American drivers just suck in general. I'd much rather be driving a manual (even though my current car is unfortunately auto). They're cheaper here as well.
I agree with you completely on a base level about genders being very different overall. However, I think there were some interesting points in the original article that are brought up concerning humans using these differences to help foster better technology in general. A woman may look at a problem in a new and better way that a man may not, and vice versa. We should encourage everyone to problem solve in ways that are unique and attractive to them.
I can understand how since a manual transmission is more complex than an automatic to drive, that there could be tests for vehicles that only allow the automatics to be driven. But...
If you already know how to drive in a manual, why do you have to take a test for people that don't know how to drive anything? Can you not take the manual lessons (if any lessons are explicitly required to take the tests) and then take the manual test, skipping the automatics?
I guess, what i'm really trying to say, is that unless the votes are rigged in some way, the most popular thing should win more times than not. regardless of how many people vote. Because the people not voting should be evenly distributed.
Unfortunately, in the real world, should does not mean how it really is. Both situations happen, the most popular thing not winning, as well as voter turnout being representative of actual population intentions.
I would agree that it would be a better system of voting for the USA, but it unfortunately is not the system we use. Basically, here's how it boils down:
People vote for *A* candidate. The votes are counted up within the state they reside in. Whichever candidate has the most votes in that state recieves 'electoral votes', which is the sum of the number of senators and representatives that exist for that state in congress. The votes from each of the states are tallied and the candidate with the most electoral votes wins the election.
Typically, the one with the most electoral votes is also the one with the highest percentage of the popular vote.
In a very tight race such as this, a lot of voters in highly-conservative or highly-liberal states feel jaded because their states are almost guaranteed to vote for a certain candidate overall (and thus their vote not count toward electoral votes), and I assume as well that less people for the likely winner in the state simply don't vote because they know he'll win as well.
Swing states (moderates that can change from year to year easily) have quite a bit of power, and have quite a bit of time devoted to them during campaigning.
While today's technology is more advanced than it was in 1994, the comparison between Doom3 and current technology, and the comparison between Doom and 1994 technology is about on par with each other. Doom was revolutionary for its time, just like Doom3 is now.
Context? What is being taken away from whom? What is being done with it now that it's available for other purposes?
For all I can tell, it's exactly what the parent meant. Government taking money away from people (taxes) on behalf of the common good. You're right, 'give' and 'take' are not synonyms, and when you apply them to the right subjects and objects, the phrases make sense. Logically, me 'giving' is the same thing as the government 'taking'.
It was the Dreamcast and Playstation 2. Sony made a large announcement within days of the Dreamcast release date regarding either dates/features/games of the PS2.
Suppose I buy a nice wooden rocking chair. I really like it--so much so, that I'd like to make one for myself from scratch. I measure things, create some plans, trace templates, buy wood and screws, sanding paper, and wood stain. Then I make my own using some tools and the materials. And now I have another, for personal use or whatever I deem fit. I've reverse engineered it.
Or, I buy a DVD. I really like it--so much so, that I'd like to make one for myself from scratch. I read the DVD using my computer, rip an ISO image of it, buy blank material and labeling stickers. Then I make my own using my DVD burner and Printer and the materials. And now I have another, for personal use or whatever I deem fit. I've reverse engineered it.
Is it wrong to do either of these? Is the 'encryption' inherent in the design of a rocking chair so trivial that it makes the situations completely different? Are the differences in cost of production (on both sides of the equation--ie, the one I bought, and the one I made) non-trivial?
For your examples, you can actually do any of those things. There is nothing preventing you from it (though it will be hard to start actual building a structure that doesn't comply). A car has the physical ability to go 150mph. It's illegal to do so, yes, but they don't typically sell cars with 65mph governors on them, just because some people choose to drive fast. That's what CSS and similar methods are. Prevention of existing 'features' of a product.
I'm in complete agreement. I'm using a Win2k box at home that I update 'every now and then' (ie, whenever I remember to). I use Opera for web browsing, no email client (web-based at the moment, though I may use Opera's or Thunderbird if I ever had a standard account), play games, and chat.
