It will be an interesting debate, because on the one hand the data will be useful (enough so that the automakers think they can make money off of it) and on the other it could cost the auto owner money, either by telling the truth or lying. Yes, these boxes could err, but I would expect that to be just another factor in court. Regardless, the ramifications will be extensive.
Of course, don't forget that a tamperproof box might very well save you in court. We would all benefit from less fraud in court, as it drives up insurance. And then there are the harder to quantify but likely benefits of incorporating lots of real-world data into safety design of brakes and such.
I think it should obviously be up to the driver whether to participate. Some rental car companies might decide to use the boxes to protect their property against illegal misuse -- indeed it may be their insurers that require it; perhaps a discount could be offered to those who want to opt-out, calibrated tp the differential in insurance claims between people who use the boxes and those who do not. Monitoring is not novel: for many years I've seen speed recording devices on some long-distance buses.
All of this can be argued up or down, but I don't think a flat ban on the boxes is appropriate or likely.
(Seriously, not my type. But couldn't resist. =] )
Methinks she doth protest too much.
Yes, yes, I know what you mean. Funny thing, in college we left a copy of Playboy out on the coffee table -- adventursome as we were -- and the only people who picked it up were women, to offer some critique or another. As for lesbians, it is my understanding Playboy's not really pitched at them. Or maybe you know that. Not to judge. There's nothing wrong with it. Let's just say I won't ask your type.:)
Yes, but without slippery slopes there would be far fewer jobs for lawyers.
The slippery slope argument is usually excessive, such as saying that to allow the government to impose a speed limit risks that one day they will set it to zero. Sure, maybe, but there are political and in extremis constitutional checks on things going to far. I assume that at some point holding someone liable for the acts of another would violate substantive due process. Believe me this has been debated for years, perhaps most famously in Palsgraf. Look for critiques of that one and your evening is all sewed up.
Leave Frex alone.:) And if you worry that the law expects too much of you, note that if you see Frex stick a knife in someone you have no obligation to call the poilce or help the victim. You have to have some positive involvement in the event, and are otherwise free to watch someone drown with impunity, no matter how easily you could have helped. Little oddities of the law.
Yep. There are two arguments in the quoted passage: First, that Congress has abused the meaning of "limited time"; second, that retroactive extensions of "existing terms" are prohibited. I'm sympathetic to the second, and think the first is for Congress not the courts.
I do sort of wish the Court would intervene to say the term has gotten too long, but don't want a precedent like that for the Court to do so in other cases. Historical experience has been that although unchecked power of Congress is bad, the unreviewable power of the Court can be worse, as when it was busy invalidating the New Deal. Given precedent, I don't think th Court will, and I'd prefer we petition Congress, as has happened with the DMCA.
But who cares what I think -- here is the transcript of the Oct. 9 oral argument, which discussion well describes the essentially simple dipute.
Yes, but just a couple. Some very industrious people compiled this list.
Even were the US the longest, it would have to be so by a good margin to stick out. Again, I don't necessarily think the current terms are appropriate. Judge Posner has criticized them well, and noted that the main problem is that because it is difficult to make money off materials in the public domain, there was little opposition to the Sonny Bono Act.
Eldred is a very interesting case. I'm optimistic the retroactive portion of the law stands a 50:50 chance of being struck down, despite the Court's conservatism and traditional deference to Congress in similar matters. As for prospective copyright terms, I really doubt the court will intervene, because the life+70/95 terms are not obviously unreasonable, esp. when compared to law in other countries -- even if they do seem a tad long as a matter of judgment.
EFF has done a nice job collecting legal materials as its website, useful as a reference even if one disagrees with their position.
What to make some money while testing your legal and psychic prowess? Try this contest.
Actually your example isn't *quite* "actual nudity."
These pictures are in the Playboy mold of certain unspoken rules over what can be shown and what should be airbrushed, and so on. The rules have relaxed over the decades, I suppose in pace with social mores.
This kind of photo shows less but IMHO is less tasteful.
Of course, here we are being suckered into the poster's prediction of degeneracy.
Isn't this woman setting herself up for an obsessive stalker? I understand she wants to make money off her birthday looks, fine, and it wouldn't be her fault if/when some nutcase targets her, but the risk of harassment is huge given that her identity is so clearly established and the website purports to sell a way to get "close" to her.
As for typing into the Playboy mark, whatever. I suppose it makes your attractiveness prestigious?
