...what about the car that has a weak battery? You had to jump it to go off to work, and now the traffic light has shut it off for you. It's not going to restart without a jump. Sure, that's going to help you improve the traffic patterns, all right. If the people behind you don't get out and kill you first, of course.
Sorry IBM, this one is just plain stupid.
Besides, electric cars will probably drive all these smoggers off the road within ten years. This'll never overcome the inertia of implementation in IC cars before the factories that make them, no longer do so. Just look at how far behind car manufacturers are with heat-IR vision, GPS, collision avoidance... working systems are *decades* old, and the number of cars today that implement them is simply pitiful. And when you do find something, for example GPS, the GPS is old, old, old. The auto industry is *very* slow to do anything.
One thing I am pretty sure of is that I'm done buying smoggers. I suspect a lot of other people have made the same determination. My family's current vehicles should last us until the time where decent electrics are available at sensible prices. Current generation vehicles have decent longevity, so with just a little luck, no chance of IBM ever shutting me down.:)
In short, the opportunities are sitting there, waiting for the right person with the right mindset to come along and find the key idea(s) the others have been missing. Those ideas may be huge and complex, or they may be very simple indeed. There's no way to know until they're here. But what we do know is that there are plenty of places where opportunity exists. What you make of that opportunity is always up in the air.
There's another concern about special equipment as well -- for instance, in the US, some types of glassware needed to explore chemistry, and perhaps to some extent biology, have been classified as "drug paraphernalia" by our insane government. You can get in some rather severe legal binds because you honestly want to "do" science if you just go about it like an innocent person would.
One oft-quoted example is that it is illegal in Texas to own anything with a ground glass joint; the rumor is that you can get a permit to get around this, so that's something to try... of course, if they don't issue the permit, you've lost your anonymity and that's the end of anything that requires that type of glassware.
You can be sure there are rules and regulations about chemicals themselves, too. Heck, around here (Montana), if you buy a bottle of NyQuil at one pharmacy, then go to another and buy one, you're going to be arrested almost immediately. They presume, you see, that you are going to manufacture Meth. Apparently our legislators have never experienced cold symptoms. Or maybe they're just fucking retarded (based on other evidence, I generally go with the latter.) In any case, don't assume that you can buy some innocuous thing and no one will pay any attention. There's a whole world of surveillance and paranoia waiting to see what you might do. To you, it's pursuit of science, and noble. To the prosecutor, it's just a feather in their cap. Don't let those two worlds collide, ever.
Again, the prohibition against ex post facto laws only applies to when the law was PASSED
Read this slowly: Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
That's ex post facto. This portion of the definition has NOTHING to do with when the law was passed; it has to do with what the laws effect upon the punished person(s) will be. It stands alone: The government is forbidden to make any such law. Ever, if you insist a time be associated with the thought.
What it means is, when a law meets that definition, it is an unauthorized law. UNAUTHORIZED. Illegal. Forbidden. The obvious responsibility of the supreme court is to spot such things and remove the law from the books, and see to recompense anyone harmed by said law. They ought to punish the lawmakers, too. When they are faced with such a law, as now, but fail to remove it, they are acting as traitors to the oaths they swore.
Now lets analyze it step by step for your benefit:
Violation of a good law? Yes. What was the punishment? Prison, X years. What was the venue? Criminal court. Why? Because the person was not deemed incompetent. Otherwise, the venue would have been civil. So, to continue. In the criminal venue, the person served the punishment. Punishment is now done with. Person expects to walk, barring commission of further crimes of a new nature. None are noted; so walking is indeed the expected outcome. Now comes an attempt by the government to extend imprisonment based on the fact that the original offense classes this person as a sexual offender. We know it isn't based upon capacity at regards the original crime; that's already been decided by putting the whole case through the criminal courts path -- we already know the person is presumed to have made a willful decision to violate the law, by choice, and we punished them for that. We also know that it isn't based upon current capacity, because the person is in prison and can't re-offend even if they wanted to. So the only thing left to base the punishment upon is the class - the fact that they are a particular type of offender. To claim that the commitment is civil is disingenuous, by which I mean to say intentionally deceiving. It can't be civil. First of all, for the original offense, we already put this person into the willful, choice-making category. Second, while in prison, if no further crime was committed, then this "civil" commitment is in fact an attempt to base it on the original crime, and therefore an invalid presumption of lack of capacity, and therefore an aggravation of the punishment already meted out. You can't base it upon speech or thought. You can only base capacity upon action, otherwise you're punishing crime in YOUR mind, not the mind of the person you're looking at. It is YOUR imagination that is committing the imaginary crime. The other person hasn't done a thing. Speech is not a crime. Preferring kids as sexual partners isn't even a crime. Having sex with them -- doing -- is. Without the doing, there is no crime.
Stepping back for a moment, the intent of the two ex post facto clauses is extremely clear: When punishing a person, you decide what is appropriate using the rules of law, you do it once, and when it's done, it's supposed to be done. You, and every person who argues for additional punishment for a crime after time is served, are making an argument for repeated punishment at the will of the tyrant, no measure to be deemed sufficient, no limits, no end. Lifelong punishment at the will of tyrants. And you know what? I say no thank you to you and all your kind. Our constitution did not authorize a tyranny. If a crime is of sufficient measure that it merits life imprisonment, we have laws for that. If we need a law like that for other crimes, we can make them. What we do not need, on any account, is laws that add punishment to people who have already been sentenced. People far wiser
You remain wrong, walking away or not, name calling or not.
All of this has been addressed. You're just being willfully ignorant. It's not civil; the person was treated as a criminal, therefore they are deemed responsible, they have been convicted, punished, and it's over. Calder vs. Bull is a constitutionally relevant cite; that was the understanding of ex post facto when the constitution was written - it was (is) contemporaneous and so is 100% relevant to what the constitution means, as opposed to some of the sophist malarkey cobbled up today. The constitution can only be understood in context. That's why we have the inversion of the commerce clause, misunderstanding of the 2nd amendment, exclusinon of email from the 4th's "papers", etc... trying to treat a 17th century document like it was written by George Bush Sr. While thinking like George Bush Jr. (I refuse to even make a joke about George Jr writing it... that man is a fool's fool, and that only on his best days.)
So look: Because of the criminal conviction, you can't move the ground and say, no, wait, we want a do-over in civil court. So you are, irrevocably, in criminal jurisdiction, no matter what you do, unless there is new activity that brings the person back to court. And you cannot extend the sentence based upon the original crime, because that is at the very heart of what constitutes ex post facto actions, which are not authorized as a government power - that means EVERYONE from lawyer, judge, legislator, governor and president and all those in between were NEVER authorized to do such a thing and are BREAKING THE LAW (constitution, highest law in the land, yes?) by exerting unauthorized power if they do so. They're also breaking their oaths - go read 'em.
Regardless of what source you are citing for the proposition that civil commitment is a form of punishment
Good grief, are you serious? Or are you just trolling? I am NOT saying that civil committment is in and of itself a form of punishment. NOT SAYING THAT. Got it? I'm all for it, given demonstrated danger to society AND the careful determination that such behavior is not willful, which is the exception, not the rule. Waving dangerous weapons at others or using them, inappropriate touching of a prepubescent child, those are demonstrations. Thoughts and wishes, or worse, the presumption of thoughts and wishes, are not. If the behavior is willful, then the path lies in criminal prosecution and forward, not the civil path. They are mutually exclusive, and for any particular crime, you get one or the other -- not both. Trying to use both is the whole double jeopardy thing rearing up to bite us -- going after someone again for the same crime on the same set of facts. Again, this is accepted by law, but the law is pathologically wrong. That is what is the problem here: The law is wrong. As determined by thinking and reasoning, a process superior to the law -- just as it gives birth to law, it also can determine the law is bad. Examples abound. Attempting to discredit my argument because it is not based in law is insufficient to the task. You have to deal with the issues, which you are not doing.
