A law which says 'you can shoot anyone you claim to feel threatened by, without being obliged to prove you made any attempt at all to avoid the situation in any other way' is reasonable?
is it just me, or is a patent champagne bottle opener a wonderful example of humanity at its most absurd?
Let's face it, the correct solution to the problem of 'making it possible to efficiently open a bottle of fizzy liquid' is 'put a bloody screw cap on the thing'.
but no, because it's only a proper bottle of champagne if it comes with a thoroughly impractical stopper covered in entirely pointless shiny foil, we have to invent and fight over the rights to the proceeds from a complex device for removing said entirely unnecessarily impractical stopper.
Your home is a place for you to live, eat, sleep and relax in. You want to be able to keep doing all those things, especially #2 and #4, you are going to want to live within your budget.
An excellent way to avoid doing that is to dream up ridiculous goals that make no damn sense and then waste your money on them.
Technology is not and never should be confused for an end in yourself. It exists to help you reach other goals more effectively and efficiently. You don't start out by thinking 'how can I throw some miscellaneous kind of Cool Technology into this house thing I just bought'. You start out by thinking 'what do I need to do to keep myself and my family sheltered, fed, and healthy?' Then you do that, and once you've covered it, if you have any money left, ask yourself how you can most efficiently keep yourself and your family relaxed and entertained, and if the answer to that involves technology, well, fine, some kind of technology it is. Perhaps something incredible like a radio or a television. If you don't have the money to afford whatever shiny whizz-bang thing caught your eye, don't fucking buy it, and definitely don't buy some kind of pointless cheap imitation of it. Just leave it the hell alone already.
preach it, brother. Is there some sort of pressure group we can join? every time I go to CNN, see an interesting headline, click on it, and see the bloody video player load up, I reach for my revolver...
It's more like standing at the end of your driveway and demanding that the driver of any bus that passes by gives you the personal details of all his passengers - and the bus driver complying. Whatever his passengers want.
The airlines are not, as far as I can see, legally obliged to comply with the U.S.'s requests. But they can choose to, and apparently, they are. The only choice passengers get in the matter is not to book such flights. If you book such a flight, you are agreeing to let the airline pass your information to the U.S. government.
For the fifteenth time, the DHS is now demanding information on flights from Europe to Canada and on flights from Europe to Cuba, which never pass into US airspace. They've been demanding information on flights which pass through US airspace for years already.
It means 'quality newspaper' as opposed to 'tabloid newspaper'. In the U.K. they're referred to as a 'broadsheet' and 'tabloid'. The Independent is a broadsheet/quality newspaper, not a tabloid.
That Canadian regulation seems to cover only provision of flight information a) to a foreign state, for a flight landing in that foreign state and b) to the U.S., for a flight overflying the U.S. I see no provision for providing flight information to the U.S. relating to a flight that does not overfly the U.S.
The original article is somewhat difficult to read and confusingly written, but I'm fairly sure you're reading it wrong.
What you're missing is that the article describes *three* stages of the process, not two. Here's the quotation:
"For several years, every US-bound passenger has had to provide Advance Passenger Information (API) before departure. Washington has extended the obligation to air routes that over-fly US airspace, such as Heathrow to Mexico City or Gatwick to Havana.
Now the US is demanding passengers' full names, dates of birth and gender from airlines, at least 72 hour before departure from the UK to Canada. The initial requirement is for flights to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and the Nova Scotia capital, Halifax – 150 miles from the nearest US territory. A similar stipulation is expected soon for the main airports in western Canada, Vancouver and Calgary."
