If the only data it's sending is "I'm version 39.0.1 (GNU/Linux i686)", I wouldn't call that "phoning home". Most people probably want this behaviour.
Yes, most people prefer convenience over privacy and will give up the latter for the former. Tell someone they'll get points or discounts for using the Safeway club card and they'll happily let a large corporation track everything they buy. Or Costco, where you MUST have the "loyalty card" (membership) to buy anything. It doesn't strike home how pervasive their monitoring is until a Costco employee walks up to you with a list of everything you've bought in the last year and tells you that you could save $16 if you paid $50 for the next higher level of membership.
To check for updates to plugins, it has to ask about the plugins you have, so you are telling someone what plugins you have installed.
Again, if all they know is that someone on your IP address has opened a browser while connected to the internet, it's barely a privacy issue.
It's not just that someone has opened a browser, even though that it technically a privacy violation (why should Mozilla get notices when that happens?), it's that the browser has been installed on another computer and whatever information is sent in the headers to help identify it (along with IP address).
I think most users want that behaviour.
You're confusing "most people want" with "privacy violation".
It's more useful than a blank page.
So? Now you don't understand the difference between "useful" and "privacy".
If there are pages you don't want showing up there, you can click the (x) on the thumbnail.
Do anybody here understand the implications of *simply making the connection*?
Yep. When the constables subpoena the network logs from your ISP they'll show a large number of connections to those CP sites, so of course you are a good candidate for a search warrant and visit to the graybar hotel.
That's a good thing, isn't it? For God's sake, man, think of the children.
I guess if you accidentally hover their link that they can see you're an active email too!
If you use a web browser as an email client, yes. That's one of the many good reasons not to overload web browers with unnecessary functions. Another is that you don't clutter the net with HTML-ized email without knowing it, and don't create unreadable email for people who use real email clients.
What are the other things it does that are bad for privacy?
Phoning home every damn time you start it up to "check for updates" to plugins.
Having a mozilla website be the default home page, so you automatically visit mozilla.com before you can get to the point where you can set your home page to be about:blank.
Having a default where it shows you (and anyone who happens to be in eyeshot) thumbnails of sites you've visited.
I haven't found a way around the second issue, but the first can be stopped. Set plugins.update.url to "" using about:config.
with the concurrence of the Senate PRIOR to the President resigning
... which happens through the same law that I've been talking about this whole time.
The advice and consent clause is part of the Constitution, so you are now going to demand a change to the constitution or you will hold your breathe and kick and scream...
The people are actually voting on who replaces me.
You hand-picking your replacement can in no way be construed as the "people actually voting on who replaces [you]".
The appointment process is a formality because that's the way the Constitution requires it to be done;
No, the appointment process is NOT a formality because the constitution requires it to be that way. There have been way too many contentious appointments for ANYONE who is sane to call it a formality, and then to claim that the constitution requires it to be so is, well, ignorance.
I would gladly do a direct election if I didn't have to push a constitutional amendment to make it happen.
And there is no constitutional authority for any election, direct or indirect, or for you to hand-pick your replacement. Unless you're going to assassinate the speaker of the house and the president pro-tem of the senate after you resign, your secretary of state pick won't become President. Your secretary of state will have gone through the "advise and consent" process, so you may not get your first pick.
(And if anyone doesn't trust that I will actually nominate the winners of that vote, then they wouldn't trust any of what I'm doing, so that argument is pointless.)
This whole argument is pointless because you cannot constitutionally do what you want to do, and the existing congress will not bend over and hand you what you demand just because you claim a "mandate from the majority of the people". They will know you have no such mandate, and they will have their own mandates from their own constituencies to consider. It will not be "political suicide" for a member from, e.g. Utah, to ignore the voices of the people from Florida or California, as much as you'd like to believe otherwise.
Your whole plan is smoke built on wishes and a complete ignorance of the political system in the US.
I see that you didn't understand what I said. I'll rephrase:
I understood what you wrote. The rephrased version isn't the same.
but to assume that no President ever achieved popular majority is wrong.
Sigh. You don't need a "popular majority" to win. In fact, there is NO popular majority, because there is no "popular vote". Adding up all the state-level elections means nothing.
And even when there is a plurality in the specious "popular vote", you certainly do NOT have a majority of the people, only a plurality of those who voted. Trying to claim a mandate to make radical changes and that it would be "political suicide" for anyone to oppose you is just nonsense.
I've covered this in other responses to you... it would be a non-binding recommendation.
And I've covered that in another response to you. If you think Congress is going to hand you the ability to hand-pick your own replacement, you are insane. There is even LESS constitutional authority for the congress to force the states to hold elections for "presidential replacement suggestions".
and after you resign the new President and congress will make it their first priority to annul any such bill.
Political suicide.
Bullshit. Political fact.
The law that changes how this work is part of the same law that I would force Congress to sign. It would be on the books before I resign... that's the whole point.
And the day you resign the new President and existing congress will repeal it before you get your bags packed and get out of the White House. Political fact. Call it "political suicide" again and you'll just prove how little you know about the process, and history.
Every "winner" who gets a large plurality claims a "mandate" to carry out his platform
And yet, congress is filled with people who have stood up to the Presidential "mandate"
There's a huge difference.
No, there isn't. Every Presidential "mandate" came from winning the election, and you are claiming that YOUR mandate will come from winning the election. Their mandates to do what they promised weren't unopposed by congress any less than YOUR alleged mandate to do what you promised to do will be. Every congressman has a mandate from their constituents, and those mandates don't necessarily agree with yours.
