The fact that this is your response to the proposal as written says a lot about media and the ability of people to accurately inform themselves. I'm sure whoever wrote the proposal is wondering WTF right about now. They put together a nice compromise proposal where hundreds of nations would be represented in the TLD process. It isn't US-centric completely controlled by a Californian corporation in turn controlled by the US, but is instead decided by representatives of the international community. At the same time it isn't handing the whole shebang over to the UN, which many business interests have been fighting.
So the sensationalism amplifying effect of the media trickles down this mediocre compromise proposal until it reaches the general public in such a distorted form, represented so poorly with scare tactics to get readers and what happens? You happen.
Except, of course, the summary was completely wrong and it is a proposal to spread out power among more nations and provide a place for an international consensus as opposed to a power grab by a single person or government. Now don't you feel silly for having wasted a perfectly good "power corrupts" speech?
Dear Mr. Obama of all of the massively important/pressing issues, why are you putting so much energy into ruining one of the few things left that are actually free?
Dear Gripp, why did you not inform yourself before forming an opinion? If you vote based upon topics you researched just as thoroughly (reading a misleading summary of a sensationalized article from a single source, without bothering to check the facts) then please just stop voting altogether. Now maybe you can go read the proposal you're complaining about and then write a nice apology to the mid level bureaucrats who wrote this very reasonable compromise on international input into the TLD process.
You should know by now the title and summary are usually wrong. The proposal is that veto power be given to an international review board made up representatives of at least 100 nations. So what is proposed is exactly the opposite of what you seem to be complaining about. This is spreading out the power to make decisions about new TLDs among many nations to make sure the interests of the world are represented.
You know this is almost exactly the opposite of what you're claiming right? This is about subjecting TLDs to review by a group of at least 100 nations and giving that group veto power. The proposal is not that the US executive gets veto power.
Okay, I read the article. I don't get it. They say the Obama administration is "...seeking the power for it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names". As far as I can tell the action they have taken was to submit a proposal that, "...domain approval procedures be changed to include a mandatory 'review' by an ICANN advisory panel comprised of representatives of roughly 100 nations".
So first off, all those comments here about the US trying to seize power over domain names from other sovereign nations, those seem more than a little uninformed. This refers to making sure a large number of nations have input into the procedure, not the other way around. Right now, the US is over represented in ICANN and many other nations are pushing for UN control. This is a compromise proposal where other countries would have more influence, but the UN would not take control (something corporate interests have been fighting hard against). It seems mostly focused on making sure trademark conflicts between nations are resolved by the international community so an '.nfl' TLD would not automatically go to the US football league, when the Canadian province of Newfoundland and the large Indian fertilizer producer have just as valid trademark claims to the acronym.
Corporations are simply groups of individuals who freely enter into an agreement.
Well, sort of. Corporations are legal agreements whereby a group of people are given exemptions from legal responsibility for their actions as a group, in order to promote business ventures. But, since anyone who passed Ethics 101 knows that responsibilities and rights are linked, the removal of one should naturally lead to the removal of the other. When a group of people form a corporation and that corporation does something negligent and people die, we don't throw all the shareholders into prison. Since they are not held responsible as individuals, neither does it make sense that they should have the rights of an individual when acting in the capacity of a corporation.
Perhaps you might want to look at it another way. Corporations are created by the government as a matter of law. As such, the government is responsible only for promoting the common good. If corporations are not serving the common good, the government should butt out of it and stop writing laws that form corporations and let individuals form whatever groups they want, but not be exempted from their responsibilities as individuals.
You're missing the attitude of the people and how it reflects upon politics I suppose. The way british people think about the commonwealth is important for those reasons. If you're from the states it's sort of like the difference between deporting a Hawaiian to China for prosecution, versus deporting a Canadian to China for prosecution. The former is "one of us" and will get voters scared and mad and voting your ass out. The latter is "one of them" and may get voters mad and might be a political problem, or might not.
When you assume news reports of what people said are twisting the facts (with no evidence of that) and assume you not only have the facts about the potential criminal charges against Assange (who even the prosecutors have not decided they have enough evidence to even charge) but also can make an accurate determination of guilt, yeah you're prejudiced. Just because you're not a judge does not make prejudice rational or acceptable.
i'm not convinced that it was done secretly or is illegal.
