Yea, and we know there's never any backlash or circular problem as a result. After all, it's not like the muslims started, no the christians started! No, you started it! Nuh uh, you started it!
Yea, of course not, this violence hasn't been going back and forth between Western and Middle Eastern cultures for the last millenium, no. Each time violence erupted, it sure settled things.
There are two reasons you're not a social scientist: 1) You have no clue how psychology, social anthropology, etc. contribute to the collective behavior of a society and 2) you're an idiot who's confusing settlement between two individuals and entire societies. Go ahead - argue that you can just nuke entire societies out of existence. I dare you.
Nothing that spell check would pick up. A "currier" is a person who prepares leather hides e.g. - by tanning them. Therefore, an International Currier would be a perfectly valid phrase referring to one who prepares leather hides around the world.
The politicians are closely linked to commercial interests.
Commercial interests have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
Both the politicians and the agencies are closely linked to the private sector. The agencies, as you stated, have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
None of these three can exist in their current incarnation without the crucial link of the politician. Would you like a pencil to connect the dots? This is not just some paranoid goon bullshit either, it's the most likely series of connections in the event that anyone really is "out to get us". Whether anyone is actually out to get us, or this is simply massive incompetence, pork-barrel spending, or a vulgar display of power by some sniveling twit with a shriveled cock sitting in Congress somewhere is up for debate.
You should not be surprised - this is behavior that should be expected from any government no matter what benevolent face it puts on.
The only things that keep power hungry government officials in check is fear of retribution from the populace. When the country was small and the military little more than a couple boy scouts with prettier boots (a situation that persisted well into the 20th century to some degree), there was the potential for armed revolts. Even pockets could cause huge problems.
When the official forces were bulked up as a result of the world wars, there was still the ever hanging axe of the ballot box to keep politicians under control. When the media gained the power of radio and TV, any little foible could be broadcast within hours to a population that might actually care.
Now, armed revolt isn't a threat, the media is broadcasting sensationalist bullshit for ratings meaning people don't take it that seriously, and the typical voter turnout is so horribly anemic that I have a hard time believing people even realize that they have a vote sometimes.
Politicians are free to pursue whatever agenda they want now. Nobody is going to stop them. With a few exceptions like TIA, nobody speaks up against ridiculous, authoritarian programs coming out of D.C. anymore. When they do, you just see this - they get broken up and hidden in various budgets and departments in such a way that they look like harmless little pocket programs, but the same folks are still pulling the strings at the top.
I've got to wonder sometimes how much farther this can go. The technology will just keep evolving in favor of loss of privacy and big brother-esque data collection and monitoring. When will people step up to draw the line and, depending on how long it takes, what will it take to actually keep the government from crossing it?
I think I remember that you're the cop that's been responding, and I'm trying to base this from your perspective and mine as a regular citizen who values a certain level of privacy.
The only issue I'm concerned about here is the guy refusing to produce id. If he was being violent or if he was actually resisting arrest, he needs to be charged with those crimes and identified. However, as I stated elsewhere - I will not provide my identification to anyone until they have first identified themself and given a perfectly valid reason for needing to know who I am. Emphasis because that's very important to me. If a cop just walks up to me and says "we're investigating such and such - show me your id", a few things come to mind (note that this is not based on the case, this is purely hypothetical):
Do you think I'm involved? If so, why? (e.g. - I fit such and such description)
Why didn't you even bother to ask me if I know anything about it?
How is my name, address, etc. relevant to determining what happened?
If these questions are answered in a satisfactory manner, I'll be happy to cooperate. However, if any one of those questions does not result in a good reason for knowing who I am, and I'm not even under the obligation to be CARRYING identification, much less showing it to anyone, you can rest assured I will not be providing it. I can tell you whatever I know about what happened without you knowing who I am.
In this case, if the guy can be charged with something, go for it. THEN identify him. If he won't id himself willingly and you need to arrest him, you don't need to actually know who he is at that very moment to do so, do you?
It's not a matter of whether this guy deserves to be arrested or not, it's whether people should be obligated to identify themselves to any public official or authority figure without a very good reason for doing so being given first. I know the cop stated what was being investigated before stumbling over his words (the "legitimacy" of some legal technicalities baffles me to no end, so this one-time stumble doesn't really concern me), but that doesn't really justify identifying the plaintiff at that point in time. He should have dug deeper to find out what was going on. If he needed to identify him after that because there was a reasonable suspicion that something illegal had happened, then I have no qualms and I doubt anyone else (excepting pscyho tinfoil peolpe) would either. The "warrant" argument doesn't really hold water either though. Are people automatically suspicious enough to justify a warrant search? I certianly don't think so. If I've been cruising along at 15 over, I broke the law already - go ahead and search for warrants on me. If I'm standing by a parked car smoking and someone has simply phoned in a relatively vague complaint, you damn well better not just automatically assume that's enough to do a warrant search on me. If the complaint is valid and I broke the law, go for it. Until then, too bad - I'll tell you who I am only if I feel like it.
