Well, the fact that the three main opinions on the Constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution/Act appear to be: (1) it is an unconstitutional delegation of reserved Congressional power to the Executive, and therefore void, or (2) it is an unconstitutional intrusion on Executive power granted by the Constitution, and therefore void, or (3) Some provisions are as described in (1), and some provisions are as described in (2)
Its probably not a wonder that every President since it was adopted has treated it as a nonbinding request by Congress, and no Congress has ever sought to enforce its provisions.
Unitl 9/11 it was unthinkable that the US military could engage in any activities on American soil.
The War of 1812, the Civil War, the 1910-1919 Border War, and the Second World War, among other examples, stand against this being "unthinkable" in practice.
As does the Insurrection Act and a number of other laws stand against it being "unthinkable" in theory.
Fixing that analogy as it applies to our current drone wars: did Bush have the authority to bomb flight schools in Florida because he suspected that bad people might be attending them?
Even before considering the arguments about "inherent executive power", he would seem to have explicit statutory authority under the Insurrection Act, though that seems to require first giving a proclamation to disperse directing the supposed insurgents to "retire peacefully to their abodes" within a limited (but not, in the text of the statute, necessarily substantial) period of time. See, generally, 10 USC Chapter 15.
Actually, I'm not entirely sure about that. I'm not a Constitutional Scholar, but I remember that there is a rule somewhere where the president cannot deploy Federal Military troops within the United States unless the governor of the state they are being deployed to explicitly requests it.
This is wrong.
The President can deploy federal troops in any of the following circumstances (and this is not an exhaustive list, because there are other sources of authority besides the Insurrection Act, and this is just the ones in the main provisions of the Insurrection Act):
To protect a state against insurrection, on the application of either the governor or the legislature of the state (10 USC Sec. 331)
"Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings" (10 USC Sec. 332)
When the President considers it necessary "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy" that opposes, obstructs, or impedes the course of justice under State or federal law, or hinders the execution of State or federal law in such a manner as to deprive any part or class of the people of the State of any "right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law" where the State authorities "are unable, fail, or refuse to" protect the right/privilege/immunity/protection at issue. (10 USC Sec. 333)
This comes up sometimes regarding disaster relief and the use of military resources.
Disaster relief has a different set of rules, true.
On the one hand that's great, especially if there's someone in the crowd you'd rather avoid. On the other hand (and in a more serious light), this is just horrible for privacy.
I really think we need a different word for "people's desire for public interactions to be mostly ephemeral" than "privacy".
I'm not saying its not an increasingly important concern (a fairly novel one raised by the increased ease of recording, analyzing, storing, and indexing information about public interactions), its just not the same thing as the traditional notion of "privacy", because it largely rests in things that are deliberately exposed publicly.
Well if the earth is approx 4 BILLION years old then 4 000 000 000 - 11 300 = 3 999 988 700, meaning that given the age of this planet were actually not in a warming period at all.
Which would be a relevant comparison if we weren't concerned with the effects of and on human civilization, which arose about 10,000 years ago.
I thought we were still technically in an "Ice Age" that started about 2.5 million years ago.
There are two different frequently encountered uses for "ice age" that conflict; the less-technical one of which is for what is more-technically known as a glacial period within what is, in the more technical use, known as an "ice age".
If someone says "most recent ice-age", they are reasonably unambiguously using the less-technical usage.
You bought a cellphone manufacturer but then use other companies to make Nexus products
The Open Handset Alliance is arguably more valuable to Google than Motorola is, plus, they haven't owned Motorola long enough for a new design to get through the pipeline anyway.
How about axing Motorola and rebranding them as Nexus, period.
If Google wanted to be Apple, that's probably what they would have done. Google, apparently, doesn't want to be Apple.
Am I the only one that was hoping Google would take Motorola and do a complete 180 to start developing really awesome phones that aren't locked down?
No, lots of people were saying that from the first time reports of a Google buying Motorola appeared. Of course, the dev pipeline for a mobile phone is not short, and we haven't even gotten to the point where a product that was started after the acquisition would be out of the pipeline, so its quite possible they are still planning on doing that.
What are their plans for the company?
