Even up here in the land of the actually free, police are starting to wear cameras (http://globalnews.ca/news/1093386/canadian-police-forces-looking-to-arm-officers-with-cameras/)
In my opinion, a camera on a cop is nothing more than an accurate, verifiable eye witness. It won't see or hear anything the officer won't already see and hear. Much better than an officer's memory and notebook.
Using google glasses... good. It won't provide any more information than the officer already has access to, or that can't be mined off a conventional camera's video. It may just provide the info quicker, when the officer needs it.
Maybe it's because I'm a white guy with a job. Maybe it's because I'm Canadian. But as a rule, I trust cops. Sure you get the odd bad cop, or a good cop making a mistake or having a bad day, but that happens with all people. Giving the cops a tool that provides information that might help reduce mistakes, and provides evidence both for and against them, to me is a good thing.
It depends on the department. Different departments have different cultures, and there are a lot of good cops, or cops who are good when dealing with a particular person or issue. (Like responding to certain issues of a white guy with a job.) But there are also a lot of bad cops who will beat the crap out of you because they want to--I've heard specifically of problems in L.A. and Nevada, for example.
Google glass for cops is not about video recording. Even if it starts there, it's not about that. It's about facial recognition.
Every cop being able to know, looking at a person, who that person is, where they work, where they live, whether there are any warrants, what their facebook page says, what political party they are... almost anything big data can generate.
This is one of the single biggest threats to individual freedoms we have ever seen.
They probably have it all on one network so they can easily correlate the data. HVAC settings will influence purchases and a smart store is dynamically setting temperature to maximize sales volume, although within certain constraints.
A major war between modern powers could be more effectively "won" with biological weapons than nuclear ones. Come up with something that will decimate the primary crop of the enemy nation (or even specific variations on that crop which might be planted en masse by Monsanto) and you severely weaken the country.
that's prosecutorial misconduct and gets convictions overturned when the courts catch them.
That's one thing, BUT it's not persuasive enough.
The prosecutor should get serious jail time over such misconduct, dependant on the gravity of the case.
For example: prosecutorial misconduct on a murder trial should be treated as a crime of: Attempted unlawful lifetime imprisonment, with a possible lifetime prison term for the prosecutor.
I would suggest the sentence should be more dependent on the willfulness of the misconduct. Intentional misconduct should absolutely result in serious jail time.
Ultimately, however, this is something that the courts could not do alone--they would need support from Congress or state government, who could set up a system of special prosecutors to investigate.
Seems as though the police should actually want people to know about the speed traps. I mean, the ultimate goal for the police is to have everyone follow the law. If people know about an upcoming speed trap, then they'll slow down to the speed limit. If they don't know about the speed trap, then they'll continue to endanger those around them by driving too fast. </delightfully naive>
Of course, we all know that what the police really want is ticket revenue. The more law breakers there are, the more revenue they get, and hence they will try to stop people from warning others to obey the law. This system is rather broken.
You assume that the justice system is calibrated incorrectly. Ideally, the penalty for speeding is designed to disincentivize the behavior and is multiplied to make up for the discount from the low probability of getting caught. A 10% chance of a $200 ticket, for example, or a 5% chance of a $400 ticket. If you warn people where speed traps are, you change the chance of getting caught, which means the fine is no longer as effective a deterrent.
This was actually a big problem with red light cameras--they made more people get caught, which made the expected penalty MUCH higher than it should have been.
I don't see how this is different from warning people not to break other laws.
The difference is in this case you are warning people that they will get caught for breaking a law, and they will get caught in about a minute if they don't stop--as opposed to a more general "you shouldn't deal drugs because EVENTUALLY someone will catch you." Philosophically, it's like telling a drug dealer "hide your stash because a cop is coming."
The only difference is that this is a more widespread behavior, so people are generally more okay with it. It's still basically conspiracy (in this case, conspiracy to break the speed limit), and it carries jailtime if they want to pursue it. (The judge here may have bought the free speech argument--more likely, he didn't want to risk getting overturned on appeal. Either way, it doesn't mean every judge will.)
Netflix doesn't push anything down Comcast's network. I pull it. I eat all of Comcast's bandwidth. Whether I do it with Netflix or Youtube or Linux distro torrents is none of Comcast's business. I pay Comcast for carriage, like when I pay UPS to transport a package; it's none of UPS's business (or liability) what I put in the box. They charge me by weight and/or size and distance, not what I'm sending or who the recipient is.
