Hey, in the 30's we didn't know IBM was evil! I mean, the Nazis. Well, we did know, but that didn't stop a lot of Americans companies from helping them. I don't suggest this mitigates IBM's responsibilities, but it does enlarge the topic of culpability, and the difficult question of ethics in corporations devoted to profit. (The current Ford is a remarkable contrast to his ancestor.)
A conspicuous example was the ferocious anti-Semite Henry Ford, who received the highest civilian medal from Adolph himself -- and saw no reason to reject it. Another prominient American medalist was aviation hero Charles Lindbergh. As with newly-Soviet Russia, a lot of people made very poor judgments, and others may have had more sinister motives. IBM -- and I have to read that book, too -- appears to have been a case of willful blindness.
This is all a good reminder of the moral indifference of technology itself. Like a gun, it can be put to purposes as varied as the imagination of the humans who use it.
Hey, maybe you could have somehow been injured in the fire, if it had happened later at night or you'd gone to bed early or passed out in a drunken stupor instead of seeing Potter (kidding) or something.
Not consolation, I know. I fear fire in our house, and you've reminded me we're short a smoke detector or two. May I ask how the fire started?
You're right, at NASA 113=112, but I did take the number from a NASA source. Go figure -- it was probably dated despite the date on the page. Interesting that the # of missions and flight number are coinciding.
This claims 111: http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/factoids/orbite r.htm
Anyway, the point was the probabilities! Future, not past, as past probabilities don't exist... they're called outcomes. So, someone break out a calculotor before I have to.
New Scientist publishes a great news service for this sort of thing -- this earlier article discusses some additional dimensions of the accident and the possibility of rescue.
The number of mission is a bit fewer, less than 100; the missions are out of sequence and have some cancellations.
Anyway, the reliability-to-date is not the right number. As those Wall Street types are always saying, "Past performance does not guarantee future returns." The shuttle could just be having a run of luck, with the odds of an accident on any given flight much higher.
I'm a flight instructor, with a preference for single-engine. Twin pilots like to say how much safer they are with an "extra" engine; the usual retort is all that does is double your chances of an engine failure.
But you can't just add up the probability for a single event. If you imagine an engine failure probability of 50%, you see the problem -- such a plane couldn't even take off. (The correct probability is 75%.)
So, the correct is what are the chances of X number of consecutive successful launches. Like, what are the chances of flipping heads 10 times in a row (maybe 1 in 500)? And I know I could figure that out, but I'm too lazy at the moment. I'd take a wild guess the odds of failure are around 1%.
(BTW, a twin with an engine out IS very dangerous because of the risk of losing control authority to the working engine, or of shutting down the good engine in a panic. So... a twin is safer... in the hands of a competent poilot.:)
What you have is a really common problem -- smoke is nastier than fire in some ways! -- so teh good news is there is a lot of help available. Even this Heloise I recall reading in the newspaper.
Search the net for info and products. The OxyClean product is a good thing, as is Simple Green, where appropriate, because they're relatively pleasant to work with. I know if you're dealing with rehabbing the house/apartment, but if you do be sure you or the contractor knows about the special challenges in concealing the damage permanently, and getting rid of the smell.
If you have insurance, talk to them about what damaged items it might be better to just declare a total loss and replace.
Condolences. I hope you enjoyed the movie more than I did.:)
Europe has a much higher sense of privacy for records and such. It has even caused problems for some U.S. businesses and exports. So f*ck you.;-) (Actually, you'd be a model for our reforms if only...)
In the US there are some specific guarantees of record rights. Usually it takes some bad happening for Congress to act. Back in 1988 video rental records were protected after conservatives irate at the leaking of Supreme Court nominee's video rentals. (We really should have gotten to see Justice Thomas's.) The Patriot Act may punch a hole in this. Read this.
Serious protection for medical records has taken many years more. Weird priorities, huh?
With bank data, the bank does have to worry, and worry a lot, about liability for mishaps resulting from misuse of your information. Unlike abstract emotional damages of releasing personal damage, laying a customer open to fraud or other exploitations would get the dollar signs ringing up in a hurry. I know, we'd most all prefer for them to stay hands off in the first place. But there are a lot of other holes in the dike as it is.
