As someone who carries an iPod everywhere, and enjoys a quiet evening in listening to music, I can't say I'm crazy about the idea of rewarding musicians only for their live performances. If the recordings become just a tie-in to the main event, then... well... you get what you pay for, so they say.
No, I was wrong. We are on completely different wavelengths. I'm not sure at all what you're trying to tell me, but just know that I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong (but I'm now not even sure if you were complaining about that).
I don't know what you're smoking, but my QQing (?) about being modded a troll, was making extremely explicit the fact that I was being ironic. That is, you cannot blame the OP, pirates, or the **AA for not participating in cleaning up the oil spill. My point was precisely that such accusations are completely worthless, not that I genuinely hated the OP for not participating in the spill. I could have done what you did, and go into a rant about all the things that I am currently doing for the environment, but I decided instead to use a much more compact, and IMHO, much more convincing technique, which was to ironically apply his own argument against him, and expose the contradiction in his thinking.
In short, you completely missed the point. We are arguing for the same thing.
Shooter licensing and gun registration violate the concept of innocent until proven guilty because you are considered guilty by default, ie: you have to provide evidence of character etc, rather than have the state prove an accusation against you.
No, you are considered untrustworthy by default, and there is a lot of precedent for this. For example, we put locks on rooms in public building, and insist that people provide evidence that they are not entering the room to set fire to it, or something like that.
Or, like when we set bail bonds in court, which rely on evidence of character. The person in question hasn't been to court, and has not been pronounced guilty, but yet they still have to argue for their right to walk freely amongst us.
Just because it's a rights violation you like doesn't mean it's not a rights violation.
Actually, with a little tweaking, that's exactly what it means. Here, in Australia, we don't like people owning guns, and so in our country, it is not a right.
As for "dangerously incompetent with deadly force until proven otherwise" there are a multitude of legal ways to purchase deadly force, such as petrol and matches, knives, baseball bats, etc.
But not one of those potential weapons are nearly as dangerous as a gun. We've also decided to draw the line past those tools, but before a gun.
Every act of disobedience towards the government is a compliance issue.
I'm going to stop you there. I was talking exclusively about compliance with a police investigation.
Penalties for not speaking are an assumption of guilt rather than innocence.
Why? Where is the assumption of guilt?
As for drug testing, you can be convicted on drug charges or drunk driving for refusing tests. That's an assumption of guilt if you refuse to provide evidence of innocence.
Wow. I had no idea. Nope, you're right on that count: that definitely assumes guilt.
You know what's also a major infringement on privacy? Having police investigate you. Somewhere along the line, we agreed that investigations (with boundaries) are OK, despite this major infringement on privacy. So no, I don't understand why this law shouldn't be law. Not yet, at least.
You're asserting that the state should be able to require you to actively cooperate in finding you guilty, using some argument which assumes that the state has a privilege to force "compliance" on the innocent.
There's something you should know about me: I make very specific, very precise arguments. The one and only thing I was arguing was that the OP's examples were not a matter of guilty until proven innocent. That does not imply I agree with their existence. There may be other reasons why I disagree with their use, bur you can be sure it's nothing to do with them assuming guilt before innocence.
So, now that you are forcing me to consider it, I am, as of yet, undecided about this law. It would be extremely useful to police investigations. If breaking encryption was as easy as breaking into a house, the police wouldn't need it, but as it stands, having the one source of evidence locked with computationally secure encryption basically would end the investigation. So, you can see why it could be a very valuable law.
The only reason I can see for this law not to exist is, as you say, it forces you potentially to testify against yourself, and forces you to participate actively in their investigations. I trust that there are very good reasons behind these laws, but I haven't actually encountered them before. Until I actually understand these reasons I cannot really decide whether I'm for, against, or even indifferent to this law. It may well be the case that the reasons behind not forcing testimony/action during an investigation do not actually apply well to this specific law, which means it probably should be granted as an exception.
Do you not think that people in interview are encouraged to confess, even when their guilt is in doubt? Is the problem not that the man under suspicion is not saying what the police want him to say?
I don't know if I'm reading this correctly, but are you saying that one of the reasons behind not forcing confession is that it increases the possibility of a false confession? Assuming that's the case, a password cannot be a confession. Even if the password leads straight to a document that says "I committed [whatever crime is being investigated]", it still wouldn't be a confession unless the person actually verified its validity. All the password could give is more evidence, and more evidence is always a good thing in an investigation (provided it's genuine evidence, not forged or planted).
And if he doesn't testify against himself why should this make him automatically guilty of anything? He should surely be innocent of the crime for which he was initially arrested until he is proven guilty of that crime - not until he can be charged with new crimes simply because of procedural bureaucracy.
