Comment Re:Old news. More accidents != bad (Score 0) 579
Wow, I wish I had mod points to give you.
Wow, I wish I had mod points to give you.
lets not paint a picture of US IPSs as working tirelessly to upgrade infrastructure and provide lower cost, improved service...It's Not in their interest to spend billions on new infrastructure to improve services and lower consumer costs
1. They are spending billions on new infrastructure. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable spent about $51 billion last year in capex.
2. They aren't focused on lowering consumer costs, but the improved service is definitely there (albeit clearly uneven, depending on location). As an example, Comcast's base broadband service was 10Mbps two years ago. By the end of this year, it will be 50Mbps. Prices have risen about 5-10% over that time, so you're looking at a 75%+ decline in $/Mbps.
If you think that the $ AT&T is getting from USF is at all meaningful to them, or comes even close to the benefit they'd get from being able to raise their other rates to capture the 15%+ USF tax (i.e. instead of consumer paying $100, USF getting 15, and AT&T getting 85, AT&T could get 95, and consumer's bill would drop), you really haven't thought much about this.
As for your complaint that USF subsidizes the wrong things, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but the program is designed to ensure that every household in the US, even if poor, rural, or both, has phone service.
AT&T gets minimal benefit from the USF. The vast majority goes to medium and small rural telcos. AT&T would be ecstatic if USF were cancelled tomorrow.
Thus we introduce seatbelts and eventually legally require them for safety -- but what happened is car crashes skyrocketed because drivers felt safer while strapped in so everyone started driving more irresponsibly.
Do you have any data to support this assertion? The data we do have clearly shows that highway fatalities have dropped DRAMATICALLY since seatbelt installation, and later use, became mandatory. In 1967 (the last year before all new cars were required to have seatbelts, the US had 5.26 traffic fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles travelled. Fifteen years later (by which time virtually all cars on the road had seatbelts, given the lifespan of a car), that rate was 2.58, or down more than 50%. Even if there was some level of increased reckless driving (which, again, you've provided no evidence for), the NET impact was dramatically positive.
The gov't is saying anything about their value. The buyers in the auction are.
Corporations are people, according to recent laws.
Only if you consider 1819 to be "recent."
And in doing so, they acknowledged that bitcoins have value and can be auctioned. This is the government implicitly declaring that bitcoins are real property, rather than worthless tokens in the latest online nerd-game.
If the gov't had seized 30,000 Magic cards, or 300 lbs of rusty scrap metal, they would have done the same thing. The USMS isn't making ANY comment about the value of bitcoins, merely that it appears others will pay money for them.
It's not a boogey man at all. It's a real risk, regardless of your political persuasion. The convention could end up deciding to repeal the 2nd Amendment, and prohibit private ownership of firearms. It could decide to ban abortion. It could decide to dramatically rein in the EPA, or dramatically expand its powers. The entire basis of our legal system would be on the table.
That's the legislative check and balance to the court. If a congress can be bribed to make an amendment to the constitution that specifies that money, resources, or commodities cannot be equated to speech, then the verdict of the Supreme Court is nullified by the voices that represent the will of the people. The real trick is getting a congress in office that would agree on passing the amendment.
Actually, you need 2/3 of both the House and the Senate, plus 3/4 of the state legislatures. Amending the Constitution ain't easy (intentionally so).
You do realize that encrypting your hard drive with a key you keep in your head really is just security through obscurity
No it's not. It involves an obscure key, sure. But that's not what is generally meant by the phrase "security through obscurity". What is meant by that phrase is a system that is secure only as long as the system's implementation is kept secret. In the case of password protection, the implementation is known, it's just the key that is secret. In security through obscurity, if somebody discovers the implementation of the system, they can get in.
An encryption system that relies on security through obscurity would be one that, if you got hold of the source code, you could decrypt anything encrypted with it, key or no key.
According to The Ruling the only reason the motion was filed and this issue came at all up was because the guy happened to have used a particularly effective encryption software that the State was unable to circumvent.
No, according to the ruling, this came up as an issue because the guy had already incriminated himself by saying "I did it, and the evidence is in these files".
You don't really get to willingly incriminate yourself, then suddenly start trying to hide behind the right not to incriminate yourself.
The Supreme Court has ruled that you can't be compelled to provide a password, if the fact that you have the password is, in and of itself, incriminating. So, if there's a hard drive that the police have reason to believe contains child porn (just as an example), and you haven't acknowledged that the drive is yours, then the police can't compel you to provide the password, since to do so would be to admit that the drive is yours (or at least provide strong evidence that it is). If there's no question that the drive is yours, however (particularly if you've admitted that it's yours), then providing the password doesn't in and of itself incriminate you.
You may not agree, but it seems to be well established in law that once you admit to the crime and identify the existence and location of evidence, you've waived your 5th Amendment right.
Just doing a little digging into the details of the 5th Amendment in practice, and found this interesting tidbit:
The Court acknowledged that it is well established that a witness, in a single proceeding, may not testify voluntarily about a subject and then invoke the Privilege against Self-Incrimination when questioned about the details.
That could very well apply in this case, so that even if there is additional evidence in the files beyond what he has admitted to, the moment he started admitting to some of it, he effectively waived his self-incrimination right.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
