People write a comment to tell you what code is doing either need to be shoot or to learn to write less confusing code.
/* Add one to i */
i++;
No shit? Is that what that does? Well, I'll be damned. Good thing you told me.
The only time people should ever write what code does, on a level smaller than a function, is when they are using some external code that is very confusing, but is needed at that point. Like 'This is Duff's device, which...' or 'This is from the reference implimentation, it does a Fourier transform on the waveform in...'
And such examples should probably go in functions, so this huge random block of unexplained code isn't sitting there inline. It's not ideal, but stick it somewhere, document inputs and outputs, and at least people won't screw with it.
And no one should ever have to explain what a single line of code does. If an average programmer, looking at the line, cannot understand what it does, it's too complicated. Break it apart.
That 'praying the Lord's Prayer' thing has always confused me.
Especially when people say it in King James English!
Here's the template as I understand it:
You are great, God. Do your will on earth. Please continue to keep us fed and whatnot. Please help us forgive other people.
Amen.
Basically, it's: Jesus's First Law (Love the Lord with all your heart), remembering that God has a plan that you don't know and it comes before any requests you make, then any random requests you might have anyway, and then a request for Him to help you with Jesus's Second Law. (Love other people as if they were yourself)
It's a very nice prayer, with all the priorities, and someone could probably preach a whole sermon on it.
Instead, people treat it like it's some sort of poem, and don't even listen to what it says.
However, it is additionally a failure of the police to stop people who have started operating outside of society's rules, which is the job of police.
Policemen aren't just there to find and capture lawbreakers. They are there to keep the peace.
The peace is not being kept. They have failed.
Sometimes this failure is the fault of society, or other people, or of the law itself. That isn't true in this case. There are laws to discourage this sort of behavior that are not being used, and society disapproves of this behavior, and store owners are calling the police.
The original failure is at the level of the parents. The failure to stop the first failure is at the police level.
In the US, it is illegal for underaged people to attempt to buy things they aren't allowed, or to ask adults to do so for them.
Granted, it's just a misdemeanor, and it's usually waived and the cops just tell the parents. But if that's not working, a few 50 dollar (or 20 pound, or whatever) fines should discourage it, especially if they're doing it enough to be annoying. Delibrately walking into a store in case kids will ask you do something illegal is not entrapment.
And loitering is almost always an actual crime. Police just never do anything about it, as loitering only kicks in after people are asked to disperse and they do not do so.
However, like I said, it can be culmulative. You can't be asked to disperse and your group just walk to the other side of the street, or dispense and then reform two minutes later. You do that, you are loitering, you don't get to move slightly and get another warning.
So if the police can determine that person X has been a member of the groups at X, Y, and Z that were all asked to disperse in a single day, he can write that person a ticket without having to ask them to disperse again.
Now, in court, if they fought it, the person might be able to get that ticket thrown out, on the grounds he didn't know he was loitering each time. Loitering is a very hard crime to actually prove beyond a reasonable doubt, mainly because it requires a lack of lawful purpose, and there are plenty of lawful reasons to be standing in any particular spot.
However, if it really is such a big problem, he won't be able to get away with that reasoning in front of a jury. And parents having to haul their kids in and out of court, and/or pay a large fine every few days, will quickly get the message they need to stop their kid from that sort of behavior.
Anyway, this sort of crap is exactly what 'loitering' is, and exactly why there are laws against it.
What the HELL is wrong with kids that won't get off the road anymore?
When I was a kid, getting off the road was The Most Important Thing In Existence. If we didn't instantly get off the road the millisecond we heard a car coming, we weren't allowed get on the road for a week!
We'd hear a car, look up, see one hundreds of feet away, and grab everything we had and sprint off the road, standing there for a good twenty seconds until the car passes. It was so important we didn't even consider there were options.
Nowadays either kids have gone deaf (Even, like, 7 year olds.), or their parents are morons.
Seriously, people. Teach your kids.
The neighbors have put up a 'Caution, children at play' sign aimed at me because I often come up behind their kids and have to idle down the damn road. (As opposed to other people, who stop their car entirely and wait for the kids to blithely wander off the road, whcih they do after about three minutes.) I have been tempted to go over there and say 'I go about 15 mph down this road. The speed limit, as this road doesn't have one, is the default 25 mph. Maybe your kids should learn to get off the road when cars come?.'
Granted, I grew up in a moderately busy Atlanta neighborhood, whereas this is a dead-end road and thus isn't busy at all. But that just means they have to get out of the way less often, not that they should just assume that all cars will park in the road and wait for them to wander out of the way. (When I use wander, I really do mean 'wander'.)
If they are harrassing people by asking them to buy them illegal thing, then the cops need to put on street clothes and walk past them, and arrest their ass when asked to buy those things.
This isn't a failure of store owners, or of society, or the law. It's a failure of police.
The police are supposed to keep the peace. If there are roving groups of people standing around on public land harrassing people, they need to fix the problem. This is exactly what loitering laws are designed for, although, like I said, underaged drinking laws might be better.
Don't start harrassing people yourself to fix the problem.
And, no, the 'only' possible response to a loitering complaint isn't to shoo them away. Take their names first. If they keep showing up on loitering complaints, give them tickets. Loitering is an actual crime.
This is why the CIA has, within it, specific groups that are experts on certain things. Sometimes areas, sometimes certain kinds of fundamentalists, sometimes just people.
The problem isn't that agencies don't talk to each other. It's that they've started overlapping.
