How are "many local governments" less dictatorial than one accountable to all citizens?
Because the individuals in that government are your friends & neighbors and as such are much more accountable than some bureaucrat 2,000 miles away. If the laws, rules, and regulations where you're at are unsuitable, you can choose to move somewhere where they are a better fit.
Alternately, you can also choose to change the local laws, rules, and regulations where you're at and have a far better chance at changing a local government than a behemoth centralized bureaucracy 2,000 miles away.
I remind you of the reality of America, instead of your myths
For which you only provide your own myths and opinions as evidence.
The US has been on a steady and increasingly-rapid decline since Progressive policies and programs have increasingly been enacted and promulgated. The correlation between the instituting of Progressive policies and programs and the decline of the US tracks together closely. Take a look at Detroit as a shining example of what 40+ years of Progressive policies and programs can accomplish.
The only reliable way to protect your data from government thugs is to change the government such that there are no government thugs wanting your data.
Since all governments will want, and are likely to insist upon, access at will to private documents, I wouldn't expect this plan to work. The Russians tried replacing a horrible monarchy with "the people's government" and wound up with Lenin and Stalin and abuses the equivalent of anything the czars committed.
That's actually a key concept and also a key reason for keeping government as decentralized and local as possible. The more concentrated & centralized government power is, the quicker it falls to corruption and outright despotism and tyranny.
That was also one of the reasons the US Constitution was written so as to allow the central government only a few limited powers and keep as much of the governing affecting individuals as local and accountable as possible.
Sadly, the US has over the last ~100 years, moved away from decentralized and accountable governance to become a top-down, centralized-power, crony-capitalist fascist surveillance-state oligarchy.
The only reliable way to protect your data from government thugs is to change the government such that there are no government thugs wanting your data.
Anything else is a band-aid and temporary at best.
In the past, believing that powerful global forces were watching your every action would have been evidence of paranoia. So I'd like to commend Google for effectively treating that delusional belief by turning it into a rational fear, and thus no longer a mental illness.
The paranoid were just ahead of their time. I wonder how long it will be before tin foil hats become popular head-wear.
A wet towel may temporarily suffice in an emergency.
Then...
Get your ass to Mars!
No, seriously! (Well, sort of.) The people here who are tired of this crap should organize and move to colonize Mars with the eventual goal of declaring independence.
Harassing a federal judge. Yeah, no way that'd go badly.
It's *ALREADY* "going badly" for citizens of the US!
Posting information that's part of the public record and openly available to anyone is not illegal.
Newsflash! If the US government keeps on this same trajectory the entire world will suffer, not just those in the US. The US has all the makings to be the most horrific and deadly tyranny the Earth has ever known.
It's gotten to the point where the only way left for the government to "take it to the next level" is to just declare martial law and start filling FEMA camps and mass graves.
When is it time to take action? Waiting until they actually start setting up neighborhood checkpoints and shipping people to camps is a tad late.
When judges routinely rule black is white and day is night to protect and cover up illegal and un-Constitutional actions by the government and it's officials, do you expect people are going to have any respect for authority?
My guess is for whatever reason, the judge did not want to rule against the NSA. So just used whatever barely coherent reason seemed remotely plausible.
As a federal judge, you're not going to ever get in trouble for protecting the NSA regardless of the gaping holes in your ruling.
Start a doxing campaign against this judge and others who rule completely contrary to the Constitution. Dig up everything possible and make it public.
Make sure there's a high price to pay to be a lapdog for TPTB.
They're doing this because they're worried about the dangers - not from commercial aviation - but from drones being used as assassination tools.
That's not what really worries the elite.
It's the ability it gives regular people to observe what they don't want people to see, to reveal things they're doing that they don't want people to know are happening, or who is really responsible.
They don't want, for instance, video taken by drone proving plainclothes police 'agent provocateurs' were responsible for the violence that was the excuse to send in riot police to an otherwise peaceful protest march where some peaceful protesters ended up dead from rubber bullets.
