I feel sorry for the girl, but ultimately it was HER DECISION to commit suicide. You can't blame somebody else for your own actions.
The reason society distinguishes between adults and minors is that minors are still maturing and aren't expected to make good mature, responsible, decisions nor be held responsible when they screw up. And adult maliciously and spitefully leading a minor to make a life-ending decision is utterly contemptible and an adult who does this should be held responsible.
If the girl has been wiser, she could have
If the girl was an adult yes. She wasn't. She wasn't even 'almost an adult' she was firmly still a child.
I only hope a wrongful death suit can be launched against the couple behind this:
From wikipedia...
"The death must have been caused, in whole or in part, by the defendant's conduct, even though there was no direct intention to kill the victim. The defendant must have been deemed negligent or strictly liable for the victim's death. Also the deceased has dependent party such as family members who have suffered from emotional and monetary damages as a result of the death."
I'd say the death was caused in or or in part by the defendants conduct, even though there was no direct intention to kill. I'd also deem the defendant negligent; adults should know better. And clearly the part about family members suffering emotionally is covered.
If I'm walking down the street and come upon a scene where someone is threatening to jump off of a building, and I yell "Jump!" and he does, does that make me a murderer?
No.
But remember you've been pretending to be that persons friend for the last several months, and then back stabbed her, threatened her, and then told her to jump off a bridge. -And- your an adult and that person is a minor... well yeah, I'd say you are guilty of something. If not murder, then something else, because that was a pretty sick and twisted thing to do.
And because your and adult and should know better, and she is a minor and therefore can't be expected to know better (the whole point of distingushing between adults and minors is to recognize that minors aren't always expected to make mature responsible decisions. So, yeah, then you SHOULD assume responsibility for what you've caused.
Ah. So its a two stage system. I didn't realize a security guard was part of the system. Although that begs the question, if you've got a security guard... you probably don't need the battery-erased ram setup.
If you got to the machine before powering down you can read the memory anyway. This is to protect against reads _after_ the machine is shut down.
So what exactly is this? Something that's going to protect you from the 30 secodns to a couple minutes after the machine is shut down but before the DRAM fades?
If I can get to the machine within 30 seconds of it turning off, surely I can get to it 30 seconds before that!!
The real security holes here are for all the time that its running, from encrypted disk, and presenting a strong multifactor login, or when stealing a laptop in standby or hibernate....in these cases I can kill power and rip the chips before they fade to grab the keys.
Now as others have mentioned there are multiple attack vectors here and this is but one of them, but its remarkably efficient. Installing a keylogger and then waiting for another opportunity isn't always possible (especially if you've stolen a laptop), and while there likely a number of hardware hacks to read the memory of a running system, this one is decidely lo-tech and simple.
If it was such a big deal that your RAM be secure why dont RAM makers make special "Secure RAM" kits with a small (I am not an engineer, please forgive my ignorance)battery and have it detect power down, and then expend the battery to alter the RAM contents, write all 1's or something? An OS solution wouldn't work if the power was pulled, I expect nearly all legitimate uses of RAM dont need the contents after power down so chances are anyone trying to get at em has nefarious plans.
What happens if I take the battery out before powering down?
When the machine is powered down, your application's exit routine zeros all of the memory, and then free()s it. Nothing that good programming practices can't address.
Unless of course the machine is, you know, simply "powered down".
Pulling the plug isn't going to let your application do squat.
What made KSM the perfect candidate for waterboarding was we already knew he had the information we wanted.
That's a fallacy pure and simple.
Consider death row. We -know- innocent people have been executed by the state. We 'knew' they were guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt through a trial and multiple appeals, and all the years it takes to get someone from convicted to executed. And WE STILL FUCK IT UP more than anyone cares to admit.
With torture its the same thing, except: 1) we remove all pretense of due process -- victim has no rights 2) its likely a relatively snap decision -- something bad is going to happen soon, so we can't wait years 3) its out of public scrutiny -- its easier to make and conceal errors if there is no one looking
If we had the same error rate with torture as we do with capital punishment I'd still be against torture. And lets face it, getting the same error rate as capital punishment is a drug induced pipe-dream with the lack of process in place.
And besides, you can't argue with results. We were able to roll up a huge financial network based on information we got from him after a few minutes of pouring water up his nose. I'm not arguing a moral position here - all I'm saying is sometimes torture works.
Flipping a coin at a murder trial to decide if someone is innocent or guilty would work ~50% of the time too. That doesn't make it a reliable method of deciding cases.
We also 'knew' Saddam had WMDs too, how long would you have tortured him to find out where they were?
Torture is like a coin toss. Sure, SOMETIMES it works, but its not reliable.
Finally, in the case of KSM, just because we thought we 'knew' he had information, that doesn't mean he actually had it, nor did it mean that by torturing him that he would give it up.
Perhaps he knew some things, but not everything we thought he knew... is it still ok to torture someone like that? What if he gives up the information he knows right away during questioning before toroture... but then "refuses" to give up additional information that we think we 'know' he knows... but in point of fact he doesn't know, or perhaps even that he did know at one time but simply forgot.
