I believe, although I am certainly no expert, that hospitals and places that do PET scans do not take delivery of the radioactive materials with such short half-lives directly; they keep on hand material that will decay into the materials they need, which allows them to keep it on hand for longer.
...not sure how jamming would help much. It gets jammed, and you know there's a hostile inside at which point you fire a live grenade.
Targeting the grenade itself with anti-radiation weapons is probably a waste of a HARM (because all of the HARMs I'm aware of are large and expensive and probably wouldn't be able to home in on a grenade-sized short-range transmitter anyway).
In any case, even if they did manage to target the grenade with a HARM... you're out one grenade, and ideally you'll be able to track back the person who's shooting the missiles at you.
As it is, the only transmitter is the grenade; the soldiers are simply receiving it, presumably.
Actually, from what I understand (and I do not claim to be an expert on these matters at any extent) the courts generally consider, when looking at matters of jurisdiction, in which way justice is better served; in some cases, that might mean that the Courts will decide they have jurisdiction over an act that took place entirely in a different jurisdiction because of fairness.
For example, look at all those laws that make it illegal to go to other countries and have sex with children there.
What about behind the screen? in most places, the screen is simply a piece of blank white cloth.
I imagine it shouldn't be difficult to set a large bank of IR lights behind it so that the image is impossibly washed out for videos.
Of course, they'd just need to throw an IR filter over the lens to compensate, but, if I recall correctly, most consumer gear does not have that by default.
So, since we're working from a dictionary interpretation, then, Congress should feel itself free to create laws abridging the freedom to express one's self in text, or on the internet, or..?
The 'fact' that PickupPal charges the driver 7% of the rider's fare was not true at the time the decision was rendered... it was once true, as I mentioned in a much earlier comment you did not read, apparently.
Those are merely the board's interpretation of the carpool exception (and to be honest, I don't see where in the carpool exception it mentions not crossing municipal boundaries.)
The only definitions of the Carpool as found in the PVA that I can find are "A motor vehicle not carrying more than twelve commuters" and "Payment is not made more frequently than on a weekly basis".
From this one can extrapolate 1) and 3) of your points, and 4) is stated in the Act, but 2) does not appear anywhere in either the Board's decision or the Act itself, to my knowledge.
Sure. It's legal to give other people rides. It's even vaguely legal to give other people rides for money (although a good lawyer could stumble over something you've done wrong, undoubtedly, whether it be breaking labour laws or smething else)
Where it becomes difficult is when a third party is acting to arrange rides between two other groups of parties for money and makes money off this service.
I don't see why the current framework is not applicable here.
The regulatory framework already provides for carpooling services. Further, the framework in existence requires that someone bring a complaint, I believe, before action is taken which is sufficient for the purposes...
The law specifically has a separate classification for taxicabs and I'm not bothered to look at what it says.
However, as it is not true that the phonebook
"...arrange[s] or offer[s] to arrange the transportation of passengers by means of a public vehicle operated by another person... [unless that other person is the holder of an operating license authorizing that other person to perform transportation.]"
Section 2(2) of the Public Vehicles Act, the comparison seems somewhat irrelevant.
Sure, I agree. But the government's mandate is in protecting consumers, and let's say that your driver did get into a crash, his insurance was invalidated... and his passenger becomes a quadriplegic for life.
His insurance company says "No thanks," Driver Joe is suddenly slapped with the possibility of a $5 million dollar judgment against himself, has assets of, say, $150,000, and says "Fuck it, I'm bankrupt."
Where does that leave Passenger Bob? Nowhere, is where.
I browsed the site quickly but didn't see anywhere that compensation might be discussed on the site itself; maybe I have to sign up (not bothering), or it's done after the site connects driver and passenger.
It seems the only difference between this and traditional carpooling is that driver and passengers might not know each other beforehand, so it's the passenger's responsibility to make sure they're comfortable riding in the car, and (optionally) check that the driver has a license.