Obviously, the patents were a big part of the deal. Though there are lots of signs that Google is interested in getting into the consumer hardware market in a significant way that complements its online services and operating system offerings (Chromebook Pixel, Google Glass, the Nexus Q effort, etc.), and there's obviously room for Motorola Mobility to play a significant role there.
But its also not particularly surprising that on the way there'd be significant downsizing and retooling.
I think Google is starting to turn evil, guys.
Not turning out new-design unlocked phones from Motorola as fast as you would like is evil now?
Even if that means driving away what little remaining talent you have left?
If you aren't able to effectively utilize the resources you have and can't nail down why you aren't able to, then that talent isn't actually doing you any good anyway.
In some future scenario when Google stops paying the licensing fees, what happens to the (developers/users/businesses/etc) who are using/developing with VP8/9/10/*/etc. Are these entities going to now be at risk?
The agreement appears to cover all use of VP8 and the still-in-development VP9 forever (or, well, for the life of any of the notional patents that MPEG LA members may or may not have that impact VP8 or VP9), so I don't think there is any risk of that for VP8/9
VP10+ would require a new agreement, presuming that when it comes around MPEG LA can raise enough of a specter of patent litigation that such an agreement would be worthwhile.
Google lies about patent coverage for VP8 (which places people who buy into it at serious risk), admits to their lies by finally licensing patents
Executing a blanket license to any and all patents that members of the MPEG LA may or may not hold that turn out to be essential to implementing either VP8 or VP9 (which isn't even specified yet, so that's pretty much a blank check from MPEG LA) is not admitting that VP8 is patent-encumbered. Its just an indication that the value to Google of eliminating, for potential users, the uncertainty raised by MPEG LA over VP8's status, plus the value to Google of assuring that MPEG LA can't do the same thing with VP9, is greater than the cost of paying off MPEG LA.
This is first and foremost a single-player game, and there should be no server requirement to play.
Every review, demo, and other piece of information about it I've seen has indicated that it is first and foremost a multiplayer game, though lots of people apparently expected it to be first and foremost a single-player game based on the history of the franchise.
It sounds like working from home is their scapegoat instead of refusing to admit to extremely incompetent management.
Even if it is potentially someone's scapegoat, that may be still be a reason to kill it; if it is an excuse that can't convingly be ruled out as the real culprit while it is around, eliminating it removes it as an excuse.
GGP claimed "everyone". "Many" is very much not the same as "everyone".
You can blame everything on fast food.
Maybe I can (or maybe you mean "can't"), but I didn't, so its irrelevant either way.
I pointed to it's continued existence as a major industry as evidence of that the claim "everyone has been eating low fat and low sodium for twenty years now" is false. No blame involved.
You can blame things on twenty-year-old advice eventually turning out to be incorrect
You could, but if you want to do so credibly, you'll also produce evidence.
I'm sure the lawyers who help get justice for rape victims in India or who prosecute war criminals sleep perfectly well at night. Charities need lawyers, plenty of victims of the powerful and wealthy need lawyers.
Both from not having time and stress of the odds they are facing, those kinds of lawyers are less likely to sleep well (or at all) at night than the amoral sociopaths who do whatever it takes to make the most money.
Lawyers learn to phrase and interpret things for what theyd' like them to mean, regardless of reality. Programmers learn to phrase and interpret things according to reality, regardless of what they'd like them to mean.
That's actually not true. Lawyers, like programmers, learn how to analyze complex systems that require interaction in specialized language, and learn the precise uses of the specialized language necessary to produce desired results.
Lawyers -- far more than programmers -- also are required to learn quite a bit about ethical codes of when it is and isn't right to use particular invocations from their craft.
Sure, there is unethical lawyering, and it can be quite disproportionately visible. But the same is true of programming. Its not like malware, despite the biological analogies often made for it ("worms", "viruses", "infections") is a naturally occurring threat.
It actually is quite ambiguous. Read literally it never requires a warrant (much less specifies who can issue them): it requires only that searches and seizures not be "unreasonable", and that any warrants that are issued be based on probable cause, and specific as to the places to be searched and things to be seized. Those two clauses have no actual explicit relationship in the text.