I don't know who was present when I signed the mortgage on my home... I don't remember the name of the bank officer I dealt with, I don't know what they looked like or even what gender the person was. I doubt I remembered their name for more than a month after the papers were signed. And now less than a year later I can't even remember whether it was a male or female. So the fact that I was in a meeting with someone less than a year ago involving the largest transaction in my life, representing multiple years of income, and a 20+ year commitment... and I couldn't tell you anything about it. If it was a terrorist funds transfer instead of a mortgage, and you had proof I was there,... well... sucks to be me. Because I'm not going to be able to tell you sweet fuck all. And no matter how much you might think I "know". I don't.
Bottom line -- you can't **KNOW** what anyone knows or doesn't know with any real certainty. So torturing someone for information you think they know is a crapshoot. Right or wrong someone pays a terrible price, and there are few controls at all, to ensure we get it right.
Torture is unreliable. Its probably better than rolling the dice to make decisions. Or is it?... those brits who got tortured (or at the very least abused) in guantanamo for being rounded up while in the wrong place at the wrong time... that seems like little more than a crapshoot to me.
but I've never read a convincing explanation of why this would be the case. The standard arguments (e.g. "They'll say whatever you want to hear, just to make you stop") aren't particularly well reasoned - they don't really work unless you assume the torturer comes into the session knowing absolutely nothing related to the information they're trying to obtain.
Suppose I planted some bombs and you caught me and demanded the information by torture. First I'd deny, then I'd lie, and presumably eventually I'd give up the locations and the city would be saved. hooray! right?
The trouble is -- what if you caught my completely innocent brother instead? You'd start in on him, and he deny. And deny. And then deny some more... but if you don't let up, he'll give up and start naming places. Of course there won't be any bombs there unless he's incredibly lucky-- but really you expected him to lie. So you torture him some more, and he'll come up with some new locations.
And all the information he'll give you will be unreliable. But he'll swear by his mothers grave its the truth everytime. until you come back tell him he lied and you want the real locations this time... and he'll come up with another set. You see? He'll just keep saying what you want to hear.
Now if you happen to know where the bombs are, and tell him to confirm it. He'll do that too. He'll jump at the chance. And admit to planning it. Buying the explosives, etc... whatever you tell him... he'll give it back to you.
And when you look at some of the information that's come from people who've been tortured. They rarely want anything so verifiable as the location of bombs... they want
a) you to confess to crimes that they'll outline for you b) tell you name co-conspirators
In which case you eventually do both. Except if your innocent the people you name in b) are just going to be random friends and family and acquaintenaces etc... which is unverifiable... because they all deny it... unless you torture them too, of course.
The trouble with torture is ultimately there is no real way to tell the difference between some who is supressing information and someone who simply doesn't know. Either will deny knowing. And either will give you false information -- the former in defiance, the latter because that's all they've got, and you don't let up until they give you SOMETHING.
And if you know the information your getting is false, well.. they must be in defiance... so you just torture them some more.
The point of illegal evidence gathering isn't to use in court where it might be found illegal. Its to use it to find suspects upon which to perform legal evidence gathering.
Phase 1. I illegally monitor and scan all conversations in the us for a keyphrase, and shortlist everyone who uses it. Phase 2. I then send out someone to either find or trump up some legitimate evidence. Phase 3. I get a warrant, gather enough evidence to make a case, and then charge you.
The 'illegal evidence gathering' in phase 1 would only crop up if you were to ask, "why was he even a suspect in the first case"... but they'll handwave that away as part of the 'routine and legal' police work done in phase 2. As for why the police happened to go through your garbage in phase 2, it was part of another investigation in the area, or blind luck when an officer backed his car into your trash can and knocked it over, and besides... garbage you put out at the street to be collected is no longer private property...
At the end of the day you'll never know you were put on a suspect list in phase 1 as a result of illegal evidence gathering.
Re:Contracts can be modified before they are signe
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UK Report Slams EULAs
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Even if there was a pre-clause that said the EULA couldn't be modified, I could cross that out too.
Actually, most EULA's seem to have a clause saying that they can be updated at any time without notice, and to be sure to check their website hourly so you don't miss any changes.
In which case, you can simply cross that out and have it point to your own website, where you will maintain EULA's you can live with.;)
So you do after having served 2 terms, when your a ridiculously unpopular president, and even your own party has distanced itself from you in the coming election.
Good news everybody. That exact scenario is upon us. Maybe Bush can do some good before he goes.
We don't dump our satellites in your recycling bin, please don't shoot your pop bottles into our space.
Nah, putting them in the recyling bin would be far too orderly, NASA has the military shoot them down with missiles and lets God sort out where the pieces end up.
Maybe we should combine our desires and use pop bottles to take out your failing satellites. Of course then the military doesn't get to use their toys... so that won't work.
I mean, aside of course from a Samsung M210, LG LX-160, Nokia 2610, Kyocera MARBL, Motorola C168i, Sanyo SCP-7050 or maybe your into NextTel iDen Push-To-Talk in which case the Motorola i570 or i690 would fit the bill or maybe you need a PDA... the new RIM BlackBerry 8800's including the 8800, 8820, 8830 all don't come with a camera either.