They don't want video from a drone on the evening news revealing/proving political bribery/payoffs or other illegal/unethical/treasonous acts by those in power.
*That* is what drives this. The "danger"-angle is simply cover to stir up shrill fear-driven knee-jerk public support for removing a powerful tool from the public for keeping government officials accountable..
Can the FCC point to any specific instances of aircraft radar interference, and especially, instances of interference caused by routers running Open Source software? Or is this another case of a Gov't agency using a bogy man (It's to prevent terrorism, It's for the children, etc) to assert control over a market segment that it didn't previously control.
Wondering which.
I suspect it's more the latter rather than the former, but not for the reasons given..
My money is on this being a method for the government to attempt to prevent widespread use of modified WiFi routers as mesh-network routers when they decide to shut down internet access due to 'terrorism' or domestic uprisings/protests.
Over here, taxis are for the rich, busses are for the poor, and everyone else drives a car. And yet, our government is also trying to figure out what to do about those lawbreakers that have the gall to try to break the taxi monopoly by providing an option relevant for the 90%.
most European standards are STRICTER than the American ones.
Not for diesels, which is what we are talking about here. In this case the American standards are stricter. You have to pull out some massive engineering mojo to make a diesel passenger car that's street legal in the US. Apparently VW doesn't have what it takes.
Well, seeing as how the EU in general has stricter regulations & standards across multiple environmental areas vs the US *except* in tiny, select areas like the one discussed here, perhaps it is actually the result of too-strict standards/regulation being set/applied in the US vs the EU and other nations? Where is the research, data, models, and methods, and how were they interpreted to arrive at these particular set of standards?
I'll bet a large part of it was pressure from domestic car makers & unions for standards to be set as a barrier precisely to counter VW & other non-domestic small diesel passenger vehicles, since US car companies offerings in that class have been sparse to non-existent.
Yeah, pulling heavy loads is exactly what Jetta's are known for.
A Jetta *is* a heavy load for a Jetta! Never mind additional waste-weight like passengers and/or cargo/luggage!
Ever tried accelerating on an inclining/upgrade on-ramp for merging onto a freeway in a Jetta with 2 or 3 people aboard? Even on a 0-degree grade on-ramp it's dicey.
There is danger both in a vehicle being under-powered and over-powered. However, AFAIK there are no government regulations which detail minimum acceleration/engine power requirements for a given horsepower/vehicle weight class for US passenger vehicles.
Maybe as a general matter you are right, but I was talking strictly about this case, it looked communist to me.
LOL! Wait...are you serious? Perhaps you should retake Polysci 101.
The goal of communism is to create a classless society by eliminating the power of the bourgeoisie. If the government (DOD) is "seeding" the means of production by handing over money/power to the proletariat, then you would be correct in describing the policy as communist. But for some reason, I have a sneaking suspicion that proles won't be reaping any benefits of this arrangement. It is the bourgeoisie that will benefit.
So no, not communist. Textbook fascism.
Generally correct, but I believe a more accurate description of the US is a fascist oligarchy composed of the power elite in politics and finance/banking and currency (the Fed for just one example).
I wish we could figure out how to limit the money they can spend or "is spent in their behalf". And I am annoyed as hell with paying for serving officials working on behalf of their own or a member of their party's campaign. It's our money they're being paid with.
There's really no good solution here.
The problem is that campaigning is synonymous with marketing plus a healthy dose of propaganda thrown in.
This takes manpower & organization. Leasing and staffing hundreds of offices. Buying TV/radio airtime and media production staff. That all costs money. A national/worldwide campaign for president of the US, astronomically so.
Handing each qualified candidate (and who determines who is "qualified" and who decides what the hurdles are and if they've been met?) a set amount to spend totally disadvantages challengers vs incumbents and/or already publicly well-known candidates. Plus, different candidates with different campaign issues, styles, and demographic footprint require differing strategies and different spending levels. There's no way to account for all the factors involved for a meaningful comparison. It would effectively eliminate any remaining and already-marginal chances of any 3rd-party/independent candidate or anyone else not approved by major-Party 'establishment'.
