Partially correct. That is one point where prior art is useful. This situation is another. If someone sues you for patent violations and you can find clear prior art, then you can attempt a flanking maneuver: file suit to have the patent invalidated. If you can invalidate the patent through prior art, you don't even have to fight the frontal battle of proving that you aren't violating the patent.
Under whose laws? Cuba's. Of course, the first thing Castro did after he took power was to legitimize himself under the law, but that doesn't really count, does it? The Batista regime took power in a military coup after losing the election of 1952. Cuba was a free country with probably the highest standard of living in Latin America throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s up until the Batista coup. There was a lot of military corruption, and the winner of the election intended to clean that up. Batista was part of the corruption, so he staged a coup to prevent that and suspended civilian law and the constitution.
Castro then led a revolution, not to restore democratic law but to completely do away with it. Of course, he didn't *say* he was going to do that, or the people would not have followed him. What they expected was a return to democracy. Once he was in power, though, he removed the constitution and confiscated private property.
Rather than "Not a legal one... under whose laws?" the question you should be asking is "Under whose laws is the Cuban government not illegal?" Many countries recognize the Cuban government because it is a fact on the ground - a not uncommon situation. However, I am not aware of any country under whose laws it is lawful to overthrow a democratically elected government by armed revolution. It is likely that - with the exception of the few remaining communist countries - the only government under whose laws the Castro government is legal is the Castro government itself.
Well, yes and no. While completely agreeing with the "What did you think would happen if you did that?" part, I think that whether or not the Cuban government is a legal government could be debated. It took power at the point of a gun from the former government and has never held a free election. To add murkiness, the previous government was also certainly not legal, having taken power in a military coup in 1952 after years of peaceful and democratic elections in Cuba. Unless and until free and open elections are held in Cuba, whatever government has power there is merely a de facto government, not a legal one.
I don't think open-sourcing old car designs would achieve the result you suggest. Assuming the big three - who own the designs in question - had any reason to open-source those designs and did so, what would happen is either:
1) Nothing 2) Some niche maker(s) would emerge which would produce expensive specialty vehicles who wanted new old cars.
The reason for this is that starting a car company and tooling up to produce cars is expensive, period. It would save little or nothing to build a car based on an old design that was updated to meet current fuel economy, emissions, and safety standards than it would to just design a car from scratch, and the from-scratch car would be a better vehicle than the old-but-updated design. Think of all how far all aspects of vehicle technology have come since then: frame, unibody, suspension, drive train, safety devices. It might be cheaper, after the sunk costs of tooling up, to build a new old car that was identical to a new car, but it's not cheaper to build an old car that has been brought up to modern standards.
Consider the new Dodge Challenger: it looks remarkably like the 1970 Challengers that my cousin and I owned a long time ago. If it were cheaper/easier to update the old Challenger design - which Chrysler still owns - and it would result in a car that was just as good, don't you think they woudd have done so rather than build a new Challenger that looks a lot like the old one?
Not necessarily. Let's say I write a program that lets you modify parameters of your car's engine computer and go racing and release it as-is and under the GPL. Or, for even greater "as-as"-ness, give it the sort of disclaimers that would accompany proprietary software sold for the same purpose.
So, you use my software to re-tune your engine and because of a bug it causes your mixture to go really lean at high RPMS and you burn your pistons the first time you go racing. Good luck suing me. You might try, but it had a big notice that said "WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY DESTROY YOUR ENGINE, BURN YOUR HOUSE, STEAL YOUR CAR, DRINK YOUR LIQUOR FROM YOUR OLD FRUIT JAR, AND EVEN STEP ON YOUR BLUE SUEDE SHOES. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK."
We get into court. At the earliest opportunity, my lawyer says, "So, this software comes with a warning that it may destroy your engine, yet you used it anyway?" "Uh, yes."
Move it to the realm of hardware. I design a car. I release the design under the GPL, or a comparable documentation license, with the usual disclaimers as above, that it might not even work, use at your own risk, intended for use only by professional mechanics or automobile designers, if you build this you may crash and be killed or permanently injured, blahblahblah. You download my design, actually build the car, take it to a test track, and drive it. On your first lap, the wheels come off, you crash, and are crippled for life. You decide to sue me. Problem one is you ignored all disclaimers and safety warnings and built and drove it anyway. If you get past all that, you're going to have to prove that the fault was with my design, and not your workmanship, materials, or any mods you made to my design. You may need to prove that you didn't mod my design. The burden of proof is on you, after all. Especially if I've actually build and drive one based on my plan and didn't crash or have the wheels come off.
Case three: I start a company that builds cars based on my design and get them certified as road-legal in the US and start selling them. After they've been in service for a while, people start crashing because the front wheels are falling off. They sue me. Now I'm in trouble, because I actually built the thing and provide it to people.
Case four: you start a company that uses my design, and have an experience like the above and get sued. People sue you for selling them a car with wheels that fall off. You decide you want to sue me because I designed it and put the plans on the Internet. Likely a non-starter, for the same reasons as above: I put it out there with all the warnings that it might not even work, hasn't been tested, blahblahblah, and you chooe to design and build a car around it anyway.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Let's assume, for instance, that all farming can be done completely by machine, better than humans can do it and with no human intervention except when the machine breaks (oops, there's a labor cost; machines are not very good at fixing other machines). There is still a company that makes those machines, and that company employs people. There's some more cost.
Let's cut all the way to the replicator level and say we have a machine that can scan an IH combine and spit out as many more as it needs. That replicator still needs a lot of raw materials that need to be mined or recycled, and and made available to it for use in replication. Unless of course it can turn some common material such as dirt into anything it needs. The first type remains firmly in the world of science fiction. The second type is more like the world of fantasy.
There's only one thing harder than any of your scenarios: eliminating the desire in people to have money, or something that takes the role of money: providing a conduit for people to have more of something than other people. That desire may sound like a bad thing on its surface, but it's actually not. Work, and the desire to obtain its fruits, is in our nature. Without it, we'd be like the people in Wall-E. OK, some people are already like that. We don't want to make it worse.
My daughter has been in the pediatric ICU twice this year. A conference that forces me to be unreachable is a conference I don't attend. Period. If I showed up and they surprised me with "no Internet access" I'd surprised them back with returning to the airport and going home. Any conference organizer who thinks s/he knows better than I do whether I (or anyone) need, or should have, Internet access during the conference is simply wrong.
Does anybody *need* to be fully engaged in a conference at all times? Of course not, that's ridiculous. At a conference I recently attended - one which was very specific to my line of work - there were still some speakers whose presentations were completely irrelevant to me. Don't get me wrong -that was the best and most useful conference I've ever attended - but that doesn't mean *all* of it was useful to me, personally. Checking my email during those times was a far more productive use of my time than listening to the speaker would have been. Heck, reading Slashdot was a more productive use of my time.
