It's merely that google allows access to the cache via some URLs that they do not give out.
The firewall is blocking access to basically exactly what google gives out. Ergo, if you slightly modify the URL, you can still get to it.
Whether this is a google bug that google doesn't care about, or a google 'bug' that google damn well knows about and did on purpose, it remains up to China to block it.
Hell, if information theory disproves evolution, it's probably information theory that's wrong.
Of course, information theory doesn't work in the way that ID people seem to think it works, and it can't 'disprove' things happened 'naturally', as it has no concept of 'natural'. And on top of that, it's statistical.
Using information theory to disprove evolution is like using sociology to disprove that gay people exist.
Heck, looking for the designer would be at least part of science. "Let's observe and see if we see God."
Of course, considering the best way to see if he exists, as he's apparently stopped sending flaming bushes, would be to poke him with a sharp stick and see if he reacts.
And perhaps it's best if we don't do that, just in case.
"Life is too complex to have evolved" is a theory; ID research (primarily using information theory) is to try to show that this is the case.
Sweet holy crap, someone who understands ID.
However, the only reason 'information theory' even got in there is that ID's specific examples kept getting torn to pieces by actual scientists. So they've turned out vague 'information theory'.
Information theory cannot, under any circumstances, tell you what information could arise via natural selection versa delibrate meddling. In fact, information theory doesn't even have a concept for those things. It can tell you what information is unlikely to be random, but the end result of evolution isn't random.
And science doesn't handwave things as 'too complex, therefore untrue'. Complexity is not an indication of truth. Science likes simple solutions, but didn't go 'Oh, quantum theory is too complex, so it's not true'.
Information theory has never been used as a argument against an actual physical theory. It just doesn't make any sense. If observations disagree with information theory, it's information theory that's going to get thrown out.
And incidentally an intelligent designer requires quite a bit of complexity. It's just moving it around. Proving that DNA is too complex either requires
'Science' and 'a scientific experiment' are not the same thing.
The scientific process has many parts. One of these is observation, aka, experiments. This must happen to some extent before there is any of the other steps involved at all. People must observe things falling to come up with gravity.
That doesn't mean dropping things is 'science'. It's science if you have a theory behind it and are making observations to confirm or deny that theory. It's even science if you are making observations trying to figure out a theory.
So it's possible to argue that SETI is part of the scientific process.
What SETI is not, however, is a scientific theory, as the person I was replying to was asserting. Despite what some people misunderstand 'science' as.
To be science, it has to complete the science method: observation, hypothesis, prediction, observe controlled circumstances (aka, experiments), go back to hypothesis if wrong and make a new one.
Why isn't SETI science?
Because, just like ID is missing missing all steps besides 'hypothesis', SETI is missing everything except 'observation'. This is a very large indication it's not science. Science needs to go through all those steps, preferably in order. (And the observation is more a philosophical point (other life must exist!) than an actual observation.)
It fails because there is no real 'theory' that life evolved elsewhere. It's nigh-impossible to have a theory about the repetition of a single event that we don't understand and haven't observed.
Evolution doesn't fall in that category, we've observed plenty of examples of it, but life starting does. So we can logically conclude that life, if it exists elsewhere, has evolved and will evolve in the future, but not give any odds whatsoever on life actually starting.
If you were a scientist and tried to use any 'theory' that there's extraterrestrial life as part of your own work, you'd be laughed out of the building. SETI is not science, SETI is speculation that scientists like to play with, and even use to get people interested in science, but I assure you they know the difference.
Name me one non-trivial, falsifiable, unfalsified claim of evolutionary theory.
Sure. Although I have no idea why you'd saying that us having the same basic building blocks is non-falsifiable. That would be trivial to falsify if true.
Anyway: Humans and other apes evolved from the same common ancestor.
This could be falsified by, for example, discovering that humans existed before the other apes did, or discovering common genes between us, and, for example, dogs, that other apes do not share.
