Wow. Anything that can travel less than 200 mph and still make sonic booms is worth a headline.
Acutally, in the extreme upper atmosphere, the speed of sound is much slower (due to the lower pressure). I'm no expert, but I wouldn't doubt 200 mph would make a sonic boom.
However, something makes me doubt the meteor was going only 200 mph when it hit the upper atmosphere. Up there in space, speeds are measured in miles per second.
all this means is that software will be able to emulate the DA (Digital -> Analog) converter. Take EAC (Exact Audio Copy - by far the best ripper) and add another option...to error-correct samples itself. Anything in hardware can be emulated in software
Unfortunately, it isn't possible for the 'ripper' software to error-correct the audio samples itself - not because the hardware does something that its impossible for software to emulate, but because the hardware gets more information than the software.
The hardware of CD players reads special error-correction bits off of the CD to determine if the other data it is reading is valid or not. These bits are intentionally scrambled in parts of a Macrovision protected recording, while static is inserted into the music. When extracting analog audio, the CD player skips over the static because the error-correction bits are invalid, which normally indicates a scratched disk or something. The player interpolates the missing samples and everything sounds all right (mostly). However, when the CD player is extracting the audio data digitally, it ignores the error-correction bits (it doesn't even send them on, it just discards them) due to some brain-deadness on the part of CD-player designers. Since the error-correcting bits aren't passed on to the software, the software can't know where the Macrovision static is.
it has been my own anecdotal evidence that computer game playing, while improving hand-eye coordination and strategic thinking, does severly limit normal social interaction.
Well, maybe computer games, but if you want to see a social video game, just get out your N64. With its 4 controller slots standard and TONS of REALLY FUN 4-player games, the N64 is a great party gaming platform. Me and my friends have hours of fun playing the likes of Goldeneye and Super Smash Bros.
Re:Low latency is good
on
DeMuDi Linux
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· Score: 2
I think the ones by Ingo are for 2.2.x and the ones by Andrew are for 2.4.x. Or maybe its the other way around. Anyway, I think that the kernel version you choose dictates which set of patches you need.
how much faster is the performance?
Its not exactly faster, just more smooth. Consequently it won't make your boot time shorter or improve startup times of applications, or improve game framerates (I think, although I could be wrong). It will make your mouse pointer move more smoothly while your system is under load (though enabling DMA on your hard drive gives a bigger improvement), it will allow you to set a lower latency on your sound programs, giving you faster response, and it will in all likelihood help videos (I'm on a modem connection and have very few videos to try it with).
If you haven't done it already, enabling DMA on your hard drive will probably make a bigger difference than these patches, though, and without a kernel recompile too! Definitely look into that.
Those low-latency kernel patches aren't just for audio guys - they're great for a desktop system as well. I find X and KDE to be more responsive with them installed (esp. when using drag-and-drop) and KDE's audio daemon aRts works much better with them.
I guess the reason they're not included in Linux releases is that they aren't suited for a server, which doesn't need low latencies. However, if you're running a desktop system, you should definitely look into these patches. I think Mandrake should include them by default.
Well put sir! I don't know what I was thinking when I posted the above, I must have just been feeling especially cynical that day.
I guess what gets people so upset about patents is that they create inconveniences in the short term and benefit only in the long term. In the short term, you can't use something that's patented without paying (sometimes you can't use it at all), which is bad. It makes people upset when they know exactly how to do something but are restricted from doing it. However, the good done to the economy in the long term due to increased R&D outweighs the bad.
Patents directly help companies (through protections and licensing revenues) at the expense of the public (higher prices and less availability for patented items). You have to look past that, though, to see that the indirect effects of patents (increased money for R&D) benefit everyone.
Hewlett-Packard Company today announced it has been awarded a key patent that could remove a major obstacle to making molecular-scale computing a reality.
A patent removed an obstacle? What are they smoking? Patents create obstacles.
