I feel the same way; and to be fair -- I don't want to pin them with any more "guilty until proven innocent" than I would want for myself. However, the situation definately warrants an investigation; and all we're getting is cover-up. History tells me when investigation is called for and you get cover-up instead, that's bad news.
Given the amount of noise about appearance of fraud in US elections, why isn't vote counting de-centralized? Other democracies seem to manage.
Because the party that cheated won on their first move, and now controls all 3 branches of government. What do you think they're gonna do, decentralize now so everyone can vote them out?
We cannot ban it according to the World Trade Organization.
Does anyone have a source for this? Of course, even if it is true, our current government hasn't shown much concern about international relations, so it might be a non-issue.
The people in Guantanamo aren't US citizens, they're enemy combatants. There's a huge difference. It's not like we can just release them back to the government they fought for, given that they didn't fight for any government. Until we finish the War on Terror, there's really no where to send them, so it's safer to temporarily keep them in Guantanamo.
It's a sad state of affairs that you felt it necessary to AC to say that.
Mr. Coward, you mentioned that the people in Guantanamo Bay aren't US Citizens. Considering that the designation "enemy combatant" strips you of your US citizenship (if you have it); I regretfully must concede that this is correct. However, in the past and in all previous wars, or peacetime; enemy combatants have still recieved the right to a trial, albeit in a military tribunal. Thus far, we have seen no such indication with regards to the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. In addition, anyone who has visited there or been allowed to inspect the facility (such as Amnesty International) have reported that they believe the prisoners are unlawfully detained and being tortured.
Being that it is highly unlikely that the military would want to show Amnesty International a worse picture of what is going on down there; the conclusion remains then it is either being presented honestly, or conditions are actually worse than we know. Unfortunately, none of the options (including the unlikely "conditions are better than reported") constitutes a retention of all rights that the average man doesn't care to protect.
In your own words, there's "really no where to send them" until we finish the "War on Terror". I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, and this discussion has occurred more than once in the last few years. Still, I am at a loss as to how you would determine the end of a war against an emotion. Perhaps you would be willing to shed some light on the situation?
If there remains no definition for the end of said war; We can extract from that that in your eyes it is acceptable for a foriegn government to:
1) enter any country it so desires, without permission or declaration of war against said country AND
2) extract and detain indefinitely anyone living in said country without trial or even so much as a criminal charge.
Unless you'd rather we release them to attack the United States.
Please review False Dilemma; then consider that a median ground option -- A fair trial by jury, without torture or multi-year delays -- is also available. If they are so guilty as to deserve the treatment in Guantanamo Bay, they would surely be found so by a trial. As it stands however, they're not even allowed council.
Watt is a measure of energy per second. That is, power. Saying 120 megawatts of electricity per day is nonsense. I think they meant to just say 120 megawatts.
Spoken like a true slashdotter who still lives in his parents basement. When you start paying your own bills, you'll find your electricity bill is measured in "kWh" or "kilowatt hours". That is, I pay some amount for every 1 kW I sustain for 1 hour. "Megawatt Days" would be a logical expansion of this rate from home level to power plant level.
It's this tiny little bit of data that could be replicated a million times much more easily than the monopoly money could be replicated-- it's only the game developers who are artificially setting the rarity of that data.
That sounds an awful lot like an MP3, and I understand there's some cases going on about those?
The fact that you were speeding did not contribute to the accident...
You are correct, and this is indeed half of the point of my original example. The difference is however, regardless of how little (even 0) impact minor speeding may be; please remember we are in a thread about EDRs and the poor picture they paint. When it comes accident time, even red-light running can turn in to "he-said/she-said"; and when that happens, the minor speeder looks bad according to data available to the EDR, and the red-light runner looks clean.
