If it is easy to crack for the FBI, it is easy to crack for anyone. Any "back doors" will be converted to front doors ( or windows ) soon enough. And the timing of such a statement. Meltdown and Spectre still in the news, then this.
Perhaps some people will provide an object lesson in what it's like to not have security/privacy for TLA top brass.
Sooner or later people will decide it's time to expose all the personal/financial/medical/social information of top TLA brass, the politicians that back these policies/programs, and their families. Let the brass/politicians explain it to their spouses and family members. Bring the reality of what they advocate for home to their own doorsteps before they bring it to ours. (well, any more than they already have brought it to ours)
I'm not personally advocating for anyone to do anything illegal, just pointing out that the TLAs should pause and do some reflecting here, as people will only be pushed so far before there is blowback and serious consequences, that the population is far, far from helpless if pushed too far, and are fully capable of wrecking your digital TLA iShit, networks, databases, etc, etc for you in very short order. There are roughly ~330 million people in the US. If even a small fraction take action that's a lot of manpower.
On the topic of socialist policies, I DO want to pay for education of others. The children of today will be taking care of me when I'm old, and it is in my direct interest that they are not complete idiots.
I understand your self interest. You're more than welcome to pay for as many people's education as you'd like. Just don't think it's OK to put a gun to other people's head to serve your self interest and beliefs around how others should live and believe by force.
You're going down the 'positive rights' path. Going down that path doesn't end well.
You have a right to education and that means I have to help pay for it? OK. Let's look at some other rights.
I have a right actually listed near the top in the BoR to own a firearm. I believe you should pay to help buy me one, if it's your right to have me help pay for your schooling. And we should probably set up education licensing and registration for those wishing to be educated and strict limits on curricula too, just to be on par with restrictions placed on 2A rights.
I mean, fair is fair, all equal under the law, equal protection and everything...right? Wouldn't any ability to interpret or restrict one particular Constitutional right a certain way be applicable to all of them equally?
abortion is about the definition of life. the government is supposed to protect the life of their citizens. a fetus is vulnerable and needs protection and defined by many to be alive q.e.d. worth protecting by the government.
Could you at least try to understand the arguments of the other-side?
I think much of the difficulty in having a reasonable debate about abortion is that those who decide that fetuses/life has little/no value cannot allow themselves to believe that opponents have any valid arguments or truly believe they are trying to protect life, as any admission that the other side may have a valid argument would mean the possibility that they may actually be wrong, and that means they could be committing atrocities.
Nobody wants to think of themselves as capable of being for the killing of helpless innocents. It's much easier and more comfortable to convince themselves that their opponents are disingenuous and evil moral authoritarians.
It's basic human nature at work, and just to make it worse, there are political/ideological forces on both sides that want the conflict and division for their own reasons and keep preventing any dialog by inciting hatred.
I will go with Adams on this one, as well, with one exception. When he says religious he is dead wrong.
How could he possibly be "wrong" when the Constitution was written with the assumption of Judeo-Christian morals restraining and molding general behaviors of those it governs?
You can disagree that the Constitution should have been drafted differently as to not make those assumptions in it's design, but the design that was created is plainly stated as making those assumptions. There is no room outside of obtuse Post-Modern Solipsism 'logic' to dispute that fact.
I get where you are pointing, however the only standard that need be applied in these circumstances, the only moral compass necessary, is the Constitution.
Well, at least one of the guys who helped write the US Constitution would appear by his own words to disagree strongly with that opinion:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams
No offense, but I think I'll go with Adams on this one.
There is value in what they are doing. They are making the issue more public. They are causing government leaders to have to declare their positions.
But, why would they not want to actually introduce and push for actual, not temporary and 'adminstrative', NN laws?
Whatever reason you wish to assign their refusal to create NN laws through Congress, it still means that whatever those reasons are, they matter more to them than actually getting real NN enacted in a relatively permanent way.
