This isn't a flaw with the technology itself. I imagine if this technology was implemented, the data from it would be subject to the same restrictions as today's medical records. If a blood test reveals that you use illegal drugs, your doctor's not allowed to tell the authorities that and have you prosecuted. The same should go for the data from these implants.
And do you have that $170k saved and ready to spend should you fall victim to an accident that ends up costing you tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills?
If you're not following the standards in place at the time you're speaking then you are wrong, or at least educated people will see you as such.
Most languages don't have standards (with the possible exception of French), they have conventions. It makes sense to speak conventional English because many people think less of those who don't, but complaining about people's irregular language use is pointless.
The government has just as much of a 'right' to pick and choose the people it allows through its borders as your business has a 'right' to choose its employees. (Your employees are being paid by the business, not by you personally, right?) Rights are not exclusively held by people.
The TPB people aren't arguing that copyright infringement should be legal, they're arguing that they are not guilty of it. TPB just provides links to pirated content. It doesn't actually distribute the content itself.
In the UK and Australia, the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy means that statutory law (laws passed by Parliament) takes precedence over case law (previous decisions by judges). I believe the same rule exists for the lawmaking body (Congress?) in the US. When precedent forces judges to make decisions that we disagree with, Parliament enacts laws to spell out exactly what should be done in the future.
Only the ratio decidendi of a case is binding. So if a judge affirms a particular interpretation of a statute (the 'loophole' you talked about), the decision is only binding on cases that examine the exact same issue. If I'm convicted of a crime under the Criminal Code (which is a single statute here), and an unrelated part of the Criminal Code is later called into question, it doesn't have any impact on the validity of the decision in my case.
they did so because they believed that people really do have these rights, not because a governing body decided to let them live in a certain way.
No, they did so because they believed that people should have those rights and they wanted to create a new government that supported this idea. If the British government did not recognize those rights, then they did not exist. What is a right without a legal system to enforce it?
Perhaps you should go into the legal field, then. Jurors are not supposed to be legal experts (which is why lawyers are not allowed to serve), and being a full-time juror would turn you into one pretty quickly.
Fair enough, but the original claim was that the "only people who serve on juries are those too stupid to get out of it". There are plenty of smart people who aren't in your position.
Actually in the US at least 'X shouldn't be a crime' is SUPPOSED to be the primary purpose of a jury trial.
I don't know about the US, but in Australia that's not the 'primary' purpose of a jury. The jury's primary purpose is to answer questions like "does this evidence establish beyond all reasonable doubt that X killed Y". The judge explains the law so that a verdict can be delivered based on the answer to a few questions like this, but the jury exists because different people have different ideas as to what constitutes (for example) "beyond all reasonable doubt".
I might be wrong, but considering the rarity of jury nullification, I doubt that would be considered the primary purpose of a jury.
I'm suggesting it's not the job of the court to make new laws. Precedent applies to existing laws, when there is no previous precedent set. In common law countries, that is.
Much of the common law arose by judges making decisions that subsequent judges were obligated to follow. That law is now largely codified (ie. statutory) in most common law jurisdictions, but it was not always so. Precedent does not "apply [only] to existing laws".
Precedent has no legal binding power in itself
At least in Australia (and AFAIK, other Commonwealth countries), precedent is legally binding: a judge is obligated to follow the decisions of previous judges in that court or in superior courts.
Precedent is imho not making law as such, it is interpreting law and maybe filling in gaps or setting limits that are left vague or undefined in the law. At least interpreting and then applying law is all a judge should do.
Precedent basically means "you are bound to follow previous decisions by equivalent or superior courts". When judges make decisions, they are making law: any cases that come to their court or an inferior court must make the same decision.
Judges don't do anything but 'interpret and apply law', but the doctrine of precedent means that interpreting and applying the law is one way of creating new law.
On that note, I'm reminded how Opera seems to be disliked here on Slashdot - despite being a decent IE alternative long before other alternatives such as Firefox existed - supposedly on the grounds of the browser not being Open Source
Although this is no longer the case, I think the reason many./ers don't like Opera is because for a long time, you either needed to pay for it or use an ad-supported version.
