I seem to remember from a similar article a few months back that an astute slashdotter pointed to case law that basically said that a defendant cannot be compelled to produce evidence that does not normally exist. In other words, if there is not currently a method that exists (e.g. commercial program) for logging all RAM contents the court cannot force the defendant to create and then implement such a program/procedure just to create the evidence the prosecution seeks. Does anyone know what I'm referring to or can provide links to such case law? Or am I totally off base with this?
And yours is typical of what I regularly bemoan on/. - people linking in "support" of their argument without reading the entirety of the linked materials. I would say the article's citation link pointing out Mr. Paul's failure to apologize for these statements, as well as his attempt to dismiss these racist remarks as "within the context of current events and statistical reports of the time," doesn't exactly make your case.
I have read the entire post that I linked to. An explanation for the newsletter was presented, and on top of that there remains the fact that at no other point before or since has anything remotely racist been uttered or demonstrated by R.P. My challenge to you still stands: apart from one single newsletter - which R.P. claims was ghostwritten - present ANY OTHER evidence that he is racist. You've not made your case on any other evidence. If he is in fact a racist it should be no problem to demonstrate other examples, even one more. You have nothing but a single newsletter which has been refuted to be his own words. And to say that not apologizing only proves his guilt is both ridiculous and ignorant of how politics functions. Were he to apologize for the statements rather than simply state his case that they are not his words it would in effect make it seem as though he were guilty, which opponents would seize on. See for example the recent baiting of the Bush administration by Hillary in Iowa. By responding to Hillary's goading the story gained legs and became elevated to the national level. Sometimes it is better to choose inaction over action, to claim that apologizing or not apologizing for someone else's remarks implies guilt is something you could bend either way.
You also have failed to mention any other candidate that supports constitutional government, supports sustainable policies, and has the voting record to match. Who exactly is it that is superior to Ron Paul in regards to reigning in an ever-expansive federal government which espouses dangerous fiscal and international policies? I'll end with this again, unless you can produce any other evidence of racism, your case is weak. And no, I cannot prove a negative, that is logically impossible.
f you're looking at the last century or more of case law, you're looking at a whole lot of practice that has nothing to do with the constitutional legitimate power of the court.
Then where would you suggest we look? At yesterday's docket? You just ruled out the entire history of the court as being the place to look for case law, that makes zero sense. In addition, you seem to want to refute my statement yet agree with me, the SCOTUS has the power to strike down a law, specifically if it is unconstitutional. Gee, didn't I say EXACTLY that in my post? "The courts do indeed have the power to strike down a law if it is unconstitutional or overly broad, etc" Oh yes, yes I did. The OP did not qualify his use of the phrase "Strike it down" because it was mentioned in passing to support another point. The fact is it is a correct statement without specifying all the cases when it is and isn't true, there are valid cases where the SCOTUS can strike down the law, we agree on this, let's move on.
If constitutional laws or checks have been breached, I am against it, but I do not believe that to be so. Particularly, I do not believe the FISA law to be constitutional in most applications. It is a legislated redistribution of constitutional war powers from the executive to the judicial branch. I don't know whether the president quite shares that view, but to the degree that he does, he has the sworn duty to refuse to execute that law.
You mean in the EXACT same way that congressional war powers were transferred to the executive branch by the open-ended use of force legislation made by the congress? I will point out that that was NOT a declaration of war, something that ONLY the congress can do per the constitution. For your argument to hold water the President's nullification/ignoring of an unconstitutional law/redistribution of powers requires that he also not accept anything less than a full declaration of war from the congress before assuming his role as commander in chief. Without that declaration technically he cannot assume war powers PER THE CONSTITUTION. Any examples trotted out about the (mis)use of the armed forces by the president without a declaration of war historically are almost totally for operations lasting under 5 days and involving less than 100 troops. Mostly they were nothing more than displays of force without actually engaging in battle. The scale of the current engagement is irrefutably full blown war in cost, commitment, and scope. In addition there are already prescribed methods of how to deal with a perceived unjust or unconstitutional law, and NONE OF THOSE METHODS ARE IGNORING THE LAW. The President does not have the power to simply ignore any law he disagrees with regardless of the reason. The law must be challenged or changed, not simply ignored, otherwise it is still breach of law. Try telling a cop arresting you, or the judge in court, on charges of minor drug possession that you disagree with the law therefore you may ignore it at will. As a citizen of the US, and an employee of the people, the President does not entertain such a power either, nor is presidential nullification of a law (other than veto) encoded in any US law or the constitution. I would very much like for you to demonstrate the portion of law that grants the President the power to ignore any law he disagrees with. And simply pointing out he took an oath to uphold the constitution does not suffice. Upholding the constitution requires following the processes outlined in that document itself. I would also point out that various abuses by this administration run counter to the argument that the current President is upholding the constitution in all of his actions, there are many cases which in fact demonstrate breaches of the constitution. Specifically prisoner abuses and removal of habeas corpus for detainees is prohibited by the Geneva Convention, which the US is a signatory thereof and that agreement supersedes any other law as it is an international tre
The Bush position is that it is not always an American making a call from inside America.
