Why, why does our potential landmark 5th amendment case have to be a kiddie porn case?
Because if somebody doesn't like the 5th amendment and he wants it overturned or weakened, he's going to pick the strongest possible case to do that. And he feels that `think of the children' might be strong enough to override a judge's sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. And if a judge rules against the person's 5th amendment rights, that sets precedent, and so it might make the next judge more likely to rule similarly the next time it comes up...
He probably even thinks he's doing the right thing, that there's a lot of criminals out there that are only out there because of the protections afforded to them by the Constitution. [and perhaps he's right.]
Granted, this is all hypothetical, as I don't know many of the details here (and IANAL), but it seems that many people in positions of power think this way -- that it's OK to do a little evil (violate the laws, the Constitution, torture, etc.) if it's for the Greater Good (as they see it, of course.)
The Constitution gives us the right to not incriminate ourselves. With so many obscure laws out there, you never know WHAT information on your hard disk might incriminate you in some way.
Ok, so you don't have child pornography on your computer -- but perhaps you received spam email inviting you to support Al Quaeda three years ago. Now you're a terrorist...
Or perhaps you accidently stumbled on a child porn site three years ago, and there's a bit of it left in your cache. Now you are guilty of having child pornography...
This video is probably very informative, especially if you think that the innocent have no reason not to want to talk to the police.
Sounds good, but I think the estimate was that there's at least 10,000 federal laws -- and so no single person could possibly know them all.
So while the police are combing through your hard drive, and while they don't find any child pornography, they DO find a picture of you holding a baby bird -- and it turns out that some 1856 law made illegal to handle this type of bird without a permit. And here's evidence of you violating the law.
Or, perhaps they don't find any child pornography... until they scan every sector on the disk and find some thumbnail of some picture of a naked 8 year old girl that was deleted 18 months ago. If they'd dug deeper, they might have learned that that was from getting redirected to a child pornography site in Romania by some typo-squatter, which you immediately closed and never visited again -- but the DA is up for re-election, and he doesn't want to give up this new feather in his cap, the child pornographer he just took off the street. He doesn't care that you're innocent, only that you're helping prove that he's tough on child pornography.
No, cops and vampires are best not invited into your home, or your hard drives. Even if proving perjury is `priceless'. (And really, it wouldn't prove perjury. The cop would just say `I guess I was mistaken. My bad.' Though he probably wouldn't even say that.)
In a civil case, yes. 5th amendment doesn't apply to civil cases (which is wrong, if you ask me, but it's the way it seems to have turned out.)
It would be interesting if somebody developed some sort of new material that nobody could break through. Perhaps a house protected by a force field. The person was outside, and the police wanted in because they thought there was evidence of a crime inside. Let's say they even had a search warrant. But they couldn't, not with any of the technology or equipment at their disposal, get inside the house without the password. I'll bet if this happened, they'd find some way to force him to give up the password through some sort of civil proceedings... it's a huge loophole, and I'm surprised the government doesn't (ab)use it more.
At least in Texas, a PI (Public Intoxication) charge tends to land you in the drunk tank overnight, unless you have a friend who can convince the cop that he'll get you home and take care of you.
It's certainly not reserved for dire cases.
Ironically, the DWI (driving while intoxicated) law here explicitly says `motor vehicle', so you can't get a DWI on a bicycle (other states are different, of course.) So the cop will give you a PI instead -- which is much less serious. (I have to wonder if a motorized wheel chair is legally a motor vehicle or not...)
1) wikipedia is not a definitive source. By all means, use it for research, but click on [13] and [14] and use them for a citation in cases like this.
2) Like the passage you quoted says, the laws regarding child pornography vary from country to country. It's usually best to qualify claims about laws with a statement about which country you're talking about.
I'm not sure I'd go so far to say the Constitution doesn't grant anything, but in this case it's an important distinction, because the Bill of Rights limits what the Federal Government can do (and in many cases the courts have said it applies to the state governments too -- but it generally doesn't apply to individuals.)
So, to read the 4th Amendment in a way that's useful to this discussion...
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, BY THE GOVERNMENT, shall not be violated...
It doesn't mean that individuals can't do these things. (But there are generally other laws against that.)
