The fact that it's "recent" is revealing in and of itself; it's a clear attempt to draw moral equivalence between the founders of the US and the oppressive theocratic fanatics butchering people in the middle east.
It's more than that. There's a line of revisionism which states basically that not only were the US revolutionaries terrorists, but that their complaints against Britain ranged from unfounded to trivial, that the colonists were actually being coddled compared to those back at home, and that the whole revolution was unjustified.
They're for weak people who need others in order to validate their existence.
Now MOD ME UP DAMN YOU!!!! I NEED YOUR VALIDATION!!!
ROTFL. I don't care about mod points either, I've got karma to burn. What I can't figure out is why my insights are modded informative, my informative posts are modded funny, and my jokes are modded troll... and when I do indulge in a bit of trolling, it's modded insightful.
My first programming experience was an SC/MP homebrew with 2k of RAM.....blah blah blah yellow onion blah blah blah...If you can't get there from R, I'm in real trouble
Someone with 25 years experience is far more employable than someone with 5 years because they... have more experience?
Have you ever seen a job ad which asks for 25 years experience? Or even 15? No, they all ask for about 5 years experience and "extensive experience in" a laundry list of technologies which would take about 50 years total to get.
And it begs the question, what are the rulers if not themselves men?
Two basic possibilities: 1) There are a few men who are free, who have authority without responsibility, and who wield control over the rest of us.
2) There are no men who are free; even those at the top are constrained by the society they and their predecessors have built, or by the weight of responsibility on them.
Can Google confirm or deny a relationship with the NSA?
If Google were to deny it, would you believe them? If the NSA were to deny it, would you believe them? If the NSA were to demand information from Google and Google were to refuse, do you think the NSA would simply give up and go away, or would they find some way to obtain the information?
IMO, it's a pretty safe assumption that if the NSA wants information from Google, they can get it, by hook or by crook, no matter what either of them say about it.
Mathematically speaking, 1-2-3 has the same probability as 10-30-70 when choosing 3 numbers from a pool of 10k...
Not in this case. In this case, 1-2-3-...-100,000 was chosen with probability 1. Human intuition that this sequence was not the result of a random process was correct.
Also, isn't int true that the order in which the applicants were filed was completely random?
No. It was slightly randomized due to some implementation details, but it was certainly not completely random, being well-correlated to time of application.
I'm thinking that ALL previous algorithm runs were skewed and they only discovered that this year after the first run.
No, it was a new program for this year: From the decision:
The State Department used a new randomizer program for the 2012 DV lottery, which turned out to include an error in the process that âoerendered the Randomizer Program ineffective.â Instead of directing the computer to select the winners as they had been re-ordered and randomized in step two, the computer simply selected the entries in the order in which they were originally numbered.
So basically the first 100,000 people to enter won (not quite because of some complications while entering them, but pretty close). How the plaintiffs thought they could convince a judge that this was legally "random" is beyond me; I guess they figured they had nothing to lose.
Being subject to search, in and of itself, is not against the Constitution. Being subject to unreasonable search is where the problem is.
By "subject to search" I mean "subject to arbitrary search, for any reason or no reason". That's unreasonable.
At the very least, cars are still supposed to be free from unreasonable search, since any warrantless searches of a car are supposed to happen under conditions that have been tightly regulated.
Said conditions basically amount to "It's a car."
But as long as we have viable alternatives that are free from unreasonable search, we aren't subject to it.
And as long as we can speak in a "free speech zone" we've got freedom of speech? No. These rights are intended to apply universally (and are written that way); it is simply not valid reasoning to claim that an arbitrary government-mandated search is "reasonable" because one could avoid it by taking some other means of transportation.
I'd suggest that they're able to get around it because viable alternatives exist. As you said, eventually they could try to push things to the point where our rights only exist on paper, since no one can be reasonably expected to travel everywhere on foot, but, as I just mentioned in a lengthier reply to someone else, I believe that it would be ruled to be an undue burden, and as such, would be considered unconstitutional.
You'd be wrong, because we've already reached that point. Saying "This search is OK because there's another way people can go about doing the same thing without the search" invites defeat in detail. And indeed, it's happened. Want to get from one place to another, far away? Fly... subject to search. Drive... subject to search. Take a train... subject to search. Take a bus... subject to search.
Simple Question: Would get rid of all airport security given the chance or do you think there is a happy middle ground?