Most Presidents run to become and remain President for the full term. I would run to pass the bill that I state I will pass while vetoing anything that is not that bill, until I sign it into law. The first one is a "mandate", the second is actually a mandate.
Nonsense. Absolute malarky. Every politician makes promises to get elected and then calls them a "mandate", and yours will be no different.
I have no problem with ad on the margins of the page. Slashdot has three up right now and they don't block my view of the content, they aren't playing music or videos (chewing up my bandwidth), and nothing opened a popup.
I have "Ads disabled" checked on/. and I'm getting headline banner ads that actively rotate (chewing up bandwidth and CPU), a small add at the top of the right column (right above the "ads disabled" option), and another ad below that option.
And just prior to coming to this article, the main page of/. got covered up by a full-page popup grocery ad for Fred Meijer, which had NO obvious way of making it go away. That ad came from a rollover when my cursor touched the top headine ad, which hadn't yet loaded.
The add on the right side has an 'x' that should make it go away, but it brings up a menu to report the ad. I'm actively reporting every such ad as "inappropriate", because that is what they are.
Editing and quality control are now "cost centers"... Look upon my ebooks ye
might
y and de-spair.
You owe me money to replace my overloaded irony detector.
But your point is valid. Someone I know told me she was writing science fiction books that were being sold on Amazon, I think it was. I went to get a preview and my God, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't understand it because, like, every three, words there was, a comma, or so. A copy, editor could, have cleaned it, up so easily.
... that as machines took over the humdrum tasks, humans would work less and create more.
Unfortunately, the people whose jobs are being replaced by machines aren't usually the creative type. DaVinci might have been an autoworker before a robot welder replaced him and he could devote his time to creative endeavours, but Jane Smith, who used to be the receptionist/phone answerer at Multi-Corp, didn't start winning Pulitzers once the call director replaced her.
Trump is very loudly pointing out the egregious problems that many people see, and that's a large part of his success....
The flaws that hopefully will bring him down are that his "fixes" are frequently nonexistent, unworkable, wrongheaded, or missing a critical component.
Step one in fixing a problem is to admit there is a problem.
Saying that the correct fix for illegal immigration is to just hand out amnesties isn't admitting that there is a problem, it's pandering to it.
Once you admit the problem you can work on the solutions. The President isn't supposed to come up with unilateral fixes, he's supposed to work with Congress. It doesn't really matter if his proposed solutions are "unworkable" (in your opinion), they're a starting point for finding real ones.
I'll point out that he's not the first politician to come up with unworkable, unrealistic solutions to problems. I recall a recent electee who thought that "closing Gitmo on day one" was a workable solution to Gitmo. Turned out it wasn't.
Trump's different, Trump believes that people will do as he wishes because he can gain psychological leverage through intimidation, rudeness, brashness and raw intelligence, backed up by money.
Trump believes that people will do as he wishes because they believe he is right. He is rude, brash, and speaks directly -- a quality that has been lacking in politicians who try to pander to everyone. As for "money", he's already donated tons of money, and he readily admits that. Will he donate such sums after he's elected? Would it make any difference? No.
but whether it will work domestically among those he's supposed to be helping is an open question.
Do you not believe that dealing with the crime problems created by illegal immigrants will help everyone who is supposed to be here? You use the word "supposed" as if you think he is supposed to be helping the illegal immigrants in preference to the law abiding citizens, or that it won't help those law abiding citizens.
If you think Congress is going to pass a law that says that a current, qualified President gets to pick his own successor, you truly are insane. And if you think SCOTUS will let that law survive, you are even more so.
So if I send a self driving car through your ranch, but its not occupied, its not trespassing?
No, it is not trespassing. YOU may be guilty of some crime (reckless endangerment, vandalism, etc), but your car is not guilty of anything.
Belief that physical objects can be guilty of crimes is what has led to the ridiculous state of civil forfeiture that we have in some parts of the US.
The law talks about infringing on your enjoyment. "irritate" is an apt word to describe something that infringes on your enjoyment.
It also talks about "significant". Stop changing the words.
That's all it says... it can operate lower so long as the above, so where are the routes and what are the altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA?
It isn't relevant, because there was no such route that had to be followed by the quad copter pilot.
Is 20' above my pool a route specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA?
Would a helicopter hovering 20' above your pool create a significant effect through downwash that would preclude your use of that pool? I think so. Significant infringement. Two words that are now being met. But a quad 200' above you isn't causing significant anything.
But I'd love to see you argue your way out of prison should you choose to try shooting that police helicopter that is hovering over your pool out of the sky.
That's like saying that a gun can't commit murder.
That's true. Murder requires intent, and an inanimate object cannot have intent. That you think it depends on where you are is interesting, but wrong. A drone cannot trespass. Period.
but it's not the issue in question - the drone can definitely be used by a person to commit an illegal act.
Yes, of course it can. Nobody said it can't. Unfortunately for the argument that the drone was committing criminal trespass, the criminal trespass laws in Kentucky require that the person (not drone) actually enter the property. "A person commits... when he enters...".
By far, most Presidential elections were won with a majority vote.
A majority vote of the electors chosen by the states. Not a majority vote of the sum of the total votes case nationwide. NOBODY won a Presidential election by getting a majority of the "popular vote" -- it just doesn't work that way in the US.
Until you resign
... which we would, as I stated before.
I didn't question that you would be stupid enough to resign, just that your plan of getting a bill passed that would force an immediate election to replace you would be unlikely to have any effect. Until you resign there is no constitutional authority for the congress to call for such an election, and after you resign the new President and congress will make it their first priority to annul any such bill.
