As recent events tend to point out... no. People want cheaper stuff and that comes from overseas.
I know it's a bit off-topic but I feel that our own government is making this worse as time goes on. The only way to reverse the loss of jobs is to start cutting government agencies and military spending while giving tax breaks to all Americans. If I wasn't getting nearly 40% of my income taken out each month, I'd gladly take a 30% pay cut which would be more like a 10% pay raise in cost of living adjustment. (my math is probably all wrong, but it's not the point of the matter.) If American companies didn't have to pay all their employees 40% more than a country with less gouging taxes in order to maintain their quality of life, more jobs would stay here because it would cost the company less.
if there was no government, your take a much larger paycut. children would work instead of going to school. (it would start off simply as a way to earn some "extra cash"). since children have no dependants they would be willing and able to work for less money. this creates downwards pressure on wages. not to mention the introduction of children into the workforce would create unemployment which would put further downward pressure on wages.
of course without a government then what's to stop me from breaking the knees of your kids if you don't pay me 40% of your wages? anyone with a big stick would be your new government.
So, on that scale, a foreign company doing business in U.S. will pay outrageous taxes because most of their employees are in their home country, i.e. not the U.S.? Geez, that's going to bring investors who are desperately needed especially during an economic downturn.
However, a child can not legally consent, making any sexual act with a child rape.
In many places 16 and 17 years olds CAN consent to have sex. and therefore a sexual act with them is NOT rape. And moreover, 15 year olds can usually have sex with other 15 year olds and that would mean the sexual act is not rape.
Until this year in canada 14 year olds could consent to have sex.
Copyright law has nothing to say about whether a particular use is legitimate. That is covered by contract law--the license agreement that you have to accept in order to install the software.
you dont have to accept a contract in order to install software.
But these were VZW employees who were given the ability to look at records as part of their job.
the ability to do something does not equal authorization to do it. By your logic cops aren't breaking the law if they start shooting people randomly on the street, and surgeons are free to do anything they want to you once they get you under the knife.
Because a using a triggerfish means they don't need to produce a warrant to a third party before executing the warrant. This leaves a big opportunity for a compliant judge to issue a predated warrant after the fact.
If you have a complaint judge who is willing to break the law for you, then he can issue a bogus warrant before the fact just as easily. The police can claim they received an anonymous tip.
When you have the executive branch and the judicial branch of government both colluding together to screw you... give up. You're fucked Leave town.
It's not that I think telcos are going to act in the public service by refusing to comply with non-warrant requests... it's that there are now negative ramifications for doing so.
But we are NOT talking about non-warrant requests. We are talking about warrant requests. And specifically the evidentiary bar.
the legal ramification of police using their own cell phone tower without a warrant is that no one is legally allowed to simply operate a cell phone tower. You need a license to operate that kind of equipment and the police don't have them.
if you are talking about cops and judges breaking the law.. well we are going off in a seperate direction and the only solution is to abolish the police and the courts.
Its getting progressively more difficult for law enforcement to get the data they're looking for from the telcos, so instead they're going around the telco's by setting up fake cell towers.
This does NOT lower the evidentiary bar to obtain a legal search.
The sentence "Courts in recent years have been raising the evidentiary bar law enforcement agents must meet in order to obtain historical cell phone records that reveal information about a target's location. But documents obtained by civil liberties groups under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest that 'triggerfish' technology can be used to pinpoint cell phones without involving cell phone providers at all. " is weasily.
How does triggerfish lower the evidentiary bar required to authorize law enforcement to use special sensing technology to search for a cell phone?
"Survival of the fittest" is a tautology. The very definition of fitness in the Darwinian sense is that you survive, so the saying is really saying: "That which survives survives".
it says more than that.
The statement predicts that barring a change in the environment, the next generations on average will consist of more higher fitness individuals, and fewer lower fitness individuals than prior generations.
On the other hand one biblical view is that each generation is further and further removed from Paradise, and life spans get shorter and shorter, and people get shorter and shorter. People used to live 800 years and have hundreds of kids (possibly a 24 hour gestation period), and there were giants.
If god created the world in a state of perfection, then each generation could be getting worse and worse and worse... survival of the fittest would then be a false statement, because the fittest would all be dead, and whatever we found at any given time would be an example of the least fit individuals that ever existed. the unfit would inherit the earth.
... Replace the women's rights pamphlet with a (non-explicit) circular defending paedophilia. Do you think our society would still protect your freedom of speech if you began circulating that? How long before they beat a confession out of you? Who's going to defend you?
Pedophilia is not the same thing as women's rights. Try replacing 'pedophilia' in your example with 'racism'...
