doctors are legally forbidden from disputing bad reviews. HIPPA (U.S. patient privacy law) doesn't even allow doctors to acknowledge that a particular person was in fact a patient
So what you're saying is that HIPPA prevents a doctor from even attempting to enforce this contract because by doing so he will have acknowledged a person as his patient and deprived them of doctor/patient confidentiality. A better way to argue it methinks.
the Constitution says only what the government may, may not, and must do
And who enforces the contract? Who made the laws which make contracts legally binding? The government. A private contract between two individuals can only be as powerful as the government that enforces it. If the government cannot legally limit your speech then they cannot legally enforce a contract that does so.
Do you really believe the government has no right, and should have no right, to enforce contracts?
To enforce contracts that violate your protected rights? Yes, I believe they have no right. That is in fact Congress passing a law whose effect is to limit your free speech rights. Period, end of story. Just cause some lawyers (I don't say judges cause most of them used to be lawyers) can do some mental gymnastics and use twisted logic to argue their way out if it does not make it less true. Remember, rights are inherent and inalienable - they are not given, they cannot be taken away, they cannot be given away. This is the mind-set of the founders.
Who the hell wants the URL bar removed (other than spammers/phishers/scammers)?? Seriously, isn't that the best practice to prevent phishing attacks is to manually type the URL of the website you are trying to connect to?? What are they thinking? Not too mention being able to verify the site you are on, easily copy/paste links, etc.
What should be done is to increase the functionality of the URL bar. The one thing that always pisses me off and should be fixed is not allowing a web page to steal the focus from the URL bar. I don't know how many times I've started typing in a URL only to have the Yahoo or Google bar steal the focus 3-5 characters in. Improve it, don't remove it.
I agree. Companies/Corporations cannot be allowed to grow bigger than a certain point. Once, they are bigger and have more influence than the government itself, it is well past maximum size. We are already at that stage. The behemoths need to be forced to divide into smaller branches. I'm not talking about redistribution of wealth here, I'm talking about the prevention of the concentration of wealth.
I think it comes to this (and I'm not claiming to believe any theories) - If the hackers broke in and wiped everything out including backups then it cannot be proven that they didn't steal user information so it must be assumed they did. It becomes pretty impossible (especially involving computers) to prove a negative - that an action did not occur.
Yeah, you know logic, my ass. Lets start with the Rental Car Analogy. The reason the Rental Car Agency would be a potential defendant is because they are the owners of the car that caused the damage and as such are liable, unless they can show that they assigned this liability to a third-party (the renter) and that the third-party accepted it the assignment (usually take care of in the signed rental agreement/contract). Secondly, in a given rental car, there can only be one driver at any given time an accident could take place. It is impossible to have more than one. This means that one car is tied to one license plate which is tied to one identifiable driver. Now, lets apply this to an IP address, an ISP, and a subscriber. First, the ISP cannot be a potential defendant as they cannot be held liable for copyright infringement due to their carrier status. The only thing they are required to do is to make a good faith effort to remove infringing material that they are claimed to be hosting upon receiving an official DMCA take-down notice. Second, an IP address is assigned to a device, not a person. Now there may only be that device assigned to the IP in the entire network but there could also exist hundreds or thousands of other devices behind that device which all share that IP address - known or unknown to the owner of the device. Each of these device(s) can have one or more users at any given time - known or unknown to the owner of any of the individual devices or to the owner of the parent device (with IP address assigned). So to sum up, one IP address maps to a single web-faced device as well as an unknown number of other devices operating behind that device. Each of these devices map to an unknown number of users. So the judge was comparing a one-to-one-to-one connection (Car-to-driver) with the end result being a single person who without a doubt was liable at the time to a one-to-one-to-many-to-many connection (IP-to-device(s)-to-person(s)) with the end result being an unknown number of people who only one of which may have been liable and no additional evidence to identify an actual individual. Sounds like an apples-to-oranges comparison to me. Think of it this way, say there was a murder which could only have been committed by a single person and the only evidence you have equally indicts 100 people. Without any other evidence, you have no case. Could that evidence be used to obtain 100 search warrants? I don't know but somehow I don't think so (and I hope not).
I certainly don't want to take the position that anyone who doesn't deny their guilt is guilty — but we shouldn't assume that they're innocent, either.