Now please, pay attention: This is NOT civil commitment. This is extension of the CRIMINAL commitment. It is based upon the ORIGINAL CRIME. They are CALLING it "civil" and THAT is the crime here: The JUDGES and the LEGISLATORS are committing the crime by trying to hide their violation of ex post facto under another domain that DOES NOT APPLY. You get it now? I'm telling you that the criminals are the legislature, the judges, and the lawyers. This isn't a "mistake", this isn't relevant to the original offender, this is a CRIME by those tasked with managing the legal system.
They're not just wrong. They are CRIMINAL. Violators of the constitution. Violators of their oaths. Panderers to social pressure and flagrant flouters of the governing law, the constitution.
Not any, no. If the person has demonstrated by their actions (not words) that they are insane and dangerous, then I am, unhappily, for locking them up and treating them with an eye towards the earliest possible release if they can be changed such that they no longer exhibit those actions. I agree with the concept that when a person is insane, they are not responsible and so should not be held criminally liable. We must allow for the reality of both disease and genetic impairment; neither should lead to blame unless we're talking about the willful imposition of same.
I should note that barring a truly righteous fuckup by prison authorities, is impossible for a person who is locked up for molesting pre-puberty children -- actual pedophiles, as opposed to the myriad victims of social hysteria who bear the label "sex offender" -- to commit such actions while in prison, and therefore utterly unjustifiable to attempt to class them as having exhibited such actions, and from there, impossible to justify committing them civilly as insane and dangerous.
Freedom is the very most important thing a human being can possess. Taking it should be a consequence of either willful disobedience of another's rights, or the most visible and incontrovertible evidence that the person is right off their rocker, and further, in such a way as to have currently and relevantly demonstrated they pose a real danger to others. Actions are key. Words and wishes -- irrelevant, and all the more so in someone deemed sane enough to have made the willful choices that result in criminal prosecution and punishment.
In this case, we have persons deemed by the court as willfully disobeying the law -- they had a choice, and they made it -- and therefore not insane, and therefore subject to normal punishment, which they have duly served. This eliminates punishing them for the crime as insane folk. It's already been decided they were competent, and they have already been punished. So it should be over. Ex post facto exists specifically so that the government is forbidden to go back and re-punish, extend punishment, or re-define. Things are what the are, when they happen.
I am hugely against letting the government move the ground the defendant stands upon. People do what they do in the matrix of the laws that exist now. We cannot possibly act in such a way as to anticipate what may be illegal tomorrow (especially given that our legislators appear to be half-insane themselves, when they're not being outright fools.) These people broke a law or laws; they had their day in court; they were not deemed insane, but determined to be responsible individuals, punishment was decreed in that vein, and served. It has every reason to be over, and zero reason to be extended.
If this person re-offends, then we have a reason to punish further. Without same, absolutely not. As far as the original crime goes, it cannot be a reason for civil commitment. Here, the very class of those to be further punished is defined by the original criminal prosecution - it's ex post facto right down the line to even consider extending the punishment based upon changing the definition of the individual's sanity.
One last thing. I use the term "punishment" because the facts of our prison system demonstrate that it is not even marginally focused upon rehabilitation. That is (stupidly, in my view) left to the criminal by simply making the association between the horrible conditions of imprisonment and the commission of a crime. Further, criminals (felons) are permanently deprived of rights as extended punishment (voting, right to bear arms, more), creating membership in a permanent criminal underclass. This is true of felons in general, and considerably more so for sex offenders (restricted in where they can live, work, recreate, shamed and listed publicly, occasionally lynched, etc.) It is all about punishment. When society permanently puts you in the "you're marked and disadvantaged" class, by definition, you cannot be rehabilitated in society's eyes. I view this as a huge mistake, one of our biggest single social errors with immediate unsavory consequences that are no one's fault but our own.
As a single case, Williams serves to show that there is justification for making new laws. You can't heal everything that happens all the time with law. You can use these events to make better new law -- and that's been done -- so that knowingly infecting someone is a serious crime. But it doesn't serve as an example of why we need to give the government license to do anything it wants to anyone they like just because they decide to.
Thank you -- very well said, you have precisely identified why the whole civil commitment vector is sophist. I've been steering clear of this because I knew it was, but it is very useful to have it nailed down so well. Kudos.
A classic ad hominem post, attacking the man when you cannot address the argument.
I applaud you, sir, for walking away from the facts with your head embedded to the neck into the manure of the judiciary. Breath deep. That, my profoundly argument-deprived respondent, is the smell of tyranny.
As for your complaint, the thing is, you want the law to be cited when the law is defective. Think about it. You're caught in self-referential idiocy. Such an issue has to be addressed using mechanisms that are supra to the law. You know, by thinking and discourse.
Yes, I do. Quite precisely. Which, if you had read the thread, or the blog post of mine I initially linked to, you would know. The fact that you think I'm just ranting, though, tells me very clearly that you don't know what ex post facto is, and that you've not read the thread, so I will explain yet again, just for you:
Calder v Bull (3 US 386 [1798]), in the opinion of Justice Chase:
1st: Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2nd: Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3rd: Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th: Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense, in order to convict the offender.
Now look at #3. Now think about extending the prison term indefinitely of a criminal when they have already served out the ordered punishment.
Now you too know what an ex post facto law is. What you may not know is that ex post facto laws are explicitly forbidden to both the state and federal governments. Unlike our enumerated rights, these things are in the main body of the constitution, and they are painfully clear: Such laws are forbidden. That is why it is important to scream like a banshee when such laws, as now, are made flesh.
Was this law enacted after the crime it is punishing?
Yes, it most certainly was. It is also a bill of attainder, as it is an act of the legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial. Trying to disguise it under the veil of civil law is sophist horseshit. The issue at hand is criminal; that's why they're in jail. Making up a NEW law, which is what this is, that makes their crime worse, aggravates it, and applies new punishment, is precisely the very thing that the ex post facto prohibition was intended to absolutely, utterly prevent.
it just sounds silly to me.
That is neither a measure of my posts, which have addressed your salient issues previously, or of the facts. It is a measure of your own ignorance, and your failure to read the thread before commenting. I suggest you rectify your ignorance and improve your commenting skills. In that order.
My naive friend, if the question is "what is US law?", the answer is: A disaster, out of control, unauthorized, and self-referentially insane.
The system has evolved into a state where it cannot reliably dispense justice; it does not obey the constitution; it imposes itself where it does not belong; and it is in no way responsive to the citizens. A train wreck of an attempt to do right, now doing wrong as fast as it can, growing uncontrollably, already far too large for anyone to grasp or control, full of archaic "gotchas" and brand-new malfeasance like this latest fuckery of the justices of the supreme court.
The law, from a justice and authorization perspective, is profoundly mutated and dangerous, and it is also in some parts (like this one) entirely unauthorized. The constitution says NO. It doesn't say "oh, but if you call it something else, you can", it just says NO.
And here's the core of the problem: With the law running wild, mutated and dangerous, lawyers, judges and legislators all continue to go around trying to explain their actions using other invalid law they've made as justification, as if that made it all ok.
But it doesn't. They're no different from the sex offenders who wronte something down that says what they did was ok because that's what they meant to do. Legislators meant to make this law; the Justices meant to let it stand. They each have their reasons that they have codified into law and opinion, but the law is mutated and dangerous and the opinions are based on the unauthorized law and so explaining it in those terms is absolutely bloody meaningless.
