"Degrading taliban and terrorists to Enemy combatant and thus denying them the rights of the Geneva Convention. No trials either."
The Geneva Convention covers how SOLDIERS are to be treated after capture, and the rules for ARMIES to use while engaging each other, and some rules for treating CIVILIANS. And they provide definitions of what those entities are -wearing a uniform, command structure, etc. Under the Geneva Convention, the Taliban and insurgents are NOT "enemy combatants", i.e. soldiers. Nor are they civilians, in that they have taken up arms. They are unaddressed. In the past, that means that it was perfectly legal, under the Geneva Convention, to shoot them out of hand.
So, in essence, the Taliban are being treated BETTER than the GC requires, in that they are still alive and being accorded the rights of POW's. And since hostilities are not ended in Afganistan, they stay in Gitmo. Those rights, BTW, do NOT include a trial. POW's are to be held in humane conditions until hostilities are ended, and then repatriated. They are only tried for crimes - i.e. actions taken outside the rules of war.
So the Taliban fighters are in limbo - they are not soldiers, but are being treated as if they were in order to satisfy the sensibilities of citizens like yourself. Since they acted outside of the rules of war, i.e. shooting at folks and blowing shit up while acting outside of a military structure - they are subject to trial, but no set of laws exist to treat this situation. And on top of all of that, the current insurgency certainly isn't following the Geneva convention (basing among the civilian populace, targeting civilians), but the national forces are expected to do so.
The Geneva convention, as a means of regulating warfare, is broken. It was created at a time when the horror of war was thought to be massive armies slugging it out for political/nationalistic reasons. Now the situation includes entities that do not identify with a nation, using means specifically to inflict the very damage on civilians the Geneva Convention was supposed to prevent, and they then use that same convention to cover for themselves.
...which will "inexplicably" explode shortly after launch. The launch director will be overheard shortly after saying "red button? I didn't punch any red buttons". The reporter will note that the destruct button is indeed not red; it is black.
So, are you proposing that mistakes should have no consequences other than those that directly afect the offender?
If we are in traffic, and I am not paying attention and I crash into you from behind, that is a mistake, in the sense that I did not intend to do you harm. So, since my car is damaged as well, your sense of justice is served, and I am free to go on. Wait a minute - who is going to pay for the damage to your car? I won't - I have been "punished" enough. You are left holding the bag for my mistake.
People make mistakes all the time. That does not mean they should not be held liable for the consequences of those mistakes, irrespective of anyone's sense of justice or revenge.
"In my opinion, this company has already been punished for their mistake. They exist no more. The employees who made the mistake have already lost their jobs. What would be the purpose of suing? Revenge?"
No, restitution. The civil court system is primarily concerned with damages and making an injured party whole. "Punitive" damages are tacked on at the end if the conduct has been egregious. So the hospital sues not to punish the company but to recover damages - fines, labor for fixing the contractor's mistake, etc. Since the primary investor bailed, it is presumed that he either extracted his investment, or at least has some signifigant holdings independent of the bankrupt company.
We can debate the merits of piercing the corporate veil for civil liability, but talking about "punishment" in this context is a red herring.
Since yours is the first post to actually come up with assertions that can be checked, I'll have to do some digging. If my perceptions of Australian firearms regulations are mistaken, then I apologize and need to educate myself.
I am concerned about your last statement, regarding "want" vs. "need". Who determines what is a legitimate need or not? You mentioned that you have relatives that were champion shooters, but did they really have a "need" to put holes in paper at a distance? In the US gun control advocates are fond of the term "legitimate sporting purpose", and have used that "criterion to ban certain typoes of firearms while leaving other functionally equivalent types alone. But "legitimate sporting purpose", aside from difficulties with the US 2nd amendment, is also quite vague. Who determines what is "legitimate"? Who determines what is "sporting"?
If "sporting" is defined as "hunting", then there goes your relative's achievements. If "legitimate" is defined as "officially sanctioned", no more heading to the back field to shoot at tin cans with your friends. If I want to go out on my property, or a firing range, and blast away with a semi-auto rifle at a stump or a paper target, why is that "illegitimate."
