There's no law stating that people have to inquire about large sums of money. If the guy had behaved like the locksmith who never sees the insides of the safes, then he should have been fine. The evidence against him was very flimsy and he wasn't knowingly performing an illegal act (especially not one that landed him with 24 years in prison).
Okay, my example was vague (I was trying to demonstrate how much of a slippery slope the whole chain of liability is).
I think that the best course of action would be to keep an eye on the manufacturer and thus get a list of suspects. Arrest the suspects and you're more or less solving the problem. I suppose that potential customers would eventually get wise and stop purchasing from the manufacturer and that would remove the incentive for the manufacturer to keep on selling for that purpose.
I thought the guy in the article was hard done by as I don't believe it was proven that he had "certain" knowledge that his compartments were used for drugs. It sounds like he had a very good idea that illegal activity was involved, but he was very unlucky to be charged as an accomplice.
So, what percentage are you thinking of when you specify "primarily"? Also, how far down the chain should it go - what about the producer of the gun-metal? How many other items are made from gun-metal and what are those purposes?
I understand the thinking behind stopping someone being an accomplice, but I hate the arbitrariness of the application of the law. Any law under which an ordinary person can't clearly determine whether an action is illegal or not, is a very bad law. Unless you implicitly trust all police, lawyers, judges, juries and politicians to never abuse a position of power.
That sounds a bit arbitrary. Either it's a crime to make the item or it's not; it shouldn't be dependent on what questions you ask or what you believe. Suppose a drug (e.g. an anti-inflammatory) manufacturer refused to supply it to ethnic groups on the grounds that it "believed" the drug would be mis-used? Would the manufacturer be considered wise and careful or a racist?
I just don't see how a manufacturer should ever be held liable.
Killing someone is a crime, whether by gun or hammer. Making a gun or hammer is not a crime, so why should they be held liable when they are ot breaking the law?
Making a hidden compartment also isn't a crime. In fact, I was given a hidden compartment (basically a fake book) by a cop after we were burgled. There's plenty of legitimate uses for a hidden compartment, but more importantly, making a hidden compartment is not illegal!
If someone is committing a crime, bring the perpetrator to justice, not someone who made their shoes or cut their hair or provided a map.
That was my first reaction on seeing this. I thought I'd have a look to see what April Fool jokes are on Slashdot, saw this and thought how pathetic it was.
I think you misunderstand atheism - there's no need to disprove the existence of a god for the same reason there's no need to disprove the existence of fairies, ghosts, goblins, invisible pink unicorns etc.
I imagine that you're atheist with regard to all the gods except for your chosen one. Do you feel the need to disprove the existence of Thor and Odin?
If he's right, then maybe his fork will gain momentum. If he's wrong, then he'll be wasting some of his time, but I bet he'll learn from the experience either way.
Often it takes someone to branch out and start something to jumpstart development so that other people see what's been done and think it's worth contributing to. Unless someone makes that jump, we'd never know what might have been.
The important difference is that atheists believe in one (usually) less god, whereas the fundamentalist doesn't believe in any gods except his particular chosen deity/deities. Also, atheists don't go to war over their lack of belief (there's usually other reasons, typically resources like oil, land etc).
People have known that the earth was spherical for a long time. The evidence for a spherical earth doesn't require any special equipment as you can figure it out from the shadow of the Earth on the moon during eclipses and the behaviour of objects appearing over the horizon. So, it most certainly was not foolish to use the evidence to reason that the earth was spherical.
Circumnavigating the globe is an extension of ordinary travel. Doesn't seem foolish to me, just imagining and dreaming.
Seeing live events all over the world 25 years ago was technically possible, but a bit expensive to rent the satellite time. Again, not foolish at all.
All of those are entirely different to believing that although there's thousands of different gods and tens of thousands of different religions that the one that you've chosen to believe is the only true one and all the others are wrong. You are an atheist with regard to Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, invisible pink unicorns, Odin, Thor etc. People who believe in the invisible pink unicorns are just people who are willing to view beyond their senses - I call them fools.
The justice system may well have it's root in religion as religion did have a stranglehold on Britain for a number of years. However, I don't see how the church is at all involved in crafting or verifying laws.
