I'm not from the US but isn't that why the states have "troopers"?
Because the states are sovereign powers in their own right. They've given up certain powers to the central Government in exchange for being part of the Republic (namely foreign policy and interactions with the other states) but they retain certain powers that the Federal Government can't take away. At least, in theory.
I'm pretty sure they'd suddenly discover that log data in a dusty server room somewhere...
You can't uncover a data log that doesn't exist. Long ago in a Galaxy far away when I was the system admin for a local dial-up ISP (dialup???) I retained our radius logs for 72 hours. After that they were rotated out of existence and I'd honestly have no way of telling you who was using what dialup IP at what time.
In a dire situation relating to an actual crime and not a civil matter I would have happily turned my hard drive over to the FBI and let them have a go at recovering the deleted files. But for RIAA? Pfffft. Not a chance in hell. If I was still in this business today I'd probably store my logfiles on a ramdisk and keep the same 72 hour rotation. That's enough time for law enforcement in a legal situation (bomb threats against the local school were the favorite back in the day) but I doubt that RIAA moves that fast.
The two mentioned in my post are certainly xenofobes to say the least. There are plenty of people opposed to immigration who are not described as such, it's just that the ones that go to extremes in this usually seem to coincide with the political racist contingent. Calling things by their names doesn't prevent any debate at all. Many European countries have adopted ever stricter immigration laws in the last couple of years, regardless of any discussion about racism. Personally I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.
I don't think I am. There are certain people, both in the "real-world" and in the political one, that will throw the R word at you if you state that you are opposed to immigration. They don't care if you are only opposed to illegal immigration. Why does that make someone a racist? I'm not basing my immigration views on race.
Okay, okay, they're mostly against immigrants and most immigrants are muslim. Still, dangerously close.
The implication that if you are opposed to immigration then you must be a racist is a tired one and prevents any legitimate debate on the subject of immigration.
You think your prints were destroyed? I hope you are right, but, I fear they made it into some OTHER database somewhere before they were purged.
Eh, the court order specifically said that New York State had to order other agencies that received them (presumably the FBI database) to delete them. Whether or not they did is debatable, but any decent lawyer would get fingerprint evidence out of that database excluded if it ever came back to bite me in the ass at a later date.
are the new Jews. Give history a little time to repeat itself.
The example is still stupid. Come back to me when an entire political party bases it's platform around hatred of the Muslims. The fear of terrorism is being used to take away our rights. Not the fear of Arabs or the fear of Muslims. So the Nazi example is still stupid.
I can't take anybody seriously that brings up the Nazis in a discussion. Sorry, but Godwin had a point.
Why did they bother with WW2, they should have just said to Hitler, we like what you do. Lets unite, no bloodshed, let the industrial complex grow.
I hereby invoke Godwin's law. Come back to me when the Brits start basing their policy on racial purity and blaming the Jews and Slavs for all their problems. What they are doing is scary and I'd be looking to leave the UK if I lived there but the Nazi example is just plain stupid.
I was arrested without charge in a mix up last year - now my DNA and fingerprints are on national record and I didn't even do anything. Is that fair? Is that right?
Hmm, I was arrested and charged with a felony once upon a time. Six months later I was cleared. The court signed an order mandating the return of my fingerprints (DNA was never taken). I guess the UK works differently. In the US (New York at least) they don't keep them unless you are convicted.
Our president's intentions to take down Saddam after 9/11 don't change the fact that we, America and probably most of the first world, are pussies. Have you ever been in a fight? I've never been in a fight. I was a gigantic asshole for the last two years high school and never found myself in the slightest danger of receiving even a single punch.
And what's the point? If the powers-that-be had decided to glass Afghanistan do you really think they wouldn't have been able to rally the American people behind it in the days after 9/11? Throw some propaganda in the mix, make the Pearl Harbor comparison (though 9/11 is inherently worse -- Pearl Harbor was a military target) and demand nothing less then total victory. I think you'd be surprised by the American people.
That said, it was all for naught, because from day 1 of being sworn in this administration wanted to go into Iraq.
If we weren't such pussies we would have done what Israel did to Lebanon when Hamas took two guys hostage.
