This isn't entirely correct, you're not allowed to not take cash to settle a debt. If there's no debt, you're more than welcome to tell people to piss off with their bag of change.
Actually there is no legal requirement to take cash, debt or no debt. You can refuse to accept cash if you want.
You can have your own set of opinions, but you can't have your own set of facts. Fact is that he initially leaked it to journalists. The governments' actions forced him into hiding, not his choice.
Facts are what are presented in court. The government may dispute his facts with evidence to the contrary. That's why we have juries, to decide cases based on the facts. Even if the government did force his hand that shows he realized he broke the law and decided to run to avoid getting punished. Regardless of our opinion on the rightness of his actions things do not look good for him. Each side will present facts that best suit their narrative. we obviously disagree on what we think the outcome will be but the truth of the matter is, no matter what we want it to be, the fate would be in the hands of a jury and no one knows how they will decide. To me, basing your hope of avoiding a serious prison term is to be able to convince a jury that you do not deserve to be convicted despite what the law says is a very risky thing to do.
And I think after two or three hung juries, they'll let it slide.
As I have said, I don't think the government will have a hard time getting a conviction that results in serious time. You disagree. That's fine; and in the end if he returns a jury will decide which one of us was correct assuming he doesn't return under a plea bargain. Personally, I would not return absent a plea, even then that has some risk because if i remember correctly a plea bargain is not binding on a court.
Too bad your version of the facts isn't the true one. He initially DID give the information to reporters - Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. It was only when things got too hot that he ended up "on the other side." At no point before he was forced into hiding was he "spying for the Russians and Chinese."
It all depends on how you spin the facts; and the prosecution will do so to make him look as bad as possible. He has no idea what others have said to investigators, and even once he finds out pre-trial it's his word against theirs and he may not come across as the most honest and truthful witness to a bunch of jurors. An innocent joke to a coworker that "the Russians would love to know we can do x" or musing "I wonder what X would pay of this" could be construed as part of a plan to commit espionage, for example In the end it's all about whose story is better and his isn't exactly the best since it hinges on jurors believing what he did was for the greater good and thus should ignore the law.
All it takes is one juror to hang a jury... and IF it ever goes to trial (doubtful) that's a likely scenario.
While I doubt it ever goes to trial simply because he has too much to lose absent a plea bargain I am not convinced they couldn't get a conviction or that a hung jury is the likely scenario. They may not convict on every count they'll charge him with but likely would find him guilty of enough counts to spend the rest of his life behind bars and in solitary.
And if they get a hung jury they can just retry him if they want and meanwhile keep him in jail since he has proven to be a flight risk. In the end the odds are not in his favor absent a plea bargain, and the US has little incentive to cut a favorable deal since most of the damage probably has already been done. They can just let him fall deeper and deeper into a bad psychological state since time is on their side; who knows at some point Putin may decide giving him up gets him something more valuable or even decide letting him go is to dangerous and as a result he gets charged with a crime in Russia or suffers an accident. He is only valuable as long as he either has information or is seen as a bargaining chip, and that is a really bad negotiation position to be in.
you can't run from government regulation in hatred of it as a great evil, and then expect government to come to rescue you when you inevitably get fucked. you got fucked, because there's no regulations.
Sure you can. Americans call them Tea Party Republicans.
One thing I would point out that he gave them to point out to the American people the extent to which the government was violating the constitutiion; there was no way to do that without the whole world knowing (including the ruskies and the chinese).
While you could legitimately argue that he was doing a good thing that is not the point. The point is can you make the argument convincingly enough to convince a jury not to convict despite ample evidence laws were broken? I think that is a high bar to clear, and the counter to letting the world know is he did not have to go to the Chinese and the Russians and hand over a treasure trove of material and that is the issue at trial. The prosecution would hammer home that the damage he did far outweighed any good he sought to do and focus on his spying for the Chinese and Russians. They might even point out he could have done the same thing in the US, via leaks to newspapers or to a sympathetic representative, without hurting the US by giving it to China and Russia. They will make as strong an emotional appeal to the jurors as his lawyers would. Since neither the law nor the facts are on his side he is reduced to a very, IMHO, long shot attempt to convince a jury to ignore both and acquit. He will be portrayed in the worst possible light, with everything he did while working for the government and later on the run, to make him a very unsympathetic defendant. Is he willing to bet his life on a long shot?