There is a specific statutory exception for carpooling in the Act, which is defined in a specific way. Not all types of carpooling fall under this definition by a long stretch. In fact, so far as I'm aware, the portion of PickupPal's ridership that does operate within such limits is very small.
But wait, why put it on the passenger's shoulders? How are they to know if the license is valid or if they're a dangerous driver with five demerit points already, or the car isn't safe? Only government regulations and inspectors can do that!
That's not entirely the issue. The issue is that public carriers carry significant liability insurance in case of damage caused by their drivers, as well as insuring that the drivers have the correct licenses for the type of vehicles they use... they are heavily regulated in that respect in order to ensure public safety.
PickupPal does not provide this insurance nor ensure their drivers carry sufficient insurance and licensing. Whether or not it should be the responsibility of the government to ensure this is a different issue, I think. The fact is that the government does, on almost all carriers. I'm not sure why PickupPal should be different from any other carrier in this respect.
Well, IIRC Craigslist offers a similar listing, and I've seen plenty of these on university bulletin boards too. Is the Transportation board cracking down on those?
How can it? As far as I am aware, somebody needs to bring a complaint before it before it can rule.
PickupPal is a broker of transportation services, and they do not fulfill the requisite statutory requirements of acting like a broker.
Nobody's arguing that PickupPal is actually doing the transportation, because, of course, that is silly.
Your argument is vaguely like a bookie saying that he's not actually doing any gambling, he's just connecting individuals who are willing to place different wagers. Well, perhaps and so, but that doesn't mean what he's doing is not regulated.
The difference being that the taxicab/bus company itself makes money on each ride. PickupPal does not receive any money from the passenger or driver. Are they going to fine the phone company when I call my friend up and we arrange a road trip where he agrees to pay for half the gas? What about the message boards at colleges where drivers and passengers arrange for long trips back home? Sue the college?
Actually, part of the information in evidence was that, in fact, up until fairly recently PickupPal did make a 7% commission.
However, I'm not sure that's necessary in this case. PickupPal is still making money off of this service of connecting riders to drivers (which, I'll point out is what a taxicab service does). PickupPal just has a different way of collecting that money now (via advertisements).
Between the driver and passenger, which is a private transaction that has nothing to do with PickupPal. It is not a transaction between the driver, passenger, and 'arranging' entity (taxicab company). Now, if you want to go after a driver because he is accepting money for a ride without having a taxi license, then go ahead. But going after PickupPal is just absurd.
Not at all. PickupPal is an instrumental entity in this transaction. It acts like a broker. Just because the contract is between two parties doesn't mean PickupPal isn't in the business of arranging public transportation.
I refer you to section 2(2) of the Public Vehicles Act, which is cited in the Board's decision:
"No person shall arrange or offer to arrange the transportation of passengers by means of a public vehicle operated by another person unless that other person is the holder of an operating license authorizing that other person to perform transportation."
The article is heavily biased, although this isn't terribly surprising.
Pickup Pal is a service that allows individuals to arrange not only carpools. Specifically, it allows drivers and passengers to arrange compensation for trips.
Does this remind you of anything else? Oh, yes, a taxi company (or bus company, take your pick) which is Trentway-Wagar's complaint.
The bus company, which TW is, as an organization that arranges for buses to transport passengers for money, is bound by a series of provincial vehicle travel laws which require its drivers to be insured, to possess the correct licenses for their vehicles, and so on.
There are, in fact, specific exceptions in the specified Acts for car-pooling, but it appears that Pickup Pal does not satisfy them for various reasons (which should actually be quite obvious, prima facie).
The difficulty is that Pickup Pal is obviously not merely offering a carpool service. They are also obviously not offering a public taxi service or a bus service, either, but the carpool service has a defined exception in the law.
The law, the board argues, exists to protect riders. Drivers are to be insured, carry the proper licenses for their vehicles, and so on. (Insurance issues, which is a major public interest in cases such as these, form a major part of the Board's concern. Insuring a public vehicle is very different from insuring a private car and the caps on insurance are often much higher.)
As a result, Pickup Pal was ordered to immediately cease taking any actions that would put them in violation of the Public Vehicles Act.
