Point taken; that is how it should be. Though Ashcroft doesn't want to lay PATRIOT aside, as he's appealing the court decision that lets him get away with spying on financial records without a warrant.
Yes, but privacy law is a matter of expectation. The question here is not whether ISPs are physically capable of spying on email, the question is whether they are legally allowed to.
From a practical standpoint, an email is more like a letter with a thin envelope. You don't have to do much to read it (browse mail server log, hold the envelope up to a light) but it still requires some positive action as opposed to a postcard which can essentially fall message-side-up in front of you. But enough of the analogies.
Practically, we should be encrypting -all- our email, and demanding end-to-end encryption in our phone conversations (which I would never trust without an open source phone). Pragmatically, until we all are, at least saying that such snooping is not allowed is a good step. I would still like it to be illegal for my ISP to snoop on me if they are able to break the encryption I use.
Hey so long as you were having a coniption fit about it in 1998 I can agree with that, but as a sign I once saw so aptly pointed out... say no to war, unless there is a democrat in the whitehouie..
Amusing. I was recently called a "Republican attack-dog" for my views on Clinton's military exploits. The other day I was a libertarian. Funny how a reasoned distaste that you can't disagree with is nevertheless a sign of bias, unless I immediately recite a litany of everyone else I may not like for doing similar. Sign of the times, I guess. I didn't know Halliburton by name in '98, but Clinton didn't draw my attention to it by hiring their CEO to be his VP, turning the one deciding energy policy and the one profiting from it into the same person. He was doing more than enough to reveal the corruption of government -- note the lack of party qualifiers -- besides.
sigh... all of which is compleatly fungable
Maybe I'm missing your point. What part of fungibility makes it undesirable to own or control large amounts of the fungible resource? Just because it doesn't matter where you get the oil doesn't mean it isn't profitable to be the one selling it, or being able to sell it when the supply from elsewhere is low, or to control the price by managing the supply. Haven't you seen the price of oil fluctuating with the reliability of Iraqi pipelines? Or are the Strategic Petrolium Reserve and OPEC useless, even though both have served to manage the supply of oil, therefore the price, and therefore profits of oil producers?
ANWR is actually a perfect example. Despite acting as though it isn't the case publicly, Cheney is certainly aware that oil is not an infinite resource, we can and will run out, and ANWR's easily recoverable oil provides only a tiny bump in the date in which that occurs. When oil starts to become scare you really don't think it's going to matter whose military bases are sitting atop the oil fields, because oil's "fungible"?
So you see Bush in a room saying well I would not invade Iraq but damn if they dont have oil... Seriously thats what you think it came down to?
Remember what I said about shades of grey? Saying "I would not invade Iraq but damn if they dont have oil" is like saying "I would not invade Iraq but damn if they dont have WMD". Do I think "strategic oil == $$$" showed up in the "pros" column when they decided to go to war? Absolutely. Was it a binary go/don't go decision as you want to paint it? Probably not, because rarely are things that simple. Even the existence of nuclear weapons doesn't qualify as being a sole deciding factor. But if you're looking for some kind of ranking between factors, I point you to the planning and execution of bringing peace in the aftermath of war versus exploiting Iraq's resources. It doesn't have to be the single most important factor to still be present and disgusting.
What could be more romantic than exchanging vows while 100km up?
Are there any possible launch sites in Nevada? Find a pilot who's also an ordained minister and Elvis impersonator, and you'd only need the 3-seater version of the space ship!
Yes and this is a systematic problem with our government, not a particular political party.
Um, yes. Your point? Both parties also have started pointless foreign wars, which mitigates the current pointless war not at all. Get this straight: I don't care what party a rotten politician is from, I care that they are rotten.
So if cheny used to say head up the red cross should they not be allowed in? This argument *might* hold some water if Clinton had not done the *exact same thing*
That depends. Is the Red Cross a publicly traded company in which Cheney had more than 400,000 stock options? Do we give them multi-billion contracts?
Ok So if I get you right, even though oil is fungable, and even though Clinton gave no bid contracts to halliburton in the 90's its still blatent proof this was was about oil?
