He isn't claiming that the critical comments on yahoo aren't protected speech under the first amendment; he's claiming that yahoo failed to fulfill their promise to prevent abusive postings, which doesn't have anything to do with the first amendment.
" The article said the program took in to account idle times and took no screenshots during periods of inactivity."
True, but it also doesn't say *how often* the boss was using his computer. If he spent six hours at his computer every day that was 70% solitaire/20% stock checking, then it looks pretty bad. On the other hand, if every day he spent 7 minutes playing solitaire, 2 minutes checking his stocks, and 1 minute switching between the two, then it would be pretty trivial.
Social engineering has been around for a long, long time. The only difference is that until recently everyone just called it 'conning'. I don't know if geek hackers prefer to think of themselves as 'social engineers' because it's easier on their conscience than thinking of themselves as con men, or if it's just a result of the natural geek affinity for overly technical jargon. Either way, it's a bit silly.
"We read book after book after book of "great" literature which more or less meant old, and hard to read. Anything new was crap, anything kids might enjoy was crap."
You're exactly right about this. Why do we make kids read things like 'Hard Time' or 'Emma'? Does a knowledge of 19th century literature really fall into the "thing you should know to be a good citizen and productive member of society" category that's supposed to be what public education is about? Yes, people need to learn how to read and analyze books, but why do we go out of our way to make it boring for them? Let's be honest, knowing about the literary themes of Dickens has almost zero value in daily life, and only a very tiny minority of people ever actually read that sort of 'classic' literature for entertainment. The important thing is that kids learn how to analyze what they read, not what they read in and of itself. You can learn to analyze literature just as effectively with things that kids are likely to enjoy reading, so why make them suffer needlessly through Jane Austin? It only serves to make them less attentive to the lessons that they're supposed to be learning, as well as giving some kids the idea that reading is inherently boring.
I love the way some people don't seem to realize that it's possible to understand a movie but still not like it.
"What??? You didn't like it??? Well then, you must be some ignorant moron who only enjoys mindless action films and reality TV!!"
Yes, THX-1138 had a lot of meaning, symbolism, and character development, but that doesn't necessarily make it entertaining. It's possible for a movie to be deeply intellectual but still be boring, even to the people who understand it.
"1) A control surface actuator had run against a stop limiting its movement, and 2) Wind shear caused the 90-degree roll shortly after rocket ignition. Rutan also said with the problems now identified, the next time SpaceShipOne flies, it will be to win the prize."
So I guess it's:
1. Fix control surface actuator
2. Fix wind shear problem
3. Profit!
"If you can estimate the odds better than the bookie, then you're on a winning ticket. "
Just a quick note...bookies don't work like that. It's the people placing bets that determine the odds on sporting events. The bookie will constantly recalculate who has bet on what side, and what odds they had when they bet. They will them change the 'odds' continuously, so that they make money no matter who wins. Its the same sort of system that they use at horse racing tracks, except that they lock people in at fixed odds when their bet is placed.
In movies you often see bookies portrayed as experts at sports handicapping, but it isn't really necessary for a bookie to know anything about the teams who are playing or who is likely to win.
It's true that stores generally only offer extended warranties when they know that they'll make money off of them, so over the course of one's life you will generally save money if you never buy an extended warranty and simply replace anything that breaks - statistically, the amount of money that you spend replacing things should be less than the amount you would have spent on buying an extended warranty for everything.
But that doesn't mean you should never buy a warranty - it just means that you should only buy a warranty if you will be unable to easily replace the item. If the item is something that's critical to the operation of your business and you don't know if you will have the cash immediately on hand to replace it if it breaks, or if it's an extravagantly expensive luxury item that you will probably be unable to purchase again for a long time, then getting a warranty makes sense.
"Unfortunately i didnt watch the launch(so correct me if im wrong) but one thing that I quite dont undestand is how he has managed to reach the space with so little fuel in such a 'fragile' structure (considering that the pictures showed a shuttle that didnt have those ceramics plates for reentering the atmosphere).
