Diplomats can be deported if they do anything the host state is unhappy with. Countries can also break off diplomatic relations on a whim. Apparently the only people these exemptions are likely to apply to are US Citizens in the US.
This basically allows a law enforcement officer to carry out his duties.
Why, exactly, do they need this protection? Especially given that criminal infiltration of law enforcement is something to guard against.
It is identical to when the FBI comes to a local town to investigate, they can not be hindered or stopped by the local law enforcement.
What if they hinder otherwise interfere with the investigations of local law enforcement? What if they break the law in the course of their activities?
This is obvious and should not raise any issues.
Anyone being "above the law" comes with a whole host of issues. Even more so if they are "law enforcement".
Copyrights exist to serve the public interest. Part of the means by which they work is to give authors an additional incentive to create and publish beyond those which are naturally present. Creation and publication are both important, as unpublished works do so little good for society that they may as well not exist.
Authors can still face difficulties in getting published.
We in the modern west have a problem, and I, for one, do not see an easy solution.
Actually the easy solution is treat copyright in the same way as horse powered mass transit...
It used to be that making copies of creative works was a physical task that was the domain of professionals. As such, enforcing copyrights was relatively easy.
Copyright came into existance when technology enabled copies to be meade cheaply if you wanted many copies.
Copyrights exist so that creators of creative works can be given an incentive to create. Their creations, on the whole, enrich society. That's the basic copyright bargain: You write good books and we, as a society, will insure that you can make a living doing it.
Actually the theory is more that if> there is money to be made from a work the author should get it. It's by no means clear that the possibility of profit plays any great part in motivating people to be creative in the first place.
Coincedently this is exactly what I preach to my friends & family about when I said that if the MPAA wants to continue to exist, they'll find a way to fill the theater seats. This innovation will help for the next 5 years or so until the consumer market saturates with 3D glasses & Tech.
Depends very much on if there is a sucessful "home 3D" tech, especially with broadcaster support.
The aliens are still too stiff, their faces are too uniform, their movements are too smooth - they need pores, facial hair, creases, loose skin, etc
Because aliens must have all of these:)
Some of the new humaniod features were imaginative, like the neural connection in the pony tail
One thing that seemed a bit odd was how the "animals" all appeared to have two neural connections. As well as things like 3 pairs of limbs, separate breathing and eating orifices, etc which made the humanoid aliens look out of place.
but overall the alients were pretty standard - "good" aliens must look human for us to identify with them, they must have the same mannerisms (e.g. identical emotions), and other real differences must be superficial.
Being played by human actors probably has quite a bit to do with this too...
Avatar did have a lot more plot than Transformers, GI Joe, and some other recently popular films, but it was still simpler than the Cat in the Hat - subtle & not-so-subtle political statements notwithstanding. Between visual effect and good writing, I'll take the latter, but why can't we have both?
Probably because "good writing" comes with far more actual risks than visual effects.
Quoted: "One of the riskiest movies of all times is now officially one of the most successful at the box office."
Which is nonsense. A risk would be something like spending this amount of money making a movie without any "names" amongst the actors, writer(s), director(s), etc.
I'd like to see a director's cut when this goes to DVD. I know Cameron had an extremely rich back story, and most of it didn't make the cut to get into the movie, since it weighed in at 2 hours 40 minutes long. I also think it would help flesh out a story that was somewhat bland.
Some of the scenes where are in could probably be trimmed. So even with more backstory you might not get much longer than 3 hours.
How much of that is due to something like being prescribed a ten-day course of oral antibiotics for something that could be cleared up with a single injection instead? IMHO it's oral antibiotics that are overprescribed -- leading to poor compliance and an excess of unmetabolized antibiotic in the waste system.
As well as all the side effects resulting from bacterial symbiotes in the gut being exposed to antibiotics.
If he was seriously talking about future artists or the small time artists that are trying to break into the musical big leagues, he would look far more seriously at why competitions like "American Idol" or "Pop Idol" have to be created in order to find the talent for tomorrow's music.
These only give exposure to a tiny number of acts anyway. Especially given that the modern idea is along the lines of "eliminate one a week" as opposed to "eliminate all but one a week".
My reading of the law (which I needed to do for my work) requires that we inform the person what information is being collected, what it will be used for, how long will it be kept, AND who it will be shared with.
Since the US has no equivalent law you might just as well publish the information. Would that be legal? It probably also isn't acceptable to state that it will be used for various undisclosed things, will be kept indefinitly and will be shared with various undisclosed entities.