The Constitution, as both of us quoted, provides that Congress may "by Law" change how this works.
Yes, they may, by law, change how a resigned, dead, or unable to serve President will be replaced. YOU, until you resign, will be none of those. And they've already put a system in place, so when you DO resign and the law kicks in, you won't be in power to change it. There WILL be a President who WILL sign the law rescinding the election, because there cannot be any significant period of time where there is no President. If you think that there will ever be a law that says we won't have a President for a month so that the states can hold their elections, you're even more naive than you've already demonstrated.
It would require Congress and the new President to agree to do this, clearly against the will of the people (as we have established although you refuse to acknowledge).
No, WE have not established any such thing, because I understand the system a lot better than you seem to. Even with a plurality of the "popular vote", your support will have vaporized the day you actually veto a bill that causes a government shutdown, and the level of support you started with will not be as great as you think. Every "winner" who gets a large plurality claims a "mandate" to carry out his platform, and then he runs into the truth of the matter. The truth is, the congresspeople are ALSO elected (and this time directly by the people they represent) with a mandate. If their mandate doesn't match the President's, well, things don't happen as quickly as he wants them to, if at all.
Of course that would be political suicide.
And yet, congress is filled with people who have stood up to the Presidential "mandate" that the "popular vote" proved he had, and many of them get re-elected after committing that "political suicide" you claim they've committed. You really don't understand how the system works, do you?
At least then, they will prove that they are unwilling to respect the direct decision of the people.
You skipped over every word I wrote about you not being elected as a direct decision of the people, didn't you? And every word where what you think was a "direct decision" will be contradicted by everyone who contacts their congressman about NOT shutting the government down. And how even winning the "popular vote" (a meaningless term since there is no popular vote for US President) doesn't mean a majority of the people support you, only a plurality.
If the new President calls to reverse a decision made directly by the people, it's instant political suicide.
Har har hardy har har. He's President. He's not going to go back to running for congress. He'll have a pension and a load of speaking engagements at worst, and since he replaced a clear nutter and didn't demonstrate a lack of concern for the people who elected him, he'll probably be elected if he runs.
and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President,
A current, qualified President does not meet any of the conditions of that clause. He is not "removed, dead, resigned, or unable." Until you resign, there is no provision for an election to replace you, except for the normal end of term. And, guess what? They have already provided for those constitutional provisions. Once you resign, you have no power and your replacement can simply change the laws back to the way they were. Why wouldn't he? He'll want to stay in office and he'll have the backing of his partisan colleagues.
However I do not agree that withholding is a free loan. The government has to pay bills through the year, not only in April.
It is not withholding per se that is the free loan, it is the excess withholding. It doesn't matter when the government has to "pay bills", the fact that they hold on to your money and don't pay you interest for the time they have it is what makes it a "free loan".
Jan 1 through April 15 is, or should be, an eye-opener for all taxpayers, even those who get refunds. It is the one time when they get to see just how much money they ARE paying in taxes, in one number (two or three when including state and/or local municipalities) on one line on a form. Right before the feeling of "whee, look at my refund" should be the feeling of "holy shit, look at how much they still get to keep!"
By electing me, you are approving of this action and Congress will know precisely what the majority requires of them.
I was going to say that the correct term is "plurality", but that's not even accurate. It's closer than "majority", however. The actual majority to which you refer is the electors, not the voters, and if you are truly such a nutter you'll find them voting for someone else.
If you DO manage to get enough electors to win, then you should realize that every congressman will have his constituents to think about, and they're collectively going to overrule your vetoes. They'll have veterans who want VA benefits, government employees who want paychecks, Universities and independent research organizations that want grant monies to pay their people, etc etc etc. You won't have partisanship to fall back on because you've abandoned all party affiliations in this quest, and both parties will have no hesitation to abandon you.
One of the bills that must pass would require another election to be held to determine who becomes President and Vice-President immediately after the bill is passed.
And as soon as the Speaker of the House is sworn in, he can call for that bill to be rescinded (or pass a new one just like the old one). The Speaker is not appointed by the President, he is elected by his state first and then elected by the other house members, and you have as much chance of getting him to go along with your plan as you do of getting elected in the first place.
If you believe you can call for such a bill to hold an election before you resign, then you should realize there is no provision in the Constitution for holding an election to replace a current, qualified President.
I don't want the candidacy of my running mate to become an issue.
Of course it will be an issue, because they will be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. You don't get to change the succession rules before you become President, and as soon as you do become "it" the current succession rules apply. Only if you demand the existing Succession Act be repealed or changed as part of your reign can you keep him out of the line of succession and thus not an issue -- but that can only happen after you are elected and he's been an issue.
Doesn't matter how mean he is or anything like that. And it takes somebody as arrogant as he to believe that he can make things better. And make no mistake, he totally believes it.
Do you not listen to ANY of the candidates? They ALL know they can make things better. Every one of them. They're ALL as "arrogant" as Trump, which isn't saying much. Even the candidates for local city council know they can make things better.
As to Lessig, it will, of course, require 8 years before he's anywhere close to successful (in his opinion) and isn't it an interesting coincidence that 8 years is the term limit?
For most people artificial sweeteners including aspartame fool the body into thinking you've ingested sugar and responding in kind. In particular spiking insulin levels. This causes the body to reserve body fat, store any sugar in the blood as tissue (mostly fat), and experience low blood sugar levels and therefore mood swings.
Oh, God, how I wish this were true. I'd drink gallons of the stuff. I'd buy the power in a package and eat it like candy. But sadly, no.
I tested your claim on myself last night. One data point. Yeah. Two different diet drinks with two different sweeteners. My blood sugar did not change. No insulin spike, no low blood sugar level, nothing.
