Universal healthcare here (Brazil) is paid with tax money. It is fairer than the private healthcare system because...
you define "fair" to include the concept of taking things from someone who works to get them to give them to someone who doesn't. This is "fair" to the people who get things; patently unfair to those who get things taken away. Since there are generally more people who want their stuff to be paid for by other people than those who want to buy other people stuff, this make this, on average, "fair".
What isn't discussed in this idea of "fair" is what happens when the population of people this is "fair" for grows past the ability of the rest to pay for it. And certainly, this balance is shifting the wrong way, pushed more and more by those who want to create class envy so the demarcation moves even faster. "Those awful rich people" owe everyone else, so taking it all away from them to give it to us is "fair".
Because they aren't, don't want to be, and would probably be skewered by their customers if they suggested such a thing. Would YOU be happy with a service that monitored everything you watched and reported that data to some potentially huge corporation? The fact is they aren't, and thus their viewers are not contributing to the numbers used to set advertising rates, and thus aren't paying through advertising for the content Aereo is selling them.
Fun fact: your right to life is inviolate only for as long as everyone around you agrees to it.
You are confusing rights with conditions. Your right to life is independent of your neighbors, otherwise "inalienable" it would not be. Whether your neighbors violate your right is a different matter.
Feel free to explain how that differs from a privilege.
Privileges can be revoked without legal repercussions.
The lawyer would have to now the officer in question at least well enough to recognize his voice over the phone.
What? All the lawyer has to do is play the 911 tape and a section of any radio call by that officer (or just let the jury hear the spoken testimony from him) for the jury to make a decision. The lawyer doesn't need to "now" the officer at all.
Also, I think you missed the point of adjusting the time on the ticket and report of the stop. That would put it after the call.
The time on the ticket would be irrelevant. The time on the radio call wouldn't be. I think you missed that point.
Also, I do not believe non-anonymous 911 calls justify stopping the car and most certainly do not justify searching it.
Ok, that's a consistent position. That's probably why many jurisdictions require the officer to view an infraction after locating the vehicle reported by a 911 call before they stop it.
But suppose the 911 call said "I just saw a red SUV with a partial plate number of XYZ1 something hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk and drive away." Would that 911 call be sufficient in your opinion for an officer to stop a red SUV with the plate XYZ123 to examine the vehicle for damage and the driver for impairment?
So if I turn on my TV and watch ABC over the air, I'm stealing by taking the content and not paying ABC for it?
Where did you get that silly idea? Of course not. Advertisers are paying for your eyeballs, you aren't paying a cent (directly) for the content on OTA. But don't let that confuse you, someone is paying for it, just not Aereo who wants to make a profit from it.
There's still radio.
Radio is a broadcast medium, too. Nobody wants broadcast. Broadcast is a buggy whip.
Oh, and what's wrong with me setting up a PVR? Is that illegal as well?
Another silly and already settled question. Same answer as before.
If not, why are you arguing that it should be illegal for me to pay someone to do something that's legal?
It's not. It should be illegal for them to sell you a service using someone else's data. You can hire all the people you want to come set up your OTA antenna and wire your house and install all the TVs you want.
I just though of the analogy. Aereo are TV pimps.
So you think pimping should be legal? How interesting.
unless you pay the state-mandated monopoly.
I'm sorry, what "state mandated monopoly" do you think exists?
No. A specific case does not reflect the "average".
All it says is the lines are longer in black neighborhoods.
Forgive me for assuming you were comparing apples to apples, instead of comparing the wait times for all people at different polling places and coming to the conclusion that affirmative action was necessary to solve some horrific problem. The way you stated it, it sounded very clearly like "If you are black you get pulled out of line to wait". Lines are longer in some polling places than at others. Gee. That happens. Have 800 people all show up at the same time at any polling place and there will be a line. Is there some inherent racial component to who shows up when?
Regarding citations, I'm pretty sure you could have found this one yourself. It was the first google result
Pick the right words, anything will be the "first google result". I looked at that article. I see nothing about Michigan, and the word "Michigan" doesn't appear. It says Florida lines were 45 minutes long. How sad. Come at a different time, or vote absentee if you can't come during regular voting time.
I cited specifically Michigan in my statement, but the NYTimes article indicates nationwide blacks and hispanics wait twice as long to vote as whites.
Actually, it said that Democrats wait longer than Republicans. How they know what you are when you are in line waiting to get in so they know to delay you is a mystery the article doesn't solve.
Here's a gem from the article you cite:
In some other places, including counties and cities run by Democrats, local officials have not spent the money to open as many polling places.
That tells us that in places RUN BY DEMOCRATS, the DEMOCRATS aren't spending enough money to open enough polling places for all the DEMOCRATS to vote, and this is a sure sign that the REPUBLICANS are biasing the system against them.
Yeah, some polling places aren't run as well as others. Here's a secret you forgot: polling places are run by people of BOTH parties. There are Republican and Democrat poll workers at every location. If the Republican poll workers are slowing down the Democrat voters, you'd think the Democrat poll workers would step in to smooth out the process.