We aren't pussies. Our fearless leader just had other priorities. Rather then rally the country behind him ala FDR after Pearl Harbor he decided to try and use it as an excuse to take down Saddam. Days after 9/11 Bush and Cheney were looking at ways to tie Saddam to the attacks.
FDR desperately wanted war with Nazi Germany but he didn't try to blame Pearl Harbor on them.
Could they have convicted the other three without him rolling on them? Because that's the price you pay to get justice. Plea bargins don't seem to capture the public's fancy but without them the justice system would grind to a halt.
Besides, eligible for parole != automatic freedom.
There are no checks and balances at all, except for the control of the House of Commons.
As an American I find it ironic that we broke away from Britain because of King George and now the only remaining check and balance for the UK is Royal Assent and maybe the House of Lords.
Not that we are much better off. In theory we have the Judiciary to keep the Government in line. History says otherwise though.
And why exactly does that justify breaking the law while not on duty? Hell, why does it justify breaking the law while on duty, unless they are being dispatched somewhere/involved in a pursuit?
I could make the argument that I'm a better driver then most but if I tried to use that argument to get out of a speeding ticket the judge would laugh at me while calculating my fine. Your friend had a good excuse but how does that relate to cops that speed for the hell of it?
It is funny that you list one tyrannous group after another in order to try to "fix" the initial group -- the local police.
You know, I agree with you, but do you have a better idea? Even the most die-hard Libertarian isn't going to advocate dismantling the police -- because that's one of the few things that the Government should be doing, protecting the people from crime.
Perhaps all police departments could adopt the sheriff's model whereby the leadership of the department is elected by the people in the area that they serve? Would this provide some accountability over the police?
It's all well and good to rail against the status quo but we need to come up with a workable solution.
When it's online I think certain rules apply, and "send it back or be charged" is definately justified.
It doesn't matter if it's justified or not. It's most likely a violation of their agreement with the credit card processing company and it's certainly a violation of the customer. If I agree to a $100 invoice and approve the charge on my card they can't later change that to $200 because they screwed up.
All that said, I have a lot of respect for Amazon and have done a lot of business with them. It's pretty low to take advantage of their mistake like this. But it was their mistake and that doesn't mean that they get to change the rules and start charging peoples cards after the fact.
That is not valid legal theory. The bill of rights only applied to the states after ratification of the 14th Amendment and many lawsuits later.
It still doesn't apply in full. Read about the Fifth Amendment. Grand Juries are only required on a Federal level. States don't need to use them to indict somebody for trial. Those states that do (New York is one of them) do so by choice or because their own state constitutions require it.
You should price out a dedicated line like a T1 in your area. I bet you would decide that and over-subscribed $80 DSL
And this is what pisses me off. People leaping to a conclusion that I didn't make.
I'm not bitching about DSL being over-subscribed. I'm bitching about the fact that everybody is paying the same amount of money for it while certain people are using more resources -- and a few people are using the majority of the resources.
Because Grandma chose to. If you purchase 1000 yards of string when all you needed was a foot-long piece to tie up a package, you really have no business whining that you have to pay the same price as everyone else buying 1000 yards of string.
A better analogy would be why am I allowed to take as much string as I want while paying the same price as Grandma who took three feet?
The most popular compromise was selling plans that don't monitor your personal usage at all, but come with the "catch" that the network may get congested and slow down without warning.
That catch doesn't bother me as much as the providers that have fine print that says they can basically terminate you for doing anything they don't like.
If you buy into the concept of network neutrality (disclaimer: I do) then it follows that it's really none of your ISPs business what kind of traffic you are using it. Be it bittorrent, VoIP, http, ssh, irc, etc, etc. It may be their business how much bandwidth you use (because that impacts them) but not the manner in which you use that bandwidth.
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I honestly think that whatever the military has, is what regular joes on the street should be able to have. Nothing at all should be excluded.
Cool, where can I buy my nuclear weapon?
I'm not from the US but isn't that why the states have "troopers"?
Because the states are sovereign powers in their own right. They've given up certain powers to the central Government in exchange for being part of the Republic (namely foreign policy and interactions with the other states) but they retain certain powers that the Federal Government can't take away. At least, in theory.
I'm pretty sure they'd suddenly discover that log data in a dusty server room somewhere...
