OMG! OMG! I'm being downvoted by both females and their pussyboys, you know, the males who will valiantly protect any female, in any situation, against any male, just because of that slit between their legs, even if the protectors have no chance of getting some. Those two groups easily cover more than 99.9% of the human population.
It's somewhat ironic that I'm being downvoted on a simple response to a comment on an article about GooglePlus, the same service which was reported, on the same day, to have banned certain people for saying certain things. I better stop, before I get banned from here, or rendered invisible, because I don't want to have to join the ranks of Anonymous ... just yet.
You're barely even offensive, you're just a waste of space. You have an inflated sense of how strongly people feel about your comments. I'm only voting you down because you're noise in my conversation.
I also considered that possibility, but since I don't know the real reason why, and you don't either, I figured I'd go with the more sensational response, especially since the comment to which I responded was also not "very contributive", yet did not get downvoted.
Before the CTO, you might want to get a CPO (Chief Proofreading Officer).
"Let’s face it, only a fraction of your day is spent on the tasks and projects that directly effect your bottom line."
- http://zirtual.com/how-it-works
It should be "affect". Personally, I'm looking for a C3PO (Chief Proofreading, Pudding and Panties Officer) because I like for my people to multitask.
Yep, you caught me I got confused on effect & affect - guess i should open a whole new position for it. Though the idea of someone watching over our pudding & panty operating does sound appealing since that is a large part of our operations out here ;)
Perfect! It just so happens that I am available for the newly-formed C3PO position at your company. My comment was actually BOTH a means of creating a position specifically tailored for myself, AND my application for said position. If you hire me, your proofs shall always be read, your pudding shall always be warm, and your panties shall always be clean and pressed.
I remember an interview, from long ago, with Peter Sellers, who played Chief Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther" film series. He said something to the effect (<--!!!) that he didn't wait around for jobs in Hollywood to become available. Instead, he created situations out of which roles tailor-made for him would come into existence. In other words, he did what it took to make jobs for which he was the best choice. From that, I now have the philosophy of "One Job, One Applicant".
"The only thing the US government has ever given up is control over the registry and DNS management. Under a MoU[1] that facility was handed over to ICANN ..."
That's just a bureaucratic illusion. As we can see from recent domain seizures, the feds can take over any of these domains, unilaterally, and without any notice or due process.
Assets used in the commission of a crime can be seized regardless of if you are charged or even found guilty of that crime. Cars, boats, and houses are regularly seized from suspected drug dealers.
None of these people have been deprived of due process. The due process is to go to the courts to challenge it.
If you don't like either of these points, you'll need to go to the courts and have the laws changed or thrown out. Thats how America works.
EDIT: Downvotes are not how you disagree on HN. Well thought out replies are.
I think it depends on what you mean by "due process." If you mean "whatever the law says the government can do, and/or what the government customarily does," there may have been no violation of due process.
However, the phrase "due process" also often means "what the law should say the government should do." Such an interpretation usually appeals to a higher moral authority, the Constitution, etc. This is how people often criticize the PATRIOT Act for violating due process, even though the PATRIOT Act defines clear processes to be followed. These people are saying, in effect, that the processes defined by existing law don't count as "due process."
You are right that court challenges are the way to fix problematic laws. But I disagree that "none of these people have been deprived of due process," because I think that any process worthy of being called "due process" should involve, among others, presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and a bunch of documents signed by judges. I don't know what the law is really like in the US, but seizing property in the absence of a criminal conviction (except temporarily, to gather evidence) sounds like a gross violation of due process.
"Assets used in the commission of a crime can be seized regardless of if you are charged or even found guilty of that crime."
If you don't have to prove there was a crime then how can you claim that the assets were used in the crime? This would mean the government/police could seize assets with nothing more than finger pointing. I'm ignorant of the law here, but I thought you were innocent until proven guilty. Not "innocent sans assets until proven otherwise."
You're making an assertion of a fact of law when you say:
"Assets used in the commission of a crime can be seized regardless of if you are charged or even found guilty of that crime."
This is the perspective of those who agree with the Asset Forfeiture law.
However, the constitution is also the law, and the fourth amendment is pretty clear on the matter. Further, other federal laws make it a crime to violate constitutional rights, due process, etc.
If the constitution is the highest law of the land, then every one of these illegal seizures is a crime. If the constitution is not the highest law of the land, then the Asset Forfieture law, which was enacted by congress that was created by the constitution, is null and void because the congress is null and void.
Further, in Mabury v. Madison the supreme court ruled that any law contrary to the constitution was null and void the moment it was enacted, not the moment it is struck down.
This means everyone participating in these thefts of property without due process are liable for their criminal acts.
Due Process requires that a conviction be obtained before seizing assets.
If you want to amend the constitution, there is a procedure for doing so. It requires more than just the congress passing a law.
