actually, the presumption of innocence principle is much more restricted than you think. You are entitled to be presumed innocent in the eyes of judge and jury while they evaluated the evidence and determine your guilt. But, otherwise outside of court there is no such presumption. Arrest, bail, pre-trial jail, etc. all presume your guilt or the strong possibility of it. And the system must work that way. Witnesses, too, need not presume you innocent, nor do the people the witnesses tell their story to, like the press.
Wouldn't it be unfair to be falsely accused? Sure! that's what unfair means. But it's not unfair for people to exercise free speech and base their conclusions on the credibility of their sources, and it's not unfair to the rest of the population for people suspected of committing crimes to have to appear in court.
that's probably what Katz was thinking. He meant to say, "Rebecca Goldstein really pulled a rabbit out of a hat" which is how people say what you are suggesting.
it is pointless to discuss things with nitpickers.
In your scenario, if my testimony was that I had seen the murder, that'd be wrong. If my testimony was that I first saw you standing over the body with a knife, that would be accurate. The jury or judge would be perfectly justified in reaching conclusions from that combined with other evidence, such as you owned the knife and had threatened the person the day before.
Now, I'm sure you'll find some nits to pick with that, but that's just you. I'm explaining how the world works and you are stuck on some hypothetical way the world might work. "Gee, your honor, I did intend to stab him, but he might have had a heart attack as the knife plunged so I can't be certain to be culpable."
Cops get caught lying and tampering with or withholding evidence fairly often.
...but still less often than criminals do (and that's just the times they get caught), unless you think over 50% of convictions are invalid. Do you know any actual criminals? Do you think they're a bunch of girl scouts who are fun to hang out with?
We would be fools to believe our own cops are not capable of similar stuff
we would be fools to assume that our own cops are guilty without actual evidence, in the form of eye-witness testimony and physical evidence... oh wait, you don't believe in those... guess you'll just have to go on your assumptions and intuitions about everything.
Rebecca Goldstein really pulled off a
hat trick, turning physics into first-rate fiction.
the term "hat trick" comes from ice hockey where the fans will throw their hats on the ice if you score three goals in one game. Outside hockey, it is still generally reserved for accomplishing three things, not one. Rebecca Goldstein may have scored a goal with this, an amazing goal, but it's not a hat trick.
I wonder how many times we'll have to encounter police lying and tampering with evidence before we realize that they
DO lie. They DO tamper with evidence.
Yes, sometimes they do. Why? Because they are human, and all humans have moral weaknesses. But they don't lie and tamper with evidence as much as your run of the mill criminal does. And, I don't believe they are routinely harassing and locking up innocent people.
people say stuff like you are saying, but that just makes me think, actual evidence is just as easy to tamper with too! It's awfully easy to plant a weapon or drugs, or to grab clothing fibers. If you can't rely on honesty by law enforcement you are sunk.
More directly to the point of eye witness testimony, I would not be so quick to dismiss it (once again, assuming honesty). Let me give the positive spin scenario to the lineup case (and, I don't want to go back and forth forever, I just want to present the best case for both sides): if an eye-witness picks somebody out of a "clean" lineup, I'd put some credence on it (assuming stuff like the person picked has no alibi, was placed at the scene, had motive, etc.). That witness may later be unable to remake the same pick or may grow doubtful: by then, all the faces have become familiar. But at that moment, only one face looked familiar, and I think that's worth something.
That's not a good example either: he didn't die, he was just a person wrongly convicted and sentenced to jail, then let out. That's an example of a flawed system "working".
he
may in fact have been guilty.
The latter is unlikely though -- police routinely lie in court, under oath, and obtain false convictions, and in many cases
would whether or not the defendent chose a jury trial
yes, I'm sure that the police do routinely lie in court and under oath to ensure convictions, but that does not say anything about the liklihood of the defendant's innocence. And while it would be a better world if the police didn't lie, it is also true that the police do not routinely arrest people who behave, remain orderly, and mind their own business, even during demonstrations. They just don't. If you want to exercise your right to demonstrate, you are generally allowed to. But when things start to seem out of control in a large crowd, the smaller numbers of police get nervous, and if the police tell you to back away, disperse, etc., you should really expect that if you don't, you may (it's still less than likely) get punished, even if the punishment is not literally connected to the crime.
