How do you know? Maybe without his involvement the Depression would've played out differently. Maybe he set events in motion that changed the outcome of WWII so that the Allies would win. Could've changed anything or everything; it's not like any of us would "remember" how it was "supposed to be".

Actually, if he was so open about using anachronistic technology that he got caught on film on a movie set, I'd say he did a pretty piss poor job with the whole 'leaving no trace' thing.

Web site access controls are not the same thing as DRM. For a web site to use DRM, it would need your browser's cooperation to control what you do with the content once you have access to it. A web site could use either, both, or neither. Traditionally you would expect /. to complain if a web site does use DRM; but it is not inconsistent for /. to complain if a web site expects to be paid when not using access controls.

(Under current law the web site may prevail, but that's a different issue.)

Some differences to think about between DRM and access controls:

1) DRM doesn't work. Access controls do, and in fact other news sites use them with considerable success. Yes, many of us avoid those sites in favor of free information sources when they are available; but that's a flaw with using access controls foolishly, not a flaw with the concept of access controls.

2) DRM often prevents you from doing things you should be allowed to do; it's hard to argue that about access controls.

3) Access controls can keep you from inadvertantly breaking rules; DRM rarely serves that purpose. This pertains to the current story, because if I write a deep link into these jerks' content, and you follow that link, it's your IP that's going to show up in their logs.

There are a lot of misconceptions about what's required for a contract; other posters have spelled out some of that.

However, the way this agreement is presented doesn't offer an opportunity to negotiate, so it could be a contract of adhesion (which would not be enforcable).

But then again, they're probably not resting on contract law; they're probably claiming that the agreement sets the terms of a license under copyright, and I don't need much of anything to hold you to a license under copyright. If you say "but I didn't agree", then I say "exactly, so you had no license; and yet you copied the materials illegally".

The problem IMO is that the law doesn't set intuitive standards for the licensing of materials published on the web. If I got to write the law, publishing material on the web without access controls would constitute a blanket license to view (but not necessarily save or print) said material to the extent the person publishing the material has the right or authorization to publish it. (Saving/printing wouldn't be authorized, but would probably fall under fair use.) This is the common expectation about the web today, but I'm not aware of any legal recognition of it, and unscrupulous sites could try to take advantage of that.

But then IANAL.

I have no real opinion on the "Internet kill switch" issue, but this kind of nonsense argument just can't go unchallenged, so...

Hey, you know, I bet you'd get a low rate of agreement on this one too:

"Do you support the president having the authority to launch nuclear missiles in response to unfavorable comments by foreign leaders?"

Oh, but both my question and yours are loaded with misleading and biasing rationales for granting the president authority, aren't they?

Could the President abuse "kill switch" authority? Sure, just like the president can abuse many of the powers he has. If he does, he should be punished accordingly; but that it could happen is not an automatic reason to avoid giving him authority. That is the nature of a position of trust.

And while I'm guessing you'll retort that you think the potential abuses really are the reason the government wants this authority, I highly doubt it. It's not very useful. Casual use of this power would lack plausible deniability and on a political scale would be right up there with nuking a political opponent.

"Then the same rules should apply to an individual who has access to union dues."

I've not commented on whether unions should be able to make campaign contributions. The topic is corporations.

"... its assets are held to be used only in acceptable ways to advance that purpose,

That's your opinion, but not the law. I suggest you contact Ben and Jerry's and tell them that their donations to civic causes are not allowed because they do not fall within the scope of "ice cream business"."

Can you quote Ben and Jerry's purpose as stated in their corporate bylaws? I bet you can't. I also bet the phrase "ice cream business" doesn't appear in there anywhere.

So setting your non sequitur aside, no it isn't "my opinion", it's a fact of law and has been enforced in the past by shareholder lawsuits.

A corporation does typcially have a certain amount of lattitude. Charitable efforts, to the extent that they don't financially cripple the company's direct efforts towards its state purpose, are generally accepted as an attempt to support the business through PR and buliding good will.

And certainly it is true that campaign contributions can support a corporation's mission; hence the importance of the other fact you seem to mistakenly believe is my opinion:

"... and the government has every right and interest in constraining what ways are acceptable.

