>>>It was a police officer investigating a reported crime following the suspect.
And "crimes" reported via phone calls are not justification to enter a private home, per the U.S. Supreme Court. Why? Because as the justices pointed-out, these phone calls could be abused by your neighbors who don't like you. They could call, report a crime that never happened, and then have police officers enter your home. It's a way for neighbors to harass one another. Therefore the SCOTUS says a phone call is Not probable cause, not justification to enter a private home, and any evidence observed/collected will be thrown-out and the suspect released.
I'm sorry you disagree with the Supreme Court's decision, but that IS what the case law says. You can look it up yourself. .
>>>didn't bother following him because he went back inside my house, I'd be REALLY PISSED -- at the cops.
I wouldn't. The cops may not enter a house, but they CAN surround the house to prevent the suspect's escape, obtain a warrant from a judge, and then enter the house to perform a legal search. Yes it's inconvenient. It's supposed to be. ----- The alternative is that cops could make up random lies, say "we got a call about a breakin", and force their way into your home at any time they feel like it. THAT is not acceptable.
>>>AND LEFT HIS DOOR OPEN so the officer followed.
And when the officer did that, he committed a crime. Just because a person leaves a door open (whether a house or car) does not mean the government can enter the property without a warrant. Time-and-time again the Supreme Court has ruled these searches unconstitutional and thrown-out the evidence.
>>>giving someone a viable option with positive societal value is interfering?
If the government is telling malleable children that "masturbation is good" and "masturbation is your right" in direct contradiction to Church of England, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim beliefs that "masturbation is a mortal sin that will doom your to eternal damnation"...... then yeah I'd say there's a problem there. NO government has a right to damn our children to hell.
>>>The UK government has it right, and thank you for playing.
Yes but I'm neither a serf nor a slave, and the government is not my master (on the contrary, the People are the master; the government the servant). So as far as I am concerned my *employees* in government can take their opinions and stuff them. I'm going to teach my kids MY beliefs and the government should stay silent.
And if the government refuses to stay silent, then I'll rally the support of the Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else who cares to join against this "masturbation is good" propaganda and MAKE the government be silent, for fear the MPs will lose the next election.
>>>Telling kids to jerk it seems far more responsible.
I value you your opinion, but since is a free country where individuals are liberated, I'm going to completely reject it. I don't see a problem with masturbation, but for some cultures it's a mortal sin that will damn you or your kid to hell for all eternity. They should be free to follow their own morality without interference from the crown. That's what liberty means.
>>>>>> Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist (or so I've been told). And I don't need to prove it, since it's a belief and beliefs are a protected right. > >> Sure you do. If you expect to be taken for anything but a total nutter, you will justify the claims you make.
Or what? You going to strap me to the rack and stretch my body until I either recant my belief that masturbation is a sin, or else die??? Come on. This is not the middle ages. This is a modern, liberated society where people are free to believe whatever they want to believe in regards to sex, and the crown/government has no authority to overrule. We are FREE citizens, not serfs. .
>>>Not every religion on the planet is fiercely anti-intellectual.
STRAWMAN ARGUMENT. I didn't say they were anti-intellectual. Most religions like Catholicism have very well-reasoned arguments for why they think masturbation is a sin against God, and will likely protest strongly against the UK government health monopoly telling schoolkids "it's good to masturbate".
Or, rather than hire more people, they'll consider ways to reduce costs by extending password expiration to a year, so the workers can remember the damn word.
>>>Nowhere I have worked during my career would someone get fired for fogetting passwords etc..... is just an unfair dismissal case waiting to happen. >>>
No they wouldn't. If Boeing was like government they'd have a monopoly on your wallet, and be able to sustain themselves by sucking dollars out of it, even when they are producing an old obsolete 1960s product. Kinda like how Amtrak operates now. Or how the Government-Tribant monopoly operated in East Germany (smelly belchy oil-burning cars).
Where there is no competition, and you have direct access to funds, there is no need to innovate.
