When someone says flag burning is illegal, they are referring to burning flags in a particular context, so your argument there is tangential to the point being made here.
Burning flags is not illegal in either the US or in Canada - it's Constitutionally-protected speech in both countries. But what we see all the time is American politicians trying to "rally around the flag" and make it an issue. They do this because a sizable portion of the American population - mostly republicans - finds restricting that form of freedom of speech appealing.
As for other measures of freedom of speech, Canada still ranks higher than the US wrt freedom of the press.
I could play the same game and point to America having a greater freedom towards ownership of means of self-defense,
Another bad example. You can buy firearms in Canada - just not handguns. Only 5.5% of the population owns a firearm, and they're mostly hunters. We don't have the same crime levels (1/3 the murder rate, for example), and as I pointed out, you have much higher rates of incarceration; we on the other hand don't generally feel the need to go shooting up the neighborhood. The freedom to walk down the street without worrying about getting shot counts for something. Our big problem is guns smuggled in from the US.
In fact, given that Canadian healthcare participation is compulsory (at least paying for it is via taxes) I'd have to argue that it's less free
And Medicare/Medicaid is supported by taxpayers in the US - even though those same taxpayers may not necessarily benefit from it. So that's taxation without concomittent benefits - far less free.
The current US system is unfortunately very broken. It's gotten that way over the course of the last 4 decades, and it may not be fixable. Only time will tell if Americans have what it takes to take an objective look at how bad things have gotten, and to better prioritize. Bailing out the banks and Wall Street should not have been a priority - not when it has so thoroughly compromised the future of the citizenry. Nationalization of the banks, and letting Wall Street fail, were the way to go, would have been cheaper, and would have been completed by now. Instead, you have the "too big to fail" being even bigger - they're now the "too big to survive without continuous bail-outs." Not too smart. Then again, the concept of fixing the debt by running even higher deficits over the next decade is also stupid. Look for the dollar to depreciate in terms of true purchasing power by at least 50% (and more likely 80%).
You don't need to run code in the kernel to infect a machine, so the claim that "this won't happen with 64-bit vista/7" is still bullshit, and your defense stinks just as much.
Not really. First, the most it could do is infect your own files, not the system. Second, you would have to run it - it can't spread by itself. Do people running linux run strange executable binaries that people send them? No. It's not like Windows, where reading your email can infect your machine.
the only reason there aren't many viruses for linux is because it isn't popular enough. virus makers don't want to target a platform that is only used by a handful of people. in a way it's security through obscurity, though in this case the obscurity is the operating system itself.
That was disproven with the different rates of infection wrt apache vs. iis. The study showed Apache had by far the larger market share, but IIS had by far the most vulnerabilities. According to YOUR illogic, Apache, not IIS, should have had the most vulnerabilities.
Also, most crackers would prefer to p0wn one unix-type box over a dozen Windows boxes. Windows are the low-hanging fruit because the OS is pretty crappy by design. Microsoft refuses to make a clean break with the buggy code from the past, because they know that if they do, a lot of their customers are no longer "locked in", so it is in fact insecure by design.
Let's be clear here (and the same is true for anyone running Linux), you don't know that none of your machines were infected. You know thatyou (sic) never discovered an infection.
When a machine behaves the same day in, day out, year after year, you get to know it. As an example, back in the days when I still dual-booted, I connected my box to the local lan, grabbed the file from the local share that I had been asked to look at, and I knew within a matter of seconds that it had gotten infected - it simply didn't feel the same. Booted back into linux, then tracked down the mofo who had the virus. He actually paid me $75 to install linux on his machine so he wouldn't have to re-install windows yet again.
We're not all dummies who will see our machines experience huge slowdowns, files that shouldn't have changed grow in size, lots of network activity, and not think that something is wrong. With Windows, though... you've got to keep in mind that Windows is the exception that proves the rule that software doesn't just "wear out."
