You're both right, to some degree. I have no doubt that the Jihadists want exactly what you describe. The question is, why do they care at all about attacking a power on the far side of the world, when they haven't achieved their ends locally? Why do they find support among the local populace for their attacks?
As an analogy - Hitler was an asshole who wanted world domination and the extinction of the Jewish race. But why was he able to come to power? His platform was not only "elect me because I hate Jews, too!" You have to look at the context of what motivated the German people - the poor economy, the association of the Weimar government with western foreign imperialism and decadence, the concerns about a communist takeover.
Similarly, the leaders of the Islamic terror groups want a world-wide Islamic power under Shariah rule... but you're missing a huge part of the picture if you don't look at the social and economic forces that make people decide to follow them. The US has been giving people in that region plenty of reasons to hate them *before* you get into the all western thought is evil stuff.
Under every mountain of crazy is grain of truth and legitimate grievance, or no one would ever listen to the crazy guy.
I'm not sure what they see on these things that's useful anyway. When I went through a few months ago they had to pat down my ass after the scan, and I didn't even have anything in my pocket.
You're missing the part where the military often cares more about maximum performance than maximum efficiency. It's like arguing that any advances made in formula one cars are worthless because if they were any good they'd be all over Camry's by now. The thing is that these techs do trickle down once they are no longer so cutting edge.
Although I will tell you that the vast majority of contractors have *really* bought into the patriotism thing, and would prefer that they made shit that works *and* get paid for it.
I used to work for a military contractor, and the CEO got a medal for his actions during the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon. They aren't all soulless - some really believe they're doing good by supplying the troops. You can judge whether that *is* a good or not on your own terms.
WTF did they change the names anyway? It's really confusing for anyone who took health class ten years ago and then stopped worrying about them when he got married.
See, the fun thing about these enforced work program ideas is that they only work if no one is doing the job already. That "public work somewhere we can throw people at" is currently done by salaried government employees (who are probably unionized) and who will heartily object to being replaced by people who were too lazy to sign up for that job under their own free will.
Not to mention that anything that get officially procured for the military has to go through a prolonged design and approval process, has to withstand extreme temperatures and weather, all that.
Which in practice means that you will be late to getting all of the cool consumer-style tech gadgets, and the ones you get will be slower. Which can make sense... you don't want a consumer product failing in the middle of your engagement because some sand got into it or it doesn't work in the snow -- but it also means that theres a definite niche for bringing in a cheap consumer product as as a secondary system to whatever your tried and true military stuff, because it'll be a lot nicer when it does work.
I'm pretty sure that's why the jury keeps awarding these ridiculous numbers.
The PROBLEM is that no matter how unsympathetic she is, the facts of the case do not in any way justify the level of statutory punishment the jury is inflicting. Previous caselaw in other, non-copyright areas put statutory damages somewhere between 10-20x the actual commercial harm caused. The low end the judge is suggesting ($54,000) is around 750x the damage inflicted! The jury decision amounts to several thousand times the actual claimed damages.
This is not just in any sense of the word, and it is worth fighting for, even if she is the slimiest, guiltiest liar on the face of the planet. Legal precedent is built on principals, not likable defendants.
Liberals would be much more effective in your arguments if you would admit that conservatives do actually have possibly legitimate opinions that disagree with yours, and aren't just misinformed sheep. Most conservatives seem to think of liberals as misguided or out of touch, but they at least usually admit you are sincere.
So that means we can blame the democrats completely for everything we didn't like about the Bush administration, right? Because he passed everything that democrats hate without a filibuster proof majority. By your argument they were completely able to stop it and didn't
Yes, and there is absolutely no reasonable government in between our current state of affairs and anarchy.
There is a big difference between talking about what new laws are in our existing system are likely to be and what base laws in a theoretical primitive state of nature are. I'm pretty sure most people aren't as concerned about the latter.
How are you supposed to get funding to make a movie with policy implications without going to a corporation, or starting one? So you can't make polical documentaries during an election year, when they might do something?
It's not just endorsements. If you believe liberals, every single program on Fox News is a political statement. Conservatives will say the same about MSNBC. Should Olbermann be taken off the air because his program is paid for by a corporation?
Big Media has just as much of an agenda as Big Oil or Big Ag. You can't ban political speech by corporations without playing favorites or banning all speech by anyone who *isn't* a rich individual.
Keep in mind that the Citizen's United is a *non-profit* corporation who was being prevented from making a documentary!
Also, no liberal ever mentions it, but CU also struck down limitations on Union spending as well. So the massive UAW, teacher's unions, firemen's unions and general public servant's unions can spend all they want as well - and have been!
You might also note that this decision only moved things back to the way they were ten years ago! People act as though it's the end of democracy when it's how democracy was conducted for over 200 years! Or were rich, powerful, evil corporations only invented eight years ago?
