Nothing in its constitution mentions communism. It's simply a dictatorship.
But impressions are more important than fact to China, and just about everyone else, I guess.
I would say having a ruling party called the "Communist Party of [country]" whose official economic policy is "socialism with [country's] characteristics" has more to do with how Red a country is than what's in its Constitution. At any rate, China certainly claims to be Red and North Korea claims to as well, so it's in their interest to keep up those appearances any way they can.
I was about to post everything you just said, but now that I've read your post, I have to say this is all spot-on. At this point any alliance between China and North Korea is purely symbolic. It's like that part in Redvsblue when Tucker says, "It's Blue, we're Blue..." I'm pretty sure the CCP is basically going, "We gotta stick up for North Korea! It's Red, we're Red..." and that relationship is more about the show of bolstering China's communist credentials at a time when it seems more and more capitalist than any actual strategic gain China thinks it's getting out of the deal.
People won't be happy if their Netflix streaming doesn't work right on Comcast/FiOS/whatever.
Yeah, and if they haven't done any research they'll blame Netflix. Which is exactly what Comcast wants to happen. Comcast doesn't NEED to be more powerful; they just want to shave off a couple percent of Netflix's market share, while the rest of us suffer a slow, crappy internet.
I would say it's the opposite since, although they both like to spend, the Democrats spend far, far more.
Factually untrue on a national level. If you care to spend 5 minutes doing actual research, you will find tons of well-vetted graphs and charts comparing national spending under Republicans and under Democrats. There's no comparison: Republicans talk a good game on spending, but simply haven't delivered since, oh, maybe McKinley.
Back to topic: The FCC's idea of "net neutrality" is not our idea of net neutrality. The FCC would impose all kinds of restrictions such as forbidding bittorrent, forbidding downloads of sex vids, pulling websites w/o due process of law (i.e. as just happened last month), require a license to post a personal website, tax ebay sales, and on and on. At least that's what I've heard - I'm still researching the FCC's exact plan.
Just like when they imposed common carrier rules for phone lines the FCC banned sex lines, pulled people's phone lines without due process of law, required a license to use a phone for personal purposes, and taxed all products ordered over the phone. At least, that's what I heard they did...wait? They didn't do that? Seriously, that makes about as much sense as what you're trying to tell us. Are you at the stage now where you literally just make shit up?
I'm also wondering how the FCC can claim authority over the net?
- These are private cables owned by private companies. The FCC was
empowered by Congress to regulate the PUBLIC airwaves and that's it.
It's why HBO and other channels can show nudity/sex - because the FCC has no authority to stop them.
The FCC regulates telephone lines. Look it up. Presumably these are also private lines owned by private companies, at least as much so as are internet lines.
The judge then takes responsibility for making sure the information you get is reliable, rather than some shit you found on the internet.
That doesn't always happen.
I'll be the first to agree that the system is flawed. Your example, however, seems to be a case where that is exactly what happened, and you just didn't appreciate it.
My last jury stint involved a trial with more than one defendant and an invocation of the so-called "felony murder rule".
The felony murder rule is a stupid rule. One of the stupidest rules I know. I had a crim law professor who told us every time it came up that it should never have been made and that every so-called felony murder would be better prosecuted either as a reckless homicide or as murder directly without using the rule. However, the felony murder rule is the law of the land. I don't know about where you live, but in my jurisdiction it's actually a felony murder statute that's been duly passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. It's the job of judge and jury to follow that rule in all jurisdictions where it's in effect.
The judge wanted each jury member to affirm that they would treat the felony murder rule as Gospel, AND made this demand WITHOUT any detailed discussion of its value or history.
It's not your job to make judgments about its value or history, or any decisions that require you to have that information. It's your job to decide the facts of the case, that is to say what the accused did or did not do.
When I specifically asked for that, the judge flatly denied my request. So I did what any freethinker would have done: during lunch I "broke the rules" using the court house's free wifi and researched the felony murder rule on my Pocket PC.
That's only what some freethinkers would do. I'm as free a thinker as they come, and had I taken an oath to decide questions of fact in a case according to a set of rules designed to ensure my impartiality, I would have followed the rules even if it meant waiting to do research to satisfy my own curiosity until after I had responsibly discharged my duty to society.
Frankly, that is just a great way to have the judge (and whatever potentially lame ideas he has on issue X) pushed on a ignorant jury.
What if the judge thinks that 'rape trauma syndrome' is some made up condition? Or as tends to happen one side will put a 'expert' on the stand who may be full of crap about it and say whatever helps side X?