For example, the FBI shouldn't have anything to do with terrorists, but they do, because we don't want the CIA screwing around in the US, because the CIA is...well...rather used to doing completely illegal things, which is normally fine because they're doing them in other countries. But not fine here.
We really need a total revamp. Homeland Security was supposed to be part of it, but they did stupid like put FEMA in it. FEMA has nothing to do with preventing terrorism or any crimes at all.
I have a few suggestions, including who would move where:
All Federal law enforcement: The FBI and the counterfeiting part of the SS, maybe combined with the SEC and FEC. (They can divide up however they want internally.)
Then the three sources of intelligence:
Passive intelligence: Runs the giant radios, reads the newspapers, police reports, etc. Does the 'all the time', background intelligence collecting, not 'missions'. Collects, tags, doesn't analyze, and passes it along.
Internal Intelligence: very strict rules: The part of the Secret Service that protects the president should go here, as should the part of the CIA that does, in fact, spy on the US. (We know you exist, you aren't fooling anyone.) This is what the FBI is trying to become, but should not be allowed to. Homeland Security is almost this. These people should also keep track of who's in the US and who isn't, which means they need to operate the borders. These are the scary fascist people, but at least they're all in one place. Can detain people in the US, but only until they can reach and hand them over to the law-enforcement people.
External Intelligence: What the CIA is supposed to be doing. Same as above, but does things outside the US. Way less rules then above.
All these people use:
Counter-intelligence: Currently part of the CIA. Covers intelligence leaks, makes all fake documentation and cover stories. (Yes, this could be part of the previous two, but having 'forged documents' as a seperate part will make it a lot harder to be unaccountable.) All lies, all the time, with no field agents. (Well, none that do any work.)
And they all take orders from, and feed into:
Classified info, and reports: Part of what the NSA does, and a major part of the CIA. Charged with securing all classified info, period, and figuring out what it means. Has access to everything. There are strict rules about when this information can be passed to the law-enforcement people. Also has read-only access to the law-enforcement people's computers. (This sounds too powerful, but it's better than many agencies like this, which we currently have, who also have the ability to run missions.)
Don't give the 'CIR' any ability to do anything by itself except look at data. Don't give law enforcement the ability to talk to any of the spying people, just the CIR. Make all faked stuff and cover stories use the counter-intelligence people.
That's just off the top of my head, and I'm well aware it would probably be better to, for example, split the CIA up and make the 'CIR' out of the remains, and call it the CIA still. That's not really my point.
The problem isn't not talking. The problem is that everyone is doing what they aren't supposed to. Homeland security made all these overlapping people operate under the same name, which didn't help one bit, and added a new 'Homeland Security' group that overlaps with everyone!
He throws them together in one big mess that doesn't work.
And since it's one big mess, when it doesn't work, it doesn't work incredibly well. It is astonishing how much it completely fails to function. It is a level of failure unknown in the history of mankind. It is, to continue the FDR analogy, the Hoover Dam of failure, the most massive failure apperature ever constructed.
This is not, however, because the President is an incompetant buffoon, or at least not entirely. (The FEMA thing probably is due to that.)
It's because neo-cons do not believe in government. They want to break everything as much as possible before they can leave office. At least, as much as possible while still funneling money to their pockets.
This is also why the 'conservatives' have mysteriously bankrupted the government and completely unbalanced the budget. Tax-and-borrow conservatives aren't stupid, they know exactly what they are doing.
But wait! They can't fight the war on terror, not if the entire government is rendered incompetant!
Well, no. They have no intention of actually fighting terror. They just want it to look like that so they can invade whereever they want and do whatever they want here. Competant intelligence could end the war, and where would they be then?
Sadly, they appear to have shot their wad too early, and the country has caught on. The plan was for another decade or so of them, while the economy collapses and we all end up working as servants for the 1000 people who actually have any money left, because, frankly, them maintaining the US is a hell of a lot cheaper than them moving to a third world country and trying to get servants who can speak decent English. And their private security forces will keep out all suspicious and Muslim-looking people, at least out of their own house.
In thise country, it is legal to commit a crime to stop a larger harm. However, and this is important, you still get charged with the smaller crime, and the jury decided whether or not it was justified. (Well, unless the DA figures they will find you innocent and doesn't bother pressing charges.)
This hass happened so often there's actually case law to that extent. Legal students learn about the 'borrowing a neighbor's hose to put out a house fire' rule. And there's the famous example that it's legal to throw people off the liferaft, until it floats, to save the people still on it.
And we also have the concept, in this country, that juries can, despite all evidence, say 'That should not be a crime in those circumstances.'. Period, no exceptions, despite what the law says, a jury can say 'That law should not be enforced in these circumstances'. It's called 'jury nullification'.
If someone actually does torture someone to learn where the nuke is, in the absurd hypothetical that's going around, then they are welcome to present their case to a jury. We don't need any laws to that effect.
All laws are going to do is move it out of the 'exceptional' into the 'normal', and replace judical oversight with some 'who watches the watchers' scenerio.
There was plenty of circumstantial evidence that he intended to obtain and detonate a dirty bomb in a US city (most likely downtown Chicago) in the service of radical Islam. However, the US government clearly didn't have enough evidence to charge him for such crimes for 3 years; at least, that's what I'm assuming, since I'd expect they would have charged him otherwise. The circumstantial evidence seemed overwhelming. Granted, I'm making that judgment on the basis of what the government asserted and generally as an outsider. But a lot of the circumstantial evidence (i.e., that he coverted to Islam, changed his name, went overseas to train in al Qaeda camps, etc.) is independently verifiable. But none of those things are "illegal". But would I want him to be free? Absolutely not. When someone asks, "well, what happens when the standard is lowered such that someone like yourself could be held without charge for 3 years?" I find myself being able to only respond "Well, I'll never convert to radical Islam, change my name, and train in al Qaeda terror camps, so I don't think I'll have to worry." Some here will no doubt find that trite, but I'm one hundred percent serious when I say that.
