They also wax poetic about how awesome it is to be accountable to no one, and specifically gloat over not answering to the FDA. Now, IANAL, but I doubt their claim will stand up in court if/when the FDA says "Oh, really? We'll see about that." But leave that aside for a minute.
Why would being answerable to no one ever be a positive thing? Especially in the medical field! The entire reason the FDA exists is because people were selling sugar water for $30 a bottle and claiming it would cure any disease. Or worse, they would sell a folk remedy that turned out - once rigorous testing was done - to be poisonous. Anyone remember Vioxx? Or Fen-phen? History is replete with dozens of examples of serious complications like this.
Look at asbestos for example: it took decades of painstaking research to uncover the connection between asbestos and the diseases that are caused by exposure to it over very long periods of time, and not right away. But now? It's so hazardous entire specialized industries exist that serve no purpose but to know how to safely clean up asbestos-contaminated sites.
Similarly we have no idea what this therapy's non-obvious long term implications are. None. There is no way of knowing whether this treatment is going to lead to uncontrolled cell growth (that is, cause cancer) or somehow cause an auto-immune disease. Sure, using the patient's own cells makes this unlikely, but introducing bone marrow cells where they're not normally found might confuse the immune system. The FDA approval process is designed to mitigate these risks, and ensure that the procedure actually does what they say it does. Openly bragging about circumventing the FDA makes you a quack automatically, for that alone.
No, that's not what he's getting at at all, though he probably thinks it is. If it really didn't matter, then it's a meaningless attribute; therefore, he should have no preference one way or the other. Clearly he does (certain handles he doesn't want to hear). Given that you have to have a screen name in order to make services like this work, then why shouldn't people be able to name themselves something meaningful to them? They already have to choose a name, and choose well enough that it's unique.
It's not as if people are actively in a multiplayer match, then randomly decide -- while taking fire -- to stop playing, and redesign their handle. No, that happens before the battle is even joined; by the time you're in a match with someone, their handle is already immutable. "Shut up and play" sounds good, but is meaningless in this context. He gives the lie to his own statement: If all he cares about is playing the game, why should it matter whether the guy kicking his ass is named "GayInDallas" as opposed to "StormPanzer"?
Yeah! If you didn't like Fallout 3 because they changed things, I can't imagine why you'd want to play a Fallout game made by the creators of the original games.
Clear and plain? Not at all, given that the amendment uses the word "unreasonable" without providing any definition whatsoever as to what precisely is, or isn't, reasonable. The people are only protected against "unreasonable" searches without warrant. And before you say "no warrantless search is ever reasonable" consider the case of an on-duty cop who personally witnesses a crime in progress where every second counts (say, someone breaking into a house with a sledgehammer, or throwing a gagged child into the back of a van).
Given that clearly some searches are reasonable, even without a warrant, it isn't a question of "if" warrantless searches are ever OK, but "when" they are. And the Supreme Court has said, basically, that keeping contraband out of the country is enough of a good reason that warrantless border searches are "reasonable". You can disagree with the particular result, but this is not at all a black and white issue.
I continue to be amazed at how terms that only appear on the surface to be unambiguous and perfectly clear, actually hide seriously thorny issues of interpretation. If you've ever worked from a requirements document and tried to implement something that seems to be clear, until you start coding, it's basically the same thing.
The idea is that if you have a tool that can be used for legal and illegal purposes, then whether you are liable depends on what exactly you are doing with it. If I have a crowbar, for example, because I frequently need to move very heavy objects and the crowbar is convenient, that is one thing. If I get caught hanging around the back door of a business after closing with a crowbar and other burglars' tools, then claim when arrested "Oh, look, see, I need it for $LEGIT_PURPOSE" you should not expect this defense to work.
If something not only is capable of being used illegally, but in fact, is almost exclusively used for said illegal purpose, does that matter? If those who created the service give every indication that the illegal purposes are the intended purpose, only to sing a different story in court, does that matter?