Again, your opinion. In my opinion, the government has no right, and indeed no Constitutional authority, to tell me that I cannot spend the corporate assets of a company I own in any way I see fit"

Nonsense. Let's start with the obvious: the executivies making decisions about campaign contributions do not "own" their respective corporations.

Second, what you're claiming is that if you contribute some of your assets into a corporation, you should get all of the benefits the government offers you as part of that deal but should still have full personal control of your assets, which is bs on its face.

The authority the government has to regulate a corporation's actions (above and beyond those of individuals) comes from the deal that a group of individuals made with the government in forming the corporation; those are the costs for liablity shields, special tax treatment, etc. without which those corporate assets (which are not the same thing as your assets even if you "own" the company) would never have been amassed.

You claim it violates the intent or wording of the Constitution, but can you provide a citation? Or is that just your opinion?

I only ask because a lot of people (myself among them) think you're wrong, so you might want to provide some factual basis for your claim. Note that I have provided a citation for my position, that being a long history of decisions by the courts who are, in fact, an authority on the matter considerably higher than "slashdot user Chaos Incarnate". For a start, they've actually studied the intent of the clause.

You're resting on the assumption that all groupings of people are created equal. I'm not sure I agree with that.

A corporation is given specific benefits and expected to abide by specific rules. It does not transiently acqurie all the rights or responsibilities of the indivuals who make it up, and in particular an individual's right to expression cannot be exercised by leveraging corporate assets to which he or she might have access.

Each corporation has a stated purpose for existing (though typically the founders keep this as broad as is legally acceptable), its assets are held to be used only in acceptable ways to advance that purpose, and the government has every right and interest in constraining what ways are acceptable.

Pretend all you want that anyone gets to overrule the Court on what is constitutional.

Then try to make it happen.

Good luck.

Use taxes don't violate the Interstate Commerce clause. Not even Amazon claims that. Here is a pretty good explanation of how state taxes interact with the Interstate Commerce clause. Note that a tax is illegal only if it discriminates against Interstate Commerce, and particularly note the heading Discriminatory Taxes May Be Valid as Complementary Taxes.

It has historically been considered an undue burden, but technology has passed the point where that reasoning could be deemed obsolete.

The question to me is at what point it becomes regulation of interstate commerce. The Courts have held that the tax itself is not such a regulation (within certain criteria), but saying "to sell here you must act as our tax agent" might cross a line even if the burden is made minimal by technology.

...except the Supreme Court, whose job it is to interpret the supreme law of the land and who serves as the higest authority on the matter, says you're wrong.

As long as the use tax on an interstate sale to someone in the state is no higher than the sales tax that would be charged for an in-state purchase, the Court does not regard it as a tarrif.

Perhaps you haven't been paying attention, but the Court already took up that issue.

Yes, a state may tax an interstate sale of goods received in its territory so long as the tax is no greater than the sales tax that would apply if the sale took place entirely within the state. If the use tax were higher, it would be an illegal restraint on interstate commerce, but up to that point it is not.

I'm not sure exactly where you're coming from, or where you think I'm coming from, so allow me to clarify this point:

As I said, I disagree with the ruling. I'm just saying that doesn't mean I'm going to jump on the bandwagon with every criticism of the ruling and those who made it, and I think GGP's comment about it being an incomplete law is out of line.

I know many people find this hard to comprehend in a society that's so immersed in the polarized bitch-fests that pass for discourse these days, but that's how I roll.

Riiiiight.

First, you're misusing the idiom of calling an occurance "convenient". Before that idiom applies, you need a coincidence of the alarms being offline with some other event such that, taken together, the two might point to a plot.

Second, to GP's question, yes they did inspect and the warheads are still in place.

Third, only certain alarms were off-line. Many other safeguards were still active and an attempt to steal a warhead would've been suicidal.

Fourth, root cause analysis is currently pointing to a mode of hardware failure that's been seen before. There is little reason to suspect malice.

Do we really need to continue with the reasons your paranoia makes no sense?

Right, exactly.

Except the ICBM complexes have far more failsafes than just the UPS you have. And (headilne and summary notwithstanding) it wasn't a power issue (nor had anything to do with a backhoe or a bottle of Jager), so a UPS is beside the point. And the missiles weren't unusable even during the brief outage, so the "free world" was at no elevated risk.

But apart from those minor details, you're spot on.