Yup, Fox News is just an obvious example. The issue happens on the left just as much as on the right. That's why I said 80% and not 49%. If the country were 49% Republican idiots and 51% enlightened Democrats we'd be in much better shape. It is more like 40% Republican sheep and 40% Democrat sheep and maybe 20% if you're lucky that actually consider issues and wish they had some better options.
Well, you've managed to figure out my politics completely wrong. I'm not sure if I've ever voted for a politician that most would consider liberal - unless you're counting school boards or state reps or something.
None of the other networks reported on anything reasonably in favor of the 2nd amendment.
Well, I happen to fully support the 2nd amendment. If it were up to me just about anything that is man-portable would be legal.
I just used Fox News as an example - those who vote Democrat are just as often guilty of the same kind of thinking.
Ok, perhaps in my first sentence I should have used "or" instead of "and" between all three clauses. Fox news was just an example as it is an obvious case of this sort of filter-opposing-views thinking. It happens just as much on the left.
The Daily Show is as much of a problem. Fox News was just one example of this type of thinking - people just filter out anything they disagree with and choose forums that reinforce their already-held beliefs.
I just used Fox News as an example as it is easy to pick on. Those who vote Democrat suffer from many of the same problems, just obviously in more left-leaning forums.
>Agree in part, but as long as 80% of the voters watch Fox News
Uhm, it's the Obama administration, silly.
Read the rest of my post. I wasn't suggesting that this was purely a problem caused by those who run Republican. Fox News just seems to typify the problem - it is just as much an issue on the left.
The problem is that people get super-polarized and elections are more about riling up supporters on hot topics than actually doing stuff that fixes the country. That tends to make it more about spending money.
Agree in part, but as long as 80% of the voters watch Fox News and attack ads and do what the rest of the 80% of America tells them to do we're going to end up with more of the same.
Very few people enter into reasoned debate and bother to understand issues before voting on them. If everybody they associate is talking about death panels, then there must be death panels.
The result is that the only way to get elected is to spend enormous amounts of money on advertising and influencing public opinion. The only way to get that kind of money is to be in bed with special interests. The go-easy-on-the-little-guy group doesn't have much money to give.
Unless we can somehow end bribery there really isn't any way to fix these issues. And corporate interests are just part of the problem - the US takes positions that impose on personal liberty in countless social issues that probably don't have corporate interests behind them. In the US everybody loves to tell everybody else what they can do...
But the issues were the same with Australia the had no such actual security issues. I've stated elsewhere that India has more of a reason for political reasons to not buy Chinese, but off US and Australian reports to do so is silly.
I'm having difficulty parsing that. However, generally speaking it is wiser to buy products from countries that you're allied with than from those you get into spats with, if you don't want to risk sabotage.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that the Chinese may have never used their position as a supplier to sabotage them yet, but that isn't a reason to trust them. I'd be paranoid and not trust my allies either, but if you have to pick somebody to trust better it be an ally.
That is your opinion. In my opinion there are two people accountable; Swartz' lawyer and Swartz himself.
Well, the beautiful thing about America is that you're entitled to your opinion no matter how wrong it might be, well, as long as you don't make too many waves visible to those in power.
You can actually make waves too, but only if you don't break any laws, which is pretty much impossible these days...
Oh, I think they'd be foolish to buy from Cisco. They really should make something domestically.
That said, India is far more likely to end up in hostilities with China than the US. They do share a border, and I believe they occasionally end up in skirmishes over it.
So your opinion that the law is wrong means you can ignore it?
I said the law was wrong, and those those who enforced it were wrong.
You can of course ignore any law at any time whether it is right or not. If the law is wrong then you're right to ignore it, and if the law is right you're wrong to ignore it. Either way you're likely to rot in jail.
That is not the way the legal system works. Lobby to have the law changed.
I never claimed it was how the legal system did work - only that this was how it OUGHT to work.
I will of course try to change the law, but lobbying is largely reserved for those with lots of cash. That's why we have so many wrong laws to begin with. In the meantime 99% of the population will ignore the laws they feel are wrong, and from time to time a few of them will get made examples of. Such is the US concept of justice.
The purpose of maximum penalties is to limit prosecutorial misconduct so they can not threaten 100 years for stealing a loaf of bread.
