I had a friend in Europe who lock himself out of his house once, he was just going to the local store to get a drink. As he was climbing into the window, police stopped him and asked for ID. He explained his situation, they checked the name on the house with his story and other things, and helped him in with the condition that he had to provide ID once inside. He did that, and before they left, they ticketed him a fine for not having ID (at first). I don't want to live like that.
I am unclear on what part of that story is how you'd not like to live.
Would you rather the cops simply arrested the fellow who looked like he was breaking into a house? Would you rather they ignored the fellow who looked like he was breaking into a house?
I think helping him upon the condition that he proved who he was when he could is a very reasonable response to the situation.
And I think having to carry an ID in a socialist country is a small issue compared to having to pay the taxes and having to work for everyone else's benefit. Then having to stand in line to get the benefits that you've paid for because so many other people get them for free.
Here in the US we already have a national ID -- it's called a passport.
Despite what you learn from fables in grade school, rights come from society.
That's the fable. Any "right" that comes from society can be taken back, and that means it certainly isn't a right.
Rights require recognition from society, but that's not where they come from. Yes, people can violate your rights, but the fact that they don't violate them doesn't mean they are the source.
No, "we" didn't. We got the responsibility for the people who pay taxes to pay for other people's healthcare. The difference is that the government doesn't create rights, they can only infringe upon the rights we already have, and create "entitlement programs" that some people mistake for rights because other people have to pay for them.
...and make the source code available (via the web?) for the GNU parts. Offering the source for the GNU packages wouldn't cut into their sales much,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the GPL etc require source distribution only for the software covered by GPL that someone has provided to you? If they haven't provided a binary of the updated software, are they required to provide updated SOURCE for that software?
Does the GPL REALLY mean that someone is required to support the code you got from them forever for free? Can I call up Walnut Creek and demand that they send me a CD of the all the updates for all the software I bought from them?
Depends on whether ATC is relying on primary or secondary radar and if both are functional.
I've flown through areas where the NOTAM says "primary radar OTS", so a lost transponder means invisible. There are areas where primary radar doesn't provide as much coverage as secondary, so again, invisible.
OTOH, once primary radar shows you, than can identify you by having you turn specific directions. I don't recall if they can stick a tag on you with just primary, and you certainly won't have automatic altitude info, but they'll know who you are.
The only downside is that stereo phono jacks have more noise than separate RCA jacks,
Sigh. RCA jacks are PHONO jacks. The small connector on the end of your earphones is a PHONE plug, either 1/2 inch, 3.5mm, or 2.5mm.
PhonO jacks are harder to use because they are a full friction fit, thus are intended for longer term connections even though they tend to suffer from corrosion and oxidation. PhonE jacks are simple to use and usually considered self-cleaning, for short term connections. They slide in easy and have a click-fit.
but by using separate RCA cables instead of a stereo phono cable, you'll eliminate most of the noise since the noise is mostly created in the cable,
Noise is more due to the sometimes poor grounding of a PHONE connector (there is no compression fit like the PHONO connector has) than the cable, and you can get good cables with PHONE connections on the end. OTH, RCA connectors often corrode while in use and need a few twists every so often to regain contact. That's not a function of the cable, either.
Any time you build on top of quirks and such that deviate from standardized protocols, upgrading will be hard.
Don't for a minute think that FOSS doesn't have its own quirks and deviations. Even just the "extensions" can be viewed as quirks, since that make moving from one system to another more difficult.
there is much digital waste to be cleaned up on exit from the proprietary.
This is not a proprietary/FOSS issue. Every programmer knows that version 2 of the code is better than version 1. More than once I've "rm *.o" and gotten rid of more than just the objects on the way to recompiling them all, and every time that happens, the code I write to replace what went away is tighter, cleaner, and runs faster. I already know what works, I already know the processes, and I usually come up with a better solution to doing the same thing. (Of course I never benefit from that now, since it taught me to use RCS...)
This would happen with a change from Proprietary A to Proprietary B just as much as from Proprietary to FOSS. Or FOSS to proprietary.
Your 2% is misleading. What that means is that of 100 couples who have sex with a condom regularly for a year, 2 will have an unwanted pregnancy. It does not mean that if you have sex with a condom 50 times, you are statistically likely to get pregnant.
