Is anyone surprised? As soon as companies grow so big that consumers can not easily vote with their wallet anymore, or their offers are non-monetary for the end-user (who is the product, instead of the consumer), there's no reason they would take privacy seriously. I'm pretty sure the bad PR is the only reason they worry about it at all.
In advertisement, all commercial participants conspire against the consumer.
I'm not a friend of government (especially our current one here in Germany, a bunch of monkies could do a better job) - but I don't see which other organisation could regulate these commercial big players anymore. Certainly not the consumers, who despite Internet and all theoretical options of banding together simply have 1000 other things in their lives to worry about, so finding a sufficiently large group of people who care about this particular thing enough to make a difference is as hard as ever.
If you seek to understand the average Muslim perspective though, conduct the following though experiment:
Good intentions, but vastly misleading.
The caricatures in a danish newspaper were meant for a danish and almost entirely (99% or so) non-muslim audience. They were a far call from shouting in someones face. And they still called for murder.
If you're black, and have a problem with someone on the other end of town talking to his brother in his lawn and using the word "nigger", then yeah, feel offended if you want to. If you go out and kill that person, or ask others to kill him, you're a lunatic, plain and simple.
Finally, let's not forget what this is all about. "Nigger" is something about you (if you're black), so there is a reasonable link between the word and your feelings. A drawing of some long-dead person does not have a reasonable link to murderous hatred, unless you first accept that religion is a permissible way to create entirely irrational causal links. Or in simpler terms: Unless you define insanity as normal first.
Religion is not an acceptable excuse for murderous nonsense. I don't know why we ever thought it would be. It's crazy to kill people because their imaginary friend is different from your imaginary friend. So no matter what you argue about how deep things run in some culture, it is still crazy to kill someone because he made a drawing of your imaginary friend.
One, I'd rather have the people being offended by something someone else does on his own turf to turn away than trying to stop others from doing it. Yes, Draw Mohammed Day is a bit childish, and it's purpose is to offend, it also does make a point about free speech. The important difference is whether or not something offensive is being shoved in your face against your will or not. I'm fine with Draw Mohammed Day. I'd not be fine with Send A Picture Of Mohammed To 100 Muslims Day. One is excercising your free speech, the other is being intentionally offensive to people.
Two, it makes clear what the actual effect of these prohibitions is: Removing yourself from civilized society. If you want to remain in the middle ages, fine with me (as long as you leave me alone). But don't try to profit from everything that modern technology gives while at the same time condemning it (most christian fundamentalists fall in the same category - they discard what science says about evolution but they gladly take a plane and a car on their next trip, instead of a donkey and their own feet).
Three, it makes it more clear to the general public just how fucked up these extremists are. A stick figure turns from a stick figure to a mortal sin the second you write "Mohammed" under it? If it weren't in the context of religion, where we accept the greatest nonsense, people like that would be classified as insane.
I think you need to clear out your prejudices a bit.
Switzerland, for example, is probably the most democratic country on the planet. The ban on minorettes was not done by the government, it is the result of a popular vote on the matter.
That said, I don't trust the government much, either. Especially given that right now, we have a government that is so bad I don't even have the proper curse words anymore. It makes anarchy look like an interesting alternative. Actual anarchy, not the dreamworld one where everyone is cool and nice to each other.
But I don't trust Google, either. And when it comes to corporations its size, the government is the only entity that can take it on. So I'm happy it does.
Yes, same here. After initial excitement, I've tried using it for some things.
Turns out that it's an ok replacement for IM, since it keeps the history and allows non-linear editing (i.e. I can go back and put a comment to an earlier statement of yours, and it'll be put into the correct place). Also for having IMs with multiple people, while keeping the option of having sub-threads with just a part of them.
But as a replacement for e-mail, especially mailing lists, if you have more than 2 people in the conversation? It becomes really cumbersome really quickly.
It desperately needs some kind of archiving or aging, to cut the current conversation down to what is still relevant. As of right now, I feel like starting a new wave every week, but since you can't "carry over" context, that means starting anew.
My interpretation fits the context of Roman 13... I'd like to how I'm wrong with explicit statements such as:
I already answered that. In a book as thick as the bible, I would be surprised if you could not find a sentence or two in support or in opposition to pretty much anything.
If you do not recognize the authority of the Bible, then why are you even arguing in a discussion of what the Bible as an authority has to say about something?
You brought in the bible as authoritative. I was merely discussing an utterance ascribed to the main actor of its part 2. Lacking pretty much any other historic sources, we have to take the bible. That doesn't mean having to believe every word in it. For ancient egypt, we also take their official texts, because there isn't much else. Doesn't mean we have to read them as universal truth.
If one accepts the Bible as a religious authority,
Yes, "if". My personal authoritative religious source is the Principia Discordia. It's a lot easier to read than the bible, and it's got pictures.:-)
I'm not arguing with atheists with the Bible...
