All this article really tells us is that a leech who was trying to flip houses for a quick profit got burned by a bigger leech.
It's not being a leech to buy something that you think is undervalued by the seller. Quite the opposite. It has the effect of smoothing out pricing in a market and making it more liquid.
No need to be jealous of those who find good deals before you do.
No sane person would. By their own admission, it is clear that they gave a blank check to Microsoft. Whatever their motive for doing that, it shows a lack of devotion to the stated goal of their products.
If a company wants my money for securing my computers, they better show some integrity that doesn't shift depending on how their relationship with the bigger company is going that day.
That's good news, since the Live.com portal is the entry point for the first release of its Windows Live Search, the site through which Microsoft hopes to make the big bucks through paid search.
I think its effects are irrelevant. It should be nobody's business but your own what you put in your body.
Ideally, I would agree. But that's the problem with ideals. If you ignore effects and focus only on principles, then you risk creating an incredibly bad result, which is justified by principle alone. Principles are nice, but effects are what we work with in our everyday lives.
A more scientific approach would focus on reaching the desired result through expirementation. One might start out with the principle (the theory). If the principle is followed, your hypothesis is that happiness should be maximized. But if it turns out that happiness is not maximized, then you should be willing to alter your hypothesis.
Even if you focus on the happiness of non-users, happiness is not maximized by allowing methamphetamine to be produced and consumed freely. Of this, I am sure.
Basically, I have never seen a drug as bad as meth before. I have been around people using all kinds of drugs. I have done a few myself when I was younger.
I don't believe that any other drug is abused as widely, with as much negative consequences.
My default answer to the question is that you should be allowed to put whatever you want in your body if you choose to. What I have seen of meth is so bad that I am forced to reexamine that perspective and make an exception.
That Frontline documentary was excellent. After working in a sub-sub-urban Public Defender's office for awhile and seeing that 90% of our cases were somehow related to methamphetamine, I would have to agree that it is definitely worth it.
Drug store pseudoephedrine has become an essential ingredient to make the stuff.
I used to be a total libertarian when it came to drugs. I figured that it should be nobody's business but your own what you put in your body... no more after seeing what meth does.
It is a drop in the bucket, but people who've never heard of MySpace before don't know this. It's the same thing that happened when the internet was just entering the popular culture. People didn't realize how widespread it already was, so when they heard the horror stories, they thought it was the rule rather than the exception.
I don't like Diebold any more than the average slashdotter, but jesus christ on a candy cane, you don't divulge the secrets of your clients. Even if he wasn't a lawyer in the firm, he knew damn well that he wasn't supposed to run around giving away confidential information.
This guy is not a whistleblower in the slightest sense of the word. That would be like calling Johnny Cochran a whistleblower if he jumped up in the middle of the OJ trial and screamed... "He's GUILTY, GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!"
They had encountered businesses which were selling copies of Firefox, and wanted to confirm that this was in violation of our licence agreements before taking action against them.
At least she tried to confirm this before running out to arrest people. She may not understand WHY she has to confirm a violation of the licensing agreement... but the fact that she followed the procedure indicates that we aren't all about to be raided for having "pirated" copies of Firefox on our computers.
There is certainly no shortage of dense people in the world. But that's why we have procedures... we say "do this! this way!" And they do... even if it makes them incredulous. Bravo standards-bearers! Bravo.
He is suing the city because it refused to provide him with the records that he, as a citizen, was entitled to. The mayor's misconduct is just the reason he wanted access to the records, but it is not the basis for his suit.
The purpose of making one side pay the other's legal fees is to encourage people to settle for a fair amount rather than fight a losing case. If we made an exception for pro bono attorneys, it would encourage an opponent of someone using a pro bono attorney to fight to the very end even if the law was completely against them. It would mean that whenever an attorney took a case pro bono, their client would be at a big disadvantage... and the pro bono attorney could expect to spend a lot of time simply proving to the other side that he is willing to work work work for free just to win a case that would have been settled early if only the losing side wasn't playing games.