You call this a test worthy of coverage here? The guy don't even state whether he's using 32-bit version which I suspect is the case. This won't happen on 64-bit Vista/7.
Bullshit. Microsoft made the same claim when they made the switch from 16-bit to 32-bit - "Viruses will be a thing of the past." 64 bits is not "magic pixie dust" - it's just the size of a native integer or memory pointer on your cpu.
Anyone who uses any computer (including Mac AND Linux) without anti-virus is asking for what they get
Sure - just that you won't get a virus by running linux. I have yet (in over a decade of tending linux and bsd servers) had a single machine get infected.
Lesson learned - friends don't let friends run Windows.
If the telcos were buying them with a PO number, etc., and the PO states that they're test equipment, it shows his intent was to sell them test equipment. People usually do the illegal stuff without purchase orders, invoices, etc. Or does the local crack dealer now give receipts for tax purposes? Or the mafia give invoices for the "insurance protection plan" you buy from them:-)
What will hang him, IMO, is his attempt to get valid MAC addresses for a network he didn't have access to (for another customer). People doing legit deployment of testing equipment would already have such a list of addresses. Only someone who wanted to clone a legit MAC address so they could steal service would need that. His case is weak, very weak. He'll probably cop a plea.
Asking for a MAC address for a specific network or region does not indicate criminal behavior. I can think of several valid technical support reasons to be asking for MAC addresses like that, and I am sure an IT competent defense lawyer would be happy to use them in court too.
Asking for a MAC address for use by a third party who wishes to remain anonymous IS a smoking gun. That's what he did on his own forum. And that will hang him.
We're all waiting for your "several valid technical support reasons" - but remember, they have to be credible enough that, to use your words, "an IT competent defense lawyer would be happy to use them in court."
You're not going to get much of an argument from me vis. the modem guy - he was clearly selling gear to help people steal service, judging by one of his forum posts.
However, it's not only electricians who should be able to carry around pliers in Texas. I've often kept a toolbox in my trunk, for those "just in case" emergencies, and the pliers in there are also illegal in Texas. Pretty stupid law - fortunately not often enforced.
It's like the contradictory highway code up here. When Walkmans became popular, they modified it so that headphones, etc. (any earpiece), were banned if you were driving a car. Then cell phones came out and you have to use either a speaker kit or a bluetooth earpiece - but the bluetooth earpiece is against the law under the language of the headphone ban. I won a bet with a cop over this - she didn't believe me until she pulled out her book, read the older law, and said:oops -you're right." The law still hasn't been fixed, and it probably never will be.
Or another contradictory pair of laws. Kids were hanging onto the rear bumper of buses during the winter and sliding along the street. City passed a bylaw making it illegal for anyone to hold onto any part of a vehicle in motion. So how the f*ck are you supposed to steer?
Same city passed a law prohibiting "massage" - and defined it as the "manipulation of a part of a human body by another person." Stupid politicians didn't realize they had just banned the hand-shake, doctors setting broken bones, dentistry, haircuts, giving babies a bath, and a whole lot of other common stuff.
it's illegal, in Finland, to burn their flag... yet Americans still have that right (in most places) despite the protestations of many politicians and red necks here
Americans have that right in ALL parts of the US, not just "most places". It's not just a right - burning is the PROPER way to dispose of a flag that's no longer suitable for display. The knee-jerk uninformed reaction of many Americans to flag-burning ("OMG it's WRONG and UNPATRIOTIC") is just another example of the sheer stupidity of misguided patriotism. Even the American Legion insists that burning the flag is the ONLY proper means of disposal.
Also, if you actually go to the link that claims that burning the flag is illegal in Finland, it references a flag-burning incident in *Australia*. No reference to Finland. In other words, wiki's citation is completely bogus, which means yours is too... good thing you pulled it out of your ass:-)
So come up to Kanuckistan and burn as many flags as you want. Our attitude is that it says more about the person doing the act than anything else. We had Quebecers stomping on the Canadian flag in order to try to provoke anger, and most of us said "When you get down to it, that's pretty f*ing childish. Grow up already." Our pride is in our country, our people. In that context, flags are pretty much secondary.
