Drone pilots don't seem to have much of a conscience either.
BUNK!
Drone piolots have no doubt done somethings history won't look kindly on but so has basically every fighting man using whatever technology and tactics. Sure maybe some just do it for the pay check or lack of other options but most of the people that enlist in our volunteer armed services have some conviction about defending the nation.
They are fed probably ten times as much propaganda about the enemy as the rest of us and yet 9999 times of 10000 or more they continue to treat the enemy humanely and frequently place themselves in grater danger to do so. Drone pilots might not face that personal danger and not facing that choice probably makes them better not worse when it comes to "doing the right thing". Suppose all the drone missions were instead flowing with manned aircraft, with pilots always wonder when they might be surprised by some AA device left over from previous conflicts. Do think they would make more or fewer errors?
Militaries kill people and break things, its what they do on a very very fundamental level. Whatever the mission is that is ultimately how it will be effected if you employ the military to do it. Sometimes that is the right thing. I'll be the first to say the middle east aint our fight, and we should bring both the troops and the drones home. Please though lets put the blame for those casualties where it belongs. On the people giving the orders and overseeing the programs. Not on our pilots, sailors and soldiers who really are just following orders.
If your CO handed you a photo of a nondescript building and said "Intel says a terrorist cell is hiding out here, hit it with a hellfire" What would you do? You would probably do what most of us would take them at their word and follow the order. When you read next week in the Time about how the CIA fucked up again and the place was full of civilians you'd feel guilty and not re-enlist when the time come, a problem the Air Force currently is having.
I hope you take some responsibility for it when you next visit the ballot box and cast your vote for someone who will stop doing this crap.
I would have to imagine some of it has to do with not tempting fate. Physical security companies don't generally like it publicly known when one of their higher profile clients gets broken into. The armored car services don't like to talk about their drivers being held up etc. Prior to FDIC banks frequently names themselves after heavy stones like granite to give the impression they were secure.
So much of security is people and process. The people part basically boils down to trust and often simple faith. Would you be more or less likely to purchase security software from a firm that had just been hacked themselves. I suspect Kaspersky might not have wanted to out a bunch of criminals because it paints a target on them. They know like most of the folks here know sooner or later given enough time the bad guys will probably accomplish something significant enough to get you in the news for the wrong reasons, should they be motivated to do so.
otherwise it opens up a whole legal way to expropriate property.
I generally agree with you in principle as to how trademark law ought to be interpreted.
I think its an interesting question to ask though. Does a domain name constitute property. Its not as if its tangible. Its record in a database, perhaps more importantly its a record in someones elses's database. That is before you even start to address who really owns that database. Is the 'private' organization ICANN or is it the US Department of Commerce.
In any case its hard for me to see how domain name can be rightly call property. Certainly this post belongs to Slashdot. I doubt anyone would get far asserting otherwise EULA or not. In the end its an electronic record that governs the behavior of an application (Slashdot's comment system) just like any DNS record does.
Similarly if you town decided to rename the street you live on would have any legal recourse (other than ballot box).
I can see how a digital record that you personally control, is rightly analogous to a 'paper or effect' in the fourth amendment sense. Once you hand it off to someone else though or it because a 'fact' in a public database I am not sure you can call it yours anymore and I am even less sure its 'property'
I think the problem is we need both. In most cases programs are not like buildings they don't fall down and kill people if they are implemented badly. Now if that program is controlling your nuclear reactor or your medical implant, flying your plane its a different story.
Look at your accounts. Sure we don't let just anyone do the books at public company. Someone with a CPA at least needs to supervise the preparation of those SEC filings. On the other hand we don't need the guy at the HR Block kiosk running TaxCut for you while you shop at Wall-Mart to have an accounting degree or a CPA either (not to say some of them don't).
That is only if it buys bread and milk. The trouble Greece and most of the modern world has is that its entirely dependent on international trade. Greece can't meet its needs by itself. I am not an expert on the Greek economy. Lets charitably assume they can feed themselves. What about all the drugs that are not manufactured there that many depend upon to live for example? Can a private individual order drugs from across the boarder with gold coins? Can a pharmacy or hospital buying in quantity for that matter?
Sure there are exchanges for gold abroad, ultimately the answer is yes; for some quantity of gold you can obtain enough Euro to buy what you need. Now if the banks are closed where you are that might mean sending someone abroad to physically execute these transactions where trading desks and banks are open.
If the economy becomes truly unhinged, people stop working, stores close, etc than gold really is not all that great. If I am hungry and you are hungry, and neither of us imagines that changing anytime soon do you think I'll trade my pound of cheese for your gold?