So lets see... you've got options on multiple networks, all major manufacturers, with devices from 'entry level budget' to 'work horse phone' to 'executive PDA' are available to you.
Oh wait... all the Apple iPhones come with a camera.
But that does nothing to stop porn sites (or museums or schools) from having.com addresses.
But that's not the issue.
The -real- issue is that the porn websites do not want google to give away their images for free. They'd choose to move to a.xxx domain on their own if it meant their 'valuable images' would stay off google as a result.
Sure they might still have a.com address full of 'promo images' and lots of descriptive text to help googlers find their off the radar.xxx site... but that's exactly what they WANT. This was -never- really about the children.
Of course the real issue all along is that he doesn't know how to prevent deep linking of his images, nor apparently how to prevent google from indexing part of his site. But that's a separate concern and it would cost him effort and money to fix it... far better to just demand google 'not show porn' and have someone else solve the problem of his content leaking out into search engines where he won't get paid for it.
That's a one-sided report. What I heard on the radio yesterday is that the Republicans were upset that the democrats were wasting time on the vote to hold Bush Officials in contempt of Congress.
Since when is it "wasting time" when a large part of congress wants to vote on whether officials held CONGRESS in CONTEMPT?
And you think -your- version is -less- one sided?
Poor republiclans, just trying to get an honest days work done rubberstamping their presidents bills, but oh noooo the democrats wouldn't let them. They wanted to "waste time" on silly little trivialities like whether the executive branch can do whatever it wants without any oversight from congress.
So they did the only thing they could under the circumstances: Quit for the day in protest.
"If we're not going to rubberstamp this bill, there is just no point in being here." one was heard to say leaving the building.
The Republican senators claimed that they were in support of the investigation, but felt that President and adviser communications should have some degree of privilege.
So apparently even the republicans have mixed views on it. For my part if those communications involved something illegal then no there should be no privilege. But lets discuss it and have a vote.
They wanted to move on to the business for the day (which happened to be the surveillance bill) and called for a walk-out when the Democrats were insistent on worrying about the (probably impotent anyway) contempt vote.
It seems particularly ironic that the bill they wanted to tackle involves surveillance. Maybe we should rubberstamp it and then use it to record the president and his advisors conversations without a warrant. Sidestep the whole issue of whether they are required to testify to congress if we can just record them directly... you know like they want to do to us.
Sure my post is sarcastic and mocking, but seriously... this is screwed up.
From what I understand of this (and I could be wrong), the physx accelerator is primarily used to add eye-candy -- so things like showers of sparks, sprays of blood, geysers and clouds of dirt or water or snow on an impact (whether a footfall or a weapon strike...), leaves falling when you shoot trees, better hair and clothing, clouds, rain drop impacts, etc, etc.
All the physics processing for all those particles can be offloaded to the physx engine, allowing more particle effects to be going on at higher level of detail and realism (e.g. incorporating 'wind' etc..) without dragging down the cpu.
Its cool... but not earthshattering. And its a logical step to incorporate it into a video card.
I don't honestly know if it it can really be used to assist with the trajectory calculations of the interactive players tank or fighter plane or whatever, etc... but I doubt it. And it probably doesn't matter either. That is a minor part of the scene...each shower of sparks by itself probably requires more physics calculations than an entire squadron of planes... more independant particles in the shower.
It is more like you have the license plate number of the car, and can see an arm sticking out and keying your car as it drives by on the surveillance camera. You make the assumption that the car was being drive by the person to whom it is registered, and get a subpoena to get the name of the registrant from the institution that assigned license plates to people.
And then you bang down the door of the old grandmother who owns it, and drag her through the court system? Despite the fact she probably hasn't driven in 5 years.
And really, the RIAA's cases are different on a couple points: 1) You have actual proof something illegal was done. The RIAA just asserts the files were there, so you could have infringed copyright. And their proof of even that is far less convincing than a video showing the files being made available.
2) Real harm has been done - your car is keyed. The RIAA can't show any harm. How they show harm when they don't even show any copies have been made?
If this were about keying the car the RIAA would only have a video of you holding a key, not actually keying anything. And throughout the trial, it never comes up whether or not their car was actually keyed... they're claiming damages for what you've done... but don't actually need to show that the car was even scratched.
said dissension will provide weapons that exceed "small arms and rifles" and troops who are trained to use them. You ignore that reality because it moots your point completely.
Right. If internal dissenion provides weapons that exceed small arms and troops that are trained to use them, then small arms and rifles are even *less* of an issue because they aren't even your best asset.
Pretending that resistance would be limited to "small arms and rifles" while ignoring the members of the military who would side with the citizenry and bring their weapons with them is mendacious.
Your right. My argument presupposed that small arms and rifles would be the best we'd have and concluded it wouldn't be relevant. The comment about military dissension highlights that it wouldn't be the best we'd have, which changes the dynamic considerably... but not the conclusion. Civilian small arms are still irrelevant.
