He did not have to answer the questions at all, due to the Fifth at a minimum, and to the irrelevance you mention. He could at least have deferred to his attorney. Instead he elected, of his own free will, to lie. This is a crime.
Labeling such as 'bullshit politics' puts you in the same camp as Nixon claiming that the President is above the law. Personally I feel that those in authority should be held to a HIGHER standard, not a lesser one.
If I had my druthers, they would be under oath whenever in public, period.
I think the problem is that circumstances have organized such that the executive branch no longer has meaningful oversight.
A conception from the start of the country, born by Clinton, raised by Bush, and now wielded to full effect by Obama. It's the ramping up that's the real problem.
Congress is unwilling to take a stand because anyone who does gets voted out of office for...
I'd modify that ending to 'for the cause de jour', but opposing the party leadership really is what gets them tossed these days. It isn't so much about who holds sway over the voters, as it is who commands the political party. This is why the Tea Party is such a negative force for the Red Team. The people in control aren't members of the party, so they're hard(er) to control.
The judiciary has largely punted on the issue so far by claiming no one has standing to challenge. (It's unclear how you prove standing against a classified program that you can go to jail for talking about)
While I agree with the judiciary, they can't really intervene here without cause, understand that these laws and executive orders are being designed this way when they are being issued. It's no accident.
Worst of all we have a surveillance program with zero accountability to the electorate.
This is entirely by design. The framers of the Patriot Act and its massive new powers knew that the public would grow weary of the 'War' on 'Terror'. But our current system doesn't perform well without someone to be 'at war' with, and the end of the Cold War mean needing to pick a new enemy.
Fortunately for the evil-doers there was this whole Sunni-Shia thing just waiting to start sucking up war dollars.
I think all of this is evident in what Fienstein said in the sound-byte:
"The president has very clearly said that he wants to keep the capability so I think we would agree with him."
"The president says if we want to stay in the party, we'll do what he says".
"A lot of the privacy people, perhaps, don't understand that we still occupy the role of the Great Satan."
"We're in the middle of a Middle Eastern Batman gambit, so things won't change soon."
Notice she even uses the phrases 'occupy the role' and 'the Great Satan'. How very Freudian.
I'm not particularly inclined to trust anybody affirming or denying anything outright. None of it can be independently verified.
That's not true. We can witness the behaviors of the organization. Note how they started with denial, then moved towards excuses, and now have clammed up entirely. This tells us something about their behavior, and if we assume that behavior makes sense in context with the truth, then we get a glimpse of that truth as well.
If someone were to kill you for food, even if they were genuinely starving, you can bet that person would be considered a murderer, despite the fact that you are an animal like any other.
That's probably not true. Recent examples are scarce, but historical examples show us that those people would be thought of as having gone crazy. There's no mens rea for murder in your example. In most if not all true 'kill or be killed' situations, juries acquit.
Otherwise, your standard is too low to be useful. You're killing millions of living right this very second just through metabolic practices. Is not 'kingdom' just as 'arbitrary' as 'intelligent'? Your world view would allow for the murder of innocent treants, would it not?
To spy in the US, though, they need a FISA rubber stamp. So there's a record of it, somewhere, supposedly.
To spy in Canada, they just need to push the button.
If it were my company, I would have all the realms under my own authority as much as possible. Nobody could be served a warrant without my knowing about it. So no data centers, vendors, or other third parties with access to my systems, and they'd need to be in the US.
This way were any of my data seized there's just cause to go looking for a copy of the warrant.
Moving it to Canada just means you've removed the necessity to get a warrant at all.
I do not hold lobbying on the same moral level as murder. I do not believe this makes me a psychopath as much as it makes your example a strawman.
Lobbying is more like speeding. If all the traffic around you is going ten miles over the limit, you are NOT contributing to the greater good by adhering to the law. You're making yourself an obstacle.
Doing the right thing can be complex. Perhaps too much so for some to grasp.
People do not grow food. If anything, biology does this.
People do run factories. Factories chew large quanties of things up to produce small quanties of goods and medium quantities of waste. Waste which must be managed and cleaned up, drawing away even more productivity.
People mining minerals does not create minerals. There's a finite amount on the planet, period.
