Is why Peter King, who has used his position as a NY Congressman to aid the IRA, has not been denounced for his rank hypocrisy in calling for Assange to be prosecuted.
If Assange can be extradited to the US, I say we should arrest King and offer him up for prosecution by an all-Protestant jury in Northern Ireland...
People will finally grasp what the rest of us grasped ages ago. That is, I have nothing worth saying that hundreds or thousands of people need to know about and none of them have anything worth saying that I give a damn about.
Here you are, on slashdot, sharing your opinion with a mass audience.
Ironically, you are doing so pseudononymously to a crowd of pseudononymous and anonymous people.
or perhaps the number one thing the government could do to prevent leaks in future would be to... i don't know... *NOT DO ILLEGAL SHIT*
You make it sound like you got 250k pages of criminal reports when probably a single digit percentage, at best, was a violation of federal law.
Now perhaps you live in an ivory tower and think that it's a heinous crime for Clinton to have her people do basic human intelligence gathering, among other "nasty revelations."
I have news for you. Most of Europe and Asia does that shit right back to us. Foreign affairs have been dirty ever since two dissimilar tribes first met and had to share the same savannah or part of the fertile crescent.
If you cannot live with that, then you need to just ignore the news because there is no way for the federal government to be utterly above board in its foreign dealings and not have the American people lose out.
Start a charity that provides one free space flight for children with rare and fatal diseases. Everyone wins. The kids get an obscenely expensive, cool experience and commercial space travel gets an unprecedented shot in the arm with private funds.
Yes, it only needs an old man in the sky to make the delusion perfect.
Ironic you should say that when the largest monotheistic religion in the world teaches precisely the opposite of the GP about human nature.
The GP's posts are laughable to Christians because they resemble a flower-child version of the pharisees' arguments. Jesus responded to them that even as they obeyed most of the law, they missed the point by acting without justice, mercy or humility. According to Jesus, "the old man in the sky" actually doesn't look favorably on the "good works" of men and women who act that way.
In short, my searches would make me look like the sort of person who you'd expect to find holed up in a compound in flyover country, which is downright hilarious since I've never even owned a gun.
The Unabomber probably never owned one as well. A handgun or hunting rifle is usually not what police worry about from guys they think might be holed up in a compound...
You might want to learn some history there. Corporations are a legal fiction created and backed by government. Every time you look at a truly evil thing that was done and made possible by the scale and legal immunity that individuals in corporations often enjoy, you can thank a government for that.
If Google were serious about competing in enterprise search against vendors like Autonomy, they wouldn't have to worry about losing significant business here. Google's problems here are a direct result of the fact that they haven't spun off a unit that is really funded and operated like an organization that wants to get down and dirty with those customers.
Considering the amount of cash I've seen thrown at Autonomy (it would make Larry Ellison wet himself in excitement), I just don't understand it. Sure, it's not sexy and it's often bureaucratic as hell, but Google could easily afford to spin off their appliance unit into a software/service arm that operates independently of the main "cool" business.
So the increased valuation is clearly based on something.
Indeed. As the GP said: investor confidence/some chump buying it at a higher price. Without a dividend, there is no inherent return on investment. It's only going to go up so long as someone is willing to pay you more than you paid for it.
Since the GP used oil investments as an example, I'll point out my own experience from researching them: there's barely any good oil companies that aren't paying a healthy dividend. As some southerners are fond of saying, you could swing a dead cat into a room filled with oil investment ideas and no matter where it lands, you'll likely find a company that pays at least a 3% dividend (and 6-12% dividends are very common).
Oil investments are actually one of the very best investments for the elderly and poor because they are so reliable about paying dividends in bad times. The oil companies my grandmother owned may have lost half of their value in 2008, but there was not even a hiccup in her getting her dividend checks from them.
If Facebook is more important to them than learning, let them flounder if they're not keeping up. They're adults and don't need any "sympathy" or "understanding" on this subject. If they cannot look at the unemployment rates for their demographic and then treat college like it's their last make-it-or-break-it chance at success short of them working 100 hours a week on their own business in their parents' garage, then I say screw them.
I'm tired of the hand-wringing about my generation. Stop coddling us. We are not entitled to the American Dream just because we showed up.
That they might actually be withholding them for a good reason? Such as:
1) They'd just make Manning look even worse to a lot of people without adding anything new or newsworthy? 2) They contain state secrets that would get Wired in trouble if they released them? 3) They're simply not relevant to the discussion?
If the stuff is important to understanding Manning, I'm sure his defense counsel will subpoena it from Wired because it'll be useful in his defense. If it's not useful in his defense, then it's not newsworthy because the public already knows enough from what's been released to have a clear idea of what he is accused of doing.
