1. Senators and representatives would be closer to their actual constituents. There's at least a slightly improved chance that they'll actually vote the way the people who elected them want.
Look closely at a man's home district and you can almost always predict way he will vote. There are very few surprises. The geek doesn't want to hear that because the decisions the Congress makes almost never go his way.
2-1/2 - it would make it more difficult for lobbyists to buy an entire block of votes. This would force the LOBBYISTS to sink tons of money into travel to visit each Congresscritter.
You don't get out much, do you?
The lobbyist already has a presence in your Congressman's home district.
He's been there from the beginning, lobbying state and local governments. In the old days, before the direct election of the Senate, he would often be appointed to the Senate. The Senator for Pennsylvania Coal. The Senator for Nevada Silver.
We might actually (OK, I'm dreaming now) elect people with brains, who would at least be required to know how to write and operate a computer, instead of blowhards who are elected simply because they know how to speak well in front of a camera.
Social skills win elections. Build effective coalitions.
Jimmy Carter had as fine a scientific and technical education as one could ask for. He can be an able and effective writer. But that does not make him a politician.
Carter paid too much attention to detail. He frequently backed down from confrontation and was quick to retreat when attacked by political rivals. He appeared to be indecisive and ineffective, and did not define his priorities clearly. He seemed to be distrustful and uninterested in working with other groups, or even with Congress when controlled by his own party, which he denounced for being controlled by special interest groups.
In the 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan projected an easy self-confidence, in contrast to Carter's serious and introspective temperament. Carter's personal attention to detail, his pessimistic attitude, his seeming indecisiveness and weakness with people were accentuated in contrast to Reagan's charismatic charm and delegation of tasks to subordinates. Reagan used the economic problems, Iran hostage crisis, and lack of Washington cooperation to portray Carter as a weak and ineffectual leader. Carter was the first elected president since Hoover in 1932 to lose a reelection bid.
I wasn't real thrilled with the idea at first due to concerns around the integrity of the system, but then I imagined them working from a remote town hall and surrounded by their constituants instead of their peers and lobbyies. I think it could do great things for establishing accountability.
The congressman, surprisingly enough, likes the visibility of having offices in the bigger and more politically potent cities and suburbs in his district. This is where his district's major employers, economic and political interests are centered.
This is where the lobbyist draws his strength.
The whole point of having a national capital is to encourage your representatives to take a wider view of things.
NEW ORLEANS - U.S. District Judge Robert F. Collins was convicted yesterday of scheming to split a $100,000 bribe from a drug smuggler, making him the first federal judge in the 200-year history of the judiciary to be found guilty of taking a bribe.
The 9th Circuit is a joke. It is the most overturned circuit in the country and the laughing stock of the judicial system.
It's a meaningless stat when the Supreme Court takes on less than 100 cases a year and perhaps 25 of those will be from the nine states of the Ninth Circuit.
I don't see how this is going to work for anything but the largest online retailers and I'm still not convinced that this doesn't violate interstate commerce.
The same retail giants who sell enormous quantities of goods across state lines and who have immense regional distribution centers in many?
Arrington's notion of a boat that is "nothing too fancy or large" is a 48' high-performance Canadian built aluminum cruiser with a base price of one million dollars. It's the kind of boat that ships with a hydraulic lift to make the in-board engine more easily serviceable.
The Washington state sales tax became due and payable about a week after delivery and, soon to come, this year's state "property tax" bill on the boat.
If everyone uses a different standard it slows the spread of DRM and makes it more difficult for those who wish to use it.
Damn near half of all prime time Internet traffic in the US was a Netflix stream before Netflix offered a streaming-only service. So much for slowing the spread of DRM or making it difficult to use.
There is a Netflix app for your Chromebook.
The geek has two choices:
He can stand by and watch as media distribution --- music, video and games --- shifts to the "walled gardens" of the corporate branded app stores --- and the significance and value of the browser is depreciated.
OR
He can support development of a global standard for protected media which can be supported in every browser.
Which do you think serves his long term interests better?
"If you are one of the lucky 125,000 people who live in Olathe, Kansas, the rest of us congratulate you on your new amazing $70.00/month, 1 GB Google fiber service.