The issue is that here, Comcast doesn't really charge you based on size and weight--i.e. bandwidth. The major fairly morally neutral question (1) is who should carry the cost of excess bandwidth, i.e. when bandwidth use exceeds projected use and therefore costs more in terms of peering, infrastructure costs, etc...; the major thing that needs regulation is (2) preventing Comcast or other providers from favoring one service over another in a way that is an abuse of their market power.
For the first question, there are a lot of ways to do it that are fair. The biggest issue there is making sure that bandwidth is available for programs which have a social benefit but don't produce revenue to support a lot of bandwidth costs, like Wikipedia. The first question also goes away to some extent if the U.S. moves to metered billing like the rest of the world, and doesn't also charge big content servers like Netflix. (Because then unexpected costs are built into the metered billing costs, and the customer pays for them.)
The second question is really almost more of an antitrust problem than an FCC problem. I would expect that the Department of Justice could bring charges under the Sherman Antitrust Act if network providers abused their monopolies to favor affiliated content.
"Due process of law" is all that seems to be required, and in practice that means that discovery has to proceed in a normal manner and the prosecution may bring as much or as little evidence against you as they may require to convict you, no more or less. They must produce this evidence, and how they got it; any evidence they don't bring to court, they don't have to explain.
They have an obligation to make evidence, including exculpatory evidence, available to the defense. Some of them don't--that's prosecutorial misconduct and gets convictions overturned when the courts catch them.
... sensitive information such as his date of birth, his wife's name, the date they got married, his educational history and even the geographical coordinates of his residence.
None of that is "sensitive" information. You can get all of that from public records, or from someone's Linkedin home page.
The geographical coordinates of his residence are almost certainly not. People at that level in National Security conceal the address of their residences from the public for good reason.
(1) For fifteen million dollars, I could find a lot of people willing to take that risk. (2) Even people who would not decide to take the risk normally would take the risk under certain circumstances. Including things as simple as "I need to tell the investors something to cover up the fact that I couldn't do X."
I'm not saying they HAVE taken the risk--or even that they would. I'm just saying that that's not a reliable question to guide you on whether someone did something except in exceptionally rare circumstances. (E.g. the primary way we know there's no 9/11 conspiracy is that if they were caught, everyone involved would be lined up against the wall and shot.)
Again, I disagree. Today, the internal structuring of the military is being tampered with to accommodate various special interest groups.
Actually, the MUCH more important thing going on right now is tampering with the military to make it effective, or trying to. Did ending DADT take some time and resources? Yes, because they used that time to make damn sure it wouldn't effect combat capabilities and that front-line troops would be ready for it. They were smart about it and learned exactly where they were most likely to have problems (33% of marines were the most concerned about it), and had good training and a strong message all the way down the chain of command. It worked, and more importantly, it worked as the military put it into effect, and NOT the way it would have gone down otherwise--because if it hadn't been done, a federal court would have ordered it and full service integration would have had to happen overnight. That came damn close to happening, and I'm sure a few soldiers had their lives saved by the fact that Defense was ready to move on it.
However, there are MUCH bigger problems at defense. Aquisitions is insane and parochial, and based on what Congress wants for their district pork rather than on what is actually needed to run a country. In order to actually get anything done, you need crash programs that SECDEF arranges personally and a way for the real needs of soldiers in the field to penetrate up the chain of command--which it usually doesn't, now. And the institutional bureaucratic problems on the Veteran's side are an almost intractable problem.
Those groups begin with women and gays, and continue with Muslims, atheists, and ends God knows where.
A recent article shows that the Pentagon is reconsidering uniform requirements to permit beards and turbans for Muslims. Now consider that beards have been outlawed by our military for decades, based on "discipline" considerations. No redneck, no Jew, no mountain man has been permitted to display a beard while in uniform. Suddenly - we are courting Muslims, so out of the goodness of our hearts, we are going to allow them to wear beards and turbans.
So what? If we are going to allow beards I'm sure the soldier with them will still have to be well-groomed (to the extent soldiers usually are, anyway--try smelling one after a week in the field for ranger training), and if we allow them only for religious reasons I'm sure they will be available for people of different religions where the religion mandates them, and if we allow them for people who will work in cultures where beards are status symbols it may even *help* the image of the United States in those countries. Let's not foreclose the possibility that it's okay just because it's never been done.
Fundamentally, when you really think about it, are these things really a problem that will prevent the military from doing it's job, or is it just that you're uncomfortable with them or with the way they've been done or presented?
Or maybe, just maybe, it's a scientific accomplishment that a technologically advanced nation would like to achieve. They don't have to land on the moon to remind the other nations in the Middle East that this probably isn't the best time to start another pogrom.
