Ah...but let someone post a picture or Muhammad or a desecrated Koran and everyone goes nutts:)
It's their right to take down any picture they way, just like it's anyone elses' right to not use flikr. Piss off enough users and *poof* you face into obscurity.
That said, keeping some semblance of order and control is generally a good thing. They more edgy things you allow, the more drama you bring to your site. Good for page views in the short term but also likely to push people away in the long term.
Except the police are public servants. While at work or doing work-related things they're public employees and their actions are not guaranteed the same privacy a "normal" citizen is.
Watching his house is a bit iffy, but if the picture and information were publicly available then publishing that information shout not have any penalty. Note - they didn't arrest her for stalking.
It's amazing how the police fight to their dying breath to hide what they do on a regular basis. Not only undercover, but try following a cop car or beat cop around with a camcorder. I bet it doesn't take more than a few minutes before you're questioned and told to stop...and when you don't listen I'd give about even odds you're arrested, detained, or have some other right violated.
...or to put it more simply: The stock market is FAR more complex than most of the people comparing it to gambling even suspect. Investing in the 'market *IS* still a risk but it's one so complex it's impossible to put actual odds on.
Do tell. There are several counting systems that, while not simple, are not exceptionally difficult. If you were allowed unrestricted use of one (even if you have to count entirely in your head) there's the obvious potential for exponential profit.
I would love to know how I could make 7 figures in a job I could do any time i wanted, an hours i wanted and, given internet gambling, from anywhere i wanted.
Instead of "moving servers" he should have out-sourced to a wholly owned subsidiary. I believe that would actually have been legal with the right juggling of books.
You really have no idea what you're talking about. Your post is factually and conceptually incorrect on so many levels.
"automated systems" aka matching engines don't put things up for sale like on ebay and someone else clicks the buy button. You put a sell/offer order in, someone else puts a bid/buy order in. Both have to exist PRIOR to an actual transaction. The matching engine does the 2+2 and you get your trade.
'Sub-second' is actually a few 10's of milliseconds in ideal cases...which is NOT what your fancy etrade account will give you.
Day trader refers to someone who makes stock trades full-time and, based on small fluctuations in the market aims to profit. They do NOT match sell/buy offers manually - you're thinking of the people who work on an exchange floor which are a dwindling minority at this point.
Suggesting we take the liquidity out of the stock market would only serve to crash it. People invest because it's liquid, because they have access, because they can make money or bail out if things turn south. Who would invest in anything but the most solid and stable (which 99.9% implies extremely slow growth) companies? You'd do better buying bonds or CDs.
Day traders have some things in common with gamblers, but there are also many key points that separate them. I'm not promoting day trading or the risks of the stock market, but it's very much NOT the same thing as spinning a roulette wheel.
If you think a quarterly report is the only thing that matters in business you're sadly mistaken. 'Legally published' is a fantasy term. Any document a company publishes they are legally responsible for. Documents published about a company? Oh yes, someone is responsible for that too. How about, 2 weeks after a quarterly report when a companies blockbuster AIDS cure is unexpectedly shot down by the FDA...you should ignore it and wait to read about it next quarter? Come on. Without liquidity and WITH your 3 month rule you make it MORE like gambling, not less.
Now, with that cleared up...I do agree the stock market has problems that are driving our economy in a... less than ideal direction. Companies hold mass lay-offs essentially just to drive up stock prices. Companies marginalize employees, their benefits, compensation, value, and job security because it helps their P&L.
Wait, how can a firm based in costa-rica rig bets on boxing or horse racing? They can't any more than the "legal" betting venues such as OTB, vegas casinos, etc.
I mean, even if you didn't RTA, the site itself is "betonsports".
Tax evasion...yeah. Gotta love that one. It's nothing like extortion. (sarcasm) Pay us this % of your income or we arrest you.