Focus on the center issue here: The constitution FORBIDS making ex post facto law. The definition of what that is, is extremely clear. The intent behind that declaration was perfectly clear: Trying to get around it by calling what you're doing something else is utter sophistry, not to mention a violation of both the congressional and judicial oaths of office.
If US law were a computer program, I'd stop it, expunge it, destroy the source code, and start over. Actually, if anything I wrote ever turned out as badly as US law, I think I'd go to work at McDonald's and quit programming entirely. Out of pure shame.
Lawyers and judges don't generally have that much sense, though. No, let me amend that. I've never met or heard of one that had that much sense. They all proceed under the presumption that the law is perfect, and do their harm to society based on that. From the drug war at one end, re-subjecting the population to the obvious and known effects of (stupidly and obliviously) creating a black market, to the outright inversion of the commerce clause in order to make (obviously intentionally limited) federal power omnipresent, to (with malice aforethought) eroding our other constitutionally enumerated rights at the other, we're being utterly fucked: BY THE LEGAL SYSTEM AND EVERYONE IN IT.
It was a system set up to fail by the simple expedient of depending upon the honor of those in high office. Such honor may have existed to some extent when the constitution was penned, but the presumption that it would always be so that underlies the implementation of the document has been proven to be not just optimistic, but entirely wrongheaded and insufficient to the task of keeping the nation on course.
Because of the law -- and nothing else whatsoever -- our nation has come off the tracks and we are no longer able to enjoy the fruits of a constitutional republic. The culprits are the legislators, the judiciary, and the lawyers. These people are the worst of the worst, no matter their intentions. They have shown their true colors in what they have done to this country; they are the worst poison we face, far worse than most criminals, who do their harm one person at a time. With the stroke of a pen, judges and legislators exert unauthorized coercion on many people at a time, sometimes the entire population. There's no stopping them under the law (surprise), because they wrote it.
This has nothing to do with a civil violation, except with regard to the excuses the justices are trying to use. There has been no civil violation. The conviction was for a criminal violation. The extension in jail time is because of the conviction for the criminal violation, which you can tell because the class of affected persons is criminally convicted sex offenders. This extension is specifically consequent to the original criminal act. So all discussion of civil punishment is completely misleading. You want to refer to the SCOTUS opinion, and what I am telling you is that SCOTUS is the criminal here -- the foxes are guarding the hen house. It's like you read the writings of the sex offender, and he said "well, it wasn't a crime because she seemed to want it" and you therefore conclude, well, must not be a crime, then. The fact is that the Justices here are committing a crime: That of bringing an ex post facto law into permanent being in violation of the clear prohibition against same. Reading why they explain it away means jack shit. It's ex post facto, because it increases the punishment for the original crime after the fact. That is not an authorized power for either the state or federal government. It is entirely insufficient to say you can have that power if you call it something else: The constitution says you can't have it, and it doesn't say "unless you call it roses", either. It says NO.
And no, I don't think you should be jailing people over some buzz in your head that makes you think they might do something wrong. That's purest evil and a power no one should ever have. Civil commitment without evidence of intent is utter bullshit. Just like this SCOTUS decision.
What do you suggest we do? There are no laws that govern the behavior of the supreme court justices. There are no laws that address violation of constitutional prohibitions by congress (our federal lawmakers), or by the courts. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, and the system's huge flaw is that it was designed that way under the horribly optimistic presumption that would be ok because these would be honorable people, bound by (cough) oath.
Seriously, what can we do? Are you suggesting armed revolt? The populace is very happy, by and large, and very poorly educated as to what it is they have lost, and are losing. They're not going to take up arms. And if some lone avenger-type did, let's say he manages to carve his message into every monument in Washington and do in the congress and supreme court, do you think that would change anything? They'd just replace them with like-minded folk, name the avenger as a "terrorist", and go on about their business. I tell you, there is no solution.
I think what you are watching is literally the dissolution of a constitutional republic into government by arbitrary force, completely free of the bounds originally placed upon it by its original authorizing document -- that change was made by force and subversion. It's well along, in fact I'd say it is almost complete.
Sorry, no. "Ex post facto" has nothing to do with increasing the punishment after conviction.
Sorry, yes. Here's the legal definition, from Calder vs. Bull:
Calder v Bull (3 US 386 [1798]), in the opinion of Justice Chase: 1st: Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2nd: Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3rd: Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th: Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense, in order to convict the offender."
Read #3 there. Does this law change the punishment for the crime for which the criminal was convicted? Yes, it does. Is the punishment greater than that applied at conviction? Yes, it is. Are these two changes relevant to the law annexed to the crime when committed? Yes, they are.
Also, you're talking out your ass about parole and fighting, etc. These are new violations of existing laws and they get new punishments. They are in no way increases of the sentence for the original act. But this idiocy the supreme court passed is exactly that: the time in jail is extended indefinitely because of the original crime. No new crime has been committed. That lands this clearly in ex post facto territory.
This is not a bill of attainder, because it doesn't address specific people or groups of people.
No? What are "sex offenders", then, if not a group of people? It is a classing mechanism, is it not? Can you tell if you are in the class? Yes, certainly you can. Can you tell if you're not in the class? Yes, again, easily. So you're wrong again. Must not be your day, pal.
It's also (arguably) not a due process violation, because since it is a civil punishment and not a criminal one, the standard is lower than what is necessary to convict a person of a crime and send him to prison.
If you aren't given the right to face your accusers and defend yourself, and your jail term is extended consequent to the fact that you committed a criminal act, which is what is happening here, then it is a due process issue. You can't just wave your hands, mutter abracadabra, and magic up a civil violation for some clown in jail, now magically "re/deeper-guilty" of being a sex offender, murderer, or litterbug. Until or unless that person commits a new crime, they have every right in the world to walk the streets. Otherwise, you're engaging in prosecuting thought crime / future crime, which is utter bullshit.
But please get your facts and legal terminology straight before going off half-cocked based on your limited legal understanding.
Spoken by someone whose post was almost straight-through technically wrong, point by point, that is a fabulously amusing remark. You have a nice day now. I suggest you spend it reading the constitution, and then looking up the big words.
Even if you are right, you really do need to show your work on this one.
I did show my work. Calder vs. Bull. Read it and weep. This issue is hugely simple. They're increasing the punishment after conviction. That's forbidden. Period. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because a judge somewhere has written that "it's ok because it's not punishment" that it actually IS ok, or that it actually ISN'T punishment. Ask the motherfucker who gets imprisoned for life without due process, ex post facto, if it's not punishment, and you'll get an accurate answer. Ask a judge, and you'll get a mouthful of shit. Ask a lawyer, and you'll get *shovelfulls* of shit.
This type of law is absolutely forbidden. Period. There's no amount of rhetoric, sophist pin-ballet, or writing of "opinion" that will change that. Pointing and screaming "sex offender" doesn't change it either, as much as the media-terrified rank and file might wish it were so. It isn't even *just* ex post facto. It's wrong on many levels - what about due process? What about the prohibition against bills of attainder? This is mind-boggling, is what it is. The fact that SCOTUS let this one go through is the clearest possible indication that they are directly and knowingly violating their oaths. Reading the opinion of people who are violating their oaths is a complete and utter waste of time. They're not doing their jobs, and that's the very nicest thing I can say about them.
the ruling seems to be that a civil commitment can be ordered after the jail term is served
The problem here is authorized power. The government can, and does, define its own rules to break the constitution. Civil commitment post term served adds to the punishment. Any claim that it does not is purest sophist nonsense. Therefore, it too is ex post facto, and UNAUTHORIZED -- now, unauthorized, as we see, has very little effect on the government. That is why the commerce clause has been inverted, that is why judges have taken unto themselves the essential power only AUTHORIZED by article five (amendment), and why ex post facto laws are being enacted, and why detention without lawyer, phone call, etc., and why your email is being monitored, all of this is happening as a consequence of CLEARLY unauthorized power...
