I think you misinterpreted the quotes you used as the basis for your calculations. The important part of the first quote is After a few hours, one fifth of the substance had turned into oxygen. To me, this says that one fifth of the total mass of the soil ended up as oxygen; you seem to have taken it to mean one fifth of the available oxygen in the substance. The quote says no such thing, and does not reference the 45% number out of the second quote; those two facts (the composition percentage and the yield from NASA's procedure) are not related. So, instead of figuring 9g of oxygen per 100g soil, your figures should start with 20g oxygen per 100g soil. Still not the factor of 4 you were hoping for, but it'll get you more than halfway there.
Yes, if this was a rule that they agreed to. Plenty of private schools do things like this.
If it were a private school, this debate could be entirely different. I assume parents of students at private schools sign some sort of contract with the school, which can define whatever terms they want. But it isn't.
I'm not saying that I agree with the suspension that you received. I'm saying that there's a difference between what happened to you and what happened to this kid. The public school system which is part of our government, *should* be actively protecting first amendment rights. They have no such obligation to protect criminal activities.
OK...perhaps, but irrelevant. We aren't talking about a district protecting anything. We are talking about a district punishing a student. In one case the act they are punishing him for was legal, in the other it was illegal. This has absolutely no impact on the discussion, because the school is not a law-enforcement organization. They have no authority to enforce law, and no authority at all outside acting in loco parentis during those times when students have been placed in their care. Had they found actual pot on the actual student while he was in class, they still could not have arrested him for it...they could have called the cops, who would have, and they could have suspended him or whatever else their policy states. But they would be left out of the legal process other than as witnesses at trial. Similarly, they could have suspended him for any number of things that weren't illegal...and it doesn't make any difference whether it was legal, constitutionally protected, etc.
In short, when talking about whether a school is justified in punishing the actions of a student, the legality of those actions is completely and totally irrelevant.
No, that is an example of hypocrisy. It would be Irony of Fate if the students in the "How to stay in school 101" class somehow got suspended.
No, he was right. Isn't the person who got suspended in his example also a student? Thus they still took a student out of school when the expected result would be fewer students out of school. Situational irony. Very simple. Your point that it was hypocritical of the school is much less sound, but probably also supportable.
But there's a significant difference in what (allegedly) did and what this kid did. If you were involved at all with the posession or sale of marijuana, that is a criminal activity. What this kid did....is, in fact, constitutionally protected.
That is a difference, true. But it does not make any difference to the school's role in the situation. You forget that the school is not a law-enforcement agency. They are not legally authorized to take disciplinary action in either case. The only thing they are allowed to do is call the cops and tell them what they heard. Of course, the "rumor" of possession of marijuana isn't going to excite a cop much. Neither will a blog post. Which is why in both cases the school simply ignored their legal options and went to bullying the student instead. In the marijuana case, they correctly calculated that the family would not go to the expense of suing them. The Plainsfield (Illinois, not New Jersey, the summary is wrong) district has obviously made the same calculation, but it appears (given the quotes from the lawyer in TFA) that they may have been mistaken.
By the way, this summary has an important detail wrong. The district in question is Plainsfield ILLINOIS, NOT NEW JERSEY. We should all have been able to tell by the fact that the link goes to a Chicago newspaper which never mentions the state in which the district lies. But I for one did not notice that, and sent a (polite, but firm) email to the wrong district suggesting they drop the matter before they get their pants sued off. Well...the fellow was not as polite in return and basically called me an idiot for getting the wrong district.
So, I feel dumb, but whatever. If you are going to call or write, make sure you do it to the Illinois district. http://www.learningcommunity202.org/
So i could publicly accuse my hypothetical school of anything online? (does the media matter? newspaper, sign on freeway overpass), and no matter how bad the slur you would not expel me?
Absolutely. Perhaps I might want to (not likely, given my personal philosophy) but I would not have any legal authority to. The public school system is created by laws, charters, and case law, which grant them certain authority over students that are placed in their care. But they only grant that authority so long as the students are in the care of the school. The school is said to act in such cases "in loco parentis"...but when the student is at home, they aren't.
Note that the school still has the full range of legal recourses available to it which any other citizen would have. However, having read the blog in question, I would consider any actual legal steps they might take laughable. Which is why they've ignored their legal options and instead gone to bullying the kid and his family. Of course, if the family can afford to, they'll beat the pants off the district in court, but I'd also bet that the district is well aware of that and calculates that an actual showdown is unlikely. Let's hope they're wrong.
One other note: Metallica does appear to have a strong case against this kid if they ever happen across his blog, assuming he doesn't have appropriate license to broadcast "Master of Puppets" on his page.
Well, he did admit to drinking and he did ask to be suspended.
So? Should the school be able to suspend or expell him for drinking outside school? Should they suspend a student who asks them to?
The former policy would leave the school with no students, while the latter would be extremely unpopular with parents and teachers, given that lots of misguided students would ask for such treatment, to their own detriment.
Well I'll be damned! They finally did add currency conversion...when the calculator first came out that was the one thing they left out that I wanted most. I hadn't even tried today...just went to xe.com like always to make sure that the headline was stupid and the dollar hadn't really just magically gotten 30% stronger while I was sleeping...
