Re: Re: UN decisions that fly in the face of obvious, well established, histor
Do the Christians claim the site?
Because if not, there's no particular reason to be surprised if they aren't making a fuss that their names (if distinct) weren't used.
If two factions which have different names for a thing lay claim to it, and an official statement about that thing uses the names preferred by one of the factions and not the other, I think it's reasonable to infer that the party making that statement is not properly neutral between the two factions.
It's not the sex so much as the "exposing self to strangers" humiliation aspect and/or the "doing private things for money" economic/could-be-coercion aspect.
I think. As I said, I disagree with the premise (I can see counterarguments to both of the aspects I cited just now, in fact), so I'm probably not the best person to explain what it is - but I can still see it, though I'm not managing to put it into words well right now. (I might do better on another occasion.)
On consideration, I might want to retract the use of "reasonable".
As a counterexample, I point you to Secure Boot, and the example of Windows RT.
When Secure Boot is enabled on a computer, it will refuse to begin booting of any OS which is not signed by a cryptographic key that's known to the firmware (BIOS, UEFI, whatever applies). It was introduced by Microsoft along with the release of Windows 8, as a way to improve security and/or reduce piracy (exactly which was the main motivation is not entirely clear).
When Microsoft released Windows 8, their hardware-certification program for "works with Windows 8" came with a mandate that Secure Boot be included. The reason we can still put Linux on a computer that comes with Windows today is that the mandate also required that it be possible for the end user A: to disable Secure Boot via the firmware, and B: to update the list of keys included in the firmware.
However, they only mandated that for x86-compatible hardware. For other hardware, such as ARM devices, they did not; in fact, IIRC, they specifically required that such things not be possible.
Windows RT is built to run on that other hardware, and if there's any way to bypass Secure Boot on that hardware and get any other OS running on something that comes with Windows RT, I've never heard about it.
IIRC, the mandate that Secure Boot be disable-able and that it include a way to add to the valid-keys list was dropped with Windows 10, but most if not all manufacturers still include those features - if only out of inertia. There's nothing requiring that they have to continue to do so, however, especially not if the government were to start requiring that they stop.
In theory it would be possible to bypass the Secure Boot requirement by replacing the firmware with a custom firmware that doesn't enforce Secure Boot. Even leaving aside how difficult it could be to create such a firmware that's compatible with any given motherboard in the first place, however, that approach is easily defeated by making the firmware-update functionality (which itself is built into the firmware) employ a similar signing requirement on the prospective replacement firmware; it wouldn't surprise me if many or even all manufacturers nowadays already include that.
Basically, if a government wants to prevent anyone from booting an un-approved OS, all they have to do is prohibit the hardware makers from including firmware that will permit loading any such OS. The technical challenges are already solved.
(Building your own hardware could still work around the problem, of course, but the requirements which that necessitates - including the infrastructure to actually make the equipment - make it prohibitively impractical, especially if you need to do it without the government noticing.)
To be fair, there's a reasonable argument to be made that the process of making porn inherently involves degrading and/or otherwise negative activities, and so permitting it to be made at all is a bad thing, regardless of whether or not one watches it oneself.
I disagree with the premise of that viewpoint, but there are those who do agree with it, and the logic is consistent from that perspective.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Private platforms" don't have a right to exist without Permission from The Public.
You literally said I should be given a pink badge like the ones given to gay people who were killed by the Nazis. Piss off.
I read him(?) as arguing - in part - that he didn't say (or imply) that you should, just that you would. The reasons why he(?) thinks that will/would happen escape me, but the necessary prerequisite events for that sort of thing to happen do seem like the sort of thing that might be plausible in his(?) apparent mindset.
(Also, I'm fairly sure I've seen one of the people who engages and opposes him(?) here in these comments assert to being gay, just within the past few months - and I kind of thought that I remembered that being you. I could certainly be wrong in that memory, however.)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Limitations in an anti limitation bill
One of the things restricted by the DRM is the ability to change what code is being run. In order to replace the firmware, you have to bypass that restriction, and hello DMCA violation.