As for other online gambling - cards and the like, it's not exceptionally difficult to write a monitoring program to count cards and make sure things fall within proper probability parameters. I mean, you actually CAN'T do that in vegas. If you walked in with anything to count cards, measure odds, or even track... anything on a casino floor you'd be ejected in minutes if not arrested. You have to trust the casino and government monitors. Does a dealer show you each individual card in each deck before they deal blackjack? Are you sure there's 20 aces in 5-deck blackjack? NO. In the end it's all...just a gamble.
The terms say nothing about protecting your privacy.
Regardless of that, the general situation (large crowd with cameras all over) pretty much guarantees you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. I challenge you to find case law or a judge that would disagree.
You misunderstand what a public venue is. Requiring ticket purchase does not make it a private venue.
And no, the expectations of privacy are NOT high. The terms say BMO take ownership of pictures/video when 'any third party displays or disseminates'. The event does NOT guarantee or even directly offer privacy. It does NOT prohibit photography. This isn't a splitting hairs, type thing, it's a realistic evaluation by a judge which is why I used quotes. If you think a person can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in an open area surrounded by thousands of people who are free to look, photograph, video, sketch, or do just about anything else then I think you mis-understand what privacy is. In addition, there are plenty of nudie shots from past BM events. The inside of your closed tent, yes, you can expect privacy. Walk around with your junk swinging? No.
BM does have the right to enforce whatever rules they want provided they don't break existing applicable law. However, if you don't want people to know you do/did something then don't do it in plain sight (or at all)!
These rules provide only the slightest protection. You can't make a picture un-public once it hits the net. You can't avoid 'fair use' of that picture either so there's no real protection for the individuals either. In the end, BM can do whatever they want, but the bad publicity can certainly help convince them to do what their customers/fans want...or people will stop attending and the event dies.
Does your office permit visitors/guests? If so, at least part of it is a public venue. I can legally enter without invitation. It is privately owned/leased space being used as a public venue.
You, of course, can expel me and ban me from coming back - at which point it would be trespassing - but until that point I'm NOT committing a crime.
A private home is different - it is NOT expected that uninvited individuals enter. It is not only privately owned but a private venue as well.
Besides all this, someone standing OUTSIDE the event with a telephoto lens could take pictures and not be bound by event rules over ownership of the pictures. The person being photographed would have a fairly difficult time proving in court they had a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' being nude among thousands of other people.
But that's totally different. This is property (privately or publicly owned) that is open for the general public to enter. Yes, there may be a ticket purchase, but it is open to the general public.
If those cabins were open for tours by the general public it would be different.
A shopping mall would be a much closer analogy. Ownership of the land has little to no meaning if it is a public *venue*
Sorry, but it IS a public place. You misunderstand the definition of public, private and privately-owned public venues.
A private place is somewhere the general public can not go without invitation (inside your house for example). A country club that requires membership is not public.
A publicly place is somewhere that the general public can go. Some may be ticketed, some may have fences, some may be wide-open park lands. BM is a public event.
Your local shopping mall is privately owned. BUT it is a public venue. Private property, but OPEN to the public.
The county park is public/government property that's (usually!) open to the public.
Now, a public venue can have rules - no photography, no nudity, all-your-picture-are-belong-to-us, etc. BUT as GP stated (with slight edit): If you don't want nude pictures of yourself taken, don't be nude in a public venue that permits photography.
Go start your own nude event that bans photography...or just stop thinking that everyone else's actions must accommodate your desires.:)
Lasik is much more than a simple cosmetic procedure. You would understand better if you had poor vision (e.g. glasses/contacts necessary for all waking hours) and had it done. It may not be medically "necessary" but is profoundly life changing.
As for hospitals inventing 'emergency' bills...simply require legitimate documentation and if you believe they manipulating prices intentionally to overcharge, then sue. I love how 'someone, somewhere will do something wrong... eventually' is considered a valid argument against something. Granted it's used all the time...but still seems silly when you consider it.
