No need to run for office to stop it. Just send a check to the Institute for Justice. They have fought for years (sometimes successfully) to throw out ridiculous licensing requirements for various types of businesses -- hairbraiders, jitney drivers, florists (the florists are also in Louisiana), etc. They're sort of a libertarian do-gooder group. They also do some anti-eminent domain work as well as some school choice work. A neat bunch of folks:
Usually, it goes to whatever the folks running the Foundation want it to go to. Their expenses include servers, and also the programmers, and other staff.
You can find out where some of the money is going by requesting a copy of their informational tax return.
If you request it, they must provide you with a copy. No, really, it's true -- they have to do it.
So, if you have questions, write to the Mozilla Foundation and ask for their tax return info.
Here is an example of what Nature and other for-fee journals need to be concerned about. In my opinion, more power to the free and open distribution of knowledge. Let the battle begin based on the value of the journals.
If Nature, the Lancet, and other major journals can justify their prices to their subscribers, more power to them. I would like to see access to science made more open and widespread, so my cheering interest is against them, but I don't begrudge them their efforts. I think that Nature et al are fighting what will ultimately be a losing battle, but the competition cannot be bad for scientists and the public -- let each side fight harder to win attention and business, and hopefully it will drive everyone to greater heights.
You place a little much trust in your government. Despite Bert the Turtle, ducking won't protect you in atomic warfare.
Correction:
It will protect you in atomic warfare. It will not protect you in thermonuclear warfare. Duck and Cover predated hydrogen bombs, and the risk of debris hitting you was what Duck and Cover was all about. Duck and Cover was based on a Hiroshima/Nagasaki scenario where the force and heat of the explosion, not radiation, was the primary immediate killer. It was not about protecting you from radiation and the much more massive forces of a 10 megaton+ H-bomb.
The title of the movie (The Day After Tomorrow) struck me as strangely similar to that of The Day After, a TV movie released in 1983 which highlighted the Doomsday consequences of nuclear war. Both movies appear to be highly politicized, anti-GOP movies timed (more or less) to coincide with the election cycle. Naming the new movie "The Day After Tomorrow" struck me as an obvious play on the original "The Day After". It just seemed too close to it to be an accident.
FWIW, The Day After had a realistic representation of the effects of nuclear war. Too bad the current The Day After Tomorrow seems to be according to many accounts just a modified, updated Poseidon Adventure or Towering Inferno. To some extent that undercuts my theory that there may be political motivation behind this, but the less realistic it is, the less effective it is, and it becomes just a fantasy type movie. Unfortunately, people often take fantasy (i.e. "JFK") and turn it into their reality because they are too intellectually lazy to find out whether something on the big screen has any basis in reality. Too many people just guzzle the shit that the media pumps out to them without questioning any of it. That goes for for left, right, and plain old profit-seeking media alike.
I'm feeling cynical this morning for some reason. Please excuse my negativity and have yourself a really nice day. Maybe it'll offset the negative karma I'm giving off this morning.
I'm a software engineer... when will my rickets set in??
Funny, but unlikely. Vitamin D is added to many things, including milk. Anyone in the US, including goth-like only come out at night wanna-be vampires is unlikely to suffer the softening of the bones associated with rickets because of dietary additives.
The folks in Pittsburgh during industrialization are familiar with the loss of sunlight. So were those in London and Manchester in England during industrialization there. The "English Disease", or rickets, resulted from low levels of vitamin D production due to a lack of sunlight attributable in part to (1) long working hours out of the sun and (2) particulate pollution from burning coal.
An interesting book that deals, in part, with that is Coal: A Human History. Also available here or from your local library.
I think your assessment of the risk level is accurate, but:
I have no debts, and I don't think I could reasonably be held liable for anything, because I deal with only with information, which is mostly protected by the Constitution.
I deal with "information" too. I am a lawyer. Just because I deal with "information" doesn't exempt me from taxation on income.
I think that the general sense here is that if the thing that you are pushing is available regardless of whether payment is made or not, then it may be a gift. On the other hand, there have been restaurants, for instance, that did not charge anything for food -- people pay what they think the meal is worth and they do not receive a bill. Such places surely would be subject to income tax.