If the judge thinks 'rape trauma syndrome' is made up and doesn't allow evidence about it, that's in the record and can be addressed on appeal. If an 'expert' is full of crap, his expert testimony is in the record and his expert credentials could be contested on appeal. If some juror reads some garbage and makes a decision based on it, that's not reversible on appeal unless they get caught. Jurors need to know, in no uncertain terms, that violations of process are unacceptable because they swing the outcomes of cases in ways that are not appealable.
Not allowing outside sources means only the aspect presented within the courtroom ever gets heard. That's like asking for bias.
Not really. Both sides have a fair chance to present evidence and contest the other side's evidence, to present arguments and contest the other side's arguments. More like asking for fairness than asking for bias. Allowing unexamined outside information is asking for bias.
I'm not saying wikipedia is a great source for this, but frankly I'd rather see the court not rule every aspect of what a term means.
The court might have just given them the exact same information if they had asked, but the important thing is the process, because without proper process it would be impossible to have a fair trial. Think of it this way: Imagine you're on trial for molesting a child. In fact, you've never touched the child in your life, but someone accuses you anyway and you're on trial. You also happen to be gay. A juror goes home and looks up "homosexuality" in his 1950s Encyclopedia Brittanica, and discovers that homosexuality is a mental disease, that it is considered to lead to pedophilia, and that almost all homosexuals end up molesting children. Of course none of this is true, and if the prosecutor had introduced this article as evidence it would have been stricken by the judge. But neither your lawyer nor the judge knows that this juror is using this information. The juror decides based on this that you must be guilty, and brings the article in to show his or her fellow jurors. You get convicted based on an antiquated definition without a fair chance to defend yourself. Would you rather let the jury come to its own conclusions based on outside information as to what "homosexual" means, or would you rather let the court "rule every aspect of what a term means"?
So it's like the other guy said. The entire system is rigged to make sure the jury is completely ignorant.
If your definition of "completely ignorant" is only being able to request information through a judge who ensures that it's competent and accurate instead of some shit you found on the internet, then yes.
Ensuring that the jury can't call bullshit on some bit of rhetoric or evidence is not justice.
Ensuring the parties to the case CAN call bullshit on whatever (mis-)information the jury is exposed to is the cornerstone of a fair trial.
That gets away from the original intent of the jury. Decide a case based on information presented at trial.
Ah, but you omitted the qualifier, didn't you? We're not entitled to just 'a jury', but 'a jury of our peers'.
Not according to the US Constitution, you're not. If you're in England and subject to the Magna Carta, sure, but "peers" in that context means "other noblemen." In the US you're entitled to "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed" in criminal cases. "Jury of one's peers" is a catchy phrase, but it's not the law.
It doesn't matter if the information is "verified." A mistrial would likely be called if she had brought in the legal books that the judge would have consulted himself. "Verified" has nothing to do with it. Learning something that could influence the decision of the jury without the judge's permission is against the rules. The source of the information is irrelevant.
I am dumbfounded as to why a court would ban content from an Encyclopedia Britannica.
That's because you don't understand why they ban information. It would have been a mistrial even if she brought in a copy of the laws with her, which are obviously vetted (and that has happened before).
Exactly. They also tend to strike potential jurors who have any legal expertise because they assume such people will end up telling the other jurors what the law is, where the judge is supposed to be the only conduit of legal information to the jury.
No, only a jury that follows the rules is a fair one. If you have a question or need more clarification on terminology, you ask the judge. The judge then takes responsibility for making sure the information you get is reliable, rather than some shit you found on the internet.
So what makes a reference acceptable? I mean even the Encyclopedia Britannica contains errors or has entries that have changed / are out of date.
You're not allowed to bring Encyclopedia Britannica into jury deliberations either. No outside sources of information, that's the rule.
In the end, I think Wikipedia should be an allowed reference source as long as _all_ (and not just from wikipedia) sources are checked by the court later on.
The point is not accuracy, the point is to allow the court to control what evidence the jury has access to so that both sides have a fair shot at rebutting or clarifying anything that might otherwise hurt their case. The proper thing to do is for the jury to ask the judge for more information, and have the judge come up with with the encyclopedia article or other source deemed appropriate for the purposes of the trial, possibly in consultation with both the prosecution and defense.
Cobol might be a pretty easy joke for obsolescence, but remember that Cobol was written by a woman in a time where the industry was far more male dominated than it is today.
This was surely an impressive achievement. And for 1959, COBOL was surely an impressive language. It's no disrespect to Hopper to dis COBOL based on the standards of the '70s, or '80s, or '00s, however. That's a dis to the folks who should know better, and yet continue implementing the damn thing.
