it is derivative, just fails the substantially different test.
It is derivative in the same way that a published novel is a derivative work from the version the author sent to the editor to be published. In other words, NOT.
This way CBS is preserving their (C) but allowing the fan base to continue.
According to the summary, CBS is blocking "an episode" using the script, not "all production of the series". Thus, CBS is preserving their copyright and allowing the fanbase to continue, just not continue with that script.
I'd say "RTFA", but the NY Times link requires a login.
"Published?" They weren't selling copies of the script, they were making a Phase II episode out of it. That's a "derivative work", not "publishing."
Since TV scripts are the means of creating a TV episode, the episode filmed from that script is hardly a derivative work.
If you take the characters from that script and use them in a different way, THAT'S a derivative work.
Now, if you're asking if some of us want to live in a world where it's OK to make new works derivative of 40-year-old prior art, then the answer is OF COURSE WE FUCKING DO.
And if you're asking if some of us want you to take material that wasn't considered suitable for production away from the owner and produce it anyway, then the answer is OF COURSE WE DON'T.
After all, if you are a citizen (naturalized or otherwise), you will have a ssn.
Not necessarily. You don't just get one issued at birth, although the state would love to do that. You have to apply.
And your employer needs your ssn to employ you, pay you and deduct your taxes, for verification, etc.
Employment comes after the offer and acceptance. Until you are an employee, you don't need to tell them. When they need it to deal with Social Security, they will get it. For "verification"? Well, that's illegal too. SSN Is not to be used for Identity. My card says this in black and white right on the front.
And if you don't have one, it would call your naturalization (and your entire immigration status/history) into question.
If a potential employer questions your citizenship because you won't tell him your SSN until you are hired, you will have worse problems than the interview awaiting you.
Certainly the conclusion that God put dinosaur bones on earth to test Christian's faith sounds ridiculous, but how else would a young earth creationist explain them?
It is only ridiculous if you dicount the value of faith. The other obvious explanation is that He put dinosaur fossils (not bones, rocks shaped like bones) on Earth to give the paleontologists something to do to entertain themselves. Some people like jigsaw puzzles made out of cut up pictures on cardboard, some like 3-D jigsaw puzzles made out of rock.
He loves us and wants us to be happy. Who is happier than a paleontologist climbing out of a dig clutching a rock he thinks is a Dododecathon kneecap that nobody has ever seen before?
I was a Jehovah's Witness for the first 30-odd years of my life, and neither me nor the many hundreds of other Jehovah's Witnesses that I knew would have ever been offended by the mention of birthdays in a test. Why are they being over-sensitive in retarded ways?
They aren't.
This whole proposal is coming from the professional educators, not the people the professional educators are claiming might be offended.
Professional educators are trying very hard to find ways to keep test scores from dropping so they won't look like failures at education and they can keep their jobs. Every way except actually teaching things that are hard and cause lack of self-esteem in children who would have a hard time learning something hard.
Question: A man walks into his house and flips the switch to his 60-watt lightbulb for 8 hours. How many kWh does the lightbulb use?
Answer: you cannot answer the question because the lightbulb is a modern CFL that is rated at 60W for light output but uses much less energy. The amount of energy depends on the specific brand and how modern the bulb is. Oops, the correct answer is "close to zero" because the CFL just burned out, but the electronics in the base still draw current anyway. (For "lightbulbs" that last so long, I seem to be replacing them on a regular basis.)
More important, why are we letting the mouth breathers and knuckle draggers dictate what our children will experience?
Slow down. City-mandated standardized progress tests should not be the only thing that your children experience. You get to dictate what they experience at home. The "professional educators" get to dictate what they experience at school.
That latter statement is why "we" are letting TMB and KD dictate, because we've turned the education of the children over to professionals that get paid to keep studying what the best way to educate children is. "Common sense" would mean an end to almost all education degrees and grants for education research.
I lived through the change from "old math" to "new math". I saw the math that kids were being taught a few years ago and it bore no resemblance to math as far as I could tell. I no longer wonder why high school graduates can't figure out your change when they sell you a burger.
Now, for the people who are insulting the yokels upstate and blaming them for this, if you read the fine article, you'd note that it is New York City officials calling for this, not New York State or Syracuse or Albany or Buffalo or Rochester.
Are we in fact trying to homogenize our young into a consistent state of profound stupidity? Is that now the goal of public education?
We are trying to equalize outcomes because equal outcomes is a measurement proxy for equal opportunity. If all the kids get the same score on tests, then they all obviously had equal opportunity to learn. (If there are 5% of male students playing school-organized softball then "equal opportunity" means that there will be 5% of female students playing school-organized softball. Even if only 1% of the female students want to play softball. This IS how schools are evaluated in Oregon.)
Equalizing outcomes means slowing down the faster learners, thus bringing the average down, further lowering the "average standards", slowing the faster learners down even more. We're seeing the unanticipated consequences of valuing self-esteem over knowledge.
