Just like the old adage about privacy and security, is it worth trading choice for convenience?
Sounds like that's a question that people can only answer for themselves - and a lot of them are answering "yes" by buying locked-down devices and aren't regretting it. I think the reason for this might be that the choice that you see isn't apparent or useful to most people. Only for a very small portion of users are the limitations that an iPhone imposes limitations at all - using myself as an example, I used to work as a programmer and still have an interest in technology, but moving to an iPhone wouldn't hamper me one bit because I have no interest in exercising any of the choices that it takes away from me.
Asking the judge didn't help for the jury in Brian Aitken's case. A judge wouldn't even allow the jury to read the New Jersey statute showing the moving exemption for having a gun in the car [...] There were plenty of other fucked up things in that case, but at least if the jury had information access they could have looked up the law rather than be dependent on the word of a judge.
There are good reasons for this. First, statutes are complex. They are drafted in a technical way, and they rely on rules of interpretation that aren't included in the statute itself and may not be included in any statute at all. Furthermore, the interpretation of the law will have developed through court rulings, other laws that have been passed (even though they may not actually have amended the wording of the original statute), academic writing and a variety of other influences. The average juror doesn't have the time, expertise or resources to wade through this. To put it another way, I'm sure you're an intelligent person, but you didn't even realise that there would be an issue - and why would you, if you're not a lawyer? Judges spend years developing the skills and knowledge to interpret the law with great accuracy, they have the benefit of argument from the lawyers and legal teams from both sides, and even then they sometimes err. An untrained individual cannot possibly be expected to come to the correct decision when the law is complex. That's not really the big reason, though. Jury deliberations are secret, whereas the judge's directions to the jury are committed to the court record. This means that if the judge has not correctly stated the law then his direction can be reviewed by a superior court (and they aren't shy - there are cases where an appeal court has taken issue with the use of the word "infer" rather than "find" in a jury direction!). If there was a misstatement of the law by the judge that could potentially have affected the jury's verdict the appeal court should order a retrial. If the jury were allowed to research the law on its own there would be no way of knowing whether it had interpreted the law correctly.
Just to add to that, in complicated trials juries will commonly make requests to the judge for clarification of points of law, and he will write an explanation and give it to them. If you're struggling to understand something that's what you should do - that way there's a record of the basis on which you made your judgement. There's no reason to try to research it yourself.
I have to admit I did think of that comic while writing the explanation, but I didn't want to copy the wording because it's a serious point - there's a fairly widespread misunderstanding about the meaning of the maxim.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to waste a lot of time clicking "random" on the XKCD archive page..
correlation does not imply causation, it implies connection.
The first part of this is true - but it's important to bear in mind that the use of "imply" in this statement is not the same as the colloquial use. Imply here means "prove" - correlation does not prove causation. A suggestion for a more accurate way of phrasing the statement that avoids confusion is "correlation does not imply causation, but it is a hint". I point this out because the second part of your statement isn't true unless you're taking the colloquial meaning of "imply", since it is not true that correlation always means there is connection - coincidence is also a possibility. Taking this meaning (that correlation suggests there is a connection) it would be true in many circumstances to say that correlation implied causation.
The idea that accents are optional on capitals in French is a myth; they aren't (and never have been, although see the next sentence) and occasionally it can be confusing when they are omitted. Their omission was common when moving type was still in use simply for practical reasons, but now that that's not an issue there's no reason to carry on the practice and good reason to abandon it. For clarity, here's the position of the Académie Française:
"On veille donc, en bonne typographie, à utiliser systématiquement les capitales accentuées, y compris la préposition À, comme le font bien sûr tous les dictionnaires [...] ou les grammaires [...] A quick translation: "Correct typography therefore requires that one is careful to systematically use accented capitals, including the preposition À - as is done, of course, by all of the dictionaries [...] and grammar books"
Absolutely agree. Heavy use of the internet to learn seems to me to lead to a very superficial level of learning - enough to sound knowledgeable in a soundbite, but not enough to actually understanding what you're reading about or do anything non-trivial with it. It's something that I think is very apparent on Slashdot; there are a great many posts made by people who have "learnt" about something via Wikipedia but who have completely misunderstood, or over-generalised, or misinterpreted it but who remain convinced that they are experts. It perhaps comes down to the old truism that the more you learn the more you realise how ignorant you are - and as a corollary, that when you know very little you are generally unable to tell just how little you know. A good teacher can guide your learning, because he/she has a solid general understanding of the subject area. Without one you're liable to stumble across a tail and assume that it's the entire elephant.