The FCC is a regulatory agency and as such can draft up all sorts of regulations based on what Congress permits, intentionally or unintentionally. Other executive branch agencies cannot. Homeland Security needed very specific legislation to shut down those sites recently for copyright infringement. The FCC, depending on how Congress acts, could do whatever its leadership wants.
Do a Google search yourself for "fairness doctrine" and you will find a number of Democrats calling at various points in the last three years for it. Kerry was one of them.
That opposing Net Neutrality legislation is going to make it harder for governments to censor?
Actually, in the US it would, since no federal agency has any direct statutory control over the Internet yet. Law enforcement can enforce specific criminal statutes, but no federal agency has the power to get right in there and start messing with the Internet itself in the United States. The FBI can come in with all sorts of orders, but the telecoms can tell them to go f#$% themselves if the law doesn't back them up.
Cause it seems to me that a small number of powerful telecoms dominating what people read is more or less a precondition for a modern totalitarian state.
And no net neutrality proposal will address this point because they all just blithely assume that those telecoms are going to lay there and take it up the ass as a federal regulator reviews their network operations on a regular basis.
What is really needed is a good plan to separate ownership of the backbone from ownership of the last mile. If Comcast couldn't legally enter the backbone infrastructure market, and "Mom and Pop Fiber Optics" could get access to Verizon's infrastructure at a "reasonable, non-discriminatory rate" it wouldn't matter if Comcast combined content and ISP services because Comcast would not have any more clout than its smaller competitors.
This came up a lot in Gay Marriage for instance, where people couldn't really say no to two people in love getting married, so they started talking about people marrying sheep or dogs instead.
What about three people? Why can't a man have two lawfully wedded wives at the same time? Who appointed you the arbiter of where the line in the sand is drawn once marriage is no longer between one man and one woman (which the overwhelming majority of human cultures have always defined it as)?
To the extent that gay marriage redefines how our society views marriage, it opens up pandora's box because today's "reasonable person" who balks at polygamy today is tomorrow's "reactionary."
Incorporate his research. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with the suits that they don't look at this and go "hmmmm, free research" instead of "OMG TEH WURLD IZ FALLIN?!"
They're screwed right now. If they bankrupt him through litigation, you can bet that someone from the Russian mob is going to offer him a briefcase of unmarked bills to "fund his education."
The reason that happens is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. do it all. Ideally, the regulation would be simple:
1) Create two classes of companies: core infrastructure owners and ISPs. One side controls the heavy infrastructure, one focuses on the last mile and such.
2) By law, ISPs cannot compete with core infrastructure providers and vice versa. You must choose at the time of incorporation. Likewise, they cannot own stock in each other or share members of the same board of directors.
3) Exempt core infrastructure providers from antitrust regulations if they sell their services at a non-discriminatory rate. Meaning if Verizon sells bandwidth at the same rate to Comcast and FiOS Independent Internet, Verizon simply cannot be sued for antitrust at all in its handling of its services.
4) Require ISPs to provide all customers a list, written at a level appropriate for a high school level of reading comprehension, that clearly states all non-QoS discrimination they perform. Whenever they change the policy, such as to gouge iTunes or Netflix, they must inform all customers in writing, in the same level of language.
denying to them the very same freedom and democracy that you so espouse. Pot. Kettle. Black.
I'm confused. You actually want me to feel like a dirty hypocrite for not giving a bunch of tin horn dictators who often terrorize their people a seat at the table? What's your next move? Accuse me of ageism for supporting the signs at amusement parks that say "you must be this tall to ride the ride?"
If you want to "prevent corporate control," there are better ways like forcefully divesting the telecoms of their ISP businesses. Make Verizon sell off FiOS as a new company that has to license Verizon's infrastructure like any other business.
Some of my older relatives find it bewildering that so many decisions about the direction of the Internet, a "public resource," are made by private bodies from corporations to the IETF and not governments. These are from the older generations that were spoon-fed that bullshit about how we are all Free and Equal Citizens participating in our democratic process, "we're the government," etc. The idea that it's being guided by a fairly enlightened, techno/meritocratic elite and not by "democracy" is scary to them.
Considering the fact that the number of states that can even reasonably claim to be "free, democratic societies" are a minority in the UN, it **should** go without saying that this is bad. The UN as a forum has not done much of anything good in a long time. Just recently, it resurrected a proposal against "defamation of religion" which, if adopted by member states, would do things like make you a criminal for pointing out that Mohammed was a pedophile even by the standards of his day (marrying and deflowering a 9 year old was considered deviant even back then, as 9 was not a common marriage age for girls).
