It's easy to be a tough guy on the internet. Gun ownership strikes me a bit like a sexlife. Those who actually have one feel far less of a need to talk about it all the time.
Truer words were never spoken. Well, not on Slashdot anyway.
The only thing special in regard to the government there is that they can create the debts for you to pay (i.e. taxes).
Yes, and that's the key difference! You pretty much shot the rest of your argument down by pointing this out. By having the ability to levy taxes, and the power to force the sale of property to recover those taxes, the government ultimately has effective ownership of your "property". Ownership is a matter of control, and if you don't control something you really don't own it.
I don't know if you've ever been in the position of nearly losing your home to that, but it's a frightening process, and it's then that you realize how little you matter, how little they care, how little control you actually have.
How we managed to let this state of affairs become law is beyond me, but we did.
Through eminent domain, in which case they still have to pay you what a judge deems to be fair market value.
He wasn't talking about that. In any event, the power of eminent domain, which was intended by the Founders to be used to build public works, has been reinterpreted by the Supreme Court to allow for the transfer of private property to private hands, if for no other reason than that the new owners may create more tax revenue. That's just twisted, but it's the law now.
Regardless, in many counties in the U.S., which is the bulk of them since they're supported by real estate taxes, if you don't pay said taxes they can and will sell your property out from under you in order to recover the value of the taxes. That's not ownership, by any stretch of the imagination. You are merely the steward of your (ahem) "property" until such time as you fail to pay your property tax, or someone in power decides they really want your space.
But by removing the specific guidelines the earlier court had created, they've opened the door to a repeat performance of this whole mess.
I get the impression that many people in power feel that our social problems can be cured by simply applying more law enforcement. I don't know why they think that: it has never worked in the past.
All the more reason to start using TrueCrypt now if you haven't already.
Until the cops in the US get the authority to legally compel you to divulge passwords, your computer will be safe from prying eyes.
My understanding is that a Federal judge ruled, a couple of years ago, that a password stored in someone's head cannot be forced from him. If, on the other hand, said person writes that password down and the cops find it, that's fair game.
We either need strict rules that our police officers have to follow, or we need psych evaluations to weed out the overzealous people who go too far, too fast, without consideration that someone is innocent until PROVEN guilty.
Do you really know the laws? There are thousands on the books, and thousands created each year.
It's hard to control a free man who is innocent of any wrongdoing. He'll just tell you to fuck off. But if you make that free man a criminal, even if he doesn't know it yet, you've got him by the balls.
Re:I AM THE GOD OF HELLFILE AND I BRING YOU ...
on
HDCP Master Key Revealed
·
· Score: 2, Informative
fire?
Well, whether he meant Fire or File, it's still a pretty funny use of Arthur Brown's FIRE.
What do you call the incident in Iraq or Afghanistan? Most people call it an act of mass murder..... In terms of terrorist attacks, there are a lot of countries with plenty of those. Russia, England, Spain.
Sure. And you will never hear me say that those attacks were "pinpricks", that those deaths were any less significant than any other act of mass murder. Why does everyone persist in misinterpreting what I'm trying to say? I am not the one trying to diminish anyone else's tragedy.
More people die on the roads due to automobile accidents every year in America by a long shot. Have some perspective in terms of real actual risk. In those terms it was a tiny poke.
Sorry, I clipped the wrong quote:
My goodness, did I ever set off a bunch of soapboxes. I'm, not arguing with your conclusions, matter of fact I agree with them, but if you actually read my post in the context that it was written, you'd probably have responded differently.
Whether you agree with the direction our government and law enforcement have taken in the years since 9/11 (and I, personally, do not)
My goodness, did I ever set off a bunch of soapboxes. I'm, not arguing with your conclusions, matter of fact I agree with them, but if you actually read my post in the context that it was written, you'd probably have responded differently.
Its much better to have just ignored the people who did this. I mean, what more could they do?...
A cruise missile hitting Mecca would have very little actual damage. Even a few casualties would be the merest Pinprick to the Global Islamic Community. I think the response would belie that though.
Well... to be fair he did say he was playing devils' advocate. But yeah, I agree with you: there would be consequences for that. Surprised nobody's done it yet, just to watch the global conflagration.
On a human scale, 9/11 was a tragedy of epic proportions. It is a day and an act that I will never forget or forgive, period.
I agree.
From the standpoint of a nation of 300 million people, it was a pinprick.
I agree.
The impact of the domestic policy enacted in the wake of 9/11 an order of magnitude larger than that of the work of 12 nutjobs.
I agree, which is why I said, Whether you agree with the direction our government and law enforcement have taken in the years since 9/11 (and I, personally, do not) .