We're mostly on the same page. And put that way, I do concede your points about Abu Ghraib. In fact, the only thing I have a big difference of opinion about is your assertion that Gonzales is legally correct, or even close to it. To be clear, he was talking about the journalist who publishes leaked information, not the official who leaked it. The official is definitely commiting a crime. But I don't see how the journalist is. In situations where there was a legitimate threat to national security, they could be tried for treason. But if it's a whistleblower situation, like this one, then the standard of knowingly aiding our enemies would be real hard to prove. I'm unaware of any other laws that would take effect here, and even if they did then the court would need to examine the first amendment issues, and it seems unlikely that they'd restrict this speech, particularly with criminal charges.
Wow. So many facts, and so little thought put into what they might mean.
First, your terrorism timeline is a lot of evidence that makes absolutely no point whatsoever. You appear to be trying to convince me that 9/11 wasn't the only terrorist attack ever. At least that's what I gather from "One event? I really don't know why you guys keep repeating this." But see, I never suggested that it was the only terrorist attack...in fact, the rest of my argument rather relies on the fact that terrorism has been and will be around for a long time. I said "the administration is using one event to justify..." and this is true. The administration used the single attack on 9/11 for its drum-beating and propagandizing. They didn't use "a decade-long string of terrorism" to woo the American people for their oil war, they used "9/11."
Before I continue, you do recognize that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism, right? If in doubt, check with people for the new american century, a Dick Cheney think-tank. They had that war planned out at least as early as 1996, and you can download the pdf's that explain it in detail. In one place it even notes that it would require a "Pearl Harbor-esque" event to get public support for such a strategy. Well, looks like they got it.
What civil liberties have we lost? Did I miss something? The only civil liberty I've ever seen chipped away at in this country is the right to bear arms.
Yes, you missed something; do I have to repeat myself? The sentence after the one you quote listed several civil liberties (but certainly not a complete list) that have been lost under the administration since 9/11. Not that I'm the definitive source....why don't you go pick up a copy of the actual PATRIOT act and take a look for yourself? It's not really much other than a collection of new procedures for going past the bounds of what was previously acceptable law-enforcement.
No, my library records won't be searched. You think that Bush is sitting up at night thumbing through everyones personal records don't you?
Obviously Bush has lackeys for this. They're called cops. But now they can access library records without warrants. They couldn't do that before. This is what's called "loss of civil liberties." And I've got no idea what makes you so sure yours will be exempted.
[Call detail records] won't be analyzed by any human unless you happen to talk to a suspected terrorist.
Again, where are you getting this information? You work at the NSA? We have only very shaky promises from the administration that this is even limited to terrorism investigation. Hell, a couple weeks ago they were saying no data was collected at all on domestic calls. Furthermore, what difference does it make whether a human is doing the analyzing, versus a computer? I guess then it's OK to have a robot break into my house when I'm not there and take photos of everything inside? And if it finds something "flagged" as a likely terrorism indicator, then call the humans to have a look? I simply can't wrap my head around what here makes you think any of this is OK.
[Detention without attorney] happens during war. See WW2 for a recent example. We don't need to let non-citizens see lawyers.
First, we are not currently at war. Second, some of the people we have detained were American citizens.
I see, you would rather more Americans die than we torture known terrorists.
This statement assumes at least two facts not in evidence. First, it assumes that everyone we've tortured is a "known terrorist." Certainly you can't prove that, and in fact I think it would be a lot easier to prove the opposite claim. But the other, dumber assumption is that torture saves American lives. I double-dog-dare you to show even one instance where this was the case. John McCain (my favorite Republican) triple-dog-dares you. And finally, let me say that yes, even if it could be shown that we
I wouldn't go so far as to call you naive, but I would say that you are ignoring plenty of evidence. Was the secrecy around the Abu Ghraib there to "safeguard the lives and liberties" of citizens? How about the secrets going on in guantanamo bay? What about Hoover's cardfiles? The medical records of people hit with agent orange, or by nuclear testing?
I'm sure if I thought about it for a while I could come up with pages of these examples. If I were better informed, I'd probably be able to fill a big book with them...and there are people who have. The point is quite simple; we have plenty of evidence to prove that the government sometimes keeps things secret out of motives other than protecting the citizenry.
There are things that journalists should not publish because they could result in harm to the country and death to its people. That is not the same as saying that all leaked information is a threat to national security or to the lives of Americans. And anyone who says the first amendment doesn't trump the government's desire for secrecy has no business anywhere in the legal machinery of this country.
So what you are saying is, we have to wait until the terrorist kill a significant amount of people before we should spend money to fight them.
No. What I'm saying is that the threat to our citizens, our national security, and our way of life posed by terrorists is not in any way, shape, or form large enough to justify the wholesale destruction of our civil liberties. The administration has used one event to justify unbelievable changes to what ordinary, law-abiding citizens can expect with respect to their privacy and freedom. Now you can expect that your library records will be searched, your phone-calling patterns analyzed, and your email read. Meanwhile we're detaining people without letting them see lawyers. We're torturing. The justice department denies every single freedom of information act request they receive, out of hand, and make requesters challenge them in court if they want anything. None of these things were true before 9/11. Each one of these things is more significant than the number of lives we've lost to terrorism.
So how many innocent people have to die before the US government can spend money to stop these nutjobs without our domestic socialists crying about malaria in Africa?
