One quote in particular stands out to me... "Participation in the Olympic Games is voluntary. Thus,
nations and individuals who participate in the Olympic Games submit themselves to the rules and regulations
established by the IOC, and to subsequent sanctions for violating these rules. The IOC alone cannot compel
governmental compliance, however, the Olympic Charter exemplifies current international practice and has the
effect of customary international law. Therefore, the authoritative force of the rules and regulations of
the Olympic Charter are recognized by state and international law.
Interestingly, I can't find substantiation of my claim that they have an international trademark by treaty,
as with the IRC. So I'll have to take my spankings on that point, though I consider the above somewhat more
scary.
but it really is only theory unless the Supreme Court has tried to overturn part of a treaty, and was denied.
As I said, IANAL. However, the best I can find on this subject comes from
De Geofroy vs Riggs, 1890, which says
"The treaty power, as expressed in the constitution, is in terms unlimited, except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government" - Which I take to mean that unless they blatantly violate the constitution, treaties win.
OK, now you are changing the issue. Originally you were asking whether a contract between two people could affect a third party
I think you have confused me for someone else with whom you had a disagreement on this topic. The closest I came to that involved
mentioning Prince, and I explicitly said I didn't know enough to make any really globally applicable statement about such situations, beyond knowing (as a non-expert) of similar cases that have gone both ways.
Frankly your rhetoric skills suck, and you sound more like someone who is afraid to be 'wrong' and thus you change your argument slightly, but we'll move past that.
Frankly your ad hominem skills suck, and you should endeavor to keep track of the various people you decide to drive-by threadsnipe.
In this case, an IOC law-monkey decided it was close enough to an endorsement that they would send a letter.
They probably sent out dozens of them that day.
And some of us consider that, not Uvex' use of her name, the real problem here.
The lack of thought you put into figuring this out is really disheartening, I really like think that slashdot readers can do
better than this. However, since you seem to lazy (because I don't think you are stupid), let me explain it to you:
The lack of thought you put into figuring this out is really disheartening, I really like think that slashdot readers can do
better than this. However, since you seem to lazy (because I don't think you are stupid), let me explain it to you:
It is illegal for you to use my name to promote your products without my permission. You can use my name, but not in a way
that could be construed as endorsing your product.
Saying "Lindsey Vonn won two gold medals wearing UVEX goggles" states a simple fact, not an explicit endorsement. US law
still protects those, last I heard.
I can sign a contract with the IOC saying I will not allow anyone else to use my name to promote their
product for the duration of the olympics.
Saying "Lindsey Vonn won two gold medals wearing UVEX goggles" states a simple fact, not an explicit endorsement. US law
still protects those, last I heard.
They can, if they make the olympians sign a contract. For the Beijing Olympics, Britain made
their athletes sign a contract promising not to say anything political during the event.
Funny thing about "inalienable" rights - You can't sign them away.
For example, you can't sell yourself into slavery. Simple as that, you just can't
do it. You can't waive your first amendment rights, either (though your employer
has no obligation to keep employing you if they don't like what you have to say).
Now, whether or not you can sell your name itself... Ask the Artist Formerly Known as Prince
about that one. Precedent exist on both sides of that fence, and not many people want to
risk going up against something as big as the IOC when they may well lose.
BTW, IANAL. Just someone who loathes the power (and abuses thereof) of the IOC. They travel
the world destroying businesses, lives, and communities, and that without resorting to
various seemingly frivolous trademark issues.
Claiming a thing is their property does not actually make it their property until a court has made the decision.
Actually, in this case, they have more than just a "local" claim.
The IOC (and the Red Cross and AFAIK almost no one else) actually have their trademarks protected directly by international treaty. Not only
can they enforce that claim, but the Supreme Court itself can't say boo to the contrary.
Now, whether that extends to people competing in the Olympics or just to a small set of specific logos and words associated with the Olypics,
I lack the qualifications to say. But in the general sense, yeah, they have one of the most powerful (and enforceable) trademarks on the planet.
Answer is to not either pirate or buy it, but spend the money on competitors product who is doing it correctly.
One problem - Games (and music, and movies) do not count as fungible goods. You can't just replace Far Cry or
Assassin's Creed with "Fred's generic open source FPS".