So you're saying the Swedish Minister for Justice was lying about having no knowledge and it was not kept secret? Or you're saying it is legal to allow a foreign nation to spy on the citizenry without informing the Minister?
...the people making statements that it was secret and illegal are quoting second-hand descriptions that use words that create distortions.
You seem prejudiced. How can you know they're distorting the meaning if you haven't read the original documents? You're just making that assumption.
i am convinced that people are somewhat unhinged about assange, for no good reason. they're protecting him rather than wikileaks.
Perhaps, but that's completely beside the point of whether or not his lawyers' objection to extradition has any merit.
he's a criminal and a douchebag, and wikileaks could do better work without him.
See, that is prejudice. I don't know if he's a criminal because I haven't seen the evidence and neither have you.You seem somewhat irrational in your formation of beliefs.
as for your arguments: when you talk about governments and secrets, laws come into play. saying something is a secret just because it's not publicly known is an amplification of the severity of the situation.
Saying something is secret because the government officials that are supposed to be in charge of it claim they were not informed, is not amplifying the severity of anything. That's what a secret is.
and no, it's not "almost certainly illegal" for people in government to do things without being ordered to, and it's certainly not unheard of for them to be thrown under the bus by the person who told them to do it without issuing any official order.
...which of course would involve that person lying, which is illegal. No? Or are you contending it is legal for the elected officials to lie to the people about what they knew while blaming underlings?
But Assange is Australian, so wouldn't that mean that UK citizens would react similarly to the Swedes?
Not really. The UK is a limited member of the EU, but Australia is a part of the british empire; the commonwealth. It's basically still regarded as a british colony by many brits and there is some truth to that as members of the commonwealth are automatically granted extra privileges in other member countries. For example, Assange could work in the UK without a visa and if he stayed in the country for a year, could vote in the elections. It is why in Canada there is a high commissioner from the UK instead of an ambassador.
"parliamentary hearing" is a political process, not a juridical one, and being "unable to pass" one is a reflection on popularity, not legality. and "could be unconstitutional" is not a clear indication of illegality.
Perhaps, but there are also public statements from the elected and appointed officials that they did not give orders for this to happen and were not informed about it. That is almost certainly illegal unless the government officials are lying to the public (which would likely be illegal in and of itself).
...as for the "secretly", unless it's stamped "secret" it's not secret it's just not being made public.
So if I intentionally hide something from you but don't stamp "secret" on it, I'm not keeping a secret from you? I'm just not making it public? Umm, if you have a girlfriend can I mail a copy of this to her? She might have something to say about your creative redefinition of common words.
...count me not convinced by what's being said.
You're not convinced that Sweden has been violating human rights by helping to hide that the US is spying on their citizens or you're not convinced that such a thing happened? Either way, it is very likely elements of the Swedish government are in collaboration with the US, and it is unclear that the Swedish government is even obeying their own laws in that regard. Such human rights issues certainly bring into question any extradition to that country without very clear assurances about what will happen and a way to make sure those assurances are not simply lies.
What truth? He engaged in espionage against the United States - that isn't in dispute.
That is very much in dispute. Publishing leaked information that is a protected government secret is legal according to the courts, ala the Pentagon Papers. Unless there is some evidence that he conspired to help get those secrets in the first place, then he's probably in the clear according to US law, but in any case that is a huge point that IS in dispute, at best.
According to one of the leaked diplomatic cables, the US ambassador to Sweden stated that the Swedish government was helping to hide US surveillance of the Swedish citizens and that such surveillance was clearly against Swedish law as the courts would rule if it was discovered. The government officials overseeing those departments claim to have been duped by their subordinates who were secretly conspiring with the US. Here's a blurb from a wikileaks summary in the news:
According to Swedish television SVT, a yet-to-be-released cable from the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm reveals that Swedish authorities have secretly cooperated with the U.S. government handing over information about Swedish citizens, who might be associated with terrorism. According to the report the Swedish authorities knew about American surveillance of Swedish citizens but were hiding it from the public. Michael M. Wood, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, writes in the leaked cable that this cooperation would not pass a parliamentary hearing, and that it could be unconstitutional. Nevertheless, he recommended to stick with the secret practice. The Sweden Minister for Justice claims she has no knowledge of this type of cooperation.
