In that vein, here's a suggestion: (a) get out your _manual_ typewriter and write a letter to your three members of Congress explaining your views on this situation (b) contribute $100 each to DS's legal defense fund and a fund for his family's well-being (c) write out 3 checks for $50 each to your congresspeople's re-election fund.
FWIW, a $50 check isn't that impressive. Instead, they look at voting records to see how seriously you should be taken. If you vote in primaries and local and off-elections, they'll give you a LOT more weight than someone who just shows up in November in even-numbered years. And if you don't even vote in those, don't bother writing. Non-voters tend to be ignored.
Besides, Diana DeGette (D-CO) is my congresscritter. I'm not going to give her a damn dime.
t would be more like: "I have a two litre, 150bhp car. What controls should I get (auto/stick, power steering/manual, etc)
Windows would be a 1992 Ford Taurus: Arguably the worst car on the planet that didn't come from the former Communist Bloc.
I'm holding out, still, for the distro that would be the equivalent of the Chevrolet Caprice I drive at work. Okay, so you can't carry seventeen kids, their dogs, and a boat in the trunk, and it doesn't have a fancy stereo, but it's fast and stable in heavy maneuvering, and forgiving of a newer driver. Not to mention, not only does it do a reasonably good job of avoiding crashes, but it also survives them reasonably well.
I've never tried Mandrake, but seems to be the distro of choice for refugees from Windows; I answer newbie questions over at AskMe.com and I see a tremendous amount of new users saying they are using Mandrake - and liking it.
I'm a bit out of the loop over here - how did it get to be so popuar? Is it the cheapest on the shelf at WalMart or something?
It forked off of Red Hat a few years ago. Now, this may be close to flamebait, but RH is/was fairly close to a standard among the commercially-available distros. It's usually wise to stay close to the standard, at least until you actually have a reason to diverge.
Also, Mandrake has tried to be as idiot-proof as a linux distro could be. I first started with Mandrake 6, which was basically a RH6 which DID NOT INSTALL A C COMPILER BY DEFAULT! An extremely stupid move, and stupid of me not to catch it, but it was aimed at the people who were end-users of Windows and therefore probably had no idea what the compiler was or what purpose it served. (Note: This has changed.)
When you install Mandrake (at least version 7.1), it asked you if you wanted "low, medium, high, or paranoid" security. While I'd have dearly loved to have some explanation of what differentiated one level from the next, there was the option and it was dumbed-down enough that a Windows 98 refugee could make a decision.
I'm not knocking "dumbed down." I'm using Mandrake 7.1 (kernel 2.4.6 and KDE 2.1) at home, rather than Slackware or LinuxFromScratch. I AM a Windows refugee. If I were smart enough to make Slackware do everything I wanted, I'd be smart enough to get a tech job instead of being a dumbass traffic cop:-)
Half a billion per launch, I think someone quoted?
It's a space luxury car. What we really need is a spacecraft version of my 1978 Chevy K-body pickup: a cheap, workhorse vehicle that doesn't look cool but at least gets a cargo to where a cargo needs to go.
Is there some technical flaw with the Energia rockets, or is it politics that keep us from using them?
And even if Energia or Ariane is unacceptable, why the hell haven't we built our own? I mean, jeez, there HAS to be a better way.
Personally, though, I think the money would have been better spent on another Mars probe. A little help for NASA: 454 grams to the pound, 2.54 centimeters to the inch, 1.609 kilometers to the mile: come on, guys, it can't be THAT hard.
What difference is there between putting 100,000 cops on the street with mugshot photos, or deploying automated computer controlled cameras? Same thing will be accomplished. Why is that people prefer human beings over computers?
I know a lot of people hate it, but it's called officer discretion. Machines don't have it.
"Let me be sure I'm understanding this. At the time of the rape, you were fishing in the mountains about ninety miles away with your friend? And he can corroborate this? Excellent. Here's my business card. My pager number's on the back, in case you need to get ahold of me. I really appreciate your help."
Trust me: I AM a cop. I know something about the limitations of technology as applied to my profession. Radar can sometimes be wrong, but the century-old technique of topwatch-and-tape- measure somewhat less so. Polygraphs can be wrong, but a skilled human observer is a hell of a lot harder to fool. Et cetera.
one question: "how do they have your fingerprints if you are not a criminal"
If you've ever joined the Armed Forces, you've been fingerprinted. Also, professional licensing and certification sometimes requires a fingerprint check, for some professions and some states. If you've been printed for that fingerprint check, then your prints are on file. Law enforcement and teaching are prime examples of professions requiring this, and I think it's now required in one or two states for firefighter certification (but don't quote me on that)
Also, some states are taking an inkless print or inkless ten-print card when you receive a driver's license. I don't know why: I don't know if the FBI is all that willing to take inkless prints. Last I had heard, they were trying desperately to avoid them.
Until you are under arrest, you are free to leave. Period.
Wrong. See Terry v. Ohio, in which the USSC said a person may be detained against his will, upon reasonable suspicion, and that such detention shall not constitute arrest (and shall not constitute custody for Miranda purposes).
The fact of the matter is that it is the responsibility of the Police to identify you, not vice versa.
With the caveat that we're less likely to finally believe you when it takes two hours to get your name. You could look like someone wanted for rape and end up getting hooked up, because you matched a description and weren't willing to give us any reason to believe otherwise.