Many of these sweeteners also disrupt beneficial digestive bacteria.
They are absorbed in the stomach and thus don't make it to the lower gut to kill anything. They do remove a source of energy (sugar) for all bacteria there, but so does a no-carb diet.
This is Slashdot, so I understand that you didn't read the linked articles. Here is a more general summation from the articles I posted above.
The material you quoted was rather specific. It dealt with the specific case where a drone was causing significant impact on the use of the property by the owner. Had that drone caused no damage, it is unlikely there would be a case, much less the same decision. You cannot extrapolate from that case that any drone flight at 83 feet AGL above someone else's property is illegal, because the impact on the chickens was a critical part.
Imagine this: I fly my drone in my own backyard at 83 feet, but it is gas powered, makes a lot of noise, and makes the same kind of disruption to your chickens in your yard nextdoor that happened in the case you quoted. Would I be immune from any action because I was over my backyard, or would the fact that my activity was impacting your use of your property create a cause for action? Since the latter is true, then it cannot be ignored in the case you cited.
The only way to guarantee that you are not trespassing is to be in public airspace which is determined to be 500ft.
An airplane trespasses by flying low enough over the surface to interfere with the owner's reasonable use and enjoyment of her surface.
Like I said, had the drone at 83 feet caused no damage, it would not have interfered. The court decision that was quoted did not define an altitude that was absolute, it was an altitude in conjunction with effects. And apparently, only women who own property are so protected, since the deliberate use of the feminine pronoun in place of the genderless pronoun when referring to the owner.
As for the "500' is public airspace" determination, it is based on FAA minimum safe altitude rules. Those rules were not written to determine what "public airspace" is, so using them as that is outside the scope of their intent. There are too many places where controlled airspace extends to the surface for anyone to claim that 500' is a hard deck. In fact, the existence of the FARs that prohibit flight below certain altitudes for fixed wing aircraft proves that the airspace below that altitude does not belong to the property owner under it; otherwise that property owner could fly his own airplanes below that altitude without violating any rules. Even so, the minimum safe altitude for rotary wing aircraft is below 500'. There goes the "public airspace" argument for quads.
And no, you do not have to cause damage to be trespassing.
I didn't say you did. I said that the damage was a critical and necessary part of the case you cited, and therefore an extrapolation from that case that ignores the effects is specious.
The drone was clearly piloted as a FPV vehicle. As such, it had to have one video downlink for the pilot's goggles.
Not all drone systems have goggles. Mine does not.
That video stream *always* has OSD telemetry information, at least altitude, orientation vs. the launch point, speed, maybe battery charge status and timestamp.
Ok, but that's not the HD video that the camera records. The OP was claiming that the video was bogus because it showed up even when the claim was that the drone's SD card was missing. Gosh, it was recorded from the lower quality stream sent back to the pilot.
In that case, a second downlink may be needed in order to control what the high-quality camera "sees" and that stream may not have OSD information, but will be good quality.
It will be no better than the wireless data link allows. "Good" is subjective.
If your point is that the drone was piloted via GPS waypoints on a computer screen,
No, my point was that questioning the availability of video because the drone's on-board SD was missing can be answered trivially by knowing that there is a wireless stream that can be recorded.
then it's difficult to explain why it would hover for 22 seconds in a location of no interest.
Who said it was "of no interest"? I think the original story contained the claim that the pilot was there to take pictures of a friend's house. Hovering to the side of a house (which may wind up over someone else's backyard) to take pictures of that house is not "in a location of no interest". And, I hate to tell you, but when I fly my drone, I hover for much longer periods of time just to see how it does at station keeping, with absolutely no interest in what is on the ground -- other than to see that the ground image doesn't move. What's actually there is irrelevant to me.
For some reason, you've assumed that the only thing of interest that could possibly be seen from where the drone was was some teenage T&A. Therefore, if the drone hovered at all, it must be looking at the teenagers. That's your assumption, not a fact.
91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General.
Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface. ...
(d) Helicopters, powered parachutes, and weight-shift-control aircraft. If the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface --
(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA; and
And no, I don't think an unmanned drone is a helicopter by FAA rules either.
Sorry, but the FAA disagrees. Once they class a drone as an aircraft, then 14 CFR 1.1 says:
Helicopter means a rotorcraft that, for its horizontal motion, depends principally on its engine-driven rotors.
And "rotorcraft"? "Rotorcraft means a heavier-than-air aircraft that depends principally for its support in flight on the lift generated by one or more rotors."
A quad-copter is a helicopter according to the FAR.
How long exactly can i hover a drone over your back yard before it irritates you 'substantially'?
The law doesn't talk about "irritate". You're changing the words to make a straw argument.
not a generic "infraction". A "trespass". That's a specific legal term.
The text you didn't quote despite relying on it for the rest of your argument doesn't talk about trespass, it talks about "infraction". But you are right. "Trespass" is a specific legal term. In Kentucky, trespass law says "A person is guilty of criminal trespass in the second degree when he knowingly
enters...". A quad-copter is not a person.
And trespass by an unmanned unregistered drone is new legal territory... if a car parks on my lawn
Not so new territory. People have hit tennis balls and baseballs onto someone else's property and it hasn't been trespass. Inanimate objects cannot trespass. And if a car parks itself on your lawn, well, it's autonomous and therefore perfect. It can make no mistakes, cause no accidents.
I suppose it is ok to shoot a "trespassing" autonomous vehicle, too. It has cameras! It may be spying on you.