One of my friends and co-workers has a Samsung Galaxy S5, which is I think one of the last smartphone models with both expandable storage and a user-replaceable battery ever released. (I think I've heard of maybe as many as two others since that point, and probably fewer.)
He routinely carries two-to-four fully-charged replacement batteries around in his pocket, and when the phone runs down, he just shuts it off, pops it open, swaps in one of the full batteries, and is back in business. He charges the batteries overnight in a wall unit at home.
I carry the same model, for somewhat different reasons. In my case, I run LineageOS (currently a quite outdated version), and I moderately-infrequently see the OS crash or hang in one of a few ways that leave it not responding to the power button. When that happens, the only way to get the phone going again is to cut the power and do a cold boot.
With the Galaxy S5, that's just a matter of removing the battery for a moment and then putting it back in, and I can be back in operation in less than a minute; with almost any newer model of smartphone, the only way to get the phone working again would be to wait for the battery to run all the way down, which would be likely to take hours at best.
Both of those benefits are comparable to the benefit of waterproofing, IMO; they're just useful in different contexts from the context where waterproofing is useful. Neither of them would be viable with a battery that's technically replaceable, but only with effort and the right tools.
I've seen an analysis of details in the text at one point that indicates that he may have suffered from a particular, recognizable medical syndrome, which results in excessive size (et cetera) at the cost of something akin to what we would now call mental retardation. (Note that he apparently had to be led out to the battlefield by his handlers.)
It's possible that he didn't even really understand what was going on, just that he was expected to fight, and that when he did he more-or-less invariably won.
I've suspected that the problem was that my TWRP was too old, but I haven't been able to find any documentation suggesting that they had done anything to fix the problem, and I haven't upgraded TWRP in rather too long either. Then again, I'm also not particularly in the loop on TWRP development, and unlike LineageOS I never was.
I've got a week-and-a-half off work at the end of February, so maybe I'll take the time to make a project out of it all at that point.
If you have any links to any information on the question, I'd be interested.
I think you've mistakenly conflated two ACs. The one who called the other a "bloody special paint-drinking snowflake" was not replying to you, but to the Thomas Jefferson comment from the other AC.
I not only don't have a passcode on my phone, I don't even encrypt it.
The former is a matter of convenience, and I keep meaning to get around to changing it, but haven't done so yet.
The latter is mainly because I have yet to find a reliable way of backing up the phone and its data (such that I can restore it after a failed upgrade) that I'd expect to work with the encrypted storage.
(I run LineageOS, formerly CyanogenMod, so upgrades and rollbacks and so forth are entirely under my own control.)
The lack of encryption on the phone means that the lack of a passcode is significantly less of a security reduction than would otherwise be the case.
If the burden of proving that you obtained it illegally is on them, they shouldn't be able to take it unless they've proven their case first.
Whenever they take something and have to give it back because there was no underlying illegality, they've punished an innocent person - and that should require them to compensate the innocent person for the inconvenience (and, potentially, the public humiliation) involved.
Is there any provision in the law for appropriately compensating those whose property was taken when they had in fact done nothing wrong? And does that compensation in any way come from the police who committed the offense against the innocent person?
I'd be extremely surprised if so, but if there is, that would at least serve to provide the police with an incentive not to overreach themselves and abuse the law.
Can I be the only one who's disappointed that a lobbying organization prominent enough to be involved in discussing something like this has either a poor enough grasp of the English language, or a poor enough proofreading / copyediting / QA process, that they would use "slam the breaks"?
The idea of blowing the whistle is to report the wrongdoing to the lowest authority level in the chain which is not complicit in the wrongdoing - or, at least, the lowest which you A: can get in touch with and B: are sure is not complicit.