As for your stereotypes about who votes on Sunday -- the national election day in November is on Tuesday. Voting any other day is a convenience. Why are Sunday "early voting days" being eliminated? Perhaps because they can't find enough volunteers to be poll workers for Sunday and they can't open the polls without them? Perhaps those blacks who you claim are filling the pews and then rushing to the polls to vote on Sunday (an interesting stereotype, I think) aren't volunteering to be workers to help keep those polls open because they're too busy going to church, along with a lot of other people who think Sunday is a day of rest instead of a day to spend working in a polling place?
Yes, polling places are supposed to be allocated based on population. That doesn't mean that a large, densely populated city in one county will have the same "poll density" that a sparsely populated county somewhere else would have, that just means that within that voting jurisdiction there should be a even distribution. Yes, that means that a city like Detroit might have one polling place for 10,000 people, while a county in the UP might have one polling place per thousand. That's a matter for Wayne County (I think that's the county that Detroit is in) to solve, not some random commenter on/.
Now I'd love to hear your suggestion for "affirmative action" to solve this problem of some polling places having lines. Do you actually start turning white Republicans away from the polls so you can get all the black Democrats in quicker? Create specific lines for each race and party affiliation and serve two of one line for every one you accept from the others? That'
The average wait for a white person to vote in Michigan is 7 minutes. The average wait for a black person to vote in Michigan is 46 minutes.
I'd love to see the citation for that fact. What you're saying is if I get in line to vote behind a black person, the polling officials will pull me out of line to go ahead of him, and make him wait an extra 30 minutes as well? I don't believe it. Were that to be happening in any significant amount (i.e. AT ALL) there would be screaming headlines in the newspapers.
Instead it is the over the air broadcasters that are suing and no one wants them.
Except all the people who have antennas and rely on OTA for their content. Perhaps because they don't have/don't want to pay for broadband?
People do NOT want to receive it by broadcast, which is why people want Aereo to take that junk off the air and put it on wires.
Of course there are people who want to receive "it" by broadcast. And there are already wired modes to get "it".
This is a case of a new player using the broadcast signal to provide a pay service without remuneration to the broadcast source. The broadcaster is paying the fees for the content and getting nothing in return.
Now the broadcasters are going the way of the Buggy Whip.
During an emergency, there is still nothing as efficient as broadcast for dissemination of information to the public. Broadcast has not and will not for a very long time become a "buggy whip". You may decide not to rely on or use it, but many many other people do.
It's a good thing to get diversity going and established, even if you have to be heavy-handed about it, and this allows anybody really talented to get into college, etc.
Except that a quota system doesn't necessarily do that. A quota system ensures that a certain percentage of your population has a certain trait. It says nothing about the qualifications of anyone involved.
In fact, if the standards have to be lowered to achieve that percentage, it means that the qualifications for that group are, on average, lower than for the other group. And if there is a limited overall population, then the presence of the lower qualified marginalized group means that many higher qualified applicants are rejected. Thus the claim "anybody really talented [can] get in" is false.
The correct remedy to a 0% quota system has never been an X percent quota, it is a "no quota" system. E.g., "the top 3000 applicants will be accepted". To have such a system, you have to do exactly what Michigan voters have said -- ignore race and gender in the application process.
The rest of what you said is exactly correct. AA has created problems for talented minorities because it puts a stigma of helplessness on them that they don't deserve, and they have to work very hard to dismiss.
More to the point, a cop pulls some one over, and suspects them of something but doesn't have enough for a search. The cop calls in reporting the car anonymously using a prepaid cell phone, a few moments later it goes out over the radio and he can now search the vehicle. Who's going to check who made the anonymous tip?
The lawyer for the defendant, who is going to produce the tape of the call and play it in court so everyone can hear that the voice is the same as that of the officer. Then he'll display the E911 data for the call that shows that the call was made from a location immediately next to the car. And then the final nail: he'll display a time-line of the events showing that the call being used to support the stop came in after the stop was made.
Better yet, the cop does a search and there is room to question whether it was reasonable, so he just calls in after the fact. A few min difference on the report and no one would know.
Nobody except anyone who looks at the times on the tapes.
Let me ask you this: do you believe non-anonymous 911 calls can justify a stop? If so, what difference does it make if I say "my name is Fred Johnson and I'm reporting... " vs. "I'm reporting...". That 911 operator has no way of knowing if I'm really Fred Johnson or not.
It's only a poison pill for companies who's business model is to cyberstalk people.
You are so wrong that it's remarkable. It's a poison pill for any company that needs customer data to operate. The ultimate example is this one, where data is needed so the education can be personalized and similarities in student backgrounds can be leveraged into better education for all of them. This company wasn't cyberstalking anyone.
Everyone else can simply not collect and record personally idenfiable data.