In fact, the mere existance of any animal on the genetic 'tree' that did not fit 'correctly' would be a rather large indication the theory of evolution was not true, like discovering a tree that fits into genetic tree quite well in the plant kingdom, except for the troublesome fact it manages to grown hair like mammals.
There as some 'cross-pollination' routes known where people get genes from bacteria and whatnot, but trees with hair would simply not be reasonable under any theory of evolution.
However, there are none of these falsifiably things. Often there is parallel evolution, like the eyes of the giant squid, but the genes that create that behavior don't match up at all.
If there was an intelligence designer, he operated exactly as evolution says various species came about. He took one thing and modified it and saved it under a new file name, went back and edited the old one, copy that, edited it some more, etc, etc.
He didn't copy and paste between files any, except for a few mishapen genes that do not actually work, and we've fairly certain bacteria did that. If there was copy and paste between species not able to mate, then that would be a fairly obvious falsification of evolution.
Who the FUCK said SETI was science, so I can beat their ass?
SETI is not science. SETI is looking for evidence. SETI is the stage you get before you have science.
I swear, people need to think about what they're saying before they say it. SETI isn't science any more than determining the exact color of the sky is science, or looking behind the couch to see if your keys are there is science.
Science is a method that you apply, using observations, to predict things, and determine which prediction makes the most sense. There's a set of rules you follow, and a set of rules the community follows so other people can check the results, so that a general consensus builds up about 'true' predictions.
No individual part of that is science. Science is a process, a several step method to get 'true predictions', or at least as true as we can make them.
If you don't understand that, you need to stay the hell out of this discussion, no matter which side you're arguing.
One year at my tiny high school there was some gang violence from the closest major cities. We're talking about a high school with about 100 people in each grade level and the only one in the county, vs. the nearby major metropolian inner-city schools, basically two orders of magnitude of size in the school systems.
What did they do? Did they ignore it, because we'd never actually have any gangs? Did they try to figure out a way to keep out gangs? (1)
No. They banned gang symbols and colors. That was the 'solution' to the non-existent problem.
What did we do? Started making up gang symbols and colors. We'd make weird hand signals in the halls and lunchrooms. One day, someone brought in some bandanas and handed them out and people would wear them on their arms, trading them off with other people at breaks.
The 'administration' was always making stupid-ass rules like that, and the teachers, staff, and students would just completely ignore them.
1) A decade later, I have now heard rumors of gangs impenging on that school, although they don't actually have any power. It's more people who have 'officially' gotten the right to use the name of the gang and behave like assholes, and collect four or five other assholes.
The school managed to demonstrate it is impotent. It's like King Canute. You can't stop people from blogging. A few high-profile cases and people will, gasp, start using fake names.
The question is, which version of King Canute? The one where he honestly believes he can hold back the tide, or the one where he's doing it as a demonstration that he cannot do so?
How does it compare to the percentage of the general population that gets close enough to random children to molest them?
The higher percentage you're yammering about is pointless. Almost all child molesters molest children entrusted to their care, which usually means relatives.
Prients, OTOH, are entrusted to the care of a large amount of children.
What the hell is going on with all the stupid people here? The 1st doesn't apply here, but not because they aren't 'Congress', it's merely because they aren't a public school.
The 14th amendment made all the other amendment apply to the states.
So, here's the new 1st amendment, after interpeted via the 14th: A government, be it Federal, State, or Local, shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
And who made your public school? Why, I believe it was your state's department of education! Which was created and given authority by the state government!
Now, there are two cavets here:
1. This is a private school. The 1st doesn't apply here, solely because they are a private organization.
2. Schools, in addition to being government agencies, are acting in loco parentis, 'in the place of parents'. Parents do have the ability to limit some rights. Schools have even less, but they have some. Same with foster parents.
Courts have, however, held that schools can't punish people for what happens off school grounds, and that students have freedom of speech and press as long as it is not disruptive, along with freedom of assembly, freedom to petition for changes (Usually used at school board meetings.), freedom of religion, etc.
If this was a public school, owning and operating a blog would be expressly allowed outside of school hours. We've already had a court case over a student punished because he wrote a web page, and he won.