The silly thing about Clinton -- who must have tried drugs at some point -- is who should care whether he did. I would care if he continued to use them, if only because you can't have the leader breaking his own country's laws. With Bush, I dont care about the cocaine or DUI, except to the extent he lies or refuses to come clean. What I would like to hear is whether he thinks that, had he been prosecuted and punished per current draconian law, he and the nation would be better off. If not...
Hey, I'm sympathetic, but I think a lot of the focus on personality comes from the public's demand for it. We can all understand personality, most of us have one, without studying a bunch of history. The stories can also be titillating, esp. with Clinton -- not that I was interested, yuck.
Politicians do show up on those boring Sunday shows and things like Nightline, I've seen them often. It's hard not to run into John McCain, and he's done a good job of getting his message out for free via the media. Trent Lott got his message out for free, too, but what did him in was that Republicans wanted to dump him. The gaffe, which merely represented what he's been about all along (and worse, in the past), was pretext. BTW, I'm fascinated by his successor Frist who had not voted until 1989 at age 38. I don't think that disqualifies him, but I'd sure like to know why he changed.
The internet has been great for sidelining the media on basic information like the candidates' position papers. It's also much harder to bury something one said, wrote, or did (e.g., http://www.thesmokinggun.com/). That's great. But I think there will always be only a % of people actively involved in politics, and that's OK with me -- it's rational to be uninvolved if things are going the way you desire. But I don't want to here from the uninvolved how terrible everything is. Nor is any of this new, I bet you could find ancient Greek writers complaining about people ignoring politics. IRC voting was mandatory in Athens.
Also, not to be cynical, but I'm a lot more interested in what politicians do or did than what they say they'll do.
Oh, we're already there. An implied example might be the Nichols trial. Actually there it is a tougher question of constructive knowledge, or shouldn't Nichols have realized what was going on? This assumes he isn't simply lying.
Reagardless of the details of this or any case, it is existing law that you can be reponsible for a crime without pulling the trigger, whether as a conspirator, accomplice, accessory. That liability might even be just civil. This liability is not absolute, it depends on the character of your participation, what you knew, and when you knew it.
I don't know the precise rules with regard to a merchant selling something to a soon-to-be criminal. But there is the possibility in there somewhere, particularly where the merchant knows of an imminent threat to a third party. Try to think of the ugliest possible facts, like the person announces, "Sell me this gun so I can go shoot my wife waiting in the car," and so on; at some point it should feel like too much. Then it is simply a matter of drawing the line.
This sounds kind of unfair because the defendant didn't "do" anything to the victim, but a good part of the analysis is about economics not morals. It is efficient to hold the defendant to a duty of care to prevent bad acts by others to others. One common example is the "dram shop acts" holding liable bars and restaurants that serve too many drinks to someone who goes out and runs over someone. Another example is that you can be liable for leaving your keys in the car, or worse leaving the car running (which in most places is illegal, too), if someone steals the car and runs over people. Yes, technically you didn't "do it" but you certainly enabled it, and the point is the safety of society more than condemning an individual.
Here is a random hit from the web, a "sale of bullets" case that appears to me correct (I skimmed it). Note that this is a civil case, and the court basically found that the plaintiff's legal arguments might be valid but needed to be developed factually in the trial court. The court did not look at who should win, just whether the plaintiff could win under their various theories of the case.
I'm not justifying any of this so much as saying it is already the law, adn has been for many years.
That is why we have in the Whitehouse a Vietnam draft dogger who deserted his National guard post that daddy pulled strings to get, a man with a criminal conviction and a man who was investigated by the SEC for corruption who got off on a 'technicality' - if you call having daddy being Vice President at the time a technicality.
and forgive me if for a moment I flashed back to President Clinton. His offenses were not precisely the same, but there are plenty of parallels. Clinton's weakness tended to run to sexual rather than financial dealings. Both men shared some difficulties with the draft, certain unclean dabblings with the courts, and a peculiar lying about past drug use, lies I can only think Americans somehow demand of them. None of this makes me happy. But we know this stuff (well, OK, I thought everyone know about Bush ducking his incredibly valuable duties learning to fly antiquated airplanes in Texas -- but that's relatively minor), it's not going to change much now. Also, forgive me but there is a certain amount of common sense in trying to avoid going to Vietnam. The biggest objection I have is that ducking the draft effectively meant sending some less connected in your place. (Notes: Clinton allegedly did a double-duck -- getting ROTC for draft immunity, then ducking ROTC when his draft number showed he would not have been drafted. Bush's alleged double-duck was that he skated into a flight training program desired by many, with barely passing test scores, then didn't show up for a third of it anyway, yet was not punished).