Just because Canada (or any other nation, or America compared to another nation) might be better on whatever issues currently making the rounds through the world medias these days doesn't make it overall more free.
The fact is that in terms of freedom, Canada ranks a lot higher than the US. We have freedom from bailing out banksters (we've only had 2 bank failures in almost 90 years; our banking system is rated the best in the world for a reason). That's not just a multi-trillion-dollar freedom - it's priceless. We have freedom from a de-facto two-party electoral system. We have campaign financing laws that give us political freedom from corporate overlords buying elections. We have public health care that gives us freedom from worrying about losing everything should we get sick. We're also already more than self-sufficient, energy-wise. In terms of the percentage of people in jails, we're definitely a LOT freer (but then again, so is every other country in the world. Ironic that the "land of the free" has not just the highest percentage of people behind bars, but more people than China, Russia, or any other country in the world).
Those are all current issues - and on every one, we're "more free". If it were only one or two issues where we were more free, you might be right... but not when it's consistent, on such a broad range of issues.
It's a darned shame, because for a large portion of the last century, the US was *the* example of freedom (if you didn't look too close beneath the surface at the treatment of blacks via Jim Crow laws, for example, or jews, or asians, or the still-ongoing discrimination against gays and lesbians).
The comparisons aren't made to put down the US, but to point out that there are problems that need to be addressed, that other countries have successfully addressed them, and that maybe its time to drag the lobbyists (and the politicians beholden to them) behind the barn and shoot them in the wallet. That's what the ballot box is for.
The screens are about $20 a piece, so a second screen, which doubles the screen area, is only $20 more - MINUS the cost of building a cover (folding the screens serves that purpose). So the incremental cost is less than $20. It's too bad they dropped the two-screen model... it's a good idea. If you've ever worked with dual monitors on your computer, going back to one is unthinkable. It just works so much better.
WRT Polanski, fortunately, once the "celebrity crowd" became more aware of the facts, they mostly STFU, and some have gone out of their way to take the other side publicly. Schwarzenegger said Polanski shouldn't get special treatment.
And lets face it, having Woody Allen publicly on your side in a case involving sex with a minor has got to be a boat anchor. That's like having Michael Vic say you know how to handle dogs properly, or Tom Cruise saying he likes your spirituality, or Chris Brown saying someone knows how to handle a woman.
If I feel a law is just, I will mostly obey it. If a law is unjust, or even just stupid, I'll mostly ignore it or disobey it. I say mostly, because I can't be 100% sure that I've, for example, always ignored bad laws.
I believe most Canadians are the same way. Americans... you'd have to ask them. They're the ones who originated the phrase, "My country, right or wrong!" and whose leader made jingoism national policy with "You're either with us, or you're against us."
Nobody wants to punish everyone. If you pick up after your dog, you don't get "punished" for it. If you don't speed in a school zone, you don't get "punished" for it.
Learn to troll better. Or at least come up with a better bad car analogy, because that was pathetic.
All that is expensive and has no return for your government. The government will of course choose the punishment that nets them the greatest possible amount of money, so they can go on spending it on weapons and wiretapping initiatives.
I'm in Canada. We don't spend that much on weapons, and the courts have already ruled that plastering CCTV cameras all over public places in the hopes of catching Random J Offender are an unconstitutional invasion of privacy (we have a concept of "the anonymity of the crowd" - that people going about their own business in public should be able to do so without being spied upon).
We're also the country whose privacy commissioner forced Facebook to change its' operations wrt user data. The recent "memorializing of the dead" policy (item #3 in the link) is part of that process, just as making it clear to users that they can both deactivate AND delete their accounts (item #2). They have a year to get into full compliance, and they probably realized that if they didn't, other countries would start making the same demands, since they're reasonable.