So those are our two options as you put them: blatant proof, or no basis in reality. Sorry, but this discussion would be more fruitful if we could acknowledge shades of grey. Substantial conflict of interest, acting in ways beneficial to said interest, all while lying about the conflict of interest is not proof of anything, but is still as real as anything.
No I pointed out facts, I fully expected you to ignore them and contiune an anti-bush rant
I'm not ignoring it, I'm questioning how you think it is supposed to sway me. Me: Handing these overpriced contracts to Halliburton was indefensible. You: Just as it was when Clinton did it.
Okay. That changes the word "indefensible" in my first statement how?
Do you really think Iraq was the most politically expedient way to get halliburton money? hell Bush could have rammed anwar through (he did have the votes) and gave halliburton a no bid contract for that.
Who said it was the most politically expedient, or had to be?
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, possibly more in the nine tenths of the country that are unexplored, more than ten times the amount in the ANWR. And Alaska isn't going anywhere, so Iraq or ANWR is a false dichotomy. Lifting the sanctions may have lowered oil prices, but it wouldn't provide long term strategic control over the 3rd largest oil reserve on earth. That this would also result in financial benefit to Halliburtion is something I'm sure Cheney would say doesn't impact the decision at all, while eyeing the stock price.
It's not just about oil; it's not just about feeding Halliburton money. Those are strawmen. And yet, the first thing we secured was the oil fields, which are still better protected than Iraqi cities outside the Green Zone. We'll let cities go without electricity for weeks, but damned if we let the terrorists stop the flow of oil for more than a day. It's not all about oil and money for Halliburton, but it's a far, far cry from not being about oil.
many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's.
In the purpely hypothetical choice of a world with Saddam leading Iraq, and a world with someone else preferably democratically elected leading a peaceful Iraq, then there's no comparison. Clearly, the latter universe is better. If the only difference between universes were Saddam vs no Saddam, then everything being said now (as opposed to before) as justifying the war would be true.
However, that is simply fantasy. Reality is that there are more consequences of a U.S. invasion than the removal of Saddam Hussein. Reality is that we have a U.S.-appointed ruler leading an Iraq that is in chaos with violence from kidnappings to suicide bombings to open combat with occupying and national forces. Our real enemy, international terrorists, are now in the country in force whereas before they had essenitally no presence. As a result of this war, we now lack both the manpower and the credibility to deal with the genocide in Darfur or the rising threat of Iran.
So, is the world safer without Saddam? You can't answer that question without realizing that "without Saddam" also means "with the current situation in Iraq and the world". With that understanding, I think the answer is no, we are decidedly less safe.
Just as it was when Clinton did it. The point is that the common calls that this war is about oil and halliburton are compleatly unbased in reality.
Of course it has a basis in reality. Reality says that Halliburton is getting tremendous overpriced no-bid contracts for oil collection and other projects. The administration has close ties to said company, and Cheney lied about his continuing financial interest in the company. That's reality, and that is certainly a basis (leaving the issue of whether it is indeed true) for the "war for oil" claims. How does Clinton granting contracts to Halliburton in the past change what is being done in the present? If you think saying Clinton did something similar will compel me to think that it is or was without underhanded motive, you are mistaken. I hold no delusion that Bush's Presidency is the first to be fraught with corruption.
Look getting someone to do reconstruction in a war zone is not like hiring someone to seal your driveway, there are very few who do it and Halliburton just happens to be one of the bigger better companies..
Which is why giving Halliburton no-bid contracts is ridiculous. In an open fair bidding process, Haliburton would have naturally won many of them anyway, being one of the best providers of many of the needed services. Handing these overpriced contracts to Halliburton was indefensible.
Rides like that are good to wait on until the end of the day, when hopefully the crowd has thinned out. Back when the Magnum at Cedar Point was a big deal, I was able to ride it about 5 times in 30 minutes, so despite the fact that you're on the thing for 30 seconds it's still worth it.
Yeah, if I wait in line for an hour in the sun, I want a ride that lasts longer than it takes to get everyone into the train and strapped in.
Why would you go elsewhere just because of adwords? It'd be just like the google search adwords -- do those drive you away from Google? If they're clearly labeled, I don't see the problem. Though, on second thought, I can't imagine what kind of adwords you'd get from a search on, say, "iraq terrorism death" or some such...
