That's a perfect illustration of the problem with excessive hatred. You can't see clearly who is letting him get away with "it".
yes I can and do see that it is the democratically controlled Congress that is letting him get away with this. That is why it is imperative that he not be allowed to finish his term unimpeached. The US government is broken and we are rapidly running out of time to fix it in a nonviolent, rule of law, kind of way. I hate on Bush because of the permanent damage he has done by exploiting the weaknesses in our voter population (fear mongering) and creating loopholes and weaknesses in our Constitution's checks and balances and separation of powers. Thanks to gerrymandering and a lack of congressional term limits, I've never had very high expectations or opinions of Congress, but somehow I've just always held the President to a higher standard. Congress has been this broken for as long as I can remember, but with the presidency just as fubared as congress I've got very little hope for the long term sustainability of America as a free country.
Impeaching the bastard would do wonders for our political system, regardless of how much time he's got left.
That is a point that is too overlooked these days. In order to restore the checks and balances, Bush and Cheney much be impeached before leaving office. Failure to do so sets the precedent that a sitting president can ignore limits to his power and order his staff to ignore Congressional subpoenas And after do so, that President can still complete his term of office. Allowing Bush and Cheney to go impeached finishes the process of turning the Constitution into "just a g*d dammed piece of paper" Bush hating isn't just about the temporary damages that occur during his presidency, but the lasting damages, like the destruction done to our rights and our Constitution. Bush hating is about the amount of freedoms we have lost because of his presidency and how it is very difficult to regain lost freedoms without bloodshed.
Oil prices are high because speculators think future supply will be low. Prices are high because speculators think that in the future prices will be higher, that price has been disconnected from supply and demand, and is now just about more speculation. From the supply and demand perspective, even if supply rises it's not going to rise nearly as fast as demand (see growing middle class in China, India, Brazil and Russia 42% of the world's population). So it's a safe enough bet that oil is going to go and stay up. Such a safe bet compared to other markets right now, that it's a good place for the uber-wealthy to stow their fortunes while they wait for the other markets to settle down. Once the economy has adjusted to the inflated oil prices, the uber-wealthy move their fortunes to other markets (maybe consumer goods)removing the artificial hike to oil prices, consumer confidence gets a predictable boost from the quick drop in gas prices, the market for consumer goods jumps from the rise in consumer confidence, uber-wealthy profit.
online people can be who they REALLY ARE and say what they what they REALLY feel, certainly this allows for more hot-headedness and stupidity as well that we regret later, but more or less people get to be another side of themselves who they really are and is really a part of them.
Who they really are or who they wish they could be? I look at the rest of your statement and I wonder if the trolls are using the lame "it's funny to me and my cool friends" idea to mask their own feelings of inadequacy at being unable to contribute meaningfully. Trolling makes them feel special as being "one of the chosen few" that is in on the joke, and it relieves them from introspection required to critically examine their ideas as Ibn al-Haytham suggests. They wish that they were bold and witty and special, but they aren't, so they troll.
I always figure the phenomenon of trolls was related to the same root source as Road Rage, the dehumanizing effect of anonymity. It is twofold: first it is easy to dehumanize the person you are hating-on because they are obscured in a metal box, second it is easy to let go of your social common sense because you are obscured by your metal box. I've seen people who go ballistic with road rage being very quiet and polite in the subway when they are face to face with their fellow commuters. I some how doubt that the trolls that spout racist slurs here on Slashdot would willingly do the same in Times Square.
That might explain why they took the pictures in the first place, it fails entirely to explain why they are fighting in court to keep the pictures. Once Google learned was notified that it was private property, they should have simply removed the pictures from StreetView at the property owners request.
I really don't see how a picture of someones house is some big invasion of privacy.
For starters, it is a house at the end of a private road. People live on private roads because they don't want their homes to be out in public view. Their reasons for that are really no one's business but the owners of the property. I'm not arguing that pictures of a house are more intrusive, but they are still intrusive enough particularly when that house has been purposefully set out of public view. By your logic, what is the big deal about going up to the windows and photographing the interiors as well? Private property is private, as in not public, not a resource to be shared.
If nothing else the way the owners decided to decorate the exterior of their house is intellectual property.
I was under the impression that Phoenix was equipped to detect organic compounds in the water vapor. Sure that's not about trying to grow terrestrial lichen or algae on Mars, but it's a good idea to see if there might be native microscopic life in the water/ice layer of Mars first. Just what sort of astrobiology experiments did you have in mind?