You seem to look at this as some sort of retail anti-terrorism purchase. Let me clue you into something; we spend money and lives to attempt to "stop these nutjobs." Last I checked the number was somewhere around 2400 lives, if you only count Americans. If you count innocent Iraqi civilians, the number is far in excess of the 9/11 death toll. If you count the Iraqi soldiers we killed (note, they did not have anything to do with terrorism) it climbs staggeringly high. If you are going to act like it's the lives you care about, your argument falls to pieces simply because the administration has dramatically increased the lives lost, not reduced them. And that ignores the fact that deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks have been steadily rising since the Iraq war started. 9/11 was a spike in a flat line of terrorism. Our response to 9/11 has made that flat line into a steadily rising hill.
Here is a news flash, the American government and the American people owe no debt to Africa, nor do they have to spend money to fight a disease there while disregarding their own personal security.
We'll suspend indefinitely the discussion of whether the US owes a debt to Africa (How much is the economic output from those slaves worth? What about their descendents who helped fight all our wars since the Civil, and continue to help generate our economy, without, on average, taking hardly any of it for themselves?). Let's just examine the general idea you're going for here. That idea is that we don't have to give other countries aid. That's more or less true...we have no legal responsibility to help poorer countries. It's not a principle of the constitution or anything. But I'll put it to you like this: if we were to spend the money that we have spent in the Iraq war on targeted humanitarian aid, what would be the relative effect on terrorism?
To get more specific...say we went on a global "Marshall Plan" and invested in building the economic prosperity of all the Arab nations. Wipe out poverty there and make everyone wealthy enough to drive an American/German/Japanese car and listen to American rock music on their Chinese stereos. Think there'd still be a lot of suicide bombers out there? Radical militant Islam, and radical militant religion in general, requires poverty to be effective on a wide scale. In fact, stable democratic government can be said to require economic prosperity. And on the other side of the equation, various economists have looked at the expenditures of the Marshall Plan (for those who don't know, this was Truman's aid package to rebuild Europe (including Germany) and Japan after WWII) and invariably they conclude that the return on investment to America was more than worth it. This would be similar. If we wipe out Arab poverty,
Show me another instance of so much money being spent to keep 6 people from dying over the course of 5 years.
Show me another instance where you consider it justifiable to let 2400 of our soldiers die to keep 6 people from dying over the course of 5 years.
Show me another case where you think it's reasonable to collect and data mine the calling patterns of every American citizen (minus Qwest subscribers) to prevent 6 deaths.
Despite the triteness of the old Jefferson quote about trading liberty for security, it plays so well here it's hard to avoid. Because no matter what he said, every society makes that tradeoff. Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus, and FDR had some serious executive power plays as well. But those were instances with huge consequences for our country. 6 deaths isn't that kind of consequence.
Nobody said there was "no threat." We just said it was inconsequential. 6 deaths over 5 years in a country of 260M is inconsequential.
Given that if we had these programs in place before 9/11, the 9/11 dead wouldn't be dead right now, I expect they'd be all for them.
Interesting assertion you make here without any evidence. In what way does leaking confidential information have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks? Were the attacks planned using information leaked to the press? What the fuck are you talking about?
Worse, given the fact that the white house had actually been briefed concerning a likely terrorist attack, complete with 9/11 as the date, and took no action, what makes you think any of the programs the government has enacted since would have made a difference? If they couldn't be bothered to beef up airport security or keep closer tabs on flights diverging from their IFR flight plans in the face of a report suggesting terrorists might use planes, then what were they going to do with the PATRIOT act provision for searching library records, or with illegal NSA wiretaps?
The government keeps things secret for the protection of Americans, and the people who leak those secrets therefore place all Americans into harm's way.
Right. Because we've never found out 30 years later that "classified" government programs and information were used improperly. Because J. Edgar Hoover's cardfiles on thousands of civilians chosen for political reasons were "for the protection of Americans." Same with Nixon's blacklist. This is bullshit. If men were angels, there'd be no need for government, and if men were ruled by angels, there'd be no need for controls on government. They aren't.
Keep in mind that requiring people not to leak secrets does in no way infringe on the First Amendment. No one is having their freedom of speech taken away.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you were an expert in constitutional law. Oh, wait, you aren't. I wonder what mental gymnastics you went through to come to this conclusion. Because the idea that a journalist cannot write about the government's activities simply because they haven't been officially acknowledged is rather incompatible with the idea of a free press. Note that there is a huge difference between not being able to print any leaked information and being responsible for information you publish that might actually hurt people. Journalists already take seriously the publication of troop movements, sensitive covert op data, secret identities, etc. That's not what we're talking about.
However, just like yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater, there can be consequences to what you say.
Yes, and there are consequences. But that's different. A journalist cannot write and say that a secret team will be operating on a certain street in Baghdad tomorrow. That endangers people, similarly to yelling fire in a theater. This is already covered by known and accepted law and case law. Printing information about a secret, illegal government program to spy on American citizens is not such a situation. Gonzales is now saying that anything the government wants secret is exempt from the first amendment. This is a long, long way away from the existing case law on the subject.
Just like you're not allowed to explain how to make bombs online, you're not allowed to leak secrets that can place America at risk.
Well, this last sentence really proves you're a dumbass. First, it is completely legal to explain how to make bombs online. Or in print; there's a page at the back of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears that apologizes for including enough information for a knowledgable, well-funded person to make an atomic bomb, but notes that all the information was found and can be found in a public library. A friend of mine got busted in middle school selling floppy discs of "Jolly Roger's Cookbook" with hundreds of explosive recipes...the school called the ATF, but they just laughed at them and told them their hands were tied by the first amendment. So that half of the sentence is simply false. The other h
Repeat after me: I'm a Moonbat I'm a Moonbat I'm a Moonbat.
