No, you may not. Under what exact circumstances the police may or may not is more dicey, but not too relevant to this case.
Stingrays are not collecting voice data, but metadata. More like a pen register than a phone line tap, but legally those require
The real truth is we don't have any real legal precedent on whether these are legal with or without warrants or not, as they and their workings have been systematically hidden from the courts. The FBI has been confiscating both the hardware and all details about them whenever people discover local law enforcement has been using them, sometimes in defiance of local judicial rulings.
The FitBit (or Nike Fuel, or Jawbone up, or even a basic pedometer) is a nifty tool to help you quantify who much you move in an average day, and to encourage you to improve it.
Actually, startup and memory use is the reason I don't use Chrome.
Firefox has a setting to only load tabs when you click on them, and Chrome doesn't. Because of how many tabs I keep open from session to session, Firefox is a much better choice for me at the moment.
Yes, the "Cosmos for rednecks" gag was good, but isn't it also worth mentioning he's currently producing the next Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan?
It's vaguely interesting to me because he used to be my aunt and uncle's next door neighbor in Kennet Square, PA. He seemed to be a nice guy, but his bulldogs were a bit over the top.
I heard he played some stick-ball game or something also, but I must admit I don't care about that very much...
If you want to get the attention of an elected official, it's much more effective to appeal to their pocketbook or need for campaign volunteers than to their sense of decency,
They do have a stable SDK with forward compatibility now, just most extensions were not written to use it as they were written before it was released. Like Chrome's API, it's less powerful than the XUL addons, but it covers what 95+% of addons need.
IMHO they should have released the SDK first and pushed for developers to use it, and then started rapid release, but that's not how they did it.;-)
It's a legacy problem like that many other systems have. Getting big enough that people bitch about some of the early imperfect decisions you made is a problem many devs would like to have.;-)
Is it really possible that in 80 posts, no one has suggested The Geek Atlas?
It's a book of 128 geeky sites to visit, with background stories and science discussions for each one, as well as the normal location and logistic information.
There's also a website with maps and other content, as well as an iOS app that will give you info on the places closest to you and other handy reference info.
You'd have to be fairly confident in your chemistry skills to put the result in drinking water purifier, but for home chemistry and presumably for whatever it's used for in meth production(yeah, really don't feel like googling that), it should be fine.
So once again, our laws only hurt the legal users.
Luckily there are people who can do something who care.
TSA operates with the blessing of local law enforcement and the property owner of where they are. They have no jurisdiction, nor law enforcement powers, and are totally dependent on these individuals.
From wikipedia:
Savannah incident - Amtrak temporarily bans VIPR teams, 2011 In early 2011, a TSA VIPR detained and patted down people at an Amtrak station in Savannah, Georgia. The incident became rather controversial. According to Trains magazine, Amtrak Police Chief John O'Connor described the TSA behavior as illegal, and in violation of Amtrak policy. The incident led Amtrak to temporarily ban VIPR teams from Amtrak property.
Yes. What the general public doesn't seem to realize is that 95% confidence is the standard, and that means we expect at least 5% of scientific studies to be false positives.
(As a side rant, I really think statistics should be the capstone course in math in HS, not Calculus, as it's much more useful to the general populace.)
Actually, I did respond to that, but apparently not clearly enough, so I'll highlight it:
There's a number of different ways Jesus and the Bible could be extraordinary, but they fail to be. That's not a flaw in my argument, it's just the nature of the myth of the culture you grew up in. It is clear to everyone in every other culture that there's nothing special about the myths of yours.
Yes, I know of the excuses given for why things must be that way, but it is clear to 2/3 of the world that they are just that: excuses. If there was a way to know, the world would long ago have converged on the true religion.
I make the meta-argument that there is nothing to recommend the Bible as better than the Koran or the Vedas, or the hundreds of other earlier tales of demigods that die and come back to life. John Loftus calls the the "Outsider Test For Faith". I reject Christianity because it is not in fact remarkable enough to clearly show the world that it is in fact the one true way, and claims an eternal punishment for not believing that it is. The fact that I give multiple kinds of ways God could have communicated better and established clearly the truth of the Bible and hence of Jesus does not undermine that argument. There is no reason to choose one of the sub-arguments, as you claim.
