I agree, I also know people who have saved money. For them it worked out. Yay, them.
However, I was laid off and needed to use the system in December. Unemployment sucks, especially in the US. In early December I was told my application went through and I would get coverage, and was given a bunch of information that I printed. The second week of January (remember: I was in before the date when I was "guaranteed" to get coverage by Jan 1st) I was told there was an error in the site, all the information had been sent to the wrong place, asked to start the application process over. This is exactly what the original story complained about.
But that isn't all.
Saturday (this weekend) I got some snail mail that I was not covered, could not be covered through them, and told that there were numerous errors in my data. (For example, my wife was listed as a paid employee of my wife, a corporation based in my state, and was required to provide six months of pay stubs.) Today I spent most of the day on the phone with agents who could issue apologies but could not issue policies nor modify the data. They again instructed me to apply again (the third time).
Unfortunately I have some medical needs that cannot be put off, so I'm facing the horrible prospect of being a recently laid off tech worker who is being forced into medical debt while unemployed. (Currently only about $1,800 that would normally be covered by the insurance I lost with the layoff.) My little nest egg is vanishing surprisingly fast as I hunt for a job.
Just like the original story, I was advised to simply start the process over. Multiple times, including today.
As is frequently pointed out, the US medical billing system is badly broken.
I would go further and say not only is Snowden not a traitor, he exposed treason. What he deserves is for the treason comitted by secret services to be stopped and to be persecuted.
No, they didn't, and for precisely the same reasons Snowden's actions were not treason.
As I stated in the post you are replying to (and many others have stated as well) treason is a very specific crime with a very specific legal meaning.
If you were to rank the severity of crimes in our nation, the very specific crime of 'treason' is perhaps the most severe on the list, beyond things like espionage, rape, murder, and mass murder. Less than 30 Americans have been convicted of treason in this country, the latest in 1953.
Even though the NSA spied on many people both inside and outside the law, that does not meet the bar of treason. Even though various agencies have 'disappeared' people, tortured people, terrorized people, and murdered people, those are separate crimes and still are not up to the very specific legal standard of treason.
Consider that the definition of treason partially includes providing aid and comfort to our enemies, people who readily admit to directly helping Al Queada and similar organizations, declaring that despite being born in the country and being willing to fight to the death to bring it down, even these people are not convicted of treason.
While the spy agencies certainly defile both the spirit and the letter of the law and Constitution, destroy the nation's credibility, and reek of corruption even at the highest levels of government, those terrible and disgusting actions do not rise to the level of treason. The crimes they could be accused of are certainly diverse and sundry, but do not reach the very high level of treason, which is perhaps the most heinous of all crimes in our legal system.
The United States does not have a "jury of your peers", as there is no peerage system in the United States.
A "jury of peers" is designed so that nobility is tried by other nobility, that peasants are tried by other peasants, and you don't have poor commoners standing in lordship over gentry.
In the United States any person can be called in for jury duty over any other person. You can have the lowest classes of brick layers and auto mechanics in a jury against millionaires and doctors and other powerful people.
Not a 'criminal', simply a 'traitor' - a traitor can have good motives (good enough for him), but we-all used to shoot a lot of 'em.
Traitor has a very specific meaning under the law.
While he did release a lot of documents that made people uncomfortable, and some of those documents did harm to the nation by revealing the truth, that isn't the meaning of 'traitor'.
He would have needed to knowingly and willingly provide 'aid and comfort' to known enemies of the country, or declare war on the country (which is very difficult for an individual to do)
Short of direct evidence of his doing something like knowingly harboring Al Queda operatives as they plan an attack against the nation, a 'traitor' charge is not appropriate.
Yes, a cable torpedo, along with other tools like a pneumatic mole or trenchless borer, is a real thing. They are usually run for one-shot cables of short distance, such as hooking up a single house, rather than a large area. Basically they dig a hole on either end, stick the torpedo with a cable, and hope it doesn't miss. Sometimes they accidentally pierce existing things, sometimes they hit a rock and get lost, but usually they make it between the ends just fine.
But as I said, if the OP is going to rip up an entire neighborhood for Internet connections, they might as well lay down fiber instead of copper. It isn't much more expensive, and both costs will be dwarfed by the cost of trenching and repairing everything when done.
Also, if you are paying for it yourself, why go with cable? Normally the cable companies just go in with an underground torpedo (yes, just like in the ocean, a big projectile that rockets through the ground) and shoot the thing toward the destination. They occasionally hit water lines, power lines, and other infrastructure. Then they hunt for it on the other end and hook things up.
If you are serious about doing it, avoid cable. Hook up the neighborhood with fiber to each home. It isn't that much more expensive if you are going to tear up the streets anyway, and is far more valuable in the long run. You will still need someone to hook up the neighborhood to the grid, but once the fiber is in place, connecting the neighborhood's hub to a CO is pretty easy.
Indeed there is a great amount of privacy we should demand.
I'll start with his conclusion first, then with one of his Disney examples.
He claims we really don't want our privacy even in our homes because it is the future. Interesting.
It is odd how he concludes that we ultimately will be giving "all our info" to everyone, including random strangers on the Internet in exchange for a flashlight app. Would he mind if his job performance information (and those of his co-workers) are publicly shared? Perhaps he has always been a stellar employee and doesn't mind that becoming public. What about if his family's medical records become public knowledge, that is part of "all our info".
perhaps again he is a rare individual with nothing he cares to hide in his family; nobody has a mental illness, nobody has reproductive issues, nobody had a tumor or other problem that could affect him or his children for seven generations.