And, of course, if the government hadn't been breaking the law and the constitution, none of this would have happened, and it's to prevent the USA from becoming another North Korea / USSR / China.
That would probably hurt him since jurors are likely not think we are heading in that direction and thus find the claim a bit outrageous and thus discount his need to reveal the information.
And then to ask the same question that's been asked about the banks - why not a single conviction for the law-breakers.
That would probably be ruled inadmissible since it is irrelevant to the case and would think a lawyer that did that would be on shaky ethical ground.
In the end, our opinion on what he did is irrelevant, what counts is that of the jurors and I doubt popular opinion would be so strongly in his favor that he could win on jury nullification strategy; especially since the prosecution is free to press how badly he damaged American security while his lawyer would have to very carefully navigate the ethical grounds of making a jury nullification argument.
It goes back way passed that, except it used to be called Monday morning quarterbacking; and no doubt variants existed long before football was a sport. I could imagine Ogg and Trog sitting in the cave discussing how it was obvious Slog would get eaten by a sabertooth tiger as they recall all the close calls and stupid things he did long before he was eaten. After that was done they started the great Obsidian vs Flint spearhead flame war... It's a lot easier to go back and find the needles in the haystack once you now what you are looking for and to spin a timeline that supports the eventual outcome.
Once you're on the jury you can't be dismissed without cause. Jury nullification is not cause. And since lawyers aren't allowed to discuss it, they won't ask prospective jurors for their views on it.
Actually they can but they have to be sure it's because a juror refuses to follow the law and not just because the juror doen't believe in the merits of the prosecution's case. That is a very high bar and justifiably so; given the need for secret deliberations means it is exceedingly difficult to do which is good since it preserves a jury's independence and prevents a judge from removing a juror to get a guilty verdict. That does not mean it cannot be done.
Yoou needn't have gone to Canada to get an example; there are plenty in the US from juries refusing to enforce fugitive slave laws, refusing to convict whites when they murdered blacks, to refusing to convict fraft card burners during the VietNam war. What all if those cases, and your example, have in commn is a sympathetic populace that did not like the law or how it was applied. Lawyers always try to make thier client sympthetic and get jurors they think they can convince he or she is innocent based on the story they plan to tell.
The question in Snowden's case is "how easy will it be to get a sympathetic jury that would be willing to overlook the facts and decide based on a peraonal belief that what he did served a greater good and thus not convict?" I think it is a long shot bet, even if it is his only hope. The prosecution might even conceed his revelations did some good but giving everything to the Chinese and Russians warrants a finding og guilt and severe punishment to counter any desire on the part of jurors to acquit based on their belief the what he did accomplished. Greater good and thus does not deserve to be punished even if he broke the law.
His lawyers may try to make that argument, I think it is their only hope to win. In the end however his future is at stake and hinges on being able to convince a jury what he did was right despite the law. Remember, if you want to learn about right and wrong, you turn to religion, to learn about winning and losing you turn to the courts.
Everyone and their dog who owns a TV knows about jury nullification.
I doubt many people know wht it means but regardless knowing what it means and doing so are two different things and lawyers are not allowed to argue for nullification. Judges also tend to disqualify jurors who inquire about it and tell juries to decide based on the law. Ultimately you can't get inside the mind of a juror so it is always a possibility, doing so isn't easy. I would not bet my future on it as a strategy.
Except lawyers are not allowed to bring that up in trial or arguments.
2. Can he get a fair trial anywhere in the US, given that the entire pool of jury candidates has heard about him and his alleged acts (remember - he's still innocent until proven guilty, much as many people find that concept hard to swallow).
Also immaterial as long as the jury members can base their decision on the facts raised at trial. There is no need to not know anything about what he did. I also would not be surprised if you could find a jury pool that hasn't heard of him or doesn't remember hearing of him. We assume because we do everyone does which is not necessarily true since ewe are surrounded by people with similar interest and read similar news.