Pickup Pal argues that they have nothing to do with the service, that they merely arrange this. The Board does not agree, for good reason- a taxicab company could make an identical argument. Such an argument is unpersuasive. There is a compelling public policy argument to regulating public vehicles and carriers and so on. For abiding by these regulations, Trentway-Wagar incurs costs, and they found it unfair that another provider would be able to avoid the regulations and thereby avoid the costs- hence the charge of unfair competition.
The summary writes that the regulations are making things worse for the consumer. I beg to disagree. Unsafe public transportation is worse than expensive public transportation, and there is a compelling public policy reason for regulating public transportation for safety's sake- regulations that Pickup Pal did not abide by.
I suspect that you didn't read the judgment... well and so. Let me quote just one statement from it.
"Plaintiffs' ultimate legal claim is that the Navy must prepare an EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] not that it must cease sonar training. There is accordingly no basis for enjoining such training pending preparation of an EIS- if one is determined to be required- when doing so is credibly alleged to pose a serious threat to national security. There are many other remedial tools available, including declaratory relief or an inunction specifically tailored to the preparation of an EIS, that do not carry such dire consequences."
The lower courts, it seems, significantly overstepped their authority, because the scope of the granted interlocutory injunction was far broader than the scope of the final demands for judgment.
Doing this sort of analysis does not really require one to look at the actual arguments of the environmentalists.
On the other hand, the Navy is arguing that they are substantially harmed by this injunction and that it is overbroad... therefore, their evidence is examined.
The freedoms that Open Source brings to developers directly impacts users. Support for hardware and software provided by corporations can only last as long as there is a commercial interest in people using a given product. Old peripherals don't get drivers coded by their vendor for new OS releases and new peripherals don't get drivers bundled for old OS installations. Open source has thankfully picked up the slack for these users. Microsoft intentionally is withholding additional development on fixes, updates, etc. on this end-of-lifed OS, pressuring users to purchase an upgrade to its replacement OS. As new protocols, file formats, and other technical evolutions come along, XP will not be updated to support them.
In many cases, however, this is simply not necessary, which makes the argument rather redundant.
For example, the support provided for the F-104 Starfighter will only last for as long as the manufacturer is willing to support the plane. However, in many cases, the product is supported to a point that exceeds its useful lifespan; the F-104, for example, was still flying until 2004, well beyond when it could serve a effective air combat role against suitable opponents (it being flown by the Italians).
Operating systems are very much the same. It's true, Microsoft doesn't support Windows 3.1. However, modern hardware doesn't support Windows 3.1 either, and neither does modern software. There is no reason to provide support for the product because the product has well exceeded its useful design lifetime.
You may argue that Open Source would pick up the slack. This is a ridiculous assertion. "Open Source" as a concept does not do anything of the sort. Open Source, the concept, merely makes it easier for problems to be fixed by outside agents who do not have access to the source; it does not prevent other agents from fixing those problems. As can be seen, for example, in the surprising rapidity in which computer game DRM is bypassed- often within days or hours of release. The lack of readily-availible source code does not deter these programmers.
The second part is "Open Source" the community, which is again a silly assertion. Such a community does not exist to provide the broad-based support that would generally be provided by an organization under a support agreement. It provides support where it wants, to whom it wants, when it wants, under what conditions it wants, and more often than not, this means none at all.
Open Source, the community, (because open source the concept is irrelevant) does not support software much better- but one thing it does do is support software in a far more haphazard fashion, which can be even worse. Knowing that your software support will have a solid cut-off date at a specific time is an acceptable argument to put forward in strategic planning. The vague assumption that perhaps someone, somewhere, will find time to support it if they feel like it is not. The latter is far less useful in any realistic scenario where either time or money is on the line.
This is not solely true of business, either; most users who consider their computers to be appliances feel similarly, because in both cases, the computer is merely a means to an end and not an end itself. Means need to be solid, and not vague, and "Open Source" the community does not do solid very well.