I mean fuck man, you just tried to argue that better training and weapons would be a bad thing
Not at all. I argued that better training and weapons would make a force of civilians with inferior weapons less important to the effort. So whether those civilians had access to pre-revolution small arms becomes an even smaller concern.
As to the point I was making, which you were to busy in your rush to find some way to salvage your previously mooted argument, the military INCLUDING IT'S LEADERS are not of one mind and cannot be treated as such. The idea that it can only be grunts with rifles is ignorant and disingenuous. It could just as easily be whole aircraft carriers fighting against each other.
I don't dispute that is a possibility at all. I didn't address it because I don't dispute it. But it makes no difference -- if the battle is aircraft carrier against aircraft carrier then whether joe-sixpack has a pistol or not is still irrelevant, and if anything less relevant. I wasn't trying to 'salvage my point' because you never trashed it. It stands up just as well in your scenario, no it stands up better.
The truth is, you're an anti-gun nut
The truth? Hardly. I have nothing against gun ownership. I merely don't think owning a pistol is going to be a relevant factor, never mind a deciding factor, to victory 'when the revolution comes'.
These people distributed copyrighted material that they had no right nor authorization to distribute. Representatives of the copyright holders found out about it, and are suing. Unless the representatives found out about it in an illegal way (read: non-admissible in court), they are fully within their rights to sue.
This would be like you coming home, and finding that someone keyed your car. There aren't any footprints nearby in the muddy ground, but a particular tire tread swerves within a few inches of your vehicle. So you deduce that someone pulled along side your car reached out and keyed it.
So... the first thing you do is get the court to subpoena the surveillance tapes of a business down the road so you can see *everyone* who drove down the road. Then you make a list of the vehicles driving down the street with that tire tread -- turns out its a fairly common tread and there are 4 or 5 cars that match. So, you make a list of plate number. (Yeah its CSI fairy land where surveillance cameras are high resolution colour devices with the magical ability to see hidden surfaces...how convenient for you.)
So now you've got a list of plate numbers of possible cars so off to court you go to demand the department of motor vehicles hand over the contact information for each of these plates so that you can visit each of those homes and check the vehicles to find out which one has mud on it, so you can sue the owner...
Nevermind, that you've still only identified the registered owner, not the driver. Turns out the cars are leased - so the plates go back to a leasing company... so off you go to court to get more names...
Which they give you, and at this point all you've got is the guy paying the lease... still not the actual driver.
Yes you were harmed by *someones* actions, and yes you should be able to recover your damages... and yes, you could theoretically follow a trail like this to a person that possibly did it. But there's no way in hell you should be allowed to conduct a private investigation like that over a frustrating but ultimately minor wrong. The neighboring business should have no obligation to turn over their tapes to YOU simply because you're out a few bucks. And the DMV shouldn't hand over a list of names of people who drove on your street simply because one of them MIGHT have been the vehicle that damaged your car. All the while ignoring the fact that identifying the car doesn't reliably identify person who keyed your car.
And that is an RIAA investigation.
I would tolerate an invasive dragnet investigation like this for a serious crime like rape or kidnapping. But some jack ass keyed your car and you want to sue him for damages in civil court? If that's legal then something is seriously wrong.
And guess what... its NOT legal... but the RIAA is using loopholes and other abuses to game the system, *relying* on the fact that its cheaper for victims to roll over and pay them off than fight them and risk losing. And to combat them for their abuses of the system? They'll bankrupt any individual who even tries.
Can you imagine if SCO had sued YOU for infringment instead of IBM? The fact the SCO was wrong wouldn't matter... you'd have been bankrupt YEARS before a judgment was made. Or, as the RIAA has demonstrated, as soon as the case goes sideways, they drop it. Your still out all the money you put out defending yourself, probably more than you would have paid to settle, and that's good enough for them.
This presupposes that the military will act as one, with no internal dissension from the soldiers who will be asked t fight against their friends and family.
Not really. Internal dissension within the military is irrelevant to the discussion of whether small arms and rifles would enable an efficient resistance. Dissension from the military would provide the revolution with trained soldiers and some access to real weapons. Which if anything, would further undermine the real value of a large supply of civilians armed with hunting rifles and pistols.
Do you actually think the United States has "won" in Iraq?
They won the 'open war' in short order.
They can't win an 'occupancy' against people don't want them there.
The same would be true in a revolution. Any sort of open combat with the military enabled by our 'right to bear arms' leading up to the revolution would be so feeble it wouldn't even get off the ground. But your right the military could never defeat an indigent resistance using makeshift weapons and guerrilla tactics.
Having a large supply of small arms weapons sitting in homes around the country going into the revolution might give us a bit of a leg up in terms of initial effectiveness, but really it doesn't matter in the long run. We aren't going to confront soldiers with pistols and hunting rifles except as a final act of desperation -- so if we don't have them its not going to make much difference.
We'd be focussed on other tactics... car bombs, and the like. And importing/stealing 'real' weapons as fast as possible.
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I feel sorry for the girl, but ultimately it was HER DECISION to commit suicide. You can't blame somebody else for your own actions.
