I'm smart, maybe not mensa smart (don't really care either way) but fuck hanging out with other aholes like me!
OP is a bit snobbish itself.
People (by and large... certainly there are exceptions) join MENSA so that they can converse with other people with similar mental character and interests. Just exactly how some people join motorcycle clubs because they like motorcycles and want to discuss them and appreciate them with people of similar interest, someone might join MENSA because they like talking about physics -- or even crossword puzzles -- with people who are like themselves.
There is no need to try to suggest that is "snobbery" of any kind. Would you call a motorcycle gang "snobs"? Or stamp collectors? MENSA is a social club, nothing more.
And by the way, a bit of history: MENSA members did sometimes wear small yellow pins, like tie tacks but about 1/8" diameter, like those little pins you stick in maps -- not badges -- simply so that they could find each other in a crowd. It wasn't snobbery, it was subtle (very subtle) identification. The reason was because more obvious identification made them targets of violence for bigots and other idiots.
I could make phone calls on it without carrying a separate phone. Beyond that and telling time, I can't think of any other use for a screen I'd want to wear on my wrist.
I basically agree. Here is how I see it: the thing on your wrist should do things that make sense for something on your wrist to do.
Making telephone calls is one. Without any other device necessary. Fitness and sleep tracking are also obvious functions.
But for just about everything else, you can have a tablet. Tether it to your phone (watch) via Bluetooth, or whatever.
But the point is, I think current "smartwatch" efforts have it backward. Rather then trying to put everything on your watch, powered by your telephone, put the phone and health apps ONLY on your watch, then tether your tablet to that.
That wasn't the worst sentence in history, but it's got to be right up there.
You have nothing better to do that criticize other peoples' typographical errors?
I'll leave aside your amusingly delusional implication that unwarranted invasions of privacy somehow didn't happen - or weren't attempted by law enforcement with similar enthusiasm and vigour - under the preceding 43 Presidents...
Not only that, you have reading comprehension issues. I specifically stated that these things DO happen.
Which is precisely the point. When you're on the receiving end of extrajudicial treatment, I'm sure you'll find great comfort in "stare decisis".
Again I say, "Not Really".
I mean, yes these things do happen. But in most cases you will probably eventually get relief. It is this fear of repercussion which usually prevents administrations from grossly abusing their power, even temporarily.
Of course, that hasn't stopped Obama and his cronies. But personally, I could this as the worst administration in history.
The term "imminent threat" like everything else as it relates to matters of law is as fluid and malleable as the entity wielding the power wants it to be.
Not really. We have the concept of stare decisis which largely prevents that from happening, except perhaps temporarily.
This is reasonable, as police historically have not needed a warrant if there is an "imminent threat".
However, any genuine "imminent threat" from a cell phone would be an extremely -- and I mean very extremely -- rare circumstance.
(Note for citizens: this is not a good reason to not lock your phone. Police have been known to bend the rules. I would like to see that change, but today you should be careful.)
All persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether it be felony or misdemeanor, and whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense, or aid and abet in its commission, or, not being present, have advised and encouraged its commission, [...] are principals in any crime so committed.
First, it says "advised AND encouraged". That makes you an accessory. You haven't just encouraged, you have assisted in the commission of the crime.
And second: it applies to felonies and misdemeanors. Which are crimes. A traffic or parking violation my be illegal, but it is not a crime, it is a civil infraction.
So even if it were illegal for this app to "encourage" a crime (and I am not convinced that it is), it is not, in fact, encouraging a felony or misdemeanor. Just a civil infraction.
No. Too generic. If they said Kill Whitey Ford, that would have been different.
You're trying to move the goalposts. The discussion was about "encouraging people to break the law".
Saying "Kill Whitey" is encouraging people to break the law. Nobody said it had to be about some specific person, or some specific law.
We have something in the United States called the First Amendment. Inciting imminent riot (the famous example is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater) was ruled an exception. "Encouraging" someone to break a municipal parking laws doesn't even come close to being an exception.
Cool, so any drone flying over my house below the FAA controlled airspace is trespassing, and I can get some skeet shooting practice in?
Actually, at least in my State, it is. Not just trespassing, but if it is using a camera to see over my fence, it is also conducting "illegal surveillance".
Well, then you don't know the gaming industry. Basically people work on a game and then get laid off.
