Anyway - requirement to use a specific safety solution that's patented is stupid, but some safety solutions should exist.
The state of product liability law is such that if you don't use every available safety solution, and sometimes even if you do, you'll get sued and lose.
Beyond fMRI studies, there are lots of other formal studies and semi-formal observations (look at actuarial data on auto accidents, for example) that show that the cognitive ability we call "judgement", the ability to weigh multiple competing factors with a fair degree of accuracy and arrive at a sensible conclusion, is something that isn't fully-developed until the mid-20s.
Such interpretations assume that "judgement" is an ability -- something inherent -- rather than a skill acquired and improved through use and training. If what you call judgement is a skill or set of skills, then preventing teenagers from exercising it will prevent them from developing it. I assert that this has already happened.
but overall adults are much better equipped to make difficult choices than kids are.
Overall, certainly. But in areas where the teens are directly impacted, that direct interest changes things. For instance, Colin Powell is probably far more equipped overall to make a difficult choices than I am. But if I'm deciding on which house to buy, should he make the decision? Not a chance; that's a decision which affects me (and my wife) way more than anyone else, and that direct interest means we're better equipped than Colin Powell.
STDs and unwanted pregnancies can really screw with a young person's future. And if they show really poor judgment, especially when coupled with what are normally relatively minor cognitive disorders like poor impulse control (a common characteristic of ADHD), they can end up with criminal charges, and for far worse than "sexting".
The only way they end up with criminal charges is if 1) They do something which is forbidden to everyone, like forcible rape. In this case, making it MORE illegal for them to do it isn't going to help
or
2) They commit some sort of offense which is only an offense because the legal system denies them the ability to make the decisions they make. In which case their judgement wasn't the problem; the legal systems refusal to allow them to engage in decision-making is.
And aside from AIDS, a prosecution on sex charges will likely screw up the teen's life as bad as or worse than any of the other consequences of underaged sex. Herpes may be forever, but it's not going to prevent you from living within 1000 feet of a school or prevent you from getting many jobs.
The US Government claims that filing taxes is voluntary under the same argument. You don't have to file taxes, you can chose to go to jail or have your babies shot instead.
The IRS isn't quite that Orwellian in this case. More Humpty-Dumptyish (Carolinian?). They claim that the tax system is "voluntary" because the taxpayer gets to figure his own taxes rather than just getting sent a bill and told to pay. They don't claim that filing is voluntary (except for certain low-income taxpayers, most of whom are better off if they do file) or that paying is voluntary.
This will be a great, hot new trend until companies start running into what Google already has - their research & assets seized by the government, the company kicked out of the country, and no compensation or help forthcoming. It may not be in China's best interest to do so, but they have the track record already.
Yeah, it's insane. China may or may not be as unsubtle as to seize their assets and kick them out, but you can be pretty certain that anything they develop at the Chinese facilities will end up right in the hands of Chinese competitors. And if after that goes on for a while, they do decide to leave on their own, they'll certainly lose all their fixed assets.
The judges are asserting that there is a likelihood that the prosecutor was retaliating by threatening to prosecute because the Does were seeking to exercise their rights under the law. Isn't this barratry?
It's violation of civil rights under color of law (18 USC 242). Perhaps the FBI should be brought in.
What, you mean the Texas board of education hasn't already required condom buyers to prove their 18?
You can get condoms in Texas at any age provided you explain they're for keeping dust out of your rifle barrel. You've got to fast-talk them about metallurgical nonsense to get the ones with spermicide, though.
The District Attorney needs to go to vocabulary re-education class:
"Participation in the program is voluntary," the letter said. "Please note, however, charges will be filed against those that do not participate or those that do not successfully complete the program."
Except in OrwellWorld(TM), "obey or be prosecuted" is not "voluntary".
"Appearing in a photograph provides no evidence as to whether that person possessed or transmitted the photo," said the opinion, by Judge Ambro.
Not noted in the article was that Judge Ambro specifically credited Captain Obvious, Esq. for his amicus brief on this subject.
Any time anyone collects detailed information about a person, his associations, or his possessions, there are privacy implications. That includes dog DNA databases, VIN databases (and tag number databases even more so), processor serial number databases, etc.
We're already so far down this slope, though, that nobody really notices it any more.
Lots of statistical problems seem to be ignored. Papers which blithely present meta-analyses as if they had the power of a single large study. Far too much significance attributed to case-control studies (which magnify small effects and can't, by nature, show causation). And statistical tests which simply don't have the power to show what they purport to be showing.
One example: A study purporting to demonstrate the effect of an event E on a particular variable X. The study took the average of the variable 12 months prior to E (high), and 12 months following E (much lower), and determined that event E reduced variable X. Only problem is that variable X had been declining, and about the time event E happened, that decline reversed and X started going up, though more slowly than it had been declining.
