Well, you can certainly argue it as a defense, though it's not carte blanche to stop criminal charges from being filed, and it's near useless as a defense against a civil suit.
Except in satire, you know the person performing is not the actual subject. When SNL does a skit featuring GWB, you know it's not really the president and is done for comedic value. In this case, the distinction cannot be made. By your definition of satire, I could assume your identity and rack up credit cards under your name/SSN, and when caught claim, "it's satire, see, wasn't it funny?" when we both know it's identity theft and credit fraud.
Well, here we both know it's libel and possibly harrassment.
This is civil law, therefore, reasonable doubt is not the standard. And anyway, most kids who would be stupid enough to have done this, have probably been pretty dumb about keeping it a secret.
Seems like all school administrators these days are requiring the LAW to teach students.
This is because the parents have made it this way. You wouldn't believe how much the hands of administrators and teachers are tied when it comes to disciplining a student in a public school. I wouldn't last a day without a lawsuit.
Case in point. My wife is an elementary school teacher. She had to take "restraint training" and I asked her what that was. It's training to "restrain" an unruly and potentially violent student. But here's the thing, she's not allowed to touch the student! The student can physically assualt her and the other children in the classroom, but she can't grab him by the wrist. Remember the saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"? Well, the students are the only ones allowed to have sticks and stones. Administrators and teachers can't even use words.
The best that can be hoped for is that the parents will take care of the situation, that's it. You can't punish a student anymore. You can't expel them. Parent's will sue, district's will give in. Basically, the unruly kids with poor parents have won. They can do whatever they want without any recourse. Which is why I hope this lawsuit succeeds. It's about time that the parents and courts agreed that sometimes kids need to be disciplined.
I think the proper way to deal with this is to have MySpace take the page down. Then at the next school assembly ask the perpetrator to come forward. Explain that if the responsible party owns up they will receive a rather light punishment however, if no one owns up an investigation will be done and, if the responsible party is found, a serve punishment will be given.
What world are you living in? Has that technique ever worked for you? In all my years of school, that technique never brought somebody forward to confess. What would probably happen is that nobody would come forward. An investigation would take place, if they find the person, they will be suspended. The parent's will then sue the school district because "Poor little Johnnie is just a young kid and couldn't possibly know better" costing the school district (i.e. all taxpayers) money to fight the case. The case will be posted on slashdot as "Computer loving teen expelled from school for promoting first amendment rights" and the slashbots will come out in full force defending his actions and talking about how bad America, it's schools and especially teachers are.
No, I think what is being done here is exactly right. You have to strike fear into the people with control sometimes, and in this case, it's the parents.
It is important for kids to learn that their actions have consequences and to take responsibility.
And you know who a great teacher of that is? A pissed of father with a belt.
This is not about violating Copyrights. Google is saying that yahoo and MSN have legal rights to these books and so should we.
Just because you have legal rights to property that you have paid/bartered/negotiated for or otherwise obtained, does not mean that I nor anyone else have a legal right to the same property.
This may turn into a new form of discrimination where publishers can say "we dont like you so No you cant use my books....but we like this guy" Personally, I say if you make it open to one....you must make it open to all.
This discrimination happens currently, and at least in some cases, is needed. If you wanted to make it that anything available to somebody, must be made available to anybody (even at equivalent pricing, etc.), you're in for a world of problems.
Companies could not donate software since by making it available to one group for free, they would have to be able to make it available to everybody for free. Companies could not limit resellers/distributors to only those that they feel meet their requirements for customer service or volume or any other metric.
Protected classes exist to protect from discrimation due to certain factors, but they only apply to the protected classes.
The library purchases a book from the publisher, so in effect pays a fee for the book. The book is a physical item and as such, one copy of the book can only be used by one person at a time. So there is a method of licensing or rate-limiting built into the system inherently. But with a digital library, unless DRM is thrown into the mix (and we all know how well that goes over on Slashdot), there is no way to license or rate-limit the viewing of the digital book. The difference being that a library loans a book, and in effect what you want is the ability to buy a digital version of the book (which can be done already in some instances).
One thing I've noticed (while doing the wash in our harvest gold washer and dryer), is that it seems the appliances of yesteryear (at least the ones that are around and we remember, rather than the ones that sucked so much we got rid of them and forgot them), tended to be at the higher end of quality.