You can't give any one group of people too much information. The benefit to this type of technology, organized databases, cameras, etc. might indeed be a safer public experience, but it comes with a tradeoff. It creates a centralized system that's ripe for abuse not only by the people controlling the information (look at the conglomeration of tax info in MA and the IRS wanting to use it track down "evaders" - the tax system is so ludicrously complicated that I can't even begin to imagine how many people would be labeled as crooks who thought they had done exactly what they needed to), but also anyone who can access it by illegal means. Information is not safe in one place. You can have watchdogs and standards out the wazoo, but the government is notoriously bad when it comes to enforcing such things.
The issue is the increased POTENTIAL for abuse. Just because it might not be abused right away (although, given the actions of the current and last administrations, I find it hard to believe it wouldn't be), doesn't mean we should set something up for some screwball to get ahold of down the road.
Besides, my odds of being murdered in the places that they'd install such critters are awfully damn low right now. Do you think they're going to go down to Liberty City and install this shit? Hell no. They'll put it in high class snobhoods to make the taxpaying populace think it's safer. Safer from what, I don't know.
I call troll. The issue of it being a "stupid case" to some people centers around the report and the fact that the defendant was acting in "an aggressive manner". However, he was hauled in for not producing and ID which is not a pubnishable offense. Since he wasn't driving the car, not ony is not prosecutable, he was under NO obligation to even be CARRYING an ID.
If some cop walked up to me and said "I have a vague report of XYZ occurring" and couldn't give me any better reason for producing ID, I'd tell him to go pound sand too if he persisted after a polite refusal. Know why? Because a responsible officer wouldn't press the issue without producing a good reason for me to identify myself to him. Gonna charge me for something, I'll tell you who I am. I've never given my driver's license and registration to a cop that pulled me over until they told me why. I tell them I have it and I'll show it to them when they tell me why they pulled me over. This caused a problem one time when he persisted, but then relented, told me why he pulled me over, and I handed over the license without another word. Two other times they informed me why I was pulled over and that was that.
They're not a threat to the majority of the people who drive, they're a threat to the majority of people who are within striking distance of the drunk driver's path. Big difference. Although I think the fingerprinting is a bad idea and the shoe-checking is silly, there's a huge difference. They're not checking the shoes of EVERY citizen and they're not fingerprinting EVERY citizen (yet). The majority of people on an airplane would be in danger of a bomb. The majority of drivers in the state of New Mexico are not being endangered by a drunk driver at any particular time. Therefore, the people who get on a plane all get checked because the majority IS in danger. However, the majority of drivers at any given time are NOT in danger of being hit by a drunk driver. In fact, I've never been hit by a drunk driver in 6 years and out of all the people I know, only one of them has. Yet, to protect from the statistically few tragedies that occur, they're proposing that everybody be penalized. Everybody's penalized getting on a plane because 100% of the flyers are endangered by a person with a bomb. Unless the drunk driver happens to encounter 100% of the drivers in his state during his drive, the situation is not even remotely comparable. In fact, if the number of drunk drivers really are as high as you suggest, there's even less grounds for this because it would seem that the majority of individuals who are DUI don't wind up hitting anything or anyone.
Pennsylvania hick country. HUGE drunk driving problem where I used to live: Perry County, PA.
I'd like to see statstics on those claims of drunk driving frequency. Somehow, I have a VERY hard time believing that the number of licensed drivers is even REMOTELY close to the number of drivers who have driven drunk at least once over the same time period measured (licensed or otherwise).
You can't impose restrictions on a majority because of a minority problem. If the problem is really out of hand, the solution is to ensure that it can't be perpetuated by chronic offenders, not to impose restrictions, inconvenience, and cost on everybody. Alcoholism is probably even more widespread than drunk driving and it has a huge impact on society as a whole - including sober folks - as well. Does that mean everyone should be required to attend monthly AA meetings in the name of prevention? Of course not, that's silly. It's a huge waste of resources brought on by a few people who can't manage their own lives for whatever reason.
The problem that I see with drunk driving isn't prevention, it's that there's little reason not to risk it. I know people that have never gotten caught driving drunk and did it on countless occasions. The instant they saw a relative get slapped with one of the greatly increased fines and saw her lisence suspended, they wised up and started calling me or friends/relatives after a trip to the bar. One time? Get a huge ass fine based on your income (prorated based on estimated costs for children) to cut into spending cash. Suspend the license for a year. After that? Jail the sucker for the next five years and revoke the license permanently. Drunk driving is far too dangerous to innocent people to go about playing stupid games with people who don't get the picture. If they get caught again, up the jail time each time. Remove the people from the stream that are a chronic problem and make a concerted, HONEST effort to educate people. Don't penalize me. I felt perfectly fine after 3 beers and dinner and I still handed my keys to my girlfriend "just in case". No way I'd stand for being treated like that just becsaue of a few incredibly ignorant morons.
I'm pretending for the sake of argument that this is possible. Some people seem to have the weird notion that if you are struck you can somehow be accelerated away from the point of impact. It sounds like somebody once argued wtih the grandparent poster that seatbelts should be required because this can happen.
