I thought the whole point of having an Army Corps Of Engineers was so that when technical skills were needed in a war zone, the Army would be able to provide them.
None of those events were televised live on multiple TV networks... the second plane hitting the second tower was.
The body count is most certainly higher in all of the other events you mentioned, but those were also longer series events that went practically one-by-one in killing people.
BTW -- huh? How can the Berg video be taken or used that way? If anything, it incited me to a firmer resolve. Same with dozens of friends and coworkers.
Think of the Spain train bombings... and how an pre-election polls that indicated re-eleections quickly turned into the election of a government whose platform was based on a retreat from Iraq.
The issue of whether Al Queda was linked to Iraq before 9/11 or before the war started may be an open question... but it's very clear that Al Queda would like to establish a new Iraq government of their own by force if given the chance. They attacked Spain because that was all it took to scare them into a retreat from the currently conflicted field.
As much resolve as we might have, the rest of the world doesn't have quite so much. We're losing the battle for "hearts and minds" in Europe... and I just wonder what would happen to France if they were invaded and the USA wasn't around to clean up their mess again.
The family members on national TV begging for the Bush administration to do something to get the freedom of Paul Johnson, who is in peril of having a similar fate at the moment, are not a good sign. Let's face it, unless a longshot commando raid can find and rescue him, he should be treated as if he's already dead. Saudi Arabia is being firm in not releasing the prisoners as the hostage takers are demanding, and they are right to do so because responding to terrorist demands only encurages them to continue.
Terrorist acts are designed not only to be violent, but to scare the target population into not acting out against the terrorists. We really should be doing the opposite, but emotional human nature is not always with us.
Is slashdot anti-microsoft propoganda illegal? It would be under your definitions.
What definition would that be? I didn't post one. I just said we needed one that is a "tight and fair definition of what makes up that term", because figuring out just what such a defintion is would be a completely different post altogether.
I just argued that a category of unprotected "hate speech" should exist... and most definitely I wouldn't include all anti-microsoft propoganda in that.
However, just what is the term "freedom of speech" defined as?
We've already got several example of expressions that are not tolerated under US law:
Slander/Libel: You can't spread false information about somebody else, because their right to not have their reputation unfairly soiled trumps your right to free speech. This isn't a crime, but it can be a very expensive civil tort case. False reports: You can't spread false information that puts others in danger, or wastes government resources. Public safety is more important that your right to free speech. Perjury: When dealing with the government, you must always speak the truth. Lies become criminal when under oath. Somebody else's right to a fair trial is more important your right to free speech.
The Constitution conflicts with itself sometimes... and that's why we have a judicial system to determine when two rights conflict which is higher.
Chirac has practically sent us loud messages that he doesn't like us either. He was on American soil (to attend a G8 meeting) during the time of President Reagan's fueral, and was invited, but did not attend or send any representative in his place.
That's pretty much the definition of an intentional diplomatic snub...
Unfortunately, if we take that tact, then we have to be stong enough as a culture to accept the Nick Berg video and any similar video that comes our way in the future... because such videos are being used as propaganda to try to convince us and our allies to give up the fight against anti-freedom terrorists.
I'm not sure if the world has that strong of a stomach sometimes...
Hate speech has always been a sore issue for Europe for as long as the Internet has been around. Over there, they really don't like anybody throwing hate speech around the way that Nazi Germany did. Stateside, we just take groups like the KKK and ignore them and shove them out of our way when they try to use their right to free speech to say something we don't really care to hear... hate speech is protected by free speech, but we most definitely slam the cell doors on people who take actions that we define as hate crimes.
But what's sticky about this is that hate speech is often the forerunner to hate actions. Afterall, part of Al Queda's definition is that they hate anybody who doesn't follow their misguided splinter religion (that they claim to be Islam but isn't) and any form of government that isn't an opressive "perfect Islamic state". We should be particularly alarmed about about the spread of anti-American hate speech going on in the world... it's perfectly fine to be critcal of what we do here, but there comes a point where "dislike" crosses the line into "hatred", and it's those who have been brainwashed into thinking that free governments need to be banished from the world that we are fighting against as terrorists. Simply put, if there were less people in the world spreading hate against us, there'd be less terrorists for us to have to defend against.