It's perfectly legal for Canadians to travel to Cuba, and many do for vacations. It's not that much of a stretch for the US to gather names of Canadians travelling to Cuba and then ban them from entering the US for that reason.
Maybe the US is more interested in finding out about US citizens travelling to Cuba via Canada.
Prior to 9/11, air hijacks resulted in the passengers as hostages. After 9/11, the reality is that an aircraft is now a weapon.
That should have been obvious after American Airlines Flight 11 hit WTC1.
The impetus that would allow NORAD command to authorize the downing of a civilian craft that has been hijacked
On that day they couldn't even manage to intercept one of the hijacked aircraft. Which is (or at least should be) the norm anywhere. Even though any one of "no radio", "no transponder" or "off course" indicated an "emergency". If nothing else putting a fighter alongside would prevent the risk of a mid-air collision similar to that which destroyed GOL 1907. There had also, AFAIK, never been multiple hijackings. Even though the FAA, USAF, NORAD, etc utterly failed to do their jobs no one responsible appears to have faced any sanctions.
But something like that was supposed to happen with the 9/11 planes too, and yet it didn't in spite of the planes being off course and unresponsive for a very long time. Why should we expect anything different now?
Considering that Northwest 188 did not wind up getting a fighter escort draw your own conclusions.
Aircrafts not intended to US airspace is handled by NORAD.
This would be the same NORAD which was utterly ineffective on the morning of September 11 2001?
Aircrafts that we don't know about that enters US airspace is handled by shot-range air-to-air missiles after sufficient warnings have been given over radio.
Assuming they havn't turned their transponders off...
Of course we'll never eliminate every potential risk. Even if we could, I doubt that the resulting world would be one I'd want to live in.
People have an acceptable level of perceived risk. Make anyone feel "too safe" and they will try to compensate. The best situation is one which is perfectly safe, but feels unsafe. The worst is where something feels safe, but is unsafe.
Few thousand lives? Who cares? US roads (just US roads) kill almost 40 thousand people a year. 39800 in 2008 alone.
No doubt some of these are due to people driving instead of flying.
Since 1999 there have been 6 attempted terrorist attacks concerning US or US bound aircraft with 4 successes. The number of people lost is completely irrelevant in light of the tens of thousands that die yearly in the mundane crap nobody seems to care about.
More planes have crashed due to human error. The TSA, AFAIK, contributes nothing towards improving aircraft mechanics or pilots.
The billions wasted on ever more ridiculous regulations screwing up the lives of air travelers amounts to exactly that: a waste.
There's also probably plenty which could be done with the amount of money to actually improve safety.
We could reduce premature death by forcing lifestyle changes on people. We could make cars far safer, but almost certainly more expensive to buy and operate. We could make obtaining a drivers license more challenging.
Which would still probably be cheaper and more effective.
Even worse, the new measures are only marginally more effective than the old measures.
In some cases utterly daft. I wonder if they make Obama stay in his seat for the last hour on Airforce One:)
The only things that went wrong with the 9/11 attacks were policy issues - like what passengers/staff should do in the event of a hijacking, how the military should respond in the case of losing contact with an airplane that has changed course, and locking the cockpit for the duration of the flight.
It dosn't appear that the FAA and/or the US Military actually followed the rules as they existed at that time anyway. Also if there is a "man on the inside" as was possibly the case with Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab then "screening" at airports will be subverted anyway.
The rest of what needed to change were behind the scenes intelligence stuff - the TSA is all for show,
Politicans like showey stuff.
All it does is harrass American citizens to try to make them feel safer.
The harrassment is fairly "equal opportunity", New Zealand (for example) citizens get treated just the same. It's also getting to the point where it's questionable if this "security theater" even does make the majority of people "feel safer".
Last Name: "Alphabetic, no numeric or special characters, except dash ( - ) and single quote ( ' ). Do not include suffixes (e.g., jr.). Truncate names longer than 35 characters to 35 characters".
No spaces? These are very common in Spanish names...
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There's different kinds of diplomatic immunity, read this for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity#Diplomatic_immunity_in_the_United_States
Diplomats can be deported if they do anything the host state is unhappy with. Countries can also break off diplomatic relations on a whim.
Apparently the only people these exemptions are likely to apply to are US Citizens in the US.
This basically allows a law enforcement officer to carry out his duties.
Why, exactly, do they need this protection? Especially given that criminal infiltration of law enforcement is something to guard against.
It is identical to when the FBI comes to a local town to investigate, they can not be hindered or stopped by the local law enforcement.
What if they hinder otherwise interfere with the investigations of local law enforcement? What if they break the law in the course of their activities?