Not sure I follow how the UK politicians could claim to be duped and not risk too much negative exposure but the Swedish could?
The UK politicians can claim to be duped, oops, our mistake. This might not get them kicked out of office. The Swedish government could extradite Assange to the US to face espionage charges or some such nonsense and because Assange is a foreign national they don't associate so much with themselves the Swedish politicians might not be voted out of office. Really, people generally don't favor that sort of heavy handedness, but they don't get really pissed off to the point of getting up and voting people out on that issue, unless they are also afraid. Your government shipping one foreigner to a different foreign nation is a lot different in the "shit that could be me" fear generation factory, than shipping a "local" off to the bad old US (local being a member of the commonwealth here, which is a different worldview than a lot of people are used to).
Also, I am reminded of the Gary McKinnon case.
It is certainly similar and if you recall, it was an election issue and in several instances the people who said they would stop the extradition were elected to replace those who were in the process of making it happen. (Of course those politicians have mostly gone failed to keep that campaign promise, but that doesn't help the officials voted out partly because of their support for extradition to the US.)
We can't extradite him because... then he might be extradited. Doesn't that indicate that the proper place for this argument would be any future extradition hearing in Sweden?
No. One of the considerations of an extradition hearing is the human rights protected by the country to which he would be extradited. Many countries, for example, have the right to life enshrined in the legal system and so refuse to extradite anyone to a country where they might be executed (like the US) if the crime they are to be tried for could result in execution. They certainly don't leave it up to the courts in the other country to decide if that person is deserving of execution. Likewise, countries with a poor record of following their own laws or properly investigating may not be places where a country is willing to extradite people. Elements of the Swedish government have recently been discovered to have been illegally collaborating with US intelligence, thus bringing into doubt whether or not Mr. Assange's human rights would be adequately protected by the Swedish government.
It is absolutely important for a government to look at the protections for human rights and state of the legal system in another country before deporting a person there. I mean would you like to be deported to a country to face possibly spurious charges when that country has a history of collaborating with other nations that make people magically and illegally vanish to secret prisons to be tortured? If it was your extradition trial wouldn't you want the government of the nation you're in to look at the potential of your human rights being thrown out the window by the legal processes of the other country?
if their client is forced to return to Sweden he could be extradited to the US Why would they think that? Do they think he did something wrong?
What an odd question. Why would you think you'd have to do something wrong to be secretly extradited to the US and locked away and denied due process? That certainly hasn't been the case in the past.
Sweden has laws that are similar to those in the UK, so I see very little extra risk for Assange to be extradited to USA if he is transferred or travels to Sweden.
Factions of the Swedish government have been secretly and illegally collaborating with the United States intelligence agencies as exposed by Wikileaks itself. Thus, the laws on record may not be as important as you think. Second, politically speaking it would be difficult for the UK to ship a member of the commonwealth to the US under questionable legal circumstances, given the US's human rights record at the moment. The people that actually vote for the UK politicians would probably view that as just a little too close to home, as in making them afraid they too could be shipped away to be tortured. This would get the UK politicians kicked out of office.
On the other hand, if the UK were to ship him to Sweden to face unrelated charges, then the Swedish were to extradite him (legally or illegally) then the UK politicians could claim they were duped and likely keep their jobs. Swedish politicians would be seen extraditing a foreigner messed up with intelligence agencies and potential criminal acts and again, probably keep their jobs.
All of this is, of course, exceedingly unlikely, but that doesn't mean it is not possible. The argument that shipping him to Sweden could actually result in him being taken illegally by US intelligence, held outside the US, but by US agents, and denied basic human rights. This is the bed the US made and now we must sleep in it a while. There was no real risk in throwing the Guantanamo prisoners into our federal prisons and prosecuting them (aside from political risk). It was all part of the fear-mongering designed as electoral ploys. We threw away any pretense of honor and justice as principals of our government and now we are openly treated as treacherous and dishonorable and unable to be trusted to uphold even the most basic human rights according to treaties we helped write.
Is Julian Assange taking advantage of the US's shitty world image? Most likely. Who's to blame for this? We are, for giving his lawyers so much ammunition.