Why? Good security doesn't have to get in the users way.
Any security, good or bad, adds complication to the system and thus "gets in the user's way", compared to no security at all. What kind of security did you have in mind that wouldn't get in the way?
Right now, to access my phone, I push the wake up button on the top and slide my finger across the screen. To access my tablet, I push the same kind of button and then have to play connect the dots. I can get onto my phone much easier than getting onto my tablet. (Add into that that my tablet is a "Cruz" reader that will power itself off when the battery gets low or you don't use it for an hour or so, so pressing the "wake up" button often requires a full reboot to get to the connect the dots stage.) Yes, it's a pain to get into the tablet, and the only reason I have the "connect the dots" is because I got tired of the tabled turning on by itself and running the battery all the way down, so I turned on gesture unlock with the hope it would prevent that from happening.
but the OP I was referring to was saying these types of snooping devices was mandated for young drivers,
He actually said they were required in return for reduced rates. Progressive won't give you the "snapshot" discount without actually installing a snapshot device, so that fits the definition of "required in return for a reduced rate."
... and I was saying I'd never heard they were required for insurance coverage, even for young people.
I've never heard of it just to get insurance, either, but in return for reduced rates, absolutely. So that's the info I provided links for.
Flo from Progressive is on my TV on a regular basis advertising "snapshot". It's a dongle that plugs into the car computer to record how you are driving. In exchange, you get a lower rate for insurance -- if your Big Brother device concurs.
It isn't a great leap until it goes the other way. Pay more unless you install "snapshot". In fact, that's exactly what is happening, it is just worded backwards.
Other companies do different things. I recall there being a company that gives young drivers a discount for installing a video/tattletale device so parents can monitor their driving habits, but I can't find it now.
Given the rarity of any terrorist attack before the TSA existed I would say that it is far more reasonable for the TSA to have the burden of proof why they should be allowed to continue to exist.
Because those events you classify as rare before TSA existes are even rarer now. That doesn't prove a causal link, but there are definitely fewer attacks on aircraft than before. For awhile, it seemed like there was a nutjob trying to get to Cuba in a commercial airliner every few weeks or so. I don't remember when the last one I heard of was... No, it probably wasn't "every few weeks", but it was a lot more common. And someone else has posted the data showing why it is better to prevent than to clean up after such things.
And you assume that includes continuing ineffective and invasive searches why again?
Because if they don't do them, and someone gets through with something that is used to hijack a plane, they will be sued by the heirs and/or surviviors for being negligent in providing security. I think I said that already.
Further, anyone who buys into the current process won't accept an airport manager who proclaims that the current process is ineffectual and he's going to run things much looser.
That you and many others don't think the current measures are effective and/or reasonable won't be part of the equation. The lawyers run the asylum.
I was going to post an example from the newspaper last week but didn't. So: a guy goes to a bar and gets drunk. He drives home, and in the process runs into someone else. That person is seriously injured, unable to work, and will require a lifetime of managed care. That costs money. $5 million, to be exact. The lawyer sues the bar for not cutting him off, which apparently they didn't. Ok so far, I think there's a reasonable case. BUT. The lawyer also includes the bar the drunk was at PRIOR to the last one. The reason the drunk left that bar was because they CUT HIM OFF, which is what the law requires. Somehow, the previous bar should have known the impaired guy (he wasn't legally drunk yet) was going to go to another bar where they wouldn't cut him off and done something to stop him.
Put searches back in airports where they can apply some common sense, something that is not found in DC where the TSA edicts emanate from.
You assume that will happen. You assume that they have common sense (which is really not that common), and that those with common sense will overrule the lawyers on staff, or the local citizens on whatever airport board there might be who think that there must have been a reason the TSA did things the way they did.
The only reason I can see that returning the security process to the airports might result in a more reasonable system is if the airport cannot afford the staff to do it the same way the TSA did. That will probably result in increased fees on tickets and higher gate rentals for the airlines, even above the initial increases just to have a "common sense" system. And probably increased demands for federal funding of airport security, which will cost more and put us right back where we are now.
Now, that is not the case. In fact even at the time one flight was brought down short of target as soon as passengers figured it out.
If I was a passenger on United 93, I think I would have much preferred that someone on the ground at a security checkpoint stopped the guys who wanted to take over before we left. I think flying the airplane into the gound and killing everyone on board to stop it would be my last choice.
No-one wants themselves to die, but even fewer want to die while taking a bunch of innocent people with them.
Nineteen fellows who felt ok dying while taking a bunch of innocent people with them were sufficient for 9/11. You are right. That's a small number. It's usually just one required to take out a city bus filled with women and children. That's even a smaller number. One guy walked into the one room Amish schoolhouse.
A plane will not be used as a weapon again.
