I must be missing something, because I think what you said is, "Israel isn't really Jewish, outside of part of the court system", and that can't be it. It may be that your qualifications for what constitutes a "[insert religion here] regime" are far stricter than mine. I'm not saying that Israel is a theocracy (and while Iran is a little closer, I don't think it is either). OTOH, both are a lot more than what you get with the typical Western European established religion, where the only real effect is that the king has to be a member of the official church, and there's a small government subsidy. But Israel is a state where the government strongly favors a religion, and treats citizens differently based upon their religion. (Somewhat muddled by the fact that "Jews" are not only a religion but one or more ethnic groups, but my opinions of states that discriminate based on ethnic group are even stronger, so let's assume that's not involved.)
Yes, because atheists are always the most tolerant people in the world.
Ooh, touched a nerve. Let me be clear, by "religion" I mean "gods, goddesses, and other supernatural deities", not "ethics" or the like. I never said that being free of those particular superstitions made a person pure and inerrant. There are many ways to control people, and religion is just one.
Dubious religious machinations such as law, marriage, tolerance, modesty, self-sacrifice, temperance, and honesty are the very things that tear apart a perfectly good community!
None of those things requires religion. Some of those things such as self-sacrifice and mating for life are even found in other species. (I suppose I am making the assumption that religion is a peculiarly human thing. Might not be, I guess.)
On a serious note: It's those who/pervert/ their religions to gain power that are the dangerous ones, like Ahmadinejad, Bin Laden, and the Inquisition.
Those are indeed extreme cases. But it's not just the ogres (and I don't think Ahmadinejad really qualifies, he's more of a garden-variety opportunist politician.. maybe substitute Bush or Milosevic). But they don't work alone. They use religious personnel to tell people that "god is on our side", "it's god's will", "you have to do it, because it's a lawful order". And thus the religions are complicit.
They do share a substantial border. And there was plenty of talk of *cough*Iranian interference*cough* with Iraqi affairs, to mention nothing of Lebanon.
Yabbut, it's not like Americans are exactly in a position to diss "foreign interference" in any of those countries.
Let me put it this way. If Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are turfed tomorrow, the Islamic regime will still be there.
Come on. If it's ok for Israel to have a Jewish regime, why isn't it ok for Iran to have an Islamic one? After all, their last experiment with a secular government didn't work out so well, the Shah was a thug propped in place by foreign governments.
Personally, I think that superstition should be kept far far away from government, religion is the opiate of the masses, etc. etc. But I'm obviously in a minority. So just get rid of the thugs and puppetmasters, and hopefully the other stuff will take care of itself.
It's not the downloading they are punishing. It is the sharing.
My understanding is that there is no evidence that she uploaded the files in question to anyone (except possibly to MediaSentry, who was authorized to get them by the copyright owners). She has to actually distribute copies to be in violation.
Maybe she did, but how would anyone know for sure? I don't think Kazaa made detailed logs, no P2P software that I am aware of makes logs like that (except in test builds or debugging modes).
In the United States, discrimination on the basis of genetic information or the requesting, requiring, or purchasing of genetic information by any health care plan is prohibited by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008
Which prohibits use of such information as the sole reason for discrimination. So if they see the information and deny you coverage because not only do you have bad genetics, but you're unattractive too, they're in the clear. It also does not appear to have criminal penalties for violation. What financial penalties there are appear to be at the option of the government (think worst case scenario, with Dick Cheney making the decision).
I would suggest that to expect compliance by a large insurance company, you need penalties like mandatory jail time for the officers, or fines that will actually hurt, like $10M for the first offense, doubled for each subsequent case.
It is hard to avoid a sense of the "creeps" when you see pictures of your child(ren) used without your knowledge or permission, especially in another country.
Why would any rational parent put pictures of their children on a publicly accessible website, if they were not prepared for that to happen? If they hand out pictures of their children to 1 billion strangers, what in the world would a thinking person expect? That first "W" in "www" is for "world", after all.
I know in most cases where class action suits are filed, the attorneys filing and operating the case get a rather sizeable chunk of the take. If/when this class action is filed and won, does Kiwi intend to take from the rich to give to the poor or will he take a sizeable chunk for himself?