Have they proven any of this in court?
No, of course not, he didn't set foot in a courtroom until this month.
SO LEGALLY IT DIDN'T FUCKING HAPPEN
It doesn't matter if we, the spectators, can 'prove' it. There must be judicial oversight. There must be a court that proves X, Y, and Z are true.
Even if it's 'You are acting incredibly suspicious by doing certain things, even though we can't think of a crime yet', the person must have their day in court to say 'I did not do those things, that is a lie, and I have an alibi'. Hell, even if those things are true, there must be a jury to say 'We do not think those things are enough to detain him'.
It's one thing to assert we need 'vaguer' laws. I don't agree, but whatever. It's another thing to let the government just assert things are true.
This is a right 'Americans' got 700 years ago, back when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta. This right predates the Constitution, John Locke, the American revolution, the damn discovery of America by white people, everything. We have the right to be free unless the government can show some cause to hold us.
In fact, habeas corpus and 'no ex posto facto laws' are the only rights actually listed in the Constitution.
And, yes, of course Jose Padilla is a wannabe terrorist. I'm bet the government actually thought it had good evidence for the dirty bomb.
Because, you see, Jose Padilla is just to set a precedent: That Americans can be detained by the government on the executive branch's say-so.
First they said they didn't have to charge people captured on the battlefield, and I didn't speak up because I never was on a battlefield.
Then they said they didn't have to charge people captured by warlords who they gave bounties for, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't around any warlords.
Then they said they didn't have to charge people handed to them by other countries, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't in other countries.
Then they said they didn't have to charge non-citizens captured in the US, and I didn't speak up because I was a citizen.
Then they said they didn't have to charge naturalized citizens captured in the US, and I didn't speak up because I was a born citizen.
Then they said they didn't have to charge born citizens captured in the US who really do look like terrorists, and I didn't speak up because I surely didn't look like a terrorist.
Next, they say they didn't have to charge born citizens captured in the US who do not really look like terrorists, and I won't be able to speak up because it will be me...
Well, that's a lie. I was screaming about this ever since the first step.
When will you join in? It's too late if you've already been detained.
This was actually done in the book 'Signal to Noise'.
Aliens contact a few humans by 'radio', trade us all sorts of tech in exchange for information about us.
One of the tech they trade us is a teleporter, for people, that uses the orbital velocity of the earth to power it, so the earth starts slowing down, rather catastrophically.
That link is about cosmetics, not food. Cosmetics labeling is nowhere near as important as food labeling.
However, it does exist, in a very limited form, under food. Like I said, you can call things that are just flavors, and natural, 'natural flavors', without specifying what those flavors are, or exactly how much of these there are.
The FDA may refer to these as 'trade secrets', but 'not well-known in the industry' is NOT, under any circumstances, a valid defination of a trade secret under any state law.
And that Wikipedia aticle is gibberish, as, for one thing, it fails to recognize that you can't patent a recipe. Just because it calls trade secrets IP does not make that true. It does, however, also says 'Trade secrets are not protected by law in the same manner as trademarks or patents.'
Now, in addition to normal tort laws about violating contracts and harming people, there is also include a more general concept that the government should not disclose company secrets unless they have a good reason. And sometimes these rules are actually written down.
However, they all have different ideas about what 'secrets' are, and this concept is completely disconnected from the legal concept of 'trade secrets' in civil law. Don't think that because the FDA called them 'trade secrets' they are they same thing. According to the FDA's rules, it can be a 'trade secret' if a shampoo contains aloe in it, and might be able to leave off the label. However, the existence of aloe in shampoo would not a trade secret under any state law's concept of trade secrets if, for example, you didn't sign the workers to NDAs, and even get the company supplying aloe to the factory under an NDA, too.
Whereas in California state court, for example, you can keep information from being disclosed if it mets exactly the legal defination of trade secrets in California. (And for other reasons, but the aloe example would not fall under any of them.)
In other words, trade secrets are two things. They provide a nice framework under the law for unlawful disclosure of company information, if the company follow certain standards to keep it secret, and, in various ways, they keep a company from having to tell the government, under varying circumstances, certain things, or keep the government from then telling anyone those things, unless it really really feels like it.
However, they are not IP. They are more like privacy laws for company. Property has rather one large and important property that trade secrets do not:
If you accidentally 'misplace' property, you can get it back. Be it physical or intellectual property. If you leave your wallet or your car title or copyright registration laying around, and others find it, it is still yours, because it is property. This is, in fact, the entire basis for 'ownership', going back to when that concept was seperated from 'possession'. We're talking 'back when we were monkeys', this concept is so old. It is yours even when you don't hold it.(1)
Whereas trade secret and indivdual privacy laws merely say 'If people unlawfully reveal this information, they can be punished, and we, the government, will not reveal it unless we have to'. If you leave your secrets, be they trade secrets or your social security number, laying around, and others find it, that information is their's to do with as they see fit, barring fraud.
1) Not that I like the idea of owning copyrights or patents or even land. I don't like the idea of 'owning' something that is merely a restriction on others. But the framework of 'ownership' is consistent between a can of coke and the copyright to Superman.
