Don't even start. The ACLU is no friend of 2nd ammendment liberties. On every other ammendment the position of the ACLU is that supporting maximum individual liberty. Yet on 2nd ammendment they take the position - their stated position - of least individual liberty.
Let's put it this way: When it comes to me sitting on my front porch telling the government to get the fuck away, they're with me. But when it comes to me sitting on my front porch with a gun cradled across my lap telling the government to get the fuck away, they afraid. They are afraid because the power of force ultimately trumps the power of any law and any lawyer.
The ACLU is all for you so long as you live on their terms in their utopia. But as soon as you assert your own power, they turn from defender to oppressor.
Now, I'm as liberal as the next guy, but which ammendment is most important?
If the 2nd ammendment goes you are going to have a hell of a lot harder time getting back the 1st ammendment once it goes, and rest assured it will be next.
But give us our 2nd ammendment and I'd like to see them try to take the 1st. Now, maybe Americans are too lazy and apathetic to resist, but when it comes right down to it our odds are much better armed. Look no further than Iraq.
This was close in mind of this nation's founders.
What do you think would have happened if instead of taking up arms they had staged a giant sit-in? You'd be having tea and fucking crumpets right now instead of beer and pork rinds watching John Wayne - peace be upon him. Amen.
It is possible to control the rate of advancement of players. This usually amounts to daily or weekly experience caps. I think a curve-based cap, where one is capped in power relative to other players might be workable. But these systems tend to be arbitrary and unfair. Who's to say the person who is most advanced isn't also a great player who happens to have a lot of freetime?
However, bigger issues in my mind are "twinking" and farming, particularly "boss-farming". These activities can ruin the atmosphere for other players, as well as ruin the economy.
My experience is particularly in Neverwinter Nights community persistent worlds.
There are two very effective measures to controlling these excesses: 1. Make content tied to quests and one-time only. If you defeat a boss once on a character, you don't - can't - defeat it again. Create sufficient content so that players can reach maximum level with minimal replay. You'd think this would drive players away; it doesn't. Most of these players will start new characters and play through the world again, until eventually they have experienced all the content and leave once they become bored like any other player. 2. Prevent players from transferring gold and powerful items to the new characters you create. This keeps everyone on a reasonably even playing field, and it prevents the world economy from spiraling out of control or otherwise disrupting the original vision for the world. A low magic world where every new player has a +2 weapon is suddenly no longer low magic.
Reinforce these steps with content and quests that focus on choice and character development in order to provide greater replay value.
I will never go back to playing a game like WoW where the "end game" is fighting through the same 2-3 dungeons to kill the same bosses, week after week after week for months. On top of this, outside of PvP WoW has next to no replay value in terms of character development and dynamic content, making it that much worse. And even PvP amounts to little more than a grind. Anything but the top rank is primarily about finding a group of people with as much free time as you and playing more than everyone else in the same 3 battlegrounds, over and over and over for 40+ hours a week.
"I think kids should be allowed to have electronic devices because the threat of being recorded will keep bad teachers in check"
Absolutely!
And if that means teachers who can't handle the stress or the scandal are weeded out... win for us!
Once we start to effectively filter out the abusive, dysfunctional, mediocre teachers, we can start to see the salaries of good teachers increase and the prominence of the position in society increase.
Teaching should be considered one of the highest callings in society.
I'd like to see teaching become a profession that is considered elite, that demands excellence, that is highly challenging, where 5 years in teachers are earning $80k+ or more.
But right now we don't have the quality control and the funding to do that.
"You would lose your job as a teacher rather quickly. Doesn't mean you would be a bad teacher."
Oh PLEASE. Insightful? It is Insightful to suggest that teachers should "slap kids around a little"?
This is criminal abuse. Should employers "slap employees around a little"? Should police be able to "slap arestees around a little"?
Or do you think children are some kind of sub-humans?
This attitude is shameful. Are we cavemen? Do we want to impress upon our children that the structure of society is that of a chicken house pecking order?
Do we want to impress upon our children that the correct way to resolve disagreements is through violence and intimidation rather than reason, understanding, and care?
And we wonder why politics in our country is centered around shouting and hate, violence and intimidation and unthinking propaganda... If these are the only tools with which we equip students to resolve disputes, to compell compliance, to compell submission, it is little wonder that this is what it comes down to.
"Kids who deliberately provoke a teacher to film the results don't need to be yelled at so much as slapped around a little. And that's why I'd be a terrible teacher."
This is a SHAMEFUL attitude.
There is nothing more important we as a society can do for our future workers, artists, thinkers and leaders than to ensure that they are taught by the absolute best people - best teachers - we can find. Teaching should be seen as one of the highest callings in our society.
And do you know what it is going to take for this to happen? We are going to need to weed out the scum and the freeloaders and the riff raff currently serving as teachers - teachers like you would be.
ONLY then can we increase their pay.
And students like we see here are essential to raising our standards and forcing the scum out. It is never acceptable to scream like this at a child. Never. We can not fund the abuse of our children in our education system and wonder why our education system is failing.
Just as we need police officers who are honorable and intelligent and of mild tempermant who can respond to the most intense situations and remain cool, we need teachers who can do the same.
If you and your friends can't cut it in the teaching profession, then the problem isn't that we don't allow you to get away with abusing and intimidating our children. No, the problem is YOU.
"Slapped around a little?" You should not be allowed near a child. I fear for your children.
Wake up, buddy. These are public employees. These are the people to who we have committed one of the most fundamental and important roles in our society: teaching the next generation. In many cases these teachers are more important in shaping the future of our society than are parents themselves.
You better believe we need to hold these people to the highest level of accountability.
And you know what? Teachers unions should be happy we are doing this. As we weed out the scum and the freeloaders who are negatively impacting our children, we will raise the standards in the teaching profession and hopefully thereby raise the wages of teachers to reflect the fundamental and critical role they play in our society and our future.
If the teacher feels that it is shameful to be yelling like this then the teacher should not have done it. This teacher - many teachers - seem to think that their students are some kind of sub-people, to and in front of whom otherwise shameful behavior has no consequences. This is a public employee in a public building operating in a public employee's capacity. This behavior is unacceptable. This attitude is unacceptable. It is as unacceptable as it is in another context for a police officer to react in an uncontrolled and violent manner. If these public employees can not function in their public capacity with dignity, understanding, and a mild temperment, they are not fit to serve us and should be dismissed.
We must object to this. The ubiquity of video and audio documentation of abuse has empowered the victims and at-risk people of our society in unprecedented ways. No doubt the system and those employ and who otherwise beneit from it, wish to shut this down, wish to remain unaccountable.
It is the test of our society how we will stand up for those who are least among us.
The UCLA police officer videotaped last week using a Taser gun on a student also shot a homeless man at a campus study hall room three years ago and was earlier recommended for dismissal in connection with an alleged assault on fraternity row, authorities said.