In most class action suits, if it fails the attorneys get to eat the entire cost as well as their own time. So I'd say they're entitled to some return. Now, one would hope the victims would get a good chunk back (one would hope in this case there would be punitive damages, and lots of money for everybody), but at the very worst, the victims won't be any worse off than they were without the suit. If the victims want to ensure getting the lion's share for themselves, they can always hire an attorney for whatever his hourly rate is, win or lose.
But the biggest purpose of a class action suit is to hurt the defendant badly enough so that they won't do it again.
Does young "Kiwi" there really have your best interests at heart, or is he more interested in making a name for himself by shooting for the moon?
So long as he hits the moon, it's a win both ways. He's going to try hard, because a high-profile loss isn't going to do his name any good.
old age and cunning will always defeat youth and vigour. And the RIAA are ancient and well versed in the ways of the Dark Side.
The RIAA seem to be more the equivalent of a mugger armed with a rock. Intimidating if you're alone and unarmed, but less so if you're with a friend who's carrying a crowbar or, better yet, a Glock. It's worked because most of their victims were alone and unarmed.
DSL on the other hand is using PPPoE (PPP over ethernet.) Every time it starts a new session it gets a new IP, completely independant of what it had before. And from my experience with ATT/Bellsouth it's not daily, it's hourly.
Depends on where you are. With Qwest (and a local third party ISP) I've had the same IP number since I got the service, maybe 10 years ago. That's regular consumer-grade (1.5M/1.0M) DSL. The reverse DNS lookup gives a name that has my ISP username embedded into it.
I think we are entering an age where everyone knows the employee's loyality goes just as far as the permanence of their job, and no job is permanent anymore. So everyone is out for themselves, and if they see a chance to grab some kind of a big payoff they are going to take it. Or toss a wrench into the works just to see what happens.
Well, over the last 20 years or so, companies in general have made it abundantly clear that they feel little or no obligation to their workers. Their stockholders and CEOs, yes, but not their workers. I'm not saying they really ever did, but for perhaps 50 years there was a facade (pensions, long-term employment, etc.).
So it's entirely reasonable that workers return the favour.
Because they violated the KaZaA TOS they were shown to have invaded a private conversation,
Well, sorta. But it was a "conversation" between their computer and hers, so "invaded" is a little strong. I assume you're saying that they did not have a right to have that conversation. Could be, it just intuitively seems weak to me, but I guess the lawyer thinks it's worth arguing, and maybe that's why he's a lawyer and I'm not.
I'm not totally sure how KaZaA works, but with the P2P I'm familiar with (gnutella, slsk, emule, BitTorrent) there wouldn't be any certain way to know who she was uploading to (except for the last, no way at all, unless MediaSentry is lurking at her ISP watching her datastream). The only sure thing they can say is, we were able to download that file from her.
Gathering information on others while in this context (other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with) was a violation of the Pen Register act (which covers routers etc.).
I understood the "other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with" to be MediaSentry's computers. So does that mean it's a violation when my ISP's routers log connections? When Google remembers my search strings and what I clicked on? I don't really see why there's a difference, and both of those have been used in criminal and/or civil cases in the past. It would be wonderful if retaining logs of that sort was illegal, but since everybody seems to do it, I'm wondering what the distinction is.
(They still failed to prove that it was Jammie at the helm, but all they have to do is convince the jury that it was more likely than not, since this wasn't a criminal trial. I can see a jury believing that.)
I'm not questioning the PI violations, those seem to be true (and if we had any prosecutors with spines, criminal charges would be levied against MediaSentry and its employees). And they violated the KaZaA TOS, of course, for what that's worth (not much, I'd hope).
I like this new lawyer. He understands the issues and isn't afraid to grab the bull by the horns. Hopefully, he'll be successful and provide models for other lawyers to follow. And if he is, he'll deserve all the bragging rights he can get.
I'm a little dubious about the wiretap stuff, since MediaSentry was a party to the communication and not an outside snooper. I'm not sure I like the argument that MediaSentry violated the KaZaA TOS, but that's mostly because I'm not convinced TOS are enforceable in any way other than letting the vendor revoke your license (note: IANAL and the law may or may not agree with me). But I think that lawyers are supposed to throw everything they've got into the battle, even if some arguments are weaker than others (you never know what the judge and/or jury will like). The private eye stuff, he's got them dead to rights, MediaSentry was collecting evidence without a license. And one would hope that the RIAA lawyers who knowingly used such services would be subject to personal sanctions, as well.