And all this has just about zero to do with the comment you replied to. Which I agree with, by the way.
THIS is the reason I don't buy many competitive games anymore. When you can buy your way through them, then who gives a shit at getting good at the game?
I don't give the slightest damn about the gaming industry's internal problems. I didn't create them. I'm a customer, and I don't like their product.
Period. It's that simple. Make a product I want to buy, or I won't buy it.
I will add: again, just as the judge stated in the ruling I quoted above, what Congress intended as "navigable airspace" and "aircraft" are what rule the day here. It does not encompass any part of any air in United States terroritory, nor does it mean any conceivable flying machine.
In the United States, the original intent of the law as passed trumps somebody's later interpretation.
The opening claim was that the judge said that the FAA was not permitted to make rules in this area while the judge was actually silent on that matter.
First paragraph of cited article: "A federal judge slapped down the FAAâ(TM)s fine for a drone operator, saying there was no law banning the commercial use of small drones."
Third paragraph of the cited article "NTSB Administrative Law Judge Patrick Geraghty ruled Thursday that the policy notices the FAA issued as a basis for the ban werenâ(TM)t enforceable because they hadnâ(TM)t been written as part of a formal rulemaking process." This contradicts the claim from first paragraph that the judge said the FAA could not legally make any rules in this area.
But if you look at the judge's actual ruling, you will see that the opening claim is in fact correct.
The judge did rule that there was no law allowing the FAA to regulate model aircraft (which, it should be noted, was being used for commercial purposes). Quote the ruling:
Neither the Part 1, Section. 1.1, or the 49 U.S.C. Section 40102(a)(6) definitions of "aircraft" are applicable to, or include a model aircraft within their respective definition.
. . .
Accepting Complainant's overreaching interpretation of the definition "aircraft", would result reductio ad absurdum in assertion of FAR regulatory authority over any device/object used or capable of flight In the air, regardless of method of propulsion or duration of flight.
The judge further notes that this is far beyond the intent of Congress when they passed the relevant law.
This in no way implies that ALL rulemaking by hte FAA is illegal, you you still have to demonstrate the the specific area of rulemaking has not been authorized. This has yet to be shown.
I didn't say all rulemaking by FAA is illegal. What I wrote was that the fact that the judge used lack of rulemaking as the basis of his decision does not imply that rulemaking would be legal. But that in itself doesn't imply it would be illegal, either. My argument about whether they had authority to make rules was based on what the judge above said: the FAA was never given authority to make such rules by Congress.
The FAA is a Federal agency. As such, it only has authority that is given it by Congress. Attempting to regulate outside that authority IS illegal, as SCOTUS made very clear yesterday.
49 U.S. Code 40103 - Sovereignty and use of airspace (a) (1) "The United States Government has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States."
You didn't read far enough:
Specifically, the Federal Aviation Act provides that: "The United States Government has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States."[2] The act defines navigable airspace as "airspace above the minimum altitudes of flightâ¦including airspace needed to ensure the safety in the takeoff and landing of aircraft."
These areas are clearly defined in aviation charts. Anything else belongs to the owner of the property below.
Actually, what happened there is that the reporter didn't know what he was talking about and contradicted his opening statement in the 3rd paragraph.
No, he didn't. The judge DID strike down the rule. He then went on to explain that the reasoning the judge used was because it wasn't part of a formal rulemaking process. But it would be a mistake to then assume that if they HAD made it part of a formal rulemaking process, it would automatically be legal!
This is important: yesterday SCOTUS made it very clear that the FAA does not have authority to regulate things that are not specifically authorized by Congress and signed into law. Their CO2 regulations were part of a formal rulemaking process... and were smacked down. Because Congress did not give them authority.
And Congress hasn't given FAA authority for this.
What the law allows the FAA to do is to regulate navigable airspace. Nothing else. (Navigable means, roughly, continuously travelable by human beings in vehicles... similar to the way navigable rivers are defined.) Navigable airways are clearly defined throughout the United States, down to damn near the square meter. There isn't much wiggle room there. My father was a pilot and I put it a pretty good amount of airtime.
Low-altitude commercial drones (of the kind the NTSB judge ruled about, and the kind Amazon wants to use) do not operate in "navigable airspace". Therefore, the FAA does not have authority to regulate them.