Gee, that is comforting. Maybe you'll only get 35 years for that particular crime at worst... But, that is theft of a physical good - most likely you'll get off pretty light for that. Try to "steal" some music online and you could easily face a suit for 100 year's worth of wages at least.
Any good lawyer will tell his client the true probable sentence that would be imposed for that person's crime.
No doubt this is why Aaron killed himself. He was very likely to end up in prison for years, and generally have his life ruined after he got out. There are cases of people who have been offered plea bargains for time served and continue to rot in jail because they turn them down. Why would they do this? Because they're innocent and don't want to allocute to a crime they didn't commit. What other motive would they have. People are constantly being let out of prison after many years served on the basis of new evidence.
It comes down to this, the six month plea bargain sentence was reasonable for the crimes committed.
That's your personal opinion, and the law, but certainly not a fact. And he wasn't offered six months - he was offered a prosecutorial recommendation of six months that the judge could ignore.
Where were his lawyer, family or friends to see he was having trouble and commit him or stay with him for his own protection?
I dunno, but as far as I'm aware none of them were out to get him. What do you want them to do, lock him up before he gets hauled off to prison? And who are you to call them to account? Clearly you aren't looking to make things better for the next poor soul to end up in his place. As taxpayers we're certainly accountable for his death, even if we outsource the dirty work to government officials.
Not sure, but the fact is that the 64-bit switch was handled differently on different OSes/compilers/etc. Bottom line is that if you really care exactly how large a particular type is you need to define it using something like uint32 or such.
When you say "this law" what are you talking about? Breaking and enter? tampering with computers? Copyright infringement? What is wrong with those laws?
The works being copied should have been in the public domain to begin with, so there should not have been copyright infringement.
In any case, there is nothing wrong with having reasonable laws covering any of those things. The problem is that the penalties are draconian. Copyright laws used to be used to punish people running large scale printing operations copying popular books. Now they're used with the same penalties to punish people for downloading a song or movie - something generally considered acceptable by the public.
Everyone keeps harping on the the maximum penalties when we all know few get the max.
The purpose of maximum penalties is to force defendants to accept a plea bargain for a lesser penalty. Suppose I think you're ugly and should be locked away, so I point a gun at you and tell you that if you voluntarily agree to being locked up for 5 years I won't shoot you. Does that make the 5 years in prison acceptable?
If a guy pulls a prank like this he should get community service or a fine. Instead he was threatened with 30 years in prison with the goal of getting him to agree to 0.5-30 years in prison (he'd have to plead guilty and then take what the judge gives him with no guarantees), the loss of voting rights for life, and the near-impossibility of ever getting a professional job in the future. Frankly the latter two penalties shouldn't even be considered constitutional, but they're commonplace for felony convictions.
There has never been one, and millions of dollars have been spent looking. It's all about racism (or nationalism or protectionism).
I dunno. If you really care about security then you need to trust your suppliers. When your threat model is attacks by other nation-states then your only good solution is to make things domestically. There have been a few high-profile cases where equipment was sabotaged by foreign governments - the US destruction of a Soviet refinery comes to mind. Then you have stuxnet and such - which work in part because foreign governments have strong knowledge of the equipment you're using, even if it doesn't have back-doors. Who knows how many incidents have happened without becoming public knowledge?
It really does make sense to keep the manufacture of core infrastructure local. Not only does this help prevent sabotage, but it also helps your supply chain (you can't be cut off as easily).
Just one other point that might help to clarify things.
If you need a bypass operation, then in a US hospital you'll probably get a bypass operation that is as good as one you'll get anywhere - certainly above average. If you need really exotic surgery chances are you'll actually do better in the US than just about anywhere else.
On the other hand, if you need to be able to pay for a bypass operation, or you aren't sure if you need one or not, you'll probably get better advice/costs/insurance just about anywhere else.
In the US the execution of individual elements of healthcare is top-notch - probably in the running for #1 overall. The problem is all the stuff that happens in the 99.9999% of your life that you aren't actually on an operating table or having a test performed.
The US has the best quality health care in the world!
That should be "had", you lost the #1 spot about 40yrs ago, although your still among the leaders in medical research.
It really depends on what you measure. For the average person you're absolutely right. For somebody with the money to pay for healthcare and good sense in using the current system the US is as good as any place else on the planet, and sometimes better.