Pedophilia is not the same thing as racism. Try replacing "racism" in your sentence with "woman's rights".
Fortunately there are lawyers who will defend anyone, even convicted terrorists.
and why shouldn't they? the fundamental principles of justice DEPEND on every trial being fair and presided by impartial judges.
if no lawyers would defend a convicted terrorist, then the first thing that every prosecution would commence with is a document purporting to be a record of conviction for terrorism. at that point the defense would collapse because the accused would have no legal counsel and consequently incapable of pointing out non-sequitur lines of reasoning, or legal errors commited by the prosecution of the presiding judge. We'd have millions of convicted terrorists (who none the less are completely innocent) in jail for no crime more serious than pissing off the wrong person.
I'm glad to hear that. For a moment I thought I was helping to support a war in order to establish theocracy. This is just good old fashioned secular corruption and tyranny.
But, for the most part...the intelligence in the US, UK, France..and Russia all said he had some hidden over there. And it isn't like Saddam didn't try to perpetuate the myth that he did. Ironically...if he's allowed unfettered inspections, and went out of his way to show he had none, and truly did NOT pursue getting them, he'd still be alive, in charge....and torturing his people for fun along with his sons.
If Hussein could do the impossible then he would have waved his hand and the ocean would have swallowed the American invasion fleet.
WMD was merely a pretense for war. The war was already decided upon. Nothing Hussein did could have prevented it.
And no intelligence agency claimed they had reliable information that any weapons of mass destruction were located in Iraq.
He claims he owns. Without the registration, the ISP has to assume he doesn't.
By that same logic the cops must assume a crime is in progress in your bedroom without proof to the contrary.
imagine if you went into a store and tried to buy something and they store demanded proof that the 10$ bill you were carrying truly belonged to you?
Imagine if every morning IRS agents showed up and demanded proof that you filed your taxes on time. Or the cops showed up demanding proof you weren't a fugitive on the run from the law?
a society can't function unless people are able to take basic honesty and good faith as the default assumption, and leave the suspicion to cases where there is grounds for it.
If someone claims to own something they are in possession of, most rational people assume that they DO own it, unless they have some reason to suspect otherwise.
if people are criminals by default, then there is something extremely non democratic and tyrannical about the law which makes them so.
Our country doesn't make the same promises about liberty in a single document which all our countrymen regard as some kind of holy scripture. It is the American attitude of how you are all in the "land of freedom, better than all other nations in every way" that makes your massive overreaction to one terrorist attack so ironic. It's like a kid vowing to never go back to school again because a bully once stole his lunch money.
I don't mean any disrespect to those who died in 9/11, but people are dying all the time from accidents, disease and natural disaster. Wasting all the money you have on going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact it was a terrorist organisation and not a single country that attacked you, is pretty dumb. If you go around spending billions attacking everyone that you feel slightly threatened by, you'll end up in financial meltdown... oh, wait...
Actually the constitution of the united states has more legal power than the holy scripture ever did. And the USA is not the only country which has such a document. Look at Canada. Look at Japan. Look at France. The UK is still living in the dark ages with respect to its constitution. It has none, and in its place it has nothing but dumb luck as to whether or not any given Monarch is going to be a benign and loving ruler, a tyranical maniac or perhaps an ignorant and naive child with a learning disability who lives in Denmark and doesn't speak English. The US constitution is a more valuable piece of law than anything which ever came out of the UK.
the people of the UK are at the complete and utter mercy of government, a government which is still partially hereditary and partially theocracy. The UK has the worst civil liberties in all of europe and its only going to get worse and worse without a written constitution.
At the most fundamental level, the UK has a government which is not by the people, but is separate and apart from the people. The people have no real power or rights in the UK except what the government supposes it gives them.
And FYI: In case you didn't know, the UK is also at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and is ALSO spending billions.
>>>I don't know of any countries with socialized medicine where the government is the only provider.
Canada. If a Canadian wants service from someone other than the Ottawa Parliament, then they have to come south to the U.S.
Wrong: Healthcare is provided at the provincial level. And virtually all hospitals and doctors operate privately. The only difference is that the rates for various services are fixed by law, and it is illegal to directly bill the patient for any medically necessary service. They must bill the province.
The government acts as a single BUYER of healthcare services, not a single provider.
Ummm. you think a government run healthcare system would end up with less waiting?
I'm sure your insurance (if you're lucky enough to have it) has more than one approved healthcare provider in your area. Maybe its time to act like a good consumer and go somewhere else where you would be more satisfied with the service? Perhaps you should speak with your physician about the length of wait and possibly ask for a recommendation to go to an alternatiev caregiver?