That's an overly broad assertion. Maybe "a plane filled with arbitrary and unrelated passengers will probably not be used as a weapon again in any way that we can predict". That I'd agree with. But given how easy it is to walk onto the vast majority of the airports and steal an airplane or three, I don't agree that one will never be used as a weapon again. A Cessna 182 with a couple hundred pounds of C4 surrounded by ball bearings would do a pretty good job taking out a football stadium of people, even if there is a TFR over it. Crossing the few miles it would take to breach the prohibited space and crash boom would take much less time than the time it takes for an F16 intercept to happen. Finding an unattended C182 to fly off to a field somewhere to load up is trivial. At my local airport, there are even cargo helicopters (the life flight kind, and the "dump water on forest fires" kind) sitting on the ramp. Even if they are alarmed, it would take longer for the cops to show up than it would to start one up and fly it away, and they'll hold a butt-load of explosives. Or can dump a basket full of acid or other nasty stuff on a lot of people.
Pre-9/11 security seemed to be good enough to prevent regular bombings, plenty good for me.
Was it good enough for the people on United 93?
In a world with a pre-9/11 mindset, maybe it was good enough. We're faced with something called "progress", however. The information on how to make bombs is much easier to find, for just one thing.
What you need to remember is that it really wasn't the passengers that stopped either the shoe or underwear bomber from being successful. Yes, the passengers reported the activity and stopped it, but if either of those fellows had been one bit smarter, they'd have gone to the lavatory where nobody was watching to light things off. And if they had been two bits smarter, they'd have had working bombs. According to this, the shoe bomb only failed because the fuse was damp due to either the rain in Paris or foot persperation.
Relying on other passengers to stop a bombing on an airplane is relying on the bad guys being stupid. How do you plan on other passengers stopping someone from detonating a bomb when the bomber is alone and unobserved and has a working bomb?
Of course, you need to remember that the underwear bomber got on his plane in Schipol (not in the US), and the shoe bomber got in his plane in Paris (also not the US). And that the shoe bomber was actually in the custody of the French National Police because he wouldn't answer the airline screener's question and was, in general, a really suspicious fellow. But THEY LET HIM GO, including the bombs that were in his shoes. Apparently, it is legal to walk around Paris with bombs in your shoes. I don't know that TSA is the point of failure in these examples.
The only area in which they left for any room for personal judgment was lie detection; that's pretty much all they wanted us for.
Yes, that's the job of the jury. You get to decide who is telling the truth and who is not, and whether the facts based on those truths support the charges as written in the law.
So when I told them I think some laws are unjust and would not be able to render a verdict I found sufficiently unjust,
That's not the job of the jury. That's the job of the courts. If a law is unjust, the finding that it is unjust should apply to ALL, not just a lucky defendant that happens to get you on the jury. It should be the defendent who takes the law to court and gets it overturned, which makes for a formal ruling that other defendants can use.
You wouldn't want the baliff pulling out his gun and shooting the defendant if the jury comes back with a verdict of guilt in a murder case, would you? That's not his job. The court reporter doesn't ask questions of the people who testify. The judge isn't supposed to ask questions of the defendant or witnesses, either. That's not their jobs.
If we want justice, we need to understand intention and apply reason to a situation, not mechanically apply a list of technicalities.
But if you have prejudged that a law is unjust and improper, then you are not worrying about intentions, you are applying a unilateral veto, in effect, to legislation passed by the elected representatives and signed by the executive branch. Yes, the courts are the overseers of that process, but not the juries in a criminal trial. The courts where laws themselves are judged are the place to get them overturned.
Intent should be part of the consideration. If you consider intent, then you have to be ready to apply the law if the intent was to commit the crime, and only say "not guilty" if the intent wasn't there -- or the actually didn't do it. Sometimes intent isn't important, or changes the charges but doesn't negate a crime.
If you say "I won't find anyone guilty of that law because I don't like it", then you are not doing your job as a jurur.
The TSA needs to be totally disbanded and security taken over by the airports.
If security is handed back to the airports (where it used to be), you can be sure that they'll receive the same authority to conduct the same operations that TSA is doing today, with exemptions from lawsuits for doing it. If an airport were to relax the standards from fear of lawsuits from passengers offended by being searched, they'd be sued by families of anyone who died or was injured in an aircraft that was blown up by someone who smuggled the explosives through that airport's security.
When something bad happens, everyone involved gets sued. Right now, the airports have no responsibility for and no activities involved in screening passengers. Put them in the liability chain and see if they don't do everything they can to protect themselves, including lobbying for legislation and keeping the searches going.
Can some one point to the airport exclusion? Or where congress amended the constitution to allow this?
They didn't need to. The prohibition is against "unreasonable" searches. That means reasonable ones are allowed. Guess who gets to define "unreasonable"? Well, "reasonable" has been defined to include "voluntary", and "voluntary" has been defined to mean "going past this point" when there is a sign that says "by going past this point you are subject to search."