They're displaying, yet again, the same kind of blind arrogance they recently displayed in front of SCOTUS. They're just asking for another smackdown.
Another point: even if Congress did want to give them authority to regulate low-altitude drones, it probably couldn't. Because Federal authority is limited to interstate transportation. It does not have authority over all the airspace in the U.S.! Common law says a property owner controls the airspace over his land. Navigable airways were deemed an exception to this principle, for the sake of interstate air travel.
So it looks like it's going to have to remain a matter of State regulation.
The way I see it (which also appears to be the way SF see it), this app encourages people to break several laws - laws against using a phone while driving, laws against loitering, et. al.
In general, "encouraging" people to break the law is perfectly legal. Look up the "99%" protests. Look up the 1960s. Look up marijuana laws in some of the states today.
Saying "go ahead, break this law" is not the same as holding a gun to someone's head. And it's very much different from shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Encouraging people to break the law is one of the primary ways laws get changed.
That said, I'm pretty sure you can't legally encourage people to commit crimes without committing one yourself; for example, if you encourage someone to murder someone else, that's either accessory or conspiracy, depending on locale and to what level, exactly, that you offered encouragement.
No it isn't. Unless you help or compel them, in general you're only expressing an opinion. If you know about a murder and don't say anything, you might be an accessory. If you help with a murder, that might be conspiracy (or again, accessory). But encouraging? If that were true, then all those Black Panthers who have been saying "Kill Whitey", in public, were committing crimes, yes? Why weren't they prosecuted?
Oh, yeah: because it's not a crime. It's just offensive.
The only way information received from this application could possibly be useful was precisely if the auctioner held the spot for the winner. Because otherwise it would already be long taken by the time they got around, even if they were just a few city blocks away. Alternatively, San Francisco has an abundance of parking spaces, so what would be the point of this app?
Just as I said to the other poster: whether it has any point or not is completely irrelevant to whether it is legal.
Does it ever make you uncomfortabe how posting this kind of reflexive, unthinking, ideology-based bullshit makes you exactly like the Stalinists of old, just with a different set of keyword triggers? Do you ignore the similarities because clearly, their ideology was wrong and yours is right? Or do you simply lack the self-awareness to notice?
Principle and ideology are not the same things. The law works the way it does for good reasons. Your ignorance of some of the fundamental principles of common law does not give you standing to throw insults. I think it's hilarious that you see my arguments about historical concepts of common law, and compare them to Stalinism. I have little doubt that in your ignorance, it seems logical to you.
You're kidding, right? As soon as you use the app you've proven intent.
No, you haven't. Only if you use the app AND break the law by holding the parking space hostage. It doesn't matter "prove intent" but the law is not broken. (Unless you want to come up with a new crime: "conspiracy" to hold a parking space hostage for money.) So you have to do both or there is nothing to prosecute.
How long do you think such a service would last if all it did was sell "information" about where someone was leaving a parking spot?
As long as it wants. THAT'S. ALL. IT. DOES. The app doesn't hold parking spaces. It doesn't do anything illegal. If the people using it violate the law, that's their business. But as I understand the law, the app isn't doing anything illegal.
Why would anyone in their right mind bid on "information" that everyone in within fifty feet of the seller can see for himself, and would be there to take advantage of long before any auction could take place, much less the winner driving to the location to accept his prize?
That's a completely different issue. I wasn't arguing about the viability of the business. Just about whether it was actually illegal.
Just because it was cold in New York due to the vortex oscillations does not cancel out the overall upward.
Way to BS-up your argument. The entire continental U.S., even when you factor in the areas in the Pacific that were experiencing El Nino, experienced record cold for the entire first 5 months of 2014. USHCN's own raw data.
And the same time, Antarctic sea ice was also setting new records.
Was it warmer in the Arctic? Probably not. Sea ice extent was perfectly normal this year, after several years of shrinkage. That argues that the temperatures in the Arctic were normal, too.
When you have huge areas of the globe showing normal to historical record lows, then in order for the Earth to be "warmer than normal", much less record warm, you would also have to have large areas that were extraordinarily hot during the same period.
I have seen no evidence of such.
Do you have some? TFA certainly did not provide any.
Yes, there's no question that cannot be truthfully answered with a cursory googling is there Ginger.