We have all heard (or experienced) the customer service classic tale. A sales rep promises you an amazing deal, which includes the london bridge and water on the moon. A month later you get a package of manure; and a bill for twice what you expected. When you call to complain, the new agent adamantly insists you were not promised such things; he has the records right there, and they don't show any calls. A cursory look at how other industries have responded to machine recording with incomplete data shows in each case, the machine has come to be seen as "infallible". This no doubt comes at least in part from the fact that it makes an easy case to cover your ass.
Well boss, there were no witnesses, and both parties swore the light was green and it was the other guy's fault. I checked the EDRs and Party A was speeding at the time, and Party B appeared to be driving in a straight line at 2mph under. I declared Party A partially at-fault and only awarded them half of their policy.
Somebody is violating a traffic law in just about every accident. If this were grounds for insurance denial, they would never have to pay a claim.
Once again, unfortunately, you are incorrect. Your insurance would still have to pay your claim when the other driver committed the violation.
As I said before, in a majority of the cases it is simply impossible to prove you were violating any traffic laws, so even if you were speeding, you still get away with it. I did try to find some online copies of insurance documents, as you requested.
Interestingly enough, I was unable to find any company which publically displayed their full policy documents. My own documents are in a safe box at a bank, which I am not going to retrieve just for a Slashdot discussion.
You may be familiar with the term "at-fault", or "partially at-fault". These are the terms that get applied to you when you are involved in an accident in which it is provable that you committed a traffic violation. Unless you have "no fault" coverage; being at fault or partially at-fault will result in your claim being denied or only a partial payment dispersed. I congratulate you on both having a no-fault policy, and never having read any other policies. However, if you want the final answer on this, I invite you to call your insurance agent, and ask him if you didn't have a no-fault policy, how much of your policy you would recieve payout from if you were at-fault or partially at-fault. When he stumbles and tries to break the bad news to you that being partially at-fault or worse can reduce your coverage payouts; then ask him if you can become at-fault or partially at-fault by being verifiably in the process of a traffic violation when the accident occurs. The answer will most definately be YES. Remember however, as you have mentioned you have a no-fault policy, your policy is much different from the typical comprehensive coverage that most consumers have. No-fault policies were specifically created to relieve this issue -- people don't want to have to worry about whether they are going to get screwed over a minor violation. No-fault policies typically carry a higher price for that luxury.
You got modded up for that for some reason, so I wanted to reply to you here and set it all straight for you. First of all "could result" doesn't mean "automatically result"; this is an important bit of understanding which most Americans fail. Also, if you are violating ANY traffic law, that's grounds for denying your claim. Read your fine print. It has just been that in the past, without the black box, speeding was a traffic violation that was impossible to determine after you've already come to a grinding halt from the crash. With the EDR, that is going to change, and you can bet the insurance companies will forum shop for a favorable ruling if necessary -- doing so would mean they would almost never have to pay out.
This black box technology could hedge my (and others) bets on accurately describing what "went down".
No, not really. You see, the black box can tell your insurance company that you were going 5 over the limit to pass someone, which could invalidate your claim (you were speeding). It has no idea that the other party was a 30-something on their cell phone with their laptop open, swerving to avoid the teenagers joyriding in the wrong lane with their lights off.
The point of my post is really that Google's ad targeting approach may lead to less ads
Nothing in the history of capitalism that could have lead to less of something that was good for the corporation and bad for the consumer has ever done so. Least of all advertising, which is now so pervasive there are ads in front of the cart facing you, in the seat, on the order seperation bar, and on the payment counter where I put down my purse. The best hope is for it to lead to the same amount of ads. I expect however, that it means more advertising, as with more acute ads, it means the last dollar that is 'worth it' is farther away; and in capitalism not spending all of those dollars means you 'lose'.
From TFA: The Greenphone appears to be a working GSM/GPRS mobile phone
However, the important (and missing) bit of information here is, which carriers will let you use it? Around here (Arizona, USA) its all but impossible to get a carrier to take a phone you didn't purchase from them, even when it is locked up and in essence still 'owned' by them.