In any case, as long as things are on a de minimis level, I don't think that anyone is going to come sniffing around your door. If you can stop working and if you are able to live solely off of those "donations" I think that you would want to spend a few quality hours with your attorney and/or accountant to see how to report it.
I've got an original Mac promo insert that was included in Time Magazine. It's kind of a cool retro thing to keep around with my old magazines with programs that you had to type in. The latter kept my brother and myself out of my parents' hair for endless hours. I think my folks must have gotten twenty times the cash benefit out of that knowing that it kept us busy each month for hours on end when it came in the mail.
Later on, I think they were thrilled when we discovered that we could program dice rollers and character sheet programs for AD&D. The couple of months I spent programming a text adventure must have also been a treat to them.
1. Who is backing the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology? Where does their money come from? Scientists? Scientists that work for big pharma? Scientists that work for biotech firms?
2. For all the people who have posted things like: "People have been saying that X invention would kill everyone for years, but it hasn't happened", just remember -- they only have to be right once. Might they not be right this time?
Enrico Fermi was the one who proposed that we haven't discovered extraterrestrial "life" or "intelligence" (or been discovered and contacted by it) because any advanced extraterrestrial society would have already killed itself off before advancing to the point where extraterrestrial travel is possible (Fermi's Paradox is what this is called, although my explanation is pretty inelegant).
Akamai probably drops most of their servers in ISPs anyway. They have, what, 2,000 datacenters? The ISPs are footing the bills for their own servers anyway, so a couple more boxes in the server room isn't going to make a big difference to each ISP. Then, the ISP's customers get especially close to the premium content delivered by the Akamai servers.
This is precisely the reason that my ISP has Akamai boxes -- our customers are essentially on the same network with no hops from Akamai. It saves us bandwidth and increases performance for our users. Akamai prepopulates the box with content from their network so that it is retrieved once from the internet side of our network and it can be delivered many times to our user side.
Think of it as akamai-specific caching.
Sure, Akamai could distribute content from datacenters, but they don't have to pay to use the power and hvac of my ISP and they don't need to rent space. It's a win-win symbiotic relationship that they have with ISPs.
Yes, it affects it. Yes you can fix it by following the instructions in the linked story:
If for some reason it is impossible to download the updated version of Winamp, the vendor has informed NGSS that it is possible to disable the handling of Fasttracker 2 module files by taking the following steps:
1. Right click the Winamp player, go to 'Options' and then to 'Preferences...'.
2. In the new window which loads, go to 'Plug-ins' and 'Input'.
3. Look for the input plug-in items 'Nullsoft Module Decoder' and double click it to bring up the 'Nullsoft Module Decoder Preferences' window.
4. Select the 'Fasttracker 2' loader and deselect the 'Enabled' checkbox to the right of the loaders list.
5. Close all of the option windows and return to the main player.
Then the Constitution should've said so. "Compelling state interest to abridge rights" is a dangerous concept to let stand, because it can also be applied to speedy & fair trials, uncompensated seizure of property, and more...
That battle has been fought and lost. See here for an example of where a "compelling state interest" permits a constitutionally suspect practice (racial discrimination) to be used by a public university.
As it stands, both the criminal libel code and campaign-finance regulations are both unconstitutional on their faces. (Blatant unconstitutionality is of course only a minor barrier to widespread enforcement of a USA law).
AFAIK, there is no "criminal libel code". Defamation is a civil tort. The US Govt. is not at all involved. The constitution protects individuals against only government action. Civil disputes are not regulated by it.
FWIW, I agree with you on campaign finance. I think it is clearly unconstitutional, but the Supremes disagree with the two of us. C'est la vie.
Well that's all well and good, except that the Constitution does not allow for any exceptions,
Sure it does. The Constitution provides for judicial review...uh...let me find a cite in the text. Wait a minute...um...go ask Chief Justice Marshall. The Supreme Court certainly wouldn't make anything up, would it?
and in making those exceptions, Congress, the states, and the courts are essentially acting on authority that hasn't been delegated to them by the people.