So you have the same idea that spetry did, that a student can log in with his student ID and magically the system will know what learning material to provide to it. I say "it" because gender is a personally identifiable bit of data, and we dare not keep that or you'll start shouting "cyberstalker!".
And the DATA, along with the USE to provide personalized learning, IS THE VALUE OF THE COMPANY. If you have to delete the data to sell the company, or merge it with another technology firm to enhance the products, then the company loses a lot of its value and this provision becomes, just like I said, a poison pill.
And before you rant on about use of this data, I'm saying it is going to be used for EXACTLY THE REASON IT WAS COLLECTED.
If the new buyer has any desire to use the data in a way that wasn't part of the deal when the user provided it,
If the new buyer has ANY desire to use the data for the same purpose it was collected for, he can't.
Of course, those investors have the money burning a hole in their pocket. If they don't invest it, it will inflate itself away.
So you think someone is going to pay a lot of money for a company that immediately loses all its value when the data it needs to function is purged? Don't be stupid. And the people who created the company who are trying to sell it won't be able to sell it for what it is truly worth, so they lose big time.
The investors will simply go somewhere else, buying companies who won't have to delete all their user data and make themselves worthless. And the entrepreneurs will get shafted.
And there will be some companies who are willing to accept the risk, provided the rewards are commensurate.
The final result of this will be both less competition in the market and higher prices. A win-win for the consumer.
I actually wasn't overlooking the application to existing companies, I was just making the point stronger by showing how it would stifle innovation and creativity.
It would be better to hear their logic for collecting this data to begin with. If they wanted personalized learning, I'm pretty sure a student ID unique to each student make more sense than gathering data on parents, their partners, reasons they missed class, etc...?
Yeah, cause you can tell so much about a person by an arbitrarily assigned ID. The ID tells you all you need to know about what kinds of learning materials might work best for someone, or what wouldn't be appropriate. Yeah, you know from the ID that a child is in a single parent home so you might want to tailor the material towards examples that he will be familiar with (because you also know that the student is a boy from his student ID.)
And when the next arbitrarily assigned ID shows up on the system, you can tell from just the ID that this girl (which you know because of the ID, of course) is in a similar situation as half a dozen other students (which you know by just matching IDs, of course) and would be better served by materials similar to the ones that work well for them.
The whole concept of personalized education is that YOU NEED TO KNOW THINGS ABOUT THE PERSON YOU ARE EDUCATING so you can, you know, personalize it. In the Good Old Days of single room schoolhouses the teacher knew every student and the parents and kept a database in his head. In the online world that means the database is...
They obviously wanted that data more than they want to really wanted help people.
Yeah. Obvious. It couldn't be because the entire concept of what they were doing is based on knowing things about the student so they can, you know, personalize the education.
The standardized testing systems are being criticized because they assume a common cultural knowledge and some students don't do well because they don't have that experience. An impersonal test asks Billy the farmer's son the same kind of story problems it asks Martha the single-mom-in-the-tenement-house's daughter. If you're going to remove those biases in the tests (and in the education behind them) you need to know "where does Billy/Martha live?", "parents?", "income?", etc.
"Any company says they won't abuse your data gets shut down and all their assets siezed if they sell, transfer, share with a parter, or in any other way distribute your data, or if they sell the use of your data as a service, or use your data for any purpose or in any way other than what is explicitly stated on the front page of their web site, above the fold, in bold 14 point type."
The ultimate poison pill for any startup company. This would effectively prohibit any future funding or merger. "Gee, guys, you have a great idea and we'd love to buy you out to bring your idea to a larger audience, but our lawyers won't let us assume the liability of dealing with your data."
Since when is it permissible for any government to employ military force against its own (civilian) citizens?
There are a large number of countries which have no equivalent to posse comitatus, and the US didn't have posse comitatus until 1878 -- 100 years after the Constitution was enacted. In those countries it is permissible for the government to use military forces against their own citizens.
I'm pretty sure that armed (combat) drones are military technology.
Military technology is not the same as military forces, and it a pretty nebulous term, kinda like "assault weapon".
"Military (force|technology)" is an arbitrary distinction.
Military technology is an arbitrary distinction, yes. The OP used the phrase "military force".
Military force is when the military is used to apply force, and it is completely distinct from "military technology". A US Army PFC acting under his commander's order wielding an ax to stop someone looting a grocery store in the US is still a violation of posse comitatus even if the technology isn't "military" in nature, because it is still military force.
Hmm, 100000x the 3000-odd killed when the Twin Towers were hit. So drug dealers have killed 300,000,000 million Americans?
Exaggerating for effect is nice,...
Yes, it is. My calculator shows that 100,000 times 3,000 is just 300,000,000, not 300,000,000 million.
I'm pretty sure he's considering the ongoing toll, not the one-off anomaly of 9/11.
Yes, it actually does. The issue at this point is not allowing someone who made what you claim are baseless claims to go hunting for one, it is to allow him to defend himself against a lawsuit. The lawsuit is the cause of the FOIA request. Had Levin wanted to go fishing against Mann, he could have filed the request long ago.