They can afford it.
The median income for a household was $61,111, and the median income for a family was $68,498 (these figures had risen to $72,634 and $82,747 respectively as of a 2007 estimate. Males had a median income of $45,699 versus $30,217 for females. The per capita income for the city was $24,498. About 2.4% of families and 4.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.1% of those under age 18 and 4.1% of those age 65 or over.
The median age in the city was 32.9 years. 30% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.5% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 32.1% were from 25 to 44; 23.1% were from 45 to 64; and 7.2% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.5% male and 50.5% female.[2010 Census Data]
In Kansas City, Google offers three tiers of service. The baseline fiber installation fee is $300, or $25 per month for 12 months. After paying that amount, Kansas City residents are guaranteed seven years of free broadband Internet service at current national âoeaverageâ speeds. The second tier costs $70 per month for the super-fast Internet service, and the top tier, which includes Google's TV service, costs $120 per month. The $300 installation fee is waived for the top two tiers.
While it's nice to speculate that the guy was fired for reasons that suit the average slashdotter's predilection's about DRM, there is no evidence that this is the case.
EA is claiming 1.1 million in sales, according to USA Today and other sources.
50% of that in download sales. The bestseller lists at Amazon.com are in perfect alignment with this.
Two high school kids just got 1 year each for raping a drunk 16 year old at a party (where people actually filmed and took pictures of it happening)..
It is not a determinate sentence.
Ohio Youth Services can keep them locked up until they are 21, if they think it is appropriate. They will then become registered sex offenders ranked by a judge according to the threat they appear to present at that time. Two teens found guilty in Steubenville rape case
Since when should the legal system be like playing roulette?
The odds are better in roulette.
There were three jury trials and verdicts against her and several rounds of appeal none of which ended well. Her performance on the stand was disastrous to her cause.
The appeal to the Supreme Court in such a case is melodramatic nonsense.
The press release doesn't mention anything about SimCity. Could it be other causes and you're just trying to bend the message to your own personal fantasies?
The SimCity download is back on Amazon.com. The disclaimer about EA's servers is gone.
#2 in PC game sales. #8 in combined PC and video game sales --- and how often does a PC game reach such heights? The retail box is doing well, SimCity 4 is right up there, EA has 20 or so games in the top fifty PC bestsellers ---- these numbers change hourly.
If this is failure, I'd like a taste of it myself.
We have convicted rapists and murderers that seem to get off with lighter sentences than people that do anything that involves a computer these days, even if the results don't hurt anyone and only embarrass a company or some govt. personnel.
Show me the numbers and then we can talk.
Real stats for the rapist and murderer. Real stats for the geek whose computer-related crimes earned him hard time.
In the American federal system, crimes of violence are almost always prosecuted under state law.
Execution List 2012 Each state on this list, for example, has executed between 1200 and 1300 death row inmates since 1976.
The DOJ's Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section archives its press releases of charges and convictions dating back to 2000. It's a useful corrective to the notion that the geek's crimes are victimless. That he hasn't hurt anyone.
When I first saw the headlines for this story I immediately went to a much darker place. I envisioned doctors going into the morgue and borrowing a few digits for use in fooling the machines. I mean, it's not like those guys needed them any more. Things like this have happened before.
Then I realized this wouldn't work. For one thing, they'd have the wrong prints. For another, they'd be, well, a bit chilly.
Most current fingerprint scanners have technology that can detect whether the finger has a pulse, and some read fingerprints at a depth below skin level, which would render the silicon fingers useless. Apparently, that hospital is using an older type of scanner.
The perfect example of corruption and conspiracy that begins --- and must begin --- at the top.
Another television network said it was the head of the emergency room that ran the scam and that his daughter had not worked a day in three years but got paid all the time.
Ferreira confessed to using different fake fingers bearing the prints of 11 fellow doctors and 20 nurses in order to pretend they were showing up to work five overnight shifts each month, instead of just one, police said.
Ferreira also said the staff at the Ferraz Vasconcelos Hospital paid $2,400 per month to participate.
The doctor will face charges of falsifying a public document and could get two to six years in prison.
The non-profits around here gladly take any computers that they're given. Some get recycled and others get refurbished, but they aren't in the position of refusing to take a computer just because it's 5 years old.