First, it doesn't sound as good, byte-for-byte, as files purchased from iTunes Music Store (in the AAC format) or any of the Microsoft-compliant stores.
The fact is that an mp3 file can have the same quality as a wma or an aac file. It just uses more memory. Memory is cheap and gets cheaper every day.
This gives me two choices: 1. Have my music in a non-standardized format like wma... and then buy a new music player when I realize that everything but the iPod sucks... or vice-versa.
2. Use a little bit more memory for the same quality and play my music on any device I want, now and in the future.
The memory savings are not significant.
Surround sound is for movies. I don't care what audio format my movie files use. The requirement of a video display means that I won't need to play movies on as many devices as I play music.
But only if the statement is material to the case.
That's a good point. The Lewinsky affair would have only shown a propensity to engage in affairs with people less powerful than himself. At first glance, this appears to be material to the case, because it would bolster the claims of Ms. Jones. But evidence that serves no purpose but to show a propensity to act a certain way is not admissible in a Federal court. You could ask about it a deposition, but the response would not be admissible over an objection in court.
Can inadmissible evidence obtained in a deposition be material to a case? I would think not, but have to admit that I'm not certain.
Neither statement is perjury, because neither statement is made under oath... These statements are just arguments made by the lawyers. One is made in a brief and the other was made in oral arguments in a completely different case, with different parties.
As a lawyer, I can say whatever I want to a court, and the court knows that. If I make a bold statement that turns out to be false, it may affect my credibility with the court; it may cause me to be found in contempt of court; it may ruin my reputation and cause me to hang my head in shame... but it ain't perjury.
Realize also, that these are statements of what the lawyer believes the law to be. They aren't statements of "this happened" or "that happened". It's the same as when the Independent Counsel asked Clinton "Is it true or not that you are the highest law enforcement officer in the country?" It's a question of legal opinion, and not a factual matter, so it isn't perjury.
Now, when you get sworn in and you say "I didn't have sex with that woman (koala bear) (llama) (whatever the case may be)." That would be perjury.
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I would definitely consider regulations forcing me to act against my will, not to prevent a crime but simply to give someone else something of mine that they want, to be "involuntary servitude".
You have now left the State of Misguided Libertarians and entered the Land of the Ludicrous.
Be sure to check in with the Ministry of Funny Walks before wandering too far.
After all, the trains are their property, and any use of their property against their will violates their Constitutional rights.
You are not looking at the same Constitution that I have studied. The United States Constitution does not say this nor even imply this anywhere in the text. The takings clause, which merely requires "just compensation", only involves takings. It does not concern reasonable government regulations.
Your point of view is highly principled. I admire that. But this idea that the "free market of ideas" will eventually smooth out all the kinks, is an idea with very little evidence to back it up. If you have something more than theory... perhaps a documented history involving large populations, demonstrating that lack of governmental oversight causes everything to work out in a just and orderly fashion... I would be interested... but that documented history doesn't exist. If it did, governments would never have been invented in the first place.
You also say "boycotts tend to increase the strength of the prejudices instead of removing them." Yet this is also not backed up by any evidence. Quite frankly, I think it is bullshit. If you assert strength and show someone they are wrong, they normally tend to respect you for it and learn more from it even if they still think that they are right.
Even if it were true, who cares? A person who is discriminating against people on the basis of their race isn't making anyone happy or removing any prejudices. The goal is to make them stop... not to give them a warm fuzzy feeling and hope they will learn they're error on their own. If they still disagree in their heart of hearts, that is their problem. Again, it is the real world problem of discrimination that I am concerned with more than the prejudice which may exist in someone's mind.
Desegregation in the South is the example which we are talking about. If it were not for the Fair Housing Act and other similar Federal legislation (not to mention military involvement), we would still have segregation in the South. And I submit to you that we would have a lot more racists than we do now. The idea that use of government force makes people more strong in their racism is not backed up by fact. The Federal government left the Southern system undisturbed for almost a hundred years after Reconstruction, and nothing smoothed itself out. The end of slavery also only came about because of government action.
