Actually, you wouldn't, you probably see a lot FEWER frivolous lawsuits./grammar nazi
Actually I think you have a good idea. Once a lawsuit is filed, the options should be 1. defendant settles for whatever terms are acceptable for plaintiff 2. plaintiff settles for whatever terms are acceptable for defendant, which would normally be costs plus punitive damages 3. judge makes a ruling on the initial question
It's odd that we allow a plaintiff to drag a defendant into court, only to then drop the case. Courts should recognize that going to court in the first place is an imposition worthy of remuneration.
We live in a constitutional republic, not a direct democracy, so rule by the majority is tempered by some overarching rules which limit the control of the majority; but still, a large enough and sufficiently motivated majority can do, pretty much, whatever they want, by amending the Constitution. Yes, politically motivated people can complain when judges rule against them; it's part of of politics. Yes, in some instances it can be hypocritical. For the most part, however, Americans accept court rulings. When I say "accept", I mean they don't overthrow the government, rather they work within the system to get a different ruling. That's what conservatives have been doing for 40 years with abortion, and they're about five or ten years away from success.
It's a trite and trivial platitude to say that your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Would you also agree that your right to go without health insurance ends when the public pays for your emergency care? This is the essential question in the topic you allude to: if we want to live in a society where people with gushing head wounds receive immediate medical care by emergency responders and emergency-room doctors, then we either have to require everyone to plan for such a contingency, or we have to have a system where everyone else is obligated to pay for the uncovered care. In the past we chose the second option: people with health insurance paid higher costs, to cover the care given to people who don't pay. Well, fuck those deadbeats, the rest of us don't like their swinging fists hitting our noses anymore, so a majority (supermajority, actually) of American got together and demanded that the deadbeats be required to provide for their own care. Quite the opposite of what conservatives say, the law was to assure that people took responsibility for themselves, instead of the rest of us continuing to take care of them. Me? I would have preferred a different solution: socialized medicine; but hey, that's not how it shook out.
If libertarians were carrying signs saying "TURN SICK PEOPLE AWAY FROM EMERGENCY ROOMS!" then they might (might!) have some small toehold of moral claim when they ask why the government is "requiring" people to have health insurance. And, by the way, the government is not requiring anyone to buy insurance: if they choose not to do so, then they don't get a tax break, and the extra taxes are used to pay for their medical care. Thus, we good upstanding citizens with noses are no longer suffering the swinging fists of deadbeats, in theory anyway.
I agree that health care is not a right, no more than trash pick up is a right, any more than public parks are a right. I disagree when the left says things like that. But ObamaCare, or a similar system, will make the country a better place, and that's why I support it, like trash pick-up, and like public parks.
I don't see how requiring people to take personal responsibility for their medical care is tantamount to a threat of force by the government against the people it serves, and neither should you, because that is totally delusional. We don't live under tyranny, and anyone who would imply such a thing has zero perspective. Do you realize that there are actual, real tyrannies in the world, and in the past? I mean, like, real tyranny? Not the kind that helps people enjoy better, more healthy lives? To equate that with tyranny is preposterous and laughable.
I'm not saying what the majority wants is "okay", and I'm also not saying that a majority should always get its way (that's why we're a Constitutional Republic), but in general, yes, I think democratic majorities or super-majorities should be able to basically do what they want. I'm not okay with gay marriage being unrecognized, which is why I oppose that non-recognition, but you don't exactly see me taking up arms against the government over it, and that's because I'm willing to be in the minority. And since you bring it up, even though I oppose DOMA I've discussed with friends whether or not the President should be allowed to ignore laws he doesn't want to enforce. It's an interesting question, and in the end I had to agree that yes, they should have that power, because it is a check against powers in the other branches of government, just as the budget and legal decisions are checks against the President.
That's all irrelevant to the fact that in the face of my brilliant and complete demolition of your petty complaint, you had to change the subject instead of trying to rebut me, which of course you had to do because there is no rebuttal.
Darfur is indeed a straw man; I'm sure you don't want to undo government so much as that. But, it's a sliding scale, and if your political beliefs put you in a perpetual minority, then it's not so unreasonable for you to immigrate somewhere more in line with your beliefs. Or, you can stay and try to affect change from within, but you're not allowed to call shenanigans when the rest of us overrule you time and again.