Yes, if you have something unpopular to say you should most definitely have to identify yourself to say it. Not to mention giving out your address, so people know where to find you when they want to intimidate you. While you're at it, how about we make all speech on the internet require your real name, and get rid of anonymous voting as well!
This country was built on anonymous speech. The Federalist papers are only one example.
It all depends on whether you consider whoring to organized labor as being concerned for the interests of wage-earners.
For example, bumping the auto workers union to the front of the line in the GM bankruptcy was great for those union workers, but it's pretty awful for everyone who every working stiff who has a 401k. Same for teacher's unions versus everyone else paying taxes and sending kids to school. Protectionism in general is only good for the specific sectors that bought off congress - the rest of the workers in the country benefit from cheap chinese stuff at wal-mart.
And this is incredibly more dangerous than, say, Michael Bloomberg funneling money into "Americans for Safe Streets" and running a bunch of political ads...
Tell me any reasonable way to parse the difference between the two that is *not* incredibly open to political abuse. Tell me how to keep the regulatory structure immune from every political lobbying group pressuring the justice department. Tell me what justifies giving some giant faceless corporations (the New York Times, Fox News, Time Warner) the right to make political statements and not others.
There is no clear line to draw and no clean way to draw it. This is why the first amendment exists - rather than risk creating a regulatory structure that is incredibly open to abuse, we open speech up to everyone and every thing and leave it up to the voter to parse out the bad speech.
Exactly. It's not that the US can't manufacture things any more - if you look, we're actually still the number one producer of manufactured goods in the world. We just haven't grown as fast as China has. It's that it doesn't make economic sense for us to make everything right now. If the supply with China dries up, suddenly it'll make sense again, and factories will start springing up all over the place. There is capital here to do it, there just hasn't been a reason to allocate it to those industries.
Can it get moving in six months? No. But industry movements are rarely measured in months, and it can definitely get done in a few years.
Or maybe we security experts can stop trying to tell everyone to treat their slashdot account the same as their bank account.
It's entirely reasonable to have one password that you use for your random forums, your slashdot login, posting on si.com, your fantasy football team, etc. It doesn't even have to be a good password.
Just make sure that your facebook, you email, and your bank account are all different, secure passwords.
But to an end user, they all just say "password."
And really, why do we still care about a short maximum password length? Do we really need the extra bytes that we can't have pass phrases instead of trying to make grandma memorize some l33t h@x0R! shit? Having her remember that "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want" or "Who let the dogs out?" is a lot easier, and pretty much as secure as l33tp@assword. But that won't work, because my bill payment login needs five different strange symbols and a capital, but still only requires an 8 character password...
m's simple rules for password safety: 1) Don't send it to anyone over a non-encrypted channel. Look for the lock on the browser. Email is not encrypted. 2) Use one easy password for sites you don't care about, and a different password for the 3-5 where you actually do. 3) If it will let you, use a long passphrase from something you like that is catchy and that you will remember.
Just as much practical security as the current million rules everyone always gives, and much easier.
I have no problem with the FBI putting tracking devices on people on whom they are conducting a legitimate investigation. I have a huge problem with the fact that they can do it now on minimum suspicion and without a warrant.
Something like six years ago... It essentially sat between the DHCP server and the client, requiring that you had the a certain patch level and virus protection/firewall settings before you were allowed on the network. Seemed like about as much of a pain as most security products are, but it worked for the general case. Malicious people could still bypass it, but if random marketing guy plugged in his vulnerable laptop it generally kept it from infecting anything.
ENDFORCE was the name of the company then, but there were other competitors out there.
I'm not seeing your logic about recognizing assemblies.
If I produce a movie entitled "Hillary Clinton Sucks" and fund it myself, that is 100% protected speech under the constitution.
If I get together with a friend, pool our money to form a company called "MeAndMyFriend inc.", and then produce a movie called "Hillary Clinton Sucks" that is suddenly no longer protected speech.
However, if I get together with a friend, form a company called "MeAndMyFriend News Inc.", and then claim to be reporting by making a movie called "Hillary Clinton Sucks", that's back to protected speech.
This is essentially what you are arguing when you say that Citizen's United was wrongly decided...
Corporations are how *anything* gets funded these days. Restricting corporate speech is restricting speech to only those wealthy enough to finance it by themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
You're both right, to some degree. I have no doubt that the Jihadists want exactly what you describe. The question is, why do they care at all about attacking a power on the far side of the world, when they haven't achieved their ends locally? Why do they find support among the local populace for their attacks?
As an analogy - Hitler was an asshole who wanted world domination and the extinction of the Jewish race. But why was he able to come to power? His platform was not only "elect me because I hate Jews, too!" You have to look at the context of what motivated the German people - the poor economy, the association of the Weimar government with western foreign imperialism and decadence, the concerns about a communist takeover.