There are two possibilities here. 1) you have a head on collision and are ejected through the windshield (note to the "thrown away" people: even though you will fly past the accident and land on the other side of the car in this example, you are actually initially moving TOWARD the point of impact, not away from it - you just happen to be passing it) and up and over the other vehicle. In this case, you'd have to clear the other vehicle horizontally AND vertically which seriously hurts the amount of force you could deliver to any object beyond the far side of the other vehicle since a 150 lb. sack of meat is not particularly aerodynamic.
Of couse, there's always option 2 where you are magically ejected in a different direction than you were originally moving (let's say you've magically stopped moving forward and have now accepted a large amount of force from the right side that is moving you to the left). In this instance, I still don't see how a 150 lb. sack of meat could cause significant damage. Even if you initially left the vehicle moving at an outrageous speed of 60 mph (we'll pretend there was a 100% energy transfer from the side collision to the point at which you were moving at your highest speed), how far could you possibly fly? Initially, I'd think you'd have a great enough velocity to cause some very serious damage as a projectile, but flopping humans do not travel through the air very well and would lose energy quickly. You'd almost certainly be very little danger within a few seconds. At your highest speed you'd be traveling what, about 1.5 feet per second? I don't have statistics on the aerodynamic properties of a flying human body, but I'd think that would drop very, very rapidly. I just don't think that anybody could be hurt by a flying body from a car accident unless they were already within a few feet of the crash, and this is assuming that the moving body doesn't have to obey the laws of physics. Of course, when you take into consideration the various ways you can be hurt (e.g. - the person would land in such a way as to acutely strain a single part of your neck and break it), the odds seem to go up, but remember - we didn't even consider the enormous amount of area the person could potentially land in based on the radius they traveled which, unless there happen to be a lot of people crowding a single spot on the street, seems to put the odds of the person actually striking someone else pretty low.
And, again, I conclude that whoever argued that idea was an idiot.
That didn't make any sense. You can't punish people you don't catch unless you just punish everybody. Are you suggesting that it's a good idea to penalize everybody because a very small minority of stupid people can't comprehend ("drunk driving" eq 'bad')?
Obviously, basic issues (murder, theft, etc.) would be exempt from this sort of thing..
You underestimate what a powerdrunk government that doesn't want to give up that power can do. If you give them ANY loophole, they WILL find dirty, underhanded ways to exploit it. Look at the copyright situation. It's so assbackwards now from what it's supposed to be that the people that originally debated it would probably get sick to their stomachs if they saw how the issue has been butchered. Look at the way we tried to circumvent basic rights in this country by declaring people "enemy combatants" - an inoccuous term that just sprang into existance when convenient to take advantage of the "state of emergency" we're perpetually in. Doing things like that is like saying that the current laws don't work, so we need special ones to take their place. It doesn't matter WHY someone is criminal, if they're a criminal they're a criminal and we already have a setup to deal with them. Why do we need special exceptions for different types of criminals? They're just exploiting loopholes to garner additional power they're not supposed to have.
You can't trust the government to do the right thing - this country is based on that principle. Why do you think each of the three branches is supposed to keep the others under control? Why do you think the constitution is written in ways that suggest the framers expected the government to get out of hand? It's only natural that it will take every chance to grab more power. There should be NO exceptions. If the law isn't enforced or renewed, it dies - NO EXCEPTIONS.
Heh... somehow I doubt that even if you were ejected from the vehicle through the windshield or side window (even if it were down) at 65 mph, you're body would have enough force to actually cause significant damage to a bystander unless they were standing right next to the accident already (thereby putting them in greater danger of debris and the accident itself than your flopping missile of a body). I guess it's possible that you'd beat the odds and actually smack somebody, and I guess if you got hit hard enough to accelerate your mass to such a degree that it could cause major damage you COULD hurt someone.. but it's one of those "BUT WE HAVE TO TAKE EXTREME MEASURES BECAUSE I'M CONSIDERING UNREALISTICALLY EXTREME POSSIBILITIES!!!! lol!!"
Or, in conclusion, I think whoever used that argument against you is an idiot. I also wonder at the utility of requiring people to wear seatbelts since they're only endangering themselves (lamebrain arguments about being "ejected to safety" and "trapped" notwithstanding the fact that only idiots believe them). This makes a lot more sense because you're obviously putting other people in the way of a much greater danger by driving drunk, but the fact that the government feels it can walk up to me and say 'you have to pay for this becuase that dumbass was driving drunk' is something that more than just ruffles my feathers. Here's an idea: put the dumbass in rehab, take away the license PERMANENTLY, fine the living shit out of them the first time they do it, and lock them up for a good long stint in the state pen for increasing amounts of time for each repeat.
Any vehicle that comes into my household equipped with such a device will not stay that way for long (and will only be on long enough to pass inspection each year). I can imagine there will even be a pretty quick grey market set up around easy mods to eliminate them.
Yet another idea that looks real good on paper, gets some government figures some face time, and is just a really, really dumb idea that doesn't withstand even a cursory run through the logic chain.
What checks does Freenet have in place to preserve privacy, and yet prevent the distribution of illegal material?
