" 60% of those who voted FOR it were "conservative" judges..."
No, 60% were appointed by Republicans. That does not make them conservative judges. Why didn't you mention that 0% of "liberal" judges were opposed to the ruling, BTW. Spin is annoying.
"it was a 5-4 decision, which the conclusion being that the supreme court doesn't feel it's their job the decide what falls within the "public good" clause of eminent domain.
They stated that this doesn't nothing to prevent states from legislating limits on eminent domain seizures by municipal government"
States have no right to violate the 5th amendment, but the court didn't see it that way.
"Thank you for seeing through the knee-jerk reaction. Basically they said what the Conservatives would normally say, the states have the power. Rather than limit the rights of the states this ruling gives them more power. What they do with it is not for the federal government to decide.
Want your state to make laws to prevent this? Show up and vote."
This has to do with interpreting the 5th amendment properly, not about state's rights. State's cannot have rights that violate the constitution. Saying that local govts. can take anyone's property for any reason that vaguely falls under "for the public good" is not a correct interpretation. What's the point of having a bill of rights if they are watered down to the point of being useless.
"it was a 5-4 decision, which the conclusion being that the supreme court doesn't feel it's their job the decide what falls within the "public good" clause of eminent domain.
They stated that this doesn't nothing to prevent states from legislating limits on eminent domain seizures by municipal government"
I wish there was a constitutional amendment to protect my money and property even a fraction of the amount speech gets.
"And that creates a new way around California's Proposition 13 (which keeps them from raising property taxes on your house and land until it sells). Watch for this:
1) Emminent domain the tax-capped house.
2) Sell it to another buyer. (Taxes now at new rate.)
3) Previous owner has to buy a different house. (Taxes now at new rate.)
Old owner is now paying the higher tax rate. Old property is now taxed at the higher tax rate.
Public good: Increased tax base.
Supremes say that's OK, it's a state matter."
An even simpler workaround: They'll make you buy your own house from yourself at current market prices and then raise your taxes accordingly.
" The war against the rich and lower classes is over.
The rich have won."
You don't even know who's fighting this war. The battle was between the collective and the individual, and the individual lost. Now govt. can include increasing tax revenue as a reason to invoke eminent domain for "the public good". Whenever someone says something is being done for the public good, there's ussually at least one individual getting shafted. No surprise the more liberal judges voted for this while the conservative judges were against the ruling.
"As much as this ruling scares me, perhaps the commercial development would aid the community or in some way improve it, just as would a freeway or a public school, which normally allows for such seizure under eminent domain."
Communities are abusing eminent domain by forcefully buying people's property and selling it to commercial interests who will generate more tax revenue for the community. This is a huge abuse of govt. power.
" There might be some simple (or complex) mechanism for locking the OS to the Apple/Intel system, but even if this is broken, who is going to write all of the drivers for that Dell that everyone keeps talking about?"
If you know what hardware Apple does support, you could start a company making inexpensive Mac knockoffs that contain hardware that MacOS X supports. I think they will use Palladium, however, to make it very difficult to boot MacOS on non-Apple hardware.
"Wait, what conservatives? Do you mean Republicans? Don't they generally support anything that helps big corporations and screws individuals who aren't rich?"
Yeah, those individuals who aren't rich (everyone below the 50% mark for wages earned) are sure getting screwed by paying that 4% of the total tax revenue.
"I hope you mean that humerously. CNN, being part of a media conglomerate has a vested intest in seeing the broadcast flag go through. I don't think that they are going to bring it to the publics attention against their own best interests."
Yes, CNN sues people constantly for bootlegging old Larry King Live shows. Teens and college students just can't get enough of that show.
"But is it stealing if you never would have bought it anyway. The music/movie industry would have you believe that every download is a lost sale at full retail price, yet you are not railing against this untruth from the industry."
If you wouldn't have bought it anyway, then why did you download it? The truth is at some price you would have bought it, but the price was higher than that, so you set the price at $0, and took it without the sellers consent. A trade requires an agreement between seller and buyer. You bypassed that agreement, so you stole it.
As for stealing a cd. The physical cd and packaging costs less than a dollar. When you steal a cd, you're not doing much worse than someone downloading all the tracks from p2p networks.
"Obviously, locking us in isn't working. I propose an alternative business method: quality service. It works something like this:
1. Stop suing your customers. I postulate that the vast majority of people being sued for trading have purchased at least a few CDs. Suing them is just going to irritate them and cause them not to make any other purchasers. It also irritates people who are totally legit, like me.
