, they could look you up based on name/address/DOB and using the photo attached to the record in the system, see that it's you. That also makes it harder to use a fake license, since it wouldn't come up in the system, or to use someone else's license, because the photo on the record wouldn't be you. It also lets the police use a much bigger / higher quality photo (on the screen) for identification, than the crappy one on the license itself.
That wouldn't require any more data collection than what they assumedly have already (assuming they use photographic drivers licenses and that the photos are digitized), and it doesn't involve sampling previously uncollected data from lots of people. Randomly fingerprinting people is tres creepy, in my opinion.
I've never really looked too hard at the systems in use here in the U.S., but I think that they work something like this. (The cities that have in-car computer systems, anyway.) I'm sure that whoever makes these systems would be happy to demo them in Britain.
They'll just invent some form of "implied consent" just like they do when you're driving a car.
Eventually it's going to get to the point where just by walking out of your house in the morning, you're going to automatically "consent" to being fingerprinted, having your DNA sequenced, your retinas scanned, and your anus probed; and if you don't, they'll invent some sort of punishment for noncompliance. Or just Mace the hell out of you and do it anyway.
Sure, they'll say, you don't have to consent -- you can just live inside your house 24/7. Just like, theoretically, you can walk everywhere instead of driving a car. By creating a totally impractical straw man, they allow you a "choice" to give up your rights, only without any other realistic option.