The authors of the US Constitution warned again and again against large political parties and the threats they pose. Combined with a large government that means the apparatchiks have plenty of government to sell large donors.
One thing that absolutely has to be stopped is the foreign money coming into US political campaigns & political organizations, along with "bundling" and other methods used to avoid leaving trails back to the sources to obstruct any future detection and/or investigation as well as skirt legal limits on contributions.
You are not seriously comparing Trump to Obama, are you?
Heavens, no!
Trump actually has experience successfully running something, whereas all Obama had previous to his entry into politics was "community organizing" and the 'Choom Gang". Although to be fair Obama was very successful at whitewashing his past regarding his schooling etc, so there's that.
Is that article illegal as well? I guess a LOT of people learned about Popcorn Time that day...
One step at a time.
The news service likely has lawyers on retainer which means a lengthy legal battle and the outcome is less than certain.
Therefor, you go after the low-hanging fruit like these two poor slobs who are without such resources in order to build a string of solid legal court precedents.
*Then* you go after the news service(s), libraries, bookstores, universities, etc.
Neither. I get the point, it's just so horribly made it doesn't follow at all from the events in her books.
The point may seem horribly made to those to whom the concept is foreign and antithetical to their way of thinking, yes.
And it seems you conveniently missed the title of one of her stories. "The virtue of selfishness".
I quoted Atlas Shrugged, and specifically for the authoritarian point made. You're welcome to start another thread where Rand's other works could be discussed in relation to other concepts like capitalism vs collectivism. I preferred to stay on-topic.
If that's what you took away from Atlas Shrugged then you missed the point or simply refuse to acknowledge it for ideological/political reasons.
Where she goes wrong is in assuming this means that only selfish people should lead the world and then everything will be all right.
Wanting to not have the fruits of your labor stripped away and redistributed to those who have not worked for it (but who would otherwise be capable) is NOT "selfish". It's the story of the ant & grasshopper, only these grasshoppers come armed and take from the hard-working ants at the point of a gun.
As was her writing on that point; it's hard to find more selfish people than the ones she so strongly despise in her stories. They just happen to not be written as heroes, and therefore their selfishness is bad, while that of the heroes is good. Simply because her stories make it so.
The villains in Atlas Shrugged seek power & control by robbing other people of the fruits of their labor through the power of an authoritarian government, and making it so that everybody is guilty of breaking *some* law/regulation so that selective enforcement allows them to have leverage on anyone they wish.
Mod parent up; even the death penalty wouldn't stop it, it's so commonplace that once half the population is in jail; a military coup would ensue.
The point isn't to put everyone in jail, the point is to put anyone in jail.
Turn everyone into criminals and you legally put anyone of them in jail when they are inconvenient for whatever reason.
"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Yeah, yeah. "Objectivist", blah blah blah.
For being so wrong she is proving to have been remarkably prescient.
Two years? That's outrageous. Any vendor that takes that long to patch their holes *deserves* to get zero-day'd.
Things like this, and that nonsense that the court in Boston pulled wrt/ to the researchers and their DEFCON presentation, really sour me on the idea of "responsible disclosure." If the result of my courtesy is going to be a lawsuit and a gag order, I'd not be particularly inclined to offer vendors the courtesy in the first place.
Easy fix.
Just make it a high crime with onerous penalties to perform security vulnerability testing, release vulnerabilities, or to be complicit with either or both without both the manufacturer's and government's prior approval, either of which may withdraw consent/approval at a later date and leave researchers et al legally liable & open to prosecution ex post facto if things don't turn out to the manufacturer's and/or government's expectations.
Coz of course, lava and ashes are gonna take roads and tolls... Distance is about 140 km, which is very close for a volcano that big.
Hey, hate to rain on your roll, but if a volcano 140km away erupts on a scale that it's a serious threat to a reactor installation at that distance, seeing how we're talking about an island with limited area, chances are very good that the presence of a reactor installation will be the least of their problems!
