Not at all. Rather, an officer has a much easier time justifying a lawful detainment than a private citizen does and is on much more solid legal ground if he or she has to use force in the furtherance of a legal goal. Officers also typically have more training and experiencing both in preventing the need for such force and using it appropriately when necessary. (There are, of course, examples to the contrary.)
If an officer truly just unlawfully detains you, then the question becomes whether or not that unlawful detainment violated a clearly established constitutional right. If so, qualified immunity generally doesn't apply and someone is getting out their checkbook. In fact, as an agent of the state, an officer is at greater peril if they violate your rights as they can be both civilly and criminally liable at both the state and federal level and they can also receive departmental discipline. What that means is that a single action can result in repercussions for the officer in five different venues.
Again, I am not a lawyer and I am skipping over a lot of important details that aren't really relevant to a hypothetical like this.
Valid point, but there are key legal and practical differences. I am not a lawyer and I may not be read up on all the recent cases, but I am a police officer and I have looked into this area a bit a while back.
For example, police officers acting in their official capacity (regardless of who pays) are generally entitled to qualified immunity. While private guards may qualify for qualified immunity in some circumstances, the law there is much less clear and their use in actual roles requiring action (rather than just observing and reporting) can be a major source of liability.
That is, Facebook would generally be liable for actions taken by private security working directly for them. They set the policy the security guard follows and are liable for the consequences of that policy. Police officers, on the other hand, work for the city (or county or state or federal) and their actions are generally governed by policy and law, which may act as a buffer between Facebook's deep pockets and potential lawsuits.
Additionally, even in states where a citizen's arrest is perfectly legal, there are logistical concerns. In the states I am familiar with, resisting an officer who is effecting a legal arrest is illegal and in some states even resisting an illegal arrest is illegal unless certain other elements (i.e. risk of physical harm) are involved. When a citizen is attempting to effect the arrest, it is much easier for the person being arrested to simply claim they were being assaulted and fought back and there is no simple way to determine who is right.
Having a trained, experienced, uniformed police officer effecting the arrest undercuts this argument because it isn't (generally) reasonable for an individual to claim they were being randomly assaulted by an on-duty officer.
I don't have mod points right now, but I would mod this up if I did.
The argument that artists shouldn't have to worry about getting paid but rather just worry about making art isn't sustainable. I think most of us have hobbies or interests that we would prefer to spend our time doing more than whatever we actually do to pay the bills, but those things clearly aren't sufficiently economically productive or we would be doing them full-time.
The argument the artist is making is essentially, "I don't want to do something people value enough for me to survive, so you should pay me for something you don't value enough because I say it is worth it." If we don't value labor based on the economic value of its output, how do we value it? Currency is simply a more convenient way to trade labor for products. It has no inherent value unless core products (like food) are produced in order to obtain it. That is, currency is how we motivate individuals to work in ways the economy finds productive in addition to ways they find personally satisfying. Without valuing labor's output economically, no one would do unpleasant jobs (barring the few that find those jobs pleasant) and there would be no society to look at the art anyway.
Many of us would rather spend time doing a thing we love than a thing society economically values, but that isn't how the world works. The counterargument is that it would be okay if only a few people got the privilege and the rest of us worked to support them, but that opens an entire other set of questions as to who is in that select group, what efforts are appropriate for qualification, etc. The answer, of course, is that the efforts most worthy for inclusion are the efforts that people will pay for anyway so the creation of the special group isn't necessary at all.
I switched from Zotero to Bibtex for my academic work a few months ago. I used Zotero for years and was generally happy with it, but I have really started to enjoy working in latex and bibtex is the obvious choice for that. There is just something really nice about having a plain text document. It can be easily versioned, edited on pretty much any device (including vim from a chromebook I travel with), and being able to manually edit the library file has shown me several errors Zotero made importing sources that I failed to notice before.
Gummi, an F/OSS latex editor, has nice latex/bibtex integration so you can insert references by searching/clicking rather than having to know their identifier.
Google scholar has a nice "import to bibtex" function so adding a source to your library is as simple as copy/paste. I do wish I could find (or make time to write) a simple chrome extension that appends a.bib file automatically to the selected library, but otherwise I couldn't he happier with it.
I can't speak to legislative intent, but I wouldn't be surprised if harassment of victims or witness tampering were at least part of that conversation. If your attorney comes down to the police station, then you can chat as privately as your attorney wants. In practice, the police monitor and log all calls made such that they can later prove that they gave the suspect a reasonable opportunity to contact someone. (Failure to do so can have pretty severe legal ramifications including excluding evidence.)
Prior to the recent rash of Dice.com slashvertisements, I held a very positive opinion of both Dice.com and Slashdot. With each new thinly veiled attempt to drive traffic to Dice, I lose a little bit of respect for each.
If Dice wants to put ads on slashdot, just put ads on slashdot. Stop running fake stories that just diminish a site that has spent a long time earning a loyal following.
