It's a fair guess that most actually do not feel this way, considering that the Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed in 2003, during a time when those whose political ideals seem most likely to approve of retributive prison violence were in control of all major branches of government.
Yeah I guess I'd be in a grumpy mood too if I lived in a country where attacks are a regular part of every day life, and my responsibility as a guard at a particularly volatile border crossing was to prevent such attacks. I've been in Aqaba and Taba, cities on each side of and within view of Elat; the Jordanians and Egyptians I met refused to even refer to the city as Elat, out of animosity towards Israel.
The thing that pissed me off most about this was that she hadn't backed up whatever was so dreadfully important ("omfg that's all mah work!") Sure it's inconvenient, but that's about it. After all, they'll reimburse her for her laptop; she'll get a new macbook for her trouble.
Depends. I don't believe that would hold up for a second under an at-will employment scheme. Under those you can be fired for no reason at all, or any legal reason. That would include your direct supe screwing up and his supe taking it out on you.
The only few reasons you can't be fired under work for hire are prohibited are things like racial, sexual, religious bias, and a few other limited categories.
I'm not so worried about Exxon Mobil. I am worried about the economy as a whole if we tie both our hands behind our collective backs. Particularly when we can't promise that the nations that compete with us on the global stage (*cough* China *cough*) will do the same.
First off, the US has *always* produced more emissions than China, and their population is ~4 times as big as the US.
Secondly, your hands-tying metaphor is off. You're equating eliminating a current resource with investing in alternatives & backups. That mindset is keeping us from having alternative & backups. You know, just in case.
You could, for example, make use of any of the other five sources of the same type of data that covered the same time period as the data.
IOW, test whether the original conclusions can be replicated. You could even test whether the value-added data that was retained was inaccurately modified.
It will take time, expertise, and resources to do this, but it can be done.
Seriously, nook? The name is going to condition people to feel disappointed upon realizing that someone was talking about an ebook reader instead of sex.
"You want my nook? REALLY?? Oh....oh, right, that. Sure. It's in the other room." (sigh)
Start with the assumption that any account you access while traveling will be compromised at some point -- anything that requiring a username/password or any other form of online authorization. Structure your accounts to minimize the loss suffered from any compromise.
Set up a separate email & IM accounts. Get a credit card designed for travel. I'm not going to suggest brands, however certain cards have security policies that lend themselves well to the risks of travel and compromise.
For your online banking and investments, set up separate travel accounts. For banking, have a periodic automatic deposit from another non-travel account in an amount sufficient to cover your expenses for the period between transfers. If your account is compromised you will lose only the funds from that period. Structure your investment accounts similarly.
Do not access your non-travel accounts while traveling. To manage your non-travel accounts while you're away, set up limited access so that a trusted family member or accountant can make transactions on your behalf & at your request if necessary. Develop some sort code/confirmation to include in any such communication to allow for the possibility that even this might be compromised -- for example a message isn't legit if you don't complain about/praise the food or the weather, or if you don't link to/attach a picture of you wearing something unique/making a certain gesture/face.
So, I guess, the real question is why you'd use Linux over FreeBSD?
The real time, low latencey kernel available to user accounts is pretty much the only reason I do. It's a must for multitrack sound recording.
The last time I was using FreeBSD regularly (late 4.x through 6.0), the real-time kernel access required for low-latency recording (a must for multitrack recording) was only available if you were running as root. At this time it was available via Igno Molnar's kernel patch and a rebuild.
My understanding was that the structure blocking users from real time kernel access is an intentional security design and very unlikely to change in FreeBSD. Do you happen to know if it has?
Incarceration is not for punishment or revenge; it serves 3 purposes to society: 1) Deterrent 2) Rehabilitation 3) Preventing the criminal from re-offending, at least for the time period they are incarcerated.
I wish that you were correct, but you aren't. Punishment is the very root of prison; hell, it's called the penal system because it is punishment.
Moral culpability for punishment is at the root of sentencing. While we justify it with other reasons such as public safety and rehabilitation, prison serves as an institutionalized way to address the human desire for vengence.
