Having your vote tallied by someone in running a machine in front of you defeats the whole purpose of confidentiality. They know exactly what I voted for, since they are right there at the machine. I would be against having my neighbor run my vote through a machine. (And if you can't expect the people to vote correctly, you certainly can't expect them to run it through a machine correctly, you would need someone "trained" to do it) I can't believe you have ever actually voted, or at least ever voted using a paper ballot that is scanned. Poll workers don't look at your ballot or know how you voted, the sheets are fed into a scanner upside down by the poll worker and a counter increments to let you know your ballot was scanned correctly. If there is a problem with your ballot (not necessarily equated with "not being able to fill out a ballot properly"), you will know it and the error can be corrected before you leave because until your ballot has been scanned you have not yet voted and your ballot is still in your possession.
You really ought to know more about what you are talking about before you dismiss scanned paper ballots as not confidential. And by the way, in the US votes are secret, not confidential.
Wow, such a definitive evaluation of the situation in NY from someone who doesn't live there and has likely never even been there. You need to stop getting your view of the world from TV. It is pretty obvious that you have created "facts" in your head to support your opinions. I lived in New York City for over ten years and I came close to exactly one crime (other than 9/11)- it was an after-hours break-in at a restaurant I frequented. I have now lived in a semi-rural area in NC for three years and have come close to at least four crimes - mostly drug-related (and don't even pretend that middle-America doesn't have a big methamphetamine drug problem). So don't try and tell me that NYC is an island of lawlessness - I know better and I think it is just the opposite. I felt very safe and secure in NYC at any time of the day or night, and I wouldn't even think of going downtown in my small community after 10 pm. Again, I think you just watch too much TV. New Yorkers do not need guns.
So basically - your pseudo-logic, crafted from false asumptions to support your views, falls apart because you simply don't know what you are talking about.
This entire discussion could be rendered moot by the simple act of locking your device. I'm hoping that locked devices will not become part of these types of searches, but I'm not convinced.... Especially with the entire problem "there be terrorists!", we could see laws similar to Great Britain's where you are forced to hand over passwords.
If you have incriminating items on your PDA and it is password protected you do not have to provide the password to police because to do so would be self-incriminating. That is a Constitutional right, so writing laws to require you to give up passwords would be difficult. That's theory. But in the real world, where the White House uses convoluted legal reasoning to justify torture and the suspension of habeus corpus, it is quite possible they could write a secret law that doing so isn't self-incrimination and you therefore have to give it up or go to prison.
A policeman can arrest you for anything, whether its valid or not is to be decided in the courts later. After the arrest, they can search the "area" you were arrested in. Anything they find, even if its not related to why you were arrested, is fair game to be used against you for new charges. Actually it isn't even that strict. Police can search your car when it is on a public road anytime they want to. They do not need a warrant or even that there be reasonable suspicion, and they do not need to arrest you first. However they cannot search a passenger in the car or search the car without a warrant if it is on private property. They can also search you and your bags at any airport, bus terminal, etc without any sort of warrant. I do not know the exact legal reasoning, but it has to do with you being in an area of public, regulated transportation.
Believe whatever you want while within your church. Just keep it out of the science classroom. Don't stop there. Keep it out of the classroom, period...and the government.
That phrase is a latin translation, and before it was translated from latin it never meant anything in this language. How ironic (and frankly, moronic) that you didn't know that, but tried to call me out on it. God, you're pedantic. Is there a logical point to your apparently nonsensical reference to Latin? Almost the entire English language is based on Latin - so what?
Trust me, anyone who would write "before it was translated from latin it never meant anything in this language" doesn't have the horsepower to argue the correct use of language.
No, I don't care if some website says the etymology of that phrase is in some fashion contrary to it's current modern day usage. The mere fact of the matter is that language evolves, and so did that phrase. People look like idiots for suggesting that the phrase was used incorrectly... No, the phrase "begs the question" hasn't evolved to mean some other thing. It still means to avoid answering the question no matter how forcefully you insist that it means what you want it to mean. How ironic (and frankly, moronic) that you feel justified in calling people idiots because they know the English language better than you.