Ubisoft knows that. Their customers know that. Their pirates know that. The only groups that don't get it,
sadly enough, count as the only ones that really need to - The FTC and DOJ.
If we started seeing crippling DRM prosecuted as abuse of monopoly control over a market (of one product),
we might get some change. But that simply won't ever happen.
So... Yes, definitely, support the competition by buying their games... But don't hesitate to also pirate those you want
under terms the publisher doesn't offer.
Geez, #7 is fricking directory traversal. DIRECTORY TRAVERSAL. In 2010!
While that (and a good many of these "bugs") sounds really really obvious, consider that many apps vulnerable
to such attacks started as strictly single-user locally-running versions. Yes, you want to take basic steps to
make sure your users don't accidentally overwrite system files (though any "real" OS does this for you),
but for the most part, you trust a local user not to trash their own files. Permissions? If a (local) program
tells me "Sorry Dave, I can't let you do that", that program immediately goes into the bit bucket.
Now your boss comes to you and says, "Hey, I like that - Make it work via the web".
You could do it the right way, of course. But your boss wants it this afternoon. So you
throw it in an ASP.NET wrapper, make sure it still has all its basic functionality, and call
it good.
Riiiiiiight - We can see where that leads... A list of the 25 most common programming errors.
So... Contracts holding me responsible for bugs? Yeah, fuck right off please. Others have said it, but it
bears repeating even for the hundredth time - When I get to decide my schedule, budget, and when to
ship, you can hold me responsible for bugs. Until then, point those fingers at the PHBs who see the barely
functional proof of concept demo and say, "Why do we need to spend any more time on this? Ship it!".
And I was just about to get into my 99.999998% lightspeed spaceship.
Aside from the current nonexistence of such a craft, that really does count as the faulty
premise with Edelstein's conclusion...
Why would you go that fast (presuming you can't go much faster, of course)? It takes exponentially more energy to
accelerate as you approach the speed of light, but that doesn't get you to your destination all that much faster. At a
mere 99.9% of the speed of light, you spend less than one extra hour of travel (externally measured, of course) per month. For
a "realistic" trip to nearby stars, that means an extra day and a half out of the 4.37 years to get to Alpha Centauri.
For relatively local trips, the difference amounts to a triviality - And longer trips simply will never happen unless
we have some breakthrough that makes Star-Trek-like warp engines a reality.
That doesn't sound like something a 30-person company could pull off. Or are you just incredibly competent?
Failover generators don't really count as rare or overly expensive items. $5k-$10k will get you a decent 20-25KW unit, under $1500
to have it properly installed (and I find most tech-oriented companies tend to have at least one licensed electrician on
staff, which would make installation "free" from the PHB perspective), and make it someone's job to do a weekly test fire (takes
all of 15 minutes).
Perhaps not that common to find locally in places that never get ice storms or high winds, but they've essentially become a
commodity item - You have a dozen brands to choose from, in capacities from under a kilowatt to over 50KW (and that still at
the "home-sized" end of the spectrum). Hell, Home Depot and Lowes carry 5-10KW models in store (though I don't think I'd
trust something quite so low-end for the FP's purpose).
As a result, a large number of Indian Paypal accounts have a negative balances running into the
thousands of dollars.
Does anyone else see that as a good opportunity to cease their relationship with PayPay (for those stupid
enough to have kept using them anytime in the past, oh, decade)?
Remember - Not a bank, by their own maneuverings. You can't actually owe PayPal money,
because they don't sell anything or provide any (direct for-cost) services. Sure, you can owe their
other customers money, but PayPal itself?
Negative balance? Yeah, time to close that account. Thanks, PayPal, but you can keep "my" negative money.
Funny thing, about forced arbitration clauses - You can stack the system as much in your favor as you
want, but to get government sponsored armed thugs to go shake down your clients, you need to step in to
a real court of law and risk setting some seriously unfavorable precedents.
Any information the jury needs to know to resolve the case must be provided by the parties, or by the judge.
This premise leads to an outright absurdity.
First, you have lawyers speaking what looks like English but has only a thin connection to it. Would you feel
comfortable sentencing a man to death in a trial conducted entirely in Mandarin Chinese (or if you happen to speak Mandarin,
substitute any other language you don't know)? Except, this works out even worse, since the jury thinks
they understand, but most likely do not follow key subtleties in either argument.