You can't "read the opinion" to solve this problem. You're asking the vampire why it's ok to drink your blood. It's wrong *by definition* because IT ISN'T AN AUTHORIZED POWER.
So what do we have? We have UNAUTHORIZED POWER. Look it in the eye and recognize it for what it is.
Lawyers, judges, lawmakers -- they're all complicit in this scheme to circumvent the constitution. And meanwhile, the law schools churn out more robots who have been convinced that the constitution can be circumvented by dancing on the head of a pin. Look at Obama - a self-proclaimed "constitutional scholar", and HE thinks the second amendment doesn't give the citizens a right to bear arms, and further, he thinks that the government -- somehow -- has the power to say otherwise. Which, you'll note, is nowhere in the constitution.
The bottom line is this:
When the constitution says NO, then the answer is NO. If the government wants to change that answer, then the process is laid out in article five, Amendment. Otherwise, the answer REMAINS NO.
So until there are amendments that say otherwise, you can keep and bear arms (and that's more than guns, people.) You can say anything you want, and that includes in a crowded theater. But the thing is, the government will use UNAUTHORIZED power to punish you for not recognizing the powers it has STOLEN. No one will give up their comfy life in order to put down the uprising in the judiciary and the congress; and therefore, this constitutional republic will continue to erode at a very rapid pace.
This is an ex post facto law. No way around it. Making such a law is outright forbidden - explicitly - by the constitution to both the feds (congress) and the states. The fact that it's aimed at some sex offender is just used to get the foot in the door -- if you remove "sex offender" and put "murderer" or "litterbug" in there, the effect of the law is the same: To increase punishment after the fact.
SCOTUS, out of control, still. Or again. However you want to put it. There's no way to rein in these traitors to their oaths either -- the system as designed is outright broken. The constitution has zero legal teeth.
It is Irish law that allows an academic to be convicted for showing a scientific paper to another person. That would be a consequence of the actions of Irish morons. Not US morons (not to say we don't have 'em, but so far, they've mostly confined themselves to ripping up our constitution, rather than attacking the proliferation of scientific information.)
From that point of view, you can see why Jobs wants his device to be like
a VCR.
Does a VCR regulate what you can watch on it? No. So "just like a VCR" isn't the problem here.
Sure, if you're the sort of rube that has trouble burning a DVD on ANY platform
then it poses the "least dangerous" platform with nearly all of the sharp corners
rounded off. It's like school scissors.
No. It isn't. OS X is the same kind of OS Linux is, except it has an excellent UI. If you want the sharp edge, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from opening a shell, or Xwindows, and having at it with as bleeding-edge code or trolling about in the underbelly of the nest as root. I spend about half my day in the shell, as a matter of fact, though some of that is SSH'd to our Linux servers.
The fact that the GUI works well enough without most people having to go further into the OS is a great thing; in no way a bad thing. And of course, there's nothing stopping you from building any app you like, that does anything you like, as unsafely as you like, if you like. The vast majority of Linux projects can also be compiled and run without much ado. Where there are exceptions, there are workarounds to make them work anyway. As as far as Windows goes, OS X and Linux both blow the Windows OS away. Windows exists on the strength of the apps available for it and how widespread it is. As an OS, it sucks fungus.
Just because OS X has been made easy to use at the topmost level doesn't mean it isn't powerful. In this case, exactly the opposite.
No. If all they could come up with was showing her the article, a scientific article... then the court is wrong, not him. He was cleared of the other charges. The only thing left was NOT creepy.
You know, it really pisses me off when people assume someone is guilty because they're in court, no more. Sure, there were charges, but they were NOT found to apply; and the only thing left was the COURT being creepy.
This government is demonstrating it is still in the dark ages, where idiotic canned morals and ethics based on superstitious and largely fictional books still dictate the rules of state.
It's going to be a long, long haul getting rid of the "Sky Daddy" moralizers. Everywhere. In the meantime, the religiots will continue to look for contemporary alternatives to burning at the stake. Ruining one's career, and to some extent one's life... a fairly effective replacement, I'd say. A lifetime of suffering coupled with loss of ability to teach what one knows in an atmosphere of respect and personal and professional growth.
Fellatio in bats. What should be extremely interesting, is instead a hair trigger for idiots.
Sometimes I can go days without having to realize just how much I despise religion. And then something like this happens.
By the way, IRISH MORONS: Sex is good. Violence is bad. Imposed government/social censorship is MORONIC. Freedom for people to view what they CHOOSE and make their own decisions is the ONLY correct path through this mess. Is that convenient for everyone? Will everyone feel good about it? No. But it is still the BEST path. Because freedom of knowledge for everyone totally trumps anyone's moral qualms.
Teach your kids what you want to teach them. What you think is right. But don't attempt to sanitize the rest of the world in the shape of your morals and ethics. My kids are not your kids and you have NO right to impose your morals and ethics upon them. That's MY job. And I teach my kids that sex is good, and violence is bad. I'm not in the least interested in your goat-age, superstition-driven stupidity. Thanks.
(DENVER, CO, US - 2 February 2010) - MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as Internet Broadcast AVC Video) during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2016
You were saying about how it's not like GIF? Can't come back and bite the users later? Yes? Please do go on. Explain how the change in charging the users for use in 2016 that MPEG-LA has set themselves up to be able to do wouldn't suddenly disrupt the community? Or do you believe, that after establishing a huge user base, there is no chance they, or whoever they've sold it to in the meantime, is not going to tap that metaphorical piggy bank, after they went to the extreme of specifically setting a time limit on how long it could be used for free?
h.264 is, because of the time limit (and indirectly because it is encumbered), a huge mistake, and both its intent, effect, and consequences, have the potential to have effects precisely like GIF: Get it embedded, get everyone using it, then hammer them with charges.
This is why it's a terrible choice. Being "up front" about it has nothing to do with it. It is potential developer- and user-license-bombing that is the issue. Why be stupid and walk into such a thing, knowing you can be screwed? The sensible thing is to use a codec that is not encumbered. Doesn't matter if the compression is poor, as long as it is even moderately reasonable, and it gets the movie to you. To the extent that bandwidth is a problem, it is temporary; bandwidth goes up constantly. It's no reason to dive face first, eyes open, into a reeking pile of financial hurt.
Technologies that are encumbered drag everyone down except the inventor. We need to stop using them. Every time we do, we get screwed. Want to watch a DVD on your linux machine? Guess you'll have to break the law. Notice how VNC won't play until you "do something"? That's because the technology is encumbered, not because it's hard to do. Want to watch a Bluray on a Mac? No, sorry. Again, it's not a problem technically. It's about licensing. Want to watch your h.264 stuff on 2017 on your new machine? Will you be able to? You can't answer yes with any certainty.
It's really amazing how an excellent UI is so valuable to quite a lot of people that they'll pay much higher prices, and blow off the overreaching fine print that infringes on our rights.
Excellent UI
Excellent hardware
Excellent (and easily used) software
It really does "just work" right out of the box
iPod ditto
iPad ditto
I find Jobs to be the exact wrong person to exert his idea of morals and ethics upon the morals and ethics of his customers. His cry of "you'd understand if you had kids" is just the kind of moronic posturing I'd expect... the Apple store is chock full of blood and gore, but sex, one of the most wonderful things we get to involve ourselves in, is "bad." This is how I *know* that Jobs is possessed of absolutely bankrupt morals and ethics, and why I don't think he belongs between myself, or my children, and content of any type.