And piracy advocates are teaching that same generation that "if you don't agree with it then it is fine to break the law, even for the flimsiest of excuses". Neither side is really helping civilisation in that case.
The question is who is to be the master. Are individuals the servants of "civilisation", or does "civilisation" exist to serve the individuals? If it is the latter, it is the law which is the problem, not those breaking it.
When your opponents control the law, a stance like "one shouldn't ever break the law" is completely disarming. It is very easy for them to manipulate things so that all opposition is ineffectual, illegal, or both. So unless you want to say that those with the best lobbyists automatically win, don't try and raise the law to the level of something sacred.
A medical CT scanner lacks the resolution to scan a book, but there are CT scanners for other purposes which claim to have the resolution. However, I suspect most inks are essentially transparent to X-rays, so it wouldn't work.
In my mind - and I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned - if you are a traitor then you're not really a citizen any more.
If you're a traitor -- a person who has committed treason, that is making war against the US or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort, and who has been convicted of same by the testimony of at least two witnesses or who has confessed in open court -- then you are still a citizen (assuming you were to begin with). Revocation of citizenship is not part of the punishment for treason. (18 USC 2381)
Since no such judicial process exists for people on the "kill them from a drone" list exists, whether or not they are traitors is irrelevant.
Hi. I'm a US Citizen. I joined the Russian army and have bombed several US Embassies. But you can't kill me without a fair trial because I'm a US Citizen.
If you get killed while engaging in a hostile act (e.g. some troops catch you planting the next bomb), that's fine. If the US and Russia go to war (right now we're at peace) and you get shot on the battlefield, that's fine too. But if you've merely joined the Russian army and you're walking around Moscow while on leave, the US shouldn't get to summarily execute you just because you're _accused_ of bombing a few embassies.
Sorry, the moment they become EC's, they lose *all* affiliation with the US, including citizenship, and any protections afforded them by such things as the Geneva Convention...unless they become affiliated with another recognized nation.
I'm unaware of any part of the US Constitution that grants the executive branch the power to unilaterally revoke citizenship. Furthermore, opposing your own country does NOT deny you all the protections of the Geneva convention, though the Geneva convention does not (obviously) forbid killing your enemy.
The apparent position of the executive branch on this is that they have the power to decide that a given person, regardless of national affiliation, is an "enemy combatant" and to kill him anywhere and anytime so long as he's not on US soil. I find this hard to square with the Fifth Amendment. It's not even remotely similar to an actual battlefield situation.
the USA said "no, you turned him in, you don't prosecute DCMA, we do - he stays in jail for a year until we eventually get around to trying him and finding him not guilty". The worm turned on its master, very funny for everyone but Dmitriy's wife and infant children.
Actually, he was released from jail after 3 weeks and allowed to return home to Russia after 5 months. The real facts are bad enough without making stuff up. Elcomsoft was acquitted a year following Sklyarov's release.
Why did he do it? Not for the challenge, it was trivial! He did it so people could back up their legally purchased e-Books and so that blind people could read e-books. For that, he was held.
He worked for Elcomsoft; Elcomsoft sold a product to unlock the eBooks. I wouldn't be so quick to ascribe noble motives to either one.
Most major inventions are credited to first being invented by the Chinese, regardless how little evidence there is, or whether the invention was anything more than a dream, drawing, or element in a painting.
You mean someone's auto-replaced "Russian" with "Chinese"? Those bastards!
And now for the entirely predictable posts claiming low power lighting causes cancer, are crap, and cause global warming...
CFLs are largely crap.
Then we attack the lights. They are crap, taking too long to turn on, not being bright enough and so forth. Arguments that might have been true 10 years ago but have been entirely overcome unless you insist on buying the cheapest pos you can find.
They do take too long to turn on, the quality of light still sucks, and many of them still have noticable flicker and buzz. The passage of time has not decreased these arguments; that's just marketing. Put the same old crap in new packaging and claim the new stuff doesn't have any of the problems of the old stuff.
Oh, yeah, and they largely don't live up to their lifetime claims, which throws the whole cost and energy argument into doubt.
Then there is people claiming that CFLs give them headaches, if I had more time I'd point out the studies where people are shown to have similar sensitivity as those who sense EM fields.
I can sense the EM fields coming out of a CFL; if I couldn't, they'd be useless. Headaches caused by flicker (and yes, some of them DO flicker) aren't in the same category as headaches caused by wifi.
In Canada, if that person gets into an accident, my taxes are going to pay for his hospital bill. I'm all for saving lives, but I would rather prevent injury before it happens.
And THAT is one of the best arguments against national health care. I don't want you or the government to have an interest in preventing injury to me which overrides my own freedom to risk said injury.
Seems people in America only want to invest in fraudulent get rich quick gambling schemes these days. Actual resource extraction and manufacturing is for the peons.