That's kind of the point. Illegal != immoral != harmful. It's up to each individual user to determine whether what they're doing is "right" or "wrong". Is it wrong to wail against communism? The Chinese government thinks so. Is it wrong to spread child porn? The U.S. government thinks so. But, what does the USER think. It's THEIR responsibility to do the right thing rather than the government forcing them to do it. I must say, I don't participate in freenet because I'm not convinced that the benefits of using my computer to help spread democratic propaganda away from the prying eyes of the Chinese government outweights the negatives of some sick fuck using it to spread kiddy porn, but that's MY decision, not the governments.
When you rely on the government to hold people to certain standards, you're just asking for trouble. Look at the gay marriage thing. Does it hurt anybody? No. Still, there are people who say it's right and people who say it's wrong. The government wants to stick it's big nose in the mess now and that's just begging for trouble. They'll try to legislate morality which is just plain nuts. The government is hear to PROTECT and SERVE the public, not be a self-appointed moral watchdog. Freenet is an interesting experiment in putting the power of deciding one's own moral course back in the hands of individuals.
Unlike the screwball grandparent poster, I like Freenet in principle, I'm just not convinced that I like it in practice...
Nobody who knows anything about science makes a blanket statement like that with a straight face. In fact, if they did, and people always believed things were so clearly cut and dry, we'd all be sitting around in caves marveling at the power of the Gods to make the sun rise.
Too bad the "interest" you convey is totally divorced from "understanding" of even the basic tenets upon which science is built.
Maybe before you go about berating other posters about their potentially lacking science skills, you ought to take the time to make sure you're not making a TOTAL ass of yourself, at least.
That's the point - they didn't misrepresent anything. They basically said "we think Linux is illegally derived in part from UNIX IP that we think we own and you MAY be liable if you're using Linux. Oh, by the way, can we interest you in a purty license?" All the company has to do is say no and it's over (or, just ignore them). I highly doubt that the letter is written in such a way that could get SCO in hot water for tying the IP lawsuits to the licensing. They're lawyers. They're good at bullshit. They're paid to do bullshit. They're not going to put SCO in any near-term danger, if any danger at all, over a "licensing" scheme that was devised to generate hype, not revenue.
Fortunately for the world, what it is "to [you]" is not necessarily relevant to how it actually is =P
SCO's letters asked for money. They were basically nothing more than amusing invitations to send SCO some cash. There's no law preventing me from sending letters to people asking if they'll send me some money as long as I'm not threatening them, harassing them, etc. People may think I'm an idiot (and SCO is likely comprised of nothing but 100% all-natural idiots by now), but I won't be a criminal.
Insightful? That's the most hairbrained thing I've seen posted around this whole SCO debate so far, unless you were trying to be funny.
The RIAA got away with the "sue-a-kid" business model because the kid was, technically, breaking the law. Using Linux is not illegal. In fact, all the kid would have to do is show up in court and say "not guilty" and then watch Darl's brother proceed to hang himself before being laughed out of court.
Up to now, SCO has played their cards very carefully so as not to invoke the wrath of the courts (I'm sure they're trying the courts patience, but they're being very careful not to step over that fine line) so they can keep this charade up for as long as possible. Voluntarily bringing this to court would be nothing short of suicidal.
Here in my little neck of the woods, it's not really that hard to find labeled food, it's hard to find CLEARLY labeled food. A lot of people look at "Natural" and say "oh.. that must be good" without realizing that it does not mean what they think it means. There are already too many labels. We need to pick some standards and set about them and I think all generic claims by individual manufacturers should have to be submitted for approval and certified before they can be used.
First, since the PA legislature has proven itself to be a wholly ineffective system run by ignorant dolts, they could eliminate their automatic pay raises, pet funds, and "perks". Why the fuck they should be able to make the taxpayers pay for half of their goddamn BMW (or an entire Taurus or Impala) when they're making 60K+ per year and can't even pass a fucking budget?.
Then, they could slash the shit out of the pay of the administration that's trying to turn the state schools here into diploma mills for morons with revolving part-time teachers and vastly lowered standards.
After they do that, they could quit paying the many levels of beauracracy in PennDOT that are causing basic reconstruction and maintenance tasks to take three, four, five years at a time over a single 1/2 mile stretch of road.
Oh yea... government spends it's money reeeaaallll well. If I blew my money like these idiots do, I'd be living in a fucking cardboard box down by the river. Frankly, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd cheat them on my taxes based on the fact that all they ever seem to do with the money is waste it anyway.
Nice troll, idiot. And, of course, stupid moderators didn't RTFA to realize that the entire block of text right in the center of your post is lifted straight from the article.
I ask, are you too stupid to be creative, or are you really just so fucking pathetic that this is the best troll you can come up with? At least be amusing... christ you trolls suck these days.
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Yea? Well, I'm suffering from a case of the Mondays...
Yea, and we know there's never any backlash or circular problem as a result. After all, it's not like the muslims started, no the christians started! No, you started it! Nuh uh, you started it!
