There is a big difference between a device that in effect acts as a cell site (broadcasting) versus a subscriber handset.
But the MiFi doesn't act at all like a cell site - from the carrier's perspective, it's no different from any other cell phone (except it doesn't make or receive voice calls).
It's just a 3G modem attached to a wifi router. The 3G part uses the carrier's licensed spectrum in the same way that a smartphone does, and the wifi part uses unlicensed spectrum.
You are in effect using the carriers licensed spectrum. They have a right to know what devices are using it and where.
Well, there'd be rioting in the streets if it turned out that typical cell phones were constantly reporting GPS data to the carrier, especially if they still did it when the GPS feature was supposedly turned off. Why should a MiFi be any different?
RF engineers don't deal with customer data (unless they need to meet with a customer), nor do they have access to it.
The carrier still has that data, though, and they could be forced to turn it over when faced with a subpoena or warrant -- or, as we've seen repeatedly, they could just decide to turn it over in response to a polite request from the government.
Regarding the reason for GPS functionality: the RF engineers need to know where your MiFi is. It's all about statistics and measurements with those guys.
Are you saying the router is designed to report its GPS location to the carrier without the user's knowledge (ostensibly for the purpose of improving the network)? That seems like a privacy violation in itself.
Perhaps you've heard the phrase "primary election", but from your post it's clear that you don't understand what primaries are or how they work.
Here's how they work:
* democrat party selects a MIC compliant candidate
* republican party selects a MIC compliant candidate
* people vote on dem or repub
* viola, an MIC compliant candidate is elected
* the MIC continues unabated.
Uh, no. Try this:
anyone who wants to be the next candidate for the Democratic or Republican party collects signatures to get on that party's primary ballot
people vote in the primary election, and each party's winner goes on to the general ballot
people vote in the general election
voila, a candidate is elected
ignorant people who couldn't be bothered to vote in the primary whine about being excluded from the process and blame the outcome on the MIC
There are some variations between states (e.g. some states have caucuses instead), but the party does not "select" a "compliant candidate". The people select a candidate by voting in the caucus or primary.
The province for this is political; request for extradition, etc.
It was requested and denied. So, what's the appropriate next step? Are you implying there were some kind of diplomatic or economic sanctions we could have imposed on Afghanistan to persuade them to hand over ObL before he fled?
Heck, there's a connection to Iraq, too, which is, Iraq is full of Arabic looking people, and it was easy to stir up the US people at the time to go after anyone they'd been taught to dislike.
You can't seriously expect anyone to believe that sort of "connection" is remotely comparable to harboring and protecting Osama bin Laden.
Afghanistan, the nation, did not attack us; they did not fund the attack; they were not the source of the nationals.
But they did protect bin Laden after the attacks.
As for "source of the nationals"... how is that even important? Suppose a British citizen comes to the US, blows up a building, and then flees to a third country where the local authorities refuse to hand him over - by your logic, we should attack the UK?
They continuously evaded inspections and eventually prevented them entirely, as was widely reported at the time.
I think you're misremembering. The inspectors left because we were about to invade: Bush didn't have the patience to let the inspections continue. Up to that point, the inspections were proceeding (not without some resistance, but that's to be expected), and the inspectors themselves wanted to continue.
So what? That was entirely post-attack. The attack was paid for by Saudis, and executed by nationals from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt.
You forgot "masterminded by a guy hiding in Afghanistan".
Now, do you see Iraq in that list? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see Afghanistan there? Fuck no, you don't.
Again, that's only because you forgot to include Afghanistan.
And if you think it's ok to attack a country because they don't want to hand someone over, then you better start ducking, because the US holds people back from all manner of countries.
Yes, that's a good point. I'm not arguing that we should treat other countries any differently than we expect to be treated - I'm just pointing out that there is in fact a connection between 9/11 and our attack on Afghanistan.
But I think you might agree with me that if someone attacks you, then you have some justification to hit back at where they come from and/or who paid/ordered the act. Let me repeat, just for the sake of trying to point the objective facts to you:
* Saudi Arabia
* United Arab Emirates
* Egypt
* Lebanon
...and Afghanistan, where someone who "ordered the act" was hiding out and being protected by the local government. Why do you insist on ignoring that objective fact?