I love living here and all, but damn - if I were a young single guy and my home country wants me imprisoned (or worse - probably worse) over uncovering illegal activities they committed?
Screw that - I could learn Russian easily enough, many of the women there are reportedly rather cute, vodka ain't that bad as far as booze goes, and I can easily deal with living in cold-ass weather 9 months of the year.
Except you're not some random expat in Russia. You're a spy who has left everything behind, and not necessarily trusted by the Russians, either; since they cannot predict what you might do or say if you leave. They can't very well let you talk to whoever you want, get a job where you might learn something of interest you could reveal, or turn on them if you decide life there is worse than when you left. You have to wonder if the Russians one day will decide they get a better deal turning you over to the Americans what they get by protecting you; and possibly feeling guilty about what you did, if even only those you left behind, and add in loneliness and it may not be as idyllic as you hoped. Now comes the hard part for him; the realization he never can really return.
Because crime scenes aren't "clean" places. A lot of people have typically been on-scene. Jumping at the first match you find on file can end up convicting the wrong person. The actual perp may have been someone who'd managed to stay under the radar.
That's why it's called police work. DNA may put someone at a scene, but how and where it is found is very important as to wetter or not the person is a suspect. On a glass in the dishwasher? Probably not if the person is known to the victim. On a rape kit swab or under the victim's fingernails if they said they scratched the perpetrator? Sounds like at least a suspect to me in absence of other information.
Aside from the huge privacy issues, I'm even more concerned that they would screw up collecting it. Everyone sheds DNA. Who is to say that the DNA they collect is actually from the person they think it is? DNA gets all mixed together after it leaves a person's body.
In this case, the person was sitting in the chair, they swabbed it after he left, and it matched that found at the scene. Not hard to connect the dots.
I wouldn't be surprised if the wiped down the chair beforehand to remove potential contamination.
DNA would be collected at the crime scene and found in locations that wouldn't normally be found if someone merely visited the person so it's not as if he visited, they found his DNA on a chair at the scene, and decided he committed the crime.
In both collection cases there would be a chain of custody as well to help ensure the DNA collected was actually the DNA from the person the claimed it was.
A more interesting off shoot of the use of DNA is juries now seem to want DNA evidence as proof and the lack of it might convince them the have a reasonable doubt and thus find someone not guilty despite strong evidence of guilt absent DNA evidence.
the DNA test was no different than lifting a fingerprint left by someone. The did not force him to take a DNA test, rather he left it behind and thus no warrant is needed.
The Boston & Roxbury Mill Dam did this back in the early 1800's. It failed, in part because of "stagnant and foul water".
I say go for it. That failed project result din the Boston Back Bay, one of the priciest pieces of real estate in the US. Scotland, Wales and the rest of England could get new Londons sprouting up in a few years.
The problem with screamingly obvious answers is the may be obvious but wrong. Wire mesh over turbines are nice, but what do you do if sea life grows on them blocking intakes? Chlorine shock the water to kill growth? Any solution has pluses and minuses and to minimize the negative is a long run mistake.
is essentially what they are building, although a two way one. While Friends of the Earth may like it it appears not all do with concerns over the impact on fish in the lagoon and access to spawning sites.
I loved his acting as much as anyone, but I disagree that it was necessarily a sad day. He was, after all, 83 years old. He beat the average life expectancy in this country by a wide margin. He made an impact on a huge number of people, as well. He was ready to check out and move on. Really, what could you reasonably expect an 83 year old man to do beyond this point anyways? I'm happy for him and all he's done.
Joel Spolsky has a take on this problem, called Evidence-Based Scheduling, which tracks past estimates against their deliveries, and uses that to improve future estimates.