`Right to privacy' isn't explicitly in the Constitution, true, (I'll skip over where the right does come from, it's more complicated than that), but to claim it's never `explicitly stated as a right in any law' is downright nuts.
There are *so* many laws out there it's not even funny. I doubt that any one person could even read them all, let alone remember and understand even a significant fraction of them.
I don't think the US has claimed to be the free-est nation in quite some time. 200 years ago, democracies/republics were perhaps rare, but more recently they've become much more common.
I could tell you how to do it with trn and slrn, but that probably wouldn't help you. But perhaps if I point out the general procedure, you can get your preferred newsreader to do that.
Basically, there's three ways :
1) you have your newsreader put something distinctive into your Message-IDs -- probably a special hostname. And then when it gets headers, it gets the References: header, and if that header contains your special string, it flags that post for reading/scores it high.
2) you have your newsreader look at the From: and Subject: headers, and it makes a note of the Message-Ids of any posts that have your mail address (presumably, you made these posts.) It then looks for these Message-IDs: in the References: headers of each post, and if it's there, flag that post. (It's also possible for your newsreader not to look at the From: headers at all -- instead, it remembers the Message-Ids: of all posts it makes. But looking at the From header is probably better, or do both.)
3) Not as good as #1 or #2, you can not worry about the References: header, and just look at From and Subject, and if a From header in this thread (posts with a related Subject) matches your email address, mark the entire thread for reading.
4) you have an external program, outside of your newsreader, that does method #1, #2 or #3, and if it finds something, it emails you (or builds a web page, does a pop-up, etc.)
I take it you want to be sent an email when your posts are replied to? Or you want a popup to appear when you log into Usenet and your post has been responded to?
It's a simple matter to get an agent of some sort to scan Usenet groups for this sort of post and inform you about it. Your news reader may also offer this functionality -- it's pretty easy to make trn flag any posts in reply to your posts for reading, for example.
But Usenet wasn't designed as a `post and forget' sort of thing. It's meant for having discussions -- you post, and your post is sent out to the world, they post, sent to the world, etc. The server is pretty simple -- most of the fancy stuff happens in your client, and it's up to your client (or another client) to look for things that interest you, like replies to your post.
Besides, perhaps even older than the `Read the FAQ!' rule of Usenet, and certainly older than the oft-repeated `The first rule of Usenet is you don't talk about Usenet' mantra (but that's about binaries, not text groups) is `read the group before you post.' And the corollary is `if you can't be bothered to read the group, don't post to it.'.
Hopefully the web forums will catch up, eventually. So far, it doesn't look promising...:)
I've been trying to think of how I might write a web 2.0 forum that is easy to use and yet still contains what made usenet nice.
Craiglist comes close, at least when duplicating *.forsale.
The interface for it's discussion forums is horrible, however, and so is the content -- single line responses up the wazoo, for example.
But yes, like Zoxed, I use/.'s web interface because the only other choice is to not use anything. I'm still a regular Usenet user, but there's lots of topics that I have to go elsewhere if I want to discuss them. It's a pain in the ass, but the other choice is to not participate in the discussions at all -- you've got to go where the peopel are.
Ease of use is very debatable. Adding a new Usenet group is far easier for me than finding a new forum, registering, learning it's interface and quirks, etc.
As for accessibility, OK, at least until your favorite forum's server loses power. Or forgets to pay it's registrar bill. Or the admin decides to shut it down. Or decides he doesn't like you and blocks you.
Google groups is indeed the source of a lot of spam posted to Usenet. But it's also the source of a lot of non-spam posted to Usenet.
For example, about 27% of the posts to the Big-8 come from Google Groups now. If less than 27% of the spam posted to the Big-8 comes from google, then it's doing a better job of controlling it's users than Usenet as a whole. (I don't know if this is the case or not. Posts are easy to count. Classifying them as spam or not is harder.)
Either way, Google Groups is such a big contributor of noise and spam to Usenet because it's such a big contributor of _posts_ to Usenet.
No argument about the interface, however. But the retention is nice!
and if you subtract the time spent exercising or recovering, it's not like you'll live noticeably longer anyhow.
As I understand it, you're incorrect. An hour spent exercising will, on average, make you live a few hours longer. Citation, though I don't know how accurate his claim is.
It will also make you more healthy, so you'll enjoy the hours that you are alive more.
