The results of this ruling are bad, but the law was clearly written to say this. It was probably not written this way on purpose, but I wouldn't bet on that. Considering that legislators often don't even read laws that they introduce, it is possible that some staffer introduced this wording for exactly this purpose.
I dunno, given that there are aspects of corporations that require them to be treated as an individual (contracts, property ownership) they might have just picked up a generic definition from some other location to save time. (The old "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" defense.)
The real problem is these laws don't get the full fine-tooth comb treatment until they get challenged at which point everyone comes out with magnifying glasses arguing that a smudge is a comma and vice versa.
Actually that is what I said, that this law was probably not written on purpose to generate this court ruling, but that I wasn't entirely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I do agree with you as to the real problem with many laws. Actually, that gives me an idea for a great group for someone to start. This group would go through every law that is passed by Congress and look for language that is either blatantly bad or that doesn't match up with the expressed purpose of the law. It would be important that this group have no other political agenda than informing the public as to whether the laws passed by Congress are what Congress says they are.
If people are texting while driving, they are not obeying the no reckless driving law. How will having another law change this?
If you are correct, than what is needed is an education campaign, not another law. Texting while driving is already illegal under current law, it is reckless driving.
As a side note: I kept wanting to write "reckless" as "wreckless". That would be a completely different meaning and I hope the day never comes when wreckless driving is illegal.
The problem is that patenting of software didn't come from Congress in the first place, it came from the courts.
What I would like to see is a Supreme Court ruling that extended patents to software and business methods worded in such a way as to push Congress to pass a law addressing the issues that lead to patenting software. I don't believe that this would be a good law, but it would be one that could be more easily addressed than the current situation.
So corporations get all the right of an individual, but with nothing but monetary penalties when they do something criminal like poison the ground water. The jerks responsible just close up shop and start a new corporation and rinse repeat.
No, this ruling does not go that far. This ruling does not say that corporations get the same "personal privacy" protection as individuals in all cases, only in the way that the government responds to FOIA requests. This is not a bad ruling, it is a good ruling on a badly written law. The results of this ruling are bad, but the law was clearly written to say this. It was probably not written this way on purpose, but I wouldn't bet on that. Considering that legislators often don't even read laws that they introduce, it is possible that some staffer introduced this wording for exactly this purpose.
However, I would expect that in this case the wording was introduced to serve some other purpose in the law (such as allowing corporations to file FOIA requests) without anybody noticing that it gave corporations unintended privacy protections.
The problem with using reckless driving types laws is that they are too late. Once you are exhibiting a behavior which is reckless (lane changes, etc) the only thing that separates that from a accident is that no-one else had the misfortune of being there at the time. The purpose of texting bans, etc is to stop a behavior which is likely to be a problem BEFORE it is actually a problem.
How is a texting while driving law any different than a reckless driving law? The odds of a police officer being able to see that I am texting while driving is rather slim. All he can see is that I am looking down more than is safe (if that) or that my driving is erratic. So a texting while driving law is either, also, "too late", or no different than a reckless driving law enforced on behavior. do you really think that with these laws in place people will have their cellphones out by the time the officer gets to the door of the car?
If you can turn it over to a geek for about two days (how long depends on the computer, some I can scan and clean in a couple of hours, some take longer), they should be willing to fix it for under $100. It really takes very little of my time to clean these, a couple of minutes to install software then let it run until it has finished scanning (maybe reaching over and clicking "ok" every now and again) while I work on other things. If I can work at it at my leisure in between working on other projects, I figure it takes about an hour of my time to clean it up.
I skimmed the article and this looks like it decreases ICANN's accountability to anybody. So when ICANN does something bad, who can hold their feet to the fire to get them to fix it?
ICANN is an organization composed of human beings, sooner or later it will do something that is evil.
No, it doesn't. Using the manual method (having an officer physically follow the vehicle) places a limit on the ability of the police to track someone. This limit means that the police will, generally, only do it when they have a reasonable suspicion that the person they wish to track is involved in illegal activity. This ruling puts a similar requirement on using a GPS tracker, they must have sufficient reason to suspect the individual of illegal activity to convince a judge (and they must provide a specific category of crime they are investigating).