You should. Most of us know a whole lot more about the bible than most christians do. As Pen Jillette once said: "Read the bible. We need more atheists."
Arguments should always be tailored toward the audience that you are arguing with.
That's why I - an atheists - discuss the bible with christians, not the koran.;-)
You can discuss the Principia Discordia with me, if you prefer. It's funnier, too.
You left out the most important part of the context. There wasn't just a head on the coin, there was very likely also some text (as was common with roman coins). At that time, it was probably something that proclaimed either the emperor or his father to be a god.
That was the trap, not the simple tax question. If he said "yes", it would mean accepting another god, which is against the commandments, etc. If he said "no", they'd hang him for tax evasion.
Even bible scholars agree that most likely there is no deeper meaning to this, and it is included as an example of Jesus' wits.
This is a direct statement by Jesus, that a Christian should submit to secular rule by secular authorities, but resist secular authorities, when they attempt to make religious rule.
That is an interpretation of his statement. There are many good books on the art of interpretation, and how easy it is to read something that's not there.
Everything in the Bible has meaning.
Nonsense. The bible is, as literally quality goes, the pulp fiction of religious literature. Thanks to sheer volume, you can find a lot of deep and meaningful sentences, if you start looking. Sam Harris has a great example of how to read deep philosophical meanings into a text (he uses a fish recipe) in the appendix of "The End of Faith".
Should we hold, that since this was just Jesus getting out of a trick that his statements are vacuous?
Just because the guy apparently had a number of nifty ideas doesn't mean every single one of his utterances is a gospel of truth. I know it's hard to wrap your mind around that if you believe he's the son of god and all that, but at that time and place in history, there was pretty much a plague of messiahs, and some made it into the history books and most didn't. And one guy made it big time. But thinking that from this popularity follows that everything he had to say had deep and unexplored meaning is a bit like saying the winner of a casting show absolutely has to be a great musical talent. Well yes, sometimes that's true, most of the times it isn't. A lot of the Jesus things are pretty plain and everyone with half a brain could come up with them. And many have.
So I'm not saying that "his statements", as in the totality of them, are empty. But I am saying that not every single word of his had the deepest meaning.
While I agree on being careful with the government, I find this american trait of total distrust in the government paired with way too much trust in private companies very much irrational. As do most europeans. We watch our governments, and we usually don't like them very much, but we don't think they were put there by the devil himself and are evil incarnate.
4. Why do we trust the German government (or any EU government, for that matter) with this data more than we trust Google?
Why do we trust Google more with it than the government? Right now, only Google knows what exactly they captured. The government wants to know, too. Because they want to snoop on you? Please, be serious. Don't you think they could've their own streetview cars on every corner if they wanted to?
I personally think our current german government stinks and is probably the worst one we had since the founding of the federal republic. But a rational view says me it's a lot more likely they want the data so they can make a better estimate about how bad Google screwed up, than it is that they can't do their own surveilance and thus think a public demand for this data would help them in anything.
Though I agree an independent auditor would be best. But who do you pick? Anderson^H^H^HAccenture?
It's sad that Google is getting punished for "doing the right thing" and being honest about their screw-up.
It's not as if they discovered it themselves and brought it to the attention of the authorities. On the contrary: The authorities were concerned, questioned Google, and Google discovered: "oops..."
And yes, it is proper to punish someone who admits his guilt. It is also proper to punish someone who lies until the end harsher, but saying "ok, I did it" does not get you off free.
I really doubt that. Their dreams are smaller than that. Having their own house, for example. Junior getting a "really cool job", where "really cool" means an office job, maybe even with a computer.
On the other hand, for a lot of the lower class, the dreams are shallower still, basically what you see in the sitcoms and the casting shows.
That doesn't mean everyone should be forced to be a Christian. Be whatever you want (I am atheist). BUT at the same time to deny the reality that the founders of this country were Christians who devoutly beloved in God and a Christ/Messiah is ALSO a bias, and that bias has perverted our textbooks for decades.
Very few people at their times in the west were not christians. Mostly because not long before, there was a strong correlation betwen not giving the right answer to the question and a sudden downturn of life expectancy. Heck, punish disbelief in anything with death for a few hundred years and you can create a society of believers in it, no matter how ridiculous it is. Easter bunny, M&Ms, virgin birth, doesn't matter.
At their times, the important difference wasn't whether you were a christian or not, that was pretty much a given, but how much power you wanted to grant the church over everyday life. On the one hand, some people wanted the middle ages back, where the pope crowned kings and was generally the #1 bigshot. On the other hand, some people wanted the church to attend to matters of faith and the state to attend to matters of state. I think there's no doubt where the founding fathers stood on that debate.