Every now and then I'll get a traffic ticket that is unfair. And when I get stopped, whether fairly or unfairly, the police are often unnecessarily rude. But I don't get huffy about it because if I'm honest to myself, I know that on balance I get away with plenty. I also feel like I got a good sense of what the Republicans were saying inside of the convention hall, and what the demonstrators were saying outside. I do not have the sense that free speech is being suppressed, nor that demonstrators are being locked up and/or fined simply for their beliefs. So, it's hard to get worked up about these allegations of police misconduct.
Eyewitness testimony has two problems: it's unreliable and it's easily corruptable.
what you are saying is true as far you've gone, but there's more to the story than that, and I'll bet that's why we give it creedence.
I was a TA, proctoring an exam, and I began to notice a student peeping at another student's exam paper. Every time my attention was elsewhere, when I looked back he'd be peeping, and over time it became clear that she was allowing him to see her paper since no matter how much they shifted in their seats, this fact of their behavior remained a fact. I moved him to a new seat. After the exam, I reported the incident to the Professor who turned out to be a hardass, and he pressed the "charge" with the disciplinary committee. The students resisted the accusation, and I wanted to be very careful not to taint their records with any unfair allegations, so in describing the event I kept hedging and saying "I'm not sure", "I don't remember", etc. But then the professor asked a question that brought it all home to me. He said, "At the time it was happening, was there any doubt in your mind that they were colluding?" And I realized, no, at the time I was completely convinced that they were cheating.
All of the doubt was after the fact. The doubt was the "taint".
From this experience I would say that eyewitness testimony from a number of people who each saw a little may not be that useful for reconstructing the puzzle pieces of an event because it can be hard to remember details, but the testimony of a single eyewitness who saw the whole thing is pretty compelling. And note, the anti-death penalty side here is trying to raise doubts. They don't say "he didn't do it", they say, "ooooh, look at all the possibility for doubt" but that's precisely how you taint eyewitness accounts.
That's heresy! As soon as the first "Votronic" gets popular, we'll see a bunch of "Hack the Votronic" slashdot articles about "How I added an Ethernet card". They'll probably try to stimulate sales of the Votronic by adopting the following business model: give them away and sell subscriptions to a per-election counting service. This will really get the hackers going: "How I hacked my free Votronic to play MP3s" or worse, "England's New PM Turns Out To Be an MP3. RIAA sues."
I vote with the masses: IOHO, the century changed along with the millenium when we went from 19 to 20.
"turn of the century" refers not to the moment, but to the period straddling. We are in a turn of the century period right now, no matter which way you measure it.
To back up that claim I looked "turn of the century" up and discovered this definition has a Y-mod-100 bug: "the period from about 1890 to 1910"
my, that was an insightful and informative post: moderators should hammer down your self proclaimed +1.
you quoted something I wrote, but ignored what it meant. To give an example, Pablo Picasso was a great artist who was also abusive to women. You can talk about one aspect without commenting on the other. I was talking about Gingrich's career as a college professor. What did your statement about ethics have to do with that? (not to mention that your statement that he "was an individual" is just plain silly)
roblimo had used "Gingrichlike" to mean something like "highly partisan to the point of dirty tricks." I gave several examples from the Democrat side which you could have responded to if you were an honest debater (you're not) but you instead swerved off-topic to bring up totally unrelated ethics allegations, but you did it in a McCarthyist way, not actually citing any evidence.