Or taking it further, since he is willing to share "all our info" for his family with everyone online, what if we installed webcams in his bathroom, broadcasting every angle of the toilet and shower featuring his wife and daughters? Or cameras in his marriage bed? He plainly states he doesn't care about the privacy of himself or his family, so why not?
Moving on to the middle of TFA, he details about high-spending visitors should be given preferential treatment when waiting in line in order to encourage additional money extraction through entertainment. What he blissfully fails to notice is the flip side of the coin: everyone else gets screwed by this model.
Sure, if you are the wealthy people targeted for money extraction you will have entertainers making sure you have the time of your life. If you are the commoner spending an average amount of money your experience will decrease from the present level. And if you are not exactly wealthy but taking your family on a once-in-a-lifetime entertainment retreat, well, sucks to be you under the new model.
If he doesn't see the difference between a per-instance transaction of specific information versus a wholesale surrender of "all our info", he is a fool.
Oh, yeah in those cases they are helpful. Or in cases where people's habits leave certain vitamins and minerals out. But never mind that. Just pay attention to my edgy new study and talk-show appearances.
As is frequently the case, the article is misleading and misinterpreting the scientists.
Also just like/. tends to do, the linked news article headline is sensationalized and exists just to get people to read the story.
The scientists talk about three specific things: (1) Preventing chronic disease, including heart disease and cancer, (2) preventing cognitive decline in seniors, and (3) high-dose pills to prevent subsequent events after a confirmed heart attack.
For those three specific things, multiple studies show they do not provide statistically significant benefits. They found that high doses of specific nutrients could slightly increase the risk of certain cancers in people pre-disposed to them, which is why they recommended against the multivitamins for those in good health.
Note that also in TFA they agree that there are some health benefits in specific cases. These include vitamin D in the elderly for bone strength, iron and folic acid for pregnant and nursing mothers (and in unrelated studies elsewhere, also in men wanting children), those with poor nutrition, and for other specific situations.
Note that the studies do not say multivitamins are worthless, nor does it address any other health areas except those three. That is just the headline sensationalism.
This is not exactly what you said, but the fact is that representatives in democracies are at least chosen by the people, and their continuing re-election is subject to the approval of those same people. The fact that those people make terrible choices (or at least ones you don't agree with) does not make democracy any less a government by, for and of "the people." You seem to think the system is rigged in some way, when it's really not. People who have a viewpoint - left, right, rich people, unions, whoever - spend money to convince others of that viewpoint, good or bad. If you don't like the way that people voted or who they elected, then maybe you should get more involved with ensuring that your viewpoint gets more votes.
Reminds me of a much more succinct quote:
"Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?" she asked. "A Republic, madam..." Franklin quickly answered, "if you can keep it."
Sadly it ever more frequently appears our Constitution is dangling by threads over a flame.
November's election our city had 24% voter turnout. It was considered a high turnout because of a bond issue. I call it a pathetically low turnout, indicative of the reason why our government is not what we want, but what we collectively are deserving.
No need to leave over that corporate decision. It is likely to only be a problem if you make it one.
If you are afraid you can CYA with a printed paper trail showing their responses, and then do the job you are paid for.
The company bought the software, they did the risk management, and they decided to use it. It is improbable that a developer would be fired over security problems for the platform that was brought in externally. You found some security bugs and were told not to fix them in this release. Good enough, get QA to mark them as "known shippable" or "deferred" and move on to the next bug.
For all you that may even be THE ENTIRE REASON the fortune 500 company bought the product to begin with; they can disclaim liability because someone else made the system.
You reported some bugs. They are choosing not to fix those bugs. This is normal in software development. Some bugs get fixed, some bugs ship. This is daily life.
If you spend your time bringing up security problems and going over your manager's head, following that route will quickly lead to the unemployment lines. Just carry on with your job; some bugs are not getting fixed in this release, nothing else to see here.
The thing is that laws like the ACA do generally work for the masses. Yes they have their flaws, but all laws are a balancing act of the good of society versus the good of the individual. In this case the general good of society is eliminating plans that are frequently mis-purchased by people who don't understand the nature of the policies. For the general masses it can be an improvement, but for those who are very well off and can afford the costs directly, it adds a completely unnecessary $7200 cost that yields zero benefit for the individual.
As for the mentality that is is okay to arbitrarily burden the wealthy/successful people who have managed to accomplish the dream of becoming financially independent, yes, I have a problem with adding a financial burden for no benefit. I can easily imagine myself as taking the risk of starting a small business and having it succeed after investing untold hours of personal time and resources into the project. Then to have people say "You succeeded in reaching the American dream of independence, now we want to take it away through an arbitrary 'because you have money' tax" is the antithesis of freedom.
Taxing money as it changes hands or changes forms is one thing, but arbitrarily reaching in to their pocket and demanding more just because the person has saved up and succeeded in life is something altogether different.
most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. most people can't put away $100,000 for the cancer treatment
And yet some people do not.
The updated minimum insurance requirements are a good thing for "the 99%", most of us are wage slaves who cannot afford a medical catastrophe, so for most of us removing the catastrophic-only plans is a good thing; too many idiots rely on them. While the requirement is universal, the need is not.
While I am generally in favor of much of the ACA, there this is one of several portions which I disagree with.