Yes. Which is fine -- if those records are relevent to a criminal investigation, then the police should be able to access them. However the question of "relevent to a criminal investigation", the question of whether the search is reasonable, should be decided by a judge as required by the 4th Ammendment. PATRIOT tried to get around that requirement, which is why a lot of us were pretty upset when it passed.
slap some adwords on there, and then feed the content providers portions of the ad revenue based on some model, click throughs or whatnot? I know online news providers are struggling themselves, and it would incentivize them not to require registration (since I avoid the google links that require a subscription). Yeah, that's obvious enough that they've probably thought of it. Maybe it wouldn't be profitable enough for them, or for the content providers.
or prequels, as the case may be, rarely live up to their predecessors even remotely. Spaceballs is to space hilarity as Star Wars is to space adventure. And both were sat on for ~20 years before their creator decided to continue. In Mel Brooks case, we've seen what he's released since the peak of Spaceballs, and let's just say that only makes things look worse -- "Dracula Dead and Loving It", anyone?
Oh well. The nice thing about Mel Brooks is that even if it turns out to be a good movie I won't miss much if I give the theatrical release a miss.
I was an absolutely ecstatic Emusic subscriber, and I would plug them in just about every/. article on online music, DRM, etc. because they were awesome.
My standard model, which apparently was pretty common, was to download a single album from ten bands, burn it on a CD and listen to it at work for a week or two and decide what I liked. Then I'd get more of those bands, burn a CD for work, listen for several more weeks. Repeat a couple times, and I'd have enough new music to last me for several months. I wouldn't download much in that time, but I kept the subscription because when I wanted to experiment with some new bands, I could.
The new model, while still better than some of the other schemes kicking around including others suggested by Emusic, doesn't lend itself well to this experimental style.
It might still work, but the amount of experimentation would be more limited, and I'd have to wait a month to turn experimentation into aquiring more songs from the bands I liked. Eh, maybe I'll try it for a month or two.
Of course, all of the bidding nurses are employees already, and this shouldn't affect the quality of care.
That's naive. If the low bidder puts financial pressure on themselves due to their low bid, then that stress will impact their performance on their already stressful job. Particularly if, already being employees, they were used to a certain income level.
Contractors can easily move from job to job -- we're talking about individuals here, not a contracting company that would bid on a large government contract. Thus there's a form of competition between employers, as well.
sure enough, software is only copyrighted as code, making it a literary work.
Yep. You can't copyright ideas, only a particular expression of ideas. In as much as the code -is- the idea, or implements a standard, it can't be copyrighted (e.g. interfaces). Patents cover ideas, not copyright.
Not that SCO hasn't argued exactly the opposite! They've been saying "UNIX concepts and methods" have been infringed as in the press, and even in the courts. It hasn't flown in court at all. The only examples they have of 'infringement' are exactly the kind of standard interfaces that can't be protected.
So basically their entire court case is based on a false reading of copyright law that, judging by the times on comments, would have taken them about 13 minutes of research to disprove. Pathetic.
I know it isn't fair to do this, but when I see that $5 bills flushed down the toilet, I can't help but remember that this is around the estimates I've heard of the cost of distributing all the excess food the midwest produces to every hungry person on earth.
I also can't help but remember that the launch of Iridium involved giving rocket technology to China so they could launch the satellites cheaper than was possible over here. Thanks, Al Gore.
On the other hand, we can get data connections to the south pole.
Hey, that's worth a mod point (um... since they're worthless). While I think the environmental impact should be studied, common sense arguments like the one you just made strongly suggests it can't possibly be worse than what we're doing now.
Slashdot Mirror
That could be a funny scene!
Sarge: Welcome aboard, Private... Player? Did you forget to change your name in the Options menu?!
Player: Sorry, sir! I'll fix it right away, sir!
[name changes to FragMaster]
Fr4gY0M4m4: How do I get l33t colors, sir?
Okay, nevermind.
Point taken; that is how it should be. Though Ashcroft doesn't want to lay PATRIOT aside, as he's appealing the court decision that lets him get away with spying on financial records without a warrant.