Do you care to back up your claims about his ethics? He signed a book deal for a fair bit of money when he was recently elected Speaker. What made that look unethical was that his predessessor Democrat Jim Wright had actually used phony book royalties as a kickback scheme to actually collect large sums of money without actually selling any books. The difference is that Gingrich's book would likely have sold a large number of copies given the national significance of what he had just accomplished, ousting the Democrats in Congress after 40ish years, but the deal never took place so essentially you are accusing him of potentially being unethical. In his heart was he doing something unethical at that moment? If he was, it was certainly no worse than the popular Tony Coelo (sp? Democrat of CA) who was forced to resign, or the unpopular Clintons and their option trading sleight of hand.
I never tried to make the point that Republicans are more ethical than Democrats. I was making a point that people who would think somthing along those lines are immature and politically naive. roblimo, jamie, and CmdrTaco all fit that bill, as do you. As another example, there were also allegations about Gingrich's divorce and some marital infidelity, both in the realm of his lovelife... Is that what you were thinking of (like I said, Mr. McCarthyist, you were unspecific.) Because if you were, I thought Democrats keep telling us that stuff doesn't matter, stay out of people's bedrooms. Are you being a hypocrite?
BTW, forgetting about the specifics of this contract,
If the contract between the school and the corporation was for free computers, no conditions
...then it's not a contract.
contracts must entail an exchange, something given in consideration for something received. If there had been no consideration, the company would still own everything. And, that still applies if the contract stipulated consideration but it was never delivered.
Republicans are using voter lists as a way to irritate everyone they can in the most
Gingrichlike way possible
I'm constantly astounded by the juvenile level of political sophistication displayed by members of the "government" of Slashdot. Thank God it's a website, and not a country.
Do you really think there is some correlation between the political parties and fairness? The very reason you would use a word like "Gingrichlike" is because Gingrich was the victim of a steady stream of negative propaganda from Democrat spin doctors, and you've swallowed it hook line and sinker. Politically vicious and cynical people like Democrats James Carville and Dick Morris exist all across the spectrum. Al Gore's campaign savaged Bill Bradley just last year in the Democratic primary, accusing him of being racist. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Gore's versus Bradley's records as Democratic officeholders would think Bradley would be immune from such a vicious lie... of course, "anyone with passing knowledge" would pretty much rule out anyone who works on Slashdot.
Have you ever read or seen any of Gingrich's educational output? He was a college professor and educator, and is quite knowledgeable, non-partisan, and downright charming when he talks about the history of American democracy. Catch him on CSPAN if you ever get the chance. If he were to post to Slashdot (under a false name) his posts would be +4 Informative every time.
I did not think that the other person who replied to you gave enough info. Traditionally, the government had no other record of your existence. Voter registration was the only way you had of telling the government that you existed. There are birth records kept where you are born, and death records kept where you die, but there is no comprehensive list of the integral of those two functions, except the census every ten years, but that data is considered private and cannot be used for any other purpose beyond aggregation.
And the same concept of privacy exists in most other areas too. When income tax was instituted (to pay for WWI?) that data was made private and only covers workers, not all voters. When Social Security (gov't pension system) was started, that data was kept private, and only covers workers, not all voters. Drivers licenses are semi-public, but don't cover voters. Military draft registration has been sporadic and is treated same as the above.
When you move to a new town here, you can vote in town, county, state and federal elections. The only government record of your existence in that hierarchy is your voter registration. BTW, yes is does seem easy to abuse the system for voting fraud, and in some places it does get abused routinely. On a small scale in local elections a lot, but it has even touched national elections. President Kennedy probably would have been counted a loser without fraud in some key locales.
In fact, 70% of the anti-choice movement are men. It really makes me wonder...
you completely made that statistic up. You wish it were true because it fits a sexist stereotype you hold of men, but it is simply not true. It is false, and probably because of different sexist stereotypes. Men care less about children than women do, and because men want sex, mostly they are in favor of free availability of abortion for practical reasons.