The reason society distinguishes between adults and minors is that minors are still maturing and aren't expected to make good mature, responsible, decisions nor be held responsible when they screw up. And adult maliciously and spitefully leading a minor to make a life-ending decision is utterly contemptible and an adult who does this should be held responsible.
If the girl has been wiser, she could have
If the girl was an adult yes. She wasn't. She wasn't even 'almost an adult' she was firmly still a child.
I only hope a wrongful death suit can be launched against the couple behind this:
From wikipedia...
"The death must have been caused, in whole or in part, by the defendant's conduct, even though there was no direct intention to kill the victim. The defendant must have been deemed negligent or strictly liable for the victim's death. Also the deceased has dependent party such as family members who have suffered from emotional and monetary damages as a result of the death."
I'd say the death was caused in or or in part by the defendants conduct, even though there was no direct intention to kill. I'd also deem the defendant negligent; adults should know better. And clearly the part about family members suffering emotionally is covered.
If I'm walking down the street and come upon a scene where someone is threatening to jump off of a building, and I yell "Jump!" and he does, does that make me a murderer?
No.
But remember you've been pretending to be that persons friend for the last several months, and then back stabbed her, threatened her, and then told her to jump off a bridge. -And- your an adult and that person is a minor... well yeah, I'd say you are guilty of something. If not murder, then something else, because that was a pretty sick and twisted thing to do.
And because your and adult and should know better, and she is a minor and therefore can't be expected to know better (the whole point of distingushing between adults and minors is to recognize that minors aren't always expected to make mature responsible decisions. So, yeah, then you SHOULD assume responsibility for what you've caused.
Ah. So its a two stage system. I didn't realize a security guard was part of the system.
Although that begs the question, if you've got a security guard... you probably don't need the battery-erased ram setup.
If you got to the machine before powering down you can read the memory anyway. This is to protect against reads _after_ the machine is shut down.
So what exactly is this? Something that's going to protect you from the 30 secodns to a couple minutes after the machine is shut down but before the DRAM fades?
If I can get to the machine within 30 seconds of it turning off, surely I can get to it 30 seconds before that!!
The real security holes here are for all the time that its running, from encrypted disk, and presenting a strong multifactor login, or when stealing a laptop in standby or hibernate....in these cases I can kill power and rip the chips before they fade to grab the keys.
Now as others have mentioned there are multiple attack vectors here and this is but one of them, but its remarkably efficient. Installing a keylogger and then waiting for another opportunity isn't always possible (especially if you've stolen a laptop), and while there likely a number of hardware hacks to read the memory of a running system, this one is decidely lo-tech and simple.
If it was such a big deal that your RAM be secure why dont RAM makers make special "Secure RAM" kits with a small (I am not an engineer, please forgive my ignorance)battery and have it detect power down, and then expend the battery to alter the RAM contents, write all 1's or something? An OS solution wouldn't work if the power was pulled, I expect nearly all legitimate uses of RAM dont need the contents after power down so chances are anyone trying to get at em has nefarious plans.
What happens if I take the battery out before powering down?
When the machine is powered down, your application's exit routine zeros all of the memory, and then free()s it. Nothing that good programming practices can't address.
Unless of course the machine is, you know, simply "powered down".
Pulling the plug isn't going to let your application do squat.
What made KSM the perfect candidate for waterboarding was we already knew he had the information we wanted.
... well... sucks to be me. Because I'm not going to be able to tell you sweet fuck all. And no matter how much you might think I "know". I don't.
That's a fallacy pure and simple.
Consider death row. We -know- innocent people have been executed by the state. We 'knew' they were guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt through a trial and multiple appeals, and all the years it takes to get someone from convicted to executed. And WE STILL FUCK IT UP more than anyone cares to admit.
With torture its the same thing, except:
1) we remove all pretense of due process -- victim has no rights
2) its likely a relatively snap decision -- something bad is going to happen soon, so we can't wait years
3) its out of public scrutiny -- its easier to make and conceal errors if there is no one looking
If we had the same error rate with torture as we do with capital punishment I'd still be against torture. And lets face it, getting the same error rate as capital punishment is a drug induced pipe-dream with the lack of process in place.
And besides, you can't argue with results. We were able to roll up a huge financial network based on information we got from him after a few minutes of pouring water up his nose. I'm not arguing a moral position here - all I'm saying is sometimes torture works.
Flipping a coin at a murder trial to decide if someone is innocent or guilty would work ~50% of the time too. That doesn't make it a reliable method of deciding cases.
We also 'knew' Saddam had WMDs too, how long would you have tortured him to find out where they were?
Torture is like a coin toss. Sure, SOMETIMES it works, but its not reliable.
Finally, in the case of KSM, just because we thought we 'knew' he had information, that doesn't mean he actually had it, nor did it mean that by torturing him that he would give it up.
Perhaps he knew some things, but not everything we thought he knew... is it still ok to torture someone like that? What if he gives up the information he knows right away during questioning before toroture... but then "refuses" to give up additional information that we think we 'know' he knows... but in point of fact he doesn't know, or perhaps even that he did know at one time but simply forgot.