You can't uncover a data log that doesn't exist. Long ago in a Galaxy far away when I was the system admin for a local dial-up ISP (dialup???) I retained our radius logs for 72 hours. After that they were rotated out of existence and I'd honestly have no way of telling you who was using what dialup IP at what time.
In a dire situation relating to an actual crime and not a civil matter I would have happily turned my hard drive over to the FBI and let them have a go at recovering the deleted files. But for RIAA? Pfffft. Not a chance in hell. If I was still in this business today I'd probably store my logfiles on a ramdisk and keep the same 72 hour rotation. That's enough time for law enforcement in a legal situation (bomb threats against the local school were the favorite back in the day) but I doubt that RIAA moves that fast.
The two mentioned in my post are certainly xenofobes to say the least. There are plenty of people opposed to immigration who are not described as such, it's just that the ones that go to extremes in this usually seem to coincide with the political racist contingent. Calling things by their names doesn't prevent any debate at all. Many European countries have adopted ever stricter immigration laws in the last couple of years, regardless of any discussion about racism. Personally I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.
I don't think I am. There are certain people, both in the "real-world" and in the political one, that will throw the R word at you if you state that you are opposed to immigration. They don't care if you are only opposed to illegal immigration. Why does that make someone a racist? I'm not basing my immigration views on race.
Okay, okay, they're mostly against immigrants and most immigrants are muslim. Still, dangerously close.
The implication that if you are opposed to immigration then you must be a racist is a tired one and prevents any legitimate debate on the subject of immigration.
You think your prints were destroyed? I hope you are right, but, I fear they made it into some OTHER database somewhere before they were purged.
Eh, the court order specifically said that New York State had to order other agencies that received them (presumably the FBI database) to delete them. Whether or not they did is debatable, but any decent lawyer would get fingerprint evidence out of that database excluded if it ever came back to bite me in the ass at a later date.
are the new Jews. Give history a little time to repeat itself.
The example is still stupid. Come back to me when an entire political party bases it's platform around hatred of the Muslims. The fear of terrorism is being used to take away our rights. Not the fear of Arabs or the fear of Muslims. So the Nazi example is still stupid.
I can't take anybody seriously that brings up the Nazis in a discussion. Sorry, but Godwin had a point.
Why did they bother with WW2, they should have just said to Hitler, we like what you do. Lets unite, no bloodshed, let the industrial complex grow.
I hereby invoke Godwin's law. Come back to me when the Brits start basing their policy on racial purity and blaming the Jews and Slavs for all their problems. What they are doing is scary and I'd be looking to leave the UK if I lived there but the Nazi example is just plain stupid.
I was arrested without charge in a mix up last year - now my DNA and fingerprints are on national record and I didn't even do anything. Is that fair? Is that right?
Hmm, I was arrested and charged with a felony once upon a time. Six months later I was cleared. The court signed an order mandating the return of my fingerprints (DNA was never taken). I guess the UK works differently. In the US (New York at least) they don't keep them unless you are convicted.
How can I prove IANAL?
Allow an ambulance to go by without salivating or getting an erection?
wouldn't jump a hijacker with any sort of impressive-looking or effective weapon
Doesn't United 93 kind of prove you wrong there? I still think you are underestimating Americans.
Our president's intentions to take down Saddam after 9/11 don't change the fact that we, America and probably most of the first world, are pussies. Have you ever been in a fight? I've never been in a fight. I was a gigantic asshole for the last two years high school and never found myself in the slightest danger of receiving even a single punch.
And what's the point? If the powers-that-be had decided to glass Afghanistan do you really think they wouldn't have been able to rally the American people behind it in the days after 9/11? Throw some propaganda in the mix, make the Pearl Harbor comparison (though 9/11 is inherently worse -- Pearl Harbor was a military target) and demand nothing less then total victory. I think you'd be surprised by the American people.
That said, it was all for naught, because from day 1 of being sworn in this administration wanted to go into Iraq.
If we weren't such pussies we would have done what Israel did to Lebanon when Hamas took two guys hostage.
We aren't pussies. Our fearless leader just had other priorities. Rather then rally the country behind him ala FDR after Pearl Harbor he decided to try and use it as an excuse to take down Saddam. Days after 9/11 Bush and Cheney were looking at ways to tie Saddam to the attacks.