Final points:
1. it's a mighty strong democracy that can withstand civil wars, and it's a mighty stable democracy which can go for three centuries with the civil war being the biggest upheaval.
2. I used to believe that trope about Hitler being elected, but it's actually not true. He was never elected to any office he attained. So, that's a bad example to use in the future.
Oh, I don't mean to say that a benevolent dictatorship might not be very nice for citizens, but I do mean to say that a benevolent dictatorship tautologically indicates a lack of self-direction by the individuals. I mean, by definition, self direction means self direction, and a dictatorship is specifically not directed by the population.
Indeed, the text of the law sounds very reasonable, as quoted in the article.
But to be fair, even if the article doesn't support the claims made in the Slashdot summary, the reality of the state of Utah does support it. Those folks are crazy, on average.
I'm not clear on your complaint. Government requiring you to purchase things that you otherwise wouldn't purchase is literally the entire reason government exists, and describes every single thing a government does. I probably wouldn't pay for an interstate road system, foreign wars, historical monuments, or even public libraries, unless the government required me to do so. And yet, I definitely absolutely positively without a doubt live in a better world because of that governmental requirement, and so, to answer your question, I feel very good about it.
Where is the self determination? Good question! It's in the voting booth. We all get together in big groups and decide what we are going to require other people to do, usually indirectly via representatives. It's a great system and everyone (pretty much) gets to participate. And even better yet, people who don't like the outcome are absolutely free to leave the country and pursue their own agenda elsewhere; we don't restrain people from leaving. I hear that Darfur is a nice region for people who don't like government telling them what to do.
I'm glad we've cleared up these questions for you. I bet you'll have a much better time living in this wonderful stable prosperous democracy we've build here in Western civilization.
He means that because government affects the lives of subjects, participation in directing government action is an essential component of determining one's own life.
Shit, to me that's totally obvious. How was that not obvious to you? Maybe I don't understand your question.
PS GP is wrong about one thing -- it is not "exactly the same" as slavery, but rather "is similar in one limited way".
It sounds to me like you are an above-average Joe. I make trades approximately once per never. I've done a tiny bit of that in my day and was never good at it, but I think it's a vanishingly tiny amount of people who buy individual stocks.
I'll tell you what, if you support my bid to be king of the world, I'll move the 15% out to four months.;-)
Good luck trading, enjoy the nice low tax rate.
(The reason to incentivize very-long-term investing is because society benefits from very-long-term thinking. America suffers some ills because elections only ever last for two, four, or six years; bonuses are calculated based on three, six, or twelve months of performance; and nobody is making decisions based on where we need to be in a few decades.)
Hi everybody. Thank you for correcting my factual error of saying that the wars are declared. Even though that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether Manning is a traitor, which he is, I nevertheless concede that they are in fact undeclared wars. Thanks for the fact checking, and to everyone who had nothing to say except that the wars were not declared, I accept your acknowledgment that everything else I said was spot-on and correct.
So, okay, then you admit he is plainly a traitor who broke the law, plus the only crime actually defined in the Constitution? Okay, if you admit that, then I concede the one-word mistake of saying the wars were declared, when in fact they are undeclared hot wars. Also, you'd do well not to assume so so so much into a person based on one post on the internet. I laugh at your accusations -- except for draft dodging, because even though I've never had the chance, it is quite likely that I would have dodged the draft if it came to that.
PS actually, no, I mean the people who are shooting back at us in Afghanistan, not the noncombatants. Actually I think that should have been pretty obvious, but it's okay, I don't mind telling you.
I've never heard of prosecutions being up for a popular vote. Is that the way it's done in your country? Here in the United States we write down statutes, then we have case law on top of that, and we generally try to decide cases based on the statutes and the case law. But if you have popular voting for trials where you are from, then yeah maybe we could go that route. But no, here in the USA, he's plainly a traitor.
I'm not clear on how war is even a relevant question. I just checked my Constitution to be sure I am right:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Even though the first clause mentions war, the second and third clauses are what we are talking about, and no war is necessary for them. It is plainly true that Manning gave aid to the enemies of the United States.