We want to believe that we're adding value by adding people to the planet, but a quick glance at the human need for expansion tells us this isn't true. If additional people meant a lower need for other resources, why expand at all?
Reading the linked Lanier article reminds me of the movie Elysium. If you didn't see it, eventually the protagonists claw their way up from the dirty world to the clean one, making everyone a citizen of the clean one, where all the wealth must be shared.
The problem with this is lack of foresight. See, if everyone lives in the same world, which will it be? It'll be the dirty one. There's just no getting around it. So instead of a world of haves and have-nots, we have a world made up entirely of have-nots.
It may be 'fair' but is it 'better'?
Same point made by the article. Instead of a world where people have skills and people need to pay for them, everyone can do their own stuff, and everyone shares the poverty of not having skills.
Slashdot Mirror
Fine. But he still lied. If anything, your argument makes his lie a worse crime because he lied when he didn't need to do so.
Given that you hate all things Google, you can't deny how easy it is to use when your app supports it.
Also, as far as I know, it works on non-Google devices as well, like iPhone.
I'll say this: Nintendo will never, EVER associate its name with an Android phone.
You neglected to say 'why' you feel this is the case.
Connecting your phone to the large-screen TV in the living room is a pain in the ass.
Chromecast changed that. Or at a minimum demonstrated how easily that can be changed, provided app support.
Dude lied while under oath. Full stop.
He did not have to answer the questions at all, due to the Fifth at a minimum, and to the irrelevance you mention. He could at least have deferred to his attorney. Instead he elected, of his own free will, to lie. This is a crime.
Labeling such as 'bullshit politics' puts you in the same camp as Nixon claiming that the President is above the law. Personally I feel that those in authority should be held to a HIGHER standard, not a lesser one.
If I had my druthers, they would be under oath whenever in public, period.
What I genuinely don't understand is - why break backward compatibility?
Why not just layer touch on top of the existing UI?
Then everybody wins.
For example, there could be two ways to reboot your PC:
1) Pull the side-window thing over, go to Settings, then Power, then Reboot
or
2) Click Start, click the Arrow beside Shutdown, then click Reboot
One is better for touch (supposedly) and the other is what you're already used to doing.
Does anyone know why this wasn't the method they went with?
Precisely. Or thought of as 'a murderer', as far as I know.
I think the problem is that circumstances have organized such that the executive branch no longer has meaningful oversight.
A conception from the start of the country, born by Clinton, raised by Bush, and now wielded to full effect by Obama. It's the ramping up that's the real problem.
Congress is unwilling to take a stand because anyone who does gets voted out of office for...
I'd modify that ending to 'for the cause de jour', but opposing the party leadership really is what gets them tossed these days. It isn't so much about who holds sway over the voters, as it is who commands the political party. This is why the Tea Party is such a negative force for the Red Team. The people in control aren't members of the party, so they're hard(er) to control.
The judiciary has largely punted on the issue so far by claiming no one has standing to challenge. (It's unclear how you prove standing against a classified program that you can go to jail for talking about)
While I agree with the judiciary, they can't really intervene here without cause, understand that these laws and executive orders are being designed this way when they are being issued. It's no accident.
Worst of all we have a surveillance program with zero accountability to the electorate.
This is entirely by design. The framers of the Patriot Act and its massive new powers knew that the public would grow weary of the 'War' on 'Terror'. But our current system doesn't perform well without someone to be 'at war' with, and the end of the Cold War mean needing to pick a new enemy.
Fortunately for the evil-doers there was this whole Sunni-Shia thing just waiting to start sucking up war dollars.
I think all of this is evident in what Fienstein said in the sound-byte:
"The president has very clearly said that he wants to keep the capability so I think we would agree with him."
"The president says if we want to stay in the party, we'll do what he says".
"A lot of the privacy people, perhaps, don't understand that we still occupy the role of the Great Satan."
"We're in the middle of a Middle Eastern Batman gambit, so things won't change soon."
Notice she even uses the phrases 'occupy the role' and 'the Great Satan'. How very Freudian.
I'm not particularly inclined to trust anybody affirming or denying anything outright. None of it can be independently verified.