Slashdot Mirror
If the only data it's sending is "I'm version 39.0.1 (GNU/Linux i686)", I wouldn't call that "phoning home". Most people probably want this behaviour.
Yes, most people prefer convenience over privacy and will give up the latter for the former. Tell someone they'll get points or discounts for using the Safeway club card and they'll happily let a large corporation track everything they buy. Or Costco, where you MUST have the "loyalty card" (membership) to buy anything. It doesn't strike home how pervasive their monitoring is until a Costco employee walks up to you with a list of everything you've bought in the last year and tells you that you could save $16 if you paid $50 for the next higher level of membership.
To check for updates to plugins, it has to ask about the plugins you have, so you are telling someone what plugins you have installed.
Again, if all they know is that someone on your IP address has opened a browser while connected to the internet, it's barely a privacy issue.
It's not just that someone has opened a browser, even though that it technically a privacy violation (why should Mozilla get notices when that happens?), it's that the browser has been installed on another computer and whatever information is sent in the headers to help identify it (along with IP address).
I think most users want that behaviour.
You're confusing "most people want" with "privacy violation".
It's more useful than a blank page.
So? Now you don't understand the difference between "useful" and "privacy".
If there are pages you don't want showing up there, you can click the (x) on the thumbnail.
Great. Solution after the fact.
I don't. "yum install lynx" was all it took to put it on my system.
Do anybody here understand the implications of *simply making the connection*?
Yep. When the constables subpoena the network logs from your ISP they'll show a large number of connections to those CP sites, so of course you are a good candidate for a search warrant and visit to the graybar hotel.
That's a good thing, isn't it? For God's sake, man, think of the children.
I guess if you accidentally hover their link that they can see you're an active email too!
If you use a web browser as an email client, yes. That's one of the many good reasons not to overload web browers with unnecessary functions. Another is that you don't clutter the net with HTML-ized email without knowing it, and don't create unreadable email for people who use real email clients.
What are the other things it does that are bad for privacy?
Phoning home every damn time you start it up to "check for updates" to plugins.
Having a mozilla website be the default home page, so you automatically visit mozilla.com before you can get to the point where you can set your home page to be about:blank.
Having a default where it shows you (and anyone who happens to be in eyeshot) thumbnails of sites you've visited.
I haven't found a way around the second issue, but the first can be stopped. Set plugins.update.url to "" using about:config.
with the concurrence of the Senate PRIOR to the President resigning
... which happens through the same law that I've been talking about this whole time.
The advice and consent clause is part of the Constitution, so you are now going to demand a change to the constitution or you will hold your breathe and kick and scream...
The people are actually voting on who replaces me.
You hand-picking your replacement can in no way be construed as the "people actually voting on who replaces [you]".
The appointment process is a formality because that's the way the Constitution requires it to be done;
No, the appointment process is NOT a formality because the constitution requires it to be that way. There have been way too many contentious appointments for ANYONE who is sane to call it a formality, and then to claim that the constitution requires it to be so is, well, ignorance.
I would gladly do a direct election if I didn't have to push a constitutional amendment to make it happen.
And there is no constitutional authority for any election, direct or indirect, or for you to hand-pick your replacement. Unless you're going to assassinate the speaker of the house and the president pro-tem of the senate after you resign, your secretary of state pick won't become President. Your secretary of state will have gone through the "advise and consent" process, so you may not get your first pick.
(And if anyone doesn't trust that I will actually nominate the winners of that vote, then they wouldn't trust any of what I'm doing, so that argument is pointless.)
This whole argument is pointless because you cannot constitutionally do what you want to do, and the existing congress will not bend over and hand you what you demand just because you claim a "mandate from the majority of the people". They will know you have no such mandate, and they will have their own mandates from their own constituencies to consider. It will not be "political suicide" for a member from, e.g. Utah, to ignore the voices of the people from Florida or California, as much as you'd like to believe otherwise.
Your whole plan is smoke built on wishes and a complete ignorance of the political system in the US.
And funny coincidence, today my "ad block" option is UNset and I can click on it but it won't stay set.
Thanks slashdot.
Since you seem to think that you're going to get to pick your own successor, you truly are insane, and further discussion is a waste of time.
I see that you didn't understand what I said. I'll rephrase:
I understood what you wrote. The rephrased version isn't the same.
but to assume that no President ever achieved popular majority is wrong.
Sigh. You don't need a "popular majority" to win. In fact, there is NO popular majority, because there is no "popular vote". Adding up all the state-level elections means nothing.
And even when there is a plurality in the specious "popular vote", you certainly do NOT have a majority of the people, only a plurality of those who voted. Trying to claim a mandate to make radical changes and that it would be "political suicide" for anyone to oppose you is just nonsense.
I've covered this in other responses to you... it would be a non-binding recommendation.
And I've covered that in another response to you. If you think Congress is going to hand you the ability to hand-pick your own replacement, you are insane. There is even LESS constitutional authority for the congress to force the states to hold elections for "presidential replacement suggestions".
and after you resign the new President and congress will make it their first priority to annul any such bill.
Political suicide.
Bullshit. Political fact.
The law that changes how this work is part of the same law that I would force Congress to sign. It would be on the books before I resign... that's the whole point.
And the day you resign the new President and existing congress will repeal it before you get your bags packed and get out of the White House. Political fact. Call it "political suicide" again and you'll just prove how little you know about the process, and history.
Every "winner" who gets a large plurality claims a "mandate" to carry out his platform And yet, congress is filled with people who have stood up to the Presidential "mandate"
There's a huge difference.
