The statement by James Madison is particularly applicable here:
It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.
(emphasis mine)
By singling out rights which do not exist in the Bill of Rights, claiming that they don't exist, and supporting Judges who do the same, you are making the exact argument against the Bill of Rights that the writers were afraid of. There's no need to swear at me, just stop using the phrase "You don't have a right to X" unless it's something that Congress or the Executive actually has the right to regulate.
Speaking of which...
It has become popular today to recite the mantra "You don't have a right to X", and the people saying it seem to think that by "roughing it" and going without rights they are stronger and more independent. This does not make anyone a strong and independent person; however, it does show them to be completely misunderstanding the way powers are allocated by the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't limit powers, it grants them in a short finite list.
Whether they are enforced or not, you have an infinite list of Federal Rights that you seem to want to casually throw away. And you also seem to support Judges who do the same. It's really a pity that so many people think like this.
One of the arguments the Federalists gave against the addition of a Bill of Rights, during the debates about ratification of the Constitution, was that a listing of rights could problematically enlarge the powers specified in Article One, Section 8 of the new Constitution by implication. For example, in Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton asked, "Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?"
The power is not enumerated as a power of congress, so the TSA can't do it legally, so it is our right. Don't let that stop you from being a living breathing argument against the Bill of Rights though.
That potential misunderstanding of the US Constitution is why the ninth and tenth amendments had to be added. They expected the government to say to people "hey that's not in the Bill of Rights so it's not your right." I think they would be saddened that it's actually civilians trying to throw each other's rights away.
Never assume the owner of the medium you are using can't access your information on it. The phone company can hear your phone calls. Your ISP can monitor your traffic. Your email server can read your email. Your game server can read your private chats. Youtube can read your private youtube messages. Forum owners can read private forum messages.
And yes, corporations/companies/individuals know your history of buying from them.
The only way to avoid it is to one day need that information; then it probably can't be found.
Perhaps you missed the fact that Alawi was actively at war with the United States? You missed the fact that the Underwear Bomber, among others, had contact with Alawi? Had things gone slightly differently, Alawi would have aided and abetted the destruction of an airliner over Detroit, resulting in the deaths of all the crew and passengers, along with unguessable casualties on the ground. The potential death count *could have exceeded the death count at the WTC.
Trials are for establishing facts that occurred in past tense.
Let me guess - some guy is taking pot shots at you and your family. You are armed, and capable of taking the man out. Instead of doing so, you're going to wait on the cops to arrive, so that they shooter gets his "due process"?
Guessed wrong, and pretty poor argument to try to put words into people's mouths.
Sorry, the scenario just doesn't work.
Then why bother bringing up, no one said it but you. You've changed your attempt at argument from "I don't like him so he shouldn't have civil rights" to "he was putting citizens into imminent danger." And you are still wrong. No one has established that anyone was going to die today, tomorrow, or even a month from now if Alawi was left alive. Put on trial, the actual evidence against him would have been made clear. He also could have served as a source of information.
A lot of people died to create and later defend the right of citizens to have trials. If you are going to throw that away just because you feel threatened, and not even imminently, perhaps you don't appreciate the safety those rights have granted you nearly enough.
HINT: al Alawi was no countryman of mine. The sumbitch deserved much worse than he got. Due process? The process of launching that missile was long overdue!
It would be nice if we could set aside a state for people who don't believe in trials. A place where, if a person is disliked enough, he loses all rights as a citizen. You could live there, and the rest of us can live in places where "every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern."
How long could you live there before begging to come back to us, I wonder.
What a deliberately backwards way of looking at things. You can choose how to release it? Absolutely nonsensical statement. The threat of force is being applied against those who wish to copy and communicate the information. What you are choosing is whether or not legal action can be brought against other people.
A right is a restriction or requirement of the government or authority. Restricting the government from making laws against speech is a right.
When creating a restriction on another person with no authority over you, by means of government enforcement, it is called a law. The ability to bring legal force against someone for taking your possessions is a law.
When you have a general restriction of a person from copying and transferring information by threat of government action -- no matter how much you want to use the word "right" because it sounds compelling, it is still just a law. But that correct terminology is avoided because then it raises the question: "is it a fair law?" The answer to that depends on your priorities. What is more important, the freedom to communicate what information you know with your fellow person, or the financial compensation of one person by another with no prior contractual obligation?