Yes, but privacy law is a matter of expectation. The question here is not whether ISPs are physically capable of spying on email, the question is whether they are legally allowed to.
From a practical standpoint, an email is more like a letter with a thin envelope. You don't have to do much to read it (browse mail server log, hold the envelope up to a light) but it still requires some positive action as opposed to a postcard which can essentially fall message-side-up in front of you. But enough of the analogies.
Practically, we should be encrypting -all- our email, and demanding end-to-end encryption in our phone conversations (which I would never trust without an open source phone). Pragmatically, until we all are, at least saying that such snooping is not allowed is a good step. I would still like it to be illegal for my ISP to snoop on me if they are able to break the encryption I use.
If not, then while curious, the fact does nothing to change Ashcroft's appearance.
What part of not wanting others to have spying rights is inconsistant with Ashcroft as a rights-stomping totalitarian?
Hey so long as you were having a coniption fit about it in 1998 I can agree with that, but as a sign I once saw so aptly pointed out... say no to war, unless there is a democrat in the whitehouie..
Amusing. I was recently called a "Republican attack-dog" for my views on Clinton's military exploits. The other day I was a libertarian. Funny how a reasoned distaste that you can't disagree with is nevertheless a sign of bias, unless I immediately recite a litany of everyone else I may not like for doing similar. Sign of the times, I guess. I didn't know Halliburton by name in '98, but Clinton didn't draw my attention to it by hiring their CEO to be his VP, turning the one deciding energy policy and the one profiting from it into the same person. He was doing more than enough to reveal the corruption of government -- note the lack of party qualifiers -- besides.
sigh... all of which is compleatly fungable
Maybe I'm missing your point. What part of fungibility makes it undesirable to own or control large amounts of the fungible resource? Just because it doesn't matter where you get the oil doesn't mean it isn't profitable to be the one selling it, or being able to sell it when the supply from elsewhere is low, or to control the price by managing the supply. Haven't you seen the price of oil fluctuating with the reliability of Iraqi pipelines? Or are the Strategic Petrolium Reserve and OPEC useless, even though both have served to manage the supply of oil, therefore the price, and therefore profits of oil producers?
ANWR is actually a perfect example. Despite acting as though it isn't the case publicly, Cheney is certainly aware that oil is not an infinite resource, we can and will run out, and ANWR's easily recoverable oil provides only a tiny bump in the date in which that occurs. When oil starts to become scare you really don't think it's going to matter whose military bases are sitting atop the oil fields, because oil's "fungible"?
So you see Bush in a room saying well I would not invade Iraq but damn if they dont have oil... Seriously thats what you think it came down to?
Remember what I said about shades of grey? Saying "I would not invade Iraq but damn if they dont have oil" is like saying "I would not invade Iraq but damn if they dont have WMD". Do I think "strategic oil == $$$" showed up in the "pros" column when they decided to go to war? Absolutely. Was it a binary go/don't go decision as you want to paint it? Probably not, because rarely are things that simple. Even the existence of nuclear weapons doesn't qualify as being a sole deciding factor. But if you're looking for some kind of ranking between factors, I point you to the planning and execution of bringing peace in the aftermath of war versus exploiting Iraq's resources. It doesn't have to be the single most important factor to still be present and disgusting.
That's a great idea: Space weddings!
What could be more romantic than exchanging vows while 100km up?
Are there any possible launch sites in Nevada? Find a pilot who's also an ordained minister and Elvis impersonator, and you'd only need the 3-seater version of the space ship!
Unless there's an untapped market of rich suicidal people looking for a spectacular way to go out...
Yes and this is a systematic problem with our government, not a particular political party.
Um, yes. Your point? Both parties also have started pointless foreign wars, which mitigates the current pointless war not at all. Get this straight: I don't care what party a rotten politician is from, I care that they are rotten.
So if cheny used to say head up the red cross should they not be allowed in? This argument *might* hold some water if Clinton had not done the *exact same thing*
That depends. Is the Red Cross a publicly traded company in which Cheney had more than 400,000 stock options? Do we give them multi-billion contracts?
Ok So if I get you right, even though oil is fungable, and even though Clinton gave no bid contracts to halliburton in the 90's its still blatent proof this was was about oil?