Going after Facebook wasn't about getting money from them, but of making sure they respected people's rights.
I'm just saying that the Polanski case is a good example of leniency in plea bargaining. It wasn't statutory rape (sex with someone too young to give legal consent), but "rape rape" (to borrow Whoopie's term). He probably portrayed it as statutory rape to those around him, hence their weird "defense" of Polanski. It was plea-bargained to no jail time... at least the case you cited, they got jail time.
I'm just wondering how much of his reluctance to return is related to whether he paid her the $400,000 he agreed to pay in response to her civil suit years later. We know from court records that she had to go back to court at least once to try to get him to cough up the agreed-upon amount...
1. You specified common law. Most of Canada is common law, and my post disproves that what you said applies to "common law" generically.
2. Why not look at the plea bargain in the Roman Polanski affair if you want something that doesn't pass the smell test?
BTW, the maximum sentence for sexual assault when tried as a misdemeanor in Canada is $2,000 + 6 months. The minimum is an absolute discharge. Aggravated sexual assault, on the other hand, can get you life.
To put this in context, we just gave a life sentence to a genocidal nutbar from another country who thought that Canada would be a safe place for him.
'Kill, rape and pillage': Rwandan gets life in jail'
Published On Fri Oct 30 2009
MONTREAL-In sentencing genocidal killer Désiré Munyaneza to the harshest penalty possible, Quebec Superior Court Justice André Denis quoted an ancient philosopher who insisted that even when everyone else is going one way, you can always go another.
"Many Rwandans of all ethnicities, as the proof showed, behaved courageously during the genocide, often paying the price with their lives," said Denis. "The accused, an educated and privileged man, chose to kill, rape and pillage, in the name of supremacy of his ethnic group."
Handing down a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, as Munyaneza stood unmoved, the judge added, "Each time a man affirms to belong to a superior race, a chosen people, humanity is in danger."
Munyaneza, known as "Scarface" to his victims, is the first person to be convicted under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. The 42-year-old father of two will serve his sentence in Canada.
It's a case watched closely by legal observers because of the implications it could have for similar cases here and abroad and even, some say, for preventing such tragedies in the first place.
Denis found Munyaneza guilty last May of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1994 Rwandan genocide that saw the Hutu-led extermination of hundreds of thousands of people, primarily ethnic Tutsis.
A businessman in his home city of Butare, Rwanda, Munyaneza came from a well-known bourgeois family and had a master's degree in economics.
During the genocide he also acted as a leader among the brutal Interahamwe militia.
Denis found that Munyaneza, a failed refugee claimant to Canada who was arrested at his home in Toronto in 2005, used his access to vehicles to transport innocent Tutsi to their deaths. He looted Tutsi businesses. He murdered four Tutsi in a store, saying, "All Tutsi must die."
He called them "vermin."
He even used sticks to beat to death children who were tied up in sacks, the judge found.
The defence is appealing the verdict, but a hearing before the Quebec Court of Appeal isn't likely until next year and both sides agree the case will ultimately wind up before the Supreme Court of Canada.
"We've got what we believe to be a pretty strong appeal," defence lawyer Richard Perras said outside the courtroom.
The trial was extraordinary in that it took nearly two years and even travelled to Butare to hear witnesses.
The total cost reportedly reached $4 million.
Munyaneza's defence contended much of the evidence was faulty, witnesses were hazy on dates, and that many couldn't identify his prominent facial scar.
But Denis said he believed the prosecution's witnesses, noting Thursday that Munyaneza's witnesses often denied there was even a genocide.
"We know that to deny a genocide is to kill the victims a second time," Denis admonished.
Jayne Stoyles, executive director of the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for International Justice, said in an interview that the sentence "se
And suits at common law where the amount in dispute exceeds twenty dollars.