I'm not attacking or defending anyone, I just don't think the character attacks do much good, esp. over stuff 25 years ago except to put down misrepresentations. Character and record are things to think about in deciding whom to trust, but now that the election is past (on which I accept the result but insist on reform) really there's plenty concrete to criticize without digging up the past or speculating about the future. I don't happen to believe President Bush is a person of great character -- compare him to his father even -- but I'm a lot more worried that he just isn't showing much common sense, and so many of his actions or inactions appear beholden to certain minority (and I don't mean race) interests.
So rather than become liberal Rush Limbaughs -- what a concept! -- let's ask about the Iraq agenda, the economy, prescription drugs, Wall Street corruption, Enron and family, domestic spying, immigration law, peculiar tax breaks, budget deficits, and so on and so on
Well, OK, that's pretty much what compulsory means.
Presumably voting is an aspect of freedom, and being forced to vote runs against that. Although it's not a practice I readily endorse, I know perfectly intelligent people here in the States who have boycotted elections out of disgust. If they should must be coerced, it would make a lot more sense to force themm to get involved at the grassroots level, or to contribute money to minor candidates, that to force them to ratify the result of a selection process they think is corrupt.
I don't see how increased "swing votes" prove people care more. Detailed surveys might, but vote counts could mean different things. Swingers can be either principled or fickle. Also, it is inevitable that a swing group will develop and grow, because the major parites will adjust their policies to get as many voters as possible, resulting in roughly even split. The swing group simple develops at this split, their loyalties divided and thus up for grabs.
Being forced to vote would make me mad. I'd vote against it.:)
...when I first saw that. I thought at first it was just an unexpected combination of words until I realized it came up every time.
It's nice to be with the "in" crowd. The post-Neaderthal crowd. In one way anyhow.
Now which books would you buy to trigger the "People who don't wear clothes..." link? I guess Amazon wouldn't give a damn about them because they're not going to buy anything.
... Barnes&Noble sued Amazon: "The day before Amazon.com launched its Initial Public Offering on the NASDAQ exchange, Barnes and Noble filed suit to stop Amazon from billing itself as "Earth's Biggest Bookstore." Barnes and Noble, which bills itself as the "World's Biggest Bookseller Online" on its new Web site, claims in its lawsuit that Amazon.com is not a bookseller but a broker for distributors." There's a good use of the courts.
I don't worry a whole lot about the corporations jostling for control. Amazon has in many ways been the innovator and gold standard in online commerce; most of its competitors launched as wannabes, which is great. As B&N illustrates, mindlessness is not Amazon's monopoly. It's when a company does go monopoly and anticompetitive (or is on the verge of same) that I recommend walking, as with a certain software company called -- well, if you're using IE to read this, you're not with me.:)
All that said and done, I think it's great to hunt down smaller sellers that offer specialized selections or benefit a cause you care about, even if the price is not less. Also try to use the Amazon Associates feature to channel some $ to useful groups.
So, if you're selling large numbers of ball-peen hammers that people are using to bash in car windows so they can steal stereos, should we hope that the cops shut down your hardware store?
The key is knowledge. If a guy comes in your gun shop and you ask, "What are you going to use it for?" and he says, "I want a gun to shoot my wife." then you'd best take a pass. I'm not even sure selling would be illegal but I just think it's be better to refrain. You wouldn't I believe had a responsibility to report him to the police, but I'd probably do that, too. In a pinch, sell him a broken gun. Or one of the backwards-firing ones from that Bond movie.
In NYC they actually banned the sale of spraypaint to kids because of graffiti. An especially problematice hardware store item has been $1.95 box cutters, used for everything from muggings to hijackings. I have no idea wha can or should be done, but sometimes benign items like blank CD's (notice how he skillfully glides back on-topic) can have destructive consequences.
4th, 9th... I'm a little rusty, but don't you live in the 1st Circuit? It may be a little dry, but the region has supplied two Supreme Court justices. Huh, I hadn't thought about it, but I guess I live in the 4th now. And I read just Supreme Court decisions at most, which are funny if you are a little twisted. If you find the law amusing you may enjoy the novel "Supreme Court Fantasy League" contest.
He didn't believe there was a valid contract because the two parties had different expectations of the promise.
That is one of the basics of contract law, the "meeting of the minds." But when one party misleads the other.... Sure they had different expectations, one to cheat, the other to work. I'm interested in what the judge thinks because (1) some have insights and (2) some are nuts.:) The elected ones can be a particularly mixed bag.