I am supportive of a gold standard in general because I think inflation and debt based currency is an insidious trap used to enslave all of us. A gold standard would prevent the vipers from manipulating things and causing recessions that last half of peoples productive lives, it would reduce inequality, it would reduce war, in exchange for more frequent smaller booms and busts. In short it would shrink many of the worlds problems. If you already have problems like Greece does it won't provide some magic fix, don't have any illusions about that.
I am not sure how much that will help you. Its still on your premiss associated with your device. The prosecutor is going to just say to the judge or jury, "Which is more likely that Bob here singed on to the guest network that is always available to him in an attempt to hide his activities or that someone sat in car outside Bob's house and did all this bad stuff."
Its not right, its not fair, its certainly not really beyond a reasonable doubt, but I would not want to bet my future on it in a court room.
Would that be the party that insisted and using parliamentary tricks to prevent debate on a giant controversial piece of legislation, finally resorting to abusing the budget reconciliation process to pass it without the normally require floor votes. Next even though the law was and still is unpopular with the majority of the public continued to prevent any of the repeal measures passed in the House from ever seeing the Senate floor? That party?
See they are all petulant children it cuts both ways. At the end of the day though DNC politics always stink worse. That is why Obama wins the RNC folks at least keep trying to hold to some form of normal procedure. Bush gets a congressional authorization for his war, even goes to the UN. Obama just does whatever they hell he wants in Libya. Nancy Pelosi and friends use budget reconciliation to enact the AFCA. The RNC tries to use the budget to shut down the government and default in order to make they president bend. What the administration do they threaten to basically just pint money if congress won't act. Liberals when because they don't care about the rule of law. They don't care about freedom and what it takes to protect it. If the rules get in the way of their agenda they change them.
What is written is not what is meant by intent, what is meant by intent is what the law was meant to accomplish
That is a dangerous and STUPID precedent to set. That is how you get the NSA collecting phone records for the entire nation when even the PATRIOT act never authorized it!
What you suggest essential dismantles any notion of rule of law. It essentially frees the administration to do whatever it wants. Independent of the current congress, no matter what the laws actually read on the books. You have essentially no recourse.
Naturally the SCOTUS will rule this way because it HAS NOT REAL CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY either except what it imagined for itself.
Bullshit! Words need to have meanings and laws need to have concrete meanings to whatever degree is possible. Its the whole reasons things are struck down all the time as 'void for vagueness.'
If congress is allowed to retroactively decide what they intended, never mind what the wrote than we might has well go back to a monarchy and whatever the King thinks today goes. A system of laws is absolutely useless when anything can mean whatever government wants it mean. You and I just suffered a blow to any real protection any real possibility of justice. This is just one more example of turning the rule of law into a bad joke. The SCOTUS, POTUS, and Congress should be ashamed of themselves.
There is plenty of evidence in the form of Gruber to suggest that congress did indeed intend to write what they wrote to cajole states into compliance. Sates called their bluff and now congress gets a pass.
I agree with the parent they *can* do these things, and nobody ought should stop them. I hope the reaction from users is "Fuck you I am going to avoid using your products and those of the people you are advertising for like Yahoo whenever possible in the future."
Bad business practices should be rewarded with less business. People need to stop being sheep and just accepting it.
We are not talking about undermining a foreign sovereign here. We are talking about people who won't move to the next county.
Lets look at it more carefully. Nobody is being chased out of any where. If you are property owner and developers are buying up everything around you. Your property just became a printing press for cash. The value will sky rocket. This is wonderful thing to have happen to you. Which is exactly why no growth policies get voted for. The existing owners know its good for them.
Now if you are a renter, its not really your home is it. Its someone elses you happen to rent. Its not like its your multi-generational familiar home. Land values go up rents naturally go up too. Yes at some point you can or should or maybe are even forced to leave. Why you might have go as many as 30miles away to find affordable property again! Big fucking deal. You can still visit your parents on the weekend etc. Its not like you have to say good bye to everything you knew.
Now see the lefty affordable hosing people show up and start building "projects". Guess what that makes the problem worse! Suddenly the barrister, the carpenter, the ladscaper have a place to live again, probably a shitty one. That enbables the wealthy to stay there in the first place and keep raising land values even higher, ensuring you the renter will NEVER be able to buy into the market and become an owner. If high prices were really allowed to chase these people out, services would vanish. You think mister million+ a year salary wants to live in a town where he has to cut his own lawn, and can't stop somewhere for a bagel? (Yes some do) but not enough to sustain those communities. Prices would head back down to earth pretty darn quick!
So its all the well meaning fair and affordable housing prolicy that enables and creates these out of control valuations in the first place.
Yes it has. The costs are damn near zero the let people download software they can reproduce infinitely from servers they already on using bandwidth they already pay for. There are essentially no fixed costs beyond what is already sunk developing the product. The variable costs are so small at the scan Microsoft does anything they don't matter. So cost being nearly 0; the benefit does not need to be especially high.