Not in Canada. Cases below a certain minimum (examples: $7,000 in Quebec, $10,000 - or $25,000 as of next January - in Ontario) are going to end up in small claims court. Small claims court is the only option for many such cases. Here's the relevant citation for Quebec, which shows that even the Code Civile treats it the same as common law in the rest of Canada:
The Small Claims Division
The Small Claims Division deals with all claims up to $7,000 made by natural persons, or by legal persons, partnerships or associations that have employed no more than five people in the twelve months prior to the claim. The types of claims heard may involve, for example, breach of contract or damage to another person's property.
Procedure in the Small Claims Division is simple and informal. The claimant cannot be represented by a lawyer, unless allowed because of the complexity of the case. The proceedings are conducted by the judge, who examines the witnesses and hears the parties. Judgments in the Small Claims Division are final and cannot be appealed.
It is important to note that this Division also hears various tax cases involving both income tax and other types of taxes. A taxpayer may file an appeal concerning a tax matter to this Division. Since this question is relatively complex, it is preferable to contact Revenu Québec for more information.
There are no civil jury trials in Quebec, and few in the rest of Canada. Thee is no Constitutional right for a trial by jury in civil cases in Canada.
Simple - he's then in a position to prove his claim that he's a legitimate supplier of legitimate goods, as acknowledged by experts in the industry purchasing and using his equipment.
Example:
Your client is arrested and charged with being in the possession of tools to facilitate crime, specifically a pry bar, which is used by burglars, and a body dent puller, which is used by car thieves to pop car locks. Also, a mask with filters, so he's also suspected of terrorism.
Your client then produces multiple invoices showing that he owns and runs a legitimate automotive garage, and those are just common tools of the trade - and the mask is OSHA-mandated safety equipment for anyone using a paint booth.
Heck, in Texas it's illegal to walk around with a pair of wire cutters in your back pocket - "might be used for cattle rustling." So what are they going to do - arrest electricians on house calls? They're in violation of the law, but the application of the law doesn't make sense in that context. Electricians need wire cutters.
In this case, though, he also posted a notice asking for a MAC address for a specific network. The operator of a network buying test equipment would already have these. That's an indication he's guilty, at the very least, in one specific case. He'll be smart to squawk loudly as a tactic to get a plea bargain, and that's what he's doing.
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You can get a virus without using a web browser. There's email, there's files that are available over the local lan ...
Burning flags is not illegal in either the US or in Canada - it's Constitutionally-protected speech in both countries. But what we see all the time is American politicians trying to "rally around the flag" and make it an issue. They do this because a sizable portion of the American population - mostly republicans - finds restricting that form of freedom of speech appealing.
As for other measures of freedom of speech, Canada still ranks higher than the US wrt freedom of the press.
Another bad example. You can buy firearms in Canada - just not handguns. Only 5.5% of the population owns a firearm, and they're mostly hunters. We don't have the same crime levels (1/3 the murder rate, for example), and as I pointed out, you have much higher rates of incarceration; we on the other hand don't generally feel the need to go shooting up the neighborhood. The freedom to walk down the street without worrying about getting shot counts for something. Our big problem is guns smuggled in from the US.
And Medicare/Medicaid is supported by taxpayers in the US - even though those same taxpayers may not necessarily benefit from it. So that's taxation without concomittent benefits - far less free.
The current US system is unfortunately very broken. It's gotten that way over the course of the last 4 decades, and it may not be fixable. Only time will tell if Americans have what it takes to take an objective look at how bad things have gotten, and to better prioritize. Bailing out the banks and Wall Street should not have been a priority - not when it has so thoroughly compromised the future of the citizenry. Nationalization of the banks, and letting Wall Street fail, were the way to go, would have been cheaper, and would have been completed by now. Instead, you have the "too big to fail" being even bigger - they're now the "too big to survive without continuous bail-outs." Not too smart. Then again, the concept of fixing the debt by running even higher deficits over the next decade is also stupid. Look for the dollar to depreciate in terms of true purchasing power by at least 50% (and more likely 80%).
You don't need to run code in the kernel to infect a machine, so the claim that "this won't happen with 64-bit vista/7" is still bullshit, and your defense stinks just as much.
