magine Joe Blow the computer tech stumbles across kiddie porn while working on a PC. He calls the police. Case goes to court. Joe Blow doesn't have a PI licence. The evidence gets thrown out - illegal search, and Joe Blow goes to jail/pays a huge fine.
There are no grounds for throwing the evidence out. If a burglar finds evidence that one of his victims is committing a worse felony, they can turn in the person. Obviously, the jury also hears that the witness was a burglar violating the law when he found the evidence, but weighing evidence and witness quality to determine facts in a case is what juries are supposed to do. Only if the burglar was a prior police agent, will the evidence be thrown out (eg, sending a crook in specifically to get a murderer to brag about his killings will get the testimony suppressed).
If they made not having the license a capital offense, they will not get too many techs turning in pornographers, but my guess is that they didn't.
> The problem is that even the simplest of these conditions > require dangerous, dangerous drugs such as Penicillin that > must be kept from the public at all costs,
My Mother is allergic to penicillin, you insensitive clod:-)
Seriously, though she is, severely. Take one dose, and she'll die, according to her doctors. Further, since almost every bug around is immune to it until we stop using it for a couple decades or more, there are reasons to restrict prescribing it to qualified professionals. It can be dangerous and it is rarely useful. Other members are still dangerous, but for those not allergic may still be useful (although other penicillin-like drugs have fallen or are falling to resistant strains).
To balance it out...ok, make them all have to be PI's. However, just pass a 2nd law making anything found on a computer without a valid search warrent (before it is cracked open) invalid in a court of law. A person working on a PC is not supposed to be looking for/at files that are not part of the problem to the system working. This way...if something is stumbled across, it is inadmissible in a court of law.
Would you make it illegal for a janitor to report finding a dead body in someone's office, too?
The tech is not supposed to be snooping, but likewise, he has no duty to NOT report a felony, just as the owner's attorney MUST report when his client is about to perform a felony (which is why Consiglieri and Mob Lawyer should be separate jobs, so the attorney can say that he had no knowledge that the other guy was going to be wacked).
Anyway, all that will do is make them pass a third law, directing that the judge MUST provide a warrant to all non-police computer repair people, covering any and all felonies, because needing to repair a computer is to be considered sufficient grounds to suspect that it was used in the commission of one.
> Why would you give your computer to someone with illegal material on the hard drive?
Damned if I know. I never have my computer serviced by people with hard drives embedded in their bodies:-)
Seriously (yes that last sentence was meant to be a joke), the answer is that someone DID give their computer to a tech who narced on them, and the convicted felon's friends in the Texas Legislature (which once passed a resolution commending Robert DiSalvo [the Boston Strangler] for his efforts at population control) are making sure that it can never happen again.
BTW, the resolution was introduced by one representative just to prove that no one in the Legislature paid attention. Naturally, he didn't mention that DiSalvo was the chief suspect in the Strangler Case (it was never PROVED that he was, just as Lizzie Borden wasn't PROVED to have hacked her father and stepmother to death) in the resolution.
In the UK at least, holding an "officer" position in a company, means that you can be held legally responsible for your companys actions even though you may not have actually performed said action yourself.
A few years back, an article in one of my computer magazines (Dr. Dobbs or PC probably, but I forget, now) pointed out that the benefit of raising the head of IT to CIO is that the board now has a patsy to take the fall when they screw up, whereas some manager wouldn't satisfy Wall Street, the FBI, Elliot Spitzer's or Rudy Giuliani's task force from the US Attorney's Office, or whatever other group wants someone to blame. Otherwise, it was a dead end, and the occupant "died" fairly soon after, moving on to "a new, exciting opportunity" with some small or startup firm or retiring to "spend more time with my family" or whatever other lame cover-up.
Do not be upset. Stupid people are there so that intelligent or smart people are given a reason to shine. If everyone was smart, you'd be another drop in the bucket, but if you are, and they are not, then be happy you're stronger, smarter or better off, enjoy the advantage, help others if you want, or avoid helping them, all up to you.