Christianity is about a continuing relationship with God, and yes, the events within that relationship can possibly be explained by things like coincidence, selective memory and so forth. But there comes a point where that just does not make sense any more. Either I am incredibly "lucky", incredibly selective in my memory of experiences or I actually have a relationship with God. While I don't expect you to trust my judgment in this matter, I must trust my own because if I reject it, I how can I trust my judgment in say, accepting your judgment?
I recommend reading a book like "50 Reasons People Give For Believing In a God" or the anthropological chapters in The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails. Heck, read any modern anthropological textbook. Every major religion gives this kind of evidence for their God. If it was only Christianity that did, I admit it would be good evidence, and the world would have converged on that religion instead of 2/3s of the people rejecting it, and Christianity splintering into smaller and smaller sects. If the Holy Spirit enlightens us like the bible says, he does terrible job of it. Things like the 30 years war are god's fault if he does exist, because he clearly could have communicated the truth better, or even what parts were essential and what was debatable. He didn't.
I have given God many opportunities to show himself, but he only does so in a matter that is exactly the same as chance. In the OT, he is supposed to have sent fire from heaven, and a simple lack of the Baal to act was proof that he was not the true god, and in the tale his prophets were murdered. Elijah didn't say, "Oh, I understand, my god values divine hiddenness also." No, simple failure of a god to respond to a challenge was definitive proof of his non-existence in the test YHWH himself designed. Somehow, once modern science and good record-keeping came about, god no longer shows up in any measurable way, and the theological sausage grinder comes up with ideas like "divine hiddenness" and the soul making theodicy. Strange that. I have yet to meet a Christian who is willing to anticipate future consequences of God's existence. No,belief in belief is the belief of the day, and even Christians recognize it.
The reason I am an atheist is the Chrisitianity does not stand up to the "Outsider Test for Faith", which it must if god is good and universalism is not correct. Either Christianity is false, god is not good and not worthy
The only argument that was throughly refuted is that Jesus could have been talking about Noah as a fictional character, which you chose the third option: To ignore the fact that was your whole argument before and add new arguments. Was there a good argument that hasn't been well answered, besides a 64 page document I refute with another long document? I simply don't have time to cover every point here on issues that have been refuted a million times. Yes, I have some issues with Carrier and some of the other infidels writers, but they did a good job in refuting the arguments of McDowell et al. That road has been tread a thousands times, and I see little benefit over trying to explain it again.
Why does Bart Ehrman, probably the foremost new testament scholar, not believe? Why does Bishop Spong not believe? These are people who know much more about the early Christian writings than I, apparently the evidence is just not that strong. Spong definitely wants to keep Christian morality and practice alive, which leaves none of the excuses Christians usually give to explain away people who reject the resurrection.
I understand the Christian position. I was one for 25 years. I've been an atheist for about 1/2 a year, and it's a highly uncomfortable thing for me to be. My whole family is Christian, most of my neighbors and friends are, etc. If you or anyone else could convince me there was any good reason to believe, I would happily go back. The only evidence is evidence that is only convincing if you already believe. The only logical Christianity I've come across is Calvinism, in which it makes sense that nobody else accepts the poor evidence given for the deity and resurrection of Jesus, because god is a jerk who didn't choose them.
If you want "new" arguments, come to http://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion . I and others have preposed a number of new arguments there that are not covered by multiple people 20 or 200 years ago. That's the only reason I've linked to infidels.com, you linked to a book treatment of an argument they covered well 15 years ago. There's tons more stuff out there, it just hasn't come up in this discussion yet.
I'm well aware of how the gospels were produced, and how long it was from Jesus's death. The problem is they are just not believable, we don't know which books should have been canonized if any, etc. If that really was God's idea of the best way to give a message to his world, he's an idiot.
There's a number of different ways Jesus and the Bible could be extraordinary, but they fail to be. That's not a flaw in my argument, it's just the nature of the myth of the culture you grew up in. It is clear to everyone in every other culture that there's nothing special about the myths of yours.
Yes, I know of the excuses given for why things must be that way, but it is clear to 2/3 of the world that they are just that: excuses. If there was a way to know, the world would long ago have converged on the true religion.