That may be true where you stand, but the NPO I know best had to put the brakes on --- gently but firmly reminding would-be donors that it was not a trash heap and not in the recycling business.
You are right that the general public isn't comfortable using Linux. Unfortunately, you falsely imply that they are comfortable using Windows. The vast majority of people who would be in a position to go to a library or Non-Profit don't know the difference....
This --- to put it charitably --- is fantasy.
The MSDOS and Windows eco-system is 31 years old.
The software used in-house by the library or NPO will almost certainly have been built within that system.
MS Office is a given --- but there are countless other examples, some of them very arcane and unexpected --- and you are not employable even as a senior volunteer unless you are comfortable with the Windows OS and Windows software.
There isn't a public school, library, community college, state employment service or senior center within 75 miles of here that hasn't offered introductory courses or more advanced training in Windows and MS Office, and some of these programs are twenty years old now.
The message --- and it comes across loud and clear to anyone listening --- is that employers demand and expect that you will have these skills.
If you looking at something for home use, the refurbished Windows 7 desktop with free in-store pickup starts at $160 at Walmart.com. Machines in the class will run Office 365 and pretty much everything available in FOSS for Windows without the least bit of trouble, along with 500 or so dirt-cheap games from Gog,com.
But when you are targeting an audience looking for a productivity app, "Excel" is brilliant. Succinct, memorable, scans well,*** and woven into it is a clever bit of word play.
"Excel" = "From Cell." The spreadsheet.
It doesn't hurt that Excel is usually distributed as a core component of the world's best selling office suite.
----
**** ffDiaporama does not trip lightly off the tongue.
Double-Entendres, lame jokes like the GIMP, pose problems of their own. The geek will tell you straight-faced that its merely an acronym for Gnome Image Processor --- and that may even be true, but no outside his own circle of friends ever quite believes him.
The Roman church has never been comfortable with a pope who holds the reins too long. The cardinals who will both name his successor and from whom his successor will be chosen will all be his appointments --- and each a mirror image of a man grown old and set in his ways.
So - a 'masked man' allegedly committed this crime - no CCTV footage whatsoever, of ANYBODY entering the cinema through the normal, front entrance, the police ALLEGEDLY found Holmes sitting in a car - in a DRUGGED STATE, out the back of the cinema, and in the car were some weapons.
Idiocracy rules.
In introducing photos found on Holmes' cell phone, prosecutors showed that on June 29, July 5 and July 11 Holmes took photos that included the interior of the theater, door hinges and back doors.
In other photos introduced Wednesday, Aurora police detective Sgt. Matthew Fyles showed images Holmes took of himself the night of the shootings.
In one, marked 6:22 p.m., Holmes was wearing black contact lenses. His hair was dyed red under a black cap, and he stuck out his tongue at the camera.
In another image, he is seen smiling with the muzzle of a Glock handgun in the frame.
Prosecutors told the court they introduced the self photos because they help show Holmes' "identity, deliberation and extreme indifference."
An image Holmes took of himself on July 5 shows him posing with an assault rifle and "a majority of the tactical, ballistic gear" he had with him when he was apprehended, Fyles testified.
Another photo shows all of the gear used in the attack --- the guns, the body armor, helmet and gas mask --- arrayed neatly on Holmes' bed.
When officers searched Holmes' car in the parking lot, they found "road stars" --- the spikes thrown on the ground to stop vehicles. They also found a used tear gas can, a Glock with a holster, 2 cases for long guns, an iPhone and a carryall bag.
Fyles testified that police they found four gas masks, although only two belonged to Holmes.
It was also revealed that Holmes used a clip for securing a tablecloth to prop open the door to Theater 9.
In through the front door, prop open the back. It's a very old trick.
Is it necessary to add that in a real-life crime scene is like the jigsaw puzzle in the back of your closet? Some pieces will be missing and others mixed in.
Either way you are being forced to confess and give testimony against yourself. Whatever happened to I dunno, finding EVIDENCE?
Insanity comes into play only when the guilt of a defendant is no longer in doubt and the only question remaining is whether he should be held responsible for his actions. The burden of proof is on the defense ---- and there is not a whole lot you can do that is likely to be persuasive.
