Facts please. When did Israel threaten another country with nukes? They don't even acknowledge they have them.
Actually Israel has used it's nukes as part of a threat when US aid was restricted.
Of course it wasn't acknowledged. But when you roll out a certain squadron from bunkers with the clear intention of allowing it to be seen by the people who know what it is, and the purpose of that rollout was to say, "We need aid, or these are all we have left to defend ourselves." The threat is quite clear.
Essentially, Israel used their nukes as leverage in negotiations to say that they didn't want to use them, but they would if that's all they had.
Who has heard about this and can still meaningfully declare to stop buying from Sony? Nobody, that's who. Everybody "in the know" already boycotts Sony, so Sony doesn't have to give a rat's ass about anything anymore: Their customers don't care.
My family doesn't buy sony, because as the family techie, I tell them it's not worth trying to deal with them and I get them a system that has the capabilities they want and doesn't depend on brand.
So my boycotting is essentially 40-50 people boycotting. (Hey, I've got a big extended family)
To prove that there was evidence deleted, you have to prove it existed in the first place.
Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence in certain situations.
To greatly simplify things: There is a room with a fire in the center and nothing else. A judge tells me not to burn any paper I may have in my pockets. I go into the room, and I come out and they search me and the room and find no paper. I say that I never had the paper.
Then the present evidence of me putting paper into my pockets earlier, and evidence that the paper never left my pockets until I entered the room.
No one is clever enough, especially with computers to hide all of their tracks, because they don't have all of the information, and if you weren't acting like the ultimate uber-black-hat at all points before you were even accused, there is probably some evidence.
And certainly enough evidence to get the judge pissed off at you. And you DON'T want the judge pissed at you in a civil trial.
The problem with that obfuscation technique is that it isn't effective when you have an entire history of hundreds of previous coded messages. It might work if only small percentage are legitimate though.
Of course if something is used over and over it is possible to extract extra information. Important messages or statements might only be used once. The above comment could have been a typical 'Nothing new'. But it is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
You can begin to associate messages with events... if you already know what events to associate with the message.... if you already know to look at that message.
So if you know to look at someone, and you theorize that their regular statements contain extra information, and you have some idea of what events may be associated with particular comments, then perhaps you can start to break it.
But like passwords, the greater the character set you draw from, the harder it is to crack. What if you factor in certain emotions as a qualifier? What if a certain feeling is a trigger for another word to mean the opposite? Take this to a very basic statement.
I'm not feeling well today. I just can't seem to get over this sinus headache. This new allergy prescription doesn't work as well as the old one. Does anyone have any home remedies I could try?
It refers to health, it mentions symptoms, a drug or two, and temporal information.
But what doesn't it mention? There is a doctor involved. The tone is negative. Did you happen to notice that the request was at the end of the message instead of the beginning? I could have easily asked if anyone knew how to treat an allergy first, and then went into the description. Does that mean anything?
Now, this is off the top of my head, and obviously terribly simplistic. But it achieves to illustrate that there are many ways to increase the complexity in a manner that makes attempting to decipher it without 'clues' nearly impossible.
Even then, let's say you are getting close, and I read a message on some business journal that company xyz purchased 5,000 units from so and so.
That message just changed my 'password' and some of the associations of my messages. Probably not all of them, maybe all of them. But you don't know that.
Maybe I just like getting into discussions on Slashdot on Saturday mornings. Maybe that means something.
If you think that a "spook" would contact someone over facebook, again wrong (unsecured, no encryption/tunneling, c'mon man).
IndustrialComplex thinks that the weather was nice yesterday, he wishes it could stay like this for the entire weekend.
Decrypt that message. Find the suspicious behavior in that message. Do you know how many datapoints could be in that message?
The number one rule of any sort of clandestine activity is to be in the bell curve. Be that 50% person. You aren't James Bond, you are Mike Smith. You drive a reasonable vehicle. Maybe a Sonata.
OH get off it. We have a Constitution which defines how our officials are elected and the President is selected.
Don't bitch and moan that the government followed the Constitution, Following the rules and limitations set forth in the Constitution is EXACTLY what we need the government to do. It is the rules that WE place on the government. You can't get mad for the government following the rules.
This is the reason why a lot of us (advocates of limited government) when people work to have the government do things it isn't authorized to do. Even if it is a 'good' thing to do, we shouldn't let them do it if it isn't in their authorization. If we think they should do it, then we need to give them the authorization by amending the Constitution. Otherwise, the Constitution is pointless. And advocating that the government should ignore the Constitution no matter how 'noble' the cause would be just like advocating for the government to ignore the Bill of Rights.