Definitely. I expect them to be free and I don't want to see ads. It's not my problem how Youtube or free TV will make an income. If they don't have a clue how to make a living then they cease to exists, that is what free market is all about.
But surely that's bad for you, since you want to watch the videos? It's not like anyone else has found a better way to make money from video, and it costs money to host, so you're not talking about a provider being out-competed you're talking about free-to-view online video going extinct. I don't really see that as a desirable outcome.
Tell me, do you hold everyone you contract with to such a low standard? If sometimes your box of cereal turns out to be totally empty do you just shake your head sadly and say "well I should have checked at the supermarket"? If you pay a mechanic to fix your car and he doesn't bother do you write off your loss while mentally chastising yourself for not training as a mechanic yourself so that you could verify what he'd done?
I don't know about where you are, but in this country if someone fails to do what they've promised to do then they have to make right any damage. That goes double if, like here, they have been negligent. And in general they cannot exclude liability for this sort of thing when dealing with a consumer. Would you really want it to be otherwise? For big companies to be able to do whatever they want, safe in the knowledge that if they screw up, costing their customers a great deal of money, the consumer has no recourse and "no-one to blame but himself"?
And I fully agree with you fully agreeing with that guy.
I think a lot of people on Slashdot are doing exactly what he complained about - look round on the internet to find some way they can disagree and then disagreeing, just for the sake of being contrarian. These people don't seem to have noticed the difference between the examples they're giving and the use that's being banned: context, the title of the guy's post and pretty much the entire reason for his decision. In some contexts a swastika can be a neutral or even positive symbol. Devoid of any context, as a player's logo, normally decked out in the colours of the Nazis, is another matter. It's being used by ignorant players to be deliberately offensive and provocative, and the arguments are just rationalisations.
I would urge anyone thinking of posting to say "in some places the swastika is fine" to read the article first. He addresses that point, and he probably actually agrees with you. So far I haven't seen a single pro-Swastika post that wasn't clearly either written by someone who hadn't bothered to read what the guy said before disagreeing with it or by someone who had just gone to Wikipedia to look for a reason to be contrary. Neither of those is particularly helpful.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but checking an employee's ID even if you recognise him or her is good practice. When someone is laid off or quits they should have their ID taken and will be removed from the database of employees; checking ID therefore allows you to avoid letting people in who have been allowed in in the past but are no longer allowed, possibly for a reason that would make them a potential threat.
I'm sure that your citation of Minnesota law, and your interpretation of the words "probable cause" would, in certain contexts, be accurate. However statute law is only one part of the process of construction, another is case law. The District Judge explained to you the reason, in law, that you cannot succeed simply by showing that the client had no proof: the liability for an attorney under the tort of malicious prosecution is more carefully circumscribed than the statute would suggest. In his judgement he referred you to Hoppe v Klapperich, in which it was held that an attorney is liable for malicious prosecution only if he "knowingly" became an "instrumentality for the perpetration of fraud"*. This is clearly a much more restrictive test, requiring a much higher degree of intention than simply lack of probable cause and will, I imagine, have been a policy decision to protect plaintiffs' access to attorneys. With this in mind you can, I'm sure, see that the evidence you adduced at trial could not possibly satisfy the standard required to succeed; other than showing that the attorney knew his client to be lying I cannot readily see any way you could have made out your claim.
* [these quotes are taken from the headnote - I don't have access to the full case file without getting a physical copy of the case from the library. They should still be accurate.]
