Sure you can. I was once falsely (and maliciously) accused of something, and was able to prove that I was 100 km away in a different city for the extended weekend, with hundreds of witnesses. 7 witnesses was more than sufficient.
So, you proved that you were somewhere else, which is a positive.
Oh for fucks sake, you KNEW what he meant by the post.
Of course he knew what the OP meant, but I have to side with mrchaotica and I'll tell you why. A large part of the population thinks that copyrights are something that only big companies own. When people say "it's illegal to download copyrighted content" they perpetuate that myth. Nearly everything I download in a given day is copyrighted, it's just that the author has given permission for it to be downloaded. All the posts on/. are a great example.
So the issue is about whether it's unauthorized sharing, not whether it's copyrighted. I make that distinction simply because I don't want to help lay the groundwork for a fundamental change in copyright law at some point.
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has been suggesting this approach for years with this and other invasive species. Ultimately it's the only way to go. When you say the fish "has no natural predators" - well, I know a *bunch* of potential predators....
The argument is that the government doesn't create wealth. While you can look at defense contractors as the government creating jobs it is at best intellectually dishonest. The government doesn't create wealth, it acquires from other parties and redistributes it to further parties. Those first parties, from which the taxes are collected, would have been otherwise able to use those tax monies which would have stimulated other businesses and created the need and opportunities for jobs. Now these specific jobs probably wouldn't exist and the jobs that would be here may not be as well paying but in a climate where we consider part time jobs replacing full time positions to be job creation, I hardly think that matters.
Those jobs are taken from companies like mine that paid the taxes being used to pay for those jobs. Therefore, no net jobs are created and, in fact, net jobs are lost. The government doesn't create wealth - with the caveat being "usually" but "certainly not in this case".
Correct! So what if I placed an on-demand playback of "This call may be recorded for future review". How many CSRs at the other end would drop my call?
You're missing the point. If they give notice that "this call may be recorded" then that covers *both* parties. Either one of you may record legally at that point.
I live in a "one-party" state (TN) and used to live in another (IN) so it's never been a concern to me if I wanted to record, and I definitely have. One of my best calls was with a idiot Comcast rep - surprise, surprise.
The work involved in telling computers what to do is markedly different than it was even five years ago, and it's quite possible that any Rip Van Winkle-like developer who slept through the past 10 years would be unable to function in the today's computing world.
This is quite possibly the stupidest article ever posted to Slashdot.
Ok, this month.
I hate it when I have mod points and comments like this are already at 5.
Because the returns are abysmal compared to the stock market.
you plan to die young, or work til your 90?
Or, you're not stupid with money.
this is the same nonsense dreck you "shrink the gov til you can drown it in a bathtub" types always put up. you need a course in basic civics concerning government (i suggest starting at governmentisgood.com).
Ah, yes, let's ask government-worshiping leftists what they think.
and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out.
You make a voluntary contract with the bank and if you renege on your side they have the right to use the courts to enforce the contract. Works both ways:
A big part of the purpose of government in a civilized society is to enforce contracts. You'd think reading "governmentisgood" would help you understand that.
You have no idea what I think. I think that relative to the entire prison population it's a fairly small percentage, definitely single digit and probably "low single digit" at that. However, when you have the world's largest prison population that's significant.
But worse than that a lot of people that we see being declared innocent were convicted of heinous crimes. That's creates two problems: 1. an innocent person is in jail and 2. a murderer/rapist/whatever *isn't* in jail. There have been documented cases of the murderer killing someone else while stupid prosecutors worked overtime to put the wrong guy in jail.
Obviously Aaron Schwartz was the right person, but the prosecution thought the alleged crime was worth 6 months in the slammer. They instead pursued charges that would have added up to a lifetime sentence. Something's not right in that picture.
Apparently the young man committed suicide due to the threat of severe charges and punishments.
He was offered a 6-month sentence in a low security prison. Turned it down.
