Google should comply for 3 or 4 years and own the Chinese market like they own the rest. Then they should start relaxing the filters. China is no longer a Cuba or North Korea, and there is a certain momentum which the government is not able or willing to resist. Faced with blocking the universally used search engine at that point or letting it go, I think they would end up letting it go.
Now, Google could try the same strategy in Germany or France, but the people might just take to the streets and demand that they bring back the censorship. (hmm, maybe if we gave their leaders some free oil vouchers...)
Perhaps you are familiar with the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants"?
Newton, who said that, is probably one of the best counter-examples to the the article's arguement. He could not handle the critisism of his peers, and was rather involved in a protracted ego-war with the scientific establishment, and therefore worked in isolation. It was only after his chief rival died that he started being celebrated by the scientific community, whereupon he could put on a veil of humility and "reluctantly" accept all the praise, and interact with other scientists.
"Pornography" isn't mentioned in the COPA law, but rather "Material that is harmful to minors", as defined below. Incidently this is almost exactly the definition of "obscenity" which has been consistently held by the Supreme Court to be UNPROTECTED by the First Ammendment. This definition only differs from "obscenity" by way of a few instances of "to minors" inserted into the text, which cannot have the effect of making it a broader definition. So, as Justice Scallia pointed out, it's silly to argue that Congress doesn't have the right to require age verification for obscenity, when they in fact have the right to BAN it outright if they wished to.
(6) Material that is harmful to minors.--The term
`material that is harmful to minors' means any communication,
picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording,
writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene or
that--
``(A) the average person, applying contemporary community
standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and
with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is
designed to pander to, the prurient interest;
``(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner
patently offensive with respect to minors, an actual or
simulated sexual act or sexual contact, an actual or
simulated normal or perverted sexual act, or a lewd
exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast;
and
``(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic,
political, or scientific value for minors.
Parenting is a little different when your child gets older. You said you want to protect your daughter from certain things on the Internet, but how are you going to do that when she uses the Internet at the public library or at school? Or at the house of a friend whose parent's do not share your philosophy?
The law in question doesn't BAN anything. If a parent wants their kids to see something, they can see it. It does take steps make make the Internet more kid-friendly. It's really a value judgement of whether doing so is worth the cost of making it somewhat more inconvenient for adults to access obscene material.
Incidently, the Supreme Court has always held as a matter of law that obscenity is NOT protected by the First Ammendment. And all the material for which this law requires age verification is described with almost the exact language as the definition of obscenity. Where it differs from that language it is more restricted. Hence, all the speech covered by this law is obscene and not protected by the Constitution. For some reason all the Supreme Court Justices except Justice Scallia ignored this little fact.
If [porn] were harmful then we would be a nation of damaged people.
You just disproved your theory.
If it had actually harmed me in some way I think I would know it.
Yeah, or else you wouldn't. If porn were NOT harmful, I think at least ONE of those smart lawyers at the ACLU would have made that arguement, as that would make the whole case of the government moot. They never suggested that it. Not one of the judges or justices who reviewed this case suggested that porn wasn't harmful. If they thought or even suspected that it wasn't, they would have had to go no further to decide it. (And as a matter of U.S. law, porn IS harmful to children, for whatever that's worth.)
It seems to me that they want to do some data mining, maybe to identify terrorists (or dissenters), and they could just be using the "what about the children" thing in their attempt to gain access.
Paranoid much? They didn't request any identifying information. They requested a one-week span of search results for one million randomly selected "web addresses" (I'm guessing IP Addresses). That doesn't really lend itself to your nefarious plot. Besides, we aren't planning to round up all the liberals into concentration camps until NEXT year.
The most likely actual reason they would want the information is to show the ratio between US-based and foreign-based porn sites in the results, which is an issue central to one of the legal arguements in the case.
You are confusing a search warrant with a subpoena. A search warrant authorizes a search for evidence in the presence of probable cause of a crime.
This is a subpoena, which requires the issuee to testify in a case before the court, or (as here) to provide evidence in his possession which is vital to correctly deciding a case before the court.