And also given the fact that a vast majority of them are punctuated with discretionary conditions in them, such as "what an average person would believe" or "Probable Cause" or "Credible Suspicion", etc., who is to say definitively? Afterall, the officer has sole discretion in interpretation of these conditions.
On the scene, yes. But officers have to make instant decisions with limited information then the courts get as much time as they want and as much information as they want to determine whether the officer was right or not. If an officer believes they have probable cause and uses that as the basis for a search and later a court disagrees, any evidence found in that search is inadmissible in any criminal proceeding. (Subject to certain exceptions and case law that is too detailed to go into here)
The alleged drunk driver refused a breathalyzer test at the time, which some people consider an admission of guilt. Now, I don't know if he was drunk or not, but consider this: can a police officer who lies on his police report be trusted to accurately report the breathalyzer result? (Keep in mind there's no evidence, just a number he writes down.)
There actually is evidence in many cases. The "Datamaster" breath machine used by many states prints two receipts, one for our records and one to give to the defendant that shows the results of the machine's test of its internal standard as well as the results of two separate tests of the submitted breath. Additionally, the machine logs all of the information internally and my state's crime lab can connect to the machines and download the data. (Useful in the event of a lost or torn receipt) We also video-tape the entire administrative breath testing procedure for evidence and videotape as much of the standardized field sobriety tests as is safe and practical. I imagine the same is true with competing breath machines used in some other states, though I only have direct experience with the Datamaster cdm.
In my state, the machines are actually owned by the state crime lab and they are responsible for all of their maintenance / testing, so a department couldn't rig one to print fake receipts if they wanted to.
The other issue here is that drivers slam on their breaks to avoid a ticket, which leads to more rear-end collisions. Larger vehicles often can't stop in time to make the short yellows, but smaller cars in front of them can. The small car driver slams on his or her breaks and gets rear-ended by the larger vehicle behind them. In this scenario, collisions are possible and even imminent despite both drivers behaving within the confines of the law.
Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed.
You just described the way america is trying to deal with drugs. If you are caught in possession, you go to jail. Despite that, drugs are very common and little progress has been made in thwarting their use.
It would be the same with guns. We might get the guy off the street that night, but he'll be back out the next day with another gun and doing whatever it is he intended to do in the first place. I know its cliche, but its true. "If you criminalize guns, then only criminals will have guns."
I'd rather law-abiding citizens have a legal option to defend themselves against those criminals.
Did you RTFA? The user was never able to play HD content.
Exactly. He had a computer capable of playing it. He had a monitor capable of displaying it. DRM prevented him from doing it. This is a classic example of your computer doing something against your best interest.
I doubt you ever exercise your "control".
Wrong. I compile stuff from source regularly and occasionally tweak them to fit my needs. Just the other day I modified SiPie as I prefer to record streaming Sirius to disk rather than listen to it as SiPie receives it. I am dabbling in Microcontroller programming and having low-level access to hardware can be beneficial there.
Your "control" is a warm fuzzy blanket that undoubtably helps with your unjustified paranoia
Remember that when MS decides its no longer profitable to support Vista's activation servers and your $200 operating system becomes a coaster.
You think a company that size is going to listen to a bunch of loonies over probably 99% of their home customers
No, but I do believe that a company that size will listen to other megacorporations over probably 99% of their customers. MS controls 90+% of the home user market. If they wanted to stand up and fight for users, they could do so. However, as a company, their goal (rightfully) isn't to provide users with the best experience. Their goal is profit, and that sometimes means diminishing the users experience for the sake of corporate interests.
Users do not want DRM. It does not benefit them in any way.
Microsoft is the big bogeyman that is out to get you.
Not at all, actually. Microsoft is out to make money. I don't fault them for that, I simply choose to put my interests ahead of theirs. If Microsoft were to provide an open source product tomorrow that was DRM free, I'd check it out. If it was a good fit for one of my needs then I would have no issue paying for it.
I am not trying to convert you. If you are happy living within the box Microsoft defines, then I wish you well. I'm not happy living within that box, so I chose open source.
The key point here is that you appear to think you understand the parameters of that box, have enough faith in Microsoft to trust that they won't shrink it or end it, and are deciding to accept the box in whatever form they choose. You are well within your rights to make that choice - I just happen to think its foolish.
The typical user, however, doesn't even know the box exists. They don't get a clear warning when they buy their shiny new PC that it will obey the MPAA before it obeys them. Even if they did, the fact that its closed source means that Microsoft can change the rules any time they want. That is the total lack of control I choose to avoid.
Then don't purchase and attempt to play content which requires protected media path.
Once again, your logic is clearly flawed. You assume that users who choose not to purchase certain content won't be affected. The reality is that users have absolutely no say over what the system decides to block. Its closed source and Microsoft could change the rules or completely pull the plug at any time. Here is an example of a user with every right to view their content not being allowed to do so because of Vista DRM: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/01/04/vista.drm.and.netflix/
I'm kinda happy they are there - I know at some stage I'm going to end up with a blu-ray super DRM++ disk in my hand, and I'm going to be able to play it, with x% overhead because of some shitty DRM system.