It seems the sticking point is the Democrats' intense desire to place ISPs under Title-II. Why is placing ISPs under Title-II such an imperative for the US Left if enacting NN is the only goal, here? They would very likely garner significant Republican support for reasonable NN legislation. Hell, the Republicans are the only ones who have introduced new NN legislation, WTF? What's up with that, FFS? Why won't the Democrats just say what they actually, really want instead of playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes over NN and meanwhile not getting NN done?
The Democrats wouldn't be trying to get something else accomplished by alternate methods that they are certain the majority of people would reject if fully informed and allowed to choose for themselves, are they?
What is the other hand doing while this one is waving the 'FCC Title-II NN or I riot' banner?
If there is no way to distinguish between encrypted message and a random blob of data, are people going to get thrown in prison for not handing over the encryption keys for scrubbed hard drives or noise on some recording? Will posession of random bits be illegal?
That ship has largely already sailed.
Try boarding an airline flight carrying a laptop in carry-on luggage with a blank HDD/no OS through TSA "security".
Don't attempt this if you actually need to fly somewhere on that flight and/or remain in possession of said laptop, as you're likely going to be missing that flight while playing '20 questions' with TSA..The guy ahead of you may have just walked through with a loaded handgun in his carry-on luggage (TSA is notoriously, hilariously bad at catching actual weapons and stuff, though they're murder on those dangerous water bottles!), but you'll be the one they catch and put through the wringer.
This is Darth; can't be arsed to log in atmo. No, Title II does not put the Internet under tight regulatory control. That's laughable hard right-wing babble. What it does do is allow the federal government to prohibit service providers from certain behavior, most of which is anti-consumer, and detrimental to the openness of the Internet.
If all you wanted was NN to prevent the behaviors you describe why not just pass a law? Republicans are introducing NN legislation, where is the Democratic legislation? Why does regulations have to be enacted administratively (leaving them open to be changed or eliminated in the next administration) by the FCC under Title-II?
It's because the true goals have little to do with making sure service providers don't misbehave. That's just the cover story. The real story, as usual, is money, power, and control...and the Democrats want it all.
There are definitely democrats/leftists that hate the idea that people can move out of the big cities, taking their tax revenue with them. I've talked with them. They don't consider it "fair" that people can move to suburbs and not support the inner city schools anymore.
Some of the more extreme Bill Ayers types spew loads over the idea of turning the US and the world into a bad remake of Logan's Run and/or Demolition Man.
They want a human ant-farm.
It's freaking depressing...hold on....
[turns to booth]
"You are an incredibly sensitive man, who inspires joy-joy feelings in all those around you."
[turns back]
OK, I'm good. What seems to be your boggle, citizen?
Correct, they stripped themselves of this power a few weeks ago by reclassifying internet service as Title I. That's the whole point here. They did have the legal authority, and they took it away from themselves to please their corporate overlords.
What this proves is that Democrats want the internet under that sweet, tight, Title-II regulatory control. They aren't really interested in NN as such, just in it's usefulness in placing the internet under tighter government control.
If they actually wanted NN they could have, and still could now, introduce NN legislation. They could probably even get Republican support if it were reasonable. But instead, they want the old Title-II control back and to kick some market-protection favors to their FAANG cronies/donors.
You got it ass-backwards. I know. I lived through the 50s, 60s and 70s. I saw what really happened. The Democrat Party has always been home to the racists and sexists, and it still is today.
Another greying temporal traveler here to corroborate and verify. This is exactly, precisely the truth. It's always been the Republicans who pushed for civil rights and Democrats who opposed it.
In the 1960s, the Democrats adopted tactics straight out of "Rules For Radicals" by Alinsky and began a propaganda campaign to accuse Republicans of everything they had done and were doing while seeking to grab the 'civil rights' flag away by introducing the "War On Poverty" with welfare, food stamps, housing, and more that was designed from the start to make the recipients dependent.