In May 1990, he was accused of using his nightstick to choke someone who was hanging out on a Saturday in front of a UCLA fraternity. Kente S. Scott alleged that Duren confronted him while he was walking on the street outside the Theta Xi fraternity house.
Scott sued the university, and according to court records, UCLA officials moved to have Duren dismissed from the police force. But after an independent administrative hearing, officials overturned the dismissal, suspending him for 90 days.
It's off the front page now, but hopefully we can get this and some additional information brought up in a Slashback.
In my mind this is an incredibly important case. All the more so because outside of places like Slashdot and "liberal" blogs and newssources, there is the sentiment that the student "got what he deserved". This should come as no surprise, I suppose, considering how the public still blames rape victims for "asking for it" or suggesting that they "should have known better". I don't care how much of an ass this student is. That simply doesn't matter. We need to take every opportunity we can to get these thugs out of positions of authority. It is disgusting to see common people siding with thugs in positions of authority over their fellow citizens. The only way to combat this is to raise the outrage by getting public exposure of videos like these.
"Actually, I'm just a bit wiser than the student in the video. I don't believe in silent obedience, but I do believe in picking the time and place for the battle. Now, if this student was out to prove that the police are out of control, he will probably be successful, and he just endured what was necessary to make his point. Otherwise, he was just being an idiot."
ALL that matters is that the cops tasered this man 5 times while he was lying limp on the ground. He could have screamed "Fuck you pig fuckers" while laying on the ground and it would not have mattered. It does not matter how dumb he was. You are simply blaming the victim.
Yet NOTHING he did could have justified this assault. Let there be no doubt: this man was the victim of a brutal and malicious assault. He was lying limp on the ground. He posed no threat whatsoever. The only "threat" was to the ego and control-complex of the officers. They even tasered him one last time at the end for good measure. You can just imagine the officer saying under his breath, "Take that you little Arab shit" as he drives the taser into him one last time.
He did the right thing by screaming. He was being assaulted. Who knows what these monsters would have done to him had there been no witnesses. They would have beaten and tasered him with impunity. What jury would otherwise believe the word of an Arab-American student against the word of white police officers? Thank God he screamed.
What did he achieve? This man has done a great service to the community. He has exposed these armed, vindictive thugs in positions of authority for what they are.
I hope to God they are stripped of their badges and charged with felony assault. They are not fit to be mall security guards.
Citizens should fight these big brother activities by turning the concept on its head. Just as we as citizens are concerned about "big brother" activities, corrupt politicians and law enforcement officers should be trembling in their boots over "little brother".
What does "little brother" do? He tattles on "big brother". That's us watching them.
At-risk citizens - citizens at-risk to be victims of big brother abuse - should be provided with concealed video recording devices that interoperate with their cell phones, or possibly just use the cell phone cameras themselves. At the press of a button, the video will begin being inconspicuously transferred in near real time via cell phone to a remote server. A citizen would activate the remote transfer mode when being confronted by an officer. This ensures that the footage can not be "lost" or otherwise destroyed or confiscated by the enforcement officers or agency involved. The video would be transferred to the remote server encrypted. But could after the incident be "unlocked" by the transmitting individual for publication if abuse occurred during the recorded confrontation.
"What is wrong with our schools is that this can a) happen and b) get blown off completely; as it is obviously my fault for seeking medical attention and since I was a student, I must have started the fight with the rent-a-cop."
If this is true, you should file a complaint. I'm serious. You were the victim of a crime. It doesn't matter that it was 10 years ago. Just like it doesn't matter when sexual assaults occur 10 or more years ago. Don't let this offender forget what happened. You owe it to the others students who have and will be abused by this same officer.
You dispute that the goal is making sure every vote counts.
"This is a very widely accepted fallacy. As the size of the voting body rises, the chance of a perfect tally falls very quickly towards zero. Voting with any large group is a statistical process, not an exact one."
On the contrary, the probability that we can correctly tally all tallyable votes - "a perfect tally" - is very close to 1.
You seem to misunderstand the function of elections. An election is not simply a poll to determine the preference of the electorate. An election is a "poll" to determine precisely the preference of members of the electorate who express a preference, where the sample size is the number members of the electorate who express a preference through the designated means - the production of a tallyable vote. There is no projection or extrapolation involved. If a member of the electorate does not show up and produce a tallyable vote, then his or her preference is uncounted. This is not a medi poll. This is not an exit poll. This is a very different kind of "poll". It is a count.
We are faced with 2 challenges, neither of which has anything significant to do with sample size and confidence level of the polling you seem to be thinking of.
The first challenge is to ensure that every voter who wishes to produce a tallyable vote, produces a tallyable vote.
The first challenge is largely independent of the method of voting and tallying the vote. We need to make sure that people are not turned away, are not threatened, are not compelled to vote one way or another, vote for only a single candidate per race, and so forth. While electronic voting can help us address some of these issues, they for the most part are independent of the actual process of tallying votes and are not, for the most part: the issue we are discussing when we discuss electronic voting.
And why you want to make the distinction between a runoff election and a recount, makes no sense. These same issues will be present should a runoff election be conducted. Whereas recounting actually makes a difference. A recount is essentially an audit. We perform an audit of a vote just as we would perform an audit of monetary transactions in a bank system. We do so to look for tampering and other sources of error. Whereas a runoff election risks disenfranchizing large numbers of voters who do not vote on the second, or third, or fourth attempt.
The second challenge, the one we are concerned with here, is to ensure that we tally every tallyable vote.
The second challenge, despite what you would have us believe, has no fundamental margin of error that is significantly more than the margin of error in a bank system totalling monetary transactions, or for that matter, your CPU performing integer addition. This is a miniscule margin of error we are talking about here.
Tallying every tallyable vote is a solved problem. We just need to get the technology out there. It is as solved as the "problem" of your bank producing monthly statements. Would you accept a statement from your bank reading: $5000.00 +/- $30? Of course not, and we don't, but it is a solved problem. Just as with voting, the challenges we face in voting are problems problems of security and deception.
And once we get this minor hurdle out of the way, as Thompson says, we can move on to the much bigger issues.
"Did you even read the article? There simply ARE NOT ENOUGH SKILLED IT WORKERS IN THE US!"
If the demand for skilled IT workers were higher than the supply, we would expect wages to be up. But adjusted wages are basically flat over something like the last 5 years.
The "problem" is that there is a shortage of supply of IT workers at the prices corporations want to pay.
By bringing in additional H1Bs who will be underpaid (yes, they are and will be), we disrupt the market forces which would otherwise tend to force IT wages up.
Claims that there are not enough skilled U.S. IT workers is just another case of the corporate propaganda and lobbying.
And of *course* foreign governments want more of their workers to have access to U.S. jobs. Why? Because those workers will funnel a significant amont of that money back into the economies of their countries of origin.