I thought we were discussing a story called "Man Who Sold the Moon," not our United States Congress. Yes I know they lie through their teeth, promising to fund moon exploration, but please stay on topic. I don't trust the congress. They're just going to do the same thing they did in 1972 - cut the funds and kill the program. Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. It's time to try something new
>>>There was no money in the internet either until the 1990s. I guess building it before then was a waste of time and money.
The people who sold me my first modem in 1987, which allowed me to get online and access the primitive internet, would have disagreed with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CommodoreVICModem.jpg - So too would America Online which was born in the mid-80s. No money? There was lots of money to be collected from the internet prior to the 1990s.
>>>If there were, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and all the other usual suspects...
They can't. These companies are BANNED from creating interplanetary ventures. The law allows them to send-up satellites, but it's illegal for them to do any other space-based entrepreneurship. The government has assigned that market to NASA as a monopoly, just like the old East India Trading Company had been granted a monopoly by the crown.
What we need to do is repeal that law, open Moon and Mars development to private business, and we'll see colonies on both those bodies before we die. As long as we leave it in the hands of government, which is more-interested in cutting budgets than exploring (see NASA 1972 when Apllo was killed), the colonization will never happen. Government has already demonstrated it can not be entrusted to do the job, ad this new moon program is certain to end the same way the last one did. As the saying goes, "Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me." .
>>>libertarian paradise in space
Oh and by the way I'm not Libertarian. I'm a Jeffersonian-democrat. He believed in pushing the government out of the way, and letting the People operate freely in their private ventures. So do I. We need to keep NASA, but we also need to revoke their monopoly and allow other businesses like Lockheed, Boeing, even Microsoft, to extend their reach into interplanetary travel. That's the only way to create a thriving space-based community.
You read my mind. Companies don't give stuff away for free, except as a way to sucker you out of your money somewhere else. Stores give-away goods below cost, because they know you'll probably buy regular-priced items too, and the store will profit overall. Microsoft gives-away Xboxes below cost, or web-aps for free, because they know they can make money later on when they sell the Xbox360 at $50 profit and/or start charging an annual rental fee on the WebOffice aps.
>>>Resale is currently one advantage of the retail product manufacturer that is probably on the way out if [megacorporations] has anything to do with it.
Fixed. Everybody from game companies to amazon.com e-books to the music/video industry is trying to kill the "used" market. When you download your games, books, videos, or songs you have to keep them for life. You can never resell them to somebody else. Which is frankly annoying. I often buy a book or game, play it through, and then resell the physical object to recover my money.
With the new download model I'll no longer be able to recover my cash.
In many ways computers have freed customers by enabling them to buy entertainment over the net. In other ways computers have shackled the customers by making it virtually-impossible to physically own and later resell what they've bought. The goods have become high-priced rentals.
Maybe for the same reason why they auctioned-off the Star Trek props - they have no place to store all this crap, so they are selling it.
Now suppose I bought this Mac. What would I use it for? My ancient Commodore 64 and Amiga make great 8- and 32-bit game machines which I still play even today. What good is an ancient Mac?
Go read "The Man Who Sold the Moon," a story about an entrepreneur who not only reached the moon, but also set-up permanent colonies. As long as the government runs the show, it will just be like the last moon mission - lots of expensive tourist visits but no long-term settlement.
Even better! I get $75 for every hour of overtime, so the more time spent in meetings the more money I get. Last Christmas, due to a rather stupid promise by management to the U.S. government, I had to rush to finish a project in just one week. I worked 80 hours and earned $5000.
No because I can write a book over the weekend, take it to a printing shop, and have it in stores within 1-2 months. I can quickly reap the rewards of my effort, and 14 years is plenty of time for me to get rich off that book.
In contrast if I was working on a new battery technology, it takes time to develop it - usually 10 years - sometimes 20 years until it gets to market. Example - FM radio and TV took about 20 and 15 years before they finally hit store shelves... and even longer to turn a profit. So it's logical to make inventions have a far longer timespan for exclusive privileges.
