>Someone remind me what the point of this whizz-bang technology is again?
High explosives are not exactly stable.
Your plan will not really keep the volatile materials fully *inside* the suitcase.
Any kind of bomb worth using is going to be pretty noisy, chemically speaking. You're pretty much going to have a cloud of nitrates around you. If you've got enough of an oxidizer in your bag to be an effective bomb, it's going to be very difficult to keep it from being detected.
You could probably seal an organic explosive like C4 or TNT well enough to avoid detection by the swab test (which is looking for nitrates, sodium chlorate, etc.) but those have an obvious x-ray signature.
I sometimes work with my laptop in an environment that has all kinds of lawn and garden products (e.g., fertilizer), and if I take that laptop through security, they swab it every time, it comes up positive (!) and I get to explain to them why (!!). More than once, I've had to endure questioning by several levels of security people, and once, they made me sign something declaring that I didn't have any explosives (like that would matter?)
>Point of Sale systems are really not enterprise level software or whatever
The slightly bigger picture is the POS has responsibilities related inventory control, loss prevention, and cash accounting. It's as "enterprise" as it gets.
If someone were to simply productize a system and sell it on its features, it shouldn't matter what OS it runs. Only geeks care that the Tivo is a linux box, or the Linksys routers, or the Muse Receptor (musical instrument), to name a few consumer products.
As for enterprise products, isn't one of the major hotel desk packages a Linux system from start to finish?
I see a lot of posts in this thread that seem to be from the point of view that there is Windows, and then there is "anything else", including Linux. I suspect people don't realize just how many systems run SCO in applications like this. It's not just a slashdot/groklaw conceit that SCO is going away and these systems need to migrate. I imagine there's quite a marketplace opening up.
Open source advocates tend to have stagnant careers, and don't reach C-level exec or board positions. Otherwise these decisions would simply be made, rather than all the whining we hear when they aren't.
If you try to collect the data to contruct a NYC subway map, you will probably be arrested as a suspected terrorist. Many photographers have run into problems taking mundane photos in NYC. It's a situation that I associated with East Berlin, never the US. People aren't fighting it, at least, not *really* fighting.
Get a court order, then write the letter, Mister "Senior Associate Counsel".
A letter from a lawyer carries no special powers simply on the virtue of it being signed by the name of a person who happens to be a lawyer. A demand from a lawyer does not become law.
This letter does not even specify a legal basis for the demand, nor does it enumerate damages or consequences for noncompliance.
"People I work with are MAD that I get good mileage in my Escape Hybrid. It may only be 33 mpg, but they get 12."
I can't conceive of a scenario where I'd be talking about something like this with people I work with. I can't even imagine the subject coming up, and certainly not becoming a subject that would engender *anger*. Do they talk about your doctor bills or the thread count in your bed sheets too?
You seem to believe that the government is distinct from the people governed, and that the people have, or should have, no influence on the government. It appears that you even would *prefer* it that way.
The real story here is how the leak was an inside job. Someone who was a trusted member of the limited circle of people who get pre-release copies of features, seeded the trading network.
>No, it's not inevitable. Far from it. And laws do get repealed, you know, there's this thing >called "prohibition" that once was a law, but isn't anymore because enough, but not all, of the >people didn't want it to be a law.
They just changed their drug of choice. 1937. Prohibition is alive and well and has put more people in jail since 1937 than *ever* before, *anywhere*.
National debt? If you loan money to someone who can't pay, especially if you *keep* lending them money, sooner or later you must bear the responsibility for making that poor choice.
You first. Do you have 3999 other people who are pissed off enough to lay their lives down so that others may have an opportunity to live under less tyranny? Until you've got an issue that's important enough for people to decide that the issue is more important than life or death, you'll have no "armed rebellion."
For best results, find an issue so divisive that it persuades even military people -- entire chains of command, and people who control the industries that supply them -- to join your cause.
Good luck with your revolution. I'll watch it on TV.
If your password is compromised, will someone be able to do stock trades and make it look like you did it? Would they be able to expose your company trade secrets and make it look like you did it? Would they be able to access classified material of a military nature (even mundane stuff?)