Sometimes that means taking it public. Other times it just means taking it to your boss's boss. Other times the mechanics can be more complicated.
There's nothing oxymoronic about having systems set up to protect people who do this from being retaliated against by the intermediate authority levels, whether because they're complicit or just because they don't like being bypassed.
Where it develops problems is when the official systems for bypassing the intermediate authority levels - and/or for protecting those who so bypass such authority - themselves become complicit, and themselves need to be bypassed. Which certainly seems to have happened in the overwhelming majority of the US intelligence community, at least as far as we can see from the outside.
There was a piece on NPR recently (I think yesterday, in fact) which pointed out that the "family reunification" immigration policy was put in place back when most existing immigrants were from European - read, white - countries, as a "backdoor" way of restricting immigration from countries with darker-skinned populations, and that it was proposed (by a Democrat) as an alternative to a merit-based immigration system. It's just that over the intervening decades, enough people from those other countries got in by other means (e.g., by marrying US citizens) that bringing in their families has resulted in more existing immigrants being from those other countries than from the "white" ones.
So the racists have gone from opposing merit-based immigration and pushing "family reunification"-based immigration as a way to keep out the darkies, to pushing merit-based immigration and opposing "family reunification" as a way to keep out the darkies.
The party affiliations of the racists may have shifted somewhat, and the exact policies they push to achieve their goals may be different, but the goals themselves seem more or less unchanged.
Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Better than it was' does not quite reach 'good'
Not from what I understand, it doesn't.
From what I understand, it lets them take it to an unaccountable tribunal of arbitrators, who - by the structure of the system - are highly likely to be biased in favor of the corporations. (At least the bigger ones.)
That is in no way better than taking it to a court which is highly likely to be biased in favor of the countries.
If we thought the people who would sit on the ISDS tribunals could be trusted to be fair and impartial in their rulings, at least as much as those who sit on the national courts can, we might not object to ISDS nearly so strongly. But from the impression I've gotten of the structure of the proposed systems, they almost certainly will be less trustworthy in that regard than those who sit on the courts of many countries.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Great piece; here are a few observations
I think the underlying argument is that "preventing a potential listener from hearing the speech, and therefore preventing that listener from being able to decide whether or not to listen" is functionally equivalent to "preventing the speaker from speaking".
And I think there's a certain amount of merit to that argument, particularly in cases where the potential listener has no input on whether or not such filtering occurs or on what is filtered when it does occur.
Where it falls down is when the potential listener does know that the filtering is taking place, and what (sort of thing) is being filtered, and has actively chosen or approved this.
Most governmental filtering is the former type. Essentially all individual filtering is the latter type. The question is which type the platform-based filtering is - and I think the answer to that is much more varied.
To be fair, that quoted fragment is a general truism. No matter how bad things are, it is essentially always possible to come up with a way they could be worse.
There's actually a story out there centered on this point. It tells of a poor couple who live in a one-room hut and keep animals outside. As best I recall, when they go to the headman/wise man/what-have you to complain about the cramped conditions and ask for advice, he tells them to take the chickens into the hut; when they go back to say it's worse and complain again, he tells them to take the pig into the hut; et cetera. Eventually, after they've worked their way up to the horse, he gives them the OK to put one of the animals back outside, and one by one they work their way back down to where it's just the two of them in the hut without any of the animals - and then there seems like so much space, and it's such a relief!
The moral of the story is presented in its title: "It Can Always Be Worse".
(The flip side of "it could be worse" being a general truth is that pointing it out doesn't really have much weight as an argument.)
On the post: Israeli Music Fans Sue Two New Zealanders For Convincing Lorde To Cancel Her Israeli Concert
Re: Re: UN decisions that fly in the face of obvious, well established, histor
Do the Christians claim the site?
Because if not, there's no particular reason to be surprised if they aren't making a fuss that their names (if distinct) weren't used.