How long is it now? 100 years? Pretty soon I expect Disney will petition (read: bribe) Congress to extend it to 200 years, so they can protect their precious copyrights over ancient cartoons drawn in the 1920s. That's ridiculous. The men who drew those cartoons are dead and buried, and the copyright should have expired with them or shortly thereafter. Those cartoons should be public domain now so everyone can enjoy them, even the poor.
The only solution is to put the time-limit in the Constitution, that way it can not be altered by the corporations.
>>>i don't personally acknowledge amendments 11+ as being valid. Its 1-10 only.
Oh you're one of *those* persons. Yeah I've met people like you when I belonged to the Libertarian Party. It's why I eventually quit, because they say ridiculous things like "amendments 11 and up are not valid". I can understand questioning if the Civil War amendments are valid, but not those amendments passed per the Constitution's established rules (3/4 vote of the Legislatures). Those amendments are legally binding.
Libertarians are good overall, but the party is dominated by a bunch of nutters that scare away voters (which means the LP will never win). Some of them think it's better to let people starve on the street, rather than have Food Stamp/Housing programs as a safety net. Others say income tax is not legal, even though the Constitution says it is. And still others claim the U.S. is not a government at all, but a British corporation?!?!? These are mentally challenged persons.
>>>Where did i say [copyrights] were not part of [the constitution]? I said they shouldn't be.
Okay. Based upon what you're saying, it sounds like you want to strike the entire phrase "To promote... their respective Writings and Discoveries" from the Constitution because you don't think they should be there. Sounds reasonable but there's a major flaw with the idea.
If that phrase was removed from the document, Congress would no longer have the authority to grant copyrights. The States could still issue copyrights, per the tenth amendment, but the U.S. Congress itself would no longer hold that power.
Good point. I guess that's why Congress is pushing government-run healthcare with a simple majority vote, even though Constitutionally it requires a 2/3rds amendment process to grant said power to the U.S.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>It was a police officer investigating a reported crime following the suspect.
And "crimes" reported via phone calls are not justification to enter a private home, per the U.S. Supreme Court. Why? Because as the justices pointed-out, these phone calls could be abused by your neighbors who don't like you. They could call, report a crime that never happened, and then have police officers enter your home. It's a way for neighbors to harass one another. Therefore the SCOTUS says a phone call is Not probable cause, not justification to enter a private home, and any evidence observed/collected will be thrown-out and the suspect released.
I'm sorry you disagree with the Supreme Court's decision, but that IS what the case law says. You can look it up yourself.
.
>>>didn't bother following him because he went back inside my house, I'd be REALLY PISSED -- at the cops.
I wouldn't. The cops may not enter a house, but they CAN surround the house to prevent the suspect's escape, obtain a warrant from a judge, and then enter the house to perform a legal search. Yes it's inconvenient. It's supposed to be. ----- The alternative is that cops could make up random lies, say "we got a call about a breakin", and force their way into your home at any time they feel like it. THAT is not acceptable.
>>>AND LEFT HIS DOOR OPEN so the officer followed.
And when the officer did that, he committed a crime. Just because a person leaves a door open (whether a house or car) does not mean the government can enter the property without a warrant. Time-and-time again the Supreme Court has ruled these searches unconstitutional and thrown-out the evidence.
Yeah but Apple also happens to be the distribution company, so the ASCAP is targeting the correct person.
>>>giving someone a viable option with positive societal value is interfering?
If the government is telling malleable children that "masturbation is good" and "masturbation is your right" in direct contradiction to Church of England, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim beliefs that "masturbation is a mortal sin that will doom your to eternal damnation"...... then yeah I'd say there's a problem there. NO government has a right to damn our children to hell.
>>>The UK government has it right, and thank you for playing.
Yes but I'm neither a serf nor a slave, and the government is not my master (on the contrary, the People are the master; the government the servant). So as far as I am concerned my *employees* in government can take their opinions and stuff them. I'm going to teach my kids MY beliefs and the government should stay silent.
And if the government refuses to stay silent, then I'll rally the support of the Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else who cares to join against this "masturbation is good" propaganda and MAKE the government be silent, for fear the MPs will lose the next election.
