1. The contractor, fed up with an onerous and ridiculous authorization process,
2. asked for permission from FBI officials to crack their superiors' passwords,
3. and the FBI officials in question said yes.
Okay, so, Colon is in court. What happened to the FBI staffers who gave him the go-ahead?
My question exactly. I used to work for the government, and it's highly believable that the guy was given approval to do this. (You have no idea how much red tape there is, let alone the process to get an account with the type of access he was after.) However, Colon shouldn't have cracked the database multiple times (let alone once). He should have either 1) kept requesting the agent's password when it changed, or 2) quit. There's a reason those processes were there, and if he didn't like it, he should have left. Also, the staffers can claim ignorance all they want, but I find it very hard to believe that none of them knew he was doing this to get his work done.
Won't someone please think of the children?
on
Enron's Kenneth Lay Dies
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Good Riddance.
Um, does anyone know whether the gov't seized all his assets before he croaked? Because if they didn't, his heirs might just try to take what's left "while the body's still warm". I haven't heard of passing a sentence on a dead body before, but I'm sure there's a legal battle in there somewhere that lawyers are chomping at the bit to get in on.
I'd hate for "Kenny-Boy" to get the last laugh on America, you know, by dying early.
Ridiculous
Etymology: Latin ridiculosus (from ridiculum jest, from neuter of ridiculus) or ridiculus, literally, laughable, from ridEre to laugh
Irregardless
The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.
Yes, my spelling is subpar, and my grammar could use some improvement. However, the goal of communication is to convey an idea or thought, and less about the accuracy of the delivery. I'm not writing an academic paper or published work, merely stealing some time to post on slashdot.
Yes we all understand what you meant.
Excellent, that was the real intention of my post.
However, when you are out in the real world and are conversing with a well-educated individual, you might do well to keep to good grammar as that person may look on you when you say, "irregardless" much the same way you might look upon someone who says, "I already done told you, it ain't me who done took it."
That's good advice. I'll be sure to keep that in mind if I ever run across someone of that description.
No, it is absolutely true, because the laws against it are unconstitutional bullshit!
I don't give a rat's ass about what's technically "legal;" I care about what's right.
I agree with your statement. Crap like this shouldn't be tolerated by our legal system at all. I was merely trying to state what does often happen. I'd be quite happy if the bar for "police harassment" was lowered a few notches, especially with the way this country is heading.
I'm pretty sure TFA says he did have a sign.
The article doesn't explicitly mention a sign, just that the officer was "informed" about the cameras. I explained in a little more detail
here.
What reason does the officer have to tell you to stop cursing? Does it matter if you call him a motherfucker or not? What if the officer tells you to do jumping jacks? Do you have to listen then? I would say no, a police officer should not have the ability to take total control of you.
Continued cursing or yelling probably falls under the "makes unreasonable noise and continues to do so after being asked to stop" clause commonly found in Disorderly Conduct laws (most likely varying a little from location to location).
As for the jumping jacks, probably not, but a decidedly evil cop could probably call it a sobriety test. I have multiple lawyers and a judge in the family, and the general rule of thumb they repeat when dealing with police is to be courteous, and don't give them an excuse to charge you with something. Most B.S. charges will get thrown out of court, but "disorderly conduct" is a fairly easy charge to stick to a person.
Different laws were created to give police officers the tools they need to catch crooks, but it's very easy for them to use a few of them to penalize people that annoy them. They have enough tricks in their book, that are legal, that they can use on occasion to stick it to us normal people. I'm not judging the legality of these types of actions, but I am aware that these things happen.
According to the available information he DID have a sign posted.
From the article:
Karlis didn't know about the security camera until his second visit, when Michael Gannon told him to "smile" for the camera, police reported.
Janet Gannon said her husband explicitly warned officers of the camera, later adding "smile," as a joke.
"I heard him say it," she said. "He said, 'Gentlemen, there's a camera right there.'"
The article makes no mention of whether there was a sign, merely that Gannon informed the policeman verbally. In most cases the owner has a sign posted, but the article doesn't mention it.
In reality it is exactly the opposite: he can call them whatever he damn well pleases because he has Free Speech, while they are restricted while on duty because they're representatives of the State.
Actually, that's not quite true. If the officer asked the individual to watch his language or curb his swearing, and the individual went ahead and still swore away, the police can charge him with disorderly conduct. From my understanding, "disorderly conduct" is usually written in a vague enough fashion so that police can charge any person who disobeys (does not follow) a police warning or order, no matter how rediculous it may be. If the officer's request is later found to be illegal you can sue, but it's best to do what the officer says to avoid legal headaches.
The owner probably should have had a sign posted, to avoid all of this legal hassle. Simply stating to the officer that he or she is being videotaped makes for a shaky "who are you going to believe" argument. A key issue that I don't see listed is whether the owner turned on the system in response to the officer knocking at the door. If the individual was not running a continuous surveillance loop, it could be argued that the person merely installed the camera system to target certain individuals or the police.