Actually, in this country, we should assume that one is innocent until it has been proven that they are guilty. It's the founding concept at the heart of our entire justice system. Without sufficient proof they are to be considered innocent. It it's a tie, then they should be considered innocent. The benefit-of-the-doubt should always go to the defendant.
To be honest, I haven't read any of the facts of this case but let's speculate anyway (since this is slashdot). First, if they don't have a body, it's hard to prove there was even a murder let alone who the murderer is (beyond a reasonable doubt). If they do have a body and the time of death is proven (proven here, not estimated) to be well before the phone call - it makes the phone call look suspicious again the defendant. However, if the time of death is proven to be well after the phone call, it now depends on the strength of the defendant's alibi at the time of death. Lastly, if the time of death is proven to be around the same time as the phone call, it pretty much exonerates the defendant (assuming his cell phone log/location tracking proves him to be elsewhere).
99% of the time the only person that can get really annoyed with someone enough to kill them is the person they are married to. The police and prosecutors know this and it makes their job a lot simpler
This problem with this assumption is that it is a double-edge sword. Imagine, that the husband really didn't do it but the police and prosecutor assume he did. Now they have this piece of evidence that exonerates him and instead of accepting that their assumption was wrong and spending their resources finding the real killer, they continue their investigation against the innocent husband. Now if they push this to trial and the jury finds him not guilty, are they going to think they got it wrong and start looking for the real killer or claim its a crime of our justice system that a guilty man went free? Criminals aren't the only ones with a big ego's who can be cocky and arrogant to the point where it makes them appear stupid, police and prosecutors have been known to suffer from this as well.
*His* best piece of evidence that he *didn't* kill her
Wrong way around. They have to prove he did it, beyond a reasonable doubt. He doesn't have to prove anything - most importantly he doesn't have to prove that he is innocent (which in a lot of instances can be really hard to prove even when one is innocent). Showing her to be alive at a time when the prosecution says she was dead certainly opens a big door to reasonable doubt. Also, creating this whole theory of how he could have faked the evidence, without any hard evidence on their own to prove it (like the scripted router), should also create its own reasonable doubt.
hat's the thing though, it was NOT storing accurate location data. It's cell tower and some WiFi data, generally information you cannot use to tell you were at a specific house or even possibly neighborhood... think 1/4 to 1/2 mile radius, possibly a block but not a store.
Now for cell towers, this is probably accurate. However, for WiFi networks, that gets you down to a couple hundred feet at most. Even with a high gain antennae on both ends, facing out windows, I could barely get my WiFi signal to reach the house directly across the street.
XP forever simply because some customers paid for it 10 years ago
Not a single person has bought a new, valid, license to WinXP in 10 years?? That is absolutely false! You could buy a brand new machine with XP installed up until a year ago.
Win 7 Pro and higher editions have integrated VM based XP emulation. It works.
So, your suggestion is to upgrade to Win 7, so you run an emulated Win XP instance, instead of just staying on XP? Really? You must be a MS Shareholder.
Luckily your box will continue to work fine; people seem confused by end of life.
Yes, it will work just fine as currently configured. Give it a year or two and you won't be able to run an up-to-date AV on it because 3rd party development support often goes along with end-of-life.
I think this is the end of the line: I doubt there will ever be a successor to Blu-Ray as a physical format
A little short-sighted thinking there. To where are you to backup all those valuable downloads without some form of high-capacity physical media? You may say to another HD of course and while probably not really economical is absolutely possible. However, the advantage of having your backup stored in a fundamentally different way is that a large EMP wouldn't wipe out your discs and your backups
At the time of The Dark Knight, Batman had been around a while, so it is feasible he did do something to create the Joker. Just because neither of them realized or talked about it does not mean it didn't happen that way.
Re:Organic vs processed (toxic) sugar.
on
Is Sugar Toxic?
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· Score: 1
The problem with "processed" sugar is that it is usually processed to get all of the fiber out.
So, what you are saying is that there is no "problem" with sugar (of any kind), only that there may be problems with a diet that doesn't balance sugar intake with fiber intake. Wow, common-sense saves the day again. The substance itself isn't toxic (or by this definition, every substance is toxic), only the diet as a whole can be considered toxic if not balanced properly. I know this won't be taken well by the masses as it means they actually have to take responsibility for their entire diet instead of just avoiding "danger" foods.
Re:Organic vs processed (toxic) sugar.
on
Is Sugar Toxic?