On the other hand, Europeans tend to have less protection than Americans in things like free speech. So we get to complain more vocally about the things we don't like.:)
...I'll just take the pharmaceuticals. You can have the ammunition. With the right drugs, I won't *care* if you shoot me, or whether my Visa card still works.
I'm interested in the statistical projections for shuttle failures. The figure I've heard for catastrophic failure -- loss of vehicle and crew -- is around 1-in-300. Of course, lesser but nonetheless dramatic failures of the Apollo 13 sort are also a possibility. Finally, the shuttle fleet is getting old, and being a reusable craft the duty cycles might bring unpleasant surprises. Here's a recent article that made the rounds. (note the silver lining noted by the welder:)
If/when there is a failure, will the statisticians go, "Yup, that's about what we expected?" If the shuttle beats or falls short of its reliability prediction, does that make it a good or bad craft? I'm talking about perceptions here, not objectivity. It's a lot easier to be sober about failures of unmanned rockets.
It looks like we'll be talking seriously about what's going to replace the shuttle in just a few years. This could be good or bad for reliability -- while we've learned a lot, we have to admire the track record of the boring old Soyuz.
(old schoolyard retort that still makes no sense to me)
I keep reading that the projected failure rate, where failure==boom, for the space shuttle is one in 300. It some ways that's a low failure rate, in others a disturbing one. I don't have the math here, but what are the odds of going ten years without an accident?
The fairly successful but brief Apollo program had one lethal ground accident (#1) and one near inflight catastrophe (#13). That's still fewer than the half the deaths of Challenger.
Now, I know some smartass is going to tell me how much safer it is per mile to take a rocket to the Moon than to drive your car there.;-)
I think the "pebbles" terminal velocity would be a lot less than 200 mph. Indeed, the old story about pennies cracking the sidewalk around the Empire State Building turns out to be UL. Here is an account of objects falling with and without air.
But a perversely arrow-shaped piece of debris that did not tumble, that could be bad news. Then you just have to rely on statistics.
Trivia: the Shuttle SRB casing fall at about 350 MPH without parachutes, and 50 MPH with. Hey, I was curious....
Yes, I was impressed that it was the hundreds of tons of graphite that burned so ferociously. According to a Frontline report, about 50 tons of reactor fuel simply vaporized. That was one massive reactor, and not an escpecially fault-tolerant one.
Cuba? Hmm. I thought you said that radiation was healthy? All they need is some good fire extinguishers.
Paul Krugman wrote a nice article about this "gold bug" in Slate a while ago. Whatever you may think of him personally, the article sets forth the considerations crisply.
Anyone who feels paper money has no intrinsic value is encouraged to mail it to me. I'll pay the postage. And just try buying lunch with gold bullion. There are hardly any employed economists advocating gold or the gold standard, but it is worthwhile to discuss why these are inferior forms of money.
Think of your paper money as shares of stock in America Inc. If you don't believe in American solvency, consider that the rest of the world does. Two thirds of American currency is in circulation overseas, and America attracts trillions in foreign investment. I'm bullish on it, and note that gold has been a consistently lousy investment since the 80's, underperforming even inflation by failing to appreciate at all (the chart is not in constant dollars). Also, don't forget to deduct transportation or storage costs like that safe deposit box. Paper money did the same if you stuffed in under the mattress and failed to invest it in at least a passbook savings account or insured CD -- either of which handily outperformed gold.
Thanks for bringing this my attention, I did some more reading about it and am intrigued. I know i read an account of a journalist visiting the exclusion zone in the last few years, and it painted a much starker picture; I'd like to figure out what that was about. And I suppose the point should be made that whether the exclusion zone is fit for human habitation is an open question, and even if it is the necessary expenses in reaction to the explosion of #4, such as containment, cleanup, evacuation, lost productivity, mental anguish to those who had a reactor catch fire in their backyards, and the loss of that 1 gigawatt of energy production are cumulatively quite high, and should be included in the calculation of how much nuclear energy costs. Granted we might well decide it is stil worth it, balanced against alternative methods of energy production, and that we'd never build reactors as hazardous as the Soviet design (still in operation elsewhere?), but there are still significant excess costs. I recetly discovered one third of my home state Virginia's electricity is nuclear; and 70% of France's!