Compare that to now where you have a wide range of quality in whatever you buy. You can buy an el-cheapo appliance at Walmart, or a high end Sub-Zero/Wolf/etc. appliance and pay many multiples more. It seems like in the past there was one level of quality, but it was generally pretty high.
Talking about efficiency. I got an upright freezer for free from a local guy who needed it out of his house. I haven't plugged it in because after doing the research, a new one will recover it's $300 price tag in just about two years because of increased efficiency. The old unit consumes 1200kWh/year, the new one 300kWh/yr. Electricity around me is about 14 cents/kWh. It's not a "little efficiency" it's huge strides in efficiency.
I read your post, and the irony is, I can't tell if you are trolling or are ignorant yourself. I'm sorry, but I really can't.
Democracy dies when voters get their non-news from television instead of researching sites like Vote Smart
You point out that people should research sites like Vote Smart. What is inherently more reliable about Vote Smart than a television station? Nothing. Fact of the matter is, people have thousands upon thousands of sources to get information from. They don't have time to research all, or even anything close to a representative sampling, and since most people don't want to spend every waking moment researching a subject that does not directly affect their daily lives, they generally choose convenient methods (TV, radio, popular web sites). I'm not saying that Vote Smart isn't a good source, I just don't think you can expect people to know of all that many web sites.
when voters leave school without a basic education and never get it later.
It's very popular here on Slashdot to criticize the American education system. But I can tell you that most people in the U.S. do receive a basic education, and a good one at that. Sure, there are areas, primarily in poorer areas, where there is a lot of room for improvement, but by and large American schools are quite good. But I think rather than attacking basic education, you meant to attack what is taught in public schools nowadays. And again, I think this goes back to what I was saying above, it's all about daily life. If I have a wife, two kids, a mortgage, and a job that's paying me $60k a year, I'm not directly affected by the differences of the Sunni and the Shi'a. I'm concerned about taxes, education, raising my kids, enjoying life. Sure, there are lots of important issues, but a factory worker doesn't have a pressing need to know the customs of foreign cultures he will probably never encounter.
How can US voters make wise decisions if they don't know who borders whom, or the difference between Sunni and Shi'a (read to near the end)?
Again, borders, while great to know for geography tests and international travelers, don't mean much to the average person. There are a lot of American's who never leave the country, even quite a few who never leave a single state or region. Sure, knowledge is great, and knowing more never hurts anybody, but if it's not important to the person, why should they be criticized for not knowing every border on the planet (and I'd be willing to bet there are plenty that you don't know about)?
Your link for the difference between Sunni and Shi'a (if I'm reading the correct passage, and I believe I am) is really stretching it. It's supposedly a reference (though cited, yet I personally do not know the cite) to something George W. has said. Now, I am no fan of W, but I also know that he is not a gifted orator, and has a tendency to mangle his words. In addition, I'm not sure that he needs this knowledge. Sure, advisors should be making him aware of the cultural differences, but I don't know that I could really claim to know any of the differences between the two sects (do you the differences?). I know they exist, and past that, not much more. And this is after living for two years with a Muslim (and to be honest, I don't know if he was Sunni or Shi'a).
Sure, there are valid reason to be upset at this poll, and there are reasons to be upset at the average American for not being informed on certain issues. But you just came off as either an elitist troll, or one of the ignorant masses you seem to abhor (I'm sure you're a nice guy, I'm just refering to your post).
Yes, if your email goes down your only inconvenienced, but that's not the "doomsday scenario" envisioned to combat against. There are many areas of our economy and society that now rely on the internet in some way, shape or form. Imagine if all of a sudden all ATMs stopped working, bank tellers couldn't access accounts and credit cards stopped working. On a small scale, it's no big deal really. But on a nationwide scale, it causes panic. Remember, people don't react rationally (hell, I yell at the TV set, and I know that's not rational).
More and more of our telecommunications infrastructure is potenetially vulnerable. And without the ability to check up on friends and family, a physical attack would be magnified by the psychological impact of not being able to see if somebody is ok and the worrying involved.
So an attack on our network infrastucture could be very bad for the US. Do I think it's likely? No. But in 2000 if you asked me if I thought terrorists would be able to hijack four airplanes simultaneously and crash them into buildings, I'd have probably said no. It's not the body count that hurts us most, it's the psychological effects. We were attacked here on our soil by a foreign enemy, and that was something new to us.