Yea, of course not, this violence hasn't been going back and forth between Western and Middle Eastern cultures for the last millenium, no. Each time violence erupted, it sure settled things.
There are two reasons you're not a social scientist: 1) You have no clue how psychology, social anthropology, etc. contribute to the collective behavior of a society and 2) you're an idiot who's confusing settlement between two individuals and entire societies. Go ahead - argue that you can just nuke entire societies out of existence. I dare you.
Nothing that spell check would pick up. A "currier" is a person who prepares leather hides e.g. - by tanning them. Therefore, an International Currier would be a perfectly valid phrase referring to one who prepares leather hides around the world.
The politicians are closely linked to commercial interests.
Commercial interests have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
Both the politicians and the agencies are closely linked to the private sector. The agencies, as you stated, have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
None of these three can exist in their current incarnation without the crucial link of the politician. Would you like a pencil to connect the dots? This is not just some paranoid goon bullshit either, it's the most likely series of connections in the event that anyone really is "out to get us". Whether anyone is actually out to get us, or this is simply massive incompetence, pork-barrel spending, or a vulgar display of power by some sniveling twit with a shriveled cock sitting in Congress somewhere is up for debate.
The Office of Naval Intel?
Give me a break...
Or blown up on the land mines, assuming they got past the ditch. Possibly sliced to bits by the razor wire.
Fear not, there were lots of horrible ways to die rather than being shot from a tower or on the patrol road.
You should not be surprised - this is behavior that should be expected from any government no matter what benevolent face it puts on.
The only things that keep power hungry government officials in check is fear of retribution from the populace. When the country was small and the military little more than a couple boy scouts with prettier boots (a situation that persisted well into the 20th century to some degree), there was the potential for armed revolts. Even pockets could cause huge problems.
When the official forces were bulked up as a result of the world wars, there was still the ever hanging axe of the ballot box to keep politicians under control. When the media gained the power of radio and TV, any little foible could be broadcast within hours to a population that might actually care.
Now, armed revolt isn't a threat, the media is broadcasting sensationalist bullshit for ratings meaning people don't take it that seriously, and the typical voter turnout is so horribly anemic that I have a hard time believing people even realize that they have a vote sometimes.
Politicians are free to pursue whatever agenda they want now. Nobody is going to stop them. With a few exceptions like TIA, nobody speaks up against ridiculous, authoritarian programs coming out of D.C. anymore. When they do, you just see this - they get broken up and hidden in various budgets and departments in such a way that they look like harmless little pocket programs, but the same folks are still pulling the strings at the top.
I've got to wonder sometimes how much farther this can go. The technology will just keep evolving in favor of loss of privacy and big brother-esque data collection and monitoring. When will people step up to draw the line and, depending on how long it takes, what will it take to actually keep the government from crossing it?
I think I remember that you're the cop that's been responding, and I'm trying to base this from your perspective and mine as a regular citizen who values a certain level of privacy.
The only issue I'm concerned about here is the guy refusing to produce id. If he was being violent or if he was actually resisting arrest, he needs to be charged with those crimes and identified. However, as I stated elsewhere - I will not provide my identification to anyone until they have first identified themself and given a perfectly valid reason for needing to know who I am. Emphasis because that's very important to me. If a cop just walks up to me and says "we're investigating such and such - show me your id", a few things come to mind (note that this is not based on the case, this is purely hypothetical):
- Do you think I'm involved? If so, why? (e.g. - I fit such and such description)
- Why didn't you even bother to ask me if I know anything about it?
- How is my name, address, etc. relevant to determining what happened?
If these questions are answered in a satisfactory manner, I'll be happy to cooperate. However, if any one of those questions does not result in a good reason for knowing who I am, and I'm not even under the obligation to be CARRYING identification, much less showing it to anyone, you can rest assured I will not be providing it. I can tell you whatever I know about what happened without you knowing who I am.In this case, if the guy can be charged with something, go for it. THEN identify him. If he won't id himself willingly and you need to arrest him, you don't need to actually know who he is at that very moment to do so, do you?
It's not a matter of whether this guy deserves to be arrested or not, it's whether people should be obligated to identify themselves to any public official or authority figure without a very good reason for doing so being given first. I know the cop stated what was being investigated before stumbling over his words (the "legitimacy" of some legal technicalities baffles me to no end, so this one-time stumble doesn't really concern me), but that doesn't really justify identifying the plaintiff at that point in time. He should have dug deeper to find out what was going on. If he needed to identify him after that because there was a reasonable suspicion that something illegal had happened, then I have no qualms and I doubt anyone else (excepting pscyho tinfoil peolpe) would either. The "warrant" argument doesn't really hold water either though. Are people automatically suspicious enough to justify a warrant search? I certianly don't think so. If I've been cruising along at 15 over, I broke the law already - go ahead and search for warrants on me. If I'm standing by a parked car smoking and someone has simply phoned in a relatively vague complaint, you damn well better not just automatically assume that's enough to do a warrant search on me. If the complaint is valid and I broke the law, go for it. Until then, too bad - I'll tell you who I am only if I feel like it.