The Bush position is that they don't need a warrant before, they don't need a retroactive warrant after, and they don't need a warrant ever in such cases. This contrary to the law as it stood at the time. I am NOT saying all wiretaps are/should be illegal, or that all wiretaps involving Americans are/should be illegal. What I AM saying is that there WERE legal requirements in place, through FISA to handle these instances and they were completely ignored by the administration. ILLEGALLY. Why is it so hard for people to understand that for the rule of law to work and be upheld ALL PARTIES must be equally subject to the law. NO ADMINISTRATION should be allowed to pick and choose where and when they will follow the law, and when they are caught simply say "we thought it should work otherwise". Well too bad, then change the law BEFOREHAND, do not sidestep it and ask for forgiveness later. In some instances it turns out to be no big deal, but eventually it WILL BE. Eventually they will commit some act that is NOT forgivable after the fact and then it's too late. The argument about the urgency of a situation being a roadblock to changing the law is baseless. FISA was designed to allow retroactive warrants, which the administration could have applied for but never bothered to. And the wiretapping that went on outside of FISA rules went on for a period of YEARS so there was certainly plenty of time for them to begin changing the law to be in line with how they wanted to conduct operations. The fact that no changes were even proposed until AFTER the program was publicly outed shows that they had no intention of following the law. This only makes one wonder, how many other laws are being ignored in the name of fighting terrorism that we don't know about yet? How many of those are abuses that should never be allowed to occur?
There is also established precedence that the remedy to an illegal wiretap is the inadmissibility of the wiretapped conversation into evidence. That is, they can't use it to prosecute you.
To think that prosecution in a court is the only thing those logs can be used for is naive. To think that the court may even be a remedy in all cases is also naive thanks to recent events like the passing of the 2006 Military Commissions Act and the Jose Padilla ruling. Even if you agree with the Padilla verdict, the fact is that he was held in US custody for a period of years with no due process for charges that ultimately were never even brought against him. The charges he was convicted of recently were not the ones that the US used to justify his arrest and detainment and suspension of habeas corpus. Only after it became apparent that the SCOTUS was likely to rule against the government in regards to his detainment was he moved to the civilian system. Keep in mind this is a US citizen, regardless of the crimes he is charged with he is guaranteed constitutional protections which were denied until the government's hand was forced.
(For example, in what you said, the courts do NOT have the legitimate power to arbitrarily strike down a law.)
The parent poster never used the term arbitrary, nor implied it, you added that to support your own argument. The courts do indeed have the power to strike down a law if it is unconstitutional or overly broad, etc.; however it must be brought before the court by someone with proper standing, i.e. someone who has been harmed by or prosecuted under said law. To claim that the courts do not have this power is not only wrong, but easily refuted by over a century of case law.
The problem at hand with the FISA issue is that the wiretaps are being used on Americans, located in America. It is not the cases of purely foreign wiretaps that people have issue with, it is the unsupervised use of them against NON-foreigners that is the problem. And the fact that the administration knowingly and willingly sidestepped mandatory FISA regulations early on in the process? Are they to be left completely unaccountable for that? You seem like a reasonable person who accepts the rule of law, however you also seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the very laws and checks you are advocating and believe in have already been breached. Also, the justification for expansion of powers along the lines of "we've stopped/will stop lots of crimes but we can't tell you about any of them" is hardly an acceptable reason for a government supposedly of and for the people. Do you disagree that a system of checks and balances cannot properly function if one side is completely cloaked in secrecy?
Absolutely unfounded... There are entirely too many checks and balances in place for the VP (or any politician for that matter) to create his own classification scheme.
My friend, some might say there are too many checks and balances to prevent a lot of the things that have gone on with this administration in the last 6 years, yet the abuses occurred anyway. Your disbelief makes them no less true. The Washington Post broke this story and AFAIK there have been no retractions. Here are some links to the articles in question.
A reference from rawstory.com, with the daily show clip.
The NYT article deals mostly with how Cheney HAS BEEN flaunting the system of checks and balances already in place, even going so far as to request the abolition of the classification oversight committee itself! From the article: "Officials at the National Archives and the Justice Department confirmed the basic chronology of events cited in Mr. Waxman's letter.
The letter said that after repeatedly refusing to comply with a routine annual request from the archives for data on his staff's classification of internal documents, the vice president's office in 2004 blocked an on-site inspection of records that other agencies of the executive branch regularly go through. "
I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions from these events, but I assure you, they are occurring.
I'm not sure what your Cheney comment is referring to, but it can't be more egregious than the Berger incident.