The same kind of argument against TSA searches would apply to searches conducted at the entrance to military bases.
Bruce's appearance had already been cancelled last week, at least by Friday, when the slashdot story about how it was mandatory to use facebook was posted. The FA didn't say why, just that it had been.
The Committee on Oversight and Reform's webpage, linked to in the article, says otherwise:
Members will solicit questions from the public via their Facebook pages to ask TSA officials at the hearing.
Where is the word "only", or even the implication of "only", in that statement? It isn't there. Congressmen aren't going to shut off their phones or stop reading email or refuse to open their mail until Tuesday just because this webpage says that comments can be sent via facebook.
Congressmen have web contact forms listed here. Did anyone jump up and down and rant about how congressmen wouldn't take phone calls or letters or regular email anymore when that page went up saying "contact your congressman here"? And did they all use "troll" and "flamebait" to mod people who told them that congressmen will still have email and phones and letters and whatever even with a new way of communication set up, like someone is doing here? I don't think so.
No, I think most rational people can see a statement that "you can do X" as meaning "you can do X", not as "Y and Z are no longer allowed." This article happens to deal with three hot buttons for slashdot (facebook, politicians and the TSA), so any possible rant material blows up into a full flame, and anyone who tries to put out the fire is modded "troll" or "flamebait" as retaliation.
The only way this conflagration could have been worse is if the article said that congressmen will accept comments about the TSA using the iPod app for facebook.
The real complaint some people are making here is that a supposedly "public" discussion is taking place in a closed off, walled off private community.
That's not true. The disussion is taking place at the hearing. Facebook is being used as ONE METHOD of sending questions that you want asked to your congressman. That's what the fine article says: congressmen will accept questions via facebook. Not "congressmen will discuss the issue with their constituents only via facebook".
"Members will solicit questions from the public via their Facebook pages to ask TSA officials at the hearing."
RTFA. Facebook is the only option. There is no suggestion that letters submitted to your congressman via email or US Post will be considered. In fact, there is no suggestion that questions will even be solicited from the audience.
I read TFA. Now you read it. There is no "only" in that statement. It's an affirmative statement of action, not a denial. Do you really believe that a congressman will tell his staffer "go to facebook" if the staffer says "you ought to ask TSA..."? Don't be stupid. It doesn't need to be said. Just like it doesn't need to be said that a congressman can use any other means of communications to get questions.
Do you really think that when someone tells you that you can now post messages on his facebook wall that he will no longer accept phone calls or email? He may note accept them from you anymore, after you jump down his throat for being on facebook at all, and then flame him for deciding to make his sole means of communicating with anyone via facebook.
The only thing that the statement you quoted says is that there will be a facebook method of communication. It does not eliminate anything.
But for misdemeanor 'sex offenses' like indecent exposure or public urination, there isn't a manditory registration, is there?
I wouldn't know. You'll have to ask someone who thinks that this is a critical part of the point being made and wants to look it up. It was an offhand example of a reason a Walmart would be better than a school for some people.
And I don't know that you have to be registered to have an exclusion from schools.
You could also have an order of protection against you for beating up a school teacher and you can't go within 300 feet of him, and he's in the classroom next to the poll. Whatever.
Yeah, electronic communication that already arrives in an easily indexed, searchable format.
Yeah, EMAIL.
Facebook users all have something in common: they are willing to surrender privacy to have a substandard Web hosting presence.
That is your misperception. Not all of them are willing to do that. Many do. And for them, what you call a "substandard web hosting presence" really means "apps that work well enough for what I want to do, all in one convenient place, that all my friends can use too, and I don't have to program or maintain them". Wasn't it you that complained about my condescening tone? Isn't your attitude the same thing? Whose standard applies, yours or the people who use them?
This is just another group that can be treated as a group.
I've seen some of the comments. I would be really hesitant to call them "group think" or assign any "group" to them at all.
Real individuals are quite hard to market to.
Yes, I am nearly impossible to market to, and yet I have a facebook account. Not a single one of the ads they've shown me has meant anything. They may be getting paid to show them, but so what? Meow.
I believe the problem is that you are forced to use a single company,
How so? You can use your telephone to call your congressman, that's a different company than facebook. You can send a letter via USPS. I know USPS isn't facebook. You can FAX him. You can take the bus over to his local office and chat with staff, if they are there. You can send him email (if he has it) or use the congressional web interface to send messages to your congressman. Facebook can't censor any of that.
Also, Facebook still gets benefit of being validated as a proper communication channel for constituents, therefore entrenching their position of control over everyone's communications.
Facebook controls communications made using their system. That isn't "everyone's communications" by a long shot.
Slashdot Mirror
it is derivative, just fails the substantially different test.
It is derivative in the same way that a published novel is a derivative work from the version the author sent to the editor to be published. In other words, NOT.