In fact, he could legally print out copies of it and distribute it during breaks, and the shcool couldn't stop him. And that's been true for three decades.
If I obtain a GPL program binary from you, and do not have the source, I can obtain the source for a nominal amount or free, no matter what is going on. (Well, within three years.)
That's all anyone is saying, and you also seem to agree with this, you're just refusing to state it in a sane way.
I can also, if I am stupid, pay a large amount of money for the source at certain times, like if I buy it at the same time as the binary.
However, that does not hinder my right to get it for the cost of shipping if I don't have it, no matter what was offered at what point.
I don't know exactly where you got sidetracked in this, but the debate was over providing source code. Under no circumstances can you charge whatever you want for source code.
You can charge whatever you want for GPL binaries, or even GPL binaries+source.
Hell, you could even legally charge them 10 dollars for the binary, and 3010 dollars for the binary plus source. How you package and price things is not covered under the GPL.
However, if someone who has a binary then asks for code, however, you have to give it to them for a reasonable amount, unless you already gave it to them. You can't say 'You had the option to purchase the code for $3000 when you bought the binary, so I don't have to give it to you.' under any interpetation of 3a.
All you can do is refuse to sell the the code for the price of the medium if they did get the code on their CD. If they didn't, you must give it to them for a trivial amount.
This is a different matter to refusing to testify in a criminal trial in which you're the accused.
No, it's not. Not legally. You can always refuse to answer questions about your own involvement or lack thereof in a crime, for any reason, whether you did it or not, any time under oath, or even merely when talking to the government in other circumstances, like filling out forms.
That may not be obvious from reading the 5th, but that's been caselaw for 200 years. That's why police officers say 'You have the right to remain silent'. Not 'You have the right to not say incriminating things specifically about a certain crime', you have the right not to speak at all.
Oddly enough, it's been one of the few rights not whittled away at, at least not until this whole 'torture' thing started being okay.
Now, you're thinking that 'They weren't charged with a crime, so they have to testify'. If they aren't being charged with a crime and are testifying in court as witnesses, true, the rules are laxer, and they can only refuse to answer questions that will, in fact, incriminate themselves.
Note the wording. They can refuse to answer questions designed to incriminate themselves, even if the answers would not, in fact, do so. So 'them not being charged' only works if they were being asked innocent questions, it doesn't work if you're asking them questions to determine if they had, in fact, been spies. You can't call someone into court for witnessing a traffic accident and start questioning them about a murder they committed, and require them to answer. Even if they didn't do it.
Seriously, haven't you ever watched Matlock, or any of those legal mysteries where a witness on the stand turns out to be the guilty party, and when they realize the game is up, they stop answering questions and aren't arrested for contempt? Because if their questions are about their guilt, or are even trying to prove their guilt despite them being innocent, they don't have to answer anymore.
As I've already pointed out that one of the few things that ever came of the hearings was someone getting charged with perjury, I think it's pretty obvious that refusing to answer questions was a good idea.
The evidence is quite the opposite: alcholism rates did NOT skyrocket after the end of prohibition.
In fact, prohibition demonstrated something quite interesting: While adult male drinking went slightly down during it, 'unapproved' drinking by women and children went up. When prohibition ended, the levels returned to basically what they were before, although women drank slightly more than before. (Although social mores were changing anyway, so that might not be prohibition's fault.)
Which is exactly why it's sometimes easier for children to get their hand on pot than alcohol. Alcohol is regulated, and doesn't have a real blackmarket. All alcohol for children exits the market at the very end, and require a go-between between the legal and illegal aspect that can get caught and severely punished and doesn't make very much money.
Drugs, OTOH, already have a black market that is perfectly willing to sell to kids. They're already under the threat of punishment if caught. Selling to kids is no problem.
Uh, what? Of course it is. Your answers can't incriminate you if you're not guilty of anything, so by definition it's restricted to the guilty.
No, it's not.
Almost every single defendant in criminal cases refuses to testify. It's dangerous to testify if the state is pressing a case against you. If the case fails, and they think are guilty, they might comb over your testimony for perjury out of spite, and try you for that.