It simply seems to me that the simplest and most appropriate thing for Ford to do here would have been to provide all the necessary permission for them to proceed with their artistic work, or license it with a smallish fee if necessary. There is still no reason why BMC couldn't ask Ford for permission to use the images. A cease and desist letter isn't necessarily the end of the road - it may be the beginning of a negotiation. Ford, having made claim to it's rights may very well be willing to now allow the calendar to be published - with its permission.
Who in their right minds would bet the future of their company on a technology that is both completely controlled by Microsoft and in a market MS will probably want to compete in? I foresee the end of Netflix. Good grief! No one is betting the future of their company on that. These Netflix streaming movies are FREE! In fact, their strategy for moving into streaming seems pretty smart to me - go slow, don't try to be all things to all people right from the start, gauge demand, don't risk a major newsworthy failure (like Wal Mart), etc.
Not to be too snarky, but you are clearly so not an expert in this topic.
First, the Constitution does not "confer" rights to the people...it recognizes that the people have inalienable rights. That is an important distinction. The founding fathers were smart enough to know tht if the Constitution granted rights, those rights could be taken away by simply changing it.
Your other arguement that it isn't a Federal school so Constitutional Rights don't come into play is just plain silly. No governmental entity can violate a citizen's Constitutional Rights.
This looks to be open and shut, so, does anyone know- If the judge is sane... The courtroom is such an alien environment that people often make the incorrect assumption that legal arguments are the same as scientific arguments. Neither the EFF nor the RIAA has the least obligation to present any data that supports the other side's position. So it is a mistake to read only one side's brief and come to the conclusion that it looks to be "open and shut".
Marshall Plan: An early U.S. attempt at controlling everyone else's citizens.
Well if you are going to nitpick, at least be right about it. The Marshall Plan was a US economic aid program for European countries after WWII to help them restore their destroyed infrastructure and economies. It wasn't a plan to control other countries' citizens.
My snake oil sensors are going off. Mine too and I didn't even have to read the article. Ok, Sesame Street kids - what two things from the OP don't go together?
"A nuclear engineer has developed a solid-state heat engine that converts the sun's heat to electricity at 60-percent efficiency."
and,
"If it proves feasible, drastically reducing the cost of solar power would only be a start."
ANSWER: "has developed a heat engine" and "if it proves feasible".
They are not looking for passwords to nuclear reactor equipment [...] No, they are pretty much just looking for naughty pix of little kids - that's it. And much as someone might find that offensive, sorry it just aint "dangerous." How do *you* know what they are looking for? And besides, what they are looking for and what they find are two different things.
As far as I know they are not restricted to looking only for child porn, so they can look for anything that gets into their heads. So yes, that IS dangerous. Maybe you do your banking online and they decide to look at your tansaction history to see if you bought anything expensive you didn't declare (they do that now when they search for paper receipts). Dangerous? You bet.
this stupid search mandate is to teach ALL (even the perps) to put the data on an SD or mini-SD card and declare that all suspicious data is NOT on the computer (and if it is regularly true, then let the statistics argue to dispense with or repeal that law/order).
Oh good grief. Do you really think that if they go to the trouble to search your laptop for files that they aren't going to make you empty your pockets or your bags while they are at it?
And secondly, there is no "mandate" or "order" or "law" to search laptops. The point of contention is that they have assumed the ability to search your data just like they search your suitcase. There isn't a law to repeal.
This was the central message of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. It was called "swinging a big line". It's been claimed that the market is too big and diverse for this to happen in the modern world.