I've never heard of Opera suddenly giving out viruses or trojans to begin with. I ran spybot search and destroy a month ago to see if in the past 2 years I've owned this machine whether I've gotten anything. Other than the WildTangent driver and a slew of cookies (none of which appeared to be anything dangerous), I didn't have anything worth noting.
I've used windows enough to know when things in my task lisk look funny. I'm amazed at the number of things that look odd on other people's machines (running 2k or xp).
The only things holding me back personally from using linux are hardware support (I'm unsure about nforce2 abilities, WIFI HELL); sound support (going through my head during installs - "what's a sound server?"); video support ("kernel recompile? where do I find these config files..." and "damn that fucking 'no screens found' bug to hell!"); and games - While I love freeciv, I can't play many of my staple games without learning how to download (which I can't do without WIFI support or another machine with it, which either entails getting linux WIFI working with one of two hardware methods at the moment, or using a windows box as an internet server) Wine (or is it WineX, or some other wierd thing I haven't a clue about), learning how to install Wine, learning how to CONFIGURE Wine, and learning how to fix inevitable problems I'll have with Wine.
Yeah, easy as pie. And oh, btw, I'd install linux, but I don't want to lose my windows install. I've got space that I think is partitionable on the machine on a separate drive, but who knows. I've never gotten LILO/GRUB installed correctly on this particular machine (others haven't had multiple drives/OS), and Mandrake won't even install - no kernel found.
I just haven't the time to figure out if something I can't do everything in in the first place can be installed on my machine using one out of 10 distributions. That's a whole evening wasted, doing solely installation, per try. I've got better things to do.
At least the things I haven't had problems with in linux actually work really well. Chatting, web browsing (when I've had a direct-to-ethernet connection), having fun with file systems and package management (on a debian machine). Fun stuff. It's just not all there for me.
Yeah and car users should be informed enough to be able to fit their own seatbelts.
Yeah, you're thinking of that compulsory Driver's Ed. thing. We don't have that for computers. Here's your car, pay for your own gas (internet access), here's the steering wheel (IE), drive wherever you want to go. And oh, sorry, this one doesn't come with a manual on how to drive safely. And there's a small oil leak, but you don't need to know that. Let us know when you crash.
We're obviously at a point of bottleneck at the graphics card more so than the bus: every time we have a new graphics card, it increases performance of games, but we still have plenty of room on the AGP/PCI bus. Adding an additional card will likely continue the trend of increasing performance, and lessening the available room left over on the bus.
Most so called "support contracts" for propriatary software arn't even worth the paper they are printed on.
Man, I really have to agree with you there. Every time we find a bug in the software we use (which is a system of addons to Microstation and related database software), we get some sort of 'workaround' that will be 'fixed in the next patch' (or 'update to the upgrade' (of the latest patch)). Nevermind that it still doesn't give the real results we need, or that we won't get the patch installed on the client systems for 4 months after it's actually available.
If there's something wrong with anything we're doing, we don't have the power or ability to fix it ourselves. What recourse do we have, other than saying "fix it please pretty please, or we're not going to buy from you anymore!" when in actuality, we'll have to anyway for backwards compatibility and continual operation of day to day activities.
OSS increases the demand for good support. If you use it, and your support vendor (or in-house programmer) isn't any good at it, you can find someone else that can do the job better, because he has the code right there in front of him, and not locked in an offsite computer that you'll never see. Anyone can fix the problem if they know how.
That's funny, because the company I work for (which has around 50 small-business-like manufacturing shops networked together to a headquarters in Texas) uses Windows on all desktops and servers (that I'm aware of, this seems to be the norm), and I imagine has support contracts through Microsoft, and I know for a fact through Dell, and through our own company support center at HQ which handles everything from computer hardware, operating system, and additional software support. We've had programmers fly to different branches to consult with us regarding specialized programs (to be used throughout the company for connecting to materials and orders databases (which we have support contracts through another company for) and using it for sales and shipping coordination).
