As I read the case, McNeil admitted to taking out his weapon and choosing not to retreat. Am I not reading that correctly? Zimmerman, in contrast, claims to have been attacked by Martin, pinned to the ground and beaten, and that it was Martin who was reaching for his weapon.
I'm not stating an opinion about McNeil's guilt or innocence, simply that the two cases are quite different from one another. Furthermore, keep in mind that McNeil was not charged until a year after the incident, calling into question claims that Zimmerman would have been arrested immediately if he had been black.
One of the things which came out was that Sanford PD investigators spent little time interviewing witnesses and may have had a pro-Zimmerman bias while doing so (i.e. everything they asked was slanted towards establishing Zimmerman shot in self defense).
Incorrect. It was the police who wanted to charge Zimmerman and the DA overrode them because he thought there was insufficient evidence for a conviction. Since the police wanted to charge Zimmerman, it stands to reason that if they had any biases, they would have been against Zimmerman, not for him.
Correction: some witnesses saw that. Others reported something else
Really? Which witness reported Zimmerman being on top? What actual evidence is there that Zimmerman attacked Martin, or that Zimmerman was physically threatening to Martin?
Human memory is extremely fallible, subject to all kinds of biases, and shockingly easy to alter after the fact
The state needs to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If these witnesses are as unreliable and easily influenced as you say, then Zimmerman probably can't be convicted at all.
The entire incident could not have happened without Zimmerman behaving in an extremely confrontational manner, even if you believe his self-serving story.
How is following a stranger at a distance in your own gated community "extremely confrontational"? Even according to Martin's own girlfriend, it was Martin, not Zimmerman, who initiated the actual confrontation, consistent with Zimmerman's own testimony.
On what planet is arresting Zimmerman and properly investigating the event the 'destruction of our justice system for everybody'?
On what planet do you live? People aren't just calling for a proper investigation (and there is no evidence that the initial investigation was improper), they are calling for the conviction of Zimmerman and indictments of the police and prosecutors for alleged racial bias and improper conduct.
My prediction is that Zimmerman will be found "not guilty"; Unless there is evidence that hasn't been revealed yet, I simply can't see how the state can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not act in self defense or that he even initiated the confrontation. And I suspect that there will be riots as a consequence because people will simply be unwilling to accept this verdict.
Why did he even leave his car in the first place, if he thought that Martin was dangerous?
Burglars usually aren't dangerous, they are in it for the money: they just run away when they are spotted or confronted. And doubtlessly, carrying a weapon gave Zimmerman a false sense of security.
I agree it would have been prudent for him not to have left the car. I also think "stand your ground" and concealed weapons are questionable. None of that amounts to a crime, though. Whether Zimmerman committed a crime or not hinges on proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman actually attacked Martin.
That may all be true. But the question is how the story continues. Zimmerman states that he lost sight of Martin and was returning to his car when Martin attacked him. That would make Martin the attacker. The physical evidence and witness statements seem to support Zimmerman's story. That would make Martin the attacker. The fact that Zimmerman followed him initially is irrelevant at that point.
What was egregious here was the government not applying the law evenly, and not even charging the guy.
You're confusing fact and perception. This case could be presented as if the government wasn't applying the law evenly, but whether that was actually the case or not now remains for the courts to determine.
He's an asshole because he ignored the 911 operator's instructions to wait for the cops, and got out of his car with a gun to confront somebody.
The 911 operator told him that he didn't "need to" follow Martin and Zimmerman said "OK" and was going to wait by his car for police. Zimmerman testified that he was returning to his car and it was Martin who confronted him and then punched him. Witnesses saw Zimmerman on the ground, with Martin on top, and Zimmerman's injuries and dirty clothing support that.
I don't know of any actual evidence that support the idea that Zimmerman ignored the 911 operator's suggestion and followed and attacked Martin. Maybe you can share what evidence you think there is?
(Didn't he think it out? What did he intend to do after he confronted Martin? It had to turn out bad.)
There is no evidence that Zimmerman confronted Martin.
A lot of black people in Florida go to jail for less.
I don't know whether that's true or not, but if racism causes the justice system to be unreasonably harsh towards black people, then we need to fix that, instead of destroying our justice system for everybody.
At this point, the only way to settle this is for it to go to trial. The facts need to be laid out in court, experts need to testify, and a jury needs to decide.
I think there's a good chance that a jury will find Zimmerman "not guilty". The DA's original assessment was that there wasn't even enough evidence to win a conviction, and that's consistent with the evidence that has come out since.