The summary says that "nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction". What percentage of accidents was that? What percentage of people who drove last year was that? How many of those "driver distraction" cases were text messaging? For that matter, how many were from people using "mobile devices behind the wheel"? How many were changing the radio station? How many were eating something?
Texting while driving is stupid, but current laws already cover it. I am pretty sure that a ticket for reckless driving given to someone texting while driving would hold up in court.
So, do you really think that Joe Six Pack is going to be happy with a computer that he can't install software on? If the user can't install an executable, the computer is useless to most users. If the user can install an executable (no matter what hoops they have to jump through to do it), the "hole" isn't closed.
Public schools have a monopoly in that they get the money whether the kids go there or not. Private schools do not compete with the public schools for money.
Yes, I have read at some of his books. I couldn't see any reason to continue them. I read for one of two reasons: pleasure or knowledge (of course, I also get pleasure from acquiring knowledge). James Joyce wrote fiction so that leaves out knowledge. I got no pleasure from his book.
Would you think less of Joyce if you agreed that he sacrificed the mental stability and well being of his daughter to complete a novel? Would you think less of him if it was confirmed that he had contracted syphilis or that that is what caused him to go blind? Or that he wrote dirty letters to his wife? All these things may or may not be true.
None of them would in anyway cause me to think less of James Joyce, but then there is very little that could. I remember in 7th or 8th grade my English teacher went over the elements that made for a good novel. My English teacher the following year told me what a great writer James Joyce was because he didn't include any of those elements. I've never understood why he is considered a great writer.
Well, there is the Washington Post story about the independent film maker who exposed ACORN. It said "he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans." Except he didn't say that. The closest quote to that the Washington Post had was the following: "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization," he said. "No one was holding this organization accountable. No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and see what we could find."
I find it interesting that we have a complete critique of this story because it comes from the Washington Times, yet stories with the reverse bias from the Washington Post or the AP are given a pass.
I have heard many pro-life Christians express strong disapproval of the actions of those who direct violence against abortion clinics. I have never heard any Muslims express more than mild disapproval of the actions of terrorists. If you can cite some Muslim sources that have condemned Muslim terrorists to the same level that Christians condemn those who commit violence against abortion clinics, I may be willing to reconsider my position.
Those running Iran are not nationalists, they are internationalists. They have repeatedly expressed a desire to create an Islamic caliphate that encompasses the whole world.
I am unaware of a significant number of Christians in the U.S. who believe that it is their religious duty to conquer the world. On the other hand, most Muslim religious leaders I am aware of express the belief that it is every Muslim's religious duty to assist in the military conquest of the world.
Sarah Palin's non-denominational church is the "Wasilla Assembly of God". From the Wikipedia page on the church, here is a quote from Sarah Palin about our involvement in Iraq:
[pray] "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure we're praying for: that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."
Ok, so she believed that we should pray that our leaders were sending soldiers out on a task that is from God (as opposed to it being a task that was not from God) and further that we should pray that our leaders have a plan and that the plan is God's plan. She did not anywhere in that say that the task was from God or that the plan was God's plan. She said that we should pray that it was, that we should pray that God influence our leaders to act according to His will. I'm not sure how that supports the assertion that she is trying to stir up wars to bring about Armageddon.
And if you believe that Abu Ghraib was just a few rogue soldiers, then you have fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the propaganda book (blaming a few low-level scapegoats whenever evidence of widespread systematic atrocities start to leak out).
What "evidence of widespread systematic atrocities"?
The reference you give has references to a county political convention...using that to base one's understanding of general beliefs in a country of 300 million would be like saying that there is a major political movement in Europe based on the minutes of the city council of Nice. The rest of the references are even less useful to support the case because they are not references to statements made supporting the premise, but references to articles claiming the same premise with no more real support for it than the article you linked.
Why are you limiting it to fundamentalist Christians in the U.S.? There are more fundamentalist Christians in the rest of the world than in the U.S. and guess what, many of them live in conditions similar (or worse) to fundamentalist Muslims in Iraq or Palestine. Oh yeah, the Muslims who bombed the trains in England a couple of years ago had lived most of their lives in England. Osama Bin Laden is no poor destitute.