As I said, the key point is there are *three* levels there. "every US-bound passenger has had to provide Advance Passenger Information (API) before departure" is Stage 1, what everyone's familiar with. Stage 2 is "Washington has extended the obligation to air routes that over-fly US airspace, such as Heathrow to Mexico City or Gatwick to Havana" - a more recent extension of the policy to routes that go through US airspace, but not the new policy the article is about. This part is still background. The whole final paragraph - "Now the US is demanding passengers' full names, dates of birth and gender from airlines, at least 72 hour before departure from the UK to Canada. The initial requirement is for flights to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and the Nova Scotia capital, Halifax – 150 miles from the nearest US territory. A similar stipulation is expected soon for the main airports in western Canada, Vancouver and Calgary." - is Stage 3. It's a further extension of the policy: the new extension that the article is complaining about. It's different from Stage 2. Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax are all north of the 49th parallel and commercial flights from the U.K. to Canada all follow great circle routes. Standard flight plans from the U.K. to any of the four named cities (and Vancouver and Calgary) do not overfly U.S. airspace at any point (well, I think some approach routes to YVR might).
I can certainly see how you can misread the article, but I'm pretty sure you are misreading it.
You might want to read the article, and the dozens of other comments on this post. What makes this policy so insane is that they are demanding information on flights which _never enter US airspace_.
No, not really. It's an extremely fine distinction. In the end, saying something was illegal.
In this case, it's the 'action' of 'inciting racial hatred' that's criminal, not the speech. You can argue over whether such an action should be illegal, or whether such an action actually happened in this case (it could be appealed). But it seems to meet the very fine distinction you're trying to draw here.
Indeed not. Americans often don't recognize that other countries don't venerate the 'freedom of speech' to anything like the extent you do. Even in most other countries that are perfectly democratic and 'free' by any rational measure, speech is somewhat less strongly protected in grey areas like this than it is in the U.S.
"I have zero self-control and wish to enforce needless annoying restrictions on others in order to provide an incredibly minor transient benefit to my own peace of mind, which I could do for myself if I tried even a little bit."
They're not talking about either of those things. Those are military networks. They're talking about the Department of Defense network - the network of the civilian agency which oversees the military. Different organizations, different networks.
Poker doesn't make brick-and-mortar casinos much, it's low volume and somewhat heavy on the manpower (dealing poker must be one of the higher skilled blue collar jobs remaining in America...), and you're not betting against the house; the house is offering a service to players who are betting against each other. Casinos offer it because it's something a 'real casino' has to do, and hey, it makes them _some_ money. Brick-and-mortar casinos don't promote poker that heavily.
The organizations that make a ton of money off poker are the online poker sites, through the miracle of volume; they take a pretty small cut (much lower than brick-and-mortar casinos, as their overheads are WAY lower - essentially they write the software and after that they're a pure IT / marketing operation) of massive volume. Just huge. I don't have any numbers to hand but it's probably something ludicrous like more hands are played online every hour than are played in real casinos all year, that kinda thing.
Casinos make most of their money on slots, and then sucker table games.
"a) No longer is the only source of getting a song, buying an album"
I'm always vaguely bemused at this canard, which is constantly cited over and over by both sides of whatever argument you happen to be having at the time.
'The only source of getting a song' has _never_ been buying an album. At least in by far the most common case, which is 'wanting to buy that popular song that you keep hearing on the radio'. All those songs on the radio are called 'singles'. And you've _always_ been able to buy them...as singles. CD singles, record singles, whatever - you get the song you wanted, and a couple of tracks of filler, for about 1/8th the cost of the album.
Until recently, when digital distribution changed everything, singles massively outsold albums. I'm just not sure where this phantom image of millions of sad people buying entire albums just to get single tracks comes from, because it's never actually been the case.
"Speculation is that this is related to the attempts of the ITU-T to take over Internet governance"
I'm not sure who with a modicum of knowledge would speculate that, given that the ITU and ICANN are utterly separate bodies and don't like each other very much. Not re-signing with ICANN is not going to annoy the ITU at all.
Slashdot Mirror
2: not just tourism, transits. I take great care never to connect through the U.S. any more.
So what you're saying is, we still have vaguely functional labour laws? Good.
A law which says 'you can shoot anyone you claim to feel threatened by, without being obliged to prove you made any attempt at all to avoid the situation in any other way' is reasonable?
Only an American.
"a penchant for fine cheese, cigars, and port"
Please provide details as to how I might subscribe to your newsletter.
is it just me, or is a patent champagne bottle opener a wonderful example of humanity at its most absurd?