I know several people who are self-made millionaires through starting their own businesses. (Sadly, I am not one of them.) One of them in particular is a healthy, middle-age man, very athletic (he climbed Everest a few years back) and can afford to self-insure. (He drives his Lamborghini as his primary car, even when going up in the mountains to his 'cabin', over unpaved washboard roads.)
He was recently complaining because he had a well-researched catastrophic insurance plan that was costing about $150/month for himself but had a five-figure annual deductible to meet. That plan is going away because it doesn't satisfy the ACA's requirements, and is being replaced by a $750/month plan.
One of the flaws in the law is that it doesn't allow for people who CAN afford healthcare and want the MINIMUM of insurance. That kind of catastrophic care insurance program is rarely useful for most normal people, but for those who are independently wealthy the plans are just fine.
So while for most people it is a good thing to require the new minimums, it is not universally good.
In most states, you need consent to record a person. If you are doing this with hidden cameras without their consent, you are doing so illegally. If you are doing so with google glass, then when they tell you to leave they have expressed that they do not give their consent.
Um, no.
While I am not a lawyer, I am a photographer and have had to 'lawyer up' a few times. I've also studied the law in the area, and it seems much more familiar with it than you.
First, there is the very important concept of location. There are public places, publicly vsible places, and private places. A person in a public place, such as on public sidewalks or public parks or public buildings, does not generally have a right to that kind of privacy. Anyone who frequents/. can tell you about their favorite stores of photographs from public places (both for good and ill). Public places are public. If you are not in a private place but are still in a location that is publicly visible your privacy rights are also very limited; again we have stories both positive and negative, businesses dumping waste in a publicly visible alley or superstars making out in their back yard. Only if you are in a non-publicly-visible place can you reasonably expect privacy.
Second, there is the very important concept of commercial and noncommercial photograph use. You are right that you do usually need consent if the image will be used in commercial work, such as an advertisement or a movie. However, if the work is non-commercial in nature, such as a personal photograph, a wedding photograph, or if the image is to be used for news or social commentary or many other potential uses, no permission is needed.
So combine the two and you will see you absolutely do not need consent to record a person. You can legally record from any public place to any publicly viewable place. That gives us all the tabloid pics of the superstars naked in their back yards, from a location that is viewable from the public streets, without the permission of the superstars. That gives us all the beach photos of wardrobe malfunctions, again without the consent of the recorded. And it gives us the recordings of police misconduct, without the consent of the officers being recorded.
If you are in a private location then the rules are a little different. But as a general rule if the photographer is in a public place or has permission from the property owner on a private place, any photos they take of you can be used for just about any non-commercial purpose without your consent.
You may not like that. I can guarantee you movie stars and political figures also do not like it. But even with waves of public support (such as after princess Diana's death) the right to photograph people in public places without their consent still stands. Lots of money and effort has been put into rying to get rid of it, but it isn't going away.
Health care professionals may choose to (and do) ignore living will provisions. I googled as you suggested to the other poster.
Depends on the state.
In my state, any treatment that is knowingly against both the will of the agent and the directive is defined as both felony-level battery and medical malpractice.
This is why you need both the advance care directive **AND** the durable power of attorney for healthcare that designates a legal agent, usually a family member.
Also a DNR order and an advance care directive are distinctly different things.
In my state (and according to Google 37 others) there is a requirement that if a doctor or facility objects to the directive they must notify the patient at the time of admittance and if necessary assist in finding a provider who will comply with the directive. In the 1990s most states revised the law around advance care directives and healthcare agents giving them very real teeth. Among those teeth are the federal Patient Self-Determination Act and the tying of medicare/medicaid funds to compliance. Many states have similarly tied payment with advance directive compliance. In my state knowingly treating a patient against their will or against a directive is a felony battery offense; your state may vary.
If the doctor decides to go against both the written directive and the legal agent they'll be looking at not just paying the bills, but also a rather large medical malpractice suit in addition to potential state and federal penalties, and even the possibility of jail time in some states.
It is one thing to write that on/., it is another to implement it in real life.
If that is what you want, great. Get it written down in your advance healthcare directive (living will) and make sure whoever you designate with power of attorney knows your wishes.
While they cannot kill you directly, you can specify that you want neither nourishment nor water, even through I/V. That tends to result in death fairly quickly.
Yep. $8,000 a month to watch somebody die slowly, painfully and inevitably. When the person being kept alive doesn't want it.
If the person doesn't want it, they have the ability to create a living will (advance healthcare directive) and to designate someone with a durable power of attorney for healthcare.
Although it is generally not allowed to have a "kill me" suicide directive, you can include things like not using medical devices, not resuscitating, and not providing food or water or I/V nourishment while still getting pain medication.
No need for $8000/month. A natural death can follow quickly, especially if your order says to give you no food or water.
People should have the right to die, and more so, people should have the right to pass on that right to someone they know in the event they are unable to make that decision.
They do have that right. They need two documents: an 'advance healthcare directive' that says what they want to have happen, and a 'durable power of attorney for healthcare' that designates a person legally empowered to make the decisions.
While the documents cannot say "kill me outright", they can say many variations of "do not extend my life". For some situations that can mean death within minutes, for others it can mean death within three days.
If you don't want to spend your last days hooked up to medical equipment you don't need to. Getting those two documents in order is a simple thing.
Generally you need two documents, both the living will ('advance healthcare directive') and a legal representative ('durable power of attorney for health care'). Usually if you get a will drawn up the lawyer will help with these as well.