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· Score: 1
Yes, but they also have about double the amount of sugar per serving. I like them better myself but I did actually compare the labels and they use about half as much HFCS as they do "real" sugar.
that's like saying driving is a human right because it is so prevalent in modern society.
Driving should be a right in modern society. Not because it is prevalent in modern society but because it has become practically necessary to survive in modern society. People are compelled to pay for and support the infrastructure that is required for people to drive, the same infrastructure that restricts/outlaws other viable means of transportation (i.e. horses), and as result should have the right to use it. The whole 'driving is a privilege' is complete BS. It used to be true, it no longer is. Don't buy it, try to survive in a suburban/rural area without the ability to drive and see how far you get and how difficult it is.
This is not to say all people should be provided gas and vehicles. Just that they cannot be denied the right to drive if they have the ability and the means to do so. Also, keep in mind, in the days of horses, depriving a man of his was considered a capital offense as it deprived him of his livelihood.
There are NO positive rights, only negative rights. You have a right not to be stolen from or murdered.
Meaning: You have the right to NOT be denied web-access which you would otherwise have the means and will to access. I think this is what he was talking about. It's not a right that must be provided to you (i.e. given access), it's a right that cannot be taken from you (i.e. denied access). It's a logical extension of the right to free speech. No one can deny you you're right to speak but then again no one has to provide you with a mega-phone either.
the fact of the matter is universal health care is in the best interest of all (i.e., net positive) at both the individual and societal levels
You state this as matter of fact when it is still in the realm of matter of opinion. The fact of the matter is that Universal Health Care is in the best interest of the ill at the expense of the healthy. In some instances, contagious diseases for example, the treatment/quarantining of the ill is in the best interests of both the ill and the healthy but in others, lung cancer caused by smoking for example, is only in the best interest of the ill at the expense of the healthy.
The problem with people having a right to health care is that must also be accompanied with a responsibility to try as best as possible to keep yourself healthy to be in the best interests of all. The act of forcing you to live up to that responsibility will encroach on your other rights (religion, expression, choice, etc.) so it cannot and should not be done and as a result you cannot have a right to health care.
Think of it this way; you may be able to ethically compel someone to help another (i.e. save their life) if it costs them nothing (other than an insignificant/inconsequential amount of their time) but you cannot ethically compel someone to do so if it actually costs them something as it is depriving them of their property (which is an existing, higher-order right) against their will. Universal Health Care attempts to foist this deprivation of property to a country-wide scale while trying to hide the fact that it is doing so. It is wrong (opinion).
Firstly, he is making a distinction between web access being a privilege which can be denied to a person for trivial/arbitrary reasons and it being a right which cannot be denied to a person for trivial/arbitrary reasons. I don't believe he is arguing that everyone should be guaranteed and given web access for free, only that said web access cannot be denied to person (via government for instance) who could otherwise obtain it. Think compulsory 3-strikes laws which enacted by government to force ISPs to deny individuals web access if certain conditions are met (accused of copyright infringement 3 times).
Not only that but web access is a logical extension of the existing right to free speech. Speech includes spoken word, written word, sung word, encoded word, drawn word, and now web-transmitted-word (HTML). The concept being that you cannot deny a person access to the interconnected network of the world to an individual who has the means and the will to access it.
If some jackass I hate wants to buy a sandwich from me, I shouldn't have to sell it to him.
Yes, you do have the right to discriminate (if that is even the correct word to use) on an individual basis. If you do not want to hire an individual or do business with one based on that individuals actions, attitude, etc. then that it fine. However, what you cannot (should not) do is discriminate against an entire class or group of people based solely on their membership in that class.
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doctors are legally forbidden from disputing bad reviews. HIPPA (U.S. patient privacy law) doesn't even allow doctors to acknowledge that a particular person was in fact a patient
So what you're saying is that HIPPA prevents a doctor from even attempting to enforce this contract because by doing so he will have acknowledged a person as his patient and deprived them of doctor/patient confidentiality. A better way to argue it methinks.
the Constitution says only what the government may, may not, and must do
And who enforces the contract? Who made the laws which make contracts legally binding? The government. A private contract between two individuals can only be as powerful as the government that enforces it. If the government cannot legally limit your speech then they cannot legally enforce a contract that does so.
Do you really believe the government has no right, and should have no right, to enforce contracts?