But Google is able to say they've received from 0-999 letters each year for the past four years. And we know it's likely near the upper end of that range because they list the number of accounts affect, as well: always over a thousand.
Uh, no, that doesn't follow. There is no basis for the assumption that the average number of accounts affected by an NSL is 2 or fewer, which is the assumption necessary to conclude that "over a thousand" accounts affected makes it more likely than than not that the number of actual NSLs is in the upper half (much less "near the upper end") of a 0-999 range.
In fact, the numbers for 2010 (0-999 NSLs, and 2000-2999 accounts effected) are only consistent with > 2 accounts per NSL, which suggests that (presuming the accounts/NSL ratio is the same across years) the number of NSL in the other years were likely in the lower half of the 0-999 range.
don't build inherently single-player games with always-on requirements! There was no reason for this in SimCity.
Well, there are three reasons (in descending order of significance to people who aren't EA, though arguably in ascending order of significance to EA):
1. SimCity 5 is inherently a multiplayer game, not inherently a single player game, 2. SimCity 5 simulation engine is split between server side and client side components (in part, this is because of point 1), 3. DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, PCA limits the use of military personnel for law enforcement except where there is specific statutory authority.
The insurrection nexus is just that the Insurrection Act is the main source of specific statutory authority for the domestic use of the military.
Well, the fact that the three main opinions on the Constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution/Act appear to be:
(1) it is an unconstitutional delegation of reserved Congressional power to the Executive, and therefore void, or
(2) it is an unconstitutional intrusion on Executive power granted by the Constitution, and therefore void, or
(3) Some provisions are as described in (1), and some provisions are as described in (2)
Its probably not a wonder that every President since it was adopted has treated it as a nonbinding request by Congress, and no Congress has ever sought to enforce its provisions.
Well, sure, it can't be broadcast in the United States, but, well "broadcast" isn't the only way its delivered.
Conversely, see the Insurrection Act.
The War of 1812, the Civil War, the 1910-1919 Border War, and the Second World War, among other examples, stand against this being "unthinkable" in practice.
As does the Insurrection Act and a number of other laws stand against it being "unthinkable" in theory.
Even before considering the arguments about "inherent executive power", he would seem to have explicit statutory authority under the Insurrection Act, though that seems to require first giving a proclamation to disperse directing the supposed insurgents to "retire peacefully to their abodes" within a limited (but not, in the text of the statute, necessarily substantial) period of time. See, generally, 10 USC Chapter 15.
This is wrong.
The President can deploy federal troops in any of the following circumstances (and this is not an exhaustive list, because there are other sources of authority besides the Insurrection Act, and this is just the ones in the main provisions of the Insurrection Act):
Disaster relief has a different set of rules, true.
I really think we need a different word for "people's desire for public interactions to be mostly ephemeral" than "privacy".
I'm not saying its not an increasingly important concern (a fairly novel one raised by the increased ease of recording, analyzing, storing, and indexing information about public interactions), its just not the same thing as the traditional notion of "privacy", because it largely rests in things that are deliberately exposed publicly.
Which would be a relevant comparison if we weren't concerned with the effects of and on human civilization, which arose about 10,000 years ago.
There are two different frequently encountered uses for "ice age" that conflict; the less-technical one of which is for what is more-technically known as a glacial period within what is, in the more technical use, known as an "ice age".
If someone says "most recent ice-age", they are reasonably unambiguously using the less-technical usage.
The Open Handset Alliance is arguably more valuable to Google than Motorola is, plus, they haven't owned Motorola long enough for a new design to get through the pipeline anyway.
If Google wanted to be Apple, that's probably what they would have done. Google, apparently, doesn't want to be Apple.
No, lots of people were saying that from the first time reports of a Google buying Motorola appeared. Of course, the dev pipeline for a mobile phone is not short, and we haven't even gotten to the point where a product that was started after the acquisition would be out of the pipeline, so its quite possible they are still planning on doing that.
Obviously, the patents were a big part of the deal. Though there are lots of signs that Google is interested in getting into the consumer hardware market in a significant way that complements its online services and operating system offerings (Chromebook Pixel, Google Glass, the Nexus Q effort, etc.), and there's obviously room for Motorola Mobility to play a significant role there.