Well, good job -- I'd like to be a juror some day, provided it's at a time completely convenient to me, and an interesting yet brief case, where all the other jurors agree with me. Getting a book contract out of it would be nice, too.;-)
Re:DETAILS on his pretrial detention??
on
Kevin Free
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· Score: 2
The denial of a bail hearing was disturbing. But the chances that Mitnick was consequently denied bail are practically nil. Even if he did lose out on bail, the time he spent in detention counted towards the sentence of 22 months imposed in 1997 and his later sentence of 40+ mos. for other offenses, so no harm there either. In other words, he may have been wronged but the injury was small or negligible. The hearing is not valuable; the result is.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of a hearing in a summary order. IMHO I think they were almost certainly mistaken. Yet because of the nature of the case Mitnick would have a very difficult time showing the injury was anything more than pro forma, and the damages any more than nominal (e.g., $1).
I went and looked up federal bail rules under the Bail Reform Act of 1984. Section 3142(f) certainly appears to require a hearing, and the trial court simply appeared to have its mind made up. On the other hand, Mitnick has put forward nothing taht would get him out of 3142(e) even if the court believed him. That he was a flight risk was already right there on paper -- his criminal history -- and it would have been his onerous burden to rebut that.
I think this is a case where the system injured itself much more than this particular defendant, and I worry what that will mean for the next defendant. For individual miscarriages of justice I can think of many far, far worse than the possibility Mitnick served a few months too many on his third trip to prison.
Humans are vulnerable to false memories and memories of memories. In the first, your mind simply accepts a lie; in the second, you remember not what happened, but what you remember when you last thought of it or, worse, talked to someone else about it who was there. So I suppose your true oldest memory would be something you recall for the first time today, and which happens to me true.
The mind plays all sorts of tricks that infect eyewitness or child testimony, psychological counseling, and so on. Controversial are "suppressed" memories, submerged for years by trauma such as child abuse, which later come out and may be accurate (courts have even extended statutes of limitation by the period of the suppression).
So it is important to be very cautious and critical. I have a few faint memories dating from when I was 1 1/2 to 3, but since I've thought about them now and again over the years I don't really think of them as true 30+ year memories, and they may entirely false by now. Perhaps how far back you remember reflects how introspective and literal you are.
Memory has been studied extensively in the psych literature. I mostly looked at it from the standpoint of the effects of organic brain injury on the ability to learn or remember. I bet you can find many books on childhood memories at Amazon et al; unfortunately I do not know the field well enough to recommend any. Much of the literature is in a subfield called cognitive science that I never cottoned to.
For the layperson, Oliver Sacks' books (especially "Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat") on psychological ephemera are quite entertaining, if not rigorously scientific.
Didn't you know that an oral contract isn't worth the paper it's written on?:)
Of course most promises are enforceable, but it comes down to a test of credibility -- here between two engineers, so your loyalties must have cancelled out. Certain contracts must by law be in writing -- for sale of land, certain other contracts... the Statute of Frauds is sometimes called the "statute for frauds". I wonder what annoyed the judge; perhaps he just didn't believe the testimony.
Should be obvious that you can be held to your word, but a lot of people, including some lawyers (one who wrote into Dear Abby said you couldn't collect on a debt without an IOU), will tell you that you have no rights unless it is in writing. Wrong, but get it in writing to maybe avoid a trial, you might not get a sympathetic jury, and what a waste of money.
(See I had to learn this stuff to pass a test a long time ago, and now you know it , too.:)
Why isn't NASA interested in sending people to Mars?
NASA has plenty of stuff on the Mars menu as it is. Personally I hope they take a pass on sending humans, there's just so little point to it. Odds are Europe will come to the same conclusion. On the other hand, if they want to pay for it, go for it!
Send the robots, you don't even have to pay them and they can be programmed to say historic things like, "This is one small step for [a] man-bot, one giant leap for man-bot-kind." I just don't think it's cost-effective to send humans with all their frailties -- and send enough extra stuff to get them back.
Slashdot Mirror
Put a brain in her, and throw her on a treadmill, then get back to me. =]
How do you know you're her type? See that's the thing with centerfolds, everyone assumed they're available.....
A bit heavy? Really? I'll go back and study... (kidding!)
Oh, are we off-topic here or something? How about that trademark problem?
They have denied the Swedish police force access to the data
Really, how? In the U.S. that info could probably be subpoenaed anyway (i.e., demanded by formal court process).
There's plenty of other, and non-nagging, information sources available, why not use them?
Because they're not as good. Use them all, but don't avoid one that is free and demands next to nothing in return.