What's the point? If I'm innocent then 6 months in any prison is wrong.
The grandparent has a lot of good points. Another much-needed reform is to force prosecutors to tell the jury the details of all plea bargains that were offered. When someone's facing 70 years in prison and the prosecutor has to sheepishly say to the jury "yeah, we thought 6 months was a reasonable sentence" then the jury's going to step back and say "okay, then what's up with all these charges?"
The other reform mentioned by the grandparent is to simply disallow adding charges after the initial charges. If they uncover other criminal activity then make it a separate trial or something - it needs to be more expensive in terms of time and money for the prosecution to bring more charges.
Sure, the way Russians go about nationalizing companies is not very nice or even subtle. But I wish my government did the same. Services that people need in order to live - energy, water, medical - shouldn't be on the free market. All that stuff should be publicly owned and the goal shouldn't to be to make money but to provide critical services to the people for the cheapest amount possible.
They most definitely should be in a free market as much as possible as that has proven time and again to be the only way to make it as cheap as possible. What you're looking for is "nonprofit".
1. The President doesn't support this. He's the executive and is over the NSA. If he really wanted to stop bulk data collection he would simply call the NSA and say "hey, quit doing bulk collection". The law is needed specifically because he doesn't support it.
2. Unless the law will include criminal penalties it's of no value. A cursory glance shows that it simply says "hey, don't do that" instead of "hey, don't do that, and if you do it'll be a class _ felony with a minimum penalty of ___". It's interesting how laws made to limit non-government workers *always* have the criminal penalties, and laws that are made to limit government workers always conveniently forget that part. When we start jailing people who break laws like this we'll start making headway.
No, it's not fraud. Unless otherwise dictated by statute, they reserve the right to terminate their contract (service) with you at any time.
No they don't. You might not realize this but a contract places obligations on both parties. I know you've probably been brought up with the one-sided "terms of service" style contracts that have "we can get out of this any time but you can't" clauses, but you might want to see how many times that "we can get out of this any time but you can't" clauses have held up in court. They can't just say "we don't like you" and kick him off the plane.
The only thing that would warrant a paying customer being denied service would be some sort of serious disruption to the other passengers or the plane itself. Speaking ill of a gate attendant doesn't affect the plane in any way, therefore they have no right to remove him from the plane.
You seem to forget about them having his money and all that.
I think you should stop conflating "shit that i think is mean and bad for businesses to do" with "illegal". It makes you look stupid.
The guy can most definitely file a tort suit against the airline. But are you actually proposing that a carrier of human cargo not be allowed to refuse service?
After he's already paid and on the plane?
Not providing a service for which you've accepted payment is fraud - illegal. Also a tort, which is a civil action.
No rights were violated unless Southwest Airlines recently became government owned.
Also observe that nobody stopped the man in question from tweeting anything, it's just that the airline after reading the tweet decided it didn't want to transport this person. And that is fully legal.
Um, no it's not. He had a ticket and there's a contract in place to transport him, and I highly doubt it has any provisions regarding "no negative tweets". Threatening to have him arrested is also really dangerous. Since he did nothing illegal the gate agent could have faced charges for harassment or filing a false report.
The proper thing to do in a case like that is demand to speak to a supervisor. If she wants to call the police, encourage it. It'll make her look like more of a dumbass when they show up and tell her to never call them again. Deleting the tweet was the wrong way to go.
One more thing - Herb Kelleher would have probably personally fired Kimberley S. I would recommend the current president take the same course of action.
Yes, if there were a fast lane, one could theoretically put special-deaf-packets in it (or just as easily shove them into the slow lane, if they can't afford to pay); but this ignores the more pressing question of "What, pray tell, is currently suffering for want of special bandwidth and how demanding must it be if your existing service can't cope?".
When people can't hear well youtube, netflix, etc. have to send more data for the sound to make it louder. Similarly, people with vision problems get a really really huge movie to watch, meaning they need even more data (measured in bites) than the deaf folks. Someone like Helen Keller would need a dedicated OC-48 - possibly even an OC-49 or something like that - to handle her needs.