If you have sex with a condom, you won't get pregnant. If you have sex and use a condom, there is a 2% chance of failure. Every time. The first time. The fiftieth time. Just as in every independent result statistic, the stats are the same every time.
I didn't say you were "statistically likely" to get pregnant after fifty tries. That's your misinterpretation of standard terminology.
As for the "you are likely to get pregnant" from the other commenter. Yes, and the natural result of pregnancy is a baby, even if you don't consider the thing inside the woman a human life. If you aren't ready to accept the natural consequences of the result of an act, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that act. That's part of being mature and "growing up" and being able to make decisions.
The only reason abstinence does not work is because people don't use it.
It's like saying that your microwave oven is broken because a can of tomato soup sitting on the counter isn't getting hot. You have to open the can of soup and put it in the microwave, and then turn the microwave on, before you can expect the soup to get hot.
Abstinence works, when used, 100% of the time. Condoms are what, 98% WHEN USED. Why don't people ever say "condoms don't work", because condoms, like abstinence, don't work when they aren't used?
I'm sure someone can come up with a car analogy now.
Many teens have sex yet their lives don't fall apart after that.
And some people win the lottery, but a lot more do not. Yes, some teens win the lottery and don't wind up pregnant or worse, but that doesn't mean they don't have emotional scars from intimate relationships they weren't ready for. So then later in life, they don't have the intimate relationship because they've learned that sex is just something to do for fun.
The problem is that "having sex" and "having babies" have been so decoupled as cause and effect. The fact is that every time you have sex, a baby can be the result. (Even with condoms, a 2% chance.) If you aren't ready for the latter, you shouldn't be doing the former. If you aren't ready for a broken toe, don't drop a hammer on your foot.
Also, I don't get why anybody has the 30+GB ipod. I got an old 4GB Nano, and it has way more than enough space. You don't have to bring every song you own with you.
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Surely, you jest. When I make a cultural reference to something from the movie 'Hoodwinked' ("what do you expect, I was raised by wolves...", "Be prepared...") and the other people go "huh?", don't you think it's important I am able to pull my pocket media player out and play them the movie? Or when someone talks about an auction and I say "I came to america on the atlantic auction", or a math prof talks about a 'radius' and I say "that's WJZ", don't you think I should be able to pull that clip out of The Cocoanuts out and play it for them? Boy, you must be no fun at parties. (Plays clip of door to door salesman sketch from Monty Python).
I know when my son goes to college (if he chooses to) I'll be damned if I'm paying $50k for him to yawn his way through eight different versions of "English for Idiots". Community college, here he comes.
That truly differentiates the purpose of a University and a Community College.
Community colleges are basically trade schools with frills. Become a mechanic. Become a nurse. Become a beautician. Teach enough english classes so the mechanics and nurses and beauticians can be literate and communicate with their peers. Teach the math that mechanics and beauticians etc will use.
Universities are supposed to be for "higher education". Teach people how to be scientists and artists and how to enjoy both. Teach the chemists that there is a world outside the lab. Teach social "scientists" some real scientific techniques.
Those "core courses" that you rebel against were designed to round out your university education so that you could at least experience something outside your comfort zone and maybe pick up a desire to know more. It's a shame that the core courses are taught by people who actually care about the material and expect you to care, too.
Yes, if all you want for your son is a trade education so he can have a job, send him to CC. If you want him to have an education, send him to a Uni so he can take a few classes in english that teach him how to enjoy reading some of the classic literature more, maybe an art class so he appreciates what goes into a painting and it's not just a thing hanging on the wall that "looks nice".
And maybe don't pay the $50k, let him pay for his college himself. He'll appreciate it more.
Your post has quite good points, but you come off looking like an idiot when you equate legislation to jurisdiction,
I made no such equation. The discussion is about the meaning of "reasonable" when it comes to the law. Both legislation and jurisprudence are involved in "the law". The legislature writes laws that rely on "reasonable man" interpretations; the courts adjudicate based on "reasonable man" interpretations.
Or did you just not read up on the facts of the McDonald's coffee case?
Here are the facts that are relevant to this discussion.
At a very young age, most people ("reasonable") learn that hot things can burn them.