It will be an interesting debate, because on the one hand the data will be useful (enough so that the automakers think they can make money off of it) and on the other it could cost the auto owner money, either by telling the truth or lying. Yes, these boxes could err, but I would expect that to be just another factor in court. Regardless, the ramifications will be extensive.
Of course, don't forget that a tamperproof box might very well save you in court. We would all benefit from less fraud in court, as it drives up insurance. And then there are the harder to quantify but likely benefits of incorporating lots of real-world data into safety design of brakes and such.
I think it should obviously be up to the driver whether to participate. Some rental car companies might decide to use the boxes to protect their property against illegal misuse -- indeed it may be their insurers that require it; perhaps a discount could be offered to those who want to opt-out, calibrated tp the differential in insurance claims between people who use the boxes and those who do not. Monitoring is not novel: for many years I've seen speed recording devices on some long-distance buses.
All of this can be argued up or down, but I don't think a flat ban on the boxes is appropriate or likely.
(Seriously, not my type. But couldn't resist. =] )
:)
Methinks she doth protest too much.
Yes, yes, I know what you mean. Funny thing, in college we left a copy of Playboy out on the coffee table -- adventursome as we were -- and the only people who picked it up were women, to offer some critique or another. As for lesbians, it is my understanding Playboy's not really pitched at them. Or maybe you know that. Not to judge. There's nothing wrong with it. Let's just say I won't ask your type.
P.S. Not my type either. Can't even spell.
Yes, but without slippery slopes there would be far fewer jobs for lawyers.
:) And if you worry that the law expects too much of you, note that if you see Frex stick a knife in someone you have no obligation to call the poilce or help the victim. You have to have some positive involvement in the event, and are otherwise free to watch someone drown with impunity, no matter how easily you could have helped. Little oddities of the law.
The slippery slope argument is usually excessive, such as saying that to allow the government to impose a speed limit risks that one day they will set it to zero. Sure, maybe, but there are political and in extremis constitutional checks on things going to far. I assume that at some point holding someone liable for the acts of another would violate substantive due process. Believe me this has been debated for years, perhaps most famously in Palsgraf . Look for critiques of that one and your evening is all sewed up.
Leave Frex alone.
Yep. There are two arguments in the quoted passage: First, that Congress has abused the meaning of "limited time"; second, that retroactive extensions of "existing terms" are prohibited. I'm sympathetic to the second, and think the first is for Congress not the courts.
I do sort of wish the Court would intervene to say the term has gotten too long, but don't want a precedent like that for the Court to do so in other cases. Historical experience has been that although unchecked power of Congress is bad, the unreviewable power of the Court can be worse, as when it was busy invalidating the New Deal. Given precedent, I don't think th Court will, and I'd prefer we petition Congress, as has happened with the DMCA.
But who cares what I think -- here is the transcript of the Oct. 9 oral argument, which discussion well describes the essentially simple dipute.
Yes, but just a couple. Some very industrious people compiled this list.
Even were the US the longest, it would have to be so by a good margin to stick out. Again, I don't necessarily think the current terms are appropriate. Judge Posner has criticized them well, and noted that the main problem is that because it is difficult to make money off materials in the public domain, there was little opposition to the Sonny Bono Act.
Eldred is a very interesting case. I'm optimistic the retroactive portion of the law stands a 50:50 chance of being struck down, despite the Court's conservatism and traditional deference to Congress in similar matters. As for prospective copyright terms, I really doubt the court will intervene, because the life+70/95 terms are not obviously unreasonable, esp. when compared to law in other countries -- even if they do seem a tad long as a matter of judgment.
EFF has done a nice job collecting legal materials as its website, useful as a reference even if one disagrees with their position.
What to make some money while testing your legal and psychic prowess? Try this contest.
Actually your example isn't *quite* "actual nudity."
These pictures are in the Playboy mold of certain unspoken rules over what can be shown and what should be airbrushed, and so on. The rules have relaxed over the decades, I suppose in pace with social mores.
This kind of photo shows less but IMHO is less tasteful.
Of course, here we are being suckered into the poster's prediction of degeneracy.
Isn't this woman setting herself up for an obsessive stalker? I understand she wants to make money off her birthday looks, fine, and it wouldn't be her fault if/when some nutcase targets her, but the risk of harassment is huge given that her identity is so clearly established and the website purports to sell a way to get "close" to her.
As for typing into the Playboy mark, whatever. I suppose it makes your attractiveness prestigious?