Second, I work as a software engineer. I know, even stated humbly and conservatively, vastly more about how
modern electronic devices work than the average Joe. In a trial where such information means the difference between
innocence and guilt, you either need everyone to have my level of understanding, or expect me to play dumb and
listen to TweedleDee and TweedleDum argue about whether computers run by pixie dust or really small gerbils running on
their wheels.
And finally...
What if the judge is pulling a fast one? That's not for the jury to identify or correct - that's what
appellate courts are for.
BS. Every single aspect of the trial should enter the jury's consideration. We have Jury Nullification for
precisely that reason. Think the judge has pulled a fast one because the government can't afford to let yet another
drug smuggler go free on a technicality? Innocent by way of I-bloody-well-don't-feel-like-saying-guilty.
Unfortunately, that requires having a well informed jury, not the first dozen morons you could find who haven't the
curiosity or resources to have watched TV in the last two months.
Looking shit up in a dictionary can be a very bad thing.
IMO, that indicates a need for trials presented before a jury to use actual English rather than
legalese.
If for no other reason, some people on the jury will know the truth or falsity of most facts
not unique to the case; That leads to a situation where a jury doesn't so much legitimately "disagree" as
each working with an entirely different sets of data. They may as well disqualify any juror capable of
tying their shoes, if they really want to avoid that effect.
"or research cases" [...]
There are a lot of comments below that are obviously by people who did not read that.
The "don't communicate" part, I have no problem with.
But don't research it? That counts as the very first thing I do on hearing some questionable bit
of information. I can understand not wanting people to "research" by taking the NYT's coverage
of the trial itself as gospel, but if some so-called "expert" tells me the sky turned green that
day, thus proving Joe murdered his wife... You can bet I plan to look up atmospheric phenomena
that can cause a green sky (as an aside, they really do exist, but pretty damned rare).
Taking the fact of the case as presented doesn't (or shouldn't) extend to shared human knowledge - Just the
facts unique to the case. If the expert says Joe drank too much, okay, fine. If the expert says Joe could
fly like superman, not okay.
If one guy can do more than the team, why would he want his reviews linked to theirs? Hell, might as
well unionize and at least get the benefits of parasitism if we need to suffer the disadvantages as well...
Despite the scarily growing trend to keep our heads down and just do the minimum needed to get a
check, I usually take "not a team player" as a compliment. If the project requires more total
work than I can possible do alone, then great, I can cooperate with the "team" to generate a spec
which we can then all go our separate ways to work toward. But seriously, unless you work for a big
software-oriented company, the vast majority of projects do not require a "team"; and trying to
squeeze it into a team model usually takes longer, costs more, and means a lower quality final product.
(That said, only an idiot does 100% of the testing on his own code - Let someone who doesn't
subconsciously know where to baby it, abuse the hell out of it and show you the real flaws).
That's just basic human decency and frankly I'm a little sickened that it is even needed.
With that, I will agree completely. As I said in another thread, most likely I would intervene even
if it meant putting myself at risk - But I would do so by choice, not because the law required it.
I see no problem with compelling a person to call 911 for a stabbing/rape/etc if they're able.
We'll just have to disagree on that point. I do see quite a few problems with compelled actions.
That's good advice! Too bad you didn't follow it! Let's try again shall we?
Yes, lets - Because unless you mean to imply that my uncle runs a dog-fighting
pit, your choices of examples have no relevance to my interests.
Though technically, I suppose I did say "situations you might disagree with", not
"situations I might disagree with"; so if you meant that as an admission of sorts, well,
apparently you have more to worry about from such laws than I do.
Hmm, yeah. Your point doesn't hold up that well anymore.
On what do you base that claim? So you substituted more violent crimes (which would fall under
the law referenced in TFA, rather than requiring a slippery slope argument). I still totally
oppose forced reporting of crimes, ever, and will continue to oppose the idea even if you change
the examples to such extremes as genocide of the Gypsies/Jews, raping a busload of nuns, or kicking puppies.