I don't buy it [that conventional wisdom is that it's a radical bomb-thrower nutcase position to hold that the government may not restrict any speech]. Conventional wisdom among who? Almost no one I know -
You must not get out much. The "falsely yelling fire in a crowded theatre" opponents, the people who believe in laws against libel and slander, people who believe that there should be penalties for false claims in advertising, people who believe that threats of violence (and not just the acts themselves) should be against the law, that it should be prohibited to advocate the positions of Al Quaida or Hamas or Nazis or Communists or anarchists or whoever the bete de jour is, that it should be prohibited to write fiction that involves children in a sexual way... It's a long list. AFAIK speech in the US (and everywhere else) has always been regulated in one way or another, the 1st Amendment notwithstanding. So yes, the 1st Amendment, as written, is an extremist position. That doesn't make it bad, but it does make it unconventional.
Why shouldn't I push for someone better than her, since she has such obvious and profound warts?
No reason, it's just that you seemed to be pushing against her, not "for" anybody. So, assuming you do have a clue, who are you pushing for?
Her entire job is to get all of it right all the time. It's plain English, for crying out loud: "...shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech"
Agreed. But conventional wisdom is, that's a radical bomb-thrower nutcase position.
She's "mainstream" (i.e., "doesn't entirely get it") on the First Amendment. But none of the other 8 Justices gets it, so what is it that makes her so much of a "constitutional nightmare" in comparison? Can anyone say with a straight face that she'd be as bad as Scalia or Thomas?
There is no, repeat, no chance of getting a First Amendment absolutist appointed to the Supreme Court.
Most of us are justifiably afraid of real terrorism. That's why it's called terrorism.
I don't know about other places (suspect that mostly it's the case there as well), but in the US there is no real justification for fear of "real" terrorism. You're 100X more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than you are to be killed by terrorist action. On 9/11 about 3000 people died in a terrorist incident, about the same number who died (worldwide) in traffic accidents that day, about the same number as died from diesel emissions in London that year. The 9/11 incident accounted for about 0.06% of the people who died by violence worldwide that year, about one day's US toll of deaths due to smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity.
Now, partly it may be psychological. We seem to be programmed to fear unknown risks much more than we fear known risks. But that doesn't make it "justifiable".
However, driving fear of outsiders is a time-honored way to control a country's population. Governments love that.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." -- Hermann Goering
While I disagree with the handing over of information, I fail to see what the RIAA will be able to prove with it.
Prove? They don't need to be able to prove anything except that they have the filing fee, just to file a lawsuit. If you don't show up in court, they win. But probably first they'll offer to cut you a deal for a thousand bucks or so.
Good luck with your court case. If you hire a lawyer, you might even win. But more likely, if it looks like you might win, they'll drop the suit. Oh, you'll still need to pay that lawyer.
This just snells like he is trying to take advantage of the situation to get some free exposure (In my opinion of course).
That's not a noble reason, of course, but it would be ok, after all he's not going to get paid unless he can convince the judge to make the RIAA pay him (that's a very long shot). For exposure to work to his advantage, he's got to do a good job, and win. Messing up is not the kind of thing he wants free exposure for.
OTOH, if he does vanquish the RIAA, he's entitled to bragging rights. And hopefully to have the heads of their attorneys mounted as trophies for his den wall.
(Slashcrew, it's a little disconcerting to have this discussion bannered with a BSA ad shouting "REPORT SOFTWARE PIRACY!")
Do we really need to hear crystal clear DSS ultra range crying?
Maybe you're on to something there... instead of banning video baby monitors, make them a self-correcting. Simply require that all monitors manufactured have audio level hardwired to "high". The manufacturers will like it because that'll be one less part, so they'll be cheaper to make. And they'll sell more, because there won't be any hand-me-downs for the next phalanx of new parents (the monitors will all have been smashed by their owners after the first few crying jags).
A big part should be disallowing judges or anyone having to do with law enforcement from affiliating with political parties.
That'll just make it "wink, wink, nudge, nudge". In my county, sheriff is an elected "nonpartisan" position. I'm sure the fact that one candidate received lots of help from Republican sources and the police union, and the other candidate received help from Democratic sources, was entirely coincidental. In any case, the parties were technically not involved, they did not directly contribute. Most judges (also a "nonpartisan" elected post) are a little more discrete (one is married to a high Republican operative, but of course that doesn't indicate anything about her own politics), though I have noticed that for some reason the names of most of the individuals endorsing a particular judge tend to also appear endorsing the same flavor of candidate for more partisan races.