At this point phones might serve as backups for cameras, netbooks, and handheld gaming consoles, but the idea of replacing them by convergence into one item ignores that each of those items has a specialized and BIGGER type of form factor to enhance functionality in ways that counter that of a phone.
While phoneboxes are on their way out, there will probably be some functional replacement along the lines of a pay-per-use public cell station because the need will probably not entirely disappear. As common as phones are, some people sometime are going to need to use a phone, won't have one, and won't be able to borrow one at that moment. Computer kiosks already outnumber phone booths in international airports as it is.
TFA almost made it through without getting cliche, but then it had to go and include paper. Didn't we already learn this from the dead-wrong paperless office predictions? Phone technology is not even fractionally as mature as paper technology.
I do not believe that Excel ever went bankrupt. After several years $1 billion/year revenue, their founder and CEO retired, Excel was bought by another company (Shaklee, another MLM giant), and ultimately the brand was retired.
As for the point that big money is a necessary ingredient for a class action lawsuit: true, but blatant fraud such as in this case allows for piercing the corporate veil and going after the personal assets and future earnings of the officers of a company.
And while biglaw might not take on a class action suit where the depths of the pockets is questionable, a smaller firm might find great publicity value to gain from such a suit.
I get that German law considers prison as primarily reformative, and has an affirmative respect for human dignity in its basic law, but I still think this law gets the balancing wrong.
From what I understand the concept of dignity applies as much to the deceased as it does to the living --Klaus Mann in the Mephisto case (http://books.google.com/books?id=sHZfkgxtoZQC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&dq=mephisto+case&source=bl&ots=BmWa0DHtk4&sig=n-E3ZqS_0NJ-mTOFr9Etr2L2JTM&hl=en&ei=qZf_SsSQJJHJlAejz4SMCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mephisto%20case&f=false)
To command that all references to a victim's killers be scrubbed seems to interfere with the deceased's right to dignity. Denying the holocaust is a crime in Germany because it disrespects the suffering of the victims; this law allows these murderers to deny their own crime.
If Germany wishes to protect their rights to move on, gain employment, and be free from harassment, they can do so by less restrictive means than by commanding that others never mention the past, in public, in too specific a level of detail.
Your name, address, social security number, bank account balance, credit card transactions, passwords, medical history, and so on are simple facts. Should those who have access to that information be allowed to state those simple facts? In public, on the internet, where anyone and everyone can see it?
They are private facts. The people who hold that information have always been, and will always be, contractually and legally obliged to keep those facts private.
In the US at least, this is not at all true for name, address, or social security number. Credit card transactions: no, see your credit report. Passwords: not unless you can show me the contract.
As for Bank account balance and medical history, yes, b/c of specific legislation ordering it after people had revealed it.
If the purpose of prison is to reform criminals and give them the opportunity to return to society as productive citizens -- as seems to be the prevailing theory in Germany -- then it is the responsibility of the public to put that theory to the test. You can't send people to prison telling them, "you must reform," then let them out and tell them, "you have not reformed, sorry." One of the fundamental principles of justice in any democratic country is that the accused is allowed to speak up in his own defense, but what you're describing is a sentence from which there is no appeal.
That's not the only purpose of prison; it is the tertiary one. The first purpose of prison is to protect the rest of society. The second (and while in my mind most dubious but in reality most accepted) purpose is to punish bad behavior -- to create suffering in response to suffering created.
Then comes reform.
Telling someone "you have not reformed, sorry," is not the same thing as telling people what a person actually did in the past.
Milli Vanilli: they settled a class action lawsuit.
A more recent example is the class action lawsuit brought against auto dealerships for refusing to disclose hidden points the added to financing charges. "Those few percentage points of interest that dealers add on for themselves - without telling the customer - is called "dealer reserve," and it can add thousands of dollars to the cost of buying a car." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/01/60minutes/main609870.shtml
Excluding scams from operating businesses seems to me an inaccurate distinction -- an operating business can be a scam. Just look at magnetic arthritis bracelets, or The Secret.