Not really. First, the most it could do is infect your own files, not the system. Second, you would have to run it - it can't spread by itself. Do people running linux run strange executable binaries that people send them? No. It's not like Windows, where reading your email can infect your machine.
That was disproven with the different rates of infection wrt apache vs. iis. The study showed Apache had by far the larger market share, but IIS had by far the most vulnerabilities. According to YOUR illogic, Apache, not IIS, should have had the most vulnerabilities.
Also, most crackers would prefer to p0wn one unix-type box over a dozen Windows boxes. Windows are the low-hanging fruit because the OS is pretty crappy by design. Microsoft refuses to make a clean break with the buggy code from the past, because they know that if they do, a lot of their customers are no longer "locked in", so it is in fact insecure by design.
When a machine behaves the same day in, day out, year after year, you get to know it. As an example, back in the days when I still dual-booted, I connected my box to the local lan, grabbed the file from the local share that I had been asked to look at, and I knew within a matter of seconds that it had gotten infected - it simply didn't feel the same. Booted back into linux, then tracked down the mofo who had the virus. He actually paid me $75 to install linux on his machine so he wouldn't have to re-install windows yet again.
We're not all dummies who will see our machines experience huge slowdowns, files that shouldn't have changed grow in size, lots of network activity, and not think that something is wrong. With Windows, though ... you've got to keep in mind that Windows is the exception that proves the rule that software doesn't just "wear out."
You must be related to the guy that was bitching about not being able to find a small distro for his 486.
BTW - trackballs suck as bad as those "natural keyboards" that were all the fad years ago.
Who said that any of them were zero-day viruses? re-read your own quote ...
Most of the viruses that could "come through the door" would not be zero-day viruses.
Same could be said about your reading comprehension ... HAND :-)
Nope. Any small laptop with an ebook reader got there first.
There's a huge difference between "patent-pending" and "we actually have an enforceable patent."
Bullshit. Microsoft made the same claim when they made the switch from 16-bit to 32-bit - "Viruses will be a thing of the past." 64 bits is not "magic pixie dust" - it's just the size of a native integer or memory pointer on your cpu.
Sure - just that you won't get a virus by running linux. I have yet (in over a decade of tending linux and bsd servers) had a single machine get infected.
Lesson learned - friends don't let friends run Windows.
If the telcos were buying them with a PO number, etc., and the PO states that they're test equipment, it shows his intent was to sell them test equipment. People usually do the illegal stuff without purchase orders, invoices, etc. Or does the local crack dealer now give receipts for tax purposes? Or the mafia give invoices for the "insurance protection plan" you buy from them :-)
What will hang him, IMO, is his attempt to get valid MAC addresses for a network he didn't have access to (for another customer). People doing legit deployment of testing equipment would already have such a list of addresses. Only someone who wanted to clone a legit MAC address so they could steal service would need that. His case is weak, very weak. He'll probably cop a plea.
Asking for a MAC address for use by a third party who wishes to remain anonymous IS a smoking gun. That's what he did on his own forum. And that will hang him.
We're all waiting for your "several valid technical support reasons" - but remember, they have to be credible enough that, to use your words, "an IT competent defense lawyer would be happy to use them in court."
You're not going to get much of an argument from me vis. the modem guy - he was clearly selling gear to help people steal service, judging by one of his forum posts.
However, it's not only electricians who should be able to carry around pliers in Texas. I've often kept a toolbox in my trunk, for those "just in case" emergencies, and the pliers in there are also illegal in Texas. Pretty stupid law - fortunately not often enforced.
It's like the contradictory highway code up here. When Walkmans became popular, they modified it so that headphones, etc. (any earpiece), were banned if you were driving a car. Then cell phones came out and you have to use either a speaker kit or a bluetooth earpiece - but the bluetooth earpiece is against the law under the language of the headphone ban. I won a bet with a cop over this - she didn't believe me until she pulled out her book, read the older law, and said :oops -you're right." The law still hasn't been fixed, and it probably never will be.