LBJ was famously quoted at the time as saying under his breath about the Democrat entitlement programs; "I'll have those n1gg3rs voting Democrat for the next hundred years!" So far LBJ has been right and the Democrat's propaganda push to re-brand themselves has also seen a lot of success among the less-informed.
There's a very good reason that the US liberal-Democrat controlled public school system barely teaches any history at all and much of what they do teach is revisionist BS. You listen to what they say with a different perspective when you know they were the Party of the KKK, Jim Crow, racial segregation, enslaving minorities through government entitlements, and eugenics.
You know that the Web is more than just social media and online shopping sites - right?
That admittedly is a problem, however it is currently in the process of being addressed as the web is gradually shifted to more resemble cable TV where data mostly flows one way.
I have been under the impression Europa's ice cover is expected to be something like 100 km thick. It seems like a flight of fantasy to try to penetrate through that..?
Other than that, I'm certainly all for sending a probe to Europa. I think the first probe could concentrate on analysing the ice cover in great detail.
Don't have time to find it again, but I read a piece a while back on this Europa underwater probe project that said that radar showed there were places where Europa's ice was much, much thinner such that reaching the liquid underneath isn't an outright impossibility for a relatively small interplanetary probe, I think it was near Europa's polar geysers which would make sense. Also, the areas around these geysers would be a prime place to search for life, as energy sources for biological life that far out from the sun are few. Ecosystems may exist around the vents somewhat similar to life around undersea volcanic vents on Earth.
I may be overly optimistic but I hope that this move will provide enough incentive for big corporations to get behind open source drivers and help create something that's on par with the official ones.
Drivers!?
Hell, I'm now cheering for the Chinese to start flooding the market with cheap nvidia GPU clones and drive nvidia out of business, or at least make them happy to sell anyone their products to do anything at all, as long as they're making the sale and not the Chinese.
Loongson produce a MIPS (open source) based CPU with an open source BIOS, and laptops are available. They just need a new iteration to get the performance up to near western standards, and make a ton of them. There are laptops available too! (Just not in the West).
You mean i can finally have a MIPS-based laptop to match my MIPS-based SGI Octane desktop? Will it be as fast as the Octane? Will it run IRIX UNIX too?:)
They showed up at a hose that didn't meet the caller's description, fired within seconds at distance, at someone for all they knew was one of the purported hostages. Of course the cop attached to the itchy trigger finger needs to spend a few years in prison for manslaughter. Cops get false or misleading calls all the time - if they can't assess the situation without killing a person in 5 seconds, they have no business being a cop.
I agree. I was simply stating what is more likely to happen in our broken system.
The elephant in the room in the US is that there are so many laws, rules, and regulations with the force of law that it takes an immense amount of manpower to police & enforce them all.
Prioritization. Cops can always concentrate on actual crime, as opposed to nuisance traffic or pot possession tickets.
The low-hanging fruit pays more into State coffers and are usually nonviolent and so typically involve less officer risk. I understand that most laws are written with the expectation that only a fraction of those breaking that law will be caught, and that police can prioritize. However, that only goes so far. Once the number of laws grows past some point, many of those laws become stacks of nearly-forgotten seldom enforced laws that eventually become a selective-enforcement minefield for citizens and an easy way for police and the politicians to bully people.
You need to read the book by Sharyl Attkisson called "The Smear". After reading just the first chapter you'll understand who the real propagandist Goebberls is.
Oh, I'm quite aware that the Nazis learned the technique of propaganda from Woodrow Wilson and the marketing guys Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman that Wilson hired while POTUS that actually organized the principles together thus creating a political/ideological tool to influence groups of people.
Barriss should be held accountable. But he didn't "murder" anyone. The SWAT team did that.
The SWAT team didn't murder anybody. As long as they were following their department's official procedures, they have "qualified immunity". The SWAT ream members themselves will likely not receive any type of disciplinary actions, possibly a few mid-level administrative/procedure-writing types may receive a negative performance review next period.