You make a very good point. I'd like to see a hybrid system that combines the sandboxes that are now ubiquitous and the permissions/ACLs for each app; with a curated system where software is tested and vetted by a security professionals that, using the ACL determine if the app is using those permissions in a reasonable way in real world use. Ideally, I'd like ratings of apps provided by multiple parties and I'd like to apply different weights to the input from different sources. I'd like the availability of these security ratings to be an open, capitalist market. It is fine if the device maker and/or the phone service provider wants to provide ratings, but I want be able to easily add a ratings "feed" from an open community effort and a 'for pay' security company with experience making viral detection software.
In my mind, this is the perfect storm for application of modern software security technologies and I'd like to see it both for mobile and desktop computing. It would get rid of much of the need for locked down app stores and still provide the same level of security that those stores provide. Sadly, Google is really the only company I could see being in a position to pull it off and also having a good profit motive for doing so. And I just don't see them as capable of putting together that slick and well architected solution that includes good usability testing for end users. They're great at building tech, but seem pretty poor at getting that cool tech usable and implemented well by the time it reaches the general public. Rather, I suspect most companies will punt and put together a curated Apple-like store solution.
If you completely ignore it, isn't it likely you'll continue on with no adverse effects? I thought VP4 would continue to work with no tweaking necessary, as long as you're not using broken equipment.
But we all buy and acquire equipment. Getting a wireless router for your home, maybe you should check the specs a bit more closely now. Buying a set top DVR? You might want to do the same. Trying to decide if your old computer needs an OS update? Some will never have IPv6 support.
For end users these are concerns that could bite them down the road. For corporations, these are the kind of acquisition failures that will cost millions down the road.
I have yet to have someone show me a "cool" app on an iPhone that wasn't an applet.
Who said anything about an iPhone? You were referring to "when Apple says". They do have other products you know. They refer to Aperture as an App and sell it in the Mac App store. You're telling me a full fledged photo retouching suite that sells for $80 is an applet? How about Pages and Keynote? Applets? Yeah, you're misinforming people.
Lack of evidence for a correlation means logical people, scientists, do not believe that there is a correlation
That's not how it works, at least not for scientific purposes. Correlation [wikipedia.org] is a mathematical term.
Correct so far.
To prove correlation or absence of among two variables you need to have a statistically significant sample set of each variable and calculate the covariance between them.
In the real world you can never collect a perfect data set so you can never prove the lack of a correlation. Rather, you can only perform an extrapolation based upon the data you can collect. Thus while you can show with certainty there is a correlation, you can never disprove the possibility of a correlation.
Given two variables, crime rate and harshness of penalties
Okay now look at your variables. Notice how you cannot get an exact figure on crime rate. Notice how "harshness" is a subjective term and not easily quantifiable?
If you did have a significant number of samples and took care to eliminate any bias you would be able to prove non-correlation among them, if they really were non-correlated variables.
Except since there is no formal definition of "harshness" and since much crime is undetected, that's pretty hard to do. The best you can do is approximate crime levels based upon reported crimes and assign agreed upon metrics to various levels of punishment for specific types of crimes to approximate an answer. Doing such a study and not finding a correlation does NOT however prove that a correlation does not exist, just that your sample set and methodology did not show any such correlation.
As such, if there is no study that shows some correlation (given reasonable methodology and sample) a logical person does not form the belief that such a correlation exists; much the same way they don't form the belief that the flying spaghetti monster exists.
Claiming "lack of correlation" is somewhat like claiming the inexistence of something, you have to present complete data to prove it.
Not to chime in on the specific topic, but your statement is wrong. You can't prove a negative. You can't prove the flying spaghetti monster is not controlling the universe. Rational people, however, require evidence that something is happening or they cannot rationally believe that it is. You don't just go believing random things willy nilly until someone can do the logically impossible and prove they aren't happening. Lack of evidence for a correlation means logical people, scientists, do not believe that there is a correlation, even if they don't dismiss the possibility that future evidence could cause them to form that opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear America Fuck off. That is all.