At any conference, no matter how relevant and how good, there will be, for any presenter, a percentage of the audience for whom the presentation is utterly irrelevant and useless. Why should those people do what they want instead of what you want?
That would be a deal-breaker for a lot of people. More than a few of us *need* to be reachable in emergencies (and not just work, either)[1]. If the conference I just attended last month had not had wireless in the hall, I wouldn't have gone. It was especially good that they did, since I found that wireless coverage (at least on my carrier) was very poor inside the hall. More than half of the time, my cell phone couldn't get a signal. It only worked reliably in the lobby.
Depends on the license. If the license is the GPL, the answer to "Can the OS remain private?" is probably "yes" - however, ultimately, it depends on if, and how, the code was commingled. Most FOSS licenses have no prohibitions against installing or building for use on a proprietary OS, however, GLP v.3 does contain "anti-tivoization" provisions. The last question, whether the provider has to provide a way to change or update the OS on the device, is probably a "no" - unless, of course, the FOSS license of the code requires it.
If the license is a BSD-style license, then the answer to all of your questions is "no." A BSD-style license basically lets you do whatever you want with the code, including taking it into a proprietary fork.
There is a great deal of debate - unlikely to ever end - over whether the BSD approach or the GNU GPL approach is more truly open. What it comes down to is a question of to whom you are trying to grant/guarantee the greatest freedom: end users of the code, or businesses. Or cast in other terms, guaranteeing freedom to get/use/modify the source to everyone up to person X, or everyone up to, including, and following person X? Or to cast it in yet other terms, do you want to guarantee that freedom to everyone who gets your code directly from you, or to anyone who gets your code, or modifications thereof, from anyone?
A BSD-style license would give those freedoms to anyone who got your code from you. Those people, in turn, could do what they want, including make a proprietary fork. This is why businesses often prefer BSD-licensed code: there are no issues around making a proprietary product based on it. A GPL-style license, on the other hand, basically prohibits making a proprietary fork of the code. If you release some code under the GPL and I use and modify that code and ever release my version to the public, I must release the source as well (if I only use it internally to my company, I don't have to release those changes).
There will always be argument as to which one is right. IMO, which one is right depends on your own definition of freedom and your own goals for your software. This, of course, is why there are so many open source licenses. Some view this as a bad thing. I view it like I view Linux distro diversity: it's a part of the strength of FOSS: there is room for everyone to meet his/her own needs with the best available solution, and solutions that many people like will emerge as best-of-breed while niche solutions will remain for those whose needs best met by one of them.
Well, yes, but spammers are not hogging bandwidth on your ISP's last-mile or middle-mile links. The places spammers use bandwidth are:
-On the ISP's own incoming links, and the the links from there to its MXes. This is why blocklists and graylisting are so popular: the MX can look at the connecting IP and tell it to go away and come back later, or to just go away, without ever seeing the mail. This saves not only a lot of bandwidth, but a lot of CPU time that would otherwise be used by content filters after acceptance of the message. Even here, however, link congestion is unlikely to come from spam; web traffic (especially streaming media) and p2p traffic account for far more bandwidth than spam does. Spam volume can bring an unprotected MX to its knees and it requires ISPs to operate much larger email infrastructures than they would otherwise need (at the ISP where I used to work, we could have thrown away 75% of our email infrastructure if we hadn't needed it to filter spam), but it's not the major consumer of inbound bandwidth. It just consumers more bandwidth than legit email does.
-In the outbound direction in cases where customer PCs become infected and are participating in botnets. However, this does not usually present a congestion problem. When was the last time you heard about an outbound congestion issue, and if you've ever heard of one, when was the last time you heard of one caused by bots sending spam?
In your own experience, have you ever received so much spam that it caused link congestion on a broadband connection?
5000 hosts running 24 x 7 for 10 years? That's a lot of electricity. Even if they might have been left powered on 24 x 7 anyway, running the SETI@Home client is probably enough to keep the CPU and disks from sleeping, which means more heat, more wear and tear on things that go around, including power supply cooling fans. If you add up the cost of the electricity, cooling, parts replacement, staff time to replace parts, it's probably not cheap. $1 million does sound a bit steep, but it's probably not as far out of line as it looks at first glance.
No, it's not. There's a smoking gun that they concealed data contrary to their hypothesis in some cases, modified the data to fit the hypothesis in other cases, and actively worked to prevent researchers with differing opinions from:
1) Analyzing their data 2) Being published at all.
The Korean guy was a lot easier to catch because he was only one guy, and he was what one might call an honest liar. He made a bogus publication while supplying all the information necessary to falsify his claims.
Climate research is dicier because not all that many scientists, really, have access to some of the raw data. Let's say, for example, that I set up a climatological research center. I go take a bunch of ice cores, tree cores, etc. I set up weather stations to record temperatures. I aggregate all this data, then adjust anything that doesn't support my hypothesis. Other researchers at my center and at other places collude with me in doing this. I publish my results.
Later, somebody wants to double-check my work. I hand over all the data. All the massaged data, that is, while claiming that it's raw. No one questions it too closely b/c after all, why should I lie?
Plausible? Sure. Did it happen in this case? Don't know. That's why I said it merits investigation. I didn't say climate change research is rigged. I said it might be, there's a smoking gun, and it needs to be scrutinized very closely. There are reputable scientists who have done so and are calling BS on some or all of it, only to have the other side work very hard to prevent them from being heard at all. Rather than attack their arguments, it doesn't want them to be allowed to argue. That's not how science is supposed to work.
And like you said, if this is bogus, some independent researcher or researchers will find them out. They seem to not want independent researchers to be allowed to fact check them or publish. Could it be that they are in the process of being found out and are trying very hard to prevent it? Maybe. Let all the fact-checking go forward and let any and all scientists who think the pro-GW group is wrong publish. If the anti-GW scientists are wrong, that will become apparent. As you say, that's how science is supposed to work. My contention is that it often doesn't work that way. Science has politics and agendas of its own, driven in large part by the desire for public and private funding, and somewhat by the desire for fame.
I'm not in disagreement with you about how it's supposed to work. What I'm telling you is that because scientists are human too, it doesn't always work that way. You sound like you are clinging to the "scientists are perfect, and perfectly honest" myth. That Korean geneticist is a perfect example supporting my argument. Thanks for that.
Is there a political agenda in the global warming debate? Sure. More than one. The pro side certainly has a political agenda, since GW theory is giving them a good excuse to do what they want to do anyway, and they are not going to scrutinize it too closely. The anti side also has a politico-economic agenda because they don't want to do it if it's not actually necessary.