They don't have to, but it's a very clear message, from a sometimes-aggressive and presumed nuclear nation.
There are basically three reasons to do it. (1) It's fucking cool. (2) It's a message to their enemies that they are capable of building ICBMs and putting their nukes anywhere on the planet. (3) It will be useful in domestic political campaigns.
Reason (1) is the best one, but it is exceptionally rare for countries to fund things for reason (1). (2) and/or (3) are FAR more likely.
Yeah, the clock face being de facto is also a bit limited--there are plenty of places (probably mostly colleges) where clocktowers toll the hour or chime the quarter-hour marks. Really we can tell time with any sense we want--I'm sure there are braile watches, for example.
Get ready for the dirt to be spilled on Darrell Issa...
What dirt? He's an asshole. He's the guy who was all about having a panel of old white guys deciding on women's reproductive issues and not letting Sandra Fluke testify--in short, he is responsible for a good chunk of the whole "war on women" rhetoric that came out against the Republicans. No matter which party someone supports, it's a stupid move to support him.
I really don't think there's much the NSA could dish out on him that's worse than his record.
He didn't lose--presumably they both won, just different things. The result was a foregone conclusion, so Gates would not have agreed if he hadn't gotten something else out of it. He presumably accomplished his goal.
(just as it's reasonable for Georgians to assume Athens, Georgia instead of Athens, Greece -- but they all damn well know the Greece version exists!)
However, most Americans will assume you are talking about Georgia in the United States when someone mentions Georgia, and will not know there is a Georgia in Eastern Europe.
Federal government jobs require that you actually speak French (and English) well enough to serve someone in that language
That is the theory, not the actual practice. Canadian government jobs require that you pass tests that are substantially more difficult than you need in order to serve French speakers, because the French-speaking lobby is politically powerful. A good part of it is a waste of money and I know people who have been unable to advance in government, despite having no problem communicating with French-speakers, because they are unable to pass the test.
Slashdot Mirror
Even up here in the land of the actually free, police are starting to wear cameras (http://globalnews.ca/news/1093386/canadian-police-forces-looking-to-arm-officers-with-cameras/)
In my opinion, a camera on a cop is nothing more than an accurate, verifiable eye witness. It won't see or hear anything the officer won't already see and hear. Much better than an officer's memory and notebook.
Using google glasses... good. It won't provide any more information than the officer already has access to, or that can't be mined off a conventional camera's video. It may just provide the info quicker, when the officer needs it.
Maybe it's because I'm a white guy with a job. Maybe it's because I'm Canadian. But as a rule, I trust cops. Sure you get the odd bad cop, or a good cop making a mistake or having a bad day, but that happens with all people. Giving the cops a tool that provides information that might help reduce mistakes, and provides evidence both for and against them, to me is a good thing.
It depends on the department. Different departments have different cultures, and there are a lot of good cops, or cops who are good when dealing with a particular person or issue. (Like responding to certain issues of a white guy with a job.) But there are also a lot of bad cops who will beat the crap out of you because they want to--I've heard specifically of problems in L.A. and Nevada, for example.
Google glass for cops is not about video recording. Even if it starts there, it's not about that. It's about facial recognition.
Every cop being able to know, looking at a person, who that person is, where they work, where they live, whether there are any warrants, what their facebook page says, what political party they are... almost anything big data can generate.
This is one of the single biggest threats to individual freedoms we have ever seen.
They probably have it all on one network so they can easily correlate the data. HVAC settings will influence purchases and a smart store is dynamically setting temperature to maximize sales volume, although within certain constraints.
A major war between modern powers could be more effectively "won" with biological weapons than nuclear ones. Come up with something that will decimate the primary crop of the enemy nation (or even specific variations on that crop which might be planted en masse by Monsanto) and you severely weaken the country.
that's prosecutorial misconduct and gets convictions overturned when the courts catch them.
That's one thing, BUT it's not persuasive enough.
The prosecutor should get serious jail time over such misconduct, dependant on the gravity of the case.
For example: prosecutorial misconduct on a murder trial should be treated as a crime of:
Attempted unlawful lifetime imprisonment, with a possible lifetime prison term for the prosecutor.
I would suggest the sentence should be more dependent on the willfulness of the misconduct. Intentional misconduct should absolutely result in serious jail time.
Ultimately, however, this is something that the courts could not do alone--they would need support from Congress or state government, who could set up a system of special prosecutors to investigate.
