So compliance should be simple and painless. We can just carry datasheets for our batteries, and show them to the TSA knuckledraggers when they demand to know the mass equivalent of elemental lithium contained therein.
So because you feel politically helpless, you're justified in shining a laser beam at a police helicopter, possibly making it crash? If you want to take civil disobedience to that level, you should remove the uncertainty and get a rocket launcher. And while you're at it, I suggest you join Al Qaida or Christian Identity or some such organization.
Or, to put it another way: The political system should be accountable and responsive to the people, because that greatly reduces the temptation to extremism.
I wasn't aware that the CIA case had anything to do with a court case. I was under the impression that it had to do with congress which is not a court.
Congress does have their own investigations, yes. But there is also a court case. I posted a link to a story from today's LA Times in another thread, here's a brief, relevant quote:
Over the objections of the Justice Department, a federal judge said Tuesday he would explore whether the U.S. had violated a court order to preserve evidence when the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of two terrorism suspects in 2005.
U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. set a hearing for Friday in Washington in response to a request from Yemeni prisoners who are challenging their detention by the U.S. at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The CIA's tapes were destroyed in 2005 -- long before any investigations into "torture" came about. Thus it was not "destruction of evidence", but merely "destruction of tapes".
A story in today's LA Times contradicts that timeline. Here's the relevant passage.
The tapes were destroyed by a CIA official in November 2005, at a time of growing congressional and public concern about U.S. tactics in the war on terrorism, including interrogation techniques.
It was also five months after Kennedy, in the case of the Yemeni prisoners, issued an order requiring that the U.S. preserve and maintain "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees now" at Guantanamo Bay. According to court papers, government lawyers said at the time that a formal order was not necessary because they were "well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation."
The money you pay for is *not* for the content itself, it is for the *right* to use the content on that specific physical piece of media.
The MAFIAAs say that a lot. But I hope it's not true. If it is, then they really are getting an unfairly generous deal, as the GP said.
I could see arguing that one buys a license, not the physical work. In that case, if the media were lost or destroyed, replacements would be available at a nominal charge to cover plastic, postage, overhead, etc. Personal backup copies to be stored safely would be OK under that concept, or the reverse -- making a copy to play and saving the original.
I could also see making the argument that you bought a copy of a work, it's now yours to do with as you please -- "first sale" doctrine. You could give it to your friends, or sell it to someone else. Of course if you break it, tough. Buy another, just like if you broke a dinner plate.
But as you state it, they want the best of both worlds. You buy a license to to a specific copy of a work. You can play it or not. But you can't back it up, you can't transfer the work to a new medium so you can continue to use it after the original technology is no longer supported. All you own is the license to play copy # 1267888993 of "Oops, I did it again" on CD.
Kudos, though. You did get a car analogy in. It might be better to add that you need to buy a license to operate each car you own, and one for each friend or relative that might borrow your car. And each license wouldn't cost a $50 fee from the DMV, but would be sold as part of the car, and each license would cost the full price of a car. Trade-ins not accepted. So a two-car, two-driver household would need to "buy" four cars, that is, one license for each driver for each car.
Yes and no. The cases are unrelated inasmuch as different people are involved and different types of information were contained in the destroyed evidence. However, both cases are about evidence destruction contrary to court order.
The relationship is that when the executive branch -- perhaps up to and including the president -- are doing it, it substantially weakens public support for the law. One could argue that the little guy is still expected to follow the law, regardless of what his betters do, but even the little guy recognizes the "do as I say, not as I do" doctrine when the two cases involve the very same illegal act.
(BTW, who modded parent funny? I'd mod him insightful instead)
I think that's cause he was loosely quoting "Team America: World Police" in the "dicks and assholes" analogy. That's the problem with being insightful and funny at the same time.
There is nothing wrong with running wires into petrol tanks for sensors... Take a good look at how badly made the rheostats in everyone's pertol tanks are made. Most engineers freak out when they see them for the first time.
Good point. Note that electronic sensors are also used in underground (and above-ground) storage tanks. Electric turbine pumps, too.
What makes it so that we aren't causing a violation of the underlying laws of the univers such that a catastrophic cascading implosion of all existance won't happen?
Not much, at least compared to what it takes to run a pump motor. And at least jet fuel isn't nearly as volatile as gasoline, which is pumped every day with submersible electric turbine pumps at nearly every gas station in the developed world. It's a PITA to make intrinsically safe electric circuits, but it's well understood and done every day.
The light powered device might be useful in planes if they could achieve the same degree of intrinsic safety at a lower weight.
AFAIK giving a false statement is a crime in and of itself.
National security, man. If I give true statements, the terrorists win. Laws are just quaint scribbles on silly pieces of paper in this post 9/11 world.