You can do the same thing in Canada. The government doesn't tell you what doctor you have to see.
It's a matter of degree. In Canada, the average waiting time for a necessary surgery is 18 weeks. Having your appointment happen an hour late isn't even close.
the Fraiser Institute is a right wing think tank and is masterful at twisting statistics to seem to mean something they don't actually mean. they have a long history of railing against the government providing services to taxpayers on a non-profit basis.
if we bothered to get their raw data, the flaw in their analysis would no doubt reveal itself.
No you don't. You don't have the right to free speech within my house, and I can tell you to leave my home and use force to compel you to if something you say offends me. Hell, I can make you leave my home if you refuse to say something I want you to say.
By the same logic, I can force you to let me live in your house by saying "Nee" until you give me permission. ergo you have no private property rights.
If I'm running a forum and I don't like what you say, I'm well within my rights to delete your posts and ban you forever.
Really? If you think so. I can retaliate once again by saying "Nee".
In no case would any court of law award you damages for me saying "Nee". Just like it wont award me damages for your use of private property rights. But neither right implicitly takes precedence over the other.
As a matter of law, a clause in a contract which forbid one party from saying "Nee" would be unenforcible in court unless the utterance caused actual harm. A contract can not simply restrict speech for the sake of restricting speech. Speech is an inalienable right.
Your power to control my speech is only as great as my desire to access your private property, but at no time did I have any greater access than your arbitrary whim anyway. Likewise my ability to coerce you by saying "Nee" is only as powerful as your dread of that awful word.
What about digital distribution? I bought Portal on Steam so I don't own a physical copy. Should I still have the right to sell what I bought to someone else or is it just for physical media?
You do own a physical copy. It is stored on your hard drive. And you have the right to sell your hard drive. You don't have the right to make copies of your hard drive and sell those.
Slashdot Mirror
As recent events tend to point out... no. People want cheaper stuff and that comes from overseas.
I know it's a bit off-topic but I feel that our own government is making this worse as time goes on. The only way to reverse the loss of jobs is to start cutting government agencies and military spending while giving tax breaks to all Americans. If I wasn't getting nearly 40% of my income taken out each month, I'd gladly take a 30% pay cut which would be more like a 10% pay raise in cost of living adjustment. (my math is probably all wrong, but it's not the point of the matter.) If American companies didn't have to pay all their employees 40% more than a country with less gouging taxes in order to maintain their quality of life, more jobs would stay here because it would cost the company less.
if there was no government, your take a much larger paycut. children would work instead of going to school. (it would start off simply as a way to earn some "extra cash"). since children have no dependants they would be willing and able to work for less money. this creates downwards pressure on wages. not to mention the introduction of children into the workforce would create unemployment which would put further downward pressure on wages.
of course without a government then what's to stop me from breaking the knees of your kids if you don't pay me 40% of your wages? anyone with a big stick would be your new government.
So, on that scale, a foreign company doing business in U.S. will pay outrageous taxes because most of their employees are in their home country, i.e. not the U.S.? Geez, that's going to bring investors who are desperately needed especially during an economic downturn.
what kind of business could this possibly be?
Try out Amazon MP3
It doesn't work outside the United States. I live in Canada and Itunes works here. Amazon does not.
and other alien races are as leery of sending out giant seedships that they themselves can't ride in as we are
who says we are?
I'm all for it.
Like it or not, agree with it or not, minors do not legally have civil rights so they can not be infringed upon.
They don't have the right to vote, and they are considered mentally incompetent. But yes, they do have civil rights.
However, a child can not legally consent, making any sexual act with a child rape.
In many places 16 and 17 years olds CAN consent to have sex. and therefore a sexual act with them is NOT rape. And moreover, 15 year olds can usually have sex with other 15 year olds and that would mean the sexual act is not rape.
Until this year in canada 14 year olds could consent to have sex.
He is Accessory after the fact at the very least.
try to make that charge stick in court.
Copyright law has nothing to say about whether a particular use is legitimate. That is covered by contract law--the license agreement that you have to accept in order to install the software.
you dont have to accept a contract in order to install software.
But these were VZW employees who were given the ability to look at records as part of their job.
the ability to do something does not equal authorization to do it. By your logic cops aren't breaking the law if they start shooting people randomly on the street, and surgeons are free to do anything they want to you once they get you under the knife.
Because a using a triggerfish means they don't need to produce a warrant to a third party before executing the warrant. This leaves a big opportunity for a compliant judge to issue a predated warrant after the fact.