Yes, it's really quite amusing. GP's first link is to a site that is full of ad-hominems, but more to the point tries to use GISS data to refute Steve, when GISS is one of the data sets Steve has quite exhaustively shown to have been deliberately manipulated. So much for "cursory glances".
The second link, also full of ad-homimen, points out a flawed graph, but fails to acknowledge that Steve himself acknowledged it was a mistake right after it was published.
So it amounts to somebody making a mistake and publicly admitting it right away, and even being pointed out in the blog post linked to, yet they come along later and saying "Look! Misinformation!" Which is, itself, misinformation.
You are not "buying or selling" a parking spot. You are buying and selling information about where that parking spot is. Those are two VERY different things.
Quote TFA:
San Francisco's Police Code that specifically prohibits individuals and companies from buying, selling or leasing public on-street parking. Police Code section 63(c) further provides that scofflaws -- including drivers who "enter into a lease, rental agreement or contract of any kind" for public parking spots...
The law is very clearly intended to prevent people from "renting" out their favorite parking spot for money, and physically holding them "hostage", as you say.
But that isn't what this app does. It auctions off information about where an available parking space is. You aren't selling the parking space. You're selling the information.
Having said that, I grant that it could be used in ways that are likely illegal... like holding the spot for the person who won the auction. Then you might be said to be actually holding it hostage. But that would mean you -- not the winner of the auction -- were breaking the law. And it would be hard to prove. You fed the meter properly, you're having lunch. Big deal. In order to prove a violation you'd have to prove intent, which is seldom easy.
IANAL but I am familiar with some aspects of law. So let's be clear: the auctioning of information about parking spaces is not illegal. If SF tries to claim it is, they have a long, Lombard-Street-steep hill to climb, and they'd probably lose in the long run.
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I'm smart, maybe not mensa smart (don't really care either way) but fuck hanging out with other aholes like me!
OP is a bit snobbish itself.
People (by and large... certainly there are exceptions) join MENSA so that they can converse with other people with similar mental character and interests. Just exactly how some people join motorcycle clubs because they like motorcycles and want to discuss them and appreciate them with people of similar interest, someone might join MENSA because they like talking about physics -- or even crossword puzzles -- with people who are like themselves.
There is no need to try to suggest that is "snobbery" of any kind. Would you call a motorcycle gang "snobs"? Or stamp collectors? MENSA is a social club, nothing more.
And by the way, a bit of history: MENSA members did sometimes wear small yellow pins, like tie tacks but about 1/8" diameter, like those little pins you stick in maps -- not badges -- simply so that they could find each other in a crowd. It wasn't snobbery, it was subtle (very subtle) identification. The reason was because more obvious identification made them targets of violence for bigots and other idiots.
If you can go with a slope and build it as a triangular prism then it is easy to build, like a long pyramid. Jobs, jobs, jobs!
To me, the whole things sounds suspiciously like the Law of Unintended Consequences just waiting to happen.
Dwarf? Diamond?
"Boss! De Beers!"
I could make phone calls on it without carrying a separate phone. Beyond that and telling time, I can't think of any other use for a screen I'd want to wear on my wrist.
I basically agree. Here is how I see it: the thing on your wrist should do things that make sense for something on your wrist to do.
Making telephone calls is one. Without any other device necessary. Fitness and sleep tracking are also obvious functions.
But for just about everything else, you can have a tablet. Tether it to your phone (watch) via Bluetooth, or whatever.
But the point is, I think current "smartwatch" efforts have it backward. Rather then trying to put everything on your watch, powered by your telephone, put the phone and health apps ONLY on your watch, then tether your tablet to that.
Best of both worlds, rather than the worst.
And to be even clearer: "could" for "count" and "that" for "than" are due to an errant spell-checker, not even my own typing.
That wasn't the worst sentence in history, but it's got to be right up there.
You have nothing better to do that criticize other peoples' typographical errors?
I'll leave aside your amusingly delusional implication that unwarranted invasions of privacy somehow didn't happen - or weren't attempted by law enforcement with similar enthusiasm and vigour - under the preceding 43 Presidents...
Not only that, you have reading comprehension issues. I specifically stated that these things DO happen.
Which is precisely the point. When you're on the receiving end of extrajudicial treatment, I'm sure you'll find great comfort in "stare decisis".
Again I say, "Not Really".