You are probably right that markets as a whole are too big and too diverse, but I assure you that it happens a lot with individual stocks. Just look on the days approaching options contract settlement dates and you will see the share price of many stocks drop preciptously for no apparent reason. These are the market makers forcing down the price to force margin calls on investors. If the investors don't have the cash handy to cover the call they have to sell the stock, which the market makers snap up at a bargain.
On a smaller scale, a stock that is rising very fast during the day will often drop for 5-10 minutes before resuming its upward move. These temporary drops are caused by the market makers selling lots of shares, causing the stock to drop, at which point they buy their shares back at a lower price and a nice little profit. You or I can't do that, but the big boys can. Happens every day.
Everything we know so far suggests that life is exceedingly rare in the universe.
Face it - that was a really dumb thing to say. We have no way to know how common or rare life is in the universe. Hell, we don't even know how common or rare life is in our own planetary system.
Stop stubbornly trying to prove you were right by using convoluted semi-logic.
Re:Chappe's telegraph and buiding of a fortune
on
Email In the 18th Century
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
actually, the story was more interesting -Rothschilds get information early -other people know rothschilds get the information early -rothschilds dump all their stock -everyone else dumps their stock -stock crashes -rothschilds buy everything
massive stock manipulation, but I guess that was legal back then.
Actually this would be perfectly legal today. Getting public information faster than everyone else is smart, not illegal; and there is noting illegal about selling stock to drive the price down and then snapping up deals. Market-makers do it every day to shake out margin traders.
Apparently, the guy tried to contact EFF and was turned down (see bottom of the link) because the EFF didn't like some of his posts.
That sounds real bad, but remember that you got that interpretation from the blogger himself. What exactly does "didn't like" mean? Maybe they didn't like them from the "makes it impossible to win a lawsuit" perpective.
Maybe it was different in the past when software didn't automatically tell its users to upgrade but now that Firefox reminds you automatically when a new release is out I don't see the reason why Slashdot would put this on the front page.
I agree - it doesn't belong here. 2.0.0.10 to 2.0.0.11. That isn't a major revision, it isn't a minor revision, it isn't even a minor minor revision! It's a minor revision of a minor minor revision. Sheesh.
Do you really think a starving farmer from somewhere in Iraq has even a common ground for a conversation with a fat redneck senator? Or a wallstreet broker? Or even a WalMart cleaner? Their worlds are so different that finding even something where they can relate would be a challenge.
People who just want to say no can always find extreme examples to "prove" their point. There are very few starving farmers in Iraq, and there are very few senators and Wall Street tycoons in the US. The vast majority of people in both countries are middle class working stiffs like you and me.
The exchange doesn't have to be 100%, even if only a million Iraqis were talking personally to Americans there would be a profound shift in understanding between the two countries.
And yes, I do think even senators, brokers and WalMart crews would have something in common with almost everyone - love of their families, wanting the best for their children, an end to the war, favorite animals, etc. A famous axiom in Social Psychology is "We are all more alike than we are different". I think any of those people might be interested that the farmer's crops might not come in this season and how the farmer was worried about it, and I KNOW that a US farmer would be interested. Stop being a knee-jerk naysayer.
The OPs plan to give OLPCs is more allegory rather than a real plan. However, his idea of finding a way to let people talk to better understand each other as people is very real and a great one.
Everyone is beholden to the bottom line of the company they work for. You only get so much manpower, so much money, so much in your PM budget, etc. It matters not one wit how ethical you are when you can't get that seam x-raed because you don't have the money.
Slashdot Mirror
You really ought to know more about what you are talking about before you dismiss scanned paper ballots as not confidential. And by the way, in the US votes are secret, not confidential.
