It might matter, but in reality there are a lot of places in Montana where nothing is going to sneak up on you. Once you get up on the high altitude plateau, you can see for miles. That, coupled with the lack of incidents currently make it unlikely that it will get worse at 85mph.

I drove in Montana back when there was no speed limit. There were times where you would drive 90 and times when 65 was in order. The nice thing was that you did not have to watch your speedometer as much and could instead focus on what felt safe at the current time. There are a lot of places around the world where speed limits might aid in safety, but there are places (like vast expanses of Montana) where there is little need for such limits.

You are absolutely correct.

In many Linux distributions, we are allowed to import a key and to add specific trusted software sources. Android, on the other hand has a "trusted source" (i.e. the play store) and everything else is untrusted. It would make sense to update this model in the future to allow additional trusted sources (of course with warnings explaining this is not for the faint of heart). That way, one might add an f-droid repository, but forgo installing from other outside sources.

This would work a lot like Yum or Apt on modern Linux platforms. Most users would never see it, but it would give a degree of security to those looking to trust only a small subset of outside sources.

I suppose people either just assume it is true, or they know details but do not want to get too sidetracked... This video may help explain which laws we break daily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

On a more on topic note, StingRay devices cover a broad range of uses. Some simply harvest unique cellular IDs, while others do much more to intercept communication and emulate legitimate towers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This is because of people who are too lazy or too intimidated by technology to understand it. You buy the camera, many times you open a port on a router, but you fail to change the password. I am not going to blame the manufacturer for that.

However, manufacturers could make the default a lot more secure by using methods to randomize the default passwords of the cameras. I've setup routers where the default password is printed on a plate on the bottom (next to the mac address and default IP). This gives you a degree of randomness and makes brute force near impossible without physical access to the device. This way, the user still has the freedom to change to a blank password, 'password' as password etc. if they choose to unprotect themselves. But the default becomes reasonably secure.

This is mostly a problem with users, but sometimes the manufacturer needs to adjust the process to help the intimidated, ignorant, or lazy user along.

Once a language is adopted by a large organization, it is almost impossible for it to go extinct. Just the way that larger companies tend to work, means that the language will exist in some form for decades. If I were to predict a language to go extinct, I would say that it has to be one that has not been widely adopted already, has not made its way to mainstream organizations, and basically reproduces what is already done by another, more popular, language.

Just to add to your statement to help clarify what is happening... I believe the RICO laws passed many years ago (1960's) were basically designed to drain the funds of mobsters so they could not higher big name lawyers to defend themselves. The promise at the time was that this would only be used for mafia like criminals. People agreed because the mafia was the "bad guy" and needed to be stopped at all costs.

The statutes use some legal tricks to define an inanimate object (currency) as a "person" or entity. Then they charge the entity with a crime. The targeted mobster, smuggler, etc. would then not be able to sue because they lack "standing". This basically means that they cannot sue to receive their money back because the money is the victim (because it was redefined as a person) instead of the accused being the victim. A person cannot sue if they do not have an interest in the offense (i.e. being a victim). Therefore, they have created a wall of red tape and legal definitions that allow them to take the resources from the accused and deny recourse to get them back.

Police departments got greedy and prosecutors wanted a shortcut to get tough on crime, so they started doing the same to those with drug offenses and other crimes. It is much easier to prosecute when the defendant is stripped of methods of defending themselves.

As a side benefit, that dealer's Ferrari looks pretty good parked next to the other squad cars.

Wasn't the forest service the ones that instituted a "free speech zone" during the Bundy incident last year? Not only that, but those taking pictures of the forest service harming animals were beaten and had their camera equipment confiscated. It seems to me that this may have more to do with silencing whistle blowers than it does with photographing nature on public lands.

I think this is a sad course of events. U.S. Forest service land should be open to the public to enjoy nature, take pictures, and more. It should not be hidden behind a locked gate, where nobody but the forest service can see it.

I like the way you think, penguinoid! If the inappropriate law was equally applied, the law would likely be changed or discarded.

As an aside to this, I think we need to put sunset clauses on existing laws anyway. Every ten years or so, the law must be re-approved in order to stay on the books. Anything uncontroversial would just be passed easily. The other stuff would be rejected and we would move on. I think cameras on cops would hasten the need for cleaning the books of archaic laws that are not needed or equally enforceable.

Your premise is wrong here. "Taking" is not the right word when the other still has their original. "Copying" may be the correct term, but "taking" implies the other party no longer has possession of something.

I know you were not trying to be a copyright troll, but it is the language they use. We must be careful to use the correct language because "taking" has much different historical implications than "copying".

That is just something guilty people say ;-) It is usually preferable to be seen as a stupid free man as opposed to a smart, but imprisoned, felon.

I was wondering the same thing. However, it appears (based on other comments) that the FOIA request was not directly related to the defamation case. I would assume Steyn will still be able to use the discovery process for this.

If I were betting on this, I would say Steyn's lawyers may have put up the FOIA so that Mann's legal team would have to fight a fire on another front and possible redirect some resources to that request. The FOIA is probably much easier to file than it is to fight against it. But that is just my speculation.

And my opinion on the matter... If you research with public dollars, your source code, research, etc, should be open and free to use. We all payed for it, so why does only the one getting paid get to use it. If you want to keep your data private, research through a privately funded organization.