Stuff that could put you in a Federal Supermax or Gitmo deserves good security hygiene on YOUR part.
Can you pass this responsibility to your employees? Certainly! Make it a serious matter to forget a password. No help desk call needed. The post-it note? A firing offense! It's that simple.
Can you pass the responsibility on to your customers? NO! And here's where you are forced to compromise. All you can do here is a best-effort at security. That has different parameters for a bank, than for a mundane blog.
>Yet we all shop at Walmart, or Target, who imports so much of their retail items from China.
Lately I've checked the origins of stuff I've bought at WalMart, and have been very surprised. Many items are made in the US, and some things I would have bet money were made in China, were from, for example, Ireland and Romania (!)
Maybe everything you buy at WalMart is made in China, but I suggest you actually check the contents of your cart, as you may be in for a big surprise.
If there is discovery involved, or expert witnesses, or research, I agree.
If the RIAA filed a suit against me and I was confident they could never produce any evidence that I have ever had access to an internet connection or owned a computer, I'd make them take me to court and explain this to a judge. I would not waive anything, ever, not one part of the process, and I would not take any action to delay the hearing.
But then, if the RIAA filed a suit against me, it would be a pretty bad thing, considering how long I've been in various scenes (since the 70s!), how outspoken I am on copyright issues, the fact that I publicly called for the head of Jack Valenti for being the one person in the JFK motorcade who benefitted the longest, and on and on, it probably wouldn't be much fun.
I observe that the person in the article actually did what she was accused of doing. I stand by my assertion that the courtroom is more expensive for the guilty.
Justice is usually less expensive if you aren't at least somewhat guilty of doing what you are accused of.
When you hear about the cost of defending yourself in court as being too expensive an option to consider, it's usually in regard to a plaintiff who has actually done the thing he is accused of, to some degree or another.
If you're facing a civil suit, and you're truly not responsible for the damage being claimed, and your evidence supports that, just go to trial. No need to hire an expensive lawyer, no need to engage in costly stalling tactics. Get the first hearing date available on the venue's docket, demand a jury trial, waive *nothing*, and prevail on the basis of the preponderance of evidence.
It gets much more difficult the closer you are to "guilty".
I'm suspicious of any "then" dollars to "now" dollars comparisons. I don't think it's a linear relation. Also, it depends on what you compare. I used to get a kick out of looking at old magazine and news ads. The amusing thing was when, say, looking at grocery specials and realizing that the same items could be bought for approximately the same prices in 1982 dollars as 1966 dollars. It was surprising that things (like milk, bread, eggs, cheese), were so expensive in the '60s. Other things compare differently, like tobacco, cars, and home prices -- but each of these gives a different curve.
Was it easier for a technophile to get his hands on $50 in 1954, than it is for a similar person to get $400 today? I think it may have been.
Loss of fundamental freedom, in this case being deprived of the protection of the rule of law, is a situation worth killing or dying in order to correct.
It's not about "income" or "punishment", it's simply that once you are deprived of a basic, fundamental right of freedom, such as the right to due process of law, the social contract between the government and the people has been broken in a way that cannot be corrected.
Whether you are *obligated* to stand up for these rights, or whether you are empowered to make that individual choice, is the basic question here.
But when you allow your rights to be abridged, you also play a role in support of the tyranny which will others will also suffer. Is the liberty of the people as a whole more important than your own comfort? That's the choice you make when you don't protest agaisnt having your rights abridged.
>You make it sound as if that's difficult. A quick Google search turns up plenty:
Most of the items listed by impeachment proponents are easily defended, and in fact, are not crimes. Do try to keep in mind that the people you need to persuade are not us liberal democrats who are *already* opposed to Bush, but rather you have to persuade Congress. The standards of evidence are going to be high. And I'm not interested in hearing about how a Republican-dominated Congress makes it even harder.
Impeachment is a tough row to hoe, and it's not going to be made easier by clouding the issue with a bunch of fluff.