I don't have time at the moment to go into any great detail - I'll try to check back later if I can - but just a couple of points:
- You're confusing a lack of evidence with knowledge of untruth. To succeed you had to prove that the attorney knew that their client was not telling the truth and you could not do this. - The point isn't whether or not a "purely speculative" claim lacked probable cause, it's that even showing that it lacked probable cause would not have been enough. That's what the case law cited in the District Court judgement was demonstrating. - You weren't denied your day in court - you had it. This was effectively a striking-out hearing; the point is that the elements that you failed to prove in this hearing are required if you are to prove your claim. Since you couldn't prove them you could not possibly succeed in your claim. There would be no advantage to proceeding to trial other than to harass your opponents, which would, as I stated, be rather ironic.
As always I should point out that I don't study US law and shouldn't ever be relied on.
Huh? He got screwed by a criminal corporation and a gang of corrupt attorneys. He's "entitled" to some redress for what they put him through. Do you have a problem with that?
He didn't get screwed - the summary is (unsurprisingly, given that it was written by one of the parties) biased. There were three actions. The first was for copyright infringement, which he won and received $19,462 in damages, being $4,462 of actual damages and $15,000 of statutory damages. In response to this the other party countersued over comments made on his website and lost.
This story relates to an attempted claim for malicious prosecution and abuse of process against the other party's attorneys. The judge effectively found that an attorney is entitled to rely on the sworn testimony of his client even if the other party says that testimony is untrue - and how could it possibly be otherwise without rendering litigation impossible? The poster has on his website a document he alleges to show that the attorneys knew their client was lying, but as far as I can tell it is not referenced in any of the cases - I don't know whether it was actually admitted as evidence. The appeal judge refers to the claim as being essentially that because in the end the claims were found not to be credible the prosecution must have been malicious - this is clearly something of a leap. Finally, the poster claims unfairness because he was denied his day in court by this summary judgement. But given that the judgement was given based on there being no chance of success it is difficult to see what the day in court could achieve other than inconveniencing his opponent - and allowing a claim for abuse of process in order only to harass the other party would be a ridiculous irony. If the claim of malicious prosecution was ambitious the appeal seems to have been consigned to failure from the beginning. The appeal judge notes that the appeal contained no disputes of law or of fact, so it is hard to see how he expected the decision to be reversed.
Get rid of copyright, though, and copying becomes a viable business - the moment an author sells a book or a musician sells a CD every publishing house will be able to sell copies. Prices of books will fall, which sounds good for consumers, but not a penny will be going back to the author. Patronage will be the only viable way to make a living from art - you get a situation akin to the Soviet Union, where only art that meets certain conditions can find funding and only the rich, or the state-approved, can afford to write.
A person asked the Pres. if his health would support getting a hip replacement of their mother/grandmother hip. He said that it would NOT because at 80+ it would not be a good medical decision. I suggest actually paying attention to the bad things the pres said.
Would you mind linking to a transcript of this? I don't seem to be able to find it anywhere. All I can find are the reports of the time I cited - his relating the story of his grandmother's hip replacement. Googling "Obama hip replacement -grandmother" gets me nowhere. I'm surprised, since I'd have thought that the President making blanket statements denying people's right to healthcare would get more coverage.
While I accept that that is probably much closer to the conscious aims of American people, I think your original post captures the reality better. This isn't just a disinclination to help other people, it's a preference to spend more money, therefore disadvantaging yourself, in order to avoid conferring a gratuitous benefit upon someone else.
While I can respect the position that people should provide for themselves I find it very difficult to respect the position that it is always preferable to avoid paying for someone else, even if avoiding paying for others in fact makes your own life harder.
I've noticed that when people refer to the "Democrat" or "Republican" president their comments are almost always hopelessly skewed, the product of a mentality that values partisan loyalty over intellectual honesty. You have given me no reason to doubt this theory.