Sorry for the uber late reply, you'll probably never see it but just in case this is good info for people to be aware of I think. Basically Cheney has created a new level of cassification to justify not sharing any information from his office. You may have heard about the "man-sized safe" that he has in his office, well he fills it with pretty much every document he produces and labels them "Treat as Top Secret". I think it's actually a different term than 'top secret' but regardless, there is no such official classification 'Treat As X'. The documents are not officially classified at that level as it would invoke all sorts of other paperwork and expenses, but since it says 'treat as' it puts his staff i the position of having to treat it as such even though it may not actually be. The upshot is that the VP has for all intents and purposes totally classified all of his office's papers without the mess of having to adhere to the classification regulations. You know, silly little procedural details like justifying the classifications. It's as evil as it is ingenious. It's one more way in which Cheney has cloaked himself and his actions in darkness from even the rest of the executive branch.
So let me get this straight, if we go with a major telco who throttles bandwidth to non-extorted - er, I mean non-partnered - sites then we have to pay them extra to really use all of our bandwidth. OR we can go with a company such as this one and... pay extra to use all of our bandwidth.
This really hasn't gotten us very far. I'm glad that a company is doing this, it's much needed, and actually gives us a chance to vote with our wallets. But until someone who controls the lines offers a similar competitive plan I think we're going to be stuck with a lot of '6 of one, half dozen of the other' choices.
Wow, amazing. I post my opinion on who I think is a candidate that respects the Constitution, in response to someone who asked about alternative candidates, and I get marked as flamebait? Apparently some people just like abusing mod points. That's ok guys, you only prove my point when instead of discussing the issue, you shout it down. Close your ears and your eyes, keep voting the same two parties into office to enact the same bad policies. Don't blame me when the only way left to fix America is to use the box that comes after 'soap' and 'ballot'....
All of your examples come from a single newsletter published in 1992. Here is a link quoting the explanation and rebuttal from Paul. Also: Texas Monthly explained, "What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U. S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this." Interesting indeed that never before or since have such remarks come from him.
I challenge you to find any other evidence in either his writings, speeches, or voting history that support your argument that he is a racist.
Considering that none of his actions in office have led to racist policies I would say it's safe to say that will continue. However all of his other actions support sound fiscal policies, international relations, and smaller government run in-line with the powers granted in the Constitution. Show me one other candidate running that can boast that. Your response is typical of what I bemoaned in my original post, voters find one polarizing issue and focus on that to the exclusion of any other position, overlooking other pros and cons of candidates based on one kneejerk soundbyte. Do some fucking homework. And for the record, I'm registered as an independent and vote for candidates based on what I have researched, not just D or R like many mindless party drones. I would rejoice at ANY other political party being nationally recognized on ballots as it might finally break the stranglehold of the current (imho failed) two party system.
I hope that some third-party candidates appear on the scene that actually have the qualifications needed to serve in office.
FYI: his name is Ron Paul. Ignore the (R) next to his name. He ran as a Libertarian in Texas till he realized that's why he was losing, put an (R) there instead and magically got elected. Some would say he actually espouses true Republican values. What's important though is he respects the Constitution and is totally consistent with his votes RE his stated positions, going against party line votes often. It's just too bad that most Americans don't even seem to register a candidate exists unless they're wrapped in the flag and screaming about issues like gay marriage that have pretty much zero effect on our economy or international relations.
If you think everyone in Boston, which itself is only one friggin city in all of MA, sounds like that then your own ignorance of travel is showing. Yes, there's some pretty bad accents downtown, but on the whole it's a slight affectation of speech with softer 'R's and not a friggin new dialect. Should we judge all of NY state based on the atrocious accents of a few Long Islanders?
On a lighter note however, whenever out of towners bring up the famous phrase "pahk the cah in ha-vahd yahd" I always like to point out, in my best Southie impression: "You cahn't pahk in ha-vahd yahd, they'll tow your cah!"
Video is still kind of difficult to alter like these photos were, but it's certainly possible for someone with the resources of a government of international organization behind them.
Although I totally agree with you, I must point out government-level resources are not required to reasonably fake video. Remember the movie Kung Pow? Amazing work done in that film placing modern actors in an old kung-fu flick. The budget was only around $10 million USD, and that was for a complete movie. Imagine how little it would cost to get the same effects for a clip only a few minutes long? A professional studio is all you need to make something convincing enough to fool anyone other than video experts, probably any news studio could do it. Scary, really.
You make very good points about how the adoption of ODF might take place, the problem is your model assumes MS's position and influence remains static during all those steps, which it won't. We've seen that MS will lobby, lie, bribe, etc to get what it wants. At every step of your theoretical adoption chain MS will find ways to disrupt it further. Like you said, it's often about price for companies, but I don't doubt that if it came down to it MS would cannibalize some of its Office profits to keep its monopoly in Office. After all, if everyone you do business with can only handle MS formats, then that's what your business is forced to use. MS will probably do something like subsidize those businesses for whom the cost of switching to OO is actually viable.
