To do that, to manage to pass changes like these, one needs a lot of people with him, and the only way to achieve that, if that is achievable at all, is by talking about it to people and showing how the current situation is absurd and how these changes are necessary, as we are doing now.
That is a fallacy. Certainly US is not as bad in executing people as China, for example, but there is little difference between executing someone and sentencing him to 30 or more years in prison, and the amount of executed people in these regimens certainly does not make for the difference in incarceration, actually the number of executions in all those countries is several orders of magnitude lower than the number of incarcerated people in US. Even if you add executions to incarcerations in all those countries and compare to US incarcerations, US is still much ahead.
If by "responsive to citizens" you mean a system that has more incarcerated people than China, Iran and North Korea all put together, certainly none other than US.
(3) 35 years is the theoretical maximum when you total up all the charges with maximum penalties. He would likely have faced a few years in prison if found guilty of all charges, about the same as in many European countries.
But he could get 35 years in prison, especially if the judge wanted to make an example of him, which happens more than you would believe. The fact that he could get this ridiculously draconian sentence, which is more than the maximum time permitted for anyone to serve for any crime in many countries, is enough to show how rotten US justice system is.
Furthermore the fact that the prosecutor can throw the whole book on him and charge him of everything he can think about does not mean she is forced to do so. That is the problem with your "adversarial legal system". Prosecutors go out of their way to intimidate and force people into deals, regardless of their culpability, and many many people take those deals forfeiting their right to defend themselves because of the chance of draconian penalties if they do not.
Absolutely nothing of this would be possible without all the mathematics, physics and chemistry developed before, which amounted for most of these "discoveries", as I said. To add even more to my point, all of these inventions you used as examples were about and in the process to be invented by someone else other than their creators when they were patented. The creators just did it a bit faster.
Please my good sir. Show me one single thing that is purely original and does not consist in 99.999% of public knowledge. The little "originality" you add to something does not give you the right to sequestrate it from public domain, from where it mostly came.
Lets see. Tyranny means that someone has usurped the power and exerts it in an oppressive way. In democracy the power comes from and should be exerted for the people.
Well, corporations have laws and the government enforcement disproportionally protecting their interests and can actually buy politicians and governments. Furthermore justice is unaffordable to all but themselves. More and more power is exerted from them and for them. First point checked.
Power has also been exerted oppressively. Check the draconian prosecutions of people that go against the interests of corporations, like Aaron Schwartz, and all the people who ended paying millions for downloading a few musics.
And before you say that it is still much better than working camps, just wait and see. Things can and will get much worse yet as long as people just remain apathetic.
Now I will have to give my full identity to any site that today requires just an e-mail account to register. An identity that will be the same I will use to make payments. What could go wrong with that?
Most of the charges were stretches. The prosecutors didn't need to bring them. They did it in order to intimidate and blackmail him into a deal, as they always do with everybody.
Still mad? We can work on that. Repeat to yourself: "I am not a failure" several times per day every day. Eventually you will accept it as true as you do with every other bullshit you say.
Most people in prison are not there because of murder or serious crimes, and neither because of drugs. A lot of countries have even more restrictive drug laws, and still a lot less people incarcerated. And citing a senator who got away with light punishment is a hardly a good way to make your point on the matter. Bankers and CEOs of big corporations get it easy too if you want to keep at the trend.
Before asking the financial information from others please give your name, your social security number and tell me how much you earn. Attach all the necessary documents to prove it please. Oh, wait, you are an anonymous coward...
Truth is you wouldn't have a way to know if I was lying if I told you I donated 10, 100, 1000 or a million dollars to anything, so what is the point in asking, Mr Troll? Actually your argument is flawed from the start as I would be a narcissist if I started to speak about myself and how much I do. I do what I think I must and I speak whenever I feel I must. You do neither. But by all means, keep to your disgusting apathy. Keep feeling right about staying quiet. It will take you far.
You don't know me and therefore you have absolutely no clue about what I do or what I do not do, still you feel in the right to try to use what you imagine I do not do as excuse to justify your apathy and talking down those that at the very least express their outrage against unfairness and authoritarianism, which is considerably more than you do. All that behind the mask of an anonymous post.
You should look at the mirror and be ashamed of what you see. You are what is wrong with our world.
Nobody is blaming the suicide solely on them, but it would be naive to think their actions have no influence over it. If the actions were fair and honest that would be only a sad correlation, but the actions weren't, at least accordingly to the views of a lot of people here. So yes, there is blame to place, because they failed the people they represent, they abused their power, and in the process of doing that, to add insult to injury, helped to end the life of a brilliant young man whose fault was mostly fighting for our eroded rights,
No we don't need to get a grip. Whenever we see injustice we have all the right to feel outrage, and I pity you if you are so apathetic that even the thought of people's non acceptance is so repulsive to you.
No matter how much you try to spin it, what was done to him was a great injustice. His punishment was by far disproportionate to the "crimes" he committed and his life was ruined by a system that threatens to ruin many more people's lives, a system that becomes more powerful and authoritative as time goes, and which is fueled by the apathy and acceptance of people like you.