I mean, yes these things do happen. But in most cases you will probably eventually get relief. It is this fear of repercussion which usually prevents administrations from grossly abusing their power, even temporarily.
Of course, that hasn't stopped Obama and his cronies. But personally, I could this as the worst administration in history.
And I'm looking forward to America getting even.
The term "imminent threat" like everything else as it relates to matters of law is as fluid and malleable as the entity wielding the power wants it to be.
Not really. We have the concept of stare decisis which largely prevents that from happening, except perhaps temporarily.
This is reasonable, as police historically have not needed a warrant if there is an "imminent threat".
However, any genuine "imminent threat" from a cell phone would be an extremely -- and I mean very extremely -- rare circumstance.
(Note for citizens: this is not a good reason to not lock your phone. Police have been known to bend the rules. I would like to see that change, but today you should be careful.)
All persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether it be felony or misdemeanor, and whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense, or aid and abet in its commission, or, not being present, have advised and encouraged its commission, [...] are principals in any crime so committed.
First, it says "advised AND encouraged". That makes you an accessory. You haven't just encouraged, you have assisted in the commission of the crime.
And second: it applies to felonies and misdemeanors. Which are crimes. A traffic or parking violation my be illegal, but it is not a crime, it is a civil infraction.
So even if it were illegal for this app to "encourage" a crime (and I am not convinced that it is), it is not, in fact, encouraging a felony or misdemeanor. Just a civil infraction.
No. Too generic. If they said Kill Whitey Ford, that would have been different.
You're trying to move the goalposts. The discussion was about "encouraging people to break the law".
Saying "Kill Whitey" is encouraging people to break the law. Nobody said it had to be about some specific person, or some specific law.
We have something in the United States called the First Amendment. Inciting imminent riot (the famous example is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater) was ruled an exception. "Encouraging" someone to break a municipal parking laws doesn't even come close to being an exception.
Cool, so any drone flying over my house below the FAA controlled airspace is trespassing, and I can get some skeet shooting practice in?
Actually, at least in my State, it is. Not just trespassing, but if it is using a camera to see over my fence, it is also conducting "illegal surveillance".
Well, then you don't know the gaming industry. Basically people work on a game and then get laid off.
And all this has just about zero to do with the comment you replied to. Which I agree with, by the way.
THIS is the reason I don't buy many competitive games anymore. When you can buy your way through them, then who gives a shit at getting good at the game?
I don't give the slightest damn about the gaming industry's internal problems. I didn't create them. I'm a customer, and I don't like their product.
Period. It's that simple. Make a product I want to buy, or I won't buy it.
I will add: again, just as the judge stated in the ruling I quoted above, what Congress intended as "navigable airspace" and "aircraft" are what rule the day here. It does not encompass any part of any air in United States terroritory, nor does it mean any conceivable flying machine.
In the United States, the original intent of the law as passed trumps somebody's later interpretation.
The opening claim was that the judge said that the FAA was not permitted to make rules in this area while the judge was actually silent on that matter. First paragraph of cited article: "A federal judge slapped down the FAAâ(TM)s fine for a drone operator, saying there was no law banning the commercial use of small drones." Third paragraph of the cited article "NTSB Administrative Law Judge Patrick Geraghty ruled Thursday that the policy notices the FAA issued as a basis for the ban werenâ(TM)t enforceable because they hadnâ(TM)t been written as part of a formal rulemaking process." This contradicts the claim from first paragraph that the judge said the FAA could not legally make any rules in this area.
But if you look at the judge's actual ruling, you will see that the opening claim is in fact correct.
The judge did rule that there was no law allowing the FAA to regulate model aircraft (which, it should be noted, was being used for commercial purposes). Quote the ruling:
Neither the Part 1, Section. 1.1, or the 49 U.S.C. Section 40102(a)(6) definitions of "aircraft" are applicable to, or include a model aircraft within their respective definition.
. . .
Accepting Complainant's overreaching interpretation of the definition "aircraft", would result reductio ad absurdum in assertion of FAR regulatory authority over any device/object used or capable of flight In the air, regardless of method of propulsion or duration of flight.
The judge further notes that this is far beyond the intent of Congress when they passed the relevant law.
This in no way implies that ALL rulemaking by hte FAA is illegal, you you still have to demonstrate the the specific area of rulemaking has not been authorized. This has yet to be shown.