So those are our two options as you put them: blatant proof, or no basis in reality. Sorry, but this discussion would be more fruitful if we could acknowledge shades of grey. Substantial conflict of interest, acting in ways beneficial to said interest, all while lying about the conflict of interest is not proof of anything, but is still as real as anything.
No I pointed out facts, I fully expected you to ignore them and contiune an anti-bush rant
I'm not ignoring it, I'm questioning how you think it is supposed to sway me.
Me: Handing these overpriced contracts to Halliburton was indefensible.
You: Just as it was when Clinton did it.
Okay. That changes the word "indefensible" in my first statement how?
Do you really think Iraq was the most politically expedient way to get halliburton money? hell Bush could have rammed anwar through (he did have the votes) and gave halliburton a no bid contract for that.
Who said it was the most politically expedient, or had to be?
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, possibly more in the nine tenths of the country that are unexplored, more than ten times the amount in the ANWR. And Alaska isn't going anywhere, so Iraq or ANWR is a false dichotomy. Lifting the sanctions may have lowered oil prices, but it wouldn't provide long term strategic control over the 3rd largest oil reserve on earth. That this would also result in financial benefit to Halliburtion is something I'm sure Cheney would say doesn't impact the decision at all, while eyeing the stock price.
It's not just about oil; it's not just about feeding Halliburton money. Those are strawmen. And yet, the first thing we secured was the oil fields, which are still better protected than Iraqi cities outside the Green Zone. We'll let cities go without electricity for weeks, but damned if we let the terrorists stop the flow of oil for more than a day. It's not all about oil and money for Halliburton, but it's a far, far cry from not being about oil.
many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's.
In the purpely hypothetical choice of a world with Saddam leading Iraq, and a world with someone else preferably democratically elected leading a peaceful Iraq, then there's no comparison. Clearly, the latter universe is better. If the only difference between universes were Saddam vs no Saddam, then everything being said now (as opposed to before) as justifying the war would be true.
However, that is simply fantasy. Reality is that there are more consequences of a U.S. invasion than the removal of Saddam Hussein. Reality is that we have a U.S.-appointed ruler leading an Iraq that is in chaos with violence from kidnappings to suicide bombings to open combat with occupying and national forces. Our real enemy, international terrorists, are now in the country in force whereas before they had essenitally no presence. As a result of this war, we now lack both the manpower and the credibility to deal with the genocide in Darfur or the rising threat of Iran.
So, is the world safer without Saddam? You can't answer that question without realizing that "without Saddam" also means "with the current situation in Iraq and the world". With that understanding, I think the answer is no, we are decidedly less safe.
Just as it was when Clinton did it. The point is that the common calls that this war is about oil and halliburton are compleatly unbased in reality.
Of course it has a basis in reality. Reality says that Halliburton is getting tremendous overpriced no-bid contracts for oil collection and other projects. The administration has close ties to said company, and Cheney lied about his continuing financial interest in the company. That's reality, and that is certainly a basis (leaving the issue of whether it is indeed true) for the "war for oil" claims. How does Clinton granting contracts to Halliburton in the past change what is being done in the present? If you think saying Clinton did something similar will compel me to think that it is or was without underhanded motive, you are mistaken. I hold no delusion that Bush's Presidency is the first to be fraught with corruption.
Look getting someone to do reconstruction in a war zone is not like hiring someone to seal your driveway, there are very few who do it and Halliburton just happens to be one of the bigger better companies..
Which is why giving Halliburton no-bid contracts is ridiculous. In an open fair bidding process, Haliburton would have naturally won many of them anyway, being one of the best providers of many of the needed services. Handing these overpriced contracts to Halliburton was indefensible.
Rides like that are good to wait on until the end of the day, when hopefully the crowd has thinned out. Back when the Magnum at Cedar Point was a big deal, I was able to ride it about 5 times in 30 minutes, so despite the fact that you're on the thing for 30 seconds it's still worth it.
Yeah, if I wait in line for an hour in the sun, I want a ride that lasts longer than it takes to get everyone into the train and strapped in.
The first incident of Space Rage!