If one studies the Muslims who have committed acts of terrorism, one discovers that many of them come from the Middle Class or above (doctors, engineers, etc).
However, the "fringe" denominations that are extremely powerful in politics (right-wing politics in particular), the varieties of Christianity that Sarah Palin and George Bush and the "C-Street house" subscribe to, are very much interested in "hastening" the return of Christ by fomenting religious wars in the middle east.
Please specify what "fringe" denomination you are referring to. Since George W. Bush was raised Episcopalian and is a practicing Methodist, neither of which denominations teaches what you are claiming, I think it safe to say that you have been misinformed by people who don't know what they are talking about.
What I can find on Sarah Palin indicates that she considers herself non-denominational which it makes it hard to identify what the churches she attends teaches on the subject. However, considering how rare in Christian circles the position that you attempt to ascribe to her is, I believe the burden of proof is on you to show somewhere that she took a stance like the one you are imputing to her.
And what are these "torture camps" you are talking about in Iraq? Abu Ghraib was an atrocity committed by soldiers outside of the chain of command. The case was already being investigated by the military when it became public. It became public as a result of the father of one of the soldiers involved going to the press after he failed to get the Pentagon to agree to go easy on his child.
Which atrocities committed by the Israelis, the "Jenin Massacre", that turned out to be made up? Most of the "atrocities" committed by the Israelis against Palestinians are stage managed by Palestinians. The exceptions, while terrible tragedies, would not happen if the Palestinian militants did not intentionally provoke them.
To be precise, he issued a fatwa which has been stated to say that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons, but nobody outside of Iran has actually seen this fatwa so we don't really know what it says.
Slashdot Mirror
The results of this ruling are bad, but the law was clearly written to say this. It was probably not written this way on purpose, but I wouldn't bet on that. Considering that legislators often don't even read laws that they introduce, it is possible that some staffer introduced this wording for exactly this purpose.
I dunno, given that there are aspects of corporations that require them to be treated as an individual (contracts, property ownership) they might have just picked up a generic definition from some other location to save time. (The old "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" defense.)
The real problem is these laws don't get the full fine-tooth comb treatment until they get challenged at which point everyone comes out with magnifying glasses arguing that a smudge is a comma and vice versa.
Actually that is what I said, that this law was probably not written on purpose to generate this court ruling, but that I wasn't entirely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I do agree with you as to the real problem with many laws. Actually, that gives me an idea for a great group for someone to start. This group would go through every law that is passed by Congress and look for language that is either blatantly bad or that doesn't match up with the expressed purpose of the law. It would be important that this group have no other political agenda than informing the public as to whether the laws passed by Congress are what Congress says they are.
If people are texting while driving, they are not obeying the no reckless driving law. How will having another law change this?
If you are correct, than what is needed is an education campaign, not another law. Texting while driving is already illegal under current law, it is reckless driving.
As a side note: I kept wanting to write "reckless" as "wreckless". That would be a completely different meaning and I hope the day never comes when wreckless driving is illegal.
The problem is that patenting of software didn't come from Congress in the first place, it came from the courts.
What I would like to see is a Supreme Court ruling that extended patents to software and business methods worded in such a way as to push Congress to pass a law addressing the issues that lead to patenting software. I don't believe that this would be a good law, but it would be one that could be more easily addressed than the current situation.
So corporations get all the right of an individual, but with nothing but monetary penalties when they do something criminal like poison the ground water. The jerks responsible just close up shop and start a new corporation and rinse repeat.
No, this ruling does not go that far. This ruling does not say that corporations get the same "personal privacy" protection as individuals in all cases, only in the way that the government responds to FOIA requests. This is not a bad ruling, it is a good ruling on a badly written law. The results of this ruling are bad, but the law was clearly written to say this. It was probably not written this way on purpose, but I wouldn't bet on that. Considering that legislators often don't even read laws that they introduce, it is possible that some staffer introduced this wording for exactly this purpose.