I guess I'm being fatalist, but I think my point is that the "wait and see, adoption will come gradually on its own" approach is going to need much more support from the community if we're actually going to affect any change on a large scale.
The other reply to you has it right. The sad fact is, all of those IMPORTANT issues you mentioned fly right out the f---'n window as soon as one of the candidates says "gay marriage".
I'm a MA resident, it's useless, the vast majority of the voting public here, just like all over the US, is mostly concerned with one or two polarizing issues that really do nothing to shape how the actual government will be run here. Open formats? Hah! I doubt even 2% of the people I see in a day know about the issue, let alone care about it, even though it's THEIR tax dollars being spent(wasted) on closed MS products that lock our own government's files away from us.
You CAN get a patent on a "perfectly novel and new invention" on your own, it simply costs money and involves hiring someone to help with the process.
I'm not sure if you noticed but hiring someone is a direct contradiction of doing it on your own. And while understandably the process does cost money, the problem is that without a patent attorney to assist in every step of the process it becomes very likely that the patent will be rejected for any number of procedural/wording reasons, at which point there are various resubmissions, fees, etc that come into play and drive the price up a lot. When you do an analysis of the likelihood of getting a patent that will protect your invention, along with how much that will cost with all these fees, you quickly see that hiring a professional to do it for you is really the only viable choice.
I think income taxes are a bad comparison for two reasons: 1) a person CAN reasonably fill out their own taxes correctly for reasonable time and cost up to a certain level of income complexity. Personally I have a couple bank accounts and stock trading accounts, work that often includes bonuses or payouts not part of my regular salary, and a few other various deductions year to year. I can with no problem complete my own income taxes at what I would gauge is the low-middle end of complexity. A person applying for a patent of a novel physical device with 3 claims would also be a similar low-complexity situation, yet they will most likely fail w/o professional help. 2) The tax code, like the patent system, is already broken in much the same way. The tax code is over 13,000 pages long! Saying that because you need professional help filing your taxes, the same should be true of patents is ridiculous when you look at how unnecessarily complicated much of the tax code is.
I'm not saying either process should, or even could, be reduced to a simple form. But to think that there's no way to streamline or correct a process overrun by red tape and legal obsfucation is false. At the start of the century inventors were able to get patents by going to the office and filling out a form! "Legalese inflation" has caused the whole process (taxes too) to become so complicated that no layman can reasonably use it. That's a crime against society. Would you think it were fair if you needed an attorney to help you renew your drivers license at the RMV? The patent system is a service by the government, there should be low and reasonable barriers to using that service but not more than is necessary for it to function as intended.
Not that I disagree with you, but I would like to point out I did specifically word the criteria as being an actual "novel and new invention", that's sort of a given.
The patent system can be BOTH 'best in the world' and 'broken and in crisis'. I don't know about being the best in the world, but I think it's completely obvious to anyone who's salary is not directly tied to the system that it is, in fact, a mess. Somehow I don't think patent attorneys really are the best qualified to make these statements. Yes, they know the industry exceedingly well, but it is their direct best interests for it to be complicated, hard to navigate, and functionally impossible to use without hiring one of their ilk. Having researched the costs and difficulties (and chances) of getting a simple patent I feel confident in saying that applying for a patent without an attorney to assist 99.99% guarantees you will not get the patent. Or it will cost you as much as hiring a patent attorney in the first place, or you'll get the patent but the wording will not be 'just so' and it will give you no protection.
If an inventor can't get a valid patent for a (let's assume) perfectly novel and new invention on their own with reasonable cost and chance of success then the system is BROKEN. That's how it should be defined.
I will admit that Tivo is at least upfront about the meaning of "lifetime service". But to me it seems rather... greedy for them to charge you again for the *same* amount of service but on a different machine, even if you physcially destroy the first box after the transfer. After all, what additional service are they really giving you for that extra $200? Ideally it should be a nominal service fee for the transfer, like $20 or $50 to cover CSR time, but if wishes were horses....
The free basic service is actually no longer even offered on new Tivos AFAIK, it was discontinued at the same time as the lifetime service contract option. The 30 second skip feature was 'hidden' and could be enabled by a specific button combination that programmed it to the ->| button. It was never an advertised feature to placate networks/advertisers, but apparently even this was not enough for those companies and they somehow pressured Tivo to remove it via a software update. That's what really bugs me. The free service provides very minimal functionality and isn't even an option anymore, and yet they still hold my box hostage and can and will change functionality on the fly. What happens if Tivo is forced out of business and they just brick all their customers' boxes as a final goodbye?