If you have a complaint judge who is willing to break the law for you, then he can issue a bogus warrant before the fact just as easily. The police can claim they received an anonymous tip.
When you have the executive branch and the judicial branch of government both colluding together to screw you... give up. You're fucked Leave town.
It's not that I think telcos are going to act in the public service by refusing to comply with non-warrant requests... it's that there are now negative ramifications for doing so.
But we are NOT talking about non-warrant requests. We are talking about warrant requests. And specifically the evidentiary bar.
the legal ramification of police using their own cell phone tower without a warrant is that no one is legally allowed to simply operate a cell phone tower. You need a license to operate that kind of equipment and the police don't have them.
if you are talking about cops and judges breaking the law.. well we are going off in a seperate direction and the only solution is to abolish the police and the courts.
Its getting progressively more difficult for law enforcement to get the data they're looking for from the telcos, so instead they're going around the telco's by setting up fake cell towers.
This does NOT lower the evidentiary bar to obtain a legal search.
The sentence "Courts in recent years have been raising the evidentiary bar law enforcement agents must meet in order to obtain historical cell phone records that reveal information about a target's location. But documents obtained by civil liberties groups under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest that 'triggerfish' technology can be used to pinpoint cell phones without involving cell phone providers at all. " is weasily.
How does triggerfish lower the evidentiary bar required to authorize law enforcement to use special sensing technology to search for a cell phone?
"Survival of the fittest" is a tautology. The very definition of fitness in the Darwinian sense is that you survive, so the saying is really saying: "That which survives survives".
it says more than that.
The statement predicts that barring a change in the environment, the next generations on average will consist of more higher fitness individuals, and fewer lower fitness individuals than prior generations.
On the other hand one biblical view is that each generation is further and further removed from Paradise, and life spans get shorter and shorter, and people get shorter and shorter. People used to live 800 years and have hundreds of kids (possibly a 24 hour gestation period), and there were giants.
If god created the world in a state of perfection, then each generation could be getting worse and worse and worse... survival of the fittest would then be a false statement, because the fittest would all be dead, and whatever we found at any given time would be an example of the least fit individuals that ever existed. the unfit would inherit the earth.
... Replace the women's rights pamphlet with a (non-explicit) circular defending paedophilia. Do you think our society would still protect your freedom of speech if you began circulating that? How long before they beat a confession out of you? Who's going to defend you?
Pedophilia is not the same thing as women's rights. Try replacing 'pedophilia' in your example with 'racism'...
Pedophilia is not the same thing as racism.
Try replacing "racism" in your sentence with "woman's rights".
Fortunately there are lawyers who will defend anyone, even convicted terrorists.
and why shouldn't they? the fundamental principles of justice DEPEND on every trial being fair and presided by impartial judges.
if no lawyers would defend a convicted terrorist, then the first thing that every prosecution would commence with is a document purporting to be a record of conviction for terrorism. at that point the defense would collapse because the accused would have no legal counsel and consequently incapable of pointing out non-sequitur lines of reasoning, or legal errors commited by the prosecution of the presiding judge. We'd have millions of convicted terrorists (who none the less are completely innocent) in jail for no crime more serious than pissing off the wrong person.
I'm glad to hear that. For a moment I thought I was helping to support a war in order to establish theocracy. This is just good old fashioned secular corruption and tyranny.
nothing to see here.
But, for the most part...the intelligence in the US, UK, France..and Russia all said he had some hidden over there. And it isn't like Saddam didn't try to perpetuate the myth that he did. Ironically...if he's allowed unfettered inspections, and went out of his way to show he had none, and truly did NOT pursue getting them, he'd still be alive, in charge....and torturing his people for fun along with his sons.
If Hussein could do the impossible then he would have waved his hand and the ocean would have swallowed the American invasion fleet.
WMD was merely a pretense for war. The war was already decided upon. Nothing Hussein did could have prevented it.
And no intelligence agency claimed they had reliable information that any weapons of mass destruction were located in Iraq.
He claims he owns. Without the registration, the ISP has to assume he doesn't.
By that same logic the cops must assume a crime is in progress in your bedroom without proof to the contrary.
imagine if you went into a store and tried to buy something and they store demanded proof that the 10$ bill you were carrying truly belonged to you?
Imagine if every morning IRS agents showed up and demanded proof that you filed your taxes on time. Or the cops showed up demanding proof you weren't a fugitive on the run from the law?
a society can't function unless people are able to take basic honesty and good faith as the default assumption, and leave the suspicion to cases where there is grounds for it.