The technology removed the obstacle, the patent ensures that everyone must bow down to HP and pay megabucks to compete in the new "molecular memory" market, unless they work around the patent. Companies probably will waste money working out an inferior way of doing it just to aviod paying license fees. Remind me again how patents are supposed to foster innovation and benefit the economy?
It seems that if current expiremental reactors are producing just more energy than is put in (say maybe 1.1x), this new reactor will produce four times the energy (4.4x) with a net energy gain of ((4.4-1)/(1.1-1)) or 34 times more usable output energy. This seems like a pretty major breakthrough.
Yeah, but what if we say maybe current reactors produce only 1.02x as much energy as they put in, since you pulled that 1.1x out of your ass anyway. Then we get ((4.4-1)/(1.02-1)) or 170 times more energy! That sounds really good! But wait! What if we pull some different numbers out of our ass? 1.003 gives us 1033 times as much energy! This breakthrough is sounding better and better all the time!
In order to access my bank online I have to use Netscape or IE
There's no reason for that to remain true. Just drop bugs.kde.org a line and they'll get right on it. They've got a great bug reporting system over there, and all improvements that get committed to the big KDE Konqueror are automatically available in KDENOX (Konqueror/Embedded is its real name, actually).
No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. You're totally immortal, but you can't cross the big seal carved into the floor of the temple. If you do the immortality goes away, and you can't drink from the grail on the other side of the seal because if you try to take it over there, the whole temple collapses on your head, as that one Nazi lady learned.
Now we just need Buck Rogers to return with that gorgeous sidekick he had and all the cool space series of the 70s will be renewed in the 21st century
Does anyone else here wish that they would start thinking up cool new space series instead of resuscitating old ones (which will inevitably be not quite as cool as you remember)? I mean, I'll go see Star Trek XVIII or whatever they're up to now, but at the same time I wish that there were new series in the pipeline that were as cool as Trek used to be.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.
DirecTV made it a bit harder on the pirates, but they have NOT "essentially won" by any means.
I'm not talking about DirecTV beating the dedicated pirates - I'm talking about DirecTV's battle against easy pirating of their service. Now that you can't just buy something from someone else and stick it into your receiver, there is a big barrier there to most people. Not just technological (the difficulty of setting it up, which IMHO is still out of reach of most people, especially if it involves Linux), but there is a psychological barrier there too.
Like Napster has shown, if it is really easy to pirate something, people's moral qualms go away. However, if pirating something requires a significant effort, the number of people who are willing to do it quickly declines, even more than you might expect just from the difficulty of pirating. The effort required serves as a reminder that you are doing something illegal, and people start to have second thoughts about doing it.
DTV's battle was against easy ways of pirating their service. Now that pirating the service requires significant effort, they have won. The hackers will continue on, but people who don't have hacking as a hobby won't bother, and that's all DTV wants.
A DTV emulation setup isn't as hard to get going as you are making out.
It isn't? Which of the steps I mentioned are unecessary? All of the steps I mentioned are necessary to get a working DTV pirate setup. It really is that hard, especially to someone who doesn't know a serial port from a cereal box (your average DTV watcher).
And where previously the market for stolen satellite signals was very expensive (reprogrammable H-cards, etc) now it's become extremely inexpensive.
I beg to differ. Previously, you could hack DirecTV recievers simply with modified cards. They might be expensive, however, it was quite simple to do once you got the card - no time, only money. Shell out a couple hundred bucks, stick in the card, you get instant "free" access.
Now, with DirecTV's incredible, unbelieveable, insanely cool counter-hacking campaign (read all about it), they have brought it to the point where in order to hack DirecTV, you must buy several pieces of custom hardware (card-readers, emulators), find an old computer, set it up next to your DirecTV receiver, connect them all up, install software (possibly including Linux, and installing Linux is still out of the reach of your normal DirecTV watcher), have an always-on broadband internet connection, and actively monitor sites like HackHU.com in case DirecTV starts hax0ring again.
