I would say yes. You and I are under no specific obligation to make web requests for any specific content, we are under no specific obligation to display/execute/process response content in any fashion. Similarly Youtube et al should be under no specific obligation to respond to any given request or respond with any specific content.
I am sure they could just enact some civil immunity law if there isnt one already. A friend of mine got t-boned by a school bus (no children aboard at the time) making an illegal left turn. Even though the police at the scene ruled the accident to be entirely the fault of the bus driver there was nothing she could do. Her insurance company had to pay the entire claim and she was suck with the deductible. Could not sue for any damages etc.
See this is where I would also hope some common sense would prevail. Ideal the cops would make that point to the kid. Say that they will have to inform the owner, and if they decline to press charges that is where this ends, and they will go as far as to suggest the owner really ought not bother with matter because it was just a kid removing some nearly worthless waste.
There is a difference between rummaging say in a trash can/dumpster/pile of rotting and rusting stuff in an open field where the owner has clearly formed the intent to discard the items and entering a building and removing things.
Wait just a moment here. Its not like he just purchases some perfectly legal stuff, and that prompted a police raid.
He committed crimes, trespass and theft. That is one of the reasons we have police to investigate crimes. They discovered that the things taken were of a nature know to have dangerous applications. The followed up in a way that was reasonable if perhaps more cautious than I might have been given the suspect was just a middle class teenager.
When someone buys chemicals/guns/tools etc by walking into a shop in broad daylight where they may be seen etc, or buys something online where their identity will be attached to the CC number used etc; I would say allowing that alone to trigger actions by authorities is an overstep and a privacy violation. The situation is different when someone acquires those types of things in an already illegal fashion which could possibly have been a chosen method to keep their possession of those items clandestine. Theft is a serious crime, its not like jay walking. I don't think its wrong for authorities to consider one serious criminal act by a suspect to be the potential precursor for additional criminal acts that should ideally be prevented; at least when we are not dealing with entrapment type situations.
personnel records on OPM computers where just anyone could see them
Would it. That information is still needed. Paychecks have to get cut etc. All these clandestine people need some kind of cover. So why not give them "jobs" as administrative employees in what everyone already understands to be a giant bureaucracy. That way if anyone inside or outside goes looking for information they find exactly what they expect.
I think that is the problem the NSA's mission isn't defense its offense largely. We don't really have a cyber (ugh I can't believe I just wrote that word) defensive force. We probably should but we leave that to 'domestic' agencies like the FBI and other groups we rolled up into Homeland Security.
Remember the "Department of Defense" (although there were some other reorganizations and mergers) was essentially created by renaming the "War Department" because its politically more palatable to have a "defense" department than a "war" department.
I think it is reasonable to have a group with the NSA's offensive mission so that we have the capability. I think its also clear we don't need that group to be the size and scale of the NSA; at least not when its in addition to the CIA.
Personally I think the sensible thing to do is disband NSA. Move some of the signals intel assets into CIA and possibly some in Army/Navy/Air-force as appropriate for task. What is left over should be re-tasked to actually defending and improving our computer security posture and probably turned into a new but small agency with a narrow mission statement and shoved under the homeland security umbrella. I'd say put in the FBI but that isn't really right because again the FBI's core mission is one of offense even if it is against domestic threats. In fact maybe we should part out the FBI a little bit too, moving some of the their fraud prevention and type efforts into again a smaller defensively focused group.
A lot of the problems we have with these agencies are culture and mission creep problems. Yes 9/11 showed us we need to be careful about erecting to many walls between our agencies. Which is why we created Homeland Security and parent department what should be coordinating information sharing. If we had smaller more narrowly focused groups with separate budgets power and money would be more diffuse it would keep one director or group of administrators from going off the rails and having such large pools of money to do insane things with like recording and storing meta data for every call make everywhere. Yet these groups could still have a culture of collaboration and information sharing possibly a way to directly refer cases to each other etc. They could still be effective without getting crazy.
More importantly and more to the point here. People in those groups would have a much clearer understanding of "the mission" and not have to deal with so many impedance mismatches. They and us would be able to do a much better job at assessing how effective they are.
I think the real challenge will be like situations the parent described. Mt. Washington would be a excellent test.
I live in the Shenandoah valley. Its mountainous terrain and rural. We have alot of roads that are unmarked in terms of speed, have no center or edge lines, are rather narrow, and in most cases have either no shoulder or dirt or grass the county keeps mowed.