In a scientific community, yes. To the extend that if you claim it isn't, it rests on you show either:
a) evidence conflicting with the widely accepted theory or b) a better theory that supports all the known facts at least as good as the old one, plus at least one additional fact
We don't remove gravity from our physics textbooks just because it isn't mentioned in the bible, or some nutjob has a personal problem with it. We will replace it if someone comes up with a better theory to explain everything Newton did. Or if someone disproves gravity, though my personal experience says that's very high on the unlikely scale.
We're beyond rational discussion here. Reasonable debate only works when both sides are intellectually honest. How about we begin with Harvard, Princeton, Caltech and MIT dropping all applications from students educated in Texas out of hand? I mean, surely no REAL American would want to send their kid to California or the bastions of the Liberal Elite to be educated?
While I agree with your sentiment, and really think the gloves need to come off on our side as well, this is the wrong approach. People who send their kids to those places are always above the average standard. Chances are that those kids don't believe the crap anyways.
You need to hit the bottom half of the population, the one that drops out of school to flip burgers or go to prison after primary education. The guys that work in your supermarket, fill up your car, repair your TV and a million other jobs that you don't learn at MIT - but that make up the majority of voters.
A big clue about whether your Church is about worshipping money and power instead of anything else is their attitude to the poor and homeless.
No, it isn't. Putting up a front of caring for the homeless is a lot cheaper than hiring a PR company, and any church that realizes people check for things like that can do it quickly and easily.
There is no magic detection method for frauds, because the charlatans evolve, and their main expertise is in convincing others that they're for real. In that game, you can only play catch-up, because educating people takes a lot longer than fooling them.
My point is that you should not be liable to anybody at all, for anything.
And my point is that - from a european perspective - that's a stupid and antisocial position to take. We over here largely believe that there are responsibilities both way. Society gives you protection (military, but also emergency services) and in return you have some responsibilities to support society (taxes) and not place an unreasonable burden on someone else (what the laws on negliegence, etc. are all about).
In this case, the court ruled that not taking at least minimal steps of precaution against your Wifi being abused for well-known and common criminal actions places an unreasonable burden on society. But it also ruled that providing really great security would place an unreasonable burden on the common man, who probably doesn't know all that much about security. So it only ruled that a minimum standard of security, that should reasonably be part of every setting up procedure (turn on encryption, set a new password) should be expected of you.
By imposing liability for something, the law is, in effect, saying that that behavior is forbidden.
No, it does not. It may exceed the amount of risk you are willing to take, but it remains your choice and you are perfectly free to do as you like, and as long as nobody suffers any damages from it, no one will mind.
I can murder people, too, but I'll be subject to a criminal penalty because the law forbids murder.
You can't be serious. One, murder is a crime, having an open Wifi hotspot is not. You may be liable in a civil case, for damages. In no case will you go to jail. Two, the law explicitly says that murder is illegal. No law addresses open Wifi hotspots, that's why we had this court decision in the first place. So the final call, the word of the legislative, is still out. Three, there's a huge difference between a crime and civil damages in real life. For one, civil damages don't show up in a background check, conviction for a crime does. I could go on. The main point is still that just because you are not willing to or can't afford pay the responsibility doesn't mean something is illegal. You probably can't afford a 1st class transatlantic flight, either, or are not willing to put that money down, but that doesn't make flying first class a crime. It really is the same, funny as it sounds. All the court did was put a price tag on running an open Wifi - in most cases, the price of a good lawyer. The german online magazines are already full of ways to get out of the liability.
More to the point, I can fail to perform on a contract, but I'll be liable for civil damages because the law forbids not performing on contracts.
Actually, no. I did take some contract law in university, but it's not my specialty. But I can't remember a single place where it says that not performing a contract is disallowed, illegal, a crime or otherwise against the law. What it does say is what the other party can sue you for if you do. That is a huge difference. Among other things, it makes it perfectly legal to fail a contract if it makes economic sense (considering loss of reputation, etc.) - there is no way to justify a murder this way ("it was cheaper to kill him than to pay my debt to him" - yeah, that's gonna get you out of a murder case).
then I should pay for the fender. You may in fact believe that. I don't.
Actually, your friend should pay. However, if the driver can not be identified, and you refuse to cooperate in identifying him, you may be held liable. I'm not sure about this specific fender example, but for speeding or parking tickets, that's exactly how it is.
I also don't believe I should be responsible civilly for other people's damaging actions,
Not if you are not involved. But in this case, you are. Or rather: You may be. If you didn't take reasonable precautions. Note that German courts usually define "reasonable" at the benefit of the common man. But we'll have to wait and see.
or that damages should be calculated based on some ethereal value thousands of times higher than the real value of the item infringed on.
I agree on that. But again, that will have to be tested in future cases, so we don't yet know which way German courts will swing.