However, he is the exact right person to nail down hardware and software guidelines. How do I know? I run Linux, Windows and OS X. OS X is - by *huge margins* - the best of the three to use day in, day out.
So hey, Steve: If you were half the man you think you are, you'd pull the violence from the apple store and put sex in. But you're not. You're a posturing idiot who is playing the social game for sales, tapping the social retards who love violence and wave their little religious hands over there eyes at the sight of sex. Congratulations, chump. Stick to areas you have skill in: hardware and software design.
Do you really think that the majority of web users are going to seek out those tools?
They would if, for example, none of the videos on YouTube would play until they did.
h.264 is a BAD mistake. It's GIF all over again. By supporting it, they're just playing the corporate game. Oh wait - they ARE corporations. Never mind. So much for freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry IBM, this one is just plain stupid.
Besides, electric cars will probably drive all these smoggers off the road within ten years. This'll never overcome the inertia of implementation in IC cars before the factories that make them, no longer do so. Just look at how far behind car manufacturers are with heat-IR vision, GPS, collision avoidance... working systems are *decades* old, and the number of cars today that implement them is simply pitiful. And when you do find something, for example GPS, the GPS is old, old, old. The auto industry is *very* slow to do anything.
One thing I am pretty sure of is that I'm done buying smoggers. I suspect a lot of other people have made the same determination. My family's current vehicles should last us until the time where decent electrics are available at sensible prices. Current generation vehicles have decent longevity, so with just a little luck, no chance of IBM ever shutting me down. :)
You just need to look at the areas where we're not very far along. I can think of a bunch right off the top of my head:
In short, the opportunities are sitting there, waiting for the right person with the right mindset to come along and find the key idea(s) the others have been missing. Those ideas may be huge and complex, or they may be very simple indeed. There's no way to know until they're here. But what we do know is that there are plenty of places where opportunity exists. What you make of that opportunity is always up in the air.
There's another concern about special equipment as well -- for instance, in the US, some types of glassware needed to explore chemistry, and perhaps to some extent biology, have been classified as "drug paraphernalia" by our insane government. You can get in some rather severe legal binds because you honestly want to "do" science if you just go about it like an innocent person would.
One oft-quoted example is that it is illegal in Texas to own anything with a ground glass joint; the rumor is that you can get a permit to get around this, so that's something to try... of course, if they don't issue the permit, you've lost your anonymity and that's the end of anything that requires that type of glassware.
You can be sure there are rules and regulations about chemicals themselves, too. Heck, around here (Montana), if you buy a bottle of NyQuil at one pharmacy, then go to another and buy one, you're going to be arrested almost immediately. They presume, you see, that you are going to manufacture Meth. Apparently our legislators have never experienced cold symptoms. Or maybe they're just fucking retarded (based on other evidence, I generally go with the latter.) In any case, don't assume that you can buy some innocuous thing and no one will pay any attention. There's a whole world of surveillance and paranoia waiting to see what you might do. To you, it's pursuit of science, and noble. To the prosecutor, it's just a feather in their cap. Don't let those two worlds collide, ever.
Read this slowly: Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
That's ex post facto. This portion of the definition has NOTHING to do with when the law was passed; it has to do with what the laws effect upon the punished person(s) will be. It stands alone: The government is forbidden to make any such law. Ever, if you insist a time be associated with the thought.
What it means is, when a law meets that definition, it is an unauthorized law. UNAUTHORIZED. Illegal. Forbidden. The obvious responsibility of the supreme court is to spot such things and remove the law from the books, and see to recompense anyone harmed by said law. They ought to punish the lawmakers, too. When they are faced with such a law, as now, but fail to remove it, they are acting as traitors to the oaths they swore.
Now lets analyze it step by step for your benefit:
Violation of a good law? Yes. What was the punishment? Prison, X years. What was the venue? Criminal court. Why? Because the person was not deemed incompetent. Otherwise, the venue would have been civil. So, to continue. In the criminal venue, the person served the punishment. Punishment is now done with. Person expects to walk, barring commission of further crimes of a new nature. None are noted; so walking is indeed the expected outcome. Now comes an attempt by the government to extend imprisonment based on the fact that the original offense classes this person as a sexual offender. We know it isn't based upon capacity at regards the original crime; that's already been decided by putting the whole case through the criminal courts path -- we already know the person is presumed to have made a willful decision to violate the law, by choice, and we punished them for that. We also know that it isn't based upon current capacity, because the person is in prison and can't re-offend even if they wanted to. So the only thing left to base the punishment upon is the class - the fact that they are a particular type of offender. To claim that the commitment is civil is disingenuous, by which I mean to say intentionally deceiving. It can't be civil. First of all, for the original offense, we already put this person into the willful, choice-making category. Second, while in prison, if no further crime was committed, then this "civil" commitment is in fact an attempt to base it on the original crime, and therefore an invalid presumption of lack of capacity, and therefore an aggravation of the punishment already meted out. You can't base it upon speech or thought. You can only base capacity upon action, otherwise you're punishing crime in YOUR mind, not the mind of the person you're looking at. It is YOUR imagination that is committing the imaginary crime. The other person hasn't done a thing. Speech is not a crime. Preferring kids as sexual partners isn't even a crime. Having sex with them -- doing -- is. Without the doing, there is no crime.
Stepping back for a moment, the intent of the two ex post facto clauses is extremely clear: When punishing a person, you decide what is appropriate using the rules of law, you do it once, and when it's done, it's supposed to be done. You, and every person who argues for additional punishment for a crime after time is served, are making an argument for repeated punishment at the will of the tyrant, no measure to be deemed sufficient, no limits, no end. Lifelong punishment at the will of tyrants. And you know what? I say no thank you to you and all your kind. Our constitution did not authorize a tyranny. If a crime is of sufficient measure that it merits life imprisonment, we have laws for that. If we need a law like that for other crimes, we can make them. What we do not need, on any account, is laws that add punishment to people who have already been sentenced. People far wiser
You remain wrong, walking away or not, name calling or not.
All of this has been addressed. You're just being willfully ignorant. It's not civil; the person was treated as a criminal, therefore they are deemed responsible, they have been convicted, punished, and it's over. Calder vs. Bull is a constitutionally relevant cite; that was the understanding of ex post facto when the constitution was written - it was (is) contemporaneous and so is 100% relevant to what the constitution means, as opposed to some of the sophist malarkey cobbled up today. The constitution can only be understood in context. That's why we have the inversion of the commerce clause, misunderstanding of the 2nd amendment, exclusinon of email from the 4th's "papers", etc... trying to treat a 17th century document like it was written by George Bush Sr. While thinking like George Bush Jr. (I refuse to even make a joke about George Jr writing it... that man is a fool's fool, and that only on his best days.)
So look: Because of the criminal conviction, you can't move the ground and say, no, wait, we want a do-over in civil court. So you are, irrevocably, in criminal jurisdiction, no matter what you do, unless there is new activity that brings the person back to court. And you cannot extend the sentence based upon the original crime, because that is at the very heart of what constitutes ex post facto actions, which are not authorized as a government power - that means EVERYONE from lawyer, judge, legislator, governor and president and all those in between were NEVER authorized to do such a thing and are BREAKING THE LAW (constitution, highest law in the land, yes?) by exerting unauthorized power if they do so. They're also breaking their oaths - go read 'em.