I tell you, Verizon's great concern for the handicapped folks just brings a tear to my eye and makes me want to use their services all the more, especially with that fast lane for handicapped people. They probably even get their own parking spot at Verizon headquarters, one for deaf drivers and one for blind drivers.
If that's true then why do they care whether the usage is commercial or not? Have you read their little chart? Taking a picture of your house is fine, but a real estate agent doing the same thing is illegal. There's no difference between the actions and the aircraft - it's just the fact that money will change hands.
If this had anything to do with "safety" and all that then it wouldn't matter whether money was changing hands.
I've been thinking along these lines for a few years now. Make the drugs legal, regulate them, and possibly even have the government sell them. Use taxes on drugs to fund rehab programs. Give sex workers a way to get out from drug induced slavery. Cut the head off the cocaine cartel by growing it here or importing it from someone else. Take a blow to the coffers of street gangs as well as more organized criminals.
The obvious number one downside is the potential for an increase in number of addicts. I never really had the answer for how to counter that.
The number of addicts decreases when you legalize drugs. No need to speculate, look at places that have actually legalized drugs. It seems counterintuitive, but the reason is pretty simple. Right now if you're addicted to something and you seek help you have to basically admit to being a criminal in order to get help. If drugs are legal - no problem. So people are more likely to ask for help when they don't have to risk jail by asking for help. Makes sense when you think about it.
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You cannot prove a negative.
Sure you can. I was once falsely (and maliciously) accused of something, and was able to prove that I was 100 km away in a different city for the extended weekend, with hundreds of witnesses. 7 witnesses was more than sufficient.
So, you proved that you were somewhere else, which is a positive.
Oh for fucks sake, you KNEW what he meant by the post.
Of course he knew what the OP meant, but I have to side with mrchaotica and I'll tell you why. A large part of the population thinks that copyrights are something that only big companies own. When people say "it's illegal to download copyrighted content" they perpetuate that myth. Nearly everything I download in a given day is copyrighted, it's just that the author has given permission for it to be downloaded. All the posts on /. are a great example.
So the issue is about whether it's unauthorized sharing, not whether it's copyrighted. I make that distinction simply because I don't want to help lay the groundwork for a fundamental change in copyright law at some point.
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has been suggesting this approach for years with this and other invasive species. Ultimately it's the only way to go. When you say the fish "has no natural predators" - well, I know a *bunch* of potential predators....
Seems pretty obvious you didn't try and click through....
Welcome to Slashdot.
The argument is that the government doesn't create wealth. While you can look at defense contractors as the government creating jobs it is at best intellectually dishonest. The government doesn't create wealth, it acquires from other parties and redistributes it to further parties. Those first parties, from which the taxes are collected, would have been otherwise able to use those tax monies which would have stimulated other businesses and created the need and opportunities for jobs. Now these specific jobs probably wouldn't exist and the jobs that would be here may not be as well paying but in a climate where we consider part time jobs replacing full time positions to be job creation, I hardly think that matters.
Those jobs are taken from companies like mine that paid the taxes being used to pay for those jobs. Therefore, no net jobs are created and, in fact, net jobs are lost. The government doesn't create wealth - with the caveat being "usually" but "certainly not in this case".
Correct! So what if I placed an on-demand playback of "This call may be recorded for future review". How many CSRs at the other end would drop my call?
You're missing the point. If they give notice that "this call may be recorded" then that covers *both* parties. Either one of you may record legally at that point.
I live in a "one-party" state (TN) and used to live in another (IN) so it's never been a concern to me if I wanted to record, and I definitely have. One of my best calls was with a idiot Comcast rep - surprise, surprise.
This is quite possibly the stupidest article ever posted to Slashdot.
Ok, this month.