An emotional argument, no matter how plaintively it is argued, goes nowhere without clear evidence.
For instance, the "Four reasons" site dwells on four things that are compelling reasons to have a general opposition to the current government's policies, but they don't give evidence of specific crimes that would be grounds for impeachment.
1. The invasion of Iraq was approved by Congress. If you want to argue that Congress is not an expression of the general affirmed will of the American people, that's still not a case for impeachment of the President. It is a good reason to get active in politics, because the strategy used in 2000, 2002, and in 2004 failed. Don't get me wrong; I agree that Bush is an entirely inappropriate choice for a national leader, but I don't agree that he was put in power by a coup. I would like to have seen, oh, 85% of the voters in favor of the opposition party. But we didn't make that happen. Anyway, you need to persuade your Congressman that his or her vote was manipulated on a fraudulent basis. Can you do that?
2. Don't talk to me about the Downing Street Memos, unless you have in your hand, the actual, original memo, in addition to the sworn testimony before Congress of the person who wrote the memo. Until and unless you can produce both of those items of evidence, there's no such thing as the Downing Street Memo.
3. Nobody that matters, cares about any foreign judicial system to which the President of the United States is not subject.
4. "The Military-Industrial complex" is everyone who owns stock in, or is employed by, any corporation that has contracts with the the US Government. Regardless of PNAC or anything else, there's no impeachable crime here. It may not be *right*, but we're not talking about how we'd rather things be, we're talking about grounds for, and evidence for, a Presidential impeachment.
5. I don't even know how to respond to this, other than to maybe point out that support for the status quo enjoys widespread support among the people. It doesn't seem that way when you associate mainly with selected educated people who are of a more liberal stripe than the average American. I think people don't realize that the problem isn't so much with the leadership, as with the people who put them in power. We came close to tipping this balance in the past few elections, but "close" wasn't good enough. I suspect that if the election were held today, Bush would win the same states, if not more, as in 2004. I also have a very strong suspicion that the 2006 Congressional election will be decided by a narrow margin in most races, with APATHY winning by 3-to-1 margins, leaving the many interested Republicans voting against the few motivated Democrats, and we will end up with yet another Republican-dominated Congress. That's my prediction for 2006.
Impeachment might be a solution if there was a crime, and if there was evidence of that crime that would be sufficient to persuade Congress to make a prosecution. There isn't, and it's a total waste of energy to try to make this case out of nothing.
Bear in mind, this is coming from a devoutly liberal individual who has some downright anti-government leanings. I'm by no means a Bush supporter, or any of these goddamned pro-war chickenhawk neocon big-business-rules assholes. I don't even need to get that far; I cannot support Bush with n
"No, not just Bush. But Bush has been, BY FAR the biggest abuser of executive powers we've ever seen."
Has he broken any laws? If so, please list them, and please provide evidence that would be acceptable for presentation to Congress.
If he *hasn't* broken any laws, then all he has succeeded in doing, is demonstrating to his presidential successor (who will likely be of the opposition party), just how much power the President of the United States actually has.
Good for the goose is good for the gander, you know.
I really think it's funny how much power Bush has sucked into the Executive Branch, only to hand that power over to a person who will in all likelihood be the most diametrically opposed individual to himself possible, in only three years.
There's no opportunity for jury nullification, because in this case, the government has declared itself to be beyond the reach of any legal process. Of course, that's one definition of tyranny. And the remedy for tyranny is overthrow of the government, through violent means if necessary.
The question is, are these inventors upset enough to start a rebellion, and if so, will they have the influence to engender such a thing? Or are they cowards who will choose not to pay the price for freedom (which might be death) so that others may have freedom?
I suspect the answer is "no."
We as a society do not have the motivation to throw off the shackles of tyranny. Therefore, we deserve whatever atrocity government becomes.
Slashdot Mirror
>Someone remind me what the point of this whizz-bang technology is again?
High explosives are not exactly stable.
Your plan will not really keep the volatile materials fully *inside* the suitcase.