That's why there needs to be a lot more scrutiny, something which the pro side seeks to suppress. Anytime one side wants to suppress debate, you need to look at their motives. It's kind of like healthcare reform in the US. The pros aren't much interested in debate of what, or even why, action needs to be taken. All the more reason why their should be vigorous and extended public debate.
What surprises me about all of this isn't that that the Climategate scientists were caught apparently fudging facts and massaging data when said facts and data did not support what they wanted the conclusion to be, or that they were caught definitely trying to muzzle any scientists who questioned them. What surprises me most is that people are surprised by this. What surprises me second most is that scientists don't get caught doing this more often.
Why is that?
Well, we (well, not I, but many people) have this view of scientists as pure, balanced, objective, high-minded individuals in pursuit of pure scientific truth, Reality is that scientists, while highly trained and educated, are human just like everyone else. They can be vain, egotistical, self-serving, corrupt, and dishonest, just like everyone else. They want to be right, just like everyone else. They don't want to be publicly proven wrong, just like everyone else. And some of them will do anything to not be proven wrong, including lie and forge data and results. I'm not saying the scientists in question here did (or didn't) do that, just that some scientists have done things like that in the past and will do so again in the future. They're human, like anybody else.
For those of you old enough to remember when the prevailing theory of dinosaur extinction was failure to adapt to changing environmental conditions and competition from the rise of mammals, you may also recall that the first scientists to advance the mass-extinction/asteroid impact theory had scorn heaped upon them for years by the scientific establishment. However, they stuck to their guns and that theory is now accepted as fact and anyone advancing the previous theory would be the scorn magnet.
This is a case that certainly bears investigation, to find out whether or not real fraud has really occurred, and why (and how successful they were) they are trying so hard to prevent even the publication by other highly qualified researchers of any opposing viewpoint. After all, if the AGW theorists are correct and their methodology sound, it should stand up to public scrutiny and challenge, so why be afraid of challengers. If the AGW group is right, the challengers will be proven wrong.
That said, I think that reasonable efforts to reduce use of fossil fuels and produce less pollution are good in and of themselves, whether global warming is caused by humans (or even happening) or not. If you lived in southern California in the seventies, you'll recall how bad the smog was in those days. There were days when the smog was so bad that classes at my middle school in San Diego were canceled and students were sent home early. Today, there are far more cars on the SoCal freeways, but the air is much better, thanks to more fuel-efficient vehicles and good pollution control equipment. AFAIK school doesn't get canceled due to smog anymore, not even in LA. If we all had the kind of cars now that we had then, the smog would be so bad that SoCal (and the Bay area) would both be unlivable. Sustainable practices are good, independent of global warming.
You didn't get the memo about how that stopped being funny in 1896?:)
Setting aside that the description of the Internet as being like a series of tubes was actually pretty accurate; as you probably know if you've ever been a neteng or SA (or even know anyone who is), it's common jargon to refer to a fast connection as a big pipe. To some extent, routing protocols do indeed try to make packets behave like flowing water: water goes by the path of least resistance, and routing protocols will try to get packets from point A to point B by the shortest/fastest path. If water finds its optimal path block, it will try to route around it. So do routing protocols.
Not to defend Ted Stevens - he seems bad even by Washington's low standards - but his description (although he was opposing net neutrality just like his owners told him to, when he said it) shows that he - or at least someone on his staff - does grasp the concept of how the Internet works:
"They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed..."
Where the wheels come off of that argument is that opponents of net neutrality aren't arguing that when traffic is high, they want to throttle and prioritize some types of traffic so that types of traffic that needs low latency will get it; they are arguing for that, plus charging extra money to certain content providers, in exchange for which they will allow that content to go through in the manner it otherwise would if they weren't throttling/prioritizing it. Sounds kind of like extortion to me. "You know, Youtube, you've got some really nice packets here. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to them."
I used to be an SA and neteng at a regional ISP, and while I stopped wearing that hat seven years ago, I'm sure what was true then is still true now: adding bandwidth and letting your routing protocols do what they are supposed to do yields better performance than applying QoS solutions to less bandwidth. Sure, you might successfully prioritize the traffic, but at the expense of screwing the low-priority stuff, and you might still not get better throughput on the high-priority stuff than if you just had a big enough pipe.
No mistake, opponents of net neutrality are opposing it only because they want to soak content providers for fees to access their networks, despite the fact that we are already paying our ISPs for connections over which we will access that content. It ain't about QoS, but QoS makes a good figleaf for covering the embarrassing truth.
How so? You can't sue (well, successfully, anyway), someone for refusing them access to your network[1]. It is, after all, your network. The entire anti-spam (in which I work) and anti-virus industries basically revolve around that central principle: that a network or site operator gets to decide who is - and is not - allowed access, and said operator's decision is final. If Craigslist doesn't want to allow Yahoo Tubes access to their RSS feed, they are fully within their rights to deny it.
[1] Well, maybe, if it was a case of discrimination against an individual based on skin color, or some other form of legally prohibited discrimination, but in general, you can't sue because someone won't accept your email/let you access their website/etc.
Not that I'm defending CBS' promotion (even in fun) of the "blood type determines personality" theory - it's crap and I think putting it on their site is a mistake - but I think your statement that "promoting ignorance will cost lives" doesn't hold up (feel free to demonstrate that I'm wrong). For instance, if I were to suddenly become convinced that blood type does in fact determine or influence personality, and went through the rest of my life believing so, it is highly unlikely that said belief would cost my life or anyone else's, or even have an material impact on my quality of life (or anyone else's).
It's not like, say, promoting ignorance regarding birth control (for example, the belief that you can't get pregnant the first time, or in some positions) or HIV (for example, the belief helf in some parts of Africa that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS). Those beliefs, if promoted, will have substantial negative impact on lives, and will cost lives in some cases. But believe in blood type personality theory? I don't buy it. Sure, it's ignorance, but it's not particularly harmful ignorance. It just makes people who believe it look foolish to people who don't.
I lived in Japan for 8 years and never heard of anyone losing her/his life because of belief that ketsueki-gata (which just means "blood type" and does not refer to the belief that blood type determines personality) may determine or affect personality.
The words "Anonymous Coward" have perhaps never been better-chosen than in this instance.
The fact of the matter is that while Bush 43 made some serious mistakes - Rumsfeld and Cheney being perhaps the most egregious - and his presidency bears more than a passing resemblance to Grant's, there was also quite a bit of good that he did.