I don't know who was present when I signed the mortgage on my home... I don't remember the name of the bank officer I dealt with, I don't know what they looked like or even what gender the person was. I doubt I remembered their name for more than a month after the papers were signed. And now less than a year later I can't even remember whether it was a male or female. So the fact that I was in a meeting with someone less than a year ago involving the largest transaction in my life, representing multiple years of income, and a 20+ year commitment... and I couldn't tell you anything about it. If it was a terrorist funds transfer instead of a mortgage, and you had proof I was there,
Bottom line -- you can't **KNOW** what anyone knows or doesn't know with any real certainty. So torturing someone for information you think they know is a crapshoot. Right or wrong someone pays a terrible price, and there are few controls at all, to ensure we get it right.
Torture is unreliable. Its probably better than rolling the dice to make decisions. Or is it?... those brits who got tortured (or at the very least abused) in guantanamo for being rounded up while in the wrong place at the wrong time... that seems like little more than a crapshoot to me.
but I've never read a convincing explanation of why this would be the case. The standard arguments (e.g. "They'll say whatever you want to hear, just to make you stop") aren't particularly well reasoned - they don't really work unless you assume the torturer comes into the session knowing absolutely nothing related to the information they're trying to obtain.
Suppose I planted some bombs and you caught me and demanded the information by torture. First I'd deny, then I'd lie, and presumably eventually I'd give up the locations and the city would be saved. hooray! right?
The trouble is -- what if you caught my completely innocent brother instead? You'd start in on him, and he deny. And deny. And then deny some more... but if you don't let up, he'll give up and start naming places. Of course there won't be any bombs there unless he's incredibly lucky-- but really you expected him to lie. So you torture him some more, and he'll come up with some new locations.
And all the information he'll give you will be unreliable. But he'll swear by his mothers grave its the truth everytime. until you come back tell him he lied and you want the real locations this time... and he'll come up with another set. You see? He'll just keep saying what you want to hear.
Now if you happen to know where the bombs are, and tell him to confirm it. He'll do that too. He'll jump at the chance. And admit to planning it. Buying the explosives, etc... whatever you tell him... he'll give it back to you.
And when you look at some of the information that's come from people who've been tortured. They rarely want anything so verifiable as the location of bombs... they want
a) you to confess to crimes that they'll outline for you
b) tell you name co-conspirators
In which case you eventually do both. Except if your innocent the people you name in b) are just going to be random friends and family and acquaintenaces etc... which is unverifiable... because they all deny it... unless you torture them too, of course.
The trouble with torture is ultimately there is no real way to tell the difference between some who is supressing information and someone who simply doesn't know. Either will deny knowing. And either will give you false information -- the former in defiance, the latter because that's all they've got, and you don't let up until they give you SOMETHING.
And if you know the information your getting is false, well.. they must be in defiance... so you just torture them some more.
The point of illegal evidence gathering isn't to use in court where it might be found illegal. Its to use it to find suspects upon which to perform legal evidence gathering.
Phase 1. I illegally monitor and scan all conversations in the us for a keyphrase, and shortlist everyone who uses it.
Phase 2. I then send out someone to either find or trump up some legitimate evidence.
Phase 3. I get a warrant, gather enough evidence to make a case, and then charge you.
The 'illegal evidence gathering' in phase 1 would only crop up if you were to ask, "why was he even a suspect in the first case"... but they'll handwave that away as part of the 'routine and legal' police work done in phase 2. As for why the police happened to go through your garbage in phase 2, it was part of another investigation in the area, or blind luck when an officer backed his car into your trash can and knocked it over, and besides... garbage you put out at the street to be collected is no longer private property...
At the end of the day you'll never know you were put on a suspect list in phase 1 as a result of illegal evidence gathering.
Even if there was a pre-clause that said the EULA couldn't be modified, I could cross that out too.
;)
Actually, most EULA's seem to have a clause saying that they can be updated at any time without notice, and to be sure to check their website hourly so you don't miss any changes.
In which case, you can simply cross that out and have it point to your own website, where you will maintain EULA's you can live with.
So you do after having served 2 terms, when your a ridiculously unpopular president, and even your own party has distanced itself from you in the coming election.
Good news everybody. That exact scenario is upon us. Maybe Bush can do some good before he goes.
We don't dump our satellites in your recycling bin, please don't shoot your pop bottles into our space.
Nah, putting them in the recyling bin would be far too orderly, NASA has the military shoot them down with missiles and lets God sort out where the pieces end up.
Maybe we should combine our desires and use pop bottles to take out your failing satellites. Of course then the military doesn't get to use their toys... so that won't work.
So I guess I'm screwed.
... you've got options on multiple networks, all major manufacturers, with devices from 'entry level budget' to 'work horse phone' to 'executive PDA' are available to you.
I mean, aside of course from a Samsung M210, LG LX-160, Nokia 2610, Kyocera MARBL, Motorola C168i, Sanyo SCP-7050 or maybe your into NextTel iDen Push-To-Talk in which case the Motorola i570 or i690 would fit the bill or maybe you need a PDA... the new RIM BlackBerry 8800's including the 8800, 8820, 8830 all don't come with a camera either.