Thanks again. Although I may be less worried about the long-term exposure to low-level radiation, such that things like radon mitigation are not worth so much investment, I don't think I'll go for the idea that people who breathe radon are healthier, until a mechanism for it is suggested that implies the effect is more than statistical noise.
This is a footnote, which I'm sure no one will ever read(!), but when I said not all contract clause specifying where disputes will be litigated are valid, I did have a procedural concern in mind -- the contract can't confer jurisdiction on an improper court, although it does at least suggest consent to be sued there. (The contract couldn't perversely choose Guam as the forum for a New York dispute.) The same goes for choice of law, which governs the different issue of whose law governs rather than where the trial is held. For example, in some cases New York law might be applied to a question tried in a California court. These clauses too are subject to tests for reasonableness.
And on top of this are the contract and public policy questions of whether the agreement was intelligently entered into, and whether it comports with a certain minimum of justice. Contracts 101.
Blah blah blah. Just trying to persuade folks that lawyers do deal with complicated stuff while charging all that money.:)
Why is this case important, and why should you care about personal jurisdiction? The case here was straight jurisidiction; the defendant's lawyer(s) placed his interests first, as they were obliged to, and immediately went after the jurisdiction problem, even if they preferred to address the merits and build some precedent for "the cause." All the same, this decision is important to geeks because it says that if you post something on the internet, you can't necessarily be sued in any jurisdiction in the country, indeed as some point your contacts with the court jurisdiction may be so weak that trying the case there violated the 5th A due process clause and/or state constitution. At least that's the rule in California.
Of course I could be entirely wrong; this is not the practice of law; YMMV. -- required disclaimer:)
Don't worry I didn't take it personally. Really, I felt good saying "You f*cking slipshod illiterate idiot" -- to state the obvious in a roundabout manner.:)
Thanks -- but you missed the part where I added, "Never mind.":)
My only experience is with the little bitty.22 cartridges, and shotgun shells. Pretty simple.
Do you happen to know what special characteristics the.223 shell used in the murders might have? I haven't found too many details. It was for a Bushmaster rifle, a civilian version of the M-16 I think, and I believe the bullet is supersonic, the shock wave accounting for much of the damage. I had thought sniper rifles tended to be high-caliber, up to.50, so I was appalled at the physical damage in these shootings. (If you don't know, all the shootings were with a single bullet, and most resulted in death at the scene.)
Obviously these incidents will figure in future gun control debates.
I, obviously, am not the sniper (of course, two excellent suspects are in custody now)
You haven't heard they're looking for a third sniper? What was your name again?
Actually, the ammunition used was.223-caliber, not.220. How's that for hair-splitting, and why are there two such similar calibers? Never mind.
Knowing who is buying ammunition might be constructive for the same reason as knowing who is buying guns. Yes, I know the whole gun control song and dance -- I'm not on either side -- but after we had one of those sniper attacks just down the road I have to wonder about it, and ballistic fingerprinting and so on. Like anything in investigatory law enforcement, there is a difficult balancing of privacy and gov't intrusion.
Anyway, I don't want my purchases, movements, thoughts tracked in the slightest. I have nothing to hide, so go away. I'm terribly curious where all this is headed.
Oh, as for traveling with anonymity, have you noticed all those surveillance cameras going up? It's only a matter of time before they can read license plates and recognize faces. Technology.
The first point is psychology, the second a factual reminder that the first point doesn't apply here.
There is a natural reluctance to sympathize with criminal defendants we know nothing about; we want the state to be right about them, because the state protects us. I'm hardly immune to this. (A major exception is the Bronx, for which the "Bronx effect" was coined; the Bronx in known among lawyers for having a much higher acquittal rate than teh neighboring boroughs.
Before some idiot interprets that as a slur against the Bronx, please google "bronx effect.":)
Too bad I can't metamoderate my own stuff. I'd be honest, really.