"If we rely on courtesy to dictate our traffic patterns, we'll be victim to those who have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk. The U.S. has far too many people that fall into this category for the strategy to be effective."
Although I imagine reckless driving would still be reckless driving. If I were to cut across another car's line through an intersection after it had already entered the intersection, my driving would still be reckless according to any definition of reckless driving I have seen. And it would be reckless independent of any traffic markings or signals present.
And we already are victim to those who "have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk." This is the definition of reckless driving (for certain degrees of "risk"). Because they ignore traffic markings and signals right now, the elimination of traffic markings does not affect the risk they pose.
For anyone who has to sit at red lights at empty intersections for fear of cops hiding in the bushes or in a parking lot, this would be most welcome.
The only issue I see is with busy roads to which access is controlled by stop signs and signals without on ramps. In these cases a driver attempting to safely enter the road could conceivably wait the better part of an hour or more before being able to safely enter.
That's great, but we're not talking about purely hypothetical space propulsion mechanisms from 40 years ago. What does the Bussard Ramjet, hypothetical musings from 40 years ago, have to do with this story today? Nothing. They share fusion, but that in name only. And what of it that science fiction has appropriated his name? And that's before you launch into your tirade of name calling. When you do reference reality, you distort it and cast it in the worst possible light. To characterize the history of his research as "whenever he tried to test it under controlled conditions, it failed - and he blamed some obscure technical malfunction for this inability to achieve any measurable results," is distortion.
Although the Slashdot moderators appear to have found your handwaving and strawman rather clever.
If you do not find at least plausible his explanation of a hold on publishing and loss of funding due to alternative energy research being cut from the Navy budget due to spending pressures on R&D coinciding with the Iraq war, without evidence to the contrary, you are simply unreasonable. Do you really believe, having provided no evidence to this effect, that this man is attempting to swindle potential investors out of $200 million? This borders on libel.
You imply Bussard is engaging in deception, yet you offer no evidence of this other than handwaving and your science fiction strawman. Do you assume everyone is attempting to deceive you until proven otherwise in a controlled experiment? Did you even watch the presentation of the story you are commenting on? I doubt it.
What are these "results" you claim he purports to have found but can't reproduce? The claims he makes of his tests are not remarkable. You appear to present the issue in a purposefully antagonistic manner. He does not, to my knowledge, claim to have demonstrated a fusion device that would be capable of producing greater useable energy than is required to power it. And in this sense, there is nothing remarkable about what he claims to have found in his results. Certainly nothing paranormal.
And what on earth should Randi have to do with this? Randi is an excellent foil for psychics and dowsers, but he is not a physicist.
And he is not asking for $200 million for himself or his company. If this is the form funding to see these tests realize took, he would accept this, but as he says, he is an old man and is tired. He only wants to see his vision realized, even if that means it is carried out by another company or by another country.
And infact in the proposal he presents, the first step involves only $2 million, and is intended to reproduce the results of earlier tests in an environment where engineering, and lab control and instrumentation are fully funded in order to improve the reliabilitty of the results. This is more than the paltry prize offered by Randi. Although I fail, again, to see why Randi would have any interest in verifying unremarkable claims of nuclear fusion.
This is not some nut playing with magnets and tesla coils in his garage.
"but it's one of those cases where it would be nice if there were a government organization, or powerful private interest, whose business it was to intercede in favor of individuals in these cases of imbalanced litigation on controversial rights issues."
We must provide individual public defenders and prosecutors for civil cases. They must be mandatory and must be available in all jurisdictions.
We seem to like to think that in our nation justice is accessible to all regardless of social and economic status. But to suggest that individual access to public criminal defenders and prosecutors is sufficient, is a mockery of justice.
Right in our midst our fellow citizens are subject to intimidation of all sorts, threats to their livelihood, and back alley shakedowns. Their abusers act in broad daylight with impunity. Our civil system does not hold them to account. This should not surprise us. Our laws are written by these very abusers: corporations and a cadre of powerful elitists. They use our government to direct our tax dollars into their coffers, while writing laws to ensure that what they can not control by force of government, they shall not be deterred from controlling by impotence of government.
To force a common citizen to face loss of livelihood and the ability to provide for one's children in a trial where a reasonable doubt is no defense, where no defender is provided against law that is illegal for the accussed to declare himself competent to practice, is criminal. It is a despicable and barbarous thing that has no place in a civilized society.
Justice without access is no justice at all.
How will we prevent abuse of such a system? Citizens might first bring their circumstances before a counselor, magistrate, panel, or similar process or body to appeal for a public civil defender or prosecutor. Yet it is far better that we should lose some resources to abuse than that any person should be denied justice, better a hundred times over.
And I'm not going to answer PnP D&D (but it should be mentioned).
For years now the Neverwinter Nights (PC game) online persistent world community has provided compelling roleplaying, epic tales, daily DM participation, and content created by and evolved by the player communities themselves.
And now with the release of Neverwinter Nights 2, the adventure will continue with shiny new graphics, a more robust 3.5ed D&D rules implementation, and a much improved world design toolkit allowing builders to create more immersive content tha never.
You're going to be waiting an awfully long time before you can get this out of WoW. WoW is the Walmart of RPGs.
Why is it that you people accept the overwhelming scientific, scholarly consensus on most issues that affect your life, yet become staunch ultra-skeptics when it comes to issues that cast doubt on your pet religious and political ideologies?
You can't have it both ways. If you go and do the research you can find crazy fringe elements affecting just about every field of science.
Is it that you are uniquely qualified in the fields of environmental and atmospheric science? Does your extensive research background in these fields put you in a position of being able to uniquely reject the scientific consensus on global warming, where you accept the scientific consensus on nearly every other issue?
I think not. I think you are politicizing something that ought not be political.
"The earth is warming slightly... perhaps with some influence from us"???
Are you aware we also have 3 theories of the development of the planet earth? One theory posits that it formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Another theory posits that it formed some tens of thousands of years ago. Yet a third theory posits that it formed 6000 years ago.
Now, I'm no "man of science", but gee golly, it looks like we have one theory WAY out of line claiming the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. And then we have two theories claiming that the earth is less than 20-30 thousand years old. What makes more sense to you? That 4.5 billion years old theory seems pretty far out there in left field. 2 theories vs 3. Boy, by the looks of it the scientific consensus is that the earth is only a few tens of thousands of years old at most! I think it's important to take a balanced view on these things you know?
Oh, wait... you're a political idealogue, not a religious idealogue, so you buy into the wacky anti global warming speculation but not the young earth speculation. Is that right? I thought so. But boy do you have a long winded way of saying it.
LOL! This is too good. To refute claims of scientific consensus, you refer us to an article on NEWSMAX.com. "Well it depends on what you mean by 'consensus'". Just like the meaning of "is"? Or is this different?
Do you people modding this guy up know what NEWSMAX is? It is an online conservative news re-publishing magazine.