It may be how the body of law works in your area, but not so often in the US.
Well, it's a decision from a german court about something that happened in Germany, so it's a little bit dumb to apply US standards all the time. It's a different country, with a different set of rules. Not massively different, but enough that things that may be an outrage in the US are perfectly fine over here, due to the different context. It works both ways, too. We Europeans largely shake our heads at the american obession with nudity. Heck, you want to see some breasts? Go to the nearest book store or kiosk, the TV magazines probably have naked ladies on the front cover. If they don't (weird week or something), try the sports or photography magazines. Unless it's hardcore porn, no one really gives a damn. A minister of justice who covers up Justicia's breasts would have his sanity questioned in the mainstream press over here.
So really, it's a different society, different laws, differen priorities. Keep that in mind or you can only arrive at odd conclusions.
In the US a panel of your peers makes that decision, unless you opt for a bench verdict.
In Germany, you usually have a panel of judges (3 in the lower courts, 5 in the higher courts, I think 7 in our equivalent of the supreme courts) in civil cases, but our equivalent of your juries are the laymen judges - volunteer judges who are not trained lawyers, but come from all walks of life.
But unfortunately I think many European countries in law take that too far, for example by placing blame or responsibility for people's actions on others that were only tangentially involved.
Yes, the system is far from perfect. I've actually been involved in civil rights issues, including some work with the EFF (both US and the several european chapters) and in the founding of EDRI. I'm not saying everything is great. But I get tired of/. stories that try to judge european events from an american perspective. As I said: If we do that with yours (Justicia), you'd appear equally insane to us.
There is no such thing as a non-flawed analogy.:-)
The point still is that other people can expect that you take reasonable precautions against bad things happening to them, if it is within your power to do so, and the burden on you is very low compared to the danger to them.
That's a pretty common standard of responsibility, at least in Europe.
I can see requiring the owner to cooperate in identifying the driver, but I don't agree with holding them responsible.
Remember we're talking civil law here, not criminal. So "holding them responsible" means paying damages (or, in the case of speeding, fines). And whether or not you like it, that's how the body of law largely works, at least for cars and their owners. So it's not the obscene, outlandish thing that the/. summary makes it out to be to apply the same standard to another area.
A pure reading of a responsibility law would mean
...that your lawyer sucks and the judge, too. This is why we have courts, so an impartial, knowledgable person (the judge) can take all the circumstances into account when applying the law.
The idea you propose to treat Wi-Fi like car owner responsibility in some countries adds a lot more friction to the experience of using Wi-Fi in places like libraries and coffee shops. It might be acceptable to the populace in a place like Europe, which seems to be swinging towards police state even more than the US.
Sorry, but you seem to not understand the cultural differences. The US has more of its population in jails by a very wide margin than any european country (in fact, I think only China beats them, world-wide). The actual difference is not police power, but how we weigh individual rights vs. social responsibility. The US puts the stress on the individual and you have all these "rights" to bear arm, to free speech, etc. etc. that you treasure so much. Europe mostly puts the stress on social responsibility, so while you have mostly the same rights, they are cushioned in a context of the larger good. While that restricts your freedoms some, you also receive the benefit that everyone else has the same limits in regards to you.
Not saying one is better or worse, history will judge that. But they're different approaches to the question of what a good society should look like.
What does that have to do with the fact that the law shouldn't forbid running an open WiFi network?
Because it doesn't. There is no such law, nor is anyone debating one. You seem to confuse "if you do this, and something bad happens, you may be liable" with "you may not do this". There's a huge difference between the two. To use the beloved car analogy: You're essentially claiming that driving a car has been disallowed because a court has ruled that if you run someone over, you have to pay their hospital bills.
And, according to the summaries I've seen of the decision, the court in fact said that, according to local law, you effectively can't run an open WiFi network.
Once more, it doesn't say that. What it does say is that you may be held liable for damages. While this will discourage a lot of people, it is a far call from saying you can't do it.
You don't need multitouch for gestures; in fact, gestures are an alternative to multitouch. And it's also not needed; even software on iPhone and iPad doesn't use multitouch consistently, with some applications only using it for scrolling, others only for zooming, and few applications supporting rotation or more complex gestures. Someone has had too much of Jobs's cool-aid.
You don't see that the iPhone was just the test device, and the iPad is the second (beta, if you want) test. Multitouch is here to stay, and it will soon be a major input device system. On a phone, you are correct that multitouch is nice, but not essential. However, on a larger device (like a tablet), you absolutely need multitouch.
Slashdot Mirror
Is anyone surprised? As soon as companies grow so big that consumers can not easily vote with their wallet anymore, or their offers are non-monetary for the end-user (who is the product, instead of the consumer), there's no reason they would take privacy seriously. I'm pretty sure the bad PR is the only reason they worry about it at all.