This way CBS is preserving their (C) but allowing the fan base to continue.
According to the summary, CBS is blocking "an episode" using the script, not "all production of the series". Thus, CBS is preserving their copyright and allowing the fanbase to continue, just not continue with that script.
I'd say "RTFA", but the NY Times link requires a login.
"Published?" They weren't selling copies of the script, they were making a Phase II episode out of it. That's a "derivative work", not "publishing."
Since TV scripts are the means of creating a TV episode, the episode filmed from that script is hardly a derivative work.
If you take the characters from that script and use them in a different way, THAT'S a derivative work.
Now, if you're asking if some of us want to live in a world where it's OK to make new works derivative of 40-year-old prior art, then the answer is OF COURSE WE FUCKING DO.
And if you're asking if some of us want you to take material that wasn't considered suitable for production away from the owner and produce it anyway, then the answer is OF COURSE WE DON'T.
After all, if you are a citizen (naturalized or otherwise), you will have a ssn.
Not necessarily. You don't just get one issued at birth, although the state would love to do that. You have to apply.
And your employer needs your ssn to employ you, pay you and deduct your taxes, for verification, etc.
Employment comes after the offer and acceptance. Until you are an employee, you don't need to tell them. When they need it to deal with Social Security, they will get it. For "verification"? Well, that's illegal too. SSN Is not to be used for Identity. My card says this in black and white right on the front.
And if you don't have one, it would call your naturalization (and your entire immigration status/history) into question.
If a potential employer questions your citizenship because you won't tell him your SSN until you are hired, you will have worse problems than the interview awaiting you.
Certainly the conclusion that God put dinosaur bones on earth to test Christian's faith sounds ridiculous, but how else would a young earth creationist explain them?
It is only ridiculous if you dicount the value of faith. The other obvious explanation is that He put dinosaur fossils (not bones, rocks shaped like bones) on Earth to give the paleontologists something to do to entertain themselves. Some people like jigsaw puzzles made out of cut up pictures on cardboard, some like 3-D jigsaw puzzles made out of rock.
He loves us and wants us to be happy. Who is happier than a paleontologist climbing out of a dig clutching a rock he thinks is a Dododecathon kneecap that nobody has ever seen before?
The TR-107 could scan EM radiation, temperature, and barometric pressure.
Ok. Scanning EM I can understand. Scanning temperature is a little harder, but IR sensors and bolometers do allow this.
How do you scan barometric pressure? It's trivial to measure it where you are, but how do you know what it is "over there"?
I was a Jehovah's Witness for the first 30-odd years of my life, and neither me nor the many hundreds of other Jehovah's Witnesses that I knew would have ever been offended by the mention of birthdays in a test. Why are they being over-sensitive in retarded ways?
They aren't.
This whole proposal is coming from the professional educators, not the people the professional educators are claiming might be offended.
Professional educators are trying very hard to find ways to keep test scores from dropping so they won't look like failures at education and they can keep their jobs. Every way except actually teaching things that are hard and cause lack of self-esteem in children who would have a hard time learning something hard.
Question: A man walks into his house and flips the switch to his 60-watt lightbulb for 8 hours. How many kWh does the lightbulb use?
Answer: you cannot answer the question because the lightbulb is a modern CFL that is rated at 60W for light output but uses much less energy. The amount of energy depends on the specific brand and how modern the bulb is. Oops, the correct answer is "close to zero" because the CFL just burned out, but the electronics in the base still draw current anyway. (For "lightbulbs" that last so long, I seem to be replacing them on a regular basis.)
More important, why are we letting the mouth breathers and knuckle draggers dictate what our children will experience?
Slow down. City-mandated standardized progress tests should not be the only thing that your children experience. You get to dictate what they experience at home. The "professional educators" get to dictate what they experience at school.
That latter statement is why "we" are letting TMB and KD dictate, because we've turned the education of the children over to professionals that get paid to keep studying what the best way to educate children is. "Common sense" would mean an end to almost all education degrees and grants for education research.
I lived through the change from "old math" to "new math". I saw the math that kids were being taught a few years ago and it bore no resemblance to math as far as I could tell. I no longer wonder why high school graduates can't figure out your change when they sell you a burger.
Now, for the people who are insulting the yokels upstate and blaming them for this, if you read the fine article, you'd note that it is New York City officials calling for this, not New York State or Syracuse or Albany or Buffalo or Rochester.
Are we in fact trying to homogenize our young into a consistent state of profound stupidity? Is that now the goal of public education?
We are trying to equalize outcomes because equal outcomes is a measurement proxy for equal opportunity. If all the kids get the same score on tests, then they all obviously had equal opportunity to learn. (If there are 5% of male students playing school-organized softball then "equal opportunity" means that there will be 5% of female students playing school-organized softball. Even if only 1% of the female students want to play softball. This IS how schools are evaluated in Oregon.)