Children whose parents tried to raise them as racists, learned from the actions of their government (a democratically elected government) that this point of view was not in touch with the majority of people in this country.
Everything you are saying is grounded in theory. Look at the real world man. It is complicated. It will always be that way. People created government to help create some order out of the immense level of complexity. You aren't going to do that without some very complex ways of controlling how people interact.
Housing laws are about controlling how people use their own property -- specifically, forcing them to enter into transactions that they would otherwise choose not to enter into.
Fair housing laws are a regulation on how you may enter into transactions. It does not force anyone to rent a house, it simply requires that if you make a business of selling or renting houses (meaning that you rent more than once every two years or own more than three houses that you rent out) then you must not discriminate against people on certain bases.
It is really disheartening that in this era, so many apparently smart people proudly display their ignorance of why so many of their forebearers died to end segregation.
Surely you must think that there is nothing wrong with Amtrak enforcing separate train cars for the races as long as those facilities are equal. After all, it is the same argument, just applied to transportation rather than housing.
The trouble with restricting discrimination by controlling speech is that Congress doesn't have the authority to abridge the freedom of speech. If you really want to shut people up, propose and pass a constitutionall amendment.
There is a long history of laws which regulate "speech" in some way. Freedom of Speech is not and never has been an absolute concept. Even the ACLU would not take that stance.
But you say you want an amendment to the Constitution, and I have one for you. Look it up. 14th Amendment.
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
...
Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Congress passed the Fair Housing Act to help ensure that citizens of the United States are not denied equal protection of the laws in the sense that they can rent or buy a house anywhere they want and have the full protection of the Federal government in case they encounter discrimination.
Except, stopping advertisements expressing such prejudice doesn't stop the prejudice itself. It just prevents people looking for a place to live/work from having any sort of warning that they will waste their time by applying.
You sir, are not looking at the big picture.
The communication that discrimination is being practiced is a very important part of carrying out the discrimination. It is like crying fire in a crowded theater, because it has a direct and tangible effect on people's lives. If you are a black person looking for an apartment in the newspaper, the very moment that you read "Blacks Need Not Apply", you have been discriminated against.
That doesn't stop prejudice. It stops speech, it stops people expressing their opinions.
As I have pointed out, it is more than simply expressing an opinion. It is a tool used to effectuate the goal of discrimination. It is speech which has a clear and present danger of causing discrimination. Once the communication is made, that person will not bother calling about that apartment. Perhaps they will not even bother looking at apartments in that area.
Noone's talking about fighting prejudice... nothing can directly regulate prejudice, as that is merely a "thought crime". Unlike prejudice, discrimination is an actual act that has direct and real consequences.
I agree that Craigslist should probably not be held responsible, as they don't review all submissions before they are posted... but that's neither here nor there.
Making discrimination illegal doesn't make it go away. It's still there, without any warning signs.
It should be perfectly legal to murder, rape and rob, because passing laws isn't going to make those things disappear. In fact, people will always be prejudiced, so let's legalize full-scale racial discrimination in housing, hiring, and education. People are always going to do evil things... so why should we bother stopping them?
It may still be there. But making it illegal means that people have to take care not to get caught. It means that they know society disapproves of their actions. It means that most landlords will follow the law, and of those that don't, some will get caught.
Yes, discrimination will always be there... but certain kinds of discrimination are illegal because they are incompatible with a free and just society. If you are willing to disregard that simple fact because it might inconvenience you in some minor way, maybe you should ask yourself whether a free and just society is the kind of society you want to live in.
Slashdot Mirror
At some point, the computer would have to decide what is arousing and what is not.
Could give HAL-9000 a whole new outlook.
If it had been contaminated with toxic waste (e.g. from a meth lab), he could have ended up owing thousands or millions to the government for clean up costs.
All this article really tells us is that a leech who was trying to flip houses for a quick profit got burned by a bigger leech.
