A loophole in the law is, quite literally, a disagreement between the letter and the spirit of the law. Remaiming free is what The Constitution is all about, I suggest you attend law school before speaking on these matters. Or, at least, obtain a 3rd grade understanding of the topic.
I think you, in fact, might be ignorant, and willfully so as all you'd have to have done in order to realize what I was actually trying to say is read my entire post and digest it before replying. Specifically:
Treason is, perhaps, a bit harsh, but I suppose it would depend on the nature of the law being twisted.
Further, we are a nation governed by the spirit of law. The Constitution gains its power primarily from the spirit with which it was written, and secondarily from its letter; that's the only reason it still holds any power today.
The constitution prohibits making things illegal after the fact which is what enforcement of the spirit of a law when it doesn't specifically outlaw an act would be.
You're not arguing against me, here. I never claimed things should be made illegal under the spirit of law but, rather, that they should not be made illegal under the letter of the law when the spirit does not also apply. That is, a law written to protect children from speeding motorists should not be applied to a motorist who speeds past a school while no children are present outside. The letter of the law says it is illegal for the motorist to do so, but the spirit of the law indicates that the letter should only apply when children are actually in danger.
Follow?
Probably not, so let me recap. Neither spirit nor letter alone should be sufficient to render anything illegal; only when both are in agreement should the law be applied.
Yes, there are several books you can purchase, both in dead-tree (which I prefer) and electronic format, from his website. Or, you can just read the how-to for free.
What would you have a physician do under those circumstances? NOT suggest a potential treatment (ie, NOT offer your wife a prescription for pain killers)?
Refer. If you don't know the answer to something, do you just spout out incorrect information, or do you say you don't know and (possibly) refer whoever asked to a better source? Doctors can and should do the same; specialists exist for a reason.
For another example of why you don't just do any old thing when you're not sure what the actual correct thing to do is, look at the TSA. Don't encourage that shit.
just realize that there are many painful diseases and injuries we don't have a cure for no matter how long and hard you search
I think he realizes this. His point, it seems to me, was that the above is not a justification for not bothering to search at all. Perhaps a referral to a specialist is a better option than a prescription that may only mask a potentially life-threatening condition, or cause one of their own? Perhaps there should be classes of drugs which can only be initially prescribed by said specialists? That would catch a lot more of these instances where the root cause of the pain can actually be treated and it would cut down a lot on abuse. And, by only requiring the initial prescription to come from a specialist, you can take that empty or near-empty bottle to your regular doctor and have him write a refill, so it wouldn't even make continued treatment a hassle. Sure, it makes it more difficult to get the initial prescription; but the side effect is that you may end up not needing the prescription in the first place, which is only a problem for addicts.
Yup, it's so addictive I use it as treatment for the migraines I've gotten since I was 5 and literally the only time I use it is when I have a migraine coming on. Oh, and my wife, who was the recreational user out of the two of us, just decided one day she was done with it and quit cold-turkey with no adverse physical or psychological effects. Then, there's my friend who went on a massive weed binge for a month or so, then quit cold-turkey, again with no adverse effects. Oh, and my mother, a few neighbors over the years, my ex-fiancee, a few coworkers, the list goes on, and that's just the people I know. People start and stop smoking pot all the time, it's not addictive in the slightest; it is subject to peer pressure but, then, what isn't?
It also is habit forming (getting high regularly)
Anything you do regularly for more than 10 days is habit forming. It's also really easy to stop.
and a gateway drug to harder stuffed (when the high isn't enough)
The only people I know who ever moved on to harder stuff were pressured by their friends or their dealer. Peer pressure was the gateway in the former cases and profit motive (on the part of the dealer) in the latter. Nobody who buys from a licensed dispensary or a dealer who only sells pot is moving on to harder stuff without some external influence (e.g. peer pressure), because marijuana is not a "gateway" drug.