Some observations as somebody who has had a fair bit of exposure to the US healthcare system (I care for somebody with some serious chronic and from time-to-time acute conditions):
1. There is not universal health insurance. That means that for the average person the US healthcare system sucks, period.
2. Those who have insurance lose it when they're out of work, or may need to change doctors from time to time due to the dictates of insurance negotiations, and so on. The latter actually helps to control prices, but all of this is bad for continuity of care and prevention.
3. The entire system is super-expensive for everybody. That means that even those with insurance or wealth end up being a bit limited in what they can afford compared to elsewhere.
4. The way payment works creates perverse incentives for providers. That means that people might not get good advice (unnecessary procedures, etc). When you pay people for procedures you tend to get more procedures, unless people go against their doctor's advice (which doctors don't like, and patients are hesitant to do). Plus, ignoring a doctor's advice can be bad for you sometimes, and how is somebody to tell.
Bottom line is that in the US everything is there for the taking, more or less, but people don't get steered in the right direction, or they often can't afford it. However, if you can get past the cost and the bad advice, the actual delivery of treatments/etc is probably the best in the world.
BTW, I'm all for reform. The whole US-healthcare-is-bad thing is just misleading because it doesn't distinguish between the aspects of the system that work REALLY well, and the parts that are, frankly, abysmal. Then reformers don't understand why their reforms aren't popular - and that is because the system isn't completely broken to begin with.
Anytime you sell a limited commodity below market prices you end up with situations like this. In the case of high-speed trading selling below market prices isn't intended, and the practice is just the result of some people understanding the market better than others (ie a few nanoseconds faster). In the case of most other things there is some strange sense of fairness that dictates that products that are limited in availability be sold at ordinary prices leading to these huge runs.
The solution in this sort of situation is simple - just have a dutch auction. Everybody places bids for their train tickets and whatever price is sufficient to sell all of them is used to settle the trades.
For various reasons this is popularly called "price gouging," but the fact is that gouging of one sort or another is bound to happen. If you do traditional price gouging then those with the most money get the sale. If you instead set up lines (a la iPhone debuts) then those who have the most free time get the sale (oh, and since time is money it works out the same - just pay somebody to stand in line for you). If you instead set up some kind of online first-come-first-serve stampede then those who have the best technology get the sale (and since you can buy technical expertise again it works out the same). And, of course, those who get items in a rush frequently put them up for sale on various black/grey markets and the result is that those with money get their tickets/phones/generators/whatever. In the interest of fairness we end up setting up markets that are both unfair, and inefficient as a bonus (with all kinds of middle-men profiting off of trades that could just be two-party).
Uh, in what alternate reality is China Communist? They're actively suppressing communist activists. They wear the name, but want nothing to do with the philosophy (at least not those in power).
Certainly nobody who knows me well. I'm all for the rule of law. I just think that laws are only valid if they serve the public interest. We have elected officials to help ensure that this is the case, but the fact that they're elected does not guarantee this.
I don't see how this law serves the public interest, so it is unjust. The reality of course is that if you defy an unjust ruler the effects are about the same as defying a just one, and often worse. The government certainly has the power to enforce its laws, however unjust. However, none of this changes the fact that the law is unjust.
A majority vote does not change an unjust law into a just one.
I'm actually fine with having Aaron charged with trespassing for going in that server closet. However, that should really be a misdemeanor, as should be trespassing in general.
In the US at least in most areas I could actually walk up to the store owner and punch him in the face and it would only be a misdemeanor, as long as I didn't proceed to beat him into a pulp, and I didn't have a history, and I didn't rob him/etc.
Well, by all means make botnets illegal, but you don't have to make a generic "violate TOS is a felony" law to do that.
I'm not convinced that merely running a botnet should be a felony either, though using it to defraud people of money and such should be. I'd focus more on outcomes than on means.
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Yup, Fox News is just an obvious example. The issue happens on the left just as much as on the right. That's why I said 80% and not 49%. If the country were 49% Republican idiots and 51% enlightened Democrats we'd be in much better shape. It is more like 40% Republican sheep and 40% Democrat sheep and maybe 20% if you're lucky that actually consider issues and wish they had some better options.
