The other problem is that there often isn't a case of being really sure of your case. I have no objection to having someone filing a frivolous lawsuit having to pay all the fees, but in the loser-pays system it could be ruinous to lose, so even a 95% chance of winning might be too dangerous. Having some sort of win-lose-"that was stupid and a waste of everyone's time" verdict could be useful, but I don't know that it doesn't function like that already.
Reducing the costs of doing business doesn't necessarily translate into lower prices. It's likely to go to greater profits instead (do a bit of microeconomic analysis to see). In any case, if prices are lower because the corps can treat people illegally without consequences, that's not necessarily a good thing,.
The problem with that...suppose somebody screws me over for $100K (I don't have millions), and it's worth filing a lawsuit. If the best outcome is that I get $100K back minus lawyer fees and court costs, and it's likely that I'll just have to pay the lawyer and court, I'm screwed. If I can get additional damages for incurring the risk and investment of filing suit, I'm in much better shape.
It doesn't take that much around here to consult a lawyer. However, Pfhorrest said he'd consulted a few, and had been told that he'd have to file suit to find out if he did have a case, because that depended on certain documents he'd only get access to during discovery.. You aren't going to start a lawsuit with $500. Seriously.
You seem to think that the facts were laid out, and it was a matter of checking out the law. That is really bad reading comprehension on your part.
Where I live, I can go through the local Bar Association and get a half-hour consult for something like $35 or $50. GGP mentioned consulting several lawyers, presumably on a similar basis. Getting the time of day, or a little advice, isn't expensive.
Technically, all weather events are partly a result of global warming. Weather is chaotic, which means extremely sensitive to initial conditions. If the atmosphere was a bit cooler, we'd have entirely different weather.
The important thing, of course, is that the weather will be statistically different with a warmer planet.
You're oversimplifying. It's easy to think of mechanisms by which an increase of CO2 doesn't trap more energy (such as increased albedo). The proof that we've got global warming is that the surface of the Earth is warming up, as shown by a very large number of measurements.
"Global warming" is a more general term than "anthropogenic global warming", and "climate change" emphasizes that weird things happen rather than just a general increase in temperature. Nor does that have anything to do with what GP said, which is that we do have global warming. GP specifically left the "A" out, although that's pretty darn certain.
I'm too fucking stupid to use Excel properly for any serious scientific analysis. I'm also too fucking stupid to figure out how to drive a screw with a ball-peen hammer.
I jaywalk, but not stupidly. I'm not going to risk my life on the chance that any particular driver is being alert. Therefore, my jaywalking is victimless. (Not that it's much of a crime, though. I think it's at most a petty misdemeanor, which doesn't qualify as a "crime" in this state.)
No, he isn't afraid of being sent to the US. For one thing, we don't want him. He's not a US citizen, and I don't know that he's ever been to the US. There's no evidence that he violated US laws. A few political idiots yelled about him, that's all. This is the US. I don't know about other countries, but we have political idiots to grandstand about all sorts of things.
He voluntarily went to Sweden. If he was afraid of being disappeared from there in the first place, why go? Then he voluntarily went to the UK. If you're afraid of being sent to the US, the UK is about the last place you want to go. Then he gets into legal trouble, and Sweden requests extradition, and suddenly he's afraid of being sent to the US? Awful convenient timing, there.
You can't make U-238 go boom. The isotopes normally used in bombs are U-235 and Pu-239. (Usually plutonium these days. A gun-type bomb is relatively easy to construct if you can get your hands on enough weapons-grade U-235, but acquisition is difficult.) Pu-238 is an alpha emitter, so it loses two protons and two neutrons per decay, resulting in U-234. I seem to remember that U-233 can go boom, also, but getting enough of it together is a big problem.
Also, from what I've read, we don't have enough Pu-238 for NASA's use, so it would be nice to get some more.
I'm not interested in what the law says for this purpose. I'm interested in what prosecutors have done. My claim is that people who did more or less what Clinton did were not criminally prosecuted. Find me a counterexample if you disagree with me.
First, I doubt you can prove illicit copying, considering that the telemetry goes out encrypted to specific IP addresses. Second, are you sure there's nothing in the EULA allowing Microsoft a limited license to whatever you do?
I'm glad that W10 works for you. For me, on a recent laptop shipped with W10, no additional hardware, recent Kaspersky scan (which didn't find the Chromium malware, so go figure), it's got a lot of annoyances, and assorted things stop working for a bit.. It's made me nostalgic for when Vista was considered a bad update.
Telling you to vote for Clinton isn't coercion with a secret ballot. You can make the decision at the spot, and if you prefer to vote for one of the other candidates at that time, you can do so. Telling you to vote for Clinton in a verifiable way accompanied by a threat or reward is.
The way to vet the voting process is by using paper ballots. They're easy to understand, so nobody has to take it on faith that the electronics are fair and not tampered with. They can be monitored by observers. They can be re-examined if necessary.