He had roomates (news said he didn't), there was at least one other person there dressed in all black holding weapons (news never mentioned this but eye-witness testimonials revealed that this is the case),
The eyewitness sees or thinks he has seen a second man armed and dressed "in black" in a darkened theater where every motion is in the shadows, colors are muted, all is confusion and his sight lines were restricted.
Initially, few in the audience considered the masked figure a threat. He appeared to be wearing a costume, like other audience members who had dressed up for the screening [of "The Dark Knight Rises."]
Some believed that the gunman was playing a prank, while others thought that he was part of a special effects installation set up for the film's premiere.
It is also alleged that the gunman threw two canisters emitting a gas or smoke, partially obscuring the audience members' vision, making their throats and skin itch, and causing eye irritation.
Witnesses said the multiplex's fire alarm system began sounding soon after the attack began and staff told people in theater 8 to evacuate One witness said that she was hesitant to leave because someone yelled that there was someone shooting in the lobby and that they shouldn't leave.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Senators and representatives would be closer to their actual constituents. There's at least a slightly improved chance that they'll actually vote the way the people who elected them want.
Look closely at a man's home district and you can almost always predict way he will vote. There are very few surprises. The geek doesn't want to hear that because the decisions the Congress makes almost never go his way.
2-1/2 - it would make it more difficult for lobbyists to buy an entire block of votes. This would force the LOBBYISTS to sink tons of money into travel to visit each Congresscritter.
You don't get out much, do you?
The lobbyist already has a presence in your Congressman's home district.
He's been there from the beginning, lobbying state and local governments. In the old days, before the direct election of the Senate, he would often be appointed to the Senate. The Senator for Pennsylvania Coal. The Senator for Nevada Silver.
We might actually (OK, I'm dreaming now) elect people with brains, who would at least be required to know how to write and operate a computer, instead of blowhards who are elected simply because they know how to speak well in front of a camera.
Social skills win elections. Build effective coalitions.
Jimmy Carter had as fine a scientific and technical education as one could ask for. He can be an able and effective writer. But that does not make him a politician.
Carter paid too much attention to detail. He frequently backed down from confrontation and was quick to retreat when attacked by political rivals. He appeared to be indecisive and ineffective, and did not define his priorities clearly. He seemed to be distrustful and uninterested in working with other groups, or even with Congress when controlled by his own party, which he denounced for being controlled by special interest groups.
In the 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan projected an easy self-confidence, in contrast to Carter's serious and introspective temperament. Carter's personal attention to detail, his pessimistic attitude, his seeming indecisiveness and weakness with people were accentuated in contrast to Reagan's charismatic charm and delegation of tasks to subordinates. Reagan used the economic problems, Iran hostage crisis, and lack of Washington cooperation to portray Carter as a weak and ineffectual leader. Carter was the first elected president since Hoover in 1932 to lose a reelection bid.
Jimmy Carter
I wasn't real thrilled with the idea at first due to concerns around the integrity of the system, but then I imagined them working from a remote town hall and surrounded by their constituants instead of their peers and lobbyies. I think it could do great things for establishing accountability.
The congressman, surprisingly enough, likes the visibility of having offices in the bigger and more politically potent cities and suburbs in his district. This is where his district's major employers, economic and political interests are centered.
This is where the lobbyist draws his strength.
The whole point of having a national capital is to encourage your representatives to take a wider view of things.
It's actually quite a good default position, with incompetence only slightly behind it.
The number of federal judges impeached for all causes since 1904 is 10.
Two were acquitted, Six were removed. Two resigned. Impeachment in the United States
NEW ORLEANS - U.S. District Judge Robert F. Collins was convicted yesterday of scheming to split a $100,000 bribe from a drug smuggler, making him the first federal judge in the 200-year history of the judiciary to be found guilty of taking a bribe.
Federal Judge First Ever Convicted Of Taking Bribe [June 30, 1991]
When confronted by fact, the geek retreats into fantasy,
The 9th Circuit is a joke. It is the most overturned circuit in the country and the laughing stock of the judicial system.