Customization of environment may lead to patch and upgrade hassles. However, it's a large hassle even in a company using Windows--Patches, updates, security policies, they're going to be there in any operating system and software setup. And to boot, you have the ability to customize the environment to suit your business' needs! You're in more overall control of your systems than with Windows, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.
I don't see where switching hardware is completely nescessary. OSS runs on plenty of flavors of hardware.
What could we possibly be doing now, that would cost more with an OSS deployment, other than the initial cost of deployment and training? As it is, we're locked into our current setup anyway due to the proprietary engineering and manufacturing software in use.
Why are members of that small team of clearanced programmers making over $300k a year? (if your 20,000 figure accounts for the additional people in the next paragraph, you should make that clearer) What sort of oversight and compliance officers does Microsoft employ to ensure whatever 'activities' you refer to meet regulations and standards (of what?)?
It may end up more expensive, but supporting yourself means you're supporting yourself... and no one else. How much attention is a vendor giving you? Certainly not undivided.
Yeah, but you could say "ADD 5 to 8 CENTIMETERS TO YOUR MANHOOD!" and it would work just fine. Larger numbers that are still relatively sane (you wouldn't want to reference this in nanometers, of course) are better in advertisement, right?
I'm suprised the automotive/highway industry in the US hasn't switched to Km/Hr for this reason. Why go 60MPH when you can go 100Km/Hr! Though, it is pretty nice to be able to know 1mile = 1minute of driving sometimes, for shorter distances.
If that's going to happen, you can either stick with your current business model, and go bankrupt, or you can change with the times: make your own product open source (or nearly so) and provide more customized service to customers via feature inclusion and support services. If the product is large enough (say, more complex than a simple utility like ZIP; consider database software), they're going to want support for it. If an alternative open-source solution doesn't offer services to go along with their software, they won't get the business.
I don't know how Microsoft (or it's funded think-tanks) can say that costs for training and support are larger for open-source, other than the fact that MS subsidizes those services, and passes the costs along to their general consumers (of high-priced Windows and Office, not requiring nearly the amount of support costs in proportion to actual businesses). Businesses are going to want support in one way or another. It's not like no one uses an IT guy to handle thier network administration, or to fix problems when they happen (oh right, this never happens with Windows!).
Nah, it's not their problem how I use it. It works great on the corrosion on my old car battery! Though, I do have quite a bit of this stuff left. Didn't even use the whole can...
The court dissentions seemed to consider it a little, but it may not have been brought up as a main point in the proceedings. I've no idea about that. It may been included in the lower courts and either struck down or abandoned. Who knows. It's something I would have brought up though. Did the man even have ID on him at the time? I didn't see anything on the video to that effect.
Actually, I'm not trying to change anything. I'm asking why things are the way they are. If I'm the subject of an investigation, that I'm not even aware if I'm a part of other than the fact that an officer tells me specifically that he's doing one and asking for information from me, why am I telling him things about me? I have no idea! Shouldn't a suspect be aware of why he's suspect?
I admit my fictitious quote was completely sarcastic.
Perhaps they should politely ask..."Pardon me, did you rob this store or rape this woman? No? Drat. Well, our job here is done."
No, they would have probable cause to ask the suspect his name, and try to fish out anything he feels willing to give out. The problem with a situation like this is no one is actually charging the suspect with anything to begin with. In case of robbery or rape, there would be a victim pressing charges, and most likely, some sort of evidence of an actual crime. If an officer is so intent on validating the identity of a person (that he may have no other identity to compare to) that may or may not be involved in a hypothetical (anecdotal account) crime, why is that the most pressing issue? Why isn't finding out if an actual crime has occurred or is in the process of happening? How about finding out if there is a victim--"did this man hit you?"
But that's not what they did. He asked for something that, vaguely worded, may have been construed as something not required by law. If the officer merely asked the apparent victim what happened (and perhaps the officer holding the truck door closed did, who knows, I can't tell from the video), then the officer would have more reason to actually charge him of a crime other than holding up an investigation (of "an investigation").