If they are shooting at you, what's the difference?
Maybe you've missed the context of the thread. At the point in time we're talking about, no one is shooting at anyone -- the "enemy combatant" has been captured and is no longer armed.
I mean, somebody shoots at you, you shoot them. It's brutal, but that's war.
Sure. If someone's shooting at you, go ahead and shoot back. But if you decide to capture him instead, don't torture him. Seems pretty simple: it's a straightforward application of the principle "don't torture anyone".
None of the people in Gitmo should have ever even been prisoners.
You seem to be implying that everyone in Gitmo was shooting at us (and thus should've been killed instead of captured). I hope you realize that isn't true.
Doesn't it seem just a little bit unfair to you to prosecute people whom were relying on legal opinions issued by our own Justice Department advising them that what they were about to do was in fact legal?
If your boss asks you to do something that seems illegal, and his lawyer says it's probably OK even though he's never tested that theory in court, do you not still bear the responsibility when it turns out your actions really were illegal after all?
The Justice Department is part of the executive branch; they don't make or interpret laws. Their opinions carry no more weight than any other lawyers' opinions.
Because terrorists that hide behind civilians and refuse to obey the laws of war aren't entitled to the same treatment as soldiers who fight under a flag and officers?
So the right to not be tortured is now reserved for uniformed members of the military?
Since you brought up WWII, why don't you do a little research and find out what happened to unlawful combatants who violated the laws of war. Start by researching the German troops that fought behind the line in Allied uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge.
Surely you don't think German troops wearing Allied uniforms are analogous to independent terrorists and civilians captured in a war zone.
Our government attacked.... Afghanistan, which had nothing to do with the attack on us.
As much as I hate to defend one of Bush's decisions, this isn't true. Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, and the Taliban refused to hand him over because (1) they didn't believe he was linked to the 9/11 attacks and (2) he was a "guest" in their country.
BTW, "Muslimist"? Perhaps you mean "Muslim" or "Islamist".
So far as tax credits equating into a cost, this is ideologically the same as a media company equating pirated copies as lost sales.
No, it's nothing at all like that.
When media companies equate pirated copies to lost sales, they make the fallacious assumption that everyone who downloaded a pirated copy would instead have bought a copy at full price if not for file sharing. But we know that isn't true for several reasons, starting with the basic demand curve: people generally consume more of something if it's cheaper.
On the other hand, someone who receives a tax credit really would have paid more in taxes if not for the credit. That's the definition of a tax credit -- you calculate the amount of tax you owe, then subtract the value of the credit.
Care to actually start that argument?
I'm surprised this actually has to be explained, but I guess I'll do it.
Imagine a country where you have 100 people who each pay $100 a year in taxes, and the government has a balanced budget: they take in $10,000 a year and they spend $10,000 a year.
Now give some of those people a tax credit, without raising taxes on the others or cutting spending. Let's say half of them get a $50 credit, so the government now only takes in $7500 a year. But the budget is unchanged: it's still spending $10,000 a year, which means it's borrowing $2500 a year to make up the difference.
That $2500 a year isn't free. It has to be paid back, eventually, either by raising taxes in the future (i.e. taxpayers still pay it, and they pay more because there's interest) or reducing services (i.e. taxpayers get less for the same money, and may have to pay extra to private companies to provide the lost services).
I am utterly baffled why Google would sully their reputation by attaching themselves to such a shit network.
More likely, I think, is that they designed the first version of the phone to use the same 3G frequencies that are used in most of the world, so they'd be able to sell it worldwide.
Unfortunately, in the US, T-Mobile is the only carrier that uses the worldwide frequencies. AT&T uses different, incompatible 3G frequencies. It's easy for us to think that T-Mobile is the outlier because AT&T is so much bigger in the US, but it's really the other way around.
That 200 billion is composed of higher rates and tax credits, which means they weren't paid by the taxpayer at all.