And the over-regulation doesn't help either. There are laws in place that require a doctor to approve even simple things (ahem, antibiotics) and the prices that go along with it. Heck, a parent of a 10 year old has probably seen enough strep cultures to do it him/herself...and can probably figure out...yep...another ear infection, let's get the pink stuff out of the fridge.
But instead you have to either have insurance or pay a doctor ~$100 to see him for ~30 seconds (nurse and PA tend to do 99% of the work in a GP office) just to get told what you know.
I'm not saying let anyone hang a single with M.D. on it but the super-tight regulations ensure that a hugely comprehensive medical plan is necessary even for basic care.
In a police state (unregulated) crime is pretty rare, however I hope you don't mind the complete lack of privacy and civil rights. I promise only state approved thugs...errr...police officers will be breaking into...erm...conducting random surveys of your house and raping..erm...frisking your wife for kitchen utensils...erm...dangerous weapons.
Don't bring a sniper rifle to a knife fight, eh? Both examples are significantly different than a bar-fight-gone-wrong. However, pray-and-spray is much closer to how it would go in a bar fight than prepared sniper vs. unaware target.
Guns are plenty scary against one or many targets. But give your average joe who doesn't handle guns a 9mm and ask him to hit a running/dodging person at 50ft on one clip? Fat chance. A trained soldier or cop? Different story but it's still no where near one-shot, one-kill. Why don't cops start shooting at fleeing suspects 99% of the time? Because they're more likely to hit everything else BUT the suspect.
MAD is essentially irrelevant. Firing a gun (and even killing someone) will not cause a large-scale firefight where a significant portion of the population dies. But if you insist...MAD acttually very much DID work. No one was willing to pull the trigger. There wasn't even any 'limited warfare'. It DID work.
A gun has nothing to do with motivation. It does make a fight very one-sided though. But you mistake motivation for capability. A sufficiently motivated person can generally wound or kill another with relative ease.
Let's take a different perspective. If all gun control laws were abolished...carry an AK-47 down 5th ave in NYC if you like...who would rob convinience stores? You KNOW every owner will have a gun. Heck, at that point assume 10% of people carry. There's a good chance someone in the store has a gun too then. Criminals stupid enough to attempt armed robbery might get one or two chances at it and then the trip to the morgue pretty much guarantees an end to the crime spree. Rob someone's house? Sure...till the owner's neighbor shoots you as you leave.
What's that saying...'the best defense is a good offense'
Oddly it's more expensive to execute someone than to let them rot in jail for the rest of their life.
But after the debacle with the NY state government I've entirely given up hope. If it's OK to suspend the constitution over 'terrorism' how about we suspend it one last time over our government not acting in the interest of our country. Kill em all and let god* sort them out.
*or whatever deity you prefer. Atheists can sit smugly knowing no one else has to clean up their trash:)
I don't understand why people insist on comparing virtual 'goods' or 'services' to tangible goods in a store. They're entirely different.
I can guarantee you that 7 hours of voice calls did not cost the cell provider anywhere near $40. Not by an order of magnitude. yes, there's capital investment in cell towers, network, etc. but it's spread over literally millions of users and billions upon billions of phone calls and, i'd venture, trillions of call-minutes over the life of the investment.
To clarify for you though - what you got was a phone and 7 hours of calls for $40. The "value" of the calls is entirely arbitrary. Not having a contract is a Good Thing in by book but don't be fooled by 'free with purchase' promotions. That second set of ginsu knives is not worth an astounding $99 value for just just $19.99:)
I'm not sure how you can claim $600 is a 'fair' price for an iPhone with a straight face. I can buy a good computer or very decent laptop for that much money. Those are certainly more complex.
Handsets are sickeningly marked up because the cost isn't directly apparent to consumers. The smoke and mirrors of 'contract discounted pricing' allows cell companies to get away with it though.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually no. EZPass charges you $1/month now.
Ah...but let someone post a picture or Muhammad or a desecrated Koran and everyone goes nutts :)
It's their right to take down any picture they way, just like it's anyone elses' right to not use flikr. Piss off enough users and *poof* you face into obscurity.