No one can answer that for you, but the for a law to be proper, it is for the advocate of the law to justify it. In other words, to consider this impartially, you have to consider it as if the concept of "intellectual property" were just being brought up for the first time.
It would be hard to argue that a leader in a group that the US has effectively declared war on (including resolutions of Congress that authorize military force) is not a legitimate military target.
I think it is also relevant that he was a leader in a group that declared war on the U.S.
If an ant declares war on you, and you ignore it, are you at war? You can only declare war for yourself, not for someone else.
Congress has gone to great lengths not to declare war (which is easily the most treasonous thing that has occurred in the last 10 years). Do you really want to live in a country where congress can pass it's responsibility for declarations of war onto foreign parties? "We don't have to vote on this, it's not our fault". They've been blaming the president, blaming the middle east, doing anything except their responsibility. And here, a citizen is killed without any trial at all, and you want to entertain their excuse of "okay, we were at war enough for that"? Fine for you, but I'd rather not put up with that.
I'm tired of cowards standing behind such statements, these barbarians knowingly and purposefully target civilians with no other reason than to cause terror and disruption. They do not even pretend to follow Geneva Convention accords, and cowardly use with women and children as human shields. They don't wear uniforms so they can be recognized as enemy combatants, putting even more innocents at risk.
They have publicly stated that they are trying to bring about the downfall of this country. If that's not a declaration of war, I don't know what is.
Blast the lot of them, no matter where they stand.
I'm tired of cowards standing behind such statements, these barbarians knowingly and purposefully target civilian's rights with no other reason than to pretend to fight against "terror and disruption". They do not even pretend to follow US Constitution, and cowardly use with women and children as emotional arguments. They don't document or backup anything they say, so they can't be argued with systematically, putting even more of our rights at risk.
They have publicly stated that they are trying to bring about the downfall of the rights that made country what it is. If that's not a declaration of war, I don't know what is.
Blast the lot of them, no matter where they stand.
Kids can not learn math from sitting there staring at a TV.
Nonsense. I learned algebra as a child (1st or 2nd grade age) from watching a TV show called "Square One". They taught the reasoning behind it without being tied down to a certain way of writing equations, and I could apply it to a wide range of problems.
You know where kids can't learn math? School. You know why kids can't learn math at school? Because it's not taught there. Adding and subtracting isn't math. Memorizing the quadratic equation isn't math. Learning the definition of sine and cosine IS NOT MATH. It's all useful background information, but it's only just arithmetic, or computing, or history, or whatever you want to call it.
Find a high school graduate and ask them the Pythagorean theorem. Almost any of them could tell you. Ask them to prove it to you; ask them to show you they know it is true. Most won't even know what you are talking about. You could ask 1000 kids and be surprised if even 1 can tell you any of the extremely simple proofs. Most kids who go through 12 years of school and even get college degrees manage to do so without ever seeing any math.
I like how sesame street wants to try to teach math; I doubt they can do it though. However, it can be done, like the show I mentioned "Square One" did a very good job of showing how to reason through problems.
Doesn't it have a feature where if you buy something and then get some number of friends to buy it you get it for free?
Another spin on multi-level marketing, AKA a form of ponzi scheme...
Actually just a general pyramid scheme. Ponzi schemes may be famous right now, but not all investment frauds are ponzi schemes.
In a pyramid scheme, each new investor has to get new investors for himself to create value to his own investment. A club that costs $30 to join where each member gets $10 for each person they invite is a pyramid scheme.
In a ponzi scheme each new investor adds value to all the previous investors; consequently, fewer investors are needed. That's one reason ponzi schemes are so much harder to find. An investment firm that pays older investors with the money earned from newer investors, rather than from external investment into something like stock, is a ponzi scheme.
Also, the internet has become a major portion of our communications and cultural dissemination and participation. As such, interfering with it potentially infringes upon our already 'guaranteed' rights.
Just imagine what it would be like if you wanted to walk downtown and talk to George Arneston, maybe give him that invite to your birthday party...
Problem is they have lawyers, connections, and other resources. Some of them are already testing the waters, so to speak. If we don't act now, greed and anti-competitiveness with turn the internet into a series of roadblocks and restrictions. That's why we need Net Neutrality, so we can stroll around the internet unimpeded.