>>>Telling kids to jerk it seems far more responsible.
I value you your opinion, but since is a free country where individuals are liberated, I'm going to completely reject it. I don't see a problem with masturbation, but for some cultures it's a mortal sin that will damn you or your kid to hell for all eternity. They should be free to follow their own morality without interference from the crown. That's what liberty means.
>>>>>> Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist (or so I've been told). And I don't need to prove it, since it's a belief and beliefs are a protected right.
>
>> Sure you do. If you expect to be taken for anything but a total nutter, you will justify the claims you make.
Or what? You going to strap me to the rack and stretch my body until I either recant my belief that masturbation is a sin, or else die??? Come on. This is not the middle ages. This is a modern, liberated society where people are free to believe whatever they want to believe in regards to sex, and the crown/government has no authority to overrule. We are FREE citizens, not serfs.
.
>>>Not every religion on the planet is fiercely anti-intellectual.
STRAWMAN ARGUMENT. I didn't say they were anti-intellectual. Most religions like Catholicism have very well-reasoned arguments for why they think masturbation is a sin against God, and will likely protest strongly against the UK government health monopoly telling schoolkids "it's good to masturbate".
Or, rather than hire more people, they'll consider ways to reduce costs by extending password expiration to a year, so the workers can remember the damn word.
>>>Nowhere I have worked during my career would someone get fired for fogetting passwords etc..... is just an unfair dismissal case waiting to happen.
>>>
I love winning the lottery.
>>>Boeing [would] be bankrupt.
No they wouldn't. If Boeing was like government they'd have a monopoly on your wallet, and be able to sustain themselves by sucking dollars out of it, even when they are producing an old obsolete 1960s product. Kinda like how Amtrak operates now. Or how the Government-Tribant monopoly operated in East Germany (smelly belchy oil-burning cars).
Where there is no competition, and you have direct access to funds, there is no need to innovate.
>>>by lying through your teeth.
I thought we were discussing a story called "Man Who Sold the Moon," not our United States Congress. Yes I know they lie through their teeth, promising to fund moon exploration, but please stay on topic. I don't trust the congress. They're just going to do the same thing they did in 1972 - cut the funds and kill the program. Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. It's time to try something new
>>>There was no money in the internet either until the 1990s. I guess building it before then was a waste of time and money.
The people who sold me my first modem in 1987, which allowed me to get online and access the primitive internet, would have disagreed with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CommodoreVICModem.jpg - So too would America Online which was born in the mid-80s. No money? There was lots of money to be collected from the internet prior to the 1990s.
>>>If there were, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and all the other usual suspects...
They can't. These companies are BANNED from creating interplanetary ventures. The law allows them to send-up satellites, but it's illegal for them to do any other space-based entrepreneurship. The government has assigned that market to NASA as a monopoly, just like the old East India Trading Company had been granted a monopoly by the crown.
What we need to do is repeal that law, open Moon and Mars development to private business, and we'll see colonies on both those bodies before we die. As long as we leave it in the hands of government, which is more-interested in cutting budgets than exploring (see NASA 1972 when Apllo was killed), the colonization will never happen. Government has already demonstrated it can not be entrusted to do the job, ad this new moon program is certain to end the same way the last one did. As the saying goes, "Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me."
.
>>>libertarian paradise in space
Oh and by the way I'm not Libertarian. I'm a Jeffersonian-democrat. He believed in pushing the government out of the way, and letting the People operate freely in their private ventures. So do I. We need to keep NASA, but we also need to revoke their monopoly and allow other businesses like Lockheed, Boeing, even Microsoft, to extend their reach into interplanetary travel. That's the only way to create a thriving space-based community.
You read my mind. Companies don't give stuff away for free, except as a way to sucker you out of your money somewhere else. Stores give-away goods below cost, because they know you'll probably buy regular-priced items too, and the store will profit overall. Microsoft gives-away Xboxes below cost, or web-aps for free, because they know they can make money later on when they sell the Xbox360 at $50 profit and/or start charging an annual rental fee on the WebOffice aps.