The other comment didn't really mention a rather bigger difference between him and the 'real' Superman: There is no such entity as Superman.
It's just Clark Kent, who everyone knows what he looks like, in a small town where about 1/10th the population knows him by sight.
So 'not getting caught' is a rather major problem.
Well, until this year, because he graduated high school, and while he's going to a college in town, a lot of time is spent at Lana's college in Metropolis, and/or the Daily Planet, also in Metropolis.
You fail to recognize that the FDA requires all food to include an ingredients list of their composition. Coca-Cola was allowed to exclude actually defining what a key ingredient was precisely because it was a trade secret.
This is complete gibberish. The FDA does not require certain types and levels of ingrediants to be listed, 'natural flavors' being one of them. It has nothing at all to do with trade secrets.
If you think that Coca-Cola has some sort of 'legally-registered' trade secret, under which they area llowed to keep information away from the public, you're completely wrong. There is no such thing. You'll notice you can file trademarks, patents, and copyrights with the government. There is nowhere to file trade secrets. (Or anywhere to file the existant of trade secrets, either, considering it wouldn't make much sense to file the actual secrets...)
And trade secrets and copyrights are nothing alike, because copyrights functions without contracts, and trade secrets do not. It is perfectly legal for me, on a tour of Coca-Cola, to whip out some binoculars and take some notes. Although they will obviously make me leave, before that, if I can figure anything out, it's mine for the taking.
It is not legal for me to copy a copyrighted work, even sans any contracts or EULAs or anything. Or use patented process, or someone else's trademarks. This is a fundamental difference.
I rather suspect you don't understand how trade secrets work, because I didn't say that NDAs and general tort law could replace trade secrets. Trade secrets already require NDAs. All the lack of specific trade secret law would mean is that people would be sued for contract violations that caused great harm to the company under general tort law, instead of status specifically set up to handle trade secrets.
Your logic is rather like assuming that, barring a law against rape, rape would be legal. Well, no...it's assault. There's just a more specific law it's illegal under that handles the situtation better.
It's the same thing with trade secrets. Breaking an NDA by telling people something you're specifically been required, by contract, not to, is perfectly good grounds to sue you for, without any trade secrets laws at all.
In fact, many states have no specific laws about trade secrets, any yet revealing them there is just as likely to get you sued. They usually have some common law concept of trade secrets, but, like I said, it's all basically tort law.
Trade secret laws just get some of the arguing out of the way. They, for example, set specific requirements for how well the 'secret' must have been guarded, so companies can't sue people for revealing info that people not under an NDA knew.
And trade secret law lets companies leap from 'breaking and entering' to 'violation of trade secret law for stealing info while you were there', whereas tort law has a long and complicated route if you want to sue someone for harming you as a result of their breaking the law.
Coca-Cola has no legal IP protection at all, so your example is extremely stupid. None whatsoever. About the only IP that that company owns is the trademark on their name and some artwork for the bottles.
Coca-Cola does have one, slightly odd, 'monopoly', and that's on de-cocainize coca extract, which they buy from the only plant in the US licensed to produce it. In theory, anyone can buy from them, but in practice, they do all their business with Coca-Cola, and thus would be rather unwilling to sell to Coca-Cola clones.
And that is just for one of their many products, and Pepsi has no monopoly like that at all.
Ah, but what about trade secrets? Well, trade secrets are not government created 'property'. They exist regardless of anything the government does. Trade secret laws give them a set value under the law. But even without the trade secret law, NDAs and generic tort law would still make them exist in exactly the same way...the court battles would just be more annoying.
You can lift an F1 race car off the ground without magically reversing the lift.
All you have to do is remove the front 'wing' and the car will instantly catch wind under the front, lift the entire car off the ground and flip front over back before skidding down the raceway backwards.
I just saw a simulation of this once. I think it may have actually happened before.
Of course, that's not technically 'flying', because the 'negative lift' at the back of the car is what's causing half the problems, pivoting the whole front upward. But the sheer pressure of the air going under the car at about 45 degrees does make the back wheels go a few inches off the ground, too, at least until the entire car goes past vertical into the wind.
The question is if splitting an arrow on command is possible. Is it possible for anyone to fire an arrow and then fire another and split the first.
The answer is: No.
The wobble in the point, which is not due to archer skill but due to how arrows fly through the air, combined with the fact you have to hit it dead on, makes this impossible.
And it is, of course, flatly impossible to split an arrow at all if your arrows are made poorly.
Re:Houston, we have a busted/confirmed myth
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· Score: 1
Hey, the picture of astronauts driving around without the helmets isn't fake!
Also, there is grass and clouds on the moon!
Re:Houston, we have a busted/confirmed myth
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Probably the same sort of people who propose that the incorrect airplanes were flew into the WTC. Or even a missile with a holographic projector.
Despite there being no motive for that at all.
If you're some super-secret black-ops guy, are you going to a) sneak explosives onto the plane, gas everyone, rig the controls to fly into the WTC, and bail out, or b) hijack the airplane, fly it elsewhere hoping no air-traffic controller sees you, kill everyone, dismantle it, fly a hi-tech missle into the WTC with explosives, and carry the dead bodies and the wreckage to the site?
If you answered b, you are offically a wackjob.
It's the same thing with the Kennedy assassination. There are a lot of crazy people going on and on about the 'Magic Bullet' when that's been explained, and ignoring the fact it does look like a government conspiracy. But, and this is a point that many people seem to miss, the easiest government conspiracy would, you know, have a single shooter from an obvious point.