DirecTV has essentially won. The cost of an emulator+PC+Linux+always on broadband connection might still be less than the rare hacked cards (which don't even work anymore), but it requires lots and lots of *time* and *effort*, both to set up and maintain. Only the most dedicated hax0rs will continue to pirate the signal, while the rest of the world decides it isn't worth the effort anymore and just pays the monthly fee. The cost of pirating DirecTV might have just decreased in monetary terms, but it has gotten *much* more expensive in terms of time and effort, to the point where it just isn't worth it anymore for most people. And "most people" is all DirecTV cares about.
KDE is plain and simple, the most disgusting user interface experience one could ever have. [...] Everything is just slightly off, which is incredibly irritating.
Gee, thanks for the informative constructive criticism there! "Slightly off!" I'll file a bug report right now!
Seriously, what kind of complaint is that? Tell us what it is you don't like!
The theming support QT is awful.Just compare all the GTK/GNOME themes to KDE themes, there is not comparison at all. [...] GTK is the most beautiful widget set I have ever seen. It has it's own unique look and feel.
GTK has been around for longer, therefore there is a much wider selection of themes, therefore it is more likely there will be ones you like. QT's theming support is actually superior to GTK, it's faster. Plus, KDE comes with a GTK theme importer - KDE can import the GTK "unique" default look. Imported GTK themes run faster under QT/KDE than GTK! I haven't had much luck importing themes other than the default GTK look, however some work has been done on the theme importer since I last looked at it. I think it's fully functional now (in CVS).
ESR says in his info page that such a thing already exists and is one of the reasons he chose Python in the first place. He mentions that a kernel source tarball could be distributed with a compiled version of the CML2 interpreter.
GCC might know a lot about processor architecture but it can't know about what tasks you will be asking the compiled application to do, so it can't optimize for that.
Hmmmm, I just had a crazy idea. What if you could compile your GCC application in a special way, then run it under simulated normal working conditions and have it log performance data on itself, just the kind of data that these run-time optimizers gather. Then, you could feed GCC this collected data along with your application's source and recompile it and GCC would be able to turbo-optimize your app for actual usage conditions! If it can be done on-the-fly at run-time, it can be done even better at compile time with practically unlimited processor time to think about it.
Even if the end-user used the application in a nonstandard way it might still provide a performance benefit because there are lots of things that a program does the same way even when it is used in a different way.
Would this be feasible? Would it provide a tangible perfomance benefit? (like HP's Dynamo?) Comments please!
If your brother,cousin,friend was running away from a cop in fear they might get into trouble for stealing a bad of candy do you condone their death sentence, with no trial and jury?
Look, I already answered this. If you don't mind I'll just quote part of my post again, which you obviously didn't read even though you quoted it yourself: I am not in any way condoning the shooting of an unarmed 15-yr old, and I wish that the cop in question would get a longer sentence. I even used the same word - condone.
I'm not viewing the case in the wrong light. You're looking at this specific case, which admittedly is not ideal - the guy should get more punishment than he will. I agree with you there. I'm looking at the big picture, and in the big picture, there's no way to modify the law to be 100% fair in this case and still be effective at all its other goals. Even if there was, it would probably only be visible in hindsight looking back at this specific case and many other cases involving shootings of people by police officers. That isn't indicative of a problem with our law system.
If you're arguing that there's a problem with our law enforcement because this policeman did this, well, that's totally different. That could be true, maybe police should receive more training on what to do in stressful situations involving firearms. That's not what I'm arguing, though. I'm arguing that this case is not indicitive of a problem in our law system (meaning courts, judges, laws, and lawyers, not policemen and law enforcement agencies).
The media only picks up on some of these cases so you have to wonder how many others go unheard.