Equalizing outcomes means slowing down the faster learners, thus bringing the average down, further lowering the "average standards", slowing the faster learners down even more. We're seeing the unanticipated consequences of valuing self-esteem over knowledge.
You could always complain about the-city-formerly-known-as-New-Amsterdam.
They had to remove all mention of that city because it was insensitive to Morey Amsterdam.
Why? Good security doesn't have to get in the users way.
Any security, good or bad, adds complication to the system and thus "gets in the user's way", compared to no security at all. What kind of security did you have in mind that wouldn't get in the way?
Right now, to access my phone, I push the wake up button on the top and slide my finger across the screen. To access my tablet, I push the same kind of button and then have to play connect the dots. I can get onto my phone much easier than getting onto my tablet. (Add into that that my tablet is a "Cruz" reader that will power itself off when the battery gets low or you don't use it for an hour or so, so pressing the "wake up" button often requires a full reboot to get to the connect the dots stage.) Yes, it's a pain to get into the tablet, and the only reason I have the "connect the dots" is because I got tired of the tabled turning on by itself and running the battery all the way down, so I turned on gesture unlock with the hope it would prevent that from happening.
but the OP I was referring to was saying these types of snooping devices was mandated for young drivers,
He actually said they were required in return for reduced rates. Progressive won't give you the "snapshot" discount without actually installing a snapshot device, so that fits the definition of "required in return for a reduced rate."
... and I was saying I'd never heard they were required for insurance coverage, even for young people.
I've never heard of it just to get insurance, either, but in return for reduced rates, absolutely. So that's the info I provided links for.
It isn't a great leap until it goes the other way. Pay more unless you install "snapshot". In fact, that's exactly what is happening, it is just worded backwards.
Other companies do different things. I recall there being a company that gives young drivers a discount for installing a video/tattletale device so parents can monitor their driving habits, but I can't find it now.
Given the rarity of any terrorist attack before the TSA existed I would say that it is far more reasonable for the TSA to have the burden of proof why they should be allowed to continue to exist.
Because those events you classify as rare before TSA existes are even rarer now. That doesn't prove a causal link, but there are definitely fewer attacks on aircraft than before. For awhile, it seemed like there was a nutjob trying to get to Cuba in a commercial airliner every few weeks or so. I don't remember when the last one I heard of was... No, it probably wasn't "every few weeks", but it was a lot more common. And someone else has posted the data showing why it is better to prevent than to clean up after such things.
And you assume that includes continuing ineffective and invasive searches why again?
Because if they don't do them, and someone gets through with something that is used to hijack a plane, they will be sued by the heirs and/or surviviors for being negligent in providing security. I think I said that already.
Further, anyone who buys into the current process won't accept an airport manager who proclaims that the current process is ineffectual and he's going to run things much looser.
That you and many others don't think the current measures are effective and/or reasonable won't be part of the equation. The lawyers run the asylum.
I was going to post an example from the newspaper last week but didn't. So: a guy goes to a bar and gets drunk. He drives home, and in the process runs into someone else. That person is seriously injured, unable to work, and will require a lifetime of managed care. That costs money. $5 million, to be exact. The lawyer sues the bar for not cutting him off, which apparently they didn't. Ok so far, I think there's a reasonable case. BUT. The lawyer also includes the bar the drunk was at PRIOR to the last one. The reason the drunk left that bar was because they CUT HIM OFF, which is what the law requires. Somehow, the previous bar should have known the impaired guy (he wasn't legally drunk yet) was going to go to another bar where they wouldn't cut him off and done something to stop him.
Put searches back in airports where they can apply some common sense, something that is not found in DC where the TSA edicts emanate from.
You assume that will happen. You assume that they have common sense (which is really not that common), and that those with common sense will overrule the lawyers on staff, or the local citizens on whatever airport board there might be who think that there must have been a reason the TSA did things the way they did.
The only reason I can see that returning the security process to the airports might result in a more reasonable system is if the airport cannot afford the staff to do it the same way the TSA did. That will probably result in increased fees on tickets and higher gate rentals for the airlines, even above the initial increases just to have a "common sense" system. And probably increased demands for federal funding of airport security, which will cost more and put us right back where we are now.
Now, that is not the case. In fact even at the time one flight was brought down short of target as soon as passengers figured it out.
If I was a passenger on United 93, I think I would have much preferred that someone on the ground at a security checkpoint stopped the guys who wanted to take over before we left. I think flying the airplane into the gound and killing everyone on board to stop it would be my last choice.
No-one wants themselves to die, but even fewer want to die while taking a bunch of innocent people with them.
Nineteen fellows who felt ok dying while taking a bunch of innocent people with them were sufficient for 9/11. You are right. That's a small number. It's usually just one required to take out a city bus filled with women and children. That's even a smaller number. One guy walked into the one room Amish schoolhouse.
A plane will not be used as a weapon again.
