You are correct. We've been lied to about these guys. Mostly, they were turned in for money -- a king's ransom really if you compared the amount paid to per capita income. Seriously, if you started offering American's $150,000 to turn in terrorists, and required little evidence beyond someone's word, every neighborhood grudge would devolve into one person disappearing, and another installing a new swimming pool. We've been totally duped: Seton Hall Report.
Sadly -- the GP is part of the end of America as we know it (whether by intention, apathy or simple lack of knowledge doesn't really matter). I don't know what we will be in the future, but it won't have anything to do with freedom, justice, fairness, or equity.
I have no doubt a sizable portion of the convicted are innocent. Sadly, many crimes don't lend themselves to exoneration via DNA evidence. Juries are very good about convicting based on their prejudices. If you're arrested and are eccentric -- you're toast.
What history of violent behavior? The only thing I can think of from the daily trial summaries was that he may have gotten in a shoving match with someone in college after that person spammed his mailbox with 5000 messages. Considering the cheering that goes up around here when spammers in Russia get murdered, it would be amazing for that to be considered a history of violent behavior.
What history of violence? Are you talking about the shoving match in college with a guy who spammed his mailbox with 5000 messages? There was no other history of violence I recall from reading the live-blogged daily trial summaries.
And what about the Cynthia Sommers case? She was convicted of first degree murder on circumstantial evidence as well (boob job, sleeping around, couldn't envision living her whole life with her husband). Turns out the lab tests that showed her dead husband had arsenic poising were wrong -- he had no arsenic in his system at all. But jeez, she acted weird after her husband died. That's all it takes to get sent away anymore.
Not quite -- At the most basic level, Habeas Corpus is the principle that the government must bring the accused to a public court and publicly let him know what the charges are. This is the whole problem with Guantanamo -- we never get to see the defendant (was he tortured? is he alive?) and nobody gets to hear the charges, not even the accused. Habeas was developed in England before the US even became a nation to prevent Government abuse. Looks like we're regressing.
Habeas refers to the _defendant's_ body. You have bring the person to court, demonstrate that he hasn't been killed or tortured, and publicly announce the charges. Habeas corpus does not refer to victim's bodies. For a nice history of Habeas, see Habeas Schmabeas.
I don't know how jury selection goes in CA, I practice in WA, but I can tell you this about jury selection -- it's the most milk-toast people that usually get on. Imagine a pool for a 6 person jury. The people are numbered in order from 1-20. Often enough, several people will be excused because of hearing problems, medical problems, or knowing a witness/party/judge/lawyer. The first 6 people in line are considered to be on the jury, except that each lawyer gets three strikes. If a person in front of the line is booted, then everyone behind moves up a slot. There are always 6 people at the front of the line.
Anyway, you have to figure out who you're absolute least favorite people are in the first 12 people in line. Then one attorney strikes, and the other strikes and so on until you're out of strikes, or both sides accept the front 6 in line. Expand everything for a 12 person jury.
What you end up with, is a jury of candidates that both sides considered "least worst". Anyway, if you want to be booted from a jury pool, express a bias toward one side -- in a criminal case, say "all cops are liars" or "all cops have a god-like understanding of what went down". You'll be sent home fast.
Yeah -- they "proved it" in the way that they proved Cynthia Sommers murdered her husband -- she got a boob job and slept around. Of course, in the Sommers case they had a body and a lab result saying it was full of arsenic -- except the police lab botched the test. Fortunately for Sommers, subsequent tests proved there was no arsenic at all. She only had to spend 876 days in jail for her conviction.
I have great faith in the legal system's ability to root out and punish eccentricity. I have absolutely no faith in its ability to do justice.
As far as software goes, on the Linux side is a program called motion. It's a command line app which makes it pretty simple to ensure it's running on bootup (nice if the power goes out and comes back). Connect a webcam, and it takes snapshots at an interval you select whenever it detects motion (can also do movies).
I have this running on an old P3 600 mhz laptop in my studio. I don't live at the studio but a number of cats adopted it as their home. I point the camera at the cat door and that allows me to know which cats have been around as they must come inside to eat. It used to be that I'd worry when I didn't see a cat for days -- now I just check my pics and usually see that truant stopping by at 3:00 a.m. for a late night snack. The whole setup cost nothing -- just repurposing stuff from its prior roll of "filling closet space due to obsolescence" to doing something useful.