In advertisement, all commercial participants conspire against the consumer.
I'm not a friend of government (especially our current one here in Germany, a bunch of monkies could do a better job) - but I don't see which other organisation could regulate these commercial big players anymore. Certainly not the consumers, who despite Internet and all theoretical options of banding together simply have 1000 other things in their lives to worry about, so finding a sufficiently large group of people who care about this particular thing enough to make a difference is as hard as ever.
You could just stop responding. ;-)
Ok, I'll do it. Ciao.
If you seek to understand the average Muslim perspective though, conduct the following though experiment:
Good intentions, but vastly misleading.
The caricatures in a danish newspaper were meant for a danish and almost entirely (99% or so) non-muslim audience. They were a far call from shouting in someones face. And they still called for murder.
If you're black, and have a problem with someone on the other end of town talking to his brother in his lawn and using the word "nigger", then yeah, feel offended if you want to. If you go out and kill that person, or ask others to kill him, you're a lunatic, plain and simple.
Finally, let's not forget what this is all about. "Nigger" is something about you (if you're black), so there is a reasonable link between the word and your feelings. A drawing of some long-dead person does not have a reasonable link to murderous hatred, unless you first accept that religion is a permissible way to create entirely irrational causal links. Or in simpler terms: Unless you define insanity as normal first.
Religion is not an acceptable excuse for murderous nonsense. I don't know why we ever thought it would be. It's crazy to kill people because their imaginary friend is different from your imaginary friend. So no matter what you argue about how deep things run in some culture, it is still crazy to kill someone because he made a drawing of your imaginary friend.
It's actually a good thing. Hear me out.
One, I'd rather have the people being offended by something someone else does on his own turf to turn away than trying to stop others from doing it. Yes, Draw Mohammed Day is a bit childish, and it's purpose is to offend, it also does make a point about free speech. The important difference is whether or not something offensive is being shoved in your face against your will or not. I'm fine with Draw Mohammed Day. I'd not be fine with Send A Picture Of Mohammed To 100 Muslims Day. One is excercising your free speech, the other is being intentionally offensive to people.
Two, it makes clear what the actual effect of these prohibitions is: Removing yourself from civilized society. If you want to remain in the middle ages, fine with me (as long as you leave me alone). But don't try to profit from everything that modern technology gives while at the same time condemning it (most christian fundamentalists fall in the same category - they discard what science says about evolution but they gladly take a plane and a car on their next trip, instead of a donkey and their own feet).
Three, it makes it more clear to the general public just how fucked up these extremists are. A stick figure turns from a stick figure to a mortal sin the second you write "Mohammed" under it? If it weren't in the context of religion, where we accept the greatest nonsense, people like that would be classified as insane.
why are you wasting my time?
If you don't want to waste your time - what the fuck are you doing on /. ? ;-)
I think you need to clear out your prejudices a bit.
Switzerland, for example, is probably the most democratic country on the planet. The ban on minorettes was not done by the government, it is the result of a popular vote on the matter.
That said, I don't trust the government much, either. Especially given that right now, we have a government that is so bad I don't even have the proper curse words anymore. It makes anarchy look like an interesting alternative. Actual anarchy, not the dreamworld one where everyone is cool and nice to each other.
But I don't trust Google, either. And when it comes to corporations its size, the government is the only entity that can take it on. So I'm happy it does.
Yes, same here. After initial excitement, I've tried using it for some things.
Turns out that it's an ok replacement for IM, since it keeps the history and allows non-linear editing (i.e. I can go back and put a comment to an earlier statement of yours, and it'll be put into the correct place). Also for having IMs with multiple people, while keeping the option of having sub-threads with just a part of them.
But as a replacement for e-mail, especially mailing lists, if you have more than 2 people in the conversation? It becomes really cumbersome really quickly.
It desperately needs some kind of archiving or aging, to cut the current conversation down to what is still relevant. As of right now, I feel like starting a new wave every week, but since you can't "carry over" context, that means starting anew.
Agreed. Maybe that's why the government isn't swinging a big fine-bat, you know?
My interpretation fits the context of Roman 13... I'd like to how I'm wrong with explicit statements such as:
I already answered that. In a book as thick as the bible, I would be surprised if you could not find a sentence or two in support or in opposition to pretty much anything.
If you do not recognize the authority of the Bible, then why are you even arguing in a discussion of what the Bible as an authority has to say about something?
You brought in the bible as authoritative. I was merely discussing an utterance ascribed to the main actor of its part 2. Lacking pretty much any other historic sources, we have to take the bible. That doesn't mean having to believe every word in it. For ancient egypt, we also take their official texts, because there isn't much else. Doesn't mean we have to read them as universal truth.