2. Stop forcing DRM on customers. It adds to the cost of the product, is easily bypassed by whomever wants to, and makes paying customers feel like they're criminals that can't be trusted.
3. Sell cheaper, and make up the difference on volume. More people would buy an album for $7.99 than they would at $21.99. "
I think you have confused cause and effect. Why don't you instead, as the parent suggests, get assholes to stop stealing music, and then your first two demands will be met since there is no point in spending money to solve a problem that doesn;t exist. As for the third demand, you have no right to demand that someone lower their prices under threat of stealing the product if the prices remain high.
"Forgotten history is doomed to repeat itself. The USS Arizona, if memory serves, is one of the most popular tourist magnets for Japanese tourists. Why aren't either hypocenter of the atomic bombs detonations a destination for Americans? The Japanese seem keen to remember their lessons.
Deciding that any race is worth more, or less, than another is a quality I never wish to have. Do you really think the US has the high road by comparing the slaughter of 2400 volunteer servicemen to the murder of nearly a quarter of a million women, children and old men in Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Do you honestly expect me to think that it takes 100 Japanese lives to make up for a single American? Or do I add up all the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers and then decide how many Germans to slaughter to compensate for Nazi atrocities?"
You miss the point entirely. The US was defending itself. Japan was the agressor. It's not a question of numbers of deaths. It's a question of how to end the war. You can argue that it was a poor choice of ways to end the war, but your arguement is bs because it implies that killing Japanese people was an act of revenge, which would be a difficult claim to prove given the circumstances. Watch "The Fog of War". It's a documaentary interviewing McNamara where he discusses the end of WWII and Vietnam.
"Quite frankly, I'd assume that the high-ups in the US military saw the general public as little more than a hindrance to their objectives; at best, viewed in a patronising, paternalistic manner."
I doubt the general public would have been resistant to dropping an atomic bomb at the time. Pearl Harbor was their 9/11, and the Japanese were the enemy.
"No doubt dropping chemical/biological weapons on Japan and wiping out large swathes of population centres would have won the second world war also, but would such a thing be morally justifiable?"
Actually, the US did firebombed Tokyo to rubble before atomic weapons were used.
from the article: ""It is more of a proof of concept rather than a device that will see the light of day," he said. That's because the chip integrates only analogue and not digital circuitry and WiFi chip would require both types to make it usable by a digital device."
All they've done is build a radio that probably runs at 2.5GHz and is probably direct conversion down to baseband. If it has enough bandwidth, linearity, and low enough phase noise in the LO, it can be used with a variety of MAC chips to implement various protocols. They may have even made the filters switchable to allow it to operate at 5G and other bands as well. Nothing revolutionary here.
"Guess we can shut down public schools then, now, eh?"
That's not a bad idea, and many have suggested it. Public education isn't that great, and private schools would be more effective since they wouldn't be local monopolies. It would be better to only have private schools and subsidize poorer families than the current public school system.
Re:Private and public are not mutually exclusive
on
Open Source Molecules
·
· Score: 1
"Yes, sure, but isn't it essential for a business to come up with something that justifies the cost of their services? In healthcare business private clinics you get to see a specialist sooner. In public transportation it means being able to get a taxi instead of having to wait for a bus/underground.
It's outrageout to say "we produce the same data, so the government should get out of our business". ACS should come up with other services (data mining, consultation,...) by which it differentiates itself from the free service."
The other side of the coin is the govt. needs to justify spending tax payer money on what is a non-essential service. People here think everything should be free as in beer, and seem to forget that someone has to pay for it. I'd rather have lower taxes if an industry is willing to do the work, and let those people who actually use the data pay for it.
Re:Private and public are not mutually exclusive
on
Open Source Molecules
·
· Score: 1
" Why is it that people always see public and private services as mutually exclusive options?
For instance, private and public health care as well as transportation work very well together."
Private companies cannot compete effectively against govt. service subsidized partially or entirely with taxpayer money. The is obvious to anyone who knows anything about economics. Your examples make no sense. If the govt sponsors universal health care, that level of service disappears from private insurance companies, and all they can offer is additional coverage. Almost all roads are public, and the private sector can only make money on alternate paths for congested freeways using toll roads. Public transportation is limited and inconvenient, so doesn't compete head-to-head with taxi services.
See here. Even libraries can't give you audio books because Apple is the only one that can make DRM files for iPod. Apple's obsession with controlling every aspect of a product will relegate iPod to a niche market one day when real competitors decide to get into the market.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no choice. They took my house in the US.
" 60% of those who voted FOR it were "conservative" judges..."