Yes, that's a great irony. Imagine, wanting to kill a person who breaks some victorian-era "murder" law, but then if I want to kill my own kid, in the privacy of my own home, then "Nooo!", that would be "IMOOOOORAL". Those hypocrites make me sick.
The Google records supeana relates to the COPA law, which has nothing to do with the laws concerning possession of child pornography. They require porn sites to get proof of age before letting visitors in. Having read the briefs of the case, I imagine the records are being sought to debunk the plaintiffs' assertion that 40% of the porn an American child would happen across is hosted outside the U.S.
That "someone" is likely to be a Republican so that means all sex education material and anything relating to birth control or LGBT issues will be classified as porn and forced into the ghetto.
Yeah, cuz Republicans, are like, stupid and stuff.
I'm so tired of this "won't someone please think of the children" scenario. This is a parental issue through and through.
I'm sick of the "it's the parents' responsibility, so nothing else should be done" arguement. Personally, I doubt the arguement is often used by people who are actually parents, or have given it much thought. It's the equivalent of saying "if you don't want your children to see me doing obscene things in the street, then you should keep your kids in the house, and keep your curtains closed." For TV, I doesn't matter to me -- because if it's necessary for my kids to watch almost no TV, it's probably to their benefit anyway. But the Internet has become central to modern society, and vital for research and education; therefore sheilding my children from it is not an option. Yet it is not safe to let them perform research, and otherwise explore the Web without supervision. I'm not aware of any legal precedent in the area of Free Speech requiring pornography to be easily accessible, and there is certainly no compelling societal interest in it being easily accessible. Yet any rational person recognizes that there is a compelling societal interest in protecting children from it. In First Ammendment law, the right of free expression can be abridged when, and only when, there is a "compelling state interest" in doing so. Until there is better research done on the subject, this ultimately will come down to the judgement (and sanity) of the Supreme Court Justices.
I'm not suggesting that warrants are never required, only that searches can be, and are, probably hundreds of times a day, performed without them when there is probable cause.
And I'm certainly not not suggesting that Executive power should be unlimited. But I am suggesting, and the Constitution clearly agrees, that Congress's power should also be limited, especially when it comes to telling the president how to do his job.
If it's preventing you from getting work done, you should have no problem convincing them -- and if you do, light a fire under your manager; that's what managers are there for.
Not sure what universe you're working in, but in this one, managers exist to think up ideas like filtering all "unproductive" web sites, without giving a crap that it actually kills productivity for people who need to get to some of these sites, and logging all the rest, so that they can read reports every week of all the web sites people tried to visit, and maybe call someone's manager if they were surfing too much.
(Software developers on the other hand, I guess, exist to download free web proxy software and set it up on one of the company's web servers, so that the software development group can bypass the filtering AND the logging, and surf freely.)
I see no such respect of the law from the Bush Administration. The mechanisms are all in place for what they want to do, and they are simply being ignored. This is unacceptable.
Under our central concept of separation of powers, certain government responsibilies fall distinctly into the authority of one of the three branches of government. One of these is the gathering of military intelligence, which falls distinctly into Executive authority. This means it is generally unconstitutional for Congress to determine how the President will execute this responsibility, and categorically unconstitutional for Congress to vest a portion of that responsibility in the judiciary branch. The president is therefore free either to make use of the FISA court, or to ignore it, in such areas where the primary purpose of the activity is gathering intelligence against a foreign enemy.
In any case, people need to understand that it is the role of the President and of the White House Counsel (Harriet Miers) to determine the scope of Presidential power and authority. The only time it stops being their role is when (as is being attempted) someone claiming actual damages brings their case to the Supreme Court for relief, in which case the Supreme Court has the final word on the correct interpretation within the narrow confines of the case being brought before it.
It is well known by now that the modern interpretation of the Constitution deems any warrantless search of US citizens unreasonable, and therefore illegal according to the Fourth Amendment.
In that case, the "modern interpretation" of the Constitution is only held by those whose rabid ideology has so blinded them them that they have blocked from their memory any concept of probable cause, and its place in the past few centuries of law, as such recollection would impede their latest invented excuse to slander the People's elected leader. So... good luck with that.