That is a good idea, but you have to be careful how you track work. We used to do estimates based on hours worked and thus come up with a price. Since the work was fixed price the actual hours were irrelevant to the customer's cost; but very relevant to our team. Going over was bad; and going under yielded us no benefits other than having to explain low utilization; even if we had huge profit margins. As a result, our total hours billed to a project always exactly matched the estimate. One word of caution, never let the sales person estimate the cost or duration; they are rewarded on sales and so have an incentive to underbid to get work and let the team try to deliver.
A well defined project can be estimated. Change Orders estimating needs to be done properly and BILLED - the cost of re-analyzing is a real cost and the business needs to see it. Once you get that across the number of change requests decreases dramatically.
Software engineering is Engineering... some of the costs are inverted, but otherwise it's the same project management as other engineering projects.
Correct. Our rule was "Give away the initial project because we'll retire on the change orders..."
This isn't like a door lock where its possible to overcome them and we can't stop them from being overcome, so we take advantage of locksmiths when we screw up. Locks can not be 100% secure, encrypted data can be effectively 100% secure and thats a different environment.
While I agree with most of your points there is no such things as 100% secure data; some is only harder to get than others. It only take step right approach to get it.
Repetitive and easily managed process are ripe for replacement, just ask telephone operators, and higher paid positions are reduced in favor of less costly staff trained in specific functions, just as MD's about NPs and Nurse Anesthetists. As machines get better at collecting, analyzing and recognizing patterns people who do that will be replaced by machines, just as the spreadsheet replaced begins of low level accountants crunching numbers by hand. The ability to use that information for decisions making will mean higher level cognitive skills will still be in demand, as will the ability to recognize and react in unforeseen circumstances. Flying FedEx drones from a room in Memphis is a great idea, but what happens when you lose the radio link or your instrument data goes haywire and you need to figure to what is going on; while controlling a hundred other plans as well? Planes already have gone to 2 person crews since automation has eliminated the need for the flight engineer and many planes can pretty much fly from takeoff to touchdown without a pilot's intervention but the pilots are there not for the routine but for the unexpected. It's the ability to apply a solution in an unforeseen situation or green insights that will continue to be valuable; sure a machine can predict the success of a lawsuit, or the probability of a winning hand, but a good lawyer, like a good poker player, can find a way to turn a loser into a winner and that's what people pay for.
that because something uses the internet or an app it is somehow different from the same activity done the "old" way; when all the new thing is is an old process enabled by a different technology. If you got a bunch of people to agree to let you dispatch them to pick up rides and charge for them, added a bunch of POTS lines to handle the calls, and then connected paying passengers with drivers, you would be called an unlicensed cab company. Uber simply replaced the POTS lines with an app, the rest of the process is the same and yet they think they are different because they use disruptive technology; when a bunch of POTS lines is just as disruptive if not as convenient as an app.
Driving the long route to get a higher fare. It still happens today but with licensing there is at least an authority to report the violation to. If it happens enough times the company can be fined and the driver's permit pulled. Fare kiting is fairly easy to prove as place to place fares are easy to confirm.
Happens in Vegas all the time. Drivers are supposed to take the shortest route, or at least that is the law unless it has changed recently, or ask if you want a different one but on city to airport runs they go the long way. If you go through the tunnel they've nailed you for a longer fare; however if you ask them why the took the long route instead of the prescribed shorter one they will charge you the shorter fare. If they balk you can always ask the cop at the airport what to do and the driver doesn't want that because he may get fined. I was told this by an honest cab driver who was pissed that many cheat customers who when they find out think al cabbies are crooks; when I went to the airport lo and behold we went through the tunnel and when I asked the driver charged the lower fare.
We're particularly interested in research that either won't work or, if it does work, won't work for a long time. And I've been reading some of your papers.
Sounds like a pretty damning indictment.
It actually has at least a couple of advantages. The sooner you learn what doesn't work the quicker you avoid sinking vast sums of money into trying to make it work. If an adversary is working on it you can be assured it is a waste of time and money they could spend on something that might actually work. Of course, sometimes people are wrong about what won't work because they give up to soon; which is the downside of asking what won't work.
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This isn't entirely correct, you're not allowed to not take cash to settle a debt. If there's no debt, you're more than welcome to tell people to piss off with their bag of change.
