I agree with the other poster. Branson can think and plan as many moves ahead as he likes. But I'd much rather see progress on his current efforts than hear talk about his future ones.
As an aside, he was allegedly downloading under false pretenses a vast number of documents from JSTOR servers. Unless all those servers were in Massachusetts, there's your interstate element right there.
Can't convict on wire fraud for access to the network as it did not cross state lines. An element of the crime.
But if this local access to the network was part of a potential larger scheme that does cross state lines (which is pretty easy to do, say if the defendant was using at one time servers in another state or country, lived elsewhere like in New Hampshire, or even merely traveled some), then they can.
Starting now or starting in a decade, it doesn't matter when the relevant technologies are a half century or more away.
Sure it does. Not everything is going to happen ten years sooner, but you will be achieving things sooner with a more advanced schedule. That's the point of doing things now rather than later.
Nothing we can do in space for next half century or so could even come close - any collapse of transportation of more than at most a few months duration is tantamount to a death sentence.
Unless, of course, you plan a little and make your colony sufficiently self-sufficient (or just give it enough supplies) so that it can handle a tranportation "collapse" longer than that duration.
For example, it makes sense to assume that for various reasons, a Mars outpost might not get supplies during a launch window (these occur every couple of years unless you have really good propulsion systems and don't need to care so much about orbital dynamics). Rather than just letting the outpost die, I imagine planners will put enough supplies and production capacity so that it can endure through a 2 year supply disruption. After all, there isn't a technology hurdle to just sending more mass to Mars.
Absolutely. Such behaviors illuminate the motivations and thought processes of the alleged perpetrator. By themselves, without a criminal act, they could just mean he's somewhat crazy/eccentric, which is not illegal, obviously. But together with more solid evidence, they can show not just that he was in certain places at certain times, but that he was trying to avoid getting caught. In other words, it indicates that he knew what he was doing was illegal. That right there is the moral justification for this sort of evidence.
All I can say is that ignorance of the law can be a mitigating factor. It doesn't keep people from getting convicted, but sentences can be lighter or even suspended. This sort of evidence will probably be used to increase the severity of the sentence, assuming the defendent is found guilty.
I guess we'll just have to see what happens. But given this happened at MIT, I imagine there's a lot of real evidence, not just black hat theater, backing this arrest.
Everyone is missing the point. The real strategic purpose of a carrier is that they are so big, expensive, and have so many sailors on board that to actually sink one is basically asking for all out war.
That would be a terrible bluff, especially, if the carrier sinking trick turns out not to be a one-time thing. So I'll have to disagree that this is somehow the purpose of a supercarrier.
the modern aircraft carriers aren't meant for fleet vs. fleet warfare
That depends which carriers you speak of. The US supercarriers aren't merely meant for fleet vs. fleet warfare (which is what they designed for during the Cold War which followed the demonstration of the effectiveness of carriers in the Second World War), they are the primary firepower of the US fleet. Any serious fleet vs. fleet action involving a US force will probably include these supercarriers.
Second, the "fleet carrier" designation remains. As I understand it, it's basically any carrier fast enough to keep up with a modern fleet and contribute in a material way at that speed. The US supercarriers qualify, but they are far from the only carriers considered fleet carriers.
Third, the US supercarriers bring along many defenses which really don't make a lot of sense unless one is facing a foe with significant assets, such as being able to launch a swarm of anti-ship missiles and/or bringing their own modern fleet to the fight.
Such things can be used as evidence that not only did Swatz break the law, but that he did so intentionally. Also the first two bits, the changing of the MAC address and providing a false email address might become supporting evidence for the argument asserting wire fraud.
Propaganda-wise, this is a easy demonstration that he was acting pretty shifty. That might get the prosecutor some mileage in the courtroom.
I guess the middle class should start paying the same low tax rates as the wealthy. Since the money is being sqaundered anyway. Tax breaks for everyone!
I'm good with that. One would have to eliminate a lot of spending, but there's a lot of low lying fruit, like most entitlements (health care, Social Security, etc). But here's the thing. That's apparently not what enough voters want to do. They apparently want a lot of free stuff paid for by rich people.
It's worth noting that the problems you speak of, aren't particularly challenging knowledge wise. One doesn't need a deep knowledge of science in order to recycle water. My bet is that within a few generations of the first colony established anywhere in space, that we would see that the technology hurdle shrunk considerably. This would be driven by such things as the expense of bringing things into the colony and lazy people wanting to do their work with less work.
Any correspondence, of anyone, can be quoted out of context.