Seems as though the police should actually want people to know about the speed traps. I mean, the ultimate goal for the police is to have everyone follow the law. If people know about an upcoming speed trap, then they'll slow down to the speed limit. If they don't know about the speed trap, then they'll continue to endanger those around them by driving too fast. </delightfully naive>
Of course, we all know that what the police really want is ticket revenue. The more law breakers there are, the more revenue they get, and hence they will try to stop people from warning others to obey the law. This system is rather broken.
You assume that the justice system is calibrated incorrectly. Ideally, the penalty for speeding is designed to disincentivize the behavior and is multiplied to make up for the discount from the low probability of getting caught. A 10% chance of a $200 ticket, for example, or a 5% chance of a $400 ticket. If you warn people where speed traps are, you change the chance of getting caught, which means the fine is no longer as effective a deterrent.
This was actually a big problem with red light cameras--they made more people get caught, which made the expected penalty MUCH higher than it should have been.
I don't see how this is different from warning people not to break other laws.
The difference is in this case you are warning people that they will get caught for breaking a law, and they will get caught in about a minute if they don't stop--as opposed to a more general "you shouldn't deal drugs because EVENTUALLY someone will catch you." Philosophically, it's like telling a drug dealer "hide your stash because a cop is coming."
The only difference is that this is a more widespread behavior, so people are generally more okay with it. It's still basically conspiracy (in this case, conspiracy to break the speed limit), and it carries jailtime if they want to pursue it. (The judge here may have bought the free speech argument--more likely, he didn't want to risk getting overturned on appeal. Either way, it doesn't mean every judge will.)
Netflix doesn't push anything down Comcast's network. I pull it. I eat all of Comcast's bandwidth. Whether I do it with Netflix or Youtube or Linux distro torrents is none of Comcast's business. I pay Comcast for carriage, like when I pay UPS to transport a package; it's none of UPS's business (or liability) what I put in the box. They charge me by weight and/or size and distance, not what I'm sending or who the recipient is.
The issue is that here, Comcast doesn't really charge you based on size and weight--i.e. bandwidth. The major fairly morally neutral question (1) is who should carry the cost of excess bandwidth, i.e. when bandwidth use exceeds projected use and therefore costs more in terms of peering, infrastructure costs, etc...; the major thing that needs regulation is (2) preventing Comcast or other providers from favoring one service over another in a way that is an abuse of their market power.
For the first question, there are a lot of ways to do it that are fair. The biggest issue there is making sure that bandwidth is available for programs which have a social benefit but don't produce revenue to support a lot of bandwidth costs, like Wikipedia. The first question also goes away to some extent if the U.S. moves to metered billing like the rest of the world, and doesn't also charge big content servers like Netflix. (Because then unexpected costs are built into the metered billing costs, and the customer pays for them.)
The second question is really almost more of an antitrust problem than an FCC problem. I would expect that the Department of Justice could bring charges under the Sherman Antitrust Act if network providers abused their monopolies to favor affiliated content.
"Due process of law" is all that seems to be required, and in practice that means that discovery has to proceed in a normal manner and the prosecution may bring as much or as little evidence against you as they may require to convict you, no more or less. They must produce this evidence, and how they got it; any evidence they don't bring to court, they don't have to explain.
They have an obligation to make evidence, including exculpatory evidence, available to the defense. Some of them don't--that's prosecutorial misconduct and gets convictions overturned when the courts catch them.
None of that is "sensitive" information. You can get all of that from public records, or from someone's Linkedin home page.
The geographical coordinates of his residence are almost certainly not. People at that level in National Security conceal the address of their residences from the public for good reason.
(1) For fifteen million dollars, I could find a lot of people willing to take that risk. (2) Even people who would not decide to take the risk normally would take the risk under certain circumstances. Including things as simple as "I need to tell the investors something to cover up the fact that I couldn't do X."
I'm not saying they HAVE taken the risk--or even that they would. I'm just saying that that's not a reliable question to guide you on whether someone did something except in exceptionally rare circumstances. (E.g. the primary way we know there's no 9/11 conspiracy is that if they were caught, everyone involved would be lined up against the wall and shot.)
Audi and Volkswagen had the best commercials so far.
CPM = Cost Per Thousand?
Good to know these marketeer types can spell.
Maybe they're spelling in latin.
the one you could buy a soldering iron at. now, its like you described. just another consumer electronics store trying to be Best Buy
I bought a soldering iron at one a few months ago. Used it to fix a truck's instrument panel.
It was kind of a mess, but they still sold what I needed.
Again, I disagree. Today, the internal structuring of the military is being tampered with to accommodate various special interest groups.