Nonsense. The higher telecom rates were paid by every taxpayer who uses telecom services, which is pretty much everyone. As for the tax credits, every tax credit is paid for by present and/or future taxpayers unless it comes with a corresponding cut in spending (which never happens).
Apart from these set phrases, English is no longer V2, and the analysis of "here" referring to the members of the set located here is consistent with the overall trend of erosion of V2 in English.
Incidentally, do you have a citation for this analysis? I'm having trouble searching for it.
Would you likewise complain about "Metallica is James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo"?
Yes, if I were being pedantic. And isn't that what we're doing?
Metallica isn't a person or people. The members of Metallica are people.
The traditional analysis supporting "here are two" treats the sentence as having been inverted into verb-subject order, an unusual order for English.
It's not unusual when used with "here" or "there", or a few other adverbial idioms (e.g. "Only then will we be free"), or when asking a question.
Dialects admitting "here is two", on the other hand, treat "here" as a singular subject referring to "the set presented here", in the same sense that "everyone" is singular, and "two" becomes the complement.
But the complement "two blog entries" is plural, not singular, and in any case a set is not the same thing as its members. You could say "[the set presented] here consists of two blog entries", maybe, but not "[the set presented] here is two blog entries".
I refuse to watch Fox News or use them as a source. I loathe biased news. But MSNBC is just as biased.
I once considered a career in journalism. I spent the past few years working for a newspaper (in IT though, not as an editor, though I almost crossed over at one point).
Yes, it's clear from your first paragraph that you've worked in journalism, because that false sense of "balance" is one of the main problems with modern professional journalism. It's taboo to say something negative about one side without saying something equally negative about the other side, whether or not it's merited by the facts.
3D Realms' own Rise of the Triad had destroyable scenery, fun weapons, and flying, over a year before Duke3D came out. It even had humor, though not to the same extent as Duke3D.
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There is a big difference between a device that in effect acts as a cell site (broadcasting) versus a subscriber handset.
But the MiFi doesn't act at all like a cell site - from the carrier's perspective, it's no different from any other cell phone (except it doesn't make or receive voice calls).
It's just a 3G modem attached to a wifi router. The 3G part uses the carrier's licensed spectrum in the same way that a smartphone does, and the wifi part uses unlicensed spectrum.
In other words, there is no legitimate reason for the MiFi to have a GPS receiver? It's only useful to locate the owner at someone else's request?
You are in effect using the carriers licensed spectrum. They have a right to know what devices are using it and where.
Well, there'd be rioting in the streets if it turned out that typical cell phones were constantly reporting GPS data to the carrier, especially if they still did it when the GPS feature was supposedly turned off. Why should a MiFi be any different?
RF engineers don't deal with customer data (unless they need to meet with a customer), nor do they have access to it.
The carrier still has that data, though, and they could be forced to turn it over when faced with a subpoena or warrant -- or, as we've seen repeatedly, they could just decide to turn it over in response to a polite request from the government.
E911 would much rather have a GPS point.
How is E911 relevant to a 3G data router that can't be used to dial 911?
Regarding the reason for GPS functionality: the RF engineers need to know where your MiFi is. It's all about statistics and measurements with those guys.
Are you saying the router is designed to report its GPS location to the carrier without the user's knowledge (ostensibly for the purpose of improving the network)? That seems like a privacy violation in itself.
However, they pretty much have to use GPS to comply with FCC E911 rules.
It's not clear to me why E911 is relevant to a 3G data router. It can't be used to make emergency calls, can it?
Sure I have.
Perhaps you've heard the phrase "primary election", but from your post it's clear that you don't understand what primaries are or how they work.
Here's how they work:
* democrat party selects a MIC compliant candidate
* republican party selects a MIC compliant candidate
* people vote on dem or repub
* viola, an MIC compliant candidate is elected
* the MIC continues unabated.
Uh, no. Try this:
There are some variations between states (e.g. some states have caucuses instead), but the party does not "select" a "compliant candidate". The people select a candidate by voting in the caucus or primary.
The province for this is political; request for extradition, etc.