Libreal retard.
Well, you've managed to figure out my politics completely wrong. I'm not sure if I've ever voted for a politician that most would consider liberal - unless you're counting school boards or state reps or something.
None of the other networks reported on anything reasonably in favor of the 2nd amendment.
Well, I happen to fully support the 2nd amendment. If it were up to me just about anything that is man-portable would be legal.
I just used Fox News as an example - those who vote Democrat are just as often guilty of the same kind of thinking.
Ok, perhaps in my first sentence I should have used "or" instead of "and" between all three clauses. Fox news was just an example as it is an obvious case of this sort of filter-opposing-views thinking. It happens just as much on the left.
The Daily Show is as much of a problem. Fox News was just one example of this type of thinking - people just filter out anything they disagree with and choose forums that reinforce their already-held beliefs.
I just used Fox News as an example as it is easy to pick on. Those who vote Democrat suffer from many of the same problems, just obviously in more left-leaning forums.
>Agree in part, but as long as 80% of the voters watch Fox News
Uhm, it's the Obama administration, silly.
Read the rest of my post. I wasn't suggesting that this was purely a problem caused by those who run Republican. Fox News just seems to typify the problem - it is just as much an issue on the left.
The problem is that people get super-polarized and elections are more about riling up supporters on hot topics than actually doing stuff that fixes the country. That tends to make it more about spending money.
Agree in part, but as long as 80% of the voters watch Fox News and attack ads and do what the rest of the 80% of America tells them to do we're going to end up with more of the same.
Very few people enter into reasoned debate and bother to understand issues before voting on them. If everybody they associate is talking about death panels, then there must be death panels.
The result is that the only way to get elected is to spend enormous amounts of money on advertising and influencing public opinion. The only way to get that kind of money is to be in bed with special interests. The go-easy-on-the-little-guy group doesn't have much money to give.
Unless we can somehow end bribery there really isn't any way to fix these issues. And corporate interests are just part of the problem - the US takes positions that impose on personal liberty in countless social issues that probably don't have corporate interests behind them. In the US everybody loves to tell everybody else what they can do...
He embarrassed a large corporation. That makes powerful people upset. He must be punished.
But the issues were the same with Australia the had no such actual security issues. I've stated elsewhere that India has more of a reason for political reasons to not buy Chinese, but off US and Australian reports to do so is silly.
I'm having difficulty parsing that. However, generally speaking it is wiser to buy products from countries that you're allied with than from those you get into spats with, if you don't want to risk sabotage.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that the Chinese may have never used their position as a supplier to sabotage them yet, but that isn't a reason to trust them. I'd be paranoid and not trust my allies either, but if you have to pick somebody to trust better it be an ally.
That is your opinion. In my opinion there are two people accountable; Swartz' lawyer and Swartz himself.
Well, the beautiful thing about America is that you're entitled to your opinion no matter how wrong it might be, well, as long as you don't make too many waves visible to those in power.
You can actually make waves too, but only if you don't break any laws, which is pretty much impossible these days...
Oh, I think they'd be foolish to buy from Cisco. They really should make something domestically.
That said, India is far more likely to end up in hostilities with China than the US. They do share a border, and I believe they occasionally end up in skirmishes over it.
So your opinion that the law is wrong means you can ignore it?
I said the law was wrong, and those those who enforced it were wrong.
You can of course ignore any law at any time whether it is right or not. If the law is wrong then you're right to ignore it, and if the law is right you're wrong to ignore it. Either way you're likely to rot in jail.
That is not the way the legal system works. Lobby to have the law changed.
I never claimed it was how the legal system did work - only that this was how it OUGHT to work.
I will of course try to change the law, but lobbying is largely reserved for those with lots of cash. That's why we have so many wrong laws to begin with. In the meantime 99% of the population will ignore the laws they feel are wrong, and from time to time a few of them will get made examples of. Such is the US concept of justice.
The purpose of maximum penalties is to limit prosecutorial misconduct so they can not threaten 100 years for stealing a loaf of bread.
Gee, that is comforting. Maybe you'll only get 35 years for that particular crime at worst... But, that is theft of a physical good - most likely you'll get off pretty light for that. Try to "steal" some music online and you could easily face a suit for 100 year's worth of wages at least.