The people delegated authority for judicial review. Errr...or at least CJ Marshall (and a majority of Supremes) thought so. In any case, a Constitution without judicial review is meaningless. Marshall had it right, or at least as right as it could be under the framework established by the Constitution. It has certainly worked reasonably well.
Laws like that are dangerous, not because of their direct effects (very few people outside the tabloid publishing industry would assert that people should have the right to blatantly lie about each other), but because they send the message that the Constitution is not, in fact, the supreme law of the land.
That is an overbroad reading of things. The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land, but it has its limitations as a "law of the land." It is an enabling (and limiting) document rather than a code, such as exists in some European countries. Enabling documents have to have some sort of limits, and a mechanism for adjudicating those limits. You touch on one of the problems with an enabling provision below (the Commerce Clause).
Besides, at its most naked, constitutional law is not about the original document or the intent of the framers. As Judge Woodside of Pennsylvania succintly put it, "a constitution is not what the words in it mean to a person reading it, nor what the framers intended, nor even what the courts have held, but what a majority of the current justices on the court of highest jurisdiction think it should mean." A Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court once stated at oral argument that, "[i]f we think it ought to be done, we'll find a way to do it." Woodside, Robert, Pennsylvania Constitutional Law at 608. Notably, Judge Woodside stated that as a fact, not as an endorsement.
While that is a frightening display of naked power, it is probably a realistic assessment. It also has worked, more or less, for over two hundred years. There have been terrible situations where the courts have failed us, such as in Plessy v. Ferguson and in the Dred Scott case. There have been cases where the courts have done the "right" thing without a sufficient basis in law (Brown v. Board of Education and Griswold v. Connecticut), but judicial review is really the last, best bulwark against tyranny by democracy. Getting rid of it would, IMHO, make things worse than they would be if judicial review did not exist and if it were up to Congress and the Executive to determine if things are constitutional.
Of course, libel laws aren't even close to being the worst offenses in that manner.
No argument there.
All the crap that Congress passes under the guise of "regulating interstate commerce" is ridiculous.
I agree. One of the most egregious cases was Wickard v. Filburn, which is still good law. A summary can be found here. I think it is ironic that the current Supremes are rolling back the power of Congress under the aegis of federalism (see US v. Lopez) while at the same time they are giving the states broader authority in the criminal realm (do we even have a 4th Amendment anymore?). The irony lies in the fact that the current majority of the Supremes (depicted as arch-conservatives) are probably doing more to limit federal power than any batch since the mid 1800s
You miss two major points. (People often do that when quoting T-shirt slogans)
First, the First Amendment applies to The US Congress and to states(through incorporation via the 14th Amendment). It does not apply as between private parties.
Second, no right is absolute. Shouting "fire!" in a theater, blah, blah, blah. Even significant rights may be impinged if there is a compelling state interest and the restriction used to accomplish that interest is the least restrictive means.
Third, the US Constitution did not serve to trump the common law rights of private parties. It codified the powers that were delegated to the Fed. Govt. by the people, and the First Amendment was a codification/restriction of the Fed's ability to act in certain spheres. Where that leaves us is that private actions for defamation (slander/libel) and to a lesser extent, other miscellaneous privacy torts, is untouched by the First Amendment. The First Amendment is essentially irrelevant to the law of slander/defamation, although there is some bleedover in media cases, such as NY Times v. Sullivan.
While you suggest marrying an american an pretending that you are an american and never returning to France, I note that you did not specifically direct that he live in the United States. I interpreted it that way in the original post as an implied "live in the US" but you did not actually include it there.
In any case, why not some other country? What makes you think that this scenario is any more or less likely in the US? Also, what about extradition? I think that the US would extradite under these circumstances.
If we are talking about banning paying for your gambling via the net w/credit cards that's one thing
There was a piece on this on NPR yesterday during the Marketplace show. One of the people quoted mentioned that no major credit card system (VISA for instance) will let you make a transaction with an off-shore casino. This is private business decision, as there is no uniform law making such transactions per se illegal, although the federal law vs. betting over phone lines has been used occasionally against internet gambling.