Or another contradictory pair of laws. Kids were hanging onto the rear bumper of buses during the winter and sliding along the street. City passed a bylaw making it illegal for anyone to hold onto any part of a vehicle in motion. So how the f*ck are you supposed to steer?
Same city passed a law prohibiting "massage" - and defined it as the "manipulation of a part of a human body by another person." Stupid politicians didn't realize they had just banned the hand-shake, doctors setting broken bones, dentistry, haircuts, giving babies a bath, and a whole lot of other common stuff.
Burning the flag is a poor example.
Americans have that right in ALL parts of the US, not just "most places". It's not just a right - burning is the PROPER way to dispose of a flag that's no longer suitable for display. The knee-jerk uninformed reaction of many Americans to flag-burning ("OMG it's WRONG and UNPATRIOTIC") is just another example of the sheer stupidity of misguided patriotism. Even the American Legion insists that burning the flag is the ONLY proper means of disposal.
Also, if you actually go to the link that claims that burning the flag is illegal in Finland, it references a flag-burning incident in *Australia*. No reference to Finland. In other words, wiki's citation is completely bogus, which means yours is too ... good thing you pulled it out of your ass :-)
So come up to Kanuckistan and burn as many flags as you want. Our attitude is that it says more about the person doing the act than anything else. We had Quebecers stomping on the Canadian flag in order to try to provoke anger, and most of us said "When you get down to it, that's pretty f*ing childish. Grow up already." Our pride is in our country, our people. In that context, flags are pretty much secondary.
The fact is that in terms of freedom, Canada ranks a lot higher than the US. We have freedom from bailing out banksters (we've only had 2 bank failures in almost 90 years; our banking system is rated the best in the world for a reason). That's not just a multi-trillion-dollar freedom - it's priceless. We have freedom from a de-facto two-party electoral system. We have campaign financing laws that give us political freedom from corporate overlords buying elections. We have public health care that gives us freedom from worrying about losing everything should we get sick. We're also already more than self-sufficient, energy-wise. In terms of the percentage of people in jails, we're definitely a LOT freer (but then again, so is every other country in the world. Ironic that the "land of the free" has not just the highest percentage of people behind bars, but more people than China, Russia, or any other country in the world).
Those are all current issues - and on every one, we're "more free". If it were only one or two issues where we were more free, you might be right ... but not when it's consistent, on such a broad range of issues.
It's a darned shame, because for a large portion of the last century, the US was *the* example of freedom (if you didn't look too close beneath the surface at the treatment of blacks via Jim Crow laws, for example, or jews, or asians, or the still-ongoing discrimination against gays and lesbians).
The comparisons aren't made to put down the US, but to point out that there are problems that need to be addressed, that other countries have successfully addressed them, and that maybe its time to drag the lobbyists (and the politicians beholden to them) behind the barn and shoot them in the wallet. That's what the ballot box is for.
The screens are about $20 a piece, so a second screen, which doubles the screen area, is only $20 more - MINUS the cost of building a cover (folding the screens serves that purpose). So the incremental cost is less than $20. It's too bad they dropped the two-screen model ... it's a good idea. If you've ever worked with dual monitors on your computer, going back to one is unthinkable. It just works so much better.
WRT Polanski, fortunately, once the "celebrity crowd" became more aware of the facts, they mostly STFU, and some have gone out of their way to take the other side publicly. Schwarzenegger said Polanski shouldn't get special treatment.
And lets face it, having Woody Allen publicly on your side in a case involving sex with a minor has got to be a boat anchor. That's like having Michael Vic say you know how to handle dogs properly, or Tom Cruise saying he likes your spirituality, or Chris Brown saying someone knows how to handle a woman.
If I feel a law is just, I will mostly obey it. If a law is unjust, or even just stupid, I'll mostly ignore it or disobey it. I say mostly, because I can't be 100% sure that I've, for example, always ignored bad laws.