How can I tell the difference between Jesus, Vishnu, Osirus, Thor, etc? I can't, and it's not for lack of trying.
I read your link. It is a poor rehashing of "Evidence that demands a verdict" and similar books. I've read both them and their critics, and their logic comes up quite short by comparison. To start with, the gospels are all anonymous and there is no good reason for believing eyewitness wrote the gospels.
As to his "Coup de grace", he's a poor scholar. It is clear that the women fit Mark's narrative quite well. Quoting Ehrman on the issue, in a debate with William Lane Craig:
I should point out, Paul never mentions the women at the tomb, only the later Gospels, Mark and following. But here the problem is one that's typical of much of Bill's position. His claim does not take seriously the nature of our sources. Anyone who's intimate with Mark's Gospel would have no difficulty at all seeing why, 35 years after the event, he or someone in his community might have invented the story. Mark's Gospel is filled with theological reflections on the meaning of the life of Jesus; this is Mark's Gospel. It's not a datasheet; it's a Gospel. It's a proclamation of the good news, as Mark saw it, of Christ's death and resurrection.
One of Mark's overarching themes is that virtually no one during the ministry of Jesus could understand who he was. His family didn't understand. His townspeople didn't understand. The leaders of his own people didn't understand. Not even the disciples understood in Mark -- especially not the disciples! For Mark, only outsiders have an inkling of who Jesus was: the unnamed woman who anointed him, the centurion at the cross. Who understands at the end? Not the family of Jesus! Not the disciples! It's a group of previously unknown women. The women at the tomb fit in perfectly with Mark's literary purposes otherwise. So they can't simply be taken as some kind of objective historical statement of fact. They too neatly fit the literary agenda of the Gospel. The same can be said of Joseph of Arimathea. Anyone who cannot think why Christians might invent the idea that Jesus had a secret follower among the Jewish leaders is simply lacking in historical imagination.
For more on why Christianity succeeding without a resurrection is not as improbable as people think see this or the book treatment linked from that page.
No, I haven't "missed' that point, it just makes no sense. If Jesus affirmed a falsehood, even if intentionally, how do we tell what is true and what is not?
If he didn't have time to "correct science", couldn't he have said "don't torture and kill people because their theology is slightly different that yours"? There's SO many simple things Jesus could have said that would have stopped things like the 30 Years War, Inquisition, etc.
Just teaching basic hygiene would have saved innumerable lives over the past centuries. The Talmud commands washing hands before meals a few hundred years later, but Jesus didn't tell people that was important. In fact, in Mark he says the opposite.
Jesus could have said that all races, sexes, and genders are equal and owning people is wrong, but he didn't.
He was a totally unremarkable preacher for the time, expect he tells us we can only come to god through him. No evidence is offered to us, except the gospels which are full of falsehoods (like the one under discussion), have mutually contradictory stories and crazy events we're sure didn't happen(like zombie apocalypses). If he wanted me to accept him, all he would have to do is give some way I could know he is the true god and Vishnu is not. Unfortunately, he failed even at that.
Jesus was (at best) a failed apocalyptic preacher and nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you may not. Under what exact circumstances the police may or may not is more dicey, but not too relevant to this case.
Stingrays are not collecting voice data, but metadata. More like a pen register than a phone line tap, but legally those require
The real truth is we don't have any real legal precedent on whether these are legal with or without warrants or not, as they and their workings have been systematically hidden from the courts. The FBI has been confiscating both the hardware and all details about them whenever people discover local law enforcement has been using them, sometimes in defiance of local judicial rulings.
Sure, get your wifi pineapple, but I've already got a wifi pineapple buster.
Quantify your activity level and improve it.
The FitBit (or Nike Fuel, or Jawbone up, or even a basic pedometer) is a nifty tool to help you quantify who much you move in an average day, and to encourage you to improve it.
We have authoritarianism, it just gets its power from corporate lobbing and campaign donations instead.
NC started a few public fiber in some towns, so Time Warner lobbied and made broadband operating as any other public utility illegal, ignoring the protests of many local tech businesses and even the FCC.
Actually, startup and memory use is the reason I don't use Chrome.