It's a delicate balance that we need to maintain. Our most powerful individial freedoms are defined in the First Amendment, and we can't afford to waive them away. However, the "Freedom of Speech" has never been truely absolute. Libel and slander are considered civil torts because that use of speech steps on the rights of other people to not have their image torn down by the spread of lies. The classic "yelling 'Fire!' in a theater" example is a case where saying something untrue that puts others in danger can be a criminal act.
I don't see "hate speech", as long as we're able to agree on a tight and fair definition of what makes up that term, as being something worthy of protection... afterall, it's those who spread hate propoganda who are also most likely to be those who are about to take action, and we could count the 9/11 attacks as the largest hate crime of all time.
There's already a process for taking a 3D world and then flatening all of the surfaces and removing all of the surfaces that are not within the view of the camera so that they no longer are included and then compressing the result...
It's called rasterizing... the process of taking a 3D world down to a 2D image.
You can watch multiple mp4 video/audio streams at this speed - so why not 1 3d model?
Because we're all still using 2D cameras and monitors... and that's the real hold-up in 3D content production. Things like QuickTime VR have been around for years, but haven't really caught on because they're not easy to make content with and the results are not exactly stunning sometimes.
I think this case only involved plantiffs who booked through the website and are trying to get the web site's privacy policy to apply to their whole transaction. Those who book through other ways would not have been presented with a privacy policy from Northwest at all, and therefore would have nothing to point to and say that NW broke a promise...
Unfortantely, the ruling is knocking the case on several other fronts as well. Even if the plantiffs had claimed to have read the statement, the ruling says that wouldn't have been enough because privacy policies do not form a contract in the first place.
From the court... Further, the disclosure here was not to the public at large, but rather was to a government agency in the wake of a terrorist attack that called into question the security of the nation's transportation system. Northwest's motives in disclosing the information cannot be questioned... the Court finds as a matter of law that the disclosure of Plaintiffs' personal information would not be highly offensive to a reasonable person and that Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim for intrusion upon seclusion.
Whoa... citing 9/11 as a reason why privacy rules should be ignored and a court saying that you can't question the motivations of those who are hiding behing a shield preventing terror attacks?
The fact that Northwest was doing this to fight for the side of good and that they didn't profit from this at all are mitigating factors that soften the blow, but should not be used to waive off the foul entirely. The whole point of the War on Terror is to protect our system of law... letting it to start going down the slippery slope towards an opressive system is exactly the way the terrorists want to push us.
Anything on a web server is most likely on a hard disk...
And hard disks are considered stable because their data doesn't disappear when the computer is powered down or reboots, but they don't last forever. All HDs have moving parts, and eventually some part of that drive will fail physically making your data nearly inaccessable. It's not a question of if but when. It will happen. Expect it to happen about 4-5 years after the drive first put into service. You should see this coming, not be caught unexpectedly by it.
The EFF has just added on another story on the topic... an Appeals Court has just ruled that showing a defendant has DirecTV hacking equipment isn't enough to create liablity. DirecTV needs to bring evidence that the devices were actually used to steal DirecTV's services sucessfully.
However, there still is a presumtion in favor of the defendant in a civil court. That is to say, any holes in the story are assumed to be filled with the most favorable possiblity for the defendant, the plantiff has to come up with some evidence if they want the court to find otherwise.
If a device can be used only to hack DirecTV, then the purchase of the device can be used to draw the conclusion that the defendant used the device to do so. However, if there's any other possible use of the device, that use is going to get assumed until DirecTV can show otherwise... the defendant doesn't even need to show that they used it the legal way until there's evidence that they didn't to contradict...
Matt Groening later admited that Fox News never threatened to sue, he was just joking. Fox News all along claimed that there was no lawsuit threatened...