Why does Google respect the privacy of people on the street but doesn't respect the privacy of marked private property? I was rather dismayed at Google's lawyer effectively saying that because technology like satellites exist and have photographed private property, and because people with legitimate business with the owners of private property may be expected to be allowed to enter on to private property, that by extension the ground level databasing of a persons private property is an assumed privilege.
Before too long you have a kid kill a bunch of people and if the media determines the kid played violent video games then they sensationalize it.
Or the kid listened to Heavy Metal, or played Dungeons and Dragons, or dressed funny and wouldn't stay off my lawn. They never seem to point out the things like "started fights regularly in school" or "had a history of sudden violent outbursts" or "used threats of suicide to manipulate others" or "would mutter angrily to himself while polishing his gun"; but if the kid plays violent video games Watch Out!!!
I don't see "compassionate Conservatives" as neocons, though. The two Bushes fall into that line.
Using "compassionate" to describe George W Bush is like using "snuggly" to describe Dick Cheney. The President who let the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts get and stay that fucked up for as long as they did; isn't compassionate. The Commander in Chief who makes excuses for torture isn't compassionate. The brilliant diplomat who famously said "Goodbye, from the world's biggest polluter" when leaving a summit discussing the huge amount of human and environmental damage being done by pollution, is not compassionate. You rightly use "machiavellian and power hungry" to describe Neocons which is an accurate descriptor of Dubya, a power hungry Neocon.
Can you imagine a MITM on your OS?
FBI, RIAA, DHS, your local Police Department, Marketing/Advertising companies, everyone else who wants info about you would no longer need physical access to your box
Do they actually contribute as much to society in the course of that one or two hour at most speech as much as a median income earner, like say an elementary school teacher contributes in an entire year? Do they contribute as much a cop walking a beat? How many months does it take you to earn $55,000 and does a former Senator's single speech match your efforts and contributions over those months? There are a few speeches that fall into the culturally significant category that contribute more than most people do in a lifetime "I have a Dream" comes to mind, but they are very few and far between and never delivered by old politicians.
Except for a huge assumption you're making: that an advanced civilization wouldn't want to broadcast a distinctive, easily decoded, narrowband signal.
They do broadcast a signal, and so do we. It's the spectrographic signature of high Oxygen content in the atmosphere. Why would they send a technologically crafted signal when their entire atmosphere is already broadcasting for them ? If we wanted to make contact with them surely we would warp over and introduce ourselves, right? For them to blast radio waves at us would just be rude!
We've been there, and picked up enough rocks to last a while. What else is there to do...?
We could start gathering/refining He3. It shows a lot of promise as a fuel source. We could use the moon as a last refining step to the habitat equipment we plan on sending to Mars. Let us not forget the real reason we went the first time: Prestige. We could use a bit of that right now, sure it would be better to improve America's reputation by once again being a leader in Human Rights, education, and freedom; but with our international street cred this low we should take what boosts we can get.
They were not charged for the blocked data? Are you nuts?
Since blocked data still eats up a users connection speed, and higher connection speed service costs more money, then in that way customers were charged for blocked data. They may not have had the blocked data counted against their upload/download limit but they did effectively get downgraded to a lesser connection speed for the same price. Rather than the telephone analogy I think of this as ordering and paying for a Corvette and getting a Chevy Malibu.
we just recognize better than most that "intellectual property" is not property at all. Property exists because of limited resources.
A fair amount of our modern idea of property comes from the philosopher John Locke and his Second Treatise on Government. Basically it is a person's labor and efforts that improve upon a common resource that creates and justifies property. ie: The fish in the ocean belong to everyone, until a fisherman catches one, then that fish belongs to him because is efforts in catching it made it useful. What modern IP law is failing to address is Locke's theory of Spoilage. "As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils; so much he may by his labour fix a Property in. Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. (II, 31)" Now with the internet, the supply of a song or movie is effectively unlimited, the real question is: How long before a song or movie spoils? Most movies and songs have a short short shelf life, a year at most for songs and maybe two for movies after that their sale number have dropped into irrelevancy. The biggest problem for IP isn't control or piracy, it's the ridiculous amount of time that passes before it becomes Public Domain.