Irregardless of the legal feasiblity of the charge, the charge sounds like a load of B.S. The owner may be a jerk, have two sons who are frequently at odds with the law, and may not feel inclined to rat on his own children whenever the police come around, but that doesn't give the police the right to make bogus charges and penalize the individual however they see fit. Even dicks have certain rights guaranteed and should be able to live without being harassed by police.
Won't somebody please think of the plants and photoplankton? I'm no scientologist, but I'm pretty sure that limiting the amount of light coming from the sun would wreck any biocycles nature has developed. Call me an alarmist, but suddenly deciding to reduce the output of a near static light source (within 1%) that has been around for millions of years would probably be a "Bad Thing" (tm).
"Geoengineering" is a cool sounding term, but only completely conceited egomaniacs would think that they have enough scientific knowledge under their belt to start tinkering with the Earth's switchboard. The scientific community can go play God on someone else's ecosystem, Earth already has enough problems without ambitious Ph.D's playing doctor with the world climate. There are less potentially dangerous ways to control carbon dioxide emissions and global warming than giving the Earth a brand new set of Oakley's.
[For added emphasis, I've replaced certain parts of the obligatory Simpsons reference with pertinent madlibs]
QUIMBY
For stopping global warming, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.
Skinner talks to Lisa.
SKINNER
Well, I was wrong. The earth sized sunglasses are a godsend.
LISA
But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by glasiers?
SKINNER
No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of nuclear weapons. They'll wipe out the glasiers.
LISA
But aren't the nuclear weapons even worse?
SKINNER
Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of bacteria that thrives on radiation.
LISA
But then we're stuck with mutant bacteria!
SKINNER
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the bacteria simply freezes to death.
You mean we have a constitutional right to a college scholarship?
I apologize for the confusion, but the ban is not limited to only the scholarship candidates. From the article:
Kent State's nearly 400 athletes will be banned from Facebook -- not by the Web site, but by university administrators.
Athletics Director Laing Kennedy recently told student-athletes they have until Aug. 1 to remove their Facebook profiles, citing a need to protect both their identities and the university's image.
Scholarship recipients can lose their ride for eating peanut butter, getting a tattoo, or changing their name to "Fred", if it's in the scholarship agreement. The university doesn't have to give out free rides to athletes, but when it does there are definitely certain strings attached. That wasn't the point I was trying to make.
I just wanted to make sure that everyone realizes that it's not limited to the scholarship recipients. The ban affects ALL athletes on university teams, irregardless of whether they are receiving scholarships. It's these "regular" athletes that are most likely having their freedom unlawfully encroached on, and are the most likely to win in court. (Scholarship candidates can lose their free rides for much less than this already.)
I still think it's a good idea not to have an account if you're an athlete anyways. You may be very careful, but your pal listed as a "friend" may be showcasing a photo of his best pal chugging down a cold one while holding a stripper in one hand. It's much more difficult to control one's friends.
is this even legal? I would think that what an adult choses to do in their provate time is their business...
If challenged, this policy will most likely be struck down. It is wrong to implement mass bans on actions such as these, and probably encroaches on a few key liberties that we're guaranteed.
Since these are students recieving athletic scholarships, my guess is that it's legal to say "if you want this free money, you can't use facebook". It's the same way that NFL teams can write contracts that forbid things like skydiving or riding motorcycles.
It's not quite the same thing. Skydiving and motorcycles are proven to be higher risk actions, that probably would drive NFL insurance policies through the roof. Facebook and MySpace may be prone to acts of stupidity, but it in no way would impair an athlete from performing his or her designated sport if something "bad" gets posted.
The way the policy is written now is too broad, and is written in such a way that allows the university to be lazy bums. The burden of proof of wrongdoing or improper behavior should be on the university. While banning the activity may seem like a viable solution to the PHB's at the university, it is most likely a breach of freedom of expression.
What the university should have implemented is an addendum to their normal code of coduct statement that reads, "Any reasonable evidence of improper behavior (underage drinking, etc.) brought to the attention of the supervising board or committee, irregardless of format (internet, photos, etc.), will result in immediate expulsion from all university athletic teams the individual is a member of." While this requires a little more proactive stance by the university, it gives them a failsafe where they have plausible deniability for actions that would hurt the universities credability.
While I think coaches should strongly discourage players from using MySpace and Facebook type accounts, it should not be banned. And the burden of proof (or reasonable evidence) should rest on the university. Otherwise the university is just promoting the generalization that all MySpace and Facebook users are immoral troublemakers. I wouldn't be surprised if MySpace and Facebook consider litigation on the matter, since it is probably the equivalent of slander for the internet.
