Proposed Legislation Is Mooninite Fallout 280
theantipop writes "Ars Technica has a story about the Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act, a bill introduced recently by the Senate. The bill aims to 'amend the federal criminal code to include a number of new clauses meant to up the ante on wasting government resources. The amendments include extensions to the prohibitions on the spread of false information and mailing threats, increases to maximum prison terms, and allowances for civil suits so that local and federal governments can attempt to recoup expenses related to an incident.' This is undoubtedly a reaction to the Great Mooninite Scare of 2007."
...and in related news, (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, that's not a questions about hair. (Score:2)
This is what I'm talking about when I say government is never at fault.. no matter how badly they screw up.
Re:I'm sorry, that's not a questions about hair. (Score:4, Funny)
Government is the cause of all of life's problems, but have legislation preventing the solutions from being released to the general public.
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Make it retroactive apply it to the government! (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-1
This would criminalize this deplorable government behavior. It would also make it illegal for the government to make up BS about WMDs in some poor country who's oil we want.
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Slashdotters will never understand that!
You're not using K&R or GNU bracket styles, and there's no indentation! I know what you're thinking, "but it's a single line, you don't need brackets!", and right you are! However, we're an anal bunch.
Hey, guys, relax, what he's saying is:
if (Crime.TimeStamp < Law.TimeStamp)
{
Crime.getPerp().setFree();
}
else
{
Crime.getPerp().incarcerate();
}
Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that mean that if another city starts considering legislation to ban dihydrogen monoxide (like Aliso Viejo, California did [msn.com] in 2004), that the government could seek damages from the mainainers of DHMO.org [dhmo.org]?
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the existence of WMD's?
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Funny)
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The government hate competition.
(That said, with the laws against spreading false information, shouldn't a certain news channel named after an animal and you know who in the elliptical-shaped office be careful?)
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Funny)
At least, that's what I'm told by the good people at Fox News. By the way -- why do you hate America?
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H: "I'm not holding a gun!"
B: "Sir, put down the gun now."
H: "I don't have any weapons!"
B: "PUT DOWN THE GUN, THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!!!!"
H: "For the last time, THERE IS NO GUN!"
*BAM BAM BAM*
B: "Well, we knew he didn't have a gun, but he never showed up in court for conceiled weapon's charges 10 years ago, so that's why we took him out."
(And yes, some of this was stolen from The Boondocks X-Box killer episode)
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Informative)
for him to provide proof,
On December 7, 2002, Iraq submitted a 12,000 page document outlining what it claimed was evidence of its weapons of mass destruction capabilities. Much of the report was recycled from previous declarations (after all, if you've said you destroyed something you can't very well provide any new information) though some clarifications of previous declarations was also provided. The UN used this declaration to assist the inspectors which were in the country (see below) to verify Iraq's claims.
Further, as soon as the report came out, and before anyone had even looked at it, Donald Rumsfeld was saying the entire report was a bunch of lies.
Hey, here's an idea. Instead of shooting your mouth off and saying someone is lying, how about at least putting on a show of opening the documents and then lie about someone else lying.
let inspectors do their inspecting,
Straight from Hans Blix's report from February 14, 2003 [mideastnews.com]:
Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidencethat the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.
A bit further down the page we find:
More than 200 chemical and more than 100 biological samples have been collected at different sites. Three-quarters of these have been screened using our own laboratory analytical capabilities at the Baghdad Centre (BOMVIC). The results to date have been consistent with Iraq's declarations.
The only thing Hans' report does say is that not all of the destroyed material that Iraq claimed it had destroyed twelve years prior could be verified to have been destroyed. However, the inspectors continuing to work with the Iraqi officials to verify this claim.
And this is what Blix himself had to say in 2003 about Saddam's declarations:
"With this long period, I'm inclined to think that the Iraqi statement that they destroyed all the biological and chemical weapons, which they had in the summer of 1991 may well be the truth," Blix told CNN television.
Common Dreams link [commondreams.org]
Further, it was the U.S. who didn't want the inspectors to continue their inspections because they weren't finding anything, even after the U.S. gave them specific locations to look at, and so were afraid that the longer the inspections went on without finding anything, the more public opinion would turn against their already conceived plans to invade and occupy Iraq.
of dismantling the weapons he did have at the time of the agreement.