No, there isn't. Every Presidential "mandate" came from winning the election, and you are claiming that YOUR mandate will come from winning the election. Their mandates to do what they promised weren't unopposed by congress any less than YOUR alleged mandate to do what you promised to do will be. Every congressman has a mandate from their constituents, and those mandates don't necessarily agree with yours.
Most Presidents run to become and remain President for the full term. I would run to pass the bill that I state I will pass while vetoing anything that is not that bill, until I sign it into law. The first one is a "mandate", the second is actually a mandate.
Nonsense. Absolute malarky. Every politician makes promises to get elected and then calls them a "mandate", and yours will be no different.
I have no problem with ad on the margins of the page. Slashdot has three up right now and they don't block my view of the content, they aren't playing music or videos (chewing up my bandwidth), and nothing opened a popup.
I have "Ads disabled" checked on /. and I'm getting headline banner ads that actively rotate (chewing up bandwidth and CPU), a small add at the top of the right column (right above the "ads disabled" option), and another ad below that option.
And just prior to coming to this article, the main page of /. got covered up by a full-page popup grocery ad for Fred Meijer, which had NO obvious way of making it go away. That ad came from a rollover when my cursor touched the top headine ad, which hadn't yet loaded.
The add on the right side has an 'x' that should make it go away, but it brings up a menu to report the ad. I'm actively reporting every such ad as "inappropriate", because that is what they are.
Editing and quality control are now "cost centers" ... Look upon my ebooks ye
might
y and de-spair.
You owe me money to replace my overloaded irony detector.
But your point is valid. Someone I know told me she was writing science fiction books that were being sold on Amazon, I think it was. I went to get a preview and my God, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't understand it because, like, every three, words there was, a comma, or so. A copy, editor could, have cleaned it, up so easily.
... that as machines took over the humdrum tasks, humans would work less and create more.
Unfortunately, the people whose jobs are being replaced by machines aren't usually the creative type. DaVinci might have been an autoworker before a robot welder replaced him and he could devote his time to creative endeavours, but Jane Smith, who used to be the receptionist/phone answerer at Multi-Corp, didn't start winning Pulitzers once the call director replaced her.
Trump is very loudly pointing out the egregious problems that many people see, and that's a large part of his success. ...
The flaws that hopefully will bring him down are that his "fixes" are frequently nonexistent, unworkable, wrongheaded, or missing a critical component.
Step one in fixing a problem is to admit there is a problem.
Saying that the correct fix for illegal immigration is to just hand out amnesties isn't admitting that there is a problem, it's pandering to it.
Once you admit the problem you can work on the solutions. The President isn't supposed to come up with unilateral fixes, he's supposed to work with Congress. It doesn't really matter if his proposed solutions are "unworkable" (in your opinion), they're a starting point for finding real ones.
I'll point out that he's not the first politician to come up with unworkable, unrealistic solutions to problems. I recall a recent electee who thought that "closing Gitmo on day one" was a workable solution to Gitmo. Turned out it wasn't.
Trump's different, Trump believes that people will do as he wishes because he can gain psychological leverage through intimidation, rudeness, brashness and raw intelligence, backed up by money.
Trump believes that people will do as he wishes because they believe he is right. He is rude, brash, and speaks directly -- a quality that has been lacking in politicians who try to pander to everyone. As for "money", he's already donated tons of money, and he readily admits that. Will he donate such sums after he's elected? Would it make any difference? No.
but whether it will work domestically among those he's supposed to be helping is an open question.
Do you not believe that dealing with the crime problems created by illegal immigrants will help everyone who is supposed to be here? You use the word "supposed" as if you think he is supposed to be helping the illegal immigrants in preference to the law abiding citizens, or that it won't help those law abiding citizens.
If you think Congress is going to pass a law that says that a current, qualified President gets to pick his own successor, you truly are insane. And if you think SCOTUS will let that law survive, you are even more so.
So if I send a self driving car through your ranch, but its not occupied, its not trespassing?
No, it is not trespassing. YOU may be guilty of some crime (reckless endangerment, vandalism, etc), but your car is not guilty of anything.
Belief that physical objects can be guilty of crimes is what has led to the ridiculous state of civil forfeiture that we have in some parts of the US.
The law talks about infringing on your enjoyment. "irritate" is an apt word to describe something that infringes on your enjoyment.
It also talks about "significant". Stop changing the words.
That's all it says... it can operate lower so long as the above, so where are the routes and what are the altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA?
It isn't relevant, because there was no such route that had to be followed by the quad copter pilot.
Is 20' above my pool a route specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA?
Would a helicopter hovering 20' above your pool create a significant effect through downwash that would preclude your use of that pool? I think so. Significant infringement. Two words that are now being met. But a quad 200' above you isn't causing significant anything.
But I'd love to see you argue your way out of prison should you choose to try shooting that police helicopter that is hovering over your pool out of the sky.
That's like saying that a gun can't commit murder.
That's true. Murder requires intent, and an inanimate object cannot have intent. That you think it depends on where you are is interesting, but wrong. A drone cannot trespass. Period.
but it's not the issue in question - the drone can definitely be used by a person to commit an illegal act.
Yes, of course it can. Nobody said it can't. Unfortunately for the argument that the drone was committing criminal trespass, the criminal trespass laws in Kentucky require that the person (not drone) actually enter the property. "A person commits ... when he enters ...".
By far, most Presidential elections were won with a majority vote.
A majority vote of the electors chosen by the states. Not a majority vote of the sum of the total votes case nationwide. NOBODY won a Presidential election by getting a majority of the "popular vote" -- it just doesn't work that way in the US.
Until you resign
... which we would, as I stated before.