We disagree there. I'll be able to enjoy the same content, but without the overhead. DRM is, by definition, broken. Read up on the fundamentals of encryption and DRM. Besides, you have no such guarantee. What you mean is that you are going to be able to play it so long as Microsoft decides to let you. They could decide tomorrow that only Microsoft's implementation of HDCP is to be trusted and require that all users by Microsoft flat panels at a 200% premium over other manufacturers in order to view some format.
Such things don't concern me as I have complete control over my computer. Microsoft has control over yours - they just let you use it sometimes.
Sounds like when your hot friend comes around
...
My wife uses Linux. Besides, I'm not willing to sacrifice my principles for sex. If you are, then I suggest you reconsider your position in that regard.
A quick google for "vista drm" will show many more.
I'm glad you haven't yet run into problems and its true that some users never will. However, Vista is still using your hardware to watch what you do at the expense of using that hardware for what you are trying to do. Even if you never run into a file you can't play, the cost to you in efficiency or in monetary terms is far above zero.
The price you paid for Vista included the cost of developing the DRM schemes that are only used to limit you. The ram and cpu Vista uses enforcing those schemes is ram and cpu that you could be using to do a useful task.
Its sort of like your neighbor stealing your bandwidth via wifi.You may not notice that you aren't getting your full bandwidth, but that doesn't mean it isn't making you wait a few seconds longer for that download, or get a little more lag playing the latest and greatest game. In this case, your nosy neighbor is watching everything you do so they can stop you if you do anything they don't like - and you are paying them for the privilege.
Tip: With ram at around $20 a gig, the people running around screaming that Vista won't run on ten bucks (512meg) of RAM should probably not be considering a $200 OS. It doesnt run on the free toy you get with a happy meal either.
The problem with that logic is that there are competing operating systems which will happily run on "ten bucks of RAM" and do everything Vista will do. Its not that RAM is expensive, its that Vista wastes the RAM it has on stuff that users don't want. I don't want a bunch of trusted computing threads watching to make sure I don't dare watch a movie I paid for on a monitor I paid for. I don't want threads making sure the audio I listen to is being played on Microsoft Approved High Security DRM+ Speakers. I want the OS I buy to use the hardware I buy to do the things I want it to be doing. That's why I switched to Debian years ago and haven't looked back.
Thanks for the link. Its good to know that an end is in sight. It will be a long while before I can recommend that approach, though, as there are still a lot of legacy browsers out there that don't support it.
Additionally, some companies are now offering "multidomain certificates" though I think that undercuts some of the trust inherent in the certificate model.
is there any real good reason that the whole web can't be HTTPS?
Sadly, there is.
Many many sites operate on shared hosts where one IP is used for many domain names. SSL, by design flaw (imo), can't be used that way as the certificate itself has the domain embedded and the server has no way of knowing which domain you want to hit prior to initiating the SSL session. I've long thought that it would be wiser to have some part of the SSL negotiation that indicates which domain was desired by the client, so that a server could have many domains (each with their own certificate) on one IP. As is, I have to give my clients that want to use SSL their own IP, which can significantly increase the cost of hosting them.
IPv6 does much to solve this problem, but its a long way off.
The problem doesn't have to do with companies gouging under socialization, it has to do with the costs to meet overregulation. I agree completely that overregulation is a huge part of it. However, in a socialized system, those same regulation requirements still exist but the price control of the free market does not. Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest that regulation would decrease under socialized medicine, and in fact history has shown us that government involvement generally increases regulatory complexity. Your point is a valid argument against government overregulation, but it is not, in my view, an argument in favor of socialized medicine.
As to your second point, I fail to see the comparison between a small federal government in a republic such as the US and the massive and controlling government in China, but I think you're trying to make the point that some government regulation is necessary for public safety. If I'm misreading your argument, I apologize.
I absolutely agree that some regulation is necessary when public safety is at issue, but there are huge portions of the government that have absolutely no effect on the safety of the public in general and I think this is well outside of the intent of the founding fathers. Additionally, I'd argue that some government regulation actually harms the public in general.
Taking your example of the food supply, lets look at ethanol.Ethanol production is promoted and subsidized by the government, and the use of corn and other crops in that production effort is contributing to higher food prices around the world. (Note that ethanol is not the only cause of these higher prices, but it is certainly a contributing factor.) In this instance, the government is damaging the people by interfering in the energy market in a well-intentioned but ultimately harmful way.
You would run into the same issues with socialized medicine as you are complaining about with the military.
Unless we nationalize every supplier needed to run a healthcare system, there is the chance (and I'd argue the likelihood) of private companies gouging the government for supplies, services, etc. In fact, I'd say that this is considerably more likely to occur with a government health care system because private institutes typically make decisions on who to purchase from based on profitability and price is a factor in that. In a government system, profitability is a non-issue and political weight becomes much more important. We as taxpayers will start paying $20 for a band-aid because ReallyBadBandaids, Inc. happened to back the right candidate at the right time in a recent election. We could legally mandate the low-bid system, but then we are essentially guaranteeing that we will all receive the lowest quality of health care legally allowed.
