It may reduce gun crime, but it has virtually no effect on crime as a whole. This is pretty easy to see if you correlate the Brady per state rating with various per capita crime stats. I did this and the correlation between states with more lax gun laws and the overall murder rate is 0.029. As in 3%, which is statistically insignificant. Conversely, the correlation between more strict gun laws and overall violent crime is 0.020. Again, insignificant. Feel free to do the numbers for yourself. I wrote a bit more about it all here if you want more details: http://daleswanson.blogspot.com/2010/03/correlation-between-gun-laws-and-deaths.html
I've heard similar stories before. I'm unconvinced that doing away with juries is the right answer. Perhaps a simpler, best of both words, approach would be simply to add the requirement that the judge also votes guilty in order to find guilty. Since all parties must vote for guilty in order for the overall judgment to be guilty, people wouldn't lose any freedom.
Debts not discharged include debts for alimony and child support, certain taxes, debts for certain educational benefit overpayments or loans made or guaranteed by a governmental unit, debts for willful and malicious injury by the debtor to another entity or to the property of another entity, debts for death or personal injury caused by the debtor's operation of a motor vehicle while the debtor was intoxicated from alcohol or other substances, and debts for certain criminal restitution orders. 11 U.S.C. 523(a).
Even reading that, I can't say for sure if copyright infringement would be dischargable or not. It's quite possible that courts would consider it 'injury to the property of another'.
I agree that people put way too much blame and credit on the president for how things go, and by extension not enough on congress. However, saying there isn't much he can do is a bit misleading. For one thing he could order the various executive departments to stop doing everything they could to ignore basic rights.
The Congress shall have Power...
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
Above in several spots someone posted the same goatse shortened link. It appears to be the most clicked goo.gl link from this page. Currently it has 403 clicks compared to rickroll's 103. 254 are from slashdot domains. http://goo.gl/info/lLIm#week -link to stats page, not redirected to goatse.
Firefox 172 43%
Chrome 79 20%
IE 3 1%
Also 89 are "other Unix" which is 22%. Not clear what that is though, as there are other dedicated categories for Linux and Mac. I would guess it is Linux though, as coming from slashdot I'd expect the Linux count to be higher than 3.
Looking at Google Maps the area covered by the windshield of my car is about five places after the decimal point of precision in both lat and long. That is about one square meter and as precise as you could realistically expect users to be. That would mean each location would give you 2+5 digits for the lat and the long, a total of 14 digits for a password. That's 10^14 possibilities. For comparison a password made up of random characters (lower, upper, digits, special) for a total of 95 total possible choices would need to be seven characters long to have about the same entropy (67 trillion vs 100 trillion).
Seven character random passwords are ok, but certainly not uncrackable. You could argue that letting the user choice several spots would greatly increase the entropy, but realistically the user is going to pick spots close together. Not to mention you could probably cut down on the possible locations with something similar to a dictionary attack, i.e., eliminating the vast expanses of nothingness that are unlikely to be chosen (like oceans, and deserts). Lastly, it relies too heavily on the mapping service. What happens when they update their images and your landmark disappears or moves slightly?
Voting is your responsibility as a citizen. It is your civic duty. It should not be voluntary.
I think it certainly should remain voluntary. If someone can't be bothered to go out and vote there is no way they will be bothered to do some basic research on who is running before hand. Particularly in local elections where there will be little to no advertising what then are these people being forced to vote going to base their vote on? Whatever they base the decision on it will be arbitrary. In the end their votes likely won't reflect their actual wishes, and will do more harm than good.
Today's average Senator was 22 in 1970. The average congressman was 16. The current generation of lawmakers are from the hippie generation (or younger), which had very liberal attitudes towards drugs. Notice that we still have very draconian drug laws.
Perhaps those who pursue a political career are far removed from the general population. Perhaps no one wants to be the first to propose some liberal idea, and thus activly vote against how they actually feel. Whatever the reason, the prevailing attitude of a generation in their youth is no indicator of how they will act when they are in power.
There have been no military executions since 1961 although the death penalty is still a possible punishment for several crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
(3) Obviously the RIAA has no chance of reaching their goal. The US government has zero authority to force MP3 players or phones to have radios. It simply does not exist in the constitution. (Such a power, if it exists, is reserved to the Member States or the People.)
It's common to use the "Pentagon" as a nickname for the DoD. The DoD certainly arrests service members for violating the UCMJ (and releasing classified information violates it).