If the Internet really does fall firmly into government controls, it'll present a scenario for individual liberty that makes the surveillance states of the Warsaw Pact look like nothing. It really is the most dangerous tool that mankind has ever created aside from nuclear technology, in its ability to be used to reshape societies for good or bad.
Is that it's going to get a little bit harder to run a new business that makes computer products.
I don't think there's anything we can do about this. The general sentiment is that patents make the market "fair" by "protecting inventors." The American people care more about a "fair market" than a "free market" today. If you suggest that no one has a right to make money from their ideas, only their actual products, you're seen as a cold-hearted bastard in the mold of Randroid who believes cigar-chomping fatcats should be able to keep guys working on The Next Big Thing in their garage from getting rich by stealing their ideas.
Nevermind the fact that more often than not, what the patent system really means is that the cigar-chomping fatcat can sue the guy in his garage into bankruptcy 100 times over before he can get his product to market.
Was there expert testimony for the jury on "rape trauma syndrome?" If not, then how can they make an informed judgment? Judges and lawyers are not experts outside of law (if that!) If no medical testimony is given, the jury has a duty to inform itself otherwise it'll be participating in a possible miscarriage of justice.
That if the prosecutor had withheld exculpatory evidence that the judge would not have done this?
The agents of the state can literally get away with "murder by state" (some prosecutors have actually successfully defended the prosecution of likely innocent men on death row), but a jury forewoman cannot research a technical term.
I'd be more sympathetic if the law actually stated that if a prosecutor violates any procedure in court, intentionally or unintentionally, all charges are dropped with prejudice (meaning they can never be refiled).
In most statutes, it's legally dangerous to even point a gun at a team of thieves who've parked a van in front of your house and who are systematically robbing you. Someone "steals" a picture that is probably worth a few hundred dollars and has no real value apart from the original story... $150k in possible statutory damages.
This isn't a sign that we're sophisticated or advanced as a society. It says we're a bloody banana republic where the common man has no legally sure way to defend what is his, but some photographer or corporation can try to ruin your business over what should be a minor infraction (that they too often commit, just look at how often major bloggers are copied by big media outlets).
It may come as a shock to a lot of Slashdot readers, but a lot of Americans don't have any need for more than that. If the price is right, it's a good bargain. My dad helped an elderly friend switch over to $15/month DSL because she's at that season of life where most of the things that need much more than DSL are just outside the scope of what she wants to learn and do. She really isn't losing anything. In fact, she's gaining Internet access that's pretty good at a price that she can actually afford without cutting her budget or dipping into the government's pocket.
Where's the loss there? Availability is one thing, but personal choices are a non-issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Is why Peter King, who has used his position as a NY Congressman to aid the IRA, has not been denounced for his rank hypocrisy in calling for Assange to be prosecuted.
If Assange can be extradited to the US, I say we should arrest King and offer him up for prosecution by an all-Protestant jury in Northern Ireland...
Here you are, on slashdot, sharing your opinion with a mass audience.
Ironically, you are doing so pseudononymously to a crowd of pseudononymous and anonymous people.
You make it sound like you got 250k pages of criminal reports when probably a single digit percentage, at best, was a violation of federal law.
Now perhaps you live in an ivory tower and think that it's a heinous crime for Clinton to have her people do basic human intelligence gathering, among other "nasty revelations."
I have news for you. Most of Europe and Asia does that shit right back to us. Foreign affairs have been dirty ever since two dissimilar tribes first met and had to share the same savannah or part of the fertile crescent.
If you cannot live with that, then you need to just ignore the news because there is no way for the federal government to be utterly above board in its foreign dealings and not have the American people lose out.
Test them for alleged illness. If they maintain the illusion all the way through, just punt them out the airlock.
Problem solved.
Start a charity that provides one free space flight for children with rare and fatal diseases. Everyone wins. The kids get an obscenely expensive, cool experience and commercial space travel gets an unprecedented shot in the arm with private funds.
Ironic you should say that when the largest monotheistic religion in the world teaches precisely the opposite of the GP about human nature.
The GP's posts are laughable to Christians because they resemble a flower-child version of the pharisees' arguments. Jesus responded to them that even as they obeyed most of the law, they missed the point by acting without justice, mercy or humility. According to Jesus, "the old man in the sky" actually doesn't look favorably on the "good works" of men and women who act that way.
The Unabomber probably never owned one as well. A handgun or hunting rifle is usually not what police worry about from guys they think might be holed up in a compound...