This is punishing Manning for trying to defend himself through the only legal means available to him.
Manning has nothing to do with this. Mann is trying to "defend himself" in a court of law instead of allowing Levin's character and actions speak for themselves. In other words, Mann has another, excellent means of defending himself outside of bringing the squabble into a court of law. By bringing it into court, he needs to accept that the matter has moved into a that venue and operates under those rules. As I've already pointed out, nobody in the "serious climate science field" (i.e., those who believe and accept Mann's data without seeing the underlying raw data) care what Levin says. Nobody who agrees with Levin is going to change their mind if Mann wins. There is little damage that Mann is going to fix by filing this suit, and in fact he's Streisanding himself pretty well by giving Levin a pulpit.
You say he's defending himself. It is just as easy to claim that he's trying to squelch someone who disagrees with him. It's now up to the courts to work out which is which, and not because of Levin, because Mann wants it that way.
I say - if you're running off your mouth about lies for which you have no evidence then you're just as guilty of libel whether or not what you say is true.
So you'd claim that the truth is not a defense against a charge of libel? That because you didn't have the evidence in hand at the moment you made a statement but could get it after the fact, you're still guilty? Hmmm. An interesting philosophy. Not legally accurate, but interesting.
Otherwise that gives me the ability to go running around slandering others as a way of forcing disclosure of whatever I want (transactions, proprietary data, sex tapes, etc.
If you made sex tapes as a public employee of a public institution covered by open access laws and subject to FOIA requests, then you are the fool and yes, you should be forced to turn those sex tapes over when a valid request for them under FOIA is made. You shouldn't be allowed to hide behind "proprietary" or "secret" claims. "It will embarass the hell out of me" isn't a sufficient exclusion for such material, nor is "it will prove that I am guilty of what the other guy said".
And, I'll point out again since you missed it twice already, the FOIA request is being made because of the lawsuit, not because someone wants to go fishing.
So the goal is to allow a guy who made baseless claims to go hunting for a base?
No. The goal, as I said, is to allow the person being sued to defend himself. You want to take a public squabble to court and have a judge rule on it, you have to accept the side effects. You don't want those issues raised, let the character of the person making the statements you don't like speak for itself. Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone in the climate science field would put much weight behind anything Mark Levin says, so it would be hard to prove there is much damage from it. I also find it hard to imagine that anyone will change their mind about Mann whether he wins or loses.
You're worried that whatever is discovered might be taken "out of context" or twisted somehow? Well, you're already going to court over the matter, it's not like you have to find a lawyer and file suit over that. It will be part of the proceedings THAT YOU STARTED.
Whether the claims that were made by the defendant are baseless or not is not entirely clear, and are a matter for the courts at this point. But also as I said, the fact that this is about AGW makes it a fascinating story but is really irrelevant to this issue.
Here's a bit of information that might shed light on the baselessness of the claims. I recall an email from a handful of years ago, after the initial appearance of the hockey stick, from NCAR scientists who were quite giddy with glee that they had been able to modify some of the parameters of the model to obtain a much more significant upturn in the rate of change. It was pretty clear from that email that the goal was not to accurately represent the physical processes involved but to get a scarier result. No, I don't have that email anymore so I can't quote it, but I do remember the message it conveyed. It wasn't "we understand the physics better and here's the new results", it was "we changed the parameters and got a higher rate of increase."
Now, I assume that Mann was on the NCAR mailing list that came out on, and I'd say that were I him, I'd really not want that email showing up in a trial.
And yet, for decades after that original publishing of the US Constitution, those very tos and fros of negotiating were slowly trickled out, leading to some of the most foundational Supreme Court rulings which have preserved our country's freedoms.
This. It is called "original intent", and it is often the crux of cases before SCOTUS. What did the legislators intend? The only way to get that is to look at the work product and not just the final published result. The Federalist Papers are one bit of the puzzle, but not the only part, and limiting the determination of original intent to that one document is limiting oneself to one man's opinion of what was intended. And, of course, the FP cover only the founders and the Constitution, ignoring completely the legislation created over the last 240 years.
What were the arguments about the law in question? What were the compromises? What was never considered?
The goal here was to destroy the reputation of a scientist that came to conclusions that someone did not like.
The goal here is to allow someone to defend themselves against a lawsuit filed because someone who has made himself a public figure didn't like what some other public figure said about him in public. In this case, the person who filed the lawsuit is a scientist. The person who didn't like what was being said was the scientist.
Now, if you admit that releasing the scientist's email would destroy his reputation, that's a pretty damning statement about that scientist, I would say.
But as has been pointed out by another, the fact that this deals with AGW makes it interesting reading but has no relevance to the legal issues involved.
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What right would that be?
Universal healthcare here (Brazil) is paid with tax money. It is fairer than the private healthcare system because ...
you define "fair" to include the concept of taking things from someone who works to get them to give them to someone who doesn't. This is "fair" to the people who get things; patently unfair to those who get things taken away. Since there are generally more people who want their stuff to be paid for by other people than those who want to buy other people stuff, this make this, on average, "fair".