A single armed individual doesnt have a chance in resisting an oppressive government. Thats why gun control is aimed at the general public, because a few million gun owners are a much bigger force to be reckoned with.
So where were all those gun owners when George Bush was gutting the Constitution? Didn't hear much of a peep out of them.
The trouble is, usually a large part of the population (including gun owners) supports the oppressive government. There were a lot of Nazis in Germany, there were a lot of Communists in Russia. There's lots of reasons people support their government, some good and some bad. Maybe it's patriotism ("he's the President, so laws don't apply to him"). Or government propaganda ("we have enemies, and people who don't support the government are aiding them"). Or opportunism. Maybe some of the people are just bigots who don't like Jews, or Muslims, or communists, or perverts, or whoever the scapegoat is today. Maybe you'll fight the oppression, but your neighbor will turn you in, if he doesn't shoot you first.
The only time you get a unified population is when the oppressive government is one put in place by foreign invaders who are occupying. That draws the lines pretty clearly, population on one side, foreigners and their puppets on the other. But even there, if they're good at it (the Brits were very good, in their day, the US not so much), they can play you off against each other. It won't work forever, but it may well work for generations.
A nation of gun owners? Afghanistan is a nation of gun owners. I wouldn't say it's made them any freer, but they do have a pretty good record against foreign invaders.
Most libertarians are absolutely against the idea of corporations.
Yeah, you'd think they'd be.
But not the ones I know. They're against government bailouts, of course. They're willing to see corporations go bankrupt. But against the idea? Nah. Just to check, I went to the Libertarian Party website and looked around. Nope, I don't see a word against the idea of corporations. In fact, their platform says "We defend the right of individuals to form corporations", though they don't mention the fact that the only value of a corporation is by virtue of the special rights that the government has bestowed upon it.
That sort of thing is why I don't take libertarians very seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
I must be missing something, because I think what you said is, "Israel isn't really Jewish, outside of part of the court system", and that can't be it. It may be that your qualifications for what constitutes a "[insert religion here] regime" are far stricter than mine. I'm not saying that Israel is a theocracy (and while Iran is a little closer, I don't think it is either). OTOH, both are a lot more than what you get with the typical Western European established religion, where the only real effect is that the king has to be a member of the official church, and there's a small government subsidy. But Israel is a state where the government strongly favors a religion, and treats citizens differently based upon their religion. (Somewhat muddled by the fact that "Jews" are not only a religion but one or more ethnic groups, but my opinions of states that discriminate based on ethnic group are even stronger, so let's assume that's not involved.)
Yes, because atheists are always the most tolerant people in the world.
Ooh, touched a nerve. Let me be clear, by "religion" I mean "gods, goddesses, and other supernatural deities", not "ethics" or the like. I never said that being free of those particular superstitions made a person pure and inerrant. There are many ways to control people, and religion is just one.
Dubious religious machinations such as law, marriage, tolerance, modesty, self-sacrifice, temperance, and honesty are the very things that tear apart a perfectly good community!
None of those things requires religion. Some of those things such as self-sacrifice and mating for life are even found in other species. (I suppose I am making the assumption that religion is a peculiarly human thing. Might not be, I guess.)
On a serious note: It's those who /pervert/ their religions to gain power that are the dangerous ones, like Ahmadinejad, Bin Laden, and the Inquisition.
Those are indeed extreme cases. But it's not just the ogres (and I don't think Ahmadinejad really qualifies, he's more of a garden-variety opportunist politician.. maybe substitute Bush or Milosevic). But they don't work alone. They use religious personnel to tell people that "god is on our side", "it's god's will", "you have to do it, because it's a lawful order". And thus the religions are complicit.
They do share a substantial border. And there was plenty of talk of *cough*Iranian interference*cough* with Iraqi affairs, to mention nothing of Lebanon.
Yabbut, it's not like Americans are exactly in a position to diss "foreign interference" in any of those countries.
Let me put it this way. If Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are turfed tomorrow, the Islamic regime will still be there.