He did not have any of the weapons despite Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld repeatedly stating, "We know he has them and we know where they are." If we knew where those weapons were, why didn't we provide that information to the UN inspectors who were on the ground looking for those weapons? Iraq's declaration showed that they had destroyed their wmd stockpiles and construction capabilities as directed to by previous UN resolutions and in those few cases where there were discrepancies, was working with the UN inspectors to clarify the questions. Continuing to state a lie enough times does not make it a fact.
Are we done now with the propaganda? It's not like poll after poll hasn't shown that people who watch Fox Noise are the most ill-informed people in the nation. You didn't need to offer proof of the validity of those polls.
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:4, Insightful)
We were anointed probation officers?
But more to the point, and where we are today... When Congress attempts to do something by passing a law, we speak quite fervently about the unintended consequences of that law. Anything any of us does has consequences, some intended, some not. The pragmatic issue is whether the unintended consequences outweigh the intended ones.
This wasn't rocket science. GHW Bush knew what the unintended consequences would be, and at the time he spoke of "fine tuning" the military and economic strength left for Saddam Hussein. The goal was enough to maintain a nation, but too little to threaten neighbors. Perhaps he stopped pounding them a little early, but he also knew the risks of landing just where we are, today.
The real problem with the Iraq war isn't now, and didn't start back in November. It began even before the war. Even if you forgive the entire intelligence fiasco, the entire thing was under-resourced. Even after toppling Saddam Hussein, we might have had 30-90 days to make their lives better, and we *would* have been welcomed as liberators. Instead, our soldiers watched their people loot, we didn't have the proper strength, training, or policies to do correct policing anyway, and it seems that "Iraq reconstruction" was really a feeding trough for US corporations. (Instead of putting Iraqis back to work, which *would* have helped more than most anything else we did.)
There's no good way out, now. Perhaps re-instituting the draft and getting our strength there up to 500,000 might do the job, but it's also possible that the well is SO poisoned after 4 years of fiddling around that even a real strength buildup wouldn't do it.
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Funny)
I smell a veto coming!
-Rick
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Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Government officials are only allowed to make themselves look like complete morons. God forbid anyone else should be allowed to do so.
Frankly, I think this bill gets dangerously close to thought crime. Making a threat is already illegal. Doing something that a f*ckcing moron thinks is a threat should not be. If you are too mind bogglingly stupid to look at the mooninite thing and realize that it is probably not a bomb, you not only do not deserve to be in any position of authority, but also probably do not even deserve the life support that they must be using to keep your body alive in the absence of a central nervous system (both parts).
The best one was Boston police blowing up a traffic counter. Seriously, there is one very massive sucking sound caused by the vacuum between the ears of the people who are reacting to these "credible threats".
Here's a counterproposal. Make it a crime punishable by termination and fines for any person in charge of any government entity to waste taxpayer resources. THAT would be a useful law. It would make it possible to can people in civil service for gross ineptitude, a condition which unfortunately seems all too prevalent in those circles, and for which which no viable solution currently exists due to fundamental brokenness in government hiring practices.
We can start by arresting Congress plus the entire Executive Branch and starting over from scratch.
A story from the military (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a pair of boots in the box.
I still don't know who the clown was who left his boots in a box by the mail, but it had the Duty on the verge of calling the MPs, Hazmat, and the OOD.
Point being, sometimes innoculous crap is just that. The bitch of it though, is that some times it isn't.
-Rick
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On the one hand, it's always good news that that wasn't a bomb on your doorstep. On the other hand, aside from the time and money wasted, that particular General probably got a few new fun nicknames.
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That's easy - a tipsy leatherneck who thought it would be a hoot to see a box of boots get blown up by the ordinance disposal team.
Re:A story from the military (Score:5, Interesting)
He was hardly an isolated incident unfortunately. The list of horrendous acts drunken members of the military have done in Okinawa is rather staggering. It was with good reason that the protesters were at our gates.
-Rick
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If you're menaced by a lout in a bar with a broken bottle, who do you want to come to your rescue? Do you want a nice, reasonable, New York Times reading diplomatic type, who'll ask everyone to sit down and discuss it?
No, you want a bigger lout with a bigger broken bottle.
And that's the United States Marine Corps.
Re:A story from the military (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you want a bigger lout with a bigger broken bottle.
Personally, I'd prefer an honest bouncer. You just can't trust where louts with broken bottles will look to get their kicks next.