Meaning that the only people who can vote are those who can keep their smartphones or computers with them at most times. There are workplaces where smartphones are banned, or like mine. I can't get reception at work. There are workplaces where letting everyone take a 15-minute break wouldn't work. There are people who really can't afford a smartphone or computer, and a lot of them in fact don't have a smartphone or computer.
This is going to disenfranchise people, primarily the people with more strict jobs and less income, which the Republicans will approve of.
The amount of voter fraud that could be stopped with voter IDs is negligible. For an ID to make a difference, someone has to walk into a polling place and commit a felony for each additional vote cast, with a chance each time that someone will know who the fraudster is impersonating and recognize the fraud. It's a really inefficient method to rig an election.
In the meantime, every voter ID law proposed in the US that I've actually looked at would have made it more difficult for certain people, who mostly lean Democrat, to vote. That, along with selective processing of absentee ballots, manipulating voter lists, and simply making it difficult to vote in the poorer sections of town, is a much more effective way to rig an election.
To file an absentee ballot in this state, you fill out your ballot and put it in a blank envelope. You put that one in a larger envelope with your name on it, and mail that in a larger envelope.
When the ballot is received, someone files the envelopes with names on them. Someone keeps track of the envelopes until it's sure that the ballot is the right one for that person. Then people open the envelopes with names and throw the blank envelopes inside into a container, and when they're through they'll get the blank envelopes and get the ballots out. The fact that you voted on an absentee ballot is on record, just like it's on record that I voted at my precinct polling place. There's no way to connect a ballot with a voter.
Gee, I fill out a paper ballot and put it into an electronic counting machine. If there's reason to suspect problems, or if the vote is really close, "they" will count all the paper ballots. The sealed ballot boxes will be handled well, with any opportunity for fraud observed by (at least) representatives of the two major parties. I'm pretty sure it's going to be counted correctly.
I have no way to judge what would happen in a world where everything that happened in public was public knowledge. It actually wouldn't do much to me, since all my iniquities are conducted in private (further details not available on request), unless you count minor traffic violations. People with less savory public habits would have problems. The husband that hits the strip club one night a week. The guy that makes an illicit drug purchase. The woman that meets a male friend at "that" motel. Many people will be judgmental, and people will find excuses for their practices and blame other for theirs.
A lot of these things work like pressure valves, allowing people to keep functioning under stressful circumstances. They give a person the sense of getting away and doing something for themselves. Cut all of those off, and that's going to raise tensions.
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The other problem is that there often isn't a case of being really sure of your case. I have no objection to having someone filing a frivolous lawsuit having to pay all the fees, but in the loser-pays system it could be ruinous to lose, so even a 95% chance of winning might be too dangerous. Having some sort of win-lose-"that was stupid and a waste of everyone's time" verdict could be useful, but I don't know that it doesn't function like that already.
Reducing the costs of doing business doesn't necessarily translate into lower prices. It's likely to go to greater profits instead (do a bit of microeconomic analysis to see). In any case, if prices are lower because the corps can treat people illegally without consequences, that's not necessarily a good thing,.
The problem with that...suppose somebody screws me over for $100K (I don't have millions), and it's worth filing a lawsuit. If the best outcome is that I get $100K back minus lawyer fees and court costs, and it's likely that I'll just have to pay the lawyer and court, I'm screwed. If I can get additional damages for incurring the risk and investment of filing suit, I'm in much better shape.
It doesn't take that much around here to consult a lawyer. However, Pfhorrest said he'd consulted a few, and had been told that he'd have to file suit to find out if he did have a case, because that depended on certain documents he'd only get access to during discovery.. You aren't going to start a lawsuit with $500. Seriously.
You seem to think that the facts were laid out, and it was a matter of checking out the law. That is really bad reading comprehension on your part.
Where I live, I can go through the local Bar Association and get a half-hour consult for something like $35 or $50. GGP mentioned consulting several lawyers, presumably on a similar basis. Getting the time of day, or a little advice, isn't expensive.
I think I spotted the flaw in your argument.
Technically, all weather events are partly a result of global warming. Weather is chaotic, which means extremely sensitive to initial conditions. If the atmosphere was a bit cooler, we'd have entirely different weather.
The important thing, of course, is that the weather will be statistically different with a warmer planet.
You're oversimplifying. It's easy to think of mechanisms by which an increase of CO2 doesn't trap more energy (such as increased albedo). The proof that we've got global warming is that the surface of the Earth is warming up, as shown by a very large number of measurements.
"Global warming" is a more general term than "anthropogenic global warming", and "climate change" emphasizes that weird things happen rather than just a general increase in temperature. Nor does that have anything to do with what GP said, which is that we do have global warming. GP specifically left the "A" out, although that's pretty darn certain.
My house is over 200m above sea level and beyond any reasonable future river flooding, SUCKERS!
OK, what experts that he doesn't agree with does he ignore? There's really not much in the way of experts arguing against evolution or AGW.
I'm too fucking stupid to use Excel properly for any serious scientific analysis. I'm also too fucking stupid to figure out how to drive a screw with a ball-peen hammer.