My opening position is that we get rid of airport security and issue guns and bombs to every man, woman, and child who gets on a plane. Also we remove the flight deck door so everyone can see that nothing is wrong up front.
Now, we can search for a happy middle ground from there.
Darn right and amen to that! Now, since I'm not a Constitutional scholar of your caliber, could you point me to the place in the Constitution where our rights are being violated if we choose to give them up for the luxury of flying?
Fourth Amendment, just as you'd expect. The fact that the government is using private actors (airlines) as intermediaries does not exempt their actions from Fourth Amendment scrutiny. Following your line of reasoning and we quickly get to the point where the only time one can be secure in ones person, papers, and effects while travelling is to travel solely on foot. And then they test the edges of that. (This isn't "slippery slope" reasoning; we're already there)
Government has its hands in the lives of nearly every PRIVATE company for one reason or another, usually due to public safety.
And you sneered at libertarians when we said this sort of thing was bad and would lead to wider and wider abuses. Welcome to the lower end of the slippery slope... are you still sneering now?
the modern Chinese people are getting along just fine without trying to fit in with Western ideals.
Ooh, the culture card. To oppose Internet censorship is to be provincial, parochial, imperialist, colonialist, or whatever the bad word is today. Imagine how silly it would be if someone from some other culture objecting to TSA groping were to be told that the US was getting along just fine without trying to fit into that other culture's ideals.
(not the Constitution itself, due to that nasty 3/5th compromise)
You do understand that it was the free states which wanted a slave counted as zero, and the slave states who wanted a slave counted as a full person, for the purposes of representation?
I really don't know how the "China model," as it's often called, is going to end up, but to be honest, propaganda is everywhere.
Indeed it is. Enjoy your job at the (Chinese) Ministry of Propaganda.
The so-called use tax amounts to a tax on imports from other states. It's worded so as to weasel around the prohibition against such by claiming the tax is on the use and not the import, but the weaseling is quite transparent.
It is regressive relative to income, since low income earners spend a greater proportion of their income on things that the sales tax applies to, therefore losing a greater proportion of their income to the tax.
It's regressive relative to income, but flat relative to its own basis, which seems a more relevant measure.
Amazon "imports" DVDs from the tax haven island of Jersey to its UK customers so it can dodge VAT and be cheaper than bricks and mortar shops in Britain.
It didn't occur to me until I read about this ongoing saga that this is a worldwide policy. They see sales tax as a rule that does not apply to them. Anywhere
They see it as a tax they can avoid by _following_ certain rules.
I see the error in my "logic" on shipping. But when I step back and take a high level look at it as a whole, would Amazon even exist if states didn't keep their infrastructure working? Amazon directly profits from all states keeping all their infrastructure operational.
Amazon doesn't ship stuff itself, it uses shipping companies. Those shipping companies pay taxes in all the states in which they operate (not sales taxes, but vehicle registration and other fees).
For example, in the 2nd Amendment, they mention a "Well Regulated Militia". Does that mean that one needs to be part of a Well Regulated Militia in order to have that right?
Well, let's take a look. Here's the text of the 2nd Amendment:
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Does it say "The right of the members of the well-regulated militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"? No. The meaning of the term "the People" is not changed by the presence of the nominative absolute.
(Also, the extra two commas which appear in some versions don't change anything)
Here's another one which isn't ambiguous:
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
That's the Sixth Amendment. How does one square this with the Supreme Court's pronouncement that a jury trial need not be provided if the maximum term of imprisonment for the offense is less than six months? Of course, you can't; the text of the Amendment is clear as day, "in all criminal prosecutions".
Slashdot Mirror
It's more than that. There's a line of revisionism which states basically that not only were the US revolutionaries terrorists, but that their complaints against Britain ranged from unfounded to trivial, that the colonists were actually being coddled compared to those back at home, and that the whole revolution was unjustified.
He's just trying to get the new RickRoller badge. I can't wait for the equivalent for goatse.
ROTFL. I don't care about mod points either, I've got karma to burn. What I can't figure out is why my insights are modded informative, my informative posts are modded funny, and my jokes are modded troll... and when I do indulge in a bit of trolling, it's modded insightful.
Thank you, Abraham Simpson.
Have you ever seen a job ad which asks for 25 years experience? Or even 15? No, they all ask for about 5 years experience and "extensive experience in" a laundry list of technologies which would take about 50 years total to get.