Let the BDS posts begin... You guys really need to grow up and start thinking.
Unquestioning loyalty and unmitigated hate are BOTH equally unhealthy behaviors. These behaviors indicate that the person expressing the emotion is beyond the reach of critical thought. (By critical thought, I expressly mean the ability of a person to examine a situation with an open mind.) This attitude formation prevents dialog or negotiation from resolving the situation, and often leads to arguments that devolve to name calling or (in extreme cases) violence.
But it should be noted that there is a difference between hate and a complete lack of trust and credability. For example, I don't hate the president. He seems like he'd be a amicable enough guy to hang around with at a party, but I can't put my trust in the man. He's fooled me too many times:
Mr. Bush is a "C" student and a failed business man, and it's showing. So you'll understand that while he may be a great guy and an optimist, he can only only fool me (and other people) a limited number of times. No president should ever be this bereft of competence. Trust and respect must be earned, and while lies, ineptitude and patriotism may work for some people, he's fooled me too many times to be trustworthy. Good intentions are nice, but don't get the job done. Any sensible employer would have replaced him by now, so please don't begrudge me (or others) the opinion that he should be replaced, too.
As a first step, I'd be quite happy with portional representation applied to the state level. For example, Florida has 25 representatives, which would mean a minority party would need 4% of the vote in order to take a house seat. I don't think it's that far fetched or unreasonable to require the Green Party (or other organization) to reach this goal. It ensures that a party has to have a decent following before it can participate. Granted, this would make it difficult for minority parties to take hold of smaller states (Wisconsin's 8 reps = 12.5%), but at least it would be a start. It would also ensure that the parties concern themselves more at the state level, instead of just pushing for a national percentage. But I think we need some kind of change, as what we currently have doesn't seem to be working as good as it should.
That's the conundrum. If she quits, she has very little to worry about. If she tells the press, the police would just leak the dirt on the mayor, discredit her with anything they dug up, and probably be worse off than she is. Knowing the right thing to do is easy, doing the right thing is difficult and oftentimes self-destructive. Some people have a lot to lose.
If the carriers think they can get away charging more, let them try it.
Slashdot's Bill: $100,000
Fox News's Bill: $0
The fallacy in this argument is believing that the market will favor the better service [read: content providers]. However, if there's one thing you can take away from corporate history, is that monopolies win 98% of the time. Rockerfeller, Gates, and Ford all employed their monopolies effectively. Historically it was only a more nimble competitor that tended to topple the bigger fish, but rarely (if ever) has anything gotten in the way of a successful monopoly.
Everyone keeps focusing on the big fish in this struggle, without realizing that it's the little fish that will get squashed. It's the ma and pop shops that will have to go belly up, because they don't have the deep pockets to fight an extra bill from the telco's. Corporations like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have enough money to keep their monetary losses to a minimum, but small time sites do not.
What we're essentially considering here, is whether the telco's have an arbitrary right to charge certain sites more. If this passes, how difficult would it be for well connected people to start censoring the internet this way? I'm not saying it will happen, but power like this often devolves towards abuse, and there are probably only 1 or 2 politicians with enough know-how to keep this abuse in check. I find it difficult to believe that any good can come from this (except for the telcos), as history has a definite pattern to favor the monopoly in question.
It is supposed to prevent a police officer from abusing his position to collect sensitive information. All too often it's forgotten that there have been cops who will dig up dirt to be used for personal gain.
To emphasize this point, my mother's close friend is the mayor's assistant for a sizable (over 40k) city in Wisconsin. After being elected, the chief of police and his cadre quickly spent resources and dug up as much dirt as they could on the mayor, and then attempted to blackmail him to ensure they had free reign. The mayor told them to piss off, so the police then proceeded to dig up dirt on each of the mayor's direct reports and repeat the process. My mother's friend is scared to no end, and is strongly considering just quitting. (They had dirt on the previous mayor as well, and so were used to the ill-gotten freedom.)
If this is happening in a city this size, I can only imagine the greed and underhandedness that happens in larger cities. This country needs to wake up, and the general population needs a few more IQ points to boot.
The Democrats and Republicans may always be fighting against each other, but they have always joined together to ensure that no third party can ever gain a foothold in the government. History shows us that (with our system) when one party falls apart, another will rise to take its place. But we've really only ever had a dicotomy in the U.S.
My solution is simple, change the House of Representatives into portional representation. Portional representation differs in that you vote for the party, not the person. So if 10% of the US votes "Green Party", then 10% of the House would be made up of Green Party members. Since we elect them every 2 years, it would ensure that the American government keeps pace with the people it represents. The idea is that the party will choose the best people to represent their ideals for office. The downside is that the house members will no longer directly represent a small area of the country; but the upside is that more parties would form, and coalitions form to take the majority (often with the smaller parties winning a few compromises in the process). So while there is no longer a Congressman doing anything for a specific town or district, you'd see grass roots parties like the "Farmland of America" party springing up.