It's not being a leech to buy something that you think is undervalued by the seller. Quite the opposite. It has the effect of smoothing out pricing in a market and making it more liquid.
No need to be jealous of those who find good deals before you do.
How can you trust these guys with your security?
No sane person would. By their own admission, it is clear that they gave a blank check to Microsoft. Whatever their motive for doing that, it shows a lack of devotion to the stated goal of their products.
If a company wants my money for securing my computers, they better show some integrity that doesn't shift depending on how their relationship with the bigger company is going that day.
That's good news, since the Live.com portal is the entry point for the first release of its Windows Live Search, the site through which Microsoft hopes to make the big bucks through paid search.
This is a joke right?
I think its effects are irrelevant. It should be nobody's business but your own what you put in your body.
Ideally, I would agree. But that's the problem with ideals. If you ignore effects and focus only on principles, then you risk creating an incredibly bad result, which is justified by principle alone. Principles are nice, but effects are what we work with in our everyday lives.
A more scientific approach would focus on reaching the desired result through expirementation. One might start out with the principle (the theory). If the principle is followed, your hypothesis is that happiness should be maximized. But if it turns out that happiness is not maximized, then you should be willing to alter your hypothesis.
Even if you focus on the happiness of non-users, happiness is not maximized by allowing methamphetamine to be produced and consumed freely. Of this, I am sure.
Basically, I have never seen a drug as bad as meth before. I have been around people using all kinds of drugs. I have done a few myself when I was younger.
I don't believe that any other drug is abused as widely, with as much negative consequences.
My default answer to the question is that you should be allowed to put whatever you want in your body if you choose to. What I have seen of meth is so bad that I am forced to reexamine that perspective and make an exception.
That Frontline documentary was excellent. After working in a sub-sub-urban Public Defender's office for awhile and seeing that 90% of our cases were somehow related to methamphetamine, I would have to agree that it is definitely worth it.
Drug store pseudoephedrine has become an essential ingredient to make the stuff.
I used to be a total libertarian when it came to drugs. I figured that it should be nobody's business but your own what you put in your body... no more after seeing what meth does.
It is a drop in the bucket, but people who've never heard of MySpace before don't know this. It's the same thing that happened when the internet was just entering the popular culture. People didn't realize how widespread it already was, so when they heard the horror stories, they thought it was the rule rather than the exception.
Edubuntu?
The guy was working for the company's law firm.
I don't like Diebold any more than the average slashdotter, but jesus christ on a candy cane, you don't divulge the secrets of your clients. Even if he wasn't a lawyer in the firm, he knew damn well that he wasn't supposed to run around giving away confidential information.
This guy is not a whistleblower in the slightest sense of the word. That would be like calling Johnny Cochran a whistleblower if he jumped up in the middle of the OJ trial and screamed... "He's GUILTY, GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!"
They had encountered businesses which were selling copies of Firefox, and wanted to confirm that this was in violation of our licence agreements before taking action against them.
At least she tried to confirm this before running out to arrest people. She may not understand WHY she has to confirm a violation of the licensing agreement... but the fact that she followed the procedure indicates that we aren't all about to be raided for having "pirated" copies of Firefox on our computers.
There is certainly no shortage of dense people in the world. But that's why we have procedures... we say "do this! this way!" And they do... even if it makes them incredulous. Bravo standards-bearers! Bravo.
Dr. Evil, meet Dr. Brilliant! Mwahahahahaha!
He is suing the city because it refused to provide him with the records that he, as a citizen, was entitled to. The mayor's misconduct is just the reason he wanted access to the records, but it is not the basis for his suit.
The purpose of making one side pay the other's legal fees is to encourage people to settle for a fair amount rather than fight a losing case. If we made an exception for pro bono attorneys, it would encourage an opponent of someone using a pro bono attorney to fight to the very end even if the law was completely against them. It would mean that whenever an attorney took a case pro bono, their client would be at a big disadvantage... and the pro bono attorney could expect to spend a lot of time simply proving to the other side that he is willing to work work work for free just to win a case that would have been settled early if only the losing side wasn't playing games.