Everytime NASA put the something in orbit, they burn that boatload of fuel, and this guy just got there in a what looks more like a giant Kite! And with what I believe being a much lower budget."
He didn't need heat shielding because he didn't achieve orbital velocity - which is around mach 25. Simply going into space and coming back doesn't create a problem with reentry.
You also have to keep in mind that impressive as space ship one is, it's a toy compared to an actual commercial launch vehicle. To get into low earth orbit you have to get up to about 300 miles altitude and attain a velocity of around mach 25, while Space Ship One only went up about 62.5 miles with a velocity of mach 3. Also, SSO doesn't carry any substantial payload; a commercial launch vehicle like the Delta 4 can launch 15 tons into orbit.
People who buy GIFT cards rarely buy them for themselves. If I receive a gift card from someone, I didn't buy it. Therefore, I didn't consent to any restrictions. Where is my protection?
Uh...hello? It was bought by someone else and given to you as a gift. You don't have any rights with regards to what other people give you as presents. You might not like that your gift card has an expiration date, just like you might not like the color of a shirt that's given to you, but in both cases it's too freakin' bad. You don't deserve any legal protection against people giving you stuff that you don't like.
Companies are able to attach terms to contracts all the time, and there's nothing illegal about it. A contract of adhesion is when the only utility company in town tells you that if you want to buy electricity from them, then you are also required to sign up for some other service that you don't really want or need. It's intended to ensure that one person can't use their position of power to unfairly force someone else into accepting a contract that they wouldn't otherwise agree to. I hardly think that a customer buying a gift certificate is being 'bullied' by a store if they agree to an expiration date. If they don't like it, they're free to not buy the gift certificate without suffering any loss.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what this will change. I can still hook up a VCR (or VCD/DVD burner, hard drive, or whatever) to my television and record whatever comes on my screen, and this law wouldn't prevent that. This legislation only seems to block the recording of an exact copy of the original, decrypted digital signal. A TiVo-like device would still be legal, so long as it recorded its own 'interpretation' of the broadcast in a format like divx or mpeg, rather than simply copying the HDTV data byte for byte as it goes into the TV.
In the early 1980s, the U.S. had almost 100% of the commercial launch industry. By the mid 1990s, it was down to 50%. Now it's barely 25%.
The main reason for this is that NASA has been absolutely killing the commercial space industry in the U.S. ever since the mid 1980s buy launching payloads on the shuttle for ridiculously low prices. It costs around $400 million to launch the shuttle, but NASA heavily subsidized the cost to the point where they only charge around $80 million. Lockheed and Boeing both use to produce unmanned launch vehicles that could launch an equivalent payload for 'only' around $170 million, but no one wants to use them when NASA is willing to charge artificially low prices on the shuttle.
Russia never had anything like the shuttle, so they've continued to develop newer, cheaper launch technology for the past 25 years while the U.S. companies spun their wheels, unable to justify spending money on research and development when they knew that they probably wouldn't have any customers for whatever new rockets they designed. Now Russia is literally decades ahead of us in terms of economical launch technology. Did you know that the Russians can launch a manned space mission for only $20 million? NASA can only dream about that kind of launch economy.
Hopefully U.S. companies will be able to get back in the game now that the shuttle is on the way out, but they're starting two decades and 75% of the market share behind.
Think again.
There are all sorts of arbitrary restrictions and rules that colleges are allowed to impose on students. You have a legal right to drink and own a handgun if you're over 21, but many colleges have blanket rules against possessing alcohol or firearms while on campus or in dorm rooms. Similarly, while there's no law preventing you from operating a WAN on an unlicensed portion of the spectrum, colleges are still able to make a 'no active WAN cards in the dorm' rule.
That's why virtually every college makes you sign the "I understand the college's rules and agree to abide by them" document when you enroll.
I'm just as against big companies screwing people as anyone else, but I don't really see the point of laws like this. If a company wants to say that gift cards expire after a year (or a month, or 10 years), what's the problem? So long as the customer knows about it when they purchase the gift card, it's just a mutually voluntary transaction between two consenting parties. I could understand a law requiring companies to explicitly warn customers about expiration dates when they buy the card, but it seems silly to say that a company shouldn't be able to impose restrictions on a gift card even if the customer agrees to it.