In the case of the internet providers and the hypothetical sidewalk company, these are not regular private companies. The internet and sidewalks are not provided without tax dollars and imminent domain, powers that regular citizens don't have. No private company should be required to help uphold constitutional rights, but in the above cases (and net neutrality issues in general) the companies are already in bed with the government. If a company is getting special treatment by the government then of course they should have to uphold the rights guaranteed by that government. On the other hand, if a company is competing fairly, which means without special government help or hindrance to competitors, then you get what you pay for.
The problem isn't corporations and it isn't lawyers. The problem is that we live in a country that has decided that it is ok for certain people and companies to get unique treatment, permissions, and tax dollars from the government. The problem is that congressmen who write special legislation and provide special finances for special groups of people don't get immediately voted out. We've gone from a country with a goal of equal rights to one with a goal of getting as much as you can vote for yourself.
Copyright infringement: Deprive the copyright owner of his right to distribute his material as he see fit.
Isn't that really just "deprive the copyright owner of the ability to deprive others of the ability to copy information" ? Either way, it's not a right since the government isn't a party to the transaction, merely an arbiter. It's just a simple law, not all laws are rights.
After all the money is the property of the government that issued it. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's
...and give to God what is God's...why do people not know the entire quote or the background of it? Do they just stop reading in the middle of sentences, close whatever book they were reading, and go to sleep? Even the sentence you quote establishes that there is a personal (religious) ownership of money.
In the US, the federal government reserves the right to print currency. However, most money is not in the form of printed cash. The federal government keeps gold stocked, but most money has no gold to back it up. The federal government insures banks holding money, but you could still spend it even if it wasn't insured.
The only way in which money can be considered the "property" of the government is by the modern obscene misreading of the right to regulate interstate commerce which the congress has taken to mean that they can assume ownership of anything at all.
People who like to give up rights to their own property so easily are really irritating to those of us who like to pretend we still have them.
The problem with this approach is that it only verifies that votes aren't modified after you cast them. The main problem with voter fraud (other than things like ballot fraud, such as candidates not being on ballots) is the presence of *extra* votes.
For example, cryptography isn't going to do anything to prevent dead people from being registered to vote. It does nothing to stop people from being allowed to vote multiple times, since multiple keys can be given out. These are the main problems we face today, not really modified votes.
The only real solution I see for this is to make it public 2 lists per district: one list says who voted with name and address, another list has a set of serial numbers and choice of votes. The 2 lists cannot correlate in order in any way. Each voter is given a unique serial number at the time of vote, and a receipt with their name, serial number, and choice of vote. Voter can use the receipt and the second public list to verify that their vote isn't modified. The only record mapping a name to a serial number is the individual receipt, not a state database, to keep the choice of vote private.
Since the lists have to be the same length per district, no one can vote twice and anyone can look up who voted to make sure no fake identities cast a vote. Anyone with a PC can add up the choices to see who wins an election. Unfortunately, such a system would give up the privacy of whether you voted, but if you didn't want to vote but didn't want anyone to know, you could choose an "abstain" vote. It also has a problem with the possibility of forged receipts for people trolling to claim their vote wasn't counted correctly, but even that would be a fairly mild problem to deal with.
Well, considering both the terms "cruel" and "unusual" are both not very well defined, debating the nature of the conjunction is a bit pointless. However, I will point out for the sake of argument:
Any time a right or law is ambiguous, it should be interpreted in full restriction of the government and full freedom of the individual. The government may always make the law more clear, but the citizen has to worry about selective enforcement. Thus choosing between the 2 above choices, the second is preferred.
From my limited reading it seems the courts have tended to favor the idea that the 8th amendment restricts the union of cruel and unusual punishments, often overturning common punishments just because they are considerred cruel.
Parent is completely right. Windows registry is one of the biggest examples of this problem, but even on Linux any program can modify nearly any other file of any other program the user has access to.
I think the main reason this is such a prevalent problem is that no one wants to deal with the trouble of "doing it right". Why make an OS force programmers (and to some degree users) to keep track of every time a program tries to access a resource out of it's sandbox when everyone is willing to accept status quo? It would break almost all existing software, which I think would be fine, but you basically need an entirely new OS (or at least interpreter) for it.