If two factions which have different names for a thing lay claim to it, and an official statement about that thing uses the names preferred by one of the factions and not the other, I think it's reasonable to infer that the party making that statement is not properly neutral between the two factions.
On the post: Virginia Politicians Looks To Tax Speech In The Form Of Porn In The Name Of Stemming Human Trafficking
Re: Re: Re: Re: How will it know?
I think. As I said, I disagree with the premise (I can see counterarguments to both of the aspects I cited just now, in fact), so I'm probably not the best person to explain what it is - but I can still see it, though I'm not managing to put it into words well right now. (I might do better on another occasion.)
On consideration, I might want to retract the use of "reasonable".
On the post: Virginia Politicians Looks To Tax Speech In The Form Of Porn In The Name Of Stemming Human Trafficking
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As a counterexample, I point you to Secure Boot, and the example of Windows RT.
When Secure Boot is enabled on a computer, it will refuse to begin booting of any OS which is not signed by a cryptographic key that's known to the firmware (BIOS, UEFI, whatever applies). It was introduced by Microsoft along with the release of Windows 8, as a way to improve security and/or reduce piracy (exactly which was the main motivation is not entirely clear).
When Microsoft released Windows 8, their hardware-certification program for "works with Windows 8" came with a mandate that Secure Boot be included. The reason we can still put Linux on a computer that comes with Windows today is that the mandate also required that it be possible for the end user A: to disable Secure Boot via the firmware, and B: to update the list of keys included in the firmware.
However, they only mandated that for x86-compatible hardware. For other hardware, such as ARM devices, they did not; in fact, IIRC, they specifically required that such things not be possible.
Windows RT is built to run on that other hardware, and if there's any way to bypass Secure Boot on that hardware and get any other OS running on something that comes with Windows RT, I've never heard about it.
IIRC, the mandate that Secure Boot be disable-able and that it include a way to add to the valid-keys list was dropped with Windows 10, but most if not all manufacturers still include those features - if only out of inertia. There's nothing requiring that they have to continue to do so, however, especially not if the government were to start requiring that they stop.
In theory it would be possible to bypass the Secure Boot requirement by replacing the firmware with a custom firmware that doesn't enforce Secure Boot. Even leaving aside how difficult it could be to create such a firmware that's compatible with any given motherboard in the first place, however, that approach is easily defeated by making the firmware-update functionality (which itself is built into the firmware) employ a similar signing requirement on the prospective replacement firmware; it wouldn't surprise me if many or even all manufacturers nowadays already include that.
Basically, if a government wants to prevent anyone from booting an un-approved OS, all they have to do is prohibit the hardware makers from including firmware that will permit loading any such OS. The technical challenges are already solved.
(Building your own hardware could still work around the problem, of course, but the requirements which that necessitates - including the infrastructure to actually make the equipment - make it prohibitively impractical, especially if you need to do it without the government noticing.)
On the post: Virginia Politicians Looks To Tax Speech In The Form Of Porn In The Name Of Stemming Human Trafficking
Re: Re: How will it know?
I disagree with the premise of that viewpoint, but there are those who do agree with it, and the logic is consistent from that perspective.
On the post: Theresa May Again Demands Tech Companies Do More To Right The World's Social Media Wrongs
Re: Re: Re: Skewed priorities
I'd take a non-flying car - or even a motorcycle - that could fold up and be carryable that way. No more searching for parking spaces!
...there'd probably be some tradeoffs in sturdiness and (therefore) safety, though, in order to get it down to a weight that most people could carry.
On the post: Israeli Music Fans Sue Two New Zealanders For Convincing Lorde To Cancel Her Israeli Concert
Re: Re: Cowardly Zionists
Wow. "Hitler (PBUH)"? Seriously?
I can't even begin to address all the problems with that. It's so wrong it's ludicrous.
7/10 trolling, trying too hard.
On the post: Implementing Transparency About Content Moderation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Private platforms" don't have a right to exist without Permission from The Public.
