For instance, does free speech apply to the internet? Under your rule, the answer would be "no", since there was no internet with the Constitution was written.
All your points pretty much described a conversion from the Common Law system as it is practiced in the UK and its former colonies (US, India, Pakistan, Oz etc) to the Civil Law system that has been introduced practically everywhere else and has been used since the times of Hammurabi and the Romans.
I was actually describing an idealized version of the Hungarian system. The real one has its flaws, of course, like the overuse of references. The whole thing looks like a wiki on paper. And the distorting of old laws for new situations happens here as well.
Is your proposed solution simply not to solve the problem?
My proposed solution:
1. abolish legally binding precedent. The accepted interpretation of a law should be a consensus among the legal community, not a decision of one moron 150 years ago. 2. Hire someone competent to rewrite the laws, aiming for clarity and precision. 3. Law should be treated like software: any and all changes should be incorporated into the text, not distributed as amendments. The current legal system looks like Linux 0.01 with all the patches distributed separately up to 2.6.30, and you can win a case by confusing the judge and your opponent into forgetting a critical patch. 3. Make the up to date text of every law easily accessible and searchable by anyone. 4. If you find there is no law for something new, like, say, the internet, say so. Don't torture existing unrelated laws fo fit the new situation. 5. Arguments should be based on merit, not qualifications and the overuse of jargon.
I'm sure there's more we could do, but these should solve the big problems.
You would expect that ethics would take a big role in how the legal system is formulated, and for the most part you'd be right.
I don't care about ethics. The problem is, the whole system is geared towards requiring lawyers to function. Unclear laws, obscure precedents, etc. Not to mention the special powers the lawyers' associations have, like automatic trust of a member judge.
In order to change this, laws should be written at least as unambiguous as RFC's, for starters.
Seems to me that they're actually doing a public service, by allowing little guys who can't afford to take on big corporations who have clearly done them wrong to proceed with a potentially expensive lawsuit.
They're solving a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place: the legal system is a capitalist enterprise, with heavy price fixing by the lawyer community.
Oh, and a perverted enough legal system that lawyer skill actually matters in a case.
When the process of legal shikanery yields better returns than investing in real world products then it is apparent that the our culture has run aground . ..
No, it's just the logical conclusion of a culture of worshipping money.
And I mean you can take them off later (delete the cookies and all that), but then every other store provides the exact same sticker and some require you to present the sticker at every counter for service. It's something that a paranoid would probably say already happens, but the fact is, that this is turning us *all* paranoid. I don't like being paranoid.
Sounds just like my credit card. Except it's not mandatory yet.
How the fuck difficult is it to realize what an RSS reader does and to realize the app doesn't 'do' that content, it just gets it from the feed?
In fact, what's up with all that parental content bullshit? Is it going to scar children for life if they see a bad word? It's not like they don't hear enough in the television, their browser, their teacher ferchrissake.
Not to mention every other kid they come in contact with. Should we ban those too? Just lock them in a box or something.
Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war. "Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits"
Oh so THAT'S why Iraq was invaded... Silly me thinking attacking two neighbors, genocide, religious persecution, utter failure to comply with terms of surrender, and last but not least intelligence claims of WMDs, etc had something to do with it. Fascinating.
So why did they let him go after the Gulf War, then? And don't tell me about WMD's when North Korea is testing nukes.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the XBox 360/PS3 really the pinnacle of console gaming for the next 5 years?
The hardware is good enough for good games. It has been since the Commodore 64. The problem is, games are more and more boring.
Oooh, mod it -1, Funny please :)
As far as syncing, there is nothing stopping native apps from syncing to "the cloud".
Except common sense, of course. I, for one, tell the new corporate overlords to stay out of my computer.
Any time an important ranking system is devised, those being judged will figure out how to cheat the system.
There's not much to figure out here. You just have to lie.
Xerxes (of 300 fame)
I think Herodotos has prior art on that.
Than e.g. OpenBSD? It sure does.
If there is no possible attack vector either way, is there a difference?
It definitely feels faster than the other major browsers, though they're all pretty good nowadays.
It uses native widgets. You hear me, Chrome and Firefox?!
After the demise of KDE, Opera is our example of a Qt application done right.
I hope you don't twitch under extreme pain. Could end up in some kind of endlessly recursive feedback loop. Which would hurt. Muchly.
You're lucky this wasn't my laptop keyboard.
They don't want any organised protests.
