Yes, B(i), B(ii), and B(iii) are linked by "or" - but A, B, and C are linked by "and".
I'm aware of the "three felonies a day" thing, but very few of those felonies involve "acts dangerous to human life".
You might be able to argue that some of the things which various high-level government officials are doing are dangerous to human life, but I think it would be much harder to support the claim that those same things are also violations of US criminal law.
You might equally well be able to argue that some of the things which those officials are doing are violations of US criminal law, but I'd think it would be much harder to support the claim that those same things are dangerous to human life.
Unless the official is doing one thing which both violates US criminal law and is dangerous to human life, that official does not meet clause A, and therefore does not qualify as a terrorist under this law. And I'm having a hard time thinking of possible examples of such things for most of the high-level officials I know by name in the current US government.
Er... you can't think of a single high-level government official who is not engaged in "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State"?
For one random example, I don't remember any indication that FCC chair Ajit Pai is doing that - or that the Register of Copyrights is, or the Librarian of Congress. Or, for that matter, Rex Tillerson, the current Secretary of State.
(If I'm reading the quoted text correctly, for something to qualify as "domestic terrorism", it has to satisfy all of A, B, and C; it just doesn't have to satisfy all of the possible options for B.)
There are certainly terrorism definitions out there in the laws of various places which are overly broad and problematic, but this one seems relatively good at a glance to my eye.
The original instance of Prime Palaver, on the Baen site, seems to have been taken down; however, there is apparently a book available which collects the recurring "columns" he wrote under that name. That book, with a few sample chapters, is here:
but no longer seems to exist on the Baen Website. It is, however, still available in the Wayback Machine; among other copies (from various points in time), there's one at
(The latter was found with the non-quoted search terms "Prime Palaver" and "alles in ordnung", which both appear in the article.)
One last note: the name "Prime Palaver" was almost unquestionably chosen, in part, as a reference to the name "Preem Palver", a character in Asimov's "Foundation" series, whose name appears to itself be a mishearing or linguistic corruption of "Prime Palaver" with the meaning of "First Speaker".
Re: Re: More stretch than an industrial rubber-band
No, the shirt is not copyright; the design on the shirt is copyrighted, because current law does not permit any new creation to not be copyrighted.
It is impossible to avoid copyrighting what you create, except by not creating it - but it is not impossible to disclaim any of the rights which that copyright would grant you.
The more power you have, the greater should be your obligation to "play fair".
Breaking or subverting the rules is only acceptable for the "little guy".
An action taken by the "little guy" can have significantly different character, and thus acceptability, from the exact same action taken by the mighty behemoth - and all the more so when the mighty behemoth takes actions not even available to the little guy.
(This is part of why many of Microsoft's tactics, at least historically, have been a problem; Microsoft continued, and possibly continues, to see themselves as the little guy trying to get ahead rather than as the 800-pound gorilla abusing its power.)
I think the rationale is something like "under civilian circumstances, close oversight and supervision - and immediate review of the details of what happened, independent of the actors' subjective reports - is much more practical than is the case in a military context", and so it's much easier to make sure the tools involved aren't abused against innocents in a civilian context than in the case of a war zone.
That falls apart in practice if that oversight isn't applied or if the supervision doesn't care / is "in on it", but the basic idea doesn't seem entirely bad.
Part of that would probably be addressed by his claim to have been the person who created Bitcoin in the first place, and thus the person who invented these things, and therefore the one who would have been entitled to patent them anyway.
Even leaving that aside, it's an unfortunate apparent fact that some patent offices (including, apparently, USPTO) look for prior art only in existing patents or patent applications - not in things that no one has tried to patent. This means that if you invent something and don't try to patent it, someone else can come in later and apply for a patent on it, and the patent examiners won't notice that your invention is already out there - no matter how famous your invention may by that point be.
The closest thing I see at a glance is the "Copyright by Leigh Beadon" in the left-hand column - but that's not a declaration that the article is copyrighted, it's an indication that the article is filed under the category of articles on the subject of "Copyright".