I read him(?) as arguing - in part - that he didn't say (or imply) that you should, just that you would. The reasons why he(?) thinks that will/would happen escape me, but the necessary prerequisite events for that sort of thing to happen do seem like the sort of thing that might be plausible in his(?) apparent mindset.
(Also, I'm fairly sure I've seen one of the people who engages and opposes him(?) here in these comments assert to being gay, just within the past few months - and I kind of thought that I remembered that being you. I could certainly be wrong in that memory, however.)
On the post: Apple, Verizon Continue to Lobby Against The Right To Repair Your Own Devices
Re: Re: Re: Re: Limitations in an anti limitation bill
On the post: Apple, Verizon Continue to Lobby Against The Right To Repair Your Own Devices
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
One of my friends and co-workers has a Samsung Galaxy S5, which is I think one of the last smartphone models with both expandable storage and a user-replaceable battery ever released. (I think I've heard of maybe as many as two others since that point, and probably fewer.)
He routinely carries two-to-four fully-charged replacement batteries around in his pocket, and when the phone runs down, he just shuts it off, pops it open, swaps in one of the full batteries, and is back in business. He charges the batteries overnight in a wall unit at home.
I carry the same model, for somewhat different reasons. In my case, I run LineageOS (currently a quite outdated version), and I moderately-infrequently see the OS crash or hang in one of a few ways that leave it not responding to the power button. When that happens, the only way to get the phone going again is to cut the power and do a cold boot.
With the Galaxy S5, that's just a matter of removing the battery for a moment and then putting it back in, and I can be back in operation in less than a minute; with almost any newer model of smartphone, the only way to get the phone working again would be to wait for the battery to run all the way down, which would be likely to take hours at best.
Both of those benefits are comparable to the benefit of waterproofing, IMO; they're just useful in different contexts from the context where waterproofing is useful. Neither of them would be viable with a battery that's technically replaceable, but only with effort and the right tools.
On the post: Portland Surrenders To Old Town Brewing Over Stag Sign Trademark
Re:
It's possible that he didn't even really understand what was going on, just that he was expected to fight, and that when he did he more-or-less invariably won.
On the post: First Amendment Lawsuit Results In Louisiana Police Department Training Officers To Respect Citizens With Cameras
Re: Re: Re: What surprised me....
I've got a week-and-a-half off work at the end of February, so maybe I'll take the time to make a project out of it all at that point.
If you have any links to any information on the question, I'd be interested.
On the post: FCC 'Broadband Advisory Panel' Faces Accusations Of Cronyism
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not surprising
On the post: First Amendment Lawsuit Results In Louisiana Police Department Training Officers To Respect Citizens With Cameras
Re: What surprised me....
The former is a matter of convenience, and I keep meaning to get around to changing it, but haven't done so yet.
The latter is mainly because I have yet to find a reliable way of backing up the phone and its data (such that I can restore it after a failed upgrade) that I'd expect to work with the encrypted storage.
(I run LineageOS, formerly CyanogenMod, so upgrades and rollbacks and so forth are entirely under my own control.)
The lack of encryption on the phone means that the lack of a passcode is significantly less of a security reduction than would otherwise be the case.
On the post: Dutch Approach To Asset Forfeiture Will Literally Take The Clothes Off Pedestrians' Backs
Re: Re: Re:
Whenever they take something and have to give it back because there was no underlying illegality, they've punished an innocent person - and that should require them to compensate the innocent person for the inconvenience (and, potentially, the public humiliation) involved.
Is there any provision in the law for appropriately compensating those whose property was taken when they had in fact done nothing wrong? And does that compensation in any way come from the police who committed the offense against the innocent person?
I'd be extremely surprised if so, but if there is, that would at least serve to provide the police with an incentive not to overreach themselves and abuse the law.