I didn't question that you would be stupid enough to resign, just that your plan of getting a bill passed that would force an immediate election to replace you would be unlikely to have any effect. Until you resign there is no constitutional authority for the congress to call for such an election, and after you resign the new President and congress will make it their first priority to annul any such bill.
The Constitution, as both of us quoted, provides that Congress may "by Law" change how this works.
Yes, they may, by law, change how a resigned, dead, or unable to serve President will be replaced. YOU, until you resign, will be none of those. And they've already put a system in place, so when you DO resign and the law kicks in, you won't be in power to change it. There WILL be a President who WILL sign the law rescinding the election, because there cannot be any significant period of time where there is no President. If you think that there will ever be a law that says we won't have a President for a month so that the states can hold their elections, you're even more naive than you've already demonstrated.
It would require Congress and the new President to agree to do this, clearly against the will of the people (as we have established although you refuse to acknowledge).
No, WE have not established any such thing, because I understand the system a lot better than you seem to. Even with a plurality of the "popular vote", your support will have vaporized the day you actually veto a bill that causes a government shutdown, and the level of support you started with will not be as great as you think. Every "winner" who gets a large plurality claims a "mandate" to carry out his platform, and then he runs into the truth of the matter. The truth is, the congresspeople are ALSO elected (and this time directly by the people they represent) with a mandate. If their mandate doesn't match the President's, well, things don't happen as quickly as he wants them to, if at all.
Of course that would be political suicide.
And yet, congress is filled with people who have stood up to the Presidential "mandate" that the "popular vote" proved he had, and many of them get re-elected after committing that "political suicide" you claim they've committed. You really don't understand how the system works, do you?
At least then, they will prove that they are unwilling to respect the direct decision of the people.
You skipped over every word I wrote about you not being elected as a direct decision of the people, didn't you? And every word where what you think was a "direct decision" will be contradicted by everyone who contacts their congressman about NOT shutting the government down. And how even winning the "popular vote" (a meaningless term since there is no popular vote for US President) doesn't mean a majority of the people support you, only a plurality.
If the new President calls to reverse a decision made directly by the people, it's instant political suicide.
Har har hardy har har. He's President. He's not going to go back to running for congress. He'll have a pension and a load of speaking engagements at worst, and since he replaced a clear nutter and didn't demonstrate a lack of concern for the people who elected him, he'll probably be elected if he runs.
and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President,
A current, qualified President does not meet any of the conditions of that clause. He is not "removed, dead, resigned, or unable." Until you resign, there is no provision for an election to replace you, except for the normal end of term. And, guess what? They have already provided for those constitutional provisions. Once you resign, you have no power and your replacement can simply change the laws back to the way they were. Why wouldn't he? He'll want to stay in office and he'll have the backing of his partisan colleagues.
However I do not agree that withholding is a free loan. The government has to pay bills through the year, not only in April.
It is not withholding per se that is the free loan, it is the excess withholding. It doesn't matter when the government has to "pay bills", the fact that they hold on to your money and don't pay you interest for the time they have it is what makes it a "free loan".
Jan 1 through April 15 is, or should be, an eye-opener for all taxpayers, even those who get refunds. It is the one time when they get to see just how much money they ARE paying in taxes, in one number (two or three when including state and/or local municipalities) on one line on a form. Right before the feeling of "whee, look at my refund" should be the feeling of "holy shit, look at how much they still get to keep!"
By electing me, you are approving of this action and Congress will know precisely what the majority requires of them.
I was going to say that the correct term is "plurality", but that's not even accurate. It's closer than "majority", however. The actual majority to which you refer is the electors, not the voters, and if you are truly such a nutter you'll find them voting for someone else.
If you DO manage to get enough electors to win, then you should realize that every congressman will have his constituents to think about, and they're collectively going to overrule your vetoes. They'll have veterans who want VA benefits, government employees who want paychecks, Universities and independent research organizations that want grant monies to pay their people, etc etc etc. You won't have partisanship to fall back on because you've abandoned all party affiliations in this quest, and both parties will have no hesitation to abandon you.
One of the bills that must pass would require another election to be held to determine who becomes President and Vice-President immediately after the bill is passed.
And as soon as the Speaker of the House is sworn in, he can call for that bill to be rescinded (or pass a new one just like the old one). The Speaker is not appointed by the President, he is elected by his state first and then elected by the other house members, and you have as much chance of getting him to go along with your plan as you do of getting elected in the first place.
If you believe you can call for such a bill to hold an election before you resign, then you should realize there is no provision in the Constitution for holding an election to replace a current, qualified President.
I don't want the candidacy of my running mate to become an issue.
Of course it will be an issue, because they will be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. You don't get to change the succession rules before you become President, and as soon as you do become "it" the current succession rules apply. Only if you demand the existing Succession Act be repealed or changed as part of your reign can you keep him out of the line of succession and thus not an issue -- but that can only happen after you are elected and he's been an issue.
Doesn't matter how mean he is or anything like that. And it takes somebody as arrogant as he to believe that he can make things better. And make no mistake, he totally believes it.
Do you not listen to ANY of the candidates? They ALL know they can make things better. Every one of them. They're ALL as "arrogant" as Trump, which isn't saying much. Even the candidates for local city council know they can make things better.
As to Lessig, it will, of course, require 8 years before he's anywhere close to successful (in his opinion) and isn't it an interesting coincidence that 8 years is the term limit?
For most people artificial sweeteners including aspartame fool the body into thinking you've ingested sugar and responding in kind. In particular spiking insulin levels. This causes the body to reserve body fat, store any sugar in the blood as tissue (mostly fat), and experience low blood sugar levels and therefore mood swings.