This is obvious and should not raise any issues.
Anyone being "above the law" comes with a whole host of issues. Even more so if they are "law enforcement".
Copyrights exist to serve the public interest. Part of the means by which they work is to give authors an additional incentive to create and publish beyond those which are naturally present. Creation and publication are both important, as unpublished works do so little good for society that they may as well not exist.
Authors can still face difficulties in getting published.
We in the modern west have a problem, and I, for one, do not see an easy solution.
Actually the easy solution is treat copyright in the same way as horse powered mass transit...
It used to be that making copies of creative works was a physical task that was the domain of professionals. As such, enforcing copyrights was relatively easy.
Copyright came into existance when technology enabled copies to be meade cheaply if you wanted many copies.
Copyrights exist so that creators of creative works can be given an incentive to create. Their creations, on the whole, enrich society. That's the basic copyright bargain: You write good books and we, as a society, will insure that you can make a living doing it.
Actually the theory is more that if> there is money to be made from a work the author should get it. It's by no means clear that the possibility of profit plays any great part in motivating people to be creative in the first place.
Coincedently this is exactly what I preach to my friends & family about when I said that if the MPAA wants to continue to exist, they'll find a way to fill the theater seats. This innovation will help for the next 5 years or so until the consumer market saturates with 3D glasses & Tech.
Depends very much on if there is a sucessful "home 3D" tech, especially with broadcaster support.
The aliens are still too stiff, their faces are too uniform, their movements are too smooth - they need pores, facial hair, creases, loose skin, etc
:)
Because aliens must have all of these
Some of the new humaniod features were imaginative, like the neural connection in the pony tail
One thing that seemed a bit odd was how the "animals" all appeared to have two neural connections. As well as things like 3 pairs of limbs, separate breathing and eating orifices, etc which made the humanoid aliens look out of place.
but overall the alients were pretty standard - "good" aliens must look human for us to identify with them, they must have the same mannerisms (e.g. identical emotions), and other real differences must be superficial.
Being played by human actors probably has quite a bit to do with this too...
Avatar did have a lot more plot than Transformers, GI Joe, and some other recently popular films, but it was still simpler than the Cat in the Hat - subtle & not-so-subtle political statements notwithstanding. Between visual effect and good writing, I'll take the latter, but why can't we have both?
Probably because "good writing" comes with far more actual risks than visual effects.
Quoted: "One of the riskiest movies of all times is now officially one of the most successful at the box office."
Which is nonsense. A risk would be something like spending this amount of money making a movie without any "names" amongst the actors, writer(s), director(s), etc.
Another nail in the "Piracy kills our industry!" coffin.
The "industry" will always claim that they could have made more if it hadn't been for "piracy".
But honestly, even the file-sharers were telling everyone to go see it in the theaters first.
Kind of hard to get the 3d effect to work on a "camed" version.
I'd like to see a director's cut when this goes to DVD. I know Cameron had an extremely rich back story, and most of it didn't make the cut to get into the movie, since it weighed in at 2 hours 40 minutes long. I also think it would help flesh out a story that was somewhat bland.
Some of the scenes where are in could probably be trimmed. So even with more backstory you might not get much longer than 3 hours.
The "plot." Pretty much the same: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104254/
Alternativly you could think of it as the offspring of "Fern Gully" and "Dances with Wolves".
How much of that is due to something like being prescribed a ten-day course of oral antibiotics for something that could be cleared up with a single injection instead? IMHO it's oral antibiotics that are overprescribed -- leading to poor compliance and an excess of unmetabolized antibiotic in the waste system.
As well as all the side effects resulting from bacterial symbiotes in the gut being exposed to antibiotics.
If he was seriously talking about future artists or the small time artists that are trying to break into the musical big leagues, he would look far more seriously at why competitions like "American Idol" or "Pop Idol" have to be created in order to find the talent for tomorrow's music.
These only give exposure to a tiny number of acts anyway. Especially given that the modern idea is along the lines of "eliminate one a week" as opposed to "eliminate all but one a week".
The problem is that these conflicts are generally fuelled by foreign meddling (see, Italy's governance of Somalia before it abandoned it),
As well as outright support of bad government.
Simply throwing food and money at people will not cause them to form stable governments, rein in crime and provide a social support network.
In the case government of "aid" this can also include arms.
My reading of the law (which I needed to do for my work) requires that we inform the person what information is being collected, what it will be used for, how long will it be kept, AND who it will be shared with.