Honestly, people. Before coming up with crazy 'evidence' that something is a fake, spend at least ten seconds thinking: Why would this be faked in this way?
Setting a ship at a known point on fire is trivial. This is what MIT did. Yay them.
Setting a single enemy ship sailing in on fire, even if you know in advance it's coming, would be near impossible, especially since you had to do it before the archers could reach you. Even if you had a bunch of extremely well-trained soldiers.
Maybe, someone once did manage to do that.
No way in hell anyone has ever burned down a fleet.
And burning down a ship isn't that impressive. You can do the same damn thing with flaming arrows, and it's a lot safer because you can get behind cover instead of standing out in the sun.
Slashdot Mirror
i++;
No shit? Is that what that does? Well, I'll be damned. Good thing you told me.
The only time people should ever write what code does, on a level smaller than a function, is when they are using some external code that is very confusing, but is needed at that point. Like 'This is Duff's device, which...' or 'This is from the reference implimentation, it does a Fourier transform on the waveform in...'
And such examples should probably go in functions, so this huge random block of unexplained code isn't sitting there inline. It's not ideal, but stick it somewhere, document inputs and outputs, and at least people won't screw with it.
And no one should ever have to explain what a single line of code does. If an average programmer, looking at the line, cannot understand what it does, it's too complicated. Break it apart.
Especially when people say it in King James English!
Here's the template as I understand it:
You are great, God. Do your will on earth. Please continue to keep us fed and whatnot. Please help us forgive other people.
Amen.
Basically, it's: Jesus's First Law (Love the Lord with all your heart), remembering that God has a plan that you don't know and it comes before any requests you make, then any random requests you might have anyway, and then a request for Him to help you with Jesus's Second Law. (Love other people as if they were yourself)
It's a very nice prayer, with all the priorities, and someone could probably preach a whole sermon on it.
Instead, people treat it like it's some sort of poem, and don't even listen to what it says.
However, it is additionally a failure of the police to stop people who have started operating outside of society's rules, which is the job of police.
Policemen aren't just there to find and capture lawbreakers. They are there to keep the peace.
The peace is not being kept. They have failed.
Sometimes this failure is the fault of society, or other people, or of the law itself. That isn't true in this case. There are laws to discourage this sort of behavior that are not being used, and society disapproves of this behavior, and store owners are calling the police.
The original failure is at the level of the parents. The failure to stop the first failure is at the police level.
In the US, it is illegal for underaged people to attempt to buy things they aren't allowed, or to ask adults to do so for them.
Granted, it's just a misdemeanor, and it's usually waived and the cops just tell the parents. But if that's not working, a few 50 dollar (or 20 pound, or whatever) fines should discourage it, especially if they're doing it enough to be annoying. Delibrately walking into a store in case kids will ask you do something illegal is not entrapment.
And loitering is almost always an actual crime. Police just never do anything about it, as loitering only kicks in after people are asked to disperse and they do not do so.
However, like I said, it can be culmulative. You can't be asked to disperse and your group just walk to the other side of the street, or dispense and then reform two minutes later. You do that, you are loitering, you don't get to move slightly and get another warning.
So if the police can determine that person X has been a member of the groups at X, Y, and Z that were all asked to disperse in a single day, he can write that person a ticket without having to ask them to disperse again.
Now, in court, if they fought it, the person might be able to get that ticket thrown out, on the grounds he didn't know he was loitering each time. Loitering is a very hard crime to actually prove beyond a reasonable doubt, mainly because it requires a lack of lawful purpose, and there are plenty of lawful reasons to be standing in any particular spot.
However, if it really is such a big problem, he won't be able to get away with that reasoning in front of a jury. And parents having to haul their kids in and out of court, and/or pay a large fine every few days, will quickly get the message they need to stop their kid from that sort of behavior.
Anyway, this sort of crap is exactly what 'loitering' is, and exactly why there are laws against it.
What the HELL is wrong with kids that won't get off the road anymore?
When I was a kid, getting off the road was The Most Important Thing In Existence. If we didn't instantly get off the road the millisecond we heard a car coming, we weren't allowed get on the road for a week!
We'd hear a car, look up, see one hundreds of feet away, and grab everything we had and sprint off the road, standing there for a good twenty seconds until the car passes. It was so important we didn't even consider there were options.
Nowadays either kids have gone deaf (Even, like, 7 year olds.), or their parents are morons.
Seriously, people. Teach your kids.
The neighbors have put up a 'Caution, children at play' sign aimed at me because I often come up behind their kids and have to idle down the damn road. (As opposed to other people, who stop their car entirely and wait for the kids to blithely wander off the road, whcih they do after about three minutes.) I have been tempted to go over there and say 'I go about 15 mph down this road. The speed limit, as this road doesn't have one, is the default 25 mph. Maybe your kids should learn to get off the road when cars come?.'
Granted, I grew up in a moderately busy Atlanta neighborhood, whereas this is a dead-end road and thus isn't busy at all. But that just means they have to get out of the way less often, not that they should just assume that all cars will park in the road and wait for them to wander out of the way. (When I use wander, I really do mean 'wander'.)
This isn't a failure of store owners, or of society, or the law. It's a failure of police.
The police are supposed to keep the peace. If there are roving groups of people standing around on public land harrassing people, they need to fix the problem. This is exactly what loitering laws are designed for, although, like I said, underaged drinking laws might be better.
Don't start harrassing people yourself to fix the problem.