You do have to wonder, don't you. In Reader's Digest every month there is a column called "That's Outrageous" that deals with dumb cases. They never seem to have a shortage of material. I do believe that the media catches almost all of the worst ones. There's nothing they love more than a juicy story, and outrageous law cases, when they are bad enough, are pretty juicy. (BTW, I think outrageous is the perfect word - outrage is defined as a violent or shameful act)
What really makes me think that the situation isn't out of hand is that there haven't been that many of those "Special Reports" that the media likes to make. If the situation was really as bad as you seem to think it is, the media would be ALL over it in two seconds. The special reports would be flying ("Did the executed killer actually commit the crime? Is our justice system going down the tubes? Find out at 11!"), and public opinion would begin to weigh on Congress to do something.
I'm not trusting the media to report all the facts accurately here, I'm just trusting their profit motive and their nose for a juicy story (both of which are pretty reliable).
I'd like to talk a little about the specific case you mentioned, though.
Here in NYC in 1999 a cop shot a 15 yr old kid from running from him. The max time he can serve is 1 yr on the misdemanor charge, He'll serve if convicted probably about 4-5 months max.
There IS a reason that the penalty is light. If cops got 20 yrs to life for shooting someone in error, they would be terrified to draw their guns. What if they hit someone by accident? What if the person they were facing was only pretending to have a gun? If cops were terrified to draw their guns, criminals would be more bold. The effectiveness of law enforcement would be reduced in situations where guns were really needed.
I am not in any way condoning the shooting of an unarmed 15-yr old, and I wish that the cop in question would get a longer sentence. My point is that there IS a reason why the law is the way it is. There isn't really a way to change the law in such a way that it is 100% fair all of the time, and the lawmakers do the best they can. It might be easy in hindsight to propose a modification to this law that might have saved this case, for example making a much stiffer penalty for shooting minors. But that modification might have other effects. How is a cop to tell, in a few seconds, whether the person he is about to shoot is a minor or not? You see the difficulty.
>Further, I urge you to not be overly cynical about our justice system.
You're too new of a lawyer to make a comment like that.
Oh, and you are so much more qualified! I mean, you listen to/read some major American news media! That obviously puts you way ahead of this lawyer dude. Sure, we all know lawyers are all lying sleazebags anyway.
Seriously now, a lawyer (person who deals with law and the justice system as his/her profession) is going to know a lot more about the American justice system than you. Just 'cause you read about a few instances of outrageous things happening in the media (who make a living off of reporting outrageous things) doesn't mean that the American legal system is flawed.
As a rule, the news media take all of the most outrageous incidents scattered across the country and report them, because no one wants to hear about the millions of everyday boring cases where the American justice system actually worked quite well. Don't let a few incidents color your perception of the whole system (even though the incidents themselves are quite bad).
And you call a freeway a "motorway" too. You'd better switch over before you start getting a Texas accent - it would just be wrong to hear a guy with a Texas drawl talking about petrol and motorways:-)
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Acutally, in the extreme upper atmosphere, the speed of sound is much slower (due to the lower pressure). I'm no expert, but I wouldn't doubt 200 mph would make a sonic boom.
However, something makes me doubt the meteor was going only 200 mph when it hit the upper atmosphere. Up there in space, speeds are measured in miles per second.
Unfortunately, it isn't possible for the 'ripper' software to error-correct the audio samples itself - not because the hardware does something that its impossible for software to emulate, but because the hardware gets more information than the software.
The hardware of CD players reads special error-correction bits off of the CD to determine if the other data it is reading is valid or not. These bits are intentionally scrambled in parts of a Macrovision protected recording, while static is inserted into the music. When extracting analog audio, the CD player skips over the static because the error-correction bits are invalid, which normally indicates a scratched disk or something. The player interpolates the missing samples and everything sounds all right (mostly). However, when the CD player is extracting the audio data digitally, it ignores the error-correction bits (it doesn't even send them on, it just discards them) due to some brain-deadness on the part of CD-player designers. Since the error-correcting bits aren't passed on to the software, the software can't know where the Macrovision static is.
Those guys at Macrovision sure are clever.
Well, maybe computer games, but if you want to see a social video game, just get out your N64. With its 4 controller slots standard and TONS of REALLY FUN 4-player games, the N64 is a great party gaming platform. Me and my friends have hours of fun playing the likes of Goldeneye and Super Smash Bros.
how much faster is the performance?