That said, keeping some semblance of order and control is generally a good thing. They more edgy things you allow, the more drama you bring to your site. Good for page views in the short term but also likely to push people away in the long term.
Except the police are public servants. While at work or doing work-related things they're public employees and their actions are not guaranteed the same privacy a "normal" citizen is.
Watching his house is a bit iffy, but if the picture and information were publicly available then publishing that information shout not have any penalty. Note - they didn't arrest her for stalking.
It's amazing how the police fight to their dying breath to hide what they do on a regular basis. Not only undercover, but try following a cop car or beat cop around with a camcorder. I bet it doesn't take more than a few minutes before you're questioned and told to stop...and when you don't listen I'd give about even odds you're arrested, detained, or have some other right violated.
...or to put it more simply: The stock market is FAR more complex than most of the people comparing it to gambling even suspect. Investing in the 'market *IS* still a risk but it's one so complex it's impossible to put actual odds on.
Do tell. There are several counting systems that, while not simple, are not exceptionally difficult. If you were allowed unrestricted use of one (even if you have to count entirely in your head) there's the obvious potential for exponential profit.
I would love to know how I could make 7 figures in a job I could do any time i wanted, an hours i wanted and, given internet gambling, from anywhere i wanted.
Instead of "moving servers" he should have out-sourced to a wholly owned subsidiary. I believe that would actually have been legal with the right juggling of books.
You really have no idea what you're talking about. Your post is factually and conceptually incorrect on so many levels.
"automated systems" aka matching engines don't put things up for sale like on ebay and someone else clicks the buy button. You put a sell/offer order in, someone else puts a bid/buy order in. Both have to exist PRIOR to an actual transaction. The matching engine does the 2+2 and you get your trade.
'Sub-second' is actually a few 10's of milliseconds in ideal cases...which is NOT what your fancy etrade account will give you.
Day trader refers to someone who makes stock trades full-time and, based on small fluctuations in the market aims to profit. They do NOT match sell/buy offers manually - you're thinking of the people who work on an exchange floor which are a dwindling minority at this point.
Suggesting we take the liquidity out of the stock market would only serve to crash it. People invest because it's liquid, because they have access, because they can make money or bail out if things turn south. Who would invest in anything but the most solid and stable (which 99.9% implies extremely slow growth) companies? You'd do better buying bonds or CDs.
Day traders have some things in common with gamblers, but there are also many key points that separate them. I'm not promoting day trading or the risks of the stock market, but it's very much NOT the same thing as spinning a roulette wheel.
If you think a quarterly report is the only thing that matters in business you're sadly mistaken. 'Legally published' is a fantasy term. Any document a company publishes they are legally responsible for. Documents published about a company? Oh yes, someone is responsible for that too. How about, 2 weeks after a quarterly report when a companies blockbuster AIDS cure is unexpectedly shot down by the FDA...you should ignore it and wait to read about it next quarter? Come on. Without liquidity and WITH your 3 month rule you make it MORE like gambling, not less.
Now, with that cleared up...I do agree the stock market has problems that are driving our economy in a ... less than ideal direction. Companies hold mass lay-offs essentially just to drive up stock prices. Companies marginalize employees, their benefits, compensation, value, and job security because it helps their P&L.
Actually, barter is subject to taxation legally.
Generally no one pays the taxes and it's not easy to track so the IRS ignores it (for now).
Trying to replace money with bartering? Welcome to...yep...tax evasion!
Wait, how can a firm based in costa-rica rig bets on boxing or horse racing? They can't any more than the "legal" betting venues such as OTB, vegas casinos, etc.
I mean, even if you didn't RTA, the site itself is "betonsports".
Tax evasion...yeah. Gotta love that one. It's nothing like extortion. (sarcasm) Pay us this % of your income or we arrest you.