Actually, the MUCH more important thing going on right now is tampering with the military to make it effective, or trying to. Did ending DADT take some time and resources? Yes, because they used that time to make damn sure it wouldn't effect combat capabilities and that front-line troops would be ready for it. They were smart about it and learned exactly where they were most likely to have problems (33% of marines were the most concerned about it), and had good training and a strong message all the way down the chain of command. It worked, and more importantly, it worked as the military put it into effect, and NOT the way it would have gone down otherwise--because if it hadn't been done, a federal court would have ordered it and full service integration would have had to happen overnight. That came damn close to happening, and I'm sure a few soldiers had their lives saved by the fact that Defense was ready to move on it.
However, there are MUCH bigger problems at defense. Aquisitions is insane and parochial, and based on what Congress wants for their district pork rather than on what is actually needed to run a country. In order to actually get anything done, you need crash programs that SECDEF arranges personally and a way for the real needs of soldiers in the field to penetrate up the chain of command--which it usually doesn't, now. And the institutional bureaucratic problems on the Veteran's side are an almost intractable problem.
Those groups begin with women and gays, and continue with Muslims, atheists, and ends God knows where.
A recent article shows that the Pentagon is reconsidering uniform requirements to permit beards and turbans for Muslims. Now consider that beards have been outlawed by our military for decades, based on "discipline" considerations. No redneck, no Jew, no mountain man has been permitted to display a beard while in uniform. Suddenly - we are courting Muslims, so out of the goodness of our hearts, we are going to allow them to wear beards and turbans.
So what? If we are going to allow beards I'm sure the soldier with them will still have to be well-groomed (to the extent soldiers usually are, anyway--try smelling one after a week in the field for ranger training), and if we allow them only for religious reasons I'm sure they will be available for people of different religions where the religion mandates them, and if we allow them for people who will work in cultures where beards are status symbols it may even *help* the image of the United States in those countries. Let's not foreclose the possibility that it's okay just because it's never been done.
Fundamentally, when you really think about it, are these things really a problem that will prevent the military from doing it's job, or is it just that you're uncomfortable with them or with the way they've been done or presented?
Or maybe, just maybe, it's a scientific accomplishment that a technologically advanced nation would like to achieve. They don't have to land on the moon to remind the other nations in the Middle East that this probably isn't the best time to start another pogrom.
They don't have to, but it's a very clear message, from a sometimes-aggressive and presumed nuclear nation.
There are basically three reasons to do it. (1) It's fucking cool. (2) It's a message to their enemies that they are capable of building ICBMs and putting their nukes anywhere on the planet. (3) It will be useful in domestic political campaigns.
Reason (1) is the best one, but it is exceptionally rare for countries to fund things for reason (1). (2) and/or (3) are FAR more likely.
Yeah, the clock face being de facto is also a bit limited--there are plenty of places (probably mostly colleges) where clocktowers toll the hour or chime the quarter-hour marks. Really we can tell time with any sense we want--I'm sure there are braile watches, for example.
What about the H&K MP3? that one really jams.
We will tell Lord Helmet when he is done with his coffee.
Eisenhower was before Kennedy.
But Balder.
Get ready for the dirt to be spilled on Darrell Issa...
What dirt? He's an asshole. He's the guy who was all about having a panel of old white guys deciding on women's reproductive issues and not letting Sandra Fluke testify--in short, he is responsible for a good chunk of the whole "war on women" rhetoric that came out against the Republicans. No matter which party someone supports, it's a stupid move to support him.
I really don't think there's much the NSA could dish out on him that's worse than his record.
He didn't lose--presumably they both won, just different things. The result was a foregone conclusion, so Gates would not have agreed if he hadn't gotten something else out of it. He presumably accomplished his goal.
(just as it's reasonable for Georgians to assume Athens, Georgia instead of Athens, Greece -- but they all damn well know the Greece version exists!)
However, most Americans will assume you are talking about Georgia in the United States when someone mentions Georgia, and will not know there is a Georgia in Eastern Europe.
Federal government jobs require that you actually speak French (and English) well enough to serve someone in that language
That is the theory, not the actual practice. Canadian government jobs require that you pass tests that are substantially more difficult than you need in order to serve French speakers, because the French-speaking lobby is politically powerful. A good part of it is a waste of money and I know people who have been unable to advance in government, despite having no problem communicating with French-speakers, because they are unable to pass the test.
Yes--that's going to be the same series of incidents.
Source for that? I'd love to read more about this. I didn't find anything through google-fu.
Hospital staff at the time. I doubt it made any of the papers, but don't know.