I think americans have seen how well their congressperson "looks out" for the people that elected them. I think people would have an easier time remembering whether the "Green Party" passed a law to clear away wetlands, than whether Congress person X did.
I'm not an exec at Bell South or any other telco, but I can tell you how their ideal business plan will be set up and marketed. The telco in question will "partner" with a major search engine, and a few other key sites. These content providers would pay some extra fee to be a "partner" with faster speeds.
Now you and I know that the telcos would slow down traffic to non-partner sites, but it will be marketed to the consumer as the service being "optimized for company X, Y and Z". The general public is rather naive, and will effectively be fooled by this. After all, why would I want to wait 3 seconds for Google to load when I can use Yahoo? It's just a search engine after all.
Google will have to pony up the cash, or else they'll start to lose market share. Do you really think that Yahoo wouldn't drop a couple million dollars to have their competitor's load times double or triple? People are lazy, and I guarantee the majority of them would just switch search engines instead of going through the hassle of using a different ISP. From a user's perspective, the major difference between ISP's will no longer be bandwidth, but what "packages" the service comes with. Do I pay $50/month for the Yahoo/Fox News/Ebay package, or $70/month for the additional YouTube/Video Plus package?
There is a TON of money being left on the table by not offering tiered service. The telcos will pull out every trick to prevent net neutrality from seeing the light of day. Make no mistake, the market will settle this, but those of you who believe that free lunches will rule the day need to hang around more PHB's. America is driven by corporations and greed, and the telco's have been around longer, and are better connected than the upstart web corporations. No legislation will be forthcoming, unless people make it an election issue (which they won't).
Google can stand up if it wants to, but short of them offer free internet service to all or buying some politicians, they've got a snowball's chance in Hell on this one. They've probably seen this coming for a while now (with the dark fiber and all), but I don't think they have enough momentum. As always, we'll have to wait and see.
Constitutional free speech is so 1780's. The new fad is for the government to just tell us what is and is not illegal. I for one welcome our existing government overlords.
I just realized something. Ma Bell is cooperating with Bush to keep track of all terror suspects. But anyone could be a terrorist, meaning "Ma Bush" must monitor everyone. "MaBus[h]" is what Nostradamus predicted would accellerate the end times and bring the comet. This means...
*head explodes*
Earthlings would would have been so much less paranoid if Nostradamus would have kept those stupid predictions to himself. I mean seriously, what good can come from them?
Tell me about it. I still can't figure out how to make the water stand still long enough for me to measure it with my ruler. It takes ME at least a few seconds to count each of the millimeter lines, and my measurements have a range of plus or minus a couple feet, depending on the day. (Stupid waves.) Although it would explain why people in labcoats and water wings keep wading into the water by the south pier.
Do you want to pay $100 a month for your 10Mb broadband connection? Probably not. The DSL and cable providers do not want to charge you that either - they want people that want to reach out to you to pay the difference.
That's not quite the issue being discussed, although the telecoms / cable cos would happily have you believe that. The telcos are still making a fat profit, that is not what is at issue. What is at issue is that the profit growth curve is flattening out, which upsets the shareholders, which forces the telcos to invent new ways to keep the curve going up.
From this miasma of thought and pressure came this idea. It's not really a new idea. (Fedex, UPS and the Post Office charge "per package", so to say.) What's got everyone so worked up into a fuss is that the the extra amount of "work" that is created by this extra traffic is miniscule compared to the post office meme.
The reason being provided with this idea doesn't have much credability, which is why there is a backlash. (People are having a difficult time believing that this isn't just a lame excuse to pick more people's pockets.) Using my example it would be like me sending a two-day package through Mailboxes Etc, only to have the courier call me up and say I'll have to pay another $50 to have it make it there on time. I paid Mailboxes Etc to send the package, so why should I now have to bribe the courier as well?
I understand that the advent of more heavily accessed streaming video will eat up the telco's bandwidth, but they should be working something out with the web site ISP's, not the people sending out the packages. But if the telcos want the market to sort itself out on this matter, I think they'll be in for a rude awakening in a few years time. The telcos should really read up on game theory.
When the US stops making the world a worse place to live in for all non-US citizens, we'll stop criticizing your politics.
I think the US is making the world a worse place to live for all US citizens as well, so please keep criticizing our politics. But criticism tends to ring hollow if it persists. What we need is a politician with constructive solutions, enough brains to implement them, and the conviction follow through on them. (Our current president has the "conviction" part down, but seems to lack the other two critical areas.) We also need to reign in our politicians, and make them understand that they do not have a free license to do whatever they wish after they're elected.