But its also not particularly surprising that on the way there'd be significant downsizing and retooling.
Not turning out new-design unlocked phones from Motorola as fast as you would like is evil now?
If you aren't able to effectively utilize the resources you have and can't nail down why you aren't able to, then that talent isn't actually doing you any good anyway.
The agreement appears to cover all use of VP8 and the still-in-development VP9 forever (or, well, for the life of any of the notional patents that MPEG LA members may or may not have that impact VP8 or VP9), so I don't think there is any risk of that for VP8/9
VP10+ would require a new agreement, presuming that when it comes around MPEG LA can raise enough of a specter of patent litigation that such an agreement would be worthwhile.
Executing a blanket license to any and all patents that members of the MPEG LA may or may not hold that turn out to be essential to implementing either VP8 or VP9 (which isn't even specified yet, so that's pretty much a blank check from MPEG LA) is not admitting that VP8 is patent-encumbered. Its just an indication that the value to Google of eliminating, for potential users, the uncertainty raised by MPEG LA over VP8's status, plus the value to Google of assuring that MPEG LA can't do the same thing with VP9, is greater than the cost of paying off MPEG LA.
Every review, demo, and other piece of information about it I've seen has indicated that it is first and foremost a multiplayer game, though lots of people apparently expected it to be first and foremost a single-player game based on the history of the franchise.
Even if it is potentially someone's scapegoat, that may be still be a reason to kill it; if it is an excuse that can't convingly be ruled out as the real culprit while it is around, eliminating it removes it as an excuse.
GGP claimed "everyone". "Many" is very much not the same as "everyone".
Maybe I can (or maybe you mean "can't"), but I didn't, so its irrelevant either way.
I pointed to it's continued existence as a major industry as evidence of that the claim "everyone has been eating low fat and low sodium for twenty years now" is false. No blame involved.
You could, but if you want to do so credibly, you'll also produce evidence.
Both from not having time and stress of the odds they are facing, those kinds of lawyers are less likely to sleep well (or at all) at night than the amoral sociopaths who do whatever it takes to make the most money.
That's actually not true. Lawyers, like programmers, learn how to analyze complex systems that require interaction in specialized language, and learn the precise uses of the specialized language necessary to produce desired results.
Lawyers -- far more than programmers -- also are required to learn quite a bit about ethical codes of when it is and isn't right to use particular invocations from their craft.
Sure, there is unethical lawyering, and it can be quite disproportionately visible. But the same is true of programming. Its not like malware, despite the biological analogies often made for it ("worms", "viruses", "infections") is a naturally occurring threat.
Well, experts have been advising it. Everyone actually been eating that way? If they were, the entire fast-food industry would have collapsed.
It actually is quite ambiguous. Read literally it never requires a warrant (much less specifies who can issue them): it requires only that searches and seizures not be "unreasonable", and that any warrants that are issued be based on probable cause, and specific as to the places to be searched and things to be seized. Those two clauses have no actual explicit relationship in the text.
Uh, no, that doesn't follow. There is no basis for the assumption that the average number of accounts affected by an NSL is 2 or fewer, which is the assumption necessary to conclude that "over a thousand" accounts affected makes it more likely than than not that the number of actual NSLs is in the upper half (much less "near the upper end") of a 0-999 range.
In fact, the numbers for 2010 (0-999 NSLs, and 2000-2999 accounts effected) are only consistent with > 2 accounts per NSL, which suggests that (presuming the accounts/NSL ratio is the same across years) the number of NSL in the other years were likely in the lower half of the 0-999 range.
No, because the game engine is split between EA's servers and the local client.
Unless they also pirate EA's server-side simulation code and run their own servers, they aren't going to be playing offline.
Well, there are three reasons (in descending order of significance to people who aren't EA, though arguably in ascending order of significance to EA):
1. SimCity 5 is inherently a multiplayer game, not inherently a single player game,
2. SimCity 5 simulation engine is split between server side and client side components (in part, this is because of point 1),
3. DRM.