It was requested and denied. So, what's the appropriate next step? Are you implying there were some kind of diplomatic or economic sanctions we could have imposed on Afghanistan to persuade them to hand over ObL before he fled?
Heck, there's a connection to Iraq, too, which is, Iraq is full of Arabic looking people, and it was easy to stir up the US people at the time to go after anyone they'd been taught to dislike.
You can't seriously expect anyone to believe that sort of "connection" is remotely comparable to harboring and protecting Osama bin Laden.
Afghanistan, the nation, did not attack us; they did not fund the attack; they were not the source of the nationals.
But they did protect bin Laden after the attacks.
As for "source of the nationals"... how is that even important? Suppose a British citizen comes to the US, blows up a building, and then flees to a third country where the local authorities refuse to hand him over - by your logic, we should attack the UK?
Each tower is divided into three 120-degree zones, so that narrows it down quite a bit.
They continuously evaded inspections and eventually prevented them entirely, as was widely reported at the time.
I think you're misremembering. The inspectors left because we were about to invade: Bush didn't have the patience to let the inspections continue. Up to that point, the inspections were proceeding (not without some resistance, but that's to be expected), and the inspectors themselves wanted to continue.
Candidates are selected by the two political parties. Without input from the citizens.
Not true. What, have you never heard of a primary election?
So what? That was entirely post-attack. The attack was paid for by Saudis, and executed by nationals from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt.
You forgot "masterminded by a guy hiding in Afghanistan".
Now, do you see Iraq in that list? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see Afghanistan there? Fuck no, you don't.
Again, that's only because you forgot to include Afghanistan.
And if you think it's ok to attack a country because they don't want to hand someone over, then you better start ducking, because the US holds people back from all manner of countries.
Yes, that's a good point. I'm not arguing that we should treat other countries any differently than we expect to be treated - I'm just pointing out that there is in fact a connection between 9/11 and our attack on Afghanistan.
But I think you might agree with me that if someone attacks you, then you have some justification to hit back at where they come from and/or who paid/ordered the act. Let me repeat, just for the sake of trying to point the objective facts to you:
* Saudi Arabia
* United Arab Emirates
* Egypt
* Lebanon
...and Afghanistan, where someone who "ordered the act" was hiding out and being protected by the local government. Why do you insist on ignoring that objective fact?
If they are shooting at you, what's the difference?
Maybe you've missed the context of the thread. At the point in time we're talking about, no one is shooting at anyone -- the "enemy combatant" has been captured and is no longer armed.
I mean, somebody shoots at you, you shoot them. It's brutal, but that's war.
Sure. If someone's shooting at you, go ahead and shoot back. But if you decide to capture him instead, don't torture him. Seems pretty simple: it's a straightforward application of the principle "don't torture anyone".
None of the people in Gitmo should have ever even been prisoners.
You seem to be implying that everyone in Gitmo was shooting at us (and thus should've been killed instead of captured). I hope you realize that isn't true.
Doesn't it seem just a little bit unfair to you to prosecute people whom were relying on legal opinions issued by our own Justice Department advising them that what they were about to do was in fact legal?
If your boss asks you to do something that seems illegal, and his lawyer says it's probably OK even though he's never tested that theory in court, do you not still bear the responsibility when it turns out your actions really were illegal after all?
The Justice Department is part of the executive branch; they don't make or interpret laws. Their opinions carry no more weight than any other lawyers' opinions.
Because terrorists that hide behind civilians and refuse to obey the laws of war aren't entitled to the same treatment as soldiers who fight under a flag and officers?
So the right to not be tortured is now reserved for uniformed members of the military?
Since you brought up WWII, why don't you do a little research and find out what happened to unlawful combatants who violated the laws of war. Start by researching the German troops that fought behind the line in Allied uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge.
Surely you don't think German troops wearing Allied uniforms are analogous to independent terrorists and civilians captured in a war zone.
Our government attacked.... Afghanistan, which had nothing to do with the attack on us.
As much as I hate to defend one of Bush's decisions, this isn't true. Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, and the Taliban refused to hand him over because (1) they didn't believe he was linked to the 9/11 attacks and (2) he was a "guest" in their country.