That's an overly broad assertion. Maybe "a plane filled with arbitrary and unrelated passengers will probably not be used as a weapon again in any way that we can predict". That I'd agree with. But given how easy it is to walk onto the vast majority of the airports and steal an airplane or three, I don't agree that one will never be used as a weapon again. A Cessna 182 with a couple hundred pounds of C4 surrounded by ball bearings would do a pretty good job taking out a football stadium of people, even if there is a TFR over it. Crossing the few miles it would take to breach the prohibited space and crash boom would take much less time than the time it takes for an F16 intercept to happen. Finding an unattended C182 to fly off to a field somewhere to load up is trivial. At my local airport, there are even cargo helicopters (the life flight kind, and the "dump water on forest fires" kind) sitting on the ramp. Even if they are alarmed, it would take longer for the cops to show up than it would to start one up and fly it away, and they'll hold a butt-load of explosives. Or can dump a basket full of acid or other nasty stuff on a lot of people.
Pre-9/11 security seemed to be good enough to prevent regular bombings, plenty good for me.
Was it good enough for the people on United 93?
In a world with a pre-9/11 mindset, maybe it was good enough. We're faced with something called "progress", however. The information on how to make bombs is much easier to find, for just one thing.
What you need to remember is that it really wasn't the passengers that stopped either the shoe or underwear bomber from being successful. Yes, the passengers reported the activity and stopped it, but if either of those fellows had been one bit smarter, they'd have gone to the lavatory where nobody was watching to light things off. And if they had been two bits smarter, they'd have had working bombs. According to this, the shoe bomb only failed because the fuse was damp due to either the rain in Paris or foot persperation.
Relying on other passengers to stop a bombing on an airplane is relying on the bad guys being stupid. How do you plan on other passengers stopping someone from detonating a bomb when the bomber is alone and unobserved and has a working bomb?
Of course, you need to remember that the underwear bomber got on his plane in Schipol (not in the US), and the shoe bomber got in his plane in Paris (also not the US). And that the shoe bomber was actually in the custody of the French National Police because he wouldn't answer the airline screener's question and was, in general, a really suspicious fellow. But THEY LET HIM GO, including the bombs that were in his shoes. Apparently, it is legal to walk around Paris with bombs in your shoes. I don't know that TSA is the point of failure in these examples.
The only area in which they left for any room for personal judgment was lie detection; that's pretty much all they wanted us for.
Yes, that's the job of the jury. You get to decide who is telling the truth and who is not, and whether the facts based on those truths support the charges as written in the law.
So when I told them I think some laws are unjust and would not be able to render a verdict I found sufficiently unjust,
That's not the job of the jury. That's the job of the courts. If a law is unjust, the finding that it is unjust should apply to ALL, not just a lucky defendant that happens to get you on the jury. It should be the defendent who takes the law to court and gets it overturned, which makes for a formal ruling that other defendants can use.
You wouldn't want the baliff pulling out his gun and shooting the defendant if the jury comes back with a verdict of guilt in a murder case, would you? That's not his job. The court reporter doesn't ask questions of the people who testify. The judge isn't supposed to ask questions of the defendant or witnesses, either. That's not their jobs.
If we want justice, we need to understand intention and apply reason to a situation, not mechanically apply a list of technicalities.
But if you have prejudged that a law is unjust and improper, then you are not worrying about intentions, you are applying a unilateral veto, in effect, to legislation passed by the elected representatives and signed by the executive branch. Yes, the courts are the overseers of that process, but not the juries in a criminal trial. The courts where laws themselves are judged are the place to get them overturned.
Intent should be part of the consideration. If you consider intent, then you have to be ready to apply the law if the intent was to commit the crime, and only say "not guilty" if the intent wasn't there -- or the actually didn't do it. Sometimes intent isn't important, or changes the charges but doesn't negate a crime.
If you say "I won't find anyone guilty of that law because I don't like it", then you are not doing your job as a jurur.
The TSA needs to be totally disbanded and security taken over by the airports.
If security is handed back to the airports (where it used to be), you can be sure that they'll receive the same authority to conduct the same operations that TSA is doing today, with exemptions from lawsuits for doing it. If an airport were to relax the standards from fear of lawsuits from passengers offended by being searched, they'd be sued by families of anyone who died or was injured in an aircraft that was blown up by someone who smuggled the explosives through that airport's security.
When something bad happens, everyone involved gets sued. Right now, the airports have no responsibility for and no activities involved in screening passengers. Put them in the liability chain and see if they don't do everything they can to protect themselves, including lobbying for legislation and keeping the searches going.
Can some one point to the airport exclusion? Or where congress amended the constitution to allow this?
They didn't need to. The prohibition is against "unreasonable" searches. That means reasonable ones are allowed. Guess who gets to define "unreasonable"? Well, "reasonable" has been defined to include "voluntary", and "voluntary" has been defined to mean "going past this point" when there is a sign that says "by going past this point you are subject to search."