Uh, hacking is illegal too. Do you really think the government gives 2 shits about this? You can go to your Navy recruiter tomorrow and sign up to be a CTN and you will be hacking networks in no time. Military trumps face-book eula, come on man you can't be serious. I'm pretty sure you can't order an employee to carry a rifle either, they can.
Err, well you have to understand that it IS illegal for the government to do illegal things. The government just has the advantage that it can make exceptions for itself in many situations because the government decides what IS and ISN'T illegal.
I'm pretty sure I CAN order an employee to carry a rifle as well. Especially if I hired someone to manage my ranch. Do you think if you ran a restaurant you couldn't demand that your chef use knives?
Presumably a law upholding (ahem) organisation like the US government and its agencies will want to abide with agreements that they enter in to ???
Why can they just lie and expect to get away with it. So does that imply that I can lie on my tax form and also expect to get away with it ? I am sorry: this is not acceptable. Governments seem to regard the law and good morals as something that others need to obey, not themselves. What about the individuals who manage these fake accounts, if I ordered an employee of mine to lie they would be liable to prosecution just as I would be; why should government employees be any different ?
What makes you think that there has to be one and only one user agreement? It's just the basic agreement that they offer everyone, there is nothing preventing the government from going to Facebook and asking:
"Hey, we want to use your service, but we don't care for the current contract. Here is what we would like: Strike lines 1383 and 273, add these lines...."
For example, you come over to my house and I ask you to take off your shoes. You do so, but when you get in you see that Bob is still wearing his shoes. I respond that I let Bob wear his shoes because he asked if he could, and I said yes. You ask and I say no.
A company doesn't have to offer one 'user agreement to bind them all' and only one. Facebook could have thousands (and probably does) for different jurisdictions, groups, etc.
I didn't believe this until my current job. Even though I've pretty much always worked Navy sponsored programs, the amount that it appears that they have to deal with in terms of operating under impossible budgets/manning surprised the hell out of me.
ie: You have to train 10 men, here 2 trainers. Training takes 4 days per person. You have 1 week.
That won't accomplish anything. The proles will just change the channel to their "American Idol" or other similar drivel when they get bored. The American public is too apathetic about the political institution in this country to actual pay attention to what it does or to even have a hope of real change.
And if you need another example. Just change "American Idol" to Slashdot.
What we need is a long, continuously updated list of every time our concerns have been assuaged by a promise that "the new powers will only be used in these specific and necessary circumstances". Then we add to the list documentary evidence of those promises being broken. Start reading it out every time a politician tries to make a new promise to that effect, and see how long it is before people get the point.
but of course keep the Bill of Rights which in my opinion is the best part of the Constitution, and probably even beef it up some with more protections for individuals.
I'd say dump it, because the original opponents of it were right. Not that those aren't Rights which we have, but because by enumerating them people think that those are the ONLY Rights we have. I've heard people claim that their rights are adequately protected by the Bill of Rights, and only cite the First, the Fourth, and the Fifth. As if those were their only Rights. I'd say strengthen the language of the enumerations of powers, and our authority/ability to smack down laws which fall outside of those enumerations would go a hell of a lot farther to protecting our rights than strengthening the Bill of Rights.
Afterall, the Internet isn't mentioned, so people would argue if it isn't mentioned in your strong bill of rights, it isn't a right. Whereas with an enumeration of poweres, if it isn't enumerated, they don't have the power. We could certainly grant them the power, but that implies that the government is ASKING us for that power, instead of simply exercising it and then We have to ask the government to limit itself.
Since the definition that the feds have used for what qualifies as Interstate commerce is "anything that might have the slightest effect on interstate commerce"
It is worse than that. The current definition is:
"If we pass any law that influences it, it BECOMES interstate commerce, and therefore we have the authority to regulate it."
I hate to use terms like this, but understand it comes from a situation where I lack a better term to describe the general group and isn't intended to say that non-progressives would behave differently, it's just that there is a naivety associated with the term.
One of the biggest issues I have with people who identify as progressive, is that they do not see the danger in attributing almost every cause to be solved by a large central government. Like communism, it could work theoretically on paper, but when faced by real world assholes (corruption, etc) it ends up being much worse than simply having an ineffective government, an unrestrained authority that becomes corrupt is my worst nightmare.