And, no, the 'only' possible response to a loitering complaint isn't to shoo them away. Take their names first. If they keep showing up on loitering complaints, give them tickets. Loitering is an actual crime.
Then get Toolbar Enhancements and add toolbars wherever you want, and drag the stuff around like normal.
This is why the CIA has, within it, specific groups that are experts on certain things. Sometimes areas, sometimes certain kinds of fundamentalists, sometimes just people.
The problem isn't that agencies don't talk to each other. It's that they've started overlapping.
For example, the FBI shouldn't have anything to do with terrorists, but they do, because we don't want the CIA screwing around in the US, because the CIA is...well...rather used to doing completely illegal things, which is normally fine because they're doing them in other countries. But not fine here.
We really need a total revamp. Homeland Security was supposed to be part of it, but they did stupid like put FEMA in it. FEMA has nothing to do with preventing terrorism or any crimes at all.
I have a few suggestions, including who would move where:
All Federal law enforcement: The FBI and the counterfeiting part of the SS, maybe combined with the SEC and FEC. (They can divide up however they want internally.)
Then the three sources of intelligence:
Passive intelligence: Runs the giant radios, reads the newspapers, police reports, etc. Does the 'all the time', background intelligence collecting, not 'missions'. Collects, tags, doesn't analyze, and passes it along.
Internal Intelligence: very strict rules: The part of the Secret Service that protects the president should go here, as should the part of the CIA that does, in fact, spy on the US. (We know you exist, you aren't fooling anyone.) This is what the FBI is trying to become, but should not be allowed to. Homeland Security is almost this. These people should also keep track of who's in the US and who isn't, which means they need to operate the borders. These are the scary fascist people, but at least they're all in one place. Can detain people in the US, but only until they can reach and hand them over to the law-enforcement people.
External Intelligence: What the CIA is supposed to be doing. Same as above, but does things outside the US. Way less rules then above.
All these people use:
Counter-intelligence: Currently part of the CIA. Covers intelligence leaks, makes all fake documentation and cover stories. (Yes, this could be part of the previous two, but having 'forged documents' as a seperate part will make it a lot harder to be unaccountable.) All lies, all the time, with no field agents. (Well, none that do any work.)
And they all take orders from, and feed into:
Classified info, and reports: Part of what the NSA does, and a major part of the CIA. Charged with securing all classified info, period, and figuring out what it means. Has access to everything. There are strict rules about when this information can be passed to the law-enforcement people. Also has read-only access to the law-enforcement people's computers. (This sounds too powerful, but it's better than many agencies like this, which we currently have, who also have the ability to run missions.)
Don't give the 'CIR' any ability to do anything by itself except look at data. Don't give law enforcement the ability to talk to any of the spying people, just the CIR. Make all faked stuff and cover stories use the counter-intelligence people.
That's just off the top of my head, and I'm well aware it would probably be better to, for example, split the CIA up and make the 'CIR' out of the remains, and call it the CIA still. That's not really my point.
The problem isn't not talking. The problem is that everyone is doing what they aren't supposed to. Homeland security made all these overlapping people operate under the same name, which didn't help one bit, and added a new 'Homeland Security' group that overlaps with everyone!
Have you checked the polls in the last two months?
He throws them together in one big mess that doesn't work.
And since it's one big mess, when it doesn't work, it doesn't work incredibly well. It is astonishing how much it completely fails to function. It is a level of failure unknown in the history of mankind. It is, to continue the FDR analogy, the Hoover Dam of failure, the most massive failure apperature ever constructed.
This is not, however, because the President is an incompetant buffoon, or at least not entirely. (The FEMA thing probably is due to that.)
It's because neo-cons do not believe in government. They want to break everything as much as possible before they can leave office. At least, as much as possible while still funneling money to their pockets.
This is also why the 'conservatives' have mysteriously bankrupted the government and completely unbalanced the budget. Tax-and-borrow conservatives aren't stupid, they know exactly what they are doing.
But wait! They can't fight the war on terror, not if the entire government is rendered incompetant!
Well, no. They have no intention of actually fighting terror. They just want it to look like that so they can invade whereever they want and do whatever they want here. Competant intelligence could end the war, and where would they be then?
Sadly, they appear to have shot their wad too early, and the country has caught on. The plan was for another decade or so of them, while the economy collapses and we all end up working as servants for the 1000 people who actually have any money left, because, frankly, them maintaining the US is a hell of a lot cheaper than them moving to a third world country and trying to get servants who can speak decent English. And their private security forces will keep out all suspicious and Muslim-looking people, at least out of their own house.
Well, duh. Because we have no idea of the status of half the people in Guantanamo, it would be rather impossible to prove the condition of 'jihadis'.
The question is: How do we treat the people we've captured and haven't charged with anything or made any sort of determination of their status?
And how about the people we ourselves have cleared in Guantanamo? How are their living conditions? (Because they're still there, you know.)
In thise country, it is legal to commit a crime to stop a larger harm. However, and this is important, you still get charged with the smaller crime, and the jury decided whether or not it was justified. (Well, unless the DA figures they will find you innocent and doesn't bother pressing charges.)
This hass happened so often there's actually case law to that extent. Legal students learn about the 'borrowing a neighbor's hose to put out a house fire' rule. And there's the famous example that it's legal to throw people off the liferaft, until it floats, to save the people still on it.
And we also have the concept, in this country, that juries can, despite all evidence, say 'That should not be a crime in those circumstances.'. Period, no exceptions, despite what the law says, a jury can say 'That law should not be enforced in these circumstances'. It's called 'jury nullification'.
