I think grand juries are BS!!! One person cotrols the grand jury, the prosecutor. A defendent isn't even allowed an attorney in hearings, not without permission of the prosecutor.
That's fine - at least they serve as somewhat of a check on the power of a prosecutor. Better than a prosecutor basically being able to press any charges he wants and have people in jail or having their reputations tainted until a trial happens to occur.
For those who don't like grand juries, I propose an alternative. Allow private prosecutions of prosecutorial and police misconduct under civil rights legislation (18 USC 241,242,etc). By private prosecution, I mean allowing a private attorney (hired by the aggreived party) to press charges against a state official in the name of the state. This is possible under common law, but infrequently used or impossible today. Why private prosecution? Government officials seem a bit too unwilling to prosecute one another, so someone from outside sometimes needs to be brought in.
Nope, quite a few states require trials before a judge only for misdemenors and traffic offenses. I think the law should be like in Texas, that you have the right to a jury trial for any offense. None of that bullshit about "civil offenses" being charged by the state or "minor misdemenors." If it's important enough to be summonsed, it's important enough for a jury. This would discourage revenue-raising cops and prosecutors who just want to make a name for themselves.
Plea bargaining is alive and well. The conventional view of people who want to abolish it is that it allows hardened criminals to get away with lesser charges. My view is the contrary, sort of - the existence of that game requires prosecutors to press the harshest charges possible and then attempt to talk them down instead of trying them. If trials or a guilty plea to the charges themselves were required, then prosecutors wouldn't press unreasonably harsh charges because the chances of going to trial would increase and juries might be unwilling to convict.
Quite a few states have abolished grand juries as gatekeepers to felony trials in the name of "expediency." A shame, really, since grand juries serve as a check on prosecutors' power to some extent.
What the US seems to lack is some sort of sense in applying laws
Also, the US system lives on plea bargaining - charging with one charge or a series of offenses then the defendant agreeing to cop to a "lesser" charge in order to avoid the more serious charge. Attorneys are too eager to avoid trial and agree to reduced charges. I suspect that if half of those BS cases went to trial, they'd be thrown out either by judges or juries.
What we need:
(a) jury trials for all criminal offenses - if it's not important enough to impanel a jury, it's not important enough try
(b) less plea bargaining - almost all cases should go to trial. Again, if it isn't important enough to try, it shouldn't be charged. Period.
(c) a Federal requirement that states require a grand jury before going to trial on any felony.
It's happened. There was a case about 15 years back where a woman asked her doctor if it was normal to get sexually aroused while breastfeeding, and after misinterpretation of the question by a secretary, was hauled up on charges of child molestation.
I thought the kid in question was something like 7 years old, though. That's a bit over the top. 2 years old I can understand, but 7, c'mon?
(The answer, incidentally, is "yes".)
Not surprising - this is nature's way of making sure that mothers actually feed their kids. Presumably the mothers who said "eew, this hurts and why do I want my nipple in something's mouth" had their babies die and were thus cut out of the gene pool.
Its goes on your record, try getting a good job with a felony on your record. If you are concerned you are living next door to an ex-con look up his records
Criminal background checks usually at least require a fee. Sex offender lists are put up by many states for access on the Internet for free. Not to mention some states actively notify neighbors. In short, yes, you're more screwed if you schtupp a 16-yo girl at age 18 than if you kill someone in a barfight. Not sure how that makes sense.
When a prosecutor has it out for you, there isn't much that can be done.
Go to trial with a lawyer who apprises the jurors of their lawful duty (in quite a few states anyway) to judge the law as well as the defendant. Then sue the prosecutor and all others involved for frivolous prosecution (which is a civil as well as a criminal offense) and make sure they'll never work again. Two can play at malice.
Folks who are against that kind of abuse of law: make sure to serve on a jury. If the case is something like that, I'd even be tempted to lie to get on the jury. Remember, it only takes one juror in most states to block a conviction and prosecutors are hesitant to retry in the case of a hung jury. Plus you can try to convince other jurors not to convict. In addition to judging the accused, jurors are required by quite a few state constitutions to judge the law itself.
What's the idea that someone handing copies of playboy to their friends be convicted of a crime? There's nothing illegal in that magazine. The US have some weird attitudes to tits and nudity (playboy ain't really porn).
Our real problem is that we don't remove outdated laws from the books. Until last year, Virginia technically forbade blacks and whites from marrying. One state had a death penalty for adultery on the books - they finally repealed that law after an angry wife pushed for a prosecution of her husband.