Actually there is no legal requirement to take cash, debt or no debt. You can refuse to accept cash if you want.
You can have your own set of opinions, but you can't have your own set of facts. Fact is that he initially leaked it to journalists. The governments' actions forced him into hiding, not his choice.
Facts are what are presented in court. The government may dispute his facts with evidence to the contrary. That's why we have juries, to decide cases based on the facts. Even if the government did force his hand that shows he realized he broke the law and decided to run to avoid getting punished. Regardless of our opinion on the rightness of his actions things do not look good for him. Each side will present facts that best suit their narrative. we obviously disagree on what we think the outcome will be but the truth of the matter is, no matter what we want it to be, the fate would be in the hands of a jury and no one knows how they will decide. To me, basing your hope of avoiding a serious prison term is to be able to convince a jury that you do not deserve to be convicted despite what the law says is a very risky thing to do.
And I think after two or three hung juries, they'll let it slide.
As I have said, I don't think the government will have a hard time getting a conviction that results in serious time. You disagree. That's fine; and in the end if he returns a jury will decide which one of us was correct assuming he doesn't return under a plea bargain. Personally, I would not return absent a plea, even then that has some risk because if i remember correctly a plea bargain is not binding on a court.
Too bad your version of the facts isn't the true one. He initially DID give the information to reporters - Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. It was only when things got too hot that he ended up "on the other side." At no point before he was forced into hiding was he "spying for the Russians and Chinese."
It all depends on how you spin the facts; and the prosecution will do so to make him look as bad as possible. He has no idea what others have said to investigators, and even once he finds out pre-trial it's his word against theirs and he may not come across as the most honest and truthful witness to a bunch of jurors. An innocent joke to a coworker that "the Russians would love to know we can do x" or musing "I wonder what X would pay of this" could be construed as part of a plan to commit espionage, for example In the end it's all about whose story is better and his isn't exactly the best since it hinges on jurors believing what he did was for the greater good and thus should ignore the law.
All it takes is one juror to hang a jury ... and IF it ever goes to trial (doubtful) that's a likely scenario.
While I doubt it ever goes to trial simply because he has too much to lose absent a plea bargain I am not convinced they couldn't get a conviction or that a hung jury is the likely scenario. They may not convict on every count they'll charge him with but likely would find him guilty of enough counts to spend the rest of his life behind bars and in solitary.
And if they get a hung jury they can just retry him if they want and meanwhile keep him in jail since he has proven to be a flight risk. In the end the odds are not in his favor absent a plea bargain, and the US has little incentive to cut a favorable deal since most of the damage probably has already been done. They can just let him fall deeper and deeper into a bad psychological state since time is on their side; who knows at some point Putin may decide giving him up gets him something more valuable or even decide letting him go is to dangerous and as a result he gets charged with a crime in Russia or suffers an accident. He is only valuable as long as he either has information or is seen as a bargaining chip, and that is a really bad negotiation position to be in.
you can't run from government regulation in hatred of it as a great evil, and then expect government to come to rescue you when you inevitably get fucked. you got fucked, because there's no regulations.
Sure you can. Americans call them Tea Party Republicans.
One thing I would point out that he gave them to point out to the American people the extent to which the government was violating the constitutiion; there was no way to do that without the whole world knowing (including the ruskies and the chinese).
While you could legitimately argue that he was doing a good thing that is not the point. The point is can you make the argument convincingly enough to convince a jury not to convict despite ample evidence laws were broken? I think that is a high bar to clear, and the counter to letting the world know is he did not have to go to the Chinese and the Russians and hand over a treasure trove of material and that is the issue at trial. The prosecution would hammer home that the damage he did far outweighed any good he sought to do and focus on his spying for the Chinese and Russians. They might even point out he could have done the same thing in the US, via leaks to newspapers or to a sympathetic representative, without hurting the US by giving it to China and Russia. They will make as strong an emotional appeal to the jurors as his lawyers would. Since neither the law nor the facts are on his side he is reduced to a very, IMHO, long shot attempt to convince a jury to ignore both and acquit. He will be portrayed in the worst possible light, with everything he did while working for the government and later on the run, to make him a very unsympathetic defendant. Is he willing to bet his life on a long shot?