I don't think that this lobbyist is going to help us, but then again, I've become more and more cynical about our government being able to accomplish anything (whether it be in regards to rights, terrorism, foreign affairs, or even the tax code) so I'm not exactly unbiased. It's easy to say that cyber terrorism hasn't really caused any problems, and never will. And you'll probably be right for a while. But eventually, there is a good chance that statement will be proven false.
Yes, people actually pay a lot of money to have simple things installed. It's not so much the physical installation though, it's all the settings, since most manufacturers don't ship the products pre-setup. Case in point, there are a number of Up-Converting DVD players that don't come out of the box with the HDMI port enabled. You have to go through menus (sometimes these procedures aren't even in the user manuals) to set it up.
Now if you are a technical newbie, plopping down thousands of dollars at the local BestBuy for a new HD/surround sound home theater, what's another $100-$200 to have somebody else unpack the boxes, wire it up, set it up, and remove the empty boxes for you? Not that I would do it, but there's a market for it, especially at the high end.
Hell, I made some money one christmas break working in the warehouse of an upscale electronics seller (think BestBuy with high quality stuff) and you'd be amazed at what people would offer us to drive to their house, set up a TV (this is when HD's were new and people were still buying large SDTV CRTs) and cable it up. A minimum $200 under the table for the simplest of jobs. People will pay for a lot of things they don't need to.
-dave
Re:But what if Microsoft offered it all together?
on
Windows vs Mac Security
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Of course most on Slashdot would cry monopoly if they included all of the features in the OS. Around here MS is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
batteries last about the same as it did 10 year ago
Maybe it's just my experience, but battery life has gotten much better. The phone I had back in 2000 couldn't go more than 24 hours without a charge. Mostly standby, a little talking. The phones I had in the 2002-2005 time frame could go about 2 days without a charge. My current phone goes for about 4 days on a charge. I think that's progress. Granted, there are factors I'm not addressing here that affect battery life (signal strength, amount of talk time/standby time, etc.), but just in general, I think battery life is one of the few things that have improved on cell phones.
Most judges won't dismiss based on something as minor as the wrong date. In some jurisdictions (Virginia, for example), even something like the cop not showing up won't automatically get you off (despite the fact that he's the only witness, therefore you're losing the crucial right to cross-examination).
True. For whatever reason people think that the smallest mistake will get them out of a ticket. I have been in traffic court in 3 states, sometimes with a lawyer, sometimes without, and for the most parts, judges are looking for the truth, and aren't too concerned with technicalities.
If you've been tagged with radar/laser, the best solution for most people, especially those with a clean record, is just to plead guilty (IN COURT -- don't pay in advance), apologize, and ask for the mercy of the court. Emphasize your record, and that you really want to keep it spot free and promise that this was a one-time thing. If your case has anything unusual about it, then it might be beneficial to argue, but in most cases it's not and will only convince the judge that you're not remorseful and therefore deserve the full punishment.
FALSE. Do not plead guilty. Especially depending on state. NY will plead down just about any speeding ticket to a non-moving violation. Keeps your record clean and your insurance rates from rising. Most prosecutors are more than willing to plea it down if you show up to court (or have a lawyer). I've done this many times. The thing to do is be polite to the officer (a must, they do record your attitude and this will be reflected in a plea deal), plead not guilty. If you are out of the jurisdiction, hire an attorney, he'll plea it out over the phone. If you are local, show up at court, and it'll be pled down. This has worked, without exception, for me on four cases in a five year period, and for my friends on numerous occasions.
Unless you are ready to accept the entire fine, and the insurance rate hike associated with it, do not plead guilty.
wtf would you need a "screen magnifier" for a word processor anyway? For a browser you can change the text size, and for any word processor there's ZOOM menu option which you can set to 200% or 300%. What am I missing here?
Your method doesn't increase the size of the menu options or buttons, only the typed text on the screen. That is what you are missing.
I don't imagine they'd be using the formatting options all that much.
Just because a blind person is creating the document, doesn't mean that only blind people will be using the document.
but I think it is so the teacher doesn't have to actually "teach" math, but instead just instructs the students to press specific buttons on the calculator and record the results
Interesting that my mother-in-law, a junior high math teacher, complains about exactly the opposite. That the students whine about learning math, and insist that a calculator is a proper way to learn math. She does not let them use a calculator until they have mastered the mathematical concepts. And before you start criticizing the math teachers, maybe you should look at the attitudes and mathematical skill levels of the parents, and see where the "calculator as a crutch" mentality comes from.