Let's face it, the correct solution to the problem of 'making it possible to efficiently open a bottle of fizzy liquid' is 'put a bloody screw cap on the thing'.
but no, because it's only a proper bottle of champagne if it comes with a thoroughly impractical stopper covered in entirely pointless shiny foil, we have to invent and fight over the rights to the proceeds from a complex device for removing said entirely unnecessarily impractical stopper.
sigh...
You're doing it wrong.
Your home is a place for you to live, eat, sleep and relax in. You want to be able to keep doing all those things, especially #2 and #4, you are going to want to live within your budget.
An excellent way to avoid doing that is to dream up ridiculous goals that make no damn sense and then waste your money on them.
Technology is not and never should be confused for an end in yourself. It exists to help you reach other goals more effectively and efficiently. You don't start out by thinking 'how can I throw some miscellaneous kind of Cool Technology into this house thing I just bought'. You start out by thinking 'what do I need to do to keep myself and my family sheltered, fed, and healthy?' Then you do that, and once you've covered it, if you have any money left, ask yourself how you can most efficiently keep yourself and your family relaxed and entertained, and if the answer to that involves technology, well, fine, some kind of technology it is. Perhaps something incredible like a radio or a television. If you don't have the money to afford whatever shiny whizz-bang thing caught your eye, don't fucking buy it, and definitely don't buy some kind of pointless cheap imitation of it. Just leave it the hell alone already.
preach it, brother. Is there some sort of pressure group we can join? every time I go to CNN, see an interesting headline, click on it, and see the bloody video player load up, I reach for my revolver...
It's more like standing at the end of your driveway and demanding that the driver of any bus that passes by gives you the personal details of all his passengers - and the bus driver complying. Whatever his passengers want.
The airlines are not, as far as I can see, legally obliged to comply with the U.S.'s requests. But they can choose to, and apparently, they are. The only choice passengers get in the matter is not to book such flights. If you book such a flight, you are agreeing to let the airline pass your information to the U.S. government.
For the fifteenth time, the DHS is now demanding information on flights from Europe to Canada and on flights from Europe to Cuba, which never pass into US airspace. They've been demanding information on flights which pass through US airspace for years already.
It means 'quality newspaper' as opposed to 'tabloid newspaper'. In the U.K. they're referred to as a 'broadsheet' and 'tabloid'. The Independent is a broadsheet/quality newspaper, not a tabloid.
That Canadian regulation seems to cover only provision of flight information a) to a foreign state, for a flight landing in that foreign state and b) to the U.S., for a flight overflying the U.S. I see no provision for providing flight information to the U.S. relating to a flight that does not overfly the U.S.
The original article is somewhat difficult to read and confusingly written, but I'm fairly sure you're reading it wrong.
What you're missing is that the article describes *three* stages of the process, not two. Here's the quotation:
"For several years, every US-bound passenger has had to provide Advance Passenger Information (API) before departure. Washington has extended the obligation to air routes that over-fly US airspace, such as Heathrow to Mexico City or Gatwick to Havana.
Now the US is demanding passengers' full names, dates of birth and gender from airlines, at least 72 hour before departure from the UK to Canada. The initial requirement is for flights to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and the Nova Scotia capital, Halifax – 150 miles from the nearest US territory. A similar stipulation is expected soon for the main airports in western Canada, Vancouver and Calgary."
As I said, the key point is there are *three* levels there. "every US-bound passenger has had to provide Advance Passenger Information (API) before departure" is Stage 1, what everyone's familiar with. Stage 2 is "Washington has extended the obligation to air routes that over-fly US airspace, such as Heathrow to Mexico City or Gatwick to Havana" - a more recent extension of the policy to routes that go through US airspace, but not the new policy the article is about. This part is still background. The whole final paragraph - "Now the US is demanding passengers' full names, dates of birth and gender from airlines, at least 72 hour before departure from the UK to Canada. The initial requirement is for flights to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and the Nova Scotia capital, Halifax – 150 miles from the nearest US territory. A similar stipulation is expected soon for the main airports in western Canada, Vancouver and Calgary." - is Stage 3. It's a further extension of the policy: the new extension that the article is complaining about. It's different from Stage 2. Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax are all north of the 49th parallel and commercial flights from the U.K. to Canada all follow great circle routes. Standard flight plans from the U.K. to any of the four named cities (and Vancouver and Calgary) do not overfly U.S. airspace at any point (well, I think some approach routes to YVR might).