Unfortunately, the majority of the populace do not want to get involved, or feel that questioning whether our leaders are acting in our best interests in unpatriotic. Hell, the way things are going, China will be our new overlords by 2020 (if not sooner). We need less debt, less of the world hating us, and smarter more able people running the country (and I don't mean that defaults to Democrats). But just because I (and other people) want these things to happen, it doesn't mean it will.
ISP's will have to deliver the sort of bandwidth to consumers that consumers already think they're paying for.
Correction: "ISP's will have to deliver the sort of bandwidth to consumers that consumers already are paying for."
It is not the consumer's fault that the ISP is reaching beyond their means and making promises they can't keep. The ISP accepts this risk as part of its business model, and is based on the assumption that not everyone will be using the bandwidth that much at once. With the advent of YouTube and frequent video access, the risk associated with their business model is going through the roof. (The risk model is similar to why banks hope everyone doesn't pull their money out all at once.) So the ISP / telcos are proactively seeking something to mitigate this risk.
The ISP's / telcos are going to have a higher risk, and lower gross profit in the coming years, so they are racking their collective brain trying to find a solution. Charging the content providers (meaning the customer indirectly) is less disruptive to their profit model, as charging the customers directly would no doubt spawn a backlash. Is it shady? Yes. But I forsee only one of two things occuring to deal with this problem. Either the existing ISP's / telcos follow this course of action to preserve their business, or new ISP's / telcos (with business models better equipped to handle the situation) rise to take their places.
So the question ends up being, who do legislator's want to support, the existing businesses or the startups that do not exist yet? Google may be crying foul here (and will probably need to flex more muscle than it already has), but I think our congress people are going to let market evolution take care of everything. I personally think the internet should be regulated as a utility, but we have a pro-business congress and administration so we're not going to see that kind of legislation unless the voters think it's an issue (which they don't). So either the web / political challengers need to make this an election issue, or we're going to be in for a bumpy ride.
I think Tom Giovanetti's reasoning is very justifiable. Often times as humans we are quick to criticize, and very hypocrytical.
Oh, I agree completely. I don't think there's any reason to think the phone company will exploit their monopoly. No reason at all...
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't valid reasons for either or both, but it's a rhetorical question that I think we should all be asking ourselves.
But if I ask myself for an answer to the question, it's no longer rhetorical. Must... not... answer... (*head explodes*)
Seriously though, this internet thing was a bad idea from the start. It's a good thing that a tiered system can develop to prune the chaff of the internet away. In an ideal world, the internet would consist of MSN, Fox News and Ann Coulter praising blogs. None of this slashdot, dailykos, or other free thinking blog crap. MySpace would still exist, just so law enforcement can catch all those idiot liberals who post their crime exploits on there. (Wish they'd do something about the color schemes though.) People nowadays have too much freedom anyways, and should just do what they're told. Friggin liberals.
Slashdot Mirror
My question exactly. I used to work for the government, and it's highly believable that the guy was given approval to do this. (You have no idea how much red tape there is, let alone the process to get an account with the type of access he was after.) However, Colon shouldn't have cracked the database multiple times (let alone once). He should have either 1) kept requesting the agent's password when it changed, or 2) quit. There's a reason those processes were there, and if he didn't like it, he should have left. Also, the staffers can claim ignorance all they want, but I find it very hard to believe that none of them knew he was doing this to get his work done.
I'd hate for "Kenny-Boy" to get the last laugh on America, you know, by dying early.
Etymology: Latin ridiculosus (from ridiculum jest, from neuter of ridiculus) or ridiculus, literally, laughable, from ridEre to laugh
Irregardless
The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.
Yes, my spelling is subpar, and my grammar could use some improvement. However, the goal of communication is to convey an idea or thought, and less about the accuracy of the delivery. I'm not writing an academic paper or published work, merely stealing some time to post on slashdot.
Excellent, that was the real intention of my post.
That's good advice. I'll be sure to keep that in mind if I ever run across someone of that description.
The article doesn't explicitly mention a sign, just that the officer was "informed" about the cameras. I explained in a little more detail here.
As for the jumping jacks, probably not, but a decidedly evil cop could probably call it a sobriety test. I have multiple lawyers and a judge in the family, and the general rule of thumb they repeat when dealing with police is to be courteous, and don't give them an excuse to charge you with something. Most B.S. charges will get thrown out of court, but "disorderly conduct" is a fairly easy charge to stick to a person.
Different laws were created to give police officers the tools they need to catch crooks, but it's very easy for them to use a few of them to penalize people that annoy them. They have enough tricks in their book, that are legal, that they can use on occasion to stick it to us normal people. I'm not judging the legality of these types of actions, but I am aware that these things happen.
Karlis didn't know about the security camera until his second visit, when Michael Gannon told him to "smile" for the camera, police reported. Janet Gannon said her husband explicitly warned officers of the camera, later adding "smile," as a joke. "I heard him say it," she said. "He said, 'Gentlemen, there's a camera right there.'"