Similarly, the leaders of the Islamic terror groups want a world-wide Islamic power under Shariah rule... but you're missing a huge part of the picture if you don't look at the social and economic forces that make people decide to follow them. The US has been giving people in that region plenty of reasons to hate them *before* you get into the all western thought is evil stuff.
Under every mountain of crazy is grain of truth and legitimate grievance, or no one would ever listen to the crazy guy.
I'm not sure what they see on these things that's useful anyway. When I went through a few months ago they had to pat down my ass after the scan, and I didn't even have anything in my pocket.
You're missing the part where the military often cares more about maximum performance than maximum efficiency. It's like arguing that any advances made in formula one cars are worthless because if they were any good they'd be all over Camry's by now. The thing is that these techs do trickle down once they are no longer so cutting edge.
Although I will tell you that the vast majority of contractors have *really* bought into the patriotism thing, and would prefer that they made shit that works *and* get paid for it.
I used to work for a military contractor, and the CEO got a medal for his actions during the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon. They aren't all soulless - some really believe they're doing good by supplying the troops. You can judge whether that *is* a good or not on your own terms.
I think television has shown us that you only really need five minutes of power.
Although where they're going to find the teenage pilots with mother issues I don't know...
About as bad as trying to talk cars with health professionals.
"I really want an http://http//www.subaru.com/vehicles/impreza-wrx/index.html"
"You want a WHAT?"
WTF did they change the names anyway? It's really confusing for anyone who took health class ten years ago and then stopped worrying about them when he got married.
Or it could be the fact that if you want to go between stores you have to walk across 2 miles of parking lots.
I don't necessarily see the cognitive dissonance.
If a store's policy is to give out $50 to every customer, I might say "that's a bad way to run a business." But I'm still going to line up for my $50.
Person advocates policy that is in his own best interest! News at 10!
See, the fun thing about these enforced work program ideas is that they only work if no one is doing the job already. That "public work somewhere we can throw people at" is currently done by salaried government employees (who are probably unionized) and who will heartily object to being replaced by people who were too lazy to sign up for that job under their own free will.
Not to mention that anything that get officially procured for the military has to go through a prolonged design and approval process, has to withstand extreme temperatures and weather, all that.
Which in practice means that you will be late to getting all of the cool consumer-style tech gadgets, and the ones you get will be slower. Which can make sense... you don't want a consumer product failing in the middle of your engagement because some sand got into it or it doesn't work in the snow -- but it also means that theres a definite niche for bringing in a cheap consumer product as as a secondary system to whatever your tried and true military stuff, because it'll be a lot nicer when it does work.
I'm pretty sure that's why the jury keeps awarding these ridiculous numbers.
The PROBLEM is that no matter how unsympathetic she is, the facts of the case do not in any way justify the level of statutory punishment the jury is inflicting. Previous caselaw in other, non-copyright areas put statutory damages somewhere between 10-20x the actual commercial harm caused. The low end the judge is suggesting ($54,000) is around 750x the damage inflicted! The jury decision amounts to several thousand times the actual claimed damages.
This is not just in any sense of the word, and it is worth fighting for, even if she is the slimiest, guiltiest liar on the face of the planet. Legal precedent is built on principals, not likable defendants.
Liberals would be much more effective in your arguments if you would admit that conservatives do actually have possibly legitimate opinions that disagree with yours, and aren't just misinformed sheep. Most conservatives seem to think of liberals as misguided or out of touch, but they at least usually admit you are sincere.
So that means we can blame the democrats completely for everything we didn't like about the Bush administration, right? Because he passed everything that democrats hate without a filibuster proof majority. By your argument they were completely able to stop it and didn't
Yes, and there is absolutely no reasonable government in between our current state of affairs and anarchy.
There is a big difference between talking about what new laws are in our existing system are likely to be and what base laws in a theoretical primitive state of nature are. I'm pretty sure most people aren't as concerned about the latter.
How is it bullshit?
How are you supposed to get funding to make a movie with policy implications without going to a corporation, or starting one? So you can't make polical documentaries during an election year, when they might do something?
It's not just endorsements. If you believe liberals, every single program on Fox News is a political statement. Conservatives will say the same about MSNBC. Should Olbermann be taken off the air because his program is paid for by a corporation?
Big Media has just as much of an agenda as Big Oil or Big Ag. You can't ban political speech by corporations without playing favorites or banning all speech by anyone who *isn't* a rich individual.
Keep in mind that the Citizen's United is a *non-profit* corporation who was being prevented from making a documentary!