The woman did something stupid. Most likely out of ignorance. The station did something stupid, most likely out of ignorance. Who's at fault. THE WOMAN. It was her body,and her DECISION. If some maliciousness on the part of the station could be proven, maybe things would be different, but as it stands, a group of ignorant people did something stupid and one of them died.
I think the station should pay some sort of restitution to the woman's family. Not as a result of a lawsuit, but something like: "we fucked up, we're good guys, we'll do our best to make sure this lady's kids are taken care of until they're 18." Also, if the DJ was warned by a nurse that the contest could be dangerous, maybe he should have had someone research it (I'm assuming the studio has 'net access) before continuing and/or sending the contestants home. The DJ is not liable for malicious homicide, but he may be liable for negligence resulting in death.
Oh - they are going to fry! Hey - make a contest of it. Winner gets to pull the lever!
Manslaughter isn't capital murder, AFAIK - it carries something like 5 or 10 years in prison maximum. As far as frying, I think California uses the gas chamber. So it'll be more like gagging to death, perhaps more appropriate considering the lady's manner of death.
consider the use of robots in the automotive industry, the precision with which they paint the cars and do the fittings and stuff. Couldn't this technology be applied to the construction of houses?
Maybe, but consider that all cars coming down an assembly line are more or less identical. Houses aren't. Unless you're buying a Maybach or Rolls, you can't really say, "Excuse me, but could you make the front seats a slightly lighter shade of beige?"
With construction using plaster (sheetrock) panels and curtain walls on studs, walls are easily modifiable. Want another outlet here? We'll just fish a BX cable from the basement through the wall, cut a hole for a box, attach the box, and connect everything up. With hollows between floors and ceilings, you have the same possibilities for new plumbing. Is spraying the plaster directly onto the concrete as I imagine they're going to do going to limit the possibilities for easy future alteration.
Also, this doesn't save as much work as you'd think. Putting up framing and basic walls is only maybe 1/3 of the work of building a house. Finishing and making it look livable inside is the real skilled labor...
Very often, lay-people are better at diagnosing medical problems.
It's a matter of time. If you or someone you love has a set of obscure symptoms, you have a lot of time to do research as to what it could be. A Dr. needs to keep seeing a patient every hour or two to make a profit.
There is a reason why I now have an Engineering Degree, and not a computer-science degree, and went from "IT" to "Engineering Services"..
Cheers to that. I graduated with an engineering degree but ended up doing freelance work in IT because of good money. Recently took the EIT exam 4 years out of college, passed despite 2 hr. sleep the night before and a 3 hr. drive in the morning to take the exam. I'm now looking to practice under a PE so I can get my certification in a few years and maybe go freelance again as an engineer in a decade or so.
My small retail store pays more than this every month just in power and phone bills. I have -zero- sympathy for a "business" that can't pay $500/year for extra security.
There are plenty of home-based businesses that have essentially zero capital when starting up. Remember that $500 is a lump-sum payment and can equal a month's rent for some people in some places. You could use a payment processor or even only accept money directly face-to-face, but will people start thinking that all companies without a green cert are untrustworthy, even if they don't take money and personal details online? This amounts to a protection racket not much different from the goons that came to brick and mortar stores and said "we need some money to protect you from thugs breaking into your store at night and torching it."
With training, you still have the problem that some people are utterly and incurably stupid and careless.
The best teacher is experience. Once the stupid and careless people get burned once or twice, I'm sure that they'll learn to be more careful in the future. Their lesson just might be a bit more expensive than the lesson given to quicker learners. BTW, in my experience, if you just look at the URL bar before entering private information, this takes care of 999 out of 1000 spam/phishing scams. If the URL bar is correct and it's still a scam, someone internal to the company is probably running the scam, so they would use a good certificate anyway. The lack of proper grammar and suspicious structure (you know it when you see it) takes care of most of the others.
That's because sole proprietorships, general partnerships and individuals won't be eligible for the new, stricter security certificates that Microsoft requires to display the color.
Most mom-and-pop shops probably go through an order clearinghouse like PayPal anyway, so once you go to the order page there'll be a green bar.
I agree that the OLPC is designed well and sounds really cool, but in practice I think most people in the developed world would be hard-pressed to find actual uses for it.
90% of "computing" work involves writing documents. This would do fine for the purpose. As it would for chatting, e-mail, and a lot of web browsing.
Most adults wouldn't be caught outside using this:
I seem to recall Apple selling quite a few clamshell iBooks. If anything, this is a bit more elegant and tasteful. I'd certainly buy one or two.
As for the grey market, you just try buying one of those and shipping it over here. You'll be spat on on the street for robbing children. You think you'll ust be left to play with your stolen toy while drinking your latte at starbucks?