Consumers don't buy Windows any more. They by new PCs/Laptops. The enthusiast era is completely over now. Its the appliance era now. Yes there may be more in absolute numbers, PC enthusiasts as ever but the part of the market they make up is tiny compared to the whole. A good portion of the ones that are left run Linux or something else. That leaves the games half of whom like to be on downlevel revs of Windows anyway.
So there are no lost sales here. OEMs will still buy licenses, Business will still buy licensing agreements or retail licenses.
So there are real downsides. Its a reasonable return the strategy of the late 80's and early 90's make Win/DOS easy to pirate. Then you control the platform. You can make your money selling them Office licenses, and server products. Control of the platform lets you lock out the competition.
Fast forward to today same deal. Get them all into your app store. You can up sell them on more stuff from there. Only its better because now you don't even need to make that other stuff, you let other people do it and just take a cut.
as police have always had and always will have better access to top grade weaponry and armour.
I would argue this statement is false. When the 2nd amendment was drafted the hunting rifle in the hands of the average citizen was not especially inferior to that of the one in the hands of the local serif or for that matter the regular army soldier. Moreover the local serif and the soldier were no more able to defend themselves against said rifle than your average citizen was.
As far as larger weapons like artillery was concerned at prior to the civil war my admittedly hasty study of the subject indicates there was not much in the way of law that prevented a citizen (other than cost) from purchasing a napoleon; which would have been a state of the art field piece. Certainly there were lots of wealthy planters and the like who could afford them.
"If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. " at least that is what our officials here in the States are always telling us. Governments all of the world want to backdoor our encryption and slap data retention and business records retention requirements on just about everything.
When given the opportunity to lead by example we get Downing Street deleting everything they can before it becomes subject to discovery, and here in the states we get White House E-mail systems so comically badly administrated and lacking in backups, it strains credibility to think its anything but a deliberate plot to make it possible to destroy public records with (im)plausible deniablity. A Secretary of State that uses her personal E-mail for official business and redacts documents before turning them over to the government. An FBI that simply ignores the law and stonewalls when it gets FOIA requests because their are really no consequences for doing so. This list could go on.
Two possible conclusions (not mutually exclusive):
1) The government is so corrupt and our leaders are knowingly and willful acting as criminals. By their own reasoning these records management failures are proof of guilt, at least of obstructing justice.
2) Broadly speaking records retention requirements and laws restricting ones ability to securely store records (weakened encryption standards etc) are a significant infringement of privacy rights and the right to be secure in ones documents. After all what document is more secure than one you shredded and than burned?
Exactly this. The only just war is one your fight to win. A war of half measures and changing objectives isn't a war its as arbitrary and capricious as any murder.
A cause is either worth fighting for, ie you are willing to kill, maim and destroy property as required to see your objective met; or you have no business killing maiming and destroying things.
Its like the ISIS conflict. I really sincerely believe we should stop fighting them as long as they stay in the what our maps call the middle east. They won't be stopped unless we are willing to march a few hundred thousand troops in there, sweep every building and cave, shoot anyone who looks like a combatant; and accept all the collateral damage that entails.
We are not willing to do that; not politically and not morally. The fact is what we are doing is just as bad. Its a never ending meat grinder. We knock a few heads from the hydra new ones grow up. There is no drone striking our way to victory. The guilty and innocent will continue to die for nothing alike, the conflict locked in perpetual stalemate (hint it basically has been for 30 years now). We will only be continuing to invest countless billions of our treasure to keep the horror show going.
War should be a question of "Go big" or "Go home", no justice lay in the middle.
Root cause or not tests are what let you 'fix' the vulnerabilities, re-factor to correct design issues, etc.
I have to agree with the parent. Having good test coverage is the difference
between: We are going to be exposed for weeks while I'll 'try' to understand all the impacts of this change and hope QA spotts any potentially disastrous bugs before we go to production.
and: Cool fix is in, tests are passing. Lets yet QA run the build for a day or so and we can get this out the door before it hits Slashdot.
For reasons of free expression to basic practicality we can't stop this stuff. As you say people can take your picture and people can produce what amounts to a hash of your facial features.
None of this stuff is a problem. It only becomes a problem when its stored and datamined. What we really need to do is actually regulate big data.
Start regulating what information about people may be stored in machine searchable formats and you can start to solve this problem. Regulate under what circumstances PII may be transferred between parties in machine readable formats and when lookup functions may be exposed to third parties.
if you stand against net neutrality, there are thousands of people who are going to do anything in their power to ensure you do not get re-elected, and no amount of corporate money is going to save you.