Also, keep in mind that a certain percentage of gift cards are sure to be lost or never used for some other reason. If they never expire, the company is basically accumulating an ever-growing debt that will probably never be called, but in theory could be at any time.
Break into the company's computers, steal some data. Break into the victim's computer, plant the data in some out-of-the-way subdirectory where he's unlikely to look. Start extorting the company, then at some point offer up the identity of your victim as your own. It seems like this would be pretty easy, especially when you consider how easy it is to take a computer over with trojans and worms now days. If you set the trojan to automatically erase most of itself after you planted the files, I doubt anyone would listen when the victim started claiming that he didn't know how the files got there.
This is an example of the sort of societal problems that come from widespread security vulnerabilities in computers. Windows is so easy to take over now that we can't really be sure of the origin of ANYTHING that we find on someone's comp. It's getting to the point where when authorities find something illegal (like say child porn) on a computer and the owner claims that he didn't put it there, there's really no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he isn't telling the truth. How hard would it be to write a worm/trojan that causes a computer to automatically download some illegal material, send an email 'tip' to the authorities via some anonymous remailer, and then erase most of the trojan? Can we really ever be sure 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that anyone is responsible for what's on their computers any more? What's to stop a criminal from installing a trojan on his own computer and then claiming (quite reasonably) that someone took over his computer and put the material there?
I really don't want this to turn into a anti-microsoft rant, but Windows vulnerabilities have basically reduced computers to the status of a big unlocked plastic bin that's sitting by the curb in front of everyone's house. If you find something illegal in it then yes, the guy who owns the bin looks pretty suspicious, but who's to say the neighbor didn't put it there? Or some random person who noticed the bin while driving by and decided to stop and place something inside? These security flaws have simultaneously taken away people's accountability for what's on their computers, and made it really easy to frame innocent people for major crimes.
Would it be cheaper than NASA developing the same things in-house?Virtually every development project in the history of NASA points to 'no'. The most recent example, of course, would be the X-33. It was supposed to replace the shuttle, and NASA spent $900 million developing it...and then just decided to canceled the project.
Considering the roughly $900 million that NASA spent on the X-33 shuttle replacement before simply canceling the project, or the $400 million that they spend on each shuttle launch, I certainly think they should be able to spare a hundred million or two as a prize for someone can develop a private, x-prize style orbital vehicle.
"But I don't remember seeing that being anonymous is an absolute right. It is implied, to a degree, with speech in some but not all ways. Commercial speech is different than political speech, for instance. It is implied in that justice should be blind, and treat you the same as everyone else. But not a blanket right to be anonymous in all things.
If something SHOULD be a Right, but its not in the Constitution, its not a Right. Petition, get sponsors, submit an Amendment, get it ratified by 2/3rds of the states, and its a Right. It's difficult on purpose, for good reason: To keep it from being used frivilously or in the heat of the moment."
I can think of at least two relevant quotes here. The most obvious would be: "'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." - The Bill of Rights
There's also this one, which is a little more complicated but equally relevant: "I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights."-Alexander Hamilton
What the second quote is essentially saying is that it's risky to enumerate certain specific rights in the Bill of Rights because at some point people might start to think that they only have a right if it's specifically listed, which wasn't what the founding fathers intended.
"No, that is just not correct. The court held that police, based on reasonable suspicion that a person is involved in criminal activity can compel him to identify themself.
This ruling doesn't change the fact that police just can't ask to for your name for no reason at all. At least get the facts right in your own damn summary before going off on "your rights".
'Reasonable suspicion' is an absolute joke. It means virtually nothing. A cop can say you were 'staggering' as you walked down the street and he suspected that you were intoxicated - bam, reasonable suspicion, and you had better be ready to identify yourself.
"NASA has accomplished amazing things in the present, too. I am amazed by the stuff coming back from Cassini and the rovers."