It's even more dangerous when there isn't an actual case against you, just a hearing about your suitablity for a job. At worse, all refusing to testify can do is make you lose your job, whereas testifing and trying to hide something can get you arrested, which happened, if you recall, to Lattimore. (And, actually they might have recourse under the law if dimissed. See here, although that ruling was two decades later.)
If you think that refusing to testify is limited to guilty people, you must be one of those people who thinks every defendant is guilty.
Almost the only defendants who take the stand are ones who lied at some point earlier about something, and were called on it, and know the only way they'll be believed now is if they personally get up there and explain why they lied earlier. (Well, and sometimes people in misdemeanors, and obviously some people who don't listen their lawyer.)
As for the legal justification? Read the fifth. It doesn't say you can't be compelled to incriminate yourself, despite that being the phrasing people say to use it.
It says, quite clearly, that, 'No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself'.
Legally, you're a 'witness against yourself' if you're testifying WRT to yourself, regardless of what you say. Yes, that sounds odd, but that's been what that's meant since before the US existed.
I can't think of a time when McCarthy was tried for perjury. Do you have a reference for that?
Sorry, he was just accused of being a liar and commmiting perjury, by Congressman Bennett. McCarthy then sued over it, but eventually dropped the case when it looked like he wasn't going to win, because he actually had said those things.
Oh yes, brilliant legal strategy. Don't answer any questions. Have a nice time in jail, Owen.
What are you talking about? The only crime that Lattimore was ever accused of was lying to Congress.
So the Tydings committee was wrong to claim he wasn't a security risk?
No. Being a security risk is an opinion.
However, he was rather pro-communist, and him working in the State Department was something I wouldn't have allowed, unless he was kept well away from classified material and policy.
He certainly shouldn't have been allowed to work there after lying to Congress. But, of course, they didn't know that at the time.
However, having a list of 205 people and claiming they are 'risks' and having one person on that list apparently being such a risk is not really evidence that the thing was worth it.
It is not guilt, or innocence, although someone accused of it can, if they care much, can prove the specific facts used to come to that conclusion are not true, like John Stewart Service did. In most cases, however, the facts were correct.
The Tyding committee can be right, as can the State Department's Loyalty Security Board, even if they come to different conclusions about the same person.
The State Department (and a few other agencies) had looked at the evidence before, and came to the opinion that none of those people were security risks. McCarthy looked at the list, and came to the opinion that surely some of those people had to be security risks. The Tyding Committee looked at it and said, no, what the State Department decided was fine.
Then, later on, the State Department decided that some of them were, in fact security risks. Some of these decisions were provably wrong, where incorrect facts were used in the process. Many of them where 'true', in that the facts could be used to come to that conclusion. A few of them I would probably agree with, that those people shouldn't be working for the State Department.
But the entire process of re-examining that list was purely political. I don't think that someone can suddenly become 'more' of a risk because pressure has been brought to bear. You can argue that the standards of 'risk' were lowered, which might or might not be true.
However, that doesn't mean it was actually lowered to the correct level, or that the previous level was incorrect.
Or you can argue that those political embarassments were removed as much as possible, instead of actually concentrating on the most 'risky' people, which is what I say is what happened.
People can 'want' whatever they choose. That doesn't give them the right to make other people stick certain labels on their products.
Of course, game publishers might just do that willingly if an alternate rating system exists. They're just not going to pay for it.
And you don't live in the US, so that may excuse your total-moronitude with this subject, but minors already can't buy M (1) or AO games. Parents, instead, must do make the purchase. (And, no, not being an American isn't an excuse for lack of knowledge when discussing American video game purchases.)
And hence your totally-fucking-stupid solution wouldn't solve anything. They already have to buy those games. And it's more likely that violent games would end up in the hands of minors if they had to purchase all games, and everything else, for their kid, as they would soon stop checking anything.
1) In my state, 17 year-old are adults under the criminal law, so I'm not calling them minors. You can't say they don't have the right to 'hurt' themselves with sexual content and violence, but hold them fully responsible if they harm others.