When I clicked through the ad on the right said "Conservative T-shirts" picturing a T-shirt reading "Hippies Smell". God, this has scientific, scholarly research written all over it!
There were an additional 11 ads lined up along the left column. And a further 6 ads on the bottom of the page.
The linked article is actually an article from csnnews.com (it says so at the top of the article).
CSNNews.com claims:
"Study after study by the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com, clearly demonstrate a liberal bias in many news outlets "
And further: "The Cybercast News Service was launched on June 16, 1998 as a news source for individuals, news organizations and broadcasters who put a higher premium on balance than spin and seek news that's ignored or under-reported as a result of media bias by omission."
LOL. The Slashdot mods are being duped by the online equivalent of FOX "News".
The problem in this case is quite clearly a system of justice that imposes an access fee, and a legal system that can not reasonably be comprehended by ordinary people. As you can see in the attorney fees awarded to Katzer against Jacobsen, it is a quagmire. One wrong step and you are out $30,000 to your abuser even when it is overwhelmingly clear to any ordinary person that you are the victim.
Either you pay the access fee - exorbitant private attorney fees - or you risk going into debt, even when no sane person would say you are guilty.
You won't see this issue on anyone's political platform either. Republicans are in bed with big business who don't want average joes to be on even playing fields, and Democrats are in bed with the trial lawyer lobbies. If average joes like Jacobsen the open source developer here can get free legal advice and get free representation to get relief from abusers like Katzer, all of a sudden all these lawyers are up in arms because most of those fuckers are more concerned with lining their own pockets than they are with truth and justice. They write our complex laws. They write our licenses and contracts. They lobby to guarantee themselves a monopoly on legal advice. And they will eat you up and spit you out if you so much as try to challenge them.
In order to get justice in this country we need to break the despicable monopoly on access imposed by private attorneys. We need to make them public. Access for all to justice is even MORE important than access for all to medical care. Maybe we can't afford the best medical care for everyone. But let it not be said that we did not guarantee every person regardless of race, class, ability or intelligence, Justice to its fullest.
The "problem" appears to be that Jacobsen represented himself and made legal charges that were technically wrong. I mean, he charged Katzer (KAM) on one count under anti-trust law. Read the judge's order. The issue with justice in our country, in my mind is illustrated here by the fact that Jacobsen is clearly the victim, yet because he did not have money to spend on a lawyer and made some technical legal blunders trying to do it on his own, he ends up getting bent over.
It's despicable, but that's how justice works in this country.
We need a system where a guy like Jacobsen here can just go down to the court, tell the judge in plain words what this fucker Katzer is doing to him, and get relief without having to put up big bucks for a lawyer and without facing $30,000 in essentially fines because of a technical screwup that someone without legal training can't be expected to have forseen.
If you read the news on the site as well as the judge's order, you see that JMRI contributor Jacobsen brought Katzer and his company KAM to court in an effort to stop him from harassing Jacobsen at home and at work and from continuing to send and demand payment of bills in excess of $200,000 for imagined patent royalties for the distribution of open source JMRI.
Because Jacobsen basically made the wrong technical legal charges in an effort to gain relief from Katzer's false accusations and harassment, Jacobsen, the open source developer, ended up being forced to pay Katzer approximately $30,000 in legal fees.
It appears that Jacobsen represented himself.
Now, this situation in itself is deeply disturbing. Jacobsen apparently did not hire a lawyer, and what is disturbing is that he should NOT have had to hire a lawyer in order to get relief from bullying by Katzer and his corporation that was already interfering with Jacobsen's personal and professional life. Because he thought justice would be done for the little guy if you are just honest, he made charges that were technically wrong. An honest mistake. A technicality.
In the case of a private citizen against a corporation (KAM in this case), justice must not come down to whether the citizen dots his 'I's and crosses his 'T's. Justice must not be dependent upon the citizen's economic means. In this and many cases it clearly was. The legal system through which we must rely for relief from injustice such as this is truly a quagmire as we can see in this case by Jacobsen, clearly the victim, being forced to pay legal fees to a corporation because of a technicality.
Do you realize it is illegal in most states for an ordinary citizen to read try to help another citizen by answering questions about what a law even means - for attempting to understand on our own the laws the govern our lives? There is a tax on justice to the tune of $200/hour+.
Jacobsen should be able to go into a court, tell the court what is happening to him, and the COURT should look at the situation and say, look, you are the victim here, this is what laws this asshole is guilty of, if he does this again you come back here and we will punish him.
THAT is what should happen. I don't care how it is done. Maybe that means public attorneys who we can go to for legal advice and to file the correct charges in court. Maybe that means courts that we can just make in and the judge will be responsible for determining if and how he has been wronged. This isn't going to be popular with the trial lawyer lobby. The same as they have lobbied to make it illegal for us to try to help fellow citizens to understand the laws that govern our lives, they also strongly resist any move that would allow us people to get justice out of this system of ours without inserting quarters in their pockets just to play.
You won't see Republicans get behind this because their big business sugar daddies want to keep citizens under their thumbs. You won't see Democrats get behind this because they are in the pockets of the trial lawyer lobby.
A technicality is not justice at all. Fuck you KAM. And fuck you you goddamned lawyers who work for money not for what is just and true.
If you are more concerned about the absolutely remote chance that you would be sued for downloading (not distributing) this software than you are in evaluating the security and fairness of this software in the public interest, then perhaps you shouldn't have spent the time to post.
Honestly. You think they will successfully prosecute you for inspecting software that is employed to safeguard the foundation of our democratic civilization? Or that they will dare even attempt to?
You don't get to say, "In hypothetical scenario X this law leads to absurd consequences, therefore I am not bound by this law. Checkmate!" It usually doesn't work like that unless someone is actually in that hypothetical scenario.
That the law could impose a penalty on someone for unknowingly connecting to an open access point without authorization does not mean the law does not apply when you knowingly connect to an open access point without authorization. Our justice system is not a sophomoric debate club.
Similarly, just because you can conceive of cases where say, choice of essid could legitimately be taken to authorize access, this does not mean you are somehow excused to use access points that do not have essid names implying access.
Further, if the law includes a clause, "under no circumstances shall the essid name alone be used as a defense that the access was authorized". Laws in our legal code aren't laws of physics, neither are they mathematical axioms. They have holes and exceptions, and the fact that you feel you have cleverly identified them does not somehow excuse you from their penalties.
Laws may also be written so as to exclude "unknowingly accessed" defenses.
It's this simple: Do not use an access point unless you have explicit authorization to use it. And NO, just because "explicit authorization" has grey areas DOES NOT mean it is null and void when the scenario you are being prosecuted for is black and white.
This is great news! I hope people realize just how much Sun is doing for Free Software in particular by taking these steps. It will soon be possible to run a complete enterprise-class Java development or production environment on a Free Software stack on a Free Software system. No more fiddling with GNU Classpath and GCJ.