Kasparov is acknowledged to be the greatest human player ever. I believe he had a problem when he played Deep Blue... IBM has subsequently adopted Linux... imagine a Beowulf cluster of Deep Blues;)
stop quibbling about things we basically agree on and both know are true... especially since you are wrong: the Magna Carta said that ordinary people had rights too, not just royalty. "Ordinary people" in that sense didn't mean everybody, but it meant at least some people beyond the King. That was a first important step toward democracy. The American Constitution was a direct extension of that thinking (and of the Declaration of Independence) because it said that ordinary people (not including everybody, but emphasizing the ordinariness of the people it did include) could govern themselves without a king at all. And the Bill of Rights, which you cite, was not originally part of the Constitution: it was added in the form of the first 10 amendments, passed by a supermajority.
These features are the essence of the great American experiment with democracy, the oldest such experiment on this planet. The founders thought they needed and used a justification based on Natural Law (from a Creator), but modern thinking has mostly abandoned that view. Today, very few people defends the Bill of Rights on the basis of Natural Law as you are suggesting. But, I hasten to add, those who do, are much more likely to include within its sweep, rights for the unborn.
Choice, the right to choose. It's what America is all about. Land of the Free.
That's right, the land where ordinary people are free to pass laws that they think are reasonable. That's the real freedom of choice that Roe v. Wade denied. It's inevitable: we'll get it back, and Pro Choice will win.
Slashdot Mirror
actually, the presumption of innocence principle is much more restricted than you think. You are entitled to be presumed innocent in the eyes of judge and jury while they evaluated the evidence and determine your guilt. But, otherwise outside of court there is no such presumption. Arrest, bail, pre-trial jail, etc. all presume your guilt or the strong possibility of it. And the system must work that way. Witnesses, too, need not presume you innocent, nor do the people the witnesses tell their story to, like the press.
Wouldn't it be unfair to be falsely accused? Sure! that's what unfair means. But it's not unfair for people to exercise free speech and base their conclusions on the credibility of their sources, and it's not unfair to the rest of the population for people suspected of committing crimes to have to appear in court.
that's probably what Katz was thinking. He meant to say, "Rebecca Goldstein really pulled a rabbit out of a hat" which is how people say what you are suggesting.
Now, I'm sure you'll find some nits to pick with that, but that's just you. I'm explaining how the world works and you are stuck on some hypothetical way the world might work. "Gee, your honor, I did intend to stab him, but he might have had a heart attack as the knife plunged so I can't be certain to be culpable."
...but still less often than criminals do (and that's just the times they get caught), unless you think over 50% of convictions are invalid. Do you know any actual criminals? Do you think they're a bunch of girl scouts who are fun to hang out with?
we would be fools to assume that our own cops are guilty without actual evidence, in the form of eye-witness testimony and physical evidence... oh wait, you don't believe in those... guess you'll just have to go on your assumptions and intuitions about everything.
the term "hat trick" comes from ice hockey where the fans will throw their hats on the ice if you score three goals in one game. Outside hockey, it is still generally reserved for accomplishing three things, not one. Rebecca Goldstein may have scored a goal with this, an amazing goal, but it's not a hat trick.
Yes, sometimes they do. Why? Because they are human, and all humans have moral weaknesses. But they don't lie and tamper with evidence as much as your run of the mill criminal does. And, I don't believe they are routinely harassing and locking up innocent people.
people say stuff like you are saying, but that just makes me think, actual evidence is just as easy to tamper with too! It's awfully easy to plant a weapon or drugs, or to grab clothing fibers. If you can't rely on honesty by law enforcement you are sunk.
More directly to the point of eye witness testimony, I would not be so quick to dismiss it (once again, assuming honesty). Let me give the positive spin scenario to the lineup case (and, I don't want to go back and forth forever, I just want to present the best case for both sides): if an eye-witness picks somebody out of a "clean" lineup, I'd put some credence on it (assuming stuff like the person picked has no alibi, was placed at the scene, had motive, etc.). That witness may later be unable to remake the same pick or may grow doubtful: by then, all the faces have become familiar. But at that moment, only one face looked familiar, and I think that's worth something.