Without them, doctors generally must assume you want to live.
I agree in the general sense, it is a good idea for doctors to try to save lives. That's the thing they do. If I get hit by a bus I would really like to go to the hospital and get fixed up, rather than just sit there on the road for days until I die. So as a general rule this makes sense: doctors are generally correct to try to keep people alive.
I always chuckle when I hear people say 'if I die...", when the correct wording is "when I die...". The exact circumstances vary from person to person, but the end result is always the same. Most people struggle to accept that fact, and delay things like life insurance, wills and estate planning, living wills, talking with family about their death plans, and so on. I guess the reasoning is that if you don't think about it and don't prepare for it, it won't happen.
Many people are afraid of death and dying, and will do anything to delay it no matter the cost. The point where it switches from reasonable to unreasonable is a difficult line to draw.
No, usually the people on the other end are just poor souls with a lousy job. They are often not the ones running the scam.
Being rude to the call center individual doesn't help. They will still call you back. If you hang up on them they will just call the next person on the list.
The scammers' big investment is in the human time at the call center. Take all the human time you can to make the calls expensive. Ask them questions about the details of the fake bill. Describe how someone already called but they described it differently and ask them to tell you why it is different. Or tell them stories about your pet, your days in school, describe your favorite youtube videos, talk about politics, or (as was posted above) try to sell them your own products. Sometimes you can even try the line that you need to do something (check on the baby, go to the bathroom, call on the other line, etc) and put the phone down for five minutes as they wait on the line.
Keep them on the phone and tie up their resources. If they are busy talking to you (who know the scam) then they aren't calling the more vulnerable people. If you can keep a rep on the phone for a half hour or an hour, that might be twenty other people they don't call.
The thing is that the studio lawyers are gloating in the legal documents. One of the first rules of the court is: NEVER PISS OFF THE JUDGE.
You need to understand the judge's background. Judge Williams spent her first four years prosecuting money laundering and trying to break up drug cartels whose lawyers did the kind of legal garbage like WB is doing. Then she spent fifteen years defending people who were accused of bank fraud, where she was in charge of defending people, managing a group of about 100 other legal experts and helping them see through corporate and government loopholes.
She has spent almost all of her career trying to stop the corporations and the governments from abusing legal loopholes. This is one of her first cases as a judge, and even though she is going to try to be unbiased, her 30 years of experience in fighting exactly what the movie studios are doing is certainly going to be significant.
This judge knows the tricks. She has spent three decades fighting against exactly this sort of thing. Now she is a judge and it is her first big case.
Now understanding all that background, the judge has already dismissed the core of the lawsuit, the copyright infringement case. She spent 30 years fighting drug cartel financial lawyers and their loopholes, and when she sees the plaintiffs (Disney, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Columbia Pictures, and WB) I'm sure she still reads "cartel".
No, the movie cartel knows they're not going to fare well in the trial. If you read the docket on Justia you will see that they started out with broad accusations and claims and Hotfile was trying to block terms like "piracy" and "theft", and as the judge dismissed large swaths the studios became more and more defensive, and now they are doing everything they can to prevent the jury from learning the truth. Now it is the studios begging for words like "perjury" and "fraud" to not come out in trial.
My guess is that near the end of 2014, after the jury hears everything but before a penalty is assigned, the movie cartel will suddenly settle the lawsuit with undisclosed millions going to Hotfile in order to avoid a punishment.
This case did not involve the specified people, nor did it involve a state. Therefore it cannot originate in the supreme court.
They should have named the government of a state that had permitted/provided the facilities that surveillance was conducted in.
No, because that would have been stupid. The parties are the NSA and the FISA court, neither is a state.
While the SCOTUS doesn't have original jurisdiction, EPIC's claim is that this is a truly exceptional case and the lower courts have no authority to hear the case, that neither the district courts nor FISA courts are competent to hear the case, that there are no other legal options available for them to get the rights the Constitution requires, and that only the supreme court is qualified to hear it. There are a small number of cases (I could find six) that the court has accepted this.
EPIC was/is trying to take an extremely rarely used path to circumvent the normal process. It is only available because the Constitution requires the courts have power to review, but in those extremely rare cases because of imperfection in the laws there is absolutely no other way to enter the legal system for redress. It was risky and almost certain to fail because district courts around the country had been flooded with similar lawsuits. Claiming they couldn't be accepted in district court when everyone else is filing was unlikely to succeed, but there was a slim-but-nonzero chance the court would take it. If all of the cases around the nation had been dismissed due to lack of standing, then there would be a much higher chance, but that is not what is going on.
EPIC took a small bet against nigh-impossible odds and lost as expected. The wager cost them almost nothing and gave them considerable media time, so they still came out ahead.
Your understanding is correct. That is why the 9th and 10th amendments were part of the initial round of amendments called the bill of rights.
The 9th tends to limit expansion of government (yet it still grows). The 10th was a restatement of the fact that anything not expressly granted is not part of their power; on its face it is redundant and therefore has often been called unnecessary, but in recent years it has been leveraged as a reminder that the government cannot claim all powers.
It isn't a matter of tradition. The US Constitution only allows two types of cases to start at the supreme court:
"In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction"
This case did not involve the specified people, nor did it involve a state. Therefore it cannot originate in the supreme court.
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I agree, I also know people who have saved money. For them it worked out. Yay, them.