Reducing a complicated moral and economic problem to this level is helpful to nobody. His story about his grandmother's hip was told to illustrate the problem that while on a national scale it is obvious that providing all treatment to everybody results in an unaffordable health bill, on a personal level one cannot expect human frailty to say no to treatment that will help, even slightly, someone they love - even when that person knows that providing such treatment will result in prices becoming even more inflated. It is possible to take a coherent position that disagrees with his conclusion - the balance between valuing individual autonomy and providing collective benefits is one that cannot be struck without sacrifice, and the Anglo-Saxon tradition generally gives autonomy a great deal of respect. One could therefore argue that the right of the individual to self-determination outweighs any economic cost to those around him. This, however, was not your argument. Your preference was to abandon any attempt at argument or logic, instead pretend that the question did not exist and that Mr Obama's statement had been quite different, and use this to support a mindless jab at the "Democrat President" (emphasis mine). This is juvenile and, worse, it is harmful to public debate. These are issues on which there will probably never be agreement, but that must be debated - it is the only way in which the issues can hope to be resolved. This debate is impossible if people resort to cheap, meaningless and defamatory sound-bites rather than reasoned argument.
So you're willing to pay extra as long as it ensures that you don't benefit anyone else? Do you also buy extra food that you don't want to make sure it isn't given to the homeless?
Of course no sane legal system would close a sourt just because someone's 'secret algorithm' might be mentioned.
I fail to see what is "insane" about closing the court for the part of the case that involves trade secrets that, if revealed, would have a huge financial impact on a very large company.
You can accept a contract implicitly, by conduct. However there are a couple of things that are relevant here:
-You can only accept a contract if you are aware of it (not sure if that's relevant, the site is 403'd). There is a doctrine of constructive notice for businesses that could mean that a contract on the terms and conditions page would be binding because they should have checked it, but I'd be amazed if it were held to apply to web pages (since no-one reads t&c pages) and it wouldn't apply to individuals anyway. -The acceptance must be unambiguous - if an objective observer wouldn't be sure you were accepting then your conduct is not an acceptance. -The more onerous and unusual a contract term the more the person proposing it has to do to inform the person accepting of its existence.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like the old adage about privacy and security, is it worth trading choice for convenience?
Sounds like that's a question that people can only answer for themselves - and a lot of them are answering "yes" by buying locked-down devices and aren't regretting it.
I think the reason for this might be that the choice that you see isn't apparent or useful to most people. Only for a very small portion of users are the limitations that an iPhone imposes limitations at all - using myself as an example, I used to work as a programmer and still have an interest in technology, but moving to an iPhone wouldn't hamper me one bit because I have no interest in exercising any of the choices that it takes away from me.
Asking the judge didn't help for the jury in Brian Aitken's case. A judge wouldn't even allow the jury to read the New Jersey statute showing the moving exemption for having a gun in the car [...]
There were plenty of other fucked up things in that case, but at least if the jury had information access they could have looked up the law rather than be dependent on the word of a judge.
There are good reasons for this. First, statutes are complex. They are drafted in a technical way, and they rely on rules of interpretation that aren't included in the statute itself and may not be included in any statute at all. Furthermore, the interpretation of the law will have developed through court rulings, other laws that have been passed (even though they may not actually have amended the wording of the original statute), academic writing and a variety of other influences. The average juror doesn't have the time, expertise or resources to wade through this. To put it another way, I'm sure you're an intelligent person, but you didn't even realise that there would be an issue - and why would you, if you're not a lawyer? Judges spend years developing the skills and knowledge to interpret the law with great accuracy, they have the benefit of argument from the lawyers and legal teams from both sides, and even then they sometimes err. An untrained individual cannot possibly be expected to come to the correct decision when the law is complex.
That's not really the big reason, though. Jury deliberations are secret, whereas the judge's directions to the jury are committed to the court record. This means that if the judge has not correctly stated the law then his direction can be reviewed by a superior court (and they aren't shy - there are cases where an appeal court has taken issue with the use of the word "infer" rather than "find" in a jury direction!). If there was a misstatement of the law by the judge that could potentially have affected the jury's verdict the appeal court should order a retrial. If the jury were allowed to research the law on its own there would be no way of knowing whether it had interpreted the law correctly.
Just to add to that, in complicated trials juries will commonly make requests to the judge for clarification of points of law, and he will write an explanation and give it to them. If you're struggling to understand something that's what you should do - that way there's a record of the basis on which you made your judgement. There's no reason to try to research it yourself.