The fact that this is your response to the proposal as written says a lot about media and the ability of people to accurately inform themselves. I'm sure whoever wrote the proposal is wondering WTF right about now. They put together a nice compromise proposal where hundreds of nations would be represented in the TLD process. It isn't US-centric completely controlled by a Californian corporation in turn controlled by the US, but is instead decided by representatives of the international community. At the same time it isn't handing the whole shebang over to the UN, which many business interests have been fighting.
So the sensationalism amplifying effect of the media trickles down this mediocre compromise proposal until it reaches the general public in such a distorted form, represented so poorly with scare tactics to get readers and what happens? You happen.
There is no surprise that Obama wants this power.
Except, of course, the summary was completely wrong and it is a proposal to spread out power among more nations and provide a place for an international consensus as opposed to a power grab by a single person or government. Now don't you feel silly for having wasted a perfectly good "power corrupts" speech?
Dear Mr. Obama of all of the massively important/pressing issues, why are you putting so much energy into ruining one of the few things left that are actually free?
Dear Gripp, why did you not inform yourself before forming an opinion? If you vote based upon topics you researched just as thoroughly (reading a misleading summary of a sensationalized article from a single source, without bothering to check the facts) then please just stop voting altogether. Now maybe you can go read the proposal you're complaining about and then write a nice apology to the mid level bureaucrats who wrote this very reasonable compromise on international input into the TLD process.
You should know by now the title and summary are usually wrong. The proposal is that veto power be given to an international review board made up representatives of at least 100 nations. So what is proposed is exactly the opposite of what you seem to be complaining about. This is spreading out the power to make decisions about new TLDs among many nations to make sure the interests of the world are represented.
You know this is almost exactly the opposite of what you're claiming right? This is about subjecting TLDs to review by a group of at least 100 nations and giving that group veto power. The proposal is not that the US executive gets veto power.
Okay, I read the article. I don't get it. They say the Obama administration is "...seeking the power for it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names". As far as I can tell the action they have taken was to submit a proposal that, "...domain approval procedures be changed to include a mandatory 'review' by an ICANN advisory panel comprised of representatives of roughly 100 nations".
So first off, all those comments here about the US trying to seize power over domain names from other sovereign nations, those seem more than a little uninformed. This refers to making sure a large number of nations have input into the procedure, not the other way around. Right now, the US is over represented in ICANN and many other nations are pushing for UN control. This is a compromise proposal where other countries would have more influence, but the UN would not take control (something corporate interests have been fighting hard against). It seems mostly focused on making sure trademark conflicts between nations are resolved by the international community so an '.nfl' TLD would not automatically go to the US football league, when the Canadian province of Newfoundland and the large Indian fertilizer producer have just as valid trademark claims to the acronym.
Corporations are simply groups of individuals who freely enter into an agreement.
Well, sort of. Corporations are legal agreements whereby a group of people are given exemptions from legal responsibility for their actions as a group, in order to promote business ventures. But, since anyone who passed Ethics 101 knows that responsibilities and rights are linked, the removal of one should naturally lead to the removal of the other. When a group of people form a corporation and that corporation does something negligent and people die, we don't throw all the shareholders into prison. Since they are not held responsible as individuals, neither does it make sense that they should have the rights of an individual when acting in the capacity of a corporation.
Perhaps you might want to look at it another way. Corporations are created by the government as a matter of law. As such, the government is responsible only for promoting the common good. If corporations are not serving the common good, the government should butt out of it and stop writing laws that form corporations and let individuals form whatever groups they want, but not be exempted from their responsibilities as individuals.
What am I missing?
You're missing the attitude of the people and how it reflects upon politics I suppose. The way british people think about the commonwealth is important for those reasons. If you're from the states it's sort of like the difference between deporting a Hawaiian to China for prosecution, versus deporting a Canadian to China for prosecution. The former is "one of us" and will get voters scared and mad and voting your ass out. The latter is "one of them" and may get voters mad and might be a political problem, or might not.
When you assume news reports of what people said are twisting the facts (with no evidence of that) and assume you not only have the facts about the potential criminal charges against Assange (who even the prosecutors have not decided they have enough evidence to even charge) but also can make an accurate determination of guilt, yeah you're prejudiced. Just because you're not a judge does not make prejudice rational or acceptable.
i'm not convinced that it was done secretly or is illegal.