A key point of this are progressives who tout the expansion of federal power (usually via the commerce clause) to be a 'good thing' because it lets them get done 'good works'. They point out things like integration of schools, abolishment of Jim Crow laws, and a series of other truly helpful things which came about. The problem isn't a government that is doing good, it is a government that isn't restrained from doing bad. Naturally, this is dangerous on any level (Sheriff Joe at the local, etc) yet on a local level, as tough a choice as it is, you always have the option to leave. Yet when it occurs on the national level, you have no option to leave. With 100% of the Earth's territory claimed (and even if you found a place that wasn't, you can bet there would be someone there to contest you even if you claimed the floor of the Marianas trench), there is no elsewhere to flee to. An important safety valve has been removed now that there is no 'frontier' on Earth people can head to should they find themselves dissatisfied.
Obviously a high level problem, but one that I feel stems from allowing unlimited authority to reside in a government at a national level like the United States. It is clear that our Constitution was designed to be one of enumerated powers, and not one simply of enumerated limitations (Bill of Rights).
In short, I find that Progressives are remarkably short sited when it comes to granting the Federal Government the power to fix 'problems' because in so doing it also grants them the power to really screw up everything without the option to move to a different state.
They are legally required to respond in such a way. An entity was using their trademark in a non-authorized manner. Anything less than a cease and desist could be used by other entities as a claim that Activision was not vigorously defending their trademarks and therefore, that Activision loses the right to the World of... and possibly Starcraft trademarks.
You think any company would dare risk losing the World of...craft trademark at this point?
This is not a Chinese company selling pirated copies or anything, but a community member using Blizzard tools to create content. How that would ever warrant a C&D is beyond me and I have a hard time believing their legal monkeys don't know that difference.
Trademarks must be vigorously defended in the United States or you risk losing them. Not copyright, copyright you retain regardless of your desire to use it.
In this way, Trademarks are actually a bit more sane as they require the company to invest a little bit of effort and time in order to maintain them. Let it sit on a shelf, or be neglectful and you lose your right to it if someone else starts extracting some value from the item. It is this way because you can Trademark some seemingly generic terms and keeps people from just trademarking everything in the dictionary (for what, $200 registration?) and then suing everyone.
So, back to Activision.
They own trademarks on Starcraft, and World of Warcraft. Someone comes along and makes a game called World of Starcraft. A mashup of two trademarks which is built on products sold by the company that owns the aforementioned trademarks.
It is incredibly easy to imagine that if a person were to come across this mod or its website that someone would consider the connection between the brand Starcraft, and the brand Warcraft. In fact, that WAS the literal intention of the creator of this mod. His goal in choosing the name was to link Starcraft, and World of Warcraft.
So, in this legal system where you have to vigorously defend your trademark or lose it. You have someone which clearly used two trademarked names in the promotion of his product. If the lawyers DIDN'T respond to this they wouldn't be doing their jobs.
Now, perhaps they could have been a bit more clear in their C&D, but that would open them up to liability. How you ask? What if they said:
"Stop using these trademarked terms until you get permission to use them"
A hell of a lot nicer yes? Except that it could imply that they might be granted permission. If they go through the hassle of trying to request permission, only to find that there is some policy in place that prohibits granting permission to use the trademarks to entities such as themselves then they may have grounds, however slim, to suggest that Activision was simply dicking them around and wasting their time/money. Waste someone's time and money like that and you have the potential for a lawsuit.
So, A Cease and Desist letter is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect when using trademarks in an unauthorized fashion.
Had they called their mod "Our New MMO" and they received a Cease and Desist, I'd consider it outrageous, but as it is, they should have expected one.
So what you are saying is that slavery might be ok if we defined a contract, let people enter into it of their own free will and granted them a fair amount of compensation in return for their services.
You forget all those cows and chickens are quite expensive to maintain. With them reeling in money to support them, those animals would have to be laid off. Of course you'll adopt one, but keep most won't.
Pick something 'good' to do. Let's say eating fast food.
If everyone quit eating fast food tomorrow, millions of people would instantly be out of work. These people have marginal if no other job skills, and in today's depressed economy, we wouldn't be able to absorb such a large number of unemployed workers in a single day. Therefore we would have massive unemployment leading to starvation and bloodshed. (most of them live paycheck to paycheck)
That's why it's a stupid thing to say, because it takes the most absurd conclusion you can draw from a proposal and suggests that because an impossible and irrational response to the suggestion is what will happen (Everyone quit eating meat tomorrow)
"You get less choice when you buy stuff online" Whaaaaat?