You can't give any one group of people too much information. The benefit to this type of technology, organized databases, cameras, etc. might indeed be a safer public experience, but it comes with a tradeoff. It creates a centralized system that's ripe for abuse not only by the people controlling the information (look at the conglomeration of tax info in MA and the IRS wanting to use it track down "evaders" - the tax system is so ludicrously complicated that I can't even begin to imagine how many people would be labeled as crooks who thought they had done exactly what they needed to), but also anyone who can access it by illegal means. Information is not safe in one place. You can have watchdogs and standards out the wazoo, but the government is notoriously bad when it comes to enforcing such things.
The issue is the increased POTENTIAL for abuse. Just because it might not be abused right away (although, given the actions of the current and last administrations, I find it hard to believe it wouldn't be), doesn't mean we should set something up for some screwball to get ahold of down the road.
Besides, my odds of being murdered in the places that they'd install such critters are awfully damn low right now. Do you think they're going to go down to Liberty City and install this shit? Hell no. They'll put it in high class snobhoods to make the taxpaying populace think it's safer. Safer from what, I don't know.
I call troll. The issue of it being a "stupid case" to some people centers around the report and the fact that the defendant was acting in "an aggressive manner". However, he was hauled in for not producing and ID which is not a pubnishable offense. Since he wasn't driving the car, not ony is not prosecutable, he was under NO obligation to even be CARRYING an ID.
If some cop walked up to me and said "I have a vague report of XYZ occurring" and couldn't give me any better reason for producing ID, I'd tell him to go pound sand too if he persisted after a polite refusal. Know why? Because a responsible officer wouldn't press the issue without producing a good reason for me to identify myself to him. Gonna charge me for something, I'll tell you who I am. I've never given my driver's license and registration to a cop that pulled me over until they told me why. I tell them I have it and I'll show it to them when they tell me why they pulled me over. This caused a problem one time when he persisted, but then relented, told me why he pulled me over, and I handed over the license without another word. Two other times they informed me why I was pulled over and that was that.
They're not a threat to the majority of the people who drive, they're a threat to the majority of people who are within striking distance of the drunk driver's path. Big difference. Although I think the fingerprinting is a bad idea and the shoe-checking is silly, there's a huge difference. They're not checking the shoes of EVERY citizen and they're not fingerprinting EVERY citizen (yet). The majority of people on an airplane would be in danger of a bomb. The majority of drivers in the state of New Mexico are not being endangered by a drunk driver at any particular time. Therefore, the people who get on a plane all get checked because the majority IS in danger. However, the majority of drivers at any given time are NOT in danger of being hit by a drunk driver. In fact, I've never been hit by a drunk driver in 6 years and out of all the people I know, only one of them has. Yet, to protect from the statistically few tragedies that occur, they're proposing that everybody be penalized. Everybody's penalized getting on a plane because 100% of the flyers are endangered by a person with a bomb. Unless the drunk driver happens to encounter 100% of the drivers in his state during his drive, the situation is not even remotely comparable. In fact, if the number of drunk drivers really are as high as you suggest, there's even less grounds for this because it would seem that the majority of individuals who are DUI don't wind up hitting anything or anyone.
Pennsylvania hick country. HUGE drunk driving problem where I used to live: Perry County, PA.
I'd like to see statstics on those claims of drunk driving frequency. Somehow, I have a VERY hard time believing that the number of licensed drivers is even REMOTELY close to the number of drivers who have driven drunk at least once over the same time period measured (licensed or otherwise).
You can't impose restrictions on a majority because of a minority problem. If the problem is really out of hand, the solution is to ensure that it can't be perpetuated by chronic offenders, not to impose restrictions, inconvenience, and cost on everybody. Alcoholism is probably even more widespread than drunk driving and it has a huge impact on society as a whole - including sober folks - as well. Does that mean everyone should be required to attend monthly AA meetings in the name of prevention? Of course not, that's silly. It's a huge waste of resources brought on by a few people who can't manage their own lives for whatever reason.
The problem that I see with drunk driving isn't prevention, it's that there's little reason not to risk it. I know people that have never gotten caught driving drunk and did it on countless occasions. The instant they saw a relative get slapped with one of the greatly increased fines and saw her lisence suspended, they wised up and started calling me or friends/relatives after a trip to the bar. One time? Get a huge ass fine based on your income (prorated based on estimated costs for children) to cut into spending cash. Suspend the license for a year. After that? Jail the sucker for the next five years and revoke the license permanently. Drunk driving is far too dangerous to innocent people to go about playing stupid games with people who don't get the picture. If they get caught again, up the jail time each time. Remove the people from the stream that are a chronic problem and make a concerted, HONEST effort to educate people. Don't penalize me. I felt perfectly fine after 3 beers and dinner and I still handed my keys to my girlfriend "just in case". No way I'd stand for being treated like that just becsaue of a few incredibly ignorant morons.
Hitting something does not accelerate you.
I'm pretending for the sake of argument that this is possible. Some people seem to have the weird notion that if you are struck you can somehow be accelerated away from the point of impact. It sounds like somebody once argued wtih the grandparent poster that seatbelts should be required because this can happen.