The internet, where stupidity and arrogance collide...
I have to admit I did think of that comic while writing the explanation, but I didn't want to copy the wording because it's a serious point - there's a fairly widespread misunderstanding about the meaning of the maxim.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to waste a lot of time clicking "random" on the XKCD archive page..
correlation does not imply causation, it implies connection.
The first part of this is true - but it's important to bear in mind that the use of "imply" in this statement is not the same as the colloquial use. Imply here means "prove" - correlation does not prove causation. A suggestion for a more accurate way of phrasing the statement that avoids confusion is "correlation does not imply causation, but it is a hint".
I point this out because the second part of your statement isn't true unless you're taking the colloquial meaning of "imply", since it is not true that correlation always means there is connection - coincidence is also a possibility. Taking this meaning (that correlation suggests there is a connection) it would be true in many circumstances to say that correlation implied causation.
The idea that accents are optional on capitals in French is a myth; they aren't (and never have been, although see the next sentence) and occasionally it can be confusing when they are omitted. Their omission was common when moving type was still in use simply for practical reasons, but now that that's not an issue there's no reason to carry on the practice and good reason to abandon it. For clarity, here's the position of the Académie Française:
"On veille donc, en bonne typographie, à utiliser systématiquement les capitales accentuées, y compris la préposition À, comme le font bien sûr tous les dictionnaires [...] ou les grammaires [...]
A quick translation:
"Correct typography therefore requires that one is careful to systematically use accented capitals, including the preposition À - as is done, of course, by all of the dictionaries [...] and grammar books"
Absolutely agree. Heavy use of the internet to learn seems to me to lead to a very superficial level of learning - enough to sound knowledgeable in a soundbite, but not enough to actually understanding what you're reading about or do anything non-trivial with it. It's something that I think is very apparent on Slashdot; there are a great many posts made by people who have "learnt" about something via Wikipedia but who have completely misunderstood, or over-generalised, or misinterpreted it but who remain convinced that they are experts. It perhaps comes down to the old truism that the more you learn the more you realise how ignorant you are - and as a corollary, that when you know very little you are generally unable to tell just how little you know. A good teacher can guide your learning, because he/she has a solid general understanding of the subject area. Without one you're liable to stumble across a tail and assume that it's the entire elephant.
This being Slashdot, I suspect "better" means more open.
Not necessarily an untenable point of view, but a little tautological when you say that open source software is better.
Definitely. I expect them to be free and I don't want to see ads. It's not my problem how Youtube or free TV will make an income. If they don't have a clue how to make a living then they cease to exists, that is what free market is all about.
But surely that's bad for you, since you want to watch the videos? It's not like anyone else has found a better way to make money from video, and it costs money to host, so you're not talking about a provider being out-competed you're talking about free-to-view online video going extinct. I don't really see that as a desirable outcome.
Russian security services made it known quite publicly that should he do something like that - he *will* be eliminated.
Really? Do you have a source for that?
Tell me, do you hold everyone you contract with to such a low standard? If sometimes your box of cereal turns out to be totally empty do you just shake your head sadly and say "well I should have checked at the supermarket"? If you pay a mechanic to fix your car and he doesn't bother do you write off your loss while mentally chastising yourself for not training as a mechanic yourself so that you could verify what he'd done?
I don't know about where you are, but in this country if someone fails to do what they've promised to do then they have to make right any damage. That goes double if, like here, they have been negligent. And in general they cannot exclude liability for this sort of thing when dealing with a consumer. Would you really want it to be otherwise? For big companies to be able to do whatever they want, safe in the knowledge that if they screw up, costing their customers a great deal of money, the consumer has no recourse and "no-one to blame but himself"?
And I fully agree with you fully agreeing with that guy.
