I feel sorry for you, because when people tell you that something bad is going to happen to you that you could avoid by taking a certain action, you believe that they are threatening you.
Where I see people offering advice that might mitigate the negative consequences someone is facing, you see a threat. What a sad world you live in.
I am arguing that while your math is correct, this wasn't a math problem and most people don't think in math when they interact with other people.
The police in this case did not commit a crime. If you think they did, please list the law that they violated.
Actually, let's put this in a different context. Suppose a teacher tells a student that right now they have earned a C grade, but if they do X they may get a B grade. Is that teacher threatening the student?
But they didn't tell him he would X time locked up if he did what they wanted. They told him he would do X time locked up if he didn't "cooperate", but if he did "cooperate" he might do less than X time. WE don't know if he did X time or not the original post doesn't tell us what penalty he got for pleading guilty.
I think your problem is that you have not spent enough time researching the sorts of things that police authorities do in truly bad systems.
A shoplifter is told that the court will look positively on his cooperation after being arested, and then is asked did he intend to steal the item(s) when he entered the store, or did he decide to steal them once inside the store.
He admits he went there to steal the item.
The guy was threatened into a confession. What the cops did was no different than if three huge guys with greased back hair and pinky rings walk into your corner shop and tell you "Nice shop you have here. It would be a shame if something bad happened to it. *wink* *wink*" and then offered you protection services. The cops told him that if he professed innocence of the larger crime, that bad things would happen to him because of it. The police committed a crime.
I'm sorry, I don't see any threat. "The court will look positively on your cooperation" is not the same as "the court will look negatively on your lack of cooperation." The latter would be a threat for greater penalties for being uncooperative (no greater penalties were ever considered, they had him dead to rights on the base shoplifting charge), the former is the suggestion that one can get a reduced sentence for cooperating (which may or may not have actually happened in this case).
No, the original story has the guy caught committing a minor crime, upon interrogation, he confesses to a more serious crime. The prosecution then threatens him with prosecution for the more serious crime unless he pleads guilty to the lesser crime (which they had enough evidence to convict him of from the beginning). The only evidence they had against him for the more serious crime was his statement, but in that statement he admitted to taking the actions that made him guilty of the more serious crime.
In all probability, if he had not made the statement to the police they still would have been able to convict him of the lesser crime. The outcome of this case was the same except without the added cost of a trial.
One day you're going to get a ticket, try to fight it and the cop is going to show up with a handwritten transcript of everything you said to him. You will have to pay the ticket. If you hadn't of talked to them, you could go to court and fight back at the prosecutor's strategy and at least have a chance of not paying it. That's what I've done and been successful at.
If it was worth your time to fight a ticket, rather than take the plea offer they give if you show up in court to fight a traffic ticket, I hope you don't live and drive anywhere near me. I was at a hearing for a bunch of people who had all been caught in the same speed trap, the officers who wrote the tickets weren't there. The judge offered us all a plea deal with no points on our licenses and a reduction in the fine to about $50 total (including court costs). One guy decided to fight it because the officers who wrote the tickets weren't there. The judge told him "No problem, we'll schedule a new court date. You may go, we'll send you a letter telling you when to appear." So, the guy got to miss a second day of work to save $50, and he probably lost and had to pay the full fine.
According to the story originally told the guy was guilty of the charge, he plead guilty to the charge to avoid a trial on an even more serious charge (which he was also guilty of). If the story was about a guy who plead guilty to a minor offense to avoid a trial on a more serious charge neither of which the guy was guilty of, it would point out a flaw in the system. The only possible flaw in the story given is in the law (if you think the fact that he could have been convicted of the more serious crime for stealing a $20 CD is wrong).
A gun store that sold armor piercing bullets and advertised that the bullets would "penetrate the bullet proof vests worn by police officers and armored car guards" would likely be charged with aiding and abetting if someone used them to shoot a police officer or armored car guard. It is not just selling tools which can be used to break the law, it is advertising that the tools you sell can be used to break the law.
Since this is a story about the EU, when he said Europe he was clearly referring to the EU, which is a much of a country as the U.S.. It's just that the member states haven't realized that they aren't countries anymore.
That's not how the editors see it. The news is just the news - you can get it from another paper and it will be basically the same. The real value in a newspaper is in the columnists, who provide a view that is unique to the paper, so if they lock up the news and leave the columnists open for all to read, noone will buy a subscription (unless they have specialist coverage of news that people are willing to pay for, like the Financial Times and Wall St Journal).