Who's going to let me use a phone they not only aren't making a profit from, but don't control and can't use as a lock-in tool to increase the hassle factor of changing providers? No one, and this device, for as cool as it is, will be useless as a result.
By all means though, if you can find evidence anywhere that any US carrier will accept this phone without 6 months of battle against staff trained to say it is "not compatable with our network"; I'd really love to be wrong.
All the people who'd previously spent all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft should adopt the Linux security model are now spending all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft stole the Linux security model.
Could you please name even a single user who has done as you suggested?
~Rebecca
PS -- You're an ass for pasting the same "admin account hidden" post a half dozen times in the same thread.
However, they certainly wouldn't have this scholarship program if someone (either the government or the poor students who are looking for scholarships) had to pay for airfare to a mountain in Alaska.
If I understand you, the NSA has a 21 million dollar electricity budget, the funding to put people through college just for a "few years" of labor down the road, but an airline ticket would bust the budget and bye bye education program due to a lack of a couple hundred bucks?
Aye, it is true, its a different scale. However, please note that I didn't say "power your home with one device". In many cases with technology, it takes one "killer app" (to use a software term) to turn a piece of tech from a gimmick to mainstream. Look at the radio, once a military-only item. Or all around you, PCs, cell phones, etc, all of these things are tech that was once unreachable by the peasants.
A device like this could make a real industry for solar (photovoltaic, specifically, as another poster points out) cells. Any company which works on these will want the unit to be as small as possible, which means more efficient cells on your rooftop. Competition will drive down prices at the component level, which means cheaper cells going in to those large panels on your roof.
The unit itself is worth it IMO, even to pay a premium for. Anything that can help push solar energy in to the home on a scale bigger than a calculator, can only be good for everyone in the long run.
For both out of range "country" areas (some of the most beautiful lands you'll ever see, btw.); and simple urban expansion. Maybe something similar to this could spur an adoption of solar panels on homes that could take a dent out of our energy use enough to stop rolling blackouts. Imagine if you could, buying/installing a system on your home that would not only cut your energy bill, but give you free high speed wifi to boot. Most states have a buyback system on any energy you produce, and it wouldn't take much energy "sold back" to pay for the cost of broadband and a profit for the maintainers.
While I'm not a huge player of WoW; I do play that/other/ MMO. It has all but eclipsed purchases of other games. Pretty much anything that's not in the maybe top 5 of games I haven't played. In fact, when I asked my friend the other day "Hey, what games are out there?", the response I got was "World of Warcraft". We had this very discussion, and yea, that's pretty much it. Everything else seems short lived.
What exactly is different between Company A (ISP) and Company B (Offshore Freakshow) amassing a huge database of child porn? Company B is probably even in a jurisdiction where having it is legal by local laws, but Company A is certainly not. We have zero tolerance laws so strict they ruin people's lives for a banner ad containing a legal model that simply wasn't documented properly. So how come it doesn't apply here?
So if production costs remain high, the price will not fall.
If the **AA, Oil Companies, or Microsoft are any indication, the price will not fall even if production costs do. I'm sure the first company to do this will have plenty of money and political palm greasing to be sure they are the only ones allowed to use it. For national security reasons of course, who knows what evil terrorists might do!
Maybe because the bitching posts have at least 1 +1 funny and you are neutralizing 2 Insightful mods with your weird settings? Here's the Breakdown:
+2 Base (Good Karma)
-1 Funny (1 +1 Funny Mod, -2 for your weird settings)
+2 Insightful (Common Moderation)
+1 Interesting (One more +1 from mods that turn off karma bonus so good karma users can still get +5s)
----
+4 (Total under your system) == You don't see it.
Slashdot Mirror
I feel the same way; and to be fair -- I don't want to pin them with any more "guilty until proven innocent" than I would want for myself. However, the situation definately warrants an investigation; and all we're getting is cover-up. History tells me when investigation is called for and you get cover-up instead, that's bad news.