So you're going to start burning Mann in effigy when it turns out he said "I... love... g... ay... socks... !"
Targeting researchers working on climate change, demanding that they give you an easy source of mud for you to dig through, hoping you can score points in the press and with your political friends?
Those scientists can always stop accepting public funds. Then they aren't subject to the FOIA.
Easy way to deal with it. ICBM. After the boost stage, even if there is no payload, the kinetic force hitting the carrier will ensure it will be underwater quite shortly.
Two problems with that. First, the carrier can move pretty fast. A normal ICBM takes something like an hour to get to target. Even an ICBM tipped with a large nuke might not take one out, if it moves far enough away from ground zero by the time the missile gets there. You need something that either hits really fast or tracks the carrier. That leads us to the second problem. Where is the carrier?
Calling it a commercial launch provider is sort of stretching the envelope a bit as it is owned by national governments of Europe
Not at all. Commercial here means that the organization is legally considered "for profit" which Arianespace happens to be. It's worth noting here that the only commercial launch providers which are fully privately owned are all US companies.
There are people in the mix. There are huge teams of people analysing the data sent back by the probe. You can't send them all to Mars, so you're still looking at a significant communication latency between the people doing the experiments and the people analysing the results.
So what? The bottleneck isn't the people on Earth. It's what's on Mars. Right now, that army of people on Earth will see the output from at most a few dozen probes on Mars over their lifetimes. That's a pretty big waste.
Even if we don't send people to Mars, we could still do better for the money we're spending on Mars exploration than we currently are. For example, we could have sent multiple additional Mars Exploration Rovers (I'd say 4 or 5 such rovers including launch costs) for the cost of the Mars Science Laboratory.
They wouldn't have the raw capability of the MSL, but we'd be exploring more sites than we currently are. And we could have sent them out back in 2006 (when the first two proved the concept worked), giving us several more years of productive science.
Creating a series of one-off probes, even if one reuses significant parts of the system (such as the landing system), is much more wasteful than creating batches of useful probes. When even a simple but large economy of scale isn't being exploited, it calls into question the entire judgment behind exploration of Mars as it is currently planned.
We can however safely tax them without without worrying the country will collapse
And we already do that. What you're claiming is that we can tax more. What is that money going to be used for?
because even if a few do turn out to whither up or explode paying the pre-Bush tax cut tax rates they will be easily replaced.
While it is reasonable to consider "facilitators" a renewable resource, we need to keep in mind that a renewable resource can be overharvested. So don't treat them as a giant piggy bank which you can break open any time you feel like it.
As I see it, the case for increased taxation is pretty spurious and poorly thought out. Among other things, I see no attempt to be responsible with taxes that are already collected. Nor an effort to stay within any sort of budget. So what's going to happen when more taxes are collected? Looks to me like it will be squandered. I'm a big fan of starving the beast in that situation.
Why would your supplies run out? It may be difficult to make your own supplies, but this is a solved problem else we would have run out of supplies on Earth long ago.
At the least, it got all of the UK's key naval bases in exchange for several old boats, transforming itself into the world's biggest naval power overnight.
Have you actually read the link in question? All that was done was to transfer some bases near the US (in the Caribbean and Newfoundland) to the US. The US already had significant holdings in those areas and the purpose was to deny these locations to a future enemy. So no massive boost to the US's naval power.
In addition, the US left most of the locations by 1949. So no real long term strategic impact to the agreement aside from giving the UK fifty destroyers when it really needed those destroyers.
There was a lot more to follow
Please continue. We still need an example of your claims. But to provide some incentive, let me provide a counter.
I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man.... and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1943
Here we see this canny statesman has convinced himself that Stalin wouldn't take over eastern Europe. That turned out well.
and the structure you've moved into is more vulnerable (structurally weaker) and less habitable (less insulation) than the one you've left.
This "more vulnerable" structure has some less vulnerable aspects. For example, it's likely to be millions of miles away from any nuclear explosions rather than a few hundred meters. That distance buffer helps a lot.
A man on the surface of mars could do more in a single day than all the probes have done to date.
At a vastly higher cost.
If all you want is to set a bit to "We're doing science on Mars!", then a cheap, unproductive probe every now and then is pretty much the way to go. But if you want to do a lot of science on Mars for the money spent, well, you'll have to have some people in the mix.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the other poster. Branson can think and plan as many moves ahead as he likes. But I'd much rather see progress on his current efforts than hear talk about his future ones.
As an aside, he was allegedly downloading under false pretenses a vast number of documents from JSTOR servers. Unless all those servers were in Massachusetts, there's your interstate element right there.