And, of course, if the government hadn't been breaking the law and the constitution, none of this would have happened, and it's to prevent the USA from becoming another North Korea / USSR / China.
That would probably hurt him since jurors are likely not think we are heading in that direction and thus find the claim a bit outrageous and thus discount his need to reveal the information.
And then to ask the same question that's been asked about the banks - why not a single conviction for the law-breakers.
That would probably be ruled inadmissible since it is irrelevant to the case and would think a lawyer that did that would be on shaky ethical ground.
In the end, our opinion on what he did is irrelevant, what counts is that of the jurors and I doubt popular opinion would be so strongly in his favor that he could win on jury nullification strategy; especially since the prosecution is free to press how badly he damaged American security while his lawyer would have to very carefully navigate the ethical grounds of making a jury nullification argument.
It goes back way passed that, except it used to be called Monday morning quarterbacking; and no doubt variants existed long before football was a sport. I could imagine Ogg and Trog sitting in the cave discussing how it was obvious Slog would get eaten by a sabertooth tiger as they recall all the close calls and stupid things he did long before he was eaten. After that was done they started the great Obsidian vs Flint spearhead flame war... It's a lot easier to go back and find the needles in the haystack once you now what you are looking for and to spin a timeline that supports the eventual outcome.
Once you're on the jury you can't be dismissed without cause. Jury nullification is not cause. And since lawyers aren't allowed to discuss it, they won't ask prospective jurors for their views on it.
Actually they can but they have to be sure it's because a juror refuses to follow the law and not just because the juror doen't believe in the merits of the prosecution's case. That is a very high bar and justifiably so; given the need for secret deliberations means it is exceedingly difficult to do which is good since it preserves a jury's independence and prevents a judge from removing a juror to get a guilty verdict. That does not mean it cannot be done.
You might not bet your future on it, but Dr Henry Morgentaler did, 3 times:
Yoou needn't have gone to Canada to get an example; there are plenty in the US from juries refusing to enforce fugitive slave laws, refusing to convict whites when they murdered blacks, to refusing to convict fraft card burners during the VietNam war. What all if those cases, and your example, have in commn is a sympathetic populace that did not like the law or how it was applied. Lawyers always try to make thier client sympthetic and get jurors they think they can convince he or she is innocent based on the story they plan to tell.
The question in Snowden's case is "how easy will it be to get a sympathetic jury that would be willing to overlook the facts and decide based on a peraonal belief that what he did served a greater good and thus not convict?" I think it is a long shot bet, even if it is his only hope. The prosecution might even conceed his revelations did some good but giving everything to the Chinese and Russians warrants a finding og guilt and severe punishment to counter any desire on the part of jurors to acquit based on their belief the what he did accomplished. Greater good and thus does not deserve to be punished even if he broke the law.
His lawyers may try to make that argument, I think it is their only hope to win. In the end however his future is at stake and hinges on being able to convince a jury what he did was right despite the law. Remember, if you want to learn about right and wrong, you turn to religion, to learn about winning and losing you turn to the courts.
Everyone and their dog who owns a TV knows about jury nullification.
I doubt many people know wht it means but regardless knowing what it means and doing so are two different things and lawyers are not allowed to argue for nullification. Judges also tend to disqualify jurors who inquire about it and tell juries to decide based on the law. Ultimately you can't get inside the mind of a juror so it is always a possibility, doing so isn't easy. I would not bet my future on it as a strategy.
"We can't compete so we need the government to step in."
Good point, which brings up two problems:
1. Jury nullification is a possibility
Except lawyers are not allowed to bring that up in trial or arguments.
2. Can he get a fair trial anywhere in the US, given that the entire pool of jury candidates has heard about him and his alleged acts (remember - he's still innocent until proven guilty, much as many people find that concept hard to swallow).