What isn't discussed in this idea of "fair" is what happens when the population of people this is "fair" for grows past the ability of the rest to pay for it. And certainly, this balance is shifting the wrong way, pushed more and more by those who want to create class envy so the demarcation moves even faster. "Those awful rich people" owe everyone else, so taking it all away from them to give it to us is "fair".
Why not?
Because they aren't, don't want to be, and would probably be skewered by their customers if they suggested such a thing. Would YOU be happy with a service that monitored everything you watched and reported that data to some potentially huge corporation? The fact is they aren't, and thus their viewers are not contributing to the numbers used to set advertising rates, and thus aren't paying through advertising for the content Aereo is selling them.
Fun fact: your right to life is inviolate only for as long as everyone around you agrees to it.
You are confusing rights with conditions. Your right to life is independent of your neighbors, otherwise "inalienable" it would not be. Whether your neighbors violate your right is a different matter.
Feel free to explain how that differs from a privilege.
Privileges can be revoked without legal repercussions.
The lawyer would have to now the officer in question at least well enough to recognize his voice over the phone.
What? All the lawyer has to do is play the 911 tape and a section of any radio call by that officer (or just let the jury hear the spoken testimony from him) for the jury to make a decision. The lawyer doesn't need to "now" the officer at all.
Also, I think you missed the point of adjusting the time on the ticket and report of the stop. That would put it after the call.
The time on the ticket would be irrelevant. The time on the radio call wouldn't be. I think you missed that point.
Also, I do not believe non-anonymous 911 calls justify stopping the car and most certainly do not justify searching it.
Ok, that's a consistent position. That's probably why many jurisdictions require the officer to view an infraction after locating the vehicle reported by a 911 call before they stop it.
But suppose the 911 call said "I just saw a red SUV with a partial plate number of XYZ1 something hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk and drive away." Would that 911 call be sufficient in your opinion for an officer to stop a red SUV with the plate XYZ123 to examine the vehicle for damage and the driver for impairment?
So if I turn on my TV and watch ABC over the air, I'm stealing by taking the content and not paying ABC for it?
Where did you get that silly idea? Of course not. Advertisers are paying for your eyeballs, you aren't paying a cent (directly) for the content on OTA. But don't let that confuse you, someone is paying for it, just not Aereo who wants to make a profit from it.
There's still radio.
Radio is a broadcast medium, too. Nobody wants broadcast. Broadcast is a buggy whip.
Oh, and what's wrong with me setting up a PVR? Is that illegal as well?
Another silly and already settled question. Same answer as before.
If not, why are you arguing that it should be illegal for me to pay someone to do something that's legal?
It's not. It should be illegal for them to sell you a service using someone else's data. You can hire all the people you want to come set up your OTA antenna and wire your house and install all the TVs you want.
I just though of the analogy. Aereo are TV pimps.
So you think pimping should be legal? How interesting.
unless you pay the state-mandated monopoly.
I'm sorry, what "state mandated monopoly" do you think exists?
They are getting the ad revenue, just like they get for everyone else in their area that puts up an antenna.
No, they aren't. Ad rates are determined by viewership numbers, and Aereo aren't counted.
No. A specific case does not reflect the "average". All it says is the lines are longer in black neighborhoods.
Forgive me for assuming you were comparing apples to apples, instead of comparing the wait times for all people at different polling places and coming to the conclusion that affirmative action was necessary to solve some horrific problem. The way you stated it, it sounded very clearly like "If you are black you get pulled out of line to wait". Lines are longer in some polling places than at others. Gee. That happens. Have 800 people all show up at the same time at any polling place and there will be a line. Is there some inherent racial component to who shows up when?
Regarding citations, I'm pretty sure you could have found this one yourself. It was the first google result
Pick the right words, anything will be the "first google result". I looked at that article. I see nothing about Michigan, and the word "Michigan" doesn't appear. It says Florida lines were 45 minutes long. How sad. Come at a different time, or vote absentee if you can't come during regular voting time.
I cited specifically Michigan in my statement, but the NYTimes article indicates nationwide blacks and hispanics wait twice as long to vote as whites.
Actually, it said that Democrats wait longer than Republicans. How they know what you are when you are in line waiting to get in so they know to delay you is a mystery the article doesn't solve.
Here's a gem from the article you cite:
That tells us that in places RUN BY DEMOCRATS, the DEMOCRATS aren't spending enough money to open enough polling places for all the DEMOCRATS to vote, and this is a sure sign that the REPUBLICANS are biasing the system against them.
Yeah, some polling places aren't run as well as others. Here's a secret you forgot: polling places are run by people of BOTH parties. There are Republican and Democrat poll workers at every location. If the Republican poll workers are slowing down the Democrat voters, you'd think the Democrat poll workers would step in to smooth out the process.