You are delusional. The fullest extent of the law is a very elastic thing. A prosecutor can press charges against you for violating every single law in the book if he so desires. There is no limit. He can make your life hell just because he so wishes for as long as he wishes. That is what the fullest extent of the law allows him to do.
You will be forced to defend against all of them (if you even have the resources for such), even the most ridiculous ones, and the sad thing is that is a jury system, chances are that some of those charges will stick, you being innocent or not.
No, definitely a prosecutor job is not to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, except in the most extreme of the cases.
When you are the only one that understands something chances are you didn't understand it at all. It is not a prosecutor's job to bring ridiculous charges and ask for ridiculous sentences for relatively trivial crimes, especially when the victim explicitly asked for the charges to be dropped (which JSTOR did).
A responsible prosecutor job is to bring adequate and proportional charges against people who committed crimes. A responsible prosecutor job is to protect the interests of society as a whole, by knowing when to uphold the law and when to drop charges when there is no benefit to society in pursuing them. That was not what was done here.
Only 3% of the defendants dop not accept a plea bargain. Do you know why? Because the possible sentences are ridiculous. Decades of punishment for relatively small crimes. In the face of the possibility of spending decades in jail and bankrupting yourself trying to defend your case, chances are you will accept a deal, even if you are innocent.
When was the last time the government (or anyone else for truth's sake) was right 97% of the time? Do you really think US prosecutors are? Isn't it more likely that a lot of innocent people are in jail right now because of this rotten and distorted judicial system?
It is no wonder that US has the highest incarcerated population in the world, per capita and in absolute values. Much more people are caged there than in other "blooming democracies" like China, North Korea or Iran.
But the first step for this is accountability, and that require at least some focus on those two. It is past time for public servants to understand they are servants of the public and not our overlords.
Oh, you see no wrong with prosecutors charging a person with 35 years for what Aaron did? You see no wrong with a system where a federal prosecutor can bankrupt a person and ruin his life even if he is innocent by just charging him with something? You see no wrong with a system that allows prosecutors to blackmail innocent people into deals because the sentences for even minor crimes can be stretched into decades, and with psychopathic people in positions of power, like this prosecutor, abusing this system for personal promotion? You need to open your eyes wide, my friend, you may be impressed by what you will see.
Slashdot Mirror
To do that, to manage to pass changes like these, one needs a lot of people with him, and the only way to achieve that, if that is achievable at all, is by talking about it to people and showing how the current situation is absurd and how these changes are necessary, as we are doing now.
That is a fallacy. Certainly US is not as bad in executing people as China, for example, but there is little difference between executing someone and sentencing him to 30 or more years in prison, and the amount of executed people in these regimens certainly does not make for the difference in incarceration, actually the number of executions in all those countries is several orders of magnitude lower than the number of incarcerated people in US. Even if you add executions to incarcerations in all those countries and compare to US incarcerations, US is still much ahead.
If by "responsive to citizens" you mean a system that has more incarcerated people than China, Iran and North Korea all put together, certainly none other than US.
(3) 35 years is the theoretical maximum when you total up all the charges with maximum penalties. He would likely have faced a few years in prison if found guilty of all charges, about the same as in many European countries.
But he could get 35 years in prison, especially if the judge wanted to make an example of him, which happens more than you would believe. The fact that he could get this ridiculously draconian sentence, which is more than the maximum time permitted for anyone to serve for any crime in many countries, is enough to show how rotten US justice system is.
Furthermore the fact that the prosecutor can throw the whole book on him and charge him of everything he can think about does not mean she is forced to do so. That is the problem with your "adversarial legal system". Prosecutors go out of their way to intimidate and force people into deals, regardless of their culpability, and many many people take those deals forfeiting their right to defend themselves because of the chance of draconian penalties if they do not.
Kaspersky would certainly say that. They are one of the parties most benefited by general security related panic.
Absolutely nothing of this would be possible without all the mathematics, physics and chemistry developed before, which amounted for most of these "discoveries", as I said. To add even more to my point, all of these inventions you used as examples were about and in the process to be invented by someone else other than their creators when they were patented. The creators just did it a bit faster.
Please my good sir. Show me one single thing that is purely original and does not consist in 99.999% of public knowledge. The little "originality" you add to something does not give you the right to sequestrate it from public domain, from where it mostly came.
Lets see. Tyranny means that someone has usurped the power and exerts it in an oppressive way. In democracy the power comes from and should be exerted for the people.
Well, corporations have laws and the government enforcement disproportionally protecting their interests and can actually buy politicians and governments. Furthermore justice is unaffordable to all but themselves. More and more power is exerted from them and for them. First point checked.
Power has also been exerted oppressively. Check the draconian prosecutions of people that go against the interests of corporations, like Aaron Schwartz, and all the people who ended paying millions for downloading a few musics.
And before you say that it is still much better than working camps, just wait and see. Things can and will get much worse yet as long as people just remain apathetic.
But hey that's just me supporting the tyranny of the power elite.