However, I would expect that in this case the wording was introduced to serve some other purpose in the law (such as allowing corporations to file FOIA requests) without anybody noticing that it gave corporations unintended privacy protections.
The problem with using reckless driving types laws is that they are too late. Once you are exhibiting a behavior which is reckless (lane changes, etc) the only thing that separates that from a accident is that no-one else had the misfortune of being there at the time. The purpose of texting bans, etc is to stop a behavior which is likely to be a problem BEFORE it is actually a problem.
How is a texting while driving law any different than a reckless driving law? The odds of a police officer being able to see that I am texting while driving is rather slim. All he can see is that I am looking down more than is safe (if that) or that my driving is erratic. So a texting while driving law is either, also, "too late", or no different than a reckless driving law enforced on behavior. do you really think that with these laws in place people will have their cellphones out by the time the officer gets to the door of the car?
If you can turn it over to a geek for about two days (how long depends on the computer, some I can scan and clean in a couple of hours, some take longer), they should be willing to fix it for under $100. It really takes very little of my time to clean these, a couple of minutes to install software then let it run until it has finished scanning (maybe reaching over and clicking "ok" every now and again) while I work on other things. If I can work at it at my leisure in between working on other projects, I figure it takes about an hour of my time to clean it up.
"his very european hero Joseph Stalin."
Yes, Hussein was a communist .
Hussein was a fascist, although the distinction is fairly minor.
So why wasn't that in the article about the meeting on "distracted driving" (actually on texting while driving)?
I skimmed the article and this looks like it decreases ICANN's accountability to anybody. So when ICANN does something bad, who can hold their feet to the fire to get them to fix it?
ICANN is an organization composed of human beings, sooner or later it will do something that is evil.
No, it doesn't. Using the manual method (having an officer physically follow the vehicle) places a limit on the ability of the police to track someone. This limit means that the police will, generally, only do it when they have a reasonable suspicion that the person they wish to track is involved in illegal activity. This ruling puts a similar requirement on using a GPS tracker, they must have sufficient reason to suspect the individual of illegal activity to convince a judge (and they must provide a specific category of crime they are investigating).
The summary says that "nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction". What percentage of accidents was that? What percentage of people who drove last year was that? How many of those "driver distraction" cases were text messaging? For that matter, how many were from people using "mobile devices behind the wheel"? How many were changing the radio station? How many were eating something?
Texting while driving is stupid, but current laws already cover it. I am pretty sure that a ticket for reckless driving given to someone texting while driving would hold up in court.
So, do you really think that Joe Six Pack is going to be happy with a computer that he can't install software on? If the user can't install an executable, the computer is useless to most users. If the user can install an executable (no matter what hoops they have to jump through to do it), the "hole" isn't closed.
So, where do the local property taxes levied by the school district go when the students aren't there?
Public schools have a monopoly in that they get the money whether the kids go there or not. Private schools do not compete with the public schools for money.
Yes, I have read at some of his books. I couldn't see any reason to continue them. I read for one of two reasons: pleasure or knowledge (of course, I also get pleasure from acquiring knowledge). James Joyce wrote fiction so that leaves out knowledge. I got no pleasure from his book.
Would you think less of Joyce if you agreed that he sacrificed the mental stability and well being of his daughter to complete a novel? Would you think less of him if it was confirmed that he had contracted syphilis or that that is what caused him to go blind? Or that he wrote dirty letters to his wife? All these things may or may not be true.
None of them would in anyway cause me to think less of James Joyce, but then there is very little that could. I remember in 7th or 8th grade my English teacher went over the elements that made for a good novel. My English teacher the following year told me what a great writer James Joyce was because he didn't include any of those elements. I've never understood why he is considered a great writer.
Well, there is the Washington Post story about the independent film maker who exposed ACORN. It said "he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans." Except he didn't say that. The closest quote to that the Washington Post had was the following: "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization," he said. "No one was holding this organization accountable. No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and see what we could find."
I find it interesting that we have a complete critique of this story because it comes from the Washington Times, yet stories with the reverse bias from the Washington Post or the AP are given a pass.