Also immaterial as long as the jury members can base their decision on the facts raised at trial. There is no need to not know anything about what he did. I also would not be surprised if you could find a jury pool that hasn't heard of him or doesn't remember hearing of him. We assume because we do everyone does which is not necessarily true since ewe are surrounded by people with similar interest and read similar news.
Thinking the same thing here.
I love living here and all, but damn - if I were a young single guy and my home country wants me imprisoned (or worse - probably worse) over uncovering illegal activities they committed?
Screw that - I could learn Russian easily enough, many of the women there are reportedly rather cute, vodka ain't that bad as far as booze goes, and I can easily deal with living in cold-ass weather 9 months of the year.
Except you're not some random expat in Russia. You're a spy who has left everything behind, and not necessarily trusted by the Russians, either; since they cannot predict what you might do or say if you leave. They can't very well let you talk to whoever you want, get a job where you might learn something of interest you could reveal, or turn on them if you decide life there is worse than when you left. You have to wonder if the Russians one day will decide they get a better deal turning you over to the Americans what they get by protecting you; and possibly feeling guilty about what you did, if even only those you left behind, and add in loneliness and it may not be as idyllic as you hoped. Now comes the hard part for him; the realization he never can really return.
Because crime scenes aren't "clean" places. A lot of people have typically been on-scene. Jumping at the first match you find on file can end up convicting the wrong person. The actual perp may have been someone who'd managed to stay under the radar.
That's why it's called police work. DNA may put someone at a scene, but how and where it is found is very important as to wetter or not the person is a suspect. On a glass in the dishwasher? Probably not if the person is known to the victim. On a rape kit swab or under the victim's fingernails if they said they scratched the perpetrator? Sounds like at least a suspect to me in absence of other information.
Aside from the huge privacy issues, I'm even more concerned that they would screw up collecting it. Everyone sheds DNA. Who is to say that the DNA they collect is actually from the person they think it is? DNA gets all mixed together after it leaves a person's body.
In this case, the person was sitting in the chair, they swabbed it after he left, and it matched that found at the scene. Not hard to connect the dots.
I wouldn't be surprised if the wiped down the chair beforehand to remove potential contamination.
DNA would be collected at the crime scene and found in locations that wouldn't normally be found if someone merely visited the person so it's not as if he visited, they found his DNA on a chair at the scene, and decided he committed the crime.
In both collection cases there would be a chain of custody as well to help ensure the DNA collected was actually the DNA from the person the claimed it was.
A more interesting off shoot of the use of DNA is juries now seem to want DNA evidence as proof and the lack of it might convince them the have a reasonable doubt and thus find someone not guilty despite strong evidence of guilt absent DNA evidence.
the DNA test was no different than lifting a fingerprint left by someone. The did not force him to take a DNA test, rather he left it behind and thus no warrant is needed.
The Boston & Roxbury Mill Dam did this back in the early 1800's. It failed, in part because of "stagnant and foul water".
I say go for it. That failed project result din the Boston Back Bay, one of the priciest pieces of real estate in the US. Scotland, Wales and the rest of England could get new Londons sprouting up in a few years.
screamingly obvious answers to non-problems.
The problem with screamingly obvious answers is the may be obvious but wrong. Wire mesh over turbines are nice, but what do you do if sea life grows on them blocking intakes? Chlorine shock the water to kill growth? Any solution has pluses and minuses and to minimize the negative is a long run mistake.
is essentially what they are building, although a two way one. While Friends of the Earth may like it it appears not all do with concerns over the impact on fish in the lagoon and access to spawning sites.
I loved his acting as much as anyone, but I disagree that it was necessarily a sad day. He was, after all, 83 years old. He beat the average life expectancy in this country by a wide margin. He made an impact on a huge number of people, as well. He was ready to check out and move on. Really, what could you reasonably expect an 83 year old man to do beyond this point anyways? I'm happy for him and all he's done.
Yes, he truly lived long and prospered...
Joel Spolsky has a take on this problem, called Evidence-Based Scheduling, which tracks past estimates against their deliveries, and uses that to improve future estimates.