And before you say "none of those things matter", another question: Would your answer be different if, instead of copyright infringement, we were discussing hit men? Supposing for the sake of argument that somebody operated a totally anonymous bulletin board called "HitMen4U" where anyone could post anything they wanted, but conveiently the board was set up to easily allow searching by dollar amount, location, and name of victim? Further suppose the operators often make statements supporting peoples' right to solve their problems with violence, and that huge numbers of people were being murdered as requested by this board. Would you support the site's right to exist?
They're both insightful comments and correct, as far as they go. Both of these things in fact cost large amounts of money. That both of them come from diametrically opposed perspectives doesn't make them less valid; instead, they're incomplete views of the whole picture. Remember the old saw about blind men and an elephant, each getting a different glimpse of the true nature of the beast? In fact, had I mod points, I probably would have modded both comments up, even though the second was clearly implying the first poster was full of it.
Did he just say Google is more powerful than the Governor of Califoria? The Governor of California can call up the national guard. I admit I haven't checked recently, but I don't recall there being a "click here to deploy National Guard troops to this address" button on Google Maps.
Everybody always talks about the weather, but when somebody tries to do something about it, "the man" has a fit. Next thing you know, you get labelled a "supervillain". And then you get beat up by a guy wearing pajamas. But they'll see, one day. Oh yes, I'll show them! I'll show all of them!
If you don't do what the voice in the implant tells you to do, you get a raging headache and are unable to sleep until you comply. When you try to tell anyone what's happening, it "accidentally" gives you a small seizure. See the difference now?
Even such a simple thing as why a ball falls when you drop it cannot be answered by science. A simple answer like "Gravity" describes the phenomenon, but does not truly explain why it occurs. All you have done is explain one thing in terms of another. This moves the question: Why does the ball fall? Because gravity makes it.
Why does gravity do that?
As most small children have discovered, it is great fun to simply continue asking "and why does that happen?" whenever anything scientific is being explained. Usually only a few levels of recursion are required before the answer essentially boils down to "we don't have a clue why it does that, we just know the data says it does that".
I have a lot of friends (no, really, I swear:) but I don't have many friends willing to spend 80 hours co-op with me on an RPG. Furthermore, given the nature of the game's willingness to let you make choices, it's an experience that would not gel well with multiple PCs. Suppose I want to kill the spy, but my co-op partner doesn't? Now either they don't allow such conflicts at al, in which case, the co-op "partner" isn't really a partner, or all of a sudden, co-op has a divergent storyline from single player. That would be a huge amount of extra work for something that (see my first point) would not often be played.
We already have enough games that tried to do too many things, or overly ambitious things, and had to be chopped up to be shoved out the door.
Apparently this manner of special-interest regulatory capture is standard operating procedure, and the exception is that it drew attention... this time. Those with a vested interest in being able to rig the process are probably not very happy that this happened, and they want this to blow over. Especially they don't want to give in, because if they do, then suddenly, SOP isn't "standard" anymore.
If I hadn't read the article, I would have said the fix is to have defense counsel go over the form - after all, that's what they're there for, to represent their client's interests. Then I find out that they did exactly that: the completed form was signed by both the prosecutor and the defense attorney before the judge sees it.
I'm with the author of the article: Any competent lawyer should never trust the number coming from the other side, for exactly this reason. To have your client be over-punished because you can't do basic arithmetic is just incompetent.
The article didn't say this, but I presume (since numerous other similar statistics are known to be true) that defense counsel were much more likely to make this mistake if they were public defenders. Lesson learned: If you're in that situation, never use public defenders. Your life depends on it.
Seems perfectly straightforward to me. The recruiter a) made untrue statements b) knowing them to be untrue c) in writing d) that damaged the reputation of this guy (by making him appear to be dishonest). That is all the required elements in most jurisdictions of libel. The damages are simple: the recruiter sent this man's resume to an unknown number of companies. (After all, once the recruiter has your resume, who knows what he did with it?) Any one of those companies now effectively will never hire this man. His potential job opportunities just got significantly curtailed for potentially a long time to come.