The complete package is almost - if not - on the same level as projects like GCC and GNOME.
Not to mention, it is very exciting to consider what this new truly democratic "Java Community Process" will produce in advances in JVM technology and the Java language itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't even start. The ACLU is no friend of 2nd ammendment liberties. On every other ammendment the position of the ACLU is that supporting maximum individual liberty. Yet on 2nd ammendment they take the position - their stated position - of least individual liberty.
Let's put it this way: When it comes to me sitting on my front porch telling the government to get the fuck away, they're with me. But when it comes to me sitting on my front porch with a gun cradled across my lap telling the government to get the fuck away, they afraid. They are afraid because the power of force ultimately trumps the power of any law and any lawyer.
The ACLU is all for you so long as you live on their terms in their utopia. But as soon as you assert your own power, they turn from defender to oppressor.
Now, I'm as liberal as the next guy, but which ammendment is most important?
If the 2nd ammendment goes you are going to have a hell of a lot harder time getting back the 1st ammendment once it goes, and rest assured it will be next.
But give us our 2nd ammendment and I'd like to see them try to take the 1st. Now, maybe Americans are too lazy and apathetic to resist, but when it comes right down to it our odds are much better armed. Look no further than Iraq.
This was close in mind of this nation's founders.
What do you think would have happened if instead of taking up arms they had staged a giant sit-in? You'd be having tea and fucking crumpets right now instead of beer and pork rinds watching John Wayne - peace be upon him. Amen.
It is possible to control the rate of advancement of players. This usually amounts to daily or weekly experience caps. I think a curve-based cap, where one is capped in power relative to other players might be workable. But these systems tend to be arbitrary and unfair. Who's to say the person who is most advanced isn't also a great player who happens to have a lot of freetime?
However, bigger issues in my mind are "twinking" and farming, particularly "boss-farming". These activities can ruin the atmosphere for other players, as well as ruin the economy.
My experience is particularly in Neverwinter Nights community persistent worlds.
There are two very effective measures to controlling these excesses:
1. Make content tied to quests and one-time only. If you defeat a boss once on a character, you don't - can't - defeat it again. Create sufficient content so that players can reach maximum level with minimal replay. You'd think this would drive players away; it doesn't. Most of these players will start new characters and play through the world again, until eventually they have experienced all the content and leave once they become bored like any other player.
2. Prevent players from transferring gold and powerful items to the new characters you create. This keeps everyone on a reasonably even playing field, and it prevents the world economy from spiraling out of control or otherwise disrupting the original vision for the world. A low magic world where every new player has a +2 weapon is suddenly no longer low magic.
Reinforce these steps with content and quests that focus on choice and character development in order to provide greater replay value.
I will never go back to playing a game like WoW where the "end game" is fighting through the same 2-3 dungeons to kill the same bosses, week after week after week for months. On top of this, outside of PvP WoW has next to no replay value in terms of character development and dynamic content, making it that much worse. And even PvP amounts to little more than a grind. Anything but the top rank is primarily about finding a group of people with as much free time as you and playing more than everyone else in the same 3 battlegrounds, over and over and over for 40+ hours a week.
"I think kids should be allowed to have electronic devices because the threat of being recorded will keep bad teachers in check"
Absolutely!
And if that means teachers who can't handle the stress or the scandal are weeded out... win for us!
Once we start to effectively filter out the abusive, dysfunctional, mediocre teachers, we can start to see the salaries of good teachers increase and the prominence of the position in society increase.
Teaching should be considered one of the highest callings in society.
I'd like to see teaching become a profession that is considered elite, that demands excellence, that is highly challenging, where 5 years in teachers are earning $80k+ or more.
But right now we don't have the quality control and the funding to do that.
"You would lose your job as a teacher rather quickly. Doesn't mean you would be a bad teacher."
Oh PLEASE. Insightful? It is Insightful to suggest that teachers should "slap kids around a little"?
This is criminal abuse. Should employers "slap employees around a little"? Should police be able to "slap arestees around a little"?
Or do you think children are some kind of sub-humans?
This attitude is shameful. Are we cavemen? Do we want to impress upon our children that the structure of society is that of a chicken house pecking order?
Do we want to impress upon our children that the correct way to resolve disagreements is through violence and intimidation rather than reason, understanding, and care?
And we wonder why politics in our country is centered around shouting and hate, violence and intimidation and unthinking propaganda... If these are the only tools with which we equip students to resolve disputes, to compell compliance, to compell submission, it is little wonder that this is what it comes down to.
"Kids who deliberately provoke a teacher to film the results don't need to be yelled at so much as slapped around a little. And that's why I'd be a terrible teacher."
This is a SHAMEFUL attitude.
There is nothing more important we as a society can do for our future workers, artists, thinkers and leaders than to ensure that they are taught by the absolute best people - best teachers - we can find. Teaching should be seen as one of the highest callings in our society.
And do you know what it is going to take for this to happen? We are going to need to weed out the scum and the freeloaders and the riff raff currently serving as teachers - teachers like you would be.
ONLY then can we increase their pay.
And students like we see here are essential to raising our standards and forcing the scum out. It is never acceptable to scream like this at a child. Never. We can not fund the abuse of our children in our education system and wonder why our education system is failing.
Just as we need police officers who are honorable and intelligent and of mild tempermant who can respond to the most intense situations and remain cool, we need teachers who can do the same.
If you and your friends can't cut it in the teaching profession, then the problem isn't that we don't allow you to get away with abusing and intimidating our children. No, the problem is YOU.
"Slapped around a little?" You should not be allowed near a child. I fear for your children.
Wake up, buddy. These are public employees. These are the people to who we have committed one of the most fundamental and important roles in our society: teaching the next generation. In many cases these teachers are more important in shaping the future of our society than are parents themselves.
You better believe we need to hold these people to the highest level of accountability.
And you know what? Teachers unions should be happy we are doing this. As we weed out the scum and the freeloaders who are negatively impacting our children, we will raise the standards in the teaching profession and hopefully thereby raise the wages of teachers to reflect the fundamental and critical role they play in our society and our future.
The context is irrelevant.
If the teacher feels that it is shameful to be yelling like this then the teacher should not have done it. This teacher - many teachers - seem to think that their students are some kind of sub-people, to and in front of whom otherwise shameful behavior has no consequences. This is a public employee in a public building operating in a public employee's capacity. This behavior is unacceptable. This attitude is unacceptable. It is as unacceptable as it is in another context for a police officer to react in an uncontrolled and violent manner. If these public employees can not function in their public capacity with dignity, understanding, and a mild temperment, they are not fit to serve us and should be dismissed.
We must object to this. The ubiquity of video and audio documentation of abuse has empowered the victims and at-risk people of our society in unprecedented ways. No doubt the system and those employ and who otherwise beneit from it, wish to shut this down, wish to remain unaccountable.