They targeted Disney because of their support for gay rights, not because of anything else.
Even in the Bible Belt, adult stores exist. Usually outside of town, but they exist.
And while banning Playboy has 1st amendment issues, and contraceptives have been explicitly made legal by the Supreme Court, there are no such issues about banning the sale of most of the other stuff sold in adult stores, yet almost nowhere has. A few scattered places have banned one or two things, usually dildos, but that's it. (And that's more a sexist and homophobic thing than anything else.)
Seriously, even in the Bible Belt, and, yes, I live here too, you will not find outright support for making naked pictures completely illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not the real Kilgore Trout.
The firewall is blocking access to basically exactly what google gives out. Ergo, if you slightly modify the URL, you can still get to it.
Whether this is a google bug that google doesn't care about, or a google 'bug' that google damn well knows about and did on purpose, it remains up to China to block it.
Of course, information theory doesn't work in the way that ID people seem to think it works, and it can't 'disprove' things happened 'naturally', as it has no concept of 'natural'. And on top of that, it's statistical.
Using information theory to disprove evolution is like using sociology to disprove that gay people exist.
Of course, considering the best way to see if he exists, as he's apparently stopped sending flaming bushes, would be to poke him with a sharp stick and see if he reacts. And perhaps it's best if we don't do that, just in case.
Sweet holy crap, someone who understands ID.
However, the only reason 'information theory' even got in there is that ID's specific examples kept getting torn to pieces by actual scientists. So they've turned out vague 'information theory'.
Information theory cannot, under any circumstances, tell you what information could arise via natural selection versa delibrate meddling. In fact, information theory doesn't even have a concept for those things. It can tell you what information is unlikely to be random, but the end result of evolution isn't random.
And science doesn't handwave things as 'too complex, therefore untrue'. Complexity is not an indication of truth. Science likes simple solutions, but didn't go 'Oh, quantum theory is too complex, so it's not true'.
Information theory has never been used as a argument against an actual physical theory. It just doesn't make any sense. If observations disagree with information theory, it's information theory that's going to get thrown out.
And incidentally an intelligent designer requires quite a bit of complexity. It's just moving it around. Proving that DNA is too complex either requires
The scientific process has many parts. One of these is observation, aka, experiments. This must happen to some extent before there is any of the other steps involved at all. People must observe things falling to come up with gravity.
That doesn't mean dropping things is 'science'. It's science if you have a theory behind it and are making observations to confirm or deny that theory. It's even science if you are making observations trying to figure out a theory.
So it's possible to argue that SETI is part of the scientific process.
What SETI is not, however, is a scientific theory, as the person I was replying to was asserting. Despite what some people misunderstand 'science' as.
To be science, it has to complete the science method: observation, hypothesis, prediction, observe controlled circumstances (aka, experiments), go back to hypothesis if wrong and make a new one.
Why isn't SETI science?
Because, just like ID is missing missing all steps besides 'hypothesis', SETI is missing everything except 'observation'. This is a very large indication it's not science. Science needs to go through all those steps, preferably in order. (And the observation is more a philosophical point (other life must exist!) than an actual observation.)
It fails because there is no real 'theory' that life evolved elsewhere. It's nigh-impossible to have a theory about the repetition of a single event that we don't understand and haven't observed.
Evolution doesn't fall in that category, we've observed plenty of examples of it, but life starting does. So we can logically conclude that life, if it exists elsewhere, has evolved and will evolve in the future, but not give any odds whatsoever on life actually starting.
If you were a scientist and tried to use any 'theory' that there's extraterrestrial life as part of your own work, you'd be laughed out of the building. SETI is not science, SETI is speculation that scientists like to play with, and even use to get people interested in science, but I assure you they know the difference.
Sure. Although I have no idea why you'd saying that us having the same basic building blocks is non-falsifiable. That would be trivial to falsify if true.
Anyway: Humans and other apes evolved from the same common ancestor.