Slashdot Mirror
Logic shows the way.
"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad."
Strat
I favor the lock-and-load general purpose laser, myself.
Give me a phased-plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.
(We both know you repeated it under your breathe with Arnie's accent after you read it.)
Strat
How are "many local governments" less dictatorial than one accountable to all citizens?
Because the individuals in that government are your friends & neighbors and as such are much more accountable than some bureaucrat 2,000 miles away. If the laws, rules, and regulations where you're at are unsuitable, you can choose to move somewhere where they are a better fit.
Alternately, you can also choose to change the local laws, rules, and regulations where you're at and have a far better chance at changing a local government than a behemoth centralized bureaucracy 2,000 miles away.
I remind you of the reality of America, instead of your myths
For which you only provide your own myths and opinions as evidence.
The US has been on a steady and increasingly-rapid decline since Progressive policies and programs have increasingly been enacted and promulgated. The correlation between the instituting of Progressive policies and programs and the decline of the US tracks together closely. Take a look at Detroit as a shining example of what 40+ years of Progressive policies and programs can accomplish.
Strat
That's actually a key concept and also a key reason for keeping government as decentralized and local as possible. The more concentrated & centralized government power is, the quicker it falls to corruption and outright despotism and tyranny.
That was also one of the reasons the US Constitution was written so as to allow the central government only a few limited powers and keep as much of the governing affecting individuals as local and accountable as possible.
Sadly, the US has over the last ~100 years, moved away from decentralized and accountable governance to become a top-down, centralized-power, crony-capitalist fascist surveillance-state oligarchy.
Strat
The only reliable way to protect your data from government thugs is to change the government such that there are no government thugs wanting your data.
Anything else is a band-aid and temporary at best.
Strat.
A wet towel may temporarily suffice in an emergency.
Then...
Get your ass to Mars!
No, seriously! (Well, sort of.) The people here who are tired of this crap should organize and move to colonize Mars with the eventual goal of declaring independence.
Strat
Harassing a federal judge. Yeah, no way that'd go badly.
It's *ALREADY* "going badly" for citizens of the US!
Posting information that's part of the public record and openly available to anyone is not illegal.
Newsflash! If the US government keeps on this same trajectory the entire world will suffer, not just those in the US. The US has all the makings to be the most horrific and deadly tyranny the Earth has ever known.
It's gotten to the point where the only way left for the government to "take it to the next level" is to just declare martial law and start filling FEMA camps and mass graves.
When is it time to take action? Waiting until they actually start setting up neighborhood checkpoints and shipping people to camps is a tad late.
When judges routinely rule black is white and day is night to protect and cover up illegal and un-Constitutional actions by the government and it's officials, do you expect people are going to have any respect for authority?
Strat
My guess is for whatever reason, the judge did not want to rule against the NSA. So just used whatever barely coherent reason seemed remotely plausible.
As a federal judge, you're not going to ever get in trouble for protecting the NSA regardless of the gaping holes in your ruling.
Start a doxing campaign against this judge and others who rule completely contrary to the Constitution. Dig up everything possible and make it public.
Make sure there's a high price to pay to be a lapdog for TPTB.
Strat
All your base (pairs) are belong to us!
(Along with all of your proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and damned well everything else you have.)
Hey! Those self-replicating airborne biological tracker-viruses with remote activate-able target-termination, streaming direct-to-brain advertisement, thought-monitoring, and remote behavior-modification/adjustment capability ain't gonna design & deploy themselves!
Why do you hate scientific progress?
Strat
They're doing this because they're worried about the dangers - not from commercial aviation - but from drones being used as assassination tools.
That's not what really worries the elite.
It's the ability it gives regular people to observe what they don't want people to see, to reveal things they're doing that they don't want people to know are happening, or who is really responsible.
They don't want, for instance, video taken by drone proving plainclothes police 'agent provocateurs' were responsible for the violence that was the excuse to send in riot police to an otherwise peaceful protest march where some peaceful protesters ended up dead from rubber bullets.