Contrary to popular belief, the Cassini missions are run by JPL, which is a federally funded research facility that has close ties to NASA, but isn't actually a part of NASA.
"Criminally poor? Ok, YOU design a cheaper space vehicle. How dare you call it "criminally poor"? Are you aware of how difficult of a task developing a reusable man-capable orbital launch vehicle is? Name someone else who has done it better and cheaper. How would YOU have predicted the specific problems that would occur in a spacecraft with millions of parts reentering the atmosphere?"
I don't need to develop better launch vehicles - many aerospace corporations have already done that. There were better launch vehicles around when they built the shuttle. The availability of better launch vehicles isn't the problem; the problem is getting NASA to swallow their pride and actually use the better launch vehicles. And in answer to your other questions, there were many engineers who pointed out the egregious flaws in the shuttle all through its development process. NASA just didn't listen to them. You seem to be under the impression that no one could have anticipated the problems, that NASA has run into with the shuttle, but virtually all of them were foreseeable. Check out http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03l.html for an extensive list of the shuttle flaws that NASA knew about when they approved the construction.
"NASA has subsidized the shuttle because they'll lose funding if they don't. Your complaint isn't with NASA - it's with the stupid American public who wants to see a fully crewed shuttle with every mission."
Actually NASA has to subsidize the shuttle because they can't afford to let the vehicle that they spend billions developing and years hyping sit around on the launch pad without being used. While it hurts NASA to spend such a huge amount on shuttle subsidies, it would hurt them even more to admit that the shuttle is such a dismal failure.
"The "bubbling morons at NASA" who sent people to the moon on the back of one of these? [neatherd.org]
With all of the money that private space launch groups have wasted with so little to show for it despite standing on the shoulders of giants, it amazes me that people can continually insult the space agencies that have overcome such incredible problems to achieve amazing feats."
Yes, NASA accomplished great things back in the 1960s, but that doesn't excuse them from the horrific behavior that they've demonstrated since then. Most Americans would be horrified if they knew how much money NASA really wastes, and how much harm it does to the commercial space industry. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-NASA because I'm against space exploration; quite the opposite. I dislike NASA precisely because I care about space exploration, and they've done a criminally poor job of it since the 1970s.
Consider the space shuttle, which is an especially low point even for NASA:
The shuttle was built to replace the Saturn family of launch vehicles. The Shuttle can launch about 60,000 lbs into orbit for a price of around $8,000/lb. The Saturn, on the other hand, could launch about 212,000 lbs into orbit or 100,000 lbs to the moon for a cost of only about $5,000/lb after adjusting for inflation to 2004 dollar. Yes, NASA spent a colossal amount of time and money to build a launch vehicle that was ¼ as powerful and much more expensive.
Even today, there are commercial disposable rockets (like the newest Titan and Delta classes) that can launch virtually any commercial satellite payloads for 'only' $170 million, vs. the average $500 million cost of a shuttle launch. But why, you probably wonder, would anyone use the shuttle if such inexpensive alternatives exist? The answer is the NASA has spent years subsidizing the shuttle costs, only charging around $80 million to launch satellites for people. This has been absolutely devastating to the companies that manufacture commercial spacecraft (Boeing, Lockheed, and Orbital Sciences) since even though they have far superior products, they can't compete with a NASA that is willing to launch payloads at enormous loss. NASA has basically been using taxpayer money to kill a vital U.S. industry.
By far the most horrific part of the whole thing is that NASA has spent years using 'science' to justify their $500 million shuttle launches. Sorry, but with a very few exceptions there aren't any science experiments conducted on the shuttle that justify that kind of expense. While things are undoubtedly learned, it's small potatoes compared to the sort of scientific research that you could conduct here on earth with a comparable amount of money. If you submitted a grant request to the National Science Foundation for $500 million to perform the sorts of experiments that they do on the shuttle, they would laugh their heads off at you.
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He isn't claiming that the critical comments on yahoo aren't protected speech under the first amendment; he's claiming that yahoo failed to fulfill their promise to prevent abusive postings, which doesn't have anything to do with the first amendment.