It just doesn't happen that someone tokes up and suddenly decides they need amphetamines or opiates.
With privatized prisons, paid for out of our tax dollars, giving kickbacks to the courts and police departments in their areas, this is no longer a "problem". Why do you these laws get enforced to begin with?
Basically, I think, what the AC you were replying to is calling for is open discussion of the spirit of the law, the letter of the law, and the ways in which the two disagree, coupled with making it illegal to do things that technically follow the letter while violating the spirit. Applied evenly, that's actually a very sound idea; for example, it would mean no more tickets for doing the regular posted speed limit past a school when school is in session and all children are inside the building, because the spirit of the law is to protect children (who aren't in danger when you're going more than 20MPH past a building they happen to be inside of) while the letter allows you to get slammed for it.
Treason is, perhaps, a bit harsh, but I suppose it would depend on the nature of the law being twisted. For example, in the case of a law you're being prosecuted for violating, if it's a minor crime and/or it wasn't publicized at all, simply dropping the charges and paying 3x lost wages and legal costs should suffice; if it was made public or is a major crime that may affect your ability to find housing or work in the future, ongoing yearly payments of 10x the mean salary might be in order. That would serve as a deterrent against bullshit arrests and prosecution and lead to more common-sense enforcement of the law, which is something that needs to be highlighted in order to get votes, especially when the people doing the voting (e.g. politicians) benefit from at least one class of the loopholes being discussed.
As for crimes you commit, which is what the AC was talking about (clearly you understand this, I'm just clarifying that I do as well) that's a much longer discussion. Perhaps too long for a single Slashdot post, but I think it would be interesting nonetheless, if you wish to pursue it.
People don't expect that from a tablet because the tablet form-factor has never been primarily comprised of machines that could do those things. Laptops not being able to do those things is a relatively new phenomenon and isn't widely accepted by a populace used to technology becoming more capable over time. To most people, it's just another laptop and everybody knows laptops can do everything desktops can do, just sometimes not as fast.
In other words, people don't always understand the finer points of fields in which they're not educated. Most people aren't educated enough in the field of computing to know the difference between x86 and ARM, or Windows, OSX, Linux, and Chrome OS. Hell, I've met people who think iOS and Android are the same OS and don't understand why apps bought on their iPhone don't appear in their Play store purchases; after all, they used the same email address for both.
When that's who you're selling to, you can expect any and all limitations of your platform to be viewed as flaws, mistakes you made, that you must fix in order for your platform to not be complete crap in the eyes of the consumer.
Know the solution to that, China? It's really simple, China. Want to know what it is, China?
Hey, China, allow your soldiers to play Pokemon GO on-base in their off time.
Problem solved.
Or, you know, don't try to screw us over and we won't have reason to invade you and, thus, won't need to know where your bases are in order to target them.
If you want to use the aircraft argument, will you agree then that Tesla should require a several hundred hour certification course before you're allowed to take ownership of your vehicle like is done with commercial aircraft to explain all the nuances of the systems and ensure the pilots know how everything works?
You're comparing the sale of an item to a government licensing program. Anyone can buy a plane, whether they can drive it or not; cars are (and should be) the same. Now, if you wanted to make the same comparison between getting a drivers license and getting a pilots license, that would be reasonable. And yes, I'm sure most of us here do think it should be much more difficult to get a drivers license; perhaps at least as difficult as getting one's pilots license, something which is required whether or not the craft to be flown has autopilot capabilities (and something which does not cover the myriad different autopilot systems in use, nor those which will be in use in the future and is, therefore, irrelevant to the discussion).
Someone mod this AC troll insightful. We're already seeing this actually happening.
In unrelated news, I've been driving a lot more, lately. I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with hearing about kids walking into traffic while playing Pokemon GO.