You might want to learn some history there. Corporations are a legal fiction created and backed by government. Every time you look at a truly evil thing that was done and made possible by the scale and legal immunity that individuals in corporations often enjoy, you can thank a government for that.
If Google were serious about competing in enterprise search against vendors like Autonomy, they wouldn't have to worry about losing significant business here. Google's problems here are a direct result of the fact that they haven't spun off a unit that is really funded and operated like an organization that wants to get down and dirty with those customers.
Considering the amount of cash I've seen thrown at Autonomy (it would make Larry Ellison wet himself in excitement), I just don't understand it. Sure, it's not sexy and it's often bureaucratic as hell, but Google could easily afford to spin off their appliance unit into a software/service arm that operates independently of the main "cool" business.
Indeed. As the GP said: investor confidence/some chump buying it at a higher price. Without a dividend, there is no inherent return on investment. It's only going to go up so long as someone is willing to pay you more than you paid for it.
Since the GP used oil investments as an example, I'll point out my own experience from researching them: there's barely any good oil companies that aren't paying a healthy dividend. As some southerners are fond of saying, you could swing a dead cat into a room filled with oil investment ideas and no matter where it lands, you'll likely find a company that pays at least a 3% dividend (and 6-12% dividends are very common).
Oil investments are actually one of the very best investments for the elderly and poor because they are so reliable about paying dividends in bad times. The oil companies my grandmother owned may have lost half of their value in 2008, but there was not even a hiccup in her getting her dividend checks from them.
If Facebook is more important to them than learning, let them flounder if they're not keeping up. They're adults and don't need any "sympathy" or "understanding" on this subject. If they cannot look at the unemployment rates for their demographic and then treat college like it's their last make-it-or-break-it chance at success short of them working 100 hours a week on their own business in their parents' garage, then I say screw them.
I'm tired of the hand-wringing about my generation. Stop coddling us. We are not entitled to the American Dream just because we showed up.
That they might actually be withholding them for a good reason? Such as:
1) They'd just make Manning look even worse to a lot of people without adding anything new or newsworthy?
2) They contain state secrets that would get Wired in trouble if they released them?
3) They're simply not relevant to the discussion?
If the stuff is important to understanding Manning, I'm sure his defense counsel will subpoena it from Wired because it'll be useful in his defense. If it's not useful in his defense, then it's not newsworthy because the public already knows enough from what's been released to have a clear idea of what he is accused of doing.
The FCC is a regulatory agency and as such can draft up all sorts of regulations based on what Congress permits, intentionally or unintentionally. Other executive branch agencies cannot. Homeland Security needed very specific legislation to shut down those sites recently for copyright infringement. The FCC, depending on how Congress acts, could do whatever its leadership wants.
That does include censoring "obscene speech."
Do a Google search yourself for "fairness doctrine" and you will find a number of Democrats calling at various points in the last three years for it. Kerry was one of them.
Actually, in the US it would, since no federal agency has any direct statutory control over the Internet yet. Law enforcement can enforce specific criminal statutes, but no federal agency has the power to get right in there and start messing with the Internet itself in the United States. The FBI can come in with all sorts of orders, but the telecoms can tell them to go f#$% themselves if the law doesn't back them up.
And no net neutrality proposal will address this point because they all just blithely assume that those telecoms are going to lay there and take it up the ass as a federal regulator reviews their network operations on a regular basis.
What is really needed is a good plan to separate ownership of the backbone from ownership of the last mile. If Comcast couldn't legally enter the backbone infrastructure market, and "Mom and Pop Fiber Optics" could get access to Verizon's infrastructure at a "reasonable, non-discriminatory rate" it wouldn't matter if Comcast combined content and ISP services because Comcast would not have any more clout than its smaller competitors.
What about three people? Why can't a man have two lawfully wedded wives at the same time? Who appointed you the arbiter of where the line in the sand is drawn once marriage is no longer between one man and one woman (which the overwhelming majority of human cultures have always defined it as)?
To the extent that gay marriage redefines how our society views marriage, it opens up pandora's box because today's "reasonable person" who balks at polygamy today is tomorrow's "reactionary."
Incorporate his research. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with the suits that they don't look at this and go "hmmmm, free research" instead of "OMG TEH WURLD IZ FALLIN?!"
They're screwed right now. If they bankrupt him through litigation, you can bet that someone from the Russian mob is going to offer him a briefcase of unmarked bills to "fund his education."
The reason that happens is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. do it all. Ideally, the regulation would be simple:
1) Create two classes of companies: core infrastructure owners and ISPs. One side controls the heavy infrastructure, one focuses on the last mile and such.