That will escalate things, and if they have
something to arrest you for, it becomes that much simpler to shut up and let them ask AND ANSWER
their own questions.
I love it when I get to deal with armchair cartooneys. I saw a guy violating some stupid little municipal ordinance. I went to contact him, he started walking away, and I ordered him to stay where he was. He started playing armchair cartooney, and I got curious. When someone caught in the act of a stupid little petty offense is about to get a warning and be released on that, it's very unusual for them to start arguing. That's just not the behavior of a rational person. Lo and behold, he had two felony warrants. Had he not started a pissing contest, I never would have known about the warrants and he would not be sitting in the (DELETED) County Justice Center on about $100,000 bond.
Any appeals in Dmitry Sklyarov's case will go to the 9th Circuit, which is just one rung below the Supreme Court (and in fact, is the final say in most cases; only about 2% of cases appealed from Circuit Courts of appeal are ever accepted for review by the Supreme Court.)
A very disproportionate amount of those 2% come from the Ninth, though. That circuit tends to be out-of-step with the rest of the US, and the Supremes know it.
It's cool that we have judges so high up the
ladder who have a sense of individual iberties and enough tech know-how to work around The System to
achieve it.
Let's don't get started with the hero worship just yet. Disabling monitoring is not a big step, and the judges didn't show tech know-how or set a legal precedent: they just called their IT staff and said "Hey, you, yeah, you who's spent the last week playing Half-Life: Turn off the monitoring. I don't care how you do it."
Unless it's written in their decisions, it's not precedent.
what the enforcement officers need are not non lethal weapons, but more precise weapons (letheal or non lethal) to be used to incapacitate the ones inciting or engaging in violence. Take this violent minority out, and the protests will be more or less peaceful
Such weapons exist, and have for some time. They're called a rifle with a heavy barrel, solid rest, and damn good scope. However, the Supreme Court has saddled us with a court finding that use of force is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and therefore must be reasonable under the circumstances. A use of deadly force for a purpose other than protecting a person against a threat of death or great bodily injury would probably be found unreasonable. Shooting rioters to protect property would be VERY hard to defend in court.
The case is called Tennessee v. Garner, if you're interested. It's at the very heart of police use-of-force case law. It should be familiar to any law student or law librarian, should you wish to look it up.
Yeah, I know some Texan is going to talk about a state law about protecting property after dark. I don't think that statute has been tested in decades, but god help whoever tries to rely on it.
I fully agree. Being able to suppress protestors with no PR backlash is probably one of the last remaining steps to stripping away freedom of speech.
No WHAT kind of backlash? Try reading 42 USC 1983. (Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code.) In terms of empowering members of the public to take legal action against government agencies for civil-rights violations, it's probably the most sweeping law of its kind in the world.
Also, look at the backlash after Rodney King got beaten. Read on, for the relevance.
The only way I would endorse nonlethals in government hands is if every single use had to be
scrutinized by a very-public review board, not only to determine if it was a justified use, but to give the individual targeted a platform to speak
First of all, there's no such thing as "nonlethal." There's lethal, consisting primarily of firearms and knives, and then there's less-lethal, which includes the technotoys of the original article. Less-lethal also includes the batons that cops have carried for over a century, the defense sprays of the last 40 years, and the unarmed, empty-hand restraint techniques taught everywhere from police academies to Tai Chi classes. They ALL have the potential to kill.
Second, such a review board does exist. It's called civil court, and there are a lot of attorneys who will take 1983 cases on contingency. The reason civilian review boards aren't popular is because they tend to make decisions based upon ignorance: very few people on such boards have ever been faced with situations where they need to either act or die, and have about a second to decide what to do. Therefore, they have no conception of what the job actually entails, and what the cop sometimes has to do, just to ensure that he goes home at night.
Why do they bother? It would be easier and cheaper to deploy some guys accross the city wearing cop uniforms, aiming hairdryers at passing rented cars. I did it for years and saved many lives. I'm a hero.
Sure you're a hero? Or are you the sonofabitch who constantly takes the last cup of the coffee at the 7-11 about ninety seconds before I walk in the door? Someone's been doing that to me, and he's always wearing a sheriff's office uniform, and I'd like to have a word with him about NOT TAKING THE LAST GODDAMN CUP OF COFFEE.
Sure it is - but then it's not, in my view, up to anyone but the police forces to enforce fines for speeding.
I see a few issues here:
I used to be a traffic cop. I didn't have time to do a whole lot of speed enforcement, since I was usually too busy working the accidents caused by the dumbasses that thought 45MPH is a good speed for a posted 30MPH zone in the rain. A rental company that did this would have done wonders to lower my workload: do you know how much time it takes to work a fatality accident???
Also, Acme was probably doing this in order to whore karma with their insurer. Speed is a major factor in most traffic accidents, and traffic accidents result in claims having been paid out. Therefore, Acme could very likely have been on the verge of having their sacks stapled to the wall by their insurer. Without insurance, it's hard to have a car rental company, and so one may need to clamp down on one's customers in order to stay in business.
I mean, a fine from Acme isn't exactly a court summons, and it doesn't carry points against one's license. It's just a civil claim that the customer behaved unlawfully or dangerously with rented property, in violation of a rental agreement. No biggie if someone can take the three minutes to actually read the contract before signing it.
I'd be interested to see the exact CT statute or case law that the Consumer Protection folks used to make their ruling. I'm not sure, but I know of a lot of states where Acme's actions would be perfectly legal, given adequate prior notice.