Used CD stores. RIAA won't get a cut from those sales (although neither will the artist) but you'll be legally purchasing at a significant discount from new material. If you want to help the artists then find their web page and order some merch direct. You can probably use the balance saved from buying used CDs vs new so it still works out to under $20/album and everyone but the RIAA gets a piece.
Basically, if you have a Series 2 with lifetime, they will for $200 let you transfer it to a Series 3
Really, they let you transfer it for only $200? Wow! What a steal. Didn't the lifetime service already cost you $300 on top of the Tivo unit cost? I'm not trolling here, I'm a Tivo owner myself, but I got a rediculous deal on the last Toshiba model that came with *free* Basic Service (3 day program listings, no auto-suggest shows). Having tried the full Tivo subscription with a 60 day free trial, I still couldn't justify the monthly subscription or the lifetime subscription when I got almost all the same functionality for free. The fact that Tivo charges you 2/3rds of the original lifetime subscription fee to "move" it to another Tivo sounds to me more like they're reselling you the same old donut again and again. I also own a small amount of Tivo stock because I thought they'd be doing great by now, but as the article says, they've got great mindshare but not much else.:( Tivo needs to figure out how to make money off it's customers while staying competitive price-wise. If I hadn't gotten my tivo with basic service so cheap I'd be using the cable company's DVR too.
And as a final rant I'm pretty ticked off that Tivo changes the terms of the deal on the fly by "upgrading" my Tivo with such "useful" features as disabling the 30 second skip. If I were under contract with them via a monthly or lifetime fee then it might make sense but since I don't pay them I'd say it's effectively (if not legally unfortunately) a bait-and-switch for them to change the functionality of the device I purchased and own. Yes, I understand I still connect to their network for scheduling, I'll gladly trade that right in exchange for them to stop mucking with my features in a negative way!
What many people fail to realize is that a business also employs people while an entertainer rarely does
A concert employs dozens, if not hundreds, from ticket takers to sound and lighting engineers. How many people work in a recording studio, or the factory that presses discs? [...] Just because you don't notice the army of black-clad figures behind the scenes putting it all together and making it work, doesn't mean they're absent or unnecessary.
But in most cases the entertainer does NOT directly employ these people, he is in fact a customer/associate of these people. The studio employs the sound engineers, if they weren't recording Artist 'A' then they'd have booked the time with Artist 'B'. If A's career goes down the tubes he's not taking money from those engineers with him, they'll record other artists. Same with concert venues. Yes, there's hundreds of people involved, they're hired by the venue, which can and will find other acts. Fact is, only the mega artists directly employ people, like an accountant, road manager, private stylist, etc. For the most part though a small artist is a one-man business. The analogy of the GP poster was that a small business owner is risking the jobs of his direct employees with business risks, he has responsibilities to other poeple's livelihoods directly with his decisions. This is NOT to say that a single musician or small band doesn't also have similar responsibilities, but for the most part they are only risking their own finances/well being with their businesses decisions more so than that of others.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to remember from a similar article a few months back that an astute slashdotter pointed to case law that basically said that a defendant cannot be compelled to produce evidence that does not normally exist. In other words, if there is not currently a method that exists (e.g. commercial program) for logging all RAM contents the court cannot force the defendant to create and then implement such a program/procedure just to create the evidence the prosecution seeks.
Does anyone know what I'm referring to or can provide links to such case law? Or am I totally off base with this?
You also have failed to mention any other candidate that supports constitutional government, supports sustainable policies, and has the voting record to match. Who exactly is it that is superior to Ron Paul in regards to reigning in an ever-expansive federal government which espouses dangerous fiscal and international policies? I'll end with this again, unless you can produce any other evidence of racism, your case is weak. And no, I cannot prove a negative, that is logically impossible.
Then where would you suggest we look? At yesterday's docket? You just ruled out the entire history of the court as being the place to look for case law, that makes zero sense. In addition, you seem to want to refute my statement yet agree with me, the SCOTUS has the power to strike down a law, specifically if it is unconstitutional. Gee, didn't I say EXACTLY that in my post? "The courts do indeed have the power to strike down a law if it is unconstitutional or overly broad, etc" Oh yes, yes I did. The OP did not qualify his use of the phrase "Strike it down" because it was mentioned in passing to support another point. The fact is it is a correct statement without specifying all the cases when it is and isn't true, there are valid cases where the SCOTUS can strike down the law, we agree on this, let's move on.
You mean in the EXACT same way that congressional war powers were transferred to the executive branch by the open-ended use of force legislation made by the congress? I will point out that that was NOT a declaration of war, something that ONLY the congress can do per the constitution. For your argument to hold water the President's nullification/ignoring of an unconstitutional law/redistribution of powers requires that he also not accept anything less than a full declaration of war from the congress before assuming his role as commander in chief. Without that declaration technically he cannot assume war powers PER THE CONSTITUTION. Any examples trotted out about the (mis)use of the armed forces by the president without a declaration of war historically are almost totally for operations lasting under 5 days and involving less than 100 troops. Mostly they were nothing more than displays of force without actually engaging in battle. The scale of the current engagement is irrefutably full blown war in cost, commitment, and scope.