The internet will trend toward monopoly. Even though it seems like the perfect 'entry-level' system, large companies can negotiate with suppliers to achieve prices that a smaller company cannot match. The smaller company will operate on smaller margins until the larger company can match or beat those margins (Automation, etc).
Even things with no tangible products are susceptible. Think of something like facebook. The market share is so large that it becomes the market. You can't really compete with these companies unless you offer a substantially better product and almost rise to popularity overnight.
Our current system HAS competition, but I don't see anything really preventing the competition from evaporating as time passes. All trends seem to point toward monopoly. (Except home run at-cost ventures for things like email or basic services)
You think those dogs will be trained to sniff explosives? That's a laugh. Sniffing for explosives is hard, and as demonstrated by the lack of planes exploding, rare.
This delusion seems to be commonplace amongst the poor and stupid. I might be monetarily wealthy, but holy shit are you doing yourself disfavor by pretending that having assloads of cash means your life doesn't suck by default.
Wanna know what is awesome about your 'problem'. You can fix it by simply walking away from wealth. Try walking away from poverty.
That is the biggest problem with SLBMs. Until it has started curving towards its target you do not know where it is going. So for all practical purposes they can open all bloody tubes, shoot the whole lot and there is still NO casus belli to take them out.
I'm sorry, but any sub opening it's tubes within 50 miles of the US coastline is going to blown out of the water as soon as we are capable of doing so. If we did that to China, and they responded with a nuclear tipped warhead (at the sub), I wouldn't think it to be much of an overreaction.
SSBM launching subs are DOOMSDAY weapons. This is not some dispute between guys with rifles over the NK border. You could even have a guy go nuts with an F-16 and drop a 500 lb bomb on another country and not get the same reaction as you would if a boomer opened its tubes off your coast.
If it actually fired a missile without warning, and within 100 miles of the coast? It would be met with military force as soon as anyone could get it there. Simply for the fact that you don't know where it is going to go.
Even when other countries test their IN COUNTRY ICBMS we announce to Russia, China, and a whole host of other militaries that we are going to be testing, where it's launching, and where it's going. We sometimes even have observers onhand! The reason why is that even for an ICBM, it is a HIGHLY scary procedure to another country as you literally only have minutes to decide if it is a peaceful missile, or one that is about to vaporize millions of people. And that's from thousands of miles away.
From 30 miles away? There is no warning, there is no time to decide if it is safe or not, it would send our Navy into Kill mode faster than you could blink.
Looking back at this story from today's news, it looks like it wasn't a missile at all, but just a weird contrail. This explains why we didn't have our sub killers scouring the are and the Pacific on high alert.
hope you're wrong. It seems to me that from 12 nautical miles out and farther, anyone could pop up and still be legally within 'international waters'.
If the Chinese popped-up 35 miles out and we did anything besides issue a friendly escort, we'd be picking a fight.
No. Submarines are a different beast when it comes to 'rules of engagement'.
First, the US doesn't recognize that 12 nautical mile international waters border. Ocean going vessels and other countries KNOW this, and they don't push the issue. (Remember, there is no concept of legal or illegal based on the actions of a sovereign nation, that's pretty much what it means to be sovereign. It's legal until someone physically tries to stop you. Think two guys on a desert island, they may reach an agreement, but with no higher power to enforce it, might may not make right, but might simply is.)
That said, submarines ARE often sunk. (often being relative to the number of times that any vessel is sunk due to conflict). I think it was Norway (or Sweden?) That was often in the practice of claiming to have sunk certain vessels.
It's a whole different ballgame and I think it's best summed up in the ending of the Hunt for Red October when the diplomats are talking and to paraphrase:
"Andrei, don't tell me you lost another sub?"
Submarines, especially boomers are highly offensive weapons. To pop one up in territorial waters of another country is not rattling sabres, it's swinging a sabre at someone else's neck all while saying: Don't worry, I'll stop swinging when I get close.
To actually fire a missile would bring us closer to WWIII than the cuban missle crisis.
Think about it this way. Cuba is 90 miles from Florida, and what kind of reaction did we have when we thought there were missles going THERE? (Not even fired, just being shipped.)
No contrast that to a submarine actually firing a missile only 35 miles away.
Slashdot Mirror
Facts please. When did Israel threaten another country with nukes? They don't even acknowledge they have them.
Actually Israel has used it's nukes as part of a threat when US aid was restricted.
Of course it wasn't acknowledged. But when you roll out a certain squadron from bunkers with the clear intention of allowing it to be seen by the people who know what it is, and the purpose of that rollout was to say, "We need aid, or these are all we have left to defend ourselves." The threat is quite clear.