These "Stand Your Ground" Laws that we have thanks to ALEC and the NRA are meant only to protect white people who shoot blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, etc.
"Meant only to protect white people"? What an inflammatory and completely unsupported thing to say. Like so many other people, when you can't actually find evidence for racism, you just fabricate claims of racism.
Have a look at how "Stand Your Ground" is applied when it's the other way around.
In the case you cite, the shooter, a black male, was not arrested and was not charged for an entire year. Eventually, under public pressure, the DA did charge the shooter and he was found guilty by a jury.
I don't see how the cases are analogous either. Zimmerman claims to have been attacked by Martin from behind, while walking back to his car, and that's consistent with physical evidence. McNeil seems to have provoked a confrontation. Even if McNeil should have been found innocent, how does one injustice justify another one? Would racially based injustice against black men mean that we need to dismantle our legal system altogether, just to justify the mob?
Unfortunately, once companies get as large and rich as Google is now, they start to attract people who use their riches to realize projects that otherwise wouldn't stand a chance in an efficient market: ChromeOS, Go, Dart, native client, etc. Companies like Google should be asking themselves: would people be doing this at a startup if their own money was at stake? If not, it's probably not worth doing.
Hybrids make sense for high mileage city driving, but most people have different needs. Also, taxis in some places have special environmental requirements or incentives.
The point he was making was that money spent on infrastructure could just as easily be going to railroads or the like, but instead it all gets spent on cars.
The cost of oil doesn't affect the railroad/car tradeoffs much, since one way or another most railroads also run on fossil fuels. And railroads are only fuel and cost effective on the very busiest of lines; on all others, buses and cars are better. Even on the busiest lines, the difference isn't all that great.
The iPad app seems like a direct copy of the hardware device, down to the images and arrangement of the buttons. That doesn't seem right and violates copyright.
So, Semantic Compaction shouldn't have a patent on this class of communications devices (they are many decades old), but they might have a valid patent on this particular arrangement of buttons. (Personally, I think we should disallow patents on keyboard layouts altogether, but for the time being, they are valid and enforceable.)
But in any case, at best, you should be able to cancel your contract prematurely, after paying for the balance of your phone. You shouldn't be able to get arbitrary amounts of data for free in perpetuity, which is what you seem to want.
It mostly tells me that collecting all this data is pretty useless. I've accumulated a lot of data myself, but never got around to analyzing it. Now I won't bother.
These games aren't "NP-hard" because they are fixed size and fixed levels. Complexity results show you nothing about the difficulty of individual instances.
What is "NP-hard" is some generalization of these games chosen by the authors, with a particular chosen outcome (e.g., maximum score). Whether that generalization is still a good game, or even the same game, is questionable.
Police are supposed to be trained professionals.... Why any policeman would think it's reasonable conduct to pepper spray a line of kneeling civilians is beyond me.
Well, perhaps it is a result of their training. If you were ordered to remove these civilians, what would you do? Walk up to them and drag them away? Would that be safer either for police or the protesters?
Sorry, but free speech and right of assembly does not give you the right to stage peaceful protests wherever you want. You do not have a right to protest on my private property, and you do not have a right to protest in a way that gets in the way of other people, like blocking public roads or places. If you do, police can remove you, if necessary by force.
Wheels are not useful in a lot of terrain and on a lot of ground. It takes special circumstances to actually make the wheel seem worthwhile. But once there is a critical mass of wheel users, then people will start to build roads and change the environment.
In my experience, AT&T doesn't even deliver the data I bought. So when they throttle you at 3Gb, they may actually be throttling you at 1Gb (the difference is far larger than what can be explained by network overhead). Run a data counter on your phone to see what is actually going on, and compare that with the data they claim you used.
No consent is requested to consumers to collect, aggregate and reuse that data. EU law requires explicit consent before consumer data and be shared with a third party.
Even if that were true in that generality (it isn't), so what? Both in the US and the EU, you are subject to credit reporting if you want credit. The question is what your protections against discrimination and other abuses are, and they are better in the US.
More generally, far from protecting privacy, EU data protection is an expansion of government power, quite in line with Europe's totalitarian tendencies. Google can't do much to you with your private data, but the STASI and they Vichy government could, and did.
(I sincerely wish that "you people" would learn to have a civil conversation)
You make completely erroneous statements, and when people point out that your statements are nonsense, you accuse them of not being civil? You really have adopted the rude and arrogant attitudes of French intellectuals completely. Show some civility yourself before demanding it from others.