My kids are with my grandparents this summer, and I asked my father to teach my kids how to shoot. My daughter went into a panic because she has been believed that "shooting" means "murder", and thought that my Dad was going to take her on a casual killing spree. He got it straightened out, but those attitudes are what are being fed to my kids - guns are bad, people who own guns are dangerous. When I was at lunch a couple of days ago, I mentioned this incident, and got a lot of rolled eyes, including a comment about "can't see any reason whatsoever to ever shoot a gun." Although I think he suffers from a lack of imagination (possibly terminal - we work in Washington, DC), it is not my place to gainsay his choices. But there are many of his same opinion who, because they can't see any reason to own or use a gun, believe that there is NO reason for ANYONE to do so.
That is how I tied it in to the original topic - people who define "legitimate uses" of the Internet a certain way, and are willing to use dishonest means to gain control over communications. They even use the same rhetoric: "It's for the children". The problem is, they don't care about your children; they care about theirs, in the sense that they want to accrue and pass down power.
The reason it is not off topic is that, historically, the first thing oppressive regimes do is to disarm the populace. Australia is simply following an historical pattern.
School shootings are an occasion for sadness and outrage; govenments using them as a catspaw to disarm the polpulace "for their own good" is a calculated move to harness those emotions to get wht it wants - a populace that can't resist government actions when the government starts acting against the best interests of the people it purports to represent.
I used to think Australia would be a great place to live, maybe even better than the US. A former British colony, lots of frontier and low population density, laid back. But now it is making up for lost time and trying to exceed Britain in being a nanny state and the US in privacy invasions.
Thank God they have liberal gun laws and a lot of folks are armed, so as to defend their rights - oh, wait, the Austrailian gov't confiscated everyone's guns in a "think of the children" ploy. And the gun owners just gave them up with nary a whimper.
What I find interesting is that the manufacturer had no problem turning over the source code, but the DA objected. To me, that indicates that:
a) the manufacturer has a high level of confidence the code will stand up to scrutiny b) the DA does NOT believe the device will stand up to scrutiny.
The DA wants to be able to say that the evidence that you are drunk is incontrovertable, because that little black box says so. He doesn't know - or really even care - what happens inside the box, or if it is accurate or not.
"It does raise money by commercial activities but does not attempt to charge people for aid?"
The American Red Cross does not charge people for aid. Period. Please cite an example where they have.
There have been 2 "exceptions" to this:
1) In Korea, the Red Cross was ORDERED to charge American GI's a nominal fee for stuff, since the Army thought that it would demoralize our allied troops, since they weren't getting their stuff for free.
2) Fraud: there have been instances where unscrupulous folks have collected money for ARC aid without the knowledge of the organization, and against policy. They are generally prosecuted.
Backwards. Congress gave the ARC (American Red Cross) the trademark, but allowed other organizations who had been previously using it to continue to do so under a grandfather clause. I believe, and my guess is that the courts will believe, that federal law trumps this previous private agreement.
J&J seems to be arguing that, since the ARC has exclusive use of the trademark, that ONLY the ARC can use it, and not assign it to "agents" taht compete with the grandfathered companies. Why do I have the suspicion that J&J is pissed that the ARC didn't license to them.
I call bullshit. The Red cross does not have, and never has had, anything to do with organ transplantation or donations. My guess is you got a call from some other organization and got confused.
They used to have a tissue donation division, but they spun it off a while ago and, to the best of my knowledge, didn't deal directly with individuals. We're talking skin and bone, not organs.
I applaud you for trying to volunteer, but it's a little complicated from the Red Cross side.
First, the American Red Cross sent very few people to Indonesia. I understand that you saw folks with the Red Cross Symbol, but there are over a hundred (I think) separate Red Cross organization, and all use the same symbol.
Second, the Red Cross, at least in America, trains its volunteers extensively before deploying them to a disaster area. The volunteers you see for disasters in the US are people who are already in the pipeline; when they rush the process they get volunteers melting down on site, or burning out rapidly, . And then there are the fraudsters - the ARC now does background checks on all volunteers to prevent some of the things that happened with the phone banks during Katrina.