ITT: everyone on slashdot but a few misunderstands what bail is.
It's a guarantee of showing up to court. He gets his xbox back if he shows up to court. If he doesn't, it becomes property of the government. Explain how this is unreasonable.
-- BMO
What are the odds that a 13 year old is going to skip out on a trial? What's he going to do , run to Scotland and start a new life? Do you suppose he is going to become a 13 year old fugitive from the law over some theft charges?
Like you said, the purpose of bail is to ensure someone shows up to court. It is highly suspicious when a judge says "what do you like" and then take it away before a trial has even been conducted. Was he trying to ensure the kid shows up to court, or was he trying to "teach the kid a lesson" before a trial even started?
Even IF the trial had been conducted there is still a problem with this. Do you really want to let judges make up their own punishments instead of sticking to predefined guidelines? There is a reason we have the 8th amendment in the US, which prevents not only cruel punishments but unusual ones as well.
I hope you mean "don't care" in the sense that it shouldn't be news, rather than "don't care" in the sense that it's not legally significant. I'm going to address the second one because it's what I see most people mean when they say this.
I care if some rich person gets cheated out of his money, because laws should be applied fairly and equally whether they are rich or not. If we start with "he's rich so I don't care if he gets what he is allegedly legally entitled to" then how do you think a legislative war between us and rich people will turn out? The moment you open Pandora's box and allow special exceptions for special situations, it will get reversed on you.
This is why we have such a horrifyingly complex tax code with giant corporations getting away with paying very few taxes. Poor people get exemptions with strings attached, higher income can afford professionals to navigate all the well intentioned tax exceptions that Pandora's box created, and the rest of us are screwed.
Furthermore, what do you think happens to the economies of nations that no longer respect the property and rights of rich people?
I care whether or not a rich person can sue someone just as much as I care whether or not a poor person can sue someone, because one day I might need to sue for something I am contractually entitled to.
I must say I don't see any problem with this. What's a virus you ask? Well that's what a jury is for deciding. I trust the common man to be able to understand these things, and if they need help there are people who are experts in these things. Virus scanners give me complete confidence that nothing will ever be improperly flagged as a virus or missed. Not to mention, this law avoid all the complications of deciding on the intent of a virus writer. There could NEVER be a good reason for a virus to be written for research or private use, and with this law juries can rightfully just assume the ill intent of the creator. And if, for some reason someone like law enforcement needed to write a virus to protect us, we can be confident that the law won't be applied in their case since realistically you just have to selectively apply laws. I've run out of sarcasm.
Yeah, more and more I'm having to count on news agencies outside the US to find good reporting on news inside the US.
That, and the Fox News "We won the right to blatantly lie and call it news" SCOTUS case pretty much clenched it.
Don't think of it as Fox News winning a right to lie and call it news. Think of it as you keeping the right to report news, and not have Fox News not gaining the right to shut you down because they want to consider what you say to be lies.
That is, unless you want really powerful organizations going to court to decide what is "true enough" to be said. You can still change the channel.
This offensive/defensive right stuff is drawing the line in the wrong direction. There are rights of omission: 1st amendment, 2nd amendment are examples. There are also rights of commission: you are entitled to a trial by jury, and you have the right for the government to give you a chance to vote.
A right is a relation between an authority and an individual. You don't have a right to call someone a cunt, that's nonsense, syntax error. You have the freedom to. It doesn't become a "right" until it becomes a relation between an authority, in this case government, and the one under the authority, in this case citizen. Your right is "to not have the government restrict your freedom to call someone a cunt". Being fired for calling someone a cunt does not restrict your federal right to free speech, although it does limit your "freedom of speech" which is unrelated to your first amendment right.
Right's stop being rights when they stop being between a ruler and a ruled. Then they are just simple laws.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you should reread the wikipedia article a few times until you understand it. Courts don't make rights.
You have a right to be on the public ways. You don't have a right to drive on them.
As for your opinion of whether I do or don't support the Bill of Rights: fuck you.
Here's the link again for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The statement by James Madison is particularly applicable here:
It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.