Any good lawyer will tell his client the true probable sentence that would be imposed for that person's crime.
No doubt this is why Aaron killed himself. He was very likely to end up in prison for years, and generally have his life ruined after he got out. There are cases of people who have been offered plea bargains for time served and continue to rot in jail because they turn them down. Why would they do this? Because they're innocent and don't want to allocute to a crime they didn't commit. What other motive would they have. People are constantly being let out of prison after many years served on the basis of new evidence.
It comes down to this, the six month plea bargain sentence was reasonable for the crimes committed.
That's your personal opinion, and the law, but certainly not a fact. And he wasn't offered six months - he was offered a prosecutorial recommendation of six months that the judge could ignore.
Where were his lawyer, family or friends to see he was having trouble and commit him or stay with him for his own protection?
I dunno, but as far as I'm aware none of them were out to get him. What do you want them to do, lock him up before he gets hauled off to prison? And who are you to call them to account? Clearly you aren't looking to make things better for the next poor soul to end up in his place. As taxpayers we're certainly accountable for his death, even if we outsource the dirty work to government officials.
Part of the problem is that ANSI SQL is fairly unfeatured. That's why everybody adds to it.
ANSI SQL really needs some official extensions so that much of the proprietary nonsense can go away.
Not sure, but the fact is that the 64-bit switch was handled differently on different OSes/compilers/etc. Bottom line is that if you really care exactly how large a particular type is you need to define it using something like uint32 or such.
Don't forget being unemployable and losing the right to vote. Gotta love the way we rehabilitate prisoners...
When you say "this law" what are you talking about? Breaking and enter? tampering with computers? Copyright infringement? What is wrong with those laws?
The works being copied should have been in the public domain to begin with, so there should not have been copyright infringement.
In any case, there is nothing wrong with having reasonable laws covering any of those things. The problem is that the penalties are draconian. Copyright laws used to be used to punish people running large scale printing operations copying popular books. Now they're used with the same penalties to punish people for downloading a song or movie - something generally considered acceptable by the public.
Everyone keeps harping on the the maximum penalties when we all know few get the max.
The purpose of maximum penalties is to force defendants to accept a plea bargain for a lesser penalty. Suppose I think you're ugly and should be locked away, so I point a gun at you and tell you that if you voluntarily agree to being locked up for 5 years I won't shoot you. Does that make the 5 years in prison acceptable?
If a guy pulls a prank like this he should get community service or a fine. Instead he was threatened with 30 years in prison with the goal of getting him to agree to 0.5-30 years in prison (he'd have to plead guilty and then take what the judge gives him with no guarantees), the loss of voting rights for life, and the near-impossibility of ever getting a professional job in the future. Frankly the latter two penalties shouldn't even be considered constitutional, but they're commonplace for felony convictions.
There has never been one, and millions of dollars have been spent looking. It's all about racism (or nationalism or protectionism).
I dunno. If you really care about security then you need to trust your suppliers. When your threat model is attacks by other nation-states then your only good solution is to make things domestically. There have been a few high-profile cases where equipment was sabotaged by foreign governments - the US destruction of a Soviet refinery comes to mind. Then you have stuxnet and such - which work in part because foreign governments have strong knowledge of the equipment you're using, even if it doesn't have back-doors. Who knows how many incidents have happened without becoming public knowledge?
It really does make sense to keep the manufacture of core infrastructure local. Not only does this help prevent sabotage, but it also helps your supply chain (you can't be cut off as easily).
Just one other point that might help to clarify things.
If you need a bypass operation, then in a US hospital you'll probably get a bypass operation that is as good as one you'll get anywhere - certainly above average. If you need really exotic surgery chances are you'll actually do better in the US than just about anywhere else.
On the other hand, if you need to be able to pay for a bypass operation, or you aren't sure if you need one or not, you'll probably get better advice/costs/insurance just about anywhere else.
In the US the execution of individual elements of healthcare is top-notch - probably in the running for #1 overall. The problem is all the stuff that happens in the 99.9999% of your life that you aren't actually on an operating table or having a test performed.
The US has the best quality health care in the world!
That should be "had", you lost the #1 spot about 40yrs ago, although your still among the leaders in medical research.