You're a dumbfuck, you're a dumbfuck, you're a dumbfuck. I really believe that.
If you really believe that, let's see you put your money where your mouth is. Go vacation on Iraq or Iran. Where would you like your head shipped?
Vacationing in Iran as an American right now is very safe. Far safer than many non-muslim third world destinations. And vacationing in Iraq was just fine too, before we started a war of choice there on fabricated evidence, toppled the only stable secular government in the region and stuck around with no exit plan. Naturally, this gave rise to a guerrilla insurgency, which is now quite dangerous. But it's not "terrorism" so much as a "resistance" and it has nothing to do with any of the massive domestic policy changes that have stripped our rights in the name of stopping "terrorism" which is, as the GP noted, an inconsequential threat. How many people have died on US soil since 9/11 in terrorist attacks? How many in places where we weren't fighting a war? How many died yesterday in car accidents?
Wolves and dogs are the same species. There is absolutely no doubt about it. Feral dogs, and even some domesticated dogs, breed with wolves all the time. It's not some rare event that only happens in a blue moon or through delibrate meddling. Ergo, same species.
Ok, the debate here is whether a species is defined as a group that can breed, or whether it needs to be defined as something else. As evidence in that debate, the GP noted that dogs and wolves can breed, but are seperate species.
So you chime in with this!? Saying, "No, wolves and dogs obviously are the same species! After all, they can breed!"
If you haven't gotten it yet, you can't use the conclusion of your side of a debate to invalidate evidence for the conclusion on the other side.
Please note, I'm only calling attention to your ridiculously flawed logic; I'm not contending that wolves and dogs are seperate species. Had you simply said something like, "Actually, wolves and dogs are the same species--canis lupus. Good point about canis latrans (coyotes) though." then I wouldn't be complaining.
How can the USA possibly claim to be a part of the European Union?
Uh, I don't think you're reading that quite right. No one here is trying to claim that the US is an EU member. Not sure where you're getting that. The part you are quoting only says that the US aproached EU countries to diplomatically ask for access to intelligence data. This is not terribly unorthodox, and most of those countries freely share this type of information frequently.
Mostly because I don't think this guy is actually flamebait. I recall when Nautilus was first added to Gnome, and I was extremely pissed about it. In fact, I'd say that was the low point in my opinion of Gnome...the file manager was slow as hell, and like Explorer on Winders it was the basis for drawing a bunch of the Gnome "stuff" like panels and whatnot, so when you had a Nautilus problem you had a total desktop problem. In short, it was pretty, but otherwise sucked. I used KDE.
But those days are over.
Nautilus these days does not seem slow at all. Particularly in comparison to Konqueror on the hardware I use both of them on. I feel strongly that the speed of Gnome has improved markedly in the last year or two, in particular the boost with this last release. The spatial file manager (once you change the gconf key to make it not litter your desktop with old windows) is killer, and irrespective of speed the functionality is excellent. I expect you simply haven't used Gnome/Nautilus recently enough; please, take another look and see if things haven't improved.
Now you are misrepresenting my posts. Let me rephrase: I do not have to follow US regulations as an EU citizen living in EU. In this sense I don't care about US regulations.
Being personally subject to a regulation is not the only reason to care about it. So these two statements you are trying to call equivalent aren't.
Perhaps Excel is still a 'killer app' because it provides features that people want, but are not available in competitors. Shouldn't people be allowed to chose MS if they want?
I think what he's getting at is not that oocalc lacks the functionality, just compatibility with Excel macros. IIRC calc has the macros, but you'd have to rewrite them for the platform. But I'm not really 100% sure, that's just how I remember it. I barely ever use spreadsheets, and never with macros...
So, the point is, it's not better functionality that entrenches Excel here, but effective lock-in because the macro structure isn't portable.
The manufacturers could make multiple versions - one FCC compliant for sale in the US, and one for everywhere else.
Well, yes, obviously; I just sort of took the cost factor as a given. Note my line "when you find a wifi chipset that isn't sold in the US let me know" It's also worth noting that the 802.11b spectrum is different in Europe than in the US, and that many drivers have multiple versions so as to open up the extra two channels for non-US users. This is another piece of evidence that the source-code isn't a violation...after all, any US citizen could go get the foreign version of the driver and use channel 13. But this is all beside the point; the discussion has gone off into one of "I'm not from the US so why should I care what your government does" which in my opinion is dumb as hell. If you can't figure out why non-US citizens should care about the policies of the largest importer of goods, the largest economy, the largest provider of foreign aid, the largest IMF contributor, a permenant member of the UN security council, and the largest military power....well, then you don't have a very good handle on world issues.
A wireless product sold in USA has to be FCC compliant, and that is clear, but that does not imply that FCC regulations are world wide in their scope.
That is correct. And I never once said or implied that FCC regulations were global in scope. I did, however, say that US regulations impact all FOSS users regardless of where they live. And I've given far more than adequate evidence to support that position. Again, note that Theo does not reside in the US, yet he obviously considers these particular FCC regulations important to him and to the rest of the (mostly non-US) OpenBSD team.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft has real competition, forcing them to develop better, more competitive software. Downside?
The Downside.