(emphasis mine)
By singling out rights which do not exist in the Bill of Rights, claiming that they don't exist, and supporting Judges who do the same, you are making the exact argument against the Bill of Rights that the writers were afraid of. There's no need to swear at me, just stop using the phrase "You don't have a right to X" unless it's something that Congress or the Executive actually has the right to regulate.
Speaking of which...
It has become popular today to recite the mantra "You don't have a right to X", and the people saying it seem to think that by "roughing it" and going without rights they are stronger and more independent. This does not make anyone a strong and independent person; however, it does show them to be completely misunderstanding the way powers are allocated by the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't limit powers, it grants them in a short finite list.
Whether they are enforced or not, you have an infinite list of Federal Rights that you seem to want to casually throw away. And you also seem to support Judges who do the same. It's really a pity that so many people think like this.
DRIVING IS ABSOLUTELY A RIGHT.
To quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
One of the arguments the Federalists gave against the addition of a Bill of Rights, during the debates about ratification of the Constitution, was that a listing of rights could problematically enlarge the powers specified in Article One, Section 8 of the new Constitution by implication. For example, in Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton asked, "Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?"
The power is not enumerated as a power of congress, so the TSA can't do it legally, so it is our right. Don't let that stop you from being a living breathing argument against the Bill of Rights though.
That potential misunderstanding of the US Constitution is why the ninth and tenth amendments had to be added. They expected the government to say to people "hey that's not in the Bill of Rights so it's not your right." I think they would be saddened that it's actually civilians trying to throw each other's rights away.
Never assume the owner of the medium you are using can't access your information on it. The phone company can hear your phone calls. Your ISP can monitor your traffic. Your email server can read your email. Your game server can read your private chats. Youtube can read your private youtube messages. Forum owners can read private forum messages.
And yes, corporations/companies/individuals know your history of buying from them.
The only way to avoid it is to one day need that information; then it probably can't be found.
Perhaps you missed the fact that Alawi was actively at war with the United States? You missed the fact that the Underwear Bomber, among others, had contact with Alawi? Had things gone slightly differently, Alawi would have aided and abetted the destruction of an airliner over Detroit, resulting in the deaths of all the crew and passengers, along with unguessable casualties on the ground. The potential death count *could have exceeded the death count at the WTC.
Trials are for establishing facts that occurred in past tense.
Let me guess - some guy is taking pot shots at you and your family. You are armed, and capable of taking the man out. Instead of doing so, you're going to wait on the cops to arrive, so that they shooter gets his "due process"?
Guessed wrong, and pretty poor argument to try to put words into people's mouths.
Sorry, the scenario just doesn't work.
Then why bother bringing up, no one said it but you. You've changed your attempt at argument from "I don't like him so he shouldn't have civil rights" to "he was putting citizens into imminent danger." And you are still wrong. No one has established that anyone was going to die today, tomorrow, or even a month from now if Alawi was left alive. Put on trial, the actual evidence against him would have been made clear. He also could have served as a source of information.
A lot of people died to create and later defend the right of citizens to have trials. If you are going to throw that away just because you feel threatened, and not even imminently, perhaps you don't appreciate the safety those rights have granted you nearly enough.
"murdering their own citizens without process"
HINT: al Alawi was no countryman of mine. The sumbitch deserved much worse than he got. Due process? The process of launching that missile was long overdue!
It would be nice if we could set aside a state for people who don't believe in trials. A place where, if a person is disliked enough, he loses all rights as a citizen. You could live there, and the rest of us can live in places where "every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern."
How long could you live there before begging to come back to us, I wonder.
What a deliberately backwards way of looking at things. You can choose how to release it? Absolutely nonsensical statement. The threat of force is being applied against those who wish to copy and communicate the information. What you are choosing is whether or not legal action can be brought against other people.
A right is a restriction or requirement of the government or authority. Restricting the government from making laws against speech is a right.
When creating a restriction on another person with no authority over you, by means of government enforcement, it is called a law. The ability to bring legal force against someone for taking your possessions is a law.
When you have a general restriction of a person from copying and transferring information by threat of government action -- no matter how much you want to use the word "right" because it sounds compelling, it is still just a law. But that correct terminology is avoided because then it raises the question: "is it a fair law?" The answer to that depends on your priorities. What is more important, the freedom to communicate what information you know with your fellow person, or the financial compensation of one person by another with no prior contractual obligation?