I believe most Canadians are the same way. Americans ... you'd have to ask them. They're the ones who originated the phrase, "My country, right or wrong!" and whose leader made jingoism national policy with "You're either with us, or you're against us."
Nobody wants to punish everyone. If you pick up after your dog, you don't get "punished" for it. If you don't speed in a school zone, you don't get "punished" for it.
Learn to troll better. Or at least come up with a better bad car analogy, because that was pathetic.
I'm in Canada. We don't spend that much on weapons, and the courts have already ruled that plastering CCTV cameras all over public places in the hopes of catching Random J Offender are an unconstitutional invasion of privacy (we have a concept of "the anonymity of the crowd" - that people going about their own business in public should be able to do so without being spied upon).
We're also the country whose privacy commissioner forced Facebook to change its' operations wrt user data. The recent "memorializing of the dead" policy (item #3 in the link) is part of that process, just as making it clear to users that they can both deactivate AND delete their accounts (item #2). They have a year to get into full compliance, and they probably realized that if they didn't, other countries would start making the same demands, since they're reasonable.
Going after Facebook wasn't about getting money from them, but of making sure they respected people's rights.
I'm just saying that the Polanski case is a good example of leniency in plea bargaining. It wasn't statutory rape (sex with someone too young to give legal consent), but "rape rape" (to borrow Whoopie's term). He probably portrayed it as statutory rape to those around him, hence their weird "defense" of Polanski. It was plea-bargained to no jail time ... at least the case you cited, they got jail time.
I'm just wondering how much of his reluctance to return is related to whether he paid her the $400,000 he agreed to pay in response to her civil suit years later. We know from court records that she had to go back to court at least once to try to get him to cough up the agreed-upon amount ...
1. You specified common law. Most of Canada is common law, and my post disproves that what you said applies to "common law" generically.
2. Why not look at the plea bargain in the Roman Polanski affair if you want something that doesn't pass the smell test?
BTW, the maximum sentence for sexual assault when tried as a misdemeanor in Canada is $2,000 + 6 months. The minimum is an absolute discharge. Aggravated sexual assault, on the other hand, can get you life.
To put this in context, we just gave a life sentence to a genocidal nutbar from another country who thought that Canada would be a safe place for him.
Isn't it obvious? Convert them to Spam. Soylent Green forever.
Not in Canada. Cases below a certain minimum (examples: $7,000 in Quebec, $10,000 - or $25,000 as of next January - in Ontario) are going to end up in small claims court. Small claims court is the only option for many such cases. Here's the relevant citation for Quebec, which shows that even the Code Civile treats it the same as common law in the rest of Canada:
There are no civil jury trials in Quebec, and few in the rest of Canada. Thee is no Constitutional right for a trial by jury in civil cases in Canada.
Simple - he's then in a position to prove his claim that he's a legitimate supplier of legitimate goods, as acknowledged by experts in the industry purchasing and using his equipment.
Example:
Your client is arrested and charged with being in the possession of tools to facilitate crime, specifically a pry bar, which is used by burglars, and a body dent puller, which is used by car thieves to pop car locks. Also, a mask with filters, so he's also suspected of terrorism.
Your client then produces multiple invoices showing that he owns and runs a legitimate automotive garage, and those are just common tools of the trade - and the mask is OSHA-mandated safety equipment for anyone using a paint booth.
Heck, in Texas it's illegal to walk around with a pair of wire cutters in your back pocket - "might be used for cattle rustling." So what are they going to do - arrest electricians on house calls? They're in violation of the law, but the application of the law doesn't make sense in that context. Electricians need wire cutters.
In this case, though, he also posted a notice asking for a MAC address for a specific network. The operator of a network buying test equipment would already have these. That's an indication he's guilty, at the very least, in one specific case. He'll be smart to squawk loudly as a tactic to get a plea bargain, and that's what he's doing.