At the very worst, one or two officers might be 'let go' and simply get a job at another department.
The elephant in the room in the US is that there are so many laws, rules, and regulations with the force of law that it takes an immense amount of manpower to police & enforce them all.
If they actually held law enforcement officers to higher standards and held them more accountable for their screw-ups, the government would either spend many times more than they do currently or not have nearly the manpower necessary to maintain order and minimal levels of enforcement.
If, in arguably one of the richest nations that's ever existed, you cannot afford to hire enough police to enforce all the laws you've passed in a just and non-abusive manner while not violating civil rights, without having to lower the standards to such low levels and allow them to get away with abusing the public rather than lose a warm body in uniform, perhaps...just perhaps...you've PASSED TOO MANY DAMNED LAWS!!!!1!!
Just something to consider, although my hopes for any meaningful reduction in the size of government and number of laws are very thin.
Here's a thing. Reading about a person does not make you a mind reader. Thinking about a person also does not make you a mind reader. No matter how convinced you are of this super power of yours.
Meh, he just gets a Goebbels up his ass when he reads political/ideological opinions, ideas, and principles he doesn't like.
The quantity of laws and regulations is only an issue for know-nothings and demagogues.
This is not true at all when the legal system places responsibility for knowledge of the law on the people ("ignorance of the law is no excuse") but the number of laws are so immense that no single human could possibly know and be aware of every law or even the majority.
The US government itself has spent literally millions attempting to ascertain the number of just Federal laws alone, and failed. This doesn't even consider all the State, county, city, township, etc etc laws, ordinances, and regulations To expect the average man to know and be held responsible for obeying literally many tens of thousands of laws he has no practical way of being aware of empowers a tyranny of selective enforcement.
Cardinal Richelieu would have a field-day and be right at home in today's US legal system.
The government can't strike a retroactive deal with Intel to prevent others from seeking restitution.
Sure they can, they did it for telecoms when it came out about TLAs having locked 'secret' rooms at major telecom facilities tapping major internet backbone trunks.
It's not a (D) or (R) issue in the main, as both sides seek to increase domestic surveillance, just differing in the details and who gets richest.
If you sell something that is fundamentally broken, you must issue a refund or a working, equivalent replacement. If you knowingly sell something that is fundamentally broken, that's fraud.
No, sorry, that's not fraud at the levels of political donations that Intel makes.
At those levels of political donations it then becomes "...an unfortunate design error for which Intel has already negotiated a full settlement with the government's lawyers that prevents any other parties filing civil actions against Intel, unfortunately, a gag clause in the settlement prevents details from being released."
What, don't tell me you thought the US still operated based on the Rule of Law!?
Seriously, Wilson RE-segregated the US government/military and a whole laundry list of other horrible, racist, bigoted things including internment camps.
He was fucking evil.
Yet we name public schools after that monster. What, exactly, is the message we're sending kids with that!?
If there's anyone's statues we as a people should be tearing down, especially racial minorities, it's those of Woodrow Wilson. He is at least as evil and offensive as any of the Confederacy leaders ever were.
Cheaper or not, it's what the citizens wanted. No amount of anti-government hand-wringing can change that...
You appear to be confused. It was government acting on behalf of the cable co.s that allowed the cable co.s to prevent municipal internet service in the past in the first place. It's not "anti-government" people that have stood in the way.
Besides, almost nobody is "anti-government". Just because someone thinks the central government is too large, too free and easy with our civil rights (domestic spying,, civil asset forfeiture, etc) and collects & spends too much of your and my money, does not make them "anti-government" any more than someone wanting women free to choose to have an abortion makes them "anti-life".
Slashdot Mirror
If it is easy to crack for the FBI, it is easy to crack for anyone.
Any "back doors" will be converted to front doors ( or windows ) soon enough.
And the timing of such a statement. Meltdown and Spectre still in the news, then this.