If you are really interested in working disaster relief, go to your local Red Cross Chapter and volunteer there. You will get the training you need and maybe be deployed to some local disasters - house fires, etc. Then you will be ready for deployment when the big ones come up.
"The Red Cross is no saint. If they were, they wouldn't be charging insane amounts of money for *donated* blood (which has an astoundingly poor rate of screening for HIV and other communicable diseases)"
Huh? Every unit of blood is screened for HIV and a shitload of other diseases, as mandated by federal law. The Red Cross runs a number of testing centers that do nothing BUT test blood, both for themselves and other blood banks.
As for charging money for donated blood, who do you think pays for all that testing? And the phlebotomists that draw the blood, the truck drivers that transport it to the blood processing center, the people who process it, the trucks to deliver it to the hospitals, the maintenance staff to keep the special refrigerators and freezers going, the electric bill, the Fedex bill to ship samples to the aforementioned testing labs, the counselors who tell blood donors about positive test ersults, and finally, shipping blood from other regions because the local populace won't give enough blood to cover what they use.
"And if just talking about looks and all, showing fit and lean, non-obese women is a good thing. We've got a horrible obesity problem out there, so, some skinnier role models are a good thing IMHO"
It's not a binary proposition. There is a huge range between obese (bad), and what actresses and models look like (also bad).
Slashdot Mirror
"Offline Files in Win2K/XP is something I've yet to see done well on _any_ OS."
Fixed that for ya.
Don't forget a liberal's integrity.
Be sure to look at the whole "first goatse" set - he has one of Ron Jeremy looking at it.
"Degrading taliban and terrorists to Enemy combatant and thus denying them the rights of the Geneva Convention. No trials either."
The Geneva Convention covers how SOLDIERS are to be treated after capture, and the rules for ARMIES to use while engaging each other, and some rules for treating CIVILIANS. And they provide definitions of what those entities are -wearing a uniform, command structure, etc. Under the Geneva Convention, the Taliban and insurgents are NOT "enemy combatants", i.e. soldiers. Nor are they civilians, in that they have taken up arms. They are unaddressed. In the past, that means that it was perfectly legal, under the Geneva Convention, to shoot them out of hand.
So, in essence, the Taliban are being treated BETTER than the GC requires, in that they are still alive and being accorded the rights of POW's. And since hostilities are not ended in Afganistan, they stay in Gitmo. Those rights, BTW, do NOT include a trial. POW's are to be held in humane conditions until hostilities are ended, and then repatriated. They are only tried for crimes - i.e. actions taken outside the rules of war.
So the Taliban fighters are in limbo - they are not soldiers, but are being treated as if they were in order to satisfy the sensibilities of citizens like yourself. Since they acted outside of the rules of war, i.e. shooting at folks and blowing shit up while acting outside of a military structure - they are subject to trial, but no set of laws exist to treat this situation. And on top of all of that, the current insurgency certainly isn't following the Geneva convention (basing among the civilian populace, targeting civilians), but the national forces are expected to do so.
The Geneva convention, as a means of regulating warfare, is broken. It was created at a time when the horror of war was thought to be massive armies slugging it out for political/nationalistic reasons. Now the situation includes entities that do not identify with a nation, using means specifically to inflict the very damage on civilians the Geneva Convention was supposed to prevent, and they then use that same convention to cover for themselves.
Puhleese...Chuck Norris looks at the frying pan, raises an eyebrow, and the pan collapses itself into neutronium out of sheer fright.
...which will "inexplicably" explode shortly after launch. The launch director will be overheard shortly after saying "red button? I didn't punch any red buttons". The reporter will note that the destruct button is indeed not red; it is black.
So, are you proposing that mistakes should have no consequences other than those that directly afect the offender?
If we are in traffic, and I am not paying attention and I crash into you from behind, that is a mistake, in the sense that I did not intend to do you harm. So, since my car is damaged as well, your sense of justice is served, and I am free to go on. Wait a minute - who is going to pay for the damage to your car? I won't - I have been "punished" enough. You are left holding the bag for my mistake.