I think you misinterpreted the quotes you used as the basis for your calculations. The important part of the first quote is After a few hours, one fifth of the substance had turned into oxygen. To me, this says that one fifth of the total mass of the soil ended up as oxygen; you seem to have taken it to mean one fifth of the available oxygen in the substance. The quote says no such thing, and does not reference the 45% number out of the second quote; those two facts (the composition percentage and the yield from NASA's procedure) are not related. So, instead of figuring 9g of oxygen per 100g soil, your figures should start with 20g oxygen per 100g soil. Still not the factor of 4 you were hoping for, but it'll get you more than halfway there.
B2's weren't used in the gulf war; those were F-117 stealth fighters.
Yes, if this was a rule that they agreed to. Plenty of private schools do things like this.
If it were a private school, this debate could be entirely different. I assume parents of students at private schools sign some sort of contract with the school, which can define whatever terms they want. But it isn't.
I'm not saying that I agree with the suspension that you received. I'm saying that there's a difference between what happened to you and what happened to this kid. The public school system which is part of our government, *should* be actively protecting first amendment rights. They have no such obligation to protect criminal activities.
OK...perhaps, but irrelevant. We aren't talking about a district protecting anything. We are talking about a district punishing a student. In one case the act they are punishing him for was legal, in the other it was illegal. This has absolutely no impact on the discussion, because the school is not a law-enforcement organization. They have no authority to enforce law, and no authority at all outside acting in loco parentis during those times when students have been placed in their care. Had they found actual pot on the actual student while he was in class, they still could not have arrested him for it...they could have called the cops, who would have, and they could have suspended him or whatever else their policy states. But they would be left out of the legal process other than as witnesses at trial. Similarly, they could have suspended him for any number of things that weren't illegal...and it doesn't make any difference whether it was legal, constitutionally protected, etc.
In short, when talking about whether a school is justified in punishing the actions of a student, the legality of those actions is completely and totally irrelevant.
No, that is an example of hypocrisy. It would be Irony of Fate if the students in the "How to stay in school 101" class somehow got suspended.
No, he was right. Isn't the person who got suspended in his example also a student? Thus they still took a student out of school when the expected result would be fewer students out of school. Situational irony. Very simple. Your point that it was hypocritical of the school is much less sound, but probably also supportable.
But there's a significant difference in what (allegedly) did and what this kid did. If you were involved at all with the posession or sale of marijuana, that is a criminal activity. What this kid did....is, in fact, constitutionally protected.
That is a difference, true. But it does not make any difference to the school's role in the situation. You forget that the school is not a law-enforcement agency. They are not legally authorized to take disciplinary action in either case. The only thing they are allowed to do is call the cops and tell them what they heard. Of course, the "rumor" of possession of marijuana isn't going to excite a cop much. Neither will a blog post. Which is why in both cases the school simply ignored their legal options and went to bullying the student instead. In the marijuana case, they correctly calculated that the family would not go to the expense of suing them. The Plainsfield (Illinois, not New Jersey, the summary is wrong) district has obviously made the same calculation, but it appears (given the quotes from the lawyer in TFA) that they may have been mistaken.
By the way, this summary has an important detail wrong. The district in question is Plainsfield ILLINOIS, NOT NEW JERSEY. We should all have been able to tell by the fact that the link goes to a Chicago newspaper which never mentions the state in which the district lies. But I for one did not notice that, and sent a (polite, but firm) email to the wrong district suggesting they drop the matter before they get their pants sued off. Well...the fellow was not as polite in return and basically called me an idiot for getting the wrong district.
So, I feel dumb, but whatever. If you are going to call or write, make sure you do it to the Illinois district. http://www.learningcommunity202.org/
So i could publicly accuse my hypothetical school of anything online? (does the media matter? newspaper, sign on freeway overpass), and no matter how bad the slur you would not expel me?
Absolutely. Perhaps I might want to (not likely, given my personal philosophy) but I would not have any legal authority to. The public school system is created by laws, charters, and case law, which grant them certain authority over students that are placed in their care. But they only grant that authority so long as the students are in the care of the school. The school is said to act in such cases "in loco parentis" ...but when the student is at home, they aren't.
Note that the school still has the full range of legal recourses available to it which any other citizen would have. However, having read the blog in question, I would consider any actual legal steps they might take laughable. Which is why they've ignored their legal options and instead gone to bullying the kid and his family. Of course, if the family can afford to, they'll beat the pants off the district in court, but I'd also bet that the district is well aware of that and calculates that an actual showdown is unlikely. Let's hope they're wrong.
One other note: Metallica does appear to have a strong case against this kid if they ever happen across his blog, assuming he doesn't have appropriate license to broadcast "Master of Puppets" on his page.
Well, he did admit to drinking and he did ask to be suspended.
So? Should the school be able to suspend or expell him for drinking outside school? Should they suspend a student who asks them to?
The former policy would leave the school with no students, while the latter would be extremely unpopular with parents and teachers, given that lots of misguided students would ask for such treatment, to their own detriment.
Well I'll be damned! They finally did add currency conversion...when the calculator first came out that was the one thing they left out that I wanted most. I hadn't even tried today...just went to xe.com like always to make sure that the headline was stupid and the dollar hadn't really just magically gotten 30% stronger while I was sleeping...
Cool!