If someone accuses somebody of raping a woman, wouldn't you want to find the woman and ask her if it happened in the first place? If you don't, you've got an officer asking the accused about something that might not have even happened, which seems like an awful waste of time to me. If the officer is trying to find the culprit, this doesn't do anything at all; it doesn't validate the identity of the culprit, and doesn't validate the accused innocence either, because he doesn't know the identity of the supposed culprit in the first place (he could even have the wrong gender). Now, if the accused is actually guilty, the officer is on an expedition trip for information from the accused about a crime he actually committed, which I gather leads to fifth amendment rights, and he doesn't have to say anything. But if he's innocent, he apparently can't just go about his business, because he must be hiding something about himself, and therefore be guilty--of a crime that might not have happened--! The whole thing just seems strage, really.
I don't want anarchy. I want people to feel that if they've done nothing wrong, that they're protected just as much by the legal system as those that have committed a crime, and that they're protected from the law just as much. If an officer can at will walk up to any person standing on a street and demand identification or more, seemingly without cause to the person, shouldn't he have to tell him why? If he tells me it's the law, I might feel more inclined to rather than feeling I have to 'just because' I should.
I'm not demonizing all officers. I highly respect and am grateful for those that prevent the country from becoming a hellhole. If a crime has been committed, make it right. But don't fight phantom crime. If you have all the participants in a supposed crime physically present, you can't tell me that one person is holding up the investigation if you don't pay any attention to the others present. This particular officer (or group of them) didn't seem to assess the situation fully.
I don't flower givers on the street corner, I want them to ask if crime even happened in the first place of the people they think it happened to. Ask the right people.
The onus of disambiguity should be on the officer when asking for information, as he is doing. The suspect may think he's asking for written documentation, and not provide it.
You're right, the guy only had to give his name. But, the officer didn't demand his name, but "identification", which implies giving more information than solely a name, by way of producing a legal document that has identification information previously verified to be true.
Why ask for something that has the potential to be understood as something not required by law to provide to an officer? If you need to know his name, ask for his name. Ask clear questions after that, including "Do you have an ID on you, so that I can verify this?"
Cases like this remind me that in no way shape or form do we provide the education to individuals regarding the complete extent of their rights and the powers of government. If you're an officer suspecting someone of a crime, tell them that their name is required by law and you must give it when asked. It forces the officer to know the law (which I would HOPE he knows, as an officer), and duly informs the suspect of his rights.
For this situation in particular, if the suspect appears uncooperative in giving him his identification, and asks why it is required, which is more likely to make him cooperative: asking again and again, or telling him why--clearly and without ambiguity--?
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American drivers just suck in general. I'd much rather be driving a manual (even though my current car is unfortunately auto). They're cheaper here as well.
I agree with you completely on a base level about genders being very different overall. However, I think there were some interesting points in the original article that are brought up concerning humans using these differences to help foster better technology in general. A woman may look at a problem in a new and better way that a man may not, and vice versa. We should encourage everyone to problem solve in ways that are unique and attractive to them.
B. It's 'better' because it gives you more control over what the car is doing. It does not 'automatically' decide how it wants to drive.
If you already know how to drive in a manual, why do you have to take a test for people that don't know how to drive anything? Can you not take the manual lessons (if any lessons are explicitly required to take the tests) and then take the manual test, skipping the automatics?
Not to be a spelling Nazi, but this helps prove the website name is capitalizing on mistaken visitors:
You reveresed the two spellings.
Unfortunately, in the real world, should does not mean how it really is. Both situations happen, the most popular thing not winning, as well as voter turnout being representative of actual population intentions.