FWIW, as early as 1995 when I worked for an official state legislative law-drafting body, there was interest in preventing on-line gambling. The solution I thought that made the most sense was to legislate that prospective contracts requiring payment of funds sent to gambling entities would be invalid. Note that I did not necessarily agree with the need for the law, but I was asked to find an effective, constitutional way to address the problem through legislation -- it was my job (I was just following orders...really). The angle of attack was obviously to prevent using credit cards to send money to on-line casinos.
According to the person interviewed by Marketplace yesterday, a similar type of bill has been introduced in the last 8 years to the US Congress, but it has never passed. The follow-up comment was the one that stated that businesses (such as VISA) decided on their own to self-regulate these payments and to refuse them, partly because they were probably scared of losing money and partly to pre-emptively act before the imposition of regulatory oversight. My gut reaction was that there are still casinos that (I think) take VISA payments successfully, but I don't gamble on-line, so I can't speak conclusively to the effectiveness of VISA's self-regulation in this respect. Perhaps it's like "Whack-a-Mole" and they slap down processing agreements when they become aware of violations of their policies.
I think that the latter part of your statement is interesting however, given the overall theme of your post here:
If we are talking about banning paying for your gambling via the net w/credit cards that's one thing (protecting people and companies from the fortunes lost via this method of payment)
and later:
As an adult you should be allowed to choose what happens to you. I wasn't aware that I needed people in Washington telling me what is and is not good for me... Especially when it comes to gambling, the purchase of adult beverages, and the premature ending of pregnancy. These are NOT issues that should be regulated by the State, Federal, or local governments.
Your first statement seems to suggest less reluctance to legislate in order to protect people (businesses and individuals) from losing money. I don't think that credit card companies need to be protected from losing fortunes -- they are big boys and can decide who they want to do business with. In response to individual people losing fortunes, I am still reluctant to see government intervention. Gambling is a "stupid" tax and I see no need to protect people from their own stupidity. The side effects (on families, for instance) can be unfortunate, but not to the extent that I want to, at the point of a gun, tell all people that they can't do something that almost all people can do in moderation with no problems.
The second statement of yours I think is probably a more accurate reflection of your sentiment. I generally agree with it, although I diverge on the "premature ending of pregnancy".
long OT digression on abortion follows
In a nutshell, I think that there is a legitimate right of states to regulate abortion. There simply is no (federal) constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade, IMHO. If there is no prohibition at the federal constitutional level, the states have the right to regulate it (subject to state constitutional provisions). Blackmun (and the Court in the Planned Parenthood case out of Connecticut in the 60
Toyota's robot site is here. It has movies of the robot. Evidently, they won't put out one with the sound because of copyright issues. I was really interested to hear it play, since I play the trumpet myself.
...but grandma didn't need no stinking cookbook and her sauce kicked ass.
Yeah, and she only knew how to make a couple of kinds of sauce. Even a master chef needs a cookbook. Or a hundred.
The whole "real hackers do it themselves" argument is crap. No man is an island, and we all learn something from others. If someone wants to be an elite h4x0r d00d, does he have to be raised like a veal in front of a computer with nobody to tell him how to turn the fucking thing on?
The whole point of networks is to share knowledge. If you don't try to build and add to that knowledge, then you are a free rider, and you are land and annoying. If you take the knowledge you can find easily and extend it or use it in a new, fun, or productive way or in an unexpected context, then you are doing what, IMHO, "hacking" is all about.
Taking an elitist "I am uber h4x0r, and I did it all by myself!" attitude is alienating and contrary to my notion of what hacking should be about. It's also bullshit. Even Torvalds had help. Going the reductio ad absurdum route, if you didn't write your own OS, then you are just a lamer according the lone wolf hacker theory. JFC.
Slashdot Mirror
No need to run for office to stop it. Just send a check to the Institute for Justice. They have fought for years (sometimes successfully) to throw out ridiculous licensing requirements for various types of businesses -- hairbraiders, jitney drivers, florists (the florists are also in Louisiana), etc. They're sort of a libertarian do-gooder group. They also do some anti-eminent domain work as well as some school choice work. A neat bunch of folks:
http://www.ij.org
GF.