Probably the environmental impact statement for opening such a separation plant outweighs (and outcosts) the equipment itself.
Oddly, it's the so-called capitalists who have become stymied by paperwork and government bureaucracy, and the bureaucratic communists of China who have not. Of course they don't mind at all if their people drink and breathe poison.
No, the charges against Sklyarov were dropped and he was released as part of a deal in which Elcomsoft agreed to accept US jurisdiction. The US jury then found Elcomsoft not guilty.
The court had a conclusion it wanted to reach (that the prosecutors were immune from suit), and it engaged in some sophistry to get there.
Normally, if Alice send a piece of mail to Bob, once it gets to Bob, Alice no longer has a Fourth Amendment interest in it; Bob however, does. A number of (bad) cases indicate that if the government just takes the mail from Bob and violates the hell out of his rights, they can still prosecute Alice (but not Bob) for the contents. Extend that to email, and you can say that if you subpoena the email from the ISP once Bob has it, you can prosecute Alice (even if the subpoena itself should not have been granted due to Bob's interest in the email). It looks like sophistry designed to vitiate the Fourth Amendment, primarily because it is, but it's sophistry with precedent.
The court went a lot further out on a limb with the other precedents it cited, however -- comparing intercepting email with the use of a pen register (which captures phone numbers -- addressing information, not content, a distinction which long precedes electronic communication and which judges have no excuse not to understand). It makes a similar "error" when it compares email content to "subscriber information" (information about the users of the system).
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The state of product liability law is such that if you don't use every available safety solution, and sometimes even if you do, you'll get sued and lose.
That's OK, there's no law involved here. As far as I can tell the court applied this prior restraint based on no statute at all.
Such interpretations assume that "judgement" is an ability -- something inherent -- rather than a skill acquired and improved through use and training. If what you call judgement is a skill or set of skills, then preventing teenagers from exercising it will prevent them from developing it. I assert that this has already happened.
Overall, certainly. But in areas where the teens are directly impacted, that direct interest changes things. For instance, Colin Powell is probably far more equipped overall to make a difficult choices than I am. But if I'm deciding on which house to buy, should he make the decision? Not a chance; that's a decision which affects me (and my wife) way more than anyone else, and that direct interest means we're better equipped than Colin Powell.
The only way they end up with criminal charges is if
1) They do something which is forbidden to everyone, like forcible rape. In this case, making it MORE illegal for them to do it isn't going to help
or
2) They commit some sort of offense which is only an offense because the legal system denies them the ability to make the decisions they make. In which case their judgement wasn't the problem; the legal systems refusal to allow them to engage in decision-making is.
And aside from AIDS, a prosecution on sex charges will likely screw up the teen's life as bad as or worse than any of the other consequences of underaged sex. Herpes may be forever, but it's not going to prevent you from living within 1000 feet of a school or prevent you from getting many jobs.
The IRS isn't quite that Orwellian in this case. More Humpty-Dumptyish (Carolinian?). They claim that the tax system is "voluntary" because the taxpayer gets to figure his own taxes rather than just getting sent a bill and told to pay. They don't claim that filing is voluntary (except for certain low-income taxpayers, most of whom are better off if they do file) or that paying is voluntary.
Yeah, it's insane. China may or may not be as unsubtle as to seize their assets and kick them out, but you can be pretty certain that anything they develop at the Chinese facilities will end up right in the hands of Chinese competitors. And if after that goes on for a while, they do decide to leave on their own, they'll certainly lose all their fixed assets.
It's violation of civil rights under color of law (18 USC 242). Perhaps the FBI should be brought in.
"Fully developed", with respect to the human brain, is a fancy way of saying "dead".
The study so widely parroted in the support of infantalizing adolescents is no more credible than the one about the telepathic dead salmon.
You can get condoms in Texas at any age provided you explain they're for keeping dust out of your rifle barrel. You've got to fast-talk them about metallurgical nonsense to get the ones with spermicide, though.
Except in OrwellWorld(TM), "obey or be prosecuted" is not "voluntary".
Not noted in the article was that Judge Ambro specifically credited Captain Obvious, Esq. for his amicus brief on this subject.
Any time anyone collects detailed information about a person, his associations, or his possessions, there are privacy implications. That includes dog DNA databases, VIN databases (and tag number databases even more so), processor serial number databases, etc.
We're already so far down this slope, though, that nobody really notices it any more.
Lots of statistical problems seem to be ignored. Papers which blithely present meta-analyses as if they had the power of a single large study. Far too much significance attributed to case-control studies (which magnify small effects and can't, by nature, show causation). And statistical tests which simply don't have the power to show what they purport to be showing.