The article makes no mention of whether there was a sign, merely that Gannon informed the policeman verbally. In most cases the owner has a sign posted, but the article doesn't mention it.
The owner probably should have had a sign posted, to avoid all of this legal hassle. Simply stating to the officer that he or she is being videotaped makes for a shaky "who are you going to believe" argument. A key issue that I don't see listed is whether the owner turned on the system in response to the officer knocking at the door. If the individual was not running a continuous surveillance loop, it could be argued that the person merely installed the camera system to target certain individuals or the police.
Irregardless of the legal feasiblity of the charge, the charge sounds like a load of B.S. The owner may be a jerk, have two sons who are frequently at odds with the law, and may not feel inclined to rat on his own children whenever the police come around, but that doesn't give the police the right to make bogus charges and penalize the individual however they see fit. Even dicks have certain rights guaranteed and should be able to live without being harassed by police.
Won't somebody please think of the plants and photoplankton? I'm no scientologist, but I'm pretty sure that limiting the amount of light coming from the sun would wreck any biocycles nature has developed. Call me an alarmist, but suddenly deciding to reduce the output of a near static light source (within 1%) that has been around for millions of years would probably be a "Bad Thing" (tm).
"Geoengineering" is a cool sounding term, but only completely conceited egomaniacs would think that they have enough scientific knowledge under their belt to start tinkering with the Earth's switchboard. The scientific community can go play God on someone else's ecosystem, Earth already has enough problems without ambitious Ph.D's playing doctor with the world climate. There are less potentially dangerous ways to control carbon dioxide emissions and global warming than giving the Earth a brand new set of Oakley's.
[For added emphasis, I've replaced certain parts of the obligatory Simpsons reference with pertinent madlibs]
QUIMBY
For stopping global warming, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.
Skinner talks to Lisa.
SKINNER
Well, I was wrong. The earth sized sunglasses are a godsend.
LISA
But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by glasiers?
SKINNER
No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of nuclear weapons. They'll wipe out the glasiers.
LISA
But aren't the nuclear weapons even worse?
SKINNER
Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of bacteria that thrives on radiation.
LISA
But then we're stuck with mutant bacteria!
SKINNER
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the bacteria simply freezes to death.
Scholarship recipients can lose their ride for eating peanut butter, getting a tattoo, or changing their name to "Fred", if it's in the scholarship agreement. The university doesn't have to give out free rides to athletes, but when it does there are definitely certain strings attached. That wasn't the point I was trying to make.
I just wanted to make sure that everyone realizes that it's not limited to the scholarship recipients. The ban affects ALL athletes on university teams, irregardless of whether they are receiving scholarships. It's these "regular" athletes that are most likely having their freedom unlawfully encroached on, and are the most likely to win in court. (Scholarship candidates can lose their free rides for much less than this already.)
I still think it's a good idea not to have an account if you're an athlete anyways. You may be very careful, but your pal listed as a "friend" may be showcasing a photo of his best pal chugging down a cold one while holding a stripper in one hand. It's much more difficult to control one's friends.
It's not quite the same thing. Skydiving and motorcycles are proven to be higher risk actions, that probably would drive NFL insurance policies through the roof. Facebook and MySpace may be prone to acts of stupidity, but it in no way would impair an athlete from performing his or her designated sport if something "bad" gets posted.
The way the policy is written now is too broad, and is written in such a way that allows the university to be lazy bums. The burden of proof of wrongdoing or improper behavior should be on the university. While banning the activity may seem like a viable solution to the PHB's at the university, it is most likely a breach of freedom of expression.
What the university should have implemented is an addendum to their normal code of coduct statement that reads, "Any reasonable evidence of improper behavior (underage drinking, etc.) brought to the attention of the supervising board or committee, irregardless of format (internet, photos, etc.), will result in immediate expulsion from all university athletic teams the individual is a member of." While this requires a little more proactive stance by the university, it gives them a failsafe where they have plausible deniability for actions that would hurt the universities credability.
While I think coaches should strongly discourage players from using MySpace and Facebook type accounts, it should not be banned. And the burden of proof (or reasonable evidence) should rest on the university. Otherwise the university is just promoting the generalization that all MySpace and Facebook users are immoral troublemakers. I wouldn't be surprised if MySpace and Facebook consider litigation on the matter, since it is probably the equivalent of slander for the internet.
Unquestioning loyalty and unmitigated hate are BOTH equally unhealthy behaviors. These behaviors indicate that the person expressing the emotion is beyond the reach of critical thought. (By critical thought, I expressly mean the ability of a person to examine a situation with an open mind.) This attitude formation prevents dialog or negotiation from resolving the situation, and often leads to arguments that devolve to name calling or (in extreme cases) violence.