The alternative is to give the government control of huge sectors of the economy so that they don't have to depend on private contractors. This is, of course, the first step toward a socialist society and the loss of our rights.
I agree that its time to take our government back and have it serve us, but I have a different viewpoint on what the government should be. The government has grown far too large and controls far too much of our lives; we need to get back to the original intent of the founding fathers and focus on a small federal government that honors the constitution.
What jurisdiction, exactly, was this in? Here, you don't pay a penny if you win your case and can often do most of the process of fighting a ticket by mail.
What agency wrote the ticket? Was it a state or local charge? Did you try discussing the situation with the relevant prosecuting attorney? What code section were you cited under?
I find it hard to believe that there is a jurisdiction that really requires you to pay court cost if you win your case, so please provide more information.
Grossman is far from silent, but video game violence is not at all his primary focus of research or education. His primary focus is the enhancement of training for military and law enforcement personnel. I've read several stories written by current Law Enforcement Officers that claim Grossman's techniques and training helped them survive their deadly force encounters and thats something worth praising and not the work of a demagogue.
As far as the graph, it doesn't really apply to the arguments Grossman is making. Looking at overall crime rates does not directly translate to the details of given violent crimes or the number of certain types of violent crimes. Grossman argues, if I recall, that aggravated assaults and attempted murders are up but that modern medical science saves a good number of people who would've died just 10 years ago, so the statistics are misleading.
Grossman may not be right about video games. Personally, I think he is probably right about the stuff I directly mention in my response to the GP, but I don't think he's right about everything. However, he is certainly not a demagogue and in no way comparable to Jack Thompson.
Disclaimer: I believe Grossman co-authored a book on video game's link to violence and I have not read it. I have, however, read his chapter on video game violence in "On Combat" and base the above on the information presented therein.
I've read On Combat by the same guy, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, and can try to elaborate on the point.
Grossman argues (quite effectively) that people tend to go into an automatic reaction state when faced with life or death choices, and that the best (only?) way to insure our warriors (military, police) survive deadly force encounters is to train them in realistic simulations. When faced with extreme stress and risk of death, humans tend to "fall back on their training" and do whatever comes naturally to survive. There is a lot of evidence to support his point and I 'd highly recommend you read either On Killing or On Combat if you are at all interested in this topic.
If I recall, Grossman does not so much argue that violent video games *cause* people to kill, but rather that they help steer the effectiveness and amount of carnage prevalent when someone puts themselves in the situation to kill. In most popular FPS video games, one acquires a target, kills it, acquires the next target, kills it, and so on. We are essentially training ourselves to keep shooting until everything in sight is dead. Grossman theorizes that this may be happening in the cases of school shootings, etc. where someone plans to commit an isolated act of violence, but their video game "training" takes over due to the extreme stress of the situation and they fall back into the acquire and kill loop until they run out of ammunition or are stopped by some outside factor.
Why not do a quick tarball of your source directory and throw it up? If its disorganized, fine.. let the community organize it. If its got some poor code, who cares? We have all been guilty of hacks. It can't take more than 15 minutes to release source code and it would go a long way toward making your project acceptable to the community.
At this point, as far as I can tell the JVC player is "broken" and it should be replaced - but the replacement system will need to be able to play these CD's. Maybe it's okay that the discs won't play on my PC, but they should work in my stereo systems.
I think there is a flaw in your logic here. If the JVC system plays standard CDs just fine, then its the new CD that is broken - not your hardware. Return the CD and let them know exactly why - because its broken as far as you're concerned. If they refuse to take it back for cash, get an exchange for the same CD..then another, then another. (For what it's worth, I've always been able to get cash back when I explain why I don't want the broken (read: DRMed) disc.)
If enough people do this, DRM becomes unprofitable (returns are expensive) and disappears.
The other side of this is that it can create a very hostile environment for the sales staff. One of my clients uses a system like this for their low-level sales staff. The problem is that the owners of the individual franchises start looking at the numbers and realize that they can just push the quotas up to the barely attainable level, and thereby get great sales without paying much to the marketing personnel.
Of course, this causes employee turnover to be high as new employees realize after a month or two that they'll never make the "big money" ownership insists is possible, but they are quite motivated for the few months they are employed with the organization.
And admittedly, a few individuals get lucky each week and actually make a decent salary, but I wrote/maintain their payroll system. I've never seen more then 3 or 4 people in a list of hundreds actually sell enough to qualify for the higher compensations plans. Of course, employees don't know what other employees earn..so many just assume that they aren't working hard enough and will be sure to "bonus" next week.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all. Rather, an officer has a much easier time justifying a lawful detainment than a private citizen does and is on much more solid legal ground if he or she has to use force in the furtherance of a legal goal. Officers also typically have more training and experiencing both in preventing the need for such force and using it appropriately when necessary. (There are, of course, examples to the contrary.)