The apparent source of all of this was that the show got a "network note" about one of their scripts that mentioned a news ticker underneath Kent Brockman pointing out that if they were going to do that, they'd have to make the headlines funny enough such that somebody just tuning in would not confuse it with the real Fox News ticker. The Simpsons staff thought that was a little overprotective... like they'd put anything that could be mistaken for real in such a ticker.
You don't have to admit wrongdoing to settle, but you do admit that you were not certain to win if the case went on and you didn't want to take the chance of losing. You can't double back and say "I want my trial now!"
DirecTV recently changed ownership hands from being part of GM to being part of News Corp. Therefore, I think this change of heart has a lot to do with a change in the bosses involved. I think it's safe to assume the people who came with this scheme aren't in power there anymore.
Just like the contrary verdicts in the OJ Simpson murder cases... you can be not guilty of a crime, but still be liable for that same crime because the criminal standard is "beyond reasonable doubt" and the civil standard is "a perponderance of the evidence".
In short, as long as DirecTV's evidence alone implies that it's more likely than not that you stole their service, you're going to need to put on an affirmative defense to tip the scales back into your favor. They don't need to prove you guilty...
If you settle, you are agreeing that the other side's case had merit such that you're willing to pay to make it go away.
Those who were truely not involved in stealing DirecTV's signal should have allowed the lawsuit to go forward, let DirecTV put on their case, and then move for dismissal immediately after that case before even needing to put on a defense.
DirecTV's case in some of these situations were so weak that they actually lost a case where the defendant didn't even show up because they didn't have enough evidence to merit a default ruling... that's a rather bad defeat when you can't beat a defense that's not even in the room.:)
Yes, but the anti-DirecTV stand in this case wasn't that DirecTV had no right to sue people pirating their signal... it was that DirecTV needed a higher level of evidence than what they were using in order to go after a defendant in many cases.
If DirecTV sticks to the modifications mentioned in the release, most of the complaints are going to be cleared up and DirecTV's accusations should only be going to people who they have a decent chance of winning a ruling against.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the whole point of having an Army Corps Of Engineers was so that when technical skills were needed in a war zone, the Army would be able to provide them.
None of those events were televised live on multiple TV networks... the second plane hitting the second tower was.
The body count is most certainly higher in all of the other events you mentioned, but those were also longer series events that went practically one-by-one in killing people.
BTW -- huh? How can the Berg video be taken or used that way? If anything, it incited me to a firmer resolve. Same with dozens of friends and coworkers.
Think of the Spain train bombings... and how an pre-election polls that indicated re-eleections quickly turned into the election of a government whose platform was based on a retreat from Iraq.
The issue of whether Al Queda was linked to Iraq before 9/11 or before the war started may be an open question... but it's very clear that Al Queda would like to establish a new Iraq government of their own by force if given the chance. They attacked Spain because that was all it took to scare them into a retreat from the currently conflicted field.
As much resolve as we might have, the rest of the world doesn't have quite so much. We're losing the battle for "hearts and minds" in Europe... and I just wonder what would happen to France if they were invaded and the USA wasn't around to clean up their mess again.
The family members on national TV begging for the Bush administration to do something to get the freedom of Paul Johnson, who is in peril of having a similar fate at the moment, are not a good sign. Let's face it, unless a longshot commando raid can find and rescue him, he should be treated as if he's already dead. Saudi Arabia is being firm in not releasing the prisoners as the hostage takers are demanding, and they are right to do so because responding to terrorist demands only encurages them to continue.
Terrorist acts are designed not only to be violent, but to scare the target population into not acting out against the terrorists. We really should be doing the opposite, but emotional human nature is not always with us.
What exactly are we supposed to do when the EU Constitution is contradictory to the US Constitution?
Is slashdot anti-microsoft propoganda illegal? It would be under your definitions.
What definition would that be? I didn't post one. I just said we needed one that is a "tight and fair definition of what makes up that term", because figuring out just what such a defintion is would be a completely different post altogether.
I just argued that a category of unprotected "hate speech" should exist... and most definitely I wouldn't include all anti-microsoft propoganda in that.
However, just what is the term "freedom of speech" defined as?