That's not a good example either: he didn't die, he was just a person wrongly convicted and sentenced to jail, then let out. That's an example of a flawed system "working".
yes, I'm sure that the police do routinely lie in court and under oath to ensure convictions, but that does not say anything about the liklihood of the defendant's innocence. And while it would be a better world if the police didn't lie, it is also true that the police do not routinely arrest people who behave, remain orderly, and mind their own business, even during demonstrations. They just don't. If you want to exercise your right to demonstrate, you are generally allowed to. But when things start to seem out of control in a large crowd, the smaller numbers of police get nervous, and if the police tell you to back away, disperse, etc., you should really expect that if you don't, you may (it's still less than likely) get punished, even if the punishment is not literally connected to the crime.
Every now and then I'll get a traffic ticket that is unfair. And when I get stopped, whether fairly or unfairly, the police are often unnecessarily rude. But I don't get huffy about it because if I'm honest to myself, I know that on balance I get away with plenty. I also feel like I got a good sense of what the Republicans were saying inside of the convention hall, and what the demonstrators were saying outside. I do not have the sense that free speech is being suppressed, nor that demonstrators are being locked up and/or fined simply for their beliefs. So, it's hard to get worked up about these allegations of police misconduct.
what you are saying is true as far you've gone, but there's more to the story than that, and I'll bet that's why we give it creedence.
I was a TA, proctoring an exam, and I began to notice a student peeping at another student's exam paper. Every time my attention was elsewhere, when I looked back he'd be peeping, and over time it became clear that she was allowing him to see her paper since no matter how much they shifted in their seats, this fact of their behavior remained a fact. I moved him to a new seat. After the exam, I reported the incident to the Professor who turned out to be a hardass, and he pressed the "charge" with the disciplinary committee. The students resisted the accusation, and I wanted to be very careful not to taint their records with any unfair allegations, so in describing the event I kept hedging and saying "I'm not sure", "I don't remember", etc. But then the professor asked a question that brought it all home to me. He said, "At the time it was happening, was there any doubt in your mind that they were colluding?" And I realized, no, at the time I was completely convinced that they were cheating. All of the doubt was after the fact. The doubt was the "taint".
From this experience I would say that eyewitness testimony from a number of people who each saw a little may not be that useful for reconstructing the puzzle pieces of an event because it can be hard to remember details, but the testimony of a single eyewitness who saw the whole thing is pretty compelling. And note, the anti-death penalty side here is trying to raise doubts. They don't say "he didn't do it", they say, "ooooh, look at all the possibility for doubt" but that's precisely how you taint eyewitness accounts.
That's heresy! As soon as the first "Votronic" gets popular, we'll see a bunch of "Hack the Votronic" slashdot articles about "How I added an Ethernet card". They'll probably try to stimulate sales of the Votronic by adopting the following business model: give them away and sell subscriptions to a per-election counting service. This will really get the hackers going: "How I hacked my free Votronic to play MP3s" or worse, "England's New PM Turns Out To Be an MP3. RIAA sues."
3 if 'cat /proc/interrupts' is accurate.
IRQ 14: ide0
IRQ 15: ide1
IRQ 11: ide2, ide3
...because the rest of us might finally understand where he's coming from :)
but, turn of the century technology is all we have to work with!
you quoted something I wrote, but ignored what it meant. To give an example, Pablo Picasso was a great artist who was also abusive to women. You can talk about one aspect without commenting on the other. I was talking about Gingrich's career as a college professor. What did your statement about ethics have to do with that? (not to mention that your statement that he "was an individual" is just plain silly)
roblimo had used "Gingrichlike" to mean something like "highly partisan to the point of dirty tricks." I gave several examples from the Democrat side which you could have responded to if you were an honest debater (you're not) but you instead swerved off-topic to bring up totally unrelated ethics allegations, but you did it in a McCarthyist way, not actually citing any evidence.