Wow. He wasn't pontificating -- he was discussing his personal experience with not watching TV for an extended period in the context of a topic related to how TV wastes resources. He brought a perfectly relevant perspective -- not a sermon.
I'm also a TV refusenik, and while I don't know if the GP is like me, I do know I don't go around willy nilly saying "I don't watch TV". It comes up from time to time when someone alludes to something I've never seen, so I'll have to ask for clarification, but I'm not pontificating in any way.
What amazes me is that a small number of people get so defensive about TV viewing habits, as if my refusal to engage (*) is some sort of personal attack. Everyone should spend their time how they want to, but I suspect that those who get defensive about how they spend their time, have some internal voice telling them they should spend it differently. Either that or they're ridiculously hypersensitive.
(*) I should note, I am no longer completely TV free -- I do watch certain shows on DVD or iTunes. I am however, completely commercial free and for me, the time spent watching commercials felt utterly wasted -- it was the main reason I quit. I also had difficulty controlling how long I'd watch. When the content is not streamed constantly to my set, but I have to select and pay for it individually, it helps me be selective. If there's nothing to buy, I have nothing to watch. My current problem though, is spending too much time online. I need to work out a cure for that like I did for TV 15 years ago.
Same here -- I gave up TV around 1993. I know exactly what you mean about being disconnected from pop culture but it hasn't really bothered me. After a few months without TV, I didn't miss it all because I had time to engage in hobbies and other things that interested me.
Unfortunately, I've discovered a new problem recently. I find my time dwindling again because in the last couple years, I've been spending way too much time online. While pre-93 I might surf channels all day hoping something good would come on -- now I'm surfing the web incessantly hoping there will be something good to read. I have to figure out how to restrain myself somehow, but this time it will be harder. I need a network connection to get linux distros and for help/documentation. Secondly, commercial free quality material is quite easy to get now thanks to DVDs, iTunes, and such. While my interests are very narrow in terms of TV content, I'm probably spending three or four hours per week on watching shows now. I'm really starting to notice how projects I have are languishing, and projects I want to do are being pushed further into the future.
Anyway -- I better get the heck of slashdot now and start my network time reduction.
You're absolutely right about how using "Mac" was silly idea -- it's even in the license:
10. Trademarks. This License does not grant any rights to use the trademarks or trade names "Apple", "Apple Computer", "Mac", "Mac OS", "QuickTime", "QuickTime Streaming Server" [blah blah blah...]
The license does allow you to "externally deploy" Darwin for commercial and non-commercial purposes, you can modify the code, and you can charge for your services.
Technically then, the question is whether you have to go through EFI rigamarole to install Darwin, and whether once done, it sticks when trying to install commercial OSX. Obviously, that install would have to be left to the end user because Apple doesn't grant that right.
Also note, I'm not making a judgment on whether it's right or wrong, just on whether a business model using Darwin could be feasible. Personally, I'd rather just throw a linux distro on a generic box than go through the trouble even of using Darwin. I have some Apple laptops and they're nice enough -- I use them for media playback, personal audio and video editing, and other such things which are either not legal or not easy in any linux distro. Apple's basic media apps are very nice, but when it comes to doing real work, I find life is much more simple on a linux box. Whenever I use my laptops for real work, it's via forwarded X sessions over SSH.
Their only mistake is selling OSX pre-installed. Now if they sold it with Darwin (the open source underpinnings to OSX) pre-installed, how would that be bad? They could load up X11 and gnome or KDE for the GUI part of things. Granted, that isn't what people expect with OSX, but it avoids the EULA issue altogether. I would imagine, but don't know, that once Darwin is running, it would be relatively easy for people to install OSX over it. But as a business, Pystar needs to leave the dirty work to the end user if they want to stay in business.
Right now, my use is only reading and display while firing. It helps me time my stoking frequency -- this is sort of a melding of 1500 year old labor intensive kiln tech, with semi-modern technology (I've been using old computers, but none older than a pentium 133, because the environment is harsh and it would be a shame to harm a nice computer). In my fantasies, I have a one-wire-weather system for atmospheric data, an oxygen sensor in the chimney (from a junked car, put it in the chimney so it doesn't burn up), and simple on/off circuit that senses when the stoke door is open. All the data would go into a database and then I could look for patterns vs. results. At one point, I had set up a script to collect data from the DMMs I connect to the thermocouples and feed a database, but I didn't take it farther. It really would make a good project for this summer.