Where is the camera?
Ok. I don't know. So where is the camera?
Can't convict on wire fraud for access to the network as it did not cross state lines. An element of the crime.
But if this local access to the network was part of a potential larger scheme that does cross state lines (which is pretty easy to do, say if the defendant was using at one time servers in another state or country, lived elsewhere like in New Hampshire, or even merely traveled some), then they can.
Starting now or starting in a decade, it doesn't matter when the relevant technologies are a half century or more away.
Sure it does. Not everything is going to happen ten years sooner, but you will be achieving things sooner with a more advanced schedule. That's the point of doing things now rather than later.
Nothing we can do in space for next half century or so could even come close - any collapse of transportation of more than at most a few months duration is tantamount to a death sentence.
Unless, of course, you plan a little and make your colony sufficiently self-sufficient (or just give it enough supplies) so that it can handle a tranportation "collapse" longer than that duration.
For example, it makes sense to assume that for various reasons, a Mars outpost might not get supplies during a launch window (these occur every couple of years unless you have really good propulsion systems and don't need to care so much about orbital dynamics). Rather than just letting the outpost die, I imagine planners will put enough supplies and production capacity so that it can endure through a 2 year supply disruption. After all, there isn't a technology hurdle to just sending more mass to Mars.
You're welcome to find an analogy that doesn't offend your delicate sensibilities.
Can be, sure. Should be?
Absolutely. Such behaviors illuminate the motivations and thought processes of the alleged perpetrator. By themselves, without a criminal act, they could just mean he's somewhat crazy/eccentric, which is not illegal, obviously. But together with more solid evidence, they can show not just that he was in certain places at certain times, but that he was trying to avoid getting caught. In other words, it indicates that he knew what he was doing was illegal. That right there is the moral justification for this sort of evidence.
All I can say is that ignorance of the law can be a mitigating factor. It doesn't keep people from getting convicted, but sentences can be lighter or even suspended. This sort of evidence will probably be used to increase the severity of the sentence, assuming the defendent is found guilty.
Do they have ANY evidence against him?
I guess we'll just have to see what happens. But given this happened at MIT, I imagine there's a lot of real evidence, not just black hat theater, backing this arrest.
Everyone is missing the point. The real strategic purpose of a carrier is that they are so big, expensive, and have so many sailors on board that to actually sink one is basically asking for all out war.
That would be a terrible bluff, especially, if the carrier sinking trick turns out not to be a one-time thing. So I'll have to disagree that this is somehow the purpose of a supercarrier.
the modern aircraft carriers aren't meant for fleet vs. fleet warfare
That depends which carriers you speak of. The US supercarriers aren't merely meant for fleet vs. fleet warfare (which is what they designed for during the Cold War which followed the demonstration of the effectiveness of carriers in the Second World War), they are the primary firepower of the US fleet. Any serious fleet vs. fleet action involving a US force will probably include these supercarriers.
Second, the "fleet carrier" designation remains. As I understand it, it's basically any carrier fast enough to keep up with a modern fleet and contribute in a material way at that speed. The US supercarriers qualify, but they are far from the only carriers considered fleet carriers.
Third, the US supercarriers bring along many defenses which really don't make a lot of sense unless one is facing a foe with significant assets, such as being able to launch a swarm of anti-ship missiles and/or bringing their own modern fleet to the fight.
Such things can be used as evidence that not only did Swatz break the law, but that he did so intentionally. Also the first two bits, the changing of the MAC address and providing a false email address might become supporting evidence for the argument asserting wire fraud.
Propaganda-wise, this is a easy demonstration that he was acting pretty shifty. That might get the prosecutor some mileage in the courtroom.
I guess the middle class should start paying the same low tax rates as the wealthy. Since the money is being sqaundered anyway. Tax breaks for everyone!
I'm good with that. One would have to eliminate a lot of spending, but there's a lot of low lying fruit, like most entitlements (health care, Social Security, etc). But here's the thing. That's apparently not what enough voters want to do. They apparently want a lot of free stuff paid for by rich people.
It's worth noting that the problems you speak of, aren't particularly challenging knowledge wise. One doesn't need a deep knowledge of science in order to recycle water. My bet is that within a few generations of the first colony established anywhere in space, that we would see that the technology hurdle shrunk considerably. This would be driven by such things as the expense of bringing things into the colony and lazy people wanting to do their work with less work.
Any correspondence, of anyone, can be quoted out of context.
So you're going to start burning Mann in effigy when it turns out he said "I ... love ... g ... ay ... socks ... !"