Wait, so does not relinquishing passwords actually mean the police assume guilt for the original crime? That seems unlikely. If it were true, it would deeply troubling, and would truly be a violation of "innocent until proven guilty". I assumed it would be like resisting arrest, where if you do resist arrest, you get charged with resisting arrest separately to the main crime. If you are found not to be guilty of the main crime, you will (in all likelihood) still be found guilty of resisting arrest. If not, you will be found guilty of both and be punished for both.
Oh, that's awful. You might as well argue that not confessing to every unsolved murder under interrogation is "a compliance issue".
One case is about insuring against deliberately hampering a police investigation, and the other is about forcing false confessions. I simply don't see why allowing one necessarily implies we need to follow the other. Besides, I would say that providing or coercing a false confessions, is an extremely large compliance issue. Compliance is to the state, not to the police officer.
There are very specific circumstances in which people may be reasonably required to comply with police. In particular, the police may detain you for a limited period when there is a reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime. There is your reasonable exception, not proof of any rule.
I never claimed it was the rule. Like I said, it was only "In certain circumstances". But there are other such circumstances where police have such powers. My point was that there is precedence.
RIPA makes me guilty of the crime of not speaking in a particular way, regardless of whether I am guilty of anything else. We have recently lost our right to remain silent, but not speaking wasn't an offence: it was instead (insanely) judged acceptable to consider "not speaking" as evidence against you. But with RIPA the government goes further: now it is a crime to not speak.
That's a separate issue. It's not actually a problem with "innocent until proven guilty".
What? How does that violate "innocent until proven guilty"? More like, "dangerously incompetent with deadly force until proven otherwise".
imposing penalties for refusing to divulge passwords
This is a compliance issue. In certain circumstances it is entirely appropriate for people to be required to comply with police. I suppose next you'll be complaining that people have to pull over to the side of the road when a policeman pulls them over.
default penalties for people who refuse drug and alcohol testing
Again, a compliance issue. There's no assumption of guilt anywhere.
Hello! I'm a mod, and I have a dilemma. I really, really want to censor the voice of the parent poster, but he isn't infringing any of Slashdot's guidelines, and I'm too chicken-shit face the metamoderators. Oh I know! I'll just mod him overrated, and hope that he doesn't stand up for himself again.
OK, I got a troll mod. I'll give the mod the benefit of the doubt and assume he misunderstood me, rather than trying to censor me, like fascist hypocrite. Let me elucidate:
The argument is bad. Very bad. The presence of a disaster has never stopped the world from generally working. The parent cherry-picked targets to accuse of not helping (in a deviously vague kind of way) based on who he dislikes. I will go out on a limb and say that > 99% of the people likes or respects also do squat for this oil spill, and thus are just as eligible for this attack as anyone else.
I then proceeded to use his own argument myself, to demonstrate how poorly thought out it was. I accused people that I cherry-picked (based on who I dislike) of spending time not blocking the oil spill. The argument was not altered in any way, merely the targets were changed. My post was a natural and logical extension of the above post.
Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day, an entire ecology is dying, and these assholes are fucking worried that some moneyless students aren't buying enough Britney Spears.
And yet, here you are, posting on Slashdot.
I also noticed you didn't single out the pirates for spending their time downloading Britney Spears while an entire ecology is dying, which is interesting. At least the RIAA keeping afloat has positive effects on the economy. What have the pirates contributed in their time not spent stopping oil spills?
Oh, and for future articles, Bad Astronomer, using cute otter lolcats to fire back at your opponents isn't exactly the hallmark of a logically sound debate. It's little more than an ad hominem attack.
I'd be cautious about getting information about loyalty cards from a website whose purpose it is to deride loyalty cards, and similar systems. It's not like they can realistically conclude that loyalty cards can work.
There's a glaring disparity in your argument. You suggest that we be discerning in choosing which wisdom to glean from the crowd, but also that when we glean wisdom from "some small segment of people", we are not discerning at all. When gleaning wisdom from anywhere, you need to be discerning, regardless of whether the sampling is small or huge. There's nothing wrong with starting with the experts, since they are the more reliable source. Again, it doesn't replace the process of critically thinking about the information; it only makes it shorter, more optimised.
so yes, people are dumb. but yet it is even dumber to trust some small segment of people according to some ill-defined parameters of what wisdom is instead
It's interesting you say this, because "ill-defined parameters" are exactly what you use to sift through any information you don't already know, be it from crowds or smaller crowds. I mean, how could you? You don't know the information, and assessing its truth can often be a gut instinct. For example, when most people come across a source of information rife with bad grammar and spelling mistakes (both parameters are ill-defined), they make a judgement that the information itself is suspect. This is in spite the fact that good information can be presented with bad grammar/spelling. However, there are some definite correlations between bad grammar/spelling and bad information, so even though it may produce some false negatives, it's a quick and relatively reliable way of filtering out information, despite the ill-definition of its parameters. I could go on with other examples, but the trick isn't finding examples of filtering techniques that are poorly defined, it's finding techniques which are well-defined. I certainly can't think of any off the top of my head, but perhaps you can correct me.