Plainly, you're way more advanced than I am. But I do think it says something about how useful serial ports are when someone with my very low level of skills can get data I want out of them.
I love serial ports for their simplicity. I do some simple data acquisition on a kiln I fire with some digital multimeters and thermocouples. It's very helpful to watch the temperature over time graph while firing a kiln that requires manual stoking of firewood. Anyway, the serial port is easy to read writing scripts to stuff with that isn't wildly hard (although every time I need to write such a script, I have to refresh myself).
You should try it. My experience with USB and Firewire drives has been much more positive on the firewire side. I don't have technical data, just subjective perception, but firewire feels snappier and more stable. I can run an OS off a firewire drive and it feels like I'm running it off an internal drive. I haven't run an OS off a USB drive directly, but I have through virtualization, and it just doesn't feel as snappy compared to doing the same thing with firewire. Plus, with big file transfers, USB feels like it bogs down. Of course, others may have other experiences, but I love firewire.
So? Some activities make driving safer, some make it more dangerous. Nobody is disputing that driving is dangerous. Driving while intoxicated is more dangerous than driving while sober. Driving while talking on a cell is more dangerous than driving while paying attention. Driving while tired is more dangerous than driving while alert. Everyone understands the danger vs. utility aspect of driving. But there is no reason to exacerbate the danger.
As for blue lights in the car, I think it's potentially a bad idea. Blue light makes it hard to see in the dark. Red light doesn't affect night vision so much. Besides, I F*#$ing sick of all the blue lights gratuitously stuck all over the place -- like in the front of an otherwise nice quality DVD player. I'm sick of having to tape over blue lights or prop up DVD covers to right this idiocy about bright blue light.
And as for drivers with those ultra-blue blinding lights, I want to build an auto-tracking fully automatic BB gun (everyone knows driving is dangerous -- anyone remember Deathtrack from the bad old DOS days? loved that game).
I really like Melville. He was way ahead of his times on a social level. For example, in the last book I read "Typee" (semi-autobiographical), he seriously trash talked the Missionaries and such who came to the South Pacific in an effort to "civilize" the natives, turning a relatively stable and easy existence into one of disease, hardship, and death. This isn't to say he failed to recognize that peoples of the S. Pacific could also be cruel, just all those who came to civilize the place were much much worse. This isn't exactly what one would expect some guy from the middle of the 1800s to say. And of course, he traveled all over the world at a time when doing that was pretty hard. Anyway, not saying you are wrong to dislike his work -- you are totally entitled to your opinion. But I bet there are plenty of people who would find his writings quite interesting. Try not to use your opinion to put them off.
Obviously, my town isn't everywhere in the country. I live about 90 miles north of Seattle, but there are at least three local coffee shops with 3 blocks of my office with free wi-fi. Maybe it isn't just CA that's hip to access.
In regards to homework -- I tend to agree with you -- collaboration shouldn't matter most of the time. I graduated college in 92 and law school in 97. I remember a great deal of collaboration in law school during the semester and it was sometimes quite enjoyable. However, we didn't have "homework" assignments for the most part -- we had tons of work but it wasn't graded in any sense of the word. We did the work because the grading system was terrifying.
Grades were determined based on a final examination -- in some classes there was a midterm and a final, in others a paper and a final. Believe me, people studied like mad for these exams, and it was really stressful to think that the entire class grade hung on one examination. People would whine about how the system favored people adept at taking tests, blah blah blah. For law, that "one final = your grade" system was appropriate because that's what it's like in real life. For other professions, the testing should probably fit with the way the work is usually done and if that means independent incremental for-credit small assignments, then so be it. As I site here now though, the whole notion of turning in small assignments along the way for credit seems juvenile, but of course, I'm getting old and turning into a curmudgeon.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct. We've been lied to about these guys. Mostly, they were turned in for money -- a king's ransom really if you compared the amount paid to per capita income. Seriously, if you started offering American's $150,000 to turn in terrorists, and required little evidence beyond someone's word, every neighborhood grudge would devolve into one person disappearing, and another installing a new swimming pool. We've been totally duped: Seton Hall Report.