Any kind of bomb worth using is going to be pretty noisy, chemically speaking. You're pretty much going to have a cloud of nitrates around you. If you've got enough of an oxidizer in your bag to be an effective bomb, it's going to be very difficult to keep it from being detected.
You could probably seal an organic explosive like C4 or TNT well enough to avoid detection by the swab test (which is looking for nitrates, sodium chlorate, etc.) but those have an obvious x-ray signature.
I sometimes work with my laptop in an environment that has all kinds of lawn and garden products (e.g., fertilizer), and if I take that laptop through security, they swab it every time, it comes up positive (!) and I get to explain to them why (!!). More than once, I've had to endure questioning by several levels of security people, and once, they made me sign something declaring that I didn't have any explosives (like that would matter?)
>Point of Sale systems are really not enterprise level software or whatever
The slightly bigger picture is the POS has responsibilities related inventory control, loss prevention, and cash accounting. It's as "enterprise" as it gets.
If someone were to simply productize a system and sell it on its features, it shouldn't matter what OS it runs. Only geeks care that the Tivo is a linux box, or the Linksys routers, or the Muse Receptor (musical instrument), to name a few consumer products.
As for enterprise products, isn't one of the major hotel desk packages a Linux system from start to finish?
I see a lot of posts in this thread that seem to be from the point of view that there is Windows, and then there is "anything else", including Linux. I suspect people don't realize just how many systems run SCO in applications like this. It's not just a slashdot/groklaw conceit that SCO is going away and these systems need to migrate. I imagine there's quite a marketplace opening up.
Open source advocates tend to have stagnant careers, and don't reach C-level exec or board positions. Otherwise these decisions would simply be made, rather than all the whining we hear when they aren't.
If you try to collect the data to contruct a NYC subway map, you will probably be arrested as a suspected terrorist. Many photographers have run into problems taking mundane photos in NYC. It's a situation that I associated with East Berlin, never the US. People aren't fighting it, at least, not *really* fighting.
*yawn*
Get a court order, then write the letter, Mister "Senior Associate Counsel".
A letter from a lawyer carries no special powers simply on the virtue of it being signed by the name of a person who happens to be a lawyer. A demand from a lawyer does not become law.
This letter does not even specify a legal basis for the demand, nor does it enumerate damages or consequences for noncompliance.
>No government or agency in the United States can legally have a valid copyright.
Why not, in the absense of a law specifically depriving them of it?
"People I work with are MAD that I get good mileage in my Escape Hybrid. It may only be 33 mpg, but they get 12."
I can't conceive of a scenario where I'd be talking about something like this with people I work with. I can't even imagine the subject coming up, and certainly not becoming a subject that would engender *anger*. Do they talk about your doctor bills or the thread count in your bed sheets too?
You seem to believe that the government is distinct from the people governed, and that the people have, or should have, no influence on the government. It appears that you even would *prefer* it that way.
The real story here is how the leak was an inside job. Someone who was a trusted member of the limited circle of people who get pre-release copies of features, seeded the trading network.
>No, it's not inevitable. Far from it. And laws do get repealed, you know, there's this thing
>called "prohibition" that once was a law, but isn't anymore because enough, but not all, of the
>people didn't want it to be a law.
They just changed their drug of choice. 1937. Prohibition is alive and well and has put more people in jail since 1937 than *ever* before, *anywhere*.
National debt? If you loan money to someone who can't pay, especially if you *keep* lending them money, sooner or later you must bear the responsibility for making that poor choice.
>It's time to clean things up.
You first. Do you have 3999 other people who are pissed off enough to lay their lives down so that others may have an opportunity to live under less tyranny? Until you've got an issue that's important enough for people to decide that the issue is more important than life or death, you'll have no "armed rebellion."
For best results, find an issue so divisive that it persuades even military people -- entire chains of command, and people who control the industries that supply them -- to join your cause.
Good luck with your revolution. I'll watch it on TV.
If your password is compromised, will someone be able to do stock trades and make it look like you did it? Would they be able to expose your company trade secrets and make it look like you did it? Would they be able to access classified material of a military nature (even mundane stuff?)