So you're saying the Swedish Minister for Justice was lying about having no knowledge and it was not kept secret? Or you're saying it is legal to allow a foreign nation to spy on the citizenry without informing the Minister?
...the people making statements that it was secret and illegal are quoting second-hand descriptions that use words that create distortions.
You seem prejudiced. How can you know they're distorting the meaning if you haven't read the original documents? You're just making that assumption.
i am convinced that people are somewhat unhinged about assange, for no good reason. they're protecting him rather than wikileaks.
Perhaps, but that's completely beside the point of whether or not his lawyers' objection to extradition has any merit.
he's a criminal and a douchebag, and wikileaks could do better work without him.
See, that is prejudice. I don't know if he's a criminal because I haven't seen the evidence and neither have you.You seem somewhat irrational in your formation of beliefs.
as for your arguments: when you talk about governments and secrets, laws come into play. saying something is a secret just because it's not publicly known is an amplification of the severity of the situation.
Saying something is secret because the government officials that are supposed to be in charge of it claim they were not informed, is not amplifying the severity of anything. That's what a secret is.
and no, it's not "almost certainly illegal" for people in government to do things without being ordered to, and it's certainly not unheard of for them to be thrown under the bus by the person who told them to do it without issuing any official order.
...which of course would involve that person lying, which is illegal. No? Or are you contending it is legal for the elected officials to lie to the people about what they knew while blaming underlings?
But Assange is Australian, so wouldn't that mean that UK citizens would react similarly to the Swedes?
Not really. The UK is a limited member of the EU, but Australia is a part of the british empire; the commonwealth. It's basically still regarded as a british colony by many brits and there is some truth to that as members of the commonwealth are automatically granted extra privileges in other member countries. For example, Assange could work in the UK without a visa and if he stayed in the country for a year, could vote in the elections. It is why in Canada there is a high commissioner from the UK instead of an ambassador.
Please characterize the difference between a rat line run by a foreign intelligence agency...
Please demonstrate the illegality of a rat line.
"parliamentary hearing" is a political process, not a juridical one, and being "unable to pass" one is a reflection on popularity, not legality. and "could be unconstitutional" is not a clear indication of illegality.
Perhaps, but there are also public statements from the elected and appointed officials that they did not give orders for this to happen and were not informed about it. That is almost certainly illegal unless the government officials are lying to the public (which would likely be illegal in and of itself).
...as for the "secretly", unless it's stamped "secret" it's not secret it's just not being made public.
So if I intentionally hide something from you but don't stamp "secret" on it, I'm not keeping a secret from you? I'm just not making it public? Umm, if you have a girlfriend can I mail a copy of this to her? She might have something to say about your creative redefinition of common words.
...count me not convinced by what's being said.
You're not convinced that Sweden has been violating human rights by helping to hide that the US is spying on their citizens or you're not convinced that such a thing happened? Either way, it is very likely elements of the Swedish government are in collaboration with the US, and it is unclear that the Swedish government is even obeying their own laws in that regard. Such human rights issues certainly bring into question any extradition to that country without very clear assurances about what will happen and a way to make sure those assurances are not simply lies.
What truth? He engaged in espionage against the United States - that isn't in dispute.
That is very much in dispute. Publishing leaked information that is a protected government secret is legal according to the courts, ala the Pentagon Papers. Unless there is some evidence that he conspired to help get those secrets in the first place, then he's probably in the clear according to US law, but in any case that is a huge point that IS in dispute, at best.
According to one of the leaked diplomatic cables, the US ambassador to Sweden stated that the Swedish government was helping to hide US surveillance of the Swedish citizens and that such surveillance was clearly against Swedish law as the courts would rule if it was discovered. The government officials overseeing those departments claim to have been duped by their subordinates who were secretly conspiring with the US. Here's a blurb from a wikileaks summary in the news:
According to Swedish television SVT, a yet-to-be-released cable from the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm reveals that Swedish authorities have secretly cooperated with the U.S. government handing over information about Swedish citizens, who might be associated with terrorism. According to the report the Swedish authorities knew about American surveillance of Swedish citizens but were hiding it from the public. Michael M. Wood, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, writes in the leaked cable that this cooperation would not pass a parliamentary hearing, and that it could be unconstitutional. Nevertheless, he recommended to stick with the secret practice. The Sweden Minister for Justice claims she has no knowledge of this type of cooperation.