I hate it when I have mod points and comments like this are already at 5.
why would you want to opt out of social security?
Because the returns are abysmal compared to the stock market.
you plan to die young, or work til your 90?
Or, you're not stupid with money.
this is the same nonsense dreck you "shrink the gov til you can drown it in a bathtub" types always put up.
you need a course in basic civics concerning government (i suggest starting at governmentisgood.com).
Ah, yes, let's ask government-worshiping leftists what they think.
and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out.
You make a voluntary contract with the bank and if you renege on your side they have the right to use the courts to enforce the contract. Works both ways:
http://articles.philly.com/201...
A big part of the purpose of government in a civilized society is to enforce contracts. You'd think reading "governmentisgood" would help you understand that.
There are plenty of innocent people in prison.
Not as many as you think.
You have no idea what I think. I think that relative to the entire prison population it's a fairly small percentage, definitely single digit and probably "low single digit" at that. However, when you have the world's largest prison population that's significant.
But worse than that a lot of people that we see being declared innocent were convicted of heinous crimes. That's creates two problems: 1. an innocent person is in jail and 2. a murderer/rapist/whatever *isn't* in jail. There have been documented cases of the murderer killing someone else while stupid prosecutors worked overtime to put the wrong guy in jail.
Obviously Aaron Schwartz was the right person, but the prosecution thought the alleged crime was worth 6 months in the slammer. They instead pursued charges that would have added up to a lifetime sentence. Something's not right in that picture.
There are plenty of innocent people in prison. If you get to trial the jury is automatically biased against you as many studies have shown.
Apparently the young man committed suicide due to the threat of severe charges and punishments.
He was offered a 6-month sentence in a low security prison. Turned it down.
What's the point? If I'm innocent then 6 months in any prison is wrong.
The grandparent has a lot of good points. Another much-needed reform is to force prosecutors to tell the jury the details of all plea bargains that were offered. When someone's facing 70 years in prison and the prosecutor has to sheepishly say to the jury "yeah, we thought 6 months was a reasonable sentence" then the jury's going to step back and say "okay, then what's up with all these charges?"
The other reform mentioned by the grandparent is to simply disallow adding charges after the initial charges. If they uncover other criminal activity then make it a separate trial or something - it needs to be more expensive in terms of time and money for the prosecution to bring more charges.
fix it yourself.
How the hell is someone supposed to DOCUMENT something that they're trying to figure out how to make work?
Are you a black hole of utter cluelessness?
No clue will ever escape your infinite singularity of utter incomprehension?
Once a clue passes your event horizon it's never seen again?
Do you emit Hawking Clue Radiation?
Keep going....
Sure, the way Russians go about nationalizing companies is not very nice or even subtle. But I wish my government did the same. Services that people need in order to live - energy, water, medical - shouldn't be on the free market. All that stuff should be publicly owned and the goal shouldn't to be to make money but to provide critical services to the people for the cheapest amount possible.
They most definitely should be in a free market as much as possible as that has proven time and again to be the only way to make it as cheap as possible. What you're looking for is "nonprofit".
Microsoft has sold more than one Surface tablet! This will show up in the annual report next year: "Somebody bought Surface tablets!"
1. The President doesn't support this. He's the executive and is over the NSA. If he really wanted to stop bulk data collection he would simply call the NSA and say "hey, quit doing bulk collection". The law is needed specifically because he doesn't support it.
2. Unless the law will include criminal penalties it's of no value. A cursory glance shows that it simply says "hey, don't do that" instead of "hey, don't do that, and if you do it'll be a class _ felony with a minimum penalty of ___". It's interesting how laws made to limit non-government workers *always* have the criminal penalties, and laws that are made to limit government workers always conveniently forget that part. When we start jailing people who break laws like this we'll start making headway.
I know what a tort is - thanks for playing.
No, it's not fraud. Unless otherwise dictated by statute, they reserve the right to terminate their contract (service) with you at any time.