Come on. If it's ok for Israel to have a Jewish regime, why isn't it ok for Iran to have an Islamic one? After all, their last experiment with a secular government didn't work out so well, the Shah was a thug propped in place by foreign governments.
Personally, I think that superstition should be kept far far away from government, religion is the opiate of the masses, etc. etc. But I'm obviously in a minority. So just get rid of the thugs and puppetmasters, and hopefully the other stuff will take care of itself.
It's not the downloading they are punishing. It is the sharing.
My understanding is that there is no evidence that she uploaded the files in question to anyone (except possibly to MediaSentry, who was authorized to get them by the copyright owners). She has to actually distribute copies to be in violation.
Maybe she did, but how would anyone know for sure? I don't think Kazaa made detailed logs, no P2P software that I am aware of makes logs like that (except in test builds or debugging modes).
In the United States, discrimination on the basis of genetic information or the requesting, requiring, or purchasing of genetic information by any health care plan is prohibited by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008
Which prohibits use of such information as the sole reason for discrimination. So if they see the information and deny you coverage because not only do you have bad genetics, but you're unattractive too, they're in the clear. It also does not appear to have criminal penalties for violation. What financial penalties there are appear to be at the option of the government (think worst case scenario, with Dick Cheney making the decision).
I would suggest that to expect compliance by a large insurance company, you need penalties like mandatory jail time for the officers, or fines that will actually hurt, like $10M for the first offense, doubled for each subsequent case.
It is hard to avoid a sense of the "creeps" when you see pictures of your child(ren) used without your knowledge or permission, especially in another country.
Why would any rational parent put pictures of their children on a publicly accessible website, if they were not prepared for that to happen? If they hand out pictures of their children to 1 billion strangers, what in the world would a thinking person expect? That first "W" in "www" is for "world", after all.
I know in most cases where class action suits are filed, the attorneys filing and operating the case get a rather sizeable chunk of the take. If/when this class action is filed and won, does Kiwi intend to take from the rich to give to the poor or will he take a sizeable chunk for himself?
In most class action suits, if it fails the attorneys get to eat the entire cost as well as their own time. So I'd say they're entitled to some return. Now, one would hope the victims would get a good chunk back (one would hope in this case there would be punitive damages, and lots of money for everybody), but at the very worst, the victims won't be any worse off than they were without the suit. If the victims want to ensure getting the lion's share for themselves, they can always hire an attorney for whatever his hourly rate is, win or lose.
But the biggest purpose of a class action suit is to hurt the defendant badly enough so that they won't do it again.
Does young "Kiwi" there really have your best interests at heart, or is he more interested in making a name for himself by shooting for the moon?
So long as he hits the moon, it's a win both ways. He's going to try hard, because a high-profile loss isn't going to do his name any good.
old age and cunning will always defeat youth and vigour. And the RIAA are ancient and well versed in the ways of the Dark Side.
The RIAA seem to be more the equivalent of a mugger armed with a rock. Intimidating if you're alone and unarmed, but less so if you're with a friend who's carrying a crowbar or, better yet, a Glock. It's worked because most of their victims were alone and unarmed.
DSL on the other hand is using PPPoE (PPP over ethernet.) Every time it starts a new session it gets a new IP, completely independant of what it had before. And from my experience with ATT/Bellsouth it's not daily, it's hourly.
Depends on where you are. With Qwest (and a local third party ISP) I've had the same IP number since I got the service, maybe 10 years ago. That's regular consumer-grade (1.5M/1.0M) DSL. The reverse DNS lookup gives a name that has my ISP username embedded into it.
I think we are entering an age where everyone knows the employee's loyality goes just as far as the permanence of their job, and no job is permanent anymore. So everyone is out for themselves, and if they see a chance to grab some kind of a big payoff they are going to take it. Or toss a wrench into the works just to see what happens.
Well, over the last 20 years or so, companies in general have made it abundantly clear that they feel little or no obligation to their workers. Their stockholders and CEOs, yes, but not their workers. I'm not saying they really ever did, but for perhaps 50 years there was a facade (pensions, long-term employment, etc.).
So it's entirely reasonable that workers return the favour.
Because they violated the KaZaA TOS they were shown to have invaded a private conversation,
Well, sorta. But it was a "conversation" between their computer and hers, so "invaded" is a little strong. I assume you're saying that they did not have a right to have that conversation. Could be, it just intuitively seems weak to me, but I guess the lawyer thinks it's worth arguing, and maybe that's why he's a lawyer and I'm not.