Usually, it goes to whatever the folks running the Foundation want it to go to. Their expenses include servers, and also the programmers, and other staff.
You can find out where some of the money is going by requesting a copy of their informational tax return.
If you request it, they must provide you with a copy. No, really, it's true -- they have to do it.
So, if you have questions, write to the Mozilla Foundation and ask for their tax return info.
GF.
Here is an example of what Nature and other for-fee journals need to be concerned about. In my opinion, more power to the free and open distribution of knowledge. Let the battle begin based on the value of the journals.
If Nature, the Lancet, and other major journals can justify their prices to their subscribers, more power to them. I would like to see access to science made more open and widespread, so my cheering interest is against them, but I don't begrudge them their efforts. I think that Nature et al are fighting what will ultimately be a losing battle, but the competition cannot be bad for scientists and the public -- let each side fight harder to win attention and business, and hopefully it will drive everyone to greater heights.
GF.
You place a little much trust in your government. Despite Bert the Turtle, ducking won't protect you in atomic warfare.
Correction:
It will protect you in atomic warfare. It will not protect you in thermonuclear warfare. Duck and Cover predated hydrogen bombs, and the risk of debris hitting you was what Duck and Cover was all about. Duck and Cover was based on a Hiroshima/Nagasaki scenario where the force and heat of the explosion, not radiation, was the primary immediate killer. It was not about protecting you from radiation and the much more massive forces of a 10 megaton+ H-bomb.
GF.
The title of the movie (The Day After Tomorrow) struck me as strangely similar to that of The Day After, a TV movie released in 1983 which highlighted the Doomsday consequences of nuclear war. Both movies appear to be highly politicized, anti-GOP movies timed (more or less) to coincide with the election cycle. Naming the new movie "The Day After Tomorrow" struck me as an obvious play on the original "The Day After". It just seemed too close to it to be an accident.
FWIW, The Day After had a realistic representation of the effects of nuclear war. Too bad the current The Day After Tomorrow seems to be according to many accounts just a modified, updated Poseidon Adventure or Towering Inferno. To some extent that undercuts my theory that there may be political motivation behind this, but the less realistic it is, the less effective it is, and it becomes just a fantasy type movie. Unfortunately, people often take fantasy (i.e. "JFK") and turn it into their reality because they are too intellectually lazy to find out whether something on the big screen has any basis in reality. Too many people just guzzle the shit that the media pumps out to them without questioning any of it. That goes for for left, right, and plain old profit-seeking media alike.
I'm feeling cynical this morning for some reason. Please excuse my negativity and have yourself a really nice day. Maybe it'll offset the negative karma I'm giving off this morning.
GF.
I'm a software engineer... when will my rickets set in??
Funny, but unlikely. Vitamin D is added to many things, including milk. Anyone in the US, including goth-like only come out at night wanna-be vampires is unlikely to suffer the softening of the bones associated with rickets because of dietary additives.
GF.
to make sure that solar energy will never be cost-effective. Clever, but diabolical.
It sure beats building a big shield to block out the sun.
The folks in Pittsburgh during industrialization are familiar with the loss of sunlight. So were those in London and Manchester in England during industrialization there. The "English Disease", or rickets, resulted from low levels of vitamin D production due to a lack of sunlight attributable in part to (1) long working hours out of the sun and (2) particulate pollution from burning coal.
An interesting book that deals, in part, with that is Coal: A Human History. Also available here or from your local library.
GF.
I think most of the /.'s on here are thinking of fitting their hard drive in a Spice Girl.
Nothing like modding a box for fun...
GF.
I think your assessment of the risk level is accurate, but:
I have no debts, and I don't think I could reasonably be held liable for anything, because I deal with only with information, which is mostly protected by the Constitution.
I deal with "information" too. I am a lawyer. Just because I deal with "information" doesn't exempt me from taxation on income.
I think that the general sense here is that if the thing that you are pushing is available regardless of whether payment is made or not, then it may be a gift. On the other hand, there have been restaurants, for instance, that did not charge anything for food -- people pay what they think the meal is worth and they do not receive a bill. Such places surely would be subject to income tax.