I like that idea, and I've thought of things like that before, but wouldn't there still be in incentive to be first in line with putting in your order? If everyone gets the prices published at a server in NYC at a particular moment, then the knowledge of that publication still propagates away from NYC at the speed of light. It's an improvement for the markets in some ways, but I don't think in that way.
I don't think it should be illegal, I just think one dimension of the assessed taxes should be length of time the asset is held. Set thresholds at, say
1 second -- 99.99% marginal tax 1 minute -- 99% marginal tax 1 hour -- 95% marginal tax 1 day -- 90% marginal tax 3 months -- 50% marginal tax 1 year -- 15% marginal tax (today's capital gains rate) 10 years -- 10% marginal tax
I actually know a local guy who implements trading algorithms in programmable-gate-array hardware for the purposes of instant trading.
Wow, a lot of dumb posts for this article. I'm not a lawyer of military justice, but releasing sensitive classified documents onto the internet is certainly, in layman's vernacular, "aiding the enemy". We are currently fighting two actual declared hot wars, and we have enemies in each of those, and in each of those the enemies gained operable knowledge they otherwise wouldn't have. How is that NOT aiding the enemy?
To me it is a plain case of treason and capital punishment seems reasonable, but a life sentence could also be reasonable if the prosecution is feeling generous.
I can't let that slide. Windows does NOT have a clear or consistent UI. I am constantly frustrated by the inconsistent ability to use "ctrl-A" to select text in text boxes. I am daily confronted by silent failures where I tell Windows to do something, and it doesn't do it, and doesn't give an error message. I am daily angered when Windows tells me it can't delete that folder because something, somewhere inside it, is in use by some process somewhere on the computer, but it won't tell me which file, or which process. Windows is less compatible with media. Windows can take multiple minutes instead of multiple milliseconds to list the contents of directories. I'm always wondering why the hell it's so hard to find stuff in the Windows filesystem. I have none of those problems (NONE) on Linux, and few of them on Macs. Sure, Linux has its own imperfections, but they are TINY compared to Windows.
You have made a moral argument for copyright, which I reject. I don't pay the workmen who built my house each year that I live in it; General Motors didn't get a cut when I bought my used Jeep Liberty vehicle; I don't pay the Ginsu company a royalty every time I cut meat with its knives -- and I reject a moral argument that I "should" do so in any of those cases. For intellectual works, I feel similarly. I get up every morning and make my money by performing my craft, which is software programming, which is just like almost everybody makes their money, for performances.
The arguments in favor of copyright which I accept are practical arguments. I want the best ongoing media creation I can have, and I support whatever laws help me get it. Some intellectual property doesn't lend itself to performance-style income, such as long-term-use-with-no-support software, or literary novels, or blockbuster movies. Because I like software, novels and movies, I support laws that help me get those things.
The question, then, is not what do we "owe" the authors (answer: nothing) but rather what system do we need to encourage them. Do we need copyrights that last longer than two human lifetimes? I don't think we do. Do we need copyrights that preclude derivative works? I don't think we do. How about preventing collage and sampling? I don't think so. I think we can have all the benefits of copyright, and much less of the drawbacks, if we change the balances in the copyright system.
Underlying what you said is the preposterous assumption that being open and honest with kids will result in kids that don't do bad stuff behind your back. That is such completely asinine nonsense that I couldn't even begin to ponder anything else you said.
This isn't a big shock or a secret. You can simply ask "Are the father, son, and holy ghost one unified God, or three separate Gods?" The answer to that question alone qualifies Mormons as polytheists. If you get circumlocution, you can also ask what a "latter-day Saint" is, and the answer to that question will also suffice.
Mainline Christianity is also goofy, but I disagree that it is "just as goofy". Mormonism is absolutely more goofy and wrong than other common religions, even though they are all goofy and wrong.
I used to think that, but eventually I decided that it's more likely that he's sincerely a douchebag all the way to his core. I don't think he's faking it.
Slashdot Mirror
No company that charges money for Windows could ever be considered ethical by anyone who understands and believes in human rights.
No company that gives an ethics award to a company that charges money for Windows could ever regain any shred of credibility.