Its not exactly faster, just more smooth. Consequently it won't make your boot time shorter or improve startup times of applications, or improve game framerates (I think, although I could be wrong). It will make your mouse pointer move more smoothly while your system is under load (though enabling DMA on your hard drive gives a bigger improvement), it will allow you to set a lower latency on your sound programs, giving you faster response, and it will in all likelihood help videos (I'm on a modem connection and have very few videos to try it with).
As for links, Google is your friend. A search for Low-Latency Kernel Patches reveals many interesting links, the most interesting being a site with history about low latency in Linux and a link to Andrew Morton's scheduling page where you can download patches for many 2.4.x kernels.
If you haven't done it already, enabling DMA on your hard drive will probably make a bigger difference than these patches, though, and without a kernel recompile too! Definitely look into that.
I guess the reason they're not included in Linux releases is that they aren't suited for a server, which doesn't need low latencies. However, if you're running a desktop system, you should definitely look into these patches. I think Mandrake should include them by default.
Perhaps. But what about a program developed using GPL header files allowing access to a GPL library?
I guess what gets people so upset about patents is that they create inconveniences in the short term and benefit only in the long term. In the short term, you can't use something that's patented without paying (sometimes you can't use it at all), which is bad. It makes people upset when they know exactly how to do something but are restricted from doing it. However, the good done to the economy in the long term due to increased R&D outweighs the bad.
Patents directly help companies (through protections and licensing revenues) at the expense of the public (higher prices and less availability for patented items). You have to look past that, though, to see that the indirect effects of patents (increased money for R&D) benefit everyone.
A patent removed an obstacle? What are they smoking? Patents create obstacles.
The technology removed the obstacle, the patent ensures that everyone must bow down to HP and pay megabucks to compete in the new "molecular memory" market, unless they work around the patent. Companies probably will waste money working out an inferior way of doing it just to aviod paying license fees. Remind me again how patents are supposed to foster innovation and benefit the economy?
Yeah, but what if we say maybe current reactors produce only 1.02x as much energy as they put in, since you pulled that 1.1x out of your ass anyway. Then we get ((4.4-1)/(1.02-1)) or 170 times more energy! That sounds really good! But wait! What if we pull some different numbers out of our ass? 1.003 gives us 1033 times as much energy! This breakthrough is sounding better and better all the time!
There's no reason for that to remain true. Just drop bugs.kde.org a line and they'll get right on it. They've got a great bug reporting system over there, and all improvements that get committed to the big KDE Konqueror are automatically available in KDENOX (Konqueror/Embedded is its real name, actually).
Yeah, this story should have been:
from the dept.-of-redundancy dept.
No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. You're totally immortal, but you can't cross the big seal carved into the floor of the temple. If you do the immortality goes away, and you can't drink from the grail on the other side of the seal because if you try to take it over there, the whole temple collapses on your head, as that one Nazi lady learned.
Sorry, that's How lightsaber effects work (with links to make your own). Wrong URL before.
Ever wondered why power poles have 3 lines?
Or how silencers work?
How to pick locks?
How lightsaber effects work (with links to how to make your own!)
I could spend hours there.
Does anyone else here wish that they would start thinking up cool new space series instead of resuscitating old ones (which will inevitably be not quite as cool as you remember)? I mean, I'll go see Star Trek XVIII or whatever they're up to now, but at the same time I wish that there were new series in the pipeline that were as cool as Trek used to be.
I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!
Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :
Mr. Project
Pygmy
A (Don't know where that one came from...)
ToutDoux
Gramps
EtherApe
Shogiopening
Moleskine
Krabber
Koog Epsilon
Ogg Vorbis
I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.
I'm not talking about DirecTV beating the dedicated pirates - I'm talking about DirecTV's battle against easy pirating of their service. Now that you can't just buy something from someone else and stick it into your receiver, there is a big barrier there to most people. Not just technological (the difficulty of setting it up, which IMHO is still out of reach of most people, especially if it involves Linux), but there is a psychological barrier there too.