No they don't. You might not realize this but a contract places obligations on both parties. I know you've probably been brought up with the one-sided "terms of service" style contracts that have "we can get out of this any time but you can't" clauses, but you might want to see how many times that "we can get out of this any time but you can't" clauses have held up in court. They can't just say "we don't like you" and kick him off the plane.
The only thing that would warrant a paying customer being denied service would be some sort of serious disruption to the other passengers or the plane itself. Speaking ill of a gate attendant doesn't affect the plane in any way, therefore they have no right to remove him from the plane.
You seem to forget about them having his money and all that.
I think you should stop conflating "shit that i think is mean and bad for businesses to do" with "illegal". It makes you look stupid.
The guy can most definitely file a tort suit against the airline. But are you actually proposing that a carrier of human cargo not be allowed to refuse service?
After he's already paid and on the plane?
Not providing a service for which you've accepted payment is fraud - illegal. Also a tort, which is a civil action.
No rights were violated unless Southwest Airlines recently became government owned.
Also observe that nobody stopped the man in question from tweeting anything, it's just that the airline after reading the tweet decided it didn't want to transport this person. And that is fully legal.
Um, no it's not. He had a ticket and there's a contract in place to transport him, and I highly doubt it has any provisions regarding "no negative tweets". Threatening to have him arrested is also really dangerous. Since he did nothing illegal the gate agent could have faced charges for harassment or filing a false report.
The proper thing to do in a case like that is demand to speak to a supervisor. If she wants to call the police, encourage it. It'll make her look like more of a dumbass when they show up and tell her to never call them again. Deleting the tweet was the wrong way to go.
One more thing - Herb Kelleher would have probably personally fired Kimberley S. I would recommend the current president take the same course of action.
I was already determined not to do business with them. Now I'm really glad I've had that policy. They're scum.
Hey, no offense intended but did you just figure that out now?
Yes, if there were a fast lane, one could theoretically put special-deaf-packets in it (or just as easily shove them into the slow lane, if they can't afford to pay); but this ignores the more pressing question of "What, pray tell, is currently suffering for want of special bandwidth and how demanding must it be if your existing service can't cope?".
When people can't hear well youtube, netflix, etc. have to send more data for the sound to make it louder. Similarly, people with vision problems get a really really huge movie to watch, meaning they need even more data (measured in bites) than the deaf folks. Someone like Helen Keller would need a dedicated OC-48 - possibly even an OC-49 or something like that - to handle her needs.
I tell you, Verizon's great concern for the handicapped folks just brings a tear to my eye and makes me want to use their services all the more, especially with that fast lane for handicapped people. They probably even get their own parking spot at Verizon headquarters, one for deaf drivers and one for blind drivers.
There are reasons we regulate businesses.
Of course there are reasons - they just aren't what naive folks like yourself fancy them to be....
If that's true then why do they care whether the usage is commercial or not? Have you read their little chart? Taking a picture of your house is fine, but a real estate agent doing the same thing is illegal. There's no difference between the actions and the aircraft - it's just the fact that money will change hands.
If this had anything to do with "safety" and all that then it wouldn't matter whether money was changing hands.
I've been thinking along these lines for a few years now. Make the drugs legal, regulate them, and possibly even have the government sell them. Use taxes on drugs to fund rehab programs. Give sex workers a way to get out from drug induced slavery. Cut the head off the cocaine cartel by growing it here or importing it from someone else. Take a blow to the coffers of street gangs as well as more organized criminals.
The obvious number one downside is the potential for an increase in number of addicts. I never really had the answer for how to counter that.
The number of addicts decreases when you legalize drugs. No need to speculate, look at places that have actually legalized drugs. It seems counterintuitive, but the reason is pretty simple. Right now if you're addicted to something and you seek help you have to basically admit to being a criminal in order to get help. If drugs are legal - no problem. So people are more likely to ask for help when they don't have to risk jail by asking for help. Makes sense when you think about it.