Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Justice, Settlement, Cosmos
"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration ..." zarathud writes "Logan Darrow Clements has begun the application process to build a hotel on land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter. This could be allowed under Eminent Domain after the controversial 5-4 Kelo vs. New London ruling which Souter voted for. Justice Souter's home currently occupies the land. The planned hotel, to be called 'The Lost Liberty Hotel,' will include a public exhibit on the loss of American Freedom. 'This is not a prank,' said Clements, 'The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development.'"
Call everyone Sir, just to be safe. Yesterday we posted an item about the first self-proclaimed Jedi in Parliament; here are two updates to the already-updated story. Americans (like me!) may still be baffled by the complications of the honorifics involved.
Stefan Magdalinski writes "If you want to link to the actual speech, then can I suggest you use our volunteer-run, open source, reimplementation of parliament's awful website?"
And reader Russell Dewhurst writes "All MPs (Members of Parliament) are called the Hon. Member for X... If the MP for Copeland were a Privy Councillor he would be the _Rt_ Hon (Right Honourable) Member for Copeland. So the original article was correct, and the correction was wrong, I'm afraid!"Thanks to everyone who's weighed in on this.
MozNews interviews Daniel Glazman, NVu Lead Dev bluephone writes "Now that NVu 1.0 has been officially released, we at MozillaNews asked Daniel Glazman to take some time to give us another interview to book-end our first interview with him, early in NVu's development. He was gracious as always, and fast! Read the interview for unavoidable laws, plans for the future of NVu and Daniel, and even news about his company's upcoming release."
Tom Clancy, eat my shorts. hydraa16 writes "The Cosmos 1 Solar Sail failed to reach orbit. This video shows its loading in a Russian Delta III Submarine, and its launch in the cold Barents Sea!"
If you accidentally blew up your DeskStar, the Empire will repay you. hardreset writes "Remember the day when the IBM 75GXP was the hot new drive? Then ... do you remember the day(s) it bit the dust? If you still have the serial number(s), you may be eligible for a $100/drive settlement from IBM. The settlement page is over here, claim form is here, and the Inquirer article is here. For those of you wearing tinfoil hats, you don't have to send in your drive. For those of you who work for IBM or live overseas, don't bother. If you're hoarding these drives, it might be a good payday!"
You'd have to pay me a lot to listen to the results. Kethinov writes "Because Trent Reznor's release of The Hand That Feeds was a spectacular success, he's decided to release more free musical source material for remixing and listening delight. The new release is another track off his new album With Teeth entitled Only. Interestingly, now he's offering multiple formats for the material instead of just Apple's Garageband format. So now non Apple users too can join the fun."
Its great to see Nvu (the Mozilla XHTML/HTML editor project) coming of age. A free XHTML able WYSIWYG editor is a tool many starting out building webpages could find useful, and begin to bring standards compliant design & creation in from the ground up, not just for professionals and those who choose to learn how to hand code clean and compliant code. I can only see this as a good step forward for compliant markup.
Business Voyeur
As always, people overseas don't get any compensation for crappy products...
I have two of these lying that has failed and one sitting in this computer which I am keeping a really close eye on...
Damn! Where do I invest? Sure sounds like poetic justice to me!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hell yeah, build a hotel on his land, this is america and those in power should be held to at least the same level as those they enforce the law upon!
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
...I strongly believe the government should instigate a policy of Eminent Domain on Intellectual Property, not just Real Property.
It would work like this: once a work reached a critical mass of popularity, the government would sieze it, pay the creator a reasonable sum, and make the work freely available for downloading and sharing.
In this way, never again would a citizen of this great nation be subject to the stigma of not having seen/heard the latest hot movie/tv show/song. It would also encourage creativity with uses like mashups, re-edits, funny overdubs, etc.
Support Fair Use!
A quick search on ebay reveals some of these drives going nice and cheap.
Your town may vary, but in many towns, the Board of Selectmen is elected. And if you didn't know that, neither do 99% of your fellow citizens.
What this means is that if three of them (or even if all five of 'em) don't vote to use the power of eminent domain (either because they think the planned redevelopment is a crock, or because they just don't care for Objectivists), it's entirely up to the citizens of Weare can choose whether or not their Selectmen are (or are not) worthy of re-election in a year or two.
I don't live in Weare. None of my business either way. But the Just Desserts Cafe sure sounds like a nice place for a bite to eat, should I be passing through the neighborhood.
Would be even better if they made a chain of hotels with locations in five cities.
I just saw a demo of a WYSIWYG, drag & drop Web page editor, where you drag around page elements: real text (with associated styler/editor) sections, images, video windows, all scaleable/positionable/stylabe. HTML is seen/touched only on demand, not to layout. It's written in JavaScript, .NET and connects live to a SQLServer backend for its library, including saved pages. It all runs in an unmodified Internet Explorer, without ActiveX, Java or other client-installed SW. They say the update for FireFox is almost ready, just bugfixes - not a plugin.