" The article said the program took in to account idle times and took no screenshots during periods of inactivity."
True, but it also doesn't say *how often* the boss was using his computer. If he spent six hours at his computer every day that was 70% solitaire/20% stock checking, then it looks pretty bad. On the other hand, if every day he spent 7 minutes playing solitaire, 2 minutes checking his stocks, and 1 minute switching between the two, then it would be pretty trivial.
What, you never dropped anything? A coffee cup, a baseball, a...cough billion dollar satellite cough...
Uh...even if you use care in the way you described, parent was still right about his correction. Think about it.
Social engineering has been around for a long, long time. The only difference is that until recently everyone just called it 'conning'. I don't know if geek hackers prefer to think of themselves as 'social engineers' because it's easier on their conscience than thinking of themselves as con men, or if it's just a result of the natural geek affinity for overly technical jargon. Either way, it's a bit silly.
"We read book after book after book of "great" literature which more or less meant old, and hard to read. Anything new was crap, anything kids might enjoy was crap."
You're exactly right about this. Why do we make kids read things like 'Hard Time' or 'Emma'? Does a knowledge of 19th century literature really fall into the "thing you should know to be a good citizen and productive member of society" category that's supposed to be what public education is about? Yes, people need to learn how to read and analyze books, but why do we go out of our way to make it boring for them? Let's be honest, knowing about the literary themes of Dickens has almost zero value in daily life, and only a very tiny minority of people ever actually read that sort of 'classic' literature for entertainment. The important thing is that kids learn how to analyze what they read, not what they read in and of itself. You can learn to analyze literature just as effectively with things that kids are likely to enjoy reading, so why make them suffer needlessly through Jane Austin? It only serves to make them less attentive to the lessons that they're supposed to be learning, as well as giving some kids the idea that reading is inherently boring.
I love the way some people don't seem to realize that it's possible to understand a movie but still not like it.
"What??? You didn't like it??? Well then, you must be some ignorant moron who only enjoys mindless action films and reality TV!!"
Yes, THX-1138 had a lot of meaning, symbolism, and character development, but that doesn't necessarily make it entertaining. It's possible for a movie to be deeply intellectual but still be boring, even to the people who understand it.
What were the specifics of the 'wrong' question? I'd like to hear more.
"1) A control surface actuator had run against a stop limiting its movement, and 2) Wind shear caused the 90-degree roll shortly after rocket ignition. Rutan also said with the problems now identified, the next time SpaceShipOne flies, it will be to win the prize."
So I guess it's:
1. Fix control surface actuator
2. Fix wind shear problem
3. Profit!
"If you can estimate the odds better than the bookie, then you're on a winning ticket. "
Just a quick note...bookies don't work like that. It's the people placing bets that determine the odds on sporting events. The bookie will constantly recalculate who has bet on what side, and what odds they had when they bet. They will them change the 'odds' continuously, so that they make money no matter who wins. Its the same sort of system that they use at horse racing tracks, except that they lock people in at fixed odds when their bet is placed.
In movies you often see bookies portrayed as experts at sports handicapping, but it isn't really necessary for a bookie to know anything about the teams who are playing or who is likely to win.
It's true that stores generally only offer extended warranties when they know that they'll make money off of them, so over the course of one's life you will generally save money if you never buy an extended warranty and simply replace anything that breaks - statistically, the amount of money that you spend replacing things should be less than the amount you would have spent on buying an extended warranty for everything.
But that doesn't mean you should never buy a warranty - it just means that you should only buy a warranty if you will be unable to easily replace the item. If the item is something that's critical to the operation of your business and you don't know if you will have the cash immediately on hand to replace it if it breaks, or if it's an extravagantly expensive luxury item that you will probably be unable to purchase again for a long time, then getting a warranty makes sense.
"Unfortunately i didnt watch the launch(so correct me if im wrong) but one thing that I quite dont undestand is how he has managed to reach the space with so little fuel in such a 'fragile' structure (considering that the pictures showed a shuttle that didnt have those ceramics plates for reentering the atmosphere).