They don't want video from a drone on the evening news revealing/proving political bribery/payoffs or other illegal/unethical/treasonous acts by those in power.
*That* is what drives this. The "danger"-angle is simply cover to stir up shrill fear-driven knee-jerk public support for removing a powerful tool from the public for keeping government officials accountable..
Strat
Can the FCC point to any specific instances of aircraft radar interference, and especially, instances of interference caused by routers running Open Source software? Or is this another case of a Gov't agency using a bogy man (It's to prevent terrorism, It's for the children, etc) to assert control over a market segment that it didn't previously control.
Wondering which.
I suspect it's more the latter rather than the former, but not for the reasons given..
My money is on this being a method for the government to attempt to prevent widespread use of modified WiFi routers as mesh-network routers when they decide to shut down internet access due to 'terrorism' or domestic uprisings/protests.
Strat
Over here, taxis are for the rich, busses are for the poor, and everyone else drives a car. And yet, our government is also trying to figure out what to do about those lawbreakers that have the gall to try to break the taxi monopoly by providing an option relevant for the 90%.
The 90% you say?
Let them eat taxi medallions!
Strat
Well, seeing as how the EU in general has stricter regulations & standards across multiple environmental areas vs the US *except* in tiny, select areas like the one discussed here, perhaps it is actually the result of too-strict standards/regulation being set/applied in the US vs the EU and other nations? Where is the research, data, models, and methods, and how were they interpreted to arrive at these particular set of standards?
I'll bet a large part of it was pressure from domestic car makers & unions for standards to be set as a barrier precisely to counter VW & other non-domestic small diesel passenger vehicles, since US car companies offerings in that class have been sparse to non-existent.
Follow the money.
Strat
Yeah, pulling heavy loads is exactly what Jetta's are known for.
A Jetta *is* a heavy load for a Jetta! Never mind additional waste-weight like passengers and/or cargo/luggage!
Ever tried accelerating on an inclining/upgrade on-ramp for merging onto a freeway in a Jetta with 2 or 3 people aboard? Even on a 0-degree grade on-ramp it's dicey.
There is danger both in a vehicle being under-powered and over-powered. However, AFAIK there are no government regulations which detail minimum acceleration/engine power requirements for a given horsepower/vehicle weight class for US passenger vehicles.
Strat
Generally correct, but I believe a more accurate description of the US is a fascist oligarchy composed of the power elite in politics and finance/banking and currency (the Fed for just one example).
Strat
I wish we could figure out how to limit the money they can spend or "is spent in their behalf". And I am annoyed as hell with paying for serving officials working on behalf of their own or a member of their party's campaign. It's our money they're being paid with.
There's really no good solution here.
The problem is that campaigning is synonymous with marketing plus a healthy dose of propaganda thrown in.
This takes manpower & organization. Leasing and staffing hundreds of offices. Buying TV/radio airtime and media production staff. That all costs money. A national/worldwide campaign for president of the US, astronomically so.
Handing each qualified candidate (and who determines who is "qualified" and who decides what the hurdles are and if they've been met?) a set amount to spend totally disadvantages challengers vs incumbents and/or already publicly well-known candidates. Plus, different candidates with different campaign issues, styles, and demographic footprint require differing strategies and different spending levels. There's no way to account for all the factors involved for a meaningful comparison. It would effectively eliminate any remaining and already-marginal chances of any 3rd-party/independent candidate or anyone else not approved by major-Party 'establishment'.
The authors of the US Constitution warned again and again against large political parties and the threats they pose. Combined with a large government that means the apparatchiks have plenty of government to sell large donors.
One thing that absolutely has to be stopped is the foreign money coming into US political campaigns & political organizations, along with "bundling" and other methods used to avoid leaving trails back to the sources to obstruct any future detection and/or investigation as well as skirt legal limits on contributions.
Strat
...but propellant mining is the one that all the other things rely on- it's the equivalent of oil in space.