And for the record - No, I would not call the police on my mother if she ran
someone over in a crosswalk. Nor, I would hope, would anyone. I would encourage
her to turn herself in, but ultimately, her choice, not mine. Even if my silence
broke the law - Some things come before mindless adherence to the law.
Hopefully most of the birds it kills will end up in the neighbour's yard.
I see this argument a lot, and... Well, I just don't buy it.
For one thing, birds have very sensitive respiratory systems - Nitrogen and sulphur compounds from combustion-based power generation kill far, far more of them than wind turbines ever could hope for.
For another, we don't tend to see a whole lot of raptors in residential areas; and the more starlings and pigeons they kill, the better.
Then let's make gangrape legal too, shall we ? Talk about your basic herd instinct.
Sorry, but a HUGE difference exists between actively committing a violent crime, and choosing not to report the same.
Try applying this to situations you might disagree with. Failure to report your friend smoking weed? Failure to report
your mother speeding? Failure to report your uncle cheating just a bit on his taxes? Failure to report your coworker for circumventing
the DMCA to do what your mutual boss ordered?
This amounts to the worst of slippery slopes. Even in the best of applications, someone might simply not have noticed (I, for one,
get very disoriented in large social gatherings, and yes, you probably could rape someone in front of me without my noticing). And
in the worst, this amounts to criminalizing a refusal to obey potentially intolerable laws (Failure to report anyone who violates the
"We love George Bush" law).
How many cases have you heard of where some random person, on trying to do the right thing, finds himself
tasered/sprayed, cuffed, tossed in a cell overnight, and charged with some absurd law simply for making
himself available for the police to take their frustrations out on, having failed to actually do their
jobs? Or worse, sued into penury by the very victim they risked their lives to help?
Yeah, I would almost certainly help someone getting raped in the street outside my house. And you can bet
your ass I'd vanish before the police showed up. "You okay? Good... See ya!".
In Florida for instance, if someone dies in front of you and CPR had a good chance of saving them, don't let anyone find out you are CPR certified (which every highschool student is at some point) as you will be punished.
...And to think, my HS health teacher wondered why I refused to fill out the paperwork to get the
"official" certification (not in FL, but that quarter's health class required we know enough to
pass the real cert test). Yeah, I passed the test - But damn my eyes if I'll save anyone I don't
feel like saving.
And if that sounds callous - Would you give G.W.Bush CPR in 2007 if you happened to notice him
conveniently choking on a chicken bone?
If every one of them said "Hey, this is who I am, this is where I live, and I am doing
this to oppress this bogus religion", *that* would have been a lot closer to heroism.
Quick history question - What did the participants in the Boston Tea Party wear, and why?
This is a dumb argument that doesn't even address what I said.In other words, I never said that perpetual copyright is a good thing.
You fail at either logic or basic reading comprehension, or both.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Though I have to admit - Balls man, great big ones. To attack a side point tagged on to the end of my post, while ignoring the actual response to what you did say,
and then claim I didn't address what you said? 9/10.
So what you're saying is that you don't actually know any fundie Christians, right?
Heh... Actually, I just didn't want to damn the mainstream with the freakishness of the fringes.
I remember once, perhaps 20 years ago, visiting a relative down South (in FL, I think). While there,
watching Saturday morning cartoons (back when they still existed) with a few other kids, my turn to
pick the next show came, and I chose Dungeons and Dragons.
You'd have thought I took a dump on the alter during communion to hear the response.
Oddly enough, I didn't play D&D before that happened. I did shortly
thereafter, though.;)
Since the Vatican holds a patent on the bible, does that make it any harder for a person to obtain one?
Well, that would use a copyright, not a patent - Although I suppose you could perhaps patent the bible as a business method.;)
More importantly... I used that example for a specific reason - Until fairly modern times, the church did strictly control
access to the bible. Your average Joe Christian couldn't just pull out the family bible and fact-check the parish priest's claim
that the Book of Steve 14:63 says "Oh ye who have a bountiful harvest, neglect not your duty to Rome and give the best third of it
in tithe".
Of course, prior to the printing press this didn't take much effort, since few could afford their own bible - But that point
nicely continues the example, in that a disruptive "new" technology forced a change on society that I think we'd all agree worked out
for the best.
Slashdot Mirror
You cow-sucking son of a motherless goat! How is that, better?