He didn't have time to yell anything, he was shooting as he got out of his car; and even if he did, Tamir didn't have an opportunity to comply. Protocol for a situation where a weapon is believed to be involved is to walk in, from a distance, guns drawn. That would have given them plenty of time to command the suspect and react if he did not obey; it also would have given them the upper hand should he have gone for the gun (though, they already had that since the gun was fucking fake).
You'll also note that every report of the incident that goes into any real level of detail, including the reports given by the officers involved, indicates that they did not perform first aid, even after finding that the gun was fake. They just let him lay there and bleed out.
Even if, and this is a big if, they truly thought they were in danger, if their intent was not simply to kill this boy, they would have taken steps to preserve his life.
I'll admit, I hadn't seen the video of the actual shooting (as you clearly didn't either) until now. Now that I've seen it, well, it's even more clear that the officer was in the wrong.
Fuck, he didn't even take the time to make sure he was shooting the person the 911 caller was even calling about, nor to see if the kid had anything on his person, let alone a gun. Car stops, Loehmann gets out and fires 2 shots, that's all.
He had been an officer in Independence for 5 months, if you include his 4 months of training, and resigned from the force to avoid being discharged from duty for "[inability to follow] basic functions as instructed" and a "dangerous loss of composure" during a weapons training exercise, in addition to signs of mental instability. An Independence PD internal memo regarding Loehmann states "Individually, these events would not be considered major situations, but when taken together they show a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions, I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies."
This was 2 years prior to him becoming a cop in Cleveland 8 months before shooting Rice. He had a minimum of 4 months of training and 14 months as a cop before the shooting, he wasn't green, he was unstable.
So you're saying the officer should have used superpowers to detect that the gun only had plastic pellets?
No, but having actually seen the gun himself would've been a start.
The case you want to make was that the 911 calls were not reliable but in this case they were reliable
They may have been right, but they were not reliable. A broken clock is right twice a day, but I'd hardly call it reliable, either.
The officer didn't see the gun, he saw what he thought was a gun. Correct procedure would have been to draw on the suspect and approach with caution. Had he drawn (not drawn and taken aim, simply drawn, such that the officer could identify the weapon as such), the shooting would have been fully justified; and, having already drawn on the suspect they'd have had time to get a couple shots off, too.
See, the thing is, I personally know several good cops and have a federal agent in my family. None of them support this shooting. Not one. It's not just me your arguing with, it's every good cop in the country.
Heck even if that orange end had been on the gun the 911 calls wouldn't have happened. Would it be so bad for the public to not let their kids play with realistic looking guns in public? Let's see this as an unfortunate circumstance, and instead of getting angry at the police, try to learn and grow from it. This is what will solve America's problem. Unfortunately, the US population seems to be very angry and mistrusting of authority and the government. There are probably many, many reasons for that and they go way beyond the police and those need to be solved. If they are not, then there will be continued escalations and we are on a crash course for a civil war. No one should want that.
+1 to that. Police as a whole did the right thing, it was the officer who fired two shots within two seconds of arriving on the scene and, according to witnesses, did not issue any verbal commands or give warning of any sort, who did the wrong thing. Get mad at him, but not police as a whole.
RE: Reliable reports, there was one call to 911, which was not treated by Officer Loehmann as reliable. The caller stated three facts, two of which were ignored by Loehmann: "of a male black sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people" (acted upon), "it's probably fake" (ignored), and "he is probably a juvenile" (ignored). If the report was reliable, why, then, was it not treated as such?
Slashdot Mirror
A loophole in the law is, quite literally, a disagreement between the letter and the spirit of the law. Remaiming free is what The Constitution is all about, I suggest you attend law school before speaking on these matters. Or, at least, obtain a 3rd grade understanding of the topic.
Treason is, perhaps, a bit harsh, but I suppose it would depend on the nature of the law being twisted.
Further, we are a nation governed by the spirit of law. The Constitution gains its power primarily from the spirit with which it was written, and secondarily from its letter; that's the only reason it still holds any power today.