If an officer truly just unlawfully detains you, then the question becomes whether or not that unlawful detainment violated a clearly established constitutional right. If so, qualified immunity generally doesn't apply and someone is getting out their checkbook. In fact, as an agent of the state, an officer is at greater peril if they violate your rights as they can be both civilly and criminally liable at both the state and federal level and they can also receive departmental discipline. What that means is that a single action can result in repercussions for the officer in five different venues.
Again, I am not a lawyer and I am skipping over a lot of important details that aren't really relevant to a hypothetical like this.
Valid point, but there are key legal and practical differences. I am not a lawyer and I may not be read up on all the recent cases, but I am a police officer and I have looked into this area a bit a while back.
For example, police officers acting in their official capacity (regardless of who pays) are generally entitled to qualified immunity. While private guards may qualify for qualified immunity in some circumstances, the law there is much less clear and their use in actual roles requiring action (rather than just observing and reporting) can be a major source of liability.
That is, Facebook would generally be liable for actions taken by private security working directly for them. They set the policy the security guard follows and are liable for the consequences of that policy. Police officers, on the other hand, work for the city (or county or state or federal) and their actions are generally governed by policy and law, which may act as a buffer between Facebook's deep pockets and potential lawsuits.
Additionally, even in states where a citizen's arrest is perfectly legal, there are logistical concerns. In the states I am familiar with, resisting an officer who is effecting a legal arrest is illegal and in some states even resisting an illegal arrest is illegal unless certain other elements (i.e. risk of physical harm) are involved. When a citizen is attempting to effect the arrest, it is much easier for the person being arrested to simply claim they were being assaulted and fought back and there is no simple way to determine who is right.
Having a trained, experienced, uniformed police officer effecting the arrest undercuts this argument because it isn't (generally) reasonable for an individual to claim they were being randomly assaulted by an on-duty officer.
I don't have mod points right now, but I would mod this up if I did.
The argument that artists shouldn't have to worry about getting paid but rather just worry about making art isn't sustainable. I think most of us have hobbies or interests that we would prefer to spend our time doing more than whatever we actually do to pay the bills, but those things clearly aren't sufficiently economically productive or we would be doing them full-time.
The argument the artist is making is essentially, "I don't want to do something people value enough for me to survive, so you should pay me for something you don't value enough because I say it is worth it." If we don't value labor based on the economic value of its output, how do we value it? Currency is simply a more convenient way to trade labor for products. It has no inherent value unless core products (like food) are produced in order to obtain it. That is, currency is how we motivate individuals to work in ways the economy finds productive in addition to ways they find personally satisfying. Without valuing labor's output economically, no one would do unpleasant jobs (barring the few that find those jobs pleasant) and there would be no society to look at the art anyway.
Many of us would rather spend time doing a thing we love than a thing society economically values, but that isn't how the world works. The counterargument is that it would be okay if only a few people got the privilege and the rest of us worked to support them, but that opens an entire other set of questions as to who is in that select group, what efforts are appropriate for qualification, etc. The answer, of course, is that the efforts most worthy for inclusion are the efforts that people will pay for anyway so the creation of the special group isn't necessary at all.
I switched from Zotero to Bibtex for my academic work a few months ago. I used Zotero for years and was generally happy with it, but I have really started to enjoy working in latex and bibtex is the obvious choice for that. There is just something really nice about having a plain text document. It can be easily versioned, edited on pretty much any device (including vim from a chromebook I travel with), and being able to manually edit the library file has shown me several errors Zotero made importing sources that I failed to notice before.
Gummi, an F/OSS latex editor, has nice latex/bibtex integration so you can insert references by searching/clicking rather than having to know their identifier.
Google scholar has a nice "import to bibtex" function so adding a source to your library is as simple as copy/paste. I do wish I could find (or make time to write) a simple chrome extension that appends a .bib file automatically to the selected library, but otherwise I couldn't he happier with it.
In addition to the system-level stuff, Android's SDK also provides a callback that apps should implement for exactly that reason.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html#onLowMemory()
The system calls it when it needs to reclaim some memory and apps are supposed to discard whatever they can in order to return memory to the system.
According to Iowa Code 804.20, the police "shall" monitor any phone calls made. The exact text is:
Such person shall be permitted to make a reasonable number of telephone calls as may be required to secure an attorney. If a call is made, it shall be made in the presence of the person having custody of the one arrested or restrained. (Source: https://coolice.legis.iowa.gov/Cool-ICE/default.asp?category=billinfo&service=IowaCode&ga=83&input=804.20)
I can't speak to legislative intent, but I wouldn't be surprised if harassment of victims or witness tampering were at least part of that conversation. If your attorney comes down to the police station, then you can chat as privately as your attorney wants. In practice, the police monitor and log all calls made such that they can later prove that they gave the suspect a reasonable opportunity to contact someone. (Failure to do so can have pretty severe legal ramifications including excluding evidence.)