Good grief, are you serious? Or are you just trolling? I am NOT saying that civil committment is in and of itself a form of punishment. NOT SAYING THAT. Got it? I'm all for it, given demonstrated danger to society AND the careful determination that such behavior is not willful, which is the exception, not the rule. Waving dangerous weapons at others or using them, inappropriate touching of a prepubescent child, those are demonstrations. Thoughts and wishes, or worse, the presumption of thoughts and wishes, are not. If the behavior is willful, then the path lies in criminal prosecution and forward, not the civil path. They are mutually exclusive, and for any particular crime, you get one or the other -- not both. Trying to use both is the whole double jeopardy thing rearing up to bite us -- going after someone again for the same crime on the same set of facts. Again, this is accepted by law, but the law is pathologically wrong. That is what is the problem here: The law is wrong. As determined by thinking and reasoning, a process superior to the law -- just as it gives birth to law, it also can determine the law is bad. Examples abound. Attempting to discredit my argument because it is not based in law is insufficient to the task. You have to deal with the issues, which you are not doing.
Now please, pay attention: This is NOT civil commitment. This is extension of the CRIMINAL commitment. It is based upon the ORIGINAL CRIME. They are CALLING it "civil" and THAT is the crime here: The JUDGES and the LEGISLATORS are committing the crime by trying to hide their violation of ex post facto under another domain that DOES NOT APPLY. You get it now? I'm telling you that the criminals are the legislature, the judges, and the lawyers. This isn't a "mistake", this isn't relevant to the original offender, this is a CRIME by those tasked with managing the legal system.
They're not just wrong. They are CRIMINAL. Violators of the constitution. Violators of their oaths. Panderers to social pressure and flagrant flouters of the governing law, the constitution.
As lo
Not any, no. If the person has demonstrated by their actions (not words) that they are insane and dangerous, then I am, unhappily, for locking them up and treating them with an eye towards the earliest possible release if they can be changed such that they no longer exhibit those actions. I agree with the concept that when a person is insane, they are not responsible and so should not be held criminally liable. We must allow for the reality of both disease and genetic impairment; neither should lead to blame unless we're talking about the willful imposition of same.
I should note that barring a truly righteous fuckup by prison authorities, is impossible for a person who is locked up for molesting pre-puberty children -- actual pedophiles, as opposed to the myriad victims of social hysteria who bear the label "sex offender" -- to commit such actions while in prison, and therefore utterly unjustifiable to attempt to class them as having exhibited such actions, and from there, impossible to justify committing them civilly as insane and dangerous.
Freedom is the very most important thing a human being can possess. Taking it should be a consequence of either willful disobedience of another's rights, or the most visible and incontrovertible evidence that the person is right off their rocker, and further, in such a way as to have currently and relevantly demonstrated they pose a real danger to others. Actions are key. Words and wishes -- irrelevant, and all the more so in someone deemed sane enough to have made the willful choices that result in criminal prosecution and punishment.
In this case, we have persons deemed by the court as willfully disobeying the law -- they had a choice, and they made it -- and therefore not insane, and therefore subject to normal punishment, which they have duly served. This eliminates punishing them for the crime as insane folk. It's already been decided they were competent, and they have already been punished. So it should be over. Ex post facto exists specifically so that the government is forbidden to go back and re-punish, extend punishment, or re-define. Things are what the are, when they happen.
I am hugely against letting the government move the ground the defendant stands upon. People do what they do in the matrix of the laws that exist now. We cannot possibly act in such a way as to anticipate what may be illegal tomorrow (especially given that our legislators appear to be half-insane themselves, when they're not being outright fools.) These people broke a law or laws; they had their day in court; they were not deemed insane, but determined to be responsible individuals, punishment was decreed in that vein, and served. It has every reason to be over, and zero reason to be extended.
If this person re-offends, then we have a reason to punish further. Without same, absolutely not. As far as the original crime goes, it cannot be a reason for civil commitment. Here, the very class of those to be further punished is defined by the original criminal prosecution - it's ex post facto right down the line to even consider extending the punishment based upon changing the definition of the individual's sanity.
One last thing. I use the term "punishment" because the facts of our prison system demonstrate that it is not even marginally focused upon rehabilitation. That is (stupidly, in my view) left to the criminal by simply making the association between the horrible conditions of imprisonment and the commission of a crime. Further, criminals (felons) are permanently deprived of rights as extended punishment (voting, right to bear arms, more), creating membership in a permanent criminal underclass. This is true of felons in general, and considerably more so for sex offenders (restricted in where they can live, work, recreate, shamed and listed publicly, occasionally lynched, etc.) It is all about punishment. When society permanently puts you in the "you're marked and disadvantaged" class, by definition, you cannot be rehabilitated in society's eyes. I view this as a huge mistake, one of our biggest single social errors with immediate unsavory consequences that are no one's fault but our own.
As a single case, Williams serves to show that there is justification for making new laws. You can't heal everything that happens all the time with law. You can use these events to make better new law -- and that's been done -- so that knowingly infecting someone is a serious crime. But it doesn't serve as an example of why we need to give the government license to do anything it wants to anyone they like just because they decide to.
Thank you -- very well said, you have precisely identified why the whole civil commitment vector is sophist. I've been steering clear of this because I knew it was, but it is very useful to have it nailed down so well. Kudos.
A classic ad hominem post, attacking the man when you cannot address the argument.
I applaud you, sir, for walking away from the facts with your head embedded to the neck into the manure of the judiciary. Breath deep. That, my profoundly argument-deprived respondent, is the smell of tyranny.
As for your complaint, the thing is, you want the law to be cited when the law is defective. Think about it. You're caught in self-referential idiocy. Such an issue has to be addressed using mechanisms that are supra to the law. You know, by thinking and discourse.
Yes, I do. Quite precisely. Which, if you had read the thread, or the blog post of mine I initially linked to, you would know. The fact that you think I'm just ranting, though, tells me very clearly that you don't know what ex post facto is, and that you've not read the thread, so I will explain yet again, just for you:
Now look at #3. Now think about extending the prison term indefinitely of a criminal when they have already served out the ordered punishment.
Now you too know what an ex post facto law is. What you may not know is that ex post facto laws are explicitly forbidden to both the state and federal governments. Unlike our enumerated rights, these things are in the main body of the constitution, and they are painfully clear: Such laws are forbidden. That is why it is important to scream like a banshee when such laws, as now, are made flesh.
Yes, it most certainly was. It is also a bill of attainder, as it is an act of the legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial. Trying to disguise it under the veil of civil law is sophist horseshit. The issue at hand is criminal; that's why they're in jail. Making up a NEW law, which is what this is, that makes their crime worse, aggravates it, and applies new punishment, is precisely the very thing that the ex post facto prohibition was intended to absolutely, utterly prevent.
That is neither a measure of my posts, which have addressed your salient issues previously, or of the facts. It is a measure of your own ignorance, and your failure to read the thread before commenting. I suggest you rectify your ignorance and improve your commenting skills. In that order.
My naive friend, if the question is "what is US law?", the answer is: A disaster, out of control, unauthorized, and self-referentially insane.
The system has evolved into a state where it cannot reliably dispense justice; it does not obey the constitution; it imposes itself where it does not belong; and it is in no way responsive to the citizens. A train wreck of an attempt to do right, now doing wrong as fast as it can, growing uncontrollably, already far too large for anyone to grasp or control, full of archaic "gotchas" and brand-new malfeasance like this latest fuckery of the justices of the supreme court.
The law, from a justice and authorization perspective, is profoundly mutated and dangerous, and it is also in some parts (like this one) entirely unauthorized. The constitution says NO. It doesn't say "oh, but if you call it something else, you can", it just says NO.
And here's the core of the problem: With the law running wild, mutated and dangerous, lawyers, judges and legislators all continue to go around trying to explain their actions using other invalid law they've made as justification, as if that made it all ok.