Wow, you got "innocent until proven guilty" and "turns out it wasn't the parents, but some nut-job ex-teacher" within three sentences. Until he's convicted, doesn't your first statement still hold true?
I believe that personally I couldn't support it in my family. But that doesn't mean that my views should overshadow the views of others when it comes to their bodies. Just because I believe something, doesn't mean that I force that belief onto all others.
and use IP telephones instead of the piece of crap system that we currently have
You mean that highly reliable, available at any location (physical, non-moving location) that we have now? The one that has the ability to use additional (read cellular) systems to provide service to moving locations? Yeah, a real piece of crap it is.
POTS may not do everything, but there is no other system that allows you to make a call as reliably.
While what you say is true, it's not quite black and white. The old carriers have legacy agreements (pensions, etc.) that the new airlines do not. Sure, we could argue about whether those legacy programs should have been enacted, etc. but it isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison to the discount airlines. Also, (again, the merits could be argued) the discount airlines serve relatively few airports. Granted, they serve a decent percentage of the population, but they don't serve the number of airports the legacy carriers do. This is beginning to change, led by JetBlue, which will start servicing more and more airports.
For similar reasons that embassy's are considered part of the nation they represent?
Embassies are considered part of the nation they represent (and are purchased as sovereign lands). But you advocate an anarchist (anarchy in it's original meaning: no government, not necessarily some violent, lord of the flies interpretation) situation. Embassy grounds are subjects to the laws of their country (i.e. US Embassies are subject to US laws). So what sovereign nation would those sections of airports belong to?
especially for fairly victimless crimes
Fraud and racketeering are victimless? Since when? They aren't violent, and they aren't necessarily all that serious, but there are still victims. And how do you propose dividing laws into ones where "you can be arrested at airports" and those where "you can't be arrested at airports?"
Slashdot Mirror
No, what I actually meant was poor-parenting skill parents. But I didn't do a good job at making that a clear statement. Poor vs. rich doesn't matter.
-dave
Well, you can certainly argue it as a defense, though it's not carte blanche to stop criminal charges from being filed, and it's near useless as a defense against a civil suit.
-dave
Except in satire, you know the person performing is not the actual subject. When SNL does a skit featuring GWB, you know it's not really the president and is done for comedic value. In this case, the distinction cannot be made. By your definition of satire, I could assume your identity and rack up credit cards under your name/SSN, and when caught claim, "it's satire, see, wasn't it funny?" when we both know it's identity theft and credit fraud.
Well, here we both know it's libel and possibly harrassment.
-dave
This is civil law, therefore, reasonable doubt is not the standard. And anyway, most kids who would be stupid enough to have done this, have probably been pretty dumb about keeping it a secret.
-dave
Seems like all school administrators these days are requiring the LAW to teach students.
This is because the parents have made it this way. You wouldn't believe how much the hands of administrators and teachers are tied when it comes to disciplining a student in a public school. I wouldn't last a day without a lawsuit.
Case in point. My wife is an elementary school teacher. She had to take "restraint training" and I asked her what that was. It's training to "restrain" an unruly and potentially violent student. But here's the thing, she's not allowed to touch the student! The student can physically assualt her and the other children in the classroom, but she can't grab him by the wrist. Remember the saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"? Well, the students are the only ones allowed to have sticks and stones. Administrators and teachers can't even use words.
The best that can be hoped for is that the parents will take care of the situation, that's it. You can't punish a student anymore. You can't expel them. Parent's will sue, district's will give in. Basically, the unruly kids with poor parents have won. They can do whatever they want without any recourse. Which is why I hope this lawsuit succeeds. It's about time that the parents and courts agreed that sometimes kids need to be disciplined.
-dave
I think the proper way to deal with this is to have MySpace take the page down. Then at the next school assembly ask the perpetrator to come forward. Explain that if the responsible party owns up they will receive a rather light punishment however, if no one owns up an investigation will be done and, if the responsible party is found, a serve punishment will be given.