Prior to the recent rash of Dice.com slashvertisements, I held a very positive opinion of both Dice.com and Slashdot. With each new thinly veiled attempt to drive traffic to Dice, I lose a little bit of respect for each.
If Dice wants to put ads on slashdot, just put ads on slashdot. Stop running fake stories that just diminish a site that has spent a long time earning a loyal following.
On the scene, yes. But officers have to make instant decisions with limited information then the courts get as much time as they want and as much information as they want to determine whether the officer was right or not. If an officer believes they have probable cause and uses that as the basis for a search and later a court disagrees, any evidence found in that search is inadmissible in any criminal proceeding. (Subject to certain exceptions and case law that is too detailed to go into here)
There actually is evidence in many cases. The "Datamaster" breath machine used by many states prints two receipts, one for our records and one to give to the defendant that shows the results of the machine's test of its internal standard as well as the results of two separate tests of the submitted breath. Additionally, the machine logs all of the information internally and my state's crime lab can connect to the machines and download the data. (Useful in the event of a lost or torn receipt) We also video-tape the entire administrative breath testing procedure for evidence and videotape as much of the standardized field sobriety tests as is safe and practical. I imagine the same is true with competing breath machines used in some other states, though I only have direct experience with the Datamaster cdm.
In my state, the machines are actually owned by the state crime lab and they are responsible for all of their maintenance / testing, so a department couldn't rig one to print fake receipts if they wanted to.
The other issue here is that drivers slam on their breaks to avoid a ticket, which leads to more rear-end collisions. Larger vehicles often can't stop in time to make the short yellows, but smaller cars in front of them can. The small car driver slams on his or her breaks and gets rear-ended by the larger vehicle behind them. In this scenario, collisions are possible and even imminent despite both drivers behaving within the confines of the law.
Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed.
You just described the way america is trying to deal with drugs. If you are caught in possession, you go to jail. Despite that, drugs are very common and little progress has been made in thwarting their use. It would be the same with guns. We might get the guy off the street that night, but he'll be back out the next day with another gun and doing whatever it is he intended to do in the first place. I know its cliche, but its true. "If you criminalize guns, then only criminals will have guns." I'd rather law-abiding citizens have a legal option to defend themselves against those criminals.
Did you RTFA? The user was never able to play HD content.
Exactly. He had a computer capable of playing it. He had a monitor capable of displaying it. DRM prevented him from doing it. This is a classic example of your computer doing something against your best interest.
I doubt you ever exercise your "control".
Wrong. I compile stuff from source regularly and occasionally tweak them to fit my needs. Just the other day I modified SiPie as I prefer to record streaming Sirius to disk rather than listen to it as SiPie receives it. I am dabbling in Microcontroller programming and having low-level access to hardware can be beneficial there.
Your "control" is a warm fuzzy blanket that undoubtably helps with your unjustified paranoia
Remember that when MS decides its no longer profitable to support Vista's activation servers and your $200 operating system becomes a coaster.
You think a company that size is going to listen to a bunch of loonies over probably 99% of their home customers
No, but I do believe that a company that size will listen to other megacorporations over probably 99% of their customers. MS controls 90+% of the home user market. If they wanted to stand up and fight for users, they could do so. However, as a company, their goal (rightfully) isn't to provide users with the best experience. Their goal is profit, and that sometimes means diminishing the users experience for the sake of corporate interests.
Users do not want DRM. It does not benefit them in any way.
Microsoft is the big bogeyman that is out to get you.
Not at all, actually. Microsoft is out to make money. I don't fault them for that, I simply choose to put my interests ahead of theirs. If Microsoft were to provide an open source product tomorrow that was DRM free, I'd check it out. If it was a good fit for one of my needs then I would have no issue paying for it.
I am not trying to convert you. If you are happy living within the box Microsoft defines, then I wish you well. I'm not happy living within that box, so I chose open source.
The key point here is that you appear to think you understand the parameters of that box, have enough faith in Microsoft to trust that they won't shrink it or end it, and are deciding to accept the box in whatever form they choose. You are well within your rights to make that choice - I just happen to think its foolish.
The typical user, however, doesn't even know the box exists. They don't get a clear warning when they buy their shiny new PC that it will obey the MPAA before it obeys them. Even if they did, the fact that its closed source means that Microsoft can change the rules any time they want. That is the total lack of control I choose to avoid.
Then don't purchase and attempt to play content which requires protected media path.
Once again, your logic is clearly flawed. You assume that users who choose not to purchase certain content won't be affected. The reality is that users have absolutely no say over what the system decides to block. Its closed source and Microsoft could change the rules or completely pull the plug at any time. Here is an example of a user with every right to view their content not being allowed to do so because of Vista DRM: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/01/04/vista.drm.and.netflix/
I'm kinda happy they are there - I know at some stage I'm going to end up with a blu-ray super DRM++ disk in my hand, and I'm going to be able to play it, with x% overhead because of some shitty DRM system.