As for your stereotypes about who votes on Sunday -- the national election day in November is on Tuesday. Voting any other day is a convenience. Why are Sunday "early voting days" being eliminated? Perhaps because they can't find enough volunteers to be poll workers for Sunday and they can't open the polls without them? Perhaps those blacks who you claim are filling the pews and then rushing to the polls to vote on Sunday (an interesting stereotype, I think) aren't volunteering to be workers to help keep those polls open because they're too busy going to church, along with a lot of other people who think Sunday is a day of rest instead of a day to spend working in a polling place?
Yes, polling places are supposed to be allocated based on population. That doesn't mean that a large, densely populated city in one county will have the same "poll density" that a sparsely populated county somewhere else would have, that just means that within that voting jurisdiction there should be a even distribution. Yes, that means that a city like Detroit might have one polling place for 10,000 people, while a county in the UP might have one polling place per thousand. That's a matter for Wayne County (I think that's the county that Detroit is in) to solve, not some random commenter on /.
Now I'd love to hear your suggestion for "affirmative action" to solve this problem of some polling places having lines. Do you actually start turning white Republicans away from the polls so you can get all the black Democrats in quicker? Create specific lines for each race and party affiliation and serve two of one line for every one you accept from the others? That'
The average wait for a white person to vote in Michigan is 7 minutes. The average wait for a black person to vote in Michigan is 46 minutes.
I'd love to see the citation for that fact. What you're saying is if I get in line to vote behind a black person, the polling officials will pull me out of line to go ahead of him, and make him wait an extra 30 minutes as well? I don't believe it. Were that to be happening in any significant amount (i.e. AT ALL) there would be screaming headlines in the newspapers.
Instead it is the over the air broadcasters that are suing and no one wants them.
Except all the people who have antennas and rely on OTA for their content. Perhaps because they don't have/don't want to pay for broadband?
People do NOT want to receive it by broadcast, which is why people want Aereo to take that junk off the air and put it on wires.
Of course there are people who want to receive "it" by broadcast. And there are already wired modes to get "it".
This is a case of a new player using the broadcast signal to provide a pay service without remuneration to the broadcast source. The broadcaster is paying the fees for the content and getting nothing in return.
Now the broadcasters are going the way of the Buggy Whip.
During an emergency, there is still nothing as efficient as broadcast for dissemination of information to the public. Broadcast has not and will not for a very long time become a "buggy whip". You may decide not to rely on or use it, but many many other people do.
It's a good thing to get diversity going and established, even if you have to be heavy-handed about it, and this allows anybody really talented to get into college, etc.
Except that a quota system doesn't necessarily do that. A quota system ensures that a certain percentage of your population has a certain trait. It says nothing about the qualifications of anyone involved.
In fact, if the standards have to be lowered to achieve that percentage, it means that the qualifications for that group are, on average, lower than for the other group. And if there is a limited overall population, then the presence of the lower qualified marginalized group means that many higher qualified applicants are rejected. Thus the claim "anybody really talented [can] get in" is false.
The correct remedy to a 0% quota system has never been an X percent quota, it is a "no quota" system. E.g., "the top 3000 applicants will be accepted". To have such a system, you have to do exactly what Michigan voters have said -- ignore race and gender in the application process.
The rest of what you said is exactly correct. AA has created problems for talented minorities because it puts a stigma of helplessness on them that they don't deserve, and they have to work very hard to dismiss.
More to the point, a cop pulls some one over, and suspects them of something but doesn't have enough for a search. The cop calls in reporting the car anonymously using a prepaid cell phone, a few moments later it goes out over the radio and he can now search the vehicle. Who's going to check who made the anonymous tip?
The lawyer for the defendant, who is going to produce the tape of the call and play it in court so everyone can hear that the voice is the same as that of the officer. Then he'll display the E911 data for the call that shows that the call was made from a location immediately next to the car. And then the final nail: he'll display a time-line of the events showing that the call being used to support the stop came in after the stop was made.
Better yet, the cop does a search and there is room to question whether it was reasonable, so he just calls in after the fact. A few min difference on the report and no one would know.
Nobody except anyone who looks at the times on the tapes.
Let me ask you this: do you believe non-anonymous 911 calls can justify a stop? If so, what difference does it make if I say "my name is Fred Johnson and I'm reporting... " vs. "I'm reporting ...". That 911 operator has no way of knowing if I'm really Fred Johnson or not.
It's only a poison pill for companies who's business model is to cyberstalk people.
You are so wrong that it's remarkable. It's a poison pill for any company that needs customer data to operate. The ultimate example is this one, where data is needed so the education can be personalized and similarities in student backgrounds can be leveraged into better education for all of them. This company wasn't cyberstalking anyone.
Everyone else can simply not collect and record personally idenfiable data.
So you have the same idea that spetry did, that a student can log in with his student ID and magically the system will know what learning material to provide to it. I say "it" because gender is a personally identifiable bit of data, and we dare not keep that or you'll start shouting "cyberstalker!".