Most people understand the term "hot coffee" ("reasonable") refers to something that is HOT, as compared to a "hotdog".
Most people ("reasonable") will understand that hot things tend to become cold things after a certain amount of time, and that asking for something "hot" means what you receive may be hotter than required so that it will still be sufficiently hot when you need to use it.
A reasonable person will exercise extra caution when dealing with things that may cause them harm.
A reasonable person will understand that failure to exercise caution with a hot thing is their own fault, not the fault of someone who sells you what you have asked for.
So, at what point does "reasonable" change from "you are responsible for handling what you have asked to be given" to "sue the hell out of anyone when they give you what you ask for and you drop it?" That's the point of the discussion -- "reasonable expectation of privacy" means exactly what the courts and legislature want it to mean, nothing more and nothing less, even if it doesn't match any reasonable definition used by any reasonable person. Arguing "reasonable expectation" is a loser's game.
In the context of the 4th Amendment, "unreasonable searches and seizures" pretty obviously refers to any search or seizure not accompanied by a warrant.
Well, that's your opinion, but I'd say it pretty obviously doesn't. Had the founders wanted to say that searches and seizures not accompanied by a warrant were unreasonable, they would have. They would have said "unwarranted searches and seizures."
Since they chose not to, there has to be a reason.
It's pretty obvious that a lack of a warrant doesn't make every search unreasonable. If you are stopped for speeding, the visible portions of the interior of your car will be searched without a warrant, and it is unreasonable to expect that the police should have to get one. You may be asked for permission to search the remainder, and if you agree then it would be unreasonable to expect that the police should obtain a warrant prior to searching.
Clearly, "unreasonable" and "without a warrant" are two different concepts.
Nice troll. I like how you slammed an organization of 50,000 people due to what was in all likelihood the flawed understanding of domain names from a marketing graduate twenty years ago, when the top of the line desktop PC was a 486 DX-50...
Not a troll, a fact that supported my claim.
It wasn't a simple misunderstanding of domain names, it was repeated deliberate refusal to fix a known invalid address they were sending allegedly very important and very private email to, each one containing what was obviously a corporate-mandated admission that email didn't always go where it was supposed to. It's hard to claim "email is private" in the face of such an admission from Microsoft. If you think you can blame this all on "a marketing graduate", you're crazy. If you think Microsoft's Partner Program was run by some incompetent wet-behind the ears newbie, you're certifiable.
The "top of the line desktop" comment is pure red herring, and has no relevance to anything.
Accordingly, if you have a post office box, your mail should be open to casual search by the government. Right?
If you say so.
You are aware, I hope, that "the government" does look at every item that goes into your post office box. They also sometimes read postcards that they put into your box. In other words, the outside of every item of mail you receive is open to "casual search" by "the government". I wouldn't try to argue that your conviction for trafficing in drugs was invalid because you were sending shipment details using postcards. You'll probably lose that one.
The insides, however, are protected both by the wrapper the sender has put around the item and federal law. Unless, of course, they happen to drop a box and it splits open, at which time they can also look at what spills out. If your latest shipment of dope arrives in a box with post-office tape holding it together and a note saying "damaged in transit", you probably ought to call your lawyer and have him ready to bail you out.
Or, if you work at a place like I do, and anything that looks like a bill is opened and rerouted to the accounting office. Then it gets routed to me to provide an account number to pay it. And every year I tell them "this isn't a corporate expense..."
The difference there is that it's nearly impossible for someone to accidentally read an e-mail as it sits on/passes through their server or network.
At one point in my life, I owned a.com domain which was similar to a large ISP's.net domain. I also wildcarded the email, which meant all email to that domain came to me. It was hilarious to see the people who could not understand that they were sending email to the wrong place --.com,.net, didn't matter to them. They'd send email containing the most interesting things. They'd actually argue with me when I tried telling them they were using the wrong address.
One of the organizations (and I use that term loosely) that had a problem understanding this was Microsoft. They simply would not take my word for it that nobody at my.com domain was a registered Microsoft marketing parter that wanted their incessant communications. And yet, every one of them contained the boilerplate about the email being intended for the intended recipient and if I wasn't it I should report it immediately. So, apparently as long ago as 1990 Microsoft, for one, was fully aware that "private" email wasn't necessarily private.