Come to think of it, I don't think the CT ruling actually banned the practice, at least not according to the ZD article: "The difference here is that they tracked--and then they fined--people without properly notifying them." (emphasis mine)
So, I guess Fleming is saying that the practice of fining the renter would be acceptable, given proper notice? I'm pretty sure it would fly here in Colorado.
Re:Physical Attacks Are Not Good
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Eco-Terrorism
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· Score: 1
I'm not certain, but I think specific case of arson, proving an "intent to kill" is not always required for it to be a capitol crime, if there are in fact people killed in the offence.
It varies from state to state. In my state, the intent of the offender is not an issue. If the offender commits any of a certain list of crimes (robbery, burglary, sexual assault, kidnapping, and arson of an occupied structure, primarily) and the crime causes the death of any person, then the offender is guilty of First-Degree Murder, which can carry the death penalty. However, there is no basis for a murder charge if nobody dies.
FWIW, murder one and kidnapping-for-ransom are the only two crimes which carry the death penalty here. And they don't carry it very often: we have maybe five or eight people on our state's death row, out of a population of about four million.
If you torch an SUV dealership in Colorado, IOW, and the owner has a heart attack while trying to put out the fire, you can easily face Murder One charges.
There is a clear legal opinion that First Amendment rights do not extend to being able to address captive audiences.
There was one called "Rowan v. Post Office," some years back. The USSC ruled that a junk mailer had absolutely no right to send mail to Rowan.
(The case that comes to mind is a KKK rally that the would-be host town objected to, where the sound of the rally would penetrate even closed doors and windows such that there would be no place in town free from the rally. I may
be misremembering this, though.)
Never heard of that case. Most of the First Amendment case law I've heard of involving Klan rallies ended up saying that cities had no right to bar the shitheads based upon objectionable content. The US courts tend to be very unfriendly to content-based restrictions, but fairly tolerant of content neutral "time, place, manner" restrictions.
This is just plain sweet. It's good to see someone in the US going back into space.
I mean, if NASA doesn't really care about Aeronautics or Space, someone has to. It's good to see that this guy is into it enough to actually do something with it.
Yeah, the FAA is going to shit bricks. They're more Administration than Aviation anyway. And he's in the PNW, home of some genuine silliness. Some crystal-wearing posie sniffer is probably going to stumble on this, think "rocket=missile=weapon=nuclear," and go truly apeshit and try to chain herself to the rocket.
But just the same, this needs to be done.
So, where does he want the donations sent? I'm not an engineer, and the only physics I know are the ones involved in firearms and traffic accidents, but I have a few buck to throw in.
Is life so bad in America that the airless vacuum of space is preferable to another day in that cultural wasteland ? Or is it simply that Americans cannot tolerate their fellow countrymen, since they are all so egotistical ?
Let me tell you a little story about history. Once upon a time, there was a country in mainland Europe. They elected a guy to the top job who had a funny mustache and only one testicle. This guy wanted to kill my parents, and a dozen or so million people with last names like my parents'.
There was another country floating just off the coast of Europe. This country elected a guy to the top job who was determined to appease the aforementioned nutless wonder at all costs.
And then there were a few more countries which set up puppet governments to do whatever the euunich said for them to do.
So there's something in the American mindset that there's always something better if we just go and actually look for it. That brought us out of Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, etc, saving us and our children from having to live with the likes of you.
Some people are happy with taking a stream of sewage and calling it a river, or are happy with having no power themselves. Some people like living in apartments and being dependent on public transportation for their whole lives. Some people like to fork over two-thirds of their paychecks. Some people can't stand the thought of even the very existence of a wilderness big enough to get lost in. Heh. In my state, they don't last long west of I-25.
So, you're damn right we're restless. There's ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS a better way, if man only has the drive and the imagination to find it and learn it.
It's an odd ruling for sure. It's like ruling that it's okay for them to install security cameras in your home but they need a warrant to view the tapes.
It's not THAT outlandish.
Let's say a cop sees a closed container. He has probable cause to believe the container contains evidence of a crime. Under the current case law he needs a warrant to actually open the container, unless there's some sort of exigent circumstance which would involve the evidence being destroyed or a significant danger to other people if the cop actually takes the six hours it would take to get the warrant.
It was some years ago, the first time I ever ran into this at work. I was booking a guy into the county jail on an FTA bench warrant. We were inventorying his personal effects and came across a small handbag, which looked damn similar to one taken in a mugging three days prior. So, what did we do?
We wrote out the affadavit, and got a warrant. THEN we opened the bag and found the mugging victim's driver's license and so forth. If we hadn't, the handbag and its contents would have been suppressed, which means they couldn't have been used as evidence and therefore we'd have almost no case on the robbery.
IOW, it's hardly unheard-of for cops to be unable to legally examine items already in their possession without a warrant. All this ruling is, is an application of the general principle to the specific case.
Re:Ummm...really stupid, but not unconstitutional.
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Killing Video Games
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· Score: 1
Bear in mind that this is a connecticut STATE bill they tried to pass. The state of connecticut can do pretty much anything they want. I was under the impression that the protection set forth in the Bill of Rights and associated Constitutional
Amendments applied only to government at the federal level.
Nope. Let's look at the Fourteenth Amendment, which says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to their laws, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States."
Or words to that effect.
