101–110 of 123 posts
"If they ever come up with a swashbuckling school I think one of the courses should be laughing, then jumping off something." -- Jack Handey I tried to register for pistol every single term and never got in; I think this may be the most difficult obstacle in obtaining MIT's pirate cert.
MIT also famously does not award honorary degrees [1] which restricts its commencement speaker pool. However, commencement speakers can get honorary Pirate Certificates which is way cooler: https://alum.mit.edu/slice/arrrr-mit-pirates-and-matt-damon-... [1] https://news.mit.edu/2001/commdegrees
Do famous people really choose not to speak at MIT Commencement because they won't get an honorary degree for it? You'd think "spoke at MIT Commencement" would be an equal line item for a CV given the context.
CEOs, Director-General of the WTO, governors, billionaires, etc
[0] https://alum.mit.edu/slice/brief-history-mit-commencement-sp...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Article I of the United States Constitution lists issuing letters of marque and reprisal in Section 8 as one of the enumerated powers of Congress, alongside the power to tax and to declare war. It's still a thing
“It is a power enumerated in the Constitution of 1789” does not mean “It is a practice still relevant in the world of 2023”. The US hasn’t issued any Letters of Marque and Reprisal since 1815, and while it remains a Constitutional power of the US government that a couple Republican members of Congress keep trying to breathe active life into since 9/11, it seems well and truly dead in practice.
Fun fact: registration for the classes required for the pirate certificate (sailing, archery, pistol/rifle, fencing) generally run out within a minute of opening. However, this being at MIT, I was never sure whether this was because of humans or bots.
I don't know why universities think the best way to decide enrollment is smashing the register button. My undergrad university had the sense to let everyone pick their first preferences within 24 hours of enrollment starting. Then for over-selected courses, people were enrolled randomly [1]. This was repeated once more, iirc, and then in the third round enrollment was instantaneous. This, thankfully, prevented virtua…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“It is a power enumerated in the Constitution of 1789” does not mean “It is a practice still relevant in the world of 2023”. The US hasn’t issued any Letters of Marque and Reprisal since 1815, and while it remains a Constitutional power of the US government that a couple Republican members of Congress keep trying to breathe active life into since 9/11, it seems well and truly dead in practice.
It does not need such letters anymore. The US got a better thing called "sanctions", which apparently allow US Navy to forcefully detain ships on the high seas and sell their stuff on the grounds of them being engaged in "illegal trade", despite the ship having nothing to do with the US.
Not actually related to article, but the title made me think this... I feel like the piracy / p2p / scenegroup communities have been aging and being whittled down by brutal relentless lawsuits and lobbying from corps. I get the impression not many younger people are interested and are generally more content to accept the corporate slop they are given. This is a bad thing. However u feel about piracy, keeping the skil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you're, y'know, Aaron Swartz.
MIT didn't want to press charges but the actual copyright owners (the publishing firms did) so it went ahead.
Harvey Silverglate wrote a book on the phenomenon, "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent". Federal DAs have the biggest hammers, and so they see nails everywhere. This is also partly why the "nothing to hide" people are foolish, because information can be selectively weaponized by authorities to construct technical crimes. There are nearly infinite and poorly-worded regulations on certain professions with civil and criminal penalties that are all but impossible to commit without intention. That's not the point; the point is that very few prosecutors are uniformly setting out to arrest and convict only the worst of the worst causing legitimate, specific harm.
Unsurprisingly, Oracle killed Zoe Lofgren's CFAA exception bill in committee because the rich and the religious run America.
Not actually related to article, but the title made me think this... I feel like the piracy / p2p / scenegroup communities have been aging and being whittled down by brutal relentless lawsuits and lobbying from corps. I get the impression not many younger people are interested and are generally more content to accept the corporate slop they are given. This is a bad thing. However u feel about piracy, keeping the skil…
However, I feel your perception of the piracy/p2p communities might be dated. I think they took a bit of a nosedive a while back when Netflix reigned supreme, at least for movies, but due to the fragmentation of streaming services and the constant removal of content and increase in prices and now the crackdown on account-sharing, movie/TV piracy seems to be alive and healthy. I'm not so sure about music piracy though; the streaming services there haven't made the huge mistakes the movie/TV services have, so having a single streaming service for music seems to be quite popular these days because it's so convenient. Software piracy appears to be largely dead, thanks to the move to SaaS and online gaming. But my perception could be quite biased too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does not need such letters anymore. The US got a better thing called "sanctions", which apparently allow US Navy to forcefully detain ships on the high seas and sell their stuff on the grounds of them being engaged in "illegal trade", despite the ship having nothing to do with the US.
Or executive orders. Where can you find congress agree to drone strike some dwelling in Afghanistan?
Congress generally doesn’t seek to separately and redundantly authorize specific attacks once it has generally authorized the President to use military force, whether it was the bill passed in 1941 stating “the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan”, or the bill passed in 2001 stating “the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”