That's precisely why it's funny. Of course no one there takes his religion seriously, but our culture forces them to act as though they do.
Hey, if we have to take one religion created by a science fiction writer as serious, we have to take them all as serious. Of course, if Jediism had as visible a spokesman as Tom Cruise, there'd be no question.
When the word "reasonable" is applied to law, it means "What would most reasonable people consider to be the case." My guess is that most people think that e-mail is private.
"Reasonable" must include "knowledgeable in the art" or it is lunacy. How can one correctly "reason" about a subject in which one is completely ignorant?
In the case of the ECPA, the only people who could "reason" that their radio-based communications were private were those ignorant of the properties of radio waves. Even after the legislature ruled they were, they didn't follow up by censuring those who broke the law.
Ignoring competence in determining reasonable opens the door to laws like "pi equals 3.00" and findings like the McDonalds coffee lawsuit. Reasonable people MUST be able to reason "coffee is best served hot" and "hot things burn you". The fact that they aren't expected to is why I say "reasonable expectation" is meaningless. "Reasonable expectation" is what unreasonable people use as a basis for unreasonable demands.
Reasonable people who have an understanding of the art do not believe email is private, just as reasonable people who have an understanding of the art don't think the moon is made of green cheese or that the earth is flat. Passing laws won't change what is truly reasonable to expect, only what unreasonable people expect.
(But you would expect a reasonable level of privacy if you were typing on your computer on said train).
I'm sorry, but "reasonable expectation of privacy" has been a meaningless phrase, probably forever, but at least since the ECPA (electronic communications privacy act). This is the law that gave people using RADIOS with UNENCRYPTED ANALOG signals that could be tuned in on any television set that was more than two years old at the time a "reasonable expectation of privacy". That's the same law that did NOT give Newt Gingrich and (IIRC) John Behner a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when their cellphone conversation was recorded and used for political purposes by someone who wasn't involved in the reception (which was and still is a violation of the Communications Act of 1937).
"'Reasonable expectation of privacy' means exactly what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less", said Anne Hathaway to Mia Wasikowska in 3D, playing at your local theater now.
I do not see how anyone sending email can have a "reasonable expectation of privacy", considering that many large corporations automatically tag every email with a paragraph saying, essentially, "this email is intended only for the intended recipient, and if you aren't the intended recipient please don't read this, just delete it as if it never existed." I'll also point out that there are email systems that run over unencrypted radio links to deliver email to various places in the world, and you have no way of knowing if your "intended recipient" happens to be forwarding your email via one of those. One such linkup uses ham radio, where it would be trivial for a non-ham (who is not subject to part 97 of 47CFR and the language restrictions therein) to create a violation of federal law by sending profanity via email.
I've never understood why he turned on the Net. He was, after all, on the bleeding edge for a time, and seemed poised to take off on a career of internet promotion rather than demotion. Strange.
Because at the time, the "bleeding edge" was not "the web", it was the Internet.
It's hard to remember back when "the web" didn't exist, but today "the web" is all that people think of. Today, when you say "internet", people expect your next words to be "double-u double-u double-u". Try saying "FTP" or "UUCP" and watch their eyes glaze over.
At the time Stoll was "bleeding edge", we hadn't run across the eternal September of AOL. AOL was, at best, their own message boards, much like Compuserve. We're talking about a time before dejaNews, when BITNET ran FTP-by-mail servers, when you needed a valid reason to have an Internet connection to start with. You didn't call your local ISP or cable company to get on the Internet, you called PSI or Network Solutions or someone else and rented a T1... and if you hacked your way onto the net it was through someone's 300 baud HayesStack connected to a serial port somewhere.
Except for having his computer using a Federal Screw Works Votrax unit reading the data as it passed by, the kid in War Games was doing exactly what most of us were doing for fun in those days of "the Internet". (I didn't own my own Votrax until I bought it at a PBS auction for $30 -- nobody else apparently knew what it was or what it was worth at the time.)
And "bleeding edge computer science" at the time was hooking a Votrax up to a phone line and modem and having it call the local pizza place to order pizza. It was billed as the perfect helpmate to the mute person.