Not sure I follow how the UK politicians could claim to be duped and not risk too much negative exposure but the Swedish could?
The UK politicians can claim to be duped, oops, our mistake. This might not get them kicked out of office. The Swedish government could extradite Assange to the US to face espionage charges or some such nonsense and because Assange is a foreign national they don't associate so much with themselves the Swedish politicians might not be voted out of office. Really, people generally don't favor that sort of heavy handedness, but they don't get really pissed off to the point of getting up and voting people out on that issue, unless they are also afraid. Your government shipping one foreigner to a different foreign nation is a lot different in the "shit that could be me" fear generation factory, than shipping a "local" off to the bad old US (local being a member of the commonwealth here, which is a different worldview than a lot of people are used to).
Also, I am reminded of the Gary McKinnon case.
It is certainly similar and if you recall, it was an election issue and in several instances the people who said they would stop the extradition were elected to replace those who were in the process of making it happen. (Of course those politicians have mostly gone failed to keep that campaign promise, but that doesn't help the officials voted out partly because of their support for extradition to the US.)
We can't extradite him because... then he might be extradited. Doesn't that indicate that the proper place for this argument would be any future extradition hearing in Sweden?
No. One of the considerations of an extradition hearing is the human rights protected by the country to which he would be extradited. Many countries, for example, have the right to life enshrined in the legal system and so refuse to extradite anyone to a country where they might be executed (like the US) if the crime they are to be tried for could result in execution. They certainly don't leave it up to the courts in the other country to decide if that person is deserving of execution. Likewise, countries with a poor record of following their own laws or properly investigating may not be places where a country is willing to extradite people. Elements of the Swedish government have recently been discovered to have been illegally collaborating with US intelligence, thus bringing into doubt whether or not Mr. Assange's human rights would be adequately protected by the Swedish government.
It is absolutely important for a government to look at the protections for human rights and state of the legal system in another country before deporting a person there. I mean would you like to be deported to a country to face possibly spurious charges when that country has a history of collaborating with other nations that make people magically and illegally vanish to secret prisons to be tortured? If it was your extradition trial wouldn't you want the government of the nation you're in to look at the potential of your human rights being thrown out the window by the legal processes of the other country?
if their client is forced to return to Sweden he could be extradited to the US Why would they think that? Do they think he did something wrong?
What an odd question. Why would you think you'd have to do something wrong to be secretly extradited to the US and locked away and denied due process? That certainly hasn't been the case in the past.
Sweden has laws that are similar to those in the UK, so I see very little extra risk for Assange to be extradited to USA if he is transferred or travels to Sweden.
Factions of the Swedish government have been secretly and illegally collaborating with the United States intelligence agencies as exposed by Wikileaks itself. Thus, the laws on record may not be as important as you think. Second, politically speaking it would be difficult for the UK to ship a member of the commonwealth to the US under questionable legal circumstances, given the US's human rights record at the moment. The people that actually vote for the UK politicians would probably view that as just a little too close to home, as in making them afraid they too could be shipped away to be tortured. This would get the UK politicians kicked out of office.
On the other hand, if the UK were to ship him to Sweden to face unrelated charges, then the Swedish were to extradite him (legally or illegally) then the UK politicians could claim they were duped and likely keep their jobs. Swedish politicians would be seen extraditing a foreigner messed up with intelligence agencies and potential criminal acts and again, probably keep their jobs.
All of this is, of course, exceedingly unlikely, but that doesn't mean it is not possible. The argument that shipping him to Sweden could actually result in him being taken illegally by US intelligence, held outside the US, but by US agents, and denied basic human rights. This is the bed the US made and now we must sleep in it a while. There was no real risk in throwing the Guantanamo prisoners into our federal prisons and prosecuting them (aside from political risk). It was all part of the fear-mongering designed as electoral ploys. We threw away any pretense of honor and justice as principals of our government and now we are openly treated as treacherous and dishonorable and unable to be trusted to uphold even the most basic human rights according to treaties we helped write.
Is Julian Assange taking advantage of the US's shitty world image? Most likely. Who's to blame for this? We are, for giving his lawyers so much ammunition.
