Well, to add a counterpoint to your valid concern about over-use of acronyms, I'm from a small town in Ontario, Canada, and I knew what SXSW was, and that it was located in Austin, and that one would expect there to be some friction between Texas' notoriously conservative law enforcement and the much more liberal crowd that SXSW would attract. I also know that SXSW is one of the biggest, most popular festivals of its kind in North America, that people I know have been talking about it for weeks, and that half my Twitter feed is chatter about how Bruce Springsteen is giving the Keynote and how awesome it is to be there to see it (or how much it sucks to not be there to see it).
So while I agree that the editors shouldn't assume that we all know what SXSW means, I can understand why they might.
I did some research on this a while ago for the lawyer I was working for at the time. The new machines can tell the difference between the breath chemistry that results from diabetes and that which comes from intoxication. I don't recall my research on the subject exactly, but I think the model in question could actually prompt the officer to tell the suspect to go get their blood sugar checked.
I am interested in participating, and rather hoped that someone local might actually contact me in person. And I also donated to the campaign. I wasn't expecting automated calls all the time, because there was nothing to indicate, when I signed up, that I'd be getting a tonne of automated calls. I get a lot of e-mail from them too, but I don't complain about that because I checked off a tickbox saying I wanted e-mail from them.
I think part of the problem is that robocalls are just offensive anyway. My attitude has always been that if something is important enough for you to call me, it's important enough for you to pay a real live human to do the calling.
No, I've been bombarded with various robocalls from the NDP since I joined the party. Just lately they're about the leadership race. Making me re-think my membership, really....
Engage your brain for a minute. We're not talking about 2 or 3 ridings. The National Post (!) is currently reporting at least 14 ridings were robo-called, and the reality is that if you're going to use an illegal tactic and risk the shitstorm that is currently brewing, you don't fuck around with one or two ridings, you do the dirty in every race that's close enough for the tactic to make the difference. That's the problem. The larger, philosophical problem (that transcends politics) is this: how can you trust a government that would cheat on a massive scale to get elected, whatever colour their lawn sign?
Uh, not so very long ago, actually. The residential schools were only closed in the last few decades, and there was the forced removal and adoption of children of the last residential school generation, and now the government is trying to kill off the First Nations by careful mismanagement of funds that go --- or are supposed to go --- to reserves. The laws that set up the reserve system themselves possibly genocidal, as they require many First Nations people to live in small chunks of land (the South African Townships were based on the Canadian reserve model, you know), or give up their rights and treaty entitlements. Sorry, we are still the same country we were back then, we just keep it more quiet now.
Well, 40% of those who voted, and voter turnout was 60% or so, give or take the number of voters who would have voted and didn't thanks to Harper's shenanigans. But yeah, saying that "no true Canadian" would vote Conservative is pretty stupid.
I think IBM wants its counterclaims adjudicated. This isn't about a reanimated SCO zombie, this is IBM kicking around a corpse. Stand not between the Nazgul and its prey.
How is this any closer to Apple locking down your ability to download and install any application (not App), and run it after a sudo check? It makes the mac App store more closed, I'll grant you that, but I for one never use the App store on my macs anyway, except to download a copy of the OS or Xcode or some other Apple software. Nothing mentioned in the summary (which was a little breathless and worshipful, I must admit) indicated that my ability to install third party software in the usual way would be limited (which is a good thing for me, because if that ever happens I'm gone).
Does the App Store make me uneasy? Yes it does. Am I watching new releases carefully before installing them on my computers? Yep. Has Apple done anything that would limit third parties from offering regular old software to mac users in the regular old way? No.
The problem is that free speech doesn't exist in a vacuum. All too often, the assertion of one person's rights leads to the abrogation of someone else's rights, and the courts need to decide which right prevails over the other. In Canada at least (and I believe this is true of the US Constitution as well), the rights aren't listed in order of priority. It's nice to make grandiose statements about the "basic tenets of Free Speech", but that right, like all rights, has a limit, and sooner or later some judge somewhere has to decide what that limit is. Invariably, that limit turns out to be pressing hard up against the limit of some other right or rights.
Let me give you an example. In Canadian law, political expression is among the most valued and valuable forms of expression, and the courts will go to great lengths to protect it. Political speech is protected in public spaces, both those spaces that are actually owned by the public, and those spaces owned privately but generally open to members of the public to attend. If you set up your soapbox in front of the courthouse and start giving a political speech, you shouldn't be disturbed by the government (and if you are, the courts will dismiss the charges against you). But, if you go to a courtroom, and start making your great speech about the evils of the government of the day, and expound upon your ideal political system, you'll be marched out of the courtroom in a hurry, and most likely in handcuffs. When you appear before the judge on public mischief charges, you'll be found guilty. Your speech in the courtroom has infringed on the rights of others to the due process of law, and in the courtroom, that right is paramount.