Civil forfeiture law has been rapidly expanded by the war on drugs. It hasn't been part of "how America works" for very long. I'd say it is an example of "how America doesn't work" and a perversion of the fourth amendment.
Too late to edit, replying to save myself from the HN army...
Just because I explained how it works, dosen't mean I agree with the policy. US asset seizure and forfeiture laws suck. They are an abuse of the "war on drugs" powers in the same way that wholesale wiretapping is an abuse of the "war on terror" powers.
Stop downvoting me like I had something to do with the creation of this system!
> EDIT: Downvotes are not how you disagree on HN. Well thought out replies are.
Well thought out posts get well thought out replies.
For one, we're talking about foreigners here and you're saying they aren't deprived of due process - they merely need to come to American courts to get the laws changed. Hello!?
Second, you're missing the whole "your TLD is one of ours so you're in our jurisdiction no matter where you are" angle to this. The USA is attempting, yet again, to make its laws global.
Third, even if this was just domain name seizure as you seem to think, the government didn't warn or even inform people, let alone charge them with something. They aren't even officially admitting to it such that you can appeal. Even for Americans there is no due process.
Fourth, your "just like our drug laws" attitude betrays an incredible lack of perspective. Your drug laws are only slightly better than Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. Your forfeiture laws are not only fundamentally unjust but also rife with corruption.
Then you capped it off with "That's how America Works."
If you happened into a tech article on a subject you didn't know anything and added your opinion you'd be downvoted for getting in the way. Why should this be any different?
Pot calling the kettle black, much? Please stop the anti-American trolling. I've noticed you consistently go from thread to thread spreading anti-American propaganda without citing any facts and insulting others: Africa like how you stood by and watched Rwanda butcher itself, quibbling over using the word 'genocide' to avoid hurting your allies, and own, historical images.
Or how WW2 the USA waited out much of the war while its allies were getting pummeled. Joining the war only when the USA was attacked. As spoils the USA has military bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, etc, and joint political control of much oil-rich and strategically important territory: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2729132
If Google has actually spent that much on renewables, then why didn't they give Bussard the measly $5M (or maybe it was $20M) for which he practically begged them, back on 11/09/06? He needed $200M, over 5 years, to build his fusion reactor, but only a small fraction of that to confirm some important experimental results which he had achieved just before the Navy cut his funding. He believed that he could get that confirmation, and that it would be enough to show that proceeding with the $200M investment would be prudent. I was quite sad to see that he died about 11 months later, having not achieved his dream, and having been reduced to begging at the end of his life. Google not only should have given him the $5M/$20M, but they should have been thrilled and honored to have such an intellect even speaking to them. Fuck Google's shortsightedness.
I don't know anything about Bussard, but seems like he unfortunately passed away before completing his research (which admittedly was underfunded). However I wonder if part of the reason for it being underfunded is that it promised power that was TOO cheap. Too cheap to profit at the same scale as coal etc.
If only I had some trash with which to create an Internet. I guess there is a downside to clean living.
What they did is okay, except: "The public hospital, which houses the endpoint of FabFi Afghanistan's longest link, has become a shared community resource, providing downlinks to a growing number of locations in the city center." It's not a good idea to give a major facility a large role in the network, because such a facility represents a big target for the government. It's a good start, but in the long term, any serious attempt at resisting censorship must use the utmost in guerrilla tactics.
The goal is not to get blown up; the government isn't going to try to censor. Plus, the government there isn't monolithic; aside from the NDS, I believe the provincial/city government is much more relevant than the national government, and the FabFi people have done a pretty good job of getting "in" with the local government.
(I've stayed at the guesthouse and climbed the water tower at the hospital where the antennas are installed.)
"... the government isn't going to try to censor."
Um, what? Our own government censors. They unilaterally take away domain names, without due process or even notice, and they create laws which make certain communication, if done in public, illegal, which leads to these crazy Terms of Service that just about every social website has today.
So, GhanStan is full of poppy fields, but the government won't attempt to censor me should I try to cause any kind of trouble with those through online postings? GhanStan is so stable that the hospital should not ever have to worry about its FabFi connection being physically taken down?
The Afghan central government would censor, but has a lot of other issues to worry about, and this is about last on their list.
The local government could try to censor (and, I think has objected to porn and other stuff in the past, which got filtered); the people running it have been proactive in working with the local government.
Not getting blown up is the primary concern here, not government censorship, though. If Afghanistan gets to the point where government censorship is their biggest problem, that's success.
This may be a hoax. There are only two occurrences of his name on PACER, and both are discharged bankruptcy cases. Also, the federal inmate locator (http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/LocateInmate.jsp) shows no one by that name.
He said the federal government was paying the jail to keep him. To me that implies that it's not a federal jail. If I remember correctly, I have visited individuals held on federal charges in a county institution.