The benefit in going after him is simple. One should not be able to beat the system by fleeing, then hiding until the statute of limitations expires. The statute of limitations is designed to prevent the State from unfairly banhammering people after enough time has passed that practical matters mean evidence has been lost. Suppose someone shows up at your doorstop, and produces proof that a table you inherited from your grandmother was stolen 120 years ago, and wants you arrested. Is that fair? No.
However, in this case, any unfairness to the defendant caused by the passage of time, is his own damn fault. By fleeing and seeking asylum abroad, and continuing to hide quite successfully for decades, he sends several messages I severely disagree with. One, that covering up your crimes works; two, justice is not blind at all, and the rich and famous get away with anything they damn well please.
Sure, both of these things are in fact, more or less true. But they shouldn't be, and the system should not just throw up its hands and give up, merely because perfect achievement of its goals is impossible.
If you want to be a pro athlete, you have to be involved in the school athletics program. While I personally don't have the drive to be a pro athlete, I understand the call of fame and fortune. If you want to be a famous anything, athlete, movie star, whatever, then you have to take the chances you have. Sure, your chances of actually making it as a pro football player are low, but if you give up your dream because it's hard, then that chance becomes zero.
What you are saying is that someone who wants more than anything else to be a professional football player should abandon his dreams, give up, and become a good little productive unit.
Many legal experts have said Google had a strong case that what they were doing originally was not illegal at all. Witness the recent appeals court decision on remote DVR: even though the company technically made a copy, it was ruled to be fair use. Sure, Google scanned all these books without permission. But the factors of fair use weighed heavily in their favor. They were not selling any of the books at all, only offering snippets (clearly fair use) and the lawsuit was about whether the scanning itself was OK. Many observers say that because of the purpose of the activity, it was likely Google would prevail.
However, the settlement goes far beyond what activities Google was engaged in. It was a joint venture agreement masquerading as a class-action settlement. Indeed, it goes beyond even a joint-venture agreement, since it covers things no reasonable joint-venture could cover (such as granting permission to ignore certain rights held by persons unknown, unidentifiable, and/or unlocatable; not just the plaintiffs). It was a wholesale policy shift, to sell these books online, and more or less to permanently change the way copyright law interacted with very old books. Google's pre-lawsuit plans never involved sales at all.
That's a terrible analogy, because the Supreme Court has basically said that this is the "plain sight" rule: if something is in plain sight and the police officer has authorization to be there looking around, then it's fair game. If the cops have a warrant to search your premise for illegal drugs, then they can search basically the whole apartment. When they find the weapons, well, they were there, and the police cannot ignore evidence of a crime. However, if what the cops have is a warrant saying they suspect you stole a Porsche and hid it in your garage, then they have no business searching your apartment (because you can't hide a stolen vehicle there).
The database analogy is like saying to the building superintendent "We have a search warrant for this apartment, let us in" and then saying "and while we're on the subject, open all the other apartments in this building". That is clearly not allowed.
So you 1) point out that correlation does not equal causation, then proceed to 2) say that it's likely that the obesity causes the brain aging seen in this study?
Because that is essentially your argument: that obesity directly causes a host of other factors, which collectively explain the observed correlation (brain aging). Therefore, obesity causes the mental decline, only indirectly. I fail to see any significant difference between the implication that obesity directly harms the brain, and that obesity, while not in itself injurious, causes people to behave in ways that are.
Often, denying the claim actually makes more people believe in it. It appears to be because if you recap the false claim as you're denying it, you are simply repeating the rumor - which makes it spread more. People will either ignore, or forget, that they heard you denying it, and will just remember you said it yourself.
So for certain kinds of rumors, the best way to deal with it is to simply attempt to silence anyone who vectors it. See the Proctor and Gamble rumors, which have been persistent for decades.
Note that this says nothing about whether such tactics are indicative of a true rumor or a false one; in P&G's case, the rumor is clearly bogus. In this case? I am not a financial auditor, so I couldn't say. They could be trying to bury it because it's scurrilous lies, and they don't want the company to collapse. Or they could be guilty as sin.
Slashdot Mirror
They also wax poetic about how awesome it is to be accountable to no one, and specifically gloat over not answering to the FDA. Now, IANAL, but I doubt their claim will stand up in court if/when the FDA says "Oh, really? We'll see about that." But leave that aside for a minute.