It doesn't matter how the editors see it. If the newspapers want people to pay to see them, in today's environment, they need to have specialist content.
It didn't work with Napster because the RIAA shut down Napster and then allowed it to be resurrected as a pay site after it became obvious that P2P was replacing it. By then it was too late, if they had cut a deal with Napster in the first place, it might have been different.
You mean the way shutting down Napster reduced the amount of file sharing on the Internet? Wait, shutting down Npaster is what lead to P2P music filesharing. It might have happened anyway, but shutting down Napster accelerated it.
The difference should be in the quality and depth of analysis. If they don't offer than quality then you needn't pay.
And there is the problem, the best newspaper columnists are no better than the best bloggers in the quality and depth of analysis. I would say that the reverse is true, the best bloggers have better quality and depth of analysis than the best newspaper columnists. The few newspaper columnists I can think of that are very good, are also bloggers.
I didn't say there was a better authority, I said that the Constitution doesn't give this authority to the Supreme Court.
I think it is very telling that the Framers did not designate anyone as the final arbiters as to whether or not something was Constitutional. They intended for everyone at every step of the way to keep that in mind. If you believe that a Federal elected official supported an action on the part of the government that was unConstitutional, you should vote against that official at the next opportunity (regardless of what the Supreme Court says about the matter).
Opinion columnists are just like bloggers. Even if there is a sound argument for a news organization to succeed by putting up a pay-wall on their website (and I believe that a good news organization could do so and succeed), it does not apply to opinion columnists who are not providing anything different than bloggers do.
. As they have the final say in interpretting US Law and the Constitution, I'd say you're wrong (or alternately the Supreme Court is wrong).
Upon what basis does the Supreme Court get final say in interpreting the US Constitution?
The answer to that question is: A Supreme Court ruling from the early 1800's. I am not sure that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is or is not Constitutional, but people need to keep in mind that that is a self designated power, not one given to the Supreme Court by the Constitution.
I stopped reading the newspaper before I started reading news online. I stopped reading the newspaper because every article contained some political commentary whether there was any relationship between the subject of the story and the political comment.
Umberto Eco is a terrible author if you read his stuff for anything other than to study the complicated ways that English can be used. The vast majority of people who buy books by Umberto Eco do so to prove how "high brow" they are.
Obama has demonstrated even less interest in the Constitution than Bush.
The key difference here was that Bush was too foolish to understand the Constitution - Obama has said in interviews that he believes the negative reciprocity upon which the Constitution is based is flawed, and that we ought to have a system of positive rights.
I'm not quite sure I understand your point. Are you saying that Obama is better because he intentionally violates the Constitution, while Bush just did it through ignorance?
Except that 3 of the 5 commissioners of the FCC were appointed by Obama, so this Notice of Inquiry was supported by at least one of the commissioners put in place by Obama. Obama has demonstrated even less interest in the Constitution than Bush.
I understand that Google employees can read my emails in gmail, but I have reason to expect that the contents won't go any further.
That is where the judge gets the interpretation that there is no expectation of privacy. If you understand that Google employees can read your email in gmail, then you don't expect that your emails are private.
This attitude of "The US shouldn't look at other countries as examples. If we didn't come up with the idea ourselves, it doesn't deserve to be used in America!" is really weird to me, as an outside observer. The same attitude is present in the current healthcare reform debate and in metrication. Surely Americans are aware that foreigners do come up with good ideas, and that you haven't failed as a country because you used some?
The problem isn't "If we didn't come up with the idea ourselves, it doesn't deserve to be used in America." The problem is that it should be Texas, or California, or Rhode Island, or Montana, etc that is looking at these solutions. The problems you talk about are all more easily resolved on a smaller scale than the entire U.S., which is what the other countries have done (the overwhelming majority of countries are smaller than the U.S. in both land mass and population, by a significant margin).
Additionally, the solutions other countries have come up with for problems that are also experienced in the U.S. will need to be customized to work here (just as they would be to work in any country different than where they originated). The best way to develop customized solutions is to try them on a state by state basis, allowing states to adopt what works best from other states and to try and tweak those solutions to improve them (and allowing people and businesses to move to those states with the best solutions and out of those with the worst solutions).
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I feel sorry for you, because when people tell you that something bad is going to happen to you that you could avoid by taking a certain action, you believe that they are threatening you.
Where I see people offering advice that might mitigate the negative consequences someone is facing, you see a threat. What a sad world you live in.