I can't find it just offhand, and I need to leave for work fairly soon so I can't spare the time to dig deeper, but it's been repeatedly pointed out in the past that the articles on this site are - as a general rule - either available under a highly permissive Creative Commons licence (CC0?), or outright disclaimed into the public domain.
Expected counterargument: "That's because the free market hasn't developed enough for there to be actual competition in your area, because there's so much regulation preventing it from developing. Get rid of the regulations that are getting in the way, and you'll see competitors become available, so that you have choices in the free market."
It's not entirely clear which regulations are supposed to be getting in the way, there; the closest thing to a specific example I remember having seen argued for is the wireless-spectrum allocation and noninterference rules, which forbid anyone from using spectrum without permission from whoever it's been allocated to - and of course, without that rule, as soon as two people start trying to provide service in the same frequenceis you get so much interference that neither of them actually provides useful service.
Exactly what the analogous obstaculatory (neologism!) regulations on the wired-service side of the fence are supposed to be I'm not clear about.
The argument is that it's obviously reasonable for border agents to search baggage, et cetera, that is crossing the border - and thus that, since this is not an "unreasonable" search, the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit it.
There's a widespread idea that the Fourth Amendment contains the underlying assumption "any search which is not authorized by a duly-issued warrant is unreasonable", but the text of the amendment does not actually state that, and the courts have not universally held to that as a hard requirement.
The fact that they do not routinely do it does not make the fact that they claim (and have apparently been permitted) the authority to do it less of a problem.
I'm more hesitant to call myself a Democrat these days, but I certainly have no problem with guns; even my father - a pastor and an ardent pacifist, who is politically somewhere to the left of Gandhi - has no problem with guns as such and has expressed interest in the idea of acquiring one.
The problem with that idea is the potential for abuse - the potential for society or those in power to arbitrarily label people as crazy, or falsely convict (or even just accuse) people of crimes, in order to deprive them of the guns which provide them with that equalizing power.
If the concern is that the electronic devices may contain concealed bombs (or that there may be a plan to assemble components from such devices into a bomb mid-flight), as I've seen consistely reported is the case, why would it be appropriate for there to be an exception for such "coming back after a quick visit" cases?
It doesn't necessarily mean less control and less regulation.
Regulations which serve to prevent A from impeding the liberty of B, more than they serve to impede the liberty of A, can be perfectly consistent with liberalism.
(Also, the word doesn't necessarily mean that anyway. If you look at usage of the adjective "liberal" outside of a political context - which are, admittely, mostly a little archaic nowadays - you run into things like "she spread her toast liberally with butter" or "he poured out the drinks with a liberal hand", where the apparent meaning is approximately the opposite of "stingy".
It's not universal, but I find that if you look at the political factions with "liberal" vs. "stingy" in mind, the positions each side takes tend to fit surprisingly well...)
Tip: If you don't want people to think you're a right-wing partisan, be careful not to use "Democrat" as an adjective.
The word "republican" is an adjective. The noun for "member of the Republican Party" is "Republican". The adjective for describing that party, or one of its members, is "Republican".
The word "democratic" is an adjective. The noun for "member of the Democratic Party" is "Democrat". The adjective for describing that party, or one of its members, is "Democratic".
The phrase "the Democrat Party" is both ungrammatical, and a sign that the speaker either doesn't know/care about the rules of the language, or is biased against the party being spoken of.
Re: Re: I have only one thing to say about Google...
The defining characteristic of a monopoly is that it is the only place where you can buy the thing it's selling - whether because that thing is not sold anywhere else, or because you can't get to any of the other places where that thing is sold.
You can get effective Web-search results from places other than Google (even if they may not be as good as the ones you get from Google), and as long as the network remains even vaguely neutral, you can get to those other places just as easily as you can get to Google. Thus, Google does not have a monopoly in the search market.
There's more of an argument that Google may come close to a monopoly in the online-advertising market, but I don't think they pass that line even there.