Did you recently read The Poisoner's Handbook? I'm reading that right now.
Actually, you wouldn't, you probably see a lot FEWER frivolous lawsuits. /grammar nazi
Actually I think you have a good idea. Once a lawsuit is filed, the options should be
1. defendant settles for whatever terms are acceptable for plaintiff
2. plaintiff settles for whatever terms are acceptable for defendant, which would normally be costs plus punitive damages
3. judge makes a ruling on the initial question
It's odd that we allow a plaintiff to drag a defendant into court, only to then drop the case. Courts should recognize that going to court in the first place is an imposition worthy of remuneration.
We live in a constitutional republic, not a direct democracy, so rule by the majority is tempered by some overarching rules which limit the control of the majority; but still, a large enough and sufficiently motivated majority can do, pretty much, whatever they want, by amending the Constitution. Yes, politically motivated people can complain when judges rule against them; it's part of of politics. Yes, in some instances it can be hypocritical. For the most part, however, Americans accept court rulings. When I say "accept", I mean they don't overthrow the government, rather they work within the system to get a different ruling. That's what conservatives have been doing for 40 years with abortion, and they're about five or ten years away from success.
It's a trite and trivial platitude to say that your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Would you also agree that your right to go without health insurance ends when the public pays for your emergency care? This is the essential question in the topic you allude to: if we want to live in a society where people with gushing head wounds receive immediate medical care by emergency responders and emergency-room doctors, then we either have to require everyone to plan for such a contingency, or we have to have a system where everyone else is obligated to pay for the uncovered care. In the past we chose the second option: people with health insurance paid higher costs, to cover the care given to people who don't pay. Well, fuck those deadbeats, the rest of us don't like their swinging fists hitting our noses anymore, so a majority (supermajority, actually) of American got together and demanded that the deadbeats be required to provide for their own care. Quite the opposite of what conservatives say, the law was to assure that people took responsibility for themselves, instead of the rest of us continuing to take care of them. Me? I would have preferred a different solution: socialized medicine; but hey, that's not how it shook out.
If libertarians were carrying signs saying "TURN SICK PEOPLE AWAY FROM EMERGENCY ROOMS!" then they might (might!) have some small toehold of moral claim when they ask why the government is "requiring" people to have health insurance. And, by the way, the government is not requiring anyone to buy insurance: if they choose not to do so, then they don't get a tax break, and the extra taxes are used to pay for their medical care. Thus, we good upstanding citizens with noses are no longer suffering the swinging fists of deadbeats, in theory anyway.
I agree that health care is not a right, no more than trash pick up is a right, any more than public parks are a right. I disagree when the left says things like that. But ObamaCare, or a similar system, will make the country a better place, and that's why I support it, like trash pick-up, and like public parks.
I don't see how requiring people to take personal responsibility for their medical care is tantamount to a threat of force by the government against the people it serves, and neither should you, because that is totally delusional. We don't live under tyranny, and anyone who would imply such a thing has zero perspective. Do you realize that there are actual, real tyrannies in the world, and in the past? I mean, like, real tyranny? Not the kind that helps people enjoy better, more healthy lives? To equate that with tyranny is preposterous and laughable.
I'm not saying what the majority wants is "okay", and I'm also not saying that a majority should always get its way (that's why we're a Constitutional Republic), but in general, yes, I think democratic majorities or super-majorities should be able to basically do what they want. I'm not okay with gay marriage being unrecognized, which is why I oppose that non-recognition, but you don't exactly see me taking up arms against the government over it, and that's because I'm willing to be in the minority. And since you bring it up, even though I oppose DOMA I've discussed with friends whether or not the President should be allowed to ignore laws he doesn't want to enforce. It's an interesting question, and in the end I had to agree that yes, they should have that power, because it is a check against powers in the other branches of government, just as the budget and legal decisions are checks against the President.
That's all irrelevant to the fact that in the face of my brilliant and complete demolition of your petty complaint, you had to change the subject instead of trying to rebut me, which of course you had to do because there is no rebuttal.