I didn't say all rulemaking by FAA is illegal. What I wrote was that the fact that the judge used lack of rulemaking as the basis of his decision does not imply that rulemaking would be legal. But that in itself doesn't imply it would be illegal, either. My argument about whether they had authority to make rules was based on what the judge above said: the FAA was never given authority to make such rules by Congress.
The FAA is a Federal agency. As such, it only has authority that is given it by Congress. Attempting to regulate outside that authority IS illegal, as SCOTUS made very clear yesterday.
49 U.S. Code 40103 - Sovereignty and use of airspace (a) (1) "The United States Government has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States."
You didn't read far enough:
Specifically, the Federal Aviation Act provides that: "The United States Government has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States."[2] The act defines navigable airspace as "airspace above the minimum altitudes of flightâ¦including airspace needed to ensure the safety in the takeoff and landing of aircraft."
These areas are clearly defined in aviation charts. Anything else belongs to the owner of the property below.
Actually, what happened there is that the reporter didn't know what he was talking about and contradicted his opening statement in the 3rd paragraph.
No, he didn't. The judge DID strike down the rule. He then went on to explain that the reasoning the judge used was because it wasn't part of a formal rulemaking process. But it would be a mistake to then assume that if they HAD made it part of a formal rulemaking process, it would automatically be legal!
This is important: yesterday SCOTUS made it very clear that the FAA does not have authority to regulate things that are not specifically authorized by Congress and signed into law. Their CO2 regulations were part of a formal rulemaking process... and were smacked down. Because Congress did not give them authority.
And Congress hasn't given FAA authority for this.
What the law allows the FAA to do is to regulate navigable airspace . Nothing else. (Navigable means, roughly, continuously travelable by human beings in vehicles... similar to the way navigable rivers are defined.) Navigable airways are clearly defined throughout the United States, down to damn near the square meter. There isn't much wiggle room there. My father was a pilot and I put it a pretty good amount of airtime.
Low-altitude commercial drones (of the kind the NTSB judge ruled about, and the kind Amazon wants to use) do not operate in "navigable airspace". Therefore, the FAA does not have authority to regulate them.
They're displaying, yet again, the same kind of blind arrogance they recently displayed in front of SCOTUS. They're just asking for another smackdown.
Another point: even if Congress did want to give them authority to regulate low-altitude drones, it probably couldn't. Because Federal authority is limited to interstate transportation. It does not have authority over all the airspace in the U.S.! Common law says a property owner controls the airspace over his land. Navigable airways were deemed an exception to this principle, for the sake of interstate air travel.
So it looks like it's going to have to remain a matter of State regulation.
The way I see it (which also appears to be the way SF see it), this app encourages people to break several laws - laws against using a phone while driving, laws against loitering, et. al.
In general, "encouraging" people to break the law is perfectly legal. Look up the "99%" protests. Look up the 1960s. Look up marijuana laws in some of the states today.
Saying "go ahead, break this law" is not the same as holding a gun to someone's head. And it's very much different from shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Encouraging people to break the law is one of the primary ways laws get changed.
That said, I'm pretty sure you can't legally encourage people to commit crimes without committing one yourself; for example, if you encourage someone to murder someone else, that's either accessory or conspiracy, depending on locale and to what level, exactly, that you offered encouragement.
No it isn't. Unless you help or compel them, in general you're only expressing an opinion. If you know about a murder and don't say anything, you might be an accessory. If you help with a murder, that might be conspiracy (or again, accessory). But encouraging? If that were true, then all those Black Panthers who have been saying "Kill Whitey", in public, were committing crimes, yes? Why weren't they prosecuted?
Oh, yeah: because it's not a crime. It's just offensive.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
The only way information received from this application could possibly be useful was precisely if the auctioner held the spot for the winner. Because otherwise it would already be long taken by the time they got around, even if they were just a few city blocks away. Alternatively, San Francisco has an abundance of parking spaces, so what would be the point of this app?
Just as I said to the other poster: whether it has any point or not is completely irrelevant to whether it is legal.
Does it ever make you uncomfortabe how posting this kind of reflexive, unthinking, ideology-based bullshit makes you exactly like the Stalinists of old, just with a different set of keyword triggers? Do you ignore the similarities because clearly, their ideology was wrong and yours is right? Or do you simply lack the self-awareness to notice?