You're absolutely correct! My statement was slightly, *just slightly*, me oriented.;)
Maybe it would be safe to say "no modern PC". I don't think even the passions of the OS wars come close to our feelings about our old 8-bit machines.
War dialers, BBSs of various nature
Don't forget the birth of online services. Like Quantum Link. I wonder what ever happened to them . ..
the infamous '5 1/4 notch'.
The flippy disk! 2 for the price of 1! Even format the two sides differently. I think my first copy of Wolfenstein came on a flippy Apple/Commodore disk.
So if my experience is anything to go by, you'ld have to be a real enthusiast and pretty handy with a soldering gun to have one still working after all this time.
Mine weren't so bad. I did kill one early in its life by zapping the console on a staticky day, but it was in the 90 day warranty, so no problem. My ultimate C=64 still works. Some guys got pretty good drilling through the potting in the power bricks to get to the fuses in those.
I sure do. Remember trying to find the typo in the 3 pages of random characters? The row/column checksum program was a most welcome addition to my software library. After I finally found all my typos in it.
I had several nerd parties where we hooked up the C=64 to the TV and fired up SIDPlayer. There were a lot of cool game tracks and techno mixes, but we really loved the pop songs with lyrics that we would sing along with (badly). "I bless the ray--yains down in Af--ri--ca . . . " "The Band" would play in the corner of the screen while graphical depiction of the music scrolled by. Good times.
Music Construction Set on C=64 got me interested in writing music of my own (also badly).
My contract prohibits me from engaging in the same business as my current employer for up to 5 years after termination. It makes perfect sense though; why fill my head with Trade secrets and methods just to have me open up shop across the street.
That's their motivation for the non-compete: it's better for them. By the same token, not having a non-compete would be better for you, since you could easily turn around that argument saying "why should I fill their pockets with money just to have them lay me off in bad times". If it's OK for an employer to look after their own interests, then certainly it is OK for an employee, too.
TFA, on the other hand, suggests that the practice of non-competes reduces overall innovation. So what's good for an individual employer is not necessarily best for society at large. So society might have an interest here in looking out for its own, also.
nothing says you have to help your enemies.
BTW, if you view your employees all as potential enemies, you might not be getting their best efforts.
Paper voting on the other side is so easy that manipulation is easy to realize.
Not to be pedantic, but the system in question does use paper (just not easily human readable). People mark machine readable paper ballots, and the PBC can be used to check the ballot before they turn it in to ensure that it is not over- or under-voted, etc. From the description of how they are using the PBCs, it sounds like they are trying to avoid some of the kinds of problems reported in Florida 2000, by letting a voter see how the machine will tally their vote.
The votes are counted electronically, but paper is still used -- in a fashion.
If the machines have paper seals in an accessible place, then you could very easily DOS the vote of a district that is known to be unfavourable to you simply by slicing the seal with your thumbnail, without ever having to hack the machine at all!
That's true, but anything accessible to the public could be potentially vandalized. At least the jurisdiction in question is using the PBCs to let the voters check their ballots, and not necessarily for counting the precinct results. If the machine were vandalized, the precinct operation would be degraded -- by not providing a way for voters to check the ballot -- but not totally offline, since the marked ballots could be counted elsewhere on an intact machine.
You're still right, making it so easy to vandalize by using paper seals instead of something a little more durable was not a very good choice.
Slashdot Mirror
That gives me an idea for "Step 2" . . .
1. Sell N pairs fake Star Trek underpants for U dollars each.
2. Get caught M times, refund M*U dollars.
3. (N-M)*U dollars Profit!!!
OK, we'll only allow "Ich luge" bullets.
So compliance should be simple and painless. We can just carry datasheets for our batteries, and show them to the TSA knuckledraggers when they demand to know the mass equivalent of elemental lithium contained therein.
The AP article says that, but the chart on TFTSA website has limits/bans on rechargeables, too.
Use them and nobody gets hurt.
Or, to put it another way: The political system should be accountable and responsive to the people, because that greatly reduces the temptation to extremism.
Kids' stuff. Real men remove "Bridge Out" signs.
Congress does have their own investigations, yes. But there is also a court case. I posted a link to a story from today's LA Times in another thread, here's a brief, relevant quote:
Here's a link to the full story http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-tapes19dec19,1,6510221.story?ctrack=3&cset=true
Free reg. required, or BugMeNot.
A story in today's LA Times contradicts that timeline. Here's the relevant passage.
Here's a link to the full article: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-tapes19dec19,1,6510221.story?ctrack=3&cset=true
Registration is required for their site, but BugMeNot works.
The MAFIAAs say that a lot. But I hope it's not true. If it is, then they really are getting an unfairly generous deal, as the GP said.
I could see arguing that one buys a license, not the physical work. In that case, if the media were lost or destroyed, replacements would be available at a nominal charge to cover plastic, postage, overhead, etc. Personal backup copies to be stored safely would be OK under that concept, or the reverse -- making a copy to play and saving the original.