It's a meaningless stat when the Supreme Court takes on less than 100 cases a year and perhaps 25 of those will be from the nine states of the Ninth Circuit.
And it is a bought and paid-for ass.
The geek's explanation for his every failure in law, politics and government is bribery.
Why was it, again, that anyone ever gave the legal system any say over what happens on or with the internet?
It's been a long tome since the Internet was the geek's private playground.
I don't see how this is going to work for anything but the largest online retailers and I'm still not convinced that this doesn't violate interstate commerce.
The same retail giants who sell enormous quantities of goods across state lines and who have immense regional distribution centers in many?
That sure looks like interstate commerce to me.
Good, but why not pay for more development of the GNU/Linux version.
The port to OSX and Windows has the potential to draw in 10 to 100 times as many contributors.
But for extra-state sales, this will have to survive a 10th Amendment challenge and well settled legal precedence dating back to the 18th century.
Homeland Security Stole Michael Arrington's Boat , The Department Of Homeland Security Stole My Boat Today
Arrington's notion of a boat that is "nothing too fancy or large" is a 48' high-performance Canadian built aluminum cruiser with a base price of one million dollars. It's the kind of boat that ships with a hydraulic lift to make the in-board engine more easily serviceable.
The Washington state sales tax became due and payable about a week after delivery and, soon to come, this year's state "property tax" bill on the boat.
If everyone uses a different standard it slows the spread of DRM and makes it more difficult for those who wish to use it.
Damn near half of all prime time Internet traffic in the US was a Netflix stream before Netflix offered a streaming-only service. So much for slowing the spread of DRM or making it difficult to use.
There is a Netflix app for your Chromebook.
The geek has two choices:
He can stand by and watch as media distribution --- music, video and games --- shifts to the "walled gardens" of the corporate branded app stores --- and the significance and value of the browser is depreciated.
OR
He can support development of a global standard for protected media which can be supported in every browser.
Which do you think serves his long term interests better?
"If you are one of the lucky 125,000 people who live in Olathe, Kansas, the rest of us congratulate you on your new amazing $70.00/month, 1 GB Google fiber service.
They can afford it.
The median income for a household was $61,111, and the median income for a family was $68,498 (these figures had risen to $72,634 and $82,747 respectively as of a 2007 estimate. Males had a median income of $45,699 versus $30,217 for females. The per capita income for the city was $24,498. About 2.4% of families and 4.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.1% of those under age 18 and 4.1% of those age 65 or over.
The median age in the city was 32.9 years. 30% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.5% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 32.1% were from 25 to 44; 23.1% were from 45 to 64; and 7.2% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.5% male and 50.5% female.[2010 Census Data]
Olathe, Kansas
The 2012 Median Income of US households was $45,018 per annum.
Household income in the United States
Olathe is 20 miles southwest of Kansas City.
In Kansas City, Google offers three tiers of service. The baseline fiber installation fee is $300, or $25 per month for 12 months. After paying that amount, Kansas City residents are guaranteed seven years of free broadband Internet service at current national âoeaverageâ speeds. The second tier costs $70 per month for the super-fast Internet service, and the top tier, which includes Google's TV service, costs $120 per month. The $300 installation fee is waived for the top two tiers.
Google Fiber Expanding Superfast Internet Service to Olathe, Kansas
While it's nice to speculate that the guy was fired for reasons that suit the average slashdotter's predilection's about DRM, there is no evidence that this is the case.
EA is claiming 1.1 million in sales, according to USA Today and other sources.
50% of that in download sales. The bestseller lists at Amazon.com are in perfect alignment with this.
Two high school kids just got 1 year each for raping a drunk 16 year old at a party (where people actually filmed and took pictures of it happening)..
It is not a determinate sentence.
Ohio Youth Services can keep them locked up until they are 21, if they think it is appropriate. They will then become registered sex offenders ranked by a judge according to the threat they appear to present at that time. Two teens found guilty in Steubenville rape case
Since when should the legal system be like playing roulette?
The odds are better in roulette.
There were three jury trials and verdicts against her and several rounds of appeal none of which ended well. Her performance on the stand was disastrous to her cause.
The appeal to the Supreme Court in such a case is melodramatic nonsense.