So yeah, trusting any information implicitly is stupid. However, I would have to say that, between trusting the first piece of information from the crowds and trusting the first piece of information from an expert, it is less stupid to trust the expert's information. Statistically, they are more likely to be right.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who carries an iPod everywhere, and enjoys a quiet evening in listening to music, I can't say I'm crazy about the idea of rewarding musicians only for their live performances. If the recordings become just a tie-in to the main event, then... well... you get what you pay for, so they say.
Ah, I see. But, isn't that the same issue though? What more should the government be doing about the oil spill?
No, I was wrong. We are on completely different wavelengths. I'm not sure at all what you're trying to tell me, but just know that I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong (but I'm now not even sure if you were complaining about that).
I don't know what you're smoking, but my QQing (?) about being modded a troll, was making extremely explicit the fact that I was being ironic. That is, you cannot blame the OP, pirates, or the **AA for not participating in cleaning up the oil spill. My point was precisely that such accusations are completely worthless, not that I genuinely hated the OP for not participating in the spill. I could have done what you did, and go into a rant about all the things that I am currently doing for the environment, but I decided instead to use a much more compact, and IMHO, much more convincing technique, which was to ironically apply his own argument against him, and expose the contradiction in his thinking.
In short, you completely missed the point. We are arguing for the same thing.
No, you are considered untrustworthy by default, and there is a lot of precedent for this. For example, we put locks on rooms in public building, and insist that people provide evidence that they are not entering the room to set fire to it, or something like that.
Or, like when we set bail bonds in court, which rely on evidence of character. The person in question hasn't been to court, and has not been pronounced guilty, but yet they still have to argue for their right to walk freely amongst us.
Actually, with a little tweaking, that's exactly what it means. Here, in Australia, we don't like people owning guns, and so in our country, it is not a right.
But not one of those potential weapons are nearly as dangerous as a gun. We've also decided to draw the line past those tools, but before a gun.
I'm going to stop you there. I was talking exclusively about compliance with a police investigation.
Why? Where is the assumption of guilt?
Wow. I had no idea. Nope, you're right on that count: that definitely assumes guilt.
You know what's also a major infringement on privacy? Having police investigate you. Somewhere along the line, we agreed that investigations (with boundaries) are OK, despite this major infringement on privacy. So no, I don't understand why this law shouldn't be law. Not yet, at least.
Hint: You may want to read the parent of my post. I think you this reply might be better suited to a post that wasn't being ironic.
There's something you should know about me: I make very specific, very precise arguments. The one and only thing I was arguing was that the OP's examples were not a matter of guilty until proven innocent. That does not imply I agree with their existence. There may be other reasons why I disagree with their use, bur you can be sure it's nothing to do with them assuming guilt before innocence.
So, now that you are forcing me to consider it, I am, as of yet, undecided about this law. It would be extremely useful to police investigations. If breaking encryption was as easy as breaking into a house, the police wouldn't need it, but as it stands, having the one source of evidence locked with computationally secure encryption basically would end the investigation. So, you can see why it could be a very valuable law.
The only reason I can see for this law not to exist is, as you say, it forces you potentially to testify against yourself, and forces you to participate actively in their investigations. I trust that there are very good reasons behind these laws, but I haven't actually encountered them before. Until I actually understand these reasons I cannot really decide whether I'm for, against, or even indifferent to this law. It may well be the case that the reasons behind not forcing testimony/action during an investigation do not actually apply well to this specific law, which means it probably should be granted as an exception.
I don't know if I'm reading this correctly, but are you saying that one of the reasons behind not forcing confession is that it increases the possibility of a false confession? Assuming that's the case, a password cannot be a confession. Even if the password leads straight to a document that says "I committed [whatever crime is being investigated]", it still wouldn't be a confession unless the person actually verified its validity. All the password could give is more evidence, and more evidence is always a good thing in an investigation (provided it's genuine evidence, not forged or planted).