Oh, dont own a HDCP compliant monitor AND video card? cant watch HD content. it downscaled it.
AIUI, you can watch HD content - just not DRM'd HD content that requires HDCP. Which won't be playable at all in HD on systems that don't support HDCP.
Seems to me that in this case, "waiving his [property] rights" (ie. giving up all rights to the post and therefore releasing it into the public domain) is a wider interpretation than the words of the original statement would allow.
This post is not covered under any license.
You are free to copy it, edit it, distribute it, delete it, mod it up, mod it down, etc.
I don't think "this post is not covered under any license" is clear enough language to waive all rights to the post, and the second part of the post seems to grant specific permissions (ie. grant a license) rather than waive all rights to the post.
So the favourable interpretation seems to be "a license was granted" (even though the post specifically said there was no license, the writer may not have understood what constitutes a license in law), rather than "all rights to the post were relinquished" (even though this wasn't clearly stated).
I feel a little silly arguing over this, considering the original post, but hey:-) IANAL, but I am a second-year law student.
Chrome just 'feels' snappier to me than Firefox. The various browser performance benchmarks out there seem to support this. Firefox is not a bad browser, but I've just never liked it (before Chrome, I was an Opera user), and I don't like having to install extensions to get the features I want. Fortunately, Chrome has most of those.
I consider Chrome a "fully fleshed out browser", and I'm not really sure what Firefox has (without extensions) that makes it more 'fleshed out' than Chrome.
He's not talking about the distinction between the web and the OS from a technical perspective. Yes, the browser and the OS will always be fundamentally different. But for most end users, the distinction between web apps and native apps is rapidly disappearing.
Screenshot start page is bloat. History is better in a side panel (ctrl-H in firefox) than in a separate tab or window. [...] If you care about UI space you're probably using full-screen, in which case Firefox's F11 fullscreen mode is better.
Your first two points are a matter of personal preference. Personally, I like the screenshot start page, and find it useful, and I prefer history as a separate page. Fullscreen mode sucks (in Windows, not sure about other OSes) because you can't see the taskbar.
I wouldn't argue that Chrome is a better browser than Firefox, but it suits my needs better, so I prefer it. What have you got against competition?
Slashdot Mirror
How would an implant such as the one proposed in the article "stop [you] from living" your life?
This isn't a flaw with the technology itself. I imagine if this technology was implemented, the data from it would be subject to the same restrictions as today's medical records. If a blood test reveals that you use illegal drugs, your doctor's not allowed to tell the authorities that and have you prosecuted. The same should go for the data from these implants.
And do you have that $170k saved and ready to spend should you fall victim to an accident that ends up costing you tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills?
How does that help you remember how to spell 'calendar'?
Most languages don't have standards (with the possible exception of French), they have conventions. It makes sense to speak conventional English because many people think less of those who don't, but complaining about people's irregular language use is pointless.
'Grammar' refers to the rules of building sentences in both written and spoken language.
The government has just as much of a 'right' to pick and choose the people it allows through its borders as your business has a 'right' to choose its employees. (Your employees are being paid by the business, not by you personally, right?) Rights are not exclusively held by people.
You just need software to interpret and display text to get information out of a text file.
You need other peers who are illegally distributing the copyrighted material in order to use a .torrent file to pirate stuff.
The TPB people aren't arguing that copyright infringement should be legal, they're arguing that they are not guilty of it. TPB just provides links to pirated content. It doesn't actually distribute the content itself.
In the UK and Australia, the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy means that statutory law (laws passed by Parliament) takes precedence over case law (previous decisions by judges). I believe the same rule exists for the lawmaking body (Congress?) in the US. When precedent forces judges to make decisions that we disagree with, Parliament enacts laws to spell out exactly what should be done in the future.