You make a very good point. I'd like to see a hybrid system that combines the sandboxes that are now ubiquitous and the permissions/ACLs for each app; with a curated system where software is tested and vetted by a security professionals that, using the ACL determine if the app is using those permissions in a reasonable way in real world use. Ideally, I'd like ratings of apps provided by multiple parties and I'd like to apply different weights to the input from different sources. I'd like the availability of these security ratings to be an open, capitalist market. It is fine if the device maker and/or the phone service provider wants to provide ratings, but I want be able to easily add a ratings "feed" from an open community effort and a 'for pay' security company with experience making viral detection software.
In my mind, this is the perfect storm for application of modern software security technologies and I'd like to see it both for mobile and desktop computing. It would get rid of much of the need for locked down app stores and still provide the same level of security that those stores provide. Sadly, Google is really the only company I could see being in a position to pull it off and also having a good profit motive for doing so. And I just don't see them as capable of putting together that slick and well architected solution that includes good usability testing for end users. They're great at building tech, but seem pretty poor at getting that cool tech usable and implemented well by the time it reaches the general public. Rather, I suspect most companies will punt and put together a curated Apple-like store solution.
I fully believe in Capitalism, and that means that if another country can provide the same goods at a lower cost, then so be it.
I fully believe in carnivorousness, but I'm still not going to let a mountain lion eat my buddies.
If you completely ignore it, isn't it likely you'll continue on with no adverse effects? I thought VP4 would continue to work with no tweaking necessary, as long as you're not using broken equipment.
But we all buy and acquire equipment. Getting a wireless router for your home, maybe you should check the specs a bit more closely now. Buying a set top DVR? You might want to do the same. Trying to decide if your old computer needs an OS update? Some will never have IPv6 support.
For end users these are concerns that could bite them down the road. For corporations, these are the kind of acquisition failures that will cost millions down the road.
I have yet to have someone show me a "cool" app on an iPhone that wasn't an applet.
Who said anything about an iPhone? You were referring to "when Apple says". They do have other products you know. They refer to Aperture as an App and sell it in the Mac App store. You're telling me a full fledged photo retouching suite that sells for $80 is an applet? How about Pages and Keynote? Applets? Yeah, you're misinforming people.
Lack of evidence for a correlation means logical people, scientists, do not believe that there is a correlation
That's not how it works, at least not for scientific purposes. Correlation [wikipedia.org] is a mathematical term.
Correct so far.
To prove correlation or absence of among two variables you need to have a statistically significant sample set of each variable and calculate the covariance between them.
In the real world you can never collect a perfect data set so you can never prove the lack of a correlation. Rather, you can only perform an extrapolation based upon the data you can collect. Thus while you can show with certainty there is a correlation, you can never disprove the possibility of a correlation.
Given two variables, crime rate and harshness of penalties
Okay now look at your variables. Notice how you cannot get an exact figure on crime rate. Notice how "harshness" is a subjective term and not easily quantifiable?
If you did have a significant number of samples and took care to eliminate any bias you would be able to prove non-correlation among them, if they really were non-correlated variables.
Except since there is no formal definition of "harshness" and since much crime is undetected, that's pretty hard to do. The best you can do is approximate crime levels based upon reported crimes and assign agreed upon metrics to various levels of punishment for specific types of crimes to approximate an answer. Doing such a study and not finding a correlation does NOT however prove that a correlation does not exist, just that your sample set and methodology did not show any such correlation.
As such, if there is no study that shows some correlation (given reasonable methodology and sample) a logical person does not form the belief that such a correlation exists; much the same way they don't form the belief that the flying spaghetti monster exists.
Claiming "lack of correlation" is somewhat like claiming the inexistence of something, you have to present complete data to prove it.
Not to chime in on the specific topic, but your statement is wrong. You can't prove a negative. You can't prove the flying spaghetti monster is not controlling the universe. Rational people, however, require evidence that something is happening or they cannot rationally believe that it is. You don't just go believing random things willy nilly until someone can do the logically impossible and prove they aren't happening. Lack of evidence for a correlation means logical people, scientists, do not believe that there is a correlation, even if they don't dismiss the possibility that future evidence could cause them to form that opinion.