We're mostly on the same page. And put that way, I do concede your points about Abu Ghraib. In fact, the only thing I have a big difference of opinion about is your assertion that Gonzales is legally correct, or even close to it. To be clear, he was talking about the journalist who publishes leaked information, not the official who leaked it. The official is definitely commiting a crime. But I don't see how the journalist is. In situations where there was a legitimate threat to national security, they could be tried for treason. But if it's a whistleblower situation, like this one, then the standard of knowingly aiding our enemies would be real hard to prove. I'm unaware of any other laws that would take effect here, and even if they did then the court would need to examine the first amendment issues, and it seems unlikely that they'd restrict this speech, particularly with criminal charges.
Wow. So many facts, and so little thought put into what they might mean.
First, your terrorism timeline is a lot of evidence that makes absolutely no point whatsoever. You appear to be trying to convince me that 9/11 wasn't the only terrorist attack ever. At least that's what I gather from "One event? I really don't know why you guys keep repeating this." But see, I never suggested that it was the only terrorist attack...in fact, the rest of my argument rather relies on the fact that terrorism has been and will be around for a long time. I said "the administration is using one event to justify..." and this is true. The administration used the single attack on 9/11 for its drum-beating and propagandizing. They didn't use "a decade-long string of terrorism" to woo the American people for their oil war, they used "9/11."
Before I continue, you do recognize that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism, right? If in doubt, check with people for the new american century, a Dick Cheney think-tank. They had that war planned out at least as early as 1996, and you can download the pdf's that explain it in detail. In one place it even notes that it would require a "Pearl Harbor-esque" event to get public support for such a strategy. Well, looks like they got it.
What civil liberties have we lost? Did I miss something? The only civil liberty I've ever seen chipped away at in this country is the right to bear arms.
Yes, you missed something; do I have to repeat myself? The sentence after the one you quote listed several civil liberties (but certainly not a complete list) that have been lost under the administration since 9/11. Not that I'm the definitive source....why don't you go pick up a copy of the actual PATRIOT act and take a look for yourself? It's not really much other than a collection of new procedures for going past the bounds of what was previously acceptable law-enforcement.
No, my library records won't be searched. You think that Bush is sitting up at night thumbing through everyones personal records don't you?
Obviously Bush has lackeys for this. They're called cops. But now they can access library records without warrants. They couldn't do that before. This is what's called "loss of civil liberties." And I've got no idea what makes you so sure yours will be exempted.
[Call detail records] won't be analyzed by any human unless you happen to talk to a suspected terrorist.
Again, where are you getting this information? You work at the NSA? We have only very shaky promises from the administration that this is even limited to terrorism investigation. Hell, a couple weeks ago they were saying no data was collected at all on domestic calls. Furthermore, what difference does it make whether a human is doing the analyzing, versus a computer? I guess then it's OK to have a robot break into my house when I'm not there and take photos of everything inside? And if it finds something "flagged" as a likely terrorism indicator, then call the humans to have a look? I simply can't wrap my head around what here makes you think any of this is OK.
[Detention without attorney] happens during war. See WW2 for a recent example. We don't need to let non-citizens see lawyers.
First, we are not currently at war. Second, some of the people we have detained were American citizens.
I see, you would rather more Americans die than we torture known terrorists.
This statement assumes at least two facts not in evidence. First, it assumes that everyone we've tortured is a "known terrorist." Certainly you can't prove that, and in fact I think it would be a lot easier to prove the opposite claim. But the other, dumber assumption is that torture saves American lives. I double-dog-dare you to show even one instance where this was the case. John McCain (my favorite Republican) triple-dog-dares you. And finally, let me say that yes, even if it could be shown that we
I wouldn't go so far as to call you naive, but I would say that you are ignoring plenty of evidence. Was the secrecy around the Abu Ghraib there to "safeguard the lives and liberties" of citizens? How about the secrets going on in guantanamo bay? What about Hoover's cardfiles? The medical records of people hit with agent orange, or by nuclear testing?
I'm sure if I thought about it for a while I could come up with pages of these examples. If I were better informed, I'd probably be able to fill a big book with them...and there are people who have. The point is quite simple; we have plenty of evidence to prove that the government sometimes keeps things secret out of motives other than protecting the citizenry.
There are things that journalists should not publish because they could result in harm to the country and death to its people. That is not the same as saying that all leaked information is a threat to national security or to the lives of Americans. And anyone who says the first amendment doesn't trump the government's desire for secrecy has no business anywhere in the legal machinery of this country.
So what you are saying is, we have to wait until the terrorist kill a significant amount of people before we should spend money to fight them.
No. What I'm saying is that the threat to our citizens, our national security, and our way of life posed by terrorists is not in any way, shape, or form large enough to justify the wholesale destruction of our civil liberties. The administration has used one event to justify unbelievable changes to what ordinary, law-abiding citizens can expect with respect to their privacy and freedom. Now you can expect that your library records will be searched, your phone-calling patterns analyzed, and your email read. Meanwhile we're detaining people without letting them see lawyers. We're torturing. The justice department denies every single freedom of information act request they receive, out of hand, and make requesters challenge them in court if they want anything. None of these things were true before 9/11. Each one of these things is more significant than the number of lives we've lost to terrorism.
So how many innocent people have to die before the US government can spend money to stop these nutjobs without our domestic socialists crying about malaria in Africa?