They could always purge the data.
And the DATA, along with the USE to provide personalized learning, IS THE VALUE OF THE COMPANY. If you have to delete the data to sell the company, or merge it with another technology firm to enhance the products, then the company loses a lot of its value and this provision becomes, just like I said, a poison pill.
And before you rant on about use of this data, I'm saying it is going to be used for EXACTLY THE REASON IT WAS COLLECTED.
If the new buyer has any desire to use the data in a way that wasn't part of the deal when the user provided it,
If the new buyer has ANY desire to use the data for the same purpose it was collected for, he can't.
Of course, those investors have the money burning a hole in their pocket. If they don't invest it, it will inflate itself away.
So you think someone is going to pay a lot of money for a company that immediately loses all its value when the data it needs to function is purged? Don't be stupid. And the people who created the company who are trying to sell it won't be able to sell it for what it is truly worth, so they lose big time.
The investors will simply go somewhere else, buying companies who won't have to delete all their user data and make themselves worthless. And the entrepreneurs will get shafted.
And there will be some companies who are willing to accept the risk, provided the rewards are commensurate.
The final result of this will be both less competition in the market and higher prices. A win-win for the consumer.
I actually wasn't overlooking the application to existing companies, I was just making the point stronger by showing how it would stifle innovation and creativity.
It would be better to hear their logic for collecting this data to begin with. If they wanted personalized learning, I'm pretty sure a student ID unique to each student make more sense than gathering data on parents, their partners, reasons they missed class, etc...?
Yeah, cause you can tell so much about a person by an arbitrarily assigned ID. The ID tells you all you need to know about what kinds of learning materials might work best for someone, or what wouldn't be appropriate. Yeah, you know from the ID that a child is in a single parent home so you might want to tailor the material towards examples that he will be familiar with (because you also know that the student is a boy from his student ID.)
And when the next arbitrarily assigned ID shows up on the system, you can tell from just the ID that this girl (which you know because of the ID, of course) is in a similar situation as half a dozen other students (which you know by just matching IDs, of course) and would be better served by materials similar to the ones that work well for them.
The whole concept of personalized education is that YOU NEED TO KNOW THINGS ABOUT THE PERSON YOU ARE EDUCATING so you can, you know, personalize it. In the Good Old Days of single room schoolhouses the teacher knew every student and the parents and kept a database in his head. In the online world that means the database is ...
They obviously wanted that data more than they want to really wanted help people.
Yeah. Obvious. It couldn't be because the entire concept of what they were doing is based on knowing things about the student so they can, you know, personalize the education.
The standardized testing systems are being criticized because they assume a common cultural knowledge and some students don't do well because they don't have that experience. An impersonal test asks Billy the farmer's son the same kind of story problems it asks Martha the single-mom-in-the-tenement-house's daughter. If you're going to remove those biases in the tests (and in the education behind them) you need to know "where does Billy/Martha live?", "parents?", "income?", etc.
"Any company says they won't abuse your data gets shut down and all their assets siezed if they sell, transfer, share with a parter, or in any other way distribute your data, or if they sell the use of your data as a service, or use your data for any purpose or in any way other than what is explicitly stated on the front page of their web site, above the fold, in bold 14 point type."
The ultimate poison pill for any startup company. This would effectively prohibit any future funding or merger. "Gee, guys, you have a great idea and we'd love to buy you out to bring your idea to a larger audience, but our lawyers won't let us assume the liability of dealing with your data."
Since when is it permissible for any government to employ military force against its own (civilian) citizens?
There are a large number of countries which have no equivalent to posse comitatus, and the US didn't have posse comitatus until 1878 -- 100 years after the Constitution was enacted. In those countries it is permissible for the government to use military forces against their own citizens.
I'm pretty sure that armed (combat) drones are military technology.
Military technology is not the same as military forces, and it a pretty nebulous term, kinda like "assault weapon".
"Military (force|technology)" is an arbitrary distinction.
Military technology is an arbitrary distinction, yes. The OP used the phrase "military force".
Military force is when the military is used to apply force, and it is completely distinct from "military technology". A US Army PFC acting under his commander's order wielding an ax to stop someone looting a grocery store in the US is still a violation of posse comitatus even if the technology isn't "military" in nature, because it is still military force.
Hmm, 100000x the 3000-odd killed when the Twin Towers were hit. So drug dealers have killed 300,000,000 million Americans? Exaggerating for effect is nice, ...
Yes, it is. My calculator shows that 100,000 times 3,000 is just 300,000,000, not 300,000,000 million.
I'm pretty sure he's considering the ongoing toll, not the one-off anomaly of 9/11.
What you said doesn't contradict what I said.
Yes, it actually does. The issue at this point is not allowing someone who made what you claim are baseless claims to go hunting for one, it is to allow him to defend himself against a lawsuit. The lawsuit is the cause of the FOIA request. Had Levin wanted to go fishing against Mann, he could have filed the request long ago.