Like Napster has shown, if it is really easy to pirate something, people's moral qualms go away. However, if pirating something requires a significant effort, the number of people who are willing to do it quickly declines, even more than you might expect just from the difficulty of pirating. The effort required serves as a reminder that you are doing something illegal, and people start to have second thoughts about doing it.
DTV's battle was against easy ways of pirating their service. Now that pirating the service requires significant effort, they have won. The hackers will continue on, but people who don't have hacking as a hobby won't bother, and that's all DTV wants.
A DTV emulation setup isn't as hard to get going as you are making out.
It isn't? Which of the steps I mentioned are unecessary? All of the steps I mentioned are necessary to get a working DTV pirate setup. It really is that hard, especially to someone who doesn't know a serial port from a cereal box (your average DTV watcher).
I beg to differ. Previously, you could hack DirecTV recievers simply with modified cards. They might be expensive, however, it was quite simple to do once you got the card - no time, only money. Shell out a couple hundred bucks, stick in the card, you get instant "free" access.
Now, with DirecTV's incredible, unbelieveable, insanely cool counter-hacking campaign (read all about it), they have brought it to the point where in order to hack DirecTV, you must buy several pieces of custom hardware (card-readers, emulators), find an old computer, set it up next to your DirecTV receiver, connect them all up, install software (possibly including Linux, and installing Linux is still out of the reach of your normal DirecTV watcher), have an always-on broadband internet connection, and actively monitor sites like HackHU.com in case DirecTV starts hax0ring again.
DirecTV has essentially won. The cost of an emulator+PC+Linux+always on broadband connection might still be less than the rare hacked cards (which don't even work anymore), but it requires lots and lots of *time* and *effort*, both to set up and maintain. Only the most dedicated hax0rs will continue to pirate the signal, while the rest of the world decides it isn't worth the effort anymore and just pays the monthly fee. The cost of pirating DirecTV might have just decreased in monetary terms, but it has gotten *much* more expensive in terms of time and effort, to the point where it just isn't worth it anymore for most people. And "most people" is all DirecTV cares about.
Gee, thanks for the informative constructive criticism there! "Slightly off!" I'll file a bug report right now!
Seriously, what kind of complaint is that? Tell us what it is you don't like!
The theming support QT is awful.Just compare all the GTK/GNOME themes to KDE themes, there is not comparison at all. [...] GTK is the most beautiful widget set I have ever seen. It has it's own unique look and feel.
GTK has been around for longer, therefore there is a much wider selection of themes, therefore it is more likely there will be ones you like. QT's theming support is actually superior to GTK, it's faster. Plus, KDE comes with a GTK theme importer - KDE can import the GTK "unique" default look. Imported GTK themes run faster under QT/KDE than GTK! I haven't had much luck importing themes other than the default GTK look, however some work has been done on the theme importer since I last looked at it. I think it's fully functional now (in CVS).
ESR says in his info page that such a thing already exists and is one of the reasons he chose Python in the first place. He mentions that a kernel source tarball could be distributed with a compiled version of the CML2 interpreter.
Hmmmm, I just had a crazy idea. What if you could compile your GCC application in a special way, then run it under simulated normal working conditions and have it log performance data on itself, just the kind of data that these run-time optimizers gather. Then, you could feed GCC this collected data along with your application's source and recompile it and GCC would be able to turbo-optimize your app for actual usage conditions! If it can be done on-the-fly at run-time, it can be done even better at compile time with practically unlimited processor time to think about it.
Even if the end-user used the application in a nonstandard way it might still provide a performance benefit because there are lots of things that a program does the same way even when it is used in a different way.
Would this be feasible? Would it provide a tangible perfomance benefit? (like HP's Dynamo?) Comments please!