The same kind of argument against TSA searches would apply to searches conducted at the entrance to military bases.
Bruce's appearance had already been cancelled last week, at least by Friday, when the slashdot story about how it was mandatory to use facebook was posted. The FA didn't say why, just that it had been.
The Committee on Oversight and Reform's webpage, linked to in the article, says otherwise: Members will solicit questions from the public via their Facebook pages to ask TSA officials at the hearing.
Where is the word "only", or even the implication of "only", in that statement? It isn't there. Congressmen aren't going to shut off their phones or stop reading email or refuse to open their mail until Tuesday just because this webpage says that comments can be sent via facebook.
Congressmen have web contact forms listed here. Did anyone jump up and down and rant about how congressmen wouldn't take phone calls or letters or regular email anymore when that page went up saying "contact your congressman here"? And did they all use "troll" and "flamebait" to mod people who told them that congressmen will still have email and phones and letters and whatever even with a new way of communication set up, like someone is doing here? I don't think so.
No, I think most rational people can see a statement that "you can do X" as meaning "you can do X", not as "Y and Z are no longer allowed." This article happens to deal with three hot buttons for slashdot (facebook, politicians and the TSA), so any possible rant material blows up into a full flame, and anyone who tries to put out the fire is modded "troll" or "flamebait" as retaliation.
The only way this conflagration could have been worse is if the article said that congressmen will accept comments about the TSA using the iPod app for facebook.
The real complaint some people are making here is that a supposedly "public" discussion is taking place in a closed off, walled off private community.
That's not true. The disussion is taking place at the hearing. Facebook is being used as ONE METHOD of sending questions that you want asked to your congressman. That's what the fine article says: congressmen will accept questions via facebook. Not "congressmen will discuss the issue with their constituents only via facebook".
"Members will solicit questions from the public via their Facebook pages to ask TSA officials at the hearing." RTFA. Facebook is the only option. There is no suggestion that letters submitted to your congressman via email or US Post will be considered. In fact, there is no suggestion that questions will even be solicited from the audience.
I read TFA. Now you read it. There is no "only" in that statement. It's an affirmative statement of action, not a denial. Do you really believe that a congressman will tell his staffer "go to facebook" if the staffer says "you ought to ask TSA ..."? Don't be stupid. It doesn't need to be said. Just like it doesn't need to be said that a congressman can use any other means of communications to get questions.
Do you really think that when someone tells you that you can now post messages on his facebook wall that he will no longer accept phone calls or email? He may note accept them from you anymore, after you jump down his throat for being on facebook at all, and then flame him for deciding to make his sole means of communicating with anyone via facebook.
The only thing that the statement you quoted says is that there will be a facebook method of communication. It does not eliminate anything.
But for misdemeanor 'sex offenses' like indecent exposure or public urination, there isn't a manditory registration, is there?
I wouldn't know. You'll have to ask someone who thinks that this is a critical part of the point being made and wants to look it up. It was an offhand example of a reason a Walmart would be better than a school for some people.
And I don't know that you have to be registered to have an exclusion from schools.
You could also have an order of protection against you for beating up a school teacher and you can't go within 300 feet of him, and he's in the classroom next to the poll. Whatever.
Yeah, electronic communication that already arrives in an easily indexed, searchable format.
Yeah, EMAIL.
Facebook users all have something in common: they are willing to surrender privacy to have a substandard Web hosting presence.
That is your misperception. Not all of them are willing to do that. Many do. And for them, what you call a "substandard web hosting presence" really means "apps that work well enough for what I want to do, all in one convenient place, that all my friends can use too, and I don't have to program or maintain them". Wasn't it you that complained about my condescening tone? Isn't your attitude the same thing? Whose standard applies, yours or the people who use them?
This is just another group that can be treated as a group.
I've seen some of the comments. I would be really hesitant to call them "group think" or assign any "group" to them at all.
Real individuals are quite hard to market to.
Yes, I am nearly impossible to market to, and yet I have a facebook account. Not a single one of the ads they've shown me has meant anything. They may be getting paid to show them, but so what? Meow.
Taking my money is not OK, but taking my privacy is?
How does using facebook to post a message on the committee wall in the manner I suggested violate your privacy in any way?
I believe the problem is that you are forced to use a single company,
How so? You can use your telephone to call your congressman, that's a different company than facebook. You can send a letter via USPS. I know USPS isn't facebook. You can FAX him. You can take the bus over to his local office and chat with staff, if they are there. You can send him email (if he has it) or use the congressional web interface to send messages to your congressman. Facebook can't censor any of that.
Also, Facebook still gets benefit of being validated as a proper communication channel for constituents, therefore entrenching their position of control over everyone's communications.
Facebook controls communications made using their system. That isn't "everyone's communications" by a long shot.