Why would being answerable to no one ever be a positive thing? Especially in the medical field! The entire reason the FDA exists is because people were selling sugar water for $30 a bottle and claiming it would cure any disease. Or worse, they would sell a folk remedy that turned out - once rigorous testing was done - to be poisonous. Anyone remember Vioxx? Or Fen-phen? History is replete with dozens of examples of serious complications like this.
Look at asbestos for example: it took decades of painstaking research to uncover the connection between asbestos and the diseases that are caused by exposure to it over very long periods of time, and not right away. But now? It's so hazardous entire specialized industries exist that serve no purpose but to know how to safely clean up asbestos-contaminated sites.
Similarly we have no idea what this therapy's non-obvious long term implications are. None. There is no way of knowing whether this treatment is going to lead to uncontrolled cell growth (that is, cause cancer) or somehow cause an auto-immune disease. Sure, using the patient's own cells makes this unlikely, but introducing bone marrow cells where they're not normally found might confuse the immune system. The FDA approval process is designed to mitigate these risks, and ensure that the procedure actually does what they say it does. Openly bragging about circumventing the FDA makes you a quack automatically, for that alone.
No, that's not what he's getting at at all, though he probably thinks it is. If it really didn't matter, then it's a meaningless attribute; therefore, he should have no preference one way or the other. Clearly he does (certain handles he doesn't want to hear). Given that you have to have a screen name in order to make services like this work, then why shouldn't people be able to name themselves something meaningful to them? They already have to choose a name, and choose well enough that it's unique.
It's not as if people are actively in a multiplayer match, then randomly decide -- while taking fire -- to stop playing, and redesign their handle. No, that happens before the battle is even joined; by the time you're in a match with someone, their handle is already immutable. "Shut up and play" sounds good, but is meaningless in this context. He gives the lie to his own statement: If all he cares about is playing the game, why should it matter whether the guy kicking his ass is named "GayInDallas" as opposed to "StormPanzer"?
Yeah! If you didn't like Fallout 3 because they changed things, I can't imagine why you'd want to play a Fallout game made by the creators of the original games.
Clear and plain? Not at all, given that the amendment uses the word "unreasonable" without providing any definition whatsoever as to what precisely is, or isn't, reasonable. The people are only protected against "unreasonable" searches without warrant. And before you say "no warrantless search is ever reasonable" consider the case of an on-duty cop who personally witnesses a crime in progress where every second counts (say, someone breaking into a house with a sledgehammer, or throwing a gagged child into the back of a van).
Given that clearly some searches are reasonable, even without a warrant, it isn't a question of "if" warrantless searches are ever OK, but "when" they are. And the Supreme Court has said, basically, that keeping contraband out of the country is enough of a good reason that warrantless border searches are "reasonable". You can disagree with the particular result, but this is not at all a black and white issue.
I continue to be amazed at how terms that only appear on the surface to be unambiguous and perfectly clear, actually hide seriously thorny issues of interpretation. If you've ever worked from a requirements document and tried to implement something that seems to be clear, until you start coding, it's basically the same thing.
Yes, but to get in the door, you have to have TEA and NO TEA at the same time.
The idea is that if you have a tool that can be used for legal and illegal purposes, then whether you are liable depends on what exactly you are doing with it. If I have a crowbar, for example, because I frequently need to move very heavy objects and the crowbar is convenient, that is one thing. If I get caught hanging around the back door of a business after closing with a crowbar and other burglars' tools, then claim when arrested "Oh, look, see, I need it for $LEGIT_PURPOSE" you should not expect this defense to work.
If something not only is capable of being used illegally, but in fact, is almost exclusively used for said illegal purpose, does that matter? If those who created the service give every indication that the illegal purposes are the intended purpose, only to sing a different story in court, does that matter?