This could be falsified by, for example, discovering that humans existed before the other apes did, or discovering common genes between us, and, for example, dogs, that other apes do not share.
In fact, the mere existance of any animal on the genetic 'tree' that did not fit 'correctly' would be a rather large indication the theory of evolution was not true, like discovering a tree that fits into genetic tree quite well in the plant kingdom, except for the troublesome fact it manages to grown hair like mammals.
There as some 'cross-pollination' routes known where people get genes from bacteria and whatnot, but trees with hair would simply not be reasonable under any theory of evolution.
However, there are none of these falsifiably things. Often there is parallel evolution, like the eyes of the giant squid, but the genes that create that behavior don't match up at all.
If there was an intelligence designer, he operated exactly as evolution says various species came about. He took one thing and modified it and saved it under a new file name, went back and edited the old one, copy that, edited it some more, etc, etc.
He didn't copy and paste between files any, except for a few mishapen genes that do not actually work, and we've fairly certain bacteria did that. If there was copy and paste between species not able to mate, then that would be a fairly obvious falsification of evolution.
SETI is not science. SETI is looking for evidence. SETI is the stage you get before you have science.
I swear, people need to think about what they're saying before they say it. SETI isn't science any more than determining the exact color of the sky is science, or looking behind the couch to see if your keys are there is science.
Science is a method that you apply, using observations, to predict things, and determine which prediction makes the most sense. There's a set of rules you follow, and a set of rules the community follows so other people can check the results, so that a general consensus builds up about 'true' predictions.
No individual part of that is science. Science is a process, a several step method to get 'true predictions', or at least as true as we can make them.
If you don't understand that, you need to stay the hell out of this discussion, no matter which side you're arguing.
People are innocent until found guilty. They don't need any sort of determination to reach that status.
What did they do? Did they ignore it, because we'd never actually have any gangs? Did they try to figure out a way to keep out gangs? (1)
No. They banned gang symbols and colors. That was the 'solution' to the non-existent problem.
What did we do? Started making up gang symbols and colors. We'd make weird hand signals in the halls and lunchrooms. One day, someone brought in some bandanas and handed them out and people would wear them on their arms, trading them off with other people at breaks.
The 'administration' was always making stupid-ass rules like that, and the teachers, staff, and students would just completely ignore them.
1) A decade later, I have now heard rumors of gangs impenging on that school, although they don't actually have any power. It's more people who have 'officially' gotten the right to use the name of the gang and behave like assholes, and collect four or five other assholes.
The school managed to demonstrate it is impotent. It's like King Canute. You can't stop people from blogging. A few high-profile cases and people will, gasp, start using fake names.
The question is, which version of King Canute? The one where he honestly believes he can hold back the tide, or the one where he's doing it as a demonstration that he cannot do so?
The higher percentage you're yammering about is pointless. Almost all child molesters molest children entrusted to their care, which usually means relatives.
Prients, OTOH, are entrusted to the care of a large amount of children.
The 14th amendment made all the other amendment apply to the states.
So, here's the new 1st amendment, after interpeted via the 14th: A government, be it Federal, State, or Local, shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
And who made your public school? Why, I believe it was your state's department of education! Which was created and given authority by the state government!
Now, there are two cavets here:
1. This is a private school. The 1st doesn't apply here, solely because they are a private organization.
2. Schools, in addition to being government agencies, are acting in loco parentis, 'in the place of parents'. Parents do have the ability to limit some rights. Schools have even less, but they have some. Same with foster parents.
Courts have, however, held that schools can't punish people for what happens off school grounds, and that students have freedom of speech and press as long as it is not disruptive, along with freedom of assembly, freedom to petition for changes (Usually used at school board meetings.), freedom of religion, etc.
If this was a public school, owning and operating a blog would be expressly allowed outside of school hours. We've already had a court case over a student punished because he wrote a web page, and he won.
In fact, he could legally print out copies of it and distribute it during breaks, and the shcool couldn't stop him. And that's been true for three decades.
I don't think I need to say anything more at this point.