What world are you living in? Has that technique ever worked for you? In all my years of school, that technique never brought somebody forward to confess. What would probably happen is that nobody would come forward. An investigation would take place, if they find the person, they will be suspended. The parent's will then sue the school district because "Poor little Johnnie is just a young kid and couldn't possibly know better" costing the school district (i.e. all taxpayers) money to fight the case. The case will be posted on slashdot as "Computer loving teen expelled from school for promoting first amendment rights" and the slashbots will come out in full force defending his actions and talking about how bad America, it's schools and especially teachers are.
No, I think what is being done here is exactly right. You have to strike fear into the people with control sometimes, and in this case, it's the parents.
It is important for kids to learn that their actions have consequences and to take responsibility.
And you know who a great teacher of that is? A pissed of father with a belt.
-dave
This is not about violating Copyrights. Google is saying that yahoo and MSN have legal rights to these books and so should we.
Just because you have legal rights to property that you have paid/bartered/negotiated for or otherwise obtained, does not mean that I nor anyone else have a legal right to the same property.
This may turn into a new form of discrimination where publishers can say "we dont like you so No you cant use my books....but we like this guy" Personally, I say if you make it open to one....you must make it open to all.
This discrimination happens currently, and at least in some cases, is needed. If you wanted to make it that anything available to somebody, must be made available to anybody (even at equivalent pricing, etc.), you're in for a world of problems.
Companies could not donate software since by making it available to one group for free, they would have to be able to make it available to everybody for free. Companies could not limit resellers/distributors to only those that they feel meet their requirements for customer service or volume or any other metric.
Protected classes exist to protect from discrimation due to certain factors, but they only apply to the protected classes.
-dave
The library purchases a book from the publisher, so in effect pays a fee for the book. The book is a physical item and as such, one copy of the book can only be used by one person at a time. So there is a method of licensing or rate-limiting built into the system inherently. But with a digital library, unless DRM is thrown into the mix (and we all know how well that goes over on Slashdot), there is no way to license or rate-limit the viewing of the digital book. The difference being that a library loans a book, and in effect what you want is the ability to buy a digital version of the book (which can be done already in some instances).
-dave
One thing I've noticed (while doing the wash in our harvest gold washer and dryer), is that it seems the appliances of yesteryear (at least the ones that are around and we remember, rather than the ones that sucked so much we got rid of them and forgot them), tended to be at the higher end of quality.
Compare that to now where you have a wide range of quality in whatever you buy. You can buy an el-cheapo appliance at Walmart, or a high end Sub-Zero/Wolf/etc. appliance and pay many multiples more. It seems like in the past there was one level of quality, but it was generally pretty high.
Talking about efficiency. I got an upright freezer for free from a local guy who needed it out of his house. I haven't plugged it in because after doing the research, a new one will recover it's $300 price tag in just about two years because of increased efficiency. The old unit consumes 1200kWh/year, the new one 300kWh/yr. Electricity around me is about 14 cents/kWh. It's not a "little efficiency" it's huge strides in efficiency.
-dave
I read your post, and the irony is, I can't tell if you are trolling or are ignorant yourself. I'm sorry, but I really can't.
Democracy dies when voters get their non-news from television instead of researching sites like Vote Smart
You point out that people should research sites like Vote Smart. What is inherently more reliable about Vote Smart than a television station? Nothing. Fact of the matter is, people have thousands upon thousands of sources to get information from. They don't have time to research all, or even anything close to a representative sampling, and since most people don't want to spend every waking moment researching a subject that does not directly affect their daily lives, they generally choose convenient methods (TV, radio, popular web sites). I'm not saying that Vote Smart isn't a good source, I just don't think you can expect people to know of all that many web sites.
when voters leave school without a basic education and never get it later.
It's very popular here on Slashdot to criticize the American education system. But I can tell you that most people in the U.S. do receive a basic education, and a good one at that. Sure, there are areas, primarily in poorer areas, where there is a lot of room for improvement, but by and large American schools are quite good. But I think rather than attacking basic education, you meant to attack what is taught in public schools nowadays. And again, I think this goes back to what I was saying above, it's all about daily life. If I have a wife, two kids, a mortgage, and a job that's paying me $60k a year, I'm not directly affected by the differences of the Sunni and the Shi'a. I'm concerned about taxes, education, raising my kids, enjoying life. Sure, there are lots of important issues, but a factory worker doesn't have a pressing need to know the customs of foreign cultures he will probably never encounter.