The constitution prohibits making things illegal after the fact which is what enforcement of the spirit of a law when it doesn't specifically outlaw an act would be.
You're not arguing against me, here. I never claimed things should be made illegal under the spirit of law but, rather, that they should not be made illegal under the letter of the law when the spirit does not also apply. That is, a law written to protect children from speeding motorists should not be applied to a motorist who speeds past a school while no children are present outside. The letter of the law says it is illegal for the motorist to do so, but the spirit of the law indicates that the letter should only apply when children are actually in danger.
Follow?
Probably not, so let me recap. Neither spirit nor letter alone should be sufficient to render anything illegal; only when both are in agreement should the law be applied.
Yes, there are several books you can purchase, both in dead-tree (which I prefer) and electronic format, from his website. Or, you can just read the how-to for free.
What you smoked wasn't weed, my friend. It may have been delivered along with some weed, but it wasn't weed.
What would you have a physician do under those circumstances? NOT suggest a potential treatment (ie, NOT offer your wife a prescription for pain killers)?
Refer. If you don't know the answer to something, do you just spout out incorrect information, or do you say you don't know and (possibly) refer whoever asked to a better source? Doctors can and should do the same; specialists exist for a reason.
For another example of why you don't just do any old thing when you're not sure what the actual correct thing to do is, look at the TSA. Don't encourage that shit.
just realize that there are many painful diseases and injuries we don't have a cure for no matter how long and hard you search
I think he realizes this. His point, it seems to me, was that the above is not a justification for not bothering to search at all. Perhaps a referral to a specialist is a better option than a prescription that may only mask a potentially life-threatening condition, or cause one of their own? Perhaps there should be classes of drugs which can only be initially prescribed by said specialists? That would catch a lot more of these instances where the root cause of the pain can actually be treated and it would cut down a lot on abuse. And, by only requiring the initial prescription to come from a specialist, you can take that empty or near-empty bottle to your regular doctor and have him write a refill, so it wouldn't even make continued treatment a hassle. Sure, it makes it more difficult to get the initial prescription; but the side effect is that you may end up not needing the prescription in the first place, which is only a problem for addicts.
MJ is already addictive(getting high) you moron.
Yup, it's so addictive I use it as treatment for the migraines I've gotten since I was 5 and literally the only time I use it is when I have a migraine coming on. Oh, and my wife, who was the recreational user out of the two of us, just decided one day she was done with it and quit cold-turkey with no adverse physical or psychological effects. Then, there's my friend who went on a massive weed binge for a month or so, then quit cold-turkey, again with no adverse effects. Oh, and my mother, a few neighbors over the years, my ex-fiancee, a few coworkers, the list goes on, and that's just the people I know. People start and stop smoking pot all the time, it's not addictive in the slightest; it is subject to peer pressure but, then, what isn't?
It also is habit forming (getting high regularly)
Anything you do regularly for more than 10 days is habit forming. It's also really easy to stop.
and a gateway drug to harder stuffed (when the high isn't enough)
The only people I know who ever moved on to harder stuff were pressured by their friends or their dealer. Peer pressure was the gateway in the former cases and profit motive (on the part of the dealer) in the latter. Nobody who buys from a licensed dispensary or a dealer who only sells pot is moving on to harder stuff without some external influence (e.g. peer pressure), because marijuana is not a "gateway" drug.
It just doesn't happen that someone tokes up and suddenly decides they need amphetamines or opiates.
With privatized prisons, paid for out of our tax dollars, giving kickbacks to the courts and police departments in their areas, this is no longer a "problem". Why do you these laws get enforced to begin with?
Basically, I think, what the AC you were replying to is calling for is open discussion of the spirit of the law, the letter of the law, and the ways in which the two disagree, coupled with making it illegal to do things that technically follow the letter while violating the spirit. Applied evenly, that's actually a very sound idea; for example, it would mean no more tickets for doing the regular posted speed limit past a school when school is in session and all children are inside the building, because the spirit of the law is to protect children (who aren't in danger when you're going more than 20MPH past a building they happen to be inside of) while the letter allows you to get slammed for it.