No, 60% were appointed by Republicans. That does not make them conservative judges. Why didn't you mention that 0% of "liberal" judges were opposed to the ruling, BTW. Spin is annoying.
"it was a 5-4 decision, which the conclusion being that the supreme court doesn't feel it's their job the decide what falls within the "public good" clause of eminent domain.
They stated that this doesn't nothing to prevent states from legislating limits on eminent domain seizures by municipal government"
States have no right to violate the 5th amendment, but the court didn't see it that way.
"Thank you for seeing through the knee-jerk reaction. Basically they said what the Conservatives would normally say, the states have the power. Rather than limit the rights of the states this ruling gives them more power. What they do with it is not for the federal government to decide.
Want your state to make laws to prevent this? Show up and vote."
This has to do with interpreting the 5th amendment properly, not about state's rights. State's cannot have rights that violate the constitution. Saying that local govts. can take anyone's property for any reason that vaguely falls under "for the public good" is not a correct interpretation. What's the point of having a bill of rights if they are watered down to the point of being useless.
"it was a 5-4 decision, which the conclusion being that the supreme court doesn't feel it's their job the decide what falls within the "public good" clause of eminent domain.
They stated that this doesn't nothing to prevent states from legislating limits on eminent domain seizures by municipal government"
I wish there was a constitutional amendment to protect my money and property even a fraction of the amount speech gets.
"And that creates a new way around California's Proposition 13 (which keeps them from raising property taxes on your house and land until it sells). Watch for this:
1) Emminent domain the tax-capped house.
2) Sell it to another buyer. (Taxes now at new rate.)
3) Previous owner has to buy a different house. (Taxes now at new rate.)
Old owner is now paying the higher tax rate. Old property is now taxed at the higher tax rate.
Public good: Increased tax base.
Supremes say that's OK, it's a state matter."
An even simpler workaround: They'll make you buy your own house from yourself at current market prices and then raise your taxes accordingly.
" The war against the rich and lower classes is over.
The rich have won."
You don't even know who's fighting this war. The battle was between the collective and the individual, and the individual lost. Now govt. can include increasing tax revenue as a reason to invoke eminent domain for "the public good". Whenever someone says something is being done for the public good, there's ussually at least one individual getting shafted. No surprise the more liberal judges voted for this while the conservative judges were against the ruling.
" So what the supreme court ruled was that you own your land, but the wealthy business pwns j00"
No, they ruled that local govt. "pwns j00", and they'll sell you out to local businesses for that extra tax buck.
is here
"As much as this ruling scares me, perhaps the commercial development would aid the community or in some way improve it, just as would a freeway or a public school, which normally allows for such seizure under eminent domain."
Communities are abusing eminent domain by forcefully buying people's property and selling it to commercial interests who will generate more tax revenue for the community. This is a huge abuse of govt. power.
" There might be some simple (or complex) mechanism for locking the OS to the Apple/Intel system, but even if this is broken, who is going to write all of the drivers for that Dell that everyone keeps talking about?"
If you know what hardware Apple does support, you could start a company making inexpensive Mac knockoffs that contain hardware that MacOS X supports. I think they will use Palladium, however, to make it very difficult to boot MacOS on non-Apple hardware.
Would the ad blocking technology block Google targeted ad links? If so, wouldn't that kill off Google billion dollar per year revenue stream?
"Wait, what conservatives? Do you mean Republicans? Don't they generally support anything that helps big corporations and screws individuals who aren't rich?"
Yeah, those individuals who aren't rich (everyone below the 50% mark for wages earned) are sure getting screwed by paying that 4% of the total tax revenue.
"I hope you mean that humerously. CNN, being part of a media conglomerate has a vested intest in seeing the broadcast flag go through. I don't think that they are going to bring it to the publics attention against their own best interests."
Yes, CNN sues people constantly for bootlegging old Larry King Live shows. Teens and college students just can't get enough of that show.
"But is it stealing if you never would have bought it anyway. The music/movie industry would have you believe that every download is a lost sale at full retail price, yet you are not railing against this untruth from the industry."
If you wouldn't have bought it anyway, then why did you download it? The truth is at some price you would have bought it, but the price was higher than that, so you set the price at $0, and took it without the sellers consent. A trade requires an agreement between seller and buyer. You bypassed that agreement, so you stole it.
As for stealing a cd. The physical cd and packaging costs less than a dollar. When you steal a cd, you're not doing much worse than someone downloading all the tracks from p2p networks.
"Obviously, locking us in isn't working. I propose an alternative business method: quality service. It works something like this:
1. Stop suing your customers. I postulate that the vast majority of people being sued for trading have purchased at least a few CDs. Suing them is just going to irritate them and cause them not to make any other purchasers. It also irritates people who are totally legit, like me.