Concerns about the implications this may have for intelligence gathering have been addressed by FISA.
Intelligence gathering is unarguably a presidential responsibility under the Constitution. Therefore, while the Congress has the right to establish the FISA court, it has no right to insist that the President execute his intelligence gathering responsibilities by means of it. That would clearly exceed the limits given it by the Constitution.
So far, the only defense of the domestic spying program has hinged on the President's ability to interpret the Constitution as he pleases - clearly an indefensible position.
Any CONTRARY opinion is indefensible. Read the U.S. v Nixon decision. The responsibility of interperting the Constitution for the President belongs to the White House Counsel, currently Harriet Miers, and by extension, to the President himself. I'm not sure who you think is supposed to supply the president with the correct interpretation... The very first Supreme Court established that it would be improper for them to provide the President with "advisory opinions." The Supreme Court's opinion of the Constitution can only trump the President's in specific cases that are brought before them by an adverse party having actual damages.
Given that the President has confessed to the act (if not the crime) of warrantless domestic spying, the only thing left to do is apply the due process set forth in the Constitution and let Justice be served.
The President can only be impeached for a crime. It is absurd to suggest that Congress has the power to take portions of executive responsibility and vest them in the judiciary branch. It is doubly absurd to suggest that they can do so under CRIMINAL law.
On the other hand, if the President were aware of someone making a phone call from within the U.S. to Osama Bin Laden, and he had the ability to listen in, and intentionally chose NOT to, while he probably could still not be impeached, he could AND SHOULD be removed from office under the 25th ammendment (which provides for removal of a president who is incapable of performing his constitutional duties).
But, no matter who you are, you have to admit that the ACLU prevents you from losing anything that might be considered a civil liberty.
You've GOT to be kidding! Like when a kid wants to bring a Bible to school and is told it's an "illegal book"? Or maybe he's a REAL radical and wants to say the word "Jesus" where someone else might hear? In such cases, the ACLU is consistently on the side of those trying to crush individuals' civil liberties, not protect them.
...they will have no regrets, will not feel moral repercussions and their conscioiusness will not eat them at night for lining up...
That may be the most mind-blowing image I've ever considered -- People being actually consumed by their own consciousness at night. The implications... I can't even fathom it. Maybe that's why people rot after they die, because their consciousness breaks free from their body, and then eats it! You probably meant "consciences," but this is much better!
The lesson to take from this if it is real is not that life came from space, but that life springs out of non-life with relative ease.
Relative to what??? Clearly it's not easy compared to anything the human race has done so far, since we've never managed to get that to happen. If this is a life form distinct from earth-life then either 1) the two life forms descended from a common ancestor, or 2) the two life forms independently transformed from non-life into life (either with or without supernatural aid).
In other words, we still won't know anything about it.
even our US facilities are regulated China-style. We're not allowed to discuss politics or religion, and our email is monitored.
Holy crap! Where do you work??? Or are you allowed to say??? Are you aware of monster.com? dice.com?
The day is going to come where the bill of rights is going to have to be forced on the corporate world the same way it is forced on the government or it will stop meaning anything. It's not useful if 10-12 hours a day you're under the rule of an oppressive foreign government.
I don't think you understand the point of the Bill of Rights. Anything the government can do to a corporation, it can do to a person. If the government seizes the power to force the bill of rights on corporations, then it seizes the power to force the bill of rights on firms, s-corps., partnerships, contractors, private schools, churches, households, and individuals. Therefore, at the whim of the Judicial Oligarchy -- oops, I mean the Supreme Court -- regious schools could be outlawed, as could any establishment of religion in a home or a church. Any attempt you make to abridge someone's free speech (e.g. telling your employees to stop talking and get back to work... or making a no shouting rule in a library) could land you in jail. The point of the Bill of Rights, is that since it's only with extreme difficulty that we can swap out our government for a new one, and since the legitimate purposes of government are extremely limited, the power of government should be similarly limited so as to keep it from unnecessarily interfering with the free pursuit of happiness. If the government can start enforcing these limitations on its subjects, it's then that the Bill of Rights would lose its meaning. Since there is no similar difficulty in swapping out your job for a new one, the company you work for is your choice, and part of your free pursuit of happiness, and of those who own and run the company. Put in perspective, it is rediculously easy in this country to find a new job.