The exact definition of "privileges and immunities" has been a subject of some controversy for the last century and change. One current understanding is that they include, but are not limited to, the Bill of Rights protections.
Another is that they include the BoR, but only once each specific BoR provision is "incorporated" into the Fourteenth. For example, there has never been a USSC or even Circuit-level ruling on whether the Second Amendment actually protects an individual right. However, there was a ruling by a Circuit (appellate) court about fifteen years ago, stating that whatever rights were or were not included in the Second were not yet incorporated into the Fourteenth. (Gun control being a touchy political topic, the court didn't want to even touch the underlying question.)
But anyway, the Federal Bill of Rights is binding upon state and local governments. Otherwise, I wouldn't necessarily have to give arrestees a Miranda warning when arresting them on state charges.
I've seen precisely one "game" designed to " teach" people about killing. It's called FATS, or Firearms Training Simulator. It's designed to teach people how to make the "shoot/don't shoot" decision under stress. Predictably, it's commonly used by police officers and is decidedly a niche market otherwise.
There can be a legitmate case made for a predisposition to violence caused by graphic first-person games. In his book, On Killing, David Grossman explores the fact that throughout history, human beings have been reluctant to kill unless conditioned to it, such as through realistic targets. He then uses this to make a case for violent TV and videogames causing a sort of dehumanization in the viewer. This dehumanization won't necessarily turn a mild-mannered adult into Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold, but it does remove one of the psychological barriers to killing.
I don't necessarily buy all of Mr. Grossman's conclusions, but he does argue them through in enough detail that they cannot simply be discounted without examination. I've taken an interest in these things, since I've had to take a professional interest in violence and its prevention.
FWIW, people often complain about the state usurping the role of the parent. Yeah, that's a legitimate gripe, but is it that legitimate in the face of parents who refuse to parent? I'm not talking about the apathy one might think happens in the inner city minority family (one might think, but it doesn't). I'm talking about the white upper-middle-class parent with the white upper-middle-class child, who gets huffy with me when I arrest Junior Darling for Domestic Abuse or DUI. Apparently, Junior Darling would be just fine if he didn't have the pigs on his ass every time he beat the snot out of his girlfriend.
It would be really nice if the parents actually parented. The only problem is, there are entirely too many that don't, thereby forcing the burden onto the rest of society.
2) Judges becoming interested... They prolongated the 2600 talk time and continued to ask question that were in no way to 'destroy' their defense
Those are the questions to be frightened of. Any time an appellate judge asks for more information during oral argument, he's skeptical of the person being examined.
5) they left more way to 2600 to express their views by asking questions where MPAA and such answer are already known (always same arguments) but really open questions for 2600
Another bad sign, IMHO. If the judges are committing procedural errors, they may be setting themselves up for an appeal-intentionally. What it looks like to me is, they're aware the current case law may require them to rule in favor of 2600, but they're hoping to create enough fuzz in their handling that the Supreme Court is effectively forced to take the case on appeal. That's how judges say "The law requires me to rule as I've ruled, but I think the law sucks here."
If it's like in Belgium, judges can't be fired once they are in place (in order to avoid political pressure)... and so, they could think as men and face the MPAA and such... But American law may be different...
In the US, Federal judges are in place effectively for life. They can only be removed through an impeachment process in the Congress, and fewer than a dozen have been removed in the 225 years that we've had the Republic. State judges can be removed more easily in some states, but that really doesn't matter because this case isn't being heard in state court.
Anyway, I didn't think that the outcome was bad for 2600...
We can hope. The question probably won't be settled until the US Supreme Court rules, but we can hope.
well cannabis doesn't do much except make you forgetful and stupid which doesn't make you a very effective person while it's relieving pain. codeine is nice, but it requires a perscription.
Not necessarily. In some US states, some codeine preparations are Schedule V. That means they're controlled substances which are legally considered to have medical value and a very low potential for abuse. An adult can legally buy them without a script.
FWIW, those preparations are usually cough medicines.
Maybe in America, buddy. In a more civilized country you are supposed to get him to surrender or avoid killing him, maybe just by shooting him in the foot. Otherwise, you WILL end up in jail.
Yeah. That's civilization. Throw a guy in the can because he was threatened and took action to stop the threat.
What do you do when he doesn't surrender?
And SHOOT HIM IN THE FOOT??? I've been a cop for pretty much my entire adult life. I've been through just about every defensive-tactics class my department would pay for. I've been a police firearms instructor for some years now. And I know how big a target the feet/knees/arms are. There just isn't any way to hit them reliably when they're moving, and they're hardly reliable stop points even when they are hit. The only reliable target is center of mass.
Self-defense law in my state is a recognition of an unpleasant reality: Some people are just shitbags, out to do whatever they want and profit through the victimization of others. We (police) try to do everything we can, but sometimes we can't get there in time and people need to do what they can to hang on until we do get on scene. If someone shoots an intruder, we'll detain him while we investigate, but if he legitimately feared for his own safety neither we, nor the prosecutor, nor the judges, nor the public would fault him for using force to protect himself.
It's all about trust. We're willing to take the chance and trust that our citizens know their responsibilities and take them seriously. You'd be surprised at how often that actually works.
Well, what does serious (adj.) mean, exactly?
1.Carried out in earnest: engaged in serious drinking.
2.Not trifling or jesting.
3.Being of such import as to cause anxiety: serious injuries; a serious turn of events.
The very definition of the word "serious" includes intent.