Sadly -- the GP is part of the end of America as we know it (whether by intention, apathy or simple lack of knowledge doesn't really matter). I don't know what we will be in the future, but it won't have anything to do with freedom, justice, fairness, or equity.
There was no history of violence against his wife. If there had been, it would have been brought up as evidence.
See Cynthia Sommers
See The Innocence Project.
I have no doubt a sizable portion of the convicted are innocent. Sadly, many crimes don't lend themselves to exoneration via DNA evidence. Juries are very good about convicting based on their prejudices. If you're arrested and are eccentric -- you're toast.
The blood experts testified that the blood cannot be dated.
What history of violent behavior? The only thing I can think of from the daily trial summaries was that he may have gotten in a shoving match with someone in college after that person spammed his mailbox with 5000 messages. Considering the cheering that goes up around here when spammers in Russia get murdered, it would be amazing for that to be considered a history of violent behavior.
What history of violence? Are you talking about the shoving match in college with a guy who spammed his mailbox with 5000 messages? There was no other history of violence I recall from reading the live-blogged daily trial summaries.
And what about the Cynthia Sommers case? She was convicted of first degree murder on circumstantial evidence as well (boob job, sleeping around, couldn't envision living her whole life with her husband). Turns out the lab tests that showed her dead husband had arsenic poising were wrong -- he had no arsenic in his system at all. But jeez, she acted weird after her husband died. That's all it takes to get sent away anymore.
Not quite -- At the most basic level, Habeas Corpus is the principle that the government must bring the accused to a public court and publicly let him know what the charges are. This is the whole problem with Guantanamo -- we never get to see the defendant (was he tortured? is he alive?) and nobody gets to hear the charges, not even the accused. Habeas was developed in England before the US even became a nation to prevent Government abuse. Looks like we're regressing.
Habeas refers to the _defendant's_ body. You have bring the person to court, demonstrate that he hasn't been killed or tortured, and publicly announce the charges. Habeas corpus does not refer to victim's bodies. For a nice history of Habeas, see Habeas Schmabeas.
I don't know how jury selection goes in CA, I practice in WA, but I can tell you this about jury selection -- it's the most milk-toast people that usually get on. Imagine a pool for a 6 person jury. The people are numbered in order from 1-20. Often enough, several people will be excused because of hearing problems, medical problems, or knowing a witness/party/judge/lawyer. The first 6 people in line are considered to be on the jury, except that each lawyer gets three strikes. If a person in front of the line is booted, then everyone behind moves up a slot. There are always 6 people at the front of the line.
Anyway, you have to figure out who you're absolute least favorite people are in the first 12 people in line. Then one attorney strikes, and the other strikes and so on until you're out of strikes, or both sides accept the front 6 in line. Expand everything for a 12 person jury.
What you end up with, is a jury of candidates that both sides considered "least worst". Anyway, if you want to be booted from a jury pool, express a bias toward one side -- in a criminal case, say "all cops are liars" or "all cops have a god-like understanding of what went down". You'll be sent home fast.
Yeah -- they "proved it" in the way that they proved Cynthia Sommers murdered her husband -- she got a boob job and slept around. Of course, in the Sommers case they had a body and a lab result saying it was full of arsenic -- except the police lab botched the test. Fortunately for Sommers, subsequent tests proved there was no arsenic at all. She only had to spend 876 days in jail for her conviction.
I have great faith in the legal system's ability to root out and punish eccentricity. I have absolutely no faith in its ability to do justice.
As far as software goes, on the Linux side is a program called motion. It's a command line app which makes it pretty simple to ensure it's running on bootup (nice if the power goes out and comes back). Connect a webcam, and it takes snapshots at an interval you select whenever it detects motion (can also do movies).
I have this running on an old P3 600 mhz laptop in my studio. I don't live at the studio but a number of cats adopted it as their home. I point the camera at the cat door and that allows me to know which cats have been around as they must come inside to eat. It used to be that I'd worry when I didn't see a cat for days -- now I just check my pics and usually see that truant stopping by at 3:00 a.m. for a late night snack. The whole setup cost nothing -- just repurposing stuff from its prior roll of "filling closet space due to obsolescence" to doing something useful.