I am arguing that while your math is correct, this wasn't a math problem and most people don't think in math when they interact with other people.
The police in this case did not commit a crime. If you think they did, please list the law that they violated.
Actually, let's put this in a different context. Suppose a teacher tells a student that right now they have earned a C grade, but if they do X they may get a B grade. Is that teacher threatening the student?
But they didn't tell him he would X time locked up if he did what they wanted. They told him he would do X time locked up if he didn't "cooperate", but if he did "cooperate" he might do less than X time. WE don't know if he did X time or not the original post doesn't tell us what penalty he got for pleading guilty.
I think your problem is that you have not spent enough time researching the sorts of things that police authorities do in truly bad systems.
A shoplifter is told that the court will look positively on his cooperation after being arested, and then is asked did he intend to steal the item(s) when he entered the store, or did he decide to steal them once inside the store. He admits he went there to steal the item.
The guy was threatened into a confession. What the cops did was no different than if three huge guys with greased back hair and pinky rings walk into your corner shop and tell you "Nice shop you have here. It would be a shame if something bad happened to it. *wink* *wink*" and then offered you protection services. The cops told him that if he professed innocence of the larger crime, that bad things would happen to him because of it. The police committed a crime.
I'm sorry, I don't see any threat. "The court will look positively on your cooperation" is not the same as "the court will look negatively on your lack of cooperation." The latter would be a threat for greater penalties for being uncooperative (no greater penalties were ever considered, they had him dead to rights on the base shoplifting charge), the former is the suggestion that one can get a reduced sentence for cooperating (which may or may not have actually happened in this case).
No, the original story has the guy caught committing a minor crime, upon interrogation, he confesses to a more serious crime. The prosecution then threatens him with prosecution for the more serious crime unless he pleads guilty to the lesser crime (which they had enough evidence to convict him of from the beginning). The only evidence they had against him for the more serious crime was his statement, but in that statement he admitted to taking the actions that made him guilty of the more serious crime.
In all probability, if he had not made the statement to the police they still would have been able to convict him of the lesser crime. The outcome of this case was the same except without the added cost of a trial.
One day you're going to get a ticket, try to fight it and the cop is going to show up with a handwritten transcript of everything you said to him. You will have to pay the ticket. If you hadn't of talked to them, you could go to court and fight back at the prosecutor's strategy and at least have a chance of not paying it. That's what I've done and been successful at.
If it was worth your time to fight a ticket, rather than take the plea offer they give if you show up in court to fight a traffic ticket, I hope you don't live and drive anywhere near me. I was at a hearing for a bunch of people who had all been caught in the same speed trap, the officers who wrote the tickets weren't there. The judge offered us all a plea deal with no points on our licenses and a reduction in the fine to about $50 total (including court costs). One guy decided to fight it because the officers who wrote the tickets weren't there. The judge told him "No problem, we'll schedule a new court date. You may go, we'll send you a letter telling you when to appear." So, the guy got to miss a second day of work to save $50, and he probably lost and had to pay the full fine.
According to the story originally told the guy was guilty of the charge, he plead guilty to the charge to avoid a trial on an even more serious charge (which he was also guilty of). If the story was about a guy who plead guilty to a minor offense to avoid a trial on a more serious charge neither of which the guy was guilty of, it would point out a flaw in the system. The only possible flaw in the story given is in the law (if you think the fact that he could have been convicted of the more serious crime for stealing a $20 CD is wrong).
A gun store that sold armor piercing bullets and advertised that the bullets would "penetrate the bullet proof vests worn by police officers and armored car guards" would likely be charged with aiding and abetting if someone used them to shoot a police officer or armored car guard. It is not just selling tools which can be used to break the law, it is advertising that the tools you sell can be used to break the law.
Since this is a story about the EU, when he said Europe he was clearly referring to the EU, which is a much of a country as the U.S.. It's just that the member states haven't realized that they aren't countries anymore.
They also intended to limit voting rights to those who had a vested interest in maintaining a limited government.
That's not how the editors see it. The news is just the news - you can get it from another paper and it will be basically the same. The real value in a newspaper is in the columnists, who provide a view that is unique to the paper, so if they lock up the news and leave the columnists open for all to read, noone will buy a subscription (unless they have specialist coverage of news that people are willing to pay for, like the Financial Times and Wall St Journal).
It doesn't matter how the editors see it. If the newspapers want people to pay to see them, in today's environment, they need to have specialist content.