In theory these are 55 zones. In practice people go much faster than that anywhere its flat and strait. The hills offer plenty of blind crests and corners, where you need to slow down to 25 and less, if you don't care to find your self rear-ending a combine. Passing some in the opposite direction is often nerve racking but humans can usually accomplish it by nods and judgments about how far not only you can go but what the other guys ability is as well. We also get our fair share of complicating conditions like dense fog many mornings, some snow in winter etc.
I wonder how the algorithms cope with situations like road contours that look like a camels back? Where you can see for miles on the crests of the hills but face 10% grade, even if it only runs for a 100 meters, in the troughs. Most of us humans operate on faith and principles of object permanence. "The road was clear 1/8th of second ago when I was atop the last crest, It will therefor still be clear 3/8ths of second from now when reach the next peak, as there is nowhere anything substantial could have come from, I'll hold speed". What will Google's car do when its suddenly blind? Is the system able to continue to track and project the future location of objects it can't currently detect?
Where I was going was that, individually to the people who care about us we are all priceless. Most of us would spend every last cent we had to save our child or spouse etc. When it comes to civil judgments and the like making people whole is a good enough system. A court can look at the individual situation and do something that is 'fair'.
At the macro social policy level its a different story. We MUST make decisions about how much we are willing to spend on counter terrorism, or social safety net programs, or health care etc. To do that rationally we do need to put some gross value numbers on people.
It really is the case that at least based on my reasoning that society for example has an interest in effecting a stronger security posture at a high school than at an elementary school, because at least to society Teenagers are actually more valuable than young children. Putting quantitative values on people in aggregate is useful and necessary if we want to rationally allocate public resources.
However while I'll believe government needs to act quantitatively and not look at the individual, I am still a libertarian. I believe simultaneously that we need to concentrate as much power and choice as possible with the individual rather than with society, because I know the intangibles are important, sometime more important than anything else. Often the only people who can recognize the true value of something or even other people are those are immediately around it.
I think he is right to do. Human life clearly has a dollar value. I would argue not an especially high one either. Consider there are 8 Billion of us. You can't get much more commodity than that. The world as a whole would arguable be better off with fewer people too.
Value has a great deal to do with what has been invested in them in terms of education, care, feeding etc. Than you need to consider things like survival rates. Certainly a healthy teenager is more valuable than a newborn. Much of the risk premature death has been removed, as has the possibility for many debilitating conditions being unknown. We can make a lot assumptions about future productivity as well based on physic, intelligence, etc.
While we can never say Bob over there is worth a half a million but we can certainly say in the abstract sense the average 22 year old native born American is worth $X. To that end we can measure the cost of the NYSE being down in lives.
I agree with you that there is no huge bubble but I don't think historical fiscal performance information is remotely applicable today where it predates the creation of the FED in 1913.
For most applications using numbers dating before the 1972 isnt really apples to apples.
Its also true the make up of the DOW has changed often as well. Even if you want to argue the DOW components are still in similar industries the impact of globalism on trade is more or less only been a factor since as recently as the mid 90s.
Lets not forget the introduction of electronic trading...
My point being is that there have been so many major changes in the past century around monetary policy, fiscal policy, and trade that we can't really let history be our guide this is new territory.
I'd say we have about 20 years of useful comps when it comes to studying the modern market. Using information much older than that to me at least suggests someone is cherry picking facts to make their case.
I think it should be noted that before anyone gets to exited Chinese markets still are higher than even a few years ago. Its pretty hard to call this a crisis. Until the bank runs starts and business actually close their doors its just the evaporation of money for which no wealth ever existed in the first place.
The Chinese market makes the US stock market look down right rational. When you consider the lack of reporting requirements, the level of state involvement in many enterprises, the fact that so much of the financial media there is state owed and therefore a propaganda arm; there isn't a value investor in all of China. Investing without information is actually just gambling no matter which side of the Pacific you happen to be on. The thing about China is there are only gamblers because the government made real investing impossible.
I think overall this will prove to be non-story when the dust up settles in another week or so. If anything the big story will be how the Chinese government blinked and interceded to soon and their intervention failed. The economic story will simply be: Market values will return to something that is at least moderately reflective of the real economic situation. The illusion of China's authoritarian system being a run-away success will be shattered. The reality is though that they will still have perfectly respectable growth, they will still be the worlds second largest economy. etc. So rather than 8% it will be the same 2% that western economies are perfectly happy to see.