But it doesn't. They're no different from the sex offenders who wronte something down that says what they did was ok because that's what they meant to do. Legislators meant to make this law; the Justices meant to let it stand. They each have their reasons that they have codified into law and opinion, but the law is mutated and dangerous and the opinions are based on the unauthorized law and so explaining it in those terms is absolutely bloody meaningless.
Focus on the center issue here: The constitution FORBIDS making ex post facto law. The definition of what that is, is extremely clear. The intent behind that declaration was perfectly clear: Trying to get around it by calling what you're doing something else is utter sophistry, not to mention a violation of both the congressional and judicial oaths of office.
If US law were a computer program, I'd stop it, expunge it, destroy the source code, and start over. Actually, if anything I wrote ever turned out as badly as US law, I think I'd go to work at McDonald's and quit programming entirely. Out of pure shame.
Lawyers and judges don't generally have that much sense, though. No, let me amend that. I've never met or heard of one that had that much sense. They all proceed under the presumption that the law is perfect, and do their harm to society based on that. From the drug war at one end, re-subjecting the population to the obvious and known effects of (stupidly and obliviously) creating a black market, to the outright inversion of the commerce clause in order to make (obviously intentionally limited) federal power omnipresent, to (with malice aforethought) eroding our other constitutionally enumerated rights at the other, we're being utterly fucked: BY THE LEGAL SYSTEM AND EVERYONE IN IT.
It was a system set up to fail by the simple expedient of depending upon the honor of those in high office. Such honor may have existed to some extent when the constitution was penned, but the presumption that it would always be so that underlies the implementation of the document has been proven to be not just optimistic, but entirely wrongheaded and insufficient to the task of keeping the nation on course.
Because of the law -- and nothing else whatsoever -- our nation has come off the tracks and we are no longer able to enjoy the fruits of a constitutional republic. The culprits are the legislators, the judiciary, and the lawyers. These people are the worst of the worst, no matter their intentions. They have shown their true colors in what they have done to this country; they are the worst poison we face, far worse than most criminals, who do their harm one person at a time. With the stroke of a pen, judges and legislators exert unauthorized coercion on many people at a time, sometimes the entire population. There's no stopping them under the law (surprise), because they wrote it.
This has nothing to do with a civil violation, except with regard to the excuses the justices are trying to use. There has been no civil violation. The conviction was for a criminal violation. The extension in jail time is because of the conviction for the criminal violation, which you can tell because the class of affected persons is criminally convicted sex offenders. This extension is specifically consequent to the original criminal act. So all discussion of civil punishment is completely misleading. You want to refer to the SCOTUS opinion, and what I am telling you is that SCOTUS is the criminal here -- the foxes are guarding the hen house. It's like you read the writings of the sex offender, and he said "well, it wasn't a crime because she seemed to want it" and you therefore conclude, well, must not be a crime, then. The fact is that the Justices here are committing a crime: That of bringing an ex post facto law into permanent being in violation of the clear prohibition against same. Reading why they explain it away means jack shit. It's ex post facto, because it increases the punishment for the original crime after the fact. That is not an authorized power for either the state or federal government. It is entirely insufficient to say you can have that power if you call it something else: The constitution says you can't have it, and it doesn't say "unless you call it roses", either. It says NO.
And no, I don't think you should be jailing people over some buzz in your head that makes you think they might do something wrong. That's purest evil and a power no one should ever have. Civil commitment without evidence of intent is utter bullshit. Just like this SCOTUS decision.
What do you suggest we do? There are no laws that govern the behavior of the supreme court justices. There are no laws that address violation of constitutional prohibitions by congress (our federal lawmakers), or by the courts. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, and the system's huge flaw is that it was designed that way under the horribly optimistic presumption that would be ok because these would be honorable people, bound by (cough) oath.
Seriously, what can we do? Are you suggesting armed revolt? The populace is very happy, by and large, and very poorly educated as to what it is they have lost, and are losing. They're not going to take up arms. And if some lone avenger-type did, let's say he manages to carve his message into every monument in Washington and do in the congress and supreme court, do you think that would change anything? They'd just replace them with like-minded folk, name the avenger as a "terrorist", and go on about their business. I tell you, there is no solution.
I think what you are watching is literally the dissolution of a constitutional republic into government by arbitrary force, completely free of the bounds originally placed upon it by its original authorizing document -- that change was made by force and subversion. It's well along, in fact I'd say it is almost complete.
Sorry, yes. Here's the legal definition, from Calder vs. Bull:
Read #3 there. Does this law change the punishment for the crime for which the criminal was convicted? Yes, it does. Is the punishment greater than that applied at conviction? Yes, it is. Are these two changes relevant to the law annexed to the crime when committed? Yes, they are.
Also, you're talking out your ass about parole and fighting, etc. These are new violations of existing laws and they get new punishments. They are in no way increases of the sentence for the original act. But this idiocy the supreme court passed is exactly that: the time in jail is extended indefinitely because of the original crime. No new crime has been committed. That lands this clearly in ex post facto territory.
No? What are "sex offenders", then, if not a group of people? It is a classing mechanism, is it not? Can you tell if you are in the class? Yes, certainly you can. Can you tell if you're not in the class? Yes, again, easily. So you're wrong again. Must not be your day, pal.
If you aren't given the right to face your accusers and defend yourself, and your jail term is extended consequent to the fact that you committed a criminal act, which is what is happening here, then it is a due process issue. You can't just wave your hands, mutter abracadabra, and magic up a civil violation for some clown in jail, now magically "re/deeper-guilty" of being a sex offender, murderer, or litterbug. Until or unless that person commits a new crime, they have every right in the world to walk the streets. Otherwise, you're engaging in prosecuting thought crime / future crime, which is utter bullshit.
Spoken by someone whose post was almost straight-through technically wrong, point by point, that is a fabulously amusing remark. You have a nice day now. I suggest you spend it reading the constitution, and then looking up the big words.
I did show my work. Calder vs. Bull. Read it and weep. This issue is hugely simple. They're increasing the punishment after conviction. That's forbidden. Period. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because a judge somewhere has written that "it's ok because it's not punishment" that it actually IS ok, or that it actually ISN'T punishment. Ask the motherfucker who gets imprisoned for life without due process, ex post facto, if it's not punishment, and you'll get an accurate answer. Ask a judge, and you'll get a mouthful of shit. Ask a lawyer, and you'll get *shovelfulls* of shit.
This type of law is absolutely forbidden. Period. There's no amount of rhetoric, sophist pin-ballet, or writing of "opinion" that will change that. Pointing and screaming "sex offender" doesn't change it either, as much as the media-terrified rank and file might wish it were so. It isn't even *just* ex post facto. It's wrong on many levels - what about due process? What about the prohibition against bills of attainder? This is mind-boggling, is what it is. The fact that SCOTUS let this one go through is the clearest possible indication that they are directly and knowingly violating their oaths. Reading the opinion of people who are violating their oaths is a complete and utter waste of time. They're not doing their jobs, and that's the very nicest thing I can say about them.
The problem here is authorized power. The government can, and does, define its own rules to break the constitution. Civil commitment post term served adds to the punishment. Any claim that it does not is purest sophist nonsense. Therefore, it too is ex post facto, and UNAUTHORIZED -- now, unauthorized, as we see, has very little effect on the government. That is why the commerce clause has been inverted, that is why judges have taken unto themselves the essential power only AUTHORIZED by article five (amendment), and why ex post facto laws are being enacted, and why detention without lawyer, phone call, etc., and why your email is being monitored, all of this is happening as a consequence of CLEARLY unauthorized power...