Wow. He wasn't pontificating -- he was discussing his personal experience with not watching TV for an extended period in the context of a topic related to how TV wastes resources. He brought a perfectly relevant perspective -- not a sermon.
I'm also a TV refusenik, and while I don't know if the GP is like me, I do know I don't go around willy nilly saying "I don't watch TV". It comes up from time to time when someone alludes to something I've never seen, so I'll have to ask for clarification, but I'm not pontificating in any way.
What amazes me is that a small number of people get so defensive about TV viewing habits, as if my refusal to engage (*) is some sort of personal attack. Everyone should spend their time how they want to, but I suspect that those who get defensive about how they spend their time, have some internal voice telling them they should spend it differently. Either that or they're ridiculously hypersensitive.
(*) I should note, I am no longer completely TV free -- I do watch certain shows on DVD or iTunes. I am however, completely commercial free and for me, the time spent watching commercials felt utterly wasted -- it was the main reason I quit. I also had difficulty controlling how long I'd watch. When the content is not streamed constantly to my set, but I have to select and pay for it individually, it helps me be selective. If there's nothing to buy, I have nothing to watch. My current problem though, is spending too much time online. I need to work out a cure for that like I did for TV 15 years ago.
Same here -- I gave up TV around 1993. I know exactly what you mean about being disconnected from pop culture but it hasn't really bothered me. After a few months without TV, I didn't miss it all because I had time to engage in hobbies and other things that interested me.
Unfortunately, I've discovered a new problem recently. I find my time dwindling again because in the last couple years, I've been spending way too much time online. While pre-93 I might surf channels all day hoping something good would come on -- now I'm surfing the web incessantly hoping there will be something good to read. I have to figure out how to restrain myself somehow, but this time it will be harder. I need a network connection to get linux distros and for help/documentation. Secondly, commercial free quality material is quite easy to get now thanks to DVDs, iTunes, and such. While my interests are very narrow in terms of TV content, I'm probably spending three or four hours per week on watching shows now. I'm really starting to notice how projects I have are languishing, and projects I want to do are being pushed further into the future.
Anyway -- I better get the heck of slashdot now and start my network time reduction.
You're absolutely right about how using "Mac" was silly idea -- it's even in the license: The license does allow you to "externally deploy" Darwin for commercial and non-commercial purposes, you can modify the code, and you can charge for your services.
Technically then, the question is whether you have to go through EFI rigamarole to install Darwin, and whether once done, it sticks when trying to install commercial OSX. Obviously, that install would have to be left to the end user because Apple doesn't grant that right.
Also note, I'm not making a judgment on whether it's right or wrong, just on whether a business model using Darwin could be feasible. Personally, I'd rather just throw a linux distro on a generic box than go through the trouble even of using Darwin. I have some Apple laptops and they're nice enough -- I use them for media playback, personal audio and video editing, and other such things which are either not legal or not easy in any linux distro. Apple's basic media apps are very nice, but when it comes to doing real work, I find life is much more simple on a linux box. Whenever I use my laptops for real work, it's via forwarded X sessions over SSH.
Their only mistake is selling OSX pre-installed. Now if they sold it with Darwin (the open source underpinnings to OSX) pre-installed, how would that be bad? They could load up X11 and gnome or KDE for the GUI part of things. Granted, that isn't what people expect with OSX, but it avoids the EULA issue altogether. I would imagine, but don't know, that once Darwin is running, it would be relatively easy for people to install OSX over it. But as a business, Pystar needs to leave the dirty work to the end user if they want to stay in business.
Right now, my use is only reading and display while firing. It helps me time my stoking frequency -- this is sort of a melding of 1500 year old labor intensive kiln tech, with semi-modern technology (I've been using old computers, but none older than a pentium 133, because the environment is harsh and it would be a shame to harm a nice computer). In my fantasies, I have a one-wire-weather system for atmospheric data, an oxygen sensor in the chimney (from a junked car, put it in the chimney so it doesn't burn up), and simple on/off circuit that senses when the stoke door is open. All the data would go into a database and then I could look for patterns vs. results. At one point, I had set up a script to collect data from the DMMs I connect to the thermocouples and feed a database, but I didn't take it farther. It really would make a good project for this summer.