People make mistakes all the time. That does not mean they should not be held liable for the consequences of those mistakes, irrespective of anyone's sense of justice or revenge.
"In my opinion, this company has already been punished for their mistake. They exist no more. The employees who made the mistake have already lost their jobs. What would be the purpose of suing? Revenge?"
No, restitution. The civil court system is primarily concerned with damages and making an injured party whole. "Punitive" damages are tacked on at the end if the conduct has been egregious. So the hospital sues not to punish the company but to recover damages - fines, labor for fixing the contractor's mistake, etc. Since the primary investor bailed, it is presumed that he either extracted his investment, or at least has some signifigant holdings independent of the bankrupt company.
We can debate the merits of piercing the corporate veil for civil liability, but talking about "punishment" in this context is a red herring.
Read comments above:
1) Court seizure of assets
2) Individual contempt of court citations
I believe the judge could also hold the officer's of the company in contemt of court and throw them in jail until such time as the judgement is paid.
Picture it: record company CEO in county jail...sweeeet.
Since yours is the first post to actually come up with assertions that can be checked, I'll have to do some digging. If my perceptions of Australian firearms regulations are mistaken, then I apologize and need to educate myself.
I am concerned about your last statement, regarding "want" vs. "need". Who determines what is a legitimate need or not? You mentioned that you have relatives that were champion shooters, but did they really have a "need" to put holes in paper at a distance? In the US gun control advocates are fond of the term "legitimate sporting purpose", and have used that "criterion to ban certain typoes of firearms while leaving other functionally equivalent types alone. But "legitimate sporting purpose", aside from difficulties with the US 2nd amendment, is also quite vague. Who determines what is "legitimate"? Who determines what is "sporting"?
If "sporting" is defined as "hunting", then there goes your relative's achievements. If "legitimate" is defined as "officially sanctioned", no more heading to the back field to shoot at tin cans with your friends. If I want to go out on my property, or a firing range, and blast away with a semi-auto rifle at a stump or a paper target, why is that "illegitimate."
My kids are with my grandparents this summer, and I asked my father to teach my kids how to shoot. My daughter went into a panic because she has been believed that "shooting" means "murder", and thought that my Dad was going to take her on a casual killing spree. He got it straightened out, but those attitudes are what are being fed to my kids - guns are bad, people who own guns are dangerous. When I was at lunch a couple of days ago, I mentioned this incident, and got a lot of rolled eyes, including a comment about "can't see any reason whatsoever to ever shoot a gun." Although I think he suffers from a lack of imagination (possibly terminal - we work in Washington, DC), it is not my place to gainsay his choices. But there are many of his same opinion who, because they can't see any reason to own or use a gun, believe that there is NO reason for ANYONE to do so.
That is how I tied it in to the original topic - people who define "legitimate uses" of the Internet a certain way, and are willing to use dishonest means to gain control over communications. They even use the same rhetoric: "It's for the children". The problem is, they don't care about your children; they care about theirs, in the sense that they want to accrue and pass down power.
Absolutely - I think the NCLB should be unceremoniously dropped, the Department of Education abolished, and the money saved used for debt reduction.
Wait - you want to KEEP the money given to states under NCLB? Just not comply with the terms? I understand now.
The reason it is not off topic is that, historically, the first thing oppressive regimes do is to disarm the populace. Australia is simply following an historical pattern.
School shootings are an occasion for sadness and outrage; govenments using them as a catspaw to disarm the polpulace "for their own good" is a calculated move to harness those emotions to get wht it wants - a populace that can't resist government actions when the government starts acting against the best interests of the people it purports to represent.
I used to think Australia would be a great place to live, maybe even better than the US. A former British colony, lots of frontier and low population density, laid back. But now it is making up for lost time and trying to exceed Britain in being a nanny state and the US in privacy invasions.
Thank God they have liberal gun laws and a lot of folks are armed, so as to defend their rights - oh, wait, the Austrailian gov't confiscated everyone's guns in a "think of the children" ploy. And the gun owners just gave them up with nary a whimper.