The silly thing about Clinton -- who must have tried drugs at some point -- is who should care whether he did. I would care if he continued to use them, if only because you can't have the leader breaking his own country's laws. With Bush, I dont care about the cocaine or DUI, except to the extent he lies or refuses to come clean. What I would like to hear is whether he thinks that, had he been prosecuted and punished per current draconian law, he and the nation would be better off. If not...
Hey, I'm sympathetic, but I think a lot of the focus on personality comes from the public's demand for it. We can all understand personality, most of us have one, without studying a bunch of history. The stories can also be titillating, esp. with Clinton -- not that I was interested, yuck.
Politicians do show up on those boring Sunday shows and things like Nightline, I've seen them often. It's hard not to run into John McCain, and he's done a good job of getting his message out for free via the media. Trent Lott got his message out for free, too, but what did him in was that Republicans wanted to dump him. The gaffe, which merely represented what he's been about all along (and worse, in the past), was pretext. BTW, I'm fascinated by his successor Frist who had not voted until 1989 at age 38. I don't think that disqualifies him, but I'd sure like to know why he changed.
The internet has been great for sidelining the media on basic information like the candidates' position papers. It's also much harder to bury something one said, wrote, or did (e.g., http://www.thesmokinggun.com/). That's great. But I think there will always be only a % of people actively involved in politics, and that's OK with me -- it's rational to be uninvolved if things are going the way you desire. But I don't want to here from the uninvolved how terrible everything is. Nor is any of this new, I bet you could find ancient Greek writers complaining about people ignoring politics. IRC voting was mandatory in Athens.
Also, not to be cynical, but I'm a lot more interested in what politicians do or did than what they say they'll do.
But it's still shooting the messenger.
Oh, I do that, too.
a rather well-greased slope
Oh, we're already there. An implied example might be the Nichols trial. Actually there it is a tougher question of constructive knowledge, or shouldn't Nichols have realized what was going on? This assumes he isn't simply lying.
Reagardless of the details of this or any case, it is existing law that you can be reponsible for a crime without pulling the trigger, whether as a conspirator, accomplice, accessory. That liability might even be just civil. This liability is not absolute, it depends on the character of your participation, what you knew, and when you knew it.
I don't know the precise rules with regard to a merchant selling something to a soon-to-be criminal. But there is the possibility in there somewhere, particularly where the merchant knows of an imminent threat to a third party. Try to think of the ugliest possible facts, like the person announces, "Sell me this gun so I can go shoot my wife waiting in the car," and so on; at some point it should feel like too much. Then it is simply a matter of drawing the line.
This sounds kind of unfair because the defendant didn't "do" anything to the victim, but a good part of the analysis is about economics not morals. It is efficient to hold the defendant to a duty of care to prevent bad acts by others to others. One common example is the "dram shop acts" holding liable bars and restaurants that serve too many drinks to someone who goes out and runs over someone. Another example is that you can be liable for leaving your keys in the car, or worse leaving the car running (which in most places is illegal, too), if someone steals the car and runs over people. Yes, technically you didn't "do it" but you certainly enabled it, and the point is the safety of society more than condemning an individual.
Here is a random hit from the web, a "sale of bullets" case that appears to me correct (I skimmed it). Note that this is a civil case, and the court basically found that the plaintiff's legal arguments might be valid but needed to be developed factually in the trial court. The court did not look at who should win, just whether the plaintiff could win under their various theories of the case.
I'm not justifying any of this so much as saying it is already the law, adn has been for many years.
I was skimming your paragraph:
That is why we have in the Whitehouse a Vietnam draft dogger who deserted his National guard post that daddy pulled strings to get, a man with a criminal conviction and a man who was investigated by the SEC for corruption who got off on a 'technicality' - if you call having daddy being Vice President at the time a technicality.
and forgive me if for a moment I flashed back to President Clinton. His offenses were not precisely the same, but there are plenty of parallels. Clinton's weakness tended to run to sexual rather than financial dealings. Both men shared some difficulties with the draft, certain unclean dabblings with the courts, and a peculiar lying about past drug use, lies I can only think Americans somehow demand of them. None of this makes me happy. But we know this stuff (well, OK, I thought everyone know about Bush ducking his incredibly valuable duties learning to fly antiquated airplanes in Texas -- but that's relatively minor), it's not going to change much now. Also, forgive me but there is a certain amount of common sense in trying to avoid going to Vietnam. The biggest objection I have is that ducking the draft effectively meant sending some less connected in your place. (Notes: Clinton allegedly did a double-duck -- getting ROTC for draft immunity, then ducking ROTC when his draft number showed he would not have been drafted. Bush's alleged double-duck was that he skated into a flight training program desired by many, with barely passing test scores, then didn't show up for a third of it anyway, yet was not punished).