I would agree that it would be a better system of voting for the USA, but it unfortunately is not the system we use. Basically, here's how it boils down: People vote for *A* candidate. The votes are counted up within the state they reside in. Whichever candidate has the most votes in that state recieves 'electoral votes', which is the sum of the number of senators and representatives that exist for that state in congress. The votes from each of the states are tallied and the candidate with the most electoral votes wins the election. Typically, the one with the most electoral votes is also the one with the highest percentage of the popular vote. In a very tight race such as this, a lot of voters in highly-conservative or highly-liberal states feel jaded because their states are almost guaranteed to vote for a certain candidate overall (and thus their vote not count toward electoral votes), and I assume as well that less people for the likely winner in the state simply don't vote because they know he'll win as well. Swing states (moderates that can change from year to year easily) have quite a bit of power, and have quite a bit of time devoted to them during campaigning.
No, that's what happened with Ross Perot before people realized he was a total looney.
While today's technology is more advanced than it was in 1994, the comparison between Doom3 and current technology, and the comparison between Doom and 1994 technology is about on par with each other. Doom was revolutionary for its time, just like Doom3 is now.
For all I can tell, it's exactly what the parent meant. Government taking money away from people (taxes) on behalf of the common good. You're right, 'give' and 'take' are not synonyms, and when you apply them to the right subjects and objects, the phrases make sense. Logically, me 'giving' is the same thing as the government 'taking'.
It was the Dreamcast and Playstation 2. Sony made a large announcement within days of the Dreamcast release date regarding either dates/features/games of the PS2.
Suppose I buy a nice wooden rocking chair. I really like it--so much so, that I'd like to make one for myself from scratch. I measure things, create some plans, trace templates, buy wood and screws, sanding paper, and wood stain. Then I make my own using some tools and the materials. And now I have another, for personal use or whatever I deem fit. I've reverse engineered it.
Or, I buy a DVD. I really like it--so much so, that I'd like to make one for myself from scratch. I read the DVD using my computer, rip an ISO image of it, buy blank material and labeling stickers. Then I make my own using my DVD burner and Printer and the materials. And now I have another, for personal use or whatever I deem fit. I've reverse engineered it.
Is it wrong to do either of these? Is the 'encryption' inherent in the design of a rocking chair so trivial that it makes the situations completely different? Are the differences in cost of production (on both sides of the equation--ie, the one I bought, and the one I made) non-trivial?
For your examples, you can actually do any of those things. There is nothing preventing you from it (though it will be hard to start actual building a structure that doesn't comply). A car has the physical ability to go 150mph. It's illegal to do so, yes, but they don't typically sell cars with 65mph governors on them, just because some people choose to drive fast. That's what CSS and similar methods are. Prevention of existing 'features' of a product.
You're right, they really should have done something important in the meantime!
Old news topic, but the response is warranted.
I'm in complete agreement. I'm using a Win2k box at home that I update 'every now and then' (ie, whenever I remember to). I use Opera for web browsing, no email client (web-based at the moment, though I may use Opera's or Thunderbird if I ever had a standard account), play games, and chat.
I've never heard of Opera suddenly giving out viruses or trojans to begin with. I ran spybot search and destroy a month ago to see if in the past 2 years I've owned this machine whether I've gotten anything. Other than the WildTangent driver and a slew of cookies (none of which appeared to be anything dangerous), I didn't have anything worth noting.
I've used windows enough to know when things in my task lisk look funny. I'm amazed at the number of things that look odd on other people's machines (running 2k or xp).
The only things holding me back personally from using linux are hardware support (I'm unsure about nforce2 abilities, WIFI HELL); sound support (going through my head during installs - "what's a sound server?"); video support ("kernel recompile? where do I find these config files..." and "damn that fucking 'no screens found' bug to hell!"); and games - While I love freeciv, I can't play many of my staple games without learning how to download (which I can't do without WIFI support or another machine with it, which either entails getting linux WIFI working with one of two hardware methods at the moment, or using a windows box as an internet server) Wine (or is it WineX, or some other wierd thing I haven't a clue about), learning how to install Wine, learning how to CONFIGURE Wine, and learning how to fix inevitable problems I'll have with Wine.