Firefox has a setting to only load tabs when you click on them, and Chrome doesn't. Because of how many tabs I keep open from session to session, Firefox is a much better choice for me at the moment.
If and when Chrome ever closes this bug, I may well jump ship too. But Firefox 15 will be out in a few weeks, and many of the memory leaks will be fixed, so we'll see. ;-)
Yes, the "Cosmos for rednecks" gag was good, but isn't it also worth mentioning he's currently producing the next Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan?
It's vaguely interesting to me because he used to be my aunt and uncle's next door neighbor in Kennet Square, PA. He seemed to be a nice guy, but his bulldogs were a bit over the top.
I heard he played some stick-ball game or something also, but I must admit I don't care about that very much...
Motorola Mobility is now a subsidiary of Google.
According to this article, the actions started in Nov 2010, before the acquisition, but it's now a patent war case of Google vs Microsoft.
iOS has "full drive encryption" in iOS 4 and later.
It's just protected by a 4 digit pin which can be easily brute forced by default.
You can use a stronger passcode, but you have to type it on every unlock so few do.
Oh, they do. They may not care what is *right*, but they care what the people want.
If you want to get the attention of an elected official, it's much more effective to appeal to their pocketbook or need for campaign volunteers than to their sense of decency,
They do have a stable SDK with forward compatibility now, just most extensions were not written to use it as they were written before it was released. Like Chrome's API, it's less powerful than the XUL addons, but it covers what 95+% of addons need.
IMHO they should have released the SDK first and pushed for developers to use it, and then started rapid release, but that's not how they did it. ;-)
It's a legacy problem like that many other systems have. Getting big enough that people bitch about some of the early imperfect decisions you made is a problem many devs would like to have. ;-)
IMAP is another potential answer.
I run Dovecot locally, and it stores every mail I've ever received, indexed for quick searches.
This way I can get my mail with all history and a fast search index on all my devices also.
This is why Time Warner pushed a bill through NC to put lots of roadblocks up for municipal broadband here.
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/cities-consumers-lose-municipal-broadband-fight/Content?oid=2440390
The local LUG was quite vocal in fighting this, but we don't have the resources of Time Warner.
Fuck you very much Time Warner.
Specifically, they use a lithium-ion polymer battery, also called LiPo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone#Model_comparison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_polymer_battery
Energetic chemistry is energetic.
Go find some RC enthusiasts and ask them if they've seen LiPos burn. There's a good chance they have.
That's why we charge our batteries in a lipo bag or other fireproof container.
Of course, RC batteries are abused much more than those in phones, but it's highly non-surprising that occasionally one lights on fire.
Is it really possible that in 80 posts, no one has suggested The Geek Atlas?
It's a book of 128 geeky sites to visit, with background stories and science discussions for each one, as well as the normal location and logistic information.
There's also a website with maps and other content, as well as an iOS app that will give you info on the places closest to you and other handy reference info.
It's also damn easy to make.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLhwkFKLdPA
You'd have to be fairly confident in your chemistry skills to put the result in drinking water purifier, but for home chemistry and presumably for whatever it's used for in meth production(yeah, really don't feel like googling that), it should be fine.
So once again, our laws only hurt the legal users.
Luckily there are people who can do something who care.
TSA operates with the blessing of local law enforcement and the property owner of where they are. They have no jurisdiction, nor law enforcement powers, and are totally dependent on these individuals.
From wikipedia:
Savannah incident - Amtrak temporarily bans VIPR teams, 2011
In early 2011, a TSA VIPR detained and patted down people at an Amtrak station in Savannah, Georgia. The incident became rather controversial. According to Trains magazine, Amtrak Police Chief John O'Connor described the TSA behavior as illegal, and in violation of Amtrak policy. The incident led Amtrak to temporarily ban VIPR teams from Amtrak property.
Yes grammer nazi, I care a very little bit, such that I could in fact care less, but not very much less.
As long as it still works as a sync agent for Reeder on Mac and iOS, I could care less. Reeder is so much better than the Reader interface anyway.
Yes. What the general public doesn't seem to realize is that 95% confidence is the standard, and that means we expect at least 5% of scientific studies to be false positives.