Also, no liberal ever mentions it, but CU also struck down limitations on Union spending as well. So the massive UAW, teacher's unions, firemen's unions and general public servant's unions can spend all they want as well - and have been!
You might also note that this decision only moved things back to the way they were ten years ago! People act as though it's the end of democracy when it's how democracy was conducted for over 200 years! Or were rich, powerful, evil corporations only invented eight years ago?
Yes, if you have something unpopular to say you should most definitely have to identify yourself to say it. Not to mention giving out your address, so people know where to find you when they want to intimidate you. While you're at it, how about we make all speech on the internet require your real name, and get rid of anonymous voting as well!
This country was built on anonymous speech. The Federalist papers are only one example.
It all depends on whether you consider whoring to organized labor as being concerned for the interests of wage-earners.
For example, bumping the auto workers union to the front of the line in the GM bankruptcy was great for those union workers, but it's pretty awful for everyone who every working stiff who has a 401k. Same for teacher's unions versus everyone else paying taxes and sending kids to school. Protectionism in general is only good for the specific sectors that bought off congress - the rest of the workers in the country benefit from cheap chinese stuff at wal-mart.
And this is incredibly more dangerous than, say, Michael Bloomberg funneling money into "Americans for Safe Streets" and running a bunch of political ads...
http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail_donors.php?ein=263516710&cycle=2008
All those opposed to Citizens United are saying is that only the rich should be able to buy free speech.
Tell me any reasonable way to parse the difference between the two that is *not* incredibly open to political abuse. Tell me how to keep the regulatory structure immune from every political lobbying group pressuring the justice department. Tell me what justifies giving some giant faceless corporations (the New York Times, Fox News, Time Warner) the right to make political statements and not others.
There is no clear line to draw and no clean way to draw it. This is why the first amendment exists - rather than risk creating a regulatory structure that is incredibly open to abuse, we open speech up to everyone and every thing and leave it up to the voter to parse out the bad speech.
Exactly. It's not that the US can't manufacture things any more - if you look, we're actually still the number one producer of manufactured goods in the world. We just haven't grown as fast as China has. It's that it doesn't make economic sense for us to make everything right now. If the supply with China dries up, suddenly it'll make sense again, and factories will start springing up all over the place. There is capital here to do it, there just hasn't been a reason to allocate it to those industries.
Can it get moving in six months? No. But industry movements are rarely measured in months, and it can definitely get done in a few years.
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4763
Or maybe we security experts can stop trying to tell everyone to treat their slashdot account the same as their bank account.
It's entirely reasonable to have one password that you use for your random forums, your slashdot login, posting on si.com, your fantasy football team, etc. It doesn't even have to be a good password.
Just make sure that your facebook, you email, and your bank account are all different, secure passwords.
But to an end user, they all just say "password."
And really, why do we still care about a short maximum password length? Do we really need the extra bytes that we can't have pass phrases instead of trying to make grandma memorize some l33t h@x0R! shit? Having her remember that "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want" or "Who let the dogs out?" is a lot easier, and pretty much as secure as l33tp@assword. But that won't work, because my bill payment login needs five different strange symbols and a capital, but still only requires an 8 character password...
m's simple rules for password safety:
1) Don't send it to anyone over a non-encrypted channel. Look for the lock on the browser. Email is not encrypted.
2) Use one easy password for sites you don't care about, and a different password for the 3-5 where you actually do.
3) If it will let you, use a long passphrase from something you like that is catchy and that you will remember.
Just as much practical security as the current million rules everyone always gives, and much easier.
I have no problem with the FBI putting tracking devices on people on whom they are conducting a legitimate investigation. I have a huge problem with the fact that they can do it now on minimum suspicion and without a warrant.
Something like six years ago... It essentially sat between the DHCP server and the client, requiring that you had the a certain patch level and virus protection/firewall settings before you were allowed on the network. Seemed like about as much of a pain as most security products are, but it worked for the general case. Malicious people could still bypass it, but if random marketing guy plugged in his vulnerable laptop it generally kept it from infecting anything.
ENDFORCE was the name of the company then, but there were other competitors out there.
I'm not seeing your logic about recognizing assemblies.
If I produce a movie entitled "Hillary Clinton Sucks" and fund it myself, that is 100% protected speech under the constitution.
If I get together with a friend, pool our money to form a company called "MeAndMyFriend inc.", and then produce a movie called "Hillary Clinton Sucks" that is suddenly no longer protected speech.
However, if I get together with a friend, form a company called "MeAndMyFriend News Inc.", and then claim to be reporting by making a movie called "Hillary Clinton Sucks", that's back to protected speech.
This is essentially what you are arguing when you say that Citizen's United was wrongly decided...
Corporations are how *anything* gets funded these days. Restricting corporate speech is restricting speech to only those wealthy enough to finance it by themselves.