Everytime NASA put the something in orbit, they burn that boatload of fuel, and this guy just got there in a what looks more like a giant Kite! And with what I believe being a much lower budget."
He didn't need heat shielding because he didn't achieve orbital velocity - which is around mach 25. Simply going into space and coming back doesn't create a problem with reentry.
You also have to keep in mind that impressive as space ship one is, it's a toy compared to an actual commercial launch vehicle. To get into low earth orbit you have to get up to about 300 miles altitude and attain a velocity of around mach 25, while Space Ship One only went up about 62.5 miles with a velocity of mach 3. Also, SSO doesn't carry any substantial payload; a commercial launch vehicle like the Delta 4 can launch 15 tons into orbit.
People who buy GIFT cards rarely buy them for themselves. If I receive a gift card from someone, I didn't buy it. Therefore, I didn't consent to any restrictions. Where is my protection?
Uh...hello? It was bought by someone else and given to you as a gift. You don't have any rights with regards to what other people give you as presents. You might not like that your gift card has an expiration date, just like you might not like the color of a shirt that's given to you, but in both cases it's too freakin' bad. You don't deserve any legal protection against people giving you stuff that you don't like.
Companies are able to attach terms to contracts all the time, and there's nothing illegal about it. A contract of adhesion is when the only utility company in town tells you that if you want to buy electricity from them, then you are also required to sign up for some other service that you don't really want or need. It's intended to ensure that one person can't use their position of power to unfairly force someone else into accepting a contract that they wouldn't otherwise agree to. I hardly think that a customer buying a gift certificate is being 'bullied' by a store if they agree to an expiration date. If they don't like it, they're free to not buy the gift certificate without suffering any loss.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what this will change. I can still hook up a VCR (or VCD/DVD burner, hard drive, or whatever) to my television and record whatever comes on my screen, and this law wouldn't prevent that. This legislation only seems to block the recording of an exact copy of the original, decrypted digital signal. A TiVo-like device would still be legal, so long as it recorded its own 'interpretation' of the broadcast in a format like divx or mpeg, rather than simply copying the HDTV data byte for byte as it goes into the TV.
In the early 1980s, the U.S. had almost 100% of the commercial launch industry. By the mid 1990s, it was down to 50%. Now it's barely 25%.
The main reason for this is that NASA has been absolutely killing the commercial space industry in the U.S. ever since the mid 1980s buy launching payloads on the shuttle for ridiculously low prices. It costs around $400 million to launch the shuttle, but NASA heavily subsidized the cost to the point where they only charge around $80 million. Lockheed and Boeing both use to produce unmanned launch vehicles that could launch an equivalent payload for 'only' around $170 million, but no one wants to use them when NASA is willing to charge artificially low prices on the shuttle.
Russia never had anything like the shuttle, so they've continued to develop newer, cheaper launch technology for the past 25 years while the U.S. companies spun their wheels, unable to justify spending money on research and development when they knew that they probably wouldn't have any customers for whatever new rockets they designed. Now Russia is literally decades ahead of us in terms of economical launch technology. Did you know that the Russians can launch a manned space mission for only $20 million? NASA can only dream about that kind of launch economy.
Hopefully U.S. companies will be able to get back in the game now that the shuttle is on the way out, but they're starting two decades and 75% of the market share behind.
Think again. There are all sorts of arbitrary restrictions and rules that colleges are allowed to impose on students. You have a legal right to drink and own a handgun if you're over 21, but many colleges have blanket rules against possessing alcohol or firearms while on campus or in dorm rooms. Similarly, while there's no law preventing you from operating a WAN on an unlicensed portion of the spectrum, colleges are still able to make a 'no active WAN cards in the dorm' rule.
That's why virtually every college makes you sign the "I understand the college's rules and agree to abide by them" document when you enroll.