(You never really appreciate your health properly until you don't have it...)
Fresh sweat doesn't smell that much. It's only old sweat that really stinks. (Though not everybody's sweat smells equally. Some you never smell, some stink all the time, actively sweating or not.)
Also, it's pretty easy to bring fresh clothes with you, and you can clean yourself up with wet paper towels or a sponge without a shower. And keep some deoderant at work.
Also, you can take it easy. Cycling at 10 mph is MUCH less strenuous than cycling at 15 mph.
Another myth. And while it can cause problems with erection, that's only if you go numb down there. Picking the right saddle, adjusting it properly, having the right clothing (cycling shorts are padded, which helps but certainly isn't required) and simple practice will prevent any problems in that department.
And besides, chicks dig cyclist legs. That'll do far more for your erection and your fertility...
ME: but every site has those!
JUDGE: no, they don't.
ME: they do! Look! (shows laptop, and indeed every site does have them.)
JUDGE: uhh... google isn't supposed to look like that...
(Of course, a computer literate judge? Bizarro world...)
Spyware/worms/etc. can do fun things like that. And when you download stuff that you don't know what it even is... guess what you tend to get?
See also: Software patents for a general overview of the patentability of software, including computer-implemented algorithms.
Algorithms, by themselves, are not usually patentable. In the United States, a claim consisting solely of simple manipulations of abstract concepts, numbers, or signals do not constitute "processes" (USPTO 2006) and hence algorithms are not patentable (as in Gottschalk v. Benson). However, practical applications of algorithms are sometimes patentable. For example, in Diamond v. Diehr, the application of a simple feedback algorithm to aid in the curing of synthetic rubber was deemed patentable. The patenting of software is highly controversial, and there are highly criticized patents involving algorithms, especially data compression algorithms, such as Unisys' LZW patent.
everyone seemed to agree that the algorithm was patentable
That's an odd thing to agree upon, because algorithms are not patentable (search for `algorithm')
But methods are. I forget where I read this, but the difference was explained something like this --
Bob: So, algorithms are not patentable and methods are.
Lawyer: Right.
Bob: But what's the difference between an algorithm and a method? Aren't they pretty much the same thing?
Lawyer: Listen carefully... algorithms are not patentable, but methods are...
Bob: ?
Slashdot Mirror
But I was pointing out why even an innocent man should not give over the keys, even if he (thinks he) has nothing to hide.
Why, why does our potential landmark 5th amendment case have to be a kiddie porn case?
Because if somebody doesn't like the 5th amendment and he wants it overturned or weakened, he's going to pick the strongest possible case to do that. And he feels that `think of the children' might be strong enough to override a judge's sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. And if a judge rules against the person's 5th amendment rights, that sets precedent, and so it might make the next judge more likely to rule similarly the next time it comes up ...
He probably even thinks he's doing the right thing, that there's a lot of criminals out there that are only out there because of the protections afforded to them by the Constitution. [and perhaps he's right.]
Granted, this is all hypothetical, as I don't know many of the details here (and IANAL), but it seems that many people in positions of power think this way -- that it's OK to do a little evil (violate the laws, the Constitution, torture, etc.) if it's for the Greater Good (as they see it, of course.)
The Constitution gives us the right to not incriminate ourselves. With so many obscure laws out there, you never know WHAT information on your hard disk might incriminate you in some way.
Ok, so you don't have child pornography on your computer -- but perhaps you received spam email inviting you to support Al Quaeda three years ago. Now you're a terrorist ...
Or perhaps you accidently stumbled on a child porn site three years ago, and there's a bit of it left in your cache. Now you are guilty of having child pornography ...
This video is probably very informative, especially if you think that the innocent have no reason not to want to talk to the police.
Sounds good, but I think the estimate was that there's at least 10,000 federal laws -- and so no single person could possibly know them all.
So while the police are combing through your hard drive, and while they don't find any child pornography, they DO find a picture of you holding a baby bird -- and it turns out that some 1856 law made illegal to handle this type of bird without a permit. And here's evidence of you violating the law.