;)
Much, thank you!.
And I only suck cows on weekends (with my breakfast cereal), I'll have you know.
Whoa! Citation please!
Fair enough request. here you go.
One quote in particular stands out to me... "Participation in the Olympic Games is voluntary. Thus, nations and individuals who participate in the Olympic Games submit themselves to the rules and regulations established by the IOC, and to subsequent sanctions for violating these rules. The IOC alone cannot compel governmental compliance, however, the Olympic Charter exemplifies current international practice and has the effect of customary international law. Therefore, the authoritative force of the rules and regulations of the Olympic Charter are recognized by state and international law.
Interestingly, I can't find substantiation of my claim that they have an international trademark by treaty, as with the IRC. So I'll have to take my spankings on that point, though I consider the above somewhat more scary.
but it really is only theory unless the Supreme Court has tried to overturn part of a treaty, and was denied.
As I said, IANAL. However, the best I can find on this subject comes from De Geofroy vs Riggs, 1890, which says "The treaty power, as expressed in the constitution, is in terms unlimited, except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government" - Which I take to mean that unless they blatantly violate the constitution, treaties win.
OK, now you are changing the issue. Originally you were asking whether a contract between two people could affect a third party
I think you have confused me for someone else with whom you had a disagreement on this topic. The closest I came to that involved mentioning Prince, and I explicitly said I didn't know enough to make any really globally applicable statement about such situations, beyond knowing (as a non-expert) of similar cases that have gone both ways.
Frankly your rhetoric skills suck, and you sound more like someone who is afraid to be 'wrong' and thus you change your argument slightly, but we'll move past that.
Frankly your ad hominem skills suck, and you should endeavor to keep track of the various people you decide to drive-by threadsnipe.
In this case, an IOC law-monkey decided it was close enough to an endorsement that they would send a letter. They probably sent out dozens of them that day.
And some of us consider that, not Uvex' use of her name, the real problem here.
Take it or leave it, just sayin'.
The lack of thought you put into figuring this out is really disheartening, I really like think that slashdot readers can do better than this. However, since you seem to lazy (because I don't think you are stupid), let me explain it to you:
The lack of thought you put into figuring this out is really disheartening, I really like think that slashdot readers can do better than this. However, since you seem to lazy (because I don't think you are stupid), let me explain it to you:
It is illegal for you to use my name to promote your products without my permission. You can use my name, but not in a way that could be construed as endorsing your product.
Saying "Lindsey Vonn won two gold medals wearing UVEX goggles" states a simple fact, not an explicit endorsement. US law still protects those, last I heard.
I can sign a contract with the IOC saying I will not allow anyone else to use my name to promote their product for the duration of the olympics.
Saying "Lindsey Vonn won two gold medals wearing UVEX goggles" states a simple fact, not an explicit endorsement. US law still protects those, last I heard.
They can, if they make the olympians sign a contract. For the Beijing Olympics, Britain made their athletes sign a contract promising not to say anything political during the event.
Funny thing about "inalienable" rights - You can't sign them away.
For example, you can't sell yourself into slavery. Simple as that, you just can't do it. You can't waive your first amendment rights, either (though your employer has no obligation to keep employing you if they don't like what you have to say).
Now, whether or not you can sell your name itself... Ask the Artist Formerly Known as Prince about that one. Precedent exist on both sides of that fence, and not many people want to risk going up against something as big as the IOC when they may well lose.
BTW, IANAL. Just someone who loathes the power (and abuses thereof) of the IOC. They travel the world destroying businesses, lives, and communities, and that without resorting to various seemingly frivolous trademark issues.
Claiming a thing is their property does not actually make it their property until a court has made the decision.
Actually, in this case, they have more than just a "local" claim.
The IOC (and the Red Cross and AFAIK almost no one else) actually have their trademarks protected directly by international treaty. Not only can they enforce that claim, but the Supreme Court itself can't say boo to the contrary.
Now, whether that extends to people competing in the Olympics or just to a small set of specific logos and words associated with the Olypics, I lack the qualifications to say. But in the general sense, yeah, they have one of the most powerful (and enforceable) trademarks on the planet.
Answer is to not either pirate or buy it, but spend the money on competitors product who is doing it correctly.