I'm just as against big companies screwing people as anyone else, but I don't really see the point of laws like this. If a company wants to say that gift cards expire after a year (or a month, or 10 years), what's the problem? So long as the customer knows about it when they purchase the gift card, it's just a mutually voluntary transaction between two consenting parties. I could understand a law requiring companies to explicitly warn customers about expiration dates when they buy the card, but it seems silly to say that a company shouldn't be able to impose restrictions on a gift card even if the customer agrees to it.
Also, keep in mind that a certain percentage of gift cards are sure to be lost or never used for some other reason. If they never expire, the company is basically accumulating an ever-growing debt that will probably never be called, but in theory could be at any time.
Break into the company's computers, steal some data. Break into the victim's computer, plant the data in some out-of-the-way subdirectory where he's unlikely to look. Start extorting the company, then at some point offer up the identity of your victim as your own. It seems like this would be pretty easy, especially when you consider how easy it is to take a computer over with trojans and worms now days. If you set the trojan to automatically erase most of itself after you planted the files, I doubt anyone would listen when the victim started claiming that he didn't know how the files got there.
This is an example of the sort of societal problems that come from widespread security vulnerabilities in computers. Windows is so easy to take over now that we can't really be sure of the origin of ANYTHING that we find on someone's comp. It's getting to the point where when authorities find something illegal (like say child porn) on a computer and the owner claims that he didn't put it there, there's really no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he isn't telling the truth. How hard would it be to write a worm/trojan that causes a computer to automatically download some illegal material, send an email 'tip' to the authorities via some anonymous remailer, and then erase most of the trojan? Can we really ever be sure 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that anyone is responsible for what's on their computers any more? What's to stop a criminal from installing a trojan on his own computer and then claiming (quite reasonably) that someone took over his computer and put the material there?
I really don't want this to turn into a anti-microsoft rant, but Windows vulnerabilities have basically reduced computers to the status of a big unlocked plastic bin that's sitting by the curb in front of everyone's house. If you find something illegal in it then yes, the guy who owns the bin looks pretty suspicious, but who's to say the neighbor didn't put it there? Or some random person who noticed the bin while driving by and decided to stop and place something inside? These security flaws have simultaneously taken away people's accountability for what's on their computers, and made it really easy to frame innocent people for major crimes.
Would it be cheaper than NASA developing the same things in-house?Virtually every development project in the history of NASA points to 'no'. The most recent example, of course, would be the X-33. It was supposed to replace the shuttle, and NASA spent $900 million developing it...and then just decided to canceled the project.
Considering the roughly $900 million that NASA spent on the X-33 shuttle replacement before simply canceling the project, or the $400 million that they spend on each shuttle launch, I certainly think they should be able to spare a hundred million or two as a prize for someone can develop a private, x-prize style orbital vehicle.
"But I don't remember seeing that being anonymous is an absolute right. It is implied, to a degree, with speech in some but not all ways. Commercial speech is different than political speech, for instance. It is implied in that justice should be blind, and treat you the same as everyone else. But not a blanket right to be anonymous in all things. If something SHOULD be a Right, but its not in the Constitution, its not a Right. Petition, get sponsors, submit an Amendment, get it ratified by 2/3rds of the states, and its a Right. It's difficult on purpose, for good reason: To keep it from being used frivilously or in the heat of the moment."
I can think of at least two relevant quotes here. The most obvious would be:
"'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." - The Bill of Rights
There's also this one, which is a little more complicated but equally relevant:
"I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights."-Alexander Hamilton
What the second quote is essentially saying is that it's risky to enumerate certain specific rights in the Bill of Rights because at some point people might start to think that they only have a right if it's specifically listed, which wasn't what the founding fathers intended.
"No, that is just not correct. The court held that police, based on reasonable suspicion that a person is involved in criminal activity can compel him to identify themself. This ruling doesn't change the fact that police just can't ask to for your name for no reason at all. At least get the facts right in your own damn summary before going off on "your rights".
'Reasonable suspicion' is an absolute joke. It means virtually nothing. A cop can say you were 'staggering' as you walked down the street and he suspected that you were intoxicated - bam, reasonable suspicion, and you had better be ready to identify yourself.