True but there are few religions that call for violence against people that leave the faith.
The simple facts are that the Islamic definition of apostasy includes anyone who leaves the faith. That inst so uncommon among world religions. What is a little more unusual is that Islamic law does hold that the death penalty is appropriate for such cases.
Christianity has some similar history around heretics (centuries ago) and phrases like "thou shall not suffer a witch" are still in print. I don't think any major branch of Christan scholorships still advocates for the killing of people who leave the flock though and that isn't true of Islam.
The point is one persons anit-dogpile tool is everyone else's unsolicited censor. The fact is most of the GG claims were unfair and unfounded. She misrepresented herself to gain credibility for her criticisms. She tried to pretend to be a victim when she was not, and now claims to be victimized by people pointing that out.
Sure we can. At some point a persons views and poor behavior have to cause you to place them on a list of people you just don't listen too. Donald Trump is a anthor perfect example. He might be right about a lot of things but some of his unthinking and disgusting positions as well as his pattern of foolish self destructive behavior cause most of us to ignore him. Same with Randi. There are plenty of more intelligent more articulate people who have or will come up with the same ideas she *might* be right about. Its not like she has offered anything novel. The best thing for most people to do is ignore her.
Yes ad hominem is a logical fallacy. The counter point is though that stopped clock might be correct twice a day, but that does not mean you treat it as a source of information.
These guys are not "security researchers" doing responsible disclosure or even just quietly helping secure their own customers against unpublished threats.
The might be doing research; but they are basically arms dealers. Weaponizing software and selling it to whoever will pay.
I am not surprised they'd backdoor it frankly. If all of my customers were professional liars known for running false flags etc, I'd have to think seriously about inserting water marks and backdoors too. If nothing else so I had some way prove whatever gets done with those tools was not done by me.
The phrase "there is no honor among thieves" comes to mind.
I don't doubt it. Ask anyone in rural Maine. The farmers are all perfectly healthy right up into they decide to retire and get a place in town. Then they go down fast. Being up and moving a large part of each day clearly is good for longevity. At least for most people.
I think it might be useful for applications like printing or engraving where it isn't necessary to put much load on the 'output shaft' the ability to make very very fine movements possibly much finer than any stepper or solenoid etc we can manufacture may be very useful.
Why didn't the US let Germany fend for itself after World War II
Because the day the conflict in Europe ended the Cold War essentially began. There was so little trust between us and the USSR that literally the US and Soviet armies raced each other to Berlin, knowing full well whoever occupied Germany first was going to have a strategic advantage in the coming conflict, no matter what the current pacts/treaties/agreements said.
If Germany had not been strategically valuable I can doubt we would have bothered. Its not like we rushed to rebuild northern Africa for example. The simple fact is Greece isn't important to our economy. Europe as whole is, but Greece isn't.
Because no matter what anyone wants to pretend Europe is not one big country. There are still pretty strong currents of nationalism with the majority of the population in most parts of Europe. We were experiencing a global financial crisis. Countries like Germany might have been still doing well but nobody would have said times were "good". There was no practical way to sell the public there that rather than spend money on domestic stimulus they should instead spend it in Greece. If Germany could not find the political will to do it much of the rest of the EU that was hurting more certainly was not going to do so.
The Fed on the other hand can get away with that type of horse shit. First the Americans think of themselves as Americans, they don't think of themselves as Virginans or New Mexicans at least not first. So politically while nobody loves money being shoveled out of their back yard and dumped someplace else its not nearly as unpopular as moving it over a national boarder. Second Balance sheet expansion ultimately just devalues the currency pick the pockets of you and me, and robs honest hardworking people who saved and were conservative the chance to pick up assets cheap. In short its drag on social mobility. It keeps those at the top at the top and the wage slaves where they are. It forces the middle class to essentially ONLY invest rather than actually save because if they don't commit every last asset to investment they inflationary pressures will ensure they can never save enough. For most of them only place that is easy to do that is Wall Street's Grand Casio and so what choice do that have but to support bailouts. Over the short term there was no way the government could raise enough revenue to do the bailing so the Fed just expands the public debt and we do the paying over generations. Me I will always believe we should have let the big houses fall but the majority of this country won't take their medicine and I can't make them.