Yeah. Once there was this high security project, and one of the people got a pass to go to the nearest city to see his wife, who was dying of cancer at the time. He used his pass to let another man at about his level drive him there, since person one didn't have access to his own car. Unknowingly, this let man two give away secrets from the project to a competitor, which used the info to jump-start their competing product.
Of course, the project was the Manhattan Engineering District, the man with the car was Klaus Fuchs, the competitor was the Soviet Union, the product was nuclear weapons, and the dupe was Richard Feynman. It doesn't take stupidity to be fooled, or genius to do the fooling, and it isn't because of a lack of responsibility. That's why the CIA could operate in the Soviet Union despite the KGB, and vice versa.
Anyway, there is always the need for some human to be able to override, in the case of "computer error" (whether the computer was responsible or not). He or she can be scammed, perhaps at a higher level of access.
> At the very least, you need to specify pressure as well.
Triple point specifies temperature (thus density) and pressure, together.
OTOH, you may be right about the container problem. I assumed that one could make a microgram-sized sample, count, then scale up, more easily than a one kg sample of silicon, given that you CANNOT make a sphere, in reality, just approach it asymptotically. A perfect tetrahedron, perhaps, but not a sphere.
My godson got his law degree, worked for a year as a lawyer, and quit because he hated it. He then went into IT, where he has been happily employed, since. Why shouldn't you be able to do the reverse? There are a number of legal specialties that prefer to have students with science backgrounds (patent law, as an obvious example).
Unfortunately we leased the only remaining bit of the British Empire near the equator to you lot back in 1976.
According to the Wikipedia article, it is a joint base. Or do you think that the USAF will shoot down your rockets for having the temerity of challenging the agency that stole of USAF's rocketry program, and cancelled their Dyna-Soar program that would have built an un-Proxmireable space shuttle in the 1960s?
The reason that the GOP still seems to run the place is that it takes a 60% majority to force cloture or override a Presidential veto. The Dems don't have it. It takes 40% to control the Senate.
No, it takes 40% to prevent the other side from controlling the Senate. And it takes even less, if the other side isn't sure what they want to do, or even IF they want to do something. And even less than that, if the other side is split into groups that want on one issue what the minority wants as well (which is how the GOP minority passed the Civil Rights Acts of the Johnson Administration, despite the screams from the Southern Democrats).
If you think that the GOP control the Senate, why haven't the Bush tax cuts been made permanent, or Social Security privatized?
What's most sickening is how so many people are SCREAMING to have this bill blocked, yet the politicians are actively voting against the wishes of their constituency. They're not even pretending to care anymore.
In a republic, the elected representatives are supposed to use their independent judgment as well as the screams of that tiny portion of their constituents that cares about an issue. Now if you want a "democracy" I am certain you can find a guillotine and execute all the employees and their families, just like in the French Revolution, for the crime of assuming that the Patriot Act didn't make this legal when they were told by lawyers (maybe even THEIR lawyers) that it did, because some mob thinks that they should be.
It was originally the mass of a cube, 10 centimeters on a side, of water. How difficult is it to reproduce that (maybe specifying at the triple point, and that all the water has to be protons, not deuterons, but otherwise)?
Pistols at twenty paces, and simultaneous shots. Dagger alone is too likely to result in a double kill. If you have to ask, then you are not good enough with a rapier. Ergo, chose the firearms.
As I recall, Lucent wasn't called Lucent until AT&T spun it off. And that business wasn't profitable until AT&T got rid of it. People who were competing with AT&T weren't interested in buying hardware from AT&T. At least, that was the reason they gave when they spun it off. Possibly Lucent just needed to get out from under AT&T's inept management.
So they could experience huge growth under its OWN inept management?
Lucent wasn't exactly highly profitable AFTER it was spun off, either. I would be surprised to hear that they had experienced an entire year without reporting a loss for at least one quarter. Great performance like that also killed their stock price. That is why Alcatel was able to buy them.