You can't "read the opinion" to solve this problem. You're asking the vampire why it's ok to drink your blood. It's wrong *by definition* because IT ISN'T AN AUTHORIZED POWER.
So what do we have? We have UNAUTHORIZED POWER. Look it in the eye and recognize it for what it is.
Lawyers, judges, lawmakers -- they're all complicit in this scheme to circumvent the constitution. And meanwhile, the law schools churn out more robots who have been convinced that the constitution can be circumvented by dancing on the head of a pin. Look at Obama - a self-proclaimed "constitutional scholar", and HE thinks the second amendment doesn't give the citizens a right to bear arms, and further, he thinks that the government -- somehow -- has the power to say otherwise. Which, you'll note, is nowhere in the constitution.
The bottom line is this:
When the constitution says NO, then the answer is NO. If the government wants to change that answer, then the process is laid out in article five, Amendment. Otherwise, the answer REMAINS NO.
So until there are amendments that say otherwise, you can keep and bear arms (and that's more than guns, people.) You can say anything you want, and that includes in a crowded theater. But the thing is, the government will use UNAUTHORIZED power to punish you for not recognizing the powers it has STOLEN. No one will give up their comfy life in order to put down the uprising in the judiciary and the congress; and therefore, this constitutional republic will continue to erode at a very rapid pace.
We are, in a word, fucked.
This is an ex post facto law. No way around it. Making such a law is outright forbidden - explicitly - by the constitution to both the feds (congress) and the states. The fact that it's aimed at some sex offender is just used to get the foot in the door -- if you remove "sex offender" and put "murderer" or "litterbug" in there, the effect of the law is the same: To increase punishment after the fact.
SCOTUS, out of control, still. Or again. However you want to put it. There's no way to rein in these traitors to their oaths either -- the system as designed is outright broken. The constitution has zero legal teeth.
It is Irish law that allows an academic to be convicted for showing a scientific paper to another person. That would be a consequence of the actions of Irish morons. Not US morons (not to say we don't have 'em, but so far, they've mostly confined themselves to ripping up our constitution, rather than attacking the proliferation of scientific information.)
Does a VCR regulate what you can watch on it? No. So "just like a VCR" isn't the problem here.
No. It isn't. OS X is the same kind of OS Linux is, except it has an excellent UI. If you want the sharp edge, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from opening a shell, or Xwindows, and having at it with as bleeding-edge code or trolling about in the underbelly of the nest as root. I spend about half my day in the shell, as a matter of fact, though some of that is SSH'd to our Linux servers.
The fact that the GUI works well enough without most people having to go further into the OS is a great thing; in no way a bad thing. And of course, there's nothing stopping you from building any app you like, that does anything you like, as unsafely as you like, if you like. The vast majority of Linux projects can also be compiled and run without much ado. Where there are exceptions, there are workarounds to make them work anyway. As as far as Windows goes, OS X and Linux both blow the Windows OS away. Windows exists on the strength of the apps available for it and how widespread it is. As an OS, it sucks fungus.
Just because OS X has been made easy to use at the topmost level doesn't mean it isn't powerful. In this case, exactly the opposite.
No. If all they could come up with was showing her the article, a scientific article... then the court is wrong, not him. He was cleared of the other charges. The only thing left was NOT creepy.
You know, it really pisses me off when people assume someone is guilty because they're in court, no more. Sure, there were charges, but they were NOT found to apply; and the only thing left was the COURT being creepy.
This government is demonstrating it is still in the dark ages, where idiotic canned morals and ethics based on superstitious and largely fictional books still dictate the rules of state.
It's going to be a long, long haul getting rid of the "Sky Daddy" moralizers. Everywhere. In the meantime, the religiots will continue to look for contemporary alternatives to burning at the stake. Ruining one's career, and to some extent one's life... a fairly effective replacement, I'd say. A lifetime of suffering coupled with loss of ability to teach what one knows in an atmosphere of respect and personal and professional growth.
Fellatio in bats. What should be extremely interesting, is instead a hair trigger for idiots.
Sometimes I can go days without having to realize just how much I despise religion. And then something like this happens.
By the way, IRISH MORONS: Sex is good. Violence is bad. Imposed government/social censorship is MORONIC. Freedom for people to view what they CHOOSE and make their own decisions is the ONLY correct path through this mess. Is that convenient for everyone? Will everyone feel good about it? No. But it is still the BEST path. Because freedom of knowledge for everyone totally trumps anyone's moral qualms.
Teach your kids what you want to teach them. What you think is right. But don't attempt to sanitize the rest of the world in the shape of your morals and ethics. My kids are not your kids and you have NO right to impose your morals and ethics upon them. That's MY job. And I teach my kids that sex is good, and violence is bad. I'm not in the least interested in your goat-age, superstition-driven stupidity. Thanks.
You were saying about how it's not like GIF? Can't come back and bite the users later? Yes? Please do go on. Explain how the change in charging the users for use in 2016 that MPEG-LA has set themselves up to be able to do wouldn't suddenly disrupt the community? Or do you believe, that after establishing a huge user base, there is no chance they, or whoever they've sold it to in the meantime, is not going to tap that metaphorical piggy bank, after they went to the extreme of specifically setting a time limit on how long it could be used for free?
h.264 is, because of the time limit (and indirectly because it is encumbered), a huge mistake, and both its intent, effect, and consequences, have the potential to have effects precisely like GIF: Get it embedded, get everyone using it, then hammer them with charges.
This is why it's a terrible choice. Being "up front" about it has nothing to do with it. It is potential developer- and user-license-bombing that is the issue. Why be stupid and walk into such a thing, knowing you can be screwed? The sensible thing is to use a codec that is not encumbered. Doesn't matter if the compression is poor, as long as it is even moderately reasonable, and it gets the movie to you. To the extent that bandwidth is a problem, it is temporary; bandwidth goes up constantly. It's no reason to dive face first, eyes open, into a reeking pile of financial hurt.
Technologies that are encumbered drag everyone down except the inventor. We need to stop using them. Every time we do, we get screwed. Want to watch a DVD on your linux machine? Guess you'll have to break the law. Notice how VNC won't play until you "do something"? That's because the technology is encumbered, not because it's hard to do. Want to watch a Bluray on a Mac? No, sorry. Again, it's not a problem technically. It's about licensing. Want to watch your h.264 stuff on 2017 on your new machine? Will you be able to? You can't answer yes with any certainty.
Bad. Idea.
I find Jobs to be the exact wrong person to exert his idea of morals and ethics upon the morals and ethics of his customers. His cry of "you'd understand if you had kids" is just the kind of moronic posturing I'd expect... the Apple store is chock full of blood and gore, but sex, one of the most wonderful things we get to involve ourselves in, is "bad." This is how I *know* that Jobs is possessed of absolutely bankrupt morals and ethics, and why I don't think he belongs between myself, or my children, and content of any type.
However, he is the exact right person to nail down hardware and software guidelines. How do I know? I run Linux, Windows and OS X. OS X is - by *huge margins* - the best of the three to use day in, day out.
So hey, Steve: If you were half the man you think you are, you'd pull the violence from the apple store and put sex in. But you're not. You're a posturing idiot who is playing the social game for sales, tapping the social retards who love violence and wave their little religious hands over there eyes at the sight of sex. Congratulations, chump. Stick to areas you have skill in: hardware and software design.
Not content.
They would if, for example, none of the videos on YouTube would play until they did.
h.264 is a BAD mistake. It's GIF all over again. By supporting it, they're just playing the corporate game. Oh wait - they ARE corporations. Never mind. So much for freedom.
How about we clean it up, instead?