This is punishing Manning for trying to defend himself through the only legal means available to him.
Manning has nothing to do with this. Mann is trying to "defend himself" in a court of law instead of allowing Levin's character and actions speak for themselves. In other words, Mann has another, excellent means of defending himself outside of bringing the squabble into a court of law. By bringing it into court, he needs to accept that the matter has moved into a that venue and operates under those rules. As I've already pointed out, nobody in the "serious climate science field" (i.e., those who believe and accept Mann's data without seeing the underlying raw data) care what Levin says. Nobody who agrees with Levin is going to change their mind if Mann wins. There is little damage that Mann is going to fix by filing this suit, and in fact he's Streisanding himself pretty well by giving Levin a pulpit.
You say he's defending himself. It is just as easy to claim that he's trying to squelch someone who disagrees with him. It's now up to the courts to work out which is which, and not because of Levin, because Mann wants it that way.
I say - if you're running off your mouth about lies for which you have no evidence then you're just as guilty of libel whether or not what you say is true.
So you'd claim that the truth is not a defense against a charge of libel? That because you didn't have the evidence in hand at the moment you made a statement but could get it after the fact, you're still guilty? Hmmm. An interesting philosophy. Not legally accurate, but interesting.
Otherwise that gives me the ability to go running around slandering others as a way of forcing disclosure of whatever I want (transactions, proprietary data, sex tapes, etc.
If you made sex tapes as a public employee of a public institution covered by open access laws and subject to FOIA requests, then you are the fool and yes, you should be forced to turn those sex tapes over when a valid request for them under FOIA is made. You shouldn't be allowed to hide behind "proprietary" or "secret" claims. "It will embarass the hell out of me" isn't a sufficient exclusion for such material, nor is "it will prove that I am guilty of what the other guy said".
And, I'll point out again since you missed it twice already, the FOIA request is being made because of the lawsuit, not because someone wants to go fishing.
So the goal is to allow a guy who made baseless claims to go hunting for a base?
No. The goal, as I said, is to allow the person being sued to defend himself. You want to take a public squabble to court and have a judge rule on it, you have to accept the side effects. You don't want those issues raised, let the character of the person making the statements you don't like speak for itself. Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone in the climate science field would put much weight behind anything Mark Levin says, so it would be hard to prove there is much damage from it. I also find it hard to imagine that anyone will change their mind about Mann whether he wins or loses.
You're worried that whatever is discovered might be taken "out of context" or twisted somehow? Well, you're already going to court over the matter, it's not like you have to find a lawyer and file suit over that. It will be part of the proceedings THAT YOU STARTED.
Whether the claims that were made by the defendant are baseless or not is not entirely clear, and are a matter for the courts at this point. But also as I said, the fact that this is about AGW makes it a fascinating story but is really irrelevant to this issue.
Here's a bit of information that might shed light on the baselessness of the claims. I recall an email from a handful of years ago, after the initial appearance of the hockey stick, from NCAR scientists who were quite giddy with glee that they had been able to modify some of the parameters of the model to obtain a much more significant upturn in the rate of change. It was pretty clear from that email that the goal was not to accurately represent the physical processes involved but to get a scarier result. No, I don't have that email anymore so I can't quote it, but I do remember the message it conveyed. It wasn't "we understand the physics better and here's the new results", it was "we changed the parameters and got a higher rate of increase."
Now, I assume that Mann was on the NCAR mailing list that came out on, and I'd say that were I him, I'd really not want that email showing up in a trial.
Take that as you will.
And yet, for decades after that original publishing of the US Constitution, those very tos and fros of negotiating were slowly trickled out, leading to some of the most foundational Supreme Court rulings which have preserved our country's freedoms.
This. It is called "original intent", and it is often the crux of cases before SCOTUS. What did the legislators intend? The only way to get that is to look at the work product and not just the final published result. The Federalist Papers are one bit of the puzzle, but not the only part, and limiting the determination of original intent to that one document is limiting oneself to one man's opinion of what was intended. And, of course, the FP cover only the founders and the Constitution, ignoring completely the legislation created over the last 240 years.
What were the arguments about the law in question? What were the compromises? What was never considered?
The goal here was to destroy the reputation of a scientist that came to conclusions that someone did not like.
The goal here is to allow someone to defend themselves against a lawsuit filed because someone who has made himself a public figure didn't like what some other public figure said about him in public. In this case, the person who filed the lawsuit is a scientist. The person who didn't like what was being said was the scientist.
Now, if you admit that releasing the scientist's email would destroy his reputation, that's a pretty damning statement about that scientist, I would say.
But as has been pointed out by another, the fact that this deals with AGW makes it interesting reading but has no relevance to the legal issues involved.
Heh, tell that to the 39% of survey respondents who apparently believe teleportation will be "solved" by 2064.
And tell that to Jules Verne and his whacky idea that people could to to the moon, or to the nitwit who came up with the fictional idea of "waldoes".