Principle and ideology are not the same things. The law works the way it does for good reasons. Your ignorance of some of the fundamental principles of common law does not give you standing to throw insults. I think it's hilarious that you see my arguments about historical concepts of common law, and compare them to Stalinism. I have little doubt that in your ignorance, it seems logical to you.
You're kidding, right? As soon as you use the app you've proven intent.
No, you haven't. Only if you use the app AND break the law by holding the parking space hostage. It doesn't matter "prove intent" but the law is not broken. (Unless you want to come up with a new crime: "conspiracy" to hold a parking space hostage for money.) So you have to do both or there is nothing to prosecute.
How long do you think such a service would last if all it did was sell "information" about where someone was leaving a parking spot?
As long as it wants. THAT'S. ALL. IT. DOES. The app doesn't hold parking spaces. It doesn't do anything illegal. If the people using it violate the law, that's their business. But as I understand the law, the app isn't doing anything illegal.
Why would anyone in their right mind bid on "information" that everyone in within fifty feet of the seller can see for himself, and would be there to take advantage of long before any auction could take place, much less the winner driving to the location to accept his prize?
That's a completely different issue. I wasn't arguing about the viability of the business. Just about whether it was actually illegal.
... AND, I should add, on the same day it got smacked down hard by SCOTUS for making policy it knows has no legal authority.
Just a couple of months ago, in March, a Federal National Transportation Safety Board Administrative Judge ruled that the FAA does not have legal authority to regulate small low-altitude commercial drones.
FAA seems to be trying to act like Obama, going ahead with policy it already knows to be illegal.
Just because it was cold in New York due to the vortex oscillations does not cancel out the overall upward.
Way to BS-up your argument. The entire continental U.S., even when you factor in the areas in the Pacific that were experiencing El Nino, experienced record cold for the entire first 5 months of 2014. USHCN's own raw data.
And the same time, Antarctic sea ice was also setting new records.
Was it warmer in the Arctic? Probably not. Sea ice extent was perfectly normal this year, after several years of shrinkage. That argues that the temperatures in the Arctic were normal, too.
When you have huge areas of the globe showing normal to historical record lows, then in order for the Earth to be "warmer than normal", much less record warm, you would also have to have large areas that were extraordinarily hot during the same period.
I have seen no evidence of such.
Do you have some? TFA certainly did not provide any.
Yes, there's no question that cannot be truthfully answered with a cursory googling is there Ginger.
Yes, it's really quite amusing. GP's first link is to a site that is full of ad-hominems, but more to the point tries to use GISS data to refute Steve, when GISS is one of the data sets Steve has quite exhaustively shown to have been deliberately manipulated. So much for "cursory glances".
The second link, also full of ad-homimen, points out a flawed graph, but fails to acknowledge that Steve himself acknowledged it was a mistake right after it was published.
So it amounts to somebody making a mistake and publicly admitting it right away, and even being pointed out in the blog post linked to, yet they come along later and saying "Look! Misinformation!" Which is, itself, misinformation.
What a load of BS.
Gotta agree with it being illegal
It's based on holding public space hostage.
No, I don't have to agree with either one.
You are not "buying or selling" a parking spot. You are buying and selling information about where that parking spot is. Those are two VERY different things.
Quote TFA:
San Francisco's Police Code that specifically prohibits individuals and companies from buying, selling or leasing public on-street parking. Police Code section 63(c) further provides that scofflaws -- including drivers who "enter into a lease, rental agreement or contract of any kind" for public parking spots...
The law is very clearly intended to prevent people from "renting" out their favorite parking spot for money, and physically holding them "hostage", as you say.
But that isn't what this app does. It auctions off information about where an available parking space is. You aren't selling the parking space. You're selling the information.
Having said that, I grant that it could be used in ways that are likely illegal... like holding the spot for the person who won the auction. Then you might be said to be actually holding it hostage. But that would mean you -- not the winner of the auction -- were breaking the law. And it would be hard to prove. You fed the meter properly, you're having lunch. Big deal. In order to prove a violation you'd have to prove intent, which is seldom easy.
IANAL but I am familiar with some aspects of law. So let's be clear: the auctioning of information about parking spaces is not illegal. If SF tries to claim it is, they have a long, Lombard-Street-steep hill to climb, and they'd probably lose in the long run.
... just like we do!
[/joke]