They just want to install their own plugin to the databases.
You might have missed the part where he said he wanted something professional
Oooh, I know! Some worthless text in yellow, with pink background, in Comic Sans, with lots of blink tags!
And don't forget to include "Best viewed with [your exact hardware]" at the bottom.
You don't swing your fist at someone without intent to cause harm.
You do in boxing. If you do go in there aiming to break the opponent's nose, you also deserve the sentence for it.
For instance, does free speech apply to the internet? Under your rule, the answer would be "no", since there was no internet with the Constitution was written.
There was no First Amendment, either.
All your points pretty much described a conversion from the Common Law system as it is practiced in the UK and its former colonies (US, India, Pakistan, Oz etc) to the Civil Law system that has been introduced practically everywhere else and has been used since the times of Hammurabi and the Romans.
I was actually describing an idealized version of the Hungarian system. The real one has its flaws, of course, like the overuse of references. The whole thing looks like a wiki on paper. And the distorting of old laws for new situations happens here as well.
So is the death penalty
Most everywhere?
You can't make laws as clear as technical documents.
Of course you can. Rule #1: Follow the intent, not the letter, And then make the intent as clear as humanly possible.
The difference between an RFC and a law is that you can reasonably expect people to follow the RFC because it is in their own best interest to do so.
Laws are not optional. They're protected by force and imposed on everyone in the area. And they have penalties, too.
Is your proposed solution simply not to solve the problem?
My proposed solution:
1. abolish legally binding precedent. The accepted interpretation of a law should be a consensus among the legal community, not a decision of one moron 150 years ago.
2. Hire someone competent to rewrite the laws, aiming for clarity and precision.
3. Law should be treated like software: any and all changes should be incorporated into the text, not distributed as amendments. The current legal system looks like Linux 0.01 with all the patches distributed separately up to 2.6.30, and you can win a case by confusing the judge and your opponent into forgetting a critical patch.
3. Make the up to date text of every law easily accessible and searchable by anyone.
4. If you find there is no law for something new, like, say, the internet, say so. Don't torture existing unrelated laws fo fit the new situation.
5. Arguments should be based on merit, not qualifications and the overuse of jargon.
I'm sure there's more we could do, but these should solve the big problems.
You would expect that ethics would take a big role in how the legal system is formulated, and for the most part you'd be right.
I don't care about ethics. The problem is, the whole system is geared towards requiring lawyers to function. Unclear laws, obscure precedents, etc. Not to mention the special powers the lawyers' associations have, like automatic trust of a member judge.
In order to change this, laws should be written at least as unambiguous as RFC's, for starters.
Seems to me that they're actually doing a public service, by allowing little guys who can't afford to take on big corporations who have clearly done them wrong to proceed with a potentially expensive lawsuit.
They're solving a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place: the legal system is a capitalist enterprise, with heavy price fixing by the lawyer community.
Oh, and a perverted enough legal system that lawyer skill actually matters in a case.
When the process of legal shikanery yields better returns than investing in real world products then it is apparent that the our culture has run aground . . .
No, it's just the logical conclusion of a culture of worshipping money.
Treating the legal system as a business opportunity is not new, but to base a business model on it?
You guys should start cutting down on lawyer fees, fast.
If you actually were worried about being tracked you'd use cash and never buy anything off the Internet.
I do. My bank account is waaaay overdrawn to be of any use :)
And I mean you can take them off later (delete the cookies and all that), but then every other store provides the exact same sticker and some require you to present the sticker at every counter for service. It's something that a paranoid would probably say already happens, but the fact is, that this is turning us *all* paranoid. I don't like being paranoid.
Sounds just like my credit card. Except it's not mandatory yet.
How the fuck difficult is it to realize what an RSS reader does and to realize the app doesn't 'do' that content, it just gets it from the feed?
In fact, what's up with all that parental content bullshit? Is it going to scar children for life if they see a bad word? It's not like they don't hear enough in the television, their browser, their teacher ferchrissake.
Not to mention every other kid they come in contact with. Should we ban those too? Just lock them in a box or something.
Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul,
curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.
"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits"
Oh so THAT'S why Iraq was invaded... Silly me thinking attacking two neighbors, genocide, religious persecution, utter failure to comply with terms of surrender, and last but not least intelligence claims of WMDs, etc had something to do with it. Fascinating.
So why did they let him go after the Gulf War, then? And don't tell me about WMD's when North Korea is testing nukes.