My favorite is Excel Communications -- a wildly successful business that managed to beat Microsoft to become the youngest operating billion-dollar-annual company in history. Their MLM scheme was practically indistinguishable from any gifting club pyramid scheme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excel_Communications
I do not know of any class action lawsuits against them, but believe there were a number of actions brought against them by state consumer agencies.
We already function quite well with laws restricting people from knowingly lying about a person. How is that any different?
It is different because frequently the information contained in credit reports is frequently accurate.
When you're talking about accurate information, the right you're treading up against is that of freedom of speech.
To get more specific, defamation --lying about someone else and causing them harm-- is already a restricted form of speech. It is also a possible action against a credit bureau that "with malice or willful intent" provides incorrect info. (See the Fair Credit Reporting Act 1681h(e).)
The standard used to include the easier to reach "reckless" inclusion of misinformation, see Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, where a company brought a defamation suit against a credit bureau for false info and prevailed in the US Supreme Court.
I am really torn about this. I believe that the business model of Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion is lecherous and pox on society -- they essentially quantify and qualify the reputation info of individuals and sell it to companies that want to know an individual's reputation before doing business with the individual. Congressional action against these companies goes back pretty far -- consumers used to have no effective recourse at all, you couldn't find out why your credit report was negative, and credit reporting companies would mark you down for prejudiced criteria (your race, gender, marital status, age, etc).
OTOH, to keep these companies from doing it would require assigning a property right to facts about you. You would have an ownership interest and the ability to restrict the use of your name, age, residence, jobs, and transactions with all others simply because you were a part of it. I don't think society could function if we needed someone's permission to talk about them to others.
I always thought it interesting that people think equilibrium is a ecosystem free of humans. Aren't humans a part of the ecosystem. True equilibrium is our food source dying, followed by world starvation. The environmental push has nothing to do with the environment but is in fact human preservation. Let's call it exactly what it is.
I've never heard that argument, and I think that it would find more resonance than the current environmentalist PR.
Cows that are fed grass (as opposed to grain), give milk that tastes far better than what you'll find in the American supermarket aisles. The cheese made from that milk doubly so. The meat obviously is better too and priced accordingly.
It's a simple concept, really. Garbage in, garbage out.
I've yet to eat grass-fed beef that tastes far better --or better at all-- than grain-fed beef, and Kobe beef is the best of all (which is a combo of grain-fed and fermented grain-fed.) It could be that my taste has simply acclimated to years of grain-fed beef, but I also prefer the taste of wild game and fish compared to farm-raised. In particular, I ate a lot of hunted venison as a kid.
In my experience, grass-fed beef has all the negative attributes of gamey flavor with none of the positive attributes. Maybe it's just because there's not really an "authentic" wild cow diet, because there is no such thing as a wild cow.
There are plenty of server farms with more compute power and far more storage than the human brain. A terabyte drive is now only $199, after all.
Was that a wooshing sound I just heard passing by overhead? Forgive me if I missed your sarcasm, but the phrase "more storage than the human brain" struck me. How exactly can you measure the storage capacity of the human brain? Neurons are not bits.
Do you get paid to work? What if people were to take your product (OK, make copies of it), reducing your sales, leaving you with no money to provide for your family . . . . However, rampantly downloading stuff just because you don't want to pay for it is unethical and immoral, and you are in essence stealing.
I disagree. While producers have been given a generous legal framework and set of tools to enforce their rights, morality and ethics are not created by legislatures, parliaments, nor courts.
As a consumer, it is neither my moral nor ethical obligation to ensure that the producers or distributors of content get reimbursed for their efforts. If they choose to work in a medium and a distribution network that allows for easy and free access, they knowingly take the risk of not profiting when people easily and freely accessing their work.
If I were to distribute their material and profit off of it, that would indeed be immoral and unethical. To simply consume it without paying the asking price is no different than reading a photocopy of a book.
Analogizing this aspect of intangible property to tangible property is useless because of the fundamental differences between the two.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all people from the US feel this way.