The term "defensive voting" more properly refers to the reaction to the spoiler effect: the people who prefer C deciding to vote instead for B, in order to prevent A from being elected, with the side effect that the real degree of support for C is not visible in the election results.
You're quite right that it's a major part of the problem, however, and that ranked-preference voting would seem to do away with the motivation for it.
Actually, the reason we continue to devolve back to two effective parties - no matter how many third parties get started, and even rise to temporary prominence, or possibly even supplant one of the existing two - is because, in a single-choice first-past-the-post voting system, that is the natural result of people voting in their own best interests.
If 60% of the population opposes A, but that 60% is divided into 35% who support B and 25% who support C, and everyone votes for what they support, then the 40% who support A will win the election - even though the majority of people oppose A. This is known as the "spoiler effect".
In a voting system where you can only pick one option from the list, and where whichever option gets the largest share of the vote wins, the "smart" thing for the people who support B and C to do is to join forces behind one of theose two options; that way, they can make sure the thing they oppose doesn't win, even if their first choice doesn't win either. The downside is that whichever of the two choices they don't unite behind seems to have no support, and disappears into obscurity, leaving behind only two options.
The only solution to this is to switch to a ranked-preferences voting system, preferably one which satisfies the Condorcet criteria, so that people can instead list the available options in order from most preferred to least preferred. In a system like that, you can indicate that you prefer C over B, while still also being able to indicate that you prefer B over A - and the spoiler effect disappears, leaving room for people who like third-party candidates to express their actual preferences at the polls without negative consequences.
I remember it being reported that Maine approved a ballot measure to switch to such a ranked-preference voting system, as part of the 2016 election. It will be worth watching closely to see what happens in the next elections in that state.
On the post: Twitter Reports On Government Agencies Using 'Report Tweet' Function To Block Terrorism-Related Content
Re: Re: Re: They're All Terrorists
Yes, B(i), B(ii), and B(iii) are linked by "or" - but A, B, and C are linked by "and".
I'm aware of the "three felonies a day" thing, but very few of those felonies involve "acts dangerous to human life".
You might be able to argue that some of the things which various high-level government officials are doing are dangerous to human life, but I think it would be much harder to support the claim that those same things are also violations of US criminal law.
You might equally well be able to argue that some of the things which those officials are doing are violations of US criminal law, but I'd think it would be much harder to support the claim that those same things are dangerous to human life.
Unless the official is doing one thing which both violates US criminal law and is dangerous to human life, that official does not meet clause A, and therefore does not qualify as a terrorist under this law. And I'm having a hard time thinking of possible examples of such things for most of the high-level officials I know by name in the current US government.
On the post: Twitter Reports On Government Agencies Using 'Report Tweet' Function To Block Terrorism-Related Content
Re: They're All Terrorists
Er... you can't think of a single high-level government official who is not engaged in "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State"?
For one random example, I don't remember any indication that FCC chair Ajit Pai is doing that - or that the Register of Copyrights is, or the Librarian of Congress. Or, for that matter, Rex Tillerson, the current Secretary of State.
(If I'm reading the quoted text correctly, for something to qualify as "domestic terrorism", it has to satisfy all of A, B, and C; it just doesn't have to satisfy all of the possible options for B.)
There are certainly terrorism definitions out there in the laws of various places which are overly broad and problematic, but this one seems relatively good at a glance to my eye.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://www.baen.com/prime-palaver.html
The original rant which introduced these columns, the concept, and the origin of the Baen Free Web Library used to be at
http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp
but no longer seems to exist on the Baen Website. It is, however, still available in the Wayback Machine; among other copies (from various points in time), there's one at
https://web.archive.org/web/20120627010616/http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp
and it was also reposted (with attribution but without permission) on at least one other site:
http://toykeeper.net/soapbox/baen_free_library
(The latter was found with the non-quoted search terms "Prime Palaver" and "alles in ordnung", which both appear in the article.)