From what I hear, 1 year is too damn long, let alone 50. Hey The Atlantic, are you sure you didn't mean "recognizes" or "observes" or hell, maybe "mourns"?
Nobody uses open source. That must be why Firefox and Chrome together account for 40%+ of browser market share. Also, that completely explains Apache's 60% share of the web server market.
You're right, obviously the Constitution was written to benefit spoiled little babies who want everything now and don't give a damn if people die because of it. Truly you are attuned to the intentions of the framers in a way that I, naively believing that "The Constitution is not a suicide pact", can only aspire to.
They vigorously check each others code before it is committed. They even keep a record of who checked it.
Yes, but who audits the vigor of the checks? How do we know they're not just saying they're vigorously checking?? Whatev, this whole discussion is mooted by the point brought up in other threads that crypto code is almost impossible to audit anyway because you would have to verify that numeric constants were not chosen for hidden properties known only to the person choosing them and that algorithms have no as-yet-unknown flaws (once again, presumably known only to the person submitting the algo code) which are basically untestable premises. I don't know enough about crypto to verify this analysis but it seems plausible. So let's assume it was vigorously checked, and call it a day.
But for now we just have one person saying all these things. We don't really know what is going on.
That's the big issue for me. It's possible the one guy thinks he knows more than he does or that he knows something real but the code has since been replaced with something more secure (which could potentially happen without the contributors of the new code even realizing the old code had a backdoor) or 10,000 other possibilities. Until more information comes out we really don't know if anything's compromised at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing in its constitution mentions communism. It's simply a dictatorship.
But impressions are more important than fact to China, and just about everyone else, I guess.
I would say having a ruling party called the "Communist Party of [country]" whose official economic policy is "socialism with [country's] characteristics" has more to do with how Red a country is than what's in its Constitution. At any rate, China certainly claims to be Red and North Korea claims to as well, so it's in their interest to keep up those appearances any way they can.
I was about to post everything you just said, but now that I've read your post, I have to say this is all spot-on. At this point any alliance between China and North Korea is purely symbolic. It's like that part in Redvsblue when Tucker says, "It's Blue, we're Blue..." I'm pretty sure the CCP is basically going, "We gotta stick up for North Korea! It's Red, we're Red..." and that relationship is more about the show of bolstering China's communist credentials at a time when it seems more and more capitalist than any actual strategic gain China thinks it's getting out of the deal.
The "rules" that the judge explains to the jury are not the actual rules.
The "rules" that the judge explains to the jury are the law. The judge, not the jury, is the duly-appointed expert on what the law says.
Ferex, the rules about nullification, a judge will lie out of his black robed ass about.
Which rules about nullification exactly? I'm guessing what you think the "rules about nullification" are is not what the law says they are.
So that is why the only position you can possibly support if you are "anti-corperate" is no regulation at all.
You realize that no regulation means no net neutrality, right?
No, I actually don't think the dude you're replying to realizes anything at all.
People won't be happy if their Netflix streaming doesn't work right on Comcast/FiOS/whatever.
Yeah, and if they haven't done any research they'll blame Netflix. Which is exactly what Comcast wants to happen. Comcast doesn't NEED to be more powerful; they just want to shave off a couple percent of Netflix's market share, while the rest of us suffer a slow, crappy internet.
I would say it's the opposite since, although they both like to spend, the Democrats spend far, far more.
Factually untrue on a national level. If you care to spend 5 minutes doing actual research, you will find tons of well-vetted graphs and charts comparing national spending under Republicans and under Democrats. There's no comparison: Republicans talk a good game on spending, but simply haven't delivered since, oh, maybe McKinley.
Back to topic: The FCC's idea of "net neutrality" is not our idea of net neutrality. The FCC would impose all kinds of restrictions such as forbidding bittorrent, forbidding downloads of sex vids, pulling websites w/o due process of law (i.e. as just happened last month), require a license to post a personal website, tax ebay sales, and on and on. At least that's what I've heard - I'm still researching the FCC's exact plan.
Just like when they imposed common carrier rules for phone lines the FCC banned sex lines, pulled people's phone lines without due process of law, required a license to use a phone for personal purposes, and taxed all products ordered over the phone. At least, that's what I heard they did...wait? They didn't do that? Seriously, that makes about as much sense as what you're trying to tell us. Are you at the stage now where you literally just make shit up?
I'm also wondering how the FCC can claim authority over the net? - These are private cables owned by private companies. The FCC was empowered by Congress to regulate the PUBLIC airwaves and that's it. It's why HBO and other channels can show nudity/sex - because the FCC has no authority to stop them.