> There were personal computers during the early rise of Microsoft
Yes. S-100 bus boat anchors running CP/M, or some unnetworked Unix for the MC68000-based machines.
> : Macs, OS/2, Suns
Nope, sorry. They may have preceded Windows 3, but none did DOS 1.1, which was NOT the QDOS that MS bought from Seattle Computing. Probably none did DOS 2.0, which was very different.
> because he's retiring.
No, he is not. He is just drastically reducing his hours. He can come back any time that he wants. Would YOU try to tell the controlling stockholder that he cannot?
> there's not much to dislike about that!
People can hate Mother Teresa, they can still hate him. Unless they start making YouTube videos of him playing lawn tennis or croquet, like they did for John D. Rockefeller to turn him from the "evil monopolist" to the grandfatherly dodderer that he appears in the old movie reels.
You DO realize that he will still be there one day every two weeks, on average? He isn't retiring, he is just cutting down to 10%. He also controls the company due to his (and his Foundation's) stock ownership - expecting him to be treated in anything less than the manner that he currently is would be ridiculous.
Bill sure did pick a good time to get out. I imagine when Windows 7 receives its inevitable bashing in the press, he'll be content just giving his money away, saving the world, one gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at a time.
What money? Most of his net worth is tied up in the (unrealized) value of the Microsoft stock that he owns. Therefore, if he dumps it or it tanks, he still ends up a mere multimillionaire:-) Hell, if Microsoft actually went belly up, he probably be worth just a few million from his house, cars, and movable chattel, and his father would have to include him and his daughter in the will, again.
Therefore, if Steve Ballmer really does drive the company into the ground, expect him back like Michael Corleone (or more realistically, like Steve Jobs back into Apple). If he doesn't, his Foundation will be broke, not to mention Melinda and daughter.
I wonder how much longer skiing/snowboarding will be a sport. I feel sorry for future generations that may never have the chance to fly down a mountain at mach 3 with a board strapped to their feet, until they crash into a tree or run off a cliff, and kill themselves.
> my logs show that there are people still using MSIE 4, MSIE 5... as well as Windows 95, and Win3.1
Or at least, so claims the HTTP traffic. I can and do fake my browser ID on occasion, and sometimes forget to unfake it when finished. My PERL scripts seldom use the ID of a fancy browser version, also.
> Upgrade, guys, upgrade!
I also run old versions of Windows on my virtual machines (not that I have a copy of Win3.1. MS-DOS 3.1, but not Win3.1). If I got a virus, it died when I reset the VM to a saved version, anyway.
We have seen this before. The new bases just make new STOP codons, until someone creates new types of MRNA and/or TRNA to let the mitochondria process them to add a matching amino acid.
Where is the whatcanpossiblygowrong tag, like last time? Have the Luddites left, already?
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There are no grounds for throwing the evidence out. If a burglar finds evidence that one of his victims is committing a worse felony, they can turn in the person. Obviously, the jury also hears that the witness was a burglar violating the law when he found the evidence, but weighing evidence and witness quality to determine facts in a case is what juries are supposed to do. Only if the burglar was a prior police agent, will the evidence be thrown out (eg, sending a crook in specifically to get a murderer to brag about his killings will get the testimony suppressed).
If they made not having the license a capital offense, they will not get too many techs turning in pornographers, but my guess is that they didn't.
> The problem is that even the simplest of these conditions
> require dangerous, dangerous drugs such as Penicillin that
> must be kept from the public at all costs,
My Mother is allergic to penicillin, you insensitive clod :-)
Seriously, though she is, severely. Take one dose, and she'll die, according to her doctors. Further, since almost every bug around is immune to it until we stop using it for a couple decades or more, there are reasons to restrict prescribing it to qualified professionals. It can be dangerous and it is rarely useful. Other members are still dangerous, but for those not allergic may still be useful (although other penicillin-like drugs have fallen or are falling to resistant strains).