Read the statute again. The word "serious" describes the level of injury which the victim feared. It does NOT have any connection to the actor's intent.
The only part of the statute where intent is relevant is in that word knowingly. "Knowingly" refers to a particular state of mind on the part of the actor. You see, under our law, a person will generally need to act in a culpable mental state in order to have committed a crime. The mental states are: "Specific Intent," where the actor has the intent to cause the prohibited result; "Knowingly" (sometimes called "willfully) where the actor knows a prohibited result is the likely result of his actions; "recklessness," where the actor disregarded a knowing risk; and "criminal negligence," where an actor failed to perceive a risk because of a lack of care.
Each individual criminal statute specifies a culpable mental state as an essential element of the crime.
In the case of Menacing/Felony Menacing, the only place where the actor's mindset matters at all is in the question: did he know his words or actions were likely to cause such fear in the victim?
"Serious Bodily Injury" is not the most-specific term in the lexicon, unfortunately. The only firm rule is that it's more than bruises and a black eye.
Without intent to harm, the fist swinger's actions couldn't be refered to as serious
Read the statute again. "Serious" is not used to describe the swinger's actions, but rather the degree of injury feared.
You'd be more than welcome to come to Colorado, swing your fist in someone's face, and try this argument on the judge. But I'm not going to bring you a file baked in a cake when the judge gives you the sentence of up to 180 days permitted by statute.
Swinging your fists is not illegal until you hit someone. It isn't illegal to swing your fist "before another man's nose", unless it can be proven you were actively threatening him.
Wrong. At least in my state, anyway.
Colorado Revised Statute 18-3-206: "A person commits the crime of menacing if, by any threat or physical action, he or she knowingly places or attempts to place another person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury."
"knowingly" means only that the defendant was aware of his own conduct and of a reasonable likelihood that his conduct will bring about the prohibited result.
Swing your fist in my face in my state, and you will definitely be charged with either menacing or attempted misdemeanor assault.
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FWIW, a $50 check isn't that impressive. Instead, they look at voting records to see how seriously you should be taken. If you vote in primaries and local and off-elections, they'll give you a LOT more weight than someone who just shows up in November in even-numbered years. And if you don't even vote in those, don't bother writing. Non-voters tend to be ignored.
Besides, Diana DeGette (D-CO) is my congresscritter. I'm not going to give her a damn dime.
Windows would be a 1992 Ford Taurus: Arguably the worst car on the planet that didn't come from the former Communist Bloc.
I'm holding out, still, for the distro that would be the equivalent of the Chevrolet Caprice I drive at work. Okay, so you can't carry seventeen kids, their dogs, and a boat in the trunk, and it doesn't have a fancy stereo, but it's fast and stable in heavy maneuvering, and forgiving of a newer driver. Not to mention, not only does it do a reasonably good job of avoiding crashes, but it also survives them reasonably well.
I'm a bit out of the loop over here - how did it get to be so popuar? Is it the cheapest on the shelf at WalMart or something?
It forked off of Red Hat a few years ago. Now, this may be close to flamebait, but RH is/was fairly close to a standard among the commercially-available distros. It's usually wise to stay close to the standard, at least until you actually have a reason to diverge.
Also, Mandrake has tried to be as idiot-proof as a linux distro could be. I first started with Mandrake 6, which was basically a RH6 which DID NOT INSTALL A C COMPILER BY DEFAULT! An extremely stupid move, and stupid of me not to catch it, but it was aimed at the people who were end-users of Windows and therefore probably had no idea what the compiler was or what purpose it served. (Note: This has changed.)
When you install Mandrake (at least version 7.1), it asked you if you wanted "low, medium, high, or paranoid" security. While I'd have dearly loved to have some explanation of what differentiated one level from the next, there was the option and it was dumbed-down enough that a Windows 98 refugee could make a decision.
I'm not knocking "dumbed down." I'm using Mandrake 7.1 (kernel 2.4.6 and KDE 2.1) at home, rather than Slackware or LinuxFromScratch. I AM a Windows refugee. If I were smart enough to make Slackware do everything I wanted, I'd be smart enough to get a tech job instead of being a dumbass traffic cop :-)
It's a space luxury car. What we really need is a spacecraft version of my 1978 Chevy K-body pickup: a cheap, workhorse vehicle that doesn't look cool but at least gets a cargo to where a cargo needs to go.
Is there some technical flaw with the Energia rockets, or is it politics that keep us from using them?
And even if Energia or Ariane is unacceptable, why the hell haven't we built our own? I mean, jeez, there HAS to be a better way.
Personally, though, I think the money would have been better spent on another Mars probe. A little help for NASA: 454 grams to the pound, 2.54 centimeters to the inch, 1.609 kilometers to the mile: come on, guys, it can't be THAT hard.
I know a lot of people hate it, but it's called officer discretion. Machines don't have it.
"Let me be sure I'm understanding this. At the time of the rape, you were fishing in the mountains about ninety miles away with your friend? And he can corroborate this? Excellent. Here's my business card. My pager number's on the back, in case you need to get ahold of me. I really appreciate your help."
Trust me: I AM a cop. I know something about the limitations of technology as applied to my profession. Radar can sometimes be wrong, but the century-old technique of topwatch-and-tape- measure somewhat less so. Polygraphs can be wrong, but a skilled human observer is a hell of a lot harder to fool. Et cetera.