Former AG Edwin Meese said while in office that "if a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect," which to me is another way of saying suspects are always guilty. I doubt that our current AG Ashcroft is much different. I've had the good fortune to work with both prosecutors and courts, and while they were both very good at their work, they were not gods. One of the cases I reviewed involved a Chicago judge who apparently took a bribe to throw a murder case for the defendant, AND to screw his codefendant into taking the blame. Lovely. I felt very naive: I could picture taking a bribe to fix a traffic ticket, but a murder case? It could have been a death penalty situation. They were probably both guilty of the murder-for-hire of a drug dealer, but all this did seem a little unfair, and it scored the codefendant an oh-so-hard to get habeas corpus hearing. The state lawyers assigned to oppose his petition did a frighteningly bad job; the judge I wrote my memo for had to correct them on a basic point of law, sinking the rest of their case. Oh well.
How's that for digression?
However, we do live in a pretty cool country (I'm assuming the U.S. here, though there are other nice places!) with lots of promise. It just takes a lot of minding so it doesn't get all run down.:)
Well, actually that's different, that's venue. You can sue in federal court anywhere you want, subject to venue rules which like personal jurisdiction partly serve to prevent one party from unfairly inconveniencing the other by picking a random place to sue. Contracts frequently ask you to waive your venue and choice-of-law rights to litigate only in their neck of the woods. These clauses are not always enforceable.
Almost wherever you are, there's a handy federal court nearby, though certainly the state sysetems are larger. I think i saw somewhere that tha CA state system has more judges than the entire federal judiciary. That's part of why federal court limits is jurisdiction to more "significant" cases, along with $5 Social Security disputes...
A third reason might also be that plaintiff's lawyers were more experienced in state court, and so chose that forum. Unfortunately, CA could not reach the defendant, so they will be sending their lawyers somewhere if they bother to pursue this harassment lawsuit at all.
This appears to be a small potatoes lawsuit. The plaintiff asked for an injunction and no money damages. Two theories: (1) the case likely did not meet the requirements for federal jurisdiction, which include like $75,000 in controversy or a federal statute that grants jurisdiction (I don't knoe how the DMCA is written on this point); or (2) state court is cheaper place to litigate, and this case was mostly symbolic anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, in the 30's we didn't know IBM was evil! I mean, the Nazis. Well, we did know, but that didn't stop a lot of Americans companies from helping them. I don't suggest this mitigates IBM's responsibilities, but it does enlarge the topic of culpability, and the difficult question of ethics in corporations devoted to profit. (The current Ford is a remarkable contrast to his ancestor.)
A conspicuous example was the ferocious anti-Semite Henry Ford, who received the highest civilian medal from Adolph himself -- and saw no reason to reject it. Another prominient American medalist was aviation hero Charles Lindbergh. As with newly-Soviet Russia, a lot of people made very poor judgments, and others may have had more sinister motives. IBM -- and I have to read that book, too -- appears to have been a case of willful blindness.
This is all a good reminder of the moral indifference of technology itself. Like a gun, it can be put to purposes as varied as the imagination of the humans who use it.
Hey, maybe you could have somehow been injured in the fire, if it had happened later at night or you'd gone to bed early or passed out in a drunken stupor instead of seeing Potter (kidding) or something.
Not consolation, I know. I fear fire in our house, and you've reminded me we're short a smoke detector or two. May I ask how the fire started?
You're right, at NASA 113=112, but I did take the number from a NASA source. Go figure -- it was probably dated despite the date on the page. Interesting that the # of missions and flight number are coinciding.
e r.htm
... they're called outcomes. So, someone break out a calculotor before I have to.
This claims 111: http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/factoids/orbit
Anyway, the point was the probabilities! Future, not past, as past probabilities don't exist
I said I was lazy! (And I was pretty close anyway, so there.) ;-)
You got the gimmie, smartass, now do the main Q.
New Scientist publishes a great news service for this sort of thing -- this earlier article discusses some additional dimensions of the accident and the possibility of rescue.
The number of mission is a bit fewer, less than 100; the missions are out of sequence and have some cancellations.
Anyway, the reliability-to-date is not the right number. As those Wall Street types are always saying, "Past performance does not guarantee future returns." The shuttle could just be having a run of luck, with the odds of an accident on any given flight much higher.
About the numbers
You know, a lot of people were way ahead of the curve on this business of living in sewer pipes. Ironically, they are known as the homeless.
So when yuppies want to abandon their nice cozy frame houses for sewer pipes, may I propose they kill two birds with one stone and just trade?