The other reality of Greece is that they NEVER should have gone on the Euro. The economic imbalances were just to great. It is a fact the growth of the Greek economy has been far slower since the introduction of the Euro there, as has the jobless rate been higher. So many of their problems are NOT their own making other than the decision to join the single currency experiment in the first place. They were of course under tremendous political pressure to do so and there was a tremendous amount of propaganda and rosy predictions to support the Euro, largely put forth by the same banking and political cartels that are Greece's creditors today. I am not sure the intent was malicious, and end the end the Greek government and the Greek voters are responsible for Greece and nobody else, but it is entirely understandable that they would assign some blame to the troika. I think the right decision for Greece is to default and take the consequences of that.
Once again we should work toward getting back to common law. A number of states have made Barratry at thing again, thankfully. What should happen is if you are right and you know your right you just ignore the bogus legal letter. If they then take you to court anyway. You phone up the local prosecutor who should go after them for filing baseless claims.
In Texas at least for repeat offenses it can be a felony! We should aim for that everywhere.
Which he probably would still be and quite possibly would have been sooner if he had risked any of his success to tread his daughter better.
So there are two conclusions you can draw (probably others as well).
1) you only live once and death is certain; best live life to the fullest enjoy it as much as you can. If you don't think there is more pleasure to be derived from things like family or other social responsibilities than the alternatives FUCK IT and move on to something more entertaining because you will end up a rotting corpse or pile of ash either way.
2) death is certain, therefore what you leave behind matters because if you don't leave something or someone behind to be remembered for or to remember you than there will be nothing left.
Applications for those warrants are inches thick. Do you think they like to redo them?
The is about the oldest game in business dealings and legal ranging. You toss together a huge pile of largely irrelevant material to "support" your argument, banking on the other guy deicing its to hard to go thru it all or if he can't connect the dots (because there really are none) he must be stupid and won't want to admit it.
No I am sure they don't want to redo a warrant, I am also sure if one comes over that is an inch think its 98% or more BS.
Yes its sad but true. The progressives win out in then end. They have succeeded, in undoing the work Hammurabi did all those years ago. Sure we still have codified law but it really does not matter. The government is bound by common definitions of works or shared understanding; let alone the notion that laws ought to be read using the prevailing definitions of the day when they were drafted. Now anything can mean anything at all.
You are free to associate unless its with a group someone has labeled terrorists. Oh and don't go thinking you have a choice in not associating. If you say don't want to join a heal insurance pool than you shall be taxed. Sounds striking similar to what was required if you chose not to join the Anglican Church in the seventeenth century. Don't wish to allow a certain group to associate with you your business etc, to bad you will sued into oblivion by an attorney general with a chip on his should. It matters not whether your reason are simple bigotry or sincere religious conviction or anything else.
The lower house the peoples house gets to allocate the purse. Nope not since the advent of budget reconciliation, and the idea the president somehow has the power to continue to spend on "critical activities" and to decide what is critical if the body won't authorize a budget he likes.
The Senate shall provide advice and consent to treaties, well consent any way and we shall see how long that lasts, thanks to TPP Fast Track.
The president isn't allowed to declare war, oh well the war powers act gives him sixty days; what its past that well no matter, its not a war its a "kinetic military action".
Al-Qaeda / ISIS Iraq / Syria those are pretty much the same right we can just say the old the AUMF covers that..
Face it folks we have shaken off the last vestiges of any kind of "Rule of Law". With Secret courts that do whatever they want and a Supreme Court that issues opinions that seem more driven by poll numbers than ideas about language, law, and facts its all a bad joke. Freedom ends not with bang but a whimper.
That is the sort of lets compare penis size thinking that gets us in wars in the first place. If bravery means putting your self in harms way when there is an equally effective and far less costly solution that does not place you in personal jeopardy available, than bravery has become synonymous with idiocy.
Its costs more per hour for a maned aircraft to be in the air, a pilot who is under some threat however small stuffed in a cramped cockpit is not going to make a better last moment decision about a target than a drone pilot, who has more time to think about the immediate state on the ground.
The problem is we are selecting targets based on shitty intelligence and in many cases nothing but metadata and then dropping bombs on people. Yep drones have become a flashpoint around the world for outrage. I don't really see any evidence to suggest sentiment toward maned American military aircraft would be much better if we were using them the way we are using the drones. Most of the targets don't really have the capacity to shoot back at something like jet fighter-bomber anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say yes. You and I are under no specific obligation to make web requests for any specific content, we are under no specific obligation to display/execute/process response content in any fashion. Similarly Youtube et al should be under no specific obligation to respond to any given request or respond with any specific content.
