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Don't most of them end up pleading guilty though? If the charges were bogus, why don't they plead not guilty?

This is why.

Once anyone gets into the hands of the federal court system, either they plead out or have a 0.2% chance of acquittal.

The police took away any means he had to defend himself, threatened him with a ridiculous punishment and he accepted a plea bargain. There is only one country in the world that regularly pretends such a thing is a conviction. Of course going to federal court is also a 99.8% chance of being convicted of something. Some federal districts in the USA actually go more than a year without an innocent verdict. http://justicedenied.org/wordp...

Uh, how can it be justice denied if he's guilty as sin?

I'm actually with you on procedural protections, but regarding justice, let's get real; the guy was literally bragging about his guilt.

If he was punished, then justice was done, albeit perhaps not done correctly.

And just to be clear, I support going back to the Founder's version of copyright (7 years, extendable to 14 max).

The police took away any means he had to defend himself, threatened him with a ridiculous punishment and he accepted a plea bargain. There is only one country in the world that regularly pretends such a thing is a conviction. Of course going to federal court is also a 99.8% chance of being convicted of something. Some federal districts in the USA actually go more than a year without an innocent verdict. http://justicedenied.org/wordp...

Uh, how can it be justice denied if he's guilty as sin?

I'm actually with you on procedural protections, but regarding justice, let's get real; the guy was literally bragging about his guilt.

If he was punished, then justice was done, albeit perhaps not done correctly.

The police took away any means he had to defend himself, threatened him with a ridiculous punishment and he accepted a plea bargain. There is only one country in the world that regularly pretends such a thing is a conviction. Of course going to federal court is also a 99.8% chance of being convicted of something. Some federal districts in the USA actually go more than a year without an innocent verdict. http://justicedenied.org/wordp...

However there is one single flaw in this solution. While people like to yell how much they are against death penalty there are only a few, who want to take actions against it.

Except for in civilised societies, where the state doesn't kill people (including innocent ones), and "life for life, Eye for eye" is not taken literally. Here most people have agreed on taking action against it a long time ago.

There are so many unfixable objective problems with capital punishment that societies that value justice should avoid it altogether. The single flaw in your solution is presuming that the law should include such punishment.

... we'd be providing her with an attorney.

A really, really crappy one...

Go to Alabama. They'll find a way to lock you up even if the charges are bogus.

For the past few years, even fingerprints (the real ones on the end of our fingertips) have been analyzed to be much less reliable than the absolute standard they are often assumed.

The FBI is in the business of convincing judges, not necessarily rigorous scientific proof. Science and facts are props used in the "justice theater" that is the law, quite different from actual justice.

No, it isn't if you don't apply it in a literal sense, such as if you disregard the entire concept of methaphor or simile. The loss of "potential revenue" by a company due to the activities of another company can be addressed in court, and repayment can ordered. That is a literal concept. If there is a way to represent the idea of "future losses" for the community that can be encapsulated in a single word, it is theft. A more accurate phrasing would be that when a person or company takes something from the community, without giving back to the community, that act is like theft. The word "like", makes this a simile. You may not consider it perfect for the role, but you haven't introduced a helpful substitute.

You're mincing words and trying to mislead people in the process.

Not my intention at all. You take things too literally. I'm trying to clarify as much as my poor abilities will allow. If you'd like to give it a shot, you're welcome to it.

First off, I can vouch for my grandparent poster's ability with the English laguage and I believe he knows what he is talking about and is right on the money.

I'm glad you have an opinion on the matter. It wouldn't be much of a discussion without one.

We do not discuss metaphoric losses in the world of software

Maybe you don't, but others do. The world isn't simply black and white as I'll show you later in the post. As an aside, people who believe that the world is black and white can be a danger to themselves and those around them as they take things too literally. The GPL clearly isn't for everyone, as the number of BSD supporting posts show in this article. However, I haven't read anything of evidence to indicate that the GPL would inhibit or hinder the growth of software, or take away code from the community as a whole. Hence, my position on it. I recognize that at a point in time, the BSD provided a useful mechanism for licensing Open Source software. That was until an improved license came along. The "improvement" is controversial to some, but an objective market will decide which is the better. My bet is that more people favor an implementation of the Golden Rule such as the GPL, than disapprove of it.

time is not something that is owned and can be robbed from someone.

The world isn't black and white, and someone stating such a broad assertion deserves instruction. To put it literally, you're absolutely wrong. On the other hand, my point regarding the BSD license and theft are not literal. It is merely illustrative of a subtle and important concept. Apparently, too subtle for some.

Figures of speech work well to denote ideas in the figurative sense

And, what is wrong with symbolic representation? It is our ability to symbolize that allows us to code.

but confusing them with literal ideas only serves to show that you don't know how to properly present the thought.

Or, that you don't understand that thoughts have meaning other than in the literal. That would indicate a lower level of self education, or someone who doesn't wish to understand past what he sees. Hence, taking things literally where literal thinking doesn't apply. I recommend a regimen of philosophical readings into abstract thought.

INFRINGEMENT which is what you are confusing for THEFT.

No. Infringement is simply some violation of an agreement, and can at times even be inappropriately used as a longer version of the same word, theft. What I'm stating is theft as a simile, not as a literal act. Theft as a simile is as real as a description of what something is like. Theft in a literal sense would not be tolerated and would become a legal

current dna testing relies on "marker" regions which are supposed to be present in a unique combination for each individual. however, because this is not a whole sequence comparison, there is a small chance of a false positive error but smaller than that of false positives using fingerprints. Indeed the marker regions were selected because they were (relatively) fast to test and did not give away information about the suspect (eg. race or eye colour, although one of the markers was later found to be linked to diabetes).

i think that this technology will eventually find its way into our courtrooms, and this is good. what would be bad is if we thought that any technology was so perfect that we didn't need a trial and we could go out hunting bad guys on their dna evidence alone.

there is no substitute for a public trial where all the evidence gets laid out on the table and a reasonable judge ensures that all parties are treated fairly. if that doesn't happen for the least of our citizens, then it's time to go find another country to live and work in. I've moved countries twice, and i'm always watching with my overnight bag under my desk.

beyond crime there are benign uses for dna identification. the Army DNA registry would also serve as a way to identify the dead, who have been blown up beyond recognition. this gives valuable closure for families and loved ones.

paternity testing now requires that you have a live man to take a sample from. with this new tech you could get the dna fingerprint from the inside of a locket or something.

the way i see it, leaving dna is like a form of subconscious, automatic grafitti. we are always tagging our environment with the words "i wuz here."

it's just that these days, there might be people around who care to read it.