The FCC regulates telephone lines. Look it up. Presumably these are also private lines owned by private companies, at least as much so as are internet lines.
Rebublicans are the kind of guys that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around.
Republicans are the kind of guys that would fuck a guy in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to admit to being gay.
That doesn't always happen.
I'll be the first to agree that the system is flawed. Your example, however, seems to be a case where that is exactly what happened, and you just didn't appreciate it.
My last jury stint involved a trial with more than one defendant and an invocation of the so-called "felony murder rule".
The felony murder rule is a stupid rule. One of the stupidest rules I know. I had a crim law professor who told us every time it came up that it should never have been made and that every so-called felony murder would be better prosecuted either as a reckless homicide or as murder directly without using the rule. However, the felony murder rule is the law of the land. I don't know about where you live, but in my jurisdiction it's actually a felony murder statute that's been duly passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. It's the job of judge and jury to follow that rule in all jurisdictions where it's in effect.
The judge wanted each jury member to affirm that they would treat the felony murder rule as Gospel, AND made this demand WITHOUT any detailed discussion of its value or history.
It's not your job to make judgments about its value or history, or any decisions that require you to have that information. It's your job to decide the facts of the case, that is to say what the accused did or did not do.
When I specifically asked for that, the judge flatly denied my request. So I did what any freethinker would have done: during lunch I "broke the rules" using the court house's free wifi and researched the felony murder rule on my Pocket PC.
That's only what some freethinkers would do. I'm as free a thinker as they come, and had I taken an oath to decide questions of fact in a case according to a set of rules designed to ensure my impartiality, I would have followed the rules even if it meant waiting to do research to satisfy my own curiosity until after I had responsibly discharged my duty to society.
It wasn't about evidence either. It was about the definition of a word.
The definition of a highly technical term is a piece of evidence.
Frankly, that is just a great way to have the judge (and whatever potentially lame ideas he has on issue X) pushed on a ignorant jury.
What if the judge thinks that 'rape trauma syndrome' is some made up condition? Or as tends to happen one side will put a 'expert' on the stand who may be full of crap about it and say whatever helps side X?
If the judge thinks 'rape trauma syndrome' is made up and doesn't allow evidence about it, that's in the record and can be addressed on appeal. If an 'expert' is full of crap, his expert testimony is in the record and his expert credentials could be contested on appeal. If some juror reads some garbage and makes a decision based on it, that's not reversible on appeal unless they get caught. Jurors need to know, in no uncertain terms, that violations of process are unacceptable because they swing the outcomes of cases in ways that are not appealable.
Not allowing outside sources means only the aspect presented within the courtroom ever gets heard. That's like asking for bias.
Not really. Both sides have a fair chance to present evidence and contest the other side's evidence, to present arguments and contest the other side's arguments. More like asking for fairness than asking for bias. Allowing unexamined outside information is asking for bias.
I'm not saying wikipedia is a great source for this, but frankly I'd rather see the court not rule every aspect of what a term means.
The court might have just given them the exact same information if they had asked, but the important thing is the process, because without proper process it would be impossible to have a fair trial. Think of it this way: Imagine you're on trial for molesting a child. In fact, you've never touched the child in your life, but someone accuses you anyway and you're on trial. You also happen to be gay. A juror goes home and looks up "homosexuality" in his 1950s Encyclopedia Brittanica, and discovers that homosexuality is a mental disease, that it is considered to lead to pedophilia, and that almost all homosexuals end up molesting children. Of course none of this is true, and if the prosecutor had introduced this article as evidence it would have been stricken by the judge. But neither your lawyer nor the judge knows that this juror is using this information. The juror decides based on this that you must be guilty, and brings the article in to show his or her fellow jurors. You get convicted based on an antiquated definition without a fair chance to defend yourself. Would you rather let the jury come to its own conclusions based on outside information as to what "homosexual" means, or would you rather let the court "rule every aspect of what a term means"?
So it's like the other guy said. The entire system is rigged to make sure the jury is completely ignorant.
If your definition of "completely ignorant" is only being able to request information through a judge who ensures that it's competent and accurate instead of some shit you found on the internet, then yes.
Ensuring that the jury can't call bullshit on some bit of rhetoric or evidence is not justice.
Ensuring the parties to the case CAN call bullshit on whatever (mis-)information the jury is exposed to is the cornerstone of a fair trial.
That gets away from the original intent of the jury. Decide a case based on information presented at trial.
Ah, but you omitted the qualifier, didn't you? We're not entitled to just 'a jury', but 'a jury of our peers'.