Not exactly. :)
... a twin is safer ... in the hands of a competent poilot. :)
I'm a flight instructor, with a preference for single-engine. Twin pilots like to say how much safer they are with an "extra" engine; the usual retort is all that does is double your chances of an engine failure.
But you can't just add up the probability for a single event. If you imagine an engine failure probability of 50%, you see the problem -- such a plane couldn't even take off. (The correct probability is 75%.)
So, the correct is what are the chances of X number of consecutive successful launches. Like, what are the chances of flipping heads 10 times in a row (maybe 1 in 500)? And I know I could figure that out, but I'm too lazy at the moment. I'd take a wild guess the odds of failure are around 1%.
(BTW, a twin with an engine out IS very dangerous because of the risk of losing control authority to the working engine, or of shutting down the good engine in a panic. So
What you have is a really common problem -- smoke is nastier than fire in some ways! -- so teh good news is there is a lot of help available. Even this Heloise I recall reading in the newspaper.
:)
Search the net for info and products. The OxyClean product is a good thing, as is Simple Green, where appropriate, because they're relatively pleasant to work with. I know if you're dealing with rehabbing the house/apartment, but if you do be sure you or the contractor knows about the special challenges in concealing the damage permanently, and getting rid of the smell.
If you have insurance, talk to them about what damaged items it might be better to just declare a total loss and replace.
Condolences. I hope you enjoyed the movie more than I did.
Europe has a much higher sense of privacy for records and such. It has even caused problems for some U.S. businesses and exports. So f*ck you. ;-) (Actually, you'd be a model for our reforms if only...)
:)
In the US there are some specific guarantees of record rights. Usually it takes some bad happening for Congress to act. Back in 1988 video rental records were protected after conservatives irate at the leaking of Supreme Court nominee's video rentals. (We really should have gotten to see Justice Thomas's.) The Patriot Act may punch a hole in this. Read this.
Serious protection for medical records has taken many years more. Weird priorities, huh?
With bank data, the bank does have to worry, and worry a lot, about liability for mishaps resulting from misuse of your information. Unlike abstract emotional damages of releasing personal damage, laying a customer open to fraud or other exploitations would get the dollar signs ringing up in a hurry. I know, we'd most all prefer for them to stay hands off in the first place. But there are a lot of other holes in the dike as it is.
On the other hand, Europeans tend to have less protection than Americans in things like free speech. So we get to complain more vocally about the things we don't like.
...I'll just take the pharmaceuticals. You can have the ammunition. With the right drugs, I won't *care* if you shoot me, or whether my Visa card still works.
I'm interested in the statistical projections for shuttle failures. The figure I've heard for catastrophic failure -- loss of vehicle and crew -- is around 1-in-300. Of course, lesser but nonetheless dramatic failures of the Apollo 13 sort are also a possibility. Finally, the shuttle fleet is getting old, and being a reusable craft the duty cycles might bring unpleasant surprises. Here's a recent article that made the rounds. (note the silver lining noted by the welder :)
If/when there is a failure, will the statisticians go, "Yup, that's about what we expected?" If the shuttle beats or falls short of its reliability prediction, does that make it a good or bad craft? I'm talking about perceptions here, not objectivity. It's a lot easier to be sober about failures of unmanned rockets.
It looks like we'll be talking seriously about what's going to replace the shuttle in just a few years. This could be good or bad for reliability -- while we've learned a lot, we have to admire the track record of the boring old Soyuz.
I'd like to see you do any better!
;-)
(old schoolyard retort that still makes no sense to me)
I keep reading that the projected failure rate, where failure==boom, for the space shuttle is one in 300. It some ways that's a low failure rate, in others a disturbing one. I don't have the math here, but what are the odds of going ten years without an accident?
The fairly successful but brief Apollo program had one lethal ground accident (#1) and one near inflight catastrophe (#13). That's still fewer than the half the deaths of Challenger.
Now, I know some smartass is going to tell me how much safer it is per mile to take a rocket to the Moon than to drive your car there.
I think the "pebbles" terminal velocity would be a lot less than 200 mph. Indeed, the old story about pennies cracking the sidewalk around the Empire State Building turns out to be UL. Here is an account of objects falling with and without air.
But a perversely arrow-shaped piece of debris that did not tumble, that could be bad news. Then you just have to rely on statistics.