To enforce contracts that violate your protected rights? Yes, I believe they have no right. That is in fact Congress passing a law whose effect is to limit your free speech rights. Period, end of story. Just cause some lawyers (I don't say judges cause most of them used to be lawyers) can do some mental gymnastics and use twisted logic to argue their way out if it does not make it less true. Remember, rights are inherent and inalienable - they are not given, they cannot be taken away, they cannot be given away. This is the mind-set of the founders.
Who the hell wants the URL bar removed (other than spammers/phishers/scammers)?? Seriously, isn't that the best practice to prevent phishing attacks is to manually type the URL of the website you are trying to connect to?? What are they thinking? Not too mention being able to verify the site you are on, easily copy/paste links, etc.
What should be done is to increase the functionality of the URL bar. The one thing that always pisses me off and should be fixed is not allowing a web page to steal the focus from the URL bar. I don't know how many times I've started typing in a URL only to have the Yahoo or Google bar steal the focus 3-5 characters in. Improve it, don't remove it.
I agree. Companies/Corporations cannot be allowed to grow bigger than a certain point. Once, they are bigger and have more influence than the government itself, it is well past maximum size. We are already at that stage. The behemoths need to be forced to divide into smaller branches. I'm not talking about redistribution of wealth here, I'm talking about the prevention of the concentration of wealth.
I think it comes to this (and I'm not claiming to believe any theories) - If the hackers broke in and wiped everything out including backups then it cannot be proven that they didn't steal user information so it must be assumed they did. It becomes pretty impossible (especially involving computers) to prove a negative - that an action did not occur.
I certainly don't want to take the position that anyone who doesn't deny their guilt is guilty — but we shouldn't assume that they're innocent, either.
Actually, in this country, we should assume that one is innocent until it has been proven that they are guilty. It's the founding concept at the heart of our entire justice system. Without sufficient proof they are to be considered innocent. It it's a tie, then they should be considered innocent. The benefit-of-the-doubt should always go to the defendant.
I chose not to have it remember it because I allow others to use my PS3 and not my CC.
99% of the time the only person that can get really annoyed with someone enough to kill them is the person they are married to. The police and prosecutors know this and it makes their job a lot simpler
This problem with this assumption is that it is a double-edge sword. Imagine, that the husband really didn't do it but the police and prosecutor assume he did. Now they have this piece of evidence that exonerates him and instead of accepting that their assumption was wrong and spending their resources finding the real killer, they continue their investigation against the innocent husband. Now if they push this to trial and the jury finds him not guilty, are they going to think they got it wrong and start looking for the real killer or claim its a crime of our justice system that a guilty man went free? Criminals aren't the only ones with a big ego's who can be cocky and arrogant to the point where it makes them appear stupid, police and prosecutors have been known to suffer from this as well.
*His* best piece of evidence that he *didn't* kill her
Wrong way around. They have to prove he did it, beyond a reasonable doubt. He doesn't have to prove anything - most importantly he doesn't have to prove that he is innocent (which in a lot of instances can be really hard to prove even when one is innocent). Showing her to be alive at a time when the prosecution says she was dead certainly opens a big door to reasonable doubt. Also, creating this whole theory of how he could have faked the evidence, without any hard evidence on their own to prove it (like the scripted router), should also create its own reasonable doubt.
hat's the thing though, it was NOT storing accurate location data. It's cell tower and some WiFi data, generally information you cannot use to tell you were at a specific house or even possibly neighborhood... think 1/4 to 1/2 mile radius, possibly a block but not a store.
Now for cell towers, this is probably accurate. However, for WiFi networks, that gets you down to a couple hundred feet at most. Even with a high gain antennae on both ends, facing out windows, I could barely get my WiFi signal to reach the house directly across the street.
XP forever simply because some customers paid for it 10 years ago
Not a single person has bought a new, valid, license to WinXP in 10 years?? That is absolutely false! You could buy a brand new machine with XP installed up until a year ago.
Win 7 Pro and higher editions have integrated VM based XP emulation. It works.
So, your suggestion is to upgrade to Win 7, so you run an emulated Win XP instance, instead of just staying on XP? Really? You must be a MS Shareholder.
just because MS stops support doesn't mean you can not use the software anymore.
And how long before they shut down their activation servers/phone lines for XP? Oh, you mean I can use it as long as I never have to reinstall it.
Luckily your box will continue to work fine; people seem confused by end of life.