It's a fair guess that most actually do not feel this way, considering that the Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed in 2003, during a time when those whose political ideals seem most likely to approve of retributive prison violence were in control of all major branches of government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Rape_Elimination_Act_of_2003
Yeah I guess I'd be in a grumpy mood too if I lived in a country where attacks are a regular part of every day life, and my responsibility as a guard at a particularly volatile border crossing was to prevent such attacks. I've been in Aqaba and Taba, cities on each side of and within view of Elat; the Jordanians and Egyptians I met refused to even refer to the city as Elat, out of animosity towards Israel.
The thing that pissed me off most about this was that she hadn't backed up whatever was so dreadfully important ("omfg that's all mah work!") Sure it's inconvenient, but that's about it. After all, they'll reimburse her for her laptop; she'll get a new macbook for her trouble.
mod parent up
Depends. I don't believe that would hold up for a second under an at-will employment scheme. Under those you can be fired for no reason at all, or any legal reason. That would include your direct supe screwing up and his supe taking it out on you.
The only few reasons you can't be fired under work for hire are prohibited are things like racial, sexual, religious bias, and a few other limited categories.
I'm not so worried about Exxon Mobil. I am worried about the economy as a whole if we tie both our hands behind our collective backs. Particularly when we can't promise that the nations that compete with us on the global stage (*cough* China *cough*) will do the same.
First off, the US has *always* produced more emissions than China, and their population is ~4 times as big as the US.
Secondly, your hands-tying metaphor is off. You're equating eliminating a current resource with investing in alternatives & backups. That mindset is keeping us from having alternative & backups. You know, just in case.
You could, for example, make use of any of the other five sources of the same type of data that covered the same time period as the data.
IOW, test whether the original conclusions can be replicated. You could even test whether the value-added data that was retained was inaccurately modified.
It will take time, expertise, and resources to do this, but it can be done.
Seriously, nook? The name is going to condition people to feel disappointed upon realizing that someone was talking about an ebook reader instead of sex.
"You want my nook? REALLY?? Oh....oh, right, that. Sure. It's in the other room." (sigh)
Start with the assumption that any account you access while traveling will be compromised at some point -- anything that requiring a username/password or any other form of online authorization. Structure your accounts to minimize the loss suffered from any compromise.
Set up a separate email & IM accounts. Get a credit card designed for travel. I'm not going to suggest brands, however certain cards have security policies that lend themselves well to the risks of travel and compromise.
For your online banking and investments, set up separate travel accounts. For banking, have a periodic automatic deposit from another non-travel account in an amount sufficient to cover your expenses for the period between transfers. If your account is compromised you will lose only the funds from that period. Structure your investment accounts similarly.
Do not access your non-travel accounts while traveling. To manage your non-travel accounts while you're away, set up limited access so that a trusted family member or accountant can make transactions on your behalf & at your request if necessary. Develop some sort code/confirmation to include in any such communication to allow for the possibility that even this might be compromised -- for example a message isn't legit if you don't complain about/praise the food or the weather, or if you don't link to/attach a picture of you wearing something unique/making a certain gesture/face.
So, I guess, the real question is why you'd use Linux over FreeBSD?
The real time, low latencey kernel available to user accounts is pretty much the only reason I do. It's a must for multitrack sound recording.
The last time I was using FreeBSD regularly (late 4.x through 6.0), the real-time kernel access required for low-latency recording (a must for multitrack recording) was only available if you were running as root. At this time it was available via Igno Molnar's kernel patch and a rebuild.
My understanding was that the structure blocking users from real time kernel access is an intentional security design and very unlikely to change in FreeBSD. Do you happen to know if it has?
Incarceration is not for punishment or revenge; it serves 3 purposes to society:
1) Deterrent
2) Rehabilitation
3) Preventing the criminal from re-offending, at least for the time period they are incarcerated.
I wish that you were correct, but you aren't. Punishment is the very root of prison; hell, it's called the penal system because it is punishment.
Moral culpability for punishment is at the root of sentencing. While we justify it with other reasons such as public safety and rehabilitation, prison serves as an institutionalized way to address the human desire for vengence.
Sounds like systemic ineptitude which is why I'm really looking forward to having health care!