One problem - Games (and music, and movies) do not count as fungible goods. You can't just replace Far Cry or Assassin's Creed with "Fred's generic open source FPS".
Ubisoft knows that. Their customers know that. Their pirates know that. The only groups that don't get it, sadly enough, count as the only ones that really need to - The FTC and DOJ.
If we started seeing crippling DRM prosecuted as abuse of monopoly control over a market (of one product), we might get some change. But that simply won't ever happen.
So... Yes, definitely, support the competition by buying their games... But don't hesitate to also pirate those you want under terms the publisher doesn't offer.
Geez, #7 is fricking directory traversal. DIRECTORY TRAVERSAL. In 2010!
While that (and a good many of these "bugs") sounds really really obvious, consider that many apps vulnerable to such attacks started as strictly single-user locally-running versions. Yes, you want to take basic steps to make sure your users don't accidentally overwrite system files (though any "real" OS does this for you), but for the most part, you trust a local user not to trash their own files. Permissions? If a (local) program tells me "Sorry Dave, I can't let you do that", that program immediately goes into the bit bucket.
Now your boss comes to you and says, "Hey, I like that - Make it work via the web".
You could do it the right way, of course. But your boss wants it this afternoon. So you throw it in an ASP.NET wrapper, make sure it still has all its basic functionality, and call it good.
Riiiiiiight - We can see where that leads... A list of the 25 most common programming errors.
So... Contracts holding me responsible for bugs? Yeah, fuck right off please. Others have said it, but it bears repeating even for the hundredth time - When I get to decide my schedule, budget, and when to ship, you can hold me responsible for bugs. Until then, point those fingers at the PHBs who see the barely functional proof of concept demo and say, "Why do we need to spend any more time on this? Ship it!".
And I was just about to get into my 99.999998% lightspeed spaceship.
Aside from the current nonexistence of such a craft, that really does count as the faulty premise with Edelstein's conclusion...
Why would you go that fast (presuming you can't go much faster, of course)? It takes exponentially more energy to accelerate as you approach the speed of light, but that doesn't get you to your destination all that much faster. At a mere 99.9% of the speed of light, you spend less than one extra hour of travel (externally measured, of course) per month. For a "realistic" trip to nearby stars, that means an extra day and a half out of the 4.37 years to get to Alpha Centauri.
For relatively local trips, the difference amounts to a triviality - And longer trips simply will never happen unless we have some breakthrough that makes Star-Trek-like warp engines a reality.
That doesn't sound like something a 30-person company could pull off. Or are you just incredibly competent?
Failover generators don't really count as rare or overly expensive items. $5k-$10k will get you a decent 20-25KW unit, under $1500 to have it properly installed (and I find most tech-oriented companies tend to have at least one licensed electrician on staff, which would make installation "free" from the PHB perspective), and make it someone's job to do a weekly test fire (takes all of 15 minutes).
Perhaps not that common to find locally in places that never get ice storms or high winds, but they've essentially become a commodity item - You have a dozen brands to choose from, in capacities from under a kilowatt to over 50KW (and that still at the "home-sized" end of the spectrum). Hell, Home Depot and Lowes carry 5-10KW models in store (though I don't think I'd trust something quite so low-end for the FP's purpose).
As a result, a large number of Indian Paypal accounts have a negative balances running into the thousands of dollars.
Does anyone else see that as a good opportunity to cease their relationship with PayPay (for those stupid enough to have kept using them anytime in the past, oh, decade)?
Remember - Not a bank, by their own maneuverings. You can't actually owe PayPal money, because they don't sell anything or provide any (direct for-cost) services. Sure, you can owe their other customers money, but PayPal itself?
Negative balance? Yeah, time to close that account. Thanks, PayPal, but you can keep "my" negative money. Funny thing, about forced arbitration clauses - You can stack the system as much in your favor as you want, but to get government sponsored armed thugs to go shake down your clients, you need to step in to a real court of law and risk setting some seriously unfavorable precedents.
Any information the jury needs to know to resolve the case must be provided by the parties, or by the judge.
This premise leads to an outright absurdity.