What I find interesting is that the manufacturer had no problem turning over the source code, but the DA objected. To me, that indicates that:
a) the manufacturer has a high level of confidence the code will stand up to scrutiny
b) the DA does NOT believe the device will stand up to scrutiny.
The DA wants to be able to say that the evidence that you are drunk is incontrovertable, because that little black box says so. He doesn't know - or really even care - what happens inside the box, or if it is accurate or not.
Oh come on - /. has plenty of lame-ass stories besides April Fools versions.
Besides which, that post doesn't really work without the OMG Ponies theme - I had to scrub my eyeballs after that one.
"It does raise money by commercial activities but does not attempt to charge people for aid?"
The American Red Cross does not charge people for aid. Period. Please cite an example where they have.
There have been 2 "exceptions" to this:
1) In Korea, the Red Cross was ORDERED to charge American GI's a nominal fee for stuff, since the Army thought that it would demoralize our allied troops, since they weren't getting their stuff for free.
2) Fraud: there have been instances where unscrupulous folks have collected money for ARC aid without the knowledge of the organization, and against policy. They are generally prosecuted.
Backwards. Congress gave the ARC (American Red Cross) the trademark, but allowed other organizations who had been previously using it to continue to do so under a grandfather clause. I believe, and my guess is that the courts will believe, that federal law trumps this previous private agreement.
J&J seems to be arguing that, since the ARC has exclusive use of the trademark, that ONLY the ARC can use it, and not assign it to "agents" taht compete with the grandfathered companies. Why do I have the suspicion that J&J is pissed that the ARC didn't license to them.
I call bullshit. The Red cross does not have, and never has had, anything to do with organ transplantation or donations. My guess is you got a call from some other organization and got confused.
They used to have a tissue donation division, but they spun it off a while ago and, to the best of my knowledge, didn't deal directly with individuals. We're talking skin and bone, not organs.
I applaud you for trying to volunteer, but it's a little complicated from the Red Cross side.
First, the American Red Cross sent very few people to Indonesia. I understand that you saw folks with the Red Cross Symbol, but there are over a hundred (I think) separate Red Cross organization, and all use the same symbol.
Second, the Red Cross, at least in America, trains its volunteers extensively before deploying them to a disaster area. The volunteers you see for disasters in the US are people who are already in the pipeline; when they rush the process they get volunteers melting down on site, or burning out rapidly, . And then there are the fraudsters - the ARC now does background checks on all volunteers to prevent some of the things that happened with the phone banks during Katrina.
If you are really interested in working disaster relief, go to your local Red Cross Chapter and volunteer there. You will get the training you need and maybe be deployed to some local disasters - house fires, etc. Then you will be ready for deployment when the big ones come up.
"The Red Cross is no saint. If they were, they wouldn't be charging insane amounts of money for *donated* blood (which has an astoundingly poor rate of screening for HIV and other communicable diseases)"
Huh? Every unit of blood is screened for HIV and a shitload of other diseases, as mandated by federal law. The Red Cross runs a number of testing centers that do nothing BUT test blood, both for themselves and other blood banks.
As for charging money for donated blood, who do you think pays for all that testing? And the phlebotomists that draw the blood, the truck drivers that transport it to the blood processing center, the people who process it, the trucks to deliver it to the hospitals, the maintenance staff to keep the special refrigerators and freezers going, the electric bill, the Fedex bill to ship samples to the aforementioned testing labs, the counselors who tell blood donors about positive test ersults, and finally, shipping blood from other regions because the local populace won't give enough blood to cover what they use.
"The secret to staying warmer when you find yourself naked in space is to keep calm. You don't want to be sweating."
Okay - will someone tell me why, with this closing phrase, this post isn't modded +5 "Funny"?
Anybody?
"And if just talking about looks and all, showing fit and lean, non-obese women is a good thing. We've got a horrible obesity problem out there, so, some skinnier role models are a good thing IMHO"
It's not a binary proposition. There is a huge range between obese (bad), and what actresses and models look like (also bad).
"my oven needs to be turned down about 25 degrees from whatever the recipe says."
You are aware that the knob on your oven is adjustable, right? Get a thermometer, get a true reading, and adjust your temp knob.
How ironic.