If one accepts the Bible as a religious authority,
Yes, "if". My personal authoritative religious source is the Principia Discordia. It's a lot easier to read than the bible, and it's got pictures. :-)
I'm not arguing with atheists with the Bible...
You should. Most of us know a whole lot more about the bible than most christians do. As Pen Jillette once said: "Read the bible. We need more atheists."
Arguments should always be tailored toward the audience that you are arguing with.
That's why I - an atheists - discuss the bible with christians, not the koran. ;-)
You can discuss the Principia Discordia with me, if you prefer. It's funnier, too.
You left out the most important part of the context. There wasn't just a head on the coin, there was very likely also some text (as was common with roman coins). At that time, it was probably something that proclaimed either the emperor or his father to be a god.
That was the trap, not the simple tax question. If he said "yes", it would mean accepting another god, which is against the commandments, etc. If he said "no", they'd hang him for tax evasion.
Even bible scholars agree that most likely there is no deeper meaning to this, and it is included as an example of Jesus' wits.
This is a direct statement by Jesus, that a Christian should submit to secular rule by secular authorities, but resist secular authorities, when they attempt to make religious rule.
That is an interpretation of his statement. There are many good books on the art of interpretation, and how easy it is to read something that's not there.
Everything in the Bible has meaning.
Nonsense. The bible is, as literally quality goes, the pulp fiction of religious literature. Thanks to sheer volume, you can find a lot of deep and meaningful sentences, if you start looking. Sam Harris has a great example of how to read deep philosophical meanings into a text (he uses a fish recipe) in the appendix of "The End of Faith".
Should we hold, that since this was just Jesus getting out of a trick that his statements are vacuous?
Just because the guy apparently had a number of nifty ideas doesn't mean every single one of his utterances is a gospel of truth. I know it's hard to wrap your mind around that if you believe he's the son of god and all that, but at that time and place in history, there was pretty much a plague of messiahs, and some made it into the history books and most didn't. And one guy made it big time. But thinking that from this popularity follows that everything he had to say had deep and unexplored meaning is a bit like saying the winner of a casting show absolutely has to be a great musical talent. Well yes, sometimes that's true, most of the times it isn't. A lot of the Jesus things are pretty plain and everyone with half a brain could come up with them. And many have.
So I'm not saying that "his statements", as in the totality of them, are empty. But I am saying that not every single word of his had the deepest meaning.
While I agree on being careful with the government, I find this american trait of total distrust in the government paired with way too much trust in private companies very much irrational. As do most europeans. We watch our governments, and we usually don't like them very much, but we don't think they were put there by the devil himself and are evil incarnate.
4. Why do we trust the German government (or any EU government, for that matter) with this data more than we trust Google?
Why do we trust Google more with it than the government? Right now, only Google knows what exactly they captured. The government wants to know, too. Because they want to snoop on you? Please, be serious. Don't you think they could've their own streetview cars on every corner if they wanted to?
I personally think our current german government stinks and is probably the worst one we had since the founding of the federal republic. But a rational view says me it's a lot more likely they want the data so they can make a better estimate about how bad Google screwed up, than it is that they can't do their own surveilance and thus think a public demand for this data would help them in anything.
Though I agree an independent auditor would be best. But who do you pick? Anderson^H^H^HAccenture?
It's sad that Google is getting punished for "doing the right thing" and being honest about their screw-up.
It's not as if they discovered it themselves and brought it to the attention of the authorities. On the contrary: The authorities were concerned, questioned Google, and Google discovered: "oops..."
And yes, it is proper to punish someone who admits his guilt. It is also proper to punish someone who lies until the end harsher, but saying "ok, I did it" does not get you off free.
I have a good quote to go with this: "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto God what is God's."
Often misrepresented quote. If you read it in context, it really doesn't mean anything. It's an escape from a trick question.
I really doubt that. Their dreams are smaller than that. Having their own house, for example. Junior getting a "really cool job", where "really cool" means an office job, maybe even with a computer.
On the other hand, for a lot of the lower class, the dreams are shallower still, basically what you see in the sitcoms and the casting shows.
That doesn't mean everyone should be forced to be a Christian. Be whatever you want (I am atheist). BUT at the same time to deny the reality that the founders of this country were Christians who devoutly beloved in God and a Christ/Messiah is ALSO a bias, and that bias has perverted our textbooks for decades.
Very few people at their times in the west were not christians. Mostly because not long before, there was a strong correlation betwen not giving the right answer to the question and a sudden downturn of life expectancy. Heck, punish disbelief in anything with death for a few hundred years and you can create a society of believers in it, no matter how ridiculous it is. Easter bunny, M&Ms, virgin birth, doesn't matter.