I'm not attacking or defending anyone, I just don't think the character attacks do much good, esp. over stuff 25 years ago except to put down misrepresentations. Character and record are things to think about in deciding whom to trust, but now that the election is past (on which I accept the result but insist on reform) really there's plenty concrete to criticize without digging up the past or speculating about the future. I don't happen to believe President Bush is a person of great character -- compare him to his father even -- but I'm a lot more worried that he just isn't showing much common sense, and so many of his actions or inactions appear beholden to certain minority (and I don't mean race) interests.
So rather than become liberal Rush Limbaughs -- what a concept! -- let's ask about the Iraq agenda, the economy, prescription drugs, Wall Street corruption, Enron and family, domestic spying, immigration law, peculiar tax breaks, budget deficits, and so on and so on
Having compulsory voting makes you vote.
:)
Well, OK, that's pretty much what compulsory means.
Presumably voting is an aspect of freedom, and being forced to vote runs against that. Although it's not a practice I readily endorse, I know perfectly intelligent people here in the States who have boycotted elections out of disgust. If they should must be coerced, it would make a lot more sense to force themm to get involved at the grassroots level, or to contribute money to minor candidates, that to force them to ratify the result of a selection process they think is corrupt.
I don't see how increased "swing votes" prove people care more. Detailed surveys might, but vote counts could mean different things. Swingers can be either principled or fickle. Also, it is inevitable that a swing group will develop and grow, because the major parites will adjust their policies to get as many voters as possible, resulting in roughly even split. The swing group simple develops at this split, their loyalties divided and thus up for grabs.
Being forced to vote would make me mad. I'd vote against it.
...when I first saw that. I thought at first it was just an unexpected combination of words until I realized it came up every time.
It's nice to be with the "in" crowd. The post-Neaderthal crowd. In one way anyhow.
Now which books would you buy to trigger the "People who don't wear clothes..." link? I guess Amazon wouldn't give a damn about them because they're not going to buy anything.
... Barnes&Noble sued Amazon: "The day before Amazon.com launched its Initial Public Offering on the NASDAQ exchange, Barnes and Noble filed suit to stop Amazon from billing itself as "Earth's Biggest Bookstore." Barnes and Noble, which bills itself as the "World's Biggest Bookseller Online" on its new Web site, claims in its lawsuit that Amazon.com is not a bookseller but a broker for distributors." There's a good use of the courts.
:)
I don't worry a whole lot about the corporations jostling for control. Amazon has in many ways been the innovator and gold standard in online commerce; most of its competitors launched as wannabes, which is great. As B&N illustrates, mindlessness is not Amazon's monopoly. It's when a company does go monopoly and anticompetitive (or is on the verge of same) that I recommend walking, as with a certain software company called -- well, if you're using IE to read this, you're not with me.
All that said and done, I think it's great to hunt down smaller sellers that offer specialized selections or benefit a cause you care about, even if the price is not less. Also try to use the Amazon Associates feature to channel some $ to useful groups.
So, if you're selling large numbers of ball-peen hammers that people are using to bash in car windows so they can steal stereos, should we hope that the cops shut down your hardware store?
The key is knowledge. If a guy comes in your gun shop and you ask, "What are you going to use it for?" and he says, "I want a gun to shoot my wife." then you'd best take a pass. I'm not even sure selling would be illegal but I just think it's be better to refrain. You wouldn't I believe had a responsibility to report him to the police, but I'd probably do that, too. In a pinch, sell him a broken gun. Or one of the backwards-firing ones from that Bond movie.
In NYC they actually banned the sale of spraypaint to kids because of graffiti. An especially problematice hardware store item has been $1.95 box cutters, used for everything from muggings to hijackings. I have no idea wha can or should be done, but sometimes benign items like blank CD's (notice how he skillfully glides back on-topic) can have destructive consequences.
4th, 9th ... I'm a little rusty, but don't you live in the 1st Circuit? It may be a little dry, but the region has supplied two Supreme Court justices. Huh, I hadn't thought about it, but I guess I live in the 4th now. And I read just Supreme Court decisions at most, which are funny if you are a little twisted. If you find the law amusing you may enjoy the novel "Supreme Court Fantasy League" contest.
Why the hell was my comment rated a troll???
This place works a little like the 9th Circuit.
He didn't believe there was a valid contract because the two parties had different expectations of the promise.
:) The elected ones can be a particularly mixed bag.