The same thing applies to other rights, including the freedom of (or from) religion. The hate speech laws are targeted at kinds of speech that make it harder for people to feel safe practicing their religion. It's not just about being offended, the laws target the kind of speech that makes people worry about being assaulted because of their faith (or race, ethnicity, gender, etc). Because in certain contexts and with certain kinds of speech (but not always) your freedom of or from religion trumps the nazi's or fundamentalist Christian's or fanatical Muslim's freedom of speech. This is not always decided in favour of freedom of religion, either. Believers of all kinds have to put up with a lot of things they find offensive, both from the government and from private citizens, because their freedom of religion does not take precedence over the rights of whoever is doing the offending.
The phone companies analogy isn't an analogy, that's exactly what they want the phone companies (which means the ISPs and cable companies as well) to do. Store all communications between parties for x number of months, so that the police can order up a disc drive full of phone calls after the fact instead of ordering up wiretaps ahead of the fact. Canada Post, not so much. Her Majesty's Mail still enjoys its ancient protections. For now.
Actually, you (probably, I'm not your lawyer, disclaimer, etc) can't be arrested, fined, or thrown in jail for making those kinds of statements. Now, if you incite someone else to hatred, that's hate speech, and a little easier to pin down in court.
Canadian rights law is all about balancing between opposing rights. So for example hate speech is a balancing act between your right to say what you want and someone else's right not to have lynch mobs form up and hunt him or her down. Also, in Canada different kinds of expression have different values. The Supreme Court hasn't exactly been clear on this issue, but it's generally understood that some kinds of expression are better or more worthy than others, and that political expression for example is much more valuable to society than, say, pornography, and therefore deserving of much more protection and deference from the courts.
It seems odd to an American, who's used to interpreting their Constitution in a binary fashion, but for the most part it works reasonably well, and is a good way to help the courts avoid the odd boundary condition cases in which a strict interpretation produces an unfair or absurd result.
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Well, to add a counterpoint to your valid concern about over-use of acronyms, I'm from a small town in Ontario, Canada, and I knew what SXSW was, and that it was located in Austin, and that one would expect there to be some friction between Texas' notoriously conservative law enforcement and the much more liberal crowd that SXSW would attract. I also know that SXSW is one of the biggest, most popular festivals of its kind in North America, that people I know have been talking about it for weeks, and that half my Twitter feed is chatter about how Bruce Springsteen is giving the Keynote and how awesome it is to be there to see it (or how much it sucks to not be there to see it).
So while I agree that the editors shouldn't assume that we all know what SXSW means, I can understand why they might.
Yep, there is. Kinda. Called the "hearsay rule". Doesn't block all anecdotes, but at least tries to keep them first-hand only.
We only ever ran into this issue twice.... at a police station which needed to make copies of counterfeit bills for use as evidence in a trial.
that's hilarious.
My understanding is that those scanners won't just refuse to copy the image, they'll voluntarily brick themselves and not scan anything at all.
I did some research on this a while ago for the lawyer I was working for at the time. The new machines can tell the difference between the breath chemistry that results from diabetes and that which comes from intoxication. I don't recall my research on the subject exactly, but I think the model in question could actually prompt the officer to tell the suspect to go get their blood sugar checked.
I am interested in participating, and rather hoped that someone local might actually contact me in person. And I also donated to the campaign. I wasn't expecting automated calls all the time, because there was nothing to indicate, when I signed up, that I'd be getting a tonne of automated calls. I get a lot of e-mail from them too, but I don't complain about that because I checked off a tickbox saying I wanted e-mail from them.
I think part of the problem is that robocalls are just offensive anyway. My attitude has always been that if something is important enough for you to call me, it's important enough for you to pay a real live human to do the calling.
It's not Islam, either. It's Wahabbiism.
No, I've been bombarded with various robocalls from the NDP since I joined the party. Just lately they're about the leadership race. Making me re-think my membership, really....
In Canada, felons don't lose their franchise. For now.
Just FYI, we still have Sheriffs too, but not in the US sense. A Sheriff in Canada is a court official.
And then this happened.
Engage your brain for a minute. We're not talking about 2 or 3 ridings. The National Post (!) is currently reporting at least 14 ridings were robo-called, and the reality is that if you're going to use an illegal tactic and risk the shitstorm that is currently brewing, you don't fuck around with one or two ridings, you do the dirty in every race that's close enough for the tactic to make the difference. That's the problem. The larger, philosophical problem (that transcends politics) is this: how can you trust a government that would cheat on a massive scale to get elected, whatever colour their lawn sign?
Uh, not so very long ago, actually. The residential schools were only closed in the last few decades, and there was the forced removal and adoption of children of the last residential school generation, and now the government is trying to kill off the First Nations by careful mismanagement of funds that go --- or are supposed to go --- to reserves. The laws that set up the reserve system themselves possibly genocidal, as they require many First Nations people to live in small chunks of land (the South African Townships were based on the Canadian reserve model, you know), or give up their rights and treaty entitlements. Sorry, we are still the same country we were back then, we just keep it more quiet now.
