Q: What do you call a law wherein Congress asserts its oversight authority and tells the executive branch "no, you can't do whatever you want, assholes."
Here are the eight senators who share my understanding of the Bill of Rights and had the backbone to sponsor this law:
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), accompanied by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dean Heller (R-NV), Mark Begich (D-AK), Al Franken (D-MN), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR)
BTW I found that information with one Google search and two clicks, but apparently that was too much work for the author of TFA. Sad.
I also note that my senator is not one of the sponsors of this bill and I would be interested to hear her explanation why not. (I only have one senator right now. There's a special election coming up to fill the vacancy.)
I think it's for the people of New York City to decide how New York City wastes its tax dollars. I think Bloomberg is a pompous ass, but that's not really any of my business because I live in a different state.
For the sake of argument, because I actually believe new plant designs are safer -- do you realize how much that sounds like "we've screwed up twice, but trust us now, this time we'll get it right!" I have my doubts how well that will go over with the general public.
It was a three-reactor meltdown, and the second incident in history to register 7 on the International Nuclear Event scale. I believe it rendered a 12-mile radius uninhabitable. Maybe the "mega" prefix is unwarranted, but Slashdot does not allow us to edit our posts, so I'll be tasting my foot all day. Still, if you think the Fukushima meltdown is not a worse disaster than we'd care to have again, we should agree to disagree.
I think we're drawing different conclusions from similar information.
Fukushima Diachi was a 1960's design that is considered quite dated and had a few known failure modes. The company operating the reactors basically refused to do all the expensive updates to improve the reactor's safety. They also ignored warnings that the sea wall was inadequate for worst case tsunami, which happened.
You seem to be saying nuclear power is safe because the risks were known, but nobody did anything about them. I say nuclear power is unsafe, for exactly the same reason.
I think thorim reactors have a lot of potential. It's frustrating if non-proliferation treaties are in the way because thorium reactors don't produce bomb material. You still have the waste-storage problem, though.
Chernobyl. Fukushima. Two megadisasters in my lifetime doesn't count as "incredibly low potential" in my book. Though frankly, I am more concerned about the lack of long-term storage facilities for high-level waste. Meltdowns can only happen while the reactor is operating; radioactive waste is a disaster waiting to happen any time in the next 10,000 years.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think the picture is as gloomy as you make it. The revolutionary ideas in the Bill of Rights are powerful and contagious. Many other countries had adopted them. I believe they will take hold, both of the immigrants and their kids. Look at what happened to the wave of immigrants from a century ago: the Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, etc. are at least as patriotic as the WASPs now, even though their ancestors came here for largely economic reasons.
Thanks. I am, of course, aware of the full quote. I have mixed feelings about how I had to butcher it to fit into a Slashdot sig.
My point was that Feynman was not openly hostile to religion. He spoke about ethics frequently and he never claimed that the scientific method was appropriate for addressing ethical questions. I frequently see Feynman quoted on Slashdot to attack religion -- and based on what I have read and heard of Feynman, I don't think he would have done that. I cannot really tell whether Feynman was an atheist or an agnostic. There's a pretty big difference, in my opinion.
My intent was invite people to look a bit more deeply into what Feynman had to say about religion. So it looks like that worked, for one person at least. If you have suggestions for a better quote that might make my point more clearly, I would love to hear them.
The question is also flawed because we don't know if this really "helps fight terrorism".
And we're not going to find out, because the program is classified. It could be wildly successful and thwarting a dozen bomb plots a day. It could be a total failure, resulting in dozens of arrests of innocent people a day.
The thing that baffles me is not that people are willing to give up freedom if it "helps fight terrorism," it's that they believe what the government does in the name of fighting terrorism is working, when they don't believe anything else the federal government does is working.
I wonder how different the poll results would have been if Snowden had released the documents six months after the Boston bombing instead of six weeks after.
Hush! Don't give the government its next pretext for an expansion of the police state! I can see it now: "nose hair complications are *deadlier than terrorism*"!
I totally believe it's possible to exfiltrate data from multiple game companies (or indeed any companies). But how do we know he didn't just upload a 1.7 TB encrypted blob of random garbage? The word of a 17-year-old script kiddie is not exactly a lot to go on.
A lot of people who work in technology care about the impact it has on society and on individuals' lives. To me, for example, the dumb pipes of the Internet are only interesting because of what you can *do* with them: from checking the basketball scores to organizing the Arab Spring. This is why Slashdot as a "Your Rights Online" category.
So to get to "news for nerds" to "update on the free state project" is about 3 hops: nerds -> Internet freedom -> libertarian platform -> libertarian group.