Robbing? If Negroponte's company is making a profit, you gave money to the company. This money can be reinvested to manufacture more OLPCs at even lower cost to give to more children. That's the way capitalism works, tovarish.
The point people seem to be missing is that it is NOT economical to sell to end users - the economies of scale when you NEED to sell 10 000 000 to get the price down to $150 just don't work for indivual shipping to a few 10s of thousands of home users.
So sell to an electronics supply house (perhaps for more than $100 in the US) and let *them* handle the distribution logistics to end users. Let them decide whether there is demand for the product and at what price. If they buy 1000 of the laptops at $250 a pop, you've still got $250,000 in hand, regardless of whether they're stuck with them or not.
We all want to play with it. But for us to have a toy to play with may easily backfire into a situation where the next set of 419'ers or click-fraud farms are enabled through the use of OLPC devices.
So I guess that we should make everyone undergo a strict background check and state their reasons for wanting a computer license before they get to buy a computer? If someone's using a computer for fraud, arrest them, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Definitely a good decision if there is going to be a shortage (at the start) of these products in the developing countries. reportedly enough for some to sell on the "gray-market"
Sell as many as you can to whomever can buy. The profits can be used to increase production capacity.
If people demand it, why should the market supply it?
But the laptops are already being made. The more they sell, the more economy of scale works to reduce the cost of the thing, which benefits everyone - users, manufacturers, and designers. With the Ford example, giving the cars away for free only benefits end-users.
Slashdot Mirror
That's fine - at least they serve as somewhat of a check on the power of a prosecutor. Better than a prosecutor basically being able to press any charges he wants and have people in jail or having their reputations tainted until a trial happens to occur.
For those who don't like grand juries, I propose an alternative. Allow private prosecutions of prosecutorial and police misconduct under civil rights legislation (18 USC 241,242,etc). By private prosecution, I mean allowing a private attorney (hired by the aggreived party) to press charges against a state official in the name of the state. This is possible under common law, but infrequently used or impossible today. Why private prosecution? Government officials seem a bit too unwilling to prosecute one another, so someone from outside sometimes needs to be brought in.
-b.
Nope, quite a few states require trials before a judge only for misdemenors and traffic offenses. I think the law should be like in Texas, that you have the right to a jury trial for any offense. None of that bullshit about "civil offenses" being charged by the state or "minor misdemenors." If it's important enough to be summonsed, it's important enough for a jury. This would discourage revenue-raising cops and prosecutors who just want to make a name for themselves.
Plea bargaining is alive and well. The conventional view of people who want to abolish it is that it allows hardened criminals to get away with lesser charges. My view is the contrary, sort of - the existence of that game requires prosecutors to press the harshest charges possible and then attempt to talk them down instead of trying them. If trials or a guilty plea to the charges themselves were required, then prosecutors wouldn't press unreasonably harsh charges because the chances of going to trial would increase and juries might be unwilling to convict.
Quite a few states have abolished grand juries as gatekeepers to felony trials in the name of "expediency." A shame, really, since grand juries serve as a check on prosecutors' power to some extent.
-b.
Also, the US system lives on plea bargaining - charging with one charge or a series of offenses then the defendant agreeing to cop to a "lesser" charge in order to avoid the more serious charge. Attorneys are too eager to avoid trial and agree to reduced charges. I suspect that if half of those BS cases went to trial, they'd be thrown out either by judges or juries.
What we need:
(a) jury trials for all criminal offenses - if it's not important enough to impanel a jury, it's not important enough try
(b) less plea bargaining - almost all cases should go to trial. Again, if it isn't important enough to try, it shouldn't be charged. Period. (c) a Federal requirement that states require a grand jury before going to trial on any felony.
-b.
I thought the kid in question was something like 7 years old, though. That's a bit over the top. 2 years old I can understand, but 7, c'mon?
(The answer, incidentally, is "yes".)
Not surprising - this is nature's way of making sure that mothers actually feed their kids. Presumably the mothers who said "eew, this hurts and why do I want my nipple in something's mouth" had their babies die and were thus cut out of the gene pool.
-b.
Criminal background checks usually at least require a fee. Sex offender lists are put up by many states for access on the Internet for free. Not to mention some states actively notify neighbors. In short, yes, you're more screwed if you schtupp a 16-yo girl at age 18 than if you kill someone in a barfight. Not sure how that makes sense.
-b.
Go to trial with a lawyer who apprises the jurors of their lawful duty (in quite a few states anyway) to judge the law as well as the defendant. Then sue the prosecutor and all others involved for frivolous prosecution (which is a civil as well as a criminal offense) and make sure they'll never work again. Two can play at malice.