So lets see
Oh wait... all the Apple iPhones come with a camera.
Yeah, I guess your screwed.
But that does nothing to stop porn sites (or museums or schools) from having .com addresses.
.xxx domain on their own if it meant their 'valuable images' would stay off google as a result.
.com address full of 'promo images' and lots of descriptive text to help googlers find their off the radar .xxx site... but that's exactly what they WANT. This was -never- really about the children.
But that's not the issue.
The -real- issue is that the porn websites do not want google to give away their images for free. They'd choose to move to a
Sure they might still have a
Of course the real issue all along is that he doesn't know how to prevent deep linking of his images, nor apparently how to prevent google from indexing part of his site. But that's a separate concern and it would cost him effort and money to fix it... far better to just demand google 'not show porn' and have someone else solve the problem of his content leaking out into search engines where he won't get paid for it.
That's a one-sided report. What I heard on the radio yesterday is that the Republicans were upset that the democrats were wasting time on the vote to hold Bush Officials in contempt of Congress.
Since when is it "wasting time" when a large part of congress wants to vote on whether officials held CONGRESS in CONTEMPT?
And you think -your- version is -less- one sided?
Poor republiclans, just trying to get an honest days work done rubberstamping their presidents bills, but oh noooo the democrats wouldn't let them. They wanted to "waste time" on silly little trivialities like whether the executive branch can do whatever it wants without any oversight from congress.
So they did the only thing they could under the circumstances: Quit for the day in protest.
"If we're not going to rubberstamp this bill, there is just no point in being here." one was heard to say leaving the building.
The Republican senators claimed that they were in support of the investigation, but felt that President and adviser communications should have some degree of privilege.
So apparently even the republicans have mixed views on it. For my part if those communications involved something illegal then no there should be no privilege. But lets discuss it and have a vote.
They wanted to move on to the business for the day (which happened to be the surveillance bill) and called for a walk-out when the Democrats were insistent on worrying about the (probably impotent anyway) contempt vote.
It seems particularly ironic that the bill they wanted to tackle involves surveillance. Maybe we should rubberstamp it and then use it to record the president and his advisors conversations without a warrant. Sidestep the whole issue of whether they are required to testify to congress if we can just record them directly... you know like they want to do to us.
Sure my post is sarcastic and mocking, but seriously... this is screwed up.
Or better still, figure out where the yellow dots are being printed, and then add a whole lot more right where the code is.
From what I understand of this (and I could be wrong), the physx accelerator is primarily used to add eye-candy -- so things like showers of sparks, sprays of blood, geysers and clouds of dirt or water or snow on an impact (whether a footfall or a weapon strike...), leaves falling when you shoot trees, better hair and clothing, clouds, rain drop impacts, etc, etc.
All the physics processing for all those particles can be offloaded to the physx engine, allowing more particle effects to be going on at higher level of detail and realism (e.g. incorporating 'wind' etc..) without dragging down the cpu.
Its cool... but not earthshattering. And its a logical step to incorporate it into a video card.
I don't honestly know if it it can really be used to assist with the trajectory calculations of the interactive players tank or fighter plane or whatever, etc... but I doubt it. And it probably doesn't matter either. That is a minor part of the scene...each shower of sparks by itself probably requires more physics calculations than an entire squadron of planes... more independant particles in the shower.
It is more like you have the license plate number of the car, and can see an arm sticking out and keying your car as it drives by on the surveillance camera. You make the assumption that the car was being drive by the person to whom it is registered, and get a subpoena to get the name of the registrant from the institution that assigned license plates to people.
And then you bang down the door of the old grandmother who owns it, and drag her through the court system? Despite the fact she probably hasn't driven in 5 years.
And really, the RIAA's cases are different on a couple points:
1) You have actual proof something illegal was done. The RIAA just asserts the files were there, so you could have infringed copyright. And their proof of even that is far less convincing than a video showing the files being made available.
2) Real harm has been done - your car is keyed. The RIAA can't show any harm. How they show harm when they don't even show any copies have been made?
If this were about keying the car the RIAA would only have a video of you holding a key, not actually keying anything. And throughout the trial, it never comes up whether or not their car was actually keyed... they're claiming damages for what you've done... but don't actually need to show that the car was even scratched.
How many solar systems and or comets must you discover to graduate from "amateur" status?
Like most things you graduate from amateur status when you start getting paid for your work.
said dissension will provide weapons that exceed "small arms and rifles" and troops who are trained to use them. You ignore that reality because it moots your point completely.
Right. If internal dissenion provides weapons that exceed small arms and troops that are trained to use them, then small arms and rifles are even *less* of an issue because they aren't even your best asset.
Pretending that resistance would be limited to "small arms and rifles" while ignoring the members of the military who would side with the citizenry and bring their weapons with them is mendacious.
Your right. My argument presupposed that small arms and rifles would be the best we'd have and concluded it wouldn't be relevant. The comment about military dissension highlights that it wouldn't be the best we'd have, which changes the dynamic considerably... but not the conclusion. Civilian small arms are still irrelevant.