Or, perhaps they don't find any child pornography ... until they scan every sector on the disk and find some thumbnail of some picture of a naked 8 year old girl that was deleted 18 months ago. If they'd dug deeper, they might have learned that that was from getting redirected to a child pornography site in Romania by some typo-squatter, which you immediately closed and never visited again -- but the DA is up for re-election, and he doesn't want to give up this new feather in his cap, the child pornographer he just took off the street. He doesn't care that you're innocent, only that you're helping prove that he's tough on child pornography.
No, cops and vampires are best not invited into your home, or your hard drives. Even if proving perjury is `priceless'. (And really, it wouldn't prove perjury. The cop would just say `I guess I was mistaken. My bad.' Though he probably wouldn't even say that.)
In a civil case, yes. 5th amendment doesn't apply to civil cases (which is wrong, if you ask me, but it's the way it seems to have turned out.)
It would be interesting if somebody developed some sort of new material that nobody could break through. Perhaps a house protected by a force field. The person was outside, and the police wanted in because they thought there was evidence of a crime inside. Let's say they even had a search warrant. But they couldn't, not with any of the technology or equipment at their disposal, get inside the house without the password. I'll bet if this happened, they'd find some way to force him to give up the password through some sort of civil proceedings ... it's a huge loophole, and I'm surprised the government doesn't (ab)use it more.
At least in Texas, a PI (Public Intoxication) charge tends to land you in the drunk tank overnight, unless you have a friend who can convince the cop that he'll get you home and take care of you.
It's certainly not reserved for dire cases.
Ironically, the DWI (driving while intoxicated) law here explicitly says `motor vehicle', so you can't get a DWI on a bicycle (other states are different, of course.) So the cop will give you a PI instead -- which is much less serious. (I have to wonder if a motorized wheel chair is legally a motor vehicle or not ...)
1) wikipedia is not a definitive source. By all means, use it for research, but click on [13] and [14] and use them for a citation in cases like this.
2) Like the passage you quoted says, the laws regarding child pornography vary from country to country. It's usually best to qualify claims about laws with a statement about which country you're talking about.
I'm not sure I'd go so far to say the Constitution doesn't grant anything, but in this case it's an important distinction, because the Bill of Rights limits what the Federal Government can do (and in many cases the courts have said it applies to the state governments too -- but it generally doesn't apply to individuals.)
So, to read the 4th Amendment in a way that's useful to this discussion ...
It doesn't mean that individuals can't do these things. (But there are generally other laws against that.)
`Right to privacy' isn't explicitly in the Constitution, true, (I'll skip over where the right does come from, it's more complicated than that), but to claim it's never `explicitly stated as a right in any law' is downright nuts.
There are *so* many laws out there it's not even funny. I doubt that any one person could even read them all, let alone remember and understand even a significant fraction of them.
I don't think the US has claimed to be the free-est nation in quite some time. 200 years ago, democracies/republics were perhaps rare, but more recently they've become much more common.
tin, trn, slrn and others.
I could tell you how to do it with trn and slrn, but that probably wouldn't help you. But perhaps if I point out the general procedure, you can get your preferred newsreader to do that.
Basically, there's three ways :
1) you have your newsreader put something distinctive into your Message-IDs -- probably a special hostname. And then when it gets headers, it gets the References: header, and if that header contains your special string, it flags that post for reading/scores it high.
2) you have your newsreader look at the From: and Subject: headers, and it makes a note of the Message-Ids of any posts that have your mail address (presumably, you made these posts.) It then looks for these Message-IDs: in the References: headers of each post, and if it's there, flag that post. (It's also possible for your newsreader not to look at the From: headers at all -- instead, it remembers the Message-Ids: of all posts it makes. But looking at the From header is probably better, or do both.)
3) Not as good as #1 or #2, you can not worry about the References: header, and just look at From and Subject, and if a From header in this thread (posts with a related Subject) matches your email address, mark the entire thread for reading.
4) you have an external program, outside of your newsreader, that does method #1, #2 or #3, and if it finds something, it emails you (or builds a web page, does a pop-up, etc.)
I take it you want to be sent an email when your posts are replied to? Or you want a popup to appear when you log into Usenet and your post has been responded to?
It's a simple matter to get an agent of some sort to scan Usenet groups for this sort of post and inform you about it. Your news reader may also offer this functionality -- it's pretty easy to make trn flag any posts in reply to your posts for reading, for example.