Since the US has no equivalent law you might just as well publish the information. Would that be legal? It probably also isn't acceptable to state that it will be used for various undisclosed things, will be kept indefinitly and will be shared with various undisclosed entities.
It's perfectly legal for Canadians to travel to Cuba, and many do for vacations. It's not that much of a stretch for the US to gather names of Canadians travelling to Cuba and then ban them from entering the US for that reason.
Maybe the US is more interested in finding out about US citizens travelling to Cuba via Canada.
If you can hijack a flight and fly it into a building, you're probably quite capable of flying it the few hundred miles from Toronto to New York.
:)
Buffalo and Detroit are nearer
If you wanted to attack New York city a plane departing JFK, Newark or La Guardia might be a better choice.
Maybe because prior to 9/11 nobody had ever flown an airplane into a building on purpose before?
People had though about an airliner being used as an improvised missile at least 30 years before.
Prior to 9/11, air hijacks resulted in the passengers as hostages. After 9/11, the reality is that an aircraft is now a weapon.
That should have been obvious after American Airlines Flight 11 hit WTC1.
The impetus that would allow NORAD command to authorize the downing of a civilian craft that has been hijacked
On that day they couldn't even manage to intercept one of the hijacked aircraft. Which is (or at least should be) the norm anywhere. Even though any one of "no radio", "no transponder" or "off course" indicated an "emergency". If nothing else putting a fighter alongside would prevent the risk of a mid-air collision similar to that which destroyed GOL 1907. There had also, AFAIK, never been multiple hijackings.
Even though the FAA, USAF, NORAD, etc utterly failed to do their jobs no one responsible appears to have faced any sanctions.
But something like that was supposed to happen with the 9/11 planes too, and yet it didn't in spite of the planes being off course and unresponsive for a very long time. Why should we expect anything different now?
Considering that Northwest 188 did not wind up getting a fighter escort draw your own conclusions.
Aircrafts not intended to US airspace is handled by NORAD.
This would be the same NORAD which was utterly ineffective on the morning of September 11 2001?
Aircrafts that we don't know about that enters US airspace is handled by shot-range air-to-air missiles after sufficient warnings have been given over radio.
Assuming they havn't turned their transponders off...
Of course we'll never eliminate every potential risk. Even if we could, I doubt that the resulting world would be one I'd want to live in.
People have an acceptable level of perceived risk. Make anyone feel "too safe" and they will try to compensate.
The best situation is one which is perfectly safe, but feels unsafe. The worst is where something feels safe, but is unsafe.
Few thousand lives? Who cares? US roads (just US roads) kill almost 40 thousand people a year. 39800 in 2008 alone.
No doubt some of these are due to people driving instead of flying.
Since 1999 there have been 6 attempted terrorist attacks concerning US or US bound aircraft with 4 successes. The number of people lost is completely irrelevant in light of the tens of thousands that die yearly in the mundane crap nobody seems to care about.
More planes have crashed due to human error. The TSA, AFAIK, contributes nothing towards improving aircraft mechanics or pilots.
The billions wasted on ever more ridiculous regulations screwing up the lives of air travelers amounts to exactly that: a waste.
There's also probably plenty which could be done with the amount of money to actually improve safety.
We could reduce premature death by forcing lifestyle changes on people. We could make cars far safer, but almost certainly more expensive to buy and operate. We could make obtaining a drivers license more challenging.
Which would still probably be cheaper and more effective.
Even worse, the new measures are only marginally more effective than the old measures.
:)
In some cases utterly daft. I wonder if they make Obama stay in his seat for the last hour on Airforce One
The only things that went wrong with the 9/11 attacks were policy issues - like what passengers/staff should do in the event of a hijacking, how the military should respond in the case of losing contact with an airplane that has changed course, and locking the cockpit for the duration of the flight.
It dosn't appear that the FAA and/or the US Military actually followed the rules as they existed at that time anyway.
Also if there is a "man on the inside" as was possibly the case with Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab then "screening" at airports will be subverted anyway.
The rest of what needed to change were behind the scenes intelligence stuff - the TSA is all for show,
Politicans like showey stuff.
All it does is harrass American citizens to try to make them feel safer.
The harrassment is fairly "equal opportunity", New Zealand (for example) citizens get treated just the same. It's also getting to the point where it's questionable if this "security theater" even does make the majority of people "feel safer".
Last Name: "Alphabetic, no numeric or special characters, except dash ( - ) and single quote ( ' ). Do not include suffixes (e.g., jr.). Truncate names longer than 35 characters to 35 characters".
No spaces? These are very common in Spanish names...