I'm not totally sure how KaZaA works, but with the P2P I'm familiar with (gnutella, slsk, emule, BitTorrent) there wouldn't be any certain way to know who she was uploading to (except for the last, no way at all, unless MediaSentry is lurking at her ISP watching her datastream). The only sure thing they can say is, we were able to download that file from her.
Gathering information on others while in this context (other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with) was a violation of the Pen Register act (which covers routers etc.).
I understood the "other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with" to be MediaSentry's computers. So does that mean it's a violation when my ISP's routers log connections? When Google remembers my search strings and what I clicked on? I don't really see why there's a difference, and both of those have been used in criminal and/or civil cases in the past. It would be wonderful if retaining logs of that sort was illegal, but since everybody seems to do it, I'm wondering what the distinction is.
(They still failed to prove that it was Jammie at the helm, but all they have to do is convince the jury that it was more likely than not, since this wasn't a criminal trial. I can see a jury believing that.)
I'm not questioning the PI violations, those seem to be true (and if we had any prosecutors with spines, criminal charges would be levied against MediaSentry and its employees). And they violated the KaZaA TOS, of course, for what that's worth (not much, I'd hope).
Ya, sure.
I like this new lawyer. He understands the issues and isn't afraid to grab the bull by the horns. Hopefully, he'll be successful and provide models for other lawyers to follow. And if he is, he'll deserve all the bragging rights he can get.
I'm a little dubious about the wiretap stuff, since MediaSentry was a party to the communication and not an outside snooper. I'm not sure I like the argument that MediaSentry violated the KaZaA TOS, but that's mostly because I'm not convinced TOS are enforceable in any way other than letting the vendor revoke your license (note: IANAL and the law may or may not agree with me). But I think that lawyers are supposed to throw everything they've got into the battle, even if some arguments are weaker than others (you never know what the judge and/or jury will like). The private eye stuff, he's got them dead to rights, MediaSentry was collecting evidence without a license. And one would hope that the RIAA lawyers who knowingly used such services would be subject to personal sanctions, as well.
I don't buy it [that conventional wisdom is that it's a radical bomb-thrower nutcase position to hold that the government may not restrict any speech]. Conventional wisdom among who? Almost no one I know -
You must not get out much. The "falsely yelling fire in a crowded theatre" opponents, the people who believe in laws against libel and slander, people who believe that there should be penalties for false claims in advertising, people who believe that threats of violence (and not just the acts themselves) should be against the law, that it should be prohibited to advocate the positions of Al Quaida or Hamas or Nazis or Communists or anarchists or whoever the bete de jour is, that it should be prohibited to write fiction that involves children in a sexual way... It's a long list. AFAIK speech in the US (and everywhere else) has always been regulated in one way or another, the 1st Amendment notwithstanding. So yes, the 1st Amendment, as written, is an extremist position. That doesn't make it bad, but it does make it unconventional.
Why shouldn't I push for someone better than her, since she has such obvious and profound warts?
No reason, it's just that you seemed to be pushing against her, not "for" anybody. So, assuming you do have a clue, who are you pushing for?
Her entire job is to get all of it right all the time. It's plain English, for crying out loud:
"...shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech"
Agreed. But conventional wisdom is, that's a radical bomb-thrower nutcase position.
She's "mainstream" (i.e., "doesn't entirely get it") on the First Amendment. But none of the other 8 Justices gets it, so what is it that makes her so much of a "constitutional nightmare" in comparison? Can anyone say with a straight face that she'd be as bad as Scalia or Thomas?
There is no, repeat, no chance of getting a First Amendment absolutist appointed to the Supreme Court.
Why don't you try what I do on such a Friday: take a coupla vicodin with three fingers of rye whiskey?
Rush, is that you?
Most of us are justifiably afraid of real terrorism. That's why it's called terrorism.
I don't know about other places (suspect that mostly it's the case there as well), but in the US there is no real justification for fear of "real" terrorism. You're 100X more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than you are to be killed by terrorist action. On 9/11 about 3000 people died in a terrorist incident, about the same number who died (worldwide) in traffic accidents that day, about the same number as died from diesel emissions in London that year. The 9/11 incident accounted for about 0.06% of the people who died by violence worldwide that year, about one day's US toll of deaths due to smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity.