It really depends on what you measure. For the average person you're absolutely right. For somebody with the money to pay for healthcare and good sense in using the current system the US is as good as any place else on the planet, and sometimes better.
Some observations as somebody who has had a fair bit of exposure to the US healthcare system (I care for somebody with some serious chronic and from time-to-time acute conditions):
1. There is not universal health insurance. That means that for the average person the US healthcare system sucks, period.
2. Those who have insurance lose it when they're out of work, or may need to change doctors from time to time due to the dictates of insurance negotiations, and so on. The latter actually helps to control prices, but all of this is bad for continuity of care and prevention.
3. The entire system is super-expensive for everybody. That means that even those with insurance or wealth end up being a bit limited in what they can afford compared to elsewhere.
4. The way payment works creates perverse incentives for providers. That means that people might not get good advice (unnecessary procedures, etc). When you pay people for procedures you tend to get more procedures, unless people go against their doctor's advice (which doctors don't like, and patients are hesitant to do). Plus, ignoring a doctor's advice can be bad for you sometimes, and how is somebody to tell.
Bottom line is that in the US everything is there for the taking, more or less, but people don't get steered in the right direction, or they often can't afford it. However, if you can get past the cost and the bad advice, the actual delivery of treatments/etc is probably the best in the world.
BTW, I'm all for reform. The whole US-healthcare-is-bad thing is just misleading because it doesn't distinguish between the aspects of the system that work REALLY well, and the parts that are, frankly, abysmal. Then reformers don't understand why their reforms aren't popular - and that is because the system isn't completely broken to begin with.
That and Nexus 4s.
Anytime you sell a limited commodity below market prices you end up with situations like this. In the case of high-speed trading selling below market prices isn't intended, and the practice is just the result of some people understanding the market better than others (ie a few nanoseconds faster). In the case of most other things there is some strange sense of fairness that dictates that products that are limited in availability be sold at ordinary prices leading to these huge runs.
The solution in this sort of situation is simple - just have a dutch auction. Everybody places bids for their train tickets and whatever price is sufficient to sell all of them is used to settle the trades.
For various reasons this is popularly called "price gouging," but the fact is that gouging of one sort or another is bound to happen. If you do traditional price gouging then those with the most money get the sale. If you instead set up lines (a la iPhone debuts) then those who have the most free time get the sale (oh, and since time is money it works out the same - just pay somebody to stand in line for you). If you instead set up some kind of online first-come-first-serve stampede then those who have the best technology get the sale (and since you can buy technical expertise again it works out the same). And, of course, those who get items in a rush frequently put them up for sale on various black/grey markets and the result is that those with money get their tickets/phones/generators/whatever. In the interest of fairness we end up setting up markets that are both unfair, and inefficient as a bonus (with all kinds of middle-men profiting off of trades that could just be two-party).
Uh, in what alternate reality is China Communist? They're actively suppressing communist activists. They wear the name, but want nothing to do with the philosophy (at least not those in power).
Has anyone accused you of being an anarchist?
Certainly nobody who knows me well. I'm all for the rule of law. I just think that laws are only valid if they serve the public interest. We have elected officials to help ensure that this is the case, but the fact that they're elected does not guarantee this.
I don't see how this law serves the public interest, so it is unjust. The reality of course is that if you defy an unjust ruler the effects are about the same as defying a just one, and often worse. The government certainly has the power to enforce its laws, however unjust. However, none of this changes the fact that the law is unjust.
A majority vote does not change an unjust law into a just one.
Happens all the time. It isn't stated that way. More like "if you sign this I'll keep paying you" and your salary is considered the consideration.
Or "sign this and you'll get six months of severance pay, otherwise you get two weeks."
This stuff happens all the time, and right now courts tend to back it up I think.
I'm actually fine with having Aaron charged with trespassing for going in that server closet. However, that should really be a misdemeanor, as should be trespassing in general.
In the US at least in most areas I could actually walk up to the store owner and punch him in the face and it would only be a misdemeanor, as long as I didn't proceed to beat him into a pulp, and I didn't have a history, and I didn't rob him/etc.
Well, by all means make botnets illegal, but you don't have to make a generic "violate TOS is a felony" law to do that.
I'm not convinced that merely running a botnet should be a felony either, though using it to defraud people of money and such should be. I'd focus more on outcomes than on means.