I think a lot of people on Slashdot are doing exactly what he complained about - look round on the internet to find some way they can disagree and then disagreeing, just for the sake of being contrarian. These people don't seem to have noticed the difference between the examples they're giving and the use that's being banned: context, the title of the guy's post and pretty much the entire reason for his decision. In some contexts a swastika can be a neutral or even positive symbol. Devoid of any context, as a player's logo, normally decked out in the colours of the Nazis, is another matter. It's being used by ignorant players to be deliberately offensive and provocative, and the arguments are just rationalisations.
I would urge anyone thinking of posting to say "in some places the swastika is fine" to read the article first. He addresses that point, and he probably actually agrees with you. So far I haven't seen a single pro-Swastika post that wasn't clearly either written by someone who hadn't bothered to read what the guy said before disagreeing with it or by someone who had just gone to Wikipedia to look for a reason to be contrary. Neither of those is particularly helpful.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but checking an employee's ID even if you recognise him or her is good practice. When someone is laid off or quits they should have their ID taken and will be removed from the database of employees; checking ID therefore allows you to avoid letting people in who have been allowed in in the past but are no longer allowed, possibly for a reason that would make them a potential threat.
I'm sure that your citation of Minnesota law, and your interpretation of the words "probable cause" would, in certain contexts, be accurate. However statute law is only one part of the process of construction, another is case law. The District Judge explained to you the reason, in law, that you cannot succeed simply by showing that the client had no proof: the liability for an attorney under the tort of malicious prosecution is more carefully circumscribed than the statute would suggest. In his judgement he referred you to Hoppe v Klapperich, in which it was held that an attorney is liable for malicious prosecution only if he "knowingly" became an "instrumentality for the perpetration of fraud"*. This is clearly a much more restrictive test, requiring a much higher degree of intention than simply lack of probable cause and will, I imagine, have been a policy decision to protect plaintiffs' access to attorneys. With this in mind you can, I'm sure, see that the evidence you adduced at trial could not possibly satisfy the standard required to succeed; other than showing that the attorney knew his client to be lying I cannot readily see any way you could have made out your claim.
* [these quotes are taken from the headnote - I don't have access to the full case file without getting a physical copy of the case from the library. They should still be accurate.]
I don't have time at the moment to go into any great detail - I'll try to check back later if I can - but just a couple of points:
- You're confusing a lack of evidence with knowledge of untruth. To succeed you had to prove that the attorney knew that their client was not telling the truth and you could not do this.
- The point isn't whether or not a "purely speculative" claim lacked probable cause, it's that even showing that it lacked probable cause would not have been enough. That's what the case law cited in the District Court judgement was demonstrating.
- You weren't denied your day in court - you had it. This was effectively a striking-out hearing; the point is that the elements that you failed to prove in this hearing are required if you are to prove your claim. Since you couldn't prove them you could not possibly succeed in your claim. There would be no advantage to proceeding to trial other than to harass your opponents, which would, as I stated, be rather ironic.
As always I should point out that I don't study US law and shouldn't ever be relied on.
Huh? He got screwed by a criminal corporation and a gang of corrupt attorneys. He's "entitled" to some redress for what they put him through. Do you have a problem with that?
He didn't get screwed - the summary is (unsurprisingly, given that it was written by one of the parties) biased.
There were three actions. The first was for copyright infringement, which he won and received $19,462 in damages, being $4,462 of actual damages and $15,000 of statutory damages. In response to this the other party countersued over comments made on his website and lost.
This story relates to an attempted claim for malicious prosecution and abuse of process against the other party's attorneys. The judge effectively found that an attorney is entitled to rely on the sworn testimony of his client even if the other party says that testimony is untrue - and how could it possibly be otherwise without rendering litigation impossible? The poster has on his website a document he alleges to show that the attorneys knew their client was lying, but as far as I can tell it is not referenced in any of the cases - I don't know whether it was actually admitted as evidence. The appeal judge refers to the claim as being essentially that because in the end the claims were found not to be credible the prosecution must have been malicious - this is clearly something of a leap. Finally, the poster claims unfairness because he was denied his day in court by this summary judgement. But given that the judgement was given based on there being no chance of success it is difficult to see what the day in court could achieve other than inconveniencing his opponent - and allowing a claim for abuse of process in order only to harass the other party would be a ridiculous irony.