First, you have lawyers speaking what looks like English but has only a thin connection to it. Would you feel comfortable sentencing a man to death in a trial conducted entirely in Mandarin Chinese (or if you happen to speak Mandarin, substitute any other language you don't know)? Except, this works out even worse, since the jury thinks they understand, but most likely do not follow key subtleties in either argument.
Second, I work as a software engineer. I know, even stated humbly and conservatively, vastly more about how modern electronic devices work than the average Joe. In a trial where such information means the difference between innocence and guilt, you either need everyone to have my level of understanding, or expect me to play dumb and listen to TweedleDee and TweedleDum argue about whether computers run by pixie dust or really small gerbils running on their wheels.
And finally...
What if the judge is pulling a fast one? That's not for the jury to identify or correct - that's what appellate courts are for.
BS. Every single aspect of the trial should enter the jury's consideration. We have Jury Nullification for precisely that reason. Think the judge has pulled a fast one because the government can't afford to let yet another drug smuggler go free on a technicality? Innocent by way of I-bloody-well-don't-feel-like-saying-guilty.
Unfortunately, that requires having a well informed jury, not the first dozen morons you could find who haven't the curiosity or resources to have watched TV in the last two months.
Looking shit up in a dictionary can be a very bad thing.
;)
IMO, that indicates a need for trials presented before a jury to use actual English rather than legalese.
If for no other reason, some people on the jury will know the truth or falsity of most facts not unique to the case; That leads to a situation where a jury doesn't so much legitimately "disagree" as each working with an entirely different sets of data. They may as well disqualify any juror capable of tying their shoes, if they really want to avoid that effect.
Oh, and hi there, yeah, still alive.
"or research cases" [...]
There are a lot of comments below that are obviously by people who did not read that.
The "don't communicate" part, I have no problem with.
But don't research it? That counts as the very first thing I do on hearing some questionable bit of information. I can understand not wanting people to "research" by taking the NYT's coverage of the trial itself as gospel, but if some so-called "expert" tells me the sky turned green that day, thus proving Joe murdered his wife... You can bet I plan to look up atmospheric phenomena that can cause a green sky (as an aside, they really do exist, but pretty damned rare).
Taking the fact of the case as presented doesn't (or shouldn't) extend to shared human knowledge - Just the facts unique to the case. If the expert says Joe drank too much, okay, fine. If the expert says Joe could fly like superman, not okay.
Corrected that for you.
If one guy can do more than the team, why would he want his reviews linked to theirs? Hell, might as well unionize and at least get the benefits of parasitism if we need to suffer the disadvantages as well...
Despite the scarily growing trend to keep our heads down and just do the minimum needed to get a check, I usually take "not a team player" as a compliment. If the project requires more total work than I can possible do alone, then great, I can cooperate with the "team" to generate a spec which we can then all go our separate ways to work toward. But seriously, unless you work for a big software-oriented company, the vast majority of projects do not require a "team"; and trying to squeeze it into a team model usually takes longer, costs more, and means a lower quality final product.
(That said, only an idiot does 100% of the testing on his own code - Let someone who doesn't subconsciously know where to baby it, abuse the hell out of it and show you the real flaws).
That's just basic human decency and frankly I'm a little sickened that it is even needed.
With that, I will agree completely. As I said in another thread, most likely I would intervene even if it meant putting myself at risk - But I would do so by choice, not because the law required it.
I see no problem with compelling a person to call 911 for a stabbing/rape/etc if they're able.
We'll just have to disagree on that point. I do see quite a few problems with compelled actions.
That's good advice! Too bad you didn't follow it! Let's try again shall we?
Yes, lets - Because unless you mean to imply that my uncle runs a dog-fighting pit, your choices of examples have no relevance to my interests.
Though technically, I suppose I did say "situations you might disagree with", not "situations I might disagree with"; so if you meant that as an admission of sorts, well, apparently you have more to worry about from such laws than I do.
Hmm, yeah. Your point doesn't hold up that well anymore.
On what do you base that claim? So you substituted more violent crimes (which would fall under the law referenced in TFA, rather than requiring a slippery slope argument). I still totally oppose forced reporting of crimes, ever, and will continue to oppose the idea even if you change the examples to such extremes as genocide of the Gypsies/Jews, raping a busload of nuns, or kicking puppies.