The press release doesn't mention anything about SimCity. Could it be other causes and you're just trying to bend the message to your own personal fantasies?
The SimCity download is back on Amazon.com. The disclaimer about EA's servers is gone.
#2 in PC game sales. #8 in combined PC and video game sales --- and how often does a PC game reach such heights? The retail box is doing well, SimCity 4 is right up there, EA has 20 or so games in the top fifty PC bestsellers ---- these numbers change hourly.
If this is failure, I'd like a taste of it myself.
We have convicted rapists and murderers that seem to get off with lighter sentences than people that do anything that involves a computer these days, even if the results don't hurt anyone and only embarrass a company or some govt. personnel.
Show me the numbers and then we can talk.
Real stats for the rapist and murderer. Real stats for the geek whose computer-related crimes earned him hard time.
In the American federal system, crimes of violence are almost always prosecuted under state law.
Execution List 2012 Each state on this list, for example, has executed between 1200 and 1300 death row inmates since 1976.
Federal Executions 1927-2003: 23.
The DOJ's Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section archives its press releases of charges and convictions dating back to 2000. It's a useful corrective to the notion that the geek's crimes are victimless. That he hasn't hurt anyone.
CCIPS Press releases
When I first saw the headlines for this story I immediately went to a much darker place. I envisioned doctors going into the morgue and borrowing a few digits for use in fooling the machines. I mean, it's not like those guys needed them any more. Things like this have happened before.
Then I realized this wouldn't work. For one thing, they'd have the wrong prints. For another, they'd be, well, a bit chilly.
Most current fingerprint scanners have technology that can detect whether the finger has a pulse, and some read fingerprints at a depth below skin level, which would render the silicon fingers useless. Apparently, that hospital is using an older type of scanner.
Giving biometric scanners the (fake) finger
Inside job.
The perfect example of corruption and conspiracy that begins --- and must begin --- at the top.
Another television network said it was the head of the emergency room that ran the scam and that his daughter had not worked a day in three years but got paid all the time.
Fake fingers to fool the boss at Brazil hospital
Ferreira confessed to using different fake fingers bearing the prints of 11 fellow doctors and 20 nurses in order to pretend they were showing up to work five overnight shifts each month, instead of just one, police said.
Ferreira also said the staff at the Ferraz Vasconcelos Hospital paid $2,400 per month to participate.
The doctor will face charges of falsifying a public document and could get two to six years in prison.
Brazilian doctor caught using fake fingers in biometrics scam
The non-profits around here gladly take any computers that they're given. Some get recycled and others get refurbished, but they aren't in the position of refusing to take a computer just because it's 5 years old.
That may be true where you stand, but the NPO I know best had to put the brakes on --- gently but firmly reminding would-be donors that it was not a trash heap and not in the recycling business.
You are right that the general public isn't comfortable using Linux. Unfortunately, you falsely imply that they are comfortable using Windows. The vast majority of people who would be in a position to go to a library or Non-Profit don't know the difference....
This --- to put it charitably --- is fantasy.
The MSDOS and Windows eco-system is 31 years old.
The software used in-house by the library or NPO will almost certainly have been built within that system.
MS Office is a given --- but there are countless other examples, some of them very arcane and unexpected --- and you are not employable even as a senior volunteer unless you are comfortable with the Windows OS and Windows software.
There isn't a public school, library, community college, state employment service or senior center within 75 miles of here that hasn't offered introductory courses or more advanced training in Windows and MS Office, and some of these programs are twenty years old now.
The message --- and it comes across loud and clear to anyone listening --- is that employers demand and expect that you will have these skills.
If you looking at something for home use, the refurbished Windows 7 desktop with free in-store pickup starts at $160 at Walmart.com. Machines in the class will run Office 365 and pretty much everything available in FOSS for Windows without the least bit of trouble, along with 500 or so dirt-cheap games from Gog,com.
Because "Excel" is just as descriptive?
But when you are targeting an audience looking for a productivity app, "Excel" is brilliant. Succinct, memorable, scans well,*** and woven into it is a clever bit of word play.
"Excel" = "From Cell." The spreadsheet.
It doesn't hurt that Excel is usually distributed as a core component of the world's best selling office suite.