And before you say "none of those things matter", another question: Would your answer be different if, instead of copyright infringement, we were discussing hit men? Supposing for the sake of argument that somebody operated a totally anonymous bulletin board called "HitMen4U" where anyone could post anything they wanted, but conveiently the board was set up to easily allow searching by dollar amount, location, and name of victim? Further suppose the operators often make statements supporting peoples' right to solve their problems with violence, and that huge numbers of people were being murdered as requested by this board. Would you support the site's right to exist?
They're both insightful comments and correct, as far as they go. Both of these things in fact cost large amounts of money. That both of them come from diametrically opposed perspectives doesn't make them less valid; instead, they're incomplete views of the whole picture. Remember the old saw about blind men and an elephant, each getting a different glimpse of the true nature of the beast? In fact, had I mod points, I probably would have modded both comments up, even though the second was clearly implying the first poster was full of it.
Did he just say Google is more powerful than the Governor of Califoria? The Governor of California can call up the national guard. I admit I haven't checked recently, but I don't recall there being a "click here to deploy National Guard troops to this address" button on Google Maps.
Everybody always talks about the weather, but when somebody tries to do something about it, "the man" has a fit. Next thing you know, you get labelled a "supervillain". And then you get beat up by a guy wearing pajamas. But they'll see, one day. Oh yes, I'll show them! I'll show all of them!
Rule 34? Of NIMF? Are you insane? Didn't anyone tell you to never cross the, uh, streams!
If you don't do what the voice in the implant tells you to do, you get a raging headache and are unable to sleep until you comply. When you try to tell anyone what's happening, it "accidentally" gives you a small seizure. See the difference now?
Even such a simple thing as why a ball falls when you drop it cannot be answered by science. A simple answer like "Gravity" describes the phenomenon, but does not truly explain why it occurs. All you have done is explain one thing in terms of another. This moves the question: Why does the ball fall? Because gravity makes it.
Why does gravity do that?
As most small children have discovered, it is great fun to simply continue asking "and why does that happen?" whenever anything scientific is being explained. Usually only a few levels of recursion are required before the answer essentially boils down to "we don't have a clue why it does that, we just know the data says it does that".
I have a lot of friends (no, really, I swear :) but I don't have many friends willing to spend 80 hours co-op with me on an RPG. Furthermore, given the nature of the game's willingness to let you make choices, it's an experience that would not gel well with multiple PCs. Suppose I want to kill the spy, but my co-op partner doesn't? Now either they don't allow such conflicts at al, in which case, the co-op "partner" isn't really a partner, or all of a sudden, co-op has a divergent storyline from single player. That would be a huge amount of extra work for something that (see my first point) would not often be played.
We already have enough games that tried to do too many things, or overly ambitious things, and had to be chopped up to be shoved out the door.
Apparently this manner of special-interest regulatory capture is standard operating procedure, and the exception is that it drew attention ... this time. Those with a vested interest in being able to rig the process are probably not very happy that this happened, and they want this to blow over. Especially they don't want to give in, because if they do, then suddenly, SOP isn't "standard" anymore.
If I hadn't read the article, I would have said the fix is to have defense counsel go over the form - after all, that's what they're there for, to represent their client's interests. Then I find out that they did exactly that: the completed form was signed by both the prosecutor and the defense attorney before the judge sees it.
I'm with the author of the article: Any competent lawyer should never trust the number coming from the other side, for exactly this reason. To have your client be over-punished because you can't do basic arithmetic is just incompetent.
The article didn't say this, but I presume (since numerous other similar statistics are known to be true) that defense counsel were much more likely to make this mistake if they were public defenders. Lesson learned: If you're in that situation, never use public defenders. Your life depends on it.
Seems perfectly straightforward to me. The recruiter a) made untrue statements b) knowing them to be untrue c) in writing d) that damaged the reputation of this guy (by making him appear to be dishonest). That is all the required elements in most jurisdictions of libel. The damages are simple: the recruiter sent this man's resume to an unknown number of companies. (After all, once the recruiter has your resume, who knows what he did with it?) Any one of those companies now effectively will never hire this man. His potential job opportunities just got significantly curtailed for potentially a long time to come.