But in modern industrialized societies, hypothetically turning off the entire Internet would have secondary effects on those who don't use it in their daily lives or work.
Don't let this scare you or anything, but you know about ham radio? That chunk of spectrum and users whose motto is "when all else fails"? Who spend time supporting disaster relief and emergency services?
A lot of those folks are putting their eggs in the internet basket, relying on the internet to get email through when local communications systems go down. If the local internet goes down, so local email won't get through, they're planning on using HF or VHF radio to get email out of the disaster area and into the hands of state and federal agencies.
If the internet goes down on a large scale, those messages will go nowhere, and the senders won't know that they aren't going anywhere.
What's even scarier is the draconian anti-spam measures being used. If you aren't on the radio user's whitelist and you don't know the secret code to bypass it, your email won't go through. The bounce message doesn't tell you the secret, and it doesn't alert the intended recipient that you tried. You could be Barack Obama himself, and if whitehouse.gov isn't in the recipient's whitelist, your email won't get delivered. Users in a disaster area who want to turn this feature off cannot.
I used to work (I say "work", I was a student) in a building with a cell tower on the top. On the lower floors signal was very patchy:you had to be careful to put your phone on the desk in a 5-bar place. 30cm further left and it might be 0-bar. I'm not sure if this was because the building was big and concrete, or if it was some side-effect of the antenna (which is presumably more concerned with 'across' than 'down').
Or it could be that those anntennas weren't owned by your carrier in the first place and you were trying to pick up a cell tower five miles away.
Slashdot Mirror
I am unclear on what part of that story is how you'd not like to live.
Would you rather the cops simply arrested the fellow who looked like he was breaking into a house? Would you rather they ignored the fellow who looked like he was breaking into a house?
I think helping him upon the condition that he proved who he was when he could is a very reasonable response to the situation.
And I think having to carry an ID in a socialist country is a small issue compared to having to pay the taxes and having to work for everyone else's benefit. Then having to stand in line to get the benefits that you've paid for because so many other people get them for free.
Here in the US we already have a national ID -- it's called a passport.
That's the fable. Any "right" that comes from society can be taken back, and that means it certainly isn't a right.
Rights require recognition from society, but that's not where they come from. Yes, people can violate your rights, but the fact that they don't violate them doesn't mean they are the source.
Rights change over time, as society dictates.
Then they aren't rights, they are privileges.
No, "we" didn't. We got the responsibility for the people who pay taxes to pay for other people's healthcare. The difference is that the government doesn't create rights, they can only infringe upon the rights we already have, and create "entitlement programs" that some people mistake for rights because other people have to pay for them.
That's the problem.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the GPL etc require source distribution only for the software covered by GPL that someone has provided to you? If they haven't provided a binary of the updated software, are they required to provide updated SOURCE for that software?
Does the GPL REALLY mean that someone is required to support the code you got from them forever for free? Can I call up Walnut Creek and demand that they send me a CD of the all the updates for all the software I bought from them?
Depends on whether ATC is relying on primary or secondary radar and if both are functional.
I've flown through areas where the NOTAM says "primary radar OTS", so a lost transponder means invisible. There are areas where primary radar doesn't provide as much coverage as secondary, so again, invisible.
OTOH, once primary radar shows you, than can identify you by having you turn specific directions. I don't recall if they can stick a tag on you with just primary, and you certainly won't have automatic altitude info, but they'll know who you are.
Sigh. RCA jacks are PHONO jacks. The small connector on the end of your earphones is a PHONE plug, either 1/2 inch, 3.5mm, or 2.5mm.
PhonO jacks are harder to use because they are a full friction fit, thus are intended for longer term connections even though they tend to suffer from corrosion and oxidation. PhonE jacks are simple to use and usually considered self-cleaning, for short term connections. They slide in easy and have a click-fit.
but by using separate RCA cables instead of a stereo phono cable, you'll eliminate most of the noise since the noise is mostly created in the cable,
Noise is more due to the sometimes poor grounding of a PHONE connector (there is no compression fit like the PHONO connector has) than the cable, and you can get good cables with PHONE connections on the end. OTH, RCA connectors often corrode while in use and need a few twists every so often to regain contact. That's not a function of the cable, either.