Yeah, easy as pie. And oh, btw, I'd install linux, but I don't want to lose my windows install. I've got space that I think is partitionable on the machine on a separate drive, but who knows. I've never gotten LILO/GRUB installed correctly on this particular machine (others haven't had multiple drives/OS), and Mandrake won't even install - no kernel found.
I just haven't the time to figure out if something I can't do everything in in the first place can be installed on my machine using one out of 10 distributions. That's a whole evening wasted, doing solely installation, per try. I've got better things to do.
At least the things I haven't had problems with in linux actually work really well. Chatting, web browsing (when I've had a direct-to-ethernet connection), having fun with file systems and package management (on a debian machine). Fun stuff. It's just not all there for me.
Yeah, you're thinking of that compulsory Driver's Ed. thing. We don't have that for computers. Here's your car, pay for your own gas (internet access), here's the steering wheel (IE), drive wherever you want to go. And oh, sorry, this one doesn't come with a manual on how to drive safely. And there's a small oil leak, but you don't need to know that. Let us know when you crash.
We're obviously at a point of bottleneck at the graphics card more so than the bus: every time we have a new graphics card, it increases performance of games, but we still have plenty of room on the AGP/PCI bus. Adding an additional card will likely continue the trend of increasing performance, and lessening the available room left over on the bus.
Man, I really have to agree with you there. Every time we find a bug in the software we use (which is a system of addons to Microstation and related database software), we get some sort of 'workaround' that will be 'fixed in the next patch' (or 'update to the upgrade' (of the latest patch)). Nevermind that it still doesn't give the real results we need, or that we won't get the patch installed on the client systems for 4 months after it's actually available.
If there's something wrong with anything we're doing, we don't have the power or ability to fix it ourselves. What recourse do we have, other than saying "fix it please pretty please, or we're not going to buy from you anymore!" when in actuality, we'll have to anyway for backwards compatibility and continual operation of day to day activities.
OSS increases the demand for good support. If you use it, and your support vendor (or in-house programmer) isn't any good at it, you can find someone else that can do the job better, because he has the code right there in front of him, and not locked in an offsite computer that you'll never see. Anyone can fix the problem if they know how.
Customization of environment may lead to patch and upgrade hassles. However, it's a large hassle even in a company using Windows--Patches, updates, security policies, they're going to be there in any operating system and software setup. And to boot, you have the ability to customize the environment to suit your business' needs! You're in more overall control of your systems than with Windows, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.
I don't see where switching hardware is completely nescessary. OSS runs on plenty of flavors of hardware.
What could we possibly be doing now, that would cost more with an OSS deployment, other than the initial cost of deployment and training? As it is, we're locked into our current setup anyway due to the proprietary engineering and manufacturing software in use.
Why are members of that small team of clearanced programmers making over $300k a year? (if your 20,000 figure accounts for the additional people in the next paragraph, you should make that clearer) What sort of oversight and compliance officers does Microsoft employ to ensure whatever 'activities' you refer to meet regulations and standards (of what?)?
It may end up more expensive, but supporting yourself means you're supporting yourself... and no one else. How much attention is a vendor giving you? Certainly not undivided.
If these limits were actually enforced, they would work. But if only 1 out of every 300 cars over the limit is pulled over, who cares?
I'm suprised the automotive/highway industry in the US hasn't switched to Km/Hr for this reason. Why go 60MPH when you can go 100Km/Hr! Though, it is pretty nice to be able to know 1mile = 1minute of driving sometimes, for shorter distances.
If that's going to happen, you can either stick with your current business model, and go bankrupt, or you can change with the times: make your own product open source (or nearly so) and provide more customized service to customers via feature inclusion and support services. If the product is large enough (say, more complex than a simple utility like ZIP; consider database software), they're going to want support for it. If an alternative open-source solution doesn't offer services to go along with their software, they won't get the business. I don't know how Microsoft (or it's funded think-tanks) can say that costs for training and support are larger for open-source, other than the fact that MS subsidizes those services, and passes the costs along to their general consumers (of high-priced Windows and Office, not requiring nearly the amount of support costs in proportion to actual businesses). Businesses are going to want support in one way or another. It's not like no one uses an IT guy to handle thier network administration, or to fix problems when they happen (oh right, this never happens with Windows!).