It didn't work with Napster because the RIAA shut down Napster and then allowed it to be resurrected as a pay site after it became obvious that P2P was replacing it. By then it was too late, if they had cut a deal with Napster in the first place, it might have been different.
You mean the way shutting down Napster reduced the amount of file sharing on the Internet? Wait, shutting down Npaster is what lead to P2P music filesharing. It might have happened anyway, but shutting down Napster accelerated it.
The difference should be in the quality and depth of analysis. If they don't offer than quality then you needn't pay.
And there is the problem, the best newspaper columnists are no better than the best bloggers in the quality and depth of analysis. I would say that the reverse is true, the best bloggers have better quality and depth of analysis than the best newspaper columnists. The few newspaper columnists I can think of that are very good, are also bloggers.
I didn't say there was a better authority, I said that the Constitution doesn't give this authority to the Supreme Court.
I think it is very telling that the Framers did not designate anyone as the final arbiters as to whether or not something was Constitutional. They intended for everyone at every step of the way to keep that in mind. If you believe that a Federal elected official supported an action on the part of the government that was unConstitutional, you should vote against that official at the next opportunity (regardless of what the Supreme Court says about the matter).
Opinion columnists are just like bloggers. Even if there is a sound argument for a news organization to succeed by putting up a pay-wall on their website (and I believe that a good news organization could do so and succeed), it does not apply to opinion columnists who are not providing anything different than bloggers do.
. As they have the final say in interpretting US Law and the Constitution, I'd say you're wrong (or alternately the Supreme Court is wrong).
Upon what basis does the Supreme Court get final say in interpreting the US Constitution?
The answer to that question is: A Supreme Court ruling from the early 1800's. I am not sure that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is or is not Constitutional, but people need to keep in mind that that is a self designated power, not one given to the Supreme Court by the Constitution.
I stopped reading the newspaper before I started reading news online. I stopped reading the newspaper because every article contained some political commentary whether there was any relationship between the subject of the story and the political comment.
the vast majority of assumptions are incorrect, but if you are right that's their loss. i love Foucault's Pendulum and the Name of the Rose.
I'm sorry.
Umberto Eco is a terrible author if you read his stuff for anything other than to study the complicated ways that English can be used. The vast majority of people who buy books by Umberto Eco do so to prove how "high brow" they are.
Obama has demonstrated even less interest in the Constitution than Bush.
The key difference here was that Bush was too foolish to understand the Constitution - Obama has said in interviews that he believes the negative reciprocity upon which the Constitution is based is flawed, and that we ought to have a system of positive rights.
I'm not quite sure I understand your point. Are you saying that Obama is better because he intentionally violates the Constitution, while Bush just did it through ignorance?
Except that 3 of the 5 commissioners of the FCC were appointed by Obama, so this Notice of Inquiry was supported by at least one of the commissioners put in place by Obama. Obama has demonstrated even less interest in the Constitution than Bush.
As to "protecting the children from inappropriate content", what "inappropriate content" are we protecting them from, exactly?
That's easy, the answer is any content that puts this President (and his successors), or his policies, in a negative light.
I understand that Google employees can read my emails in gmail, but I have reason to expect that the contents won't go any further.
That is where the judge gets the interpretation that there is no expectation of privacy. If you understand that Google employees can read your email in gmail, then you don't expect that your emails are private.
This attitude of "The US shouldn't look at other countries as examples. If we didn't come up with the idea ourselves, it doesn't deserve to be used in America!" is really weird to me, as an outside observer. The same attitude is present in the current healthcare reform debate and in metrication. Surely Americans are aware that foreigners do come up with good ideas, and that you haven't failed as a country because you used some?
The problem isn't "If we didn't come up with the idea ourselves, it doesn't deserve to be used in America." The problem is that it should be Texas, or California, or Rhode Island, or Montana, etc that is looking at these solutions. The problems you talk about are all more easily resolved on a smaller scale than the entire U.S., which is what the other countries have done (the overwhelming majority of countries are smaller than the U.S. in both land mass and population, by a significant margin).
Additionally, the solutions other countries have come up with for problems that are also experienced in the U.S. will need to be customized to work here (just as they would be to work in any country different than where they originated). The best way to develop customized solutions is to try them on a state by state basis, allowing states to adopt what works best from other states and to try and tweak those solutions to improve them (and allowing people and businesses to move to those states with the best solutions and out of those with the worst solutions).