Don't for a minute think that FOSS doesn't have its own quirks and deviations. Even just the "extensions" can be viewed as quirks, since that make moving from one system to another more difficult.
This is not a proprietary/FOSS issue. Every programmer knows that version 2 of the code is better than version 1. More than once I've "rm * .o" and gotten rid of more than just the objects on the way to recompiling them all, and every time that happens, the code I write to replace what went away is tighter, cleaner, and runs faster. I already know what works, I already know the processes, and I usually come up with a better solution to doing the same thing. (Of course I never benefit from that now, since it taught me to use RCS...)
This would happen with a change from Proprietary A to Proprietary B just as much as from Proprietary to FOSS. Or FOSS to proprietary.
If you have sex with a condom, you won't get pregnant. If you have sex and use a condom, there is a 2% chance of failure. Every time. The first time. The fiftieth time. Just as in every independent result statistic, the stats are the same every time.
I didn't say you were "statistically likely" to get pregnant after fifty tries. That's your misinterpretation of standard terminology.
As for the "you are likely to get pregnant" from the other commenter. Yes, and the natural result of pregnancy is a baby, even if you don't consider the thing inside the woman a human life. If you aren't ready to accept the natural consequences of the result of an act, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that act. That's part of being mature and "growing up" and being able to make decisions.
Unless you got into office on promises to be better than Bush, in which case being the same is pretty damning. But he's not the same, he's worse.
The only reason abstinence does not work is because people don't use it.
It's like saying that your microwave oven is broken because a can of tomato soup sitting on the counter isn't getting hot. You have to open the can of soup and put it in the microwave, and then turn the microwave on, before you can expect the soup to get hot.
Abstinence works, when used, 100% of the time. Condoms are what, 98% WHEN USED. Why don't people ever say "condoms don't work", because condoms, like abstinence, don't work when they aren't used?
I'm sure someone can come up with a car analogy now.
Many teens have sex yet their lives don't fall apart after that.
And some people win the lottery, but a lot more do not. Yes, some teens win the lottery and don't wind up pregnant or worse, but that doesn't mean they don't have emotional scars from intimate relationships they weren't ready for. So then later in life, they don't have the intimate relationship because they've learned that sex is just something to do for fun.
The problem is that "having sex" and "having babies" have been so decoupled as cause and effect. The fact is that every time you have sex, a baby can be the result. (Even with condoms, a 2% chance.) If you aren't ready for the latter, you shouldn't be doing the former. If you aren't ready for a broken toe, don't drop a hammer on your foot.
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Surely, you jest. When I make a cultural reference to something from the movie 'Hoodwinked' ("what do you expect, I was raised by wolves...", "Be prepared...") and the other people go "huh?", don't you think it's important I am able to pull my pocket media player out and play them the movie? Or when someone talks about an auction and I say "I came to america on the atlantic auction", or a math prof talks about a 'radius' and I say "that's WJZ", don't you think I should be able to pull that clip out of The Cocoanuts out and play it for them? Boy, you must be no fun at parties. (Plays clip of door to door salesman sketch from Monty Python).
That truly differentiates the purpose of a University and a Community College.
Community colleges are basically trade schools with frills. Become a mechanic. Become a nurse. Become a beautician. Teach enough english classes so the mechanics and nurses and beauticians can be literate and communicate with their peers. Teach the math that mechanics and beauticians etc will use.
Universities are supposed to be for "higher education". Teach people how to be scientists and artists and how to enjoy both. Teach the chemists that there is a world outside the lab. Teach social "scientists" some real scientific techniques.
Those "core courses" that you rebel against were designed to round out your university education so that you could at least experience something outside your comfort zone and maybe pick up a desire to know more. It's a shame that the core courses are taught by people who actually care about the material and expect you to care, too.
Yes, if all you want for your son is a trade education so he can have a job, send him to CC. If you want him to have an education, send him to a Uni so he can take a few classes in english that teach him how to enjoy reading some of the classic literature more, maybe an art class so he appreciates what goes into a painting and it's not just a thing hanging on the wall that "looks nice".
And maybe don't pay the $50k, let him pay for his college himself. He'll appreciate it more.