As for other online gambling - cards and the like, it's not exceptionally difficult to write a monitoring program to count cards and make sure things fall within proper probability parameters. I mean, you actually CAN'T do that in vegas. If you walked in with anything to count cards, measure odds, or even track ... anything on a casino floor you'd be ejected in minutes if not arrested. You have to trust the casino and government monitors. Does a dealer show you each individual card in each deck before they deal blackjack? Are you sure there's 20 aces in 5-deck blackjack? NO. In the end it's all...just a gamble.
RTFA ... or terms.
The terms say nothing about protecting your privacy.
Regardless of that, the general situation (large crowd with cameras all over) pretty much guarantees you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. I challenge you to find case law or a judge that would disagree.
You misunderstand what a public venue is. Requiring ticket purchase does not make it a private venue.
And no, the expectations of privacy are NOT high. The terms say BMO take ownership of pictures/video when 'any third party displays or disseminates'. The event does NOT guarantee or even directly offer privacy. It does NOT prohibit photography. This isn't a splitting hairs, type thing, it's a realistic evaluation by a judge which is why I used quotes. If you think a person can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in an open area surrounded by thousands of people who are free to look, photograph, video, sketch, or do just about anything else then I think you mis-understand what privacy is. In addition, there are plenty of nudie shots from past BM events. The inside of your closed tent, yes, you can expect privacy. Walk around with your junk swinging? No.
BM does have the right to enforce whatever rules they want provided they don't break existing applicable law. However, if you don't want people to know you do/did something then don't do it in plain sight (or at all)!
These rules provide only the slightest protection. You can't make a picture un-public once it hits the net. You can't avoid 'fair use' of that picture either so there's no real protection for the individuals either. In the end, BM can do whatever they want, but the bad publicity can certainly help convince them to do what their customers/fans want...or people will stop attending and the event dies.
Does your office permit visitors/guests? If so, at least part of it is a public venue. I can legally enter without invitation. It is privately owned/leased space being used as a public venue.
You, of course, can expel me and ban me from coming back - at which point it would be trespassing - but until that point I'm NOT committing a crime.
A private home is different - it is NOT expected that uninvited individuals enter. It is not only privately owned but a private venue as well.
Besides all this, someone standing OUTSIDE the event with a telephoto lens could take pictures and not be bound by event rules over ownership of the pictures. The person being photographed would have a fairly difficult time proving in court they had a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' being nude among thousands of other people.
But that's totally different. This is property (privately or publicly owned) that is open for the general public to enter. Yes, there may be a ticket purchase, but it is open to the general public.
If those cabins were open for tours by the general public it would be different.
A shopping mall would be a much closer analogy. Ownership of the land has little to no meaning if it is a public *venue*
Sorry, but it IS a public place. You misunderstand the definition of public, private and privately-owned public venues.
A private place is somewhere the general public can not go without invitation (inside your house for example). A country club that requires membership is not public.
A publicly place is somewhere that the general public can go. Some may be ticketed, some may have fences, some may be wide-open park lands. BM is a public event.
Your local shopping mall is privately owned. BUT it is a public venue. Private property, but OPEN to the public.
The county park is public/government property that's (usually!) open to the public.
Now, a public venue can have rules - no photography, no nudity, all-your-picture-are-belong-to-us, etc. BUT as GP stated (with slight edit): If you don't want nude pictures of yourself taken, don't be nude in a public venue that permits photography.
Go start your own nude event that bans photography...or just stop thinking that everyone else's actions must accommodate your desires. :)
Lasik is much more than a simple cosmetic procedure. You would understand better if you had poor vision (e.g. glasses/contacts necessary for all waking hours) and had it done. It may not be medically "necessary" but is profoundly life changing.
As for hospitals inventing 'emergency' bills...simply require legitimate documentation and if you believe they manipulating prices intentionally to overcharge, then sue. I love how 'someone, somewhere will do something wrong ... eventually' is considered a valid argument against something. Granted it's used all the time...but still seems silly when you consider it.