However, I was laid off and needed to use the system in December. Unemployment sucks, especially in the US. In early December I was told my application went through and I would get coverage, and was given a bunch of information that I printed. The second week of January (remember: I was in before the date when I was "guaranteed" to get coverage by Jan 1st) I was told there was an error in the site, all the information had been sent to the wrong place, asked to start the application process over. This is exactly what the original story complained about.
But that isn't all.
Saturday (this weekend) I got some snail mail that I was not covered, could not be covered through them, and told that there were numerous errors in my data. (For example, my wife was listed as a paid employee of my wife, a corporation based in my state, and was required to provide six months of pay stubs.) Today I spent most of the day on the phone with agents who could issue apologies but could not issue policies nor modify the data. They again instructed me to apply again (the third time).
Unfortunately I have some medical needs that cannot be put off, so I'm facing the horrible prospect of being a recently laid off tech worker who is being forced into medical debt while unemployed. (Currently only about $1,800 that would normally be covered by the insurance I lost with the layoff.) My little nest egg is vanishing surprisingly fast as I hunt for a job.
Just like the original story, I was advised to simply start the process over. Multiple times, including today.
As is frequently pointed out, the US medical billing system is badly broken.
I would go further and say not only is Snowden not a traitor, he exposed treason. What he deserves is for the treason comitted by secret services to be stopped and to be persecuted.
No, they didn't, and for precisely the same reasons Snowden's actions were not treason.
As I stated in the post you are replying to (and many others have stated as well) treason is a very specific crime with a very specific legal meaning.
If you were to rank the severity of crimes in our nation, the very specific crime of 'treason' is perhaps the most severe on the list, beyond things like espionage, rape, murder, and mass murder. Less than 30 Americans have been convicted of treason in this country, the latest in 1953.
Even though the NSA spied on many people both inside and outside the law, that does not meet the bar of treason. Even though various agencies have 'disappeared' people, tortured people, terrorized people, and murdered people, those are separate crimes and still are not up to the very specific legal standard of treason.
Consider that the definition of treason partially includes providing aid and comfort to our enemies, people who readily admit to directly helping Al Queada and similar organizations, declaring that despite being born in the country and being willing to fight to the death to bring it down, even these people are not convicted of treason.
While the spy agencies certainly defile both the spirit and the letter of the law and Constitution, destroy the nation's credibility, and reek of corruption even at the highest levels of government, those terrible and disgusting actions do not rise to the level of treason. The crimes they could be accused of are certainly diverse and sundry, but do not reach the very high level of treason, which is perhaps the most heinous of all crimes in our legal system.
The United States does not have a "jury of your peers", as there is no peerage system in the United States.
A "jury of peers" is designed so that nobility is tried by other nobility, that peasants are tried by other peasants, and you don't have poor commoners standing in lordship over gentry.
In the United States any person can be called in for jury duty over any other person. You can have the lowest classes of brick layers and auto mechanics in a jury against millionaires and doctors and other powerful people.
Not a 'criminal', simply a 'traitor' - a traitor can have good motives (good enough for him), but we-all used to shoot a lot of 'em.
Traitor has a very specific meaning under the law.
While he did release a lot of documents that made people uncomfortable, and some of those documents did harm to the nation by revealing the truth, that isn't the meaning of 'traitor'.
He would have needed to knowingly and willingly provide 'aid and comfort' to known enemies of the country, or declare war on the country (which is very difficult for an individual to do)
Short of direct evidence of his doing something like knowingly harboring Al Queda operatives as they plan an attack against the nation, a 'traitor' charge is not appropriate.
Yes, a cable torpedo, along with other tools like a pneumatic mole or trenchless borer, is a real thing. They are usually run for one-shot cables of short distance, such as hooking up a single house, rather than a large area. Basically they dig a hole on either end, stick the torpedo with a cable, and hope it doesn't miss. Sometimes they accidentally pierce existing things, sometimes they hit a rock and get lost, but usually they make it between the ends just fine.
But as I said, if the OP is going to rip up an entire neighborhood for Internet connections, they might as well lay down fiber instead of copper. It isn't much more expensive, and both costs will be dwarfed by the cost of trenching and repairing everything when done.
Very much true. Money.
Also, if you are paying for it yourself, why go with cable? Normally the cable companies just go in with an underground torpedo (yes, just like in the ocean, a big projectile that rockets through the ground) and shoot the thing toward the destination. They occasionally hit water lines, power lines, and other infrastructure. Then they hunt for it on the other end and hook things up.
If you are serious about doing it, avoid cable. Hook up the neighborhood with fiber to each home. It isn't that much more expensive if you are going to tear up the streets anyway, and is far more valuable in the long run. You will still need someone to hook up the neighborhood to the grid, but once the fiber is in place, connecting the neighborhood's hub to a CO is pretty easy.
Indeed there is a great amount of privacy we should demand.
I'll start with his conclusion first, then with one of his Disney examples.
He claims we really don't want our privacy even in our homes because it is the future. Interesting.
It is odd how he concludes that we ultimately will be giving "all our info" to everyone, including random strangers on the Internet in exchange for a flashlight app. Would he mind if his job performance information (and those of his co-workers) are publicly shared? Perhaps he has always been a stellar employee and doesn't mind that becoming public. What about if his family's medical records become public knowledge, that is part of "all our info". perhaps again he is a rare individual with nothing he cares to hide in his family; nobody has a mental illness, nobody has reproductive issues, nobody had a tumor or other problem that could affect him or his children for seven generations.