However, I dislike it when anyone says that twenty-thousand-odd deaths are of little consequence, and the GP's tone was indicative that he felt so because they were Americans.
More to the point, however, is that you (and many other people, I might add) have this idea that everything bad that's happened since 9/11, regarding overreaching government behavior, is a direct result of 9/11. It was not: 9/11 was an excuse, a rationale, that permitted the Federal Government (certain parts of it, anyway) to re-assume powers it had had taken away from it some time ago.
Start with the Patriot Act: everything thinks that it just magically appeared in front of Congress right after 9/11. That's a huge document, however, and a lot of thought went into it. Those who put it in front of Congress had it ready, just waiting for the right situation to occur so they could ram it through. And they did.
I'll leave it up to you conspiracy types to decide if 9/11 was allowed to happen for just that reason.
Keep in mind that law enforcement, specifically the FBI, was just as abusive during the early stages of the Cold War as they are now. It got so bad that Congress had to step in and limit their power. And those limits were in place for decades for good reason until the Patriot Act stripped them away. Now we're right back where we were, only worse because they have a hell of a lot more technology at their beck-and-call than they did then.
Terrorism actually offers much better justification than the Red Scare ever did. There's no overt enemy to point at and say, "there's the bad guy... get him!" It's just this miasma of fear that can be used to get anything through Congress.
I agree that in practice as things are now, your suggestions may be for the best.
I wish it were different, but if wishes were horses even beggars would ride.
Unless and until that happens, perhaps employers (and creditors) should not be legally permitted to examine social networking. I say this because the principle is not an acceptable state of affairs.
The problem will never go away. And it really isn't a problem that government needs to be involved in, especially since the Internet is a world-wide phenomenon anyway. Your image is one of your best assets, and how you protect and nurture that asset is up to you. That's always been the case: you don't see the government telling employers that they can't take into account how a potential employee presents him or her-self at an interview, how he or she dresses, whether he or she trims her fingernails or has body odor... those are all fair game in the interview process. What you put out there on Facebook is also legitimately fair game. You published it on the Web for God's sake.
Frankly, in this connected world there are good reasons to know how a potential employee handles his or her online presence. Keep in mind that a person who is indiscreet and posts compromising text or images online about themselves may do the same thing to the employer. This is not a trivial issue, not anymore. Discretion is a virtue, especially in a world full of personal Web pages and blogs.
Look, you wouldn't open an online bank account with a password of "123" would you? Would you? Proper use of social networking sites is no different: in both cases you have valuable information to which you don't want just anyone to gain access. How you protect that information is up to you, but expecting to just put it out there and have people who have a vested interest in reviewing it to just ignore it is... unrealistic. At best.
In principle, we need to do a lot of growing up socially in order to not have the connectedness abused.
I look at Facebook and the like as being similar to what my mother used to say when my brother and I were playing with BB guns as kids: "It's all in good fun until someone loses an eye." Well, we're not talking about eyes here, but the point is that having fun can have consequences. Learning that is a part of growing up too.
I gather from your smug demeanor and spelling of "centre" that you're not American. Let me ask you something: if someone performed a similar act of mass-murder in your country... would you consider it as inconsequential? Would it be a "tiny poke"?
Whether you agree with the direction our government and law enforcement have taken in the years since 9/11 (and I, personally, do not) dismissing the deaths of so many people, of so many nationalities in such a cavalier fashion is decidedly uncivilized.
Just remember this: 9/11 did little but slightly accelerate processes that have been at work in this country for far longer. I don't give Al Qaeda too much credit for the train wreck, and neither should you.
True. And when pretty much 99.9999% of the people who oppose the Iraq war criticize it because "those durn Amerikkkan Neokkkon Fascist hicks are at it again", your bullshit excuse rings very hollow.
You know, anyone who replaces the "c" in American with a "k" is invariably someone who can reasonably be completely ignored. Just so you know, it marks you as a bigoted fool with an axe to grind and little to contribute. Oh, another thing, comments like "99.9999% of the people" also make you appear ignorant of the United States and its citizens, because if you truly understood us, you'd realize that we're far from a monolithic society. I would say a more correct statement would be "99.9999% of us agree to disagree."
Just trying to be helpful, and in any event I didn't bother to read past the first "k". If you find yourself coughing up an actual valid opinion that you would like to share, feel free. Otherwise I'll continue to ignore you and focus on the more intelligent, interesting posts in this thread.
why cannot we bomb the guy out of existence? Ohh wait - have we not tried to do just this for few last years? Ohhhhh.....