Plainly, you're way more advanced than I am. But I do think it says something about how useful serial ports are when someone with my very low level of skills can get data I want out of them.
hmmm -- that just tells me that USB is good for little things, firewire for hefty work.
I love serial ports for their simplicity. I do some simple data acquisition on a kiln I fire with some digital multimeters and thermocouples. It's very helpful to watch the temperature over time graph while firing a kiln that requires manual stoking of firewood. Anyway, the serial port is easy to read writing scripts to stuff with that isn't wildly hard (although every time I need to write such a script, I have to refresh myself).
You should try it. My experience with USB and Firewire drives has been much more positive on the firewire side. I don't have technical data, just subjective perception, but firewire feels snappier and more stable. I can run an OS off a firewire drive and it feels like I'm running it off an internal drive. I haven't run an OS off a USB drive directly, but I have through virtualization, and it just doesn't feel as snappy compared to doing the same thing with firewire. Plus, with big file transfers, USB feels like it bogs down. Of course, others may have other experiences, but I love firewire.
And don't forget that Frankenstein was likely due in part to the frigid summer caused by the eruption of Mt. Tambora. That should be good for a bonus point or two.
http://frankensteinia.blogspot.com/2008/01/frankensteins-volcano.html
So? Some activities make driving safer, some make it more dangerous. Nobody is disputing that driving is dangerous. Driving while intoxicated is more dangerous than driving while sober. Driving while talking on a cell is more dangerous than driving while paying attention. Driving while tired is more dangerous than driving while alert. Everyone understands the danger vs. utility aspect of driving. But there is no reason to exacerbate the danger.
As for blue lights in the car, I think it's potentially a bad idea. Blue light makes it hard to see in the dark. Red light doesn't affect night vision so much. Besides, I F*#$ing sick of all the blue lights gratuitously stuck all over the place -- like in the front of an otherwise nice quality DVD player. I'm sick of having to tape over blue lights or prop up DVD covers to right this idiocy about bright blue light.
And as for drivers with those ultra-blue blinding lights, I want to build an auto-tracking fully automatic BB gun (everyone knows driving is dangerous -- anyone remember Deathtrack from the bad old DOS days? loved that game).
I really like Melville. He was way ahead of his times on a social level. For example, in the last book I read "Typee" (semi-autobiographical), he seriously trash talked the Missionaries and such who came to the South Pacific in an effort to "civilize" the natives, turning a relatively stable and easy existence into one of disease, hardship, and death. This isn't to say he failed to recognize that peoples of the S. Pacific could also be cruel, just all those who came to civilize the place were much much worse. This isn't exactly what one would expect some guy from the middle of the 1800s to say. And of course, he traveled all over the world at a time when doing that was pretty hard. Anyway, not saying you are wrong to dislike his work -- you are totally entitled to your opinion. But I bet there are plenty of people who would find his writings quite interesting. Try not to use your opinion to put them off.
Obviously, my town isn't everywhere in the country. I live about 90 miles north of Seattle, but there are at least three local coffee shops with 3 blocks of my office with free wi-fi. Maybe it isn't just CA that's hip to access.
Who will protect us from the Pentagon?
In regards to homework -- I tend to agree with you -- collaboration shouldn't matter most of the time. I graduated college in 92 and law school in 97. I remember a great deal of collaboration in law school during the semester and it was sometimes quite enjoyable. However, we didn't have "homework" assignments for the most part -- we had tons of work but it wasn't graded in any sense of the word. We did the work because the grading system was terrifying.
Grades were determined based on a final examination -- in some classes there was a midterm and a final, in others a paper and a final. Believe me, people studied like mad for these exams, and it was really stressful to think that the entire class grade hung on one examination. People would whine about how the system favored people adept at taking tests, blah blah blah. For law, that "one final = your grade" system was appropriate because that's what it's like in real life. For other professions, the testing should probably fit with the way the work is usually done and if that means independent incremental for-credit small assignments, then so be it. As I site here now though, the whole notion of turning in small assignments along the way for credit seems juvenile, but of course, I'm getting old and turning into a curmudgeon.