That is not to say, of course, that such a community is not useful... it is, but only in extracting the results of its collaberative effort. But it should never be relied upon for software maintenance and support because it cannot be.
In other words, Open Source is useless until it produces something, because it cannot be counted upon, ever, to produce anything. Well, you might say, Microsoft can't be counted on to provide patches... and that is true... but Microsoft also never agreed to provide patches, either. In fact, they firmly said they were under no such obligation and if you felt it needed them you were shit out of luck without a paddle. O
Please identify one capitalist economic system in existence with an educated and informed consumer base...
You cannot. The problem is that capitalism by its very nature as an economic system for a 'perfect world' is doomed to absolute failure because it relies on a perfect world. It relies on informed and educated consumers. Such consumers do not exist, such a world does not exist, and capitalism cannot exist successfully in the real world for this reason.
As a result, socialism is the name of the game. The real question is 'how much'.
Given that we have dispatched your former complaint, do you have another about the value of free flow of information?
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I believe, although I am certainly no expert, that hospitals and places that do PET scans do not take delivery of the radioactive materials with such short half-lives directly; they keep on hand material that will decay into the materials they need, which allows them to keep it on hand for longer.
At which point they pick it up and throw it back. :P
...not sure how jamming would help much. It gets jammed, and you know there's a hostile inside at which point you fire a live grenade.
Targeting the grenade itself with anti-radiation weapons is probably a waste of a HARM (because all of the HARMs I'm aware of are large and expensive and probably wouldn't be able to home in on a grenade-sized short-range transmitter anyway).
In any case, even if they did manage to target the grenade with a HARM... you're out one grenade, and ideally you'll be able to track back the person who's shooting the missiles at you.
As it is, the only transmitter is the grenade; the soldiers are simply receiving it, presumably.
Actually, from what I understand (and I do not claim to be an expert on these matters at any extent) the courts generally consider, when looking at matters of jurisdiction, in which way justice is better served; in some cases, that might mean that the Courts will decide they have jurisdiction over an act that took place entirely in a different jurisdiction because of fairness.
For example, look at all those laws that make it illegal to go to other countries and have sex with children there.
And give radiation poisoning to everyone in the theater, sure.
How about UHF? We can jam their cell phones at the same time.
What about behind the screen? in most places, the screen is simply a piece of blank white cloth.
I imagine it shouldn't be difficult to set a large bank of IR lights behind it so that the image is impossibly washed out for videos.
Of course, they'd just need to throw an IR filter over the lens to compensate, but, if I recall correctly, most consumer gear does not have that by default.
So, since we're working from a dictionary interpretation, then, Congress should feel itself free to create laws abridging the freedom to express one's self in text, or on the internet, or..?
The 'fact' that PickupPal charges the driver 7% of the rider's fare was not true at the time the decision was rendered... it was once true, as I mentioned in a much earlier comment you did not read, apparently.
They don't, and those don't.
Those are merely the board's interpretation of the carpool exception (and to be honest, I don't see where in the carpool exception it mentions not crossing municipal boundaries.)
The only definitions of the Carpool as found in the PVA that I can find are "A motor vehicle not carrying more than twelve commuters" and "Payment is not made more frequently than on a weekly basis".
From this one can extrapolate 1) and 3) of your points, and 4) is stated in the Act, but 2) does not appear anywhere in either the Board's decision or the Act itself, to my knowledge.
Sure. It's legal to give other people rides. It's even vaguely legal to give other people rides for money (although a good lawyer could stumble over something you've done wrong, undoubtedly, whether it be breaking labour laws or smething else)
Where it becomes difficult is when a third party is acting to arrange rides between two other groups of parties for money and makes money off this service.
I don't see why the current framework is not applicable here.
The regulatory framework already provides for carpooling services. Further, the framework in existence requires that someone bring a complaint, I believe, before action is taken which is sufficient for the purposes...
What part of this is not-profit? PickupPal is for profit. The drivers are making money.
The only people not making money are the passengers, and nobody's suing them.
The law specifically has a separate classification for taxicabs and I'm not bothered to look at what it says.