Perhaps some people will provide an object lesson in what it's like to not have security/privacy for TLA top brass.
Sooner or later people will decide it's time to expose all the personal/financial/medical/social information of top TLA brass, the politicians that back these policies/programs, and their families. Let the brass/politicians explain it to their spouses and family members. Bring the reality of what they advocate for home to their own doorsteps before they bring it to ours. (well, any more than they already have brought it to ours)
I'm not personally advocating for anyone to do anything illegal, just pointing out that the TLAs should pause and do some reflecting here, as people will only be pushed so far before there is blowback and serious consequences, that the population is far, far from helpless if pushed too far, and are fully capable of wrecking your digital TLA iShit, networks, databases, etc, etc for you in very short order. There are roughly ~330 million people in the US. If even a small fraction take action that's a lot of manpower.
Strat
It is fake news. 25/3 is for FIXED broadband. 10/1 is for MOBILE broadband.
Nothing got lowered. People saying "FCC wants to lower broadband standards" are pushing literal Fake News.
Next Slash-Click Story:
Ajit Pai Turned Me Into A Newt!
(Wot? I got better!)
Strat
On the topic of socialist policies, I DO want to pay for education of others. The children of today will be taking care of me when I'm old, and it is in my direct interest that they are not complete idiots.
I understand your self interest. You're more than welcome to pay for as many people's education as you'd like. Just don't think it's OK to put a gun to other people's head to serve your self interest and beliefs around how others should live and believe by force.
You're going down the 'positive rights' path. Going down that path doesn't end well.
You have a right to education and that means I have to help pay for it? OK. Let's look at some other rights.
I have a right actually listed near the top in the BoR to own a firearm. I believe you should pay to help buy me one, if it's your right to have me help pay for your schooling. And we should probably set up education licensing and registration for those wishing to be educated and strict limits on curricula too, just to be on par with restrictions placed on 2A rights.
I mean, fair is fair, all equal under the law, equal protection and everything...right? Wouldn't any ability to interpret or restrict one particular Constitutional right a certain way be applicable to all of them equally?
Strat
abortion is about the definition of life. the government is supposed to protect the life of their citizens. a fetus is vulnerable and needs protection and defined by many to be alive q.e.d. worth protecting by the government.
Could you at least try to understand the arguments of the other-side?
I think much of the difficulty in having a reasonable debate about abortion is that those who decide that fetuses/life has little/no value cannot allow themselves to believe that opponents have any valid arguments or truly believe they are trying to protect life, as any admission that the other side may have a valid argument would mean the possibility that they may actually be wrong, and that means they could be committing atrocities.
Nobody wants to think of themselves as capable of being for the killing of helpless innocents. It's much easier and more comfortable to convince themselves that their opponents are disingenuous and evil moral authoritarians.
It's basic human nature at work, and just to make it worse, there are political/ideological forces on both sides that want the conflict and division for their own reasons and keep preventing any dialog by inciting hatred.
Strat
I will go with Adams on this one, as well, with one exception. When he says religious he is dead wrong.
How could he possibly be "wrong" when the Constitution was written with the assumption of Judeo-Christian morals restraining and molding general behaviors of those it governs?
You can disagree that the Constitution should have been drafted differently as to not make those assumptions in it's design, but the design that was created is plainly stated as making those assumptions. There is no room outside of obtuse Post-Modern Solipsism 'logic' to dispute that fact.
Strat
I get where you are pointing, however the only standard that need be applied in these circumstances, the only moral compass necessary, is the Constitution.
Well, at least one of the guys who helped write the US Constitution would appear by his own words to disagree strongly with that opinion:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams
No offense, but I think I'll go with Adams on this one.
Strat
There is value in what they are doing. They are making the issue more public. They are causing government leaders to have to declare their positions.
But, why would they not want to actually introduce and push for actual, not temporary and 'adminstrative', NN laws?