You seem to look at this as some sort of retail anti-terrorism purchase. Let me clue you into something; we spend money and lives to attempt to "stop these nutjobs." Last I checked the number was somewhere around 2400 lives, if you only count Americans. If you count innocent Iraqi civilians, the number is far in excess of the 9/11 death toll. If you count the Iraqi soldiers we killed (note, they did not have anything to do with terrorism) it climbs staggeringly high. If you are going to act like it's the lives you care about, your argument falls to pieces simply because the administration has dramatically increased the lives lost, not reduced them. And that ignores the fact that deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks have been steadily rising since the Iraq war started. 9/11 was a spike in a flat line of terrorism. Our response to 9/11 has made that flat line into a steadily rising hill.
Here is a news flash, the American government and the American people owe no debt to Africa, nor do they have to spend money to fight a disease there while disregarding their own personal security.
We'll suspend indefinitely the discussion of whether the US owes a debt to Africa (How much is the economic output from those slaves worth? What about their descendents who helped fight all our wars since the Civil, and continue to help generate our economy, without, on average, taking hardly any of it for themselves?). Let's just examine the general idea you're going for here. That idea is that we don't have to give other countries aid. That's more or less true...we have no legal responsibility to help poorer countries. It's not a principle of the constitution or anything. But I'll put it to you like this: if we were to spend the money that we have spent in the Iraq war on targeted humanitarian aid, what would be the relative effect on terrorism?
To get more specific...say we went on a global "Marshall Plan" and invested in building the economic prosperity of all the Arab nations. Wipe out poverty there and make everyone wealthy enough to drive an American/German/Japanese car and listen to American rock music on their Chinese stereos. Think there'd still be a lot of suicide bombers out there? Radical militant Islam, and radical militant religion in general, requires poverty to be effective on a wide scale. In fact, stable democratic government can be said to require economic prosperity. And on the other side of the equation, various economists have looked at the expenditures of the Marshall Plan (for those who don't know, this was Truman's aid package to rebuild Europe (including Germany) and Japan after WWII) and invariably they conclude that the return on investment to America was more than worth it. This would be similar. If we wipe out Arab poverty,
Show me another instance of so much money being spent to keep 6 people from dying over the course of 5 years.
Show me another instance where you consider it justifiable to let 2400 of our soldiers die to keep 6 people from dying over the course of 5 years.
Show me another case where you think it's reasonable to collect and data mine the calling patterns of every American citizen (minus Qwest subscribers) to prevent 6 deaths.
Despite the triteness of the old Jefferson quote about trading liberty for security, it plays so well here it's hard to avoid. Because no matter what he said, every society makes that tradeoff. Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus, and FDR had some serious executive power plays as well. But those were instances with huge consequences for our country. 6 deaths isn't that kind of consequence.
Nobody said there was "no threat." We just said it was inconsequential. 6 deaths over 5 years in a country of 260M is inconsequential.
Given that if we had these programs in place before 9/11, the 9/11 dead wouldn't be dead right now, I expect they'd be all for them.
Interesting assertion you make here without any evidence. In what way does leaking confidential information have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks? Were the attacks planned using information leaked to the press? What the fuck are you talking about?
Worse, given the fact that the white house had actually been briefed concerning a likely terrorist attack, complete with 9/11 as the date, and took no action, what makes you think any of the programs the government has enacted since would have made a difference? If they couldn't be bothered to beef up airport security or keep closer tabs on flights diverging from their IFR flight plans in the face of a report suggesting terrorists might use planes, then what were they going to do with the PATRIOT act provision for searching library records, or with illegal NSA wiretaps?
The government keeps things secret for the protection of Americans, and the people who leak those secrets therefore place all Americans into harm's way.
Right. Because we've never found out 30 years later that "classified" government programs and information were used improperly. Because J. Edgar Hoover's cardfiles on thousands of civilians chosen for political reasons were "for the protection of Americans." Same with Nixon's blacklist. This is bullshit. If men were angels, there'd be no need for government, and if men were ruled by angels, there'd be no need for controls on government. They aren't.
Keep in mind that requiring people not to leak secrets does in no way infringe on the First Amendment. No one is having their freedom of speech taken away.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you were an expert in constitutional law. Oh, wait, you aren't. I wonder what mental gymnastics you went through to come to this conclusion. Because the idea that a journalist cannot write about the government's activities simply because they haven't been officially acknowledged is rather incompatible with the idea of a free press. Note that there is a huge difference between not being able to print any leaked information and being responsible for information you publish that might actually hurt people. Journalists already take seriously the publication of troop movements, sensitive covert op data, secret identities, etc. That's not what we're talking about.
However, just like yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater, there can be consequences to what you say.
Yes, and there are consequences. But that's different. A journalist cannot write and say that a secret team will be operating on a certain street in Baghdad tomorrow. That endangers people, similarly to yelling fire in a theater. This is already covered by known and accepted law and case law. Printing information about a secret, illegal government program to spy on American citizens is not such a situation. Gonzales is now saying that anything the government wants secret is exempt from the first amendment. This is a long, long way away from the existing case law on the subject.
Just like you're not allowed to explain how to make bombs online, you're not allowed to leak secrets that can place America at risk.
Well, this last sentence really proves you're a dumbass. First, it is completely legal to explain how to make bombs online. Or in print; there's a page at the back of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears that apologizes for including enough information for a knowledgable, well-funded person to make an atomic bomb, but notes that all the information was found and can be found in a public library. A friend of mine got busted in middle school selling floppy discs of "Jolly Roger's Cookbook" with hundreds of explosive recipes...the school called the ATF, but they just laughed at them and told them their hands were tied by the first amendment. So that half of the sentence is simply false. The other h
Repeat after me: I'm a Moonbat I'm a Moonbat I'm a Moonbat.