I was surprised by this as well but according to Wikipedia:
South Carolina law requires defendants who want to be represented by the public defender's office to file an "affidavit of indigency" in order to prove they cannot afford to hire a lawyer. On this affidavit, the applicant must disclose all income and assets, including checking accounts.
I'll agree the power to punish kids for stuff they do outside of school would make your job easier. However, as Bush famously said: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
Just because having a power would make your job easier doesn't mean you should have it.
First off, was it the same person repeatedly causing problems? If it was just random different people it shouldn't be any more surprising to you than when random different civilians cause problems. It seems unlikely that the same service member would be allowed the opportunity to cause multiple fights out in town (in other words they'd be barred from even leaving base after being arrested a couple of times). Perhaps in the US, but overseas any sort of interaction with the local police is severely frowned upon (international incident and all).
If it was the same person, I can tell you that those service members were being punished by the military (unless they somehow kept it secret from the military, and if civilian law enforcement was involved that is unlikely). I can also tell you that despite rather harsh punishments for rather trivial offences some people just don't care. I've seen people get punished for the same thing (often underaged drinking), multiple times. The typical punishment for something like this (or a bar fight) would be an NJP, with 60 days restriction (in uniform 24/7, can only go to work/room/food), reduction in rank (loss of pay), and 60 days reduction in pay (on top of the permanent loss from the loss of rank).
Some people simply do no consider the consequences of their actions. The military probably attracts those people more so than average.
They're just biased. Many people who go to a site like this are going to be using Noscript, and many are going to disable javascript to test the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
It may reduce gun crime, but it has virtually no effect on crime as a whole. This is pretty easy to see if you correlate the Brady per state rating with various per capita crime stats. I did this and the correlation between states with more lax gun laws and the overall murder rate is 0.029. As in 3%, which is statistically insignificant. Conversely, the correlation between more strict gun laws and overall violent crime is 0.020. Again, insignificant. Feel free to do the numbers for yourself. I wrote a bit more about it all here if you want more details:
http://daleswanson.blogspot.com/2010/03/correlation-between-gun-laws-and-deaths.html
I've heard similar stories before. I'm unconvinced that doing away with juries is the right answer. Perhaps a simpler, best of both words, approach would be simply to add the requirement that the judge also votes guilty in order to find guilty. Since all parties must vote for guilty in order for the overall judgment to be guilty, people wouldn't lose any freedom.
I'm not sure if I'd call random suspicionless check points within the US "almost none". But I guess it only really applies if you are part of the rare 2/3rds that live with 100 miles of a border. Admittedly, not many people have actually experienced these check points yet. However, the key to government usurping illegal powers is getting a foot in the door first.
Debts not discharged include debts for alimony and child support, certain taxes, debts for certain educational benefit overpayments or loans made or guaranteed by a governmental unit, debts for willful and malicious injury by the debtor to another entity or to the property of another entity, debts for death or personal injury caused by the debtor's operation of a motor vehicle while the debtor was intoxicated from alcohol or other substances, and debts for certain criminal restitution orders. 11 U.S.C. 523(a).
Even reading that, I can't say for sure if copyright infringement would be dischargable or not. It's quite possible that courts would consider it 'injury to the property of another'.
Considering that Albert Einstein had trouble with Math
That's not true.
In fact, he actually excelled at mathematics throughout his schooling and even considered becoming a mathematician for a time.
The fact that modern vehicles often are in much worst shape after minor accidents is a trade off for the driver in them being in much better shape after major accidents. Many people with new vehicles will have full coverage and would rather their car be totaled in a fender bender than themselves be killed in a major accident.
1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and 2009 Chevrolet Malibu in 40 mph frontal offset crash test
Video
1959 Bel Air after crash
2009 Malibu after same crash
I realize that is a greater difference in years, and safety features, than you were specifically talking about, but the principle still stands.
36.4 / 32 = 1.1375
14% more energy is arguably significant.
I agree that people put way too much blame and credit on the president for how things go, and by extension not enough on congress. However, saying there isn't much he can do is a bit misleading. For one thing he could order the various executive departments to stop doing everything they could to ignore basic rights.
Justices to Hear Appeal by Ashcroft Over Detention Suit
US justice department argues former detainees have no constitutional rights
Obama adopts Bush view on the powers of the presidency.
Ruling Against Bush Wiretaps Also Slaps Down Obama's Executive Overreach
Above in several spots someone posted the same goatse shortened link. It appears to be the most clicked goo.gl link from this page. Currently it has 403 clicks compared to rickroll's 103. 254 are from slashdot domains.
http://goo.gl/info/lLIm#week -link to stats page, not redirected to goatse.