But I'll leave that and point out a couple of examples of what I'm talking about:
-Should we have gotten involved in Iraq? No. In retrospect, it was a terrible mistake. Properly applied foresight would also have shown it to be a terrible mistake, I believe. However, once we were in, winning it became a matter of crucial national interest, and while some fighting remains to be done, victory in Iraq is now a done deal. However, the left wanted very badly for us to fail in Iraq just to make Bush look bad (well, worse). Now, presumably, they want us to win, since the victory will happen on Obama's watch.
-Afghanistan. Should we have gotten involved? Yes. Did we go in with enough force? From here, it looks like no. Maybe it looked we did at the time. Presumably, next week Obama will announce an increase in troop levels that will address that problem. Again, the left wanted us to fail in Afghanistan just to make Bush look bad. Of course, it sounds like some of them still do, even though it will be their guy who looks bad if we don't win.
Am I glad to be a US citizen? Having lived around the world, I'd have to say "yes" to that; however, being a US citizen was better before the Bush presidencies (41 and 43) and the Clinton presidency. America was a far better place 30 years ago, a far more American place, than it is now. Is it too late to reverse that? Maybe. I hope not, but maybe.
Oh, I totally agree with that much - this health care "reform" plan needs to be DOA. I've lived under (fully) socialized medicine and the product you get is way below what you get here - and that was in a country that by most measures is the second wealthiest in the world, after the USA.
What I'm talking about are those who want Obama to fail at everything - either when success would be to the good of the country. There were plenty of those on the left when Bush was in office, and now they have come out of the woodwork on the right. Some might call that reaping what you sow, and I suppose it is - plus, politics has always been an ugly business - but it doesn't make conservatives look good to have some of us sailing on that tack.
When Obama was running for president, I looked at (but did not agree with most of) what he was saying he was going to do, and I thought, "Yeah, right. That's what he says now, and I believe he probably wants to do most of what he says he will do, and some of it is largely BS to satisfy the wingnuts at moveon.org, but after he's elected, a lot of his suporters - especially the ones in the wingnut gallery - are going to find themselves rather disappointed."
Setting aside the BS factor of stuff he probably never intended to do, or reasonably believed he would be unable to do, there's a lot that he did intend to do that hasn't happened. Mostly, that's a good thing. He'll probably get his way on healthcare reform, but unfortunately, the health care reform we're going to get is going to be at least as screwed up as what we have now. Probably worse, and certainly more expensive. Start with the fact that the biggest problem in health care is the need for tort reform. It doesn't do that. It does contain (if it doesn't get squished in committee) the idea that people will be compelled to buy health insurance whether they want it or not, and could be jailed if they don't.
And then there are things like the topic of TFA. Jailing people for not buying health insurance and trying to keep over-broad search powers goes against one area where - because I'm a conservative - I did agree with Obama: more open and transparent government. I didn't believe he'd follow through on that. To some extent he has, to his credit, but not nearly enough. Government needs to be transparent, open, strictly limited in its powers, and _small_.
There's a reason why the 10th Amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The authors knew perfectly well that not only is government not the answer, but that it tends to be the problem and that the problem will always try to make itself grow larger and to accumulate more power.
I think we'll find, after four years, that Obama has done what most other predidents - especially recent ones - have done: failed to do much of the good he intended to do, failed to do much of the good that he didn't plan but could have done opportunistically, and failed to avoid doing much of the harm that he should have avoided doing. The measure of success of a president today is largely whether he harmed the country less than his predecessor harmed it.
We're screwed.
P.S. Why shouldn't you discuss those things in detail? Do you think he's somehow beneath you because you disagree with each other? That's one of the reasons the country is so screwed up today - people on all sides refusing to even talk with people on other sides because they believe that no one else could possibly be right, or even have valid opinions, or even be entitled to a voice in the debate. So many people - whether left, right, or whatever, want absolutely no dissent from their ideas to be tolerated.
I'll say something that may be unusual for a conservative: I didn't vote for Obama, wouldn't if he were running today, and oppose his positions on a lot of issues. However, now that he's president, for the good of the nation, I want him to be the best president he can be, and do a good job. Compare that to the left-threaded wingnuts who so wanted Bush to fail at everything he attempted that they didn't care if it harmed the entire nation, just so long as it harmed Bush, or the right-threaded wingnuts who are exactly the same about Obama. Sadly, my perception is that most people on both sides tend to be of the (left|right)-threaded wingnut variety rather than of the loyal-opposition-who-can-reasonably-respectfully-disagree variety.
If that would really be considered "victim of sexual abuse" in most environments, then (speaking as the father of martial-arts practicing daughters who could hand said 13-year old his ass) most environments are even more screwed up than I think.
13-year old walks up to other 13-year old and grabs her tits? Sexual abuse.
13-year old walks up to other 13-year old and snaps her bra strap? Inappropriate physical contact worthy of disciplinary action, but not sexual abuse.
13-year old walks up to other 13 year old and asks to see her tits? Inappropriate verbal contact worthy of a slap in the face[1]
25-year old does any of those things? Time to call the police, he belongs in jail. The age of those involved makes a big difference.
If we take the Internet out of the equation, I think it clarifies things. The panic button proposal is, of course, utterly ridiculous. Even if it could be implemented, the funding for the staffing would never happen and it would be constantly abused.
[1] Which would most likely result in punishment of the victim. In an incident that happened at my daughters' school last year, another girl (a lot bigger than the victim) came up behind one of my daughter's friends, grabber her jacket hood and pulled it tight behind her to choke her. Before my daughter could intervene, her friend twisted free, turned around, and gave the other kid a good hard shove. Naturally, that was the part seen by a teacher. My daughter spoke up and explained what was really going on, but the victim - and only the victim - was punished. I firmly believe that schoolyard bullies need a good ass-kicking and that anyone who delivers has performed a good deed. However, the opinion of schools these days is that any violence - even in self-defense - is wrong. If you're attacked, they seem to reason, you should not even raise a hand to defend yourself. Even then, I bet the victim of an attack would be punished for "fighting" even if [s]he was doing nothing but getting it and not even doing anything defensive.
That notwithstanding, my kids understand that while I expect them to make every effort to avoid fights and they will be in deep shit with me if _they_ start one, that if there is a situation where they have to defend themselves and they can't get out of it without violence, they have _my_ permission to do what is necessary and they will have my full backing afterwards. I do not expect them to stand there and take it if someone attacks them, no matter what the school thinks.
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Partially correct. That is one point where prior art is useful. This situation is another. If someone sues you for patent violations and you can find clear prior art, then you can attempt a flanking maneuver: file suit to have the patent invalidated. If you can invalidate the patent through prior art, you don't even have to fight the frontal battle of proving that you aren't violating the patent.