Or taking it further, since he is willing to share "all our info" for his family with everyone online, what if we installed webcams in his bathroom, broadcasting every angle of the toilet and shower featuring his wife and daughters? Or cameras in his marriage bed? He plainly states he doesn't care about the privacy of himself or his family, so why not?
Moving on to the middle of TFA, he details about high-spending visitors should be given preferential treatment when waiting in line in order to encourage additional money extraction through entertainment. What he blissfully fails to notice is the flip side of the coin: everyone else gets screwed by this model.
Sure, if you are the wealthy people targeted for money extraction you will have entertainers making sure you have the time of your life. If you are the commoner spending an average amount of money your experience will decrease from the present level. And if you are not exactly wealthy but taking your family on a once-in-a-lifetime entertainment retreat, well, sucks to be you under the new model.
If he doesn't see the difference between a per-instance transaction of specific information versus a wholesale surrender of "all our info", he is a fool.
Oh, yeah in those cases they are helpful. Or in cases where people's habits leave certain vitamins and minerals out. But never mind that. Just pay attention to my edgy new study and talk-show appearances.
As is frequently the case, the article is misleading and misinterpreting the scientists.
Also just like /. tends to do, the linked news article headline is sensationalized and exists just to get people to read the story.
The scientists talk about three specific things: (1) Preventing chronic disease, including heart disease and cancer, (2) preventing cognitive decline in seniors, and (3) high-dose pills to prevent subsequent events after a confirmed heart attack.
For those three specific things, multiple studies show they do not provide statistically significant benefits. They found that high doses of specific nutrients could slightly increase the risk of certain cancers in people pre-disposed to them, which is why they recommended against the multivitamins for those in good health.
Note that also in TFA they agree that there are some health benefits in specific cases. These include vitamin D in the elderly for bone strength, iron and folic acid for pregnant and nursing mothers (and in unrelated studies elsewhere, also in men wanting children), those with poor nutrition, and for other specific situations.
Note that the studies do not say multivitamins are worthless, nor does it address any other health areas except those three. That is just the headline sensationalism.
This is not exactly what you said, but the fact is that representatives in democracies are at least chosen by the people, and their continuing re-election is subject to the approval of those same people. The fact that those people make terrible choices (or at least ones you don't agree with) does not make democracy any less a government by, for and of "the people." You seem to think the system is rigged in some way, when it's really not. People who have a viewpoint - left, right, rich people, unions, whoever - spend money to convince others of that viewpoint, good or bad. If you don't like the way that people voted or who they elected, then maybe you should get more involved with ensuring that your viewpoint gets more votes.
Reminds me of a much more succinct quote:
"Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?" she asked. "A Republic, madam..." Franklin quickly answered, "if you can keep it."
Sadly it ever more frequently appears our Constitution is dangling by threads over a flame.
November's election our city had 24% voter turnout. It was considered a high turnout because of a bond issue. I call it a pathetically low turnout, indicative of the reason why our government is not what we want, but what we collectively are deserving.
No need to leave over that corporate decision. It is likely to only be a problem if you make it one.
If you are afraid you can CYA with a printed paper trail showing their responses, and then do the job you are paid for.
The company bought the software, they did the risk management, and they decided to use it. It is improbable that a developer would be fired over security problems for the platform that was brought in externally. You found some security bugs and were told not to fix them in this release. Good enough, get QA to mark them as "known shippable" or "deferred" and move on to the next bug.
For all you that may even be THE ENTIRE REASON the fortune 500 company bought the product to begin with; they can disclaim liability because someone else made the system.
You reported some bugs. They are choosing not to fix those bugs. This is normal in software development. Some bugs get fixed, some bugs ship. This is daily life.
If you spend your time bringing up security problems and going over your manager's head, following that route will quickly lead to the unemployment lines. Just carry on with your job; some bugs are not getting fixed in this release, nothing else to see here.
Nope, he is one of several that I know.
The thing is that laws like the ACA do generally work for the masses. Yes they have their flaws, but all laws are a balancing act of the good of society versus the good of the individual. In this case the general good of society is eliminating plans that are frequently mis-purchased by people who don't understand the nature of the policies. For the general masses it can be an improvement, but for those who are very well off and can afford the costs directly, it adds a completely unnecessary $7200 cost that yields zero benefit for the individual.
As for the mentality that is is okay to arbitrarily burden the wealthy/successful people who have managed to accomplish the dream of becoming financially independent, yes, I have a problem with adding a financial burden for no benefit. I can easily imagine myself as taking the risk of starting a small business and having it succeed after investing untold hours of personal time and resources into the project. Then to have people say "You succeeded in reaching the American dream of independence, now we want to take it away through an arbitrary 'because you have money' tax" is the antithesis of freedom.
Taxing money as it changes hands or changes forms is one thing, but arbitrarily reaching in to their pocket and demanding more just because the person has saved up and succeeded in life is something altogether different.
most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. most people can't put away $100,000 for the cancer treatment
And yet some people do not.
The updated minimum insurance requirements are a good thing for "the 99%", most of us are wage slaves who cannot afford a medical catastrophe, so for most of us removing the catastrophic-only plans is a good thing; too many idiots rely on them. While the requirement is universal, the need is not.
While I am generally in favor of much of the ACA, there this is one of several portions which I disagree with.
I know several people who are self-made millionaires through starting their own businesses. (Sadly, I am not one of them.) One of them in particular is a healthy, middle-age man, very athletic (he climbed Everest a few years back) and can afford to self-insure. (He drives his Lamborghini as his primary car, even when going up in the mountains to his 'cabin', over unpaved washboard roads.)