Why would you go elsewhere just because of adwords? It'd be just like the google search adwords -- do those drive you away from Google? If they're clearly labeled, I don't see the problem. Though, on second thought, I can't imagine what kind of adwords you'd get from a search on, say, "iraq terrorism death" or some such...
Yeah, that was a horrid choice of words, wasn't it?
... if the goal of the terrorists was to uphold the Constitution, then I don't think that'd be so bad.
Something makes me think 'the terrorists' and Ashcroft have frighteningly similar opinions on -that-, though. Both would rather live in a theocracy...
Yes. Which is fine -- if those records are relevent to a criminal investigation, then the police should be able to access them. However the question of "relevent to a criminal investigation", the question of whether the search is reasonable, should be decided by a judge as required by the 4th Ammendment. PATRIOT tried to get around that requirement, which is why a lot of us were pretty upset when it passed.
slap some adwords on there, and then feed the content providers portions of the ad revenue based on some model, click throughs or whatnot? I know online news providers are struggling themselves, and it would incentivize them not to require registration (since I avoid the google links that require a subscription). Yeah, that's obvious enough that they've probably thought of it. Maybe it wouldn't be profitable enough for them, or for the content providers.
Funniest line in the movie, and it felt accurate after blowing $6.50 on a ticket. :)
or prequels, as the case may be, rarely live up to their predecessors even remotely. Spaceballs is to space hilarity as Star Wars is to space adventure. And both were sat on for ~20 years before their creator decided to continue. In Mel Brooks case, we've seen what he's released since the peak of Spaceballs, and let's just say that only makes things look worse -- "Dracula Dead and Loving It", anyone?
Oh well. The nice thing about Mel Brooks is that even if it turns out to be a good movie I won't miss much if I give the theatrical release a miss.
I was an absolutely ecstatic Emusic subscriber, and I would plug them in just about every /. article on online music, DRM, etc. because they were awesome.
My standard model, which apparently was pretty common, was to download a single album from ten bands, burn it on a CD and listen to it at work for a week or two and decide what I liked. Then I'd get more of those bands, burn a CD for work, listen for several more weeks. Repeat a couple times, and I'd have enough new music to last me for several months. I wouldn't download much in that time, but I kept the subscription because when I wanted to experiment with some new bands, I could.
The new model, while still better than some of the other schemes kicking around including others suggested by Emusic, doesn't lend itself well to this experimental style.
It might still work, but the amount of experimentation would be more limited, and I'd have to wait a month to turn experimentation into aquiring more songs from the bands I liked. Eh, maybe I'll try it for a month or two.
Of course, all of the bidding nurses are employees already, and this shouldn't affect the quality of care.
That's naive. If the low bidder puts financial pressure on themselves due to their low bid, then that stress will impact their performance on their already stressful job. Particularly if, already being employees, they were used to a certain income level.
Contractors can easily move from job to job -- we're talking about individuals here, not a contracting company that would bid on a large government contract. Thus there's a form of competition between employers, as well.
sure enough, software is only copyrighted as code, making it a literary work.
Yep. You can't copyright ideas, only a particular expression of ideas. In as much as the code -is- the idea, or implements a standard, it can't be copyrighted (e.g. interfaces). Patents cover ideas, not copyright.
Not that SCO hasn't argued exactly the opposite! They've been saying "UNIX concepts and methods" have been infringed as in the press, and even in the courts. It hasn't flown in court at all. The only examples they have of 'infringement' are exactly the kind of standard interfaces that can't be protected.
So basically their entire court case is based on a false reading of copyright law that, judging by the times on comments, would have taken them about 13 minutes of research to disprove. Pathetic.
I know it isn't fair to do this, but when I see that $5 bills flushed down the toilet, I can't help but remember that this is around the estimates I've heard of the cost of distributing all the excess food the midwest produces to every hungry person on earth.
I also can't help but remember that the launch of Iridium involved giving rocket technology to China so they could launch the satellites cheaper than was possible over here. Thanks, Al Gore.
On the other hand, we can get data connections to the south pole.
Hey, that's worth a mod point (um... since they're worthless). While I think the environmental impact should be studied, common sense arguments like the one you just made strongly suggests it can't possibly be worse than what we're doing now.