Oh, God, how I wish this were true. I'd drink gallons of the stuff. I'd buy the power in a package and eat it like candy. But sadly, no.
I tested your claim on myself last night. One data point. Yeah. Two different diet drinks with two different sweeteners. My blood sugar did not change. No insulin spike, no low blood sugar level, nothing.
Many of these sweeteners also disrupt beneficial digestive bacteria.
They are absorbed in the stomach and thus don't make it to the lower gut to kill anything. They do remove a source of energy (sugar) for all bacteria there, but so does a no-carb diet.
This is Slashdot, so I understand that you didn't read the linked articles. Here is a more general summation from the articles I posted above.
The material you quoted was rather specific. It dealt with the specific case where a drone was causing significant impact on the use of the property by the owner. Had that drone caused no damage, it is unlikely there would be a case, much less the same decision. You cannot extrapolate from that case that any drone flight at 83 feet AGL above someone else's property is illegal, because the impact on the chickens was a critical part.
Imagine this: I fly my drone in my own backyard at 83 feet, but it is gas powered, makes a lot of noise, and makes the same kind of disruption to your chickens in your yard nextdoor that happened in the case you quoted. Would I be immune from any action because I was over my backyard, or would the fact that my activity was impacting your use of your property create a cause for action? Since the latter is true, then it cannot be ignored in the case you cited.
The only way to guarantee that you are not trespassing is to be in public airspace which is determined to be 500ft.
Like I said, had the drone at 83 feet caused no damage, it would not have interfered. The court decision that was quoted did not define an altitude that was absolute, it was an altitude in conjunction with effects. And apparently, only women who own property are so protected, since the deliberate use of the feminine pronoun in place of the genderless pronoun when referring to the owner.
As for the "500' is public airspace" determination, it is based on FAA minimum safe altitude rules. Those rules were not written to determine what "public airspace" is, so using them as that is outside the scope of their intent. There are too many places where controlled airspace extends to the surface for anyone to claim that 500' is a hard deck. In fact, the existence of the FARs that prohibit flight below certain altitudes for fixed wing aircraft proves that the airspace below that altitude does not belong to the property owner under it; otherwise that property owner could fly his own airplanes below that altitude without violating any rules. Even so, the minimum safe altitude for rotary wing aircraft is below 500'. There goes the "public airspace" argument for quads.
And no, you do not have to cause damage to be trespassing.
I didn't say you did. I said that the damage was a critical and necessary part of the case you cited, and therefore an extrapolation from that case that ignores the effects is specious.
The drone was clearly piloted as a FPV vehicle. As such, it had to have one video downlink for the pilot's goggles.
Not all drone systems have goggles. Mine does not.
That video stream *always* has OSD telemetry information, at least altitude, orientation vs. the launch point, speed, maybe battery charge status and timestamp.
Ok, but that's not the HD video that the camera records. The OP was claiming that the video was bogus because it showed up even when the claim was that the drone's SD card was missing. Gosh, it was recorded from the lower quality stream sent back to the pilot.
In that case, a second downlink may be needed in order to control what the high-quality camera "sees" and that stream may not have OSD information, but will be good quality.
It will be no better than the wireless data link allows. "Good" is subjective.
If your point is that the drone was piloted via GPS waypoints on a computer screen,
No, my point was that questioning the availability of video because the drone's on-board SD was missing can be answered trivially by knowing that there is a wireless stream that can be recorded.
then it's difficult to explain why it would hover for 22 seconds in a location of no interest.
Who said it was "of no interest"? I think the original story contained the claim that the pilot was there to take pictures of a friend's house. Hovering to the side of a house (which may wind up over someone else's backyard) to take pictures of that house is not "in a location of no interest". And, I hate to tell you, but when I fly my drone, I hover for much longer periods of time just to see how it does at station keeping, with absolutely no interest in what is on the ground -- other than to see that the ground image doesn't move. What's actually there is irrelevant to me.
For some reason, you've assumed that the only thing of interest that could possibly be seen from where the drone was was some teenage T&A. Therefore, if the drone hovered at all, it must be looking at the teenagers. That's your assumption, not a fact.
Which is stated as what, exactly, (with a cite).
The same cite I gave last time. 14 CFR 97.119:
And no, I don't think an unmanned drone is a helicopter by FAA rules either.
Sorry, but the FAA disagrees. Once they class a drone as an aircraft, then 14 CFR 1.1 says:
And "rotorcraft"? "Rotorcraft means a heavier-than-air aircraft that depends principally for its support in flight on the lift generated by one or more rotors."
A quad-copter is a helicopter according to the FAR.
How long exactly can i hover a drone over your back yard before it irritates you 'substantially'?
The law doesn't talk about "irritate". You're changing the words to make a straw argument.
not a generic "infraction". A "trespass". That's a specific legal term.
The text you didn't quote despite relying on it for the rest of your argument doesn't talk about trespass, it talks about "infraction". But you are right. "Trespass" is a specific legal term. In Kentucky, trespass law says "A person is guilty of criminal trespass in the second degree when he knowingly enters ...". A quad-copter is not a person.
And trespass by an unmanned unregistered drone is new legal territory... if a car parks on my lawn
Not so new territory. People have hit tennis balls and baseballs onto someone else's property and it hasn't been trespass. Inanimate objects cannot trespass. And if a car parks itself on your lawn, well, it's autonomous and therefore perfect. It can make no mistakes, cause no accidents.
I suppose it is ok to shoot a "trespassing" autonomous vehicle, too. It has cameras! It may be spying on you.