Whatever reason you wish to assign their refusal to create NN laws through Congress, it still means that whatever those reasons are, they matter more to them than actually getting real NN enacted in a relatively permanent way.
It seems the sticking point is the Democrats' intense desire to place ISPs under Title-II. Why is placing ISPs under Title-II such an imperative for the US Left if enacting NN is the only goal, here? They would very likely garner significant Republican support for reasonable NN legislation. Hell, the Republicans are the only ones who have introduced new NN legislation, WTF? What's up with that, FFS? Why won't the Democrats just say what they actually, really want instead of playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes over NN and meanwhile not getting NN done?
The Democrats wouldn't be trying to get something else accomplished by alternate methods that they are certain the majority of people would reject if fully informed and allowed to choose for themselves, are they?
What is the other hand doing while this one is waving the 'FCC Title-II NN or I riot' banner?
Strat
If there is no way to distinguish between encrypted message and a random blob of data, are people going to get thrown in prison for not handing over the encryption keys for scrubbed hard drives or noise on some recording? Will posession of random bits be illegal?
That ship has largely already sailed.
Try boarding an airline flight carrying a laptop in carry-on luggage with a blank HDD/no OS through TSA "security".
Don't attempt this if you actually need to fly somewhere on that flight and/or remain in possession of said laptop, as you're likely going to be missing that flight while playing '20 questions' with TSA..The guy ahead of you may have just walked through with a loaded handgun in his carry-on luggage (TSA is notoriously, hilariously bad at catching actual weapons and stuff, though they're murder on those dangerous water bottles!), but you'll be the one they catch and put through the wringer.
Strat
This is Darth; can't be arsed to log in atmo. No, Title II does not put the Internet under tight regulatory control. That's laughable hard right-wing babble. What it does do is allow the federal government to prohibit service providers from certain behavior, most of which is anti-consumer, and detrimental to the openness of the Internet.
If all you wanted was NN to prevent the behaviors you describe why not just pass a law? Republicans are introducing NN legislation, where is the Democratic legislation? Why does regulations have to be enacted administratively (leaving them open to be changed or eliminated in the next administration) by the FCC under Title-II?
It's because the true goals have little to do with making sure service providers don't misbehave. That's just the cover story. The real story, as usual, is money, power, and control...and the Democrats want it all.
Strat
There are definitely democrats/leftists that hate the idea that people can move out of the big cities, taking their tax revenue with them. I've talked with them. They don't consider it "fair" that people can move to suburbs and not support the inner city schools anymore.
Some of the more extreme Bill Ayers types spew loads over the idea of turning the US and the world into a bad remake of Logan's Run and/or Demolition Man.
They want a human ant-farm.
It's freaking depressing...hold on....
[turns to booth]
"You are an incredibly sensitive man, who inspires joy-joy feelings in all those around you."
[turns back]
OK, I'm good. What seems to be your boggle, citizen?
Be well!
Strat
Correct, they stripped themselves of this power a few weeks ago by reclassifying internet service as Title I. That's the whole point here. They did have the legal authority, and they took it away from themselves to please their corporate overlords.
What this proves is that Democrats want the internet under that sweet, tight, Title-II regulatory control. They aren't really interested in NN as such, just in it's usefulness in placing the internet under tighter government control.
If they actually wanted NN they could have, and still could now, introduce NN legislation. They could probably even get Republican support if it were reasonable. But instead, they want the old Title-II control back and to kick some market-protection favors to their FAANG cronies/donors.
Strat
You got it ass-backwards. I know. I lived through the 50s, 60s and 70s. I saw what really happened. The Democrat Party has always been home to the racists and sexists, and it still is today.
Another greying temporal traveler here to corroborate and verify. This is exactly, precisely the truth. It's always been the Republicans who pushed for civil rights and Democrats who opposed it.