Would you make it illegal for a janitor to report finding a dead body in someone's office, too?
The tech is not supposed to be snooping, but likewise, he has no duty to NOT report a felony, just as the owner's attorney MUST report when his client is about to perform a felony (which is why Consiglieri and Mob Lawyer should be separate jobs, so the attorney can say that he had no knowledge that the other guy was going to be wacked).
Anyway, all that will do is make them pass a third law, directing that the judge MUST provide a warrant to all non-police computer repair people, covering any and all felonies, because needing to repair a computer is to be considered sufficient grounds to suspect that it was used in the commission of one.
> Why would you give your computer to someone with illegal material on the hard drive?
Damned if I know. I never have my computer serviced by people with hard drives embedded in their bodies :-)
Seriously (yes that last sentence was meant to be a joke), the answer is that someone DID give their computer to a tech who narced on them, and the convicted felon's friends in the Texas Legislature (which once passed a resolution commending Robert DiSalvo [the Boston Strangler] for his efforts at population control) are making sure that it can never happen again.
BTW, the resolution was introduced by one representative just to prove that no one in the Legislature paid attention. Naturally, he didn't mention that DiSalvo was the chief suspect in the Strangler Case (it was never PROVED that he was, just as Lizzie Borden wasn't PROVED to have hacked her father and stepmother to death) in the resolution.
A few years back, an article in one of my computer magazines (Dr. Dobbs or PC probably, but I forget, now) pointed out that the benefit of raising the head of IT to CIO is that the board now has a patsy to take the fall when they screw up, whereas some manager wouldn't satisfy Wall Street, the FBI, Elliot Spitzer's or Rudy Giuliani's task force from the US Attorney's Office, or whatever other group wants someone to blame. Otherwise, it was a dead end, and the occupant "died" fairly soon after, moving on to "a new, exciting opportunity" with some small or startup firm or retiring to "spend more time with my family" or whatever other lame cover-up.
Yeah. Once there was this high security project, and one of the people got a pass to go to the nearest city to see his wife, who was dying of cancer at the time. He used his pass to let another man at about his level drive him there, since person one didn't have access to his own car. Unknowingly, this let man two give away secrets from the project to a competitor, which used the info to jump-start their competing product.
Of course, the project was the Manhattan Engineering District, the man with the car was Klaus Fuchs, the competitor was the Soviet Union, the product was nuclear weapons, and the dupe was Richard Feynman. It doesn't take stupidity to be fooled, or genius to do the fooling, and it isn't because of a lack of responsibility. That's why the CIA could operate in the Soviet Union despite the KGB, and vice versa.
That is a WOPR of an idea (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/)
Anyway, there is always the need for some human to be able to override, in the case of "computer error" (whether the computer was responsible or not). He or she can be scammed, perhaps at a higher level of access.
> At the very least, you need to specify pressure as well. Triple point specifies temperature (thus density) and pressure, together. OTOH, you may be right about the container problem. I assumed that one could make a microgram-sized sample, count, then scale up, more easily than a one kg sample of silicon, given that you CANNOT make a sphere, in reality, just approach it asymptotically. A perfect tetrahedron, perhaps, but not a sphere.
My godson got his law degree, worked for a year as a lawyer, and quit because he hated it. He then went into IT, where he has been happily employed, since. Why shouldn't you be able to do the reverse? There are a number of legal specialties that prefer to have students with science backgrounds (patent law, as an obvious example).
According to the Wikipedia article, it is a joint base. Or do you think that the USAF will shoot down your rockets for having the temerity of challenging the agency that stole of USAF's rocketry program, and cancelled their Dyna-Soar program that would have built an un-Proxmireable space shuttle in the 1960s?
In a republic, the elected representatives are supposed to use their independent judgment as well as the screams of that tiny portion of their constituents that cares about an issue. Now if you want a "democracy" I am certain you can find a guillotine and execute all the employees and their families, just like in the French Revolution, for the crime of assuming that the Patriot Act didn't make this legal when they were told by lawyers (maybe even THEIR lawyers) that it did, because some mob thinks that they should be.