Firefox 172 43%
Chrome 79 20%
IE 3 1%
Also 89 are "other Unix" which is 22%. Not clear what that is though, as there are other dedicated categories for Linux and Mac. I would guess it is Linux though, as coming from slashdot I'd expect the Linux count to be higher than 3.
Looking at Google Maps the area covered by the windshield of my car is about five places after the decimal point of precision in both lat and long. That is about one square meter and as precise as you could realistically expect users to be. That would mean each location would give you 2+5 digits for the lat and the long, a total of 14 digits for a password. That's 10^14 possibilities. For comparison a password made up of random characters (lower, upper, digits, special) for a total of 95 total possible choices would need to be seven characters long to have about the same entropy (67 trillion vs 100 trillion).
Seven character random passwords are ok, but certainly not uncrackable. You could argue that letting the user choice several spots would greatly increase the entropy, but realistically the user is going to pick spots close together. Not to mention you could probably cut down on the possible locations with something similar to a dictionary attack, i.e., eliminating the vast expanses of nothingness that are unlikely to be chosen (like oceans, and deserts). Lastly, it relies too heavily on the mapping service. What happens when they update their images and your landmark disappears or moves slightly?
Voting is your responsibility as a citizen. It is your civic duty. It should not be voluntary.
I think it certainly should remain voluntary. If someone can't be bothered to go out and vote there is no way they will be bothered to do some basic research on who is running before hand. Particularly in local elections where there will be little to no advertising what then are these people being forced to vote going to base their vote on? Whatever they base the decision on it will be arbitrary. In the end their votes likely won't reflect their actual wishes, and will do more harm than good.
"The average age of a House Member is now 56 years and for a Senator, 61.7 years."
Today's average Senator was 22 in 1970. The average congressman was 16. The current generation of lawmakers are from the hippie generation (or younger), which had very liberal attitudes towards drugs. Notice that we still have very draconian drug laws.
Perhaps those who pursue a political career are far removed from the general population. Perhaps no one wants to be the first to propose some liberal idea, and thus activly vote against how they actually feel. Whatever the reason, the prevailing attitude of a generation in their youth is no indicator of how they will act when they are in power.
There have been no military executions since 1961 although the death penalty is still a possible punishment for several crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
(3) Obviously the RIAA has no chance of reaching their goal. The US government has zero authority to force MP3 players or phones to have radios. It simply does not exist in the constitution. (Such a power, if it exists, is reserved to the Member States or the People.)
On your world what prevented the US government from growing in power and abusing the commerce clause to be able to do whatever it wanted?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
A number of police have told me that if you shoot in self defense, "keep shooting until you see brains".
Those weren't cops, they were zombies.
Replace "on duty" with "conducting official business".
It's common to use the "Pentagon" as a nickname for the DoD. The DoD certainly arrests service members for violating the UCMJ (and releasing classified information violates it).
One could make an argument that standing armies and freedom can't coexist.
I think he was referring to the UK–USA Security Agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93USA_Security_Agreement
Primaries aren't blue vs red though. They are more blue vs blue and red vs red.
South Carolina law requires defendants who want to be represented by the public defender's office to file an "affidavit of indigency" in order to prove they cannot afford to hire a lawyer. On this affidavit, the applicant must disclose all income and assets, including checking accounts.
I'll agree the power to punish kids for stuff they do outside of school would make your job easier. However, as Bush famously said: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
Just because having a power would make your job easier doesn't mean you should have it.
First off, was it the same person repeatedly causing problems? If it was just random different people it shouldn't be any more surprising to you than when random different civilians cause problems. It seems unlikely that the same service member would be allowed the opportunity to cause multiple fights out in town (in other words they'd be barred from even leaving base after being arrested a couple of times). Perhaps in the US, but overseas any sort of interaction with the local police is severely frowned upon (international incident and all).
If it was the same person, I can tell you that those service members were being punished by the military (unless they somehow kept it secret from the military, and if civilian law enforcement was involved that is unlikely). I can also tell you that despite rather harsh punishments for rather trivial offences some people just don't care. I've seen people get punished for the same thing (often underaged drinking), multiple times. The typical punishment for something like this (or a bar fight) would be an NJP, with 60 days restriction (in uniform 24/7, can only go to work/room/food), reduction in rank (loss of pay), and 60 days reduction in pay (on top of the permanent loss from the loss of rank).
Some people simply do no consider the consequences of their actions. The military probably attracts those people more so than average.
They're just biased. Many people who go to a site like this are going to be using Noscript, and many are going to disable javascript to test the difference.