On the post: Leaked Trump Plan To 'Nationalize' Nation's 5G Networks A Bizarre, Unrealistic Pipe Dream
Brakes vs. breaks
Oh, well; I suppose them's the brakes.
On the post: Senators Demand Investigation Of Intelligence Community's Refusal To Implement Whistleblower Protections
Re: "Whistleblower Protection" is an oxymoron
The idea of blowing the whistle is to report the wrongdoing to the lowest authority level in the chain which is not complicit in the wrongdoing - or, at least, the lowest which you A: can get in touch with and B: are sure is not complicit.
Sometimes that means taking it public. Other times it just means taking it to your boss's boss. Other times the mechanics can be more complicated.
There's nothing oxymoronic about having systems set up to protect people who do this from being retaliated against by the intermediate authority levels, whether because they're complicit or just because they don't like being bypassed.
Where it develops problems is when the official systems for bypassing the intermediate authority levels - and/or for protecting those who so bypass such authority - themselves become complicit, and themselves need to be bypassed. Which certainly seems to have happened in the overwhelming majority of the US intelligence community, at least as far as we can see from the outside.
On the post: It's Time to Talk About Internet Companies' Content Moderation Operations
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So the racists have gone from opposing merit-based immigration and pushing "family reunification"-based immigration as a way to keep out the darkies, to pushing merit-based immigration and opposing "family reunification" as a way to keep out the darkies.
The party affiliations of the racists may have shifted somewhat, and the exact policies they push to achieve their goals may be different, but the goals themselves seem more or less unchanged.
On the post: TPP Is Back, Minus Copyright Provisions And Pharma Patent Extensions, In A Clear Snub To Trump And The US
Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Better than it was' does not quite reach 'good'
Not from what I understand, it doesn't.
From what I understand, it lets them take it to an unaccountable tribunal of arbitrators, who - by the structure of the system - are highly likely to be biased in favor of the corporations. (At least the bigger ones.)
That is in no way better than taking it to a court which is highly likely to be biased in favor of the countries.
If we thought the people who would sit on the ISDS tribunals could be trusted to be fair and impartial in their rulings, at least as much as those who sit on the national courts can, we might not object to ISDS nearly so strongly. But from the impression I've gotten of the structure of the proposed systems, they almost certainly will be less trustworthy in that regard than those who sit on the courts of many countries.
On the post: Censorship By Weaponizing Free Speech: Rethinking How The Marketplace Of Ideas Works
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Great piece; here are a few observations
I think the underlying argument is that "preventing a potential listener from hearing the speech, and therefore preventing that listener from being able to decide whether or not to listen" is functionally equivalent to "preventing the speaker from speaking".
And I think there's a certain amount of merit to that argument, particularly in cases where the potential listener has no input on whether or not such filtering occurs or on what is filtered when it does occur.
Where it falls down is when the potential listener does know that the filtering is taking place, and what (sort of thing) is being filtered, and has actively chosen or approved this.
Most governmental filtering is the former type. Essentially all individual filtering is the latter type. The question is which type the platform-based filtering is - and I think the answer to that is much more varied.
On the post: Harvard Study Shows Community-Owned ISPs Offer Lower, More Transparent Prices
Re: Re: Cities and towns are incompetent
There's actually a story out there centered on this point. It tells of a poor couple who live in a one-room hut and keep animals outside. As best I recall, when they go to the headman/wise man/what-have you to complain about the cramped conditions and ask for advice, he tells them to take the chickens into the hut; when they go back to say it's worse and complain again, he tells them to take the pig into the hut; et cetera. Eventually, after they've worked their way up to the horse, he gives them the OK to put one of the animals back outside, and one by one they work their way back down to where it's just the two of them in the hut without any of the animals - and then there seems like so much space, and it's such a relief!
The moral of the story is presented in its title: "It Can Always Be Worse".
(The flip side of "it could be worse" being a general truth is that pointing it out doesn't really have much weight as an argument.)
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