Disclaimer: I don't call myself a libertarian but I agree with some libertarian policy goals.
I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with *why* their IT group is ineffective... After *just a little scratching*, it has become quite clear that the 'head of IT'
(emphasis added) So, management asked you to find out why IT isn't working, and you do a "little scratching," and decide to blame the department's dysfunction on its leader. And then, what, call it a day?
Presumably you have lots of expertise in running an IT department yourself, or else management would not be paying you the large consulting fee they're giving you for this job. They are paying you a large consulting fee, right? They are giving you access to all their monthly reports, their ticket database, interviews with the employees, and weeks to do the analysis, right?
My quick read of this situation is that either management doesn't really care about root causes and just brought you in to give them some political cover to fire the guy they want to fire, or you accepted a difficult consulting job you're not qualified to do. My advice is to tell the company you made a mistake taking this assignment and run, don't walk, out the door. Or, go ahead and recommend firing someone after "just a little scratching" while collecting a paycheck for a job *you're* incompetent to do, if that's the kind of person you want to be.
the rationale for which should have been imparted on you in fucking high school, were you to actually pay attention in class instead of diddling your boyfriend in the back of the room
I totally agree Bennett is acting like a narcissistic, self-affirming, royal doucehbag, but your homophobic aside weakens your attack. There's nothing wrong with being gay, and if I'd had a chance to get laid instead of listening in history class, I wouldn't know why the Fifth Amendment is important, either.:-)
Similarly, pretty much all of them still have a VAX or AS/400 similar mini-computer running something critical
I'm a developer, not an administrator, so I know little of these early '80s mini-computers of which you speak. However, their continued use is kind of interesting to me. Is it difficult to fix or replace these machines if they break? And if so, would it be possible/useful for a vendor to port these legacy OSes to run in a virtual machine on today's commodity hardware? Obviously such a port would be costly, but I wonder which costs less -- keeping a line of mini-computers in low-volume production, or porting the whole legacy OS to today's hardware? (The third possibility is to retire the antique system, but if that has not already been done, presumably it's because the cost of migration is worse than the risk of the system going toes-up some day.)
I think you are the only one who cares about your obnoxious challenge and childish rules. So keep posting "FAIL0" if it makes you feel superior. Every time you do it, my opinion of you lowers.
Yeah, I really don't think the framers of the U.S. Constitution needed a pedantic and contrived example like the one Bennett is demanding in order to see the value in the Fifth Amendment. I'll side with them, and with generations of federal and Supreme Court justices that Bennett feels aren't worth bothering to read.
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing we use millimeter wave scanners in airports now.
Q: What do you call a law wherein Congress asserts its oversight authority and tells the executive branch "no, you can't do whatever you want, assholes."
A: A start.
BTW I found that information with one Google search and two clicks, but apparently that was too much work for the author of TFA. Sad.
I also note that my senator is not one of the sponsors of this bill and I would be interested to hear her explanation why not. (I only have one senator right now. There's a special election coming up to fill the vacancy.)
I think it's for the people of New York City to decide how New York City wastes its tax dollars. I think Bloomberg is a pompous ass, but that's not really any of my business because I live in a different state.
For the sake of argument, because I actually believe new plant designs are safer -- do you realize how much that sounds like "we've screwed up twice, but trust us now, this time we'll get it right!" I have my doubts how well that will go over with the general public.
It was a three-reactor meltdown, and the second incident in history to register 7 on the International Nuclear Event scale. I believe it rendered a 12-mile radius uninhabitable. Maybe the "mega" prefix is unwarranted, but Slashdot does not allow us to edit our posts, so I'll be tasting my foot all day. Still, if you think the Fukushima meltdown is not a worse disaster than we'd care to have again, we should agree to disagree.
You seem to be saying nuclear power is safe because the risks were known, but nobody did anything about them. I say nuclear power is unsafe, for exactly the same reason.
I think thorim reactors have a lot of potential. It's frustrating if non-proliferation treaties are in the way because thorium reactors don't produce bomb material. You still have the waste-storage problem, though.
Chernobyl. Fukushima. Two megadisasters in my lifetime doesn't count as "incredibly low potential" in my book. Though frankly, I am more concerned about the lack of long-term storage facilities for high-level waste. Meltdowns can only happen while the reactor is operating; radioactive waste is a disaster waiting to happen any time in the next 10,000 years.
How else to you expect them to keep getting funding from an agency that wants predetermined results?
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think the picture is as gloomy as you make it. The revolutionary ideas in the Bill of Rights are powerful and contagious. Many other countries had adopted them. I believe they will take hold, both of the immigrants and their kids. Look at what happened to the wave of immigrants from a century ago: the Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, etc. are at least as patriotic as the WASPs now, even though their ancestors came here for largely economic reasons.