Re:A story from the military (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:4, Insightful)
How could we be so careless.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070507.wspycoins0507/BNStory/National/home/ [theglobeandmail.com]
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Insightful)
These were not "hoax devices". A "hoax device" is meant to fool you. This wasn't meant to fool anyone, but fools were nevertheless fooled by it. A similar incident occured a couple of years ago when someone staged a protest outside of an army recruitment office dressed like prisoner from one of the famous abu-garib photographs. Wearing a black hood, standing on a crate, with wires hanging from his arms.
Apparently in that situation they also called in the bomb squad and charged the protesters with a "hoax device" because apparently wires are serious business and EVERYONE should know that you can't just go attaching wires to things this day in age and not expect the bomb squad to be called -- EVEN IF YOUR MIMICKING A FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH THAT HAS BEEN SEEN ON NEWS BROADCASTS ALL OVER THE WORLD AD NASEUM FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS.
The appropriate response would be to start firing people. Clearly there are people in positions of power who simply do not belong there. These are people Who do not have the common sense that god gave to most creatures with an intellect greater than a tuna fish. Who can't look at protester with wires attached to his arms and say "Oh yeah, I've seen that photograph before" or who can't look at a god-damned light-bright for a popular tv show and say "Neat advertisement". Who can't understand that something INCH THICK composed almost entirely of LEDS does not have explosive potential. There is simply a limit to how tiny explosives can be, you need something capable of exploding -- some kind of fuel.
The city of Boston fucked up, big time. Instead of admitting their mistakes like men/women and firing the people responsible, they're going to go after their innocent victims in court and try to pass laws to put the burden of their stupidity on the public at large. Beware: If we mistakenly identify something completely innocuous as a bomb, it will be your fault for owning that innocuous item! Nice going, guys.
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe, just maybe, you're a complete jackass who can't think for themselves and recognize that there were a lot more failures in these incidents than by the people who placed devices that were not bombs and were not intended to be interpretted as such. Even the legal definition of hoax device under MA law states that the device must be INTENDED by the placer to be interpretted as a threat in an effort to cause panic. No intent means no hoax, no matter how hard someone squints their eyes and declares something a bomb that doesn't look, function, or have anywhere near the same mass & volume as a bomb. And placement of something is not the only factor that should be used in determining if an object is an explosive, just being under a bridge does not make something a bomb, ask any homeless person. And let's say we give the bomb squad the benefit of the doubt and say the first 5 LED signs they found should have been treated like bombs, what about the next 5 that were identical, at what point do we establish a pattern of non-threat? Never? "Well, the first 99 devices we found all turned out to be harmless tape recorders afterall, but we're still treating number 100 as a live bomb because the others could have all been distractions from the real one." Yes, very plausible indeed. Putting them under bridges may not have been the smartest move by these artists, but to lay the blame 100% on them is rediculous. If we don't hold the people in power accountable for their failures as well as their successes then we only encourage incompetence.
As a resident of Boston, what I took away from this incident is that if you wanted to plant a real bomb somewhere in the city, you could easily distract the bomb squad for the entire day by leaving harmless electircal items under multiple bridges. Leaving you free to pull off a real act of terrorism while the police spend the ENTIRE DAY "defusing" the same harmless device over and over. Although you may have to wait a while since it will take them over 2 weeks to even notice that there are devices attached to bridges. Pathetic.
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:4, Insightful)
So if it looks like a bomb, or if it DOESN'T look like a bomb, you treat it as a bomb. So you just spend your life hiding under your bed because absolutely anything outside is likely to be a bomb? Or maybe your bed is a bomb....
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The WWII booby trap was baited so obviously that it might as well have lit up with track lights and neon like in a Warner cartoon. Pistols. Ration packs. Binoculars...
Yeah, and if we were in the middle of a war zone, that level of paranoia might not be unjustified. In Iraq, if it looks even slightly like a bomb, it probably is. In Boston, if it looks only slightly like a bomb, it is probably a children's toy. If it has a rubber hose sticking out, running across the street, and is chained to a light p
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Isn't it scary how the Iraqi Information Minister sounds like the guys in charge of the US right now?
"The terrorists are stupid. They are stupid [dramatic pause] and they are condemned."
"There are no terrorists in Baghdad. Never!"
"That there are terrorists in Iraq is just a lie, and the media is lying."
"The terrorists are committing suicide at the gates of Baghdad."