In addition there are already prescribed methods of how to deal with a perceived unjust or unconstitutional law, and NONE OF THOSE METHODS ARE IGNORING THE LAW. The President does not have the power to simply ignore any law he disagrees with regardless of the reason. The law must be challenged or changed, not simply ignored, otherwise it is still breach of law. Try telling a cop arresting you, or the judge in court, on charges of minor drug possession that you disagree with the law therefore you may ignore it at will. As a citizen of the US, and an employee of the people, the President does not entertain such a power either, nor is presidential nullification of a law (other than veto) encoded in any US law or the constitution. I would very much like for you to demonstrate the portion of law that grants the President the power to ignore any law he disagrees with. And simply pointing out he took an oath to uphold the constitution does not suffice. Upholding the constitution requires following the processes outlined in that document itself. I would also point out that various abuses by this administration run counter to the argument that the current President is upholding the constitution in all of his actions, there are many cases which in fact demonstrate breaches of the constitution. Specifically prisoner abuses and removal of habeas corpus for detainees is prohibited by the Geneva Convention, which the US is a signatory thereof and that agreement supersedes any other law as it is an international tre
The argument about the urgency of a situation being a roadblock to changing the law is baseless. FISA was designed to allow retroactive warrants, which the administration could have applied for but never bothered to. And the wiretapping that went on outside of FISA rules went on for a period of YEARS so there was certainly plenty of time for them to begin changing the law to be in line with how they wanted to conduct operations. The fact that no changes were even proposed until AFTER the program was publicly outed shows that they had no intention of following the law. This only makes one wonder, how many other laws are being ignored in the name of fighting terrorism that we don't know about yet? How many of those are abuses that should never be allowed to occur?To think that prosecution in a court is the only thing those logs can be used for is naive. To think that the court may even be a remedy in all cases is also naive thanks to recent events like the passing of the 2006 Military Commissions Act and the Jose Padilla ruling.
Even if you agree with the Padilla verdict, the fact is that he was held in US custody for a period of years with no due process for charges that ultimately were never even brought against him. The charges he was convicted of recently were not the ones that the US used to justify his arrest and detainment and suspension of habeas corpus. Only after it became apparent that the SCOTUS was likely to rule against the government in regards to his detainment was he moved to the civilian system. Keep in mind this is a US citizen, regardless of the crimes he is charged with he is guaranteed constitutional protections which were denied until the government's hand was forced.
The problem at hand with the FISA issue is that the wiretaps are being used on Americans, located in America. It is not the cases of purely foreign wiretaps that people have issue with, it is the unsupervised use of them against NON-foreigners that is the problem. And the fact that the administration knowingly and willingly sidestepped mandatory FISA regulations early on in the process? Are they to be left completely unaccountable for that? You seem like a reasonable person who accepts the rule of law, however you also seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the very laws and checks you are advocating and believe in have already been breached. Also, the justification for expansion of powers along the lines of "we've stopped/will stop lots of crimes but we can't tell you about any of them" is hardly an acceptable reason for a government supposedly of and for the people. Do you disagree that a system of checks and balances cannot properly function if one side is completely cloaked in secrecy?
- A reference from rawstory.com, with the daily show clip.
- The Washington Post article
- Story in the New York Times
The NYT article deals mostly with how Cheney HAS BEEN flaunting the system of checks and balances already in place, even going so far as to request the abolition of the classification oversight committee itself! From the article: "Officials at the National Archives and the Justice Department confirmed the basic chronology of events cited in Mr. Waxman's letter.The letter said that after repeatedly refusing to comply with a routine annual request from the archives for data on his staff's classification of internal documents, the vice president's office in 2004 blocked an on-site inspection of records that other agencies of the executive branch regularly go through. "
I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions from these events, but I assure you, they are occurring.
So let me get this straight, if we go with a major telco who throttles bandwidth to non-extorted - er, I mean non-partnered - sites then we have to pay them extra to really use all of our bandwidth. OR we can go with a company such as this one and... pay extra to use all of our bandwidth.
This really hasn't gotten us very far. I'm glad that a company is doing this, it's much needed, and actually gives us a chance to vote with our wallets. But until someone who controls the lines offers a similar competitive plan I think we're going to be stuck with a lot of '6 of one, half dozen of the other' choices.
Wow, amazing. I post my opinion on who I think is a candidate that respects the Constitution, in response to someone who asked about alternative candidates, and I get marked as flamebait? Apparently some people just like abusing mod points. That's ok guys, you only prove my point when instead of discussing the issue, you shout it down. Close your ears and your eyes, keep voting the same two parties into office to enact the same bad policies. Don't blame me when the only way left to fix America is to use the box that comes after 'soap' and 'ballot'....