Only the ratio decidendi of a case is binding. So if a judge affirms a particular interpretation of a statute (the 'loophole' you talked about), the decision is only binding on cases that examine the exact same issue. If I'm convicted of a crime under the Criminal Code (which is a single statute here), and an unrelated part of the Criminal Code is later called into question, it doesn't have any impact on the validity of the decision in my case.
No, they did so because they believed that people should have those rights and they wanted to create a new government that supported this idea. If the British government did not recognize those rights, then they did not exist. What is a right without a legal system to enforce it?
There is no such thing as a right without a legal system to enforce it. If rights are 'natural' and 'self-evident', then why don't animals have them?
Perhaps you should go into the legal field, then. Jurors are not supposed to be legal experts (which is why lawyers are not allowed to serve), and being a full-time juror would turn you into one pretty quickly.
Fair enough, but the original claim was that the "only people who serve on juries are those too stupid to get out of it". There are plenty of smart people who aren't in your position.
Juries can't 'declare laws void'.
To be fair, the defense lawyers should strike off the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" soccer mums.
I don't know about the US, but in Australia that's not the 'primary' purpose of a jury. The jury's primary purpose is to answer questions like "does this evidence establish beyond all reasonable doubt that X killed Y". The judge explains the law so that a verdict can be delivered based on the answer to a few questions like this, but the jury exists because different people have different ideas as to what constitutes (for example) "beyond all reasonable doubt".
I might be wrong, but considering the rarity of jury nullification, I doubt that would be considered the primary purpose of a jury.
Much of the common law arose by judges making decisions that subsequent judges were obligated to follow. That law is now largely codified (ie. statutory) in most common law jurisdictions, but it was not always so. Precedent does not "apply [only] to existing laws".
At least in Australia (and AFAIK, other Commonwealth countries), precedent is legally binding: a judge is obligated to follow the decisions of previous judges in that court or in superior courts.
Precedent basically means "you are bound to follow previous decisions by equivalent or superior courts". When judges make decisions, they are making law: any cases that come to their court or an inferior court must make the same decision.
Judges don't do anything but 'interpret and apply law', but the doctrine of precedent means that interpreting and applying the law is one way of creating new law.
Although this is no longer the case, I think the reason many ./ers don't like Opera is because for a long time, you either needed to pay for it or use an ad-supported version.
AIUI, you can watch HD content - just not DRM'd HD content that requires HDCP. Which won't be playable at all in HD on systems that don't support HDCP.
Seems to me that in this case, "waiving his [property] rights" (ie. giving up all rights to the post and therefore releasing it into the public domain) is a wider interpretation than the words of the original statement would allow.
I don't think "this post is not covered under any license" is clear enough language to waive all rights to the post, and the second part of the post seems to grant specific permissions (ie. grant a license) rather than waive all rights to the post.
So the favourable interpretation seems to be "a license was granted" (even though the post specifically said there was no license, the writer may not have understood what constitutes a license in law), rather than "all rights to the post were relinquished" (even though this wasn't clearly stated).
I feel a little silly arguing over this, considering the original post, but hey :-) IANAL, but I am a second-year law student.
Chrome just 'feels' snappier to me than Firefox. The various browser performance benchmarks out there seem to support this. Firefox is not a bad browser, but I've just never liked it (before Chrome, I was an Opera user), and I don't like having to install extensions to get the features I want. Fortunately, Chrome has most of those.
I consider Chrome a "fully fleshed out browser", and I'm not really sure what Firefox has (without extensions) that makes it more 'fleshed out' than Chrome.
He's not talking about the distinction between the web and the OS from a technical perspective. Yes, the browser and the OS will always be fundamentally different. But for most end users, the distinction between web apps and native apps is rapidly disappearing.
Your first two points are a matter of personal preference. Personally, I like the screenshot start page, and find it useful, and I prefer history as a separate page. Fullscreen mode sucks (in Windows, not sure about other OSes) because you can't see the taskbar.
I wouldn't argue that Chrome is a better browser than Firefox, but it suits my needs better, so I prefer it. What have you got against competition?