If you've ever joined the Armed Forces, you've been fingerprinted. Also, professional licensing and certification sometimes requires a fingerprint check, for some professions and some states. If you've been printed for that fingerprint check, then your prints are on file. Law enforcement and teaching are prime examples of professions requiring this, and I think it's now required in one or two states for firefighter certification (but don't quote me on that)
Also, some states are taking an inkless print or inkless ten-print card when you receive a driver's license. I don't know why: I don't know if the FBI is all that willing to take inkless prints. Last I had heard, they were trying desperately to avoid them.
Wrong. See Terry v. Ohio, in which the USSC said a person may be detained against his will, upon reasonable suspicion, and that such detention shall not constitute arrest (and shall not constitute custody for Miranda purposes).
The fact of the matter is that it is the responsibility of the Police to identify you, not vice versa.
With the caveat that we're less likely to finally believe you when it takes two hours to get your name. You could look like someone wanted for rape and end up getting hooked up, because you matched a description and weren't willing to give us any reason to believe otherwise.
That will escalate things, and if they have something to arrest you for, it becomes that much simpler to shut up and let them ask AND ANSWER their own questions.
I love it when I get to deal with armchair cartooneys. I saw a guy violating some stupid little municipal ordinance. I went to contact him, he started walking away, and I ordered him to stay where he was. He started playing armchair cartooney, and I got curious. When someone caught in the act of a stupid little petty offense is about to get a warning and be released on that, it's very unusual for them to start arguing. That's just not the behavior of a rational person. Lo and behold, he had two felony warrants. Had he not started a pissing contest, I never would have known about the warrants and he would not be sitting in the (DELETED) County Justice Center on about $100,000 bond.
Don't pick a fight you can't win.
A very disproportionate amount of those 2% come from the Ninth, though. That circuit tends to be out-of-step with the rest of the US, and the Supremes know it.
It's cool that we have judges so high up the ladder who have a sense of individual iberties and enough tech know-how to work around The System to achieve it.
Let's don't get started with the hero worship just yet. Disabling monitoring is not a big step, and the judges didn't show tech know-how or set a legal precedent: they just called their IT staff and said "Hey, you, yeah, you who's spent the last week playing Half-Life: Turn off the monitoring. I don't care how you do it."
Unless it's written in their decisions, it's not precedent.
Such weapons exist, and have for some time. They're called a rifle with a heavy barrel, solid rest, and damn good scope. However, the Supreme Court has saddled us with a court finding that use of force is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and therefore must be reasonable under the circumstances. A use of deadly force for a purpose other than protecting a person against a threat of death or great bodily injury would probably be found unreasonable. Shooting rioters to protect property would be VERY hard to defend in court.
The case is called Tennessee v. Garner, if you're interested. It's at the very heart of police use-of-force case law. It should be familiar to any law student or law librarian, should you wish to look it up.
Yeah, I know some Texan is going to talk about a state law about protecting property after dark. I don't think that statute has been tested in decades, but god help whoever tries to rely on it.
No WHAT kind of backlash? Try reading 42 USC 1983. (Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code.) In terms of empowering members of the public to take legal action against government agencies for civil-rights violations, it's probably the most sweeping law of its kind in the world.
Also, look at the backlash after Rodney King got beaten. Read on, for the relevance.
The only way I would endorse nonlethals in government hands is if every single use had to be scrutinized by a very-public review board, not only to determine if it was a justified use, but to give the individual targeted a platform to speak
First of all, there's no such thing as "nonlethal." There's lethal, consisting primarily of firearms and knives, and then there's less-lethal, which includes the technotoys of the original article. Less-lethal also includes the batons that cops have carried for over a century, the defense sprays of the last 40 years, and the unarmed, empty-hand restraint techniques taught everywhere from police academies to Tai Chi classes. They ALL have the potential to kill.
Second, such a review board does exist. It's called civil court, and there are a lot of attorneys who will take 1983 cases on contingency. The reason civilian review boards aren't popular is because they tend to make decisions based upon ignorance: very few people on such boards have ever been faced with situations where they need to either act or die, and have about a second to decide what to do. Therefore, they have no conception of what the job actually entails, and what the cop sometimes has to do, just to ensure that he goes home at night.
Sure you're a hero? Or are you the sonofabitch who constantly takes the last cup of the coffee at the 7-11 about ninety seconds before I walk in the door? Someone's been doing that to me, and he's always wearing a sheriff's office uniform, and I'd like to have a word with him about NOT TAKING THE LAST GODDAMN CUP OF COFFEE.
I see a few issues here:
I used to be a traffic cop. I didn't have time to do a whole lot of speed enforcement, since I was usually too busy working the accidents caused by the dumbasses that thought 45MPH is a good speed for a posted 30MPH zone in the rain. A rental company that did this would have done wonders to lower my workload: do you know how much time it takes to work a fatality accident???
Also, Acme was probably doing this in order to whore karma with their insurer. Speed is a major factor in most traffic accidents, and traffic accidents result in claims having been paid out. Therefore, Acme could very likely have been on the verge of having their sacks stapled to the wall by their insurer. Without insurance, it's hard to have a car rental company, and so one may need to clamp down on one's customers in order to stay in business.
I mean, a fine from Acme isn't exactly a court summons, and it doesn't carry points against one's license. It's just a civil claim that the customer behaved unlawfully or dangerously with rented property, in violation of a rental agreement. No biggie if someone can take the three minutes to actually read the contract before signing it.