Under whose laws? Cuba's. Of course, the first thing Castro did after he took power was to legitimize himself under the law, but that doesn't really count, does it? The Batista regime took power in a military coup after losing the election of 1952. Cuba was a free country with probably the highest standard of living in Latin America throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s up until the Batista coup. There was a lot of military corruption, and the winner of the election intended to clean that up. Batista was part of the corruption, so he staged a coup to prevent that and suspended civilian law and the constitution.
Castro then led a revolution, not to restore democratic law but to completely do away with it. Of course, he didn't *say* he was going to do that, or the people would not have followed him. What they expected was a return to democracy. Once he was in power, though, he removed the constitution and confiscated private property.
Rather than "Not a legal one... under whose laws?" the question you should be asking is "Under whose laws is the Cuban government not illegal?" Many countries recognize the Cuban government because it is a fact on the ground - a not uncommon situation. However, I am not aware of any country under whose laws it is lawful to overthrow a democratically elected government by armed revolution. It is likely that - with the exception of the few remaining communist countries - the only government under whose laws the Castro government is legal is the Castro government itself.
Well, yes and no. While completely agreeing with the "What did you think would happen if you did that?" part, I think that whether or not the Cuban government is a legal government could be debated. It took power at the point of a gun from the former government and has never held a free election. To add murkiness, the previous government was also certainly not legal, having taken power in a military coup in 1952 after years of peaceful and democratic elections in Cuba. Unless and until free and open elections are held in Cuba, whatever government has power there is merely a de facto government, not a legal one.
I don't think open-sourcing old car designs would achieve the result you suggest. Assuming the big three - who own the designs in question - had any reason to open-source those designs and did so, what would happen is either:
1) Nothing
2) Some niche maker(s) would emerge which would produce expensive specialty vehicles who wanted new old cars.
The reason for this is that starting a car company and tooling up to produce cars is expensive, period. It would save little or nothing to build a car based on an old design that was updated to meet current fuel economy, emissions, and safety standards than it would to just design a car from scratch, and the from-scratch car would be a better vehicle than the old-but-updated design. Think of all how far all aspects of vehicle technology have come since then: frame, unibody, suspension, drive train, safety devices. It might be cheaper, after the sunk costs of tooling up, to build a new old car that was identical to a new car, but it's not cheaper to build an old car that has been brought up to modern standards.
Consider the new Dodge Challenger: it looks remarkably like the 1970 Challengers that my cousin and I owned a long time ago. If it were cheaper/easier to update the old Challenger design - which Chrysler still owns - and it would result in a car that was just as good, don't you think they woudd have done so rather than build a new Challenger that looks a lot like the old one?
Not necessarily. Let's say I write a program that lets you modify parameters of your car's engine computer and go racing and release it as-is and under the GPL. Or, for even greater "as-as"-ness, give it the sort of disclaimers that would accompany proprietary software sold for the same purpose.
So, you use my software to re-tune your engine and because of a bug it causes your mixture to go really lean at high RPMS and you burn your pistons the first time you go racing. Good luck suing me. You might try, but it had a big notice that said "WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY DESTROY YOUR ENGINE, BURN YOUR HOUSE, STEAL YOUR CAR, DRINK YOUR LIQUOR FROM YOUR OLD FRUIT JAR, AND EVEN STEP ON YOUR BLUE SUEDE SHOES. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK."
We get into court. At the earliest opportunity, my lawyer says, "So, this software comes with a warning that it may destroy your engine, yet you used it anyway?" "Uh, yes."
Move it to the realm of hardware. I design a car. I release the design under the GPL, or a comparable documentation license, with the usual disclaimers as above, that it might not even work, use at your own risk, intended for use only by professional mechanics or automobile designers, if you build this you may crash and be killed or permanently injured, blahblahblah. You download my design, actually build the car, take it to a test track, and drive it. On your first lap, the wheels come off, you crash, and are crippled for life. You decide to sue me. Problem one is you ignored all disclaimers and safety warnings and built and drove it anyway. If you get past all that, you're going to have to prove that the fault was with my design, and not your workmanship, materials, or any mods you made to my design. You may need to prove that you didn't mod my design. The burden of proof is on you, after all. Especially if I've actually build and drive one based on my plan and didn't crash or have the wheels come off.
Case three: I start a company that builds cars based on my design and get them certified as road-legal in the US and start selling them. After they've been in service for a while, people start crashing because the front wheels are falling off. They sue me. Now I'm in trouble, because I actually built the thing and provide it to people.
Case four: you start a company that uses my design, and have an experience like the above and get sued. People sue you for selling them a car with wheels that fall off. You decide you want to sue me because I designed it and put the plans on the Internet. Likely a non-starter, for the same reasons as above: I put it out there with all the warnings that it might not even work, hasn't been tested, blahblahblah, and you chooe to design and build a car around it anyway.
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I don't think it's quite that simple. Let's assume, for instance, that all farming can be done completely by machine, better than humans can do it and with no human intervention except when the machine breaks (oops, there's a labor cost; machines are not very good at fixing other machines). There is still a company that makes those machines, and that company employs people. There's some more cost.
Let's cut all the way to the replicator level and say we have a machine that can scan an IH combine and spit out as many more as it needs. That replicator still needs a lot of raw materials that need to be mined or recycled, and and made available to it for use in replication. Unless of course it can turn some common material such as dirt into anything it needs. The first type remains firmly in the world of science fiction. The second type is more like the world of fantasy.
There's only one thing harder than any of your scenarios: eliminating the desire in people to have money, or something that takes the role of money: providing a conduit for people to have more of something than other people. That desire may sound like a bad thing on its surface, but it's actually not. Work, and the desire to obtain its fruits, is in our nature. Without it, we'd be like the people in Wall-E. OK, some people are already like that. We don't want to make it worse.
Correction: "Why _shouldn't_ those people do what they want instead of what you want?"
My daughter has been in the pediatric ICU twice this year. A conference that forces me to be unreachable is a conference I don't attend. Period. If I showed up and they surprised me with "no Internet access" I'd surprised them back with returning to the airport and going home. Any conference organizer who thinks s/he knows better than I do whether I (or anyone) need, or should have, Internet access during the conference is simply wrong.
Does anybody *need* to be fully engaged in a conference at all times? Of course not, that's ridiculous. At a conference I recently attended - one which was very specific to my line of work - there were still some speakers whose presentations were completely irrelevant to me. Don't get me wrong -that was the best and most useful conference I've ever attended - but that doesn't mean *all* of it was useful to me, personally. Checking my email during those times was a far more productive use of my time than listening to the speaker would have been. Heck, reading Slashdot was a more productive use of my time.