Umm, no that isn't how it works at least not on an issue like this. First the vast majority of those comments will pay no attention whosoever to how you voted. Of the tiny fraction that do pay attention they have other issues that the vote on. They likely will have only one other real choice, and the candidate who 'might' side with them on net neutrality but has never been in a position to really vote on it more than like has some other deal breaker for them. So they will stick with candidate A regardless of their disagreement about this issue.
Congress can fuck this up and if the big ISPs and wireless carries donate enough to their campaigns they will. Don't kid yourself no matter how much support might exist for this it won't be the issue that costs any politician their seat. Unless you can get a Google or somebody like that to help you make noise like SOPA and PIPPA. Don't count on that though. Those actions provoked enough outrage and thinly veiled threats from the political class that Google et al. are not likely to try such shenanigans again. They'd be out trying to stop TPP fast track if they were not running scared.
I'll admin my initial post was does somewhat to act as a provocateur (though not a troll because I am genuinely interested in discussing the subject).
Its my personal view that government should get out of the marriage business. We should simply pass a low recognizing all existing marriage licenses as "Civil union licenses" and convert all marriage rights next of kin, child custody, 5th amendment testimony protections etc, to civil partner rights. Than any two people regardless of sex or gender can enter a civil union. If they are married or not is between them, their clergy, god(s), friends, and the guy who operates their car wash etc.
I find it interesting that various arguements about how having two parent house holds is good for children but the gender of parents does not have so much impact are used to justify arguments in favor of allowing homosexuals to marry. Making marriage a right implies that adultery and act that frequently makes impossible for the partner to remain in the marriage; implies that partners rights are being infringed.
Additionally the state does have pretty clear interest in promoting monogamous sexual relationships issues of morality and gender again set aside there is a clear advantage in the prevention of the spread of disease. Again since we are all "responsible" for each others healthcare costs now it seems perfectly reasonable (within that context) the state should favor policy that prefers monogamy, independent of what you call it; marriage, union, cohabitation contract.... The state has a pretty clear reason to want to encourage the formation of partnerships for raising children.
As other have pointed out we don't allow people to enter into contract of indentured servitude etc. Again I would come down on an the side of an individuals absolute right to make a contract but society has broadly chosen otherwise. A societal harm is the final underlying justification for most criminal law. Adultery is clearly harmful in the majority of cases. Its hard to escape the conclusion that if marriage is sacred enough to be considered a right that an act which harms its integrity should not be considered a crime.
I don't think your assertion that re-criminalizing adultery would negate the value proposition of marriage, union. There are lots of advantages to having a state recognized relationship (of some name). Child custody, the right to inherit property, tax filing advantages, social security, just to name a few.
Why should adultery not be a crime. We place such a high importance on marriage rights apparently that being free to enter that institution with anyone you wish is now being considered a basic human right. If that contract is so sacred that nobody should be denied it, than are not those who violate the integrity of harming society?
When prosecuting murders killing the person who was cheating with your spouse generally makes it a crime of passion and frequently is used to justify reducing the charges to second degree murder or even down to manslaughter. So obviously adultery poses a significant danger of triggering of provoking other serious crimes like battery and murder.
Its the frequent cause of dissolution of homes which negatively effects the development of children.
The list could go on. I think there is clear pattern of harm to society at large resulting from adultery. It SHOULD be a crime. If you are concerned about being and adulterer don't marry.
ISIS exists only because of the crapshoot that Bush created with his stupid war.
Doubtful.
While its true the ISIS leadership cut their teeth in Iraq, they are essentially an AL-queda offshoot. It isn't as if that group did not exist before the Iraq war. In any case OBL would still have been mostly driven underground. He still would have lost control of at least parts of the organization not being to lead effectively. More than likely the Arab spring would still have happened. Most like the Syrian collapse and subsequent power vacuum would have lead to similar results.
ISIS would still exist it would only be using a different name or be the more radical wing of some other group.
Now had Bush stayed out of Afghanistan it might be a different story.
Lets be totally frank about something else. We only really care about ISIS because their taking of the Iraq we built and trained is embarrassing. Nobody talks about the Syrian cities under ISIS control, at least not on the news. We hear little about what they are doing in Libya and Yemen.
ISIS could be the best thing that ever happened to us in the Middle East if we just left them the hell alone. They might just succeed in reducing the number of independant lunatics and strongmen over there so we would have fewer seperate enemies to deal with. They likely would solve problems like Iran either by being such a distraction it keeps them bottled up or by over running them too. The Russians and the Chinese can deal with preventing further expansion (again probably a positive for us). The smartest thing Obama could do is "Nothing"
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Drone pilots don't seem to have much of a conscience either.
BUNK!
Drone piolots have no doubt done somethings history won't look kindly on but so has basically every fighting man using whatever technology and tactics. Sure maybe some just do it for the pay check or lack of other options but most of the people that enlist in our volunteer armed services have some conviction about defending the nation.