...the government has accepted responsibility for its part, and apologized.
Well, they apologized, and paid a settlement. Not the same thing as taking responsibility. The Royal Commission Report is still gathering dust.
Well, 40% of those who voted, and voter turnout was 60% or so, give or take the number of voters who would have voted and didn't thanks to Harper's shenanigans. But yeah, saying that "no true Canadian" would vote Conservative is pretty stupid.
That's Mister Burns!
I think IBM wants its counterclaims adjudicated. This isn't about a reanimated SCO zombie, this is IBM kicking around a corpse. Stand not between the Nazgul and its prey.
Give or take 6 years.
How is this any closer to Apple locking down your ability to download and install any application (not App), and run it after a sudo check? It makes the mac App store more closed, I'll grant you that, but I for one never use the App store on my macs anyway, except to download a copy of the OS or Xcode or some other Apple software. Nothing mentioned in the summary (which was a little breathless and worshipful, I must admit) indicated that my ability to install third party software in the usual way would be limited (which is a good thing for me, because if that ever happens I'm gone).
Does the App Store make me uneasy? Yes it does. Am I watching new releases carefully before installing them on my computers? Yep. Has Apple done anything that would limit third parties from offering regular old software to mac users in the regular old way? No.
He found the Berry but he has to do a battery pull.
The problem is that free speech doesn't exist in a vacuum. All too often, the assertion of one person's rights leads to the abrogation of someone else's rights, and the courts need to decide which right prevails over the other. In Canada at least (and I believe this is true of the US Constitution as well), the rights aren't listed in order of priority. It's nice to make grandiose statements about the "basic tenets of Free Speech", but that right, like all rights, has a limit, and sooner or later some judge somewhere has to decide what that limit is. Invariably, that limit turns out to be pressing hard up against the limit of some other right or rights.
Let me give you an example. In Canadian law, political expression is among the most valued and valuable forms of expression, and the courts will go to great lengths to protect it. Political speech is protected in public spaces, both those spaces that are actually owned by the public, and those spaces owned privately but generally open to members of the public to attend. If you set up your soapbox in front of the courthouse and start giving a political speech, you shouldn't be disturbed by the government (and if you are, the courts will dismiss the charges against you). But, if you go to a courtroom, and start making your great speech about the evils of the government of the day, and expound upon your ideal political system, you'll be marched out of the courtroom in a hurry, and most likely in handcuffs. When you appear before the judge on public mischief charges, you'll be found guilty. Your speech in the courtroom has infringed on the rights of others to the due process of law, and in the courtroom, that right is paramount.
The same thing applies to other rights, including the freedom of (or from) religion. The hate speech laws are targeted at kinds of speech that make it harder for people to feel safe practicing their religion. It's not just about being offended, the laws target the kind of speech that makes people worry about being assaulted because of their faith (or race, ethnicity, gender, etc). Because in certain contexts and with certain kinds of speech (but not always) your freedom of or from religion trumps the nazi's or fundamentalist Christian's or fanatical Muslim's freedom of speech. This is not always decided in favour of freedom of religion, either. Believers of all kinds have to put up with a lot of things they find offensive, both from the government and from private citizens, because their freedom of religion does not take precedence over the rights of whoever is doing the offending.
You know, I think you might be on to something there....
The phone companies analogy isn't an analogy, that's exactly what they want the phone companies (which means the ISPs and cable companies as well) to do. Store all communications between parties for x number of months, so that the police can order up a disc drive full of phone calls after the fact instead of ordering up wiretaps ahead of the fact. Canada Post, not so much. Her Majesty's Mail still enjoys its ancient protections. For now.
Actually, you (probably, I'm not your lawyer, disclaimer, etc) can't be arrested, fined, or thrown in jail for making those kinds of statements. Now, if you incite someone else to hatred, that's hate speech, and a little easier to pin down in court.
Canadian rights law is all about balancing between opposing rights. So for example hate speech is a balancing act between your right to say what you want and someone else's right not to have lynch mobs form up and hunt him or her down. Also, in Canada different kinds of expression have different values. The Supreme Court hasn't exactly been clear on this issue, but it's generally understood that some kinds of expression are better or more worthy than others, and that political expression for example is much more valuable to society than, say, pornography, and therefore deserving of much more protection and deference from the courts.
It seems odd to an American, who's used to interpreting their Constitution in a binary fashion, but for the most part it works reasonably well, and is a good way to help the courts avoid the odd boundary condition cases in which a strict interpretation produces an unfair or absurd result.
I've seen no convincing evidence that Vic Toews is stupid, myself. Perhaps you have?