If someone actually does torture someone to learn where the nuke is, in the absurd hypothetical that's going around, then they are welcome to present their case to a jury. We don't need any laws to that effect.
All laws are going to do is move it out of the 'exceptional' into the 'normal', and replace judical oversight with some 'who watches the watchers' scenerio.
Have they proven any of this in court?
No, of course not, he didn't set foot in a courtroom until this month.
SO LEGALLY IT DIDN'T FUCKING HAPPEN
It doesn't matter if we, the spectators, can 'prove' it. There must be judicial oversight. There must be a court that proves X, Y, and Z are true.
Even if it's 'You are acting incredibly suspicious by doing certain things, even though we can't think of a crime yet', the person must have their day in court to say 'I did not do those things, that is a lie, and I have an alibi'. Hell, even if those things are true, there must be a jury to say 'We do not think those things are enough to detain him'.
It's one thing to assert we need 'vaguer' laws. I don't agree, but whatever. It's another thing to let the government just assert things are true.
This is a right 'Americans' got 700 years ago, back when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta. This right predates the Constitution, John Locke, the American revolution, the damn discovery of America by white people, everything. We have the right to be free unless the government can show some cause to hold us.
In fact, habeas corpus and 'no ex posto facto laws' are the only rights actually listed in the Constitution.
And, yes, of course Jose Padilla is a wannabe terrorist. I'm bet the government actually thought it had good evidence for the dirty bomb.
Because, you see, Jose Padilla is just to set a precedent: That Americans can be detained by the government on the executive branch's say-so.
First they said they didn't have to charge people captured on the battlefield, and I didn't speak up because I never was on a battlefield.
Then they said they didn't have to charge people captured by warlords who they gave bounties for, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't around any warlords.
Then they said they didn't have to charge people handed to them by other countries, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't in other countries.
Then they said they didn't have to charge non-citizens captured in the US, and I didn't speak up because I was a citizen.
Then they said they didn't have to charge naturalized citizens captured in the US, and I didn't speak up because I was a born citizen.
Then they said they didn't have to charge born citizens captured in the US who really do look like terrorists, and I didn't speak up because I surely didn't look like a terrorist.
Next, they say they didn't have to charge born citizens captured in the US who do not really look like terrorists, and I won't be able to speak up because it will be me...
Well, that's a lie. I was screaming about this ever since the first step.
When will you join in? It's too late if you've already been detained.
This was actually done in the book 'Signal to Noise'.
Aliens contact a few humans by 'radio', trade us all sorts of tech in exchange for information about us.
One of the tech they trade us is a teleporter, for people, that uses the orbital velocity of the earth to power it, so the earth starts slowing down, rather catastrophically.
However, it does exist, in a very limited form, under food. Like I said, you can call things that are just flavors, and natural, 'natural flavors', without specifying what those flavors are, or exactly how much of these there are.
The FDA may refer to these as 'trade secrets', but 'not well-known in the industry' is NOT, under any circumstances, a valid defination of a trade secret under any state law.
And that Wikipedia aticle is gibberish, as, for one thing, it fails to recognize that you can't patent a recipe. Just because it calls trade secrets IP does not make that true. It does, however, also says 'Trade secrets are not protected by law in the same manner as trademarks or patents.'
Now, in addition to normal tort laws about violating contracts and harming people, there is also include a more general concept that the government should not disclose company secrets unless they have a good reason. And sometimes these rules are actually written down.
However, they all have different ideas about what 'secrets' are, and this concept is completely disconnected from the legal concept of 'trade secrets' in civil law. Don't think that because the FDA called them 'trade secrets' they are they same thing. According to the FDA's rules, it can be a 'trade secret' if a shampoo contains aloe in it, and might be able to leave off the label. However, the existence of aloe in shampoo would not a trade secret under any state law's concept of trade secrets if, for example, you didn't sign the workers to NDAs, and even get the company supplying aloe to the factory under an NDA, too.
Whereas in California state court, for example, you can keep information from being disclosed if it mets exactly the legal defination of trade secrets in California. (And for other reasons, but the aloe example would not fall under any of them.)
In other words, trade secrets are two things. They provide a nice framework under the law for unlawful disclosure of company information, if the company follow certain standards to keep it secret, and, in various ways, they keep a company from having to tell the government, under varying circumstances, certain things, or keep the government from then telling anyone those things, unless it really really feels like it.
However, they are not IP. They are more like privacy laws for company. Property has rather one large and important property that trade secrets do not:
If you accidentally 'misplace' property, you can get it back. Be it physical or intellectual property. If you leave your wallet or your car title or copyright registration laying around, and others find it, it is still yours, because it is property. This is, in fact, the entire basis for 'ownership', going back to when that concept was seperated from 'possession'. We're talking 'back when we were monkeys', this concept is so old. It is yours even when you don't hold it.(1)
Whereas trade secret and indivdual privacy laws merely say 'If people unlawfully reveal this information, they can be punished, and we, the government, will not reveal it unless we have to'. If you leave your secrets, be they trade secrets or your social security number, laying around, and others find it, that information is their's to do with as they see fit, barring fraud.
1) Not that I like the idea of owning copyrights or patents or even land. I don't like the idea of 'owning' something that is merely a restriction on others. But the framework of 'ownership' is consistent between a can of coke and the copyright to Superman.
It's just Clark Kent, who everyone knows what he looks like, in a small town where about 1/10th the population knows him by sight.