With religions, what consensus have they all agreed on with regard to morals, ethics and correct behaviour? As far as I can tell, they can't even agree on where/who/what the divine beings are.
Harming/killing other people is a generally agreed upon thing that is wrong to be doing. It's not conducive to an effective society if you let random people go around randomly killing other people. Some religions used to insist upon human sacrifices, so I don't quite see how religion and ethics fit together.
Also, I don't think the Catholic church should condone/cover up priests raping little boys. A lot of religions treat women as having hardly any rights at all - I don't think thats moral or ethical and I'm certainly not referring to any religious text for my views on such behaviour.
I think courtrooms would be a lot more interesting if we could call on various gods to turn up and confirm/deny points of law. That'd be an ethics system I'd pay money to see.
Actually, I'm not going to do anything as I live in the UK, so this is not a problem for me. If, however, this kind of thing started to happen in the UK (unlikely as we're not a religious bunch), I'd set up a few "trapped" parcels with GPS receivers in them and quite easily catch the people responsible.
So let me get this straight: you can only have meaningful ethics by referring to some imaginary being (gods, fairies, gnomes, pixies etc). Here in the UK, our justice system is not based on a particular religious system - the judges aren't schooled in religion. Now I understand that ethics, morals and the law aren't exactly the same, but they tend to fill the same purpose in society.
I think the USSR failed more due to communism being a more idealistic rather than realistic political system. It wasn't due to lack of belief in a particular deity.
I choose not to forget how Sony stole from me. Companies that have such a disdain for their customers need to go out of business - there's plenty of other companies willing to produce consoles that don't treat their customers like shit.
I hope the Ouya console leads a new generation of cheap Android consoles that puts Sony out of business once and for all.
Slashdot Mirror
I appreciate his skill and talent, but I think it would celebrate the richness of his universe creation and be paying him tribute.
Hear that sound?
It'd be really nice if he could open source the Culture and allow other writers to carry on the tradition.
I don't know who would come close to filling his boots, but the Culture is such a fantastic idea that it'd be a greate tribute to the man.
No, it's Iain M Banks that writes the Culture novels.
If I was them, I'd use a deduping filesystem (e.g. zfs).
I hope his appeal succeeds as 24 years is way too long and the evidence was circumstantial at best and came from people cutting deals.
Does that mean that the internet should be considered as pornography?
I'm not entirely happy with people being able to purchase large amounts of mining explosives from shops.
There's no law stating that people have to inquire about large sums of money. If the guy had behaved like the locksmith who never sees the insides of the safes, then he should have been fine. The evidence against him was very flimsy and he wasn't knowingly performing an illegal act (especially not one that landed him with 24 years in prison).
Okay, my example was vague (I was trying to demonstrate how much of a slippery slope the whole chain of liability is).
I think that the best course of action would be to keep an eye on the manufacturer and thus get a list of suspects. Arrest the suspects and you're more or less solving the problem. I suppose that potential customers would eventually get wise and stop purchasing from the manufacturer and that would remove the incentive for the manufacturer to keep on selling for that purpose.
I thought the guy in the article was hard done by as I don't believe it was proven that he had "certain" knowledge that his compartments were used for drugs. It sounds like he had a very good idea that illegal activity was involved, but he was very unlucky to be charged as an accomplice.
So, what percentage are you thinking of when you specify "primarily"? Also, how far down the chain should it go - what about the producer of the gun-metal? How many other items are made from gun-metal and what are those purposes?
I understand the thinking behind stopping someone being an accomplice, but I hate the arbitrariness of the application of the law. Any law under which an ordinary person can't clearly determine whether an action is illegal or not, is a very bad law. Unless you implicitly trust all police, lawyers, judges, juries and politicians to never abuse a position of power.
That sounds a bit arbitrary. Either it's a crime to make the item or it's not; it shouldn't be dependent on what questions you ask or what you believe. Suppose a drug (e.g. an anti-inflammatory) manufacturer refused to supply it to ethnic groups on the grounds that it "believed" the drug would be mis-used? Would the manufacturer be considered wise and careful or a racist?
I just don't see how a manufacturer should ever be held liable.
Killing someone is a crime, whether by gun or hammer. Making a gun or hammer is not a crime, so why should they be held liable when they are ot breaking the law?