>>>Resale is currently one advantage of the retail product manufacturer that is probably on the way out if [megacorporations] has anything to do with it.
Fixed. Everybody from game companies to amazon.com e-books to the music/video industry is trying to kill the "used" market. When you download your games, books, videos, or songs you have to keep them for life. You can never resell them to somebody else. Which is frankly annoying. I often buy a book or game, play it through, and then resell the physical object to recover my money.
With the new download model I'll no longer be able to recover my cash.
In many ways computers have freed customers by enabling them to buy entertainment over the net. In other ways computers have shackled the customers by making it virtually-impossible to physically own and later resell what they've bought. The goods have become high-priced rentals.
Maybe for the same reason why they auctioned-off the Star Trek props - they have no place to store all this crap, so they are selling it.
Now suppose I bought this Mac. What would I use it for? My ancient Commodore 64 and Amiga make great 8- and 32-bit game machines which I still play even today. What good is an ancient Mac?
Go read "The Man Who Sold the Moon," a story about an entrepreneur who not only reached the moon, but also set-up permanent colonies. As long as the government runs the show, it will just be like the last moon mission - lots of expensive tourist visits but no long-term settlement.
No not a rental, since I can take the original CDs and Box and resale my copy of Office97 on ebay. That's one advantage of ownership.
I'm sure the annual rental fee will be so much cheaper (cough) than the $150 I spent to buy Office 97 (~$11.50 per year).
Even better! I get $75 for every hour of overtime, so the more time spent in meetings the more money I get. Last Christmas, due to a rather stupid promise by management to the U.S. government, I had to rush to finish a project in just one week. I worked 80 hours and earned $5000.
No because I can write a book over the weekend, take it to a printing shop, and have it in stores within 1-2 months. I can quickly reap the rewards of my effort, and 14 years is plenty of time for me to get rich off that book.
In contrast if I was working on a new battery technology, it takes time to develop it - usually 10 years - sometimes 20 years until it gets to market. Example - FM radio and TV took about 20 and 15 years before they finally hit store shelves... and even longer to turn a profit. So it's logical to make inventions have a far longer timespan for exclusive privileges.
How long is it now? 100 years? Pretty soon I expect Disney will petition (read: bribe) Congress to extend it to 200 years, so they can protect their precious copyrights over ancient cartoons drawn in the 1920s. That's ridiculous. The men who drew those cartoons are dead and buried, and the copyright should have expired with them or shortly thereafter. Those cartoons should be public domain now so everyone can enjoy them, even the poor.
The only solution is to put the time-limit in the Constitution, that way it can not be altered by the corporations.
>>>i don't personally acknowledge amendments 11+ as being valid. Its 1-10 only.
Oh you're one of *those* persons. Yeah I've met people like you when I belonged to the Libertarian Party. It's why I eventually quit, because they say ridiculous things like "amendments 11 and up are not valid". I can understand questioning if the Civil War amendments are valid, but not those amendments passed per the Constitution's established rules (3/4 vote of the Legislatures). Those amendments are legally binding.
Libertarians are good overall, but the party is dominated by a bunch of nutters that scare away voters (which means the LP will never win). Some of them think it's better to let people starve on the street, rather than have Food Stamp/Housing programs as a safety net. Others say income tax is not legal, even though the Constitution says it is. And still others claim the U.S. is not a government at all, but a British corporation?!?!? These are mentally challenged persons.
>>>Where did i say [copyrights] were not part of [the constitution]? I said they shouldn't be.
Okay. Based upon what you're saying, it sounds like you want to strike the entire phrase "To promote... their respective Writings and Discoveries" from the Constitution because you don't think they should be there. Sounds reasonable but there's a major flaw with the idea.
If that phrase was removed from the document, Congress would no longer have the authority to grant copyrights. The States could still issue copyrights, per the tenth amendment, but the U.S. Congress itself would no longer hold that power.
Good point. I guess that's why Congress is pushing government-run healthcare with a simple majority vote, even though Constitutionally it requires a 2/3rds amendment process to grant said power to the U.S.