It seems like it would be hard to enforce jurisdiction in space
But that's really the whole point you see; extending government jurisdiction into space. Suppose Virgin Galactic builds a space hotel, is it an independent nation? A privately owned holding not subject to any man made laws? What about 100 years from now, I'm sure the governments of Earth would prefer to have control over Lunar He3 resources. To do that they need to start slowly establishing authority in space. Next, any space hotel will be declared to be under the control of the home nation of the corporation that builds/operates it. Then that nation just expands it's sphere of influence in the name of security,exploration and manifest destiny. Really it's just a land grab.
Since this seems to be the "flaws" thread: My biggest concern with the robocars is mentioned at the very beginning of one of the articles, who owns the car and who controls the car. Every time I get in a car service car or Taxi here in NYC I am photographed by a camera in the car. It's there to help find/reduce taxi driver muggers. But if this is put into a robocar, maybe the camera will be linked into a wireless online system, to catch terrorists or something. In fact I would rather expect the robocars to be sending various chunks of information to a central real time database. It makes sense for traffic, maintainence, robocar gone haywire, etc. My concern is more along the lines of getting in a robotaxi and having some central computer tell it to lock the doors and drive me to a police station or the like. Yes I know it's Orwellian paranoia, but given the DHS mindset it's almost impossible to not try to have such a useful tool at the disposal of the police and the Feds. Just plug a wanted persons biometrics into the central robocar monitoring system and when the internal cameras get a match, they deliver the person right to the authorities; what could be better for law enforcement? Of course there would be laws passed that make it more and more difficult/expensive to maintain a private vehicle instead of using a robocar. Congestion tolls, HOV lanes, etc. Now when you combine that technology with the new reality of thoughtcrime and the loss of Habeas Corpus well it makes Orwell look optimistic. You visited a webpage that had a link to kiddeporn/terrorist recuitment/drug dealers/hategroups, the next day your ride to work takes you to a police station for a "debriefing".
Slashdot Mirror
That's a perfect illustration of the problem with excessive hatred. You can't see clearly who is letting him get away with "it".
yes I can and do see that it is the democratically controlled Congress that is letting him get away with this. That is why it is imperative that he not be allowed to finish his term unimpeached. The US government is broken and we are rapidly running out of time to fix it in a nonviolent, rule of law, kind of way. I hate on Bush because of the permanent damage he has done by exploiting the weaknesses in our voter population (fear mongering) and creating loopholes and weaknesses in our Constitution's checks and balances and separation of powers. Thanks to gerrymandering and a lack of congressional term limits, I've never had very high expectations or opinions of Congress, but somehow I've just always held the President to a higher standard. Congress has been this broken for as long as I can remember, but with the presidency just as fubared as congress I've got very little hope for the long term sustainability of America as a free country.
GW Bush should stand as an exemplar of a bad presidency, to serve as a warning to the rest of us for years to come.
Unless he finishes his term and retires in peace and comfort, then he is a template for how a President can act like a dictator and get away with it.
Impeaching the bastard would do wonders for our political system, regardless of how much time he's got left.
That is a point that is too overlooked these days. In order to restore the checks and balances, Bush and Cheney much be impeached before leaving office. Failure to do so sets the precedent that a sitting president can ignore limits to his power and order his staff to ignore Congressional subpoenas And after do so, that President can still complete his term of office. Allowing Bush and Cheney to go impeached finishes the process of turning the Constitution into "just a g*d dammed piece of paper" Bush hating isn't just about the temporary damages that occur during his presidency, but the lasting damages, like the destruction done to our rights and our Constitution. Bush hating is about the amount of freedoms we have lost because of his presidency and how it is very difficult to regain lost freedoms without bloodshed.
Oil prices are high because speculators think future supply will be low.
Prices are high because speculators think that in the future prices will be higher, that price has been disconnected from supply and demand, and is now just about more speculation. From the supply and demand perspective, even if supply rises it's not going to rise nearly as fast as demand (see growing middle class in China, India, Brazil and Russia 42% of the world's population). So it's a safe enough bet that oil is going to go and stay up. Such a safe bet compared to other markets right now, that it's a good place for the uber-wealthy to stow their fortunes while they wait for the other markets to settle down. Once the economy has adjusted to the inflated oil prices, the uber-wealthy move their fortunes to other markets (maybe consumer goods)removing the artificial hike to oil prices, consumer confidence gets a predictable boost from the quick drop in gas prices, the market for consumer goods jumps from the rise in consumer confidence, uber-wealthy profit.
online people can be who they REALLY ARE and say what they what they REALLY feel, certainly this allows for more hot-headedness and stupidity as well that we regret later, but more or less people get to be another side of themselves who they really are and is really a part of them.