"NASA has accomplished amazing things in the present, too. I am amazed by the stuff coming back from Cassini and the rovers."
Contrary to popular belief, the Cassini missions are run by JPL, which is a federally funded research facility that has close ties to NASA, but isn't actually a part of NASA.
"Criminally poor? Ok, YOU design a cheaper space vehicle. How dare you call it "criminally poor"? Are you aware of how difficult of a task developing a reusable man-capable orbital launch vehicle is? Name someone else who has done it better and cheaper. How would YOU have predicted the specific problems that would occur in a spacecraft with millions of parts reentering the atmosphere?"
I don't need to develop better launch vehicles - many aerospace corporations have already done that. There were better launch vehicles around when they built the shuttle. The availability of better launch vehicles isn't the problem; the problem is getting NASA to swallow their pride and actually use the better launch vehicles. And in answer to your other questions, there were many engineers who pointed out the egregious flaws in the shuttle all through its development process. NASA just didn't listen to them. You seem to be under the impression that no one could have anticipated the problems, that NASA has run into with the shuttle, but virtually all of them were foreseeable. Check out http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03l.html for an extensive list of the shuttle flaws that NASA knew about when they approved the construction.
"NASA has subsidized the shuttle because they'll lose funding if they don't. Your complaint isn't with NASA - it's with the stupid American public who wants to see a fully crewed shuttle with every mission."
Actually NASA has to subsidize the shuttle because they can't afford to let the vehicle that they spend billions developing and years hyping sit around on the launch pad without being used. While it hurts NASA to spend such a huge amount on shuttle subsidies, it would hurt them even more to admit that the shuttle is such a dismal failure.
"The "bubbling morons at NASA" who sent people to the moon on the back of one of these? [neatherd.org]
With all of the money that private space launch groups have wasted with so little to show for it despite standing on the shoulders of giants, it amazes me that people can continually insult the space agencies that have overcome such incredible problems to achieve amazing feats."
Yes, NASA accomplished great things back in the 1960s, but that doesn't excuse them from the horrific behavior that they've demonstrated since then. Most Americans would be horrified if they knew how much money NASA really wastes, and how much harm it does to the commercial space industry. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-NASA because I'm against space exploration; quite the opposite. I dislike NASA precisely because I care about space exploration, and they've done a criminally poor job of it since the 1970s.
Consider the space shuttle, which is an especially low point even for NASA: The shuttle was built to replace the Saturn family of launch vehicles. The Shuttle can launch about 60,000 lbs into orbit for a price of around $8,000/lb. The Saturn, on the other hand, could launch about 212,000 lbs into orbit or 100,000 lbs to the moon for a cost of only about $5,000/lb after adjusting for inflation to 2004 dollar. Yes, NASA spent a colossal amount of time and money to build a launch vehicle that was ¼ as powerful and much more expensive.
Even today, there are commercial disposable rockets (like the newest Titan and Delta classes) that can launch virtually any commercial satellite payloads for 'only' $170 million, vs. the average $500 million cost of a shuttle launch. But why, you probably wonder, would anyone use the shuttle if such inexpensive alternatives exist? The answer is the NASA has spent years subsidizing the shuttle costs, only charging around $80 million to launch satellites for people. This has been absolutely devastating to the companies that manufacture commercial spacecraft (Boeing, Lockheed, and Orbital Sciences) since even though they have far superior products, they can't compete with a NASA that is willing to launch payloads at enormous loss. NASA has basically been using taxpayer money to kill a vital U.S. industry.
By far the most horrific part of the whole thing is that NASA has spent years using 'science' to justify their $500 million shuttle launches. Sorry, but with a very few exceptions there aren't any science experiments conducted on the shuttle that justify that kind of expense. While things are undoubtedly learned, it's small potatoes compared to the sort of scientific research that you could conduct here on earth with a comparable amount of money. If you submitted a grant request to the National Science Foundation for $500 million to perform the sorts of experiments that they do on the shuttle, they would laugh their heads off at you.