There are two possibilities here. 1) you have a head on collision and are ejected through the windshield (note to the "thrown away" people: even though you will fly past the accident and land on the other side of the car in this example, you are actually initially moving TOWARD the point of impact, not away from it - you just happen to be passing it) and up and over the other vehicle. In this case, you'd have to clear the other vehicle horizontally AND vertically which seriously hurts the amount of force you could deliver to any object beyond the far side of the other vehicle since a 150 lb. sack of meat is not particularly aerodynamic.
Of couse, there's always option 2 where you are magically ejected in a different direction than you were originally moving (let's say you've magically stopped moving forward and have now accepted a large amount of force from the right side that is moving you to the left). In this instance, I still don't see how a 150 lb. sack of meat could cause significant damage. Even if you initially left the vehicle moving at an outrageous speed of 60 mph (we'll pretend there was a 100% energy transfer from the side collision to the point at which you were moving at your highest speed), how far could you possibly fly? Initially, I'd think you'd have a great enough velocity to cause some very serious damage as a projectile, but flopping humans do not travel through the air very well and would lose energy quickly. You'd almost certainly be very little danger within a few seconds. At your highest speed you'd be traveling what, about 1.5 feet per second? I don't have statistics on the aerodynamic properties of a flying human body, but I'd think that would drop very, very rapidly. I just don't think that anybody could be hurt by a flying body from a car accident unless they were already within a few feet of the crash, and this is assuming that the moving body doesn't have to obey the laws of physics. Of course, when you take into consideration the various ways you can be hurt (e.g. - the person would land in such a way as to acutely strain a single part of your neck and break it), the odds seem to go up, but remember - we didn't even consider the enormous amount of area the person could potentially land in based on the radius they traveled which, unless there happen to be a lot of people crowding a single spot on the street, seems to put the odds of the person actually striking someone else pretty low.
And, again, I conclude that whoever argued that idea was an idiot.
That didn't make any sense. You can't punish people you don't catch unless you just punish everybody. Are you suggesting that it's a good idea to penalize everybody because a very small minority of stupid people can't comprehend ("drunk driving" eq 'bad')?
Obviously, basic issues (murder, theft, etc.) would be exempt from this sort of thing..
You underestimate what a powerdrunk government that doesn't want to give up that power can do. If you give them ANY loophole, they WILL find dirty, underhanded ways to exploit it. Look at the copyright situation. It's so assbackwards now from what it's supposed to be that the people that originally debated it would probably get sick to their stomachs if they saw how the issue has been butchered. Look at the way we tried to circumvent basic rights in this country by declaring people "enemy combatants" - an inoccuous term that just sprang into existance when convenient to take advantage of the "state of emergency" we're perpetually in. Doing things like that is like saying that the current laws don't work, so we need special ones to take their place. It doesn't matter WHY someone is criminal, if they're a criminal they're a criminal and we already have a setup to deal with them. Why do we need special exceptions for different types of criminals? They're just exploiting loopholes to garner additional power they're not supposed to have.
You can't trust the government to do the right thing - this country is based on that principle. Why do you think each of the three branches is supposed to keep the others under control? Why do you think the constitution is written in ways that suggest the framers expected the government to get out of hand? It's only natural that it will take every chance to grab more power. There should be NO exceptions. If the law isn't enforced or renewed, it dies - NO EXCEPTIONS.
Heh... somehow I doubt that even if you were ejected from the vehicle through the windshield or side window (even if it were down) at 65 mph, you're body would have enough force to actually cause significant damage to a bystander unless they were standing right next to the accident already (thereby putting them in greater danger of debris and the accident itself than your flopping missile of a body). I guess it's possible that you'd beat the odds and actually smack somebody, and I guess if you got hit hard enough to accelerate your mass to such a degree that it could cause major damage you COULD hurt someone.. but it's one of those "BUT WE HAVE TO TAKE EXTREME MEASURES BECAUSE I'M CONSIDERING UNREALISTICALLY EXTREME POSSIBILITIES!!!! lol!!"
Or, in conclusion, I think whoever used that argument against you is an idiot. I also wonder at the utility of requiring people to wear seatbelts since they're only endangering themselves (lamebrain arguments about being "ejected to safety" and "trapped" notwithstanding the fact that only idiots believe them). This makes a lot more sense because you're obviously putting other people in the way of a much greater danger by driving drunk, but the fact that the government feels it can walk up to me and say 'you have to pay for this becuase that dumbass was driving drunk' is something that more than just ruffles my feathers. Here's an idea: put the dumbass in rehab, take away the license PERMANENTLY, fine the living shit out of them the first time they do it, and lock them up for a good long stint in the state pen for increasing amounts of time for each repeat.
Any vehicle that comes into my household equipped with such a device will not stay that way for long (and will only be on long enough to pass inspection each year). I can imagine there will even be a pretty quick grey market set up around easy mods to eliminate them.
Yet another idea that looks real good on paper, gets some government figures some face time, and is just a really, really dumb idea that doesn't withstand even a cursory run through the logic chain.