And now get off my lawn...
I made no such equation. The discussion is about the meaning of "reasonable" when it comes to the law. Both legislation and jurisprudence are involved in "the law". The legislature writes laws that rely on "reasonable man" interpretations; the courts adjudicate based on "reasonable man" interpretations.
Or did you just not read up on the facts of the McDonald's coffee case?
Here are the facts that are relevant to this discussion.
So, at what point does "reasonable" change from "you are responsible for handling what you have asked to be given" to "sue the hell out of anyone when they give you what you ask for and you drop it?" That's the point of the discussion -- "reasonable expectation of privacy" means exactly what the courts and legislature want it to mean, nothing more and nothing less, even if it doesn't match any reasonable definition used by any reasonable person. Arguing "reasonable expectation" is a loser's game.
Well, that's your opinion, but I'd say it pretty obviously doesn't. Had the founders wanted to say that searches and seizures not accompanied by a warrant were unreasonable, they would have. They would have said "unwarranted searches and seizures."
Since they chose not to, there has to be a reason.
It's pretty obvious that a lack of a warrant doesn't make every search unreasonable. If you are stopped for speeding, the visible portions of the interior of your car will be searched without a warrant, and it is unreasonable to expect that the police should have to get one. You may be asked for permission to search the remainder, and if you agree then it would be unreasonable to expect that the police should obtain a warrant prior to searching.
Clearly, "unreasonable" and "without a warrant" are two different concepts.
Not a troll, a fact that supported my claim.
It wasn't a simple misunderstanding of domain names, it was repeated deliberate refusal to fix a known invalid address they were sending allegedly very important and very private email to, each one containing what was obviously a corporate-mandated admission that email didn't always go where it was supposed to. It's hard to claim "email is private" in the face of such an admission from Microsoft. If you think you can blame this all on "a marketing graduate", you're crazy. If you think Microsoft's Partner Program was run by some incompetent wet-behind the ears newbie, you're certifiable.
The "top of the line desktop" comment is pure red herring, and has no relevance to anything.
If you say so.
You are aware, I hope, that "the government" does look at every item that goes into your post office box. They also sometimes read postcards that they put into your box. In other words, the outside of every item of mail you receive is open to "casual search" by "the government". I wouldn't try to argue that your conviction for trafficing in drugs was invalid because you were sending shipment details using postcards. You'll probably lose that one.
The insides, however, are protected both by the wrapper the sender has put around the item and federal law. Unless, of course, they happen to drop a box and it splits open, at which time they can also look at what spills out. If your latest shipment of dope arrives in a box with post-office tape holding it together and a note saying "damaged in transit", you probably ought to call your lawyer and have him ready to bail you out.
Or, if you work at a place like I do, and anything that looks like a bill is opened and rerouted to the accounting office. Then it gets routed to me to provide an account number to pay it. And every year I tell them "this isn't a corporate expense..."
At one point in my life, I owned a .com domain which was similar to a large ISP's .net domain. I also wildcarded the email, which meant all email to that domain came to me. It was hilarious to see the people who could not understand that they were sending email to the wrong place -- .com, .net, didn't matter to them. They'd send email containing the most interesting things. They'd actually argue with me when I tried telling them they were using the wrong address.
One of the organizations (and I use that term loosely) that had a problem understanding this was Microsoft. They simply would not take my word for it that nobody at my .com domain was a registered Microsoft marketing parter that wanted their incessant communications. And yet, every one of them contained the boilerplate about the email being intended for the intended recipient and if I wasn't it I should report it immediately. So, apparently as long ago as 1990 Microsoft, for one, was fully aware that "private" email wasn't necessarily private.
Hey, if we have to take one religion created by a science fiction writer as serious, we have to take them all as serious. Of course, if Jediism had as visible a spokesman as Tom Cruise, there'd be no question.
"Reasonable" must include "knowledgeable in the art" or it is lunacy. How can one correctly "reason" about a subject in which one is completely ignorant?
In the case of the ECPA, the only people who could "reason" that their radio-based communications were private were those ignorant of the properties of radio waves. Even after the legislature ruled they were, they didn't follow up by censuring those who broke the law.