First, it doesn't sound as good, byte-for-byte, as files purchased from iTunes Music Store (in the AAC format) or any of the Microsoft-compliant stores.
The fact is that an mp3 file can have the same quality as a wma or an aac file. It just uses more memory. Memory is cheap and gets cheaper every day.
This gives me two choices:
1. Have my music in a non-standardized format like wma... and then buy a new music player when I realize that everything but the iPod sucks... or vice-versa.
2. Use a little bit more memory for the same quality and play my music on any device I want, now and in the future.
The memory savings are not significant.
Surround sound is for movies. I don't care what audio format my movie files use. The requirement of a video display means that I won't need to play movies on as many devices as I play music.
But only if the statement is material to the case.
That's a good point. The Lewinsky affair would have only shown a propensity to engage in affairs with people less powerful than himself. At first glance, this appears to be material to the case, because it would bolster the claims of Ms. Jones. But evidence that serves no purpose but to show a propensity to act a certain way is not admissible in a Federal court. You could ask about it a deposition, but the response would not be admissible over an objection in court.
Can inadmissible evidence obtained in a deposition be material to a case? I would think not, but have to admit that I'm not certain.
Neither statement is perjury, because neither statement is made under oath... These statements are just arguments made by the lawyers. One is made in a brief and the other was made in oral arguments in a completely different case, with different parties.
As a lawyer, I can say whatever I want to a court, and the court knows that. If I make a bold statement that turns out to be false, it may affect my credibility with the court; it may cause me to be found in contempt of court; it may ruin my reputation and cause me to hang my head in shame... but it ain't perjury.
Realize also, that these are statements of what the lawyer believes the law to be. They aren't statements of "this happened" or "that happened". It's the same as when the Independent Counsel asked Clinton "Is it true or not that you are the highest law enforcement officer in the country?" It's a question of legal opinion, and not a factual matter, so it isn't perjury.
Now, when you get sworn in and you say "I didn't have sex with that woman (koala bear) (llama) (whatever the case may be)." That would be perjury.
How about this part?
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I would definitely consider regulations forcing me to act against my will, not to prevent a crime but simply to give someone else something of mine that they want, to be "involuntary servitude".
You have now left the State of Misguided Libertarians and entered the Land of the Ludicrous.
Be sure to check in with the Ministry of Funny Walks before wandering too far.
After all, the trains are their property, and any use of their property against their will violates their Constitutional rights.
You are not looking at the same Constitution that I have studied. The United States Constitution does not say this nor even imply this anywhere in the text. The takings clause, which merely requires "just compensation", only involves takings. It does not concern reasonable government regulations.
Your point of view is highly principled. I admire that. But this idea that the "free market of ideas" will eventually smooth out all the kinks, is an idea with very little evidence to back it up. If you have something more than theory... perhaps a documented history involving large populations, demonstrating that lack of governmental oversight causes everything to work out in a just and orderly fashion... I would be interested... but that documented history doesn't exist. If it did, governments would never have been invented in the first place.
You also say "boycotts tend to increase the strength of the prejudices instead of removing them." Yet this is also not backed up by any evidence. Quite frankly, I think it is bullshit. If you assert strength and show someone they are wrong, they normally tend to respect you for it and learn more from it even if they still think that they are right.
Even if it were true, who cares? A person who is discriminating against people on the basis of their race isn't making anyone happy or removing any prejudices. The goal is to make them stop... not to give them a warm fuzzy feeling and hope they will learn they're error on their own. If they still disagree in their heart of hearts, that is their problem. Again, it is the real world problem of discrimination that I am concerned with more than the prejudice which may exist in someone's mind.
Desegregation in the South is the example which we are talking about. If it were not for the Fair Housing Act and other similar Federal legislation (not to mention military involvement), we would still have segregation in the South. And I submit to you that we would have a lot more racists than we do now. The idea that use of government force makes people more strong in their racism is not backed up by fact. The Federal government left the Southern system undisturbed for almost a hundred years after Reconstruction, and nothing smoothed itself out. The end of slavery also only came about because of government action.