Essentially, Israel used their nukes as leverage in negotiations to say that they didn't want to use them, but they would if that's all they had.
Who has heard about this and can still meaningfully declare to stop buying from Sony? Nobody, that's who. Everybody "in the know" already boycotts Sony, so Sony doesn't have to give a rat's ass about anything anymore: Their customers don't care.
My family doesn't buy sony, because as the family techie, I tell them it's not worth trying to deal with them and I get them a system that has the capabilities they want and doesn't depend on brand.
So my boycotting is essentially 40-50 people boycotting. (Hey, I've got a big extended family)
To prove that there was evidence deleted, you have to prove it existed in the first place.
Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence in certain situations.
To greatly simplify things: There is a room with a fire in the center and nothing else. A judge tells me not to burn any paper I may have in my pockets. I go into the room, and I come out and they search me and the room and find no paper. I say that I never had the paper.
Then the present evidence of me putting paper into my pockets earlier, and evidence that the paper never left my pockets until I entered the room.
No one is clever enough, especially with computers to hide all of their tracks, because they don't have all of the information, and if you weren't acting like the ultimate uber-black-hat at all points before you were even accused, there is probably some evidence.
And certainly enough evidence to get the judge pissed off at you. And you DON'T want the judge pissed at you in a civil trial.
The problem with that obfuscation technique is that it isn't effective when you have an entire history of hundreds of previous coded messages. It might work if only small percentage are legitimate though.
Of course if something is used over and over it is possible to extract extra information. Important messages or statements might only be used once. The above comment could have been a typical 'Nothing new'. But it is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
You can begin to associate messages with events... if you already know what events to associate with the message.... if you already know to look at that message.
So if you know to look at someone, and you theorize that their regular statements contain extra information, and you have some idea of what events may be associated with particular comments, then perhaps you can start to break it.
But like passwords, the greater the character set you draw from, the harder it is to crack. What if you factor in certain emotions as a qualifier? What if a certain feeling is a trigger for another word to mean the opposite? Take this to a very basic statement.
I'm not feeling well today. I just can't seem to get over this sinus headache. This new allergy prescription doesn't work as well as the old one. Does anyone have any home remedies I could try?
It refers to health, it mentions symptoms, a drug or two, and temporal information.
But what doesn't it mention? There is a doctor involved. The tone is negative. Did you happen to notice that the request was at the end of the message instead of the beginning? I could have easily asked if anyone knew how to treat an allergy first, and then went into the description. Does that mean anything?
Now, this is off the top of my head, and obviously terribly simplistic. But it achieves to illustrate that there are many ways to increase the complexity in a manner that makes attempting to decipher it without 'clues' nearly impossible.
Even then, let's say you are getting close, and I read a message on some business journal that company xyz purchased 5,000 units from so and so.
That message just changed my 'password' and some of the associations of my messages. Probably not all of them, maybe all of them. But you don't know that.
Maybe I just like getting into discussions on Slashdot on Saturday mornings. Maybe that means something.
If you think that a "spook" would contact someone over facebook, again wrong (unsecured, no encryption/tunneling, c'mon man).
IndustrialComplex thinks that the weather was nice yesterday, he wishes it could stay like this for the entire weekend.
Decrypt that message. Find the suspicious behavior in that message. Do you know how many datapoints could be in that message?
The number one rule of any sort of clandestine activity is to be in the bell curve. Be that 50% person. You aren't James Bond, you are Mike Smith. You drive a reasonable vehicle. Maybe a Sonata.
OH get off it. We have a Constitution which defines how our officials are elected and the President is selected.
Don't bitch and moan that the government followed the Constitution, Following the rules and limitations set forth in the Constitution is EXACTLY what we need the government to do. It is the rules that WE place on the government. You can't get mad for the government following the rules.
This is the reason why a lot of us (advocates of limited government) when people work to have the government do things it isn't authorized to do. Even if it is a 'good' thing to do, we shouldn't let them do it if it isn't in their authorization. If we think they should do it, then we need to give them the authorization by amending the Constitution. Otherwise, the Constitution is pointless. And advocating that the government should ignore the Constitution no matter how 'noble' the cause would be just like advocating for the government to ignore the Bill of Rights.
Uh, hacking is illegal too. Do you really think the government gives 2 shits about this? You can go to your Navy recruiter tomorrow and sign up to be a CTN and you will be hacking networks in no time. Military trumps face-book eula, come on man you can't be serious. I'm pretty sure you can't order an employee to carry a rifle either, they can.