Ignoring competence in determining reasonable opens the door to laws like "pi equals 3.00" and findings like the McDonalds coffee lawsuit. Reasonable people MUST be able to reason "coffee is best served hot" and "hot things burn you". The fact that they aren't expected to is why I say "reasonable expectation" is meaningless. "Reasonable expectation" is what unreasonable people use as a basis for unreasonable demands.
Reasonable people who have an understanding of the art do not believe email is private, just as reasonable people who have an understanding of the art don't think the moon is made of green cheese or that the earth is flat. Passing laws won't change what is truly reasonable to expect, only what unreasonable people expect.
I'm sorry, but "reasonable expectation of privacy" has been a meaningless phrase, probably forever, but at least since the ECPA (electronic communications privacy act). This is the law that gave people using RADIOS with UNENCRYPTED ANALOG signals that could be tuned in on any television set that was more than two years old at the time a "reasonable expectation of privacy". That's the same law that did NOT give Newt Gingrich and (IIRC) John Behner a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when their cellphone conversation was recorded and used for political purposes by someone who wasn't involved in the reception (which was and still is a violation of the Communications Act of 1937).
"'Reasonable expectation of privacy' means exactly what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less", said Anne Hathaway to Mia Wasikowska in 3D, playing at your local theater now.
I do not see how anyone sending email can have a "reasonable expectation of privacy", considering that many large corporations automatically tag every email with a paragraph saying, essentially, "this email is intended only for the intended recipient, and if you aren't the intended recipient please don't read this, just delete it as if it never existed." I'll also point out that there are email systems that run over unencrypted radio links to deliver email to various places in the world, and you have no way of knowing if your "intended recipient" happens to be forwarding your email via one of those. One such linkup uses ham radio, where it would be trivial for a non-ham (who is not subject to part 97 of 47CFR and the language restrictions therein) to create a violation of federal law by sending profanity via email.
Because at the time, the "bleeding edge" was not "the web", it was the Internet.
It's hard to remember back when "the web" didn't exist, but today "the web" is all that people think of. Today, when you say "internet", people expect your next words to be "double-u double-u double-u". Try saying "FTP" or "UUCP" and watch their eyes glaze over.
At the time Stoll was "bleeding edge", we hadn't run across the eternal September of AOL. AOL was, at best, their own message boards, much like Compuserve. We're talking about a time before dejaNews, when BITNET ran FTP-by-mail servers, when you needed a valid reason to have an Internet connection to start with. You didn't call your local ISP or cable company to get on the Internet, you called PSI or Network Solutions or someone else and rented a T1 ... and if you hacked your way onto the net it was through someone's 300 baud HayesStack connected to a serial port somewhere.
Except for having his computer using a Federal Screw Works Votrax unit reading the data as it passed by, the kid in War Games was doing exactly what most of us were doing for fun in those days of "the Internet". (I didn't own my own Votrax until I bought it at a PBS auction for $30 -- nobody else apparently knew what it was or what it was worth at the time.)
And "bleeding edge computer science" at the time was hooking a Votrax up to a phone line and modem and having it call the local pizza place to order pizza. It was billed as the perfect helpmate to the mute person.
Don't let this scare you or anything, but you know about ham radio? That chunk of spectrum and users whose motto is "when all else fails"? Who spend time supporting disaster relief and emergency services?
A lot of those folks are putting their eggs in the internet basket, relying on the internet to get email through when local communications systems go down. If the local internet goes down, so local email won't get through, they're planning on using HF or VHF radio to get email out of the disaster area and into the hands of state and federal agencies.
If the internet goes down on a large scale, those messages will go nowhere, and the senders won't know that they aren't going anywhere.
What's even scarier is the draconian anti-spam measures being used. If you aren't on the radio user's whitelist and you don't know the secret code to bypass it, your email won't go through. The bounce message doesn't tell you the secret, and it doesn't alert the intended recipient that you tried. You could be Barack Obama himself, and if whitehouse.gov isn't in the recipient's whitelist, your email won't get delivered. Users in a disaster area who want to turn this feature off cannot.
No, microns are one 10,000th of a centon, which is one hundredth of a hour.
Or it could be that those anntennas weren't owned by your carrier in the first place and you were trying to pick up a cell tower five miles away.