If the claim of malicious prosecution was ambitious the appeal seems to have been consigned to failure from the beginning. The appeal judge notes that the appeal contained no disputes of law or of fact, so it is hard to see how he expected the decision to be reversed.
Get rid of copyright, though, and copying becomes a viable business - the moment an author sells a book or a musician sells a CD every publishing house will be able to sell copies. Prices of books will fall, which sounds good for consumers, but not a penny will be going back to the author. Patronage will be the only viable way to make a living from art - you get a situation akin to the Soviet Union, where only art that meets certain conditions can find funding and only the rich, or the state-approved, can afford to write.
A person asked the Pres. if his health would support getting a hip replacement of their mother/grandmother hip. He said that it would NOT because at 80+ it would not be a good medical decision. I suggest actually paying attention to the bad things the pres said.
Would you mind linking to a transcript of this? I don't seem to be able to find it anywhere. All I can find are the reports of the time I cited - his relating the story of his grandmother's hip replacement. Googling "Obama hip replacement -grandmother" gets me nowhere. I'm surprised, since I'd have thought that the President making blanket statements denying people's right to healthcare would get more coverage.
While I accept that that is probably much closer to the conscious aims of American people, I think your original post captures the reality better. This isn't just a disinclination to help other people, it's a preference to spend more money, therefore disadvantaging yourself, in order to avoid conferring a gratuitous benefit upon someone else.
While I can respect the position that people should provide for themselves I find it very difficult to respect the position that it is always preferable to avoid paying for someone else, even if avoiding paying for others in fact makes your own life harder.
I've noticed that when people refer to the "Democrat" or "Republican" president their comments are almost always hopelessly skewed, the product of a mentality that values partisan loyalty over intellectual honesty. You have given me no reason to doubt this theory.
Reducing a complicated moral and economic problem to this level is helpful to nobody. His story about his grandmother's hip was told to illustrate the problem that while on a national scale it is obvious that providing all treatment to everybody results in an unaffordable health bill, on a personal level one cannot expect human frailty to say no to treatment that will help, even slightly, someone they love - even when that person knows that providing such treatment will result in prices becoming even more inflated. It is possible to take a coherent position that disagrees with his conclusion - the balance between valuing individual autonomy and providing collective benefits is one that cannot be struck without sacrifice, and the Anglo-Saxon tradition generally gives autonomy a great deal of respect. One could therefore argue that the right of the individual to self-determination outweighs any economic cost to those around him.
This, however, was not your argument. Your preference was to abandon any attempt at argument or logic, instead pretend that the question did not exist and that Mr Obama's statement had been quite different, and use this to support a mindless jab at the "Democrat President" (emphasis mine). This is juvenile and, worse, it is harmful to public debate. These are issues on which there will probably never be agreement, but that must be debated - it is the only way in which the issues can hope to be resolved. This debate is impossible if people resort to cheap, meaningless and defamatory sound-bites rather than reasoned argument.
So you're willing to pay extra as long as it ensures that you don't benefit anyone else? Do you also buy extra food that you don't want to make sure it isn't given to the homeless?
Snooze on my phone can be easily triggered without opening my eyes - I wish it couldn't, I always end up snoozing for about an hour.
Of course no sane legal system would close a sourt just because someone's 'secret algorithm' might be mentioned.
I fail to see what is "insane" about closing the court for the part of the case that involves trade secrets that, if revealed, would have a huge financial impact on a very large company.
You can accept a contract implicitly, by conduct. However there are a couple of things that are relevant here:
-You can only accept a contract if you are aware of it (not sure if that's relevant, the site is 403'd). There is a doctrine of constructive notice for businesses that could mean that a contract on the terms and conditions page would be binding because they should have checked it, but I'd be amazed if it were held to apply to web pages (since no-one reads t&c pages) and it wouldn't apply to individuals anyway.
-The acceptance must be unambiguous - if an objective observer wouldn't be sure you were accepting then your conduct is not an acceptance.
-The more onerous and unusual a contract term the more the person proposing it has to do to inform the person accepting of its existence.