2) By law, ISPs cannot compete with core infrastructure providers and vice versa. You must choose at the time of incorporation. Likewise, they cannot own stock in each other or share members of the same board of directors.
3) Exempt core infrastructure providers from antitrust regulations if they sell their services at a non-discriminatory rate. Meaning if Verizon sells bandwidth at the same rate to Comcast and FiOS Independent Internet, Verizon simply cannot be sued for antitrust at all in its handling of its services.
4) Require ISPs to provide all customers a list, written at a level appropriate for a high school level of reading comprehension, that clearly states all non-QoS discrimination they perform. Whenever they change the policy, such as to gouge iTunes or Netflix, they must inform all customers in writing, in the same level of language.
I'm confused. You actually want me to feel like a dirty hypocrite for not giving a bunch of tin horn dictators who often terrorize their people a seat at the table? What's your next move? Accuse me of ageism for supporting the signs at amusement parks that say "you must be this tall to ride the ride?"
If you want to "prevent corporate control," there are better ways like forcefully divesting the telecoms of their ISP businesses. Make Verizon sell off FiOS as a new company that has to license Verizon's infrastructure like any other business.
Some of my older relatives find it bewildering that so many decisions about the direction of the Internet, a "public resource," are made by private bodies from corporations to the IETF and not governments. These are from the older generations that were spoon-fed that bullshit about how we are all Free and Equal Citizens participating in our democratic process, "we're the government," etc. The idea that it's being guided by a fairly enlightened, techno/meritocratic elite and not by "democracy" is scary to them.
Considering the fact that the number of states that can even reasonably claim to be "free, democratic societies" are a minority in the UN, it **should** go without saying that this is bad. The UN as a forum has not done much of anything good in a long time. Just recently, it resurrected a proposal against "defamation of religion" which, if adopted by member states, would do things like make you a criminal for pointing out that Mohammed was a pedophile even by the standards of his day (marrying and deflowering a 9 year old was considered deviant even back then, as 9 was not a common marriage age for girls).
If the Internet really does fall firmly into government controls, it'll present a scenario for individual liberty that makes the surveillance states of the Warsaw Pact look like nothing. It really is the most dangerous tool that mankind has ever created aside from nuclear technology, in its ability to be used to reshape societies for good or bad.
Is that it's going to get a little bit harder to run a new business that makes computer products.
I don't think there's anything we can do about this. The general sentiment is that patents make the market "fair" by "protecting inventors." The American people care more about a "fair market" than a "free market" today. If you suggest that no one has a right to make money from their ideas, only their actual products, you're seen as a cold-hearted bastard in the mold of Randroid who believes cigar-chomping fatcats should be able to keep guys working on The Next Big Thing in their garage from getting rich by stealing their ideas.
Nevermind the fact that more often than not, what the patent system really means is that the cigar-chomping fatcat can sue the guy in his garage into bankruptcy 100 times over before he can get his product to market.
Was there expert testimony for the jury on "rape trauma syndrome?" If not, then how can they make an informed judgment? Judges and lawyers are not experts outside of law (if that!) If no medical testimony is given, the jury has a duty to inform itself otherwise it'll be participating in a possible miscarriage of justice.
That if the prosecutor had withheld exculpatory evidence that the judge would not have done this?
The agents of the state can literally get away with "murder by state" (some prosecutors have actually successfully defended the prosecution of likely innocent men on death row), but a jury forewoman cannot research a technical term.
I'd be more sympathetic if the law actually stated that if a prosecutor violates any procedure in court, intentionally or unintentionally, all charges are dropped with prejudice (meaning they can never be refiled).
**All charges**
In most statutes, it's legally dangerous to even point a gun at a team of thieves who've parked a van in front of your house and who are systematically robbing you. Someone "steals" a picture that is probably worth a few hundred dollars and has no real value apart from the original story... $150k in possible statutory damages.
This isn't a sign that we're sophisticated or advanced as a society. It says we're a bloody banana republic where the common man has no legally sure way to defend what is his, but some photographer or corporation can try to ruin your business over what should be a minor infraction (that they too often commit, just look at how often major bloggers are copied by big media outlets).
It may come as a shock to a lot of Slashdot readers, but a lot of Americans don't have any need for more than that. If the price is right, it's a good bargain. My dad helped an elderly friend switch over to $15/month DSL because she's at that season of life where most of the things that need much more than DSL are just outside the scope of what she wants to learn and do. She really isn't losing anything. In fact, she's gaining Internet access that's pretty good at a price that she can actually afford without cutting her budget or dipping into the government's pocket.
Where's the loss there? Availability is one thing, but personal choices are a non-issue.