Look, I already answered this. If you don't mind I'll just quote part of my post again, which you obviously didn't read even though you quoted it yourself: I am not in any way condoning the shooting of an unarmed 15-yr old, and I wish that the cop in question would get a longer sentence. I even used the same word - condone.
I'm not viewing the case in the wrong light. You're looking at this specific case, which admittedly is not ideal - the guy should get more punishment than he will. I agree with you there. I'm looking at the big picture, and in the big picture, there's no way to modify the law to be 100% fair in this case and still be effective at all its other goals. Even if there was, it would probably only be visible in hindsight looking back at this specific case and many other cases involving shootings of people by police officers. That isn't indicative of a problem with our law system.
If you're arguing that there's a problem with our law enforcement because this policeman did this, well, that's totally different. That could be true, maybe police should receive more training on what to do in stressful situations involving firearms. That's not what I'm arguing, though. I'm arguing that this case is not indicitive of a problem in our law system (meaning courts, judges, laws, and lawyers, not policemen and law enforcement agencies).
A knowledgable person? On Slashdot?!?
I must be dreaming :-)
The media only picks up on some of these cases so you have to wonder how many others go unheard.
You do have to wonder, don't you. In Reader's Digest every month there is a column called "That's Outrageous" that deals with dumb cases. They never seem to have a shortage of material. I do believe that the media catches almost all of the worst ones. There's nothing they love more than a juicy story, and outrageous law cases, when they are bad enough, are pretty juicy. (BTW, I think outrageous is the perfect word - outrage is defined as a violent or shameful act)
What really makes me think that the situation isn't out of hand is that there haven't been that many of those "Special Reports" that the media likes to make. If the situation was really as bad as you seem to think it is, the media would be ALL over it in two seconds. The special reports would be flying ("Did the executed killer actually commit the crime? Is our justice system going down the tubes? Find out at 11!"), and public opinion would begin to weigh on Congress to do something.
I'm not trusting the media to report all the facts accurately here, I'm just trusting their profit motive and their nose for a juicy story (both of which are pretty reliable).
I'd like to talk a little about the specific case you mentioned, though.
Here in NYC in 1999 a cop shot a 15 yr old kid from running from him. The max time he can serve is 1 yr on the misdemanor charge, He'll serve if convicted probably about 4-5 months max.
There IS a reason that the penalty is light. If cops got 20 yrs to life for shooting someone in error, they would be terrified to draw their guns. What if they hit someone by accident? What if the person they were facing was only pretending to have a gun? If cops were terrified to draw their guns, criminals would be more bold. The effectiveness of law enforcement would be reduced in situations where guns were really needed.
I am not in any way condoning the shooting of an unarmed 15-yr old, and I wish that the cop in question would get a longer sentence. My point is that there IS a reason why the law is the way it is. There isn't really a way to change the law in such a way that it is 100% fair all of the time, and the lawmakers do the best they can. It might be easy in hindsight to propose a modification to this law that might have saved this case, for example making a much stiffer penalty for shooting minors. But that modification might have other effects. How is a cop to tell, in a few seconds, whether the person he is about to shoot is a minor or not? You see the difficulty.
You're too new of a lawyer to make a comment like that.
Oh, and you are so much more qualified! I mean, you listen to/read some major American news media! That obviously puts you way ahead of this lawyer dude. Sure, we all know lawyers are all lying sleazebags anyway.
Seriously now, a lawyer (person who deals with law and the justice system as his/her profession) is going to know a lot more about the American justice system than you. Just 'cause you read about a few instances of outrageous things happening in the media (who make a living off of reporting outrageous things) doesn't mean that the American legal system is flawed.
As a rule, the news media take all of the most outrageous incidents scattered across the country and report them, because no one wants to hear about the millions of everyday boring cases where the American justice system actually worked quite well. Don't let a few incidents color your perception of the whole system (even though the incidents themselves are quite bad).
It's gas!
And you call a freeway a "motorway" too. You'd better switch over before you start getting a Texas accent - it would just be wrong to hear a guy with a Texas drawl talking about petrol and motorways :-)