Wow, such a definitive evaluation of the situation in NY from someone who doesn't live there and has likely never even been there. You need to stop getting your view of the world from TV. It is pretty obvious that you have created "facts" in your head to support your opinions. I lived in New York City for over ten years and I came close to exactly one crime (other than 9/11)- it was an after-hours break-in at a restaurant I frequented. I have now lived in a semi-rural area in NC for three years and have come close to at least four crimes - mostly drug-related (and don't even pretend that middle-America doesn't have a big methamphetamine drug problem). So don't try and tell me that NYC is an island of lawlessness - I know better and I think it is just the opposite. I felt very safe and secure in NYC at any time of the day or night, and I wouldn't even think of going downtown in my small community after 10 pm. Again, I think you just watch too much TV. New Yorkers do not need guns.
So basically - your pseudo-logic, crafted from false asumptions to support your views, falls apart because you simply don't know what you are talking about.
This entire discussion could be rendered moot by the simple act of locking your device. I'm hoping that locked devices will not become part of these types of searches, but I'm not convinced.... Especially with the entire problem "there be terrorists!", we could see laws similar to Great Britain's where you are forced to hand over passwords.
If you have incriminating items on your PDA and it is password protected you do not have to provide the password to police because to do so would be self-incriminating. That is a Constitutional right, so writing laws to require you to give up passwords would be difficult. That's theory. But in the real world, where the White House uses convoluted legal reasoning to justify torture and the suspension of habeus corpus, it is quite possible they could write a secret law that doing so isn't self-incrimination and you therefore have to give it up or go to prison.
That phrase is a latin translation, and before it was translated from latin it never meant anything in this language. How ironic (and frankly, moronic) that you didn't know that, but tried to call me out on it. God, you're pedantic. Is there a logical point to your apparently nonsensical reference to Latin? Almost the entire English language is based on Latin - so what?
Trust me, anyone who would write "before it was translated from latin it never meant anything in this language" doesn't have the horsepower to argue the correct use of language.
Not to be too snarky, but you are clearly so not an expert in this topic.
First, the Constitution does not "confer" rights to the people...it recognizes that the people have inalienable rights. That is an important distinction. The founding fathers were smart enough to know tht if the Constitution granted rights, those rights could be taken away by simply changing it.
Your other arguement that it isn't a Federal school so Constitutional Rights don't come into play is just plain silly. No governmental entity can violate a citizen's Constitutional Rights.
Marshall Plan: An early U.S. attempt at controlling everyone else's citizens.
Well if you are going to nitpick, at least be right about it. The Marshall Plan was a US economic aid program for European countries after WWII to help them restore their destroyed infrastructure and economies. It wasn't a plan to control other countries' citizens.
Yes, because every single gun owner panics at the drop of a hat and starts shooting wildly.
Well, yes. Just ask Abner Diallo's family, or the three guys gunned down in their car by out-of-control under-cover cops last year in Brooklyn.
"A nuclear engineer has developed a solid-state heat engine that converts the sun's heat to electricity at 60-percent efficiency."
and,
"If it proves feasible, drastically reducing the cost of solar power would only be a start."
ANSWER: "has developed a heat engine" and "if it proves feasible".
They are not looking for passwords to nuclear reactor equipment [...] No, they are pretty much just looking for naughty pix of little kids - that's it. And much as someone might find that offensive, sorry it just aint "dangerous."
How do *you* know what they are looking for? And besides, what they are looking for and what they find are two different things.
As far as I know they are not restricted to looking only for child porn, so they can look for anything that gets into their heads. So yes, that IS dangerous. Maybe you do your banking online and they decide to look at your tansaction history to see if you bought anything expensive you didn't declare (they do that now when they search for paper receipts). Dangerous? You bet.
this stupid search mandate is to teach ALL (even the perps) to put the data on an SD or mini-SD card and declare that all suspicious data is NOT on the computer (and if it is regularly true, then let the statistics argue to dispense with or repeal that law/order).
Oh good grief. Do you really think that if they go to the trouble to search your laptop for files that they aren't going to make you empty your pockets or your bags while they are at it?
And secondly, there is no "mandate" or "order" or "law" to search laptops. The point of contention is that they have assumed the ability to search your data just like they search your suitcase. There isn't a law to repeal.