Stuff that could put you in a Federal Supermax or Gitmo deserves good security hygiene on YOUR part.
Can you pass this responsibility to your employees? Certainly! Make it a serious matter to forget a password. No help desk call needed. The post-it note? A firing offense! It's that simple.
Can you pass the responsibility on to your customers? NO! And here's where you are forced to compromise. All you can do here is a best-effort at security. That has different parameters for a bank, than for a mundane blog.
>Yet we all shop at Walmart, or Target, who imports so much of their retail items from China.
Lately I've checked the origins of stuff I've bought at WalMart, and have been very surprised. Many items are made in the US, and some things I would have bet money were made in China, were from, for example, Ireland and Romania (!)
Maybe everything you buy at WalMart is made in China, but I suggest you actually check the contents of your cart, as you may be in for a big surprise.
If there is discovery involved, or expert witnesses, or research, I agree.
If the RIAA filed a suit against me and I was confident they could never produce any evidence that I have ever had access to an internet connection or owned a computer, I'd make them take me to court and explain this to a judge. I would not waive anything, ever, not one part of the process, and I would not take any action to delay the hearing.
But then, if the RIAA filed a suit against me, it would be a pretty bad thing, considering how long I've been in various scenes (since the 70s!), how outspoken I am on copyright issues, the fact that I publicly called for the head of Jack Valenti for being the one person in the JFK motorcade who benefitted the longest, and on and on, it probably wouldn't be much fun.
I observe that the person in the article actually did what she was accused of doing. I stand by my assertion that the courtroom is more expensive for the guilty.
Justice is usually less expensive if you aren't at least somewhat guilty of doing what you are accused of.
When you hear about the cost of defending yourself in court as being too expensive an option to consider, it's usually in regard to a plaintiff who has actually done the thing he is accused of, to some degree or another.
If you're facing a civil suit, and you're truly not responsible for the damage being claimed, and your evidence supports that, just go to trial. No need to hire an expensive lawyer, no need to engage in costly stalling tactics. Get the first hearing date available on the venue's docket, demand a jury trial, waive *nothing*, and prevail on the basis of the preponderance of evidence.
It gets much more difficult the closer you are to "guilty".
Yes, you only need 90 in for 360 in
I'm suspicious of any "then" dollars to "now" dollars comparisons. I don't think it's a linear relation. Also, it depends on what you compare. I used to get a kick out of looking at old magazine and news ads. The amusing thing was when, say, looking at grocery specials and realizing that the same items could be bought for approximately the same prices in 1982 dollars as 1966 dollars. It was surprising that things (like milk, bread, eggs, cheese), were so expensive in the '60s. Other things compare differently, like tobacco, cars, and home prices -- but each of these gives a different curve.
Was it easier for a technophile to get his hands on $50 in 1954, than it is for a similar person to get $400 today? I think it may have been.
>(22 gauge from 100m, but I don't know if a 22 is considered a bullet by Americans.)
.22 is a bullet, but at 100m, might have trouble going through *cardboard*.
A
>Loss of income is punishable by death?
Loss of fundamental freedom, in this case being deprived of the protection of the rule of law, is a situation worth killing or dying in order to correct.
It's not about "income" or "punishment", it's simply that once you are deprived of a basic, fundamental right of freedom, such as the right to due process of law, the social contract between the government and the people has been broken in a way that cannot be corrected.
Whether you are *obligated* to stand up for these rights, or whether you are empowered to make that individual choice, is the basic question here.
But when you allow your rights to be abridged, you also play a role in support of the tyranny which will others will also suffer. Is the liberty of the people as a whole more important than your own comfort? That's the choice you make when you don't protest agaisnt having your rights abridged.
>You make it sound as if that's difficult. A quick Google search turns up plenty:
Most of the items listed by impeachment proponents are easily defended, and in fact, are not crimes. Do try to keep in mind that the people you need to persuade are not us liberal democrats who are *already* opposed to Bush, but rather you have to persuade Congress. The standards of evidence are going to be high. And I'm not interested in hearing about how a Republican-dominated Congress makes it even harder.