They are fed probably ten times as much propaganda about the enemy as the rest of us and yet 9999 times of 10000 or more they continue to treat the enemy humanely and frequently place themselves in grater danger to do so. Drone pilots might not face that personal danger and not facing that choice probably makes them better not worse when it comes to "doing the right thing". Suppose all the drone missions were instead flowing with manned aircraft, with pilots always wonder when they might be surprised by some AA device left over from previous conflicts. Do think they would make more or fewer errors?
Militaries kill people and break things, its what they do on a very very fundamental level. Whatever the mission is that is ultimately how it will be effected if you employ the military to do it. Sometimes that is the right thing. I'll be the first to say the middle east aint our fight, and we should bring both the troops and the drones home. Please though lets put the blame for those casualties where it belongs. On the people giving the orders and overseeing the programs. Not on our pilots, sailors and soldiers who really are just following orders.
If your CO handed you a photo of a nondescript building and said "Intel says a terrorist cell is hiding out here, hit it with a hellfire" What would you do? You would probably do what most of us would take them at their word and follow the order. When you read next week in the Time about how the CIA fucked up again and the place was full of civilians you'd feel guilty and not re-enlist when the time come, a problem the Air Force currently is having.
I hope you take some responsibility for it when you next visit the ballot box and cast your vote for someone who will stop doing this crap.
I would have to imagine some of it has to do with not tempting fate. Physical security companies don't generally like it publicly known when one of their higher profile clients gets broken into. The armored car services don't like to talk about their drivers being held up etc. Prior to FDIC banks frequently names themselves after heavy stones like granite to give the impression they were secure.
So much of security is people and process. The people part basically boils down to trust and often simple faith. Would you be more or less likely to purchase security software from a firm that had just been hacked themselves. I suspect Kaspersky might not have wanted to out a bunch of criminals because it paints a target on them. They know like most of the folks here know sooner or later given enough time the bad guys will probably accomplish something significant enough to get you in the news for the wrong reasons, should they be motivated to do so.
otherwise it opens up a whole legal way to expropriate property.
I generally agree with you in principle as to how trademark law ought to be interpreted.
I think its an interesting question to ask though. Does a domain name constitute property. Its not as if its tangible. Its record in a database, perhaps more importantly its a record in someones elses's database. That is before you even start to address who really owns that database. Is the 'private' organization ICANN or is it the US Department of Commerce.
In any case its hard for me to see how domain name can be rightly call property. Certainly this post belongs to Slashdot. I doubt anyone would get far asserting otherwise EULA or not. In the end its an electronic record that governs the behavior of an application (Slashdot's comment system) just like any DNS record does.
Similarly if you town decided to rename the street you live on would have any legal recourse (other than ballot box).
I can see how a digital record that you personally control, is rightly analogous to a 'paper or effect' in the fourth amendment sense. Once you hand it off to someone else though or it because a 'fact' in a public database I am not sure you can call it yours anymore and I am even less sure its 'property'
I think the problem is we need both. In most cases programs are not like buildings they don't fall down and kill people if they are implemented badly. Now if that program is controlling your nuclear reactor or your medical implant, flying your plane its a different story.
Look at your accounts. Sure we don't let just anyone do the books at public company. Someone with a CPA at least needs to supervise the preparation of those SEC filings. On the other hand we don't need the guy at the HR Block kiosk running TaxCut for you while you shop at Wall-Mart to have an accounting degree or a CPA either (not to say some of them don't).
That is only if it buys bread and milk. The trouble Greece and most of the modern world has is that its entirely dependent on international trade. Greece can't meet its needs by itself. I am not an expert on the Greek economy. Lets charitably assume they can feed themselves. What about all the drugs that are not manufactured there that many depend upon to live for example? Can a private individual order drugs from across the boarder with gold coins? Can a pharmacy or hospital buying in quantity for that matter?
Sure there are exchanges for gold abroad, ultimately the answer is yes; for some quantity of gold you can obtain enough Euro to buy what you need. Now if the banks are closed where you are that might mean sending someone abroad to physically execute these transactions where trading desks and banks are open.
If the economy becomes truly unhinged, people stop working, stores close, etc than gold really is not all that great. If I am hungry and you are hungry, and neither of us imagines that changing anytime soon do you think I'll trade my pound of cheese for your gold?
I am supportive of a gold standard in general because I think inflation and debt based currency is an insidious trap used to enslave all of us. A gold standard would prevent the vipers from manipulating things and causing recessions that last half of peoples productive lives, it would reduce inequality, it would reduce war, in exchange for more frequent smaller booms and busts. In short it would shrink many of the worlds problems. If you already have problems like Greece does it won't provide some magic fix, don't have any illusions about that.