In the 1960s, the Democrats adopted tactics straight out of "Rules For Radicals" by Alinsky and began a propaganda campaign to accuse Republicans of everything they had done and were doing while seeking to grab the 'civil rights' flag away by introducing the "War On Poverty" with welfare, food stamps, housing, and more that was designed from the start to make the recipients dependent.
LBJ was famously quoted at the time as saying under his breath about the Democrat entitlement programs; "I'll have those n1gg3rs voting Democrat for the next hundred years!" So far LBJ has been right and the Democrat's propaganda push to re-brand themselves has also seen a lot of success among the less-informed.
There's a very good reason that the US liberal-Democrat controlled public school system barely teaches any history at all and much of what they do teach is revisionist BS. You listen to what they say with a different perspective when you know they were the Party of the KKK, Jim Crow, racial segregation, enslaving minorities through government entitlements, and eugenics.
Strat
You know that the Web is more than just social media and online shopping sites - right?
That admittedly is a problem, however it is currently in the process of being addressed as the web is gradually shifted to more resemble cable TV where data mostly flows one way.
Strat
I have been under the impression Europa's ice cover is expected to be something like 100 km thick. It seems like a flight of fantasy to try to penetrate through that..?
Other than that, I'm certainly all for sending a probe to Europa. I think the first probe could concentrate on analysing the ice cover in great detail.
Don't have time to find it again, but I read a piece a while back on this Europa underwater probe project that said that radar showed there were places where Europa's ice was much, much thinner such that reaching the liquid underneath isn't an outright impossibility for a relatively small interplanetary probe, I think it was near Europa's polar geysers which would make sense. Also, the areas around these geysers would be a prime place to search for life, as energy sources for biological life that far out from the sun are few. Ecosystems may exist around the vents somewhat similar to life around undersea volcanic vents on Earth.
Strat
I may be overly optimistic but I hope that this move will provide enough incentive for big corporations to get behind open source drivers and help create something that's on par with the official ones.
Drivers!?
Hell, I'm now cheering for the Chinese to start flooding the market with cheap nvidia GPU clones and drive nvidia out of business, or at least make them happy to sell anyone their products to do anything at all, as long as they're making the sale and not the Chinese.
Strat
Luckily, the Chinese are here to help:
Loongson produce a MIPS (open source) based CPU with an open source BIOS, and laptops are available. They just need a new iteration to get the performance up to near western standards, and make a ton of them. There are laptops available too! (Just not in the West).
You mean i can finally have a MIPS-based laptop to match my MIPS-based SGI Octane desktop? Will it be as fast as the Octane? Will it run IRIX UNIX too? :)
Strat
They showed up at a hose that didn't meet the caller's description, fired within seconds at distance, at someone for all they knew was one of the purported hostages. Of course the cop attached to the itchy trigger finger needs to spend a few years in prison for manslaughter. Cops get false or misleading calls all the time - if they can't assess the situation without killing a person in 5 seconds, they have no business being a cop.
I agree. I was simply stating what is more likely to happen in our broken system.
The low-hanging fruit pays more into State coffers and are usually nonviolent and so typically involve less officer risk. I understand that most laws are written with the expectation that only a fraction of those breaking that law will be caught, and that police can prioritize. However, that only goes so far. Once the number of laws grows past some point, many of those laws become stacks of nearly-forgotten seldom enforced laws that eventually become a selective-enforcement minefield for citizens and an easy way for police and the politicians to bully people.
Strat
You need to read the book by Sharyl Attkisson called "The Smear". After reading just the first chapter you'll understand who the real propagandist Goebberls is.
Oh, I'm quite aware that the Nazis learned the technique of propaganda from Woodrow Wilson and the marketing guys Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman that Wilson hired while POTUS that actually organized the principles together thus creating a political/ideological tool to influence groups of people.
Strat
Barriss should be held accountable. But he didn't "murder" anyone. The SWAT team did that.
The SWAT team didn't murder anybody. As long as they were following their department's official procedures, they have "qualified immunity". The SWAT ream members themselves will likely not receive any type of disciplinary actions, possibly a few mid-level administrative/procedure-writing types may receive a negative performance review next period.