~Rebecca
Because the party that cheated won on their first move, and now controls all 3 branches of government. What do you think they're gonna do, decentralize now so everyone can vote them out?
~Rebecca
Does anyone have a source for this? Of course, even if it is true, our current government hasn't shown much concern about international relations, so it might be a non-issue.
~Rebecca
Identical.
Mr. Coward, you mentioned that the people in Guantanamo Bay aren't US Citizens. Considering that the designation "enemy combatant" strips you of your US citizenship (if you have it); I regretfully must concede that this is correct. However, in the past and in all previous wars, or peacetime; enemy combatants have still recieved the right to a trial, albeit in a military tribunal. Thus far, we have seen no such indication with regards to the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. In addition, anyone who has visited there or been allowed to inspect the facility (such as Amnesty International) have reported that they believe the prisoners are unlawfully detained and being tortured.
Being that it is highly unlikely that the military would want to show Amnesty International a worse picture of what is going on down there; the conclusion remains then it is either being presented honestly, or conditions are actually worse than we know. Unfortunately, none of the options (including the unlikely "conditions are better than reported") constitutes a retention of all rights that the average man doesn't care to protect.
In your own words, there's "really no where to send them" until we finish the "War on Terror". I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, and this discussion has occurred more than once in the last few years. Still, I am at a loss as to how you would determine the end of a war against an emotion. Perhaps you would be willing to shed some light on the situation?
If there remains no definition for the end of said war; We can extract from that that in your eyes it is acceptable for a foriegn government to:
1) enter any country it so desires, without permission or declaration of war against said country AND
2) extract and detain indefinitely anyone living in said country without trial or even so much as a criminal charge.
Please review False Dilemma; then consider that a median ground option -- A fair trial by jury, without torture or multi-year delays -- is also available. If they are so guilty as to deserve the treatment in Guantanamo Bay, they would surely be found so by a trial. As it stands however, they're not even allowed council.
~Rebecca
Just 'cause the average person doesn't bother to protect rights X,Y, and Z doesn't require that I surrender them.
It does if you live in the United States. If you don't think this is true, there's some men in Guantanamo Bay that would like their speedy trial.
~Rebecca
Watt is a measure of energy per second. That is, power. Saying 120 megawatts of electricity per day is nonsense. I think they meant to just say 120 megawatts.
Spoken like a true slashdotter who still lives in his parents basement. When you start paying your own bills, you'll find your electricity bill is measured in "kWh" or "kilowatt hours". That is, I pay some amount for every 1 kW I sustain for 1 hour. "Megawatt Days" would be a logical expansion of this rate from home level to power plant level.
~Rebecca
It's this tiny little bit of data that could be replicated a million times much more easily than the monopoly money could be replicated-- it's only the game developers who are artificially setting the rarity of that data.
That sounds an awful lot like an MP3, and I understand there's some cases going on about those?
~Rebecca
(Pseudo?-)Random searches will be pointless as long as the Admiral's Club is behind the security line serving steak.
~Rebecca
C. Two girls who reads Slashdot.
Given the responses to any post I ever make, I think your estimate is over by one.
~Rebecca
The fact that you were speeding did not contribute to the accident ...
You are correct, and this is indeed half of the point of my original example. The difference is however, regardless of how little (even 0) impact minor speeding may be; please remember we are in a thread about EDRs and the poor picture they paint. When it comes accident time, even red-light running can turn in to "he-said/she-said"; and when that happens, the minor speeder looks bad according to data available to the EDR, and the red-light runner looks clean.
We have all heard (or experienced) the customer service classic tale. A sales rep promises you an amazing deal, which includes the london bridge and water on the moon. A month later you get a package of manure; and a bill for twice what you expected. When you call to complain, the new agent adamantly insists you were not promised such things; he has the records right there, and they don't show any calls. A cursory look at how other industries have responded to machine recording with incomplete data shows in each case, the machine has come to be seen as "infallible". This no doubt comes at least in part from the fact that it makes an easy case to cover your ass.