This post is Treat As Top Secret.
All of your examples come from a single newsletter published in 1992. Here is a link quoting the explanation and rebuttal from Paul. Also: Texas Monthly explained, "What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U. S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this." Interesting indeed that never before or since have such remarks come from him.
I challenge you to find any other evidence in either his writings, speeches, or voting history that support your argument that he is a racist.
Considering that none of his actions in office have led to racist policies I would say it's safe to say that will continue. However all of his other actions support sound fiscal policies, international relations, and smaller government run in-line with the powers granted in the Constitution. Show me one other candidate running that can boast that. Your response is typical of what I bemoaned in my original post, voters find one polarizing issue and focus on that to the exclusion of any other position, overlooking other pros and cons of candidates based on one kneejerk soundbyte. Do some fucking homework. And for the record, I'm registered as an independent and vote for candidates based on what I have researched, not just D or R like many mindless party drones. I would rejoice at ANY other political party being nationally recognized on ballots as it might finally break the stranglehold of the current (imho failed) two party system.
Douchebag, I'm not part of his campaign office. Check my comment history.
and even boston (pak it he == park it here).
If you think everyone in Boston, which itself is only one friggin city in all of MA, sounds like that then your own ignorance of travel is showing. Yes, there's some pretty bad accents downtown, but on the whole it's a slight affectation of speech with softer 'R's and not a friggin new dialect. Should we judge all of NY state based on the atrocious accents of a few Long Islanders?
On a lighter note however, whenever out of towners bring up the famous phrase "pahk the cah in ha-vahd yahd" I always like to point out, in my best Southie impression: "You cahn't pahk in ha-vahd yahd, they'll tow your cah!"
Video is still kind of difficult to alter like these photos were, but it's certainly possible for someone with the resources of a government of international organization behind them.
Although I totally agree with you, I must point out government-level resources are not required to reasonably fake video. Remember the movie Kung Pow? Amazing work done in that film placing modern actors in an old kung-fu flick. The budget was only around $10 million USD, and that was for a complete movie. Imagine how little it would cost to get the same effects for a clip only a few minutes long? A professional studio is all you need to make something convincing enough to fool anyone other than video experts, probably any news studio could do it. Scary, really.
You make very good points about how the adoption of ODF might take place, the problem is your model assumes MS's position and influence remains static during all those steps, which it won't. We've seen that MS will lobby, lie, bribe, etc to get what it wants. At every step of your theoretical adoption chain MS will find ways to disrupt it further. Like you said, it's often about price for companies, but I don't doubt that if it came down to it MS would cannibalize some of its Office profits to keep its monopoly in Office. After all, if everyone you do business with can only handle MS formats, then that's what your business is forced to use. MS will probably do something like subsidize those businesses for whom the cost of switching to OO is actually viable.
I guess I'm being fatalist, but I think my point is that the "wait and see, adoption will come gradually on its own" approach is going to need much more support from the community if we're actually going to affect any change on a large scale.
The other reply to you has it right. The sad fact is, all of those IMPORTANT issues you mentioned fly right out the f---'n window as soon as one of the candidates says "gay marriage".
I'm a MA resident, it's useless, the vast majority of the voting public here, just like all over the US, is mostly concerned with one or two polarizing issues that really do nothing to shape how the actual government will be run here. Open formats? Hah! I doubt even 2% of the people I see in a day know about the issue, let alone care about it, even though it's THEIR tax dollars being spent(wasted) on closed MS products that lock our own government's files away from us.
You CAN get a patent on a "perfectly novel and new invention" on your own, it simply costs money and involves hiring someone to help with the process.
I'm not sure if you noticed but hiring someone is a direct contradiction of doing it on your own. And while understandably the process does cost money, the problem is that without a patent attorney to assist in every step of the process it becomes very likely that the patent will be rejected for any number of procedural/wording reasons, at which point there are various resubmissions, fees, etc that come into play and drive the price up a lot. When you do an analysis of the likelihood of getting a patent that will protect your invention, along with how much that will cost with all these fees, you quickly see that hiring a professional to do it for you is really the only viable choice.
I think income taxes are a bad comparison for two reasons: 1) a person CAN reasonably fill out their own taxes correctly for reasonable time and cost up to a certain level of income complexity. Personally I have a couple bank accounts and stock trading accounts, work that often includes bonuses or payouts not part of my regular salary, and a few other various deductions year to year. I can with no problem complete my own income taxes at what I would gauge is the low-middle end of complexity. A person applying for a patent of a novel physical device with 3 claims would also be a similar low-complexity situation, yet they will most likely fail w/o professional help.
2) The tax code, like the patent system, is already broken in much the same way. The tax code is over 13,000 pages long! Saying that because you need professional help filing your taxes, the same should be true of patents is ridiculous when you look at how unnecessarily complicated much of the tax code is.