How can US voters make wise decisions if they don't know who borders whom, or the difference between Sunni and Shi'a (read to near the end)?
Again, borders, while great to know for geography tests and international travelers, don't mean much to the average person. There are a lot of American's who never leave the country, even quite a few who never leave a single state or region. Sure, knowledge is great, and knowing more never hurts anybody, but if it's not important to the person, why should they be criticized for not knowing every border on the planet (and I'd be willing to bet there are plenty that you don't know about)?
Your link for the difference between Sunni and Shi'a (if I'm reading the correct passage, and I believe I am) is really stretching it. It's supposedly a reference (though cited, yet I personally do not know the cite) to something George W. has said. Now, I am no fan of W, but I also know that he is not a gifted orator, and has a tendency to mangle his words. In addition, I'm not sure that he needs this knowledge. Sure, advisors should be making him aware of the cultural differences, but I don't know that I could really claim to know any of the differences between the two sects (do you the differences?). I know they exist, and past that, not much more. And this is after living for two years with a Muslim (and to be honest, I don't know if he was Sunni or Shi'a).
Sure, there are valid reason to be upset at this poll, and there are reasons to be upset at the average American for not being informed on certain issues. But you just came off as either an elitist troll, or one of the ignorant masses you seem to abhor (I'm sure you're a nice guy, I'm just refering to your post).
-dave
Yes, if your email goes down your only inconvenienced, but that's not the "doomsday scenario" envisioned to combat against. There are many areas of our economy and society that now rely on the internet in some way, shape or form. Imagine if all of a sudden all ATMs stopped working, bank tellers couldn't access accounts and credit cards stopped working. On a small scale, it's no big deal really. But on a nationwide scale, it causes panic. Remember, people don't react rationally (hell, I yell at the TV set, and I know that's not rational).
More and more of our telecommunications infrastructure is potenetially vulnerable. And without the ability to check up on friends and family, a physical attack would be magnified by the psychological impact of not being able to see if somebody is ok and the worrying involved.
So an attack on our network infrastucture could be very bad for the US. Do I think it's likely? No. But in 2000 if you asked me if I thought terrorists would be able to hijack four airplanes simultaneously and crash them into buildings, I'd have probably said no. It's not the body count that hurts us most, it's the psychological effects. We were attacked here on our soil by a foreign enemy, and that was something new to us.
I don't think that this lobbyist is going to help us, but then again, I've become more and more cynical about our government being able to accomplish anything (whether it be in regards to rights, terrorism, foreign affairs, or even the tax code) so I'm not exactly unbiased. It's easy to say that cyber terrorism hasn't really caused any problems, and never will. And you'll probably be right for a while. But eventually, there is a good chance that statement will be proven false.
-dave
Yes, people actually pay a lot of money to have simple things installed. It's not so much the physical installation though, it's all the settings, since most manufacturers don't ship the products pre-setup. Case in point, there are a number of Up-Converting DVD players that don't come out of the box with the HDMI port enabled. You have to go through menus (sometimes these procedures aren't even in the user manuals) to set it up.
Now if you are a technical newbie, plopping down thousands of dollars at the local BestBuy for a new HD/surround sound home theater, what's another $100-$200 to have somebody else unpack the boxes, wire it up, set it up, and remove the empty boxes for you? Not that I would do it, but there's a market for it, especially at the high end.
Hell, I made some money one christmas break working in the warehouse of an upscale electronics seller (think BestBuy with high quality stuff) and you'd be amazed at what people would offer us to drive to their house, set up a TV (this is when HD's were new and people were still buying large SDTV CRTs) and cable it up. A minimum $200 under the table for the simplest of jobs. People will pay for a lot of things they don't need to.
-dave
Of course most on Slashdot would cry monopoly if they included all of the features in the OS. Around here MS is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
-dave
They already exist:
Firefly for Cingular
Can't get the long URL links to work right.
-dave
batteries last about the same as it did 10 year ago
Maybe it's just my experience, but battery life has gotten much better. The phone I had back in 2000 couldn't go more than 24 hours without a charge. Mostly standby, a little talking. The phones I had in the 2002-2005 time frame could go about 2 days without a charge. My current phone goes for about 4 days on a charge. I think that's progress. Granted, there are factors I'm not addressing here that affect battery life (signal strength, amount of talk time/standby time, etc.), but just in general, I think battery life is one of the few things that have improved on cell phones.