You're a dumbfuck, you're a dumbfuck, you're a dumbfuck. I really believe that.
If you really believe that, let's see you put your money where your mouth is. Go vacation on Iraq or Iran. Where would you like your head shipped?
Vacationing in Iran as an American right now is very safe. Far safer than many non-muslim third world destinations. And vacationing in Iraq was just fine too, before we started a war of choice there on fabricated evidence, toppled the only stable secular government in the region and stuck around with no exit plan. Naturally, this gave rise to a guerrilla insurgency, which is now quite dangerous. But it's not "terrorism" so much as a "resistance" and it has nothing to do with any of the massive domestic policy changes that have stripped our rights in the name of stopping "terrorism" which is, as the GP noted, an inconsequential threat. How many people have died on US soil since 9/11 in terrorist attacks? How many in places where we weren't fighting a war? How many died yesterday in car accidents?
Wolves and dogs are the same species. There is absolutely no doubt about it. Feral dogs, and even some domesticated dogs, breed with wolves all the time. It's not some rare event that only happens in a blue moon or through delibrate meddling. Ergo, same species.
Ok, the debate here is whether a species is defined as a group that can breed, or whether it needs to be defined as something else. As evidence in that debate, the GP noted that dogs and wolves can breed, but are seperate species.
So you chime in with this!? Saying, "No, wolves and dogs obviously are the same species! After all, they can breed!"
If you haven't gotten it yet, you can't use the conclusion of your side of a debate to invalidate evidence for the conclusion on the other side.
Please note, I'm only calling attention to your ridiculously flawed logic; I'm not contending that wolves and dogs are seperate species. Had you simply said something like, "Actually, wolves and dogs are the same species--canis lupus. Good point about canis latrans (coyotes) though." then I wouldn't be complaining.
How can the USA possibly claim to be a part of the European Union?
Uh, I don't think you're reading that quite right. No one here is trying to claim that the US is an EU member. Not sure where you're getting that. The part you are quoting only says that the US aproached EU countries to diplomatically ask for access to intelligence data. This is not terribly unorthodox, and most of those countries freely share this type of information frequently.
Oh, ok, fine...I'll take the bait.
Mostly because I don't think this guy is actually flamebait. I recall when Nautilus was first added to Gnome, and I was extremely pissed about it. In fact, I'd say that was the low point in my opinion of Gnome...the file manager was slow as hell, and like Explorer on Winders it was the basis for drawing a bunch of the Gnome "stuff" like panels and whatnot, so when you had a Nautilus problem you had a total desktop problem. In short, it was pretty, but otherwise sucked. I used KDE.
But those days are over.
Nautilus these days does not seem slow at all. Particularly in comparison to Konqueror on the hardware I use both of them on. I feel strongly that the speed of Gnome has improved markedly in the last year or two, in particular the boost with this last release. The spatial file manager (once you change the gconf key to make it not litter your desktop with old windows) is killer, and irrespective of speed the functionality is excellent. I expect you simply haven't used Gnome/Nautilus recently enough; please, take another look and see if things haven't improved.
Now you are misrepresenting my posts. Let me rephrase: I do not have to follow US regulations as an EU citizen living in EU. In this sense I don't care about US regulations.
Being personally subject to a regulation is not the only reason to care about it. So these two statements you are trying to call equivalent aren't.
Perhaps Excel is still a 'killer app' because it provides features that people want, but are not available in competitors. Shouldn't people be allowed to chose MS if they want?
I think what he's getting at is not that oocalc lacks the functionality, just compatibility with Excel macros. IIRC calc has the macros, but you'd have to rewrite them for the platform. But I'm not really 100% sure, that's just how I remember it. I barely ever use spreadsheets, and never with macros...
So, the point is, it's not better functionality that entrenches Excel here, but effective lock-in because the macro structure isn't portable.
The manufacturers could make multiple versions - one FCC compliant for sale in the US, and one for everywhere else.
Well, yes, obviously; I just sort of took the cost factor as a given. Note my line "when you find a wifi chipset that isn't sold in the US let me know" It's also worth noting that the 802.11b spectrum is different in Europe than in the US, and that many drivers have multiple versions so as to open up the extra two channels for non-US users. This is another piece of evidence that the source-code isn't a violation...after all, any US citizen could go get the foreign version of the driver and use channel 13. But this is all beside the point; the discussion has gone off into one of "I'm not from the US so why should I care what your government does" which in my opinion is dumb as hell. If you can't figure out why non-US citizens should care about the policies of the largest importer of goods, the largest economy, the largest provider of foreign aid, the largest IMF contributor, a permenant member of the UN security council, and the largest military power....well, then you don't have a very good handle on world issues.
A wireless product sold in USA has to be FCC compliant, and that is clear, but that does not imply that FCC regulations are world wide in their scope.
That is correct. And I never once said or implied that FCC regulations were global in scope. I did, however, say that US regulations impact all FOSS users regardless of where they live. And I've given far more than adequate evidence to support that position. Again, note that Theo does not reside in the US, yet he obviously considers these particular FCC regulations important to him and to the rest of the (mostly non-US) OpenBSD team.