> 3. mass. Well, that's the tricky one.
It was originally the mass of a cube, 10 centimeters on a side, of water. How difficult is it to reproduce that (maybe specifying at the triple point, and that all the water has to be protons, not deuterons, but otherwise)?
Pistols at twenty paces, and simultaneous shots. Dagger alone is too likely to result in a double kill. If you have to ask, then you are not good enough with a rapier. Ergo, chose the firearms.
So they could experience huge growth under its OWN inept management?
Lucent wasn't exactly highly profitable AFTER it was spun off, either. I would be surprised to hear that they had experienced an entire year without reporting a loss for at least one quarter. Great performance like that also killed their stock price. That is why Alcatel was able to buy them.
> (Is it really that bad? All Baby Bells are back together?)
Verizon (nee, Bell Atlantic) is still not owned by AT&T (nee, Southwest Bell).
> There were personal computers during the early rise of Microsoft
Yes. S-100 bus boat anchors running CP/M, or some unnetworked Unix for the MC68000-based machines.
> : Macs, OS/2, Suns
Nope, sorry. They may have preceded Windows 3, but none did DOS 1.1, which was NOT the QDOS that MS bought from Seattle Computing. Probably none did DOS 2.0, which was very different.
> because he's retiring.
No, he is not. He is just drastically reducing his hours. He can come back any time that he wants. Would YOU try to tell the controlling stockholder that he cannot?
> there's not much to dislike about that!
People can hate Mother Teresa, they can still hate him. Unless they start making YouTube videos of him playing lawn tennis or croquet, like they did for John D. Rockefeller to turn him from the "evil monopolist" to the grandfatherly dodderer that he appears in the old movie reels.
You DO realize that he will still be there one day every two weeks, on average? He isn't retiring, he is just cutting down to 10%. He also controls the company due to his (and his Foundation's) stock ownership - expecting him to be treated in anything less than the manner that he currently is would be ridiculous.
What money? Most of his net worth is tied up in the (unrealized) value of the Microsoft stock that he owns. Therefore, if he dumps it or it tanks, he still ends up a mere multimillionaire :-) Hell, if Microsoft actually went belly up, he probably be worth just a few million from his house, cars, and movable chattel, and his father would have to include him and his daughter in the will, again.
Therefore, if Steve Ballmer really does drive the company into the ground, expect him back like Michael Corleone (or more realistically, like Steve Jobs back into Apple). If he doesn't, his Foundation will be broke, not to mention Melinda and daughter.
> often scientific ideas are presented by non-scientists,
> but then, at least, they should be chosen for their charisma.
What if he WAS? Do you think that climate researchers are any more charismatic than the rest of us, here?
Remember, these are the meteorologists who couldn't get their TV job, even in the smallest markets. :-)
There. Fixed it for you.
Remember Sonny Bono! Remember what's-his-name Kennedy!
> my logs show that there are people still using MSIE 4, MSIE 5 ... as well as Windows 95, and Win3.1
Or at least, so claims the HTTP traffic. I can and do fake my browser ID on occasion, and sometimes forget to unfake it when finished. My PERL scripts seldom use the ID of a fancy browser version, also.
> Upgrade, guys, upgrade!
I also run old versions of Windows on my virtual machines (not that I have a copy of Win3.1. MS-DOS 3.1, but not Win3.1). If I got a virus, it died when I reset the VM to a saved version, anyway.
Where is the whatcanpossiblygowrong tag, like last time? Have the Luddites left, already?
Do you mean that all those companies run their own networks, in parallel? Wow!
Isn't that a tad wasteful, though? I mean, think of all the telephone poles it takes to carry all those wires to every neighborhood.
> I'll take a gun less society anytime.
I believe that the tickets to London are affordable. Canada is closer, if you don't insist on a total ban of hunting rifles.