Treason is, perhaps, a bit harsh, but I suppose it would depend on the nature of the law being twisted. For example, in the case of a law you're being prosecuted for violating, if it's a minor crime and/or it wasn't publicized at all, simply dropping the charges and paying 3x lost wages and legal costs should suffice; if it was made public or is a major crime that may affect your ability to find housing or work in the future, ongoing yearly payments of 10x the mean salary might be in order. That would serve as a deterrent against bullshit arrests and prosecution and lead to more common-sense enforcement of the law, which is something that needs to be highlighted in order to get votes, especially when the people doing the voting (e.g. politicians) benefit from at least one class of the loopholes being discussed.
As for crimes you commit, which is what the AC was talking about (clearly you understand this, I'm just clarifying that I do as well) that's a much longer discussion. Perhaps too long for a single Slashdot post, but I think it would be interesting nonetheless, if you wish to pursue it.
Not having a public release and not existing are two different things...
People don't expect that from a tablet because the tablet form-factor has never been primarily comprised of machines that could do those things. Laptops not being able to do those things is a relatively new phenomenon and isn't widely accepted by a populace used to technology becoming more capable over time. To most people, it's just another laptop and everybody knows laptops can do everything desktops can do, just sometimes not as fast.
In other words, people don't always understand the finer points of fields in which they're not educated. Most people aren't educated enough in the field of computing to know the difference between x86 and ARM, or Windows, OSX, Linux, and Chrome OS. Hell, I've met people who think iOS and Android are the same OS and don't understand why apps bought on their iPhone don't appear in their Play store purchases; after all, they used the same email address for both.
When that's who you're selling to, you can expect any and all limitations of your platform to be viewed as flaws, mistakes you made, that you must fix in order for your platform to not be complete crap in the eyes of the consumer.
I'm not saying it is right, just that it is.
but but but... Chromebooks are now cheap GAMING RIGS that can do EVERYTHING! Right?
56 hours behind the wheel, or a valid license from another state, actually.
Know the solution to that, China? It's really simple, China. Want to know what it is, China?
Hey, China, allow your soldiers to play Pokemon GO on-base in their off time.
Problem solved.
Or, you know, don't try to screw us over and we won't have reason to invade you and, thus, won't need to know where your bases are in order to target them.
Either (or both) of those will work.
right now they're the last place upstart among the major carriers
Actually, they passed up Sprint a couple weeks ago.
Oh, wait, Sprint's not a major carrier anymore. Carry on.
Why anonymous? This is the rare combination of Troll, Insighful, Funny, Interesting, and Informative I come here for.
Yeah, they're totally spying on you and they definitely didn't get a list of Niantic's Pokemon GO servers.
If you want to use the aircraft argument, will you agree then that Tesla should require a several hundred hour certification course before you're allowed to take ownership of your vehicle like is done with commercial aircraft to explain all the nuances of the systems and ensure the pilots know how everything works?
You're comparing the sale of an item to a government licensing program. Anyone can buy a plane, whether they can drive it or not; cars are (and should be) the same. Now, if you wanted to make the same comparison between getting a drivers license and getting a pilots license, that would be reasonable. And yes, I'm sure most of us here do think it should be much more difficult to get a drivers license; perhaps at least as difficult as getting one's pilots license, something which is required whether or not the craft to be flown has autopilot capabilities (and something which does not cover the myriad different autopilot systems in use, nor those which will be in use in the future and is, therefore, irrelevant to the discussion).
Similar to saying that running "cat" as root, "can not" delete your data.
sudo cat /dev/urandom > /dev/sda
Say what?
It's not about the app having malicious code in it, it's about the app being exploited, like I just did with cat.
Someone mod this AC troll insightful. We're already seeing this actually happening.