The epsilons are happy being epsilons.
Two basic possibilities:
1) There are a few men who are free, who have authority without responsibility, and who wield control over the rest of us.
2) There are no men who are free; even those at the top are constrained by the society they and their predecessors have built, or by the weight of responsibility on them.
If Google were to deny it, would you believe them? If the NSA were to deny it, would you believe them? If the NSA were to demand information from Google and Google were to refuse, do you think the NSA would simply give up and go away, or would they find some way to obtain the information?
IMO, it's a pretty safe assumption that if the NSA wants information from Google, they can get it, by hook or by crook, no matter what either of them say about it.
Because it turns out that if you add the limiting clause "on a mobile computing device", everything old becomes new again.
Not in this case. In this case, 1-2-3-...-100,000 was chosen with probability 1. Human intuition that this sequence was not the result of a random process was correct.
No. It was slightly randomized due to some implementation details, but it was certainly not completely random, being well-correlated to time of application.
No, it was a new program for this year:
From the decision:
So basically the first 100,000 people to enter won (not quite because of some complications while entering them, but pretty close). How the plaintiffs thought they could convince a judge that this was legally "random" is beyond me; I guess they figured they had nothing to lose.
By "subject to search" I mean "subject to arbitrary search, for any reason or no reason". That's unreasonable.
Said conditions basically amount to "It's a car."
And as long as we can speak in a "free speech zone" we've got freedom of speech? No. These rights are intended to apply universally (and are written that way); it is simply not valid reasoning to claim that an arbitrary government-mandated search is "reasonable" because one could avoid it by taking some other means of transportation.
You'd be wrong, because we've already reached that point. Saying "This search is OK because there's another way people can go about doing the same thing without the search" invites defeat in detail. And indeed, it's happened. Want to get from one place to another, far away? Fly... subject to search. Drive... subject to search. Take a train... subject to search. Take a bus... subject to search.
So you're saying I'm playing the "playing the foo card" card?
My opening position is that we get rid of airport security and issue guns and bombs to every man, woman, and child who gets on a plane. Also we remove the flight deck door so everyone can see that nothing is wrong up front.
Now, we can search for a happy middle ground from there.
Fourth Amendment, just as you'd expect. The fact that the government is using private actors (airlines) as intermediaries does not exempt their actions from Fourth Amendment scrutiny. Following your line of reasoning and we quickly get to the point where the only time one can be secure in ones person, papers, and effects while travelling is to travel solely on foot. And then they test the edges of that. (This isn't "slippery slope" reasoning; we're already there)
And you sneered at libertarians when we said this sort of thing was bad and would lead to wider and wider abuses. Welcome to the lower end of the slippery slope... are you still sneering now?
Supreme Court justices end up on the losing side of Constitutional issues up to 44% of the time.
Ooh, the culture card. To oppose Internet censorship is to be provincial, parochial, imperialist, colonialist, or whatever the bad word is today. Imagine how silly it would be if someone from some other culture objecting to TSA groping were to be told that the US was getting along just fine without trying to fit into that other culture's ideals.
You do understand that it was the free states which wanted a slave counted as zero, and the slave states who wanted a slave counted as a full person, for the purposes of representation?
Indeed it is. Enjoy your job at the (Chinese) Ministry of Propaganda.
The so-called use tax amounts to a tax on imports from other states. It's worded so as to weasel around the prohibition against such by claiming the tax is on the use and not the import, but the weaseling is quite transparent.
It's regressive relative to income, but flat relative to its own basis, which seems a more relevant measure.
They see it as a tax they can avoid by _following_ certain rules.
Amazon doesn't ship stuff itself, it uses shipping companies. Those shipping companies pay taxes in all the states in which they operate (not sales taxes, but vehicle registration and other fees).
Use tax is a straightforward violation of the Constitution.
Well, let's take a look. Here's the text of the 2nd Amendment: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Does it say "The right of the members of the well-regulated militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"? No. The meaning of the term "the People" is not changed by the presence of the nominative absolute. (Also, the extra two commas which appear in some versions don't change anything) Here's another one which isn't ambiguous: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." That's the Sixth Amendment. How does one square this with the Supreme Court's pronouncement that a jury trial need not be provided if the maximum term of imprisonment for the offense is less than six months? Of course, you can't; the text of the Amendment is clear as day, "in all criminal prosecutions".