He was recently complaining because he had a well-researched catastrophic insurance plan that was costing about $150/month for himself but had a five-figure annual deductible to meet. That plan is going away because it doesn't satisfy the ACA's requirements, and is being replaced by a $750/month plan.
One of the flaws in the law is that it doesn't allow for people who CAN afford healthcare and want the MINIMUM of insurance. That kind of catastrophic care insurance program is rarely useful for most normal people, but for those who are independently wealthy the plans are just fine.
So while for most people it is a good thing to require the new minimums, it is not universally good.
In most states, you need consent to record a person. If you are doing this with hidden cameras without their consent, you are doing so illegally. If you are doing so with google glass, then when they tell you to leave they have expressed that they do not give their consent.
Um, no.
While I am not a lawyer, I am a photographer and have had to 'lawyer up' a few times. I've also studied the law in the area, and it seems much more familiar with it than you.
First, there is the very important concept of location. There are public places, publicly vsible places, and private places. A person in a public place, such as on public sidewalks or public parks or public buildings, does not generally have a right to that kind of privacy. Anyone who frequents /. can tell you about their favorite stores of photographs from public places (both for good and ill). Public places are public. If you are not in a private place but are still in a location that is publicly visible your privacy rights are also very limited; again we have stories both positive and negative, businesses dumping waste in a publicly visible alley or superstars making out in their back yard. Only if you are in a non-publicly-visible place can you reasonably expect privacy.
Second, there is the very important concept of commercial and noncommercial photograph use. You are right that you do usually need consent if the image will be used in commercial work, such as an advertisement or a movie. However, if the work is non-commercial in nature, such as a personal photograph, a wedding photograph, or if the image is to be used for news or social commentary or many other potential uses, no permission is needed.
So combine the two and you will see you absolutely do not need consent to record a person. You can legally record from any public place to any publicly viewable place. That gives us all the tabloid pics of the superstars naked in their back yards, from a location that is viewable from the public streets, without the permission of the superstars. That gives us all the beach photos of wardrobe malfunctions, again without the consent of the recorded. And it gives us the recordings of police misconduct, without the consent of the officers being recorded.
If you are in a private location then the rules are a little different. But as a general rule if the photographer is in a public place or has permission from the property owner on a private place, any photos they take of you can be used for just about any non-commercial purpose without your consent.
You may not like that. I can guarantee you movie stars and political figures also do not like it. But even with waves of public support (such as after princess Diana's death) the right to photograph people in public places without their consent still stands. Lots of money and effort has been put into rying to get rid of it, but it isn't going away.
Health care professionals may choose to (and do) ignore living will provisions. I googled as you suggested to the other poster.
Depends on the state.
In my state, any treatment that is knowingly against both the will of the agent and the directive is defined as both felony-level battery and medical malpractice.
This is why you need both the advance care directive **AND** the durable power of attorney for healthcare that designates a legal agent, usually a family member.
Also a DNR order and an advance care directive are distinctly different things.
In my state (and according to Google 37 others) there is a requirement that if a doctor or facility objects to the directive they must notify the patient at the time of admittance and if necessary assist in finding a provider who will comply with the directive. In the 1990s most states revised the law around advance care directives and healthcare agents giving them very real teeth. Among those teeth are the federal Patient Self-Determination Act and the tying of medicare/medicaid funds to compliance. Many states have similarly tied payment with advance directive compliance. In my state knowingly treating a patient against their will or against a directive is a felony battery offense; your state may vary.
If the doctor decides to go against both the written directive and the legal agent they'll be looking at not just paying the bills, but also a rather large medical malpractice suit in addition to potential state and federal penalties, and even the possibility of jail time in some states.
It is one thing to write that on /., it is another to implement it in real life.
If that is what you want, great. Get it written down in your advance healthcare directive (living will) and make sure whoever you designate with power of attorney knows your wishes.
While they cannot kill you directly, you can specify that you want neither nourishment nor water, even through I/V. That tends to result in death fairly quickly.
Yep. $8,000 a month to watch somebody die slowly, painfully and inevitably. When the person being kept alive doesn't want it.
If the person doesn't want it, they have the ability to create a living will (advance healthcare directive) and to designate someone with a durable power of attorney for healthcare.
Although it is generally not allowed to have a "kill me" suicide directive, you can include things like not using medical devices, not resuscitating, and not providing food or water or I/V nourishment while still getting pain medication.
No need for $8000/month. A natural death can follow quickly, especially if your order says to give you no food or water.
People should have the right to die, and more so, people should have the right to pass on that right to someone they know in the event they are unable to make that decision.
They do have that right. They need two documents: an 'advance healthcare directive' that says what they want to have happen, and a 'durable power of attorney for healthcare' that designates a person legally empowered to make the decisions.
While the documents cannot say "kill me outright", they can say many variations of "do not extend my life". For some situations that can mean death within minutes, for others it can mean death within three days.
If you don't want to spend your last days hooked up to medical equipment you don't need to. Getting those two documents in order is a simple thing.
Generally you need two documents, both the living will ('advance healthcare directive') and a legal representative ('durable power of attorney for health care'). Usually if you get a will drawn up the lawyer will help with these as well.
Without them, doctors generally must assume you want to live.