We disagree there. I'll be able to enjoy the same content, but without the overhead. DRM is, by definition, broken. Read up on the fundamentals of encryption and DRM. Besides, you have no such guarantee. What you mean is that you are going to be able to play it so long as Microsoft decides to let you. They could decide tomorrow that only Microsoft's implementation of HDCP is to be trusted and require that all users by Microsoft flat panels at a 200% premium over other manufacturers in order to view some format.
Such things don't concern me as I have complete control over my computer. Microsoft has control over yours - they just let you use it sometimes.
Sounds like when your hot friend comes around
...
My wife uses Linux. Besides, I'm not willing to sacrifice my principles for sex. If you are, then I suggest you reconsider your position in that regard.
Vista doesn't stop me from watching anything, or burning dvd copies for that matter.
I don't have personal experiences with it as I switched completely to Linux long ago. However, there are numerous examples on the web:
A good technical overview of the stuff your computer is doing *other* than what you want it to do: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
A real-world example of that stuff hurting a real user: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/03/2339248
Vista DRM breaking apple content: http://www.saschameinrath.com/2007feb04windows_vista_drm_turning_ipods_into_doorstops_since_2007
A quick google for "vista drm" will show many more.
I'm glad you haven't yet run into problems and its true that some users never will. However, Vista is still using your hardware to watch what you do at the expense of using that hardware for what you are trying to do. Even if you never run into a file you can't play, the cost to you in efficiency or in monetary terms is far above zero.
The price you paid for Vista included the cost of developing the DRM schemes that are only used to limit you. The ram and cpu Vista uses enforcing those schemes is ram and cpu that you could be using to do a useful task.
Its sort of like your neighbor stealing your bandwidth via wifi.You may not notice that you aren't getting your full bandwidth, but that doesn't mean it isn't making you wait a few seconds longer for that download, or get a little more lag playing the latest and greatest game. In this case, your nosy neighbor is watching everything you do so they can stop you if you do anything they don't like - and you are paying them for the privilege.
Tip: With ram at around $20 a gig, the people running around screaming that Vista won't run on ten bucks (512meg) of RAM should probably not be considering a $200 OS. It doesnt run on the free toy you get with a happy meal either.
The problem with that logic is that there are competing operating systems which will happily run on "ten bucks of RAM" and do everything Vista will do. Its not that RAM is expensive, its that Vista wastes the RAM it has on stuff that users don't want. I don't want a bunch of trusted computing threads watching to make sure I don't dare watch a movie I paid for on a monitor I paid for. I don't want threads making sure the audio I listen to is being played on Microsoft Approved High Security DRM+ Speakers. I want the OS I buy to use the hardware I buy to do the things I want it to be doing. That's why I switched to Debian years ago and haven't looked back.
Thanks for the link. Its good to know that an end is in sight. It will be a long while before I can recommend that approach, though, as there are still a lot of legacy browsers out there that don't support it.
Additionally, some companies are now offering "multidomain certificates" though I think that undercuts some of the trust inherent in the certificate model.
is there any real good reason that the whole web can't be HTTPS?
Sadly, there is.
Many many sites operate on shared hosts where one IP is used for many domain names. SSL, by design flaw (imo), can't be used that way as the certificate itself has the domain embedded and the server has no way of knowing which domain you want to hit prior to initiating the SSL session. I've long thought that it would be wiser to have some part of the SSL negotiation that indicates which domain was desired by the client, so that a server could have many domains (each with their own certificate) on one IP. As is, I have to give my clients that want to use SSL their own IP, which can significantly increase the cost of hosting them.
IPv6 does much to solve this problem, but its a long way off.
Josh.
As to your second point, I fail to see the comparison between a small federal government in a republic such as the US and the massive and controlling government in China, but I think you're trying to make the point that some government regulation is necessary for public safety. If I'm misreading your argument, I apologize.
I absolutely agree that some regulation is necessary when public safety is at issue, but there are huge portions of the government that have absolutely no effect on the safety of the public in general and I think this is well outside of the intent of the founding fathers. Additionally, I'd argue that some government regulation actually harms the public in general.
Taking your example of the food supply, lets look at ethanol.Ethanol production is promoted and subsidized by the government, and the use of corn and other crops in that production effort is contributing to higher food prices around the world. (Note that ethanol is not the only cause of these higher prices, but it is certainly a contributing factor.) In this instance, the government is damaging the people by interfering in the energy market in a well-intentioned but ultimately harmful way.
You would run into the same issues with socialized medicine as you are complaining about with the military.