No one can answer that for you, but the for a law to be proper, it is for the advocate of the law to justify it. In other words, to consider this impartially, you have to consider it as if the concept of "intellectual property" were just being brought up for the first time.
It would be hard to argue that a leader in a group that the US has effectively declared war on (including resolutions of Congress that authorize military force) is not a legitimate military target.
I think it is also relevant that he was a leader in a group that declared war on the U.S.
If an ant declares war on you, and you ignore it, are you at war? You can only declare war for yourself, not for someone else.
Congress has gone to great lengths not to declare war (which is easily the most treasonous thing that has occurred in the last 10 years). Do you really want to live in a country where congress can pass it's responsibility for declarations of war onto foreign parties? "We don't have to vote on this, it's not our fault". They've been blaming the president, blaming the middle east, doing anything except their responsibility. And here, a citizen is killed without any trial at all, and you want to entertain their excuse of "okay, we were at war enough for that"? Fine for you, but I'd rather not put up with that.
I'm tired of cowards standing behind such statements, these barbarians knowingly and purposefully target civilians with no other reason than to cause terror and disruption. They do not even pretend to follow Geneva Convention accords, and cowardly use with women and children as human shields. They don't wear uniforms so they can be recognized as enemy combatants, putting even more innocents at risk.
They have publicly stated that they are trying to bring about the downfall of this country. If that's not a declaration of war, I don't know what is.
Blast the lot of them, no matter where they stand.
I'm tired of cowards standing behind such statements, these barbarians knowingly and purposefully target civilian's rights with no other reason than to pretend to fight against "terror and disruption". They do not even pretend to follow US Constitution, and cowardly use with women and children as emotional arguments. They don't document or backup anything they say, so they can't be argued with systematically, putting even more of our rights at risk.
They have publicly stated that they are trying to bring about the downfall of the rights that made country what it is. If that's not a declaration of war, I don't know what is.
Blast the lot of them, no matter where they stand.
I couldn't agree with you more, parent poster
Kids can not learn math from sitting there staring at a TV.
Nonsense. I learned algebra as a child (1st or 2nd grade age) from watching a TV show called "Square One". They taught the reasoning behind it without being tied down to a certain way of writing equations, and I could apply it to a wide range of problems.
You know where kids can't learn math? School. You know why kids can't learn math at school? Because it's not taught there. Adding and subtracting isn't math. Memorizing the quadratic equation isn't math. Learning the definition of sine and cosine IS NOT MATH. It's all useful background information, but it's only just arithmetic, or computing, or history, or whatever you want to call it.
Find a high school graduate and ask them the Pythagorean theorem. Almost any of them could tell you. Ask them to prove it to you; ask them to show you they know it is true. Most won't even know what you are talking about. You could ask 1000 kids and be surprised if even 1 can tell you any of the extremely simple proofs. Most kids who go through 12 years of school and even get college degrees manage to do so without ever seeing any math.
I like how sesame street wants to try to teach math; I doubt they can do it though. However, it can be done, like the show I mentioned "Square One" did a very good job of showing how to reason through problems.
Doesn't it have a feature where if you buy something and then get some number of friends to buy it you get it for free?
Another spin on multi-level marketing, AKA a form of ponzi scheme...
Actually just a general pyramid scheme. Ponzi schemes may be famous right now, but not all investment frauds are ponzi schemes.
In a pyramid scheme, each new investor has to get new investors for himself to create value to his own investment. A club that costs $30 to join where each member gets $10 for each person they invite is a pyramid scheme.
In a ponzi scheme each new investor adds value to all the previous investors; consequently, fewer investors are needed. That's one reason ponzi schemes are so much harder to find. An investment firm that pays older investors with the money earned from newer investors, rather than from external investment into something like stock, is a ponzi scheme.
Also, the internet has become a major portion of our communications and cultural dissemination and participation. As such, interfering with it potentially infringes upon our already 'guaranteed' rights.
Just imagine what it would be like if you wanted to walk downtown and talk to George Arneston, maybe give him that invite to your birthday party...