I am sure they could just enact some civil immunity law if there isnt one already. A friend of mine got t-boned by a school bus (no children aboard at the time) making an illegal left turn. Even though the police at the scene ruled the accident to be entirely the fault of the bus driver there was nothing she could do. Her insurance company had to pay the entire claim and she was suck with the deductible. Could not sue for any damages etc.
See this is where I would also hope some common sense would prevail. Ideal the cops would make that point to the kid. Say that they will have to inform the owner, and if they decline to press charges that is where this ends, and they will go as far as to suggest the owner really ought not bother with matter because it was just a kid removing some nearly worthless waste.
There is a difference between rummaging say in a trash can/dumpster/pile of rotting and rusting stuff in an open field where the owner has clearly formed the intent to discard the items and entering a building and removing things.
Wait just a moment here. Its not like he just purchases some perfectly legal stuff, and that prompted a police raid.
He committed crimes, trespass and theft. That is one of the reasons we have police to investigate crimes. They discovered that the things taken were of a nature know to have dangerous applications. The followed up in a way that was reasonable if perhaps more cautious than I might have been given the suspect was just a middle class teenager.
When someone buys chemicals/guns/tools etc by walking into a shop in broad daylight where they may be seen etc, or buys something online where their identity will be attached to the CC number used etc; I would say allowing that alone to trigger actions by authorities is an overstep and a privacy violation. The situation is different when someone acquires those types of things in an already illegal fashion which could possibly have been a chosen method to keep their possession of those items clandestine. Theft is a serious crime, its not like jay walking. I don't think its wrong for authorities to consider one serious criminal act by a suspect to be the potential precursor for additional criminal acts that should ideally be prevented; at least when we are not dealing with entrapment type situations.
personnel records on OPM computers where just anyone could see them
Would it. That information is still needed. Paychecks have to get cut etc. All these clandestine people need some kind of cover. So why not give them "jobs" as administrative employees in what everyone already understands to be a giant bureaucracy. That way if anyone inside or outside goes looking for information they find exactly what they expect.
I think that is the problem the NSA's mission isn't defense its offense largely. We don't really have a cyber (ugh I can't believe I just wrote that word) defensive force. We probably should but we leave that to 'domestic' agencies like the FBI and other groups we rolled up into Homeland Security.
Remember the "Department of Defense" (although there were some other reorganizations and mergers) was essentially created by renaming the "War Department" because its politically more palatable to have a "defense" department than a "war" department.
I think it is reasonable to have a group with the NSA's offensive mission so that we have the capability. I think its also clear we don't need that group to be the size and scale of the NSA; at least not when its in addition to the CIA.
Personally I think the sensible thing to do is disband NSA. Move some of the signals intel assets into CIA and possibly some in Army/Navy/Air-force as appropriate for task. What is left over should be re-tasked to actually defending and improving our computer security posture and probably turned into a new but small agency with a narrow mission statement and shoved under the homeland security umbrella. I'd say put in the FBI but that isn't really right because again the FBI's core mission is one of offense even if it is against domestic threats. In fact maybe we should part out the FBI a little bit too, moving some of the their fraud prevention and type efforts into again a smaller defensively focused group.
A lot of the problems we have with these agencies are culture and mission creep problems. Yes 9/11 showed us we need to be careful about erecting to many walls between our agencies. Which is why we created Homeland Security and parent department what should be coordinating information sharing. If we had smaller more narrowly focused groups with separate budgets power and money would be more diffuse it would keep one director or group of administrators from going off the rails and having such large pools of money to do insane things with like recording and storing meta data for every call make everywhere. Yet these groups could still have a culture of collaboration and information sharing possibly a way to directly refer cases to each other etc. They could still be effective without getting crazy.
More importantly and more to the point here. People in those groups would have a much clearer understanding of "the mission" and not have to deal with so many impedance mismatches. They and us would be able to do a much better job at assessing how effective they are.
I think the real challenge will be like situations the parent described. Mt. Washington would be a excellent test.
I live in the Shenandoah valley. Its mountainous terrain and rural. We have alot of roads that are unmarked in terms of speed, have no center or edge lines, are rather narrow, and in most cases have either no shoulder or dirt or grass the county keeps mowed.