Trivia: the Shuttle SRB casing fall at about 350 MPH without parachutes, and 50 MPH with. Hey, I was curious....
Yes, I was impressed that it was the hundreds of tons of graphite that burned so ferociously. According to a Frontline report, about 50 tons of reactor fuel simply vaporized. That was one massive reactor, and not an escpecially fault-tolerant one.
;-)
Cuba? Hmm. I thought you said that radiation was healthy? All they need is some good fire extinguishers.
Well, I'm off to drink my strontium-90 shake.
Paul Krugman wrote a nice article about this "gold bug" in Slate a while ago. Whatever you may think of him personally, the article sets forth the considerations crisply.
Anyone who feels paper money has no intrinsic value is encouraged to mail it to me. I'll pay the postage. And just try buying lunch with gold bullion. There are hardly any employed economists advocating gold or the gold standard, but it is worthwhile to discuss why these are inferior forms of money.
Think of your paper money as shares of stock in America Inc. If you don't believe in American solvency, consider that the rest of the world does. Two thirds of American currency is in circulation overseas, and America attracts trillions in foreign investment. I'm bullish on it, and note that gold has been a consistently lousy investment since the 80's, underperforming even inflation by failing to appreciate at all (the chart is not in constant dollars). Also, don't forget to deduct transportation or storage costs like that safe deposit box. Paper money did the same if you stuffed in under the mattress and failed to invest it in at least a passbook savings account or insured CD -- either of which handily outperformed gold.
Thanks for bringing this my attention, I did some more reading about it and am intrigued. I know i read an account of a journalist visiting the exclusion zone in the last few years, and it painted a much starker picture; I'd like to figure out what that was about. And I suppose the point should be made that whether the exclusion zone is fit for human habitation is an open question, and even if it is the necessary expenses in reaction to the explosion of #4, such as containment, cleanup, evacuation, lost productivity, mental anguish to those who had a reactor catch fire in their backyards, and the loss of that 1 gigawatt of energy production are cumulatively quite high, and should be included in the calculation of how much nuclear energy costs. Granted we might well decide it is stil worth it, balanced against alternative methods of energy production, and that we'd never build reactors as hazardous as the Soviet design (still in operation elsewhere?), but there are still significant excess costs. I recetly discovered one third of my home state Virginia's electricity is nuclear; and 70% of France's!
Thanks again. Although I may be less worried about the long-term exposure to low-level radiation, such that things like radon mitigation are not worth so much investment, I don't think I'll go for the idea that people who breathe radon are healthier, until a mechanism for it is suggested that implies the effect is more than statistical noise.
This is a footnote, which I'm sure no one will ever read(!), but when I said not all contract clause specifying where disputes will be litigated are valid, I did have a procedural concern in mind -- the contract can't confer jurisdiction on an improper court, although it does at least suggest consent to be sued there. (The contract couldn't perversely choose Guam as the forum for a New York dispute.) The same goes for choice of law, which governs the different issue of whose law governs rather than where the trial is held. For example, in some cases New York law might be applied to a question tried in a California court. These clauses too are subject to tests for reasonableness.
:)
:)
And on top of this are the contract and public policy questions of whether the agreement was intelligently entered into, and whether it comports with a certain minimum of justice. Contracts 101.
Blah blah blah. Just trying to persuade folks that lawyers do deal with complicated stuff while charging all that money.
Why is this case important, and why should you care about personal jurisdiction? The case here was straight jurisidiction; the defendant's lawyer(s) placed his interests first, as they were obliged to, and immediately went after the jurisdiction problem, even if they preferred to address the merits and build some precedent for "the cause." All the same, this decision is important to geeks because it says that if you post something on the internet, you can't necessarily be sued in any jurisdiction in the country, indeed as some point your contacts with the court jurisdiction may be so weak that trying the case there violated the 5th A due process clause and/or state constitution. At least that's the rule in California.
Of course I could be entirely wrong; this is not the practice of law; YMMV. -- required disclaimer
Don't worry I didn't take it personally. Really, I felt good saying "You f*cking slipshod illiterate idiot" -- to state the obvious in a roundabout manner. :)
Thanks -- but you missed the part where I added, "Never mind." :)
.22 cartridges, and shotgun shells. Pretty simple.