I could also see making the argument that you bought a copy of a work, it's now yours to do with as you please -- "first sale" doctrine. You could give it to your friends, or sell it to someone else. Of course if you break it, tough. Buy another, just like if you broke a dinner plate.
But as you state it, they want the best of both worlds. You buy a license to to a specific copy of a work. You can play it or not. But you can't back it up, you can't transfer the work to a new medium so you can continue to use it after the original technology is no longer supported. All you own is the license to play copy # 1267888993 of "Oops, I did it again" on CD.
Kudos, though. You did get a car analogy in. It might be better to add that you need to buy a license to operate each car you own, and one for each friend or relative that might borrow your car. And each license wouldn't cost a $50 fee from the DMV, but would be sold as part of the car, and each license would cost the full price of a car. Trade-ins not accepted. So a two-car, two-driver household would need to "buy" four cars, that is, one license for each driver for each car.
Yes and no. The cases are unrelated inasmuch as different people are involved and different types of information were contained in the destroyed evidence. However, both cases are about evidence destruction contrary to court order.
The relationship is that when the executive branch -- perhaps up to and including the president -- are doing it, it substantially weakens public support for the law. One could argue that the little guy is still expected to follow the law, regardless of what his betters do, but even the little guy recognizes the "do as I say, not as I do" doctrine when the two cases involve the very same illegal act.
I think that's cause he was loosely quoting "Team America: World Police" in the "dicks and assholes" analogy. That's the problem with being insightful and funny at the same time.
Good point. Note that electronic sensors are also used in underground (and above-ground) storage tanks. Electric turbine pumps, too.
Don't cross the beams.
Not much, at least compared to what it takes to run a pump motor. And at least jet fuel isn't nearly as volatile as gasoline, which is pumped every day with submersible electric turbine pumps at nearly every gas station in the developed world. It's a PITA to make intrinsically safe electric circuits, but it's well understood and done every day.
The light powered device might be useful in planes if they could achieve the same degree of intrinsic safety at a lower weight.
National security, man. If I give true statements, the terrorists win. Laws are just quaint scribbles on silly pieces of paper in this post 9/11 world.
Well excu-u-u-u-use me!
Maybe it would be safe to say "no modern PC". I don't think even the passions of the OS wars come close to our feelings about our old 8-bit machines.
Don't forget the birth of online services. Like Quantum Link. I wonder what ever happened to them . . .
The flippy disk! 2 for the price of 1! Even format the two sides differently. I think my first copy of Wolfenstein came on a flippy Apple/Commodore disk.
Mine weren't so bad. I did kill one early in its life by zapping the console on a staticky day, but it was in the 90 day warranty, so no problem. My ultimate C=64 still works. Some guys got pretty good drilling through the potting in the power bricks to get to the fuses in those.
I sure do. Remember trying to find the typo in the 3 pages of random characters? The row/column checksum program was a most welcome addition to my software library. After I finally found all my typos in it.
I had several nerd parties where we hooked up the C=64 to the TV and fired up SIDPlayer. There were a lot of cool game tracks and techno mixes, but we really loved the pop songs with lyrics that we would sing along with (badly). "I bless the ray--yains down in Af--ri--ca . . . " "The Band" would play in the corner of the screen while graphical depiction of the music scrolled by. Good times.
Music Construction Set on C=64 got me interested in writing music of my own (also badly).
This is information retrieval not information dispersal.
That's their motivation for the non-compete: it's better for them. By the same token, not having a non-compete would be better for you, since you could easily turn around that argument saying "why should I fill their pockets with money just to have them lay me off in bad times". If it's OK for an employer to look after their own interests, then certainly it is OK for an employee, too.
TFA, on the other hand, suggests that the practice of non-competes reduces overall innovation. So what's good for an individual employer is not necessarily best for society at large. So society might have an interest here in looking out for its own, also.
BTW, if you view your employees all as potential enemies, you might not be getting their best efforts.
Not to be pedantic, but the system in question does use paper (just not easily human readable). People mark machine readable paper ballots, and the PBC can be used to check the ballot before they turn it in to ensure that it is not over- or under-voted, etc. From the description of how they are using the PBCs, it sounds like they are trying to avoid some of the kinds of problems reported in Florida 2000, by letting a voter see how the machine will tally their vote.
The votes are counted electronically, but paper is still used -- in a fashion.
That's true, but anything accessible to the public could be potentially vandalized. At least the jurisdiction in question is using the PBCs to let the voters check their ballots, and not necessarily for counting the precinct results. If the machine were vandalized, the precinct operation would be degraded -- by not providing a way for voters to check the ballot -- but not totally offline, since the marked ballots could be counted elsewhere on an intact machine.
You're still right, making it so easy to vandalize by using paper seals instead of something a little more durable was not a very good choice.