The way things are set up, maybe always have been, is that corporations are OBLIGATED to maximize shareholder value, at any cost...except they can't break US laws.
They're OBLIGATED? By what???? Is there some law I'm not aware of obligating them? Granted that maximizing shareholder value is/was touted in business schools, and in the 80's was strategy of choice for managing companyies But I don't understand why anyone would suggest that companies are OBLIGATED to maximize it an any cost.
I say that any good corporation works primarily for the customers, not the shareholders. And that such a business philosophy will ultimately produce a share holder value commensurate with any of the more nefarious business philosophies.
An option if you happen to not use the CD/DVD drive often on your A75:
If you just remove the drive (I think there's a single screw underneath that holds it in) the computer runs MUCH cooler. With the air path clean the fans rarely even have to turn on.
I also have the Toshiba Satellite A75 with the same problem. There's another problem with an inadequately secured power jack, which is soldered directly to the motherboard, and another problem with the outer case not being properly grounded, which can cause static discharges, which can do various damage. In my case it killed my display. However Toshiba replaced my motherboard and display for free, and everything is working fine now, so I'm happy.
However, the design of this motherboard includes an air circulation system which is inherently prone to collecting dust in crevices that are impossible to get to short of smashing the housing open with a sledge hammer. Therefore, THE SECRET TO FIXING THE OVERHEATING PROBLEM IS to get a can of compressed air at the computer store and spray it in the intake vents on the bottom every month or so to get the dust out.
"...an extraordinary optical device that would bend light the opposite direction of that done by any natural material"
"...literally means steering it in the opposite direction of that found in the natural world."
The article makes it abundantly clear that this is not a natural device, but a supernatural device. They are therefore inconsistent in calling these clever people scientists, when they are clealy witch-doctors or magicians (in the Old Testament sense, not in the David Copperfield sense).
World population is hardly relevent anyway. 95% of the world population is outside the U.S., but only 55% of the active Internet user population is outside the U.S. Not that I'm bragging or anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Google should comply for 3 or 4 years and own the Chinese market like they own the rest. Then they should start relaxing the filters. China is no longer a Cuba or North Korea, and there is a certain momentum which the government is not able or willing to resist. Faced with blocking the universally used search engine at that point or letting it go, I think they would end up letting it go.
Now, Google could try the same strategy in Germany or France, but the people might just take to the streets and demand that they bring back the censorship. (hmm, maybe if we gave their leaders some free oil vouchers...)
Parenting is a little different when your child gets older. You said you want to protect your daughter from certain things on the Internet, but how are you going to do that when she uses the Internet at the public library or at school? Or at the house of a friend whose parent's do not share your philosophy?
The law in question doesn't BAN anything. If a parent wants their kids to see something, they can see it. It does take steps make make the Internet more kid-friendly. It's really a value judgement of whether doing so is worth the cost of making it somewhat more inconvenient for adults to access obscene material.
Incidently, the Supreme Court has always held as a matter of law that obscenity is NOT protected by the First Ammendment. And all the material for which this law requires age verification is described with almost the exact language as the definition of obscenity. Where it differs from that language it is more restricted. Hence, all the speech covered by this law is obscene and not protected by the Constitution. For some reason all the Supreme Court Justices except Justice Scallia ignored this little fact.
The most likely actual reason they would want the information is to show the ratio between US-based and foreign-based porn sites in the results, which is an issue central to one of the legal arguements in the case.
The COPA law specifically excludes anything with artistic or education value.
You are confusing a search warrant with a subpoena. A search warrant authorizes a search for evidence in the presence of probable cause of a crime.
This is a subpoena, which requires the issuee to testify in a case before the court, or (as here) to provide evidence in his possession which is vital to correctly deciding a case before the court.
Yes, that's a great irony. Imagine, wanting to kill a person who breaks some victorian-era "murder" law, but then if I want to kill my own kid, in the privacy of my own home, then "Nooo!", that would be "IMOOOOORAL". Those hypocrites make me sick.