----
**** ffDiaporama does not trip lightly off the tongue.
Double-Entendres, lame jokes like the GIMP, pose problems of their own. The geek will tell you straight-faced that its merely an acronym for Gnome Image Processor --- and that may even be true, but no outside his own circle of friends ever quite believes him.
Best keep that straw and chimney handy.
The Roman church has never been comfortable with a pope who holds the reins too long. The cardinals who will both name his successor and from whom his successor will be chosen will all be his appointments --- and each a mirror image of a man grown old and set in his ways.
I am all for buying an album or a painting from the artist directly. Fuck everybody else.
Tell me how that works with a motion picture that is the collective work of over four hundred people.
So - a 'masked man' allegedly committed this crime - no CCTV footage whatsoever, of ANYBODY entering the cinema through the normal, front entrance, the police ALLEGEDLY found Holmes sitting in a car - in a DRUGGED STATE, out the back of the cinema, and in the car were some weapons.
Idiocracy rules.
In introducing photos found on Holmes' cell phone, prosecutors showed that on June 29, July 5 and July 11 Holmes took photos that included the interior of the theater, door hinges and back doors.
In other photos introduced Wednesday, Aurora police detective Sgt. Matthew Fyles showed images Holmes took of himself the night of the shootings.
In one, marked 6:22 p.m., Holmes was wearing black contact lenses. His hair was dyed red under a black cap, and he stuck out his tongue at the camera.
In another image, he is seen smiling with the muzzle of a Glock handgun in the frame.
Prosecutors told the court they introduced the self photos because they help show Holmes' "identity, deliberation and extreme indifference."
An image Holmes took of himself on July 5 shows him posing with an assault rifle and "a majority of the tactical, ballistic gear" he had with him when he was apprehended, Fyles testified.
Another photo shows all of the gear used in the attack --- the guns, the body armor, helmet and gas mask --- arrayed neatly on Holmes' bed.
When officers searched Holmes' car in the parking lot, they found "road stars" --- the spikes thrown on the ground to stop vehicles. They also found a used tear gas can, a Glock with a holster, 2 cases for long guns, an iPhone and a carryall bag.
Fyles testified that police they found four gas masks, although only two belonged to Holmes.
It was also revealed that Holmes used a clip for securing a tablecloth to prop open the door to Theater 9.
James Holmes preliminary hearing: Holmes took photos of Aurora theater in advance
In through the front door, prop open the back. It's a very old trick.
Is it necessary to add that in a real-life crime scene is like the jigsaw puzzle in the back of your closet? Some pieces will be missing and others mixed in.
Either way you are being forced to confess and give testimony against yourself. Whatever happened to I dunno, finding EVIDENCE?
Insanity comes into play only when the guilt of a defendant is no longer in doubt and the only question remaining is whether he should be held responsible for his actions. The burden of proof is on the defense ---- and there is not a whole lot you can do that is likely to be persuasive.
He had roomates (news said he didn't), there was at least one other person there dressed in all black holding weapons (news never mentioned this but eye-witness testimonials revealed that this is the case),
The eyewitness sees or thinks he has seen a second man armed and dressed "in black" in a darkened theater where every motion is in the shadows, colors are muted, all is confusion and his sight lines were restricted.
Initially, few in the audience considered the masked figure a threat. He appeared to be wearing a costume, like other audience members who had dressed up for the screening [of "The Dark Knight Rises."]
Some believed that the gunman was playing a prank, while others thought that he was part of a special effects installation set up for the film's premiere .
It is also alleged that the gunman threw two canisters emitting a gas or smoke, partially obscuring the audience members' vision, making their throats and skin itch, and causing eye irritation.
Witnesses said the multiplex's fire alarm system began sounding soon after the attack began and staff told people in theater 8 to evacuate One witness said that she was hesitant to leave because someone yelled that there was someone shooting in the lobby and that they shouldn't leave.
2012 Aurora shooting
In Aurora, Holmes lived on Paris Street in a one-bedroom apartment, in a building with other students involved in health studies.
James Eagan Holmes
Seventy wounded. Twelve fatally. Ten dead at the scene.
That implies ballistic evidence that would make it obvious almost immediately whether there was more than one gun man.