Well boss, there were no witnesses, and both parties swore the light was green and it was the other guy's fault. I checked the EDRs and Party A was speeding at the time, and Party B appeared to be driving in a straight line at 2mph under. I declared Party A partially at-fault and only awarded them half of their policy.
Shit, he'd probably get a kudos for that one.
~Rebecca
Somebody is violating a traffic law in just about every accident. If this were grounds for insurance denial, they would never have to pay a claim.
Once again, unfortunately, you are incorrect. Your insurance would still have to pay your claim when the other driver committed the violation.
As I said before, in a majority of the cases it is simply impossible to prove you were violating any traffic laws, so even if you were speeding, you still get away with it. I did try to find some online copies of insurance documents, as you requested.
Interestingly enough, I was unable to find any company which publically displayed their full policy documents. My own documents are in a safe box at a bank, which I am not going to retrieve just for a Slashdot discussion.
You may be familiar with the term "at-fault", or "partially at-fault". These are the terms that get applied to you when you are involved in an accident in which it is provable that you committed a traffic violation. Unless you have "no fault" coverage; being at fault or partially at-fault will result in your claim being denied or only a partial payment dispersed. I congratulate you on both having a no-fault policy, and never having read any other policies. However, if you want the final answer on this, I invite you to call your insurance agent, and ask him if you didn't have a no-fault policy, how much of your policy you would recieve payout from if you were at-fault or partially at-fault. When he stumbles and tries to break the bad news to you that being partially at-fault or worse can reduce your coverage payouts; then ask him if you can become at-fault or partially at-fault by being verifiably in the process of a traffic violation when the accident occurs. The answer will most definately be YES. Remember however, as you have mentioned you have a no-fault policy, your policy is much different from the typical comprehensive coverage that most consumers have. No-fault policies were specifically created to relieve this issue -- people don't want to have to worry about whether they are going to get screwed over a minor violation. No-fault policies typically carry a higher price for that luxury.
~Rebecca
You got modded up for that for some reason, so I wanted to reply to you here and set it all straight for you. First of all "could result" doesn't mean "automatically result"; this is an important bit of understanding which most Americans fail. Also, if you are violating ANY traffic law, that's grounds for denying your claim. Read your fine print. It has just been that in the past, without the black box, speeding was a traffic violation that was impossible to determine after you've already come to a grinding halt from the crash. With the EDR, that is going to change, and you can bet the insurance companies will forum shop for a favorable ruling if necessary -- doing so would mean they would almost never have to pay out.
~Rebecca
This black box technology could hedge my (and others) bets on accurately describing what "went down".
No, not really. You see, the black box can tell your insurance company that you were going 5 over the limit to pass someone, which could invalidate your claim (you were speeding). It has no idea that the other party was a 30-something on their cell phone with their laptop open, swerving to avoid the teenagers joyriding in the wrong lane with their lights off.
~Rebecca
The point of my post is really that Google's ad targeting approach may lead to less ads
Nothing in the history of capitalism that could have lead to less of something that was good for the corporation and bad for the consumer has ever done so. Least of all advertising, which is now so pervasive there are ads in front of the cart facing you, in the seat, on the order seperation bar, and on the payment counter where I put down my purse. The best hope is for it to lead to the same amount of ads. I expect however, that it means more advertising, as with more acute ads, it means the last dollar that is 'worth it' is farther away; and in capitalism not spending all of those dollars means you 'lose'.
~Rebecca
From TFA: The Greenphone appears to be a working GSM/GPRS mobile phone
However, the important (and missing) bit of information here is, which carriers will let you use it? Around here (Arizona, USA) its all but impossible to get a carrier to take a phone you didn't purchase from them, even when it is locked up and in essence still 'owned' by them.