Sure, but then people get all riled up about "collateral damage". Just send in a hit squad to "disappear" the bastard. Do that enough times, and you might have an effective deterrent. Matter of fact, I understand the Mossad has some experience with that, so long as we don't insist they use Blackberries.
On the contrary, it's been proven that a tiny poke in the Achilles world trade centre, causes the land of the free to implode in a counterproductive, authoritarian cluster fuck.
That may be true, but that wasn't what they wanted to have happen. They wanted the US to remove its armies from muslim lands . It resulted in even more American troops in Muslim lands.
Yes. In other words, Al Quaeda's plan backfired, in an (ahem!) Biblical sort of way.
Language is about using words to communicate between two parties with similar, but ideally the same, understanding of the words. You can use your definition when you have reason to believe your audience would understand it correctly, but you become the problem when you have reason to believe your audience has a different understanding of the word, even if you think their understanding is wrong (unless you want to be a pedantic, annoying ass that corrects everybody on the term "hacker" all the time, which will make people loathe hanging out with you).
Sure, I agree with you, that's obvious. My point was simply that when an outsider comes into a group and tries to make that group arbitrarily change its vocabulary to suit his own convenience, he is being that annoying ass.
Regarding the word "hacker", Slashdot happens to be comprised of people who, by and large, understand what the word really means. Many of us were in the business when the word was first coined. Consequently, I have reason to believe that Slashdotters are likely to understand the correct definition of the term, and am not being unreasonable in using it that way here. In any event, we have the right to use that word any way we wish amongst ourselves. You're free to use it any way you wish as well, just expect to have your misuse of the word pointed out to you now and then.
A "screw machine" is the name of an automated lathe, and while they can certainly produce screws, they're often used to make all kinds of cylindrical metal parts. They are not limited to making just screws. We used them to make everything from locomotive fuel injectors to hex-socketed screwdriver shafts.
We also made plenty of screw-threaded items, but never just ordinary "raw" screws. Other, simpler machines, such as the ones you described, had long ago taken over that task.
Yeah, I had already figured we were talking apples to oranges.
Slashdot Mirror
It's easy to be a tough guy on the internet. Gun ownership strikes me a bit like a sexlife. Those who actually have one feel far less of a need to talk about it all the time.
Truer words were never spoken. Well, not on Slashdot anyway.
It wasn't hacked voting machines. It was poorly designed paper ballots.
Wait. You are talking about the 2000 election, right?
Yes, and I believe the perpetrator was a guy named Chad. But it's okay ... they caught the bastard and hung him.
The only thing special in regard to the government there is that they can create the debts for you to pay (i.e. taxes).
Yes, and that's the key difference! You pretty much shot the rest of your argument down by pointing this out. By having the ability to levy taxes, and the power to force the sale of property to recover those taxes, the government ultimately has effective ownership of your "property". Ownership is a matter of control, and if you don't control something you really don't own it.
I don't know if you've ever been in the position of nearly losing your home to that, but it's a frightening process, and it's then that you realize how little you matter, how little they care, how little control you actually have.
How we managed to let this state of affairs become law is beyond me, but we did.
Through eminent domain, in which case they still have to pay you what a judge deems to be fair market value.
He wasn't talking about that. In any event, the power of eminent domain, which was intended by the Founders to be used to build public works, has been reinterpreted by the Supreme Court to allow for the transfer of private property to private hands, if for no other reason than that the new owners may create more tax revenue. That's just twisted, but it's the law now.
Regardless, in many counties in the U.S., which is the bulk of them since they're supported by real estate taxes, if you don't pay said taxes they can and will sell your property out from under you in order to recover the value of the taxes. That's not ownership, by any stretch of the imagination. You are merely the steward of your (ahem) "property" until such time as you fail to pay your property tax, or someone in power decides they really want your space.
are asking for the entire GNP of north america as lost revenue
Well. They can ask.
But by removing the specific guidelines the earlier court had created, they've opened the door to a repeat performance of this whole mess.
I get the impression that many people in power feel that our social problems can be cured by simply applying more law enforcement. I don't know why they think that: it has never worked in the past.
All the more reason to start using TrueCrypt now if you haven't already. Until the cops in the US get the authority to legally compel you to divulge passwords, your computer will be safe from prying eyes.
My understanding is that a Federal judge ruled, a couple of years ago, that a password stored in someone's head cannot be forced from him. If, on the other hand, said person writes that password down and the cops find it, that's fair game.
euthanized
Why?
I say they should go out the hard way. Feed them to the lions.
We either need strict rules that our police officers have to follow, or we need psych evaluations to weed out the overzealous people who go too far, too fast, without consideration that someone is innocent until PROVEN guilty.