At any conference, no matter how relevant and how good, there will be, for any presenter, a percentage of the audience for whom the presentation is utterly irrelevant and useless. Why should those people do what they want instead of what you want?
That would be a deal-breaker for a lot of people. More than a few of us *need* to be reachable in emergencies (and not just work, either)[1]. If the conference I just attended last month had not had wireless in the hall, I wouldn't have gone. It was especially good that they did, since I found that wireless coverage (at least on my carrier) was very poor inside the hall. More than half of the time, my cell phone couldn't get a signal. It only worked reliably in the lobby.
I think you're attributing far too much competence to the government. Not that they don't want to do that sort of thing, of course.
I think it's code. If we select certain words, we get::
"Buttressing their dominant position in my ass."
I've heard of people being Apple fans before, but isn't that taking it to kind of an extreme?
Depends on the license. If the license is the GPL, the answer to "Can the OS remain private?" is probably "yes" - however, ultimately, it depends on if, and how, the code was commingled. Most FOSS licenses have no prohibitions against installing or building for use on a proprietary OS, however, GLP v.3 does contain "anti-tivoization" provisions. The last question, whether the provider has to provide a way to change or update the OS on the device, is probably a "no" - unless, of course, the FOSS license of the code requires it.
If the license is a BSD-style license, then the answer to all of your questions is "no." A BSD-style license basically lets you do whatever you want with the code, including taking it into a proprietary fork.
There is a great deal of debate - unlikely to ever end - over whether the BSD approach or the GNU GPL approach is more truly open. What it comes down to is a question of to whom you are trying to grant/guarantee the greatest freedom: end users of the code, or businesses. Or cast in other terms, guaranteeing freedom to get/use/modify the source to everyone up to person X, or everyone up to, including, and following person X? Or to cast it in yet other terms, do you want to guarantee that freedom to everyone who gets your code directly from you, or to anyone who gets your code, or modifications thereof, from anyone?
A BSD-style license would give those freedoms to anyone who got your code from you. Those people, in turn, could do what they want, including make a proprietary fork. This is why businesses often prefer BSD-licensed code: there are no issues around making a proprietary product based on it. A GPL-style license, on the other hand, basically prohibits making a proprietary fork of the code. If you release some code under the GPL and I use and modify that code and ever release my version to the public, I must release the source as well (if I only use it internally to my company, I don't have to release those changes).
There will always be argument as to which one is right. IMO, which one is right depends on your own definition of freedom and your own goals for your software. This, of course, is why there are so many open source licenses. Some view this as a bad thing. I view it like I view Linux distro diversity: it's a part of the strength of FOSS: there is room for everyone to meet his/her own needs with the best available solution, and solutions that many people like will emerge as best-of-breed while niche solutions will remain for those whose needs best met by one of them.
Well, yes, but spammers are not hogging bandwidth on your ISP's last-mile or middle-mile links. The places spammers use bandwidth are:
-On the ISP's own incoming links, and the the links from there to its MXes. This is why blocklists and graylisting are so popular: the MX can look at the connecting IP and tell it to go away and come back later, or to just go away, without ever seeing the mail. This saves not only a lot of bandwidth, but a lot of CPU time that would otherwise be used by content filters after acceptance of the message. Even here, however, link congestion is unlikely to come from spam; web traffic (especially streaming media) and p2p traffic account for far more bandwidth than spam does. Spam volume can bring an unprotected MX to its knees and it requires ISPs to operate much larger email infrastructures than they would otherwise need (at the ISP where I used to work, we could have thrown away 75% of our email infrastructure if we hadn't needed it to filter spam), but it's not the major consumer of inbound bandwidth. It just consumers more bandwidth than legit email does.
-In the outbound direction in cases where customer PCs become infected and are participating in botnets. However, this does not usually present a congestion problem. When was the last time you heard about an outbound congestion issue, and if you've ever heard of one, when was the last time you heard of one caused by bots sending spam?
In your own experience, have you ever received so much spam that it caused link congestion on a broadband connection?
5000 hosts running 24 x 7 for 10 years? That's a lot of electricity. Even if they might have been left powered on 24 x 7 anyway, running the SETI@Home client is probably enough to keep the CPU and disks from sleeping, which means more heat, more wear and tear on things that go around, including power supply cooling fans. If you add up the cost of the electricity, cooling, parts replacement, staff time to replace parts, it's probably not cheap. $1 million does sound a bit steep, but it's probably not as far out of line as it looks at first glance.
No, it's not. There's a smoking gun that they concealed data contrary to their hypothesis in some cases, modified the data to fit the hypothesis in other cases, and actively worked to prevent researchers with differing opinions from:
1) Analyzing their data
2) Being published at all.
The Korean guy was a lot easier to catch because he was only one guy, and he was what one might call an honest liar. He made a bogus publication while supplying all the information necessary to falsify his claims.
Climate research is dicier because not all that many scientists, really, have access to some of the raw data. Let's say, for example, that I set up a climatological research center. I go take a bunch of ice cores, tree cores, etc. I set up weather stations to record temperatures. I aggregate all this data, then adjust anything that doesn't support my hypothesis. Other researchers at my center and at other places collude with me in doing this. I publish my results.
Later, somebody wants to double-check my work. I hand over all the data. All the massaged data, that is, while claiming that it's raw. No one questions it too closely b/c after all, why should I lie?
Plausible? Sure. Did it happen in this case? Don't know. That's why I said it merits investigation. I didn't say climate change research is rigged. I said it might be, there's a smoking gun, and it needs to be scrutinized very closely. There are reputable scientists who have done so and are calling BS on some or all of it, only to have the other side work very hard to prevent them from being heard at all. Rather than attack their arguments, it doesn't want them to be allowed to argue. That's not how science is supposed to work.
And like you said, if this is bogus, some independent researcher or researchers will find them out. They seem to not want independent researchers to be allowed to fact check them or publish. Could it be that they are in the process of being found out and are trying very hard to prevent it? Maybe. Let all the fact-checking go forward and let any and all scientists who think the pro-GW group is wrong publish. If the anti-GW scientists are wrong, that will become apparent. As you say, that's how science is supposed to work. My contention is that it often doesn't work that way. Science has politics and agendas of its own, driven in large part by the desire for public and private funding, and somewhat by the desire for fame.
I'm not in disagreement with you about how it's supposed to work. What I'm telling you is that because scientists are human too, it doesn't always work that way. You sound like you are clinging to the "scientists are perfect, and perfectly honest" myth. That Korean geneticist is a perfect example supporting my argument. Thanks for that.