One last note: the name "Prime Palaver" was almost unquestionably chosen, in part, as a reference to the name "Preem Palver", a character in Asimov's "Foundation" series, whose name appears to itself be a mishearing or linguistic corruption of "Prime Palaver" with the meaning of "First Speaker".
On the post: Caution: Prolonged Exposure To Copyright Can Be Hazardous To Human Culture
Re: Re: More stretch than an industrial rubber-band
No, the shirt is not copyright; the design on the shirt is copyrighted, because current law does not permit any new creation to not be copyrighted.
It is impossible to avoid copyrighting what you create, except by not creating it - but it is not impossible to disclaim any of the rights which that copyright would grant you.
On the post: Prosecutors Have Pulled Data From More Than 100 Phones Seized From Inauguration Day Protesters
Re:
Breaking or subverting the rules is only acceptable for the "little guy".
An action taken by the "little guy" can have significantly different character, and thus acceptability, from the exact same action taken by the mighty behemoth - and all the more so when the mighty behemoth takes actions not even available to the little guy.
(This is part of why many of Microsoft's tactics, at least historically, have been a problem; Microsoft continued, and possibly continues, to see themselves as the little guy trying to get ahead rather than as the 800-pound gorilla abusing its power.)
On the post: Lawsuit: Police Destroyed Farm House To Capture Homeless Man Armed With An Ice Cream Bar
Re: Re: Re: Fun facts:
That falls apart in practice if that oversight isn't applied or if the supervision doesn't care / is "in on it", but the basic idea doesn't seem entirely bad.
On the post: Guy Who Wants Everyone To Believe He Created Bitcoin, Now Patenting Everything Bitcoin With An Online Gambling Fugitive
Re:
Even leaving that aside, it's an unfortunate apparent fact that some patent offices (including, apparently, USPTO) look for prior art only in existing patents or patent applications - not in things that no one has tried to patent. This means that if you invent something and don't try to patent it, someone else can come in later and apply for a patent on it, and the patent examiners won't notice that your invention is already out there - no matter how famous your invention may by that point be.
On the post: Caution: Prolonged Exposure To Copyright Can Be Hazardous To Human Culture
Re:
The closest thing I see at a glance is the "Copyright by Leigh Beadon" in the left-hand column - but that's not a declaration that the article is copyrighted, it's an indication that the article is filed under the category of articles on the subject of "Copyright".
I can't find it just offhand, and I need to leave for work fairly soon so I can't spare the time to dig deeper, but it's been repeatedly pointed out in the past that the articles on this site are - as a general rule - either available under a highly permissive Creative Commons licence (CC0?), or outright disclaimed into the public domain.
On the post: Congress Just Voted To Kill Consumer Broadband Privacy Protections
Re: Re: Re: Re: Where to from here?
It's not entirely clear which regulations are supposed to be getting in the way, there; the closest thing to a specific example I remember having seen argued for is the wireless-spectrum allocation and noninterference rules, which forbid anyone from using spectrum without permission from whoever it's been allocated to - and of course, without that rule, as soon as two people start trying to provide service in the same frequenceis you get so much interference that neither of them actually provides useful service.
Exactly what the analogous obstaculatory (neologism!) regulations on the wired-service side of the fence are supposed to be I'm not clear about.
On the post: Should You Have Any 4th Amendment Rights In An Airport?
Re: just too damn hard for govt to follow the law
There's a widespread idea that the Fourth Amendment contains the underlying assumption "any search which is not authorized by a duly-issued warrant is unreasonable", but the text of the amendment does not actually state that, and the courts have not universally held to that as a hard requirement.
On the post: Should You Have Any 4th Amendment Rights In An Airport?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Appeals Court Says Prior Restraint Is Perfectly Fine, Refuses To Rehear 3D-Printed Guns Case
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Appeals Court Says Prior Restraint Is Perfectly Fine, Refuses To Rehear 3D-Printed Guns Case
Re: Re: Rampage killings
On the post: Homeland Security Starts Banning Laptops & Tablets On Planes From The Middle East
Re:
On the post: Appeals Court Says Prior Restraint Is Perfectly Fine, Refuses To Rehear 3D-Printed Guns Case
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Regulations which serve to prevent A from impeding the liberty of B, more than they serve to impede the liberty of A, can be perfectly consistent with liberalism.