It is the test of our society how we will stand up for those who are least among us.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taser21no
It's off the front page now, but hopefully we can get this and some additional information brought up in a Slashback.
In my mind this is an incredibly important case. All the more so because outside of places like Slashdot and "liberal" blogs and newssources, there is the sentiment that the student "got what he deserved". This should come as no surprise, I suppose, considering how the public still blames rape victims for "asking for it" or suggesting that they "should have known better". I don't care how much of an ass this student is. That simply doesn't matter. We need to take every opportunity we can to get these thugs out of positions of authority. It is disgusting to see common people siding with thugs in positions of authority over their fellow citizens. The only way to combat this is to raise the outrage by getting public exposure of videos like these.
"Actually, I'm just a bit wiser than the student in the video. I don't believe in silent obedience, but I do believe in picking the time and place for the battle. Now, if this student was out to prove that the police are out of control, he will probably be successful, and he just endured what was necessary to make his point. Otherwise, he was just being an idiot."
ALL that matters is that the cops tasered this man 5 times while he was lying limp on the ground. He could have screamed "Fuck you pig fuckers" while laying on the ground and it would not have mattered. It does not matter how dumb he was. You are simply blaming the victim.
Yet NOTHING he did could have justified this assault. Let there be no doubt: this man was the victim of a brutal and malicious assault. He was lying limp on the ground. He posed no threat whatsoever. The only "threat" was to the ego and control-complex of the officers. They even tasered him one last time at the end for good measure. You can just imagine the officer saying under his breath, "Take that you little Arab shit" as he drives the taser into him one last time.
He did the right thing by screaming. He was being assaulted. Who knows what these monsters would have done to him had there been no witnesses. They would have beaten and tasered him with impunity. What jury would otherwise believe the word of an Arab-American student against the word of white police officers? Thank God he screamed.
What did he achieve? This man has done a great service to the community. He has exposed these armed, vindictive thugs in positions of authority for what they are.
I hope to God they are stripped of their badges and charged with felony assault. They are not fit to be mall security guards.
Citizens should fight these big brother activities by turning the concept on its head. Just as we as citizens are concerned about "big brother" activities, corrupt politicians and law enforcement officers should be trembling in their boots over "little brother".
What does "little brother" do? He tattles on "big brother". That's us watching them.
At-risk citizens - citizens at-risk to be victims of big brother abuse - should be provided with concealed video recording devices that interoperate with their cell phones, or possibly just use the cell phone cameras themselves. At the press of a button, the video will begin being inconspicuously transferred in near real time via cell phone to a remote server. A citizen would activate the remote transfer mode when being confronted by an officer. This ensures that the footage can not be "lost" or otherwise destroyed or confiscated by the enforcement officers or agency involved. The video would be transferred to the remote server encrypted. But could after the incident be "unlocked" by the transmitting individual for publication if abuse occurred during the recorded confrontation.
"What is wrong with our schools is that this can a) happen and b) get blown off completely; as it is obviously my fault for seeking medical attention and since I was a student, I must have started the fight with the rent-a-cop."
If this is true, you should file a complaint. I'm serious. You were the victim of a crime. It doesn't matter that it was 10 years ago. Just like it doesn't matter when sexual assaults occur 10 or more years ago. Don't let this offender forget what happened. You owe it to the others students who have and will be abused by this same officer.
You dispute that the goal is making sure every vote counts.
"This is a very widely accepted fallacy. As the size of the voting body rises, the chance of a perfect tally falls very quickly towards zero. Voting with any large group is a statistical process, not an exact one."
On the contrary, the probability that we can correctly tally all tallyable votes - "a perfect tally" - is very close to 1.
You seem to misunderstand the function of elections. An election is not simply a poll to determine the preference of the electorate. An election is a "poll" to determine precisely the preference of members of the electorate who express a preference, where the sample size is the number members of the electorate who express a preference through the designated means - the production of a tallyable vote. There is no projection or extrapolation involved. If a member of the electorate does not show up and produce a tallyable vote, then his or her preference is uncounted. This is not a medi poll. This is not an exit poll. This is a very different kind of "poll". It is a count.
We are faced with 2 challenges, neither of which has anything significant to do with sample size and confidence level of the polling you seem to be thinking of.
The first challenge is to ensure that every voter who wishes to produce a tallyable vote, produces a tallyable vote.
The first challenge is largely independent of the method of voting and tallying the vote. We need to make sure that people are not turned away, are not threatened, are not compelled to vote one way or another, vote for only a single candidate per race, and so forth. While electronic voting can help us address some of these issues, they for the most part are independent of the actual process of tallying votes and are not, for the most part: the issue we are discussing when we discuss electronic voting.
And why you want to make the distinction between a runoff election and a recount, makes no sense. These same issues will be present should a runoff election be conducted. Whereas recounting actually makes a difference. A recount is essentially an audit. We perform an audit of a vote just as we would perform an audit of monetary transactions in a bank system. We do so to look for tampering and other sources of error. Whereas a runoff election risks disenfranchizing large numbers of voters who do not vote on the second, or third, or fourth attempt.
The second challenge, the one we are concerned with here, is to ensure that we tally every tallyable vote.
The second challenge, despite what you would have us believe, has no fundamental margin of error that is significantly more than the margin of error in a bank system totalling monetary transactions, or for that matter, your CPU performing integer addition. This is a miniscule margin of error we are talking about here.
Tallying every tallyable vote is a solved problem. We just need to get the technology out there. It is as solved as the "problem" of your bank producing monthly statements. Would you accept a statement from your bank reading: $5000.00 +/- $30? Of course not, and we don't, but it is a solved problem. Just as with voting, the challenges we face in voting are problems problems of security and deception.
And once we get this minor hurdle out of the way, as Thompson says, we can move on to the much bigger issues.
"Did you even read the article? There simply ARE NOT ENOUGH SKILLED IT WORKERS IN THE US!"
If the demand for skilled IT workers were higher than the supply, we would expect wages to be up. But adjusted wages are basically flat over something like the last 5 years.
The "problem" is that there is a shortage of supply of IT workers at the prices corporations want to pay.
By bringing in additional H1Bs who will be underpaid (yes, they are and will be), we disrupt the market forces which would otherwise tend to force IT wages up.
Claims that there are not enough skilled U.S. IT workers is just another case of the corporate propaganda and lobbying.
And of *course* foreign governments want more of their workers to have access to U.S. jobs. Why? Because those workers will funnel a significant amont of that money back into the economies of their countries of origin.
Just follow the money.
"If we rely on courtesy to dictate our traffic patterns, we'll be victim to those who have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk. The U.S. has far too many people that fall into this category for the strategy to be effective."
Although I imagine reckless driving would still be reckless driving. If I were to cut across another car's line through an intersection after it had already entered the intersection, my driving would still be reckless according to any definition of reckless driving I have seen. And it would be reckless independent of any traffic markings or signals present.