But Usenet wasn't designed as a `post and forget' sort of thing. It's meant for having discussions -- you post, and your post is sent out to the world, they post, sent to the world, etc. The server is pretty simple -- most of the fancy stuff happens in your client, and it's up to your client (or another client) to look for things that interest you, like replies to your post.
Besides, perhaps even older than the `Read the FAQ!' rule of Usenet, and certainly older than the oft-repeated `The first rule of Usenet is you don't talk about Usenet' mantra (but that's about binaries, not text groups) is `read the group before you post.' And the corollary is `if you can't be bothered to read the group, don't post to it.'.
Hopefully the web forums will catch up, eventually. So far, it doesn't look promising ... :)
They also have a proven track record for being worse than the problems they solve. It's all about who you ask.
Some moderators are good. Some are bad. Some start good, and become bad. Few start bad and end up good.
I've been trying to think of how I might write a web 2.0 forum that is easy to use and yet still contains what made usenet nice.
Craiglist comes close, at least when duplicating *.forsale.
The interface for it's discussion forums is horrible, however, and so is the content -- single line responses up the wazoo, for example.
But yes, like Zoxed, I use /.'s web interface because the only other choice is to not use anything. I'm still a regular Usenet user, but there's lots of topics that I have to go elsewhere if I want to discuss them. It's a pain in the ass, but the other choice is to not participate in the discussions at all -- you've got to go where the peopel are.
Ease of use is very debatable. Adding a new Usenet group is far easier for me than finding a new forum, registering, learning it's interface and quirks, etc.
As for accessibility, OK, at least until your favorite forum's server loses power. Or forgets to pay it's registrar bill. Or the admin decides to shut it down. Or decides he doesn't like you and blocks you.
You read the group, of course.
Google groups is indeed the source of a lot of spam posted to Usenet. But it's also the source of a lot of non-spam posted to Usenet.
For example, about 27% of the posts to the Big-8 come from Google Groups now. If less than 27% of the spam posted to the Big-8 comes from google, then it's doing a better job of controlling it's users than Usenet as a whole. (I don't know if this is the case or not. Posts are easy to count. Classifying them as spam or not is harder.)
Either way, Google Groups is such a big contributor of noise and spam to Usenet because it's such a big contributor of _posts_ to Usenet.
No argument about the interface, however. But the retention is nice!
To be fair, google groups does contain groups that are not part of Usenet. And Usenet contains groups that are not in google groups.
So while related, they're not the same.
$80k would buy you one sweeeet bicycle!
As I understand it, you're incorrect. An hour spent exercising will, on average, make you live a few hours longer. Citation, though I don't know how accurate his claim is. It will also make you more healthy, so you'll enjoy the hours that you are alive more.
(You never really appreciate your health properly until you don't have it ...)
Fresh sweat doesn't smell that much. It's only old sweat that really stinks. (Though not everybody's sweat smells equally. Some you never smell, some stink all the time, actively sweating or not.)
Also, it's pretty easy to bring fresh clothes with you, and you can clean yourself up with wet paper towels or a sponge without a shower. And keep some deoderant at work.
Also, you can take it easy. Cycling at 10 mph is MUCH less strenuous than cycling at 15 mph.
Another myth. And while it can cause problems with erection, that's only if you go numb down there. Picking the right saddle, adjusting it properly, having the right clothing (cycling shorts are padded, which helps but certainly isn't required) and simple practice will prevent any problems in that department.
And besides, chicks dig cyclist legs. That'll do far more for your erection and your fertility ...
ME: but every site has those! ... google isn't supposed to look like that ...
JUDGE: no, they don't.
ME: they do! Look! (shows laptop, and indeed every site does have them.)
JUDGE: uhh
(Of course, a computer literate judge? Bizarro world ...)
Spyware/worms/etc. can do fun things like that. And when you download stuff that you don't know what it even is ... guess what you tend to get?
That's an odd thing to agree upon, because algorithms are not patentable (search for `algorithm')
But methods are. I forget where I read this, but the difference was explained something like this --
Bob: So, algorithms are not patentable and methods are. ... algorithms are not patentable, but methods are ...
Lawyer: Right.
Bob: But what's the difference between an algorithm and a method? Aren't they pretty much the same thing?
Lawyer: Listen carefully
Bob: ?