Now, partly it may be psychological. We seem to be programmed to fear unknown risks much more than we fear known risks. But that doesn't make it "justifiable".
However, driving fear of outsiders is a time-honored way to control a country's population. Governments love that.
While I disagree with the handing over of information, I fail to see what the RIAA will be able to prove with it.
Prove? They don't need to be able to prove anything except that they have the filing fee, just to file a lawsuit. If you don't show up in court, they win. But probably first they'll offer to cut you a deal for a thousand bucks or so.
Good luck with your court case. If you hire a lawyer, you might even win. But more likely, if it looks like you might win, they'll drop the suit. Oh, you'll still need to pay that lawyer.
This just snells like he is trying to take advantage of the situation to get some free exposure (In my opinion of course).
That's not a noble reason, of course, but it would be ok, after all he's not going to get paid unless he can convince the judge to make the RIAA pay him (that's a very long shot). For exposure to work to his advantage, he's got to do a good job, and win. Messing up is not the kind of thing he wants free exposure for.
OTOH, if he does vanquish the RIAA, he's entitled to bragging rights. And hopefully to have the heads of their attorneys mounted as trophies for his den wall.
(Slashcrew, it's a little disconcerting to have this discussion bannered with a BSA ad shouting "REPORT SOFTWARE PIRACY!")
Do we really need to hear crystal clear DSS ultra range crying?
Maybe you're on to something there... instead of banning video baby monitors, make them a self-correcting. Simply require that all monitors manufactured have audio level hardwired to "high". The manufacturers will like it because that'll be one less part, so they'll be cheaper to make. And they'll sell more, because there won't be any hand-me-downs for the next phalanx of new parents (the monitors will all have been smashed by their owners after the first few crying jags).
A big part should be disallowing judges or anyone having to do with law enforcement from affiliating with political parties.
That'll just make it "wink, wink, nudge, nudge". In my county, sheriff is an elected "nonpartisan" position. I'm sure the fact that one candidate received lots of help from Republican sources and the police union, and the other candidate received help from Democratic sources, was entirely coincidental. In any case, the parties were technically not involved, they did not directly contribute. Most judges (also a "nonpartisan" elected post) are a little more discrete (one is married to a high Republican operative, but of course that doesn't indicate anything about her own politics), though I have noticed that for some reason the names of most of the individuals endorsing a particular judge tend to also appear endorsing the same flavor of candidate for more partisan races.
A single armed individual doesnt have a chance in resisting an oppressive government. Thats why gun control is aimed at the general public, because a few million gun owners are a much bigger force to be reckoned with.
So where were all those gun owners when George Bush was gutting the Constitution? Didn't hear much of a peep out of them.
The trouble is, usually a large part of the population (including gun owners) supports the oppressive government. There were a lot of Nazis in Germany, there were a lot of Communists in Russia. There's lots of reasons people support their government, some good and some bad. Maybe it's patriotism ("he's the President, so laws don't apply to him"). Or government propaganda ("we have enemies, and people who don't support the government are aiding them"). Or opportunism. Maybe some of the people are just bigots who don't like Jews, or Muslims, or communists, or perverts, or whoever the scapegoat is today. Maybe you'll fight the oppression, but your neighbor will turn you in, if he doesn't shoot you first.
The only time you get a unified population is when the oppressive government is one put in place by foreign invaders who are occupying. That draws the lines pretty clearly, population on one side, foreigners and their puppets on the other. But even there, if they're good at it (the Brits were very good, in their day, the US not so much), they can play you off against each other. It won't work forever, but it may well work for generations.
A nation of gun owners? Afghanistan is a nation of gun owners. I wouldn't say it's made them any freer, but they do have a pretty good record against foreign invaders.
Most libertarians are absolutely against the idea of corporations.
Yeah, you'd think they'd be.
But not the ones I know. They're against government bailouts, of course. They're willing to see corporations go bankrupt. But against the idea? Nah. Just to check, I went to the Libertarian Party website and looked around. Nope, I don't see a word against the idea of corporations. In fact, their platform says "We defend the right of individuals to form corporations", though they don't mention the fact that the only value of a corporation is by virtue of the special rights that the government has bestowed upon it.
That sort of thing is why I don't take libertarians very seriously.