I am not sure how much that will help you. Its still on your premiss associated with your device. The prosecutor is going to just say to the judge or jury, "Which is more likely that Bob here singed on to the guest network that is always available to him in an attempt to hide his activities or that someone sat in car outside Bob's house and did all this bad stuff."
Its not right, its not fair, its certainly not really beyond a reasonable doubt, but I would not want to bet my future on it in a court room.
Would that be the party that insisted and using parliamentary tricks to prevent debate on a giant controversial piece of legislation, finally resorting to abusing the budget reconciliation process to pass it without the normally require floor votes. Next even though the law was and still is unpopular with the majority of the public continued to prevent any of the repeal measures passed in the House from ever seeing the Senate floor? That party?
See they are all petulant children it cuts both ways. At the end of the day though DNC politics always stink worse. That is why Obama wins the RNC folks at least keep trying to hold to some form of normal procedure. Bush gets a congressional authorization for his war, even goes to the UN. Obama just does whatever they hell he wants in Libya. Nancy Pelosi and friends use budget reconciliation to enact the AFCA. The RNC tries to use the budget to shut down the government and default in order to make they president bend. What the administration do they threaten to basically just pint money if congress won't act. Liberals when because they don't care about the rule of law. They don't care about freedom and what it takes to protect it. If the rules get in the way of their agenda they change them.
What is written is not what is meant by intent, what is meant by intent is what the law was meant to accomplish
That is a dangerous and STUPID precedent to set. That is how you get the NSA collecting phone records for the entire nation when even the PATRIOT act never authorized it!
What you suggest essential dismantles any notion of rule of law. It essentially frees the administration to do whatever it wants. Independent of the current congress, no matter what the laws actually read on the books. You have essentially no recourse.
Naturally the SCOTUS will rule this way because it HAS NOT REAL CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY either except what it imagined for itself.
Bullshit! Words need to have meanings and laws need to have concrete meanings to whatever degree is possible. Its the whole reasons things are struck down all the time as 'void for vagueness.'
If congress is allowed to retroactively decide what they intended, never mind what the wrote than we might has well go back to a monarchy and whatever the King thinks today goes. A system of laws is absolutely useless when anything can mean whatever government wants it mean. You and I just suffered a blow to any real protection any real possibility of justice. This is just one more example of turning the rule of law into a bad joke. The SCOTUS, POTUS, and Congress should be ashamed of themselves.
There is plenty of evidence in the form of Gruber to suggest that congress did indeed intend to write what they wrote to cajole states into compliance. Sates called their bluff and now congress gets a pass.
I agree with the parent they *can* do these things, and nobody ought should stop them. I hope the reaction from users is "Fuck you I am going to avoid using your products and those of the people you are advertising for like Yahoo whenever possible in the future."
Bad business practices should be rewarded with less business. People need to stop being sheep and just accepting it.
We are not talking about undermining a foreign sovereign here. We are talking about people who won't move to the next county.
Lets look at it more carefully. Nobody is being chased out of any where. If you are property owner and developers are buying up everything around you. Your property just became a printing press for cash. The value will sky rocket. This is wonderful thing to have happen to you. Which is exactly why no growth policies get voted for. The existing owners know its good for them.
Now if you are a renter, its not really your home is it. Its someone elses you happen to rent. Its not like its your multi-generational familiar home. Land values go up rents naturally go up too. Yes at some point you can or should or maybe are even forced to leave. Why you might have go as many as 30miles away to find affordable property again! Big fucking deal. You can still visit your parents on the weekend etc. Its not like you have to say good bye to everything you knew.
Now see the lefty affordable hosing people show up and start building "projects". Guess what that makes the problem worse! Suddenly the barrister, the carpenter, the ladscaper have a place to live again, probably a shitty one. That enbables the wealthy to stay there in the first place and keep raising land values even higher, ensuring you the renter will NEVER be able to buy into the market and become an owner. If high prices were really allowed to chase these people out, services would vanish. You think mister million+ a year salary wants to live in a town where he has to cut his own lawn, and can't stop somewhere for a bagel? (Yes some do) but not enough to sustain those communities. Prices would head back down to earth pretty darn quick!
So its all the well meaning fair and affordable housing prolicy that enables and creates these out of control valuations in the first place.
whether the cost benefit analysis has been done
Yes it has. The costs are damn near zero the let people download software they can reproduce infinitely from servers they already on using bandwidth they already pay for. There are essentially no fixed costs beyond what is already sunk developing the product. The variable costs are so small at the scan Microsoft does anything they don't matter. So cost being nearly 0; the benefit does not need to be especially high.