Not according to the US Constitution, you're not. If you're in England and subject to the Magna Carta, sure, but "peers" in that context means "other noblemen." In the US you're entitled to "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed" in criminal cases. "Jury of one's peers" is a catchy phrase, but it's not the law.
It doesn't matter if the information is "verified." A mistrial would likely be called if she had brought in the legal books that the judge would have consulted himself. "Verified" has nothing to do with it. Learning something that could influence the decision of the jury without the judge's permission is against the rules. The source of the information is irrelevant. I am dumbfounded as to why a court would ban content from an Encyclopedia Britannica. That's because you don't understand why they ban information. It would have been a mistrial even if she brought in a copy of the laws with her, which are obviously vetted (and that has happened before).
Exactly. They also tend to strike potential jurors who have any legal expertise because they assume such people will end up telling the other jurors what the law is, where the judge is supposed to be the only conduit of legal information to the jury.
So only an ignorant Jury is a fair one?
No, only a jury that follows the rules is a fair one. If you have a question or need more clarification on terminology, you ask the judge. The judge then takes responsibility for making sure the information you get is reliable, rather than some shit you found on the internet.
So what makes a reference acceptable? I mean even the Encyclopedia Britannica contains errors or has entries that have changed / are out of date.
You're not allowed to bring Encyclopedia Britannica into jury deliberations either. No outside sources of information, that's the rule.
In the end, I think Wikipedia should be an allowed reference source as long as _all_ (and not just from wikipedia) sources are checked by the court later on.
The point is not accuracy, the point is to allow the court to control what evidence the jury has access to so that both sides have a fair shot at rebutting or clarifying anything that might otherwise hurt their case. The proper thing to do is for the jury to ask the judge for more information, and have the judge come up with with the encyclopedia article or other source deemed appropriate for the purposes of the trial, possibly in consultation with both the prosecution and defense.
It wasn't cited, the jury foreman was unsure of a specific phrase and used wikipedia to look it up. .
Bringing it in to show to others == a form of citation.
Cobol might be a pretty easy joke for obsolescence, but remember that Cobol was written by a woman in a time where the industry was far more male dominated than it is today.
This was surely an impressive achievement. And for 1959, COBOL was surely an impressive language. It's no disrespect to Hopper to dis COBOL based on the standards of the '70s, or '80s, or '00s, however. That's a dis to the folks who should know better, and yet continue implementing the damn thing.
From what I hear, 1 year is too damn long, let alone 50. Hey The Atlantic, are you sure you didn't mean "recognizes" or "observes" or hell, maybe "mourns"?
A high enough threshold for expensive can make for impossible.
Exactly. More expensive than you can possibly afford is indistinguishable from impossible.
Is it any wonder that no one uses open source?
Nobody uses open source. That must be why Firefox and Chrome together account for 40%+ of browser market share. Also, that completely explains Apache's 60% share of the web server market.
Netflix doesn't actually provide an open source viewer, do they?
No. Don't let the (Score: 4, Insightful) fool you, OP was actually trolling.
Uh, go get the open source and build it yourself.
We can't. It isn't open source.
Why should Netflix be obliged to implement a Linux port? Not doing something is not the same as preventing it from happening.
Next time, please RTFA before spouting off.
You're right, obviously the Constitution was written to benefit spoiled little babies who want everything now and don't give a damn if people die because of it. Truly you are attuned to the intentions of the framers in a way that I, naively believing that "The Constitution is not a suicide pact", can only aspire to.
They vigorously check each others code before it is committed. They even keep a record of who checked it.
Yes, but who audits the vigor of the checks? How do we know they're not just saying they're vigorously checking?? Whatev, this whole discussion is mooted by the point brought up in other threads that crypto code is almost impossible to audit anyway because you would have to verify that numeric constants were not chosen for hidden properties known only to the person choosing them and that algorithms have no as-yet-unknown flaws (once again, presumably known only to the person submitting the algo code) which are basically untestable premises. I don't know enough about crypto to verify this analysis but it seems plausible. So let's assume it was vigorously checked, and call it a day.
But for now we just have one person saying all these things. We don't really know what is going on.
That's the big issue for me. It's possible the one guy thinks he knows more than he does or that he knows something real but the code has since been replaced with something more secure (which could potentially happen without the contributors of the new code even realizing the old code had a backdoor) or 10,000 other possibilities. Until more information comes out we really don't know if anything's compromised at all.
You can't have history books covering say Europe during Renaissance without some extensive Royal incest...
Exactly. Lets ban them all!