Darfur is indeed a straw man; I'm sure you don't want to undo government so much as that. But, it's a sliding scale, and if your political beliefs put you in a perpetual minority, then it's not so unreasonable for you to immigrate somewhere more in line with your beliefs. Or, you can stay and try to affect change from within, but you're not allowed to call shenanigans when the rest of us overrule you time and again.
Final points:
1. it's a mighty strong democracy that can withstand civil wars, and it's a mighty stable democracy which can go for three centuries with the civil war being the biggest upheaval.
2. I used to believe that trope about Hitler being elected, but it's actually not true. He was never elected to any office he attained. So, that's a bad example to use in the future.
Oh, I don't mean to say that a benevolent dictatorship might not be very nice for citizens, but I do mean to say that a benevolent dictatorship tautologically indicates a lack of self-direction by the individuals. I mean, by definition, self direction means self direction, and a dictatorship is specifically not directed by the population.
Indeed, the text of the law sounds very reasonable, as quoted in the article.
But to be fair, even if the article doesn't support the claims made in the Slashdot summary, the reality of the state of Utah does support it. Those folks are crazy, on average.
I'm not clear on your complaint. Government requiring you to purchase things that you otherwise wouldn't purchase is literally the entire reason government exists, and describes every single thing a government does . I probably wouldn't pay for an interstate road system, foreign wars, historical monuments, or even public libraries, unless the government required me to do so. And yet, I definitely absolutely positively without a doubt live in a better world because of that governmental requirement, and so, to answer your question, I feel very good about it.
Where is the self determination? Good question! It's in the voting booth. We all get together in big groups and decide what we are going to require other people to do, usually indirectly via representatives. It's a great system and everyone (pretty much) gets to participate. And even better yet, people who don't like the outcome are absolutely free to leave the country and pursue their own agenda elsewhere; we don't restrain people from leaving. I hear that Darfur is a nice region for people who don't like government telling them what to do.
I'm glad we've cleared up these questions for you. I bet you'll have a much better time living in this wonderful stable prosperous democracy we've build here in Western civilization.
He means that because government affects the lives of subjects, participation in directing government action is an essential component of determining one's own life.
Shit, to me that's totally obvious. How was that not obvious to you? Maybe I don't understand your question.
PS GP is wrong about one thing -- it is not "exactly the same" as slavery, but rather "is similar in one limited way".
facebook users == attention whores -> false equivalence
It sounds to me like you are an above-average Joe. I make trades approximately once per never. I've done a tiny bit of that in my day and was never good at it, but I think it's a vanishingly tiny amount of people who buy individual stocks.
I'll tell you what, if you support my bid to be king of the world, I'll move the 15% out to four months. ;-)
Good luck trading, enjoy the nice low tax rate.
(The reason to incentivize very-long-term investing is because society benefits from very-long-term thinking. America suffers some ills because elections only ever last for two, four, or six years; bonuses are calculated based on three, six, or twelve months of performance; and nobody is making decisions based on where we need to be in a few decades.)
Hi everybody. Thank you for correcting my factual error of saying that the wars are declared. Even though that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether Manning is a traitor, which he is, I nevertheless concede that they are in fact undeclared wars. Thanks for the fact checking, and to everyone who had nothing to say except that the wars were not declared, I accept your acknowledgment that everything else I said was spot-on and correct.
So, okay, then you admit he is plainly a traitor who broke the law, plus the only crime actually defined in the Constitution? Okay, if you admit that, then I concede the one-word mistake of saying the wars were declared, when in fact they are undeclared hot wars. Also, you'd do well not to assume so so so much into a person based on one post on the internet. I laugh at your accusations -- except for draft dodging, because even though I've never had the chance, it is quite likely that I would have dodged the draft if it came to that.
PS actually, no, I mean the people who are shooting back at us in Afghanistan, not the noncombatants. Actually I think that should have been pretty obvious, but it's okay, I don't mind telling you.
I've never heard of prosecutions being up for a popular vote. Is that the way it's done in your country? Here in the United States we write down statutes, then we have case law on top of that, and we generally try to decide cases based on the statutes and the case law. But if you have popular voting for trials where you are from, then yeah maybe we could go that route. But no, here in the USA, he's plainly a traitor.