Err, well you have to understand that it IS illegal for the government to do illegal things. The government just has the advantage that it can make exceptions for itself in many situations because the government decides what IS and ISN'T illegal.
I'm pretty sure I CAN order an employee to carry a rifle as well. Especially if I hired someone to manage my ranch. Do you think if you ran a restaurant you couldn't demand that your chef use knives?
Presumably a law upholding (ahem) organisation like the US government and its agencies will want to abide with agreements that they enter in to ???
Why can they just lie and expect to get away with it. So does that imply that I can lie on my tax form and also expect to get away with it ? I am sorry: this is not acceptable. Governments seem to regard the law and good morals as something that others need to obey, not themselves. What about the individuals who manage these fake accounts, if I ordered an employee of mine to lie they would be liable to prosecution just as I would be; why should government employees be any different ?
What makes you think that there has to be one and only one user agreement? It's just the basic agreement that they offer everyone, there is nothing preventing the government from going to Facebook and asking:
"Hey, we want to use your service, but we don't care for the current contract. Here is what we would like: Strike lines 1383 and 273, add these lines...."
For example, you come over to my house and I ask you to take off your shoes. You do so, but when you get in you see that Bob is still wearing his shoes. I respond that I let Bob wear his shoes because he asked if he could, and I said yes. You ask and I say no.
A company doesn't have to offer one 'user agreement to bind them all' and only one. Facebook could have thousands (and probably does) for different jurisdictions, groups, etc.
-NavyTakesItUpTheAss
I didn't believe this until my current job. Even though I've pretty much always worked Navy sponsored programs, the amount that it appears that they have to deal with in terms of operating under impossible budgets/manning surprised the hell out of me.
ie: You have to train 10 men, here 2 trainers. Training takes 4 days per person. You have 1 week.
That won't accomplish anything. The proles will just change the channel to their "American Idol" or other similar drivel when they get bored. The American public is too apathetic about the political institution in this country to actual pay attention to what it does or to even have a hope of real change.
And if you need another example. Just change "American Idol" to Slashdot.
What we need is a long, continuously updated list of every time our concerns have been assuaged by a promise that "the new powers will only be used in these specific and necessary circumstances". Then we add to the list documentary evidence of those promises being broken. Start reading it out every time a politician tries to make a new promise to that effect, and see how long it is before people get the point.
I think I saw that list. It's in the dictionary.
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=unity
but of course keep the Bill of Rights which in my opinion is the best part of the Constitution, and probably even beef it up some with more protections for individuals.
I'd say dump it, because the original opponents of it were right. Not that those aren't Rights which we have, but because by enumerating them people think that those are the ONLY Rights we have. I've heard people claim that their rights are adequately protected by the Bill of Rights, and only cite the First, the Fourth, and the Fifth. As if those were their only Rights. I'd say strengthen the language of the enumerations of powers, and our authority/ability to smack down laws which fall outside of those enumerations would go a hell of a lot farther to protecting our rights than strengthening the Bill of Rights.
Afterall, the Internet isn't mentioned, so people would argue if it isn't mentioned in your strong bill of rights, it isn't a right. Whereas with an enumeration of poweres, if it isn't enumerated, they don't have the power. We could certainly grant them the power, but that implies that the government is ASKING us for that power, instead of simply exercising it and then We have to ask the government to limit itself.
Since the definition that the feds have used for what qualifies as Interstate commerce is "anything that might have the slightest effect on interstate commerce"
It is worse than that. The current definition is:
"If we pass any law that influences it, it BECOMES interstate commerce, and therefore we have the authority to regulate it."
ie: We can regulate it, because we do.
I hate to use terms like this, but understand it comes from a situation where I lack a better term to describe the general group and isn't intended to say that non-progressives would behave differently, it's just that there is a naivety associated with the term.
One of the biggest issues I have with people who identify as progressive, is that they do not see the danger in attributing almost every cause to be solved by a large central government. Like communism, it could work theoretically on paper, but when faced by real world assholes (corruption, etc) it ends up being much worse than simply having an ineffective government, an unrestrained authority that becomes corrupt is my worst nightmare.