Unless we nationalize every supplier needed to run a healthcare system, there is the chance (and I'd argue the likelihood) of private companies gouging the government for supplies, services, etc. In fact, I'd say that this is considerably more likely to occur with a government health care system because private institutes typically make decisions on who to purchase from based on profitability and price is a factor in that. In a government system, profitability is a non-issue and political weight becomes much more important. We as taxpayers will start paying $20 for a band-aid because ReallyBadBandaids, Inc. happened to back the right candidate at the right time in a recent election. We could legally mandate the low-bid system, but then we are essentially guaranteeing that we will all receive the lowest quality of health care legally allowed.
The alternative is to give the government control of huge sectors of the economy so that they don't have to depend on private contractors. This is, of course, the first step toward a socialist society and the loss of our rights.
I agree that its time to take our government back and have it serve us, but I have a different viewpoint on what the government should be. The government has grown far too large and controls far too much of our lives; we need to get back to the original intent of the founding fathers and focus on a small federal government that honors the constitution.
What jurisdiction, exactly, was this in? Here, you don't pay a penny if you win your case and can often do most of the process of fighting a ticket by mail.
What agency wrote the ticket? Was it a state or local charge? Did you try discussing the situation with the relevant prosecuting attorney? What code section were you cited under?
I find it hard to believe that there is a jurisdiction that really requires you to pay court cost if you win your case, so please provide more information.
Respectfully, you're wrong.
Grossman is far from silent, but video game violence is not at all his primary focus of research or education. His primary focus is the enhancement of training for military and law enforcement personnel. I've read several stories written by current Law Enforcement Officers that claim Grossman's techniques and training helped them survive their deadly force encounters and thats something worth praising and not the work of a demagogue.
As far as the graph, it doesn't really apply to the arguments Grossman is making. Looking at overall crime rates does not directly translate to the details of given violent crimes or the number of certain types of violent crimes. Grossman argues, if I recall, that aggravated assaults and attempted murders are up but that modern medical science saves a good number of people who would've died just 10 years ago, so the statistics are misleading.
Grossman may not be right about video games. Personally, I think he is probably right about the stuff I directly mention in my response to the GP, but I don't think he's right about everything. However, he is certainly not a demagogue and in no way comparable to Jack Thompson.
Disclaimer: I believe Grossman co-authored a book on video game's link to violence and I have not read it. I have, however, read his chapter on video game violence in "On Combat" and base the above on the information presented therein.
I've read On Combat by the same guy, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, and can try to elaborate on the point.
Grossman argues (quite effectively) that people tend to go into an automatic reaction state when faced with life or death choices, and that the best (only?) way to insure our warriors (military, police) survive deadly force encounters is to train them in realistic simulations. When faced with extreme stress and risk of death, humans tend to "fall back on their training" and do whatever comes naturally to survive. There is a lot of evidence to support his point and I 'd highly recommend you read either On Killing or On Combat if you are at all interested in this topic.
If I recall, Grossman does not so much argue that violent video games *cause* people to kill, but rather that they help steer the effectiveness and amount of carnage prevalent when someone puts themselves in the situation to kill. In most popular FPS video games, one acquires a target, kills it, acquires the next target, kills it, and so on. We are essentially training ourselves to keep shooting until everything in sight is dead. Grossman theorizes that this may be happening in the cases of school shootings, etc. where someone plans to commit an isolated act of violence, but their video game "training" takes over due to the extreme stress of the situation and they fall back into the acquire and kill loop until they run out of ammunition or are stopped by some outside factor.
Why not do a quick tarball of your source directory and throw it up? If its disorganized, fine.. let the community organize it. If its got some poor code, who cares? We have all been guilty of hacks. It can't take more than 15 minutes to release source code and it would go a long way toward making your project acceptable to the community.
At this point, as far as I can tell the JVC player is "broken" and it should be replaced - but the replacement system will need to be able to play these CD's. Maybe it's okay that the discs won't play on my PC, but they should work in my stereo systems.
I think there is a flaw in your logic here. If the JVC system plays standard CDs just fine, then its the new CD that is broken - not your hardware. Return the CD and let them know exactly why - because its broken as far as you're concerned. If they refuse to take it back for cash, get an exchange for the same CD..then another, then another. (For what it's worth, I've always been able to get cash back when I explain why I don't want the broken (read: DRMed) disc.)
If enough people do this, DRM becomes unprofitable (returns are expensive) and disappears.
The other side of this is that it can create a very hostile environment for the sales staff. One of my clients uses a system like this for their low-level sales staff. The problem is that the owners of the individual franchises start looking at the numbers and realize that they can just push the quotas up to the barely attainable level, and thereby get great sales without paying much to the marketing personnel.
Of course, this causes employee turnover to be high as new employees realize after a month or two that they'll never make the "big money" ownership insists is possible, but they are quite motivated for the few months they are employed with the organization.
And admittedly, a few individuals get lucky each week and actually make a decent salary, but I wrote/maintain their payroll system. I've never seen more then 3 or 4 people in a list of hundreds actually sell enough to qualify for the higher compensations plans. Of course, employees don't know what other employees earn..so many just assume that they aren't working hard enough and will be sure to "bonus" next week.