Who they really are or who they wish they could be?
I look at the rest of your statement and I wonder if the trolls are using the lame "it's funny to me and my cool friends" idea to mask their own feelings of inadequacy at being unable to contribute meaningfully. Trolling makes them feel special as being "one of the chosen few" that is in on the joke, and it relieves them from introspection required to critically examine their ideas as Ibn al-Haytham suggests. They wish that they were bold and witty and special, but they aren't, so they troll.
I always figure the phenomenon of trolls was related to the same root source as Road Rage, the dehumanizing effect of anonymity. It is twofold: first it is easy to dehumanize the person you are hating-on because they are obscured in a metal box, second it is easy to let go of your social common sense because you are obscured by your metal box. I've seen people who go ballistic with road rage being very quiet and polite in the subway when they are face to face with their fellow commuters. I some how doubt that the trolls that spout racist slurs here on Slashdot would willingly do the same in Times Square.
That might explain why they took the pictures in the first place, it fails entirely to explain why they are fighting in court to keep the pictures. Once Google learned was notified that it was private property, they should have simply removed the pictures from StreetView at the property owners request.
I really don't see how a picture of someones house is some big invasion of privacy.
For starters, it is a house at the end of a private road. People live on private roads because they don't want their homes to be out in public view. Their reasons for that are really no one's business but the owners of the property. I'm not arguing that pictures of a house are more intrusive, but they are still intrusive enough particularly when that house has been purposefully set out of public view. By your logic, what is the big deal about going up to the windows and photographing the interiors as well? Private property is private, as in not public, not a resource to be shared.
If nothing else the way the owners decided to decorate the exterior of their house is intellectual property.
No astrobiology experiments.
I was under the impression that Phoenix was equipped to detect organic compounds in the water vapor. Sure that's not about trying to grow terrestrial lichen or algae on Mars, but it's a good idea to see if there might be native microscopic life in the water/ice layer of Mars first. Just what sort of astrobiology experiments did you have in mind?
Why does Google respect the privacy of people on the street but doesn't respect the privacy of marked private property? I was rather dismayed at Google's lawyer effectively saying that because technology like satellites exist and have photographed private property, and because people with legitimate business with the owners of private property may be expected to be allowed to enter on to private property, that by extension the ground level databasing of a persons private property is an assumed privilege.
Before too long you have a kid kill a bunch of people and if the media determines the kid played violent video games then they sensationalize it.
Or the kid listened to Heavy Metal, or played Dungeons and Dragons, or dressed funny and wouldn't stay off my lawn. They never seem to point out the things like "started fights regularly in school" or "had a history of sudden violent outbursts" or "used threats of suicide to manipulate others" or "would mutter angrily to himself while polishing his gun"; but if the kid plays violent video games Watch Out!!!
I don't see "compassionate Conservatives" as neocons, though. The two Bushes fall into that line.
Using "compassionate" to describe George W Bush is like using "snuggly" to describe Dick Cheney. The President who let the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts get and stay that fucked up for as long as they did; isn't compassionate. The Commander in Chief who makes excuses for torture isn't compassionate. The brilliant diplomat who famously said "Goodbye, from the world's biggest polluter" when leaving a summit discussing the huge amount of human and environmental damage being done by pollution, is not compassionate. You rightly use "machiavellian and power hungry" to describe Neocons which is an accurate descriptor of Dubya, a power hungry Neocon.
Spotted owls are notoriously poor prosecutors. They also have a well-known bias against rats and other vermin
and for some reason the have a deep seated hatred of Simon Cowell
Can you imagine a MITM on your OS? FBI, RIAA, DHS, your local Police Department, Marketing/Advertising companies, everyone else who wants info about you would no longer need physical access to your box
Do they actually contribute as much to society in the course of that one or two hour at most speech as much as a median income earner, like say an elementary school teacher contributes in an entire year? Do they contribute as much a cop walking a beat? How many months does it take you to earn $55,000 and does a former Senator's single speech match your efforts and contributions over those months? There are a few speeches that fall into the culturally significant category that contribute more than most people do in a lifetime "I have a Dream" comes to mind, but they are very few and far between and never delivered by old politicians.
The point you missed is that their net worth was that high before they became Senators.