-dave
Most judges won't dismiss based on something as minor as the wrong date. In some jurisdictions (Virginia, for example), even something like the cop not showing up won't automatically get you off (despite the fact that he's the only witness, therefore you're losing the crucial right to cross-examination).
True. For whatever reason people think that the smallest mistake will get them out of a ticket. I have been in traffic court in 3 states, sometimes with a lawyer, sometimes without, and for the most parts, judges are looking for the truth, and aren't too concerned with technicalities.
If you've been tagged with radar/laser, the best solution for most people, especially those with a clean record, is just to plead guilty (IN COURT -- don't pay in advance), apologize, and ask for the mercy of the court. Emphasize your record, and that you really want to keep it spot free and promise that this was a one-time thing. If your case has anything unusual about it, then it might be beneficial to argue, but in most cases it's not and will only convince the judge that you're not remorseful and therefore deserve the full punishment.
FALSE. Do not plead guilty. Especially depending on state. NY will plead down just about any speeding ticket to a non-moving violation. Keeps your record clean and your insurance rates from rising. Most prosecutors are more than willing to plea it down if you show up to court (or have a lawyer). I've done this many times. The thing to do is be polite to the officer (a must, they do record your attitude and this will be reflected in a plea deal), plead not guilty. If you are out of the jurisdiction, hire an attorney, he'll plea it out over the phone. If you are local, show up at court, and it'll be pled down. This has worked, without exception, for me on four cases in a five year period, and for my friends on numerous occasions.
Unless you are ready to accept the entire fine, and the insurance rate hike associated with it, do not plead guilty.
-dave
wtf would you need a "screen magnifier" for a word processor anyway? For a browser you can change the text size, and for any word processor there's ZOOM menu option which you can set to 200% or 300%. What am I missing here?
Your method doesn't increase the size of the menu options or buttons, only the typed text on the screen. That is what you are missing.
I don't imagine they'd be using the formatting options all that much.
Just because a blind person is creating the document, doesn't mean that only blind people will be using the document.
-dave
but I think it is so the teacher doesn't have to actually "teach" math, but instead just instructs the students to press specific buttons on the calculator and record the results
Interesting that my mother-in-law, a junior high math teacher, complains about exactly the opposite. That the students whine about learning math, and insist that a calculator is a proper way to learn math. She does not let them use a calculator until they have mastered the mathematical concepts. And before you start criticizing the math teachers, maybe you should look at the attitudes and mathematical skill levels of the parents, and see where the "calculator as a crutch" mentality comes from.
-dave
Wow, you got "innocent until proven guilty" and "turns out it wasn't the parents, but some nut-job ex-teacher" within three sentences. Until he's convicted, doesn't your first statement still hold true?
-dave
I believe that personally I couldn't support it in my family. But that doesn't mean that my views should overshadow the views of others when it comes to their bodies. Just because I believe something, doesn't mean that I force that belief onto all others.
-dave
POTS may not do everything, but there is no other system that allows you to make a call as reliably.
-dave
While what you say is true, it's not quite black and white. The old carriers have legacy agreements (pensions, etc.) that the new airlines do not. Sure, we could argue about whether those legacy programs should have been enacted, etc. but it isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison to the discount airlines. Also, (again, the merits could be argued) the discount airlines serve relatively few airports. Granted, they serve a decent percentage of the population, but they don't serve the number of airports the legacy carriers do. This is beginning to change, led by JetBlue, which will start servicing more and more airports.
-dave
from http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/posthumously:
2 : published after the death of the author
3 : following or occurring after death
And the spread is spelled hummus
-dave
Wasn't the hybrid escape the first hybrid SUV?
-dave
For similar reasons that embassy's are considered part of the nation they represent?
Embassies are considered part of the nation they represent (and are purchased as sovereign lands). But you advocate an anarchist (anarchy in it's original meaning: no government, not necessarily some violent, lord of the flies interpretation) situation. Embassy grounds are subjects to the laws of their country (i.e. US Embassies are subject to US laws). So what sovereign nation would those sections of airports belong to?
especially for fairly victimless crimes
Fraud and racketeering are victimless? Since when? They aren't violent, and they aren't necessarily all that serious, but there are still victims. And how do you propose dividing laws into ones where "you can be arrested at airports" and those where "you can't be arrested at airports?"
-dave