Wait, so does not relinquishing passwords actually mean the police assume guilt for the original crime? That seems unlikely. If it were true, it would deeply troubling, and would truly be a violation of "innocent until proven guilty". I assumed it would be like resisting arrest, where if you do resist arrest, you get charged with resisting arrest separately to the main crime. If you are found not to be guilty of the main crime, you will (in all likelihood) still be found guilty of resisting arrest. If not, you will be found guilty of both and be punished for both.
One case is about insuring against deliberately hampering a police investigation, and the other is about forcing false confessions. I simply don't see why allowing one necessarily implies we need to follow the other. Besides, I would say that providing or coercing a false confessions, is an extremely large compliance issue. Compliance is to the state, not to the police officer.
I never claimed it was the rule. Like I said, it was only "In certain circumstances". But there are other such circumstances where police have such powers. My point was that there is precedence.
That's a separate issue. It's not actually a problem with "innocent until proven guilty".
What? How does that violate "innocent until proven guilty"? More like, "dangerously incompetent with deadly force until proven otherwise".
This is a compliance issue. In certain circumstances it is entirely appropriate for people to be required to comply with police. I suppose next you'll be complaining that people have to pull over to the side of the road when a policeman pulls them over.
Again, a compliance issue. There's no assumption of guilt anywhere.
OK, I got a troll mod. I'll give the mod the benefit of the doubt and assume he misunderstood me, rather than trying to censor me, like fascist hypocrite. Let me elucidate:
The argument is bad. Very bad. The presence of a disaster has never stopped the world from generally working. The parent cherry-picked targets to accuse of not helping (in a deviously vague kind of way) based on who he dislikes. I will go out on a limb and say that > 99% of the people likes or respects also do squat for this oil spill, and thus are just as eligible for this attack as anyone else.
I then proceeded to use his own argument myself, to demonstrate how poorly thought out it was. I accused people that I cherry-picked (based on who I dislike) of spending time not blocking the oil spill. The argument was not altered in any way, merely the targets were changed. My post was a natural and logical extension of the above post.
And yet, here you are, posting on Slashdot.
I also noticed you didn't single out the pirates for spending their time downloading Britney Spears while an entire ecology is dying, which is interesting. At least the RIAA keeping afloat has positive effects on the economy. What have the pirates contributed in their time not spent stopping oil spills?
*facepalm*
OMG that's so cute!
Wait, what were we arguing about?
I'd be cautious about getting information about loyalty cards from a website whose purpose it is to deride loyalty cards, and similar systems. It's not like they can realistically conclude that loyalty cards can work.
The parent isn't kidding. The official user number of Anonymous Coward is 666. Log in and click here for proof:
http://yro.slashdot.org/zoo.pl?op=check&type=friend&uid=666
So... nobody should try to explain what a fallacy that is to you?
There's a glaring disparity in your argument. You suggest that we be discerning in choosing which wisdom to glean from the crowd, but also that when we glean wisdom from "some small segment of people", we are not discerning at all. When gleaning wisdom from anywhere, you need to be discerning, regardless of whether the sampling is small or huge. There's nothing wrong with starting with the experts, since they are the more reliable source. Again, it doesn't replace the process of critically thinking about the information; it only makes it shorter, more optimised.
It's interesting you say this, because "ill-defined parameters" are exactly what you use to sift through any information you don't already know, be it from crowds or smaller crowds. I mean, how could you? You don't know the information, and assessing its truth can often be a gut instinct. For example, when most people come across a source of information rife with bad grammar and spelling mistakes (both parameters are ill-defined), they make a judgement that the information itself is suspect. This is in spite the fact that good information can be presented with bad grammar/spelling. However, there are some definite correlations between bad grammar/spelling and bad information, so even though it may produce some false negatives, it's a quick and relatively reliable way of filtering out information, despite the ill-definition of its parameters. I could go on with other examples, but the trick isn't finding examples of filtering techniques that are poorly defined, it's finding techniques which are well-defined. I certainly can't think of any off the top of my head, but perhaps you can correct me.
So yeah, trusting any information implicitly is stupid. However, I would have to say that, between trusting the first piece of information from the crowds and trusting the first piece of information from an expert, it is less stupid to trust the expert's information. Statistically, they are more likely to be right.
No, but I was told it was "cheap", and it doesn't sound "cheap".
It's times like these I wish there was a site, in the style of "let me google that for you", except with image search, without safesearch on.
It's Claude, you insensitive claud.
I just received a sound system from them as a present. For its price range, it had plenty of features, and good sound quality. Not shitty at all.
It's kind of sad how many situations this cut-and-paste troll is appropriate.
What's the bet that the government would be rendered completely unable to perform its most basic duties?