In theory these are 55 zones. In practice people go much faster than that anywhere its flat and strait. The hills offer plenty of blind crests and corners, where you need to slow down to 25 and less, if you don't care to find your self rear-ending a combine. Passing some in the opposite direction is often nerve racking but humans can usually accomplish it by nods and judgments about how far not only you can go but what the other guys ability is as well. We also get our fair share of complicating conditions like dense fog many mornings, some snow in winter etc.
I wonder how the algorithms cope with situations like road contours that look like a camels back? Where you can see for miles on the crests of the hills but face 10% grade, even if it only runs for a 100 meters, in the troughs. Most of us humans operate on faith and principles of object permanence. "The road was clear 1/8th of second ago when I was atop the last crest, It will therefor still be clear 3/8ths of second from now when reach the next peak, as there is nowhere anything substantial could have come from, I'll hold speed". What will Google's car do when its suddenly blind? Is the system able to continue to track and project the future location of objects it can't currently detect?
Where I was going was that, individually to the people who care about us we are all priceless. Most of us would spend every last cent we had to save our child or spouse etc. When it comes to civil judgments and the like making people whole is a good enough system. A court can look at the individual situation and do something that is 'fair'.
At the macro social policy level its a different story. We MUST make decisions about how much we are willing to spend on counter terrorism, or social safety net programs, or health care etc. To do that rationally we do need to put some gross value numbers on people.
It really is the case that at least based on my reasoning that society for example has an interest in effecting a stronger security posture at a high school than at an elementary school, because at least to society Teenagers are actually more valuable than young children. Putting quantitative values on people in aggregate is useful and necessary if we want to rationally allocate public resources.
However while I'll believe government needs to act quantitatively and not look at the individual, I am still a libertarian. I believe simultaneously that we need to concentrate as much power and choice as possible with the individual rather than with society, because I know the intangibles are important, sometime more important than anything else. Often the only people who can recognize the true value of something or even other people are those are immediately around it.
I think he is right to do. Human life clearly has a dollar value. I would argue not an especially high one either. Consider there are 8 Billion of us. You can't get much more commodity than that. The world as a whole would arguable be better off with fewer people too.
Value has a great deal to do with what has been invested in them in terms of education, care, feeding etc. Than you need to consider things like survival rates. Certainly a healthy teenager is more valuable than a newborn. Much of the risk premature death has been removed, as has the possibility for many debilitating conditions being unknown. We can make a lot assumptions about future productivity as well based on physic, intelligence, etc.
While we can never say Bob over there is worth a half a million but we can certainly say in the abstract sense the average 22 year old native born American is worth $X. To that end we can measure the cost of the NYSE being down in lives.
I agree with you that there is no huge bubble but I don't think historical fiscal performance information is remotely applicable today where it predates the creation of the FED in 1913.
For most applications using numbers dating before the 1972 isnt really apples to apples.
Its also true the make up of the DOW has changed often as well. Even if you want to argue the DOW components are still in similar industries the impact of globalism on trade is more or less only been a factor since as recently as the mid 90s.
Lets not forget the introduction of electronic trading...
My point being is that there have been so many major changes in the past century around monetary policy, fiscal policy, and trade that we can't really let history be our guide this is new territory.
I'd say we have about 20 years of useful comps when it comes to studying the modern market. Using information much older than that to me at least suggests someone is cherry picking facts to make their case.
I think it should be noted that before anyone gets to exited Chinese markets still are higher than even a few years ago. Its pretty hard to call this a crisis. Until the bank runs starts and business actually close their doors its just the evaporation of money for which no wealth ever existed in the first place.
The Chinese market makes the US stock market look down right rational. When you consider the lack of reporting requirements, the level of state involvement in many enterprises, the fact that so much of the financial media there is state owed and therefore a propaganda arm; there isn't a value investor in all of China. Investing without information is actually just gambling no matter which side of the Pacific you happen to be on. The thing about China is there are only gamblers because the government made real investing impossible.
I think overall this will prove to be non-story when the dust up settles in another week or so. If anything the big story will be how the Chinese government blinked and interceded to soon and their intervention failed. The economic story will simply be: Market values will return to something that is at least moderately reflective of the real economic situation. The illusion of China's authoritarian system being a run-away success will be shattered. The reality is though that they will still have perfectly respectable growth, they will still be the worlds second largest economy. etc. So rather than 8% it will be the same 2% that western economies are perfectly happy to see.
