Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 26th Jun 2011 12:13 UTC
Well, after 50 days of causing amok on the web, the guys and/or girls behind LulzSec have called it quits last night. After hacking into the systems of various Arizona law enforcement agencies and releasing countless internal documents, they published a statement on Pastebin yesterday, dumping yet another boatload of data on The Pirate Bay, and announcing their disbanding.
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Member since:2007-04-25
I initially missed the change in topic - spiderman and I were discussing illegal immigrants and you shifted to legal immigrants, hence the edit.
I'm not familiar with laws concerning legal immigrants in most countries, so I can't answer your specific question with any confidence. I don't think that requiring a person to become a citizen prior to granting voting rights makes the USA less democratic to any significant degree, since an important part of the naturalization process is learning civics and American history - though I'll reserve the right to change my mind after thinking about it more deeply.
I realize the immigration issue is more complex than we can hope to cover here - but I'm sick to death of apologists creating new names for those who violate our immigration laws. Yesterday I heard a newscaster refer to "self-sponsored immigrants". Huh?!? If I'm traveling 120 mph on I-5, am I complying with a "self-sponsored speed limit"?
Before we can resolve the problem, we'll have to stop pretending that it's not really a problem.
Edited 2011-06-27 22:39 UTC
Member since:2010-03-30
Green card holders do not vote in the USA, despite being legal residents. They abide by the laws, pay the same taxes, but no voting rights. Is this different in other countries?
Same thing here in France. Residents don't vote: I know, I can't. At least not in presidential or parliamentary elections. Maybe they can vote in local elections (mayors and such) but I couldn't tell.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 23:02 UTC, submitted by M.Onty
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 22:28 UTC
"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."More News »
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Member since:
2011-01-28
ricegf,
"They live in violation of our law. By definition - that's why they are 'illegal'. The solution is to obtain a green card and become a legal immigrant by 'living under our law'."
Green card holders do not vote in the USA, despite being legal residents. They abide by the laws, pay the same taxes, but no voting rights. Is this different in other countries?
But anyway my take is that voting is one ingredient for a genuine democracy. But by itself voting is insufficient - the government needs to be transparent to the people, there cannot be secrets from the people. Democratic governments must make laws for the people, not in spite of them or to control them. Whistle-blowing sources like wikileaks are in fact integral to democracy.
I make the claim that, in democracy, there is no distinction between "government" and "the people", they're one and the same. Of course you've mentioned that the US is a republic, and that's true. Effectively it doesn't matter how the people feel about anything if there's an elite political class who entitle themselves to write laws in their own image.
Take for example billionaire mayor bloomburg in NY, who changed the laws on term restrictions in order to continue "serving" as mayor past legal limits. Noone can compete politically against his wealth and power. His single voice overrides millions of critics - that's not democracy.