Nah, it's not their problem how I use it. It works great on the corrosion on my old car battery! Though, I do have quite a bit of this stuff left. Didn't even use the whole can...
The court dissentions seemed to consider it a little, but it may not have been brought up as a main point in the proceedings. I've no idea about that. It may been included in the lower courts and either struck down or abandoned. Who knows. It's something I would have brought up though. Did the man even have ID on him at the time? I didn't see anything on the video to that effect.
I admit my fictitious quote was completely sarcastic.
No, they would have probable cause to ask the suspect his name, and try to fish out anything he feels willing to give out. The problem with a situation like this is no one is actually charging the suspect with anything to begin with. In case of robbery or rape, there would be a victim pressing charges, and most likely, some sort of evidence of an actual crime. If an officer is so intent on validating the identity of a person (that he may have no other identity to compare to) that may or may not be involved in a hypothetical (anecdotal account) crime, why is that the most pressing issue? Why isn't finding out if an actual crime has occurred or is in the process of happening? How about finding out if there is a victim--"did this man hit you?"
But that's not what they did. He asked for something that, vaguely worded, may have been construed as something not required by law. If the officer merely asked the apparent victim what happened (and perhaps the officer holding the truck door closed did, who knows, I can't tell from the video), then the officer would have more reason to actually charge him of a crime other than holding up an investigation (of "an investigation").
If someone accuses somebody of raping a woman, wouldn't you want to find the woman and ask her if it happened in the first place? If you don't, you've got an officer asking the accused about something that might not have even happened, which seems like an awful waste of time to me. If the officer is trying to find the culprit, this doesn't do anything at all; it doesn't validate the identity of the culprit, and doesn't validate the accused innocence either, because he doesn't know the identity of the supposed culprit in the first place (he could even have the wrong gender). Now, if the accused is actually guilty, the officer is on an expedition trip for information from the accused about a crime he actually committed, which I gather leads to fifth amendment rights, and he doesn't have to say anything. But if he's innocent, he apparently can't just go about his business, because he must be hiding something about himself, and therefore be guilty--of a crime that might not have happened--! The whole thing just seems strage, really.
I don't want anarchy. I want people to feel that if they've done nothing wrong, that they're protected just as much by the legal system as those that have committed a crime, and that they're protected from the law just as much. If an officer can at will walk up to any person standing on a street and demand identification or more, seemingly without cause to the person, shouldn't he have to tell him why? If he tells me it's the law, I might feel more inclined to rather than feeling I have to 'just because' I should.
I'm not demonizing all officers. I highly respect and am grateful for those that prevent the country from becoming a hellhole. If a crime has been committed, make it right. But don't fight phantom crime. If you have all the participants in a supposed crime physically present, you can't tell me that one person is holding up the investigation if you don't pay any attention to the others present. This particular officer (or group of them) didn't seem to assess the situation fully. I don't flower givers on the street corner, I want them to ask if crime even happened in the first place of the people they think it happened to. Ask the right people.
You're right, the guy only had to give his name. But, the officer didn't demand his name, but "identification", which implies giving more information than solely a name, by way of producing a legal document that has identification information previously verified to be true.
Why ask for something that has the potential to be understood as something not required by law to provide to an officer? If you need to know his name, ask for his name. Ask clear questions after that, including "Do you have an ID on you, so that I can verify this?"
Cases like this remind me that in no way shape or form do we provide the education to individuals regarding the complete extent of their rights and the powers of government. If you're an officer suspecting someone of a crime, tell them that their name is required by law and you must give it when asked. It forces the officer to know the law (which I would HOPE he knows, as an officer), and duly informs the suspect of his rights.
For this situation in particular, if the suspect appears uncooperative in giving him his identification, and asks why it is required, which is more likely to make him cooperative: asking again and again, or telling him why--clearly and without ambiguity--?