True but there are few religions that call for violence against people that leave the faith.
The simple facts are that the Islamic definition of apostasy includes anyone who leaves the faith. That inst so uncommon among world religions. What is a little more unusual is that Islamic law does hold that the death penalty is appropriate for such cases.
Christianity has some similar history around heretics (centuries ago) and phrases like "thou shall not suffer a witch" are still in print. I don't think any major branch of Christan scholorships still advocates for the killing of people who leave the flock though and that isn't true of Islam.
The point is one persons anit-dogpile tool is everyone else's unsolicited censor. The fact is most of the GG claims were unfair and unfounded. She misrepresented herself to gain credibility for her criticisms. She tried to pretend to be a victim when she was not, and now claims to be victimized by people pointing that out.
She is just a brat.
Sure we can. At some point a persons views and poor behavior have to cause you to place them on a list of people you just don't listen too. Donald Trump is a anthor perfect example. He might be right about a lot of things but some of his unthinking and disgusting positions as well as his pattern of foolish self destructive behavior cause most of us to ignore him. Same with Randi. There are plenty of more intelligent more articulate people who have or will come up with the same ideas she *might* be right about. Its not like she has offered anything novel. The best thing for most people to do is ignore her.
Yes ad hominem is a logical fallacy. The counter point is though that stopped clock might be correct twice a day, but that does not mean you treat it as a source of information.
These guys are not "security researchers" doing responsible disclosure or even just quietly helping secure their own customers against unpublished threats.
The might be doing research; but they are basically arms dealers. Weaponizing software and selling it to whoever will pay.
I am not surprised they'd backdoor it frankly. If all of my customers were professional liars known for running false flags etc, I'd have to think seriously about inserting water marks and backdoors too. If nothing else so I had some way prove whatever gets done with those tools was not done by me.
The phrase "there is no honor among thieves" comes to mind.
I don't doubt it. Ask anyone in rural Maine. The farmers are all perfectly healthy right up into they decide to retire and get a place in town. Then they go down fast. Being up and moving a large part of each day clearly is good for longevity. At least for most people.
I think it might be useful for applications like printing or engraving where it isn't necessary to put much load on the 'output shaft' the ability to make very very fine movements possibly much finer than any stepper or solenoid etc we can manufacture may be very useful.
Why didn't the US let Germany fend for itself after World War II
Because the day the conflict in Europe ended the Cold War essentially began. There was so little trust between us and the USSR that literally the US and Soviet armies raced each other to Berlin, knowing full well whoever occupied Germany first was going to have a strategic advantage in the coming conflict, no matter what the current pacts/treaties/agreements said.
If Germany had not been strategically valuable I can doubt we would have bothered. Its not like we rushed to rebuild northern Africa for example. The simple fact is Greece isn't important to our economy. Europe as whole is, but Greece isn't.
Because no matter what anyone wants to pretend Europe is not one big country. There are still pretty strong currents of nationalism with the majority of the population in most parts of Europe. We were experiencing a global financial crisis. Countries like Germany might have been still doing well but nobody would have said times were "good". There was no practical way to sell the public there that rather than spend money on domestic stimulus they should instead spend it in Greece. If Germany could not find the political will to do it much of the rest of the EU that was hurting more certainly was not going to do so.
The Fed on the other hand can get away with that type of horse shit. First the Americans think of themselves as Americans, they don't think of themselves as Virginans or New Mexicans at least not first. So politically while nobody loves money being shoveled out of their back yard and dumped someplace else its not nearly as unpopular as moving it over a national boarder. Second Balance sheet expansion ultimately just devalues the currency pick the pockets of you and me, and robs honest hardworking people who saved and were conservative the chance to pick up assets cheap. In short its drag on social mobility. It keeps those at the top at the top and the wage slaves where they are. It forces the middle class to essentially ONLY invest rather than actually save because if they don't commit every last asset to investment they inflationary pressures will ensure they can never save enough. For most of them only place that is easy to do that is Wall Street's Grand Casio and so what choice do that have but to support bailouts. Over the short term there was no way the government could raise enough revenue to do the bailing so the Fed just expands the public debt and we do the paying over generations. Me I will always believe we should have let the big houses fall but the majority of this country won't take their medicine and I can't make them.