(pssst, here a tip: you don't need to install additional software to access the web)
Oh? What about Acrobat, Java and Flash? Or their updates?
This was the central message of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. It was called "swinging a big line". It's been claimed that the market is too big and diverse for this to happen in the modern world.
You are probably right that markets as a whole are too big and too diverse, but I assure you that it happens a lot with individual stocks. Just look on the days approaching options contract settlement dates and you will see the share price of many stocks drop preciptously for no apparent reason. These are the market makers forcing down the price to force margin calls on investors. If the investors don't have the cash handy to cover the call they have to sell the stock, which the market makers snap up at a bargain.
On a smaller scale, a stock that is rising very fast during the day will often drop for 5-10 minutes before resuming its upward move. These temporary drops are caused by the market makers selling lots of shares, causing the stock to drop, at which point they buy their shares back at a lower price and a nice little profit. You or I can't do that, but the big boys can. Happens every day.
Everything we know so far suggests that life is exceedingly rare in the universe.
Face it - that was a really dumb thing to say. We have no way to know how common or rare life is in the universe. Hell, we don't even know how common or rare life is in our own planetary system.
Stop stubbornly trying to prove you were right by using convoluted semi-logic.
actually, the story was more interesting
-Rothschilds get information early
-other people know rothschilds get the information early
-rothschilds dump all their stock
-everyone else dumps their stock
-stock crashes
-rothschilds buy everything
massive stock manipulation, but I guess that was legal back then.
Actually this would be perfectly legal today. Getting public information faster than everyone else is smart, not illegal; and there is noting illegal about selling stock to drive the price down and then snapping up deals. Market-makers do it every day to shake out margin traders.
Apparently, the guy tried to contact EFF and was turned down (see bottom of the link) because the EFF didn't like some of his posts.
That sounds real bad, but remember that you got that interpretation from the blogger himself. What exactly does "didn't like" mean? Maybe they didn't like them from the "makes it impossible to win a lawsuit" perpective.
How long before batteries become classified as munitions?"
Or drugs.
The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium.
Finally! A positive benefit for my lithium treatments for depression! Forget Viagra! FOUR times!!!
Maybe it was different in the past when software didn't automatically tell its users to upgrade but now that Firefox reminds you automatically when a new release is out I don't see the reason why Slashdot would put this on the front page.
I agree - it doesn't belong here. 2.0.0.10 to 2.0.0.11. That isn't a major revision, it isn't a minor revision, it isn't even a minor minor revision! It's a minor revision of a minor minor revision. Sheesh.
Do you really think a starving farmer from somewhere in Iraq has even a common ground for a conversation with a fat redneck senator? Or a wallstreet broker? Or even a WalMart cleaner? Their worlds are so different that finding even something where they can relate would be a challenge.
People who just want to say no can always find extreme examples to "prove" their point. There are very few starving farmers in Iraq, and there are very few senators and Wall Street tycoons in the US. The vast majority of people in both countries are middle class working stiffs like you and me.
The exchange doesn't have to be 100%, even if only a million Iraqis were talking personally to Americans there would be a profound shift in understanding between the two countries.
And yes, I do think even senators, brokers and WalMart crews would have something in common with almost everyone - love of their families, wanting the best for their children, an end to the war, favorite animals, etc. A famous axiom in Social Psychology is "We are all more alike than we are different". I think any of those people might be interested that the farmer's crops might not come in this season and how the farmer was worried about it, and I KNOW that a US farmer would be interested. Stop being a knee-jerk naysayer.
The OPs plan to give OLPCs is more allegory rather than a real plan. However, his idea of finding a way to let people talk to better understand each other as people is very real and a great one.
Everyone is beholden to the bottom line of the company they work for. You only get so much manpower, so much money, so much in your PM budget, etc. It matters not one wit how ethical you are when you can't get that seam x-raed because you don't have the money.