Consumers don't buy Windows any more. They by new PCs/Laptops. The enthusiast era is completely over now. Its the appliance era now. Yes there may be more in absolute numbers, PC enthusiasts as ever but the part of the market they make up is tiny compared to the whole. A good portion of the ones that are left run Linux or something else. That leaves the games half of whom like to be on downlevel revs of Windows anyway.
So there are no lost sales here. OEMs will still buy licenses, Business will still buy licensing agreements or retail licenses.
So there are real downsides. Its a reasonable return the strategy of the late 80's and early 90's make Win/DOS easy to pirate. Then you control the platform. You can make your money selling them Office licenses, and server products. Control of the platform lets you lock out the competition.
Fast forward to today same deal. Get them all into your app store. You can up sell them on more stuff from there. Only its better because now you don't even need to make that other stuff, you let other people do it and just take a cut.
Anyways, what Assange did qualifies as rape in every country I know of.
I think you mean what Assange is accused of having done by people who have changed their story at least once.
as police have always had and always will have better access to top grade weaponry and armour.
I would argue this statement is false. When the 2nd amendment was drafted the hunting rifle in the hands of the average citizen was not especially inferior to that of the one in the hands of the local serif or for that matter the regular army soldier. Moreover the local serif and the soldier were no more able to defend themselves against said rifle than your average citizen was.
As far as larger weapons like artillery was concerned at prior to the civil war my admittedly hasty study of the subject indicates there was not much in the way of law that prevented a citizen (other than cost) from purchasing a napoleon; which would have been a state of the art field piece. Certainly there were lots of wealthy planters and the like who could afford them.
"If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. " at least that is what our officials here in the States are always telling us. Governments all of the world want to backdoor our encryption and slap data retention and business records retention requirements on just about everything.
When given the opportunity to lead by example we get Downing Street deleting everything they can before it becomes subject to discovery, and here in the states we get White House E-mail systems so comically badly administrated and lacking in backups, it strains credibility to think its anything but a deliberate plot to make it possible to destroy public records with (im)plausible deniablity. A Secretary of State that uses her personal E-mail for official business and redacts documents before turning them over to the government. An FBI that simply ignores the law and stonewalls when it gets FOIA requests because their are really no consequences for doing so. This list could go on.
Two possible conclusions (not mutually exclusive):
1) The government is so corrupt and our leaders are knowingly and willful acting as criminals. By their own reasoning these records management failures are proof of guilt, at least of obstructing justice.
2) Broadly speaking records retention requirements and laws restricting ones ability to securely store records (weakened encryption standards etc) are a significant infringement of privacy rights and the right to be secure in ones documents. After all what document is more secure than one you shredded and than burned?
Exactly this. The only just war is one your fight to win. A war of half measures and changing objectives isn't a war its as arbitrary and capricious as any murder.
A cause is either worth fighting for, ie you are willing to kill, maim and destroy property as required to see your objective met; or you have no business killing maiming and destroying things.
Its like the ISIS conflict. I really sincerely believe we should stop fighting them as long as they stay in the what our maps call the middle east. They won't be stopped unless we are willing to march a few hundred thousand troops in there, sweep every building and cave, shoot anyone who looks like a combatant; and accept all the collateral damage that entails.
We are not willing to do that; not politically and not morally. The fact is what we are doing is just as bad. Its a never ending meat grinder. We knock a few heads from the hydra new ones grow up. There is no drone striking our way to victory. The guilty and innocent will continue to die for nothing alike, the conflict locked in perpetual stalemate (hint it basically has been for 30 years now). We will only be continuing to invest countless billions of our treasure to keep the horror show going.
War should be a question of "Go big" or "Go home", no justice lay in the middle.
Root cause or not tests are what let you 'fix' the vulnerabilities, re-factor to correct design issues, etc.
I have to agree with the parent. Having good test coverage is the difference
between: We are going to be exposed for weeks while I'll 'try' to understand all the impacts of this change and hope QA spotts any potentially disastrous bugs before we go to production.
and:
Cool fix is in, tests are passing. Lets yet QA run the build for a day or so and we can get this out the door before it hits Slashdot.
For reasons of free expression to basic practicality we can't stop this stuff. As you say people can take your picture and people can produce what amounts to a hash of your facial features.
None of this stuff is a problem. It only becomes a problem when its stored and datamined. What we really need to do is actually regulate big data.
Start regulating what information about people may be stored in machine searchable formats and you can start to solve this problem. Regulate under what circumstances PII may be transferred between parties in machine readable formats and when lookup functions may be exposed to third parties.
Sounds totally practical I am its not as if the operators of these systems can just put a filter in front the camera or anything...
if you stand against net neutrality, there are thousands of people who are going to do anything in their power to ensure you do not get re-elected, and no amount of corporate money is going to save you.