(Also, the word doesn't necessarily mean that anyway. If you look at usage of the adjective "liberal" outside of a political context - which are, admittely, mostly a little archaic nowadays - you run into things like "she spread her toast liberally with butter" or "he poured out the drinks with a liberal hand", where the apparent meaning is approximately the opposite of "stingy".
It's not universal, but I find that if you look at the political factions with "liberal" vs. "stingy" in mind, the positions each side takes tend to fit surprisingly well...)
On the post: Former CIA Director Blame Millennials Lack Of Loyalty For All The Government Leaks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Loyalty is earned, not owed
The word "republican" is an adjective. The noun for "member of the Republican Party" is "Republican". The adjective for describing that party, or one of its members, is "Republican".
The word "democratic" is an adjective. The noun for "member of the Democratic Party" is "Democrat". The adjective for describing that party, or one of its members, is "Democratic".
The phrase "the Democrat Party" is both ungrammatical, and a sign that the speaker either doesn't know/care about the rules of the language, or is biased against the party being spoken of.
On the post: This Won't Be Abused At All: Google Offers Tool To Flag And Downrank 'Offensive' Search Results
Re: Re: I have only one thing to say about Google...
The defining characteristic of a monopoly is that it is the only place where you can buy the thing it's selling - whether because that thing is not sold anywhere else, or because you can't get to any of the other places where that thing is sold.
You can get effective Web-search results from places other than Google (even if they may not be as good as the ones you get from Google), and as long as the network remains even vaguely neutral, you can get to those other places just as easily as you can get to Google. Thus, Google does not have a monopoly in the search market.
There's more of an argument that Google may come close to a monopoly in the online-advertising market, but I don't think they pass that line even there.
On the post: This Won't Be Abused At All: Google Offers Tool To Flag And Downrank 'Offensive' Search Results
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A tale of a divided country
The term "defensive voting" more properly refers to the reaction to the spoiler effect: the people who prefer C deciding to vote instead for B, in order to prevent A from being elected, with the side effect that the real degree of support for C is not visible in the election results.
You're quite right that it's a major part of the problem, however, and that ranked-preference voting would seem to do away with the motivation for it.
On the post: San Francisco Ponders The Largest Community Broadband Network Ever Built
Re: a simple question ...
On the post: This Won't Be Abused At All: Google Offers Tool To Flag And Downrank 'Offensive' Search Results
Re: Re: Re: A tale of a divided country
Actually, the reason we continue to devolve back to two effective parties - no matter how many third parties get started, and even rise to temporary prominence, or possibly even supplant one of the existing two - is because, in a single-choice first-past-the-post voting system, that is the natural result of people voting in their own best interests.
If 60% of the population opposes A, but that 60% is divided into 35% who support B and 25% who support C, and everyone votes for what they support, then the 40% who support A will win the election - even though the majority of people oppose A. This is known as the "spoiler effect".
In a voting system where you can only pick one option from the list, and where whichever option gets the largest share of the vote wins, the "smart" thing for the people who support B and C to do is to join forces behind one of theose two options; that way, they can make sure the thing they oppose doesn't win, even if their first choice doesn't win either. The downside is that whichever of the two choices they don't unite behind seems to have no support, and disappears into obscurity, leaving behind only two options.
The only solution to this is to switch to a ranked-preferences voting system, preferably one which satisfies the Condorcet criteria, so that people can instead list the available options in order from most preferred to least preferred. In a system like that, you can indicate that you prefer C over B, while still also being able to indicate that you prefer B over A - and the spoiler effect disappears, leaving room for people who like third-party candidates to express their actual preferences at the polls without negative consequences.
I remember it being reported that Maine approved a ballot measure to switch to such a ranked-preference voting system, as part of the 2016 election. It will be worth watching closely to see what happens in the next elections in that state.
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