And the over-regulation doesn't help either. There are laws in place that require a doctor to approve even simple things (ahem, antibiotics) and the prices that go along with it. Heck, a parent of a 10 year old has probably seen enough strep cultures to do it him/herself...and can probably figure out...yep...another ear infection, let's get the pink stuff out of the fridge.
But instead you have to either have insurance or pay a doctor ~$100 to see him for ~30 seconds (nurse and PA tend to do 99% of the work in a GP office) just to get told what you know.
I'm not saying let anyone hang a single with M.D. on it but the super-tight regulations ensure that a hugely comprehensive medical plan is necessary even for basic care.
Get a concealed carry permit in NYC without being retired PD or very politically connected and get back it me.
It's essentially impossible.
So I park a tank in my yard. My neighbor has a RPG.
Someone always has a 'bigger' gun.
Freedom is not free.
In a police state (unregulated) crime is pretty rare, however I hope you don't mind the complete lack of privacy and civil rights. I promise only state approved thugs...errr...police officers will be breaking into...erm...conducting random surveys of your house and raping..erm...frisking your wife for kitchen utensils...erm...dangerous weapons.
Don't bring a sniper rifle to a knife fight, eh? Both examples are significantly different than a bar-fight-gone-wrong. However, pray-and-spray is much closer to how it would go in a bar fight than prepared sniper vs. unaware target.
Guns are plenty scary against one or many targets. But give your average joe who doesn't handle guns a 9mm and ask him to hit a running/dodging person at 50ft on one clip? Fat chance. A trained soldier or cop? Different story but it's still no where near one-shot, one-kill. Why don't cops start shooting at fleeing suspects 99% of the time? Because they're more likely to hit everything else BUT the suspect.
Sorry, but you're wrong on so many points.
MAD is essentially irrelevant. Firing a gun (and even killing someone) will not cause a large-scale firefight where a significant portion of the population dies. But if you insist...MAD acttually very much DID work. No one was willing to pull the trigger. There wasn't even any 'limited warfare'. It DID work.
A gun has nothing to do with motivation. It does make a fight very one-sided though. But you mistake motivation for capability. A sufficiently motivated person can generally wound or kill another with relative ease.
Let's take a different perspective. If all gun control laws were abolished...carry an AK-47 down 5th ave in NYC if you like...who would rob convinience stores? You KNOW every owner will have a gun. Heck, at that point assume 10% of people carry. There's a good chance someone in the store has a gun too then. Criminals stupid enough to attempt armed robbery might get one or two chances at it and then the trip to the morgue pretty much guarantees an end to the crime spree. Rob someone's house? Sure...till the owner's neighbor shoots you as you leave.
What's that saying...'the best defense is a good offense'
Oddly it's more expensive to execute someone than to let them rot in jail for the rest of their life.
But after the debacle with the NY state government I've entirely given up hope. If it's OK to suspend the constitution over 'terrorism' how about we suspend it one last time over our government not acting in the interest of our country. Kill em all and let god* sort them out.
*or whatever deity you prefer. Atheists can sit smugly knowing no one else has to clean up their trash :)
I don't understand why people insist on comparing virtual 'goods' or 'services' to tangible goods in a store. They're entirely different.
I can guarantee you that 7 hours of voice calls did not cost the cell provider anywhere near $40. Not by an order of magnitude. yes, there's capital investment in cell towers, network, etc. but it's spread over literally millions of users and billions upon billions of phone calls and, i'd venture, trillions of call-minutes over the life of the investment.
To clarify for you though - what you got was a phone and 7 hours of calls for $40. The "value" of the calls is entirely arbitrary. Not having a contract is a Good Thing in by book but don't be fooled by 'free with purchase' promotions. That second set of ginsu knives is not worth an astounding $99 value for just just $19.99 :)
I'm not sure how you can claim $600 is a 'fair' price for an iPhone with a straight face. I can buy a good computer or very decent laptop for that much money. Those are certainly more complex.
Handsets are sickeningly marked up because the cost isn't directly apparent to consumers. The smoke and mirrors of 'contract discounted pricing' allows cell companies to get away with it though.