So 'not getting caught' is a rather major problem.
Well, until this year, because he graduated high school, and while he's going to a college in town, a lot of time is spent at Lana's college in Metropolis, and/or the Daily Planet, also in Metropolis.
This is complete gibberish. The FDA does not require certain types and levels of ingrediants to be listed, 'natural flavors' being one of them. It has nothing at all to do with trade secrets.
If you think that Coca-Cola has some sort of 'legally-registered' trade secret, under which they area llowed to keep information away from the public, you're completely wrong. There is no such thing. You'll notice you can file trademarks, patents, and copyrights with the government. There is nowhere to file trade secrets. (Or anywhere to file the existant of trade secrets, either, considering it wouldn't make much sense to file the actual secrets...)
And trade secrets and copyrights are nothing alike, because copyrights functions without contracts, and trade secrets do not. It is perfectly legal for me, on a tour of Coca-Cola, to whip out some binoculars and take some notes. Although they will obviously make me leave, before that, if I can figure anything out, it's mine for the taking.
It is not legal for me to copy a copyrighted work, even sans any contracts or EULAs or anything. Or use patented process, or someone else's trademarks. This is a fundamental difference.
I rather suspect you don't understand how trade secrets work, because I didn't say that NDAs and general tort law could replace trade secrets. Trade secrets already require NDAs. All the lack of specific trade secret law would mean is that people would be sued for contract violations that caused great harm to the company under general tort law, instead of status specifically set up to handle trade secrets.
Your logic is rather like assuming that, barring a law against rape, rape would be legal. Well, no...it's assault. There's just a more specific law it's illegal under that handles the situtation better.
It's the same thing with trade secrets. Breaking an NDA by telling people something you're specifically been required, by contract, not to, is perfectly good grounds to sue you for, without any trade secrets laws at all.
In fact, many states have no specific laws about trade secrets, any yet revealing them there is just as likely to get you sued. They usually have some common law concept of trade secrets, but, like I said, it's all basically tort law.
Trade secret laws just get some of the arguing out of the way. They, for example, set specific requirements for how well the 'secret' must have been guarded, so companies can't sue people for revealing info that people not under an NDA knew.
And trade secret law lets companies leap from 'breaking and entering' to 'violation of trade secret law for stealing info while you were there', whereas tort law has a long and complicated route if you want to sue someone for harming you as a result of their breaking the law.
It wouldn't work. localhost is looked up in the hosts files before DNS.
Coca-Cola does have one, slightly odd, 'monopoly', and that's on de-cocainize coca extract, which they buy from the only plant in the US licensed to produce it. In theory, anyone can buy from them, but in practice, they do all their business with Coca-Cola, and thus would be rather unwilling to sell to Coca-Cola clones.
And that is just for one of their many products, and Pepsi has no monopoly like that at all.
Ah, but what about trade secrets? Well, trade secrets are not government created 'property'. They exist regardless of anything the government does. Trade secret laws give them a set value under the law. But even without the trade secret law, NDAs and generic tort law would still make them exist in exactly the same way...the court battles would just be more annoying.
All you have to do is remove the front 'wing' and the car will instantly catch wind under the front, lift the entire car off the ground and flip front over back before skidding down the raceway backwards.
I just saw a simulation of this once. I think it may have actually happened before.
Of course, that's not technically 'flying', because the 'negative lift' at the back of the car is what's causing half the problems, pivoting the whole front upward. But the sheer pressure of the air going under the car at about 45 degrees does make the back wheels go a few inches off the ground, too, at least until the entire car goes past vertical into the wind.
The question is if splitting an arrow on command is possible. Is it possible for anyone to fire an arrow and then fire another and split the first.
The answer is: No.
The wobble in the point, which is not due to archer skill but due to how arrows fly through the air, combined with the fact you have to hit it dead on, makes this impossible.
And it is, of course, flatly impossible to split an arrow at all if your arrows are made poorly.
Also, there is grass and clouds on the moon!
Despite there being no motive for that at all.
If you're some super-secret black-ops guy, are you going to a) sneak explosives onto the plane, gas everyone, rig the controls to fly into the WTC, and bail out, or b) hijack the airplane, fly it elsewhere hoping no air-traffic controller sees you, kill everyone, dismantle it, fly a hi-tech missle into the WTC with explosives, and carry the dead bodies and the wreckage to the site?
If you answered b, you are offically a wackjob.
It's the same thing with the Kennedy assassination. There are a lot of crazy people going on and on about the 'Magic Bullet' when that's been explained, and ignoring the fact it does look like a government conspiracy. But, and this is a point that many people seem to miss, the easiest government conspiracy would, you know, have a single shooter from an obvious point.
Honestly, people. Before coming up with crazy 'evidence' that something is a fake, spend at least ten seconds thinking: Why would this be faked in this way?
Setting a ship at a known point on fire is trivial. This is what MIT did. Yay them.
Setting a single enemy ship sailing in on fire, even if you know in advance it's coming, would be near impossible, especially since you had to do it before the archers could reach you. Even if you had a bunch of extremely well-trained soldiers.
Maybe, someone once did manage to do that.
No way in hell anyone has ever burned down a fleet.
And burning down a ship isn't that impressive. You can do the same damn thing with flaming arrows, and it's a lot safer because you can get behind cover instead of standing out in the sun.
All irrationals are made from large numbers. Pi, for example, is calculated by 4/1 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7...
And while you can write the constant named 'pi' without any numbers, you cannot write the actual value of pi that way.