That's not true. We can witness the behaviors of the organization. Note how they started with denial, then moved towards excuses, and now have clammed up entirely. This tells us something about their behavior, and if we assume that behavior makes sense in context with the truth, then we get a glimpse of that truth as well.
Sort of like the Keppler telescope.
If someone were to kill you for food, even if they were genuinely starving, you can bet that person would be considered a murderer, despite the fact that you are an animal like any other.
That's probably not true. Recent examples are scarce, but historical examples show us that those people would be thought of as having gone crazy. There's no mens rea for murder in your example. In most if not all true 'kill or be killed' situations, juries acquit.
Otherwise, your standard is too low to be useful. You're killing millions of living right this very second just through metabolic practices. Is not 'kingdom' just as 'arbitrary' as 'intelligent'? Your world view would allow for the murder of innocent treants, would it not?
One guy wrote all those Amendments.
Black voting was mostly the result of a massive war - you may have heard of it.
Women voting was years and years of hard work.
The one spouting hyperbole is the voice that says 'all we need is votes'. That's a crock of shit.
The key to democracy is that voting really does fix problems that most people actually care strongly about.
Okay. Name one. Name one problem 'fixed' via democracy.
Where I'm from, problems are 'fixed' by constant action, attention, and effort - not just by voting.
Yep. My family's small time operation in the 90s produced well over 500 feeder pigs each year - no cloning involved.
Even worse, corporations are subject to summary execution. (Google involuntary dissolution.)
Since corporations are equally beholden to the law, so should they have an interest in modifying it.
It's an entity. It has interests of its own.
Your flaw is comparing corps to people. They're not people, and should be compared to other corps.
To spy in the US, though, they need a FISA rubber stamp. So there's a record of it, somewhere, supposedly.
To spy in Canada, they just need to push the button.
If it were my company, I would have all the realms under my own authority as much as possible. Nobody could be served a warrant without my knowing about it. So no data centers, vendors, or other third parties with access to my systems, and they'd need to be in the US.
This way were any of my data seized there's just cause to go looking for a copy of the warrant.
Moving it to Canada just means you've removed the necessity to get a warrant at all.
This is doubly true because $BIG_VENDOR denied it. So if it were true that a backdoor did exist, you could doubly blame $BIG_VENDOR.
It's like ticking that box twice.
It's actually worse than just them rolling over.
See, Canadian operations are firmly within the jurisdiction of the NSA. So moving out of country makes you more hackable, not less.
I do not hold lobbying on the same moral level as murder. I do not believe this makes me a psychopath as much as it makes your example a strawman.
Lobbying is more like speeding. If all the traffic around you is going ten miles over the limit, you are NOT contributing to the greater good by adhering to the law. You're making yourself an obstacle.
Doing the right thing can be complex. Perhaps too much so for some to grasp.
I see, so expecting one and only one telco to opt out of the lobbying process is normal behavior, then, is it?
What about the customers of that telco who now have to pay higher prices than the customers of their competitors? How are their needs served?
Cool.
Were they airplane mechanics or were they not?
Nor does it mean AT&T is in the wrong. In a world where every telco lobbies, those who employ lobbyists are 'in the neutral'.
People do not grow food. If anything, biology does this.
People do run factories. Factories chew large quanties of things up to produce small quanties of goods and medium quantities of waste. Waste which must be managed and cleaned up, drawing away even more productivity.
People mining minerals does not create minerals. There's a finite amount on the planet, period.
We want to believe that we're adding value by adding people to the planet, but a quick glance at the human need for expansion tells us this isn't true. If additional people meant a lower need for other resources, why expand at all?
Maybe in a Soylent Green sort of way, but typically people are a net drain on resources.
Reading the linked Lanier article reminds me of the movie Elysium. If you didn't see it, eventually the protagonists claw their way up from the dirty world to the clean one, making everyone a citizen of the clean one, where all the wealth must be shared.
The problem with this is lack of foresight. See, if everyone lives in the same world, which will it be? It'll be the dirty one. There's just no getting around it. So instead of a world of haves and have-nots, we have a world made up entirely of have-nots.
It may be 'fair' but is it 'better'?
Same point made by the article. Instead of a world where people have skills and people need to pay for them, everyone can do their own stuff, and everyone shares the poverty of not having skills.