Is there a political agenda in the global warming debate? Sure. More than one. The pro side certainly has a political agenda, since GW theory is giving them a good excuse to do what they want to do anyway, and they are not going to scrutinize it too closely. The anti side also has a politico-economic agenda because they don't want to do it if it's not actually necessary.
That's why there needs to be a lot more scrutiny, something which the pro side seeks to suppress. Anytime one side wants to suppress debate, you need to look at their motives. It's kind of like healthcare reform in the US. The pros aren't much interested in debate of what, or even why, action needs to be taken. All the more reason why their should be vigorous and extended public debate.
What surprises me about all of this isn't that that the Climategate scientists were caught apparently fudging facts and massaging data when said facts and data did not support what they wanted the conclusion to be, or that they were caught definitely trying to muzzle any scientists who questioned them. What surprises me most is that people are surprised by this. What surprises me second most is that scientists don't get caught doing this more often.
Why is that?
Well, we (well, not I, but many people) have this view of scientists as pure, balanced, objective, high-minded individuals in pursuit of pure scientific truth, Reality is that scientists, while highly trained and educated, are human just like everyone else. They can be vain, egotistical, self-serving, corrupt, and dishonest, just like everyone else. They want to be right, just like everyone else. They don't want to be publicly proven wrong, just like everyone else. And some of them will do anything to not be proven wrong, including lie and forge data and results. I'm not saying the scientists in question here did (or didn't) do that, just that some scientists have done things like that in the past and will do so again in the future. They're human, like anybody else.
For those of you old enough to remember when the prevailing theory of dinosaur extinction was failure to adapt to changing environmental conditions and competition from the rise of mammals, you may also recall that the first scientists to advance the mass-extinction/asteroid impact theory had scorn heaped upon them for years by the scientific establishment. However, they stuck to their guns and that theory is now accepted as fact and anyone advancing the previous theory would be the scorn magnet.
This is a case that certainly bears investigation, to find out whether or not real fraud has really occurred, and why (and how successful they were) they are trying so hard to prevent even the publication by other highly qualified researchers of any opposing viewpoint. After all, if the AGW theorists are correct and their methodology sound, it should stand up to public scrutiny and challenge, so why be afraid of challengers. If the AGW group is right, the challengers will be proven wrong.
That said, I think that reasonable efforts to reduce use of fossil fuels and produce less pollution are good in and of themselves, whether global warming is caused by humans (or even happening) or not. If you lived in southern California in the seventies, you'll recall how bad the smog was in those days. There were days when the smog was so bad that classes at my middle school in San Diego were canceled and students were sent home early. Today, there are far more cars on the SoCal freeways, but the air is much better, thanks to more fuel-efficient vehicles and good pollution control equipment. AFAIK school doesn't get canceled due to smog anymore, not even in LA. If we all had the kind of cars now that we had then, the smog would be so bad that SoCal (and the Bay area) would both be unlivable. Sustainable practices are good, independent of global warming.
You didn't get the memo about how that stopped being funny in 1896? :)
Setting aside that the description of the Internet as being like a series of tubes was actually pretty accurate; as you probably know if you've ever been a neteng or SA (or even know anyone who is), it's common jargon to refer to a fast connection as a big pipe. To some extent, routing protocols do indeed try to make packets behave like flowing water: water goes by the path of least resistance, and routing protocols will try to get packets from point A to point B by the shortest/fastest path. If water finds its optimal path block, it will try to route around it. So do routing protocols.
Not to defend Ted Stevens - he seems bad even by Washington's low standards - but his description (although he was opposing net neutrality just like his owners told him to, when he said it) shows that he - or at least someone on his staff - does grasp the concept of how the Internet works:
"They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed..."
Where the wheels come off of that argument is that opponents of net neutrality aren't arguing that when traffic is high, they want to throttle and prioritize some types of traffic so that types of traffic that needs low latency will get it; they are arguing for that, plus charging extra money to certain content providers, in exchange for which they will allow that content to go through in the manner it otherwise would if they weren't throttling/prioritizing it. Sounds kind of like extortion to me. "You know, Youtube, you've got some really nice packets here. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to them."
I used to be an SA and neteng at a regional ISP, and while I stopped wearing that hat seven years ago, I'm sure what was true then is still true now: adding bandwidth and letting your routing protocols do what they are supposed to do yields better performance than applying QoS solutions to less bandwidth. Sure, you might successfully prioritize the traffic, but at the expense of screwing the low-priority stuff, and you might still not get better throughput on the high-priority stuff than if you just had a big enough pipe.
No mistake, opponents of net neutrality are opposing it only because they want to soak content providers for fees to access their networks, despite the fact that we are already paying our ISPs for connections over which we will access that content. It ain't about QoS, but QoS makes a good figleaf for covering the embarrassing truth.
How so? You can't sue (well, successfully, anyway), someone for refusing them access to your network[1]. It is, after all, your network. The entire anti-spam (in which I work) and anti-virus industries basically revolve around that central principle: that a network or site operator gets to decide who is - and is not - allowed access, and said operator's decision is final. If Craigslist doesn't want to allow Yahoo Tubes access to their RSS feed, they are fully within their rights to deny it.
[1] Well, maybe, if it was a case of discrimination against an individual based on skin color, or some other form of legally prohibited discrimination, but in general, you can't sue because someone won't accept your email/let you access their website/etc.
Not that I'm defending CBS' promotion (even in fun) of the "blood type determines personality" theory - it's crap and I think putting it on their site is a mistake - but I think your statement that "promoting ignorance will cost lives" doesn't hold up (feel free to demonstrate that I'm wrong). For instance, if I were to suddenly become convinced that blood type does in fact determine or influence personality, and went through the rest of my life believing so, it is highly unlikely that said belief would cost my life or anyone else's, or even have an material impact on my quality of life (or anyone else's).
It's not like, say, promoting ignorance regarding birth control (for example, the belief that you can't get pregnant the first time, or in some positions) or HIV (for example, the belief helf in some parts of Africa that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS). Those beliefs, if promoted, will have substantial negative impact on lives, and will cost lives in some cases. But believe in blood type personality theory? I don't buy it. Sure, it's ignorance, but it's not particularly harmful ignorance. It just makes people who believe it look foolish to people who don't.
I lived in Japan for 8 years and never heard of anyone losing her/his life because of belief that ketsueki-gata (which just means "blood type" and does not refer to the belief that blood type determines personality) may determine or affect personality.
No, you can drink pure ethanol. Not much of it, but you can drink it. Everclear is (was?) pretty close to pure alcohol.
The words "Anonymous Coward" have perhaps never been better-chosen than in this instance.
The fact of the matter is that while Bush 43 made some serious mistakes - Rumsfeld and Cheney being perhaps the most egregious - and his presidency bears more than a passing resemblance to Grant's, there was also quite a bit of good that he did.