However, as it is not true that the phonebook
Section 2(2) of the Public Vehicles Act, the comparison seems somewhat irrelevant.
Sure, I agree. But the government's mandate is in protecting consumers, and let's say that your driver did get into a crash, his insurance was invalidated... and his passenger becomes a quadriplegic for life.
His insurance company says "No thanks," Driver Joe is suddenly slapped with the possibility of a $5 million dollar judgment against himself, has assets of, say, $150,000, and says "Fuck it, I'm bankrupt."
Where does that leave Passenger Bob? Nowhere, is where.
Hence the need for carrier liability insurance.
There is a specific statutory exception for carpooling in the Act, which is defined in a specific way. Not all types of carpooling fall under this definition by a long stretch. In fact, so far as I'm aware, the portion of PickupPal's ridership that does operate within such limits is very small.
That's not entirely the issue. The issue is that public carriers carry significant liability insurance in case of damage caused by their drivers, as well as insuring that the drivers have the correct licenses for the type of vehicles they use... they are heavily regulated in that respect in order to ensure public safety.
PickupPal does not provide this insurance nor ensure their drivers carry sufficient insurance and licensing. Whether or not it should be the responsibility of the government to ensure this is a different issue, I think. The fact is that the government does, on almost all carriers. I'm not sure why PickupPal should be different from any other carrier in this respect.
How can it? As far as I am aware, somebody needs to bring a complaint before it before it can rule.
PickupPal is a broker of transportation services, and they do not fulfill the requisite statutory requirements of acting like a broker.
Nobody's arguing that PickupPal is actually doing the transportation, because, of course, that is silly.
Your argument is vaguely like a bookie saying that he's not actually doing any gambling, he's just connecting individuals who are willing to place different wagers. Well, perhaps and so, but that doesn't mean what he's doing is not regulated.
Actually, part of the information in evidence was that, in fact, up until fairly recently PickupPal did make a 7% commission.
However, I'm not sure that's necessary in this case. PickupPal is still making money off of this service of connecting riders to drivers (which, I'll point out is what a taxicab service does). PickupPal just has a different way of collecting that money now (via advertisements).
Not at all. PickupPal is an instrumental entity in this transaction. It acts like a broker. Just because the contract is between two parties doesn't mean PickupPal isn't in the business of arranging public transportation.
I refer you to section 2(2) of the Public Vehicles Act, which is cited in the Board's decision:
I suggest you read the decision of the Transportation Board- it lays out the facts right there. I simply read the decision.
The article is heavily biased, although this isn't terribly surprising.
Pickup Pal is a service that allows individuals to arrange not only carpools. Specifically, it allows drivers and passengers to arrange compensation for trips.
Does this remind you of anything else? Oh, yes, a taxi company (or bus company, take your pick) which is Trentway-Wagar's complaint.
The bus company, which TW is, as an organization that arranges for buses to transport passengers for money, is bound by a series of provincial vehicle travel laws which require its drivers to be insured, to possess the correct licenses for their vehicles, and so on.
There are, in fact, specific exceptions in the specified Acts for car-pooling, but it appears that Pickup Pal does not satisfy them for various reasons (which should actually be quite obvious, prima facie).
The difficulty is that Pickup Pal is obviously not merely offering a carpool service. They are also obviously not offering a public taxi service or a bus service, either, but the carpool service has a defined exception in the law.
The law, the board argues, exists to protect riders. Drivers are to be insured, carry the proper licenses for their vehicles, and so on. (Insurance issues, which is a major public interest in cases such as these, form a major part of the Board's concern. Insuring a public vehicle is very different from insuring a private car and the caps on insurance are often much higher.)
As a result, Pickup Pal was ordered to immediately cease taking any actions that would put them in violation of the Public Vehicles Act.
Pickup Pal argues that they have nothing to do with the service, that they merely arrange this. The Board does not agree, for good reason- a taxicab company could make an identical argument. Such an argument is unpersuasive. There is a compelling public policy argument to regulating public vehicles and carriers and so on. For abiding by these regulations, Trentway-Wagar incurs costs, and they found it unfair that another provider would be able to avoid the regulations and thereby avoid the costs- hence the charge of unfair competition.