BTW, "Muslimist"? Perhaps you mean "Muslim" or "Islamist".
Hmm, perhaps I was misinformed.
So far as tax credits equating into a cost, this is ideologically the same as a media company equating pirated copies as lost sales.
No, it's nothing at all like that.
When media companies equate pirated copies to lost sales, they make the fallacious assumption that everyone who downloaded a pirated copy would instead have bought a copy at full price if not for file sharing. But we know that isn't true for several reasons, starting with the basic demand curve: people generally consume more of something if it's cheaper.
On the other hand, someone who receives a tax credit really would have paid more in taxes if not for the credit. That's the definition of a tax credit -- you calculate the amount of tax you owe, then subtract the value of the credit.
Care to actually start that argument?
I'm surprised this actually has to be explained, but I guess I'll do it.
Imagine a country where you have 100 people who each pay $100 a year in taxes, and the government has a balanced budget: they take in $10,000 a year and they spend $10,000 a year.
Now give some of those people a tax credit, without raising taxes on the others or cutting spending. Let's say half of them get a $50 credit, so the government now only takes in $7500 a year. But the budget is unchanged: it's still spending $10,000 a year, which means it's borrowing $2500 a year to make up the difference.
That $2500 a year isn't free. It has to be paid back, eventually, either by raising taxes in the future (i.e. taxpayers still pay it, and they pay more because there's interest) or reducing services (i.e. taxpayers get less for the same money, and may have to pay extra to private companies to provide the lost services).
I am utterly baffled why Google would sully their reputation by attaching themselves to such a shit network.
More likely, I think, is that they designed the first version of the phone to use the same 3G frequencies that are used in most of the world, so they'd be able to sell it worldwide.
Unfortunately, in the US, T-Mobile is the only carrier that uses the worldwide frequencies. AT&T uses different, incompatible 3G frequencies. It's easy for us to think that T-Mobile is the outlier because AT&T is so much bigger in the US, but it's really the other way around.
That 200 billion is composed of higher rates and tax credits, which means they weren't paid by the taxpayer at all.
Nonsense. The higher telecom rates were paid by every taxpayer who uses telecom services, which is pretty much everyone. As for the tax credits, every tax credit is paid for by present and/or future taxpayers unless it comes with a corresponding cut in spending (which never happens).
Apart from these set phrases, English is no longer V2, and the analysis of "here" referring to the members of the set located here is consistent with the overall trend of erosion of V2 in English.
Incidentally, do you have a citation for this analysis? I'm having trouble searching for it.
Would you likewise complain about "Metallica is James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo"?
Yes, if I were being pedantic. And isn't that what we're doing?
Metallica isn't a person or people. The members of Metallica are people.
The traditional analysis supporting "here are two" treats the sentence as having been inverted into verb-subject order, an unusual order for English.
It's not unusual when used with "here" or "there", or a few other adverbial idioms (e.g. "Only then will we be free"), or when asking a question.
Dialects admitting "here is two", on the other hand, treat "here" as a singular subject referring to "the set presented here", in the same sense that "everyone" is singular, and "two" becomes the complement.
But the complement "two blog entries" is plural, not singular, and in any case a set is not the same thing as its members. You could say "[the set presented] here consists of two blog entries", maybe, but not "[the set presented] here is two blog entries".
Sorry, stores need crypto signatures or you get browser warnings.
So what? It's not hard to get an SSL certificate.
I refuse to watch Fox News or use them as a source. I loathe biased news. But MSNBC is just as biased.
I once considered a career in journalism. I spent the past few years working for a newspaper (in IT though, not as an editor, though I almost crossed over at one point).
Yes, it's clear from your first paragraph that you've worked in journalism, because that false sense of "balance" is one of the main problems with modern professional journalism. It's taboo to say something negative about one side without saying something equally negative about the other side, whether or not it's merited by the facts.
3D Realms' own Rise of the Triad had destroyable scenery, fun weapons, and flying, over a year before Duke3D came out. It even had humor, though not to the same extent as Duke3D.