At their times, the important difference wasn't whether you were a christian or not, that was pretty much a given, but how much power you wanted to grant the church over everyday life. On the one hand, some people wanted the middle ages back, where the pope crowned kings and was generally the #1 bigshot. On the other hand, some people wanted the church to attend to matters of faith and the state to attend to matters of state. I think there's no doubt where the founding fathers stood on that debate.
In a scientific community, yes. To the extend that if you claim it isn't, it rests on you show either:
a) evidence conflicting with the widely accepted theory
or
b) a better theory that supports all the known facts at least as good as the old one, plus at least one additional fact
We don't remove gravity from our physics textbooks just because it isn't mentioned in the bible, or some nutjob has a personal problem with it. We will replace it if someone comes up with a better theory to explain everything Newton did. Or if someone disproves gravity, though my personal experience says that's very high on the unlikely scale.
We're beyond rational discussion here. Reasonable debate only works when both sides are intellectually honest. How about we begin with Harvard, Princeton, Caltech and MIT dropping all applications from students educated in Texas out of hand? I mean, surely no REAL American would want to send their kid to California or the bastions of the Liberal Elite to be educated?
While I agree with your sentiment, and really think the gloves need to come off on our side as well, this is the wrong approach. People who send their kids to those places are always above the average standard. Chances are that those kids don't believe the crap anyways.
You need to hit the bottom half of the population, the one that drops out of school to flip burgers or go to prison after primary education. The guys that work in your supermarket, fill up your car, repair your TV and a million other jobs that you don't learn at MIT - but that make up the majority of voters.
A big clue about whether your Church is about worshipping money and power instead of anything else is their attitude to the poor and homeless.
No, it isn't. Putting up a front of caring for the homeless is a lot cheaper than hiring a PR company, and any church that realizes people check for things like that can do it quickly and easily.
There is no magic detection method for frauds, because the charlatans evolve, and their main expertise is in convincing others that they're for real. In that game, you can only play catch-up, because educating people takes a lot longer than fooling them.
My point is that you should not be liable to anybody at all, for anything.
And my point is that - from a european perspective - that's a stupid and antisocial position to take. We over here largely believe that there are responsibilities both way. Society gives you protection (military, but also emergency services) and in return you have some responsibilities to support society (taxes) and not place an unreasonable burden on someone else (what the laws on negliegence, etc. are all about).
In this case, the court ruled that not taking at least minimal steps of precaution against your Wifi being abused for well-known and common criminal actions places an unreasonable burden on society. But it also ruled that providing really great security would place an unreasonable burden on the common man, who probably doesn't know all that much about security. So it only ruled that a minimum standard of security, that should reasonably be part of every setting up procedure (turn on encryption, set a new password) should be expected of you.
By imposing liability for something, the law is, in effect, saying that that behavior is forbidden.
No, it does not. It may exceed the amount of risk you are willing to take, but it remains your choice and you are perfectly free to do as you like, and as long as nobody suffers any damages from it, no one will mind.
I can murder people, too, but I'll be subject to a criminal penalty because the law forbids murder.
You can't be serious. One, murder is a crime, having an open Wifi hotspot is not. You may be liable in a civil case, for damages. In no case will you go to jail. Two, the law explicitly says that murder is illegal. No law addresses open Wifi hotspots, that's why we had this court decision in the first place. So the final call, the word of the legislative, is still out. Three, there's a huge difference between a crime and civil damages in real life. For one, civil damages don't show up in a background check, conviction for a crime does. I could go on. The main point is still that just because you are not willing to or can't afford pay the responsibility doesn't mean something is illegal. You probably can't afford a 1st class transatlantic flight, either, or are not willing to put that money down, but that doesn't make flying first class a crime. It really is the same, funny as it sounds. All the court did was put a price tag on running an open Wifi - in most cases, the price of a good lawyer. The german online magazines are already full of ways to get out of the liability.
More to the point, I can fail to perform on a contract, but I'll be liable for civil damages because the law forbids not performing on contracts.
Actually, no. I did take some contract law in university, but it's not my specialty. But I can't remember a single place where it says that not performing a contract is disallowed, illegal, a crime or otherwise against the law.
What it does say is what the other party can sue you for if you do. That is a huge difference. Among other things, it makes it perfectly legal to fail a contract if it makes economic sense (considering loss of reputation, etc.) - there is no way to justify a murder this way ("it was cheaper to kill him than to pay my debt to him" - yeah, that's gonna get you out of a murder case).
then I should pay for the fender. You may in fact believe that. I don't.
Actually, your friend should pay. However, if the driver can not be identified, and you refuse to cooperate in identifying him, you may be held liable. I'm not sure about this specific fender example, but for speeding or parking tickets, that's exactly how it is.
I also don't believe I should be responsible civilly for other people's damaging actions,
Not if you are not involved. But in this case, you are. Or rather: You may be. If you didn't take reasonable precautions. Note that German courts usually define "reasonable" at the benefit of the common man. But we'll have to wait and see.
or that damages should be calculated based on some ethereal value thousands of times higher than the real value of the item infringed on.