Yes, it will work just fine as currently configured. Give it a year or two and you won't be able to run an up-to-date AV on it because 3rd party development support often goes along with end-of-life.
I think this is the end of the line: I doubt there will ever be a successor to Blu-Ray as a physical format
A little short-sighted thinking there. To where are you to backup all those valuable downloads without some form of high-capacity physical media? You may say to another HD of course and while probably not really economical is absolutely possible. However, the advantage of having your backup stored in a fundamentally different way is that a large EMP wouldn't wipe out your discs and your backups
At the time of The Dark Knight, Batman had been around a while, so it is feasible he did do something to create the Joker. Just because neither of them realized or talked about it does not mean it didn't happen that way.
The problem with "processed" sugar is that it is usually processed to get all of the fiber out.
So, what you are saying is that there is no "problem" with sugar (of any kind), only that there may be problems with a diet that doesn't balance sugar intake with fiber intake. Wow, common-sense saves the day again. The substance itself isn't toxic (or by this definition, every substance is toxic), only the diet as a whole can be considered toxic if not balanced properly. I know this won't be taken well by the masses as it means they actually have to take responsibility for their entire diet instead of just avoiding "danger" foods.
Yes, but they also have about double the amount of sugar per serving. I like them better myself but I did actually compare the labels and they use about half as much HFCS as they do "real" sugar.
that's like saying driving is a human right because it is so prevalent in modern society.
Driving should be a right in modern society. Not because it is prevalent in modern society but because it has become practically necessary to survive in modern society. People are compelled to pay for and support the infrastructure that is required for people to drive, the same infrastructure that restricts/outlaws other viable means of transportation (i.e. horses), and as result should have the right to use it. The whole 'driving is a privilege' is complete BS. It used to be true, it no longer is. Don't buy it, try to survive in a suburban/rural area without the ability to drive and see how far you get and how difficult it is.
This is not to say all people should be provided gas and vehicles. Just that they cannot be denied the right to drive if they have the ability and the means to do so. Also, keep in mind, in the days of horses, depriving a man of his was considered a capital offense as it deprived him of his livelihood.
There are NO positive rights, only negative rights. You have a right not to be stolen from or murdered.
Meaning: You have the right to NOT be denied web-access which you would otherwise have the means and will to access. I think this is what he was talking about. It's not a right that must be provided to you (i.e. given access), it's a right that cannot be taken from you (i.e. denied access). It's a logical extension of the right to free speech. No one can deny you you're right to speak but then again no one has to provide you with a mega-phone either.
the fact of the matter is universal health care is in the best interest of all (i.e., net positive) at both the individual and societal levels
You state this as matter of fact when it is still in the realm of matter of opinion. The fact of the matter is that Universal Health Care is in the best interest of the ill at the expense of the healthy. In some instances, contagious diseases for example, the treatment/quarantining of the ill is in the best interests of both the ill and the healthy but in others, lung cancer caused by smoking for example, is only in the best interest of the ill at the expense of the healthy.
The problem with people having a right to health care is that must also be accompanied with a responsibility to try as best as possible to keep yourself healthy to be in the best interests of all. The act of forcing you to live up to that responsibility will encroach on your other rights (religion, expression, choice, etc.) so it cannot and should not be done and as a result you cannot have a right to health care.
Think of it this way; you may be able to ethically compel someone to help another (i.e. save their life) if it costs them nothing (other than an insignificant/inconsequential amount of their time) but you cannot ethically compel someone to do so if it actually costs them something as it is depriving them of their property (which is an existing, higher-order right) against their will. Universal Health Care attempts to foist this deprivation of property to a country-wide scale while trying to hide the fact that it is doing so. It is wrong (opinion).
Not only that but web access is a logical extension of the existing right to free speech. Speech includes spoken word, written word, sung word, encoded word, drawn word, and now web-transmitted-word (HTML). The concept being that you cannot deny a person access to the interconnected network of the world to an individual who has the means and the will to access it.
If some jackass I hate wants to buy a sandwich from me, I shouldn't have to sell it to him.
Yes, you do have the right to discriminate (if that is even the correct word to use) on an individual basis. If you do not want to hire an individual or do business with one based on that individuals actions, attitude, etc. then that it fine. However, what you cannot (should not) do is discriminate against an entire class or group of people based solely on their membership in that class.
There fixed that for ya :)