I agree in the general sense, it is a good idea for doctors to try to save lives. That's the thing they do. If I get hit by a bus I would really like to go to the hospital and get fixed up, rather than just sit there on the road for days until I die. So as a general rule this makes sense: doctors are generally correct to try to keep people alive.
I always chuckle when I hear people say 'if I die...", when the correct wording is "when I die...". The exact circumstances vary from person to person, but the end result is always the same. Most people struggle to accept that fact, and delay things like life insurance, wills and estate planning, living wills, talking with family about their death plans, and so on. I guess the reasoning is that if you don't think about it and don't prepare for it, it won't happen.
Many people are afraid of death and dying, and will do anything to delay it no matter the cost. The point where it switches from reasonable to unreasonable is a difficult line to draw.
No, usually the people on the other end are just poor souls with a lousy job. They are often not the ones running the scam.
Being rude to the call center individual doesn't help. They will still call you back. If you hang up on them they will just call the next person on the list.
The scammers' big investment is in the human time at the call center. Take all the human time you can to make the calls expensive. Ask them questions about the details of the fake bill. Describe how someone already called but they described it differently and ask them to tell you why it is different. Or tell them stories about your pet, your days in school, describe your favorite youtube videos, talk about politics, or (as was posted above) try to sell them your own products. Sometimes you can even try the line that you need to do something (check on the baby, go to the bathroom, call on the other line, etc) and put the phone down for five minutes as they wait on the line.
Keep them on the phone and tie up their resources. If they are busy talking to you (who know the scam) then they aren't calling the more vulnerable people. If you can keep a rep on the phone for a half hour or an hour, that might be twenty other people they don't call.
The thing is that the studio lawyers are gloating in the legal documents. One of the first rules of the court is: NEVER PISS OFF THE JUDGE.
You need to understand the judge's background. Judge Williams spent her first four years prosecuting money laundering and trying to break up drug cartels whose lawyers did the kind of legal garbage like WB is doing. Then she spent fifteen years defending people who were accused of bank fraud, where she was in charge of defending people, managing a group of about 100 other legal experts and helping them see through corporate and government loopholes.
She has spent almost all of her career trying to stop the corporations and the governments from abusing legal loopholes. This is one of her first cases as a judge, and even though she is going to try to be unbiased, her 30 years of experience in fighting exactly what the movie studios are doing is certainly going to be significant.
This judge knows the tricks. She has spent three decades fighting against exactly this sort of thing. Now she is a judge and it is her first big case.
Now understanding all that background, the judge has already dismissed the core of the lawsuit, the copyright infringement case. She spent 30 years fighting drug cartel financial lawyers and their loopholes, and when she sees the plaintiffs (Disney, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Columbia Pictures, and WB) I'm sure she still reads "cartel".
No, the movie cartel knows they're not going to fare well in the trial. If you read the docket on Justia you will see that they started out with broad accusations and claims and Hotfile was trying to block terms like "piracy" and "theft", and as the judge dismissed large swaths the studios became more and more defensive, and now they are doing everything they can to prevent the jury from learning the truth. Now it is the studios begging for words like "perjury" and "fraud" to not come out in trial.
My guess is that near the end of 2014, after the jury hears everything but before a penalty is assigned, the movie cartel will suddenly settle the lawsuit with undisclosed millions going to Hotfile in order to avoid a punishment.
This case did not involve the specified people, nor did it involve a state. Therefore it cannot originate in the supreme court.
They should have named the government of a state that had permitted/provided the facilities that surveillance was conducted in.
No, because that would have been stupid. The parties are the NSA and the FISA court, neither is a state.
While the SCOTUS doesn't have original jurisdiction, EPIC's claim is that this is a truly exceptional case and the lower courts have no authority to hear the case, that neither the district courts nor FISA courts are competent to hear the case, that there are no other legal options available for them to get the rights the Constitution requires, and that only the supreme court is qualified to hear it. There are a small number of cases (I could find six) that the court has accepted this.
EPIC was/is trying to take an extremely rarely used path to circumvent the normal process. It is only available because the Constitution requires the courts have power to review, but in those extremely rare cases because of imperfection in the laws there is absolutely no other way to enter the legal system for redress. It was risky and almost certain to fail because district courts around the country had been flooded with similar lawsuits. Claiming they couldn't be accepted in district court when everyone else is filing was unlikely to succeed, but there was a slim-but-nonzero chance the court would take it. If all of the cases around the nation had been dismissed due to lack of standing, then there would be a much higher chance, but that is not what is going on.
EPIC took a small bet against nigh-impossible odds and lost as expected. The wager cost them almost nothing and gave them considerable media time, so they still came out ahead.
Aren't US Ambassadors also part of the group being spied on?
They are not named parties in the suit. Since this specific case was brought by EPIC and only names the FISA court, it is not proper.
If an ambassador, consul, or foreign minister sought review then yes, it would likely be proper for the SCOTUS to hear the case directly.
Your understanding is correct. That is why the 9th and 10th amendments were part of the initial round of amendments called the bill of rights.
The 9th tends to limit expansion of government (yet it still grows). The 10th was a restatement of the fact that anything not expressly granted is not part of their power; on its face it is redundant and therefore has often been called unnecessary, but in recent years it has been leveraged as a reminder that the government cannot claim all powers.
It isn't a matter of tradition. The US Constitution only allows two types of cases to start at the supreme court:
"In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction"
This case did not involve the specified people, nor did it involve a state. Therefore it cannot originate in the supreme court.