And after they are Senators, they can earn more from giving a single speech then the median American makes in a year. How is that not still an insulting rate of income?
middle name: "Little"
Governments have a tendency to take notice when people build rockets large enough to carry explosives
It was apparently big enough to take pictures, and Governments notice that too.
Except for a huge assumption you're making: that an advanced civilization wouldn't want to broadcast a distinctive, easily decoded, narrowband signal.
They do broadcast a signal, and so do we. It's the spectrographic signature of high Oxygen content in the atmosphere. Why would they send a technologically crafted signal when their entire atmosphere is already broadcasting for them ? If we wanted to make contact with them surely we would warp over and introduce ourselves, right? For them to blast radio waves at us would just be rude!
We've been there, and picked up enough rocks to last a while. What else is there to do...?
We could start gathering/refining He3. It shows a lot of promise as a fuel source.
We could use the moon as a last refining step to the habitat equipment we plan on sending to Mars.
Let us not forget the real reason we went the first time: Prestige. We could use a bit of that right now, sure it would be better to improve America's reputation by once again being a leader in Human Rights, education, and freedom; but with our international street cred this low we should take what boosts we can get.
They were not charged for the blocked data? Are you nuts?
Since blocked data still eats up a users connection speed, and higher connection speed service costs more money, then in that way customers were charged for blocked data. They may not have had the blocked data counted against their upload/download limit but they did effectively get downgraded to a lesser connection speed for the same price. Rather than the telephone analogy I think of this as ordering and paying for a Corvette and getting a Chevy Malibu.
Or keep it a secret until it's large enough to declare and defend it's independence. Here's a rough idea of probable minimum size: Liechtenstein is 62 sq miles with a population of 29,000.
we just recognize better than most that "intellectual property" is not property at all. Property exists because of limited resources.
A fair amount of our modern idea of property comes from the philosopher John Locke and his Second Treatise on Government. Basically it is a person's labor and efforts that improve upon a common resource that creates and justifies property. ie: The fish in the ocean belong to everyone, until a fisherman catches one, then that fish belongs to him because is efforts in catching it made it useful. What modern IP law is failing to address is Locke's theory of Spoilage. "As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils; so much he may by his labour fix a Property in. Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. (II, 31)" Now with the internet, the supply of a song or movie is effectively unlimited, the real question is: How long before a song or movie spoils? Most movies and songs have a short short shelf life, a year at most for songs and maybe two for movies after that their sale number have dropped into irrelevancy. The biggest problem for IP isn't control or piracy, it's the ridiculous amount of time that passes before it becomes Public Domain.
It seems like it would be hard to enforce jurisdiction in space
But that's really the whole point you see; extending government jurisdiction into space. Suppose Virgin Galactic builds a space hotel, is it an independent nation? A privately owned holding not subject to any man made laws? What about 100 years from now, I'm sure the governments of Earth would prefer to have control over Lunar He3 resources. To do that they need to start slowly establishing authority in space. Next, any space hotel will be declared to be under the control of the home nation of the corporation that builds/operates it. Then that nation just expands it's sphere of influence in the name of security,exploration and manifest destiny. Really it's just a land grab.
Since this seems to be the "flaws" thread: My biggest concern with the robocars is mentioned at the very beginning of one of the articles, who owns the car and who controls the car. Every time I get in a car service car or Taxi here in NYC I am photographed by a camera in the car. It's there to help find/reduce taxi driver muggers. But if this is put into a robocar, maybe the camera will be linked into a wireless online system, to catch terrorists or something. In fact I would rather expect the robocars to be sending various chunks of information to a central real time database. It makes sense for traffic, maintainence, robocar gone haywire, etc. My concern is more along the lines of getting in a robotaxi and having some central computer tell it to lock the doors and drive me to a police station or the like. Yes I know it's Orwellian paranoia, but given the DHS mindset it's almost impossible to not try to have such a useful tool at the disposal of the police and the Feds. Just plug a wanted persons biometrics into the central robocar monitoring system and when the internal cameras get a match, they deliver the person right to the authorities; what could be better for law enforcement? Of course there would be laws passed that make it more and more difficult/expensive to maintain a private vehicle instead of using a robocar. Congestion tolls, HOV lanes, etc. Now when you combine that technology with the new reality of thoughtcrime and the loss of Habeas Corpus well it makes Orwell look optimistic. You visited a webpage that had a link to kiddeporn/terrorist recuitment/drug dealers/hategroups, the next day your ride to work takes you to a police station for a "debriefing".