The other reality of Greece is that they NEVER should have gone on the Euro. The economic imbalances were just to great. It is a fact the growth of the Greek economy has been far slower since the introduction of the Euro there, as has the jobless rate been higher. So many of their problems are NOT their own making other than the decision to join the single currency experiment in the first place. They were of course under tremendous political pressure to do so and there was a tremendous amount of propaganda and rosy predictions to support the Euro, largely put forth by the same banking and political cartels that are Greece's creditors today. I am not sure the intent was malicious, and end the end the Greek government and the Greek voters are responsible for Greece and nobody else, but it is entirely understandable that they would assign some blame to the troika. I think the right decision for Greece is to default and take the consequences of that.
Once again we should work toward getting back to common law. A number of states have made Barratry at thing again, thankfully. What should happen is if you are right and you know your right you just ignore the bogus legal letter. If they then take you to court anyway. You phone up the local prosecutor who should go after them for filing baseless claims.
In Texas at least for repeat offenses it can be a felony! We should aim for that everywhere.
What is Jobs doing now? Oh right he is dead.
Which he probably would still be and quite possibly would have been sooner if he had risked any of his success to tread his daughter better.
So there are two conclusions you can draw (probably others as well).
1) you only live once and death is certain; best live life to the fullest enjoy it as much as you can. If you don't think there is more pleasure to be derived from things like family or other social responsibilities than the alternatives FUCK IT and move on to something more entertaining because you will end up a rotting corpse or pile of ash either way.
2) death is certain, therefore what you leave behind matters because if you don't leave something or someone behind to be remembered for or to remember you than there will be nothing left.
Applications for those warrants are inches thick. Do you think they like to redo them?
The is about the oldest game in business dealings and legal ranging. You toss together a huge pile of largely irrelevant material to "support" your argument, banking on the other guy deicing its to hard to go thru it all or if he can't connect the dots (because there really are none) he must be stupid and won't want to admit it.
No I am sure they don't want to redo a warrant, I am also sure if one comes over that is an inch think its 98% or more BS.
Yes its sad but true. The progressives win out in then end. They have succeeded, in undoing the work Hammurabi did all those years ago. Sure we still have codified law but it really does not matter. The government is bound by common definitions of works or shared understanding; let alone the notion that laws ought to be read using the prevailing definitions of the day when they were drafted. Now anything can mean anything at all.
You are free to associate unless its with a group someone has labeled terrorists. Oh and don't go thinking you have a choice in not associating. If you say don't want to join a heal insurance pool than you shall be taxed. Sounds striking similar to what was required if you chose not to join the Anglican Church in the seventeenth century. Don't wish to allow a certain group to associate with you your business etc, to bad you will sued into oblivion by an attorney general with a chip on his should. It matters not whether your reason are simple bigotry or sincere religious conviction or anything else.
The lower house the peoples house gets to allocate the purse. Nope not since the advent of budget reconciliation, and the idea the president somehow has the power to continue to spend on "critical activities" and to decide what is critical if the body won't authorize a budget he likes.
The Senate shall provide advice and consent to treaties, well consent any way and we shall see how long that lasts, thanks to TPP Fast Track.
The president isn't allowed to declare war, oh well the war powers act gives him sixty days; what its past that well no matter, its not a war its a "kinetic military action".
Al-Qaeda / ISIS Iraq / Syria those are pretty much the same right we can just say the old the AUMF covers that..
Face it folks we have shaken off the last vestiges of any kind of "Rule of Law". With Secret courts that do whatever they want and a Supreme Court that issues opinions that seem more driven by poll numbers than ideas about language, law, and facts its all a bad joke. Freedom ends not with bang but a whimper.
That is the sort of lets compare penis size thinking that gets us in wars in the first place. If bravery means putting your self in harms way when there is an equally effective and far less costly solution that does not place you in personal jeopardy available, than bravery has become synonymous with idiocy.
Its costs more per hour for a maned aircraft to be in the air, a pilot who is under some threat however small stuffed in a cramped cockpit is not going to make a better last moment decision about a target than a drone pilot, who has more time to think about the immediate state on the ground.
The problem is we are selecting targets based on shitty intelligence and in many cases nothing but metadata and then dropping bombs on people. Yep drones have become a flashpoint around the world for outrage. I don't really see any evidence to suggest sentiment toward maned American military aircraft would be much better if we were using them the way we are using the drones. Most of the targets don't really have the capacity to shoot back at something like jet fighter-bomber anyway.