Children whose parents tried to raise them as racists, learned from the actions of their government (a democratically elected government) that this point of view was not in touch with the majority of people in this country.
Everything you are saying is grounded in theory. Look at the real world man. It is complicated. It will always be that way. People created government to help create some order out of the immense level of complexity. You aren't going to do that without some very complex ways of controlling how people interact.
Housing laws are about controlling how people use their own property -- specifically, forcing them to enter into transactions that they would otherwise choose not to enter into.
Fair housing laws are a regulation on how you may enter into transactions. It does not force anyone to rent a house, it simply requires that if you make a business of selling or renting houses (meaning that you rent more than once every two years or own more than three houses that you rent out) then you must not discriminate against people on certain bases.
It is really disheartening that in this era, so many apparently smart people proudly display their ignorance of why so many of their forebearers died to end segregation.
Surely you must think that there is nothing wrong with Amtrak enforcing separate train cars for the races as long as those facilities are equal. After all, it is the same argument, just applied to transportation rather than housing.
The trouble with restricting discrimination by controlling speech is that Congress doesn't have the authority to abridge the freedom of speech. If you really want to shut people up, propose and pass a constitutionall amendment.
...
There is a long history of laws which regulate "speech" in some way. Freedom of Speech is not and never has been an absolute concept. Even the ACLU would not take that stance.
But you say you want an amendment to the Constitution, and I have one for you. Look it up. 14th Amendment.
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Congress passed the Fair Housing Act to help ensure that citizens of the United States are not denied equal protection of the laws in the sense that they can rent or buy a house anywhere they want and have the full protection of the Federal government in case they encounter discrimination.
Except, stopping advertisements expressing such prejudice doesn't stop the prejudice itself. It just prevents people looking for a place to live/work from having any sort of warning that they will waste their time by applying.
You sir, are not looking at the big picture.
The communication that discrimination is being practiced is a very important part of carrying out the discrimination. It is like crying fire in a crowded theater, because it has a direct and tangible effect on people's lives. If you are a black person looking for an apartment in the newspaper, the very moment that you read "Blacks Need Not Apply", you have been discriminated against.
That doesn't stop prejudice. It stops speech, it stops people expressing their opinions.
As I have pointed out, it is more than simply expressing an opinion. It is a tool used to effectuate the goal of discrimination. It is speech which has a clear and present danger of causing discrimination. Once the communication is made, that person will not bother calling about that apartment. Perhaps they will not even bother looking at apartments in that area.
Noone's talking about fighting prejudice... nothing can directly regulate prejudice, as that is merely a "thought crime". Unlike prejudice, discrimination is an actual act that has direct and real consequences.
I agree that Craigslist should probably not be held responsible, as they don't review all submissions before they are posted... but that's neither here nor there.
what does this have to do with online?
what does this have to do with rights?
nothing?
ok... just checking.
Making discrimination illegal doesn't make it go away. It's still there, without any warning signs.
It should be perfectly legal to murder, rape and rob, because passing laws isn't going to make those things disappear. In fact, people will always be prejudiced, so let's legalize full-scale racial discrimination in housing, hiring, and education. People are always going to do evil things... so why should we bother stopping them?
It may still be there. But making it illegal means that people have to take care not to get caught. It means that they know society disapproves of their actions. It means that most landlords will follow the law, and of those that don't, some will get caught.
Yes, discrimination will always be there... but certain kinds of discrimination are illegal because they are incompatible with a free and just society. If you are willing to disregard that simple fact because it might inconvenience you in some minor way, maybe you should ask yourself whether a free and just society is the kind of society you want to live in.
My point is that police will not fall back... at least not American police. Cops in rural America don't usually have helicopters at their disposal.
And truth be told: American cops like to drive fast. Cowboy culture, know what I mean?