In any case, as long as things are on a de minimis level, I don't think that anyone is going to come sniffing around your door. If you can stop working and if you are able to live solely off of those "donations" I think that you would want to spend a few quality hours with your attorney and/or accountant to see how to report it.
GF.
Bueller? Anyone?
I've got an original Mac promo insert that was included in Time Magazine. It's kind of a cool retro thing to keep around with my old magazines with programs that you had to type in. The latter kept my brother and myself out of my parents' hair for endless hours. I think my folks must have gotten twenty times the cash benefit out of that knowing that it kept us busy each month for hours on end when it came in the mail.
Later on, I think they were thrilled when we discovered that we could program dice rollers and character sheet programs for AD&D. The couple of months I spent programming a text adventure must have also been a treat to them.
Gah! I've been a dork for a long time...
GF.
I have a couple of questions:
1. Who is backing the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology? Where does their money come from? Scientists? Scientists that work for big pharma? Scientists that work for biotech firms?
2. For all the people who have posted things like: "People have been saying that X invention would kill everyone for years, but it hasn't happened", just remember -- they only have to be right once. Might they not be right this time?
Enrico Fermi was the one who proposed that we haven't discovered extraterrestrial "life" or "intelligence" (or been discovered and contacted by it) because any advanced extraterrestrial society would have already killed itself off before advancing to the point where extraterrestrial travel is possible (Fermi's Paradox is what this is called, although my explanation is pretty inelegant).
GF.
Akamai probably drops most of their servers in ISPs anyway. They have, what, 2,000 datacenters? The ISPs are footing the bills for their own servers anyway, so a couple more boxes in the server room isn't going to make a big difference to each ISP. Then, the ISP's customers get especially close to the premium content delivered by the Akamai servers.
This is precisely the reason that my ISP has Akamai boxes -- our customers are essentially on the same network with no hops from Akamai. It saves us bandwidth and increases performance for our users. Akamai prepopulates the box with content from their network so that it is retrieved once from the internet side of our network and it can be delivered many times to our user side.
Think of it as akamai-specific caching.
Sure, Akamai could distribute content from datacenters, but they don't have to pay to use the power and hvac of my ISP and they don't need to rent space. It's a win-win symbiotic relationship that they have with ISPs.
GF.
Yes, it affects it. Yes you can fix it by following the instructions in the linked story:
If for some reason it is impossible to download the updated version of Winamp, the vendor has informed NGSS that it is possible to disable the handling of Fasttracker 2 module files by taking the following steps:
1. Right click the Winamp player, go to 'Options' and then to 'Preferences...'.
2. In the new window which loads, go to 'Plug-ins' and 'Input'.
3. Look for the input plug-in items 'Nullsoft Module Decoder' and double click it to bring up the 'Nullsoft Module Decoder Preferences' window.
4. Select the 'Fasttracker 2' loader and deselect the 'Enabled' checkbox to the right of the loaders list.
5. Close all of the option windows and return to the main player.
Hopefully some of the subscribers live in neighborhoods with a lot of rooftop pools--and pool parties.
Naked pool parties.
What cover will they put on newstands? The home of the person who buys the magazine? That would be impressive.
GF.
Then the Constitution should've said so. "Compelling state interest to abridge rights" is a dangerous concept to let stand, because it can also be applied to speedy & fair trials, uncompensated seizure of property, and more...
That battle has been fought and lost. See here for an example of where a "compelling state interest" permits a constitutionally suspect practice (racial discrimination) to be used by a public university.
As it stands, both the criminal libel code and campaign-finance regulations are both unconstitutional on their faces. (Blatant unconstitutionality is of course only a minor barrier to widespread enforcement of a USA law).
AFAIK, there is no "criminal libel code". Defamation is a civil tort. The US Govt. is not at all involved. The constitution protects individuals against only government action. Civil disputes are not regulated by it.
FWIW, I agree with you on campaign finance. I think it is clearly unconstitutional, but the Supremes disagree with the two of us. C'est la vie.
GF.
