Honest question: isn't this the point of having a judge interpret the law? I think it is pretty clear that laws don't adapt quickly enough with society/technology and that part of the "interpretation" was to adapt what is written to the circumstances where they are applied. (IANAL, I know nothing of this. In my home country, laws are prefixed with a long list of "because..." clauses, and I was always disappointed that the laws were still upheld even when none of the "because" was relevant any more... and I envied the judge-interpretation thing in the US).

Emphasised that for you. Why would you accuse him of a "sense of entitlement" or demand any other explanation for his thoughts? Do you think that every item that is being sold, is sold at a fair price? If you have ever seen the price of an item and thought "that's more expensive that it should be" (which, if I understand correctly, is one of the basis of capitalism, "vote with your wallet" and the like), you should ask your question to yourself first.

I don't think he was trying to defend the bible:

/me laughs

You'll probably not like it. TCP over Hard Disks has a very high latency!

Cuban here (though I'm no longer in Cuba).

Be aware that Yoani is not real. Yes, the person exists, but her "opinions" are all paid for (or at least seeking a reward). She does not represent the views or the reality of the Cubans. She is not interested in giving Cubans access to information, she - just like the Cuban government - is at most interested in giving them access to propaganda. It is very hard to get access to information, because everyone wants to pick and chose what to give you. If you read her blog, you will probably notice this... almost poetic posts full of half truths in which any "good" thing is left unsaid.

This is one of the examples. It is true that sneakernet is a major way of exchanging data. It is even encouraged. One time, a government official, in a sickening display of ignorance, stated something along the lines of "everyone can access the internet, they just have to go to a library, ask what they want to know, and the librarian will download the webpage to a floppy". I used to carry not only usb drives, sometimes even up to 3 hard disks, in my pockets. Bringing a hard disk to a university, looking for an IT person and getting him to open one of the computers to insert the hard disk and copy everything they had was a regular occurrence. I was one of those IT persons... my desktop computer was permanently open, until we got an external enclosure just for that purpose. I tried once to set up a couple of "sneakernet stations" so people could come in, explore the ftp servers and download everything they wanted. You don't need encryption, unless what you are transporting is really illegal (a foreign news article is not illegal, child porn is) and you are high profile enough that the police may want to go through the effort of checking your data (unlikely, most don't even know what "data" is).

That said, encryption is illegal[1]. So one could argue that using encryption is more risky than not using it: a news article critical of the government is not illegal, the same news article encrypted is. This is moot, however... it is very unlikely that your data will be checked either way. I carried some data encrypted, mostly password lists or ssh private keys - it would have been highly irresponsible to carry my employer's data in plaintext. Of course, if you are carrying around your accounting book detailing how the CIA is paying you... you probably want to encrypt that, or even better, don't carry it around.

Regarding the export controls: probably the only area in which they are completely ineffective is in software and data. No one in Cuba cares about that. Copyright is ignored to the point that movies and TV shows shown in national television were torrented + "sneakerneted" to the TV station[2]. Same happens with software (to the despair of f/oss advocates). This is the main content of the underground networks: software, music, music videos, movies and tv shows. My hard disks used to contain a mirror of Debian and Ubuntu... and a copy of 1984 and Animal Farm that I was reading at the time, downloaded from the university's ftp server.

(I'm not defending the illegality of encryption, or the export controls, or that the police and the prosecution have too much power and that they can use their ignorance against you... Nor am I saying that it is ok because some of it is also a problem in the US. I am also not defending censorship. I'm just pointing out how deceitful Yoani is, and using the post to explain that the reasons encryption is not wildly used have nothing to do with the US export ban.)

[1] In very silly ways. For instance, to renew the "networking license" for the university, I had to state that no encryption was used, even though using https and ssh instead of telnet was mandatory to get that license. I know, I once stated "Yes, we use encryption, e.g: ssh, https,..." and the license was denied until I submitted the same form without that sentence.

[2] Funny anecdote, when The Fellowship of the Ring first arrived at the university network about 2 weeks after the release, I added a tiny mark during the opening credits, just to check how far it would spread... When it was shown on TV, I looked for that mark... and there it was.