And we already are victim to those who "have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk." This is the definition of reckless driving (for certain degrees of "risk"). Because they ignore traffic markings and signals right now, the elimination of traffic markings does not affect the risk they pose.
For anyone who has to sit at red lights at empty intersections for fear of cops hiding in the bushes or in a parking lot, this would be most welcome.
The only issue I see is with busy roads to which access is controlled by stop signs and signals without on ramps. In these cases a driver attempting to safely enter the road could conceivably wait the better part of an hour or more before being able to safely enter.
That's great, but we're not talking about purely hypothetical space propulsion mechanisms from 40 years ago. What does the Bussard Ramjet, hypothetical musings from 40 years ago, have to do with this story today? Nothing. They share fusion, but that in name only. And what of it that science fiction has appropriated his name? And that's before you launch into your tirade of name calling. When you do reference reality, you distort it and cast it in the worst possible light. To characterize the history of his research as "whenever he tried to test it under controlled conditions, it failed - and he blamed some obscure technical malfunction for this inability to achieve any measurable results," is distortion.
Although the Slashdot moderators appear to have found your handwaving and strawman rather clever.
If you do not find at least plausible his explanation of a hold on publishing and loss of funding due to alternative energy research being cut from the Navy budget due to spending pressures on R&D coinciding with the Iraq war, without evidence to the contrary, you are simply unreasonable. Do you really believe, having provided no evidence to this effect, that this man is attempting to swindle potential investors out of $200 million? This borders on libel.
You imply Bussard is engaging in deception, yet you offer no evidence of this other than handwaving and your science fiction strawman. Do you assume everyone is attempting to deceive you until proven otherwise in a controlled experiment? Did you even watch the presentation of the story you are commenting on? I doubt it.
What are these "results" you claim he purports to have found but can't reproduce? The claims he makes of his tests are not remarkable. You appear to present the issue in a purposefully antagonistic manner. He does not, to my knowledge, claim to have demonstrated a fusion device that would be capable of producing greater useable energy than is required to power it. And in this sense, there is nothing remarkable about what he claims to have found in his results. Certainly nothing paranormal.
And what on earth should Randi have to do with this? Randi is an excellent foil for psychics and dowsers, but he is not a physicist.
And he is not asking for $200 million for himself or his company. If this is the form funding to see these tests realize took, he would accept this, but as he says, he is an old man and is tired. He only wants to see his vision realized, even if that means it is carried out by another company or by another country.
And infact in the proposal he presents, the first step involves only $2 million, and is intended to reproduce the results of earlier tests in an environment where engineering, and lab control and instrumentation are fully funded in order to improve the reliabilitty of the results. This is more than the paltry prize offered by Randi. Although I fail, again, to see why Randi would have any interest in verifying unremarkable claims of nuclear fusion.
This is not some nut playing with magnets and tesla coils in his garage.
"but it's one of those cases where it would be nice if there were a government organization, or powerful private interest, whose business it was to intercede in favor of individuals in these cases of imbalanced litigation on controversial rights issues."
We must provide individual public defenders and prosecutors for civil cases. They must be mandatory and must be available in all jurisdictions.
We seem to like to think that in our nation justice is accessible to all regardless of social and economic status. But to suggest that individual access to public criminal defenders and prosecutors is sufficient, is a mockery of justice.
Right in our midst our fellow citizens are subject to intimidation of all sorts, threats to their livelihood, and back alley shakedowns. Their abusers act in broad daylight with impunity. Our civil system does not hold them to account. This should not surprise us. Our laws are written by these very abusers: corporations and a cadre of powerful elitists. They use our government to direct our tax dollars into their coffers, while writing laws to ensure that what they can not control by force of government, they shall not be deterred from controlling by impotence of government.
To force a common citizen to face loss of livelihood and the ability to provide for one's children in a trial where a reasonable doubt is no defense, where no defender is provided against law that is illegal for the accussed to declare himself competent to practice, is criminal. It is a despicable and barbarous thing that has no place in a civilized society.
Justice without access is no justice at all.
How will we prevent abuse of such a system? Citizens might first bring their circumstances before a counselor, magistrate, panel, or similar process or body to appeal for a public civil defender or prosecutor. Yet it is far better that we should lose some resources to abuse than that any person should be denied justice, better a hundred times over.
What he wants has been here all along.
And I'm not going to answer PnP D&D (but it should be mentioned).
For years now the Neverwinter Nights (PC game) online persistent world community has provided compelling roleplaying, epic tales, daily DM participation, and content created by and evolved by the player communities themselves.
And now with the release of Neverwinter Nights 2, the adventure will continue with shiny new graphics, a more robust 3.5ed D&D rules implementation, and a much improved world design toolkit allowing builders to create more immersive content tha never.
You're going to be waiting an awfully long time before you can get this out of WoW. WoW is the Walmart of RPGs.
Why is it that you people accept the overwhelming scientific, scholarly consensus on most issues that affect your life, yet become staunch ultra-skeptics when it comes to issues that cast doubt on your pet religious and political ideologies?
... perhaps with some influence from us"???
You can't have it both ways. If you go and do the research you can find crazy fringe elements affecting just about every field of science.
Is it that you are uniquely qualified in the fields of environmental and atmospheric science? Does your extensive research background in these fields put you in a position of being able to uniquely reject the scientific consensus on global warming, where you accept the scientific consensus on nearly every other issue?
I think not. I think you are politicizing something that ought not be political.
"The earth is warming slightly
Are you aware we also have 3 theories of the development of the planet earth? One theory posits that it formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Another theory posits that it formed some tens of thousands of years ago. Yet a third theory posits that it formed 6000 years ago.
Now, I'm no "man of science", but gee golly, it looks like we have one theory WAY out of line claiming the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. And then we have two theories claiming that the earth is less than 20-30 thousand years old. What makes more sense to you? That 4.5 billion years old theory seems pretty far out there in left field. 2 theories vs 3. Boy, by the looks of it the scientific consensus is that the earth is only a few tens of thousands of years old at most! I think it's important to take a balanced view on these things you know?
Oh, wait... you're a political idealogue, not a religious idealogue, so you buy into the wacky anti global warming speculation but not the young earth speculation. Is that right? I thought so. But boy do you have a long winded way of saying it.
"http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/1 4 /161152.shtml"
LOL! This is too good. To refute claims of scientific consensus, you refer us to an article on NEWSMAX.com. "Well it depends on what you mean by 'consensus'". Just like the meaning of "is"? Or is this different?
Do you people modding this guy up know what NEWSMAX is? It is an online conservative news re-publishing magazine.
When I clicked through the ad on the right said "Conservative T-shirts" picturing a T-shirt reading "Hippies Smell". God, this has scientific, scholarly research written all over it!
There were an additional 11 ads lined up along the left column. And a further 6 ads on the bottom of the page.