Well that's all well and good, except that the Constitution does not allow for any exceptions,
Sure it does. The Constitution provides for judicial review...uh...let me find a cite in the text. Wait a minute...um...go ask Chief Justice Marshall. The Supreme Court certainly wouldn't make anything up, would it?
and in making those exceptions, Congress, the states, and the courts are essentially acting on authority that hasn't been delegated to them by the people.
The people delegated authority for judicial review. Errr...or at least CJ Marshall (and a majority of Supremes) thought so. In any case, a Constitution without judicial review is meaningless. Marshall had it right, or at least as right as it could be under the framework established by the Constitution. It has certainly worked reasonably well.
Laws like that are dangerous, not because of their direct effects (very few people outside the tabloid publishing industry would assert that people should have the right to blatantly lie about each other), but because they send the message that the Constitution is not, in fact, the supreme law of the land.
That is an overbroad reading of things. The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land, but it has its limitations as a "law of the land." It is an enabling (and limiting) document rather than a code, such as exists in some European countries. Enabling documents have to have some sort of limits, and a mechanism for adjudicating those limits. You touch on one of the problems with an enabling provision below (the Commerce Clause).
Besides, at its most naked, constitutional law is not about the original document or the intent of the framers. As Judge Woodside of Pennsylvania succintly put it, "a constitution is not what the words in it mean to a person reading it, nor what the framers intended, nor even what the courts have held, but what a majority of the current justices on the court of highest jurisdiction think it should mean." A Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court once stated at oral argument that, "[i]f we think it ought to be done, we'll find a way to do it." Woodside, Robert, Pennsylvania Constitutional Law at 608. Notably, Judge Woodside stated that as a fact, not as an endorsement.
While that is a frightening display of naked power, it is probably a realistic assessment. It also has worked, more or less, for over two hundred years. There have been terrible situations where the courts have failed us, such as in Plessy v. Ferguson and in the Dred Scott case. There have been cases where the courts have done the "right" thing without a sufficient basis in law (Brown v. Board of Education and Griswold v. Connecticut), but judicial review is really the last, best bulwark against tyranny by democracy. Getting rid of it would, IMHO, make things worse than they would be if judicial review did not exist and if it were up to Congress and the Executive to determine if things are constitutional.
Of course, libel laws aren't even close to being the worst offenses in that manner.
No argument there.
All the crap that Congress passes under the guise of "regulating interstate commerce" is ridiculous.
I agree. One of the most egregious cases was Wickard v. Filburn, which is still good law. A summary can be found here. I think it is ironic that the current Supremes are rolling back the power of Congress under the aegis of federalism (see US v. Lopez) while at the same time they are giving the states broader authority in the criminal realm (do we even have a 4th Amendment anymore?). The irony lies in the fact that the current majority of the Supremes (depicted as arch-conservatives) are probably doing more to limit federal power than any batch since the mid 1800s
You miss two major points.
[snip]
Third,
But I can't count, so you shouldn't pay any attention to me anyhow.
GF.
You miss two major points. (People often do that when quoting T-shirt slogans)
First, the First Amendment applies to The US Congress and to states(through incorporation via the 14th Amendment). It does not apply as between private parties.
Second, no right is absolute. Shouting "fire!" in a theater, blah, blah, blah. Even significant rights may be impinged if there is a compelling state interest and the restriction used to accomplish that interest is the least restrictive means.
Third, the US Constitution did not serve to trump the common law rights of private parties. It codified the powers that were delegated to the Fed. Govt. by the people, and the First Amendment was a codification/restriction of the Fed's ability to act in certain spheres. Where that leaves us is that private actions for defamation (slander/libel) and to a lesser extent, other miscellaneous privacy torts, is untouched by the First Amendment. The First Amendment is essentially irrelevant to the law of slander/defamation, although there is some bleedover in media cases, such as NY Times v. Sullivan.
GF.
While you suggest marrying an american an pretending that you are an american and never returning to France, I note that you did not specifically direct that he live in the United States. I interpreted it that way in the original post as an implied "live in the US" but you did not actually include it there.
In any case, why not some other country? What makes you think that this scenario is any more or less likely in the US? Also, what about extradition? I think that the US would extradite under these circumstances.