I agree on that. But again, that will have to be tested in future cases, so we don't yet know which way German courts will swing.
It may be how the body of law works in your area, but not so often in the US.
Well, it's a decision from a german court about something that happened in Germany, so it's a little bit dumb to apply US standards all the time. It's a different country, with a different set of rules. Not massively different, but enough that things that may be an outrage in the US are perfectly fine over here, due to the different context. It works both ways, too. We Europeans largely shake our heads at the american obession with nudity. Heck, you want to see some breasts? Go to the nearest book store or kiosk, the TV magazines probably have naked ladies on the front cover. If they don't (weird week or something), try the sports or photography magazines. Unless it's hardcore porn, no one really gives a damn. A minister of justice who covers up Justicia's breasts would have his sanity questioned in the mainstream press over here.
So really, it's a different society, different laws, differen priorities. Keep that in mind or you can only arrive at odd conclusions.
In the US a panel of your peers makes that decision, unless you opt for a bench verdict.
In Germany, you usually have a panel of judges (3 in the lower courts, 5 in the higher courts, I think 7 in our equivalent of the supreme courts) in civil cases, but our equivalent of your juries are the laymen judges - volunteer judges who are not trained lawyers, but come from all walks of life.
But unfortunately I think many European countries in law take that too far, for example by placing blame or responsibility for people's actions on others that were only tangentially involved.
Yes, the system is far from perfect. I've actually been involved in civil rights issues, including some work with the EFF (both US and the several european chapters) and in the founding of EDRI. I'm not saying everything is great. But I get tired of /. stories that try to judge european events from an american perspective. As I said: If we do that with yours (Justicia), you'd appear equally insane to us.
it's not the same with an insurance,
There is no such thing as a non-flawed analogy. :-)
The point still is that other people can expect that you take reasonable precautions against bad things happening to them, if it is within your power to do so, and the burden on you is very low compared to the danger to them.
That's a pretty common standard of responsibility, at least in Europe.
I can see requiring the owner to cooperate in identifying the driver, but I don't agree with holding them responsible.
Remember we're talking civil law here, not criminal. So "holding them responsible" means paying damages (or, in the case of speeding, fines). And whether or not you like it, that's how the body of law largely works, at least for cars and their owners. So it's not the obscene, outlandish thing that the /. summary makes it out to be to apply the same standard to another area.
A pure reading of a responsibility law would mean
...that your lawyer sucks and the judge, too. This is why we have courts, so an impartial, knowledgable person (the judge) can take all the circumstances into account when applying the law.
The idea you propose to treat Wi-Fi like car owner responsibility in some countries adds a lot more friction to the experience of using Wi-Fi in places like libraries and coffee shops. It might be acceptable to the populace in a place like Europe, which seems to be swinging towards police state even more than the US.
Sorry, but you seem to not understand the cultural differences. The US has more of its population in jails by a very wide margin than any european country (in fact, I think only China beats them, world-wide). The actual difference is not police power, but how we weigh individual rights vs. social responsibility. The US puts the stress on the individual and you have all these "rights" to bear arm, to free speech, etc. etc. that you treasure so much. Europe mostly puts the stress on social responsibility, so while you have mostly the same rights, they are cushioned in a context of the larger good. While that restricts your freedoms some, you also receive the benefit that everyone else has the same limits in regards to you.
Not saying one is better or worse, history will judge that. But they're different approaches to the question of what a good society should look like.
What does that have to do with the fact that the law shouldn't forbid running an open WiFi network?
Because it doesn't. There is no such law, nor is anyone debating one. You seem to confuse "if you do this, and something bad happens, you may be liable" with "you may not do this". There's a huge difference between the two. To use the beloved car analogy: You're essentially claiming that driving a car has been disallowed because a court has ruled that if you run someone over, you have to pay their hospital bills.
And, according to the summaries I've seen of the decision, the court in fact said that, according to local law, you effectively can't run an open WiFi network.
Once more, it doesn't say that. What it does say is that you may be held liable for damages. While this will discourage a lot of people, it is a far call from saying you can't do it.
You don't need multitouch for gestures; in fact, gestures are an alternative to multitouch. And it's also not needed; even software on iPhone and iPad doesn't use multitouch consistently, with some applications only using it for scrolling, others only for zooming, and few applications supporting rotation or more complex gestures. Someone has had too much of Jobs's cool-aid.
You don't see that the iPhone was just the test device, and the iPad is the second (beta, if you want) test. Multitouch is here to stay, and it will soon be a major input device system. On a phone, you are correct that multitouch is nice, but not essential. However, on a larger device (like a tablet), you absolutely need multitouch.