2. Stop forcing DRM on customers. It adds to the cost of the product, is easily bypassed by whomever wants to, and makes paying customers feel like they're criminals that can't be trusted.
3. Sell cheaper, and make up the difference on volume. More people would buy an album for $7.99 than they would at $21.99.
"
I think you have confused cause and effect. Why don't you instead, as the parent suggests, get assholes to stop stealing music, and then your first two demands will be met since there is no point in spending money to solve a problem that doesn;t exist. As for the third demand, you have no right to demand that someone lower their prices under threat of stealing the product if the prices remain high.
"Forgotten history is doomed to repeat itself. The USS Arizona, if memory serves, is one of the most popular tourist magnets for Japanese tourists. Why aren't either hypocenter of the atomic bombs detonations a destination for Americans? The Japanese seem keen to remember their lessons.
Deciding that any race is worth more, or less, than another is a quality I never wish to have. Do you really think the US has the high road by comparing the slaughter of 2400 volunteer servicemen to the murder of nearly a quarter of a million women, children and old men in Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Do you honestly expect me to think that it takes 100 Japanese lives to make up for a single American? Or do I add up all the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers and then decide how many Germans to slaughter to compensate for Nazi atrocities?"
You miss the point entirely. The US was defending itself. Japan was the agressor. It's not a question of numbers of deaths. It's a question of how to end the war. You can argue that it was a poor choice of ways to end the war, but your arguement is bs because it implies that killing Japanese people was an act of revenge, which would be a difficult claim to prove given the circumstances. Watch "The Fog of War". It's a documaentary interviewing McNamara where he discusses the end of WWII and Vietnam.
"Quite frankly, I'd assume that the high-ups in the US military saw the general public as little more than a hindrance to their objectives; at best, viewed in a patronising, paternalistic manner."
I doubt the general public would have been resistant to dropping an atomic bomb at the time. Pearl Harbor was their 9/11, and the Japanese were the enemy.
"No doubt dropping chemical/biological weapons on Japan and wiping out large swathes of population centres would have won the second world war also, but would such a thing be morally justifiable?"
Actually, the US did firebombed Tokyo to rubble before atomic weapons were used.
from the article:
""It is more of a proof of concept rather than a device that will see the light of day," he said. That's because the chip integrates only analogue and not digital circuitry and WiFi chip would require both types to make it usable by a digital device."
All they've done is build a radio that probably runs at 2.5GHz and is probably direct conversion down to baseband. If it has enough bandwidth, linearity, and low enough phase noise in the LO, it can be used with a variety of MAC chips to implement various protocols. They may have even made the filters switchable to allow it to operate at 5G and other bands as well. Nothing revolutionary here.
"Guess we can shut down public schools then, now, eh?"
That's not a bad idea, and many have suggested it. Public education isn't that great, and private schools would be more effective since they wouldn't be local monopolies. It would be better to only have private schools and subsidize poorer families than the current public school system.
"Yes, sure, but isn't it essential for a business to come up with something that justifies the cost of their services? In healthcare business private clinics you get to see a specialist sooner. In public transportation it means being able to get a taxi instead of having to wait for a bus/underground.
It's outrageout to say "we produce the same data, so the government should get out of our business". ACS should come up with other services (data mining, consultation,...) by which it differentiates itself from the free service."
The other side of the coin is the govt. needs to justify spending tax payer money on what is a non-essential service. People here think everything should be free as in beer, and seem to forget that someone has to pay for it. I'd rather have lower taxes if an industry is willing to do the work, and let those people who actually use the data pay for it.
" Why is it that people always see public and private services as mutually exclusive options?
For instance, private and public health care as well as transportation work very well together."
Private companies cannot compete effectively against govt. service subsidized partially or entirely with taxpayer money. The is obvious to anyone who knows anything about economics. Your examples make no sense. If the govt sponsors universal health care, that level of service disappears from private insurance companies, and all they can offer is additional coverage. Almost all roads are public, and the private sector can only make money on alternate paths for congested freeways using toll roads. Public transportation is limited and inconvenient, so doesn't compete head-to-head with taxi services.
See here. Even libraries can't give you audio books because Apple is the only one that can make DRM files for iPod. Apple's obsession with controlling every aspect of a product will relegate iPod to a niche market one day when real competitors decide to get into the market.
"Imagine using your iPod and a regular old microphone to record studio-quality audio."
Or I could just buy this mp3 player instead, which has built in voice recording, instead of having to hack an iPod.