But I'll leave that and point out a couple of examples of what I'm talking about:
-Should we have gotten involved in Iraq? No. In retrospect, it was a terrible mistake. Properly applied foresight would also have shown it to be a terrible mistake, I believe. However, once we were in, winning it became a matter of crucial national interest, and while some fighting remains to be done, victory in Iraq is now a done deal. However, the left wanted very badly for us to fail in Iraq just to make Bush look bad (well, worse). Now, presumably, they want us to win, since the victory will happen on Obama's watch.
-Afghanistan. Should we have gotten involved? Yes. Did we go in with enough force? From here, it looks like no. Maybe it looked we did at the time. Presumably, next week Obama will announce an increase in troop levels that will address that problem. Again, the left wanted us to fail in Afghanistan just to make Bush look bad. Of course, it sounds like some of them still do, even though it will be their guy who looks bad if we don't win.
Am I glad to be a US citizen? Having lived around the world, I'd have to say "yes" to that; however, being a US citizen was better before the Bush presidencies (41 and 43) and the Clinton presidency. America was a far better place 30 years ago, a far more American place, than it is now. Is it too late to reverse that? Maybe. I hope not, but maybe.
Oh, I totally agree with that much - this health care "reform" plan needs to be DOA. I've lived under (fully) socialized medicine and the product you get is way below what you get here - and that was in a country that by most measures is the second wealthiest in the world, after the USA.
What I'm talking about are those who want Obama to fail at everything - either when success would be to the good of the country. There were plenty of those on the left when Bush was in office, and now they have come out of the woodwork on the right. Some might call that reaping what you sow, and I suppose it is - plus, politics has always been an ugly business - but it doesn't make conservatives look good to have some of us sailing on that tack.
Yes, I care to call you a wingnut. You've proven it beyond the shadow of a doubt. I'll throw in "liar" while I'm at it; I'm not, but you are.
When Obama was running for president, I looked at (but did not agree with most of) what he was saying he was going to do, and I thought, "Yeah, right. That's what he says now, and I believe he probably wants to do most of what he says he will do, and some of it is largely BS to satisfy the wingnuts at moveon.org, but after he's elected, a lot of his suporters - especially the ones in the wingnut gallery - are going to find themselves rather disappointed."
Setting aside the BS factor of stuff he probably never intended to do, or reasonably believed he would be unable to do, there's a lot that he did intend to do that hasn't happened. Mostly, that's a good thing. He'll probably get his way on healthcare reform, but unfortunately, the health care reform we're going to get is going to be at least as screwed up as what we have now. Probably worse, and certainly more expensive. Start with the fact that the biggest problem in health care is the need for tort reform. It doesn't do that. It does contain (if it doesn't get squished in committee) the idea that people will be compelled to buy health insurance whether they want it or not, and could be jailed if they don't.
And then there are things like the topic of TFA. Jailing people for not buying health insurance and trying to keep over-broad search powers goes against one area where - because I'm a conservative - I did agree with Obama: more open and transparent government. I didn't believe he'd follow through on that. To some extent he has, to his credit, but not nearly enough. Government needs to be transparent, open, strictly limited in its powers, and _small_.
There's a reason why the 10th Amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The authors knew perfectly well that not only is government not the answer, but that it tends to be the problem and that the problem will always try to make itself grow larger and to accumulate more power.
I think we'll find, after four years, that Obama has done what most other predidents - especially recent ones - have done: failed to do much of the good he intended to do, failed to do much of the good that he didn't plan but could have done opportunistically, and failed to avoid doing much of the harm that he should have avoided doing. The measure of success of a president today is largely whether he harmed the country less than his predecessor harmed it.
We're screwed.
P.S. Why shouldn't you discuss those things in detail? Do you think he's somehow beneath you because you disagree with each other? That's one of the reasons the country is so screwed up today - people on all sides refusing to even talk with people on other sides because they believe that no one else could possibly be right, or even have valid opinions, or even be entitled to a voice in the debate. So many people - whether left, right, or whatever, want absolutely no dissent from their ideas to be tolerated.
I'll say something that may be unusual for a conservative: I didn't vote for Obama, wouldn't if he were running today, and oppose his positions on a lot of issues. However, now that he's president, for the good of the nation, I want him to be the best president he can be, and do a good job. Compare that to the left-threaded wingnuts who so wanted Bush to fail at everything he attempted that they didn't care if it harmed the entire nation, just so long as it harmed Bush, or the right-threaded wingnuts who are exactly the same about Obama. Sadly, my perception is that most people on both sides tend to be of the (left|right)-threaded wingnut variety rather than of the loyal-opposition-who-can-reasonably-respectfully-disagree variety.
If that would really be considered "victim of sexual abuse" in most environments, then (speaking as the father of martial-arts practicing daughters who could hand said 13-year old his ass) most environments are even more screwed up than I think.
13-year old walks up to other 13-year old and grabs her tits? Sexual abuse.
13-year old walks up to other 13-year old and snaps her bra strap? Inappropriate physical contact worthy of disciplinary action, but not sexual abuse.
13-year old walks up to other 13 year old and asks to see her tits? Inappropriate verbal contact worthy of a slap in the face[1]
25-year old does any of those things? Time to call the police, he belongs in jail. The age of those involved makes a big difference.
If we take the Internet out of the equation, I think it clarifies things. The panic button proposal is, of course, utterly ridiculous. Even if it could be implemented, the funding for the staffing would never happen and it would be constantly abused.
[1] Which would most likely result in punishment of the victim. In an incident that happened at my daughters' school last year, another girl (a lot bigger than the victim) came up behind one of my daughter's friends, grabber her jacket hood and pulled it tight behind her to choke her. Before my daughter could intervene, her friend twisted free, turned around, and gave the other kid a good hard shove. Naturally, that was the part seen by a teacher. My daughter spoke up and explained what was really going on, but the victim - and only the victim - was punished. I firmly believe that schoolyard bullies need a good ass-kicking and that anyone who delivers has performed a good deed. However, the opinion of schools these days is that any violence - even in self-defense - is wrong. If you're attacked, they seem to reason, you should not even raise a hand to defend yourself. Even then, I bet the victim of an attack would be punished for "fighting" even if [s]he was doing nothing but getting it and not even doing anything defensive.
That notwithstanding, my kids understand that while I expect them to make every effort to avoid fights and they will be in deep shit with me if _they_ start one, that if there is a situation where they have to defend themselves and they can't get out of it without violence, they have _my_ permission to do what is necessary and they will have my full backing afterwards. I do not expect them to stand there and take it if someone attacks them, no matter what the school thinks.