Do you care to back up your claims about his ethics? He signed a book deal for a fair bit of money when he was recently elected Speaker. What made that look unethical was that his predessessor Democrat Jim Wright had actually used phony book royalties as a kickback scheme to actually collect large sums of money without actually selling any books. The difference is that Gingrich's book would likely have sold a large number of copies given the national significance of what he had just accomplished, ousting the Democrats in Congress after 40ish years, but the deal never took place so essentially you are accusing him of potentially being unethical. In his heart was he doing something unethical at that moment? If he was, it was certainly no worse than the popular Tony Coelo (sp? Democrat of CA) who was forced to resign, or the unpopular Clintons and their option trading sleight of hand.
I never tried to make the point that Republicans are more ethical than Democrats. I was making a point that people who would think somthing along those lines are immature and politically naive. roblimo, jamie, and CmdrTaco all fit that bill, as do you. As another example, there were also allegations about Gingrich's divorce and some marital infidelity, both in the realm of his lovelife... Is that what you were thinking of (like I said, Mr. McCarthyist, you were unspecific.) Because if you were, I thought Democrats keep telling us that stuff doesn't matter, stay out of people's bedrooms. Are you being a hypocrite?
If the contract between the school and the corporation was for free computers, no conditions
...then it's not a contract.
contracts must entail an exchange, something given in consideration for something received. If there had been no consideration, the company would still own everything. And, that still applies if the contract stipulated consideration but it was never delivered.
I'm constantly astounded by the juvenile level of political sophistication displayed by members of the "government" of Slashdot. Thank God it's a website, and not a country.
Do you really think there is some correlation between the political parties and fairness? The very reason you would use a word like "Gingrichlike" is because Gingrich was the victim of a steady stream of negative propaganda from Democrat spin doctors, and you've swallowed it hook line and sinker. Politically vicious and cynical people like Democrats James Carville and Dick Morris exist all across the spectrum. Al Gore's campaign savaged Bill Bradley just last year in the Democratic primary, accusing him of being racist. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Gore's versus Bradley's records as Democratic officeholders would think Bradley would be immune from such a vicious lie... of course, "anyone with passing knowledge" would pretty much rule out anyone who works on Slashdot.
Have you ever read or seen any of Gingrich's educational output? He was a college professor and educator, and is quite knowledgeable, non-partisan, and downright charming when he talks about the history of American democracy. Catch him on CSPAN if you ever get the chance. If he were to post to Slashdot (under a false name) his posts would be +4 Informative every time.
Could the Slashdot editors please grow up.
And the same concept of privacy exists in most other areas too. When income tax was instituted (to pay for WWI?) that data was made private and only covers workers, not all voters. When Social Security (gov't pension system) was started, that data was kept private, and only covers workers, not all voters. Drivers licenses are semi-public, but don't cover voters. Military draft registration has been sporadic and is treated same as the above.
When you move to a new town here, you can vote in town, county, state and federal elections. The only government record of your existence in that hierarchy is your voter registration. BTW, yes is does seem easy to abuse the system for voting fraud, and in some places it does get abused routinely. On a small scale in local elections a lot, but it has even touched national elections. President Kennedy probably would have been counted a loser without fraud in some key locales.
you completely made that statistic up. You wish it were true because it fits a sexist stereotype you hold of men, but it is simply not true. It is false, and probably because of different sexist stereotypes. Men care less about children than women do, and because men want sex, mostly they are in favor of free availability of abortion for practical reasons.
I think Descartes' ideas would have acheived a greater following if he had said, "I suffer from lower back pain, therefore I am."
Kasparov is acknowledged to be the greatest human player ever. I believe he had a problem when he played Deep Blue... IBM has subsequently adopted Linux... imagine a Beowulf cluster of Deep Blues ;)
These features are the essence of the great American experiment with democracy, the oldest such experiment on this planet. The founders thought they needed and used a justification based on Natural Law (from a Creator), but modern thinking has mostly abandoned that view. Today, very few people defends the Bill of Rights on the basis of Natural Law as you are suggesting. But, I hasten to add, those who do, are much more likely to include within its sweep, rights for the unborn.
That's right, the land where ordinary people are free to pass laws that they think are reasonable. That's the real freedom of choice that Roe v. Wade denied. It's inevitable: we'll get it back, and Pro Choice will win.