We've already got several example of expressions that are not tolerated under US law:
Slander/Libel: You can't spread false information about somebody else, because their right to not have their reputation unfairly soiled trumps your right to free speech. This isn't a crime, but it can be a very expensive civil tort case.
False reports: You can't spread false information that puts others in danger, or wastes government resources. Public safety is more important that your right to free speech.
Perjury: When dealing with the government, you must always speak the truth. Lies become criminal when under oath. Somebody else's right to a fair trial is more important your right to free speech.
The Constitution conflicts with itself sometimes... and that's why we have a judicial system to determine when two rights conflict which is higher.
However, conversely people with such anger might use websites to recruit people to take part in large acts violence to vent that anger.
It's a double-edged sword. Sometimes we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
Chirac has practically sent us loud messages that he doesn't like us either. He was on American soil (to attend a G8 meeting) during the time of President Reagan's fueral, and was invited, but did not attend or send any representative in his place.
That's pretty much the definition of an intentional diplomatic snub...
Unfortunately, if we take that tact, then we have to be stong enough as a culture to accept the Nick Berg video and any similar video that comes our way in the future... because such videos are being used as propaganda to try to convince us and our allies to give up the fight against anti-freedom terrorists.
I'm not sure if the world has that strong of a stomach sometimes...
Hate speech has always been a sore issue for Europe for as long as the Internet has been around. Over there, they really don't like anybody throwing hate speech around the way that Nazi Germany did.
Stateside, we just take groups like the KKK and ignore them and shove them out of our way when they try to use their right to free speech to say something we don't really care to hear... hate speech is protected by free speech, but we most definitely slam the cell doors on people who take actions that we define as hate crimes.
But what's sticky about this is that hate speech is often the forerunner to hate actions. Afterall, part of Al Queda's definition is that they hate anybody who doesn't follow their misguided splinter religion (that they claim to be Islam but isn't) and any form of government that isn't an opressive "perfect Islamic state". We should be particularly alarmed about about the spread of anti-American hate speech going on in the world... it's perfectly fine to be critcal of what we do here, but there comes a point where "dislike" crosses the line into "hatred", and it's those who have been brainwashed into thinking that free governments need to be banished from the world that we are fighting against as terrorists. Simply put, if there were less people in the world spreading hate against us, there'd be less terrorists for us to have to defend against.
It's a delicate balance that we need to maintain. Our most powerful individial freedoms are defined in the First Amendment, and we can't afford to waive them away. However, the "Freedom of Speech" has never been truely absolute. Libel and slander are considered civil torts because that use of speech steps on the rights of other people to not have their image torn down by the spread of lies. The classic "yelling 'Fire!' in a theater" example is a case where saying something untrue that puts others in danger can be a criminal act.
I don't see "hate speech", as long as we're able to agree on a tight and fair definition of what makes up that term, as being something worthy of protection... afterall, it's those who spread hate propoganda who are also most likely to be those who are about to take action, and we could count the 9/11 attacks as the largest hate crime of all time.
There's already a process for taking a 3D world and then flatening all of the surfaces and removing all of the surfaces that are not within the view of the camera so that they no longer are included and then compressing the result...
It's called rasterizing... the process of taking a 3D world down to a 2D image.
You can watch multiple mp4 video/audio streams at this speed - so why not 1 3d model?
Because we're all still using 2D cameras and monitors... and that's the real hold-up in 3D content production. Things like QuickTime VR have been around for years, but haven't really caught on because they're not easy to make content with and the results are not exactly stunning sometimes.
I think this case only involved plantiffs who booked through the website and are trying to get the web site's privacy policy to apply to their whole transaction. Those who book through other ways would not have been presented with a privacy policy from Northwest at all, and therefore would have nothing to point to and say that NW broke a promise...
Unfortantely, the ruling is knocking the case on several other fronts as well. Even if the plantiffs had claimed to have read the statement, the ruling says that wouldn't have been enough because privacy policies do not form a contract in the first place.
From the court...