Targeting researchers working on climate change, demanding that they give you an easy source of mud for you to dig through, hoping you can score points in the press and with your political friends?
Those scientists can always stop accepting public funds. Then they aren't subject to the FOIA.
Easy way to deal with it. ICBM. After the boost stage, even if there is no payload, the kinetic force hitting the carrier will ensure it will be underwater quite shortly.
Two problems with that. First, the carrier can move pretty fast. A normal ICBM takes something like an hour to get to target. Even an ICBM tipped with a large nuke might not take one out, if it moves far enough away from ground zero by the time the missile gets there. You need something that either hits really fast or tracks the carrier. That leads us to the second problem. Where is the carrier?
Calling it a commercial launch provider is sort of stretching the envelope a bit as it is owned by national governments of Europe
Not at all. Commercial here means that the organization is legally considered "for profit" which Arianespace happens to be. It's worth noting here that the only commercial launch providers which are fully privately owned are all US companies.
There are people in the mix. There are huge teams of people analysing the data sent back by the probe. You can't send them all to Mars, so you're still looking at a significant communication latency between the people doing the experiments and the people analysing the results.
So what? The bottleneck isn't the people on Earth. It's what's on Mars. Right now, that army of people on Earth will see the output from at most a few dozen probes on Mars over their lifetimes. That's a pretty big waste.
Even if we don't send people to Mars, we could still do better for the money we're spending on Mars exploration than we currently are. For example, we could have sent multiple additional Mars Exploration Rovers (I'd say 4 or 5 such rovers including launch costs) for the cost of the Mars Science Laboratory.
They wouldn't have the raw capability of the MSL, but we'd be exploring more sites than we currently are. And we could have sent them out back in 2006 (when the first two proved the concept worked), giving us several more years of productive science.
Creating a series of one-off probes, even if one reuses significant parts of the system (such as the landing system), is much more wasteful than creating batches of useful probes. When even a simple but large economy of scale isn't being exploited, it calls into question the entire judgment behind exploration of Mars as it is currently planned.
We can however safely tax them without without worrying the country will collapse
And we already do that. What you're claiming is that we can tax more. What is that money going to be used for?
because even if a few do turn out to whither up or explode paying the pre-Bush tax cut tax rates they will be easily replaced.
While it is reasonable to consider "facilitators" a renewable resource, we need to keep in mind that a renewable resource can be overharvested. So don't treat them as a giant piggy bank which you can break open any time you feel like it.
As I see it, the case for increased taxation is pretty spurious and poorly thought out. Among other things, I see no attempt to be responsible with taxes that are already collected. Nor an effort to stay within any sort of budget. So what's going to happen when more taxes are collected? Looks to me like it will be squandered. I'm a big fan of starving the beast in that situation.
You Republican revisionists just can't live with the historical fact that FDR won the presidency four times
I'm not clear why you're wasting my time here. Does getting elected four times somehow mean that it doesn't matter what FDR did or didn't do?
Why would your supplies run out? It may be difficult to make your own supplies, but this is a solved problem else we would have run out of supplies on Earth long ago.
At the least, it got all of the UK's key naval bases in exchange for several old boats, transforming itself into the world's biggest naval power overnight.
Have you actually read the link in question? All that was done was to transfer some bases near the US (in the Caribbean and Newfoundland) to the US. The US already had significant holdings in those areas and the purpose was to deny these locations to a future enemy. So no massive boost to the US's naval power.
In addition, the US left most of the locations by 1949. So no real long term strategic impact to the agreement aside from giving the UK fifty destroyers when it really needed those destroyers.
There was a lot more to follow
Please continue. We still need an example of your claims. But to provide some incentive, let me provide a counter.
I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. ... and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1943
Here we see this canny statesman has convinced himself that Stalin wouldn't take over eastern Europe. That turned out well.
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
and the structure you've moved into is more vulnerable (structurally weaker) and less habitable (less insulation) than the one you've left.
This "more vulnerable" structure has some less vulnerable aspects. For example, it's likely to be millions of miles away from any nuclear explosions rather than a few hundred meters. That distance buffer helps a lot.
Again, what benefit did the US get from the Second World War? It wasn't on the losing side, but that's not a benefit of war.
A man on the surface of mars could do more in a single day than all the probes have done to date.
At a vastly higher cost.
If all you want is to set a bit to "We're doing science on Mars!", then a cheap, unproductive probe every now and then is pretty much the way to go. But if you want to do a lot of science on Mars for the money spent, well, you'll have to have some people in the mix.