At the very worst, one or two officers might be 'let go' and simply get a job at another department.
The elephant in the room in the US is that there are so many laws, rules, and regulations with the force of law that it takes an immense amount of manpower to police & enforce them all.
If they actually held law enforcement officers to higher standards and held them more accountable for their screw-ups, the government would either spend many times more than they do currently or not have nearly the manpower necessary to maintain order and minimal levels of enforcement.
If, in arguably one of the richest nations that's ever existed, you cannot afford to hire enough police to enforce all the laws you've passed in a just and non-abusive manner while not violating civil rights, without having to lower the standards to such low levels and allow them to get away with abusing the public rather than lose a warm body in uniform, perhaps...just perhaps...you've PASSED TOO MANY DAMNED LAWS!!!!1!!
Just something to consider, although my hopes for any meaningful reduction in the size of government and number of laws are very thin.
Strat
Here's a thing. Reading about a person does not make you a mind reader. Thinking about a person also does not make you a mind reader. No matter how convinced you are of this super power of yours.
Meh, he just gets a Goebbels up his ass when he reads political/ideological opinions, ideas, and principles he doesn't like.
Strat
The quantity of laws and regulations is only an issue for know-nothings and demagogues.
This is not true at all when the legal system places responsibility for knowledge of the law on the people ("ignorance of the law is no excuse") but the number of laws are so immense that no single human could possibly know and be aware of every law or even the majority.
The US government itself has spent literally millions attempting to ascertain the number of just Federal laws alone, and failed. This doesn't even consider all the State, county, city, township, etc etc laws, ordinances, and regulations To expect the average man to know and be held responsible for obeying literally many tens of thousands of laws he has no practical way of being aware of empowers a tyranny of selective enforcement.
Cardinal Richelieu would have a field-day and be right at home in today's US legal system.
Strat
The government can't strike a retroactive deal with Intel to prevent others from seeking restitution.
Sure they can, they did it for telecoms when it came out about TLAs having locked 'secret' rooms at major telecom facilities tapping major internet backbone trunks.
It's not a (D) or (R) issue in the main, as both sides seek to increase domestic surveillance, just differing in the details and who gets richest.
Strat
If you sell something that is fundamentally broken, you must issue a refund or a working, equivalent replacement.
If you knowingly sell something that is fundamentally broken, that's fraud.
No, sorry, that's not fraud at the levels of political donations that Intel makes.
At those levels of political donations it then becomes "...an unfortunate design error for which Intel has already negotiated a full settlement with the government's lawyers that prevents any other parties filing civil actions against Intel, unfortunately, a gag clause in the settlement prevents details from being released."
What, don't tell me you thought the US still operated based on the Rule of Law!?
Strat
Guess you've never heard of Woodrow Wilson?
"I hate that guy!" -- Glenn Beck
Seriously, Wilson RE-segregated the US government/military and a whole laundry list of other horrible, racist, bigoted things including internment camps.
He was fucking evil.
Yet we name public schools after that monster. What, exactly, is the message we're sending kids with that!?
If there's anyone's statues we as a people should be tearing down, especially racial minorities, it's those of Woodrow Wilson. He is at least as evil and offensive as any of the Confederacy leaders ever were.
Strat
Cheaper or not, it's what the citizens wanted. No amount of anti-government hand-wringing can change that...
You appear to be confused. It was government acting on behalf of the cable co.s that allowed the cable co.s to prevent municipal internet service in the past in the first place. It's not "anti-government" people that have stood in the way.
Besides, almost nobody is "anti-government". Just because someone thinks the central government is too large, too free and easy with our civil rights (domestic spying,, civil asset forfeiture, etc) and collects & spends too much of your and my money, does not make them "anti-government" any more than someone wanting women free to choose to have an abortion makes them "anti-life".
Strat