What checks does Freenet have in place to preserve privacy, and yet prevent the distribution of illegal material?
That's kind of the point. Illegal != immoral != harmful. It's up to each individual user to determine whether what they're doing is "right" or "wrong". Is it wrong to wail against communism? The Chinese government thinks so. Is it wrong to spread child porn? The U.S. government thinks so. But, what does the USER think. It's THEIR responsibility to do the right thing rather than the government forcing them to do it. I must say, I don't participate in freenet because I'm not convinced that the benefits of using my computer to help spread democratic propaganda away from the prying eyes of the Chinese government outweights the negatives of some sick fuck using it to spread kiddy porn, but that's MY decision, not the governments.
When you rely on the government to hold people to certain standards, you're just asking for trouble. Look at the gay marriage thing. Does it hurt anybody? No. Still, there are people who say it's right and people who say it's wrong. The government wants to stick it's big nose in the mess now and that's just begging for trouble. They'll try to legislate morality which is just plain nuts. The government is hear to PROTECT and SERVE the public, not be a self-appointed moral watchdog. Freenet is an interesting experiment in putting the power of deciding one's own moral course back in the hands of individuals.
Unlike the screwball grandparent poster, I like Freenet in principle, I'm just not convinced that I like it in practice...
Nobody who knows anything about science makes a blanket statement like that with a straight face. In fact, if they did, and people always believed things were so clearly cut and dry, we'd all be sitting around in caves marveling at the power of the Gods to make the sun rise.
Too bad the "interest" you convey is totally divorced from "understanding" of even the basic tenets upon which science is built.
Maybe before you go about berating other posters about their potentially lacking science skills, you ought to take the time to make sure you're not making a TOTAL ass of yourself, at least.
That's the point - they didn't misrepresent anything. They basically said "we think Linux is illegally derived in part from UNIX IP that we think we own and you MAY be liable if you're using Linux. Oh, by the way, can we interest you in a purty license?" All the company has to do is say no and it's over (or, just ignore them). I highly doubt that the letter is written in such a way that could get SCO in hot water for tying the IP lawsuits to the licensing. They're lawyers. They're good at bullshit. They're paid to do bullshit. They're not going to put SCO in any near-term danger, if any danger at all, over a "licensing" scheme that was devised to generate hype, not revenue.
Fortunately for the world, what it is "to [you]" is not necessarily relevant to how it actually is =P
SCO's letters asked for money. They were basically nothing more than amusing invitations to send SCO some cash. There's no law preventing me from sending letters to people asking if they'll send me some money as long as I'm not threatening them, harassing them, etc. People may think I'm an idiot (and SCO is likely comprised of nothing but 100% all-natural idiots by now), but I won't be a criminal.
Insightful? That's the most hairbrained thing I've seen posted around this whole SCO debate so far, unless you were trying to be funny.
The RIAA got away with the "sue-a-kid" business model because the kid was, technically, breaking the law. Using Linux is not illegal. In fact, all the kid would have to do is show up in court and say "not guilty" and then watch Darl's brother proceed to hang himself before being laughed out of court.
Up to now, SCO has played their cards very carefully so as not to invoke the wrath of the courts (I'm sure they're trying the courts patience, but they're being very careful not to step over that fine line) so they can keep this charade up for as long as possible. Voluntarily bringing this to court would be nothing short of suicidal.
Here in my little neck of the woods, it's not really that hard to find labeled food, it's hard to find CLEARLY labeled food. A lot of people look at "Natural" and say "oh.. that must be good" without realizing that it does not mean what they think it means. There are already too many labels. We need to pick some standards and set about them and I think all generic claims by individual manufacturers should have to be submitted for approval and certified before they can be used.
First, since the PA legislature has proven itself to be a wholly ineffective system run by ignorant dolts, they could eliminate their automatic pay raises, pet funds, and "perks". Why the fuck they should be able to make the taxpayers pay for half of their goddamn BMW (or an entire Taurus or Impala) when they're making 60K+ per year and can't even pass a fucking budget?.
Then, they could slash the shit out of the pay of the administration that's trying to turn the state schools here into diploma mills for morons with revolving part-time teachers and vastly lowered standards.
After they do that, they could quit paying the many levels of beauracracy in PennDOT that are causing basic reconstruction and maintenance tasks to take three, four, five years at a time over a single 1/2 mile stretch of road.
Oh yea... government spends it's money reeeaaallll well. If I blew my money like these idiots do, I'd be living in a fucking cardboard box down by the river. Frankly, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd cheat them on my taxes based on the fact that all they ever seem to do with the money is waste it anyway.
Is it possible that one of the problems with the arcade industry is mismanagement of the arcades themselves?
My bosses have assured me on numerous occasions that mismanagement is never a possible problem.
Nice troll, idiot. And, of course, stupid moderators didn't RTFA to realize that the entire block of text right in the center of your post is lifted straight from the article.
I ask, are you too stupid to be creative, or are you really just so fucking pathetic that this is the best troll you can come up with? At least be amusing... christ you trolls suck these days.