Who's going to let me use a phone they not only aren't making a profit from, but don't control and can't use as a lock-in tool to increase the hassle factor of changing providers? No one, and this device, for as cool as it is, will be useless as a result.
By all means though, if you can find evidence anywhere that any US carrier will accept this phone without 6 months of battle against staff trained to say it is "not compatable with our network"; I'd really love to be wrong.
~Rebecca
They are not giving up anything that could be used to personally hurt you, unless of course you are doing something wrong.
If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about! [insert whining idiot noise]
~Rebecca
All the people who'd previously spent all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft should adopt the Linux security model are now spending all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft stole the Linux security model.
Could you please name even a single user who has done as you suggested?
~Rebecca
PS -- You're an ass for pasting the same "admin account hidden" post a half dozen times in the same thread.
However, they certainly wouldn't have this scholarship program if someone (either the government or the poor students who are looking for scholarships) had to pay for airfare to a mountain in Alaska.
If I understand you, the NSA has a 21 million dollar electricity budget, the funding to put people through college just for a "few years" of labor down the road, but an airline ticket would bust the budget and bye bye education program due to a lack of a couple hundred bucks?
~Rebecca
Aye, it is true, its a different scale. However, please note that I didn't say "power your home with one device". In many cases with technology, it takes one "killer app" (to use a software term) to turn a piece of tech from a gimmick to mainstream. Look at the radio, once a military-only item. Or all around you, PCs, cell phones, etc, all of these things are tech that was once unreachable by the peasants.
A device like this could make a real industry for solar (photovoltaic, specifically, as another poster points out) cells. Any company which works on these will want the unit to be as small as possible, which means more efficient cells on your rooftop. Competition will drive down prices at the component level, which means cheaper cells going in to those large panels on your roof.
The unit itself is worth it IMO, even to pay a premium for. Anything that can help push solar energy in to the home on a scale bigger than a calculator, can only be good for everyone in the long run.
~Rebecca
For both out of range "country" areas (some of the most beautiful lands you'll ever see, btw.); and simple urban expansion. Maybe something similar to this could spur an adoption of solar panels on homes that could take a dent out of our energy use enough to stop rolling blackouts. Imagine if you could, buying/installing a system on your home that would not only cut your energy bill, but give you free high speed wifi to boot. Most states have a buyback system on any energy you produce, and it wouldn't take much energy "sold back" to pay for the cost of broadband and a profit for the maintainers.
~Rebecca
While I'm not a huge player of WoW; I do play that /other/ MMO. It has all but eclipsed purchases of other games. Pretty much anything that's not in the maybe top 5 of games I haven't played. In fact, when I asked my friend the other day "Hey, what games are out there?", the response I got was "World of Warcraft". We had this very discussion, and yea, that's pretty much it. Everything else seems short lived.
~Rebecca
What exactly is different between Company A (ISP) and Company B (Offshore Freakshow) amassing a huge database of child porn? Company B is probably even in a jurisdiction where having it is legal by local laws, but Company A is certainly not. We have zero tolerance laws so strict they ruin people's lives for a banner ad containing a legal model that simply wasn't documented properly. So how come it doesn't apply here?
~Rebecca
So if production costs remain high, the price will not fall.
If the **AA, Oil Companies, or Microsoft are any indication, the price will not fall even if production costs do. I'm sure the first company to do this will have plenty of money and political palm greasing to be sure they are the only ones allowed to use it. For national security reasons of course, who knows what evil terrorists might do!
~Rebecca
Maybe because the bitching posts have at least 1 +1 funny and you are neutralizing 2 Insightful mods with your weird settings? Here's the Breakdown:
+2 Base (Good Karma)
-1 Funny (1 +1 Funny Mod, -2 for your weird settings)
+2 Insightful (Common Moderation)
+1 Interesting (One more +1 from mods that turn off karma bonus so good karma users can still get +5s)
----
+4 (Total under your system) == You don't see it.
~Rebecca