FTFY
The mobile phone replaced the following for me years ago, in this order:
landlines
wristwatches
bedside alarm clocks
mp3 players
At this point phones might serve as backups for cameras, netbooks, and handheld gaming consoles, but the idea of replacing them by convergence into one item ignores that each of those items has a specialized and BIGGER type of form factor to enhance functionality in ways that counter that of a phone.
While phoneboxes are on their way out, there will probably be some functional replacement along the lines of a pay-per-use public cell station because the need will probably not entirely disappear. As common as phones are, some people sometime are going to need to use a phone, won't have one, and won't be able to borrow one at that moment. Computer kiosks already outnumber phone booths in international airports as it is.
TFA almost made it through without getting cliche, but then it had to go and include paper. Didn't we already learn this from the dead-wrong paperless office predictions? Phone technology is not even fractionally as mature as paper technology.
When was the last time anyone asked for a tissue instead of a Kleenex?
I'm not sure about people asking for a tissue, but that's certainly what I offer whenever someone has an issue.
I do not believe that Excel ever went bankrupt. After several years $1 billion/year revenue, their founder and CEO retired, Excel was bought by another company (Shaklee, another MLM giant), and ultimately the brand was retired.
As for the point that big money is a necessary ingredient for a class action lawsuit: true, but blatant fraud such as in this case allows for piercing the corporate veil and going after the personal assets and future earnings of the officers of a company.
And while biglaw might not take on a class action suit where the depths of the pockets is questionable, a smaller firm might find great publicity value to gain from such a suit.
I get that German law considers prison as primarily reformative, and has an affirmative respect for human dignity in its basic law, but I still think this law gets the balancing wrong.
From what I understand the concept of dignity applies as much to the deceased as it does to the living --Klaus Mann in the Mephisto case (http://books.google.com/books?id=sHZfkgxtoZQC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&dq=mephisto+case&source=bl&ots=BmWa0DHtk4&sig=n-E3ZqS_0NJ-mTOFr9Etr2L2JTM&hl=en&ei=qZf_SsSQJJHJlAejz4SMCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mephisto%20case&f=false)
To command that all references to a victim's killers be scrubbed seems to interfere with the deceased's right to dignity. Denying the holocaust is a crime in Germany because it disrespects the suffering of the victims; this law allows these murderers to deny their own crime.
If Germany wishes to protect their rights to move on, gain employment, and be free from harassment, they can do so by less restrictive means than by commanding that others never mention the past, in public, in too specific a level of detail.
Your name, address, social security number, bank account balance, credit card transactions, passwords, medical history, and so on are simple facts. Should those who have access to that information be allowed to state those simple facts? In public, on the internet, where anyone and everyone can see it?
They are private facts. The people who hold that information have always been, and will always be, contractually and legally obliged to keep those facts private.
In the US at least, this is not at all true for name, address, or social security number. Credit card transactions: no, see your credit report. Passwords: not unless you can show me the contract.
As for Bank account balance and medical history, yes, b/c of specific legislation ordering it after people had revealed it.
If the purpose of prison is to reform criminals and give them the opportunity to return to society as productive citizens -- as seems to be the prevailing theory in Germany -- then it is the responsibility of the public to put that theory to the test. You can't send people to prison telling them, "you must reform," then let them out and tell them, "you have not reformed, sorry." One of the fundamental principles of justice in any democratic country is that the accused is allowed to speak up in his own defense, but what you're describing is a sentence from which there is no appeal.
That's not the only purpose of prison; it is the tertiary one. The first purpose of prison is to protect the rest of society. The second (and while in my mind most dubious but in reality most accepted) purpose is to punish bad behavior -- to create suffering in response to suffering created.
Then comes reform.
Telling someone "you have not reformed, sorry," is not the same thing as telling people what a person actually did in the past.
Wow.
Milli Vanilli: they settled a class action lawsuit.
A more recent example is the class action lawsuit brought against auto dealerships for refusing to disclose hidden points the added to financing charges. "Those few percentage points of interest that dealers add on for themselves - without telling the customer - is called "dealer reserve," and it can add thousands of dollars to the cost of buying a car." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/01/60minutes/main609870.shtml
Excluding scams from operating businesses seems to me an inaccurate distinction -- an operating business can be a scam. Just look at magnetic arthritis bracelets, or The Secret.