Impeachment is a tough row to hoe, and it's not going to be made easier by clouding the issue with a bunch of fluff.
An emotional argument, no matter how plaintively it is argued, goes nowhere without clear evidence.
For instance, the "Four reasons" site dwells on four things that are compelling reasons to have a general opposition to the current government's policies, but they don't give evidence of specific crimes that would be grounds for impeachment.
1. The invasion of Iraq was approved by Congress. If you want to argue that Congress is not an expression of the general affirmed will of the American people, that's still not a case for impeachment of the President. It is a good reason to get active in politics, because the strategy used in 2000, 2002, and in 2004 failed. Don't get me wrong; I agree that Bush is an entirely inappropriate choice for a national leader, but I don't agree that he was put in power by a coup. I would like to have seen, oh, 85% of the voters in favor of the opposition party. But we didn't make that happen. Anyway, you need to persuade your Congressman that his or her vote was manipulated on a fraudulent basis. Can you do that?
2. Don't talk to me about the Downing Street Memos, unless you have in your hand, the actual, original memo, in addition to the sworn testimony before Congress of the person who wrote the memo. Until and unless you can produce both of those items of evidence, there's no such thing as the Downing Street Memo.
3. Nobody that matters, cares about any foreign judicial system to which the President of the United States is not subject.
4. "The Military-Industrial complex" is everyone who owns stock in, or is employed by, any corporation that has contracts with the the US Government. Regardless of PNAC or anything else, there's no impeachable crime here. It may not be *right*, but we're not talking about how we'd rather things be, we're talking about grounds for, and evidence for, a Presidential impeachment.
5. I don't even know how to respond to this, other than to maybe point out that support for the status quo enjoys widespread support among the people. It doesn't seem that way when you associate mainly with selected educated people who are of a more liberal stripe than the average American. I think people don't realize that the problem isn't so much with the leadership, as with the people who put them in power. We came close to tipping this balance in the past few elections, but "close" wasn't good enough. I suspect that if the election were held today, Bush would win the same states, if not more, as in 2004. I also have a very strong suspicion that the 2006 Congressional election will be decided by a narrow margin in most races, with APATHY winning by 3-to-1 margins, leaving the many interested Republicans voting against the few motivated Democrats, and we will end up with yet another Republican-dominated Congress. That's my prediction for 2006.
Impeachment might be a solution if there was a crime, and if there was evidence of that crime that would be sufficient to persuade Congress to make a prosecution. There isn't, and it's a total waste of energy to try to make this case out of nothing.
Bear in mind, this is coming from a devoutly liberal individual who has some downright anti-government leanings. I'm by no means a Bush supporter, or any of these goddamned pro-war chickenhawk neocon big-business-rules assholes. I don't even need to get that far; I cannot support Bush with n
"No, not just Bush. But Bush has been, BY FAR the biggest abuser of executive powers we've ever seen."
Has he broken any laws? If so, please list them, and please provide evidence that would be acceptable for presentation to Congress.
If he *hasn't* broken any laws, then all he has succeeded in doing, is demonstrating to his presidential successor (who will likely be of the opposition party), just how much power the President of the United States actually has.
Good for the goose is good for the gander, you know.
I really think it's funny how much power Bush has sucked into the Executive Branch, only to hand that power over to a person who will in all likelihood be the most diametrically opposed individual to himself possible, in only three years.
There's no opportunity for jury nullification, because in this case, the government has declared itself to be beyond the reach of any legal process. Of course, that's one definition of tyranny. And the remedy for tyranny is overthrow of the government, through violent means if necessary.
The question is, are these inventors upset enough to start a rebellion, and if so, will they have the influence to engender such a thing? Or are they cowards who will choose not to pay the price for freedom (which might be death) so that others may have freedom?
I suspect the answer is "no."
We as a society do not have the motivation to throw off the shackles of tyranny. Therefore, we deserve whatever atrocity government becomes.
I'm really surprised this is a BB-gun and not a 308.