.223 shell used in the murders might have? I haven't found too many details. It was for a Bushmaster rifle, a civilian version of the M-16 I think, and I believe the bullet is supersonic, the shock wave accounting for much of the damage. I had thought sniper rifles tended to be high-caliber, up to .50, so I was appalled at the physical damage in these shootings. (If you don't know, all the shootings were with a single bullet, and most resulted in death at the scene.)
My only experience is with the little bitty
Do you happen to know what special characteristics the
Obviously these incidents will figure in future gun control debates.
Anyway, morbid stuff.
I, obviously, am not the sniper (of course, two excellent suspects are in custody now)
.223-caliber, not .220. How's that for hair-splitting, and why are there two such similar calibers? Never mind.
You haven't heard they're looking for a third sniper? What was your name again?
Actually, the ammunition used was
Knowing who is buying ammunition might be constructive for the same reason as knowing who is buying guns. Yes, I know the whole gun control song and dance -- I'm not on either side -- but after we had one of those sniper attacks just down the road I have to wonder about it, and ballistic fingerprinting and so on. Like anything in investigatory law enforcement, there is a difficult balancing of privacy and gov't intrusion.
Anyway, I don't want my purchases, movements, thoughts tracked in the slightest. I have nothing to hide, so go away. I'm terribly curious where all this is headed.
Oh, as for traveling with anonymity, have you noticed all those surveillance cameras going up? It's only a matter of time before they can read license plates and recognize faces. Technology.
The first point is psychology, the second a factual reminder that the first point doesn't apply here.
:)
There is a natural reluctance to sympathize with criminal defendants we know nothing about; we want the state to be right about them, because the state protects us. I'm hardly immune to this. (A major exception is the Bronx, for which the "Bronx effect" was coined; the Bronx in known among lawyers for having a much higher acquittal rate than teh neighboring boroughs.
Before some idiot interprets that as a slur against the Bronx, please google "bronx effect."
Too bad I can't metamoderate my own stuff. I'd be honest, really.
Former AG Edwin Meese said while in office that "if a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect," which to me is another way of saying suspects are always guilty. I doubt that our current AG Ashcroft is much different. I've had the good fortune to work with both prosecutors and courts, and while they were both very good at their work, they were not gods. One of the cases I reviewed involved a Chicago judge who apparently took a bribe to throw a murder case for the defendant, AND to screw his codefendant into taking the blame. Lovely. I felt very naive: I could picture taking a bribe to fix a traffic ticket, but a murder case? It could have been a death penalty situation. They were probably both guilty of the murder-for-hire of a drug dealer, but all this did seem a little unfair, and it scored the codefendant an oh-so-hard to get habeas corpus hearing. The state lawyers assigned to oppose his petition did a frighteningly bad job; the judge I wrote my memo for had to correct them on a basic point of law, sinking the rest of their case. Oh well.
:)
How's that for digression?
However, we do live in a pretty cool country (I'm assuming the U.S. here, though there are other nice places!) with lots of promise. It just takes a lot of minding so it doesn't get all run down.
Well, actually that's different, that's venue. You can sue in federal court anywhere you want, subject to venue rules which like personal jurisdiction partly serve to prevent one party from unfairly inconveniencing the other by picking a random place to sue. Contracts frequently ask you to waive your venue and choice-of-law rights to litigate only in their neck of the woods. These clauses are not always enforceable.
Almost wherever you are, there's a handy federal court nearby, though certainly the state sysetems are larger. I think i saw somewhere that tha CA state system has more judges than the entire federal judiciary. That's part of why federal court limits is jurisdiction to more "significant" cases, along with $5 Social Security disputes...
A third reason might also be that plaintiff's lawyers were more experienced in state court, and so chose that forum. Unfortunately, CA could not reach the defendant, so they will be sending their lawyers somewhere if they bother to pursue this harassment lawsuit at all.
Why indeed. Good question. I dunno. :)
This appears to be a small potatoes lawsuit. The plaintiff asked for an injunction and no money damages. Two theories: (1) the case likely did not meet the requirements for federal jurisdiction, which include like $75,000 in controversy or a federal statute that grants jurisdiction (I don't knoe how the DMCA is written on this point); or (2) state court is cheaper place to litigate, and this case was mostly symbolic anyway.