That's the kind of "HTML editor" I expected to see in common use literally a decade ago, by 1995. How come I don't see such things all over the place? Are they out there? Do I just need to get out more? Why aren't they a standard feature on every website with a content editing/creation feature for users?
--
make install -not war
That's how I was about to phrase my comment, but you beat me. :p
New London should also elect new committee which would then sieze the homes of the former one. >:)
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
Glenn Reynolds (i.e. the Instapundit) recently wrote a piece for Tech Central Station on the failure of the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1, which I thought was quite well-said. Here's a quote:
http://techcentralstation.com/062905J.html
Some might accuse [Planetary Society directory] Friedman of putting a Pollyannaish spin on things, but I'd say he's learned the most important lesson of all: It's hard to accomplish much if you're afraid to fail.
The history of success in all sorts of endeavors -- including the early days of space travel, when we were making rapid progress -- is a history of repeated failures. I don't think it's a coincidence that when the failure rate declined, so did our rate of progress. You learn from failure, and you learn from trying lots of different things. Unfortunately, fear of failure -- like fear in general -- is contagious. But fortunately, so is bravery. When people act unafraid of failure, other people may pick up on the message.
The Planetary Society's mission was, really, a failure: It was supposed to test solar sails, and it never got the chance. But, simply by happening, and by having the Planetary Society emerge with its head bloody, but unbowed, it accomplished something useful by opening up (metaphorical) space for others to try risky but low-cost approaches without worrying too much about the fallout. And that's good.
Because, as I've noted before, when you're not afraid of failure you can try lots of different things and figure out what works best. If you're afraid of failing, on the other hand, you build huge, process-laden, documentation-heavy, behemoths that -- in a way -- are already failures before they ever start because they're too hard to change and improve, and because they don't generate enough useful knowledge to allow further progress. (See, e.g., the Space Shuttle program).
The Planetary Society's launch, despite Lou Friedman's views, failed. But the approach it embodied is the only approach that's likely to achieve substantial success in the long run. And that's a kind of success in itself. Let's hope that we'll see more of this sort of thing in the future.
If the Supreme Court Justice's farmhouse can be taken to build a hotel, it won't be long before the Earth is replaced with a Galatic Freeway.
I had the idea that we should found a small community and then declare copyrighted works public domain. Now of course you couldn't do that for everything, since major corps like Disney would shit lawyers on you, but you could declare eminent domain on all copyrighted works over 20 years-old. if anyone complains, you "reinstate" their copyright. For a fee.
The economic claim is not only simple, but real. Imagine now you can scan and digitally print those old photos of your grandparents, you can archive old books and movie, and you can adapt and derive with impunity. That's one magnificent cottage industry just waiting to be formed.
So maybe this USC decision will actually have a silver lining. Without doing anything quite so ridculous and doomed to failure as traing to seize a Supreme Court justice's house.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
The European Union requires that all consumer goods sold within the Union have at least a 2 year warranty on them. The US has much less strict standards (often none at all), and therefore companies can get away with offering short warranties.
Want Slashdot headlines on your site? Try SlashHead
Many people do not realize that supream court justices can be impeached.
Section. 2.
Section. 3
Section. 1.
Amendment V
Since clearly those 5 justices cannot read, congress has a duty to remove them from their office. I know many of you don't like the idea of Bush choosing 5 justices (perhaps more, there are rumors of retirement), but that is better than letting these 5 sit on then court. Write your congressmen and make it so.
Actually they don't need to be removed from office, just a reminder that the constitution governs this land may be enough.
Well the problem is that they shouldn't ever had that power to begin with. They are prohibited it.
Article IV Section 2 Paragraph 1
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
Pair that with the 5th Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Note the wording, the powers and protections are guaranteed to THE PEOPLE not the STATES.
And also note the 9th and 10th Amendments which should lock this up.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
There is no way that one can call forcing someone to sell land just so that another can buy it can be called Public Use. A hotel, my home, the 7-11 are all private lands not public. They can take my land for a park or a freeway but not for a shopping mall. Everyone knows that yet the justices ruled against it anyway. When Judges are that out of control and that unafraid to invent law then it's time to remove them from office. It's time to pass new laws about HOW judges hold office. The constitution does not set term limits, or a lack there of, for the courts. We can pass new laws limiting terms of Judges or even require them to be elected officials as they are in many states. We are NOT stuck with them. It's time to remove them.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Q. What if I no longer have a receipt or any other supporting documentation?
A. You must produce a receipt or other supporting documentation evidencing the purchase of an eligible 75GXP hard disk drive, or you will not receive any Settlement Benefits.
Well let's see. I bought my deskstar in 2000, let me grab my file for that year... Ah yes, it's here under D, next to the receipt for that donut I bought.
Seriously I will be impressed if anyone can provide the required "supporting documentation." How lame is it to win a lawsuit that will apply to almost nobody?
Crappy thing is, I seriously have a stack of these deskstars sitting here. My last one went bad not even two weeks ago.
or else!