If I obtain a GPL program binary from you, and do not have the source, I can obtain the source for a nominal amount or free, no matter what is going on. (Well, within three years.)
That's all anyone is saying, and you also seem to agree with this, you're just refusing to state it in a sane way.
I can also, if I am stupid, pay a large amount of money for the source at certain times, like if I buy it at the same time as the binary.
However, that does not hinder my right to get it for the cost of shipping if I don't have it, no matter what was offered at what point.
You can charge whatever you want for GPL binaries, or even GPL binaries+source.
Hell, you could even legally charge them 10 dollars for the binary, and 3010 dollars for the binary plus source. How you package and price things is not covered under the GPL.
However, if someone who has a binary then asks for code, however, you have to give it to them for a reasonable amount, unless you already gave it to them. You can't say 'You had the option to purchase the code for $3000 when you bought the binary, so I don't have to give it to you.' under any interpetation of 3a.
All you can do is refuse to sell the the code for the price of the medium if they did get the code on their CD. If they didn't, you must give it to them for a trivial amount.
No, it's not. Not legally. You can always refuse to answer questions about your own involvement or lack thereof in a crime, for any reason, whether you did it or not, any time under oath, or even merely when talking to the government in other circumstances, like filling out forms.
That may not be obvious from reading the 5th, but that's been caselaw for 200 years. That's why police officers say 'You have the right to remain silent'. Not 'You have the right to not say incriminating things specifically about a certain crime', you have the right not to speak at all.
Oddly enough, it's been one of the few rights not whittled away at, at least not until this whole 'torture' thing started being okay.
Now, you're thinking that 'They weren't charged with a crime, so they have to testify'. If they aren't being charged with a crime and are testifying in court as witnesses, true, the rules are laxer, and they can only refuse to answer questions that will, in fact, incriminate themselves.
Note the wording. They can refuse to answer questions designed to incriminate themselves, even if the answers would not, in fact, do so. So 'them not being charged' only works if they were being asked innocent questions, it doesn't work if you're asking them questions to determine if they had, in fact, been spies. You can't call someone into court for witnessing a traffic accident and start questioning them about a murder they committed, and require them to answer. Even if they didn't do it.
Seriously, haven't you ever watched Matlock, or any of those legal mysteries where a witness on the stand turns out to be the guilty party, and when they realize the game is up, they stop answering questions and aren't arrested for contempt? Because if their questions are about their guilt, or are even trying to prove their guilt despite them being innocent, they don't have to answer anymore.
As I've already pointed out that one of the few things that ever came of the hearings was someone getting charged with perjury, I think it's pretty obvious that refusing to answer questions was a good idea.
In fact, prohibition demonstrated something quite interesting: While adult male drinking went slightly down during it, 'unapproved' drinking by women and children went up. When prohibition ended, the levels returned to basically what they were before, although women drank slightly more than before. (Although social mores were changing anyway, so that might not be prohibition's fault.)
Which is exactly why it's sometimes easier for children to get their hand on pot than alcohol. Alcohol is regulated, and doesn't have a real blackmarket. All alcohol for children exits the market at the very end, and require a go-between between the legal and illegal aspect that can get caught and severely punished and doesn't make very much money.
Drugs, OTOH, already have a black market that is perfectly willing to sell to kids. They're already under the threat of punishment if caught. Selling to kids is no problem.
No, it's not.
Almost every single defendant in criminal cases refuses to testify. It's dangerous to testify if the state is pressing a case against you. If the case fails, and they think are guilty, they might comb over your testimony for perjury out of spite, and try you for that.
It's even more dangerous when there isn't an actual case against you, just a hearing about your suitablity for a job. At worse, all refusing to testify can do is make you lose your job, whereas testifing and trying to hide something can get you arrested, which happened, if you recall, to Lattimore. (And, actually they might have recourse under the law if dimissed. See here, although that ruling was two decades later.)
If you think that refusing to testify is limited to guilty people, you must be one of those people who thinks every defendant is guilty.