GF.
If we are talking about banning paying for your gambling via the net w/credit cards that's one thing
There was a piece on this on NPR yesterday during the Marketplace show. One of the people quoted mentioned that no major credit card system (VISA for instance) will let you make a transaction with an off-shore casino. This is private business decision, as there is no uniform law making such transactions per se illegal, although the federal law vs. betting over phone lines has been used occasionally against internet gambling.
FWIW, as early as 1995 when I worked for an official state legislative law-drafting body, there was interest in preventing on-line gambling. The solution I thought that made the most sense was to legislate that prospective contracts requiring payment of funds sent to gambling entities would be invalid. Note that I did not necessarily agree with the need for the law, but I was asked to find an effective, constitutional way to address the problem through legislation -- it was my job (I was just following orders...really).
The angle of attack was obviously to prevent using credit cards to send money to on-line casinos.
According to the person interviewed by Marketplace yesterday, a similar type of bill has been introduced in the last 8 years to the US Congress, but it has never passed. The follow-up comment was the one that stated that businesses (such as VISA) decided on their own to self-regulate these payments and to refuse them, partly because they were probably scared of losing money and partly to pre-emptively act before the imposition of regulatory oversight. My gut reaction was that there are still casinos that (I think) take VISA payments successfully, but I don't gamble on-line, so I can't speak conclusively to the effectiveness of VISA's self-regulation in this respect. Perhaps it's like "Whack-a-Mole" and they slap down processing agreements when they become aware of violations of their policies.
I think that the latter part of your statement is interesting however, given the overall theme of your post here:
If we are talking about banning paying for your gambling via the net w/credit cards that's one thing (protecting people and companies from the fortunes lost via this method of payment)
and later:
As an adult you should be allowed to choose what happens to you. I wasn't aware that I needed people in Washington telling me what is and is not good for me... Especially when it comes to gambling, the purchase of adult beverages, and the premature ending of pregnancy. These are NOT issues that should be regulated by the State, Federal, or local governments.
Your first statement seems to suggest less reluctance to legislate in order to protect people (businesses and individuals) from losing money. I don't think that credit card companies need to be protected from losing fortunes -- they are big boys and can decide who they want to do business with. In response to individual people losing fortunes, I am still reluctant to see government intervention. Gambling is a "stupid" tax and I see no need to protect people from their own stupidity. The side effects (on families, for instance) can be unfortunate, but not to the extent that I want to, at the point of a gun, tell all people that they can't do something that almost all people can do in moderation with no problems.
The second statement of yours I think is probably a more accurate reflection of your sentiment. I generally agree with it, although I diverge on the "premature ending of pregnancy".
long OT digression on abortion follows
In a nutshell, I think that there is a legitimate right of states to regulate abortion. There simply is no (federal) constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade, IMHO. If there is no prohibition at the federal constitutional level, the states have the right to regulate it (subject to state constitutional provisions). Blackmun (and the Court in the Planned Parenthood case out of Connecticut in the 60
Toyota's robot site is here. It has movies of the robot. Evidently, they won't put out one with the sound because of copyright issues. I was really interested to hear it play, since I play the trumpet myself.
GF.
Yeah, and she only knew how to make a couple of kinds of sauce. Even a master chef needs a cookbook. Or a hundred.
The whole "real hackers do it themselves" argument is crap. No man is an island, and we all learn something from others. If someone wants to be an elite h4x0r d00d, does he have to be raised like a veal in front of a computer with nobody to tell him how to turn the fucking thing on?
The whole point of networks is to share knowledge. If you don't try to build and add to that knowledge, then you are a free rider, and you are land and annoying. If you take the knowledge you can find easily and extend it or use it in a new, fun, or productive way or in an unexpected context, then you are doing what, IMHO, "hacking" is all about.
Taking an elitist "I am uber h4x0r, and I did it all by myself!" attitude is alienating and contrary to my notion of what hacking should be about. It's also bullshit. Even Torvalds had help. Going the reductio ad absurdum route, if you didn't write your own OS, then you are just a lamer according the lone wolf hacker theory. JFC.
GF.