My favorite is Excel Communications -- a wildly successful business that managed to beat Microsoft to become the youngest operating billion-dollar-annual company in history. Their MLM scheme was practically indistinguishable from any gifting club pyramid scheme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excel_Communications
I do not know of any class action lawsuits against them, but believe there were a number of actions brought against them by state consumer agencies.
We already function quite well with laws restricting people from knowingly lying about a person. How is that any different?
It is different because frequently the information contained in credit reports is frequently accurate.
When you're talking about accurate information, the right you're treading up against is that of freedom of speech.
To get more specific, defamation --lying about someone else and causing them harm-- is already a restricted form of speech. It is also a possible action against a credit bureau that "with malice or willful intent" provides incorrect info. (See the Fair Credit Reporting Act 1681h(e).)
The standard used to include the easier to reach "reckless" inclusion of misinformation, see Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, where a company brought a defamation suit against a credit bureau for false info and prevailed in the US Supreme Court.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=472&invol=749
I am really torn about this. I believe that the business model of Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion is lecherous and pox on society -- they essentially quantify and qualify the reputation info of individuals and sell it to companies that want to know an individual's reputation before doing business with the individual. Congressional action against these companies goes back pretty far -- consumers used to have no effective recourse at all, you couldn't find out why your credit report was negative, and credit reporting companies would mark you down for prejudiced criteria (your race, gender, marital status, age, etc).
OTOH, to keep these companies from doing it would require assigning a property right to facts about you. You would have an ownership interest and the ability to restrict the use of your name, age, residence, jobs, and transactions with all others simply because you were a part of it. I don't think society could function if we needed someone's permission to talk about them to others.
I always thought it interesting that people think equilibrium is a ecosystem free of humans. Aren't humans a part of the ecosystem. True equilibrium is our food source dying, followed by world starvation. The environmental push has nothing to do with the environment but is in fact human preservation. Let's call it exactly what it is.
I've never heard that argument, and I think that it would find more resonance than the current environmentalist PR.
Cows that are fed grass (as opposed to grain), give milk that tastes far better than what you'll find in the American supermarket aisles. The cheese made from that milk doubly so. The meat obviously is better too and priced accordingly.
It's a simple concept, really. Garbage in, garbage out.
I've yet to eat grass-fed beef that tastes far better --or better at all-- than grain-fed beef, and Kobe beef is the best of all (which is a combo of grain-fed and fermented grain-fed.) It could be that my taste has simply acclimated to years of grain-fed beef, but I also prefer the taste of wild game and fish compared to farm-raised. In particular, I ate a lot of hunted venison as a kid.
In my experience, grass-fed beef has all the negative attributes of gamey flavor with none of the positive attributes. Maybe it's just because there's not really an "authentic" wild cow diet, because there is no such thing as a wild cow.
There are plenty of server farms with more compute power and far more storage than the human brain. A terabyte drive is now only $199, after all.
Was that a wooshing sound I just heard passing by overhead? Forgive me if I missed your sarcasm, but the phrase "more storage than the human brain" struck me. How exactly can you measure the storage capacity of the human brain? Neurons are not bits.
Do you get paid to work? What if people were to take your product (OK, make copies of it), reducing your sales, leaving you with no money to provide for your family . . . . However, rampantly downloading stuff just because you don't want to pay for it is unethical and immoral, and you are in essence stealing.
I disagree. While producers have been given a generous legal framework and set of tools to enforce their rights, morality and ethics are not created by legislatures, parliaments, nor courts.
As a consumer, it is neither my moral nor ethical obligation to ensure that the producers or distributors of content get reimbursed for their efforts. If they choose to work in a medium and a distribution network that allows for easy and free access, they knowingly take the risk of not profiting when people easily and freely accessing their work.
If I were to distribute their material and profit off of it, that would indeed be immoral and unethical. To simply consume it without paying the asking price is no different than reading a photocopy of a book.
Analogizing this aspect of intangible property to tangible property is useless because of the fundamental differences between the two.