The Google records supeana relates to the COPA law, which has nothing to do with the laws concerning possession of child pornography. They require porn sites to get proof of age before letting visitors in. Having read the briefs of the case, I imagine the records are being sought to debunk the plaintiffs' assertion that 40% of the porn an American child would happen across is hosted outside the U.S.
I'm not suggesting that warrants are never required, only that searches can be, and are, probably hundreds of times a day, performed without them when there is probable cause.
And I'm certainly not not suggesting that Executive power should be unlimited. But I am suggesting, and the Constitution clearly agrees, that Congress's power should also be limited, especially when it comes to telling the president how to do his job.
(Software developers on the other hand, I guess, exist to download free web proxy software and set it up on one of the company's web servers, so that the software development group can bypass the filtering AND the logging, and surf freely.)
In any case, people need to understand that it is the role of the President and of the White House Counsel (Harriet Miers) to determine the scope of Presidential power and authority. The only time it stops being their role is when (as is being attempted) someone claiming actual damages brings their case to the Supreme Court for relief, in which case the Supreme Court has the final word on the correct interpretation within the narrow confines of the case being brought before it.
On the other hand, if the President were aware of someone making a phone call from within the U.S. to Osama Bin Laden, and he had the ability to listen in, and intentionally chose NOT to, while he probably could still not be impeached, he could AND SHOULD be removed from office under the 25th ammendment (which provides for removal of a president who is incapable of performing his constitutional duties).
In other words, we still won't know anything about it.
I don't think you understand the point of the Bill of Rights. Anything the government can do to a corporation, it can do to a person. If the government seizes the power to force the bill of rights on corporations, then it seizes the power to force the bill of rights on firms, s-corps., partnerships, contractors, private schools, churches, households, and individuals. Therefore, at the whim of the Judicial Oligarchy -- oops, I mean the Supreme Court -- regious schools could be outlawed, as could any establishment of religion in a home or a church. Any attempt you make to abridge someone's free speech (e.g. telling your employees to stop talking and get back to work... or making a no shouting rule in a library) could land you in jail. The point of the Bill of Rights, is that since it's only with extreme difficulty that we can swap out our government for a new one, and since the legitimate purposes of government are extremely limited, the power of government should be similarly limited so as to keep it from unnecessarily interfering with the free pursuit of happiness. If the government can start enforcing these limitations on its subjects, it's then that the Bill of Rights would lose its meaning. Since there is no similar difficulty in swapping out your job for a new one, the company you work for is your choice, and part of your free pursuit of happiness, and of those who own and run the company. Put in perspective, it is rediculously easy in this country to find a new job.
They're OBLIGATED? By what???? Is there some law I'm not aware of obligating them? Granted that maximizing shareholder value is/was touted in business schools, and in the 80's was strategy of choice for managing companyies But I don't understand why anyone would suggest that companies are OBLIGATED to maximize it an any cost.
I say that any good corporation works primarily for the customers, not the shareholders. And that such a business philosophy will ultimately produce a share holder value commensurate with any of the more nefarious business philosophies.
An option if you happen to not use the CD/DVD drive often on your A75: If you just remove the drive (I think there's a single screw underneath that holds it in) the computer runs MUCH cooler. With the air path clean the fans rarely even have to turn on.
I also have the Toshiba Satellite A75 with the same problem. There's another problem with an inadequately secured power jack, which is soldered directly to the motherboard, and another problem with the outer case not being properly grounded, which can cause static discharges, which can do various damage. In my case it killed my display. However Toshiba replaced my motherboard and display for free, and everything is working fine now, so I'm happy.
However, the design of this motherboard includes an air circulation system which is inherently prone to collecting dust in crevices that are impossible to get to short of smashing the housing open with a sledge hammer. Therefore, THE SECRET TO FIXING THE OVERHEATING PROBLEM IS to get a can of compressed air at the computer store and spray it in the intake vents on the bottom every month or so to get the dust out.
World population is hardly relevent anyway. 95% of the world population is outside the U.S., but only 55% of the active Internet user population is outside the U.S. Not that I'm bragging or anything.