Thanks. I am, of course, aware of the full quote. I have mixed feelings about how I had to butcher it to fit into a Slashdot sig.
My point was that Feynman was not openly hostile to religion. He spoke about ethics frequently and he never claimed that the scientific method was appropriate for addressing ethical questions. I frequently see Feynman quoted on Slashdot to attack religion -- and based on what I have read and heard of Feynman, I don't think he would have done that. I cannot really tell whether Feynman was an atheist or an agnostic. There's a pretty big difference, in my opinion.
My intent was invite people to look a bit more deeply into what Feynman had to say about religion. So it looks like that worked, for one person at least. If you have suggestions for a better quote that might make my point more clearly, I would love to hear them.
And we're not going to find out, because the program is classified. It could be wildly successful and thwarting a dozen bomb plots a day. It could be a total failure, resulting in dozens of arrests of innocent people a day.
The thing that baffles me is not that people are willing to give up freedom if it "helps fight terrorism," it's that they believe what the government does in the name of fighting terrorism is working, when they don't believe anything else the federal government does is working.
I wonder how different the poll results would have been if Snowden had released the documents six months after the Boston bombing instead of six weeks after.
Hush! Don't give the government its next pretext for an expansion of the police state! I can see it now: "nose hair complications are *deadlier than terrorism*"!
If by "make fun" you mean "unleash a torrent of abuse," then, apparently, yes.
People who live in New Hampshire and work in Massachusetts have to pay Massachusetts income tax. I wouldn't exactly call that freeloading.
I totally believe it's possible to exfiltrate data from multiple game companies (or indeed any companies). But how do we know he didn't just upload a 1.7 TB encrypted blob of random garbage? The word of a 17-year-old script kiddie is not exactly a lot to go on.
Military analysts have a term for what you're describing: fourth generation warfare.
A lot of people who work in technology care about the impact it has on society and on individuals' lives. To me, for example, the dumb pipes of the Internet are only interesting because of what you can *do* with them: from checking the basketball scores to organizing the Arab Spring. This is why Slashdot as a "Your Rights Online" category.
So to get to "news for nerds" to "update on the free state project" is about 3 hops: nerds -> Internet freedom -> libertarian platform -> libertarian group.
Disclaimer: I don't call myself a libertarian but I agree with some libertarian policy goals.
(emphasis added) So, management asked you to find out why IT isn't working, and you do a "little scratching," and decide to blame the department's dysfunction on its leader. And then, what, call it a day?
Presumably you have lots of expertise in running an IT department yourself, or else management would not be paying you the large consulting fee they're giving you for this job. They are paying you a large consulting fee, right? They are giving you access to all their monthly reports, their ticket database, interviews with the employees, and weeks to do the analysis, right?
My quick read of this situation is that either management doesn't really care about root causes and just brought you in to give them some political cover to fire the guy they want to fire, or you accepted a difficult consulting job you're not qualified to do. My advice is to tell the company you made a mistake taking this assignment and run, don't walk, out the door. Or, go ahead and recommend firing someone after "just a little scratching" while collecting a paycheck for a job *you're* incompetent to do, if that's the kind of person you want to be.
I totally agree Bennett is acting like a narcissistic, self-affirming, royal doucehbag, but your homophobic aside weakens your attack. There's nothing wrong with being gay, and if I'd had a chance to get laid instead of listening in history class, I wouldn't know why the Fifth Amendment is important, either. :-)
I'm a developer, not an administrator, so I know little of these early '80s mini-computers of which you speak. However, their continued use is kind of interesting to me. Is it difficult to fix or replace these machines if they break? And if so, would it be possible/useful for a vendor to port these legacy OSes to run in a virtual machine on today's commodity hardware? Obviously such a port would be costly, but I wonder which costs less -- keeping a line of mini-computers in low-volume production, or porting the whole legacy OS to today's hardware? (The third possibility is to retire the antique system, but if that has not already been done, presumably it's because the cost of migration is worse than the risk of the system going toes-up some day.)
I think you are the only one who cares about your obnoxious challenge and childish rules. So keep posting "FAIL0" if it makes you feel superior. Every time you do it, my opinion of you lowers.
You're right. I can fault Bennett for his abrasive tone, but Soulskill gets the blame for passing his abrasive rant on to the rest of us.
Yeah, I really don't think the framers of the U.S. Constitution needed a pedantic and contrived example like the one Bennett is demanding in order to see the value in the Fifth Amendment. I'll side with them, and with generations of federal and Supreme Court justices that Bennett feels aren't worth bothering to read.