Unfortunately yes, it still is. Although I should commend you for doing it in a sensible way.
Still mad, little troll?
We can live without all of this and happily exchange it for free access to journals. Thank you.
Now I will have to give my full identity to any site that today requires just an e-mail account to register. An identity that will be the same I will use to make payments. What could go wrong with that?
Most of the charges were stretches. The prosecutors didn't need to bring them. They did it in order to intimidate and blackmail him into a deal, as they always do with everybody.
Still mad? We can work on that. Repeat to yourself: "I am not a failure" several times per day every day. Eventually you will accept it as true as you do with every other bullshit you say.
Why are you so mad, little troll? Did I expose a nerve? Do you need so desperately to justify your own apathy? Poor little troll...
Most people in prison are not there because of murder or serious crimes, and neither because of drugs. A lot of countries have even more restrictive drug laws, and still a lot less people incarcerated. And citing a senator who got away with light punishment is a hardly a good way to make your point on the matter. Bankers and CEOs of big corporations get it easy too if you want to keep at the trend.
Before asking the financial information from others please give your name, your social security number and tell me how much you earn. Attach all the necessary documents to prove it please. Oh, wait, you are an anonymous coward...
Truth is you wouldn't have a way to know if I was lying if I told you I donated 10, 100, 1000 or a million dollars to anything, so what is the point in asking, Mr Troll? Actually your argument is flawed from the start as I would be a narcissist if I started to speak about myself and how much I do. I do what I think I must and I speak whenever I feel I must. You do neither. But by all means, keep to your disgusting apathy. Keep feeling right about staying quiet. It will take you far.
You don't know me and therefore you have absolutely no clue about what I do or what I do not do, still you feel in the right to try to use what you imagine I do not do as excuse to justify your apathy and talking down those that at the very least express their outrage against unfairness and authoritarianism, which is considerably more than you do. All that behind the mask of an anonymous post.
You should look at the mirror and be ashamed of what you see. You are what is wrong with our world.
Nobody is blaming the suicide solely on them, but it would be naive to think their actions have no influence over it. If the actions were fair and honest that would be only a sad correlation, but the actions weren't, at least accordingly to the views of a lot of people here. So yes, there is blame to place, because they failed the people they represent, they abused their power, and in the process of doing that, to add insult to injury, helped to end the life of a brilliant young man whose fault was mostly fighting for our eroded rights,
No we don't need to get a grip. Whenever we see injustice we have all the right to feel outrage, and I pity you if you are so apathetic that even the thought of people's non acceptance is so repulsive to you.
No matter how much you try to spin it, what was done to him was a great injustice. His punishment was by far disproportionate to the "crimes" he committed and his life was ruined by a system that threatens to ruin many more people's lives, a system that becomes more powerful and authoritative as time goes, and which is fueled by the apathy and acceptance of people like you.
You are delusional. The fullest extent of the law is a very elastic thing. A prosecutor can press charges against you for violating every single law in the book if he so desires. There is no limit. He can make your life hell just because he so wishes for as long as he wishes. That is what the fullest extent of the law allows him to do.
You will be forced to defend against all of them (if you even have the resources for such), even the most ridiculous ones, and the sad thing is that is a jury system, chances are that some of those charges will stick, you being innocent or not.
No, definitely a prosecutor job is not to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, except in the most extreme of the cases.
When you are the only one that understands something chances are you didn't understand it at all. It is not a prosecutor's job to bring ridiculous charges and ask for ridiculous sentences for relatively trivial crimes, especially when the victim explicitly asked for the charges to be dropped (which JSTOR did).
A responsible prosecutor job is to bring adequate and proportional charges against people who committed crimes. A responsible prosecutor job is to protect the interests of society as a whole, by knowing when to uphold the law and when to drop charges when there is no benefit to society in pursuing them. That was not what was done here.
Only 3% of the defendants dop not accept a plea bargain. Do you know why? Because the possible sentences are ridiculous. Decades of punishment for relatively small crimes. In the face of the possibility of spending decades in jail and bankrupting yourself trying to defend your case, chances are you will accept a deal, even if you are innocent.
When was the last time the government (or anyone else for truth's sake) was right 97% of the time? Do you really think US prosecutors are? Isn't it more likely that a lot of innocent people are in jail right now because of this rotten and distorted judicial system?
It is no wonder that US has the highest incarcerated population in the world, per capita and in absolute values. Much more people are caged there than in other "blooming democracies" like China, North Korea or Iran.
But the first step for this is accountability, and that require at least some focus on those two. It is past time for public servants to understand they are servants of the public and not our overlords.
Oh, you see no wrong with prosecutors charging a person with 35 years for what Aaron did? You see no wrong with a system where a federal prosecutor can bankrupt a person and ruin his life even if he is innocent by just charging him with something? You see no wrong with a system that allows prosecutors to blackmail innocent people into deals because the sentences for even minor crimes can be stretched into decades, and with psychopathic people in positions of power, like this prosecutor, abusing this system for personal promotion? You need to open your eyes wide, my friend, you may be impressed by what you will see.