Problem is they have lawyers, connections, and other resources. Some of them are already testing the waters, so to speak. If we don't act now, greed and anti-competitiveness with turn the internet into a series of roadblocks and restrictions. That's why we need Net Neutrality, so we can stroll around the internet unimpeded.
In the case of the internet providers and the hypothetical sidewalk company, these are not regular private companies. The internet and sidewalks are not provided without tax dollars and imminent domain, powers that regular citizens don't have. No private company should be required to help uphold constitutional rights, but in the above cases (and net neutrality issues in general) the companies are already in bed with the government. If a company is getting special treatment by the government then of course they should have to uphold the rights guaranteed by that government. On the other hand, if a company is competing fairly, which means without special government help or hindrance to competitors, then you get what you pay for.
The problem isn't corporations and it isn't lawyers. The problem is that we live in a country that has decided that it is ok for certain people and companies to get unique treatment, permissions, and tax dollars from the government. The problem is that congressmen who write special legislation and provide special finances for special groups of people don't get immediately voted out. We've gone from a country with a goal of equal rights to one with a goal of getting as much as you can vote for yourself.
+ 1 to parent. Half the sample is below or equal to the median.
Copyright infringement: Deprive the copyright owner of his right to distribute his material as he see fit.
Isn't that really just "deprive the copyright owner of the ability to deprive others of the ability to copy information" ? Either way, it's not a right since the government isn't a party to the transaction, merely an arbiter. It's just a simple law, not all laws are rights.
After all the money is the property of the government that issued it.
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's
In the US, the federal government reserves the right to print currency. However, most money is not in the form of printed cash. The federal government keeps gold stocked, but most money has no gold to back it up. The federal government insures banks holding money, but you could still spend it even if it wasn't insured.
The only way in which money can be considered the "property" of the government is by the modern obscene misreading of the right to regulate interstate commerce which the congress has taken to mean that they can assume ownership of anything at all.
People who like to give up rights to their own property so easily are really irritating to those of us who like to pretend we still have them.
The problem with this approach is that it only verifies that votes aren't modified after you cast them. The main problem with voter fraud (other than things like ballot fraud, such as candidates not being on ballots) is the presence of *extra* votes.
For example, cryptography isn't going to do anything to prevent dead people from being registered to vote. It does nothing to stop people from being allowed to vote multiple times, since multiple keys can be given out. These are the main problems we face today, not really modified votes.
The only real solution I see for this is to make it public 2 lists per district: one list says who voted with name and address, another list has a set of serial numbers and choice of votes. The 2 lists cannot correlate in order in any way. Each voter is given a unique serial number at the time of vote, and a receipt with their name, serial number, and choice of vote. Voter can use the receipt and the second public list to verify that their vote isn't modified. The only record mapping a name to a serial number is the individual receipt, not a state database, to keep the choice of vote private.
Since the lists have to be the same length per district, no one can vote twice and anyone can look up who voted to make sure no fake identities cast a vote. Anyone with a PC can add up the choices to see who wins an election. Unfortunately, such a system would give up the privacy of whether you voted, but if you didn't want to vote but didn't want anyone to know, you could choose an "abstain" vote. It also has a problem with the possibility of forged receipts for people trolling to claim their vote wasn't counted correctly, but even that would be a fairly mild problem to deal with.
Well, considering both the terms "cruel" and "unusual" are both not very well defined, debating the nature of the conjunction is a bit pointless. However, I will point out for the sake of argument:
Any time a right or law is ambiguous, it should be interpreted in full restriction of the government and full freedom of the individual. The government may always make the law more clear, but the citizen has to worry about selective enforcement. Thus choosing between the 2 above choices, the second is preferred.
From my limited reading it seems the courts have tended to favor the idea that the 8th amendment restricts the union of cruel and unusual punishments, often overturning common punishments just because they are considerred cruel.
Parent is completely right. Windows registry is one of the biggest examples of this problem, but even on Linux any program can modify nearly any other file of any other program the user has access to.
I think the main reason this is such a prevalent problem is that no one wants to deal with the trouble of "doing it right". Why make an OS force programmers (and to some degree users) to keep track of every time a program tries to access a resource out of it's sandbox when everyone is willing to accept status quo? It would break almost all existing software, which I think would be fine, but you basically need an entirely new OS (or at least interpreter) for it.
I got it.
