Posts by Calin Brabandt

What a meth: Woman held for 3 months after cops mistake candy floss for hard drugs

Re: How many constitutional rights were violated ?

>Unfortunately, probably not. The doctrine of qualified immunity ...

Actually...most emphatically and most certainly YES; guaranteed rights were violated! No law trumps the U.S. Bill of Rights and Constitution, including qualified immunity. Any law that does so is illegitimate--even if the Supremes rule the law to be otherwise. As with lawmakers creating such laws and the police enforcing them, the Supremes are also violating their oaths to uphold the U.S. Constitution and they are illegitimate too. This case is only one of countless modern examples of the "usurpation" of the U.S. Constitution. The violations are rapidly rising in number and frequency and, as Thomas Jefferson said, the Peoples' "rightful remedy" is nullification. Failing that, the solution lies only very sadly with "the militia" (a ubiquitously armed people) and succession, which is also the plan of the founding fathers of the United States. At some point, the entire government becomes illegitimate. It's unfortunate that the "Ron Paul Revolution" did not gain traction. It was probably the last chance to turn back the clock to a time when liberty was the defining characteristic of the country. (The definitive characteristic was never democracy, BTW.) I don't think We The People are going to be able to vote themselves out of the growing tyranny these days.

The best and the brightest fighting the war on drugs again!

It's not reported here whether the victim gave them permission but it's rather moot anyway. Cops can make up a reason for a search anytime they want ("for their own safety, for example")--just as they can make up a reason for pulling anyone over at any time (as they did in this case too). Of course they are all inexcusable actions from the world's most dangerous gang of thugs, regardless of permission or refusal to a search. The Bill of Rights is a dead letter and the U.S.A. has been gradually overthrown and replaced by a tyrannical oligarchic state!

Defense Distributed starts selling gun CAD files amid court drama

Re: Absolute Moron

Yes--please leave!

Re: Cute, but not for long

I assume that you have a FFF/FDM printer, which are popular with hobbyists. You overstate its capabilities. Sure--it can lay down 0.150 mm layers (z-resolution) but the x/y resolution is far, far worse. Plastic oozing from even the smallest available nozzle orifice (and the smallest ones are slow and unreliable) just isn't very precise and the result is far lower resolution than your stepper motor steps (and the motors are using a somewhat sloppy analog/digital design trick called "microstepping" so don't believe the x/y specs you read as good as gold either). Then you have the problem of plastic shrinkage and warping with cooling. Yeah--and affordable personal 3D printer is good enough for a functional AR lower (usually after a few trials and errors like most anything 3-D printed) but nothing like what you could do with a hobby milling machine.

Google weeps as its home state of California passes its own GDPR

Now if it could only grow and be applied and enforced to hamper fed.gov spying and data collection too (countless .gov alphabet orgs, including the NSA and FBI, which typically ignore the law and U.S. Bill of Rights regardless). After all, we are all forced to be government "consumers" too!

Zimmerman and friends: 'Are you listening? PGP is not broken'

Ughh..but we don't know what we don't know!

PGP may not be cracked in epidemic proportions but i would not be surprised if the NSA and other deep state thugs have already secretly developed quantum computing to the point that they can target and crack any encryption rather promptly, if so motivated. To make a more general prediction, I believe that just about any reasonable technology/weapon that one can imagine as being useful to their evil ends is also already available and in their hands or they are working on it!

Woo-yay, Meltdown CPU fixes are here. Now, Spectre flaws will haunt tech industry for years

"These new exploits leverage data about the proper operation of processing techniques common to modern computing platforms, potentially compromising security even though a system is operating exactly as it is designed to,"

This is like arguing that a software bug isn't really a bug because the code is being executed exactly as it was written to do!

Boffins split on whether Spectre fix needs tweaked hardware

Recall impossible?

I don't know if a recall is impossible, but I know that many automobiles that functioned exactly as designed have been recalled on many occasions for lessor engineering blunders or oversights!

That CIA exploit list in full: The good, the bad, and the very ugly

Re: Claim drain

>The main purpose of the Electoral College system is that it is inherently designed to resist manipulation.

If the Electoral College members are pledged or required to vote according to the results of their state's popular election, then I don't see how the Electoral College resists the manipulations you cite. Personally, I don't care at all who rules over my ass. It's all the same...monarch, dictator, polls rigger, or the rule of the allegedly virtuous democratic mob, and it's all immoral. Force is force and government IS force, by design and definition. "Self-rule" is inconsistent with government in any form.

Virgin America mid-flight panic after moron sets phone Wi-Fi hotspot to 'Samsung Galaxy Note 7'

Risk Management Consideration

As a former airline pilot, I can tell you there are risks incurred in the diversion of a flight. Even if the phone had been an actual Samsung Galaxy Note 7, quite possibly the risks of a diversion would have exceeded the risks of transporting the phone to the scheduled destination. In threatening the passengers with a diversion, the Captain did get the moron to 'fess up though!

Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage

>What went wrong?

3. Microsoft acted like it owns your computer instead of YOU!

Hawking: Higgs boson in a BIG particle punisher could DESTROY UNIVERSE

Re: if it was going to happen

Whether the event is likely to have already occurred is a matter of probability. Regardless of the present age of universe, perhaps it is still improbable. Or perhaps it is probably. No one seems to know and I suspect more study is required to reasonably assess this probability. I have only read conjecture here.

Cloud computing lets Feds read your email

Third Parties and Privacy Rights

>The Smith court went further. It noted that the Court "consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties"...

Does the Smith ruling apply to information I voluntarily turn over to other third parties, like information I share with my lawyer or my physician? How about my financial records, like banking and credit card transactions?

I trained in engineering and my opinion is not respected by our legal system or these holy judges in their ivory towers but, I swear, it doesn't take a J.D. degree or admission to the bar to surpass their job performance! I believe when it comes to the U.S. Constitution, they are clueless and I have no respect for "the bench."

Did the judges actually study law? Did they study debate, logic, and analytical thinking? Do they understand the Socratic method? (See above...<smirk>.)

I give up! I read these news pieces and editorials daily, but every time I see the word, "government," I hear the words of George Carlin echoing in my head, "The public sucks." "Fuck hope."