A key point of this are progressives who tout the expansion of federal power (usually via the commerce clause) to be a 'good thing' because it lets them get done 'good works'. They point out things like integration of schools, abolishment of Jim Crow laws, and a series of other truly helpful things which came about. The problem isn't a government that is doing good, it is a government that isn't restrained from doing bad. Naturally, this is dangerous on any level (Sheriff Joe at the local, etc) yet on a local level, as tough a choice as it is, you always have the option to leave. Yet when it occurs on the national level, you have no option to leave. With 100% of the Earth's territory claimed (and even if you found a place that wasn't, you can bet there would be someone there to contest you even if you claimed the floor of the Marianas trench), there is no elsewhere to flee to. An important safety valve has been removed now that there is no 'frontier' on Earth people can head to should they find themselves dissatisfied.
Obviously a high level problem, but one that I feel stems from allowing unlimited authority to reside in a government at a national level like the United States. It is clear that our Constitution was designed to be one of enumerated powers, and not one simply of enumerated limitations (Bill of Rights).
In short, I find that Progressives are remarkably short sited when it comes to granting the Federal Government the power to fix 'problems' because in so doing it also grants them the power to really screw up everything without the option to move to a different state.
They are legally required to respond in such a way. An entity was using their trademark in a non-authorized manner. Anything less than a cease and desist could be used by other entities as a claim that Activision was not vigorously defending their trademarks and therefore, that Activision loses the right to the World of... and possibly Starcraft trademarks.
You think any company would dare risk losing the World of ...craft trademark at this point?
This is not a Chinese company selling pirated copies or anything, but a community member using Blizzard tools to create content. How that would ever warrant a C&D is beyond me and I have a hard time believing their legal monkeys don't know that difference.
Trademarks must be vigorously defended in the United States or you risk losing them. Not copyright, copyright you retain regardless of your desire to use it.
In this way, Trademarks are actually a bit more sane as they require the company to invest a little bit of effort and time in order to maintain them. Let it sit on a shelf, or be neglectful and you lose your right to it if someone else starts extracting some value from the item. It is this way because you can Trademark some seemingly generic terms and keeps people from just trademarking everything in the dictionary (for what, $200 registration?) and then suing everyone.
So, back to Activision.
They own trademarks on Starcraft, and World of Warcraft. Someone comes along and makes a game called World of Starcraft. A mashup of two trademarks which is built on products sold by the company that owns the aforementioned trademarks.
It is incredibly easy to imagine that if a person were to come across this mod or its website that someone would consider the connection between the brand Starcraft, and the brand Warcraft. In fact, that WAS the literal intention of the creator of this mod. His goal in choosing the name was to link Starcraft, and World of Warcraft.
So, in this legal system where you have to vigorously defend your trademark or lose it. You have someone which clearly used two trademarked names in the promotion of his product. If the lawyers DIDN'T respond to this they wouldn't be doing their jobs.
Now, perhaps they could have been a bit more clear in their C&D, but that would open them up to liability. How you ask? What if they said:
"Stop using these trademarked terms until you get permission to use them"
A hell of a lot nicer yes? Except that it could imply that they might be granted permission. If they go through the hassle of trying to request permission, only to find that there is some policy in place that prohibits granting permission to use the trademarks to entities such as themselves then they may have grounds, however slim, to suggest that Activision was simply dicking them around and wasting their time/money. Waste someone's time and money like that and you have the potential for a lawsuit.
So, A Cease and Desist letter is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect when using trademarks in an unauthorized fashion.
Had they called their mod "Our New MMO" and they received a Cease and Desist, I'd consider it outrageous, but as it is, they should have expected one.
So what you are saying is that slavery might be ok if we defined a contract, let people enter into it of their own free will and granted them a fair amount of compensation in return for their services.
ie: I think you missed the point.
all White people have similar features, all black people have similar features
This is the most ignorant thing I've ever read on Slashdot.
It isn't ignorant at all.
It's like saying all blonde haired people and all brown haired people have similar features.
It may be slightly circular, but it certainly isn't ignorant.
Please explain us why this is stupid.
You forget all those cows and chickens are quite expensive to maintain. With them reeling in money to support them, those animals would have to be laid off. Of course you'll adopt one, but keep most won't.
Pick something 'good' to do. Let's say eating fast food.
If everyone quit eating fast food tomorrow, millions of people would instantly be out of work. These people have marginal if no other job skills, and in today's depressed economy, we wouldn't be able to absorb such a large number of unemployed workers in a single day. Therefore we would have massive unemployment leading to starvation and bloodshed. (most of them live paycheck to paycheck)
That's why it's a stupid thing to say, because it takes the most absurd conclusion you can draw from a proposal and suggests that because an impossible and irrational response to the suggestion is what will happen (Everyone quit eating meat tomorrow)
"You get less choice when you buy stuff online" Whaaaaat?