Double left click, right click, left click, triple right click, A, A, B, A, Up, Up, Up and I can see almost see slashdot as any other forum!
It's pretty much the same command in Emacs.
ITT: everyone on slashdot but a few misunderstands what bail is.
It's a guarantee of showing up to court. He gets his xbox back if he shows up to court. If he doesn't, it becomes property of the government. Explain how this is unreasonable.
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BMO
What are the odds that a 13 year old is going to skip out on a trial? What's he going to do , run to Scotland and start a new life? Do you suppose he is going to become a 13 year old fugitive from the law over some theft charges?
Like you said, the purpose of bail is to ensure someone shows up to court. It is highly suspicious when a judge says "what do you like" and then take it away before a trial has even been conducted. Was he trying to ensure the kid shows up to court, or was he trying to "teach the kid a lesson" before a trial even started?
Even IF the trial had been conducted there is still a problem with this. Do you really want to let judges make up their own punishments instead of sticking to predefined guidelines? There is a reason we have the 8th amendment in the US, which prevents not only cruel punishments but unusual ones as well.
Why does anyone seem to care?
I hope you mean "don't care" in the sense that it shouldn't be news, rather than "don't care" in the sense that it's not legally significant. I'm going to address the second one because it's what I see most people mean when they say this.
I care if some rich person gets cheated out of his money, because laws should be applied fairly and equally whether they are rich or not. If we start with "he's rich so I don't care if he gets what he is allegedly legally entitled to" then how do you think a legislative war between us and rich people will turn out? The moment you open Pandora's box and allow special exceptions for special situations, it will get reversed on you.
This is why we have such a horrifyingly complex tax code with giant corporations getting away with paying very few taxes. Poor people get exemptions with strings attached, higher income can afford professionals to navigate all the well intentioned tax exceptions that Pandora's box created, and the rest of us are screwed.
Furthermore, what do you think happens to the economies of nations that no longer respect the property and rights of rich people?
I care whether or not a rich person can sue someone just as much as I care whether or not a poor person can sue someone, because one day I might need to sue for something I am contractually entitled to.
should a government employee be expected to give up all rights to individual privacy just because they work for the government?
When they are on-the-job, yes. Unless they go to the bathroom.
If they can arrest you while you are in the bathroom, then they shouldn't be given privacy even there.
Unfortunately anyone arguing for enforcing the law just because it's the law will be called extremist.
I must say I don't see any problem with this. What's a virus you ask? Well that's what a jury is for deciding. I trust the common man to be able to understand these things, and if they need help there are people who are experts in these things. Virus scanners give me complete confidence that nothing will ever be improperly flagged as a virus or missed.
Not to mention, this law avoid all the complications of deciding on the intent of a virus writer. There could NEVER be a good reason for a virus to be written for research or private use, and with this law juries can rightfully just assume the ill intent of the creator. And if, for some reason someone like law enforcement needed to write a virus to protect us, we can be confident that the law won't be applied in their case since realistically you just have to selectively apply laws.
I've run out of sarcasm.
Yeah, more and more I'm having to count on news agencies outside the US to find good reporting on news inside the US.
That, and the Fox News "We won the right to blatantly lie and call it news" SCOTUS case pretty much clenched it.
Don't think of it as Fox News winning a right to lie and call it news. Think of it as you keeping the right to report news, and not have Fox News not gaining the right to shut you down because they want to consider what you say to be lies.
That is, unless you want really powerful organizations going to court to decide what is "true enough" to be said. You can still change the channel.
This offensive/defensive right stuff is drawing the line in the wrong direction. There are rights of omission: 1st amendment, 2nd amendment are examples. There are also rights of commission: you are entitled to a trial by jury, and you have the right for the government to give you a chance to vote.
A right is a relation between an authority and an individual. You don't have a right to call someone a cunt, that's nonsense, syntax error. You have the freedom to. It doesn't become a "right" until it becomes a relation between an authority, in this case government, and the one under the authority, in this case citizen. Your right is "to not have the government restrict your freedom to call someone a cunt". Being fired for calling someone a cunt does not restrict your federal right to free speech, although it does limit your "freedom of speech" which is unrelated to your first amendment right.
Right's stop being rights when they stop being between a ruler and a ruled. Then they are just simple laws.