But it should be noted that there is a difference between hate and a complete lack of trust and credability. For example, I don't hate the president. He seems like he'd be a amicable enough guy to hang around with at a party, but I can't put my trust in the man. He's fooled me too many times:
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Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? Nope.
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Saddam has links to al Qaeda? Nope.
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Katrina victims will receive the support they require in a timely fashion? Nope.
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US citizens will only be spied on using a court order? Nope.
Mr. Bush is a "C" student and a failed business man, and it's showing. So you'll understand that while he may be a great guy and an optimist, he can only only fool me (and other people) a limited number of times. No president should ever be this bereft of competence. Trust and respect must be earned, and while lies, ineptitude and patriotism may work for some people, he's fooled me too many times to be trustworthy. Good intentions are nice, but don't get the job done. Any sensible employer would have replaced him by now, so please don't begrudge me (or others) the opinion that he should be replaced, too.As a first step, I'd be quite happy with portional representation applied to the state level. For example, Florida has 25 representatives, which would mean a minority party would need 4% of the vote in order to take a house seat. I don't think it's that far fetched or unreasonable to require the Green Party (or other organization) to reach this goal. It ensures that a party has to have a decent following before it can participate. Granted, this would make it difficult for minority parties to take hold of smaller states (Wisconsin's 8 reps = 12.5%), but at least it would be a start. It would also ensure that the parties concern themselves more at the state level, instead of just pushing for a national percentage. But I think we need some kind of change, as what we currently have doesn't seem to be working as good as it should.
That's the conundrum. If she quits, she has very little to worry about. If she tells the press, the police would just leak the dirt on the mayor, discredit her with anything they dug up, and probably be worse off than she is. Knowing the right thing to do is easy, doing the right thing is difficult and oftentimes self-destructive. Some people have a lot to lose.
Slashdot's Bill: $100,000
Fox News's Bill: $0
The fallacy in this argument is believing that the market will favor the better service [read: content providers]. However, if there's one thing you can take away from corporate history, is that monopolies win 98% of the time. Rockerfeller, Gates, and Ford all employed their monopolies effectively. Historically it was only a more nimble competitor that tended to topple the bigger fish, but rarely (if ever) has anything gotten in the way of a successful monopoly.
Everyone keeps focusing on the big fish in this struggle, without realizing that it's the little fish that will get squashed. It's the ma and pop shops that will have to go belly up, because they don't have the deep pockets to fight an extra bill from the telco's. Corporations like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have enough money to keep their monetary losses to a minimum, but small time sites do not.
What we're essentially considering here, is whether the telco's have an arbitrary right to charge certain sites more. If this passes, how difficult would it be for well connected people to start censoring the internet this way? I'm not saying it will happen, but power like this often devolves towards abuse, and there are probably only 1 or 2 politicians with enough know-how to keep this abuse in check. I find it difficult to believe that any good can come from this (except for the telcos), as history has a definite pattern to favor the monopoly in question.
If this is happening in a city this size, I can only imagine the greed and underhandedness that happens in larger cities. This country needs to wake up, and the general population needs a few more IQ points to boot.
The Democrats and Republicans may always be fighting against each other, but they have always joined together to ensure that no third party can ever gain a foothold in the government. History shows us that (with our system) when one party falls apart, another will rise to take its place. But we've really only ever had a dicotomy in the U.S.
My solution is simple, change the House of Representatives into portional representation. Portional representation differs in that you vote for the party, not the person. So if 10% of the US votes "Green Party", then 10% of the House would be made up of Green Party members. Since we elect them every 2 years, it would ensure that the American government keeps pace with the people it represents. The idea is that the party will choose the best people to represent their ideals for office. The downside is that the house members will no longer directly represent a small area of the country; but the upside is that more parties would form, and coalitions form to take the majority (often with the smaller parties winning a few compromises in the process). So while there is no longer a Congressman doing anything for a specific town or district, you'd see grass roots parties like the "Farmland of America" party springing up.
I think americans have seen how well their congressperson "looks out" for the people that elected them. I think people would have an easier time remembering whether the "Green Party" passed a law to clear away wetlands, than whether Congress person X did.
I'm not an exec at Bell South or any other telco, but I can tell you how their ideal business plan will be set up and marketed. The telco in question will "partner" with a major search engine, and a few other key sites. These content providers would pay some extra fee to be a "partner" with faster speeds.
Now you and I know that the telcos would slow down traffic to non-partner sites, but it will be marketed to the consumer as the service being "optimized for company X, Y and Z". The general public is rather naive, and will effectively be fooled by this. After all, why would I want to wait 3 seconds for Google to load when I can use Yahoo? It's just a search engine after all.