Anyway, I agree with your point. Everyone needs to stop being such pussies all their lives. There's a g
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Watch out for DHMO (Score:4, Interesting)
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The proof is there, and that proof is short sleeved shirts in March or April in Thompson or Flin Flon.
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I want you to do your very best not to be quite so dopey. Tomorrow is a new day, time for a fresh start.
Say it aloud: "I will stop being so dopey. I will fight my inclination to be played by every rightwing ra
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I've presented evidence, direct, conclusive proof that can be backed up by anyone living in the North, that global warming exists and has caused significant climate changes in the past 25 years.
Go back to Fox News Channel.
the finger (Score:5, Funny)
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Now write a damn letter to you representitives and tell them how you feel.
Nicely.
Or an email, whatever.
H. G. Wells would be a felon (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet it still wouldn't make us any more safe from a real terrorist attack. Huh.
-Rick
Re:H. G. Wells would be a felon (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA for crying out loud!
According to the article, you can only be held liable if 1) they (the government) react as if it were a real emergency, 2) you are aware of their overreaction, and 3) you fail to tell them that it is not a real emergency.
The War of the Worlds broadcast was broadcast with disclaimers. And I'm not aware of any government emergency response triggered by the broadcast. This law doesn't cover activities wasting private citizens' resources, only government resources. And CBS certainly would have informed the goverment of the nature of the program had they been aware of any official emergency response.
And the radio broadcast was ORSON Welles, not H.G. Welles.
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Re:H. G. Wells would be a felon (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unlike all of the other laws passed in the last six years? Well, most anyway. There might be one law I haven't heard of that makes sense. Nah...
Irony in action (Score:2)
Thus, ever higher (Score:2)
Soon, the difference between a normal sentence and life will be one of title only.
Re:Thus, ever higher (Score:5, Interesting)
Increasingly draconian sententencing is rather counter-productive in the sense that it may help increase the severity of crimes performed, or the desperation of those close to being nabbed.
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That seems quite unlikely to me. Quite to the contrary. So long as it isn't the children of senators and white middle class americans carrying out civil disobedience and being jailed, a majority of the country will rally behind the administration and law enforcement.
It would be for the same reasons that people react violently against anti-war protesters, and against people denouncing and criticising the government or the troops. I don't know w
Re:Thus, ever higher (Score:5, Interesting)
We had to break the law to get our paintballs, and we had to chose the option that was not only illegal, but highly immoral. It's certainly sophomoric logic, but I'm pretty sure it's the type of logic that would prevail in an over-lawed state.
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Personally, I think it's as much of a threat to the rest of the world as nuclear arms.
Eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait a minute here. How the hell can the government enter into civil suits?
These are suits which are outside of the usual prosecutorial parts of the justice system -- ie civilian.
They can pass a law to make it a crime, but I can't imagine the badness of the precedent of governments being able to take civil action. Take criminal action, or bugger off. You can't really ask to do both.
Does this even have a valid basis in law?
Cheers
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Informative)
The government has always been able to enter civil suits.
Yes, they are outside of the criminal justice system. That means, for one thing, no one is going to be sent to jail, executed, etc.
Government engages in civil lawsuits all the time.
Government has been able to take civil action forever. So there is no real precedent in it being able to do so now.
Not only can they, but they have been for quite some time.
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However, that being beside the point, this could actually be quite pernicious. Imagine a scene at an airport. Suppose one removes a small box from one's suitcase which contains a gift. You remove the gift and accidently leave the box on the seat as you leave.
After you take off, the box is discovered, bomb squad is called in. You hear about it on the news after the fact, but fail to call the TSA for fear of the result. Y
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OK. Fair enough. So
Cheers
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won't happen (Score:3, Interesting)
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Terrorists may not be the sharpest forks in the drawer, but I doubt even they would be stupid enough to put a sign saying "This is a dangerous bomb placed here for terrorist related activities." on their bombs.
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This junction is where I lose your train of logic.
Spread of false information? (Score:3, Interesting)
did not RTFA, but the government is the single largest distributor of false information around...
everything from telling us that reducing your cholesterol intake will lower your risk of heart disease (false) to telling us there were WMDs in Iraq.
seems like they're going to need a "no tag backs" clause in this one.
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you care to back that up? Having seen data that backs that up, I would find a link interesting.
Or are you talking about certian kinds of cholesterol?