No, those are not stupid. What is stupid is to spend time on them, get the people excited, and actually argue about it. Specially homosexual rights (I'm not USAian, so I don't even know what immigration reform is all about). I have yet to see an argument against homosexual rights,yet it is argued, when there is no data to support the opossing position. (No, "I don't wanna" is not an argument. An argument is "this is how this group of people will be harm by they having the same rights as I have", preferably with a study supporting that the harm is real). I'm sure there are plenty of topics that are not or cannot be scientifically settled - those are the ones they should spend their times on.

FYI, ice is less dense than water. That's why it floats.

An even better analogy: you left confidential info *about me* clearly visible and readable in your car. I had trusted you to keep it secure and I had not noticed that you were failing to do that. He saw it, and let me know in the only way he could.

I really can't understand all those "hacking victim" apologists (note the quotes). Currently it is illegal for me to accidentally discover that my bank/phone company/isp is leaking my information or allowing transactions in my name. Without that knowledge, I can't even "vote with my wallet" and choose a more secure venue. Yet the "hacking victim" apologists only focus on how wrong the "hacker" was, instead of that his actions were the only way to learn about the "victim"'s gross negligence.

Obviously your post is already receiving comments from apologists, "he had to poke", "he copied the information" (both of which are obvious, specially the copying, which is automatic, and required if you want to give warning). Those replies - people speaking against their own interests in defence of a negligent mega-corporation - sadden me.

There is one, very important, difference: asking google to retrieve information is much more efficient than requesting a secretary to do so. That's pretty much the point of asking google. There are people in this forum who will claim that the difference is essential. I find that position nonsensical, but by ignoring it, you leave open a point of attack. So I would make your conclusion more explicit:

The "report" in both cases should be considered free speech, regardless of how efficient were the means used to obtain it.

(I would also go beyond free speech here and include those actions that are considered correct or legal to do by yourself but become illegal if you ask someone else for assistance, free or not. But extending on this idea would probably be offtopic)

Re-read his post. He didn't say that the existence of a God was disproved. He said that Christianity was. Christianity makes some very specific statements about their god, some of which are nonsensical (like torturing itself to death so it could forgive "us" for a grievance committed by our supposed ancestors, which we inherit only because he made it so in the first place), some are contradictory (like being benevolent and ... well, all his cruelty in the bible). Regardless of the (in)ability to rule out the concept of a "general" creator, specific statements of christianity can be disproved.

What? As the GP told you, "Evolution", regardless of how you chose to capitalize it, says nothing about the origin of life. It explains the origin of *species*, not *life*, i.e, the observation that the biosphere today is wildly different than the biosphere several million years ago, giving an explanation of how it happens that is accurate enough to make predictions based on them ("if we do this, we should see speciacion... oh, look, speciacion!"). There is no "origin of life evolution". There is "abiogenesis", but claiming that abiogenesis is science stepping into religion demonstrates a severe lack of knowledge of what "science" and "abiogenesis" are (hint: the evidence for abiogenesis is more than "this self-contradictory book says so". The Miller-Urey experiment was a confirmation of a prediction based on the primordial soup theory -- that's science at its finest).

Crap. And you are unable to infer from my position from the rest of the posts that that is precisely what I was saying all along. Come on, honestly, cant you figure out that given the context, "if I assume that all my memories are wrong" doesn't mean anything more than "extremely unreliable"? Otherwise the statement wouldn't make any sense.

Holy shit. You are really good at this [trolling thing]. No, your question asked for proof. That's seeking proof, not truth nor utility. Just proof. Even assuming that you asked for truth (I'll grant you that if you want), your question was malformed, and so was your answer: you can't prove anything through faith. I stated that before. I merely answer the next question that comes to mind, which is how to behave, and that is a question of utility, not truth. My bad for giving a useful answer.

Really, my bad. I think there is only one way of dealing with you. Reboot. Ask the question again with a precise definitions of all your terms, and I shall answer that and only that, so that you don't get "confused" (clearly on purpose) about what we are talking about. At this point, I have no idea of what you are asking. Proceed under that assumption.

*sigh*. I don't know how to classify this. You just changed the argument right there. We know that memory is unreliable! (If we assume that it is, of course it is. If you assume that it isn't absolutely unreliable, once you get to neuroscience, you conclude that it is unreliable, eliminating contradictions even). I stated this already. So I guess I don't have "faith" in my memory being reliable because, well, I don't claim that it is.

Moving the goalposts much? Your original question wasn't about truth.