The internet will trend toward monopoly. Even though it seems like the perfect 'entry-level' system, large companies can negotiate with suppliers to achieve prices that a smaller company cannot match. The smaller company will operate on smaller margins until the larger company can match or beat those margins (Automation, etc).
Even things with no tangible products are susceptible. Think of something like facebook. The market share is so large that it becomes the market. You can't really compete with these companies unless you offer a substantially better product and almost rise to popularity overnight.
Our current system HAS competition, but I don't see anything really preventing the competition from evaporating as time passes. All trends seem to point toward monopoly. (Except home run at-cost ventures for things like email or basic services)
You think those dogs will be trained to sniff explosives? That's a laugh. Sniffing for explosives is hard, and as demonstrated by the lack of planes exploding, rare.
The dogs will be trained to sniff for Marijuana.
lol I can see why you are paranoid, seems you piss off enough people that they really ARE after you.
It's more that I just don't want to risk pissing off anyone who handles my food. They already have the opportunity, I try not to give them a reason.
This delusion seems to be commonplace amongst the poor and stupid. I might be monetarily wealthy, but holy shit are you doing yourself disfavor by pretending that having assloads of cash means your life doesn't suck by default.
Wanna know what is awesome about your 'problem'. You can fix it by simply walking away from wealth. Try walking away from poverty.
And how do you know it is shot at you?
That is the biggest problem with SLBMs. Until it has started curving towards its target you do not know where it is going. So for all practical purposes they can open all bloody tubes, shoot the whole lot and there is still NO casus belli to take them out.
I'm sorry, but any sub opening it's tubes within 50 miles of the US coastline is going to blown out of the water as soon as we are capable of doing so. If we did that to China, and they responded with a nuclear tipped warhead (at the sub), I wouldn't think it to be much of an overreaction.
SSBM launching subs are DOOMSDAY weapons. This is not some dispute between guys with rifles over the NK border. You could even have a guy go nuts with an F-16 and drop a 500 lb bomb on another country and not get the same reaction as you would if a boomer opened its tubes off your coast.
If it actually fired a missile without warning, and within 100 miles of the coast? It would be met with military force as soon as anyone could get it there. Simply for the fact that you don't know where it is going to go.
Even when other countries test their IN COUNTRY ICBMS we announce to Russia, China, and a whole host of other militaries that we are going to be testing, where it's launching, and where it's going. We sometimes even have observers onhand! The reason why is that even for an ICBM, it is a HIGHLY scary procedure to another country as you literally only have minutes to decide if it is a peaceful missile, or one that is about to vaporize millions of people. And that's from thousands of miles away.
From 30 miles away? There is no warning, there is no time to decide if it is safe or not, it would send our Navy into Kill mode faster than you could blink.
Looking back at this story from today's news, it looks like it wasn't a missile at all, but just a weird contrail. This explains why we didn't have our sub killers scouring the are and the Pacific on high alert.
hope you're wrong. It seems to me that from 12 nautical miles out and farther, anyone could pop up and still be legally within 'international waters'.
If the Chinese popped-up 35 miles out and we did anything besides issue a friendly escort, we'd be picking a fight.
No. Submarines are a different beast when it comes to 'rules of engagement'.
First, the US doesn't recognize that 12 nautical mile international waters border. Ocean going vessels and other countries KNOW this, and they don't push the issue. (Remember, there is no concept of legal or illegal based on the actions of a sovereign nation, that's pretty much what it means to be sovereign. It's legal until someone physically tries to stop you. Think two guys on a desert island, they may reach an agreement, but with no higher power to enforce it, might may not make right, but might simply is.)
That said, submarines ARE often sunk. (often being relative to the number of times that any vessel is sunk due to conflict). I think it was Norway (or Sweden?) That was often in the practice of claiming to have sunk certain vessels.
It's a whole different ballgame and I think it's best summed up in the ending of the Hunt for Red October when the diplomats are talking and to paraphrase:
"Andrei, don't tell me you lost another sub?"
Submarines, especially boomers are highly offensive weapons. To pop one up in territorial waters of another country is not rattling sabres, it's swinging a sabre at someone else's neck all while saying: Don't worry, I'll stop swinging when I get close.
To actually fire a missile would bring us closer to WWIII than the cuban missle crisis.
Think about it this way. Cuba is 90 miles from Florida, and what kind of reaction did we have when we thought there were missles going THERE? (Not even fired, just being shipped.)
No contrast that to a submarine actually firing a missile only 35 miles away.