(As a side rant, I really think statistics should be the capstone course in math in HS, not Calculus, as it's much more useful to the general populace.)
Actually, I did respond to that, but apparently not clearly enough, so I'll highlight it:
There's a number of different ways Jesus and the Bible could be extraordinary, but they fail to be. That's not a flaw in my argument, it's just the nature of the myth of the culture you grew up in. It is clear to everyone in every other culture that there's nothing special about the myths of yours.
Yes, I know of the excuses given for why things must be that way, but it is clear to 2/3 of the world that they are just that: excuses. If there was a way to know, the world would long ago have converged on the true religion.
I make the meta-argument that there is nothing to recommend the Bible as better than the Koran or the Vedas, or the hundreds of other earlier tales of demigods that die and come back to life. John Loftus calls the the "Outsider Test For Faith". I reject Christianity because it is not in fact remarkable enough to clearly show the world that it is in fact the one true way, and claims an eternal punishment for not believing that it is. The fact that I give multiple kinds of ways God could have communicated better and established clearly the truth of the Bible and hence of Jesus does not undermine that argument. There is no reason to choose one of the sub-arguments, as you claim.
Christianity is about a continuing relationship with God, and yes, the events within that relationship can possibly be explained by things like coincidence, selective memory and so forth. But there comes a point where that just does not make sense any more. Either I am incredibly "lucky", incredibly selective in my memory of experiences or I actually have a relationship with God. While I don't expect you to trust my judgment in this matter, I must trust my own because if I reject it, I how can I trust my judgment in say, accepting your judgment?
I recommend reading a book like "50 Reasons People Give For Believing In a God" or the anthropological chapters in The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails. Heck, read any modern anthropological textbook. Every major religion gives this kind of evidence for their God. If it was only Christianity that did, I admit it would be good evidence, and the world would have converged on that religion instead of 2/3s of the people rejecting it, and Christianity splintering into smaller and smaller sects. If the Holy Spirit enlightens us like the bible says, he does terrible job of it. Things like the 30 years war are god's fault if he does exist, because he clearly could have communicated the truth better, or even what parts were essential and what was debatable. He didn't.
I have given God many opportunities to show himself, but he only does so in a matter that is exactly the same as chance. In the OT, he is supposed to have sent fire from heaven, and a simple lack of the Baal to act was proof that he was not the true god, and in the tale his prophets were murdered. Elijah didn't say, "Oh, I understand, my god values divine hiddenness also." No, simple failure of a god to respond to a challenge was definitive proof of his non-existence in the test YHWH himself designed. Somehow, once modern science and good record-keeping came about, god no longer shows up in any measurable way, and the theological sausage grinder comes up with ideas like "divine hiddenness" and the soul making theodicy. Strange that. I have yet to meet a Christian who is willing to anticipate future consequences of God's existence. No,belief in belief is the belief of the day, and even Christians recognize it.
The reason I am an atheist is the Chrisitianity does not stand up to the "Outsider Test for Faith", which it must if god is good and universalism is not correct. Either Christianity is false, god is not good and not worthy
The only argument that was throughly refuted is that Jesus could have been talking about Noah as a fictional character, which you chose the third option: To ignore the fact that was your whole argument before and add new arguments. Was there a good argument that hasn't been well answered, besides a 64 page document I refute with another long document? I simply don't have time to cover every point here on issues that have been refuted a million times. Yes, I have some issues with Carrier and some of the other infidels writers, but they did a good job in refuting the arguments of McDowell et al. That road has been tread a thousands times, and I see little benefit over trying to explain it again.
Why does Bart Ehrman, probably the foremost new testament scholar, not believe? Why does Bishop Spong not believe? These are people who know much more about the early Christian writings than I, apparently the evidence is just not that strong. Spong definitely wants to keep Christian morality and practice alive, which leaves none of the excuses Christians usually give to explain away people who reject the resurrection.
I understand the Christian position. I was one for 25 years. I've been an atheist for about 1/2 a year, and it's a highly uncomfortable thing for me to be. My whole family is Christian, most of my neighbors and friends are, etc. If you or anyone else could convince me there was any good reason to believe, I would happily go back. The only evidence is evidence that is only convincing if you already believe. The only logical Christianity I've come across is Calvinism, in which it makes sense that nobody else accepts the poor evidence given for the deity and resurrection of Jesus, because god is a jerk who didn't choose them.