If someone claims to own something they are in possession of, most rational people assume that they DO own it, unless they have some reason to suspect otherwise.
if people are criminals by default, then there is something extremely non democratic and tyrannical about the law which makes them so.
Our country doesn't make the same promises about liberty in a single document which all our countrymen regard as some kind of holy scripture. It is the American attitude of how you are all in the "land of freedom, better than all other nations in every way" that makes your massive overreaction to one terrorist attack so ironic. It's like a kid vowing to never go back to school again because a bully once stole his lunch money.
I don't mean any disrespect to those who died in 9/11, but people are dying all the time from accidents, disease and natural disaster. Wasting all the money you have on going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact it was a terrorist organisation and not a single country that attacked you, is pretty dumb. If you go around spending billions attacking everyone that you feel slightly threatened by, you'll end up in financial meltdown... oh, wait...
Actually the constitution of the united states has more legal power than the holy scripture ever did. And the USA is not the only country which has such a document. Look at Canada. Look at Japan. Look at France. The UK is still living in the dark ages with respect to its constitution. It has none, and in its place it has nothing but dumb luck as to whether or not any given Monarch is going to be a benign and loving ruler, a tyranical maniac or perhaps an ignorant and naive child with a learning disability who lives in Denmark and doesn't speak English. The US constitution is a more valuable piece of law than anything which ever came out of the UK.
the people of the UK are at the complete and utter mercy of government, a government which is still partially hereditary and partially theocracy. The UK has the worst civil liberties in all of europe and its only going to get worse and worse without a written constitution.
At the most fundamental level, the UK has a government which is not by the people, but is separate and apart from the people. The people have no real power or rights in the UK except what the government supposes it gives them.
And FYI: In case you didn't know, the UK is also at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and is ALSO spending billions.
>>>I don't know of any countries with socialized medicine where the government is the only provider.
Canada. If a Canadian wants service from someone other than the Ottawa Parliament, then they have to come south to the U.S.
Wrong: Healthcare is provided at the provincial level. And virtually all hospitals and doctors operate privately. The only difference is that the rates for various services are fixed by law, and it is illegal to directly bill the patient for any medically necessary service. They must bill the province.
The government acts as a single BUYER of healthcare services, not a single provider.
Ummm. you think a government run healthcare system would end up with less waiting?
I'm sure your insurance (if you're lucky enough to have it) has more than one approved healthcare provider in your area. Maybe its time to act like a good consumer and go somewhere else where you would be more satisfied with the service? Perhaps you should speak with your physician about the length of wait and possibly ask for a recommendation to go to an alternatiev caregiver?
You can do the same thing in Canada. The government doesn't tell you what doctor you have to see.
It's a matter of degree. In Canada, the average waiting time for a necessary surgery is 18 weeks. Having your appointment happen an hour late isn't even close.
the Fraiser Institute is a right wing think tank and is masterful at twisting statistics to seem to mean something they don't actually mean. they have a long history of railing against the government providing services to taxpayers on a non-profit basis.
if we bothered to get their raw data, the flaw in their analysis would no doubt reveal itself.
And where does the article say "necessary"?
Penrose conjectured that there must be some physical principle â" a 'cosmic censor' â" that forbids singularity nakedness...
God, is that you?
Yes. anything that science can't explain is "God".
Yes, I *do* have free speech. EVERYWHERE.
No you don't. You don't have the right to free speech within my house, and I can tell you to leave my home and use force to compel you to if something you say offends me. Hell, I can make you leave my home if you refuse to say something I want you to say.
By the same logic, I can force you to let me live in your house by saying "Nee" until you give me permission. ergo you have no private property rights.
If I'm running a forum and I don't like what you say, I'm well within my rights to delete your posts and ban you forever.
Really? If you think so. I can retaliate once again by saying "Nee".
In no case would any court of law award you damages for me saying "Nee". Just like it wont award me damages for your use of private property rights. But neither right implicitly takes precedence over the other.
As a matter of law, a clause in a contract which forbid one party from saying "Nee" would be unenforcible in court unless the utterance caused actual harm. A contract can not simply restrict speech for the sake of restricting speech. Speech is an inalienable right.
Your power to control my speech is only as great as my desire to access your private property, but at no time did I have any greater access than your arbitrary whim anyway. Likewise my ability to coerce you by saying "Nee" is only as powerful as your dread of that awful word.
What about digital distribution? I bought Portal on Steam so I don't own a physical copy. Should I still have the right to sell what I bought to someone else or is it just for physical media?
You do own a physical copy. It is stored on your hard drive. And you have the right to sell your hard drive. You don't have the right to make copies of your hard drive and sell those.