You don't like the new language features? Well that's great, don't use them then. You can still fall back to plain C code as much as you like.
How naive are you? In the real world, every language feature that gets added is a feature that all developers have to deal with, because it is used in libraries (including the standard library), affects debuggers, optimization, error handling, resource management, IDEs, etc.
Furthermore, an even bigger problem is the missed opportunity: C++ tries to be a modern systems programming language, but it fails to do a good job at that. Yet, it has enough inertia to discourage people from investing in doing something better.
Slashdot Mirror
As I read the case, McNeil admitted to taking out his weapon and choosing not to retreat. Am I not reading that correctly? Zimmerman, in contrast, claims to have been attacked by Martin, pinned to the ground and beaten, and that it was Martin who was reaching for his weapon.
I'm not stating an opinion about McNeil's guilt or innocence, simply that the two cases are quite different from one another. Furthermore, keep in mind that McNeil was not charged until a year after the incident, calling into question claims that Zimmerman would have been arrested immediately if he had been black.
Incorrect. It was the police who wanted to charge Zimmerman and the DA overrode them because he thought there was insufficient evidence for a conviction. Since the police wanted to charge Zimmerman, it stands to reason that if they had any biases, they would have been against Zimmerman, not for him.
Really? Which witness reported Zimmerman being on top? What actual evidence is there that Zimmerman attacked Martin, or that Zimmerman was physically threatening to Martin?
The state needs to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If these witnesses are as unreliable and easily influenced as you say, then Zimmerman probably can't be convicted at all.
How is following a stranger at a distance in your own gated community "extremely confrontational"? Even according to Martin's own girlfriend, it was Martin, not Zimmerman, who initiated the actual confrontation, consistent with Zimmerman's own testimony.
On what planet do you live? People aren't just calling for a proper investigation (and there is no evidence that the initial investigation was improper), they are calling for the conviction of Zimmerman and indictments of the police and prosecutors for alleged racial bias and improper conduct.
My prediction is that Zimmerman will be found "not guilty"; Unless there is evidence that hasn't been revealed yet, I simply can't see how the state can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not act in self defense or that he even initiated the confrontation. And I suspect that there will be riots as a consequence because people will simply be unwilling to accept this verdict.
Burglars usually aren't dangerous, they are in it for the money: they just run away when they are spotted or confronted. And doubtlessly, carrying a weapon gave Zimmerman a false sense of security.
I agree it would have been prudent for him not to have left the car. I also think "stand your ground" and concealed weapons are questionable. None of that amounts to a crime, though. Whether Zimmerman committed a crime or not hinges on proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman actually attacked Martin.
That may all be true. But the question is how the story continues. Zimmerman states that he lost sight of Martin and was returning to his car when Martin attacked him. That would make Martin the attacker. The physical evidence and witness statements seem to support Zimmerman's story. That would make Martin the attacker. The fact that Zimmerman followed him initially is irrelevant at that point.
You're confusing fact and perception. This case could be presented as if the government wasn't applying the law evenly, but whether that was actually the case or not now remains for the courts to determine.
The 911 operator told him that he didn't "need to" follow Martin and Zimmerman said "OK" and was going to wait by his car for police. Zimmerman testified that he was returning to his car and it was Martin who confronted him and then punched him. Witnesses saw Zimmerman on the ground, with Martin on top, and Zimmerman's injuries and dirty clothing support that.
I don't know of any actual evidence that support the idea that Zimmerman ignored the 911 operator's suggestion and followed and attacked Martin. Maybe you can share what evidence you think there is?
There is no evidence that Zimmerman confronted Martin.
I don't know whether that's true or not, but if racism causes the justice system to be unreasonably harsh towards black people, then we need to fix that, instead of destroying our justice system for everybody.
At this point, the only way to settle this is for it to go to trial. The facts need to be laid out in court, experts need to testify, and a jury needs to decide.
I think there's a good chance that a jury will find Zimmerman "not guilty". The DA's original assessment was that there wasn't even enough evidence to win a conviction, and that's consistent with the evidence that has come out since.
"Meant only to protect white people"? What an inflammatory and completely unsupported thing to say. Like so many other people, when you can't actually find evidence for racism, you just fabricate claims of racism.
In the case you cite, the shooter, a black male, was not arrested and was not charged for an entire year. Eventually, under public pressure, the DA did charge the shooter and he was found guilty by a jury.