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Go google for Gary Taubes' article "What if it's all been a big fat lie". I will tell you now that the issue is hotly contested; Many people have attempted to debunk it, and I've read many debunkings, and none of them are accurate. But then, when the government is culpable in drastically lowering the quality of life of [nearly] all Americans in order to produce revenue, it's going to be pretty hotly contested, now isn't it?
The NIH spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer money trying to make a link betwee
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Whatever happened to the concept of a balanced diet? Why is it always about eliminating one type of nutrient or another?
Declaring "carbs are the enemy" or "fat is the enemy" doesn't solve anything except for people who are already eating too much carbs, or too much fat. People go haywire, eating too much of the "safe" foods, or eliminate more of the "unsafe" foods than they should and end up with a nutritional defi
Wasting government resources? (Score:2)
Besides, isn't wasting government resources precisely what government does best?
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a group posts fliers and holds rallies against some government official because he is corrupt, couldn't he simply call in the police/feds on the group as a "possible terrorist group", ransack their offices, etc, run up a huge bill and then sue the group out of existence under this new bill?
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes! This is one step shy of being the domestic equivalent of the "enemy combatant" doctrine (I say doctrine because as far as I know none of our laws refer to the concept of the "enemy combatant" and that's just some new thing Bush made up). With enemy combatants, they can simply declare you to be one and at that point your guilt or innocence is irrelevent. The mere fact that they thought you were an enemy fighter is enough for them to do whatever they want.
Here, they at least aren't able to ignore the fact that you are actually innocent of plotting any real terrorist act, but they are still able to punish you for the fact that they merely thought you might be a terrorist. So all they have to do is say that they thought some activity of yours was terrorist-related, and when it turns out not to be, any expenses they incured "figuring out" what they already knew are your problem. So your innocence is irrelevent in the sense that you are still punished, just not as severely.
This is going to be fantastic for anyone who enjoys abusing their law enforcement powers. Imagine being able to accuse any woman wearing a short skirt of being a prostitute, drag her down to the station, and when it turns out there's no evidence of her being a prostitute, you can then charge her with the crime of making you think she was a prostitute. That short skirt was very deceiving! Okay, well, actually it wasn't even that short of a skirt. But it doesn't matter how stupid the inference is, the cop says he thought it was true! Ah, such a glorious time it is for fascists. If this bill passes, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the same principle is applied to other crimes like prostitution.
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I beg to differ. This sort of behavior is now established in law [wikipedia.org]. That, I would say, is a huge difference from the oldschool wink-wink "interrog
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Explosive Alert caused by Bat Boxes [bbc.co.uk]
I drew a mooninite on my dry erase board at work. (Score:3, Funny)
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I used the mooninite "PARANOIA: If it's not an American flag, it's probably a bomb." picture as my screen background. Of course, on looking at it, it has two typos. I think I may draw in the missing apostrophes on my copy....
Will the govenment hold itself accountable then? (Score:2)
When they, for example publish official reports about, say, "Canadian Spy Coins".
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070507/ap_on_go_ot/sp y_coins [yahoo.com]
Report everything! (Score:3, Interesting)
Something along the lines of: "You wanted to be notified of any suspicious devices or activities? Well theres a paper bag lying on the ground here at (insert location) and noone seems to know anything about it. Its big enough to hold a few sticks of dynamite or something. Just being a good citizen, sir!".
If the 'authorities' want to take *obvious* stuff like the mooninites publicity stunt *that* seriously then let them try to apply the same level of serious for any notification of 'suspect objects'.
The problem of stupid overreaction on the part of the 'authorities' will go away very very quickly.
Great Advertising (Score:2)
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Considering this got more press than most Superbowl advertisements it seems like the return on investment was pretty solid.
You would think that, but practically no one went to see it. It was in 877 theaters for two weeks, half that the third week and it's all but gone from theaters now. But thanks to the movie's low production cost ($750k), the movie still managed to make a profit, bringing in about $5 million to date. The $2 million settlement therefore cut their profit margin in half, so I doubt anyone thinks it was "worth it". The story may yet change, as I'm sure the real target for the movie all along was in DVD sales.
Box [boxofficemojo.com]
Boston (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, wasnt the boston government the ones "spreading false information" and making bomb threats?
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But they would just say..