I have heard many pro-life Christians express strong disapproval of the actions of those who direct violence against abortion clinics. I have never heard any Muslims express more than mild disapproval of the actions of terrorists. If you can cite some Muslim sources that have condemned Muslim terrorists to the same level that Christians condemn those who commit violence against abortion clinics, I may be willing to reconsider my position.
Those running Iran are not nationalists, they are internationalists. They have repeatedly expressed a desire to create an Islamic caliphate that encompasses the whole world.
I am unaware of a significant number of Christians in the U.S. who believe that it is their religious duty to conquer the world. On the other hand, most Muslim religious leaders I am aware of express the belief that it is every Muslim's religious duty to assist in the military conquest of the world.
Sarah Palin's non-denominational church is the "Wasilla Assembly of God". From the Wikipedia page on the church, here is a quote from Sarah Palin about our involvement in Iraq:
[pray] "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure we're praying for: that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."
Ok, so she believed that we should pray that our leaders were sending soldiers out on a task that is from God (as opposed to it being a task that was not from God) and further that we should pray that our leaders have a plan and that the plan is God's plan. She did not anywhere in that say that the task was from God or that the plan was God's plan. She said that we should pray that it was, that we should pray that God influence our leaders to act according to His will. I'm not sure how that supports the assertion that she is trying to stir up wars to bring about Armageddon.
And if you believe that Abu Ghraib was just a few rogue soldiers, then you have fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the propaganda book (blaming a few low-level scapegoats whenever evidence of widespread systematic atrocities start to leak out).
What "evidence of widespread systematic atrocities"?
Cool? No. $700 cool? No way in hell.
If it was a choice between this and the Antec Solo with both at $89.95, then maybe I'd be interested in this case but it would be close.
The reference you give has references to a county political convention...using that to base one's understanding of general beliefs in a country of 300 million would be like saying that there is a major political movement in Europe based on the minutes of the city council of Nice. The rest of the references are even less useful to support the case because they are not references to statements made supporting the premise, but references to articles claiming the same premise with no more real support for it than the article you linked.
Why are you limiting it to fundamentalist Christians in the U.S.? There are more fundamentalist Christians in the rest of the world than in the U.S. and guess what, many of them live in conditions similar (or worse) to fundamentalist Muslims in Iraq or Palestine. Oh yeah, the Muslims who bombed the trains in England a couple of years ago had lived most of their lives in England. Osama Bin Laden is no poor destitute.
If one studies the Muslims who have committed acts of terrorism, one discovers that many of them come from the Middle Class or above (doctors, engineers, etc).
However, the "fringe" denominations that are extremely powerful in politics (right-wing politics in particular), the varieties of Christianity that Sarah Palin and George Bush and the "C-Street house" subscribe to, are very much interested in "hastening" the return of Christ by fomenting religious wars in the middle east.
Please specify what "fringe" denomination you are referring to. Since George W. Bush was raised Episcopalian and is a practicing Methodist, neither of which denominations teaches what you are claiming, I think it safe to say that you have been misinformed by people who don't know what they are talking about.
What I can find on Sarah Palin indicates that she considers herself non-denominational which it makes it hard to identify what the churches she attends teaches on the subject. However, considering how rare in Christian circles the position that you attempt to ascribe to her is, I believe the burden of proof is on you to show somewhere that she took a stance like the one you are imputing to her.
And what are these "torture camps" you are talking about in Iraq? Abu Ghraib was an atrocity committed by soldiers outside of the chain of command. The case was already being investigated by the military when it became public. It became public as a result of the father of one of the soldiers involved going to the press after he failed to get the Pentagon to agree to go easy on his child.
Which atrocities committed by the Israelis, the "Jenin Massacre", that turned out to be made up? Most of the "atrocities" committed by the Israelis against Palestinians are stage managed by Palestinians. The exceptions, while terrible tragedies, would not happen if the Palestinian militants did not intentionally provoke them.
What is the source for these statements? Whatever it is, it is not an official position of the Iranian government. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons.
To be precise, he issued a fatwa which has been stated to say that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons, but nobody outside of Iran has actually seen this fatwa so we don't really know what it says.