The linked article is actually an article from csnnews.com (it says so at the top of the article).
CSNNews.com claims:
"Study after study by the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com, clearly demonstrate a liberal bias in many news outlets "
And further:
"The Cybercast News Service was launched on June 16, 1998 as a news source for individuals, news organizations and broadcasters who put a higher premium on balance than spin and seek news that's ignored or under-reported as a result of media bias by omission."
LOL. The Slashdot mods are being duped by the online equivalent of FOX "News".
The problem in this case is quite clearly a system of justice that imposes an access fee, and a legal system that can not reasonably be comprehended by ordinary people. As you can see in the attorney fees awarded to Katzer against Jacobsen, it is a quagmire. One wrong step and you are out $30,000 to your abuser even when it is overwhelmingly clear to any ordinary person that you are the victim.
Either you pay the access fee - exorbitant private attorney fees - or you risk going into debt, even when no sane person would say you are guilty.
You won't see this issue on anyone's political platform either. Republicans are in bed with big business who don't want average joes to be on even playing fields, and Democrats are in bed with the trial lawyer lobbies. If average joes like Jacobsen the open source developer here can get free legal advice and get free representation to get relief from abusers like Katzer, all of a sudden all these lawyers are up in arms because most of those fuckers are more concerned with lining their own pockets than they are with truth and justice. They write our complex laws. They write our licenses and contracts. They lobby to guarantee themselves a monopoly on legal advice. And they will eat you up and spit you out if you so much as try to challenge them.
In order to get justice in this country we need to break the despicable monopoly on access imposed by private attorneys. We need to make them public. Access for all to justice is even MORE important than access for all to medical care. Maybe we can't afford the best medical care for everyone. But let it not be said that we did not guarantee every person regardless of race, class, ability or intelligence, Justice to its fullest.
The "problem" appears to be that Jacobsen represented himself and made legal charges that were technically wrong. I mean, he charged Katzer (KAM) on one count under anti-trust law. Read the judge's order. The issue with justice in our country, in my mind is illustrated here by the fact that Jacobsen is clearly the victim, yet because he did not have money to spend on a lawyer and made some technical legal blunders trying to do it on his own, he ends up getting bent over.
It's despicable, but that's how justice works in this country.
We need a system where a guy like Jacobsen here can just go down to the court, tell the judge in plain words what this fucker Katzer is doing to him, and get relief without having to put up big bucks for a lawyer and without facing $30,000 in essentially fines because of a technical screwup that someone without legal training can't be expected to have forseen.
If you read the news on the site as well as the judge's order, you see that JMRI contributor Jacobsen brought Katzer and his company KAM to court in an effort to stop him from harassing Jacobsen at home and at work and from continuing to send and demand payment of bills in excess of $200,000 for imagined patent royalties for the distribution of open source JMRI.
Because Jacobsen basically made the wrong technical legal charges in an effort to gain relief from Katzer's false accusations and harassment, Jacobsen, the open source developer, ended up being forced to pay Katzer approximately $30,000 in legal fees.
It appears that Jacobsen represented himself.
Now, this situation in itself is deeply disturbing. Jacobsen apparently did not hire a lawyer, and what is disturbing is that he should NOT have had to hire a lawyer in order to get relief from bullying by Katzer and his corporation that was already interfering with Jacobsen's personal and professional life. Because he thought justice would be done for the little guy if you are just honest, he made charges that were technically wrong. An honest mistake. A technicality.
In the case of a private citizen against a corporation (KAM in this case), justice must not come down to whether the citizen dots his 'I's and crosses his 'T's. Justice must not be dependent upon the citizen's economic means. In this and many cases it clearly was. The legal system through which we must rely for relief from injustice such as this is truly a quagmire as we can see in this case by Jacobsen, clearly the victim, being forced to pay legal fees to a corporation because of a technicality.
Do you realize it is illegal in most states for an ordinary citizen to read try to help another citizen by answering questions about what a law even means - for attempting to understand on our own the laws the govern our lives? There is a tax on justice to the tune of $200/hour+.
Jacobsen should be able to go into a court, tell the court what is happening to him, and the COURT should look at the situation and say, look, you are the victim here, this is what laws this asshole is guilty of, if he does this again you come back here and we will punish him.
THAT is what should happen. I don't care how it is done. Maybe that means public attorneys who we can go to for legal advice and to file the correct charges in court. Maybe that means courts that we can just make in and the judge will be responsible for determining if and how he has been wronged. This isn't going to be popular with the trial lawyer lobby. The same as they have lobbied to make it illegal for us to try to help fellow citizens to understand the laws that govern our lives, they also strongly resist any move that would allow us people to get justice out of this system of ours without inserting quarters in their pockets just to play.
You won't see Republicans get behind this because their big business sugar daddies want to keep citizens under their thumbs. You won't see Democrats get behind this because they are in the pockets of the trial lawyer lobby.
A technicality is not justice at all. Fuck you KAM. And fuck you you goddamned lawyers who work for money not for what is just and true.
If you are more concerned about the absolutely remote chance that you would be sued for downloading (not distributing) this software than you are in evaluating the security and fairness of this software in the public interest, then perhaps you shouldn't have spent the time to post.
Honestly. You think they will successfully prosecute you for inspecting software that is employed to safeguard the foundation of our democratic civilization? Or that they will dare even attempt to?
The answer to your question and to this is: no.
You don't get to say, "In hypothetical scenario X this law leads to absurd consequences, therefore I am not bound by this law. Checkmate!" It usually doesn't work like that unless someone is actually in that hypothetical scenario.
That the law could impose a penalty on someone for unknowingly connecting to an open access point without authorization does not mean the law does not apply when you knowingly connect to an open access point without authorization. Our justice system is not a sophomoric debate club.
Similarly, just because you can conceive of cases where say, choice of essid could legitimately be taken to authorize access, this does not mean you are somehow excused to use access points that do not have essid names implying access.
Further, if the law includes a clause, "under no circumstances shall the essid name alone be used as a defense that the access was authorized". Laws in our legal code aren't laws of physics, neither are they mathematical axioms. They have holes and exceptions, and the fact that you feel you have cleverly identified them does not somehow excuse you from their penalties.
Laws may also be written so as to exclude "unknowingly accessed" defenses.
It's this simple: Do not use an access point unless you have explicit authorization to use it. And NO, just because "explicit authorization" has grey areas DOES NOT mean it is null and void when the scenario you are being prosecuted for is black and white.
This is great news! I hope people realize just how much Sun is doing for Free Software in particular by taking these steps. It will soon be possible to run a complete enterprise-class Java development or production environment on a Free Software stack on a Free Software system. No more fiddling with GNU Classpath and GCJ.
The complete package is almost - if not - on the same level as projects like GCC and GNOME.
Not to mention, it is very exciting to consider what this new truly democratic "Java Community Process" will produce in advances in JVM technology and the Java language itself.