Oh, NO!
Why!?!?
Why, oh *why* did you have to say *that*!?
Good grief man, did you *have* to use the "O"-word!?
You *know* what's coming now, right?
Right!?
"Ehrrmahgerhdd!! Ehrmahgehrdd!!
Now Big Space Oil is gunna cause Orbital-Warming CO2 Terrorists In Spaaaace!!"
Way to go, man. Way to go.
j/k
Strat :P
You are not seriously comparing Trump to Obama, are you?
Heavens, no!
Trump actually has experience successfully running something, whereas all Obama had previous to his entry into politics was "community organizing" and the 'Choom Gang". Although to be fair Obama was very successful at whitewashing his past regarding his schooling etc, so there's that.
Strat
5 months ago, the danish news site Ekstra Bladet had an story about Popcorn Time (in danish):
http://ekstrabladet.dk/kup/pir...
Is that article illegal as well? I guess a LOT of people learned about Popcorn Time that day...
One step at a time.
The news service likely has lawyers on retainer which means a lengthy legal battle and the outcome is less than certain.
Therefor, you go after the low-hanging fruit like these two poor slobs who are without such resources in order to build a string of solid legal court precedents.
*Then* you go after the news service(s), libraries, bookstores, universities, etc.
Strat
Neither. I get the point, it's just so horribly made it doesn't follow at all from the events in her books.
The point may seem horribly made to those to whom the concept is foreign and antithetical to their way of thinking, yes.
And it seems you conveniently missed the title of one of her stories. "The virtue of selfishness".
I quoted Atlas Shrugged, and specifically for the authoritarian point made. You're welcome to start another thread where Rand's other works could be discussed in relation to other concepts like capitalism vs collectivism. I preferred to stay on-topic.
Strat
If that's what you took away from Atlas Shrugged then you missed the point or simply refuse to acknowledge it for ideological/political reasons.
Where she goes wrong is in assuming this means that only selfish people should lead the world and then everything will be all right.
Wanting to not have the fruits of your labor stripped away and redistributed to those who have not worked for it (but who would otherwise be capable) is NOT "selfish". It's the story of the ant & grasshopper, only these grasshoppers come armed and take from the hard-working ants at the point of a gun.
As was her writing on that point; it's hard to find more selfish people than the ones she so strongly despise in her stories. They just happen to not be written as heroes, and therefore their selfishness is bad, while that of the heroes is good. Simply because her stories make it so.
The villains in Atlas Shrugged seek power & control by robbing other people of the fruits of their labor through the power of an authoritarian government, and making it so that everybody is guilty of breaking *some* law/regulation so that selective enforcement allows them to have leverage on anyone they wish.
Strat
"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Yeah, yeah. "Objectivist", blah blah blah.
For being so wrong she is proving to have been remarkably prescient.
Strat
Two years? That's outrageous. Any vendor that takes that long to patch their holes *deserves* to get zero-day'd.
Things like this, and that nonsense that the court in Boston pulled wrt/ to the researchers and their DEFCON presentation, really sour me on the idea of "responsible disclosure." If the result of my courtesy is going to be a lawsuit and a gag order, I'd not be particularly inclined to offer vendors the courtesy in the first place.
Easy fix.
Just make it a high crime with onerous penalties to perform security vulnerability testing, release vulnerabilities, or to be complicit with either or both without both the manufacturer's and government's prior approval, either of which may withdraw consent/approval at a later date and leave researchers et al legally liable & open to prosecution ex post facto if things don't turn out to the manufacturer's and/or government's expectations.
Problem solved! /s
Strat
There is no such thing as a free lunch or unlimited rights.
Not "unlimited" right. "Unalienable" right. Meaning unable to be separated from, altered, or removed by any act of man.
Strat
Hey, hate to rain on your roll, but if a volcano 140km away erupts on a scale that it's a serious threat to a reactor installation at that distance, seeing how we're talking about an island with limited area, chances are very good that the presence of a reactor installation will be the least of their problems!
Strat