I'm not saying either process should, or even could, be reduced to a simple form. But to think that there's no way to streamline or correct a process overrun by red tape and legal obsfucation is false. At the start of the century inventors were able to get patents by going to the office and filling out a form! "Legalese inflation" has caused the whole process (taxes too) to become so complicated that no layman can reasonably use it. That's a crime against society. Would you think it were fair if you needed an attorney to help you renew your drivers license at the RMV? The patent system is a service by the government, there should be low and reasonable barriers to using that service but not more than is necessary for it to function as intended.
Not that I disagree with you, but I would like to point out I did specifically word the criteria as being an actual "novel and new invention", that's sort of a given.
The patent system can be BOTH 'best in the world' and 'broken and in crisis'. I don't know about being the best in the world, but I think it's completely obvious to anyone who's salary is not directly tied to the system that it is, in fact, a mess. Somehow I don't think patent attorneys really are the best qualified to make these statements. Yes, they know the industry exceedingly well, but it is their direct best interests for it to be complicated, hard to navigate, and functionally impossible to use without hiring one of their ilk. Having researched the costs and difficulties (and chances) of getting a simple patent I feel confident in saying that applying for a patent without an attorney to assist 99.99% guarantees you will not get the patent. Or it will cost you as much as hiring a patent attorney in the first place, or you'll get the patent but the wording will not be 'just so' and it will give you no protection.
If an inventor can't get a valid patent for a (let's assume) perfectly novel and new invention on their own with reasonable cost and chance of success then the system is BROKEN. That's how it should be defined.
I will admit that Tivo is at least upfront about the meaning of "lifetime service". But to me it seems rather... greedy for them to charge you again for the *same* amount of service but on a different machine, even if you physcially destroy the first box after the transfer. After all, what additional service are they really giving you for that extra $200? Ideally it should be a nominal service fee for the transfer, like $20 or $50 to cover CSR time, but if wishes were horses....
The free basic service is actually no longer even offered on new Tivos AFAIK, it was discontinued at the same time as the lifetime service contract option. The 30 second skip feature was 'hidden' and could be enabled by a specific button combination that programmed it to the ->| button. It was never an advertised feature to placate networks/advertisers, but apparently even this was not enough for those companies and they somehow pressured Tivo to remove it via a software update.
That's what really bugs me. The free service provides very minimal functionality and isn't even an option anymore, and yet they still hold my box hostage and can and will change functionality on the fly. What happens if Tivo is forced out of business and they just brick all their customers' boxes as a final goodbye?
Used CD stores. RIAA won't get a cut from those sales (although neither will the artist) but you'll be legally purchasing at a significant discount from new material. If you want to help the artists then find their web page and order some merch direct. You can probably use the balance saved from buying used CDs vs new so it still works out to under $20/album and everyone but the RIAA gets a piece.
I'm not trolling here, I'm a Tivo owner myself, but I got a rediculous deal on the last Toshiba model that came with *free* Basic Service (3 day program listings, no auto-suggest shows). Having tried the full Tivo subscription with a 60 day free trial, I still couldn't justify the monthly subscription or the lifetime subscription when I got almost all the same functionality for free. The fact that Tivo charges you 2/3rds of the original lifetime subscription fee to "move" it to another Tivo sounds to me more like they're reselling you the same old donut again and again.
I also own a small amount of Tivo stock because I thought they'd be doing great by now, but as the article says, they've got great mindshare but not much else.
And as a final rant I'm pretty ticked off that Tivo changes the terms of the deal on the fly by "upgrading" my Tivo with such "useful" features as disabling the 30 second skip. If I were under contract with them via a monthly or lifetime fee then it might make sense but since I don't pay them I'd say it's effectively (if not legally unfortunately) a bait-and-switch for them to change the functionality of the device I purchased and own. Yes, I understand I still connect to their network for scheduling, I'll gladly trade that right in exchange for them to stop mucking with my features in a negative way!
But in most cases the entertainer does NOT directly employ these people, he is in fact a customer/associate of these people. The studio employs the sound engineers, if they weren't recording Artist 'A' then they'd have booked the time with Artist 'B'. If A's career goes down the tubes he's not taking money from those engineers with him, they'll record other artists. Same with concert venues. Yes, there's hundreds of people involved, they're hired by the venue, which can and will find other acts.
Fact is, only the mega artists directly employ people, like an accountant, road manager, private stylist, etc. For the most part though a small artist is a one-man business. The analogy of the GP poster was that a small business owner is risking the jobs of his direct employees with business risks, he has responsibilities to other poeple's livelihoods directly with his decisions. This is NOT to say that a single musician or small band doesn't also have similar responsibilities, but for the most part they are only risking their own finances/well being with their businesses decisions more so than that of others.