I can certainly see how you can misread the article, but I'm pretty sure you are misreading it.
You might want to read the article, and the dozens of other comments on this post. What makes this policy so insane is that they are demanding information on flights which _never enter US airspace_.
That's the abstract, and as maroberts said, the abstract of a patent is not the important bit. Skip it. Read the claims.
No, not really. It's an extremely fine distinction. In the end, saying something was illegal.
In this case, it's the 'action' of 'inciting racial hatred' that's criminal, not the speech. You can argue over whether such an action should be illegal, or whether such an action actually happened in this case (it could be appealed). But it seems to meet the very fine distinction you're trying to draw here.
"But, apparently, not freedom of speech."
Indeed not. Americans often don't recognize that other countries don't venerate the 'freedom of speech' to anything like the extent you do. Even in most other countries that are perfectly democratic and 'free' by any rational measure, speech is somewhat less strongly protected in grey areas like this than it is in the U.S.
"I have zero self-control and wish to enforce needless annoying restrictions on others in order to provide an incredibly minor transient benefit to my own peace of mind, which I could do for myself if I tried even a little bit."
They're not talking about either of those things. Those are military networks. They're talking about the Department of Defense network - the network of the civilian agency which oversees the military. Different organizations, different networks.
This post is all the proof anyone should need that Slashdot comment scores should go up to 6.
Poker doesn't make brick-and-mortar casinos much, it's low volume and somewhat heavy on the manpower (dealing poker must be one of the higher skilled blue collar jobs remaining in America...), and you're not betting against the house; the house is offering a service to players who are betting against each other. Casinos offer it because it's something a 'real casino' has to do, and hey, it makes them _some_ money. Brick-and-mortar casinos don't promote poker that heavily.
The organizations that make a ton of money off poker are the online poker sites, through the miracle of volume; they take a pretty small cut (much lower than brick-and-mortar casinos, as their overheads are WAY lower - essentially they write the software and after that they're a pure IT / marketing operation) of massive volume. Just huge. I don't have any numbers to hand but it's probably something ludicrous like more hands are played online every hour than are played in real casinos all year, that kinda thing.
Casinos make most of their money on slots, and then sucker table games.
"a) No longer is the only source of getting a song, buying an album"
I'm always vaguely bemused at this canard, which is constantly cited over and over by both sides of whatever argument you happen to be having at the time.
'The only source of getting a song' has _never_ been buying an album. At least in by far the most common case, which is 'wanting to buy that popular song that you keep hearing on the radio'. All those songs on the radio are called 'singles'. And you've _always_ been able to buy them...as singles. CD singles, record singles, whatever - you get the song you wanted, and a couple of tracks of filler, for about 1/8th the cost of the album.
Until recently, when digital distribution changed everything, singles massively outsold albums. I'm just not sure where this phantom image of millions of sad people buying entire albums just to get single tracks comes from, because it's never actually been the case.
I get that reference. Let us congratulate each other on our taste!
fine, score one for you, mr. pedant. :) add, oh, another 2 sq. ft for the chair.
"anybody who thinks a functional office requires less than 60 square feet must be completely out of touch with reality"
I've worked from a 5ft by 2.5ft desk for the last four years. Yes, that's my entire work area.
Before that, I worked from one half of the same desk.
"Speculation is that this is related to the attempts of the ITU-T to take over Internet governance"
I'm not sure who with a modicum of knowledge would speculate that, given that the ITU and ICANN are utterly separate bodies and don't like each other very much. Not re-signing with ICANN is not going to annoy the ITU at all.