And for the record - No, I would not call the police on my mother if she ran someone over in a crosswalk. Nor, I would hope, would anyone. I would encourage her to turn herself in, but ultimately, her choice, not mine. Even if my silence broke the law - Some things come before mindless adherence to the law.
Hopefully most of the birds it kills will end up in the neighbour's yard.
I see this argument a lot, and... Well, I just don't buy it.
For one thing, birds have very sensitive respiratory systems - Nitrogen and sulphur compounds from combustion-based power generation kill far, far more of them than wind turbines ever could hope for.
For another, we don't tend to see a whole lot of raptors in residential areas; and the more starlings and pigeons they kill, the better.
And finally... Free catfood. Cool.
Then let's make gangrape legal too, shall we ? Talk about your basic herd instinct.
Sorry, but a HUGE difference exists between actively committing a violent crime, and choosing not to report the same.
Try applying this to situations you might disagree with. Failure to report your friend smoking weed? Failure to report your mother speeding? Failure to report your uncle cheating just a bit on his taxes? Failure to report your coworker for circumventing the DMCA to do what your mutual boss ordered?
This amounts to the worst of slippery slopes. Even in the best of applications, someone might simply not have noticed (I, for one, get very disoriented in large social gatherings, and yes, you probably could rape someone in front of me without my noticing). And in the worst, this amounts to criminalizing a refusal to obey potentially intolerable laws (Failure to report anyone who violates the "We love George Bush" law).
Unwilling to call the cops?
Yes.
How many cases have you heard of where some random person, on trying to do the right thing, finds himself tasered/sprayed, cuffed, tossed in a cell overnight, and charged with some absurd law simply for making himself available for the police to take their frustrations out on, having failed to actually do their jobs? Or worse, sued into penury by the very victim they risked their lives to help?
Yeah, I would almost certainly help someone getting raped in the street outside my house. And you can bet your ass I'd vanish before the police showed up. "You okay? Good... See ya!".
In Florida for instance, if someone dies in front of you and CPR had a good chance of saving them, don't let anyone find out you are CPR certified (which every highschool student is at some point) as you will be punished.
...And to think, my HS health teacher wondered why I refused to fill out the paperwork to get the
"official" certification (not in FL, but that quarter's health class required we know enough to
pass the real cert test). Yeah, I passed the test - But damn my eyes if I'll save anyone I don't
feel like saving.
And if that sounds callous - Would you give G.W.Bush CPR in 2007 if you happened to notice him conveniently choking on a chicken bone?
If every one of them said "Hey, this is who I am, this is where I live, and I am doing this to oppress this bogus religion", *that* would have been a lot closer to heroism.
Quick history question - What did the participants in the Boston Tea Party wear, and why?
This is a dumb argument that doesn't even address what I said.In other words, I never said that perpetual copyright is a good thing. You fail at either logic or basic reading comprehension, or both.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Though I have to admit - Balls man, great big ones. To attack a side point tagged on to the end of my post, while ignoring the actual response to what you did say, and then claim I didn't address what you said? 9/10.
<cue golfclap>
So what you're saying is that you don't actually know any fundie Christians, right?
;)
Heh... Actually, I just didn't want to damn the mainstream with the freakishness of the fringes.
I remember once, perhaps 20 years ago, visiting a relative down South (in FL, I think). While there, watching Saturday morning cartoons (back when they still existed) with a few other kids, my turn to pick the next show came, and I chose Dungeons and Dragons.
You'd have thought I took a dump on the alter during communion to hear the response.
Oddly enough, I didn't play D&D before that happened. I did shortly thereafter, though.
Since the Vatican holds a patent on the bible, does that make it any harder for a person to obtain one?
;)
Well, that would use a copyright, not a patent - Although I suppose you could perhaps patent the bible as a business method.
More importantly... I used that example for a specific reason - Until fairly modern times, the church did strictly control access to the bible. Your average Joe Christian couldn't just pull out the family bible and fact-check the parish priest's claim that the Book of Steve 14:63 says "Oh ye who have a bountiful harvest, neglect not your duty to Rome and give the best third of it in tithe".
Of course, prior to the printing press this didn't take much effort, since few could afford their own bible - But that point nicely continues the example, in that a disruptive "new" technology forced a change on society that I think we'd all agree worked out for the best.