The summary writes that the regulations are making things worse for the consumer. I beg to disagree. Unsafe public transportation is worse than expensive public transportation, and there is a compelling public policy reason for regulating public transportation for safety's sake- regulations that Pickup Pal did not abide by.
No, you really don't.
I suspect that you didn't read the judgment... well and so. Let me quote just one statement from it.
The lower courts, it seems, significantly overstepped their authority, because the scope of the granted interlocutory injunction was far broader than the scope of the final demands for judgment.
Doing this sort of analysis does not really require one to look at the actual arguments of the environmentalists.
On the other hand, the Navy is arguing that they are substantially harmed by this injunction and that it is overbroad... therefore, their evidence is examined.
Look up Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, yo.
Or, for more recent examples:
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
Rasul v. Bush
Boumediene v. Bush
Some of them would. Perhaps Linus Torvalds would, as seen in your sig line. I doubt Twitter would, however.
In many cases, however, this is simply not necessary, which makes the argument rather redundant.
For example, the support provided for the F-104 Starfighter will only last for as long as the manufacturer is willing to support the plane. However, in many cases, the product is supported to a point that exceeds its useful lifespan; the F-104, for example, was still flying until 2004, well beyond when it could serve a effective air combat role against suitable opponents (it being flown by the Italians).
Operating systems are very much the same. It's true, Microsoft doesn't support Windows 3.1. However, modern hardware doesn't support Windows 3.1 either, and neither does modern software. There is no reason to provide support for the product because the product has well exceeded its useful design lifetime.
You may argue that Open Source would pick up the slack. This is a ridiculous assertion. "Open Source" as a concept does not do anything of the sort. Open Source, the concept, merely makes it easier for problems to be fixed by outside agents who do not have access to the source; it does not prevent other agents from fixing those problems. As can be seen, for example, in the surprising rapidity in which computer game DRM is bypassed- often within days or hours of release. The lack of readily-availible source code does not deter these programmers.
The second part is "Open Source" the community, which is again a silly assertion. Such a community does not exist to provide the broad-based support that would generally be provided by an organization under a support agreement. It provides support where it wants, to whom it wants, when it wants, under what conditions it wants, and more often than not, this means none at all.
Open Source, the community, (because open source the concept is irrelevant) does not support software much better- but one thing it does do is support software in a far more haphazard fashion, which can be even worse. Knowing that your software support will have a solid cut-off date at a specific time is an acceptable argument to put forward in strategic planning. The vague assumption that perhaps someone, somewhere, will find time to support it if they feel like it is not. The latter is far less useful in any realistic scenario where either time or money is on the line.
This is not solely true of business, either; most users who consider their computers to be appliances feel similarly, because in both cases, the computer is merely a means to an end and not an end itself. Means need to be solid, and not vague, and "Open Source" the community does not do solid very well.
That is not to say, of course, that such a community is not useful... it is, but only in extracting the results of its collaberative effort. But it should never be relied upon for software maintenance and support because it cannot be.
In other words, Open Source is useless until it produces something, because it cannot be counted upon, ever, to produce anything. Well, you might say, Microsoft can't be counted on to provide patches... and that is true... but Microsoft also never agreed to provide patches, either. In fact, they firmly said they were under no such obligation and if you felt it needed them you were shit out of luck without a paddle. O
I hadn't gotten to it yet. Please, be patient. Some of us use Slashdot at work. :P
Please identify one capitalist economic system in existence with an educated and informed consumer base...
You cannot. The problem is that capitalism by its very nature as an economic system for a 'perfect world' is doomed to absolute failure because it relies on a perfect world. It relies on informed and educated consumers. Such consumers do not exist, such a world does not exist, and capitalism cannot exist successfully in the real world for this reason.
As a result, socialism is the name of the game. The real question is 'how much'.
Given that we have dispatched your former complaint, do you have another about the value of free flow of information?