The benefit in going after him is simple. One should not be able to beat the system by fleeing, then hiding until the statute of limitations expires. The statute of limitations is designed to prevent the State from unfairly banhammering people after enough time has passed that practical matters mean evidence has been lost. Suppose someone shows up at your doorstop, and produces proof that a table you inherited from your grandmother was stolen 120 years ago, and wants you arrested. Is that fair? No.
However, in this case, any unfairness to the defendant caused by the passage of time, is his own damn fault. By fleeing and seeking asylum abroad, and continuing to hide quite successfully for decades, he sends several messages I severely disagree with. One, that covering up your crimes works; two, justice is not blind at all, and the rich and famous get away with anything they damn well please.
Sure, both of these things are in fact, more or less true. But they shouldn't be, and the system should not just throw up its hands and give up, merely because perfect achievement of its goals is impossible.
If you want to be a pro athlete, you have to be involved in the school athletics program. While I personally don't have the drive to be a pro athlete, I understand the call of fame and fortune. If you want to be a famous anything, athlete, movie star, whatever, then you have to take the chances you have. Sure, your chances of actually making it as a pro football player are low, but if you give up your dream because it's hard, then that chance becomes zero.
What you are saying is that someone who wants more than anything else to be a professional football player should abandon his dreams, give up, and become a good little productive unit.
Many legal experts have said Google had a strong case that what they were doing originally was not illegal at all. Witness the recent appeals court decision on remote DVR: even though the company technically made a copy, it was ruled to be fair use. Sure, Google scanned all these books without permission. But the factors of fair use weighed heavily in their favor. They were not selling any of the books at all, only offering snippets (clearly fair use) and the lawsuit was about whether the scanning itself was OK. Many observers say that because of the purpose of the activity, it was likely Google would prevail.
However, the settlement goes far beyond what activities Google was engaged in. It was a joint venture agreement masquerading as a class-action settlement. Indeed, it goes beyond even a joint-venture agreement, since it covers things no reasonable joint-venture could cover (such as granting permission to ignore certain rights held by persons unknown, unidentifiable, and/or unlocatable; not just the plaintiffs). It was a wholesale policy shift, to sell these books online, and more or less to permanently change the way copyright law interacted with very old books. Google's pre-lawsuit plans never involved sales at all.
Don't worry about it. You've already displayed more attention to detail than those involved with actually writing the dialog for the real show.
I know kung fu.
That's a terrible analogy, because the Supreme Court has basically said that this is the "plain sight" rule: if something is in plain sight and the police officer has authorization to be there looking around, then it's fair game. If the cops have a warrant to search your premise for illegal drugs, then they can search basically the whole apartment. When they find the weapons, well, they were there, and the police cannot ignore evidence of a crime. However, if what the cops have is a warrant saying they suspect you stole a Porsche and hid it in your garage, then they have no business searching your apartment (because you can't hide a stolen vehicle there).
The database analogy is like saying to the building superintendent "We have a search warrant for this apartment, let us in" and then saying "and while we're on the subject, open all the other apartments in this building". That is clearly not allowed.
So you 1) point out that correlation does not equal causation, then proceed to 2) say that it's likely that the obesity causes the brain aging seen in this study?
Because that is essentially your argument: that obesity directly causes a host of other factors, which collectively explain the observed correlation (brain aging). Therefore, obesity causes the mental decline, only indirectly. I fail to see any significant difference between the implication that obesity directly harms the brain, and that obesity, while not in itself injurious, causes people to behave in ways that are.
Often, denying the claim actually makes more people believe in it. It appears to be because if you recap the false claim as you're denying it, you are simply repeating the rumor - which makes it spread more. People will either ignore, or forget, that they heard you denying it, and will just remember you said it yourself.
So for certain kinds of rumors, the best way to deal with it is to simply attempt to silence anyone who vectors it. See the Proctor and Gamble rumors, which have been persistent for decades.
Note that this says nothing about whether such tactics are indicative of a true rumor or a false one; in P&G's case, the rumor is clearly bogus. In this case? I am not a financial auditor, so I couldn't say. They could be trying to bury it because it's scurrilous lies, and they don't want the company to collapse. Or they could be guilty as sin.
I put on my robe and wizard hat?