If you want "new" arguments, come to http://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion . I and others have preposed a number of new arguments there that are not covered by multiple people 20 or 200 years ago. That's the only reason I've linked to infidels.com, you linked to a book treatment of an argument they covered well 15 years ago. There's tons more stuff out there, it just hasn't come up in this discussion yet.
I'm well aware of how the gospels were produced, and how long it was from Jesus's death. The problem is they are just not believable, we don't know which books should have been canonized if any, etc. If that really was God's idea of the best way to give a message to his world, he's an idiot.
There's a number of different ways Jesus and the Bible could be extraordinary, but they fail to be. That's not a flaw in my argument, it's just the nature of the myth of the culture you grew up in. It is clear to everyone in every other culture that there's nothing special about the myths of yours.
Yes, I know of the excuses given for why things must be that way, but it is clear to 2/3 of the world that they are just that: excuses. If there was a way to know, the world would long ago have converged on the true religion.
How can I tell the difference between Jesus, Vishnu, Osirus, Thor, etc? I can't, and it's not for lack of trying.
I read your link. It is a poor rehashing of "Evidence that demands a verdict" and similar books. I've read both them and their critics, and their logic comes up quite short by comparison. To start with, the gospels are all anonymous and there is no good reason for believing eyewitness wrote the gospels.
As to his "Coup de grace", he's a poor scholar. It is clear that the women fit Mark's narrative quite well.
Quoting Ehrman on the issue, in a debate with William Lane Craig:
I should point out, Paul never mentions the women at the tomb, only the later Gospels, Mark and following. But here the problem is one that's typical of much of Bill's position. His claim does not take seriously the nature of our sources. Anyone who's intimate with Mark's Gospel would have no difficulty at all seeing why, 35 years after the event, he or someone in his community might have invented the story. Mark's Gospel is filled with theological reflections on the meaning of the life of Jesus; this is Mark's Gospel. It's not a datasheet; it's a Gospel. It's a proclamation of the good news, as Mark saw it, of Christ's death and resurrection.
One of Mark's overarching themes is that virtually no one during the ministry of Jesus could understand who he was. His family didn't understand. His townspeople didn't understand. The leaders of his own people didn't understand. Not even the disciples understood in Mark -- especially not the disciples! For Mark, only outsiders have an inkling of who Jesus was: the unnamed woman who anointed him, the centurion at the cross. Who understands at the end? Not the family of Jesus! Not the disciples! It's a group of previously unknown women. The women at the tomb fit in perfectly with Mark's literary purposes otherwise. So they can't simply be taken as some kind of objective historical statement of fact. They too neatly fit the literary agenda of the Gospel. The same can be said of Joseph of Arimathea. Anyone who cannot think why Christians might invent the idea that Jesus had a secret follower among the Jewish leaders is simply lacking in historical imagination.
For more on why Christianity succeeding without a resurrection is not as improbable as people think see this or the book treatment linked from that page.
No, I haven't "missed' that point, it just makes no sense. If Jesus affirmed a falsehood, even if intentionally, how do we tell what is true and what is not?
If he didn't have time to "correct science", couldn't he have said "don't torture and kill people because their theology is slightly different that yours"? There's SO many simple things Jesus could have said that would have stopped things like the 30 Years War, Inquisition, etc.
Just teaching basic hygiene would have saved innumerable lives over the past centuries. The Talmud commands washing hands before meals a few hundred years later, but Jesus didn't tell people that was important. In fact, in Mark he says the opposite.
Jesus could have said that all races, sexes, and genders are equal and owning people is wrong, but he didn't.
He was a totally unremarkable preacher for the time, expect he tells us we can only come to god through him. No evidence is offered to us, except the gospels which are full of falsehoods (like the one under discussion), have mutually contradictory stories and crazy events we're sure didn't happen(like zombie apocalypses). If he wanted me to accept him, all he would have to do is give some way I could know he is the true god and Vishnu is not. Unfortunately, he failed even at that.
Jesus was (at best) a failed apocalyptic preacher and nothing more.