... in a court of law, not in their heads.
Do you really know the laws? There are thousands on the books, and thousands created each year.
It's hard to control a free man who is innocent of any wrongdoing. He'll just tell you to fuck off. But if you make that free man a criminal, even if he doesn't know it yet, you've got him by the balls.
fire?
Well, whether he meant Fire or File, it's still a pretty funny use of Arthur Brown's FIRE.
What do you call the incident in Iraq or Afghanistan? Most people call it an act of mass murder..... In terms of terrorist attacks, there are a lot of countries with plenty of those. Russia, England, Spain.
Sure. And you will never hear me say that those attacks were "pinpricks", that those deaths were any less significant than any other act of mass murder. Why does everyone persist in misinterpreting what I'm trying to say? I am not the one trying to diminish anyone else's tragedy.
More people die on the roads due to automobile accidents every year in America by a long shot. Have some perspective in terms of real actual risk. In those terms it was a tiny poke.
Sorry, I clipped the wrong quote:
My goodness, did I ever set off a bunch of soapboxes. I'm, not arguing with your conclusions, matter of fact I agree with them, but if you actually read my post in the context that it was written, you'd probably have responded differently.
Whether you agree with the direction our government and law enforcement have taken in the years since 9/11 (and I, personally, do not)
My goodness, did I ever set off a bunch of soapboxes. I'm, not arguing with your conclusions, matter of fact I agree with them, but if you actually read my post in the context that it was written, you'd probably have responded differently.
Yes, I agree.
Its much better to have just ignored the people who did this. I mean, what more could they do? ...
A cruise missile hitting Mecca would have very little actual damage. Even a few casualties would be the merest Pinprick to the Global Islamic Community. I think the response would belie that though.
Well ... to be fair he did say he was playing devils' advocate. But yeah, I agree with you: there would be consequences for that. Surprised nobody's done it yet, just to watch the global conflagration.
On a human scale, 9/11 was a tragedy of epic proportions. It is a day and an act that I will never forget or forgive, period.
I agree.
From the standpoint of a nation of 300 million people, it was a pinprick.
I agree.
The impact of the domestic policy enacted in the wake of 9/11 an order of magnitude larger than that of the work of 12 nutjobs.
I agree, which is why I said, Whether you agree with the direction our government and law enforcement have taken in the years since 9/11 (and I, personally, do not) .
... get him!" It's just this miasma of fear that can be used to get anything through Congress.
However, I dislike it when anyone says that twenty-thousand-odd deaths are of little consequence, and the GP's tone was indicative that he felt so because they were Americans.
More to the point, however, is that you (and many other people, I might add) have this idea that everything bad that's happened since 9/11, regarding overreaching government behavior, is a direct result of 9/11. It was not: 9/11 was an excuse, a rationale, that permitted the Federal Government (certain parts of it, anyway) to re-assume powers it had had taken away from it some time ago.
Start with the Patriot Act: everything thinks that it just magically appeared in front of Congress right after 9/11. That's a huge document, however, and a lot of thought went into it. Those who put it in front of Congress had it ready, just waiting for the right situation to occur so they could ram it through. And they did. I'll leave it up to you conspiracy types to decide if 9/11 was allowed to happen for just that reason.
Keep in mind that law enforcement, specifically the FBI, was just as abusive during the early stages of the Cold War as they are now. It got so bad that Congress had to step in and limit their power. And those limits were in place for decades for good reason until the Patriot Act stripped them away. Now we're right back where we were, only worse because they have a hell of a lot more technology at their beck-and-call than they did then.
Terrorism actually offers much better justification than the Red Scare ever did. There's no overt enemy to point at and say, "there's the bad guy
I agree that in practice as things are now, your suggestions may be for the best.
I wish it were different, but if wishes were horses even beggars would ride.
Unless and until that happens, perhaps employers (and creditors) should not be legally permitted to examine social networking. I say this because the principle is not an acceptable state of affairs.
The problem will never go away. And it really isn't a problem that government needs to be involved in, especially since the Internet is a world-wide phenomenon anyway. Your image is one of your best assets, and how you protect and nurture that asset is up to you. That's always been the case: you don't see the government telling employers that they can't take into account how a potential employee presents him or her-self at an interview, how he or she dresses, whether he or she trims her fingernails or has body odor ... those are all fair game in the interview process. What you put out there on Facebook is also legitimately fair game. You published it on the Web for God's sake.
... unrealistic. At best.
Frankly, in this connected world there are good reasons to know how a potential employee handles his or her online presence. Keep in mind that a person who is indiscreet and posts compromising text or images online about themselves may do the same thing to the employer. This is not a trivial issue, not anymore. Discretion is a virtue, especially in a world full of personal Web pages and blogs.