Umm, no that isn't how it works at least not on an issue like this. First the vast majority of those comments will pay no attention whosoever to how you voted. Of the tiny fraction that do pay attention they have other issues that the vote on. They likely will have only one other real choice, and the candidate who 'might' side with them on net neutrality but has never been in a position to really vote on it more than like has some other deal breaker for them. So they will stick with candidate A regardless of their disagreement about this issue.
Congress can fuck this up and if the big ISPs and wireless carries donate enough to their campaigns they will. Don't kid yourself no matter how much support might exist for this it won't be the issue that costs any politician their seat. Unless you can get a Google or somebody like that to help you make noise like SOPA and PIPPA. Don't count on that though. Those actions provoked enough outrage and thinly veiled threats from the political class that Google et al. are not likely to try such shenanigans again. They'd be out trying to stop TPP fast track if they were not running scared.
In what possible situation would PHP be the best tool for new development?
I can't think of ANY.
I'll admin my initial post was does somewhat to act as a provocateur (though not a troll because I am genuinely interested in discussing the subject).
Its my personal view that government should get out of the marriage business. We should simply pass a low recognizing all existing marriage licenses as "Civil union licenses" and convert all marriage rights next of kin, child custody, 5th amendment testimony protections etc, to civil partner rights. Than any two people regardless of sex or gender can enter a civil union. If they are married or not is between them, their clergy, god(s), friends, and the guy who operates their car wash etc.
I find it interesting that various arguements about how having two parent house holds is good for children but the gender of parents does not have so much impact are used to justify arguments in favor of allowing homosexuals to marry. Making marriage a right implies that adultery and act that frequently makes impossible for the partner to remain in the marriage; implies that partners rights are being infringed.
Additionally the state does have pretty clear interest in promoting monogamous sexual relationships issues of morality and gender again set aside there is a clear advantage in the prevention of the spread of disease. Again since we are all "responsible" for each others healthcare costs now it seems perfectly reasonable (within that context) the state should favor policy that prefers monogamy, independent of what you call it; marriage, union, cohabitation contract.... The state has a pretty clear reason to want to encourage the formation of partnerships for raising children.
As other have pointed out we don't allow people to enter into contract of indentured servitude etc. Again I would come down on an the side of an individuals absolute right to make a contract but society has broadly chosen otherwise. A societal harm is the final underlying justification for most criminal law. Adultery is clearly harmful in the majority of cases. Its hard to escape the conclusion that if marriage is sacred enough to be considered a right that an act which harms its integrity should not be considered a crime.
I don't think your assertion that re-criminalizing adultery would negate the value proposition of marriage, union. There are lots of advantages to having a state recognized relationship (of some name). Child custody, the right to inherit property, tax filing advantages, social security, just to name a few.
Why should adultery not be a crime. We place such a high importance on marriage rights apparently that being free to enter that institution with anyone you wish is now being considered a basic human right. If that contract is so sacred that nobody should be denied it, than are not those who violate the integrity of harming society?
When prosecuting murders killing the person who was cheating with your spouse generally makes it a crime of passion and frequently is used to justify reducing the charges to second degree murder or even down to manslaughter. So obviously adultery poses a significant danger of triggering of provoking other serious crimes like battery and murder.
Its the frequent cause of dissolution of homes which negatively effects the development of children.
The list could go on. I think there is clear pattern of harm to society at large resulting from adultery. It SHOULD be a crime. If you are concerned about being and adulterer don't marry.
Translation: Silence citizen we are above the law and not subject to the oversight of peasants like yourself.
No war in Iraq -> No ISIS today.
ISIS exists only because of the crapshoot that Bush created with his stupid war.
Doubtful.
While its true the ISIS leadership cut their teeth in Iraq, they are essentially an AL-queda offshoot. It isn't as if that group did not exist before the Iraq war. In any case OBL would still have been mostly driven underground. He still would have lost control of at least parts of the organization not being to lead effectively. More than likely the Arab spring would still have happened. Most like the Syrian collapse and subsequent power vacuum would have lead to similar results.
ISIS would still exist it would only be using a different name or be the more radical wing of some other group.
Now had Bush stayed out of Afghanistan it might be a different story.
Lets be totally frank about something else. We only really care about ISIS because their taking of the Iraq we built and trained is embarrassing. Nobody talks about the Syrian cities under ISIS control, at least not on the news. We hear little about what they are doing in Libya and Yemen.
ISIS could be the best thing that ever happened to us in the Middle East if we just left them the hell alone. They might just succeed in reducing the number of independant lunatics and strongmen over there so we would have fewer seperate enemies to deal with. They likely would solve problems like Iran either by being such a distraction it keeps them bottled up or by over running them too. The Russians and the Chinese can deal with preventing further expansion (again probably a positive for us). The smartest thing Obama could do is "Nothing"