One example: A study purporting to demonstrate the effect of an event E on a particular variable X. The study took the average of the variable 12 months prior to E (high), and 12 months following E (much lower), and determined that event E reduced variable X. Only problem is that variable X had been declining, and about the time event E happened, that decline reversed and X started going up, though more slowly than it had been declining.
The question is who is to be the master. Are individuals the servants of "civilisation", or does "civilisation" exist to serve the individuals? If it is the latter, it is the law which is the problem, not those breaking it.
When your opponents control the law, a stance like "one shouldn't ever break the law" is completely disarming. It is very easy for them to manipulate things so that all opposition is ineffectual, illegal, or both. So unless you want to say that those with the best lobbyists automatically win, don't try and raise the law to the level of something sacred.
A medical CT scanner lacks the resolution to scan a book, but there are CT scanners for other purposes which claim to have the resolution. However, I suspect most inks are essentially transparent to X-rays, so it wouldn't work.
Faster than you can say OnStar.
(what, you think Government Motors won't co-operate with the feds? You must be joking)
If you're a traitor -- a person who has committed treason, that is making war against the US or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort, and who has been convicted of same by the testimony of at least two witnesses or who has confessed in open court -- then you are still a citizen (assuming you were to begin with). Revocation of citizenship is not part of the punishment for treason. (18 USC 2381)
Since no such judicial process exists for people on the "kill them from a drone" list exists, whether or not they are traitors is irrelevant.
If you get killed while engaging in a hostile act (e.g. some troops catch you planting the next bomb), that's fine. If the US and Russia go to war (right now we're at peace) and you get shot on the battlefield, that's fine too. But if you've merely joined the Russian army and you're walking around Moscow while on leave, the US shouldn't get to summarily execute you just because you're _accused_ of bombing a few embassies.
I'm unaware of any part of the US Constitution that grants the executive branch the power to unilaterally revoke citizenship. Furthermore, opposing your own country does NOT deny you all the protections of the Geneva convention, though the Geneva convention does not (obviously) forbid killing your enemy.
The apparent position of the executive branch on this is that they have the power to decide that a given person, regardless of national affiliation, is an "enemy combatant" and to kill him anywhere and anytime so long as he's not on US soil. I find this hard to square with the Fifth Amendment. It's not even remotely similar to an actual battlefield situation.
Actually, he was released from jail after 3 weeks and allowed to return home to Russia after 5 months. The real facts are bad enough without making stuff up. Elcomsoft was acquitted a year following Sklyarov's release.
He worked for Elcomsoft; Elcomsoft sold a product to unlock the eBooks. I wouldn't be so quick to ascribe noble motives to either one.
Real physicists measure speed as fractions of the speed of light in vacuum.
You mean someone's auto-replaced "Russian" with "Chinese"? Those bastards!
CFLs are largely crap.
They do take too long to turn on, the quality of light still sucks, and many of them still have noticable flicker and buzz. The passage of time has not decreased these arguments; that's just marketing. Put the same old crap in new packaging and claim the new stuff doesn't have any of the problems of the old stuff.
Oh, yeah, and they largely don't live up to their lifetime claims, which throws the whole cost and energy argument into doubt.
I can sense the EM fields coming out of a CFL; if I couldn't, they'd be useless. Headaches caused by flicker (and yes, some of them DO flicker) aren't in the same category as headaches caused by wifi.
And THAT is one of the best arguments against national health care. I don't want you or the government to have an interest in preventing injury to me which overrides my own freedom to risk said injury.
Probably the environmental impact statement for opening such a separation plant outweighs (and outcosts) the equipment itself.
Oddly, it's the so-called capitalists who have become stymied by paperwork and government bureaucracy, and the bureaucratic communists of China who have not. Of course they don't mind at all if their people drink and breathe poison.
No, the charges against Sklyarov were dropped and he was released as part of a deal in which Elcomsoft agreed to accept US jurisdiction. The US jury then found Elcomsoft not guilty.
The court had a conclusion it wanted to reach (that the prosecutors were immune from suit), and it engaged in some sophistry to get there.
Normally, if Alice send a piece of mail to Bob, once it gets to Bob, Alice no longer has a Fourth Amendment interest in it; Bob however, does. A number of (bad) cases indicate that if the government just takes the mail from Bob and violates the hell out of his rights, they can still prosecute Alice (but not Bob) for the contents. Extend that to email, and you can say that if you subpoena the email from the ISP once Bob has it, you can prosecute Alice (even if the subpoena itself should not have been granted due to Bob's interest in the email). It looks like sophistry designed to vitiate the Fourth Amendment, primarily because it is, but it's sophistry with precedent.
The court went a lot further out on a limb with the other precedents it cited, however -- comparing intercepting email with the use of a pen register (which captures phone numbers -- addressing information, not content, a distinction which long precedes electronic communication and which judges have no excuse not to understand). It makes a similar "error" when it compares email content to "subscriber information" (information about the users of the system).