Come to think of it, I don't think the CT ruling actually banned the practice, at least not according to the ZD article:
"The difference here is that they tracked--and then they fined--people without properly notifying them." (emphasis mine)
So, I guess Fleming is saying that the practice of fining the renter would be acceptable, given proper notice? I'm pretty sure it would fly here in Colorado.
It varies from state to state. In my state, the intent of the offender is not an issue. If the offender commits any of a certain list of crimes (robbery, burglary, sexual assault, kidnapping, and arson of an occupied structure, primarily) and the crime causes the death of any person, then the offender is guilty of First-Degree Murder, which can carry the death penalty. However, there is no basis for a murder charge if nobody dies.
FWIW, murder one and kidnapping-for-ransom are the only two crimes which carry the death penalty here. And they don't carry it very often: we have maybe five or eight people on our state's death row, out of a population of about four million.
If you torch an SUV dealership in Colorado, IOW, and the owner has a heart attack while trying to put out the fire, you can easily face Murder One charges.
There was one called "Rowan v. Post Office," some years back. The USSC ruled that a junk mailer had absolutely no right to send mail to Rowan.
(The case that comes to mind is a KKK rally that the would-be host town objected to, where the sound of the rally would penetrate even closed doors and windows such that there would be no place in town free from the rally. I may be misremembering this, though.)
Never heard of that case. Most of the First Amendment case law I've heard of involving Klan rallies ended up saying that cities had no right to bar the shitheads based upon objectionable content. The US courts tend to be very unfriendly to content-based restrictions, but fairly tolerant of content neutral "time, place, manner" restrictions.
I mean, if NASA doesn't really care about Aeronautics or Space, someone has to. It's good to see that this guy is into it enough to actually do something with it.
Yeah, the FAA is going to shit bricks. They're more Administration than Aviation anyway. And he's in the PNW, home of some genuine silliness. Some crystal-wearing posie sniffer is probably going to stumble on this, think "rocket=missile=weapon=nuclear," and go truly apeshit and try to chain herself to the rocket.
But just the same, this needs to be done.
So, where does he want the donations sent? I'm not an engineer, and the only physics I know are the ones involved in firearms and traffic accidents, but I have a few buck to throw in.
Let me tell you a little story about history. Once upon a time, there was a country in mainland Europe. They elected a guy to the top job who had a funny mustache and only one testicle. This guy wanted to kill my parents, and a dozen or so million people with last names like my parents'.
There was another country floating just off the coast of Europe. This country elected a guy to the top job who was determined to appease the aforementioned nutless wonder at all costs. And then there were a few more countries which set up puppet governments to do whatever the euunich said for them to do.
So there's something in the American mindset that there's always something better if we just go and actually look for it. That brought us out of Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, etc, saving us and our children from having to live with the likes of you.
Some people are happy with taking a stream of sewage and calling it a river, or are happy with having no power themselves. Some people like living in apartments and being dependent on public transportation for their whole lives. Some people like to fork over two-thirds of their paychecks. Some people can't stand the thought of even the very existence of a wilderness big enough to get lost in. Heh. In my state, they don't last long west of I-25.
So, you're damn right we're restless. There's ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS a better way, if man only has the drive and the imagination to find it and learn it.
It's not THAT outlandish.
Let's say a cop sees a closed container. He has probable cause to believe the container contains evidence of a crime. Under the current case law he needs a warrant to actually open the container, unless there's some sort of exigent circumstance which would involve the evidence being destroyed or a significant danger to other people if the cop actually takes the six hours it would take to get the warrant.
It was some years ago, the first time I ever ran into this at work. I was booking a guy into the county jail on an FTA bench warrant. We were inventorying his personal effects and came across a small handbag, which looked damn similar to one taken in a mugging three days prior. So, what did we do?
We wrote out the affadavit, and got a warrant. THEN we opened the bag and found the mugging victim's driver's license and so forth. If we hadn't, the handbag and its contents would have been suppressed, which means they couldn't have been used as evidence and therefore we'd have almost no case on the robbery.
IOW, it's hardly unheard-of for cops to be unable to legally examine items already in their possession without a warrant. All this ruling is, is an application of the general principle to the specific case.
Nope. Let's look at the Fourteenth Amendment, which says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to their laws, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States."
Or words to that effect.
The exact definition of "privileges and immunities" has been a subject of some controversy for the last century and change. One current understanding is that they include, but are not limited to, the Bill of Rights protections.
Another is that they include the BoR, but only once each specific BoR provision is "incorporated" into the Fourteenth. For example, there has never been a USSC or even Circuit-level ruling on whether the Second Amendment actually protects an individual right. However, there was a ruling by a Circuit (appellate) court about fifteen years ago, stating that whatever rights were or were not included in the Second were not yet incorporated into the Fourteenth. (Gun control being a touchy political topic, the court didn't want to even touch the underlying question.)
But anyway, the Federal Bill of Rights is binding upon state and local governments. Otherwise, I wouldn't necessarily have to give arrestees a Miranda warning when arresting them on state charges.
I've seen precisely one "game" designed to " teach" people about killing. It's called FATS, or Firearms Training Simulator. It's designed to teach people how to make the "shoot/don't shoot" decision under stress. Predictably, it's commonly used by police officers and is decidedly a niche market otherwise.