I'm not clear on how war is even a relevant question. I just checked my Constitution to be sure I am right:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Even though the first clause mentions war, the second and third clauses are what we are talking about, and no war is necessary for them. It is plainly true that Manning gave aid to the enemies of the United States.
I like that idea, and I've thought of things like that before, but wouldn't there still be in incentive to be first in line with putting in your order? If everyone gets the prices published at a server in NYC at a particular moment, then the knowledge of that publication still propagates away from NYC at the speed of light. It's an improvement for the markets in some ways, but I don't think in that way.
I don't think it should be illegal, I just think one dimension of the assessed taxes should be length of time the asset is held. Set thresholds at, say
1 second -- 99.99% marginal tax
1 minute -- 99% marginal tax
1 hour -- 95% marginal tax
1 day -- 90% marginal tax
3 months -- 50% marginal tax
1 year -- 15% marginal tax (today's capital gains rate)
10 years -- 10% marginal tax
I actually know a local guy who implements trading algorithms in programmable-gate-array hardware for the purposes of instant trading.
Wow, a lot of dumb posts for this article. I'm not a lawyer of military justice, but releasing sensitive classified documents onto the internet is certainly, in layman's vernacular, "aiding the enemy". We are currently fighting two actual declared hot wars, and we have enemies in each of those, and in each of those the enemies gained operable knowledge they otherwise wouldn't have. How is that NOT aiding the enemy?
To me it is a plain case of treason and capital punishment seems reasonable, but a life sentence could also be reasonable if the prosecution is feeling generous.
I can't let that slide. Windows does NOT have a clear or consistent UI. I am constantly frustrated by the inconsistent ability to use "ctrl-A" to select text in text boxes. I am daily confronted by silent failures where I tell Windows to do something, and it doesn't do it, and doesn't give an error message. I am daily angered when Windows tells me it can't delete that folder because something, somewhere inside it, is in use by some process somewhere on the computer, but it won't tell me which file, or which process. Windows is less compatible with media. Windows can take multiple minutes instead of multiple milliseconds to list the contents of directories. I'm always wondering why the hell it's so hard to find stuff in the Windows filesystem. I have none of those problems (NONE) on Linux, and few of them on Macs. Sure, Linux has its own imperfections, but they are TINY compared to Windows.
Basically I'm an unapologetic Windows hater.
I must be misreading it. Help me understand it better.
You have made a moral argument for copyright, which I reject. I don't pay the workmen who built my house each year that I live in it; General Motors didn't get a cut when I bought my used Jeep Liberty vehicle; I don't pay the Ginsu company a royalty every time I cut meat with its knives -- and I reject a moral argument that I "should" do so in any of those cases. For intellectual works, I feel similarly. I get up every morning and make my money by performing my craft, which is software programming, which is just like almost everybody makes their money, for performances.
The arguments in favor of copyright which I accept are practical arguments. I want the best ongoing media creation I can have, and I support whatever laws help me get it. Some intellectual property doesn't lend itself to performance-style income, such as long-term-use-with-no-support software, or literary novels, or blockbuster movies. Because I like software, novels and movies, I support laws that help me get those things.
The question, then, is not what do we "owe" the authors (answer: nothing) but rather what system do we need to encourage them. Do we need copyrights that last longer than two human lifetimes? I don't think we do. Do we need copyrights that preclude derivative works? I don't think we do. How about preventing collage and sampling? I don't think so. I think we can have all the benefits of copyright, and much less of the drawbacks, if we change the balances in the copyright system.
Underlying what you said is the preposterous assumption that being open and honest with kids will result in kids that don't do bad stuff behind your back. That is such completely asinine nonsense that I couldn't even begin to ponder anything else you said.
This isn't a big shock or a secret. You can simply ask "Are the father, son, and holy ghost one unified God, or three separate Gods?" The answer to that question alone qualifies Mormons as polytheists. If you get circumlocution, you can also ask what a "latter-day Saint" is, and the answer to that question will also suffice.
Mainline Christianity is also goofy, but I disagree that it is "just as goofy". Mormonism is absolutely more goofy and wrong than other common religions, even though they are all goofy and wrong.
I used to think that, but eventually I decided that it's more likely that he's sincerely a douchebag all the way to his core. I don't think he's faking it.