Further, the disclosure here was not to the public at large, but rather was to a government agency in the wake of a terrorist attack that called into question the security of the nation's transportation
system. Northwest's motives in disclosing the information cannot be questioned... the Court finds as a matter of law that the disclosure of Plaintiffs' personal information would not be highly offensive to a reasonable person and that Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim for intrusion upon seclusion.
Whoa... citing 9/11 as a reason why privacy rules should be ignored and a court saying that you can't question the motivations of those who are hiding behing a shield preventing terror attacks?
The fact that Northwest was doing this to fight for the side of good and that they didn't profit from this at all are mitigating factors that soften the blow, but should not be used to waive off the foul entirely. The whole point of the War on Terror is to protect our system of law... letting it to start going down the slippery slope towards an opressive system is exactly the way the terrorists want to push us.
Anything on a web server is most likely on a hard disk... And hard disks are considered stable because their data doesn't disappear when the computer is powered down or reboots, but they don't last forever. All HDs have moving parts, and eventually some part of that drive will fail physically making your data nearly inaccessable. It's not a question of if but when. It will happen. Expect it to happen about 4-5 years after the drive first put into service. You should see this coming, not be caught unexpectedly by it.
The EFF has just added on another story on the topic... an Appeals Court has just ruled that showing a defendant has DirecTV hacking equipment isn't enough to create liablity. DirecTV needs to bring evidence that the devices were actually used to steal DirecTV's services sucessfully.
However, there still is a presumtion in favor of the defendant in a civil court. That is to say, any holes in the story are assumed to be filled with the most favorable possiblity for the defendant, the plantiff has to come up with some evidence if they want the court to find otherwise.
If a device can be used only to hack DirecTV, then the purchase of the device can be used to draw the conclusion that the defendant used the device to do so. However, if there's any other possible use of the device, that use is going to get assumed until DirecTV can show otherwise... the defendant doesn't even need to show that they used it the legal way until there's evidence that they didn't to contradict...
Matt Groening later admited that Fox News never threatened to sue, he was just joking. Fox News all along claimed that there was no lawsuit threatened...
The apparent source of all of this was that the show got a "network note" about one of their scripts that mentioned a news ticker underneath Kent Brockman pointing out that if they were going to do that, they'd have to make the headlines funny enough such that somebody just tuning in would not confuse it with the real Fox News ticker. The Simpsons staff thought that was a little overprotective... like they'd put anything that could be mistaken for real in such a ticker.
You don't have to admit wrongdoing to settle, but you do admit that you were not certain to win if the case went on and you didn't want to take the chance of losing. You can't double back and say "I want my trial now!"
DirecTV recently changed ownership hands from being part of GM to being part of News Corp. Therefore, I think this change of heart has a lot to do with a change in the bosses involved. I think it's safe to assume the people who came with this scheme aren't in power there anymore.
Just like the contrary verdicts in the OJ Simpson murder cases... you can be not guilty of a crime, but still be liable for that same crime because the criminal standard is "beyond reasonable doubt" and the civil standard is "a perponderance of the evidence".
In short, as long as DirecTV's evidence alone implies that it's more likely than not that you stole their service, you're going to need to put on an affirmative defense to tip the scales back into your favor. They don't need to prove you guilty...
If you settle, you are agreeing that the other side's case had merit such that you're willing to pay to make it go away.
:)
Those who were truely not involved in stealing DirecTV's signal should have allowed the lawsuit to go forward, let DirecTV put on their case, and then move for dismissal immediately after that case before even needing to put on a defense.
DirecTV's case in some of these situations were so weak that they actually lost a case where the defendant didn't even show up because they didn't have enough evidence to merit a default ruling... that's a rather bad defeat when you can't beat a defense that's not even in the room.
Yes, but the anti-DirecTV stand in this case wasn't that DirecTV had no right to sue people pirating their signal... it was that DirecTV needed a higher level of evidence than what they were using in order to go after a defendant in many cases.
If DirecTV sticks to the modifications mentioned in the release, most of the complaints are going to be cleared up and DirecTV's accusations should only be going to people who they have a decent chance of winning a ruling against.
A .whatever domain might be nice for users to understand the difference, but technically no TLDs are need since they'd all be "local" hostnames anyway.