That is a good idea, but you have to be careful how you track work. We used to do estimates based on hours worked and thus come up with a price. Since the work was fixed price the actual hours were irrelevant to the customer's cost; but very relevant to our team. Going over was bad; and going under yielded us no benefits other than having to explain low utilization; even if we had huge profit margins. As a result, our total hours billed to a project always exactly matched the estimate. One word of caution, never let the sales person estimate the cost or duration; they are rewarded on sales and so have an incentive to underbid to get work and let the team try to deliver.
A well defined project can be estimated. Change Orders estimating needs to be done properly and BILLED - the cost of re-analyzing is a real cost and the business needs to see it. Once you get that across the number of change requests decreases dramatically.
Software engineering is Engineering... some of the costs are inverted, but otherwise it's the same project management as other engineering projects.
Correct. Our rule was "Give away the initial project because we'll retire on the change orders..."
This isn't like a door lock where its possible to overcome them and we can't stop them from being overcome, so we take advantage of locksmiths when we screw up. Locks can not be 100% secure, encrypted data can be effectively 100% secure and thats a different environment.
While I agree with most of your points there is no such things as 100% secure data; some is only harder to get than others. It only take step right approach to get it.
Repetitive and easily managed process are ripe for replacement, just ask telephone operators, and higher paid positions are reduced in favor of less costly staff trained in specific functions, just as MD's about NPs and Nurse Anesthetists. As machines get better at collecting, analyzing and recognizing patterns people who do that will be replaced by machines, just as the spreadsheet replaced begins of low level accountants crunching numbers by hand. The ability to use that information for decisions making will mean higher level cognitive skills will still be in demand, as will the ability to recognize and react in unforeseen circumstances. Flying FedEx drones from a room in Memphis is a great idea, but what happens when you lose the radio link or your instrument data goes haywire and you need to figure to what is going on; while controlling a hundred other plans as well? Planes already have gone to 2 person crews since automation has eliminated the need for the flight engineer and many planes can pretty much fly from takeoff to touchdown without a pilot's intervention but the pilots are there not for the routine but for the unexpected. It's the ability to apply a solution in an unforeseen situation or green insights that will continue to be valuable; sure a machine can predict the success of a lawsuit, or the probability of a winning hand, but a good lawyer, like a good poker player, can find a way to turn a loser into a winner and that's what people pay for.
that because something uses the internet or an app it is somehow different from the same activity done the "old" way; when all the new thing is is an old process enabled by a different technology. If you got a bunch of people to agree to let you dispatch them to pick up rides and charge for them, added a bunch of POTS lines to handle the calls, and then connected paying passengers with drivers, you would be called an unlicensed cab company. Uber simply replaced the POTS lines with an app, the rest of the process is the same and yet they think they are different because they use disruptive technology; when a bunch of POTS lines is just as disruptive if not as convenient as an app.
Driving the long route to get a higher fare. It still happens today but with licensing there is at least an authority to report the violation to. If it happens enough times the company can be fined and the driver's permit pulled. Fare kiting is fairly easy to prove as place to place fares are easy to confirm.
Happens in Vegas all the time. Drivers are supposed to take the shortest route, or at least that is the law unless it has changed recently, or ask if you want a different one but on city to airport runs they go the long way. If you go through the tunnel they've nailed you for a longer fare; however if you ask them why the took the long route instead of the prescribed shorter one they will charge you the shorter fare. If they balk you can always ask the cop at the airport what to do and the driver doesn't want that because he may get fined. I was told this by an honest cab driver who was pissed that many cheat customers who when they find out think al cabbies are crooks; when I went to the airport lo and behold we went through the tunnel and when I asked the driver charged the lower fare.
We're particularly interested in research that either won't work or, if it does work, won't work for a long time. And I've been reading some of your papers.
Sounds like a pretty damning indictment.
It actually has at least a couple of advantages. The sooner you learn what doesn't work the quicker you avoid sinking vast sums of money into trying to make it work. If an adversary is working on it you can be assured it is a waste of time and money they could spend on something that might actually work. Of course, sometimes people are wrong about what won't work because they give up to soon; which is the downside of asking what won't work.