There can be a legitmate case made for a predisposition to violence caused by graphic first-person games. In his book, On Killing, David Grossman explores the fact that throughout history, human beings have been reluctant to kill unless conditioned to it, such as through realistic targets. He then uses this to make a case for violent TV and videogames causing a sort of dehumanization in the viewer. This dehumanization won't necessarily turn a mild-mannered adult into Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold, but it does remove one of the psychological barriers to killing.
I don't necessarily buy all of Mr. Grossman's conclusions, but he does argue them through in enough detail that they cannot simply be discounted without examination. I've taken an interest in these things, since I've had to take a professional interest in violence and its prevention.
FWIW, people often complain about the state usurping the role of the parent. Yeah, that's a legitimate gripe, but is it that legitimate in the face of parents who refuse to parent? I'm not talking about the apathy one might think happens in the inner city minority family (one might think, but it doesn't). I'm talking about the white upper-middle-class parent with the white upper-middle-class child, who gets huffy with me when I arrest Junior Darling for Domestic Abuse or DUI. Apparently, Junior Darling would be just fine if he didn't have the pigs on his ass every time he beat the snot out of his girlfriend.
It would be really nice if the parents actually parented. The only problem is, there are entirely too many that don't, thereby forcing the burden onto the rest of society.
Those are the questions to be frightened of. Any time an appellate judge asks for more information during oral argument, he's skeptical of the person being examined.
5) they left more way to 2600 to express their views by asking questions where MPAA and such answer are already known (always same arguments) but really open questions for 2600
Another bad sign, IMHO. If the judges are committing procedural errors, they may be setting themselves up for an appeal-intentionally. What it looks like to me is, they're aware the current case law may require them to rule in favor of 2600, but they're hoping to create enough fuzz in their handling that the Supreme Court is effectively forced to take the case on appeal. That's how judges say "The law requires me to rule as I've ruled, but I think the law sucks here."
If it's like in Belgium, judges can't be fired once they are in place (in order to avoid political pressure)... and so, they could think as men and face the MPAA and such... But American law may be different...
In the US, Federal judges are in place effectively for life. They can only be removed through an impeachment process in the Congress, and fewer than a dozen have been removed in the 225 years that we've had the Republic. State judges can be removed more easily in some states, but that really doesn't matter because this case isn't being heard in state court.
Anyway, I didn't think that the outcome was bad for 2600...
We can hope. The question probably won't be settled until the US Supreme Court rules, but we can hope.
Not necessarily. In some US states, some codeine preparations are Schedule V. That means they're controlled substances which are legally considered to have medical value and a very low potential for abuse. An adult can legally buy them without a script.
FWIW, those preparations are usually cough medicines.
Yeah. That's civilization. Throw a guy in the can because he was threatened and took action to stop the threat.
What do you do when he doesn't surrender?
And SHOOT HIM IN THE FOOT??? I've been a cop for pretty much my entire adult life. I've been through just about every defensive-tactics class my department would pay for. I've been a police firearms instructor for some years now. And I know how big a target the feet/knees/arms are. There just isn't any way to hit them reliably when they're moving, and they're hardly reliable stop points even when they are hit. The only reliable target is center of mass.
Self-defense law in my state is a recognition of an unpleasant reality: Some people are just shitbags, out to do whatever they want and profit through the victimization of others. We (police) try to do everything we can, but sometimes we can't get there in time and people need to do what they can to hang on until we do get on scene. If someone shoots an intruder, we'll detain him while we investigate, but if he legitimately feared for his own safety neither we, nor the prosecutor, nor the judges, nor the public would fault him for using force to protect himself.
It's all about trust. We're willing to take the chance and trust that our citizens know their responsibilities and take them seriously. You'd be surprised at how often that actually works.
Read the statute again. The word "serious" describes the level of injury which the victim feared. It does NOT have any connection to the actor's intent.
The only part of the statute where intent is relevant is in that word knowingly. "Knowingly" refers to a particular state of mind on the part of the actor. You see, under our law, a person will generally need to act in a culpable mental state in order to have committed a crime. The mental states are: "Specific Intent," where the actor has the intent to cause the prohibited result; "Knowingly" (sometimes called "willfully) where the actor knows a prohibited result is the likely result of his actions; "recklessness," where the actor disregarded a knowing risk; and "criminal negligence," where an actor failed to perceive a risk because of a lack of care.
Each individual criminal statute specifies a culpable mental state as an essential element of the crime.
In the case of Menacing/Felony Menacing, the only place where the actor's mindset matters at all is in the question: did he know his words or actions were likely to cause such fear in the victim?
"Serious Bodily Injury" is not the most-specific term in the lexicon, unfortunately. The only firm rule is that it's more than bruises and a black eye. Without intent to harm, the fist swinger's actions couldn't be refered to as serious
Read the statute again. "Serious" is not used to describe the swinger's actions, but rather the degree of injury feared.
You'd be more than welcome to come to Colorado, swing your fist in someone's face, and try this argument on the judge. But I'm not going to bring you a file baked in a cake when the judge gives you the sentence of up to 180 days permitted by statute.
Wrong. At least in my state, anyway.
Colorado Revised Statute 18-3-206: "A person commits the crime of menacing if, by any threat or physical action, he or she knowingly places or attempts to place another person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury."
"knowingly" means only that the defendant was aware of his own conduct and of a reasonable likelihood that his conduct will bring about the prohibited result.
Swing your fist in my face in my state, and you will definitely be charged with either menacing or attempted misdemeanor assault.