"Not in a post 9/11 world! Everything *COULD* be a bomb. That card board box there. That ladies handbag.. This rubber chicken in my pocket *MIGHT* be a bomb! Call the bomb squad! Scramble the aircraft! Call CNN, Soooomeooone call my barber!"
Re:Boston (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, this whole post can be summed up as me yelling "Learn some fucking common sense!" at the current administration (yes, yes, this was Boston local government - but it was the Bush administration that injected them with fear and paranoia), but I suppose I should know better, given that anyone actively seeking (and attaining) high public office is already clearly lacking a common sense gland.
*to the parent*: btw, didn't mean to get all serious in reply to your comment - it was hilarious. One question though - who carries a rubber chicken in their pocket?
Federal bill? (Score:2)
Actually, I know our states gave that up a while ago. It's still stupid, along with the bill in the first place.
Longer Jail Terms = Cost (Score:2)
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Do something about it (Score:2)
Sounds Downright Reasonable! (Score:2)
"...the provisions in the bill would allow the government to take civil action against parties involved in perceived hoaxes if they fail to "promptly and reasonably inform one or more parties... of the actual nature of the activity" once they learn about investigative action taking place. In the case of Boston, this means that everyone involved could be sued for not immediately informing the police of the campaign upon receiving news of the emergency reaction."
So if you find out that the pr
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Because it doesn't seem like the onus should be on citizens to inform their public officials that they are acting like idiots.
In the case of the mooninite hysteria, it was idiotic in the first place not to realize that terrorist devices are not normally designed to call attention to themselves, and the idio
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Sure, its pretty damn clear AFTER the fact, but before, part of defusing a bomb is to not tell anyone about it being there, so they dont crowd the damn place or cause panic.
You can tell the police are on the way, once the sirens are sounding and there's 40 cop cars around. By that point, the money is spent, its too late.
This 'law' solves, NOTHING, causes even more Bullshit, spends even MORE MONEY (gotta man phones incase someone
This is what we needed (Score:2)
An important distinction is missing... (Score:2)
If someone does something completely unrelated that is somehow interpreted as terrorist activity, that is not a terrorist hoax. It's a mess, yes, but not a terrorist hoax.
The intention and execution is what makes the difference.
Mooninite HOAX? (Score:2, Informative)
Sure, if they had intended to scare the public into thinking that terrorists were attacking America in order to drive them into their homes (where they would no doubt cower in fear watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force), then yes, I would agree that it was a hoax and that they
They *should* suffer! (Score:2)
The mayor and police chief of boston should resign immediately, followed by whoever the hell proposed this bill to congress.
"the spread of false information" (Score:2)
Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act? (Score:2)
I guess it would help if someone else perpetrated a believable hoax, it would take the pressure off the US government.
For the love of God (Score:5, Informative)
The meat of it:
Discuss.Nation of Cowards (Score:3, Interesting)
So, let me get this straight, betwetters. Every time I experience an object, sound, or symbol I don't recognize, or one which reminds me of something that could be used to inflict harm, somebody should go to jail?
If you want your safety guaranteed to an arbitrary degree, well, I guess we'll have the brain in a vat plan available fairly soon. And before that, you're welcome to check yourself into total a surveillance camp. For the rest of us, a little common sense and a modicum of dignity will just have to get us by.
Seriously, the best way, long term, to get people to make rational decisions throughout the day would be early exposure, in school, to elementary logic, statistics, and game theory. As important as pure math is, I think that this should be a separate set of classes, because... well, it'll be easier to market it if you tie it to real life. Here are a couple books I think should be required reading in high school:
Innumeracy [amazon.com]
Prisoner's Dilemma [amazon.com]
I've taken a look at the proposed amendment and... (Score:3, Informative)
It would seem that since Senator Kennedy of Massachussettes is the sponsor of the bill this has something to do with the Mooninite fallout. IANAL but I still didn't read anything much that would put the guerilla marketing company in too much extra trouble. The thing that stands out to me is that the amended version still says
The key I think is in the first part of the sentence that says "...with intent to convey false or misleading information...". I guess a case could be made that their intent was to convey false or misleading information by not providing any information but it seems like that is stretching it.
For the links I used:
the proposed amendment [govtrack.us] and its full text [govtrack.us]
Unamended Section 1038 of Title 18 of the US Code [cornell.edu]
section 2332b [cornell.edu] since the amendment adds a reference to section 2332b(g)(5)(B) of this title ( Title 18 )
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)