-b.
-b.
Our real problem is that we don't remove outdated laws from the books. Until last year, Virginia technically forbade blacks and whites from marrying. One state had a death penalty for adultery on the books - they finally repealed that law after an angry wife pushed for a prosecution of her husband.
-b.
I think the station should pay some sort of restitution to the woman's family. Not as a result of a lawsuit, but something like: "we fucked up, we're good guys, we'll do our best to make sure this lady's kids are taken care of until they're 18." Also, if the DJ was warned by a nurse that the contest could be dangerous, maybe he should have had someone research it (I'm assuming the studio has 'net access) before continuing and/or sending the contestants home. The DJ is not liable for malicious homicide, but he may be liable for negligence resulting in death.
-b.
Manslaughter isn't capital murder, AFAIK - it carries something like 5 or 10 years in prison maximum. As far as frying, I think California uses the gas chamber. So it'll be more like gagging to death, perhaps more appropriate considering the lady's manner of death.
-b.
Maybe, but consider that all cars coming down an assembly line are more or less identical. Houses aren't. Unless you're buying a Maybach or Rolls, you can't really say, "Excuse me, but could you make the front seats a slightly lighter shade of beige?"
-b.
Also, this doesn't save as much work as you'd think. Putting up framing and basic walls is only maybe 1/3 of the work of building a house. Finishing and making it look livable inside is the real skilled labor...
-b.
No, the tracts better not be pipes themselves unless you want a house that's impossible to repair or modify.
-b.
It's a matter of time. If you or someone you love has a set of obscure symptoms, you have a lot of time to do research as to what it could be. A Dr. needs to keep seeing a patient every hour or two to make a profit.
-b.
Cheers to that. I graduated with an engineering degree but ended up doing freelance work in IT because of good money. Recently took the EIT exam 4 years out of college, passed despite 2 hr. sleep the night before and a 3 hr. drive in the morning to take the exam. I'm now looking to practice under a PE so I can get my certification in a few years and maybe go freelance again as an engineer in a decade or so.
-b.
Exactly. As long as it's not Windows Mobile, s'all good...
-b.
There are plenty of home-based businesses that have essentially zero capital when starting up. Remember that $500 is a lump-sum payment and can equal a month's rent for some people in some places. You could use a payment processor or even only accept money directly face-to-face, but will people start thinking that all companies without a green cert are untrustworthy, even if they don't take money and personal details online? This amounts to a protection racket not much different from the goons that came to brick and mortar stores and said "we need some money to protect you from thugs breaking into your store at night and torching it."
-b.
The best teacher is experience. Once the stupid and careless people get burned once or twice, I'm sure that they'll learn to be more careful in the future. Their lesson just might be a bit more expensive than the lesson given to quicker learners. BTW, in my experience, if you just look at the URL bar before entering private information, this takes care of 999 out of 1000 spam/phishing scams. If the URL bar is correct and it's still a scam, someone internal to the company is probably running the scam, so they would use a good certificate anyway. The lack of proper grammar and suspicious structure (you know it when you see it) takes care of most of the others.
-b.
Most mom-and-pop shops probably go through an order clearinghouse like PayPal anyway, so once you go to the order page there'll be a green bar.
-b.
90% of "computing" work involves writing documents. This would do fine for the purpose. As it would for chatting, e-mail, and a lot of web browsing.
Most adults wouldn't be caught outside using this:
I seem to recall Apple selling quite a few clamshell iBooks. If anything, this is a bit more elegant and tasteful. I'd certainly buy one or two.
-b.
Robbing? If Negroponte's company is making a profit, you gave money to the company. This money can be reinvested to manufacture more OLPCs at even lower cost to give to more children. That's the way capitalism works, tovarish.
-b.
So sell to an electronics supply house (perhaps for more than $100 in the US) and let *them* handle the distribution logistics to end users. Let them decide whether there is demand for the product and at what price. If they buy 1000 of the laptops at $250 a pop, you've still got $250,000 in hand, regardless of whether they're stuck with them or not.
-b.
So I guess that we should make everyone undergo a strict background check and state their reasons for wanting a computer license before they get to buy a computer? If someone's using a computer for fraud, arrest them, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
-b.
Sell as many as you can to whomever can buy. The profits can be used to increase production capacity.
-b.
But the laptops are already being made. The more they sell, the more economy of scale works to reduce the cost of the thing, which benefits everyone - users, manufacturers, and designers. With the Ford example, giving the cars away for free only benefits end-users.
-b.