Making a hidden compartment also isn't a crime. In fact, I was given a hidden compartment (basically a fake book) by a cop after we were burgled. There's plenty of legitimate uses for a hidden compartment, but more importantly, making a hidden compartment is not illegal!
If someone is committing a crime, bring the perpetrator to justice, not someone who made their shoes or cut their hair or provided a map.
That was my first reaction on seeing this. I thought I'd have a look to see what April Fool jokes are on Slashdot, saw this and thought how pathetic it was.
I think you misunderstand atheism - there's no need to disprove the existence of a god for the same reason there's no need to disprove the existence of fairies, ghosts, goblins, invisible pink unicorns etc.
I imagine that you're atheist with regard to all the gods except for your chosen one. Do you feel the need to disprove the existence of Thor and Odin?
If he's right, then maybe his fork will gain momentum. If he's wrong, then he'll be wasting some of his time, but I bet he'll learn from the experience either way.
Often it takes someone to branch out and start something to jumpstart development so that other people see what's been done and think it's worth contributing to. Unless someone makes that jump, we'd never know what might have been.
The important difference is that atheists believe in one (usually) less god, whereas the fundamentalist doesn't believe in any gods except his particular chosen deity/deities. Also, atheists don't go to war over their lack of belief (there's usually other reasons, typically resources like oil, land etc).
People have known that the earth was spherical for a long time. The evidence for a spherical earth doesn't require any special equipment as you can figure it out from the shadow of the Earth on the moon during eclipses and the behaviour of objects appearing over the horizon. So, it most certainly was not foolish to use the evidence to reason that the earth was spherical.
Circumnavigating the globe is an extension of ordinary travel. Doesn't seem foolish to me, just imagining and dreaming.
Seeing live events all over the world 25 years ago was technically possible, but a bit expensive to rent the satellite time. Again, not foolish at all.
All of those are entirely different to believing that although there's thousands of different gods and tens of thousands of different religions that the one that you've chosen to believe is the only true one and all the others are wrong. You are an atheist with regard to Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, invisible pink unicorns, Odin, Thor etc. People who believe in the invisible pink unicorns are just people who are willing to view beyond their senses - I call them fools.
The justice system may well have it's root in religion as religion did have a stranglehold on Britain for a number of years. However, I don't see how the church is at all involved in crafting or verifying laws.
With religions, what consensus have they all agreed on with regard to morals, ethics and correct behaviour? As far as I can tell, they can't even agree on where/who/what the divine beings are.
Harming/killing other people is a generally agreed upon thing that is wrong to be doing. It's not conducive to an effective society if you let random people go around randomly killing other people. Some religions used to insist upon human sacrifices, so I don't quite see how religion and ethics fit together.
Also, I don't think the Catholic church should condone/cover up priests raping little boys. A lot of religions treat women as having hardly any rights at all - I don't think thats moral or ethical and I'm certainly not referring to any religious text for my views on such behaviour.
I think courtrooms would be a lot more interesting if we could call on various gods to turn up and confirm/deny points of law. That'd be an ethics system I'd pay money to see.
What does God need with a starship?
or
What the fuck was that all about? I can do a better job than you - here give me a go.
Actually, I'm not going to do anything as I live in the UK, so this is not a problem for me. If, however, this kind of thing started to happen in the UK (unlikely as we're not a religious bunch), I'd set up a few "trapped" parcels with GPS receivers in them and quite easily catch the people responsible.
So let me get this straight: you can only have meaningful ethics by referring to some imaginary being (gods, fairies, gnomes, pixies etc). Here in the UK, our justice system is not based on a particular religious system - the judges aren't schooled in religion. Now I understand that ethics, morals and the law aren't exactly the same, but they tend to fill the same purpose in society.
I think the USSR failed more due to communism being a more idealistic rather than realistic political system. It wasn't due to lack of belief in a particular deity.
What are you trying to say? Only societies using faith based law systems have any stability?
I choose not to forget how Sony stole from me. Companies that have such a disdain for their customers need to go out of business - there's plenty of other companies willing to produce consoles that don't treat their customers like shit.
I hope the Ouya console leads a new generation of cheap Android consoles that puts Sony out of business once and for all.
And sometimes you have to stand up for what is right and not let people get away with abhorrent behaviour.