FDR desperately wanted war with Nazi Germany but he didn't try to blame Pearl Harbor on them.
Just have your CC# ready when you call in for support.
As long as the problem isn't with the weapons system then I think Microsoft would have a good incentive to provide support free of charge ;)
there's simply no justification to let a fly-by-wire aircraft stall due to pilot error when the system could easily be programmed to prevent it
I'd say that there's simply no justification to allow a computer to override a pilot with decades of experience. That's Boeing's stance.
but they should all be left to rot in jail.
Could they have convicted the other three without him rolling on them? Because that's the price you pay to get justice. Plea bargins don't seem to capture the public's fancy but without them the justice system would grind to a halt.
Besides, eligible for parole != automatic freedom.
The people who run archive.org aren't immune from copyright law.
Isn't anything entered into evidence in a civil or criminal proceeding automatically part of the public domain?
There are no checks and balances at all, except for the control of the House of Commons.
As an American I find it ironic that we broke away from Britain because of King George and now the only remaining check and balance for the UK is Royal Assent and maybe the House of Lords.
Not that we are much better off. In theory we have the Judiciary to keep the Government in line. History says otherwise though.
It's all about training.
And why exactly does that justify breaking the law while not on duty? Hell, why does it justify breaking the law while on duty, unless they are being dispatched somewhere/involved in a pursuit?
I could make the argument that I'm a better driver then most but if I tried to use that argument to get out of a speeding ticket the judge would laugh at me while calculating my fine. Your friend had a good excuse but how does that relate to cops that speed for the hell of it?
It is funny that you list one tyrannous group after another in order to try to "fix" the initial group -- the local police.
You know, I agree with you, but do you have a better idea? Even the most die-hard Libertarian isn't going to advocate dismantling the police -- because that's one of the few things that the Government should be doing, protecting the people from crime.
Perhaps all police departments could adopt the sheriff's model whereby the leadership of the department is elected by the people in the area that they serve? Would this provide some accountability over the police?
It's all well and good to rail against the status quo but we need to come up with a workable solution.
When it's online I think certain rules apply, and "send it back or be charged" is definately justified.
It doesn't matter if it's justified or not. It's most likely a violation of their agreement with the credit card processing company and it's certainly a violation of the customer. If I agree to a $100 invoice and approve the charge on my card they can't later change that to $200 because they screwed up.
All that said, I have a lot of respect for Amazon and have done a lot of business with them. It's pretty low to take advantage of their mistake like this. But it was their mistake and that doesn't mean that they get to change the rules and start charging peoples cards after the fact.
That is not valid legal theory. The bill of rights only applied to the states after ratification of the 14th Amendment and many lawsuits later.
It still doesn't apply in full. Read about the Fifth Amendment. Grand Juries are only required on a Federal level. States don't need to use them to indict somebody for trial. Those states that do (New York is one of them) do so by choice or because their own state constitutions require it.
You should price out a dedicated line like a T1 in your area. I bet you would decide that and over-subscribed $80 DSL
And this is what pisses me off. People leaping to a conclusion that I didn't make.
I'm not bitching about DSL being over-subscribed. I'm bitching about the fact that everybody is paying the same amount of money for it while certain people are using more resources -- and a few people are using the majority of the resources.
Because Grandma chose to. If you purchase 1000 yards of string when all you needed was a foot-long piece to tie up a package, you really have no business whining that you have to pay the same price as everyone else buying 1000 yards of string.
A better analogy would be why am I allowed to take as much string as I want while paying the same price as Grandma who took three feet?
The most popular compromise was selling plans that don't monitor your personal usage at all, but come with the "catch" that the network may get congested and slow down without warning.
That catch doesn't bother me as much as the providers that have fine print that says they can basically terminate you for doing anything they don't like.
If you buy into the concept of network neutrality (disclaimer: I do) then it follows that it's really none of your ISPs business what kind of traffic you are using it. Be it bittorrent, VoIP, http, ssh, irc, etc, etc. It may be their business how much bandwidth you use (because that impacts them) but not the manner in which you use that bandwidth.
IMHO, anyway.