;-)
That is one of the basics of contract law, the "meeting of the minds." But when one party misleads the other.... Sure they had different expectations, one to cheat, the other to work. I'm interested in what the judge thinks because (1) some have insights and (2) some are nuts.
Well, good job -- I'd like to be a juror some day, provided it's at a time completely convenient to me, and an interesting yet brief case, where all the other jurors agree with me. Getting a book contract out of it would be nice, too.
The denial of a bail hearing was disturbing. But the chances that Mitnick was consequently denied bail are practically nil. Even if he did lose out on bail, the time he spent in detention counted towards the sentence of 22 months imposed in 1997 and his later sentence of 40+ mos. for other offenses, so no harm there either. In other words, he may have been wronged but the injury was small or negligible. The hearing is not valuable; the result is.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of a hearing in a summary order. IMHO I think they were almost certainly mistaken. Yet because of the nature of the case Mitnick would have a very difficult time showing the injury was anything more than pro forma, and the damages any more than nominal (e.g., $1).
I went and looked up federal bail rules under the Bail Reform Act of 1984. Section 3142(f) certainly appears to require a hearing, and the trial court simply appeared to have its mind made up. On the other hand, Mitnick has put forward nothing taht would get him out of 3142(e) even if the court believed him. That he was a flight risk was already right there on paper -- his criminal history -- and it would have been his onerous burden to rebut that.
I think this is a case where the system injured itself much more than this particular defendant, and I worry what that will mean for the next defendant. For individual miscarriages of justice I can think of many far, far worse than the possibility Mitnick served a few months too many on his third trip to prison.
Humans are vulnerable to false memories and memories of memories. In the first, your mind simply accepts a lie; in the second, you remember not what happened, but what you remember when you last thought of it or, worse, talked to someone else about it who was there. So I suppose your true oldest memory would be something you recall for the first time today, and which happens to me true.
The mind plays all sorts of tricks that infect eyewitness or child testimony, psychological counseling, and so on. Controversial are "suppressed" memories, submerged for years by trauma such as child abuse, which later come out and may be accurate (courts have even extended statutes of limitation by the period of the suppression).
So it is important to be very cautious and critical. I have a few faint memories dating from when I was 1 1/2 to 3, but since I've thought about them now and again over the years I don't really think of them as true 30+ year memories, and they may entirely false by now. Perhaps how far back you remember reflects how introspective and literal you are.
Memory has been studied extensively in the psych literature. I mostly looked at it from the standpoint of the effects of organic brain injury on the ability to learn or remember. I bet you can find many books on childhood memories at Amazon et al; unfortunately I do not know the field well enough to recommend any. Much of the literature is in a subfield called cognitive science that I never cottoned to.
For the layperson, Oliver Sacks' books (especially "Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat") on psychological ephemera are quite entertaining, if not rigorously scientific.
Didn't you know that an oral contract isn't worth the paper it's written on? :)
... the Statute of Frauds is sometimes called the "statute for frauds". I wonder what annoyed the judge; perhaps he just didn't believe the testimony.
:)
Of course most promises are enforceable, but it comes down to a test of credibility -- here between two engineers, so your loyalties must have cancelled out. Certain contracts must by law be in writing -- for sale of land, certain other contracts
Should be obvious that you can be held to your word, but a lot of people, including some lawyers (one who wrote into Dear Abby said you couldn't collect on a debt without an IOU), will tell you that you have no rights unless it is in writing. Wrong, but get it in writing to maybe avoid a trial, you might not get a sympathetic jury, and what a waste of money.
(See I had to learn this stuff to pass a test a long time ago, and now you know it , too.
Methinks you forgot to add "...without an oxygen supply..."
:)
Oh not to worry, they're already air-filled. Hot air. Lots of it.
*
OT: What's the difference between the Hindenberg and Rush Limbaugh?*
*joke not for Rushies.
Why isn't NASA interested in sending people to Mars?
NASA has plenty of stuff on the Mars menu as it is. Personally I hope they take a pass on sending humans, there's just so little point to it. Odds are Europe will come to the same conclusion. On the other hand, if they want to pay for it, go for it!
Send the robots, you don't even have to pay them and they can be programmed to say historic things like, "This is one small step for [a] man-bot, one giant leap for man-bot-kind." I just don't think it's cost-effective to send humans with all their frailties -- and send enough extra stuff to get them back.
These folks disagree and these guys are already colonizing Mars/Utah. Certainly the idea captures the imagination.
In the meantime, part of Mars has been conveniently discovered in Canada.