I jaywalk, but not stupidly. I'm not going to risk my life on the chance that any particular driver is being alert. Therefore, my jaywalking is victimless. (Not that it's much of a crime, though. I think it's at most a petty misdemeanor, which doesn't qualify as a "crime" in this state.)
No, he isn't afraid of being sent to the US. For one thing, we don't want him. He's not a US citizen, and I don't know that he's ever been to the US. There's no evidence that he violated US laws. A few political idiots yelled about him, that's all. This is the US. I don't know about other countries, but we have political idiots to grandstand about all sorts of things.
He voluntarily went to Sweden. If he was afraid of being disappeared from there in the first place, why go? Then he voluntarily went to the UK. If you're afraid of being sent to the US, the UK is about the last place you want to go. Then he gets into legal trouble, and Sweden requests extradition, and suddenly he's afraid of being sent to the US? Awful convenient timing, there.
You can't make U-238 go boom. The isotopes normally used in bombs are U-235 and Pu-239. (Usually plutonium these days. A gun-type bomb is relatively easy to construct if you can get your hands on enough weapons-grade U-235, but acquisition is difficult.) Pu-238 is an alpha emitter, so it loses two protons and two neutrons per decay, resulting in U-234. I seem to remember that U-233 can go boom, also, but getting enough of it together is a big problem.
Also, from what I've read, we don't have enough Pu-238 for NASA's use, so it would be nice to get some more.
I'm not interested in what the law says for this purpose. I'm interested in what prosecutors have done. My claim is that people who did more or less what Clinton did were not criminally prosecuted. Find me a counterexample if you disagree with me.
First, I doubt you can prove illicit copying, considering that the telemetry goes out encrypted to specific IP addresses. Second, are you sure there's nothing in the EULA allowing Microsoft a limited license to whatever you do?
I'm glad that W10 works for you. For me, on a recent laptop shipped with W10, no additional hardware, recent Kaspersky scan (which didn't find the Chromium malware, so go figure), it's got a lot of annoyances, and assorted things stop working for a bit.. It's made me nostalgic for when Vista was considered a bad update.
Telling you to vote for Clinton isn't coercion with a secret ballot. You can make the decision at the spot, and if you prefer to vote for one of the other candidates at that time, you can do so. Telling you to vote for Clinton in a verifiable way accompanied by a threat or reward is.
The way to vet the voting process is by using paper ballots. They're easy to understand, so nobody has to take it on faith that the electronics are fair and not tampered with. They can be monitored by observers. They can be re-examined if necessary.
Meaning that the only people who can vote are those who can keep their smartphones or computers with them at most times. There are workplaces where smartphones are banned, or like mine. I can't get reception at work. There are workplaces where letting everyone take a 15-minute break wouldn't work. There are people who really can't afford a smartphone or computer, and a lot of them in fact don't have a smartphone or computer.
This is going to disenfranchise people, primarily the people with more strict jobs and less income, which the Republicans will approve of.
The amount of voter fraud that could be stopped with voter IDs is negligible. For an ID to make a difference, someone has to walk into a polling place and commit a felony for each additional vote cast, with a chance each time that someone will know who the fraudster is impersonating and recognize the fraud. It's a really inefficient method to rig an election.
In the meantime, every voter ID law proposed in the US that I've actually looked at would have made it more difficult for certain people, who mostly lean Democrat, to vote. That, along with selective processing of absentee ballots, manipulating voter lists, and simply making it difficult to vote in the poorer sections of town, is a much more effective way to rig an election.
Is your piece of paper kept so that it can be counted again in case of problems? If so, that's a lot better than any purely electronic voting system.
To file an absentee ballot in this state, you fill out your ballot and put it in a blank envelope. You put that one in a larger envelope with your name on it, and mail that in a larger envelope.
When the ballot is received, someone files the envelopes with names on them. Someone keeps track of the envelopes until it's sure that the ballot is the right one for that person. Then people open the envelopes with names and throw the blank envelopes inside into a container, and when they're through they'll get the blank envelopes and get the ballots out. The fact that you voted on an absentee ballot is on record, just like it's on record that I voted at my precinct polling place. There's no way to connect a ballot with a voter.
Gee, I fill out a paper ballot and put it into an electronic counting machine. If there's reason to suspect problems, or if the vote is really close, "they" will count all the paper ballots. The sealed ballot boxes will be handled well, with any opportunity for fraud observed by (at least) representatives of the two major parties. I'm pretty sure it's going to be counted correctly.
I have no way to judge what would happen in a world where everything that happened in public was public knowledge. It actually wouldn't do much to me, since all my iniquities are conducted in private (further details not available on request), unless you count minor traffic violations. People with less savory public habits would have problems. The husband that hits the strip club one night a week. The guy that makes an illicit drug purchase. The woman that meets a male friend at "that" motel. Many people will be judgmental, and people will find excuses for their practices and blame other for theirs.
A lot of these things work like pressure valves, allowing people to keep functioning under stressful circumstances. They give a person the sense of getting away and doing something for themselves. Cut all of those off, and that's going to raise tensions.
Asimov ended the story just before everything was going to be made public. He never explored the consequences.