Almost the only defendants who take the stand are ones who lied at some point earlier about something, and were called on it, and know the only way they'll be believed now is if they personally get up there and explain why they lied earlier. (Well, and sometimes people in misdemeanors, and obviously some people who don't listen their lawyer.)
As for the legal justification? Read the fifth. It doesn't say you can't be compelled to incriminate yourself, despite that being the phrasing people say to use it.
It says, quite clearly, that, 'No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself'.
Legally, you're a 'witness against yourself' if you're testifying WRT to yourself, regardless of what you say. Yes, that sounds odd, but that's been what that's meant since before the US existed.
Sorry, he was just accused of being a liar and commmiting perjury, by Congressman Bennett. McCarthy then sued over it, but eventually dropped the case when it looked like he wasn't going to win, because he actually had said those things.
Oh yes, brilliant legal strategy. Don't answer any questions. Have a nice time in jail, Owen.
What are you talking about? The only crime that Lattimore was ever accused of was lying to Congress.
So the Tydings committee was wrong to claim he wasn't a security risk?
No. Being a security risk is an opinion.
However, he was rather pro-communist, and him working in the State Department was something I wouldn't have allowed, unless he was kept well away from classified material and policy.
He certainly shouldn't have been allowed to work there after lying to Congress. But, of course, they didn't know that at the time.
However, having a list of 205 people and claiming they are 'risks' and having one person on that list apparently being such a risk is not really evidence that the thing was worth it.
Being an security risk is an opinion.
It is not guilt, or innocence, although someone accused of it can, if they care much, can prove the specific facts used to come to that conclusion are not true, like John Stewart Service did. In most cases, however, the facts were correct.
The Tyding committee can be right, as can the State Department's Loyalty Security Board, even if they come to different conclusions about the same person.
The State Department (and a few other agencies) had looked at the evidence before, and came to the opinion that none of those people were security risks. McCarthy looked at the list, and came to the opinion that surely some of those people had to be security risks. The Tyding Committee looked at it and said, no, what the State Department decided was fine.
Then, later on, the State Department decided that some of them were, in fact security risks. Some of these decisions were provably wrong, where incorrect facts were used in the process. Many of them where 'true', in that the facts could be used to come to that conclusion. A few of them I would probably agree with, that those people shouldn't be working for the State Department.
But the entire process of re-examining that list was purely political. I don't think that someone can suddenly become 'more' of a risk because pressure has been brought to bear. You can argue that the standards of 'risk' were lowered, which might or might not be true.
However, that doesn't mean it was actually lowered to the correct level, or that the previous level was incorrect.
Or you can argue that those political embarassments were removed as much as possible, instead of actually concentrating on the most 'risky' people, which is what I say is what happened.
Of course, game publishers might just do that willingly if an alternate rating system exists. They're just not going to pay for it.
And you don't live in the US, so that may excuse your total-moronitude with this subject, but minors already can't buy M (1) or AO games. Parents, instead, must do make the purchase. (And, no, not being an American isn't an excuse for lack of knowledge when discussing American video game purchases.)
And hence your totally-fucking-stupid solution wouldn't solve anything. They already have to buy those games. And it's more likely that violent games would end up in the hands of minors if they had to purchase all games, and everything else, for their kid, as they would soon stop checking anything.
1) In my state, 17 year-old are adults under the criminal law, so I'm not calling them minors. You can't say they don't have the right to 'hurt' themselves with sexual content and violence, but hold them fully responsible if they harm others.
A swallow that is carrying something is, in fact, a laden swallow.
Damn, was that day confusing or what? No one could find anything!
Even in the Bible Belt, adult stores exist. Usually outside of town, but they exist.
And while banning Playboy has 1st amendment issues, and contraceptives have been explicitly made legal by the Supreme Court, there are no such issues about banning the sale of most of the other stuff sold in adult stores, yet almost nowhere has. A few scattered places have banned one or two things, usually dildos, but that's it. (And that's more a sexist and homophobic thing than anything else.)
Seriously, even in the Bible Belt, and, yes, I live here too, you will not find outright support for making naked pictures completely illegal.