Look, you wouldn't open an online bank account with a password of "123" would you? Would you? Proper use of social networking sites is no different: in both cases you have valuable information to which you don't want just anyone to gain access. How you protect that information is up to you, but expecting to just put it out there and have people who have a vested interest in reviewing it to just ignore it is
In principle, we need to do a lot of growing up socially in order to not have the connectedness abused.
I look at Facebook and the like as being similar to what my mother used to say when my brother and I were playing with BB guns as kids: "It's all in good fun until someone loses an eye." Well, we're not talking about eyes here, but the point is that having fun can have consequences. Learning that is a part of growing up too.
"dominate" can be used to mean different things.
Yes. I, for example, like to dominate with a whip and some ropes.
Context, man, context!
a tiny poke in the Achilles world trade centre
I gather from your smug demeanor and spelling of "centre" that you're not American. Let me ask you something: if someone performed a similar act of mass-murder in your country ... would you consider it as inconsequential? Would it be a "tiny poke"?
Whether you agree with the direction our government and law enforcement have taken in the years since 9/11 (and I, personally, do not) dismissing the deaths of so many people, of so many nationalities in such a cavalier fashion is decidedly uncivilized.
Just remember this: 9/11 did little but slightly accelerate processes that have been at work in this country for far longer. I don't give Al Qaeda too much credit for the train wreck, and neither should you.
True. And when pretty much 99.9999% of the people who oppose the Iraq war criticize it because "those durn Amerikkkan Neokkkon Fascist hicks are at it again", your bullshit excuse rings very hollow.
You know, anyone who replaces the "c" in American with a "k" is invariably someone who can reasonably be completely ignored. Just so you know, it marks you as a bigoted fool with an axe to grind and little to contribute. Oh, another thing, comments like "99.9999% of the people" also make you appear ignorant of the United States and its citizens, because if you truly understood us, you'd realize that we're far from a monolithic society. I would say a more correct statement would be "99.9999% of us agree to disagree."
Just trying to be helpful, and in any event I didn't bother to read past the first "k". If you find yourself coughing up an actual valid opinion that you would like to share, feel free. Otherwise I'll continue to ignore you and focus on the more intelligent, interesting posts in this thread.
why cannot we bomb the guy out of existence? Ohh wait - have we not tried to do just this for few last years? Ohhhhh.....
Sure, but then people get all riled up about "collateral damage". Just send in a hit squad to "disappear" the bastard. Do that enough times, and you might have an effective deterrent. Matter of fact, I understand the Mossad has some experience with that, so long as we don't insist they use Blackberries.
Backfire suggests unintended consequences.
On the contrary, it's been proven that a tiny poke in the Achilles world trade centre, causes the land of the free to implode in a counterproductive, authoritarian cluster fuck.
That may be true, but that wasn't what they wanted to have happen. They wanted the US to remove its armies from muslim lands . It resulted in even more American troops in Muslim lands.
Yes. In other words, Al Quaeda's plan backfired, in an (ahem!) Biblical sort of way.
Language is about using words to communicate between two parties with similar, but ideally the same, understanding of the words. You can use your definition when you have reason to believe your audience would understand it correctly, but you become the problem when you have reason to believe your audience has a different understanding of the word, even if you think their understanding is wrong (unless you want to be a pedantic, annoying ass that corrects everybody on the term "hacker" all the time, which will make people loathe hanging out with you).
Sure, I agree with you, that's obvious. My point was simply that when an outsider comes into a group and tries to make that group arbitrarily change its vocabulary to suit his own convenience, he is being that annoying ass.
Regarding the word "hacker", Slashdot happens to be comprised of people who, by and large, understand what the word really means. Many of us were in the business when the word was first coined. Consequently, I have reason to believe that Slashdotters are likely to understand the correct definition of the term, and am not being unreasonable in using it that way here. In any event, we have the right to use that word any way we wish amongst ourselves. You're free to use it any way you wish as well, just expect to have your misuse of the word pointed out to you now and then.
A "screw machine" is the name of an automated lathe, and while they can certainly produce screws, they're often used to make all kinds of cylindrical metal parts. They are not limited to making just screws. We used them to make everything from locomotive fuel injectors to hex-socketed screwdriver shafts.
We also made plenty of screw-threaded items, but never just ordinary "raw" screws. Other, simpler machines, such as the ones you described, had long ago taken over that task.
Yeah, I had already figured we were talking apples to oranges.
In Sweden any evidence is allowed even if the evidence is from a crime
Okay. I learned something new today.