Google will have to pony up the cash, or else they'll start to lose market share. Do you really think that Yahoo wouldn't drop a couple million dollars to have their competitor's load times double or triple? People are lazy, and I guarantee the majority of them would just switch search engines instead of going through the hassle of using a different ISP. From a user's perspective, the major difference between ISP's will no longer be bandwidth, but what "packages" the service comes with. Do I pay $50/month for the Yahoo/Fox News/Ebay package, or $70/month for the additional YouTube/Video Plus package?
There is a TON of money being left on the table by not offering tiered service. The telcos will pull out every trick to prevent net neutrality from seeing the light of day. Make no mistake, the market will settle this, but those of you who believe that free lunches will rule the day need to hang around more PHB's. America is driven by corporations and greed, and the telco's have been around longer, and are better connected than the upstart web corporations. No legislation will be forthcoming, unless people make it an election issue (which they won't).
Google can stand up if it wants to, but short of them offer free internet service to all or buying some politicians, they've got a snowball's chance in Hell on this one. They've probably seen this coming for a while now (with the dark fiber and all), but I don't think they have enough momentum. As always, we'll have to wait and see.
I just realized something. Ma Bell is cooperating with Bush to keep track of all terror suspects. But anyone could be a terrorist, meaning "Ma Bush" must monitor everyone. "MaBus[h]" is what Nostradamus predicted would accellerate the end times and bring the comet. This means...
*head explodes*
Earthlings would would have been so much less paranoid if Nostradamus would have kept those stupid predictions to himself. I mean seriously, what good can come from them?
From this miasma of thought and pressure came this idea. It's not really a new idea. (Fedex, UPS and the Post Office charge "per package", so to say.) What's got everyone so worked up into a fuss is that the the extra amount of "work" that is created by this extra traffic is miniscule compared to the post office meme.
The reason being provided with this idea doesn't have much credability, which is why there is a backlash. (People are having a difficult time believing that this isn't just a lame excuse to pick more people's pockets.) Using my example it would be like me sending a two-day package through Mailboxes Etc, only to have the courier call me up and say I'll have to pay another $50 to have it make it there on time. I paid Mailboxes Etc to send the package, so why should I now have to bribe the courier as well?
I understand that the advent of more heavily accessed streaming video will eat up the telco's bandwidth, but they should be working something out with the web site ISP's, not the people sending out the packages. But if the telcos want the market to sort itself out on this matter, I think they'll be in for a rude awakening in a few years time. The telcos should really read up on game theory.
Unfortunately, the majority of the populace do not want to get involved, or feel that questioning whether our leaders are acting in our best interests in unpatriotic. Hell, the way things are going, China will be our new overlords by 2020 (if not sooner). We need less debt, less of the world hating us, and smarter more able people running the country (and I don't mean that defaults to Democrats). But just because I (and other people) want these things to happen, it doesn't mean it will.
So that'll be a -1 Offtopic, -2 Not Funny, and I'll take a side of -1 Flamebait please. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
It is not the consumer's fault that the ISP is reaching beyond their means and making promises they can't keep. The ISP accepts this risk as part of its business model, and is based on the assumption that not everyone will be using the bandwidth that much at once. With the advent of YouTube and frequent video access, the risk associated with their business model is going through the roof. (The risk model is similar to why banks hope everyone doesn't pull their money out all at once.) So the ISP / telcos are proactively seeking something to mitigate this risk.
The ISP's / telcos are going to have a higher risk, and lower gross profit in the coming years, so they are racking their collective brain trying to find a solution. Charging the content providers (meaning the customer indirectly) is less disruptive to their profit model, as charging the customers directly would no doubt spawn a backlash. Is it shady? Yes. But I forsee only one of two things occuring to deal with this problem. Either the existing ISP's / telcos follow this course of action to preserve their business, or new ISP's / telcos (with business models better equipped to handle the situation) rise to take their places.
So the question ends up being, who do legislator's want to support, the existing businesses or the startups that do not exist yet? Google may be crying foul here (and will probably need to flex more muscle than it already has), but I think our congress people are going to let market evolution take care of everything. I personally think the internet should be regulated as a utility, but we have a pro-business congress and administration so we're not going to see that kind of legislation unless the voters think it's an issue (which they don't). So either the web / political challengers need to make this an election issue, or we're going to be in for a bumpy ride.
But if I ask myself for an answer to the question, it's no longer rhetorical. Must... not... answer... (*head explodes*)
Seriously though, this internet thing was a bad idea from the start. It's a good thing that a tiered system can develop to prune the chaff of the internet away. In an ideal world, the internet would consist of MSN, Fox News and Ann Coulter praising blogs. None of this slashdot, dailykos, or other free thinking blog crap. MySpace would still exist, just so law enforcement can catch all those idiot liberals who post their crime exploits on there. (Wish they'd do something about the color schemes though.) People nowadays have too much freedom anyways, and should just do what they're told. Friggin liberals.
[end sarcasm]
Sorry, couldn't resist.