I don't see how the cases are analogous either. Zimmerman claims to have been attacked by Martin from behind, while walking back to his car, and that's consistent with physical evidence. McNeil seems to have provoked a confrontation. Even if McNeil should have been found innocent, how does one injustice justify another one? Would racially based injustice against black men mean that we need to dismantle our legal system altogether, just to justify the mob?
Unfortunately, once companies get as large and rich as Google is now, they start to attract people who use their riches to realize projects that otherwise wouldn't stand a chance in an efficient market: ChromeOS, Go, Dart, native client, etc. Companies like Google should be asking themselves: would people be doing this at a startup if their own money was at stake? If not, it's probably not worth doing.
Hybrids make sense for high mileage city driving, but most people have different needs. Also, taxis in some places have special environmental requirements or incentives.
The cost of oil doesn't affect the railroad/car tradeoffs much, since one way or another most railroads also run on fossil fuels. And railroads are only fuel and cost effective on the very busiest of lines; on all others, buses and cars are better. Even on the busiest lines, the difference isn't all that great.
I guess it's kind of relevant to Slashdot because of Santorum's strong anti-science stance.
The iPad app seems like a direct copy of the hardware device, down to the images and arrangement of the buttons. That doesn't seem right and violates copyright.
So, Semantic Compaction shouldn't have a patent on this class of communications devices (they are many decades old), but they might have a valid patent on this particular arrangement of buttons. (Personally, I think we should disallow patents on keyboard layouts altogether, but for the time being, they are valid and enforceable.)
It's clear enough on their website, and they don't even seem to be offering the "unlimited" plans anymore (except for non-smartphones).
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/data-plans.jsp
http://www.att.com/esupport/datausage.jsp
But in any case, at best, you should be able to cancel your contract prematurely, after paying for the balance of your phone. You shouldn't be able to get arbitrary amounts of data for free in perpetuity, which is what you seem to want.
Look, I'm not defending what they did. I simply am not qualified to say whether what they did was reasonable or not.
And neither are you nor most of the other people commenting on this.
(I can tell you that using cable ties and then removing them would have risked seriously injuring their hands.)
It mostly tells me that collecting all this data is pretty useless. I've accumulated a lot of data myself, but never got around to analyzing it. Now I won't bother.
These games aren't "NP-hard" because they are fixed size and fixed levels. Complexity results show you nothing about the difficulty of individual instances.
What is "NP-hard" is some generalization of these games chosen by the authors, with a particular chosen outcome (e.g., maximum score). Whether that generalization is still a good game, or even the same game, is questionable.
Why don't you just boot Ubuntu from an external USB stick?
Alternatively, just use a smartphone or tablet for personal stuff.
Well, perhaps it is a result of their training. If you were ordered to remove these civilians, what would you do? Walk up to them and drag them away? Would that be safer either for police or the protesters?
Sorry, but free speech and right of assembly does not give you the right to stage peaceful protests wherever you want. You do not have a right to protest on my private property, and you do not have a right to protest in a way that gets in the way of other people, like blocking public roads or places. If you do, police can remove you, if necessary by force.
"unauthorized" merely means that the use wasn't explicitly authorized. Most fair use is "unauthorized"; that's the whole point of fair use.
Wheels are not useful in a lot of terrain and on a lot of ground. It takes special circumstances to actually make the wheel seem worthwhile. But once there is a critical mass of wheel users, then people will start to build roads and change the environment.
In my experience, AT&T doesn't even deliver the data I bought. So when they throttle you at 3Gb, they may actually be throttling you at 1Gb (the difference is far larger than what can be explained by network overhead). Run a data counter on your phone to see what is actually going on, and compare that with the data they claim you used.
Even if that were true in that generality (it isn't), so what? Both in the US and the EU, you are subject to credit reporting if you want credit. The question is what your protections against discrimination and other abuses are, and they are better in the US.
More generally, far from protecting privacy, EU data protection is an expansion of government power, quite in line with Europe's totalitarian tendencies. Google can't do much to you with your private data, but the STASI and they Vichy government could, and did.
You make completely erroneous statements, and when people point out that your statements are nonsense, you accuse them of not being civil? You really have adopted the rude and arrogant attitudes of French intellectuals completely. Show some civility yourself before demanding it from others.
How naive are you? In the real world, every language feature that gets added is a feature that all developers have to deal with, because it is used in libraries (including the standard library), affects debuggers, optimization, error handling, resource management, IDEs, etc.
Furthermore, an even bigger problem is the missed opportunity: C++ tries to be a modern systems programming language, but it fails to do a good job at that. Yet, it has enough inertia to discourage people from investing in doing something better.