I mean fuck man, you just tried to argue that better training and weapons would be a bad thing
Not at all. I argued that better training and weapons would make a force of civilians with inferior weapons less important to the effort. So whether those civilians had access to pre-revolution small arms becomes an even smaller concern.
As to the point I was making, which you were to busy in your rush to find some way to salvage your previously mooted argument, the military INCLUDING IT'S LEADERS are not of one mind and cannot be treated as such. The idea that it can only be grunts with rifles is ignorant and disingenuous. It could just as easily be whole aircraft carriers fighting against each other.
I don't dispute that is a possibility at all. I didn't address it because I don't dispute it. But it makes no difference -- if the battle is aircraft carrier against aircraft carrier then whether joe-sixpack has a pistol or not is still irrelevant, and if anything less relevant. I wasn't trying to 'salvage my point' because you never trashed it. It stands up just as well in your scenario, no it stands up better.
The truth is, you're an anti-gun nut
The truth? Hardly. I have nothing against gun ownership. I merely don't think owning a pistol is going to be a relevant factor, never mind a deciding factor, to victory 'when the revolution comes'.
These people distributed copyrighted material that they had no right nor authorization to distribute. Representatives of the copyright holders found out about it, and are suing. Unless the representatives found out about it in an illegal way (read: non-admissible in court), they are fully within their rights to sue.
This would be like you coming home, and finding that someone keyed your car. There aren't any footprints nearby in the muddy ground, but a particular tire tread swerves within a few inches of your vehicle. So you deduce that someone pulled along side your car reached out and keyed it.
So... the first thing you do is get the court to subpoena the surveillance tapes of a business down the road so you can see *everyone* who drove down the road. Then you make a list of the vehicles driving down the street with that tire tread -- turns out its a fairly common tread and there are 4 or 5 cars that match. So, you make a list of plate number. (Yeah its CSI fairy land where surveillance cameras are high resolution colour devices with the magical ability to see hidden surfaces...how convenient for you.)
So now you've got a list of plate numbers of possible cars so off to court you go to demand the department of motor vehicles hand over the contact information for each of these plates so that you can visit each of those homes and check the vehicles to find out which one has mud on it, so you can sue the owner...
Nevermind, that you've still only identified the registered owner, not the driver. Turns out the cars are leased - so the plates go back to a leasing company... so off you go to court to get more names...
Which they give you, and at this point all you've got is the guy paying the lease... still not the actual driver.
Yes you were harmed by *someones* actions, and yes you should be able to recover your damages... and yes, you could theoretically follow a trail like this to a person that possibly did it. But there's no way in hell you should be allowed to conduct a private investigation like that over a frustrating but ultimately minor wrong. The neighboring business should have no obligation to turn over their tapes to YOU simply because you're out a few bucks. And the DMV shouldn't hand over a list of names of people who drove on your street simply because one of them MIGHT have been the vehicle that damaged your car. All the while ignoring the fact that identifying the car doesn't reliably identify person who keyed your car.
And that is an RIAA investigation.
I would tolerate an invasive dragnet investigation like this for a serious crime like rape or kidnapping. But some jack ass keyed your car and you want to sue him for damages in civil court? If that's legal then something is seriously wrong.
And guess what... its NOT legal... but the RIAA is using loopholes and other abuses to game the system, *relying* on the fact that its cheaper for victims to roll over and pay them off than fight them and risk losing. And to combat them for their abuses of the system? They'll bankrupt any individual who even tries.
Can you imagine if SCO had sued YOU for infringment instead of IBM? The fact the SCO was wrong wouldn't matter... you'd have been bankrupt YEARS before a judgment was made. Or, as the RIAA has demonstrated, as soon as the case goes sideways, they drop it. Your still out all the money you put out defending yourself, probably more than you would have paid to settle, and that's good enough for them.
Right, he should be naming cars...
Integra, Maxima, Altima...
At least lucas doesn't over use the letter 'A'.
"Many Bothans died to get us this information"
Yup... just... one long trail of redshirts.
This presupposes that the military will act as one, with no internal dissension from the soldiers who will be asked t fight against their friends and family.
Not really. Internal dissension within the military is irrelevant to the discussion of whether small arms and rifles would enable an efficient resistance. Dissension from the military would provide the revolution with trained soldiers and some access to real weapons. Which if anything, would further undermine the real value of a large supply of civilians armed with hunting rifles and pistols.
Do you actually think the United States has "won" in Iraq?
They won the 'open war' in short order.
They can't win an 'occupancy' against people don't want them there.
The same would be true in a revolution. Any sort of open combat with the military enabled by our 'right to bear arms' leading up to the revolution would be so feeble it wouldn't even get off the ground. But your right the military could never defeat an indigent resistance using makeshift weapons and guerrilla tactics.
Having a large supply of small arms weapons sitting in homes around the country going into the revolution might give us a bit of a leg up in terms of initial effectiveness, but really it doesn't matter in the long run. We aren't going to confront soldiers with pistols and hunting rifles except as a final act of desperation -- so if we don't have them its not going to make much difference.
We'd be focussed on other tactics... car bombs, and the like. And importing/stealing 'real' weapons as fast as possible.