In unrelated news, I've been driving a lot more, lately. I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with hearing about kids walking into traffic while playing Pokemon GO.
He didn't have time to yell anything, he was shooting as he got out of his car; and even if he did, Tamir didn't have an opportunity to comply. Protocol for a situation where a weapon is believed to be involved is to walk in, from a distance, guns drawn. That would have given them plenty of time to command the suspect and react if he did not obey; it also would have given them the upper hand should he have gone for the gun (though, they already had that since the gun was fucking fake).
You'll also note that every report of the incident that goes into any real level of detail, including the reports given by the officers involved, indicates that they did not perform first aid, even after finding that the gun was fake. They just let him lay there and bleed out.
Even if, and this is a big if, they truly thought they were in danger, if their intent was not simply to kill this boy, they would have taken steps to preserve his life.
The officer says they gave a warning, the witnesses don't.
He didn't.
I'll admit, I hadn't seen the video of the actual shooting (as you clearly didn't either) until now. Now that I've seen it, well, it's even more clear that the officer was in the wrong.
Fuck, he didn't even take the time to make sure he was shooting the person the 911 caller was even calling about, nor to see if the kid had anything on his person, let alone a gun. Car stops, Loehmann gets out and fires 2 shots, that's all.
He had been an officer in Independence for 5 months, if you include his 4 months of training, and resigned from the force to avoid being discharged from duty for "[inability to follow] basic functions as instructed" and a "dangerous loss of composure" during a weapons training exercise, in addition to signs of mental instability. An Independence PD internal memo regarding Loehmann states "Individually, these events would not be considered major situations, but when taken together they show a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions, I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies."
This was 2 years prior to him becoming a cop in Cleveland 8 months before shooting Rice. He had a minimum of 4 months of training and 14 months as a cop before the shooting, he wasn't green, he was unstable.
The guy shouldn't have been a cop. Period.
So you're saying the officer should have used superpowers to detect that the gun only had plastic pellets?
No, but having actually seen the gun himself would've been a start.
The case you want to make was that the 911 calls were not reliable but in this case they were reliable
They may have been right, but they were not reliable. A broken clock is right twice a day, but I'd hardly call it reliable, either.
The officer didn't see the gun, he saw what he thought was a gun. Correct procedure would have been to draw on the suspect and approach with caution. Had he drawn (not drawn and taken aim, simply drawn, such that the officer could identify the weapon as such), the shooting would have been fully justified; and, having already drawn on the suspect they'd have had time to get a couple shots off, too.
See, the thing is, I personally know several good cops and have a federal agent in my family. None of them support this shooting. Not one. It's not just me your arguing with, it's every good cop in the country.
Heck even if that orange end had been on the gun the 911 calls wouldn't have happened. Would it be so bad for the public to not let their kids play with realistic looking guns in public? Let's see this as an unfortunate circumstance, and instead of getting angry at the police, try to learn and grow from it. This is what will solve America's problem. Unfortunately, the US population seems to be very angry and mistrusting of authority and the government. There are probably many, many reasons for that and they go way beyond the police and those need to be solved. If they are not, then there will be continued escalations and we are on a crash course for a civil war. No one should want that.
+1 to that. Police as a whole did the right thing, it was the officer who fired two shots within two seconds of arriving on the scene and, according to witnesses, did not issue any verbal commands or give warning of any sort, who did the wrong thing. Get mad at him, but not police as a whole.
RE: Reliable reports, there was one call to 911, which was not treated by Officer Loehmann as reliable. The caller stated three facts, two of which were ignored by Loehmann: "of a male black sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people" (acted upon), "it's probably fake" (ignored), and "he is probably a juvenile" (ignored). If the report was reliable, why, then, was it not treated as such?
try it out, we might get somewhere
So, when I point out your logical failure (in the other thread) I get crickets. Yes, we're getting somewhere, alright.