For the rule of law, he should be tried and sentenced to the prescribed penalty for those crimes.
For the rule of law, he is innocent until proven guilty.
I'm glad we know what he told us. But you can't not prosecute people who undoubtedly did commit crimes because you agree with their stated motives.
The only person who can know if he 'undoubtedly' did commit a crime are the judge and jury in court. If you let that go the second you think "He don't look right..." or "Well, I saw on the news that..." then you're throwing the whole judicial process on the scrapheap. This even applies if you "saw him do it" a.k.a. "I (think) I saw him do it and I'm (pretty) sure he did" - and even if he confesses.
It may seem like syntactic sugar but you'll do yourself a lot of good if you start inserting "allegedly" into any statement you make about an individual pre-trial - and subconsciously do so when reading other people's information-free opinionfacts. For the record I think he's guilty as sin of the law, but that the law is probably wrong.
Absolutelty. My house is wired so that when I plug in a high load device it electrocutes the neighbours kids. One of them nearly died when I got my new 8 slice toaster, I dread to think what would happen if I plugged in a car?!
Unfortunately, it's the boundaries of how un-newsworthy content can be and still be called "news".
Someone I've never heard of does dodgy SEO, gets banned by Google, then gets the ban lifted (+- unproven allegation of favouritism) and I'm supposed to give a shit?
Happens every day, almost entirely to other people I've never heard of either.
I don't make that assumption at all (and I don't agree with it either). As I wrote elsewhere:
What I can't agree with is applying sunset clauses to laws that are intended to last. The solution to "Some laws are bad" is not "Let's make laws last for less time and then renew them!" it's "Let's make better laws". If a law is so bad you can't bear to enact it unless it is automatically repealed in 5 years - it's probably not a very good law. All this accomplishes is feeding short-termism, allowing politicians off the hook for their crap. "Hey I passed a law! (But don't worry it won't do any real harm because it'll be off the books before we see the consequences)."
Sunset clauses increase legislative overhead. There are two outcomes from this that I can see:
the politicians are overworked so they are able to produce fewer laws, and so fewer laws (bad and good) are passed
the politicians are overworked so they are less able to usefully debate/deconstruct laws, and more bad laws are passed
From your post it sounds as though you are advocating for position #1 - that is by making politicians revisit their laws, fewer laws are passed and so the bad laws will be reduced. However, if we apply sunsetting to everything then we also lose good laws. If you think this is on balance an optimum solution then sunsetting is a strange way to approach it - you can have the same effect by simply reducing the numbers of politicians*. That also has the benefit of saving money.
(* the Constitution may have a problem with this - but that's something that can be dealt with when you sunset that and revisit it).
I fall more on the side of position #2 in that I want elected representatives to spend their time doing maximally useful work. I do think there are probably too many laws, but that the most efficient way to deal with that is through progressively revisiting and repealing those that are deemed counterproductive (by the same debate process as sunsetting). I would argue quite strongly that such review should be carried out.
Just to clarify - I'm not against sunset clauses in all cases. But I am against the idea (expressed in the original post) that "There really should be sunset provisions on all laws." Some things don't need regular repeal - some laws are just that good. Like laws against murder. Similarly, short term laws to cover things (like getting back on topic corn subsidies) make sense as a short term financial instrument. There sunsetting makes sense - and gives a defined end point for companies that depend on the subsidy.
What I can't agree with is applying sunset clauses to laws that are intended to last. The solution to "Some laws are bad" is not "Let's make laws last for less time and then renew them!" it's "Let's make better laws". If a law is so bad you can't bear to enact it unless it is automatically repealed in 5 years - it's probably not a very good law. All this accomplishes is feeding short-termism, allowing politicians off the hook for their crap. "Hey I passed a law! (But don't worry it won't do any real harm because it'll be off the books before we see the consequences)."
Bundling these things into cumulative bills would mean they'll get so little oversight that they may as well be permanent. They're hardly read the first time, what makes you think anyone will pay attention to what the law says when it's on page 543?
Huh? That makes no sense. So, basically, you're saying that it takes more time to buy (or not buy) a car someone built than it would take for you to engineer and build a car yourself. That's nuts, yo.
Quite obviously, no. In bigpat's OP they stated that: "There really should be sunset provisions on all laws." This is clearly nonsensical. Or would you argue that there should be sunset provisions on the laws against murder? The Constitution? If not then you accept there is a class of laws for which sunset clauses don't apply (i.e. laws that will be a good law for a long period of time). "There really should be sunset provisions on all laws." is demonstrably false.
If you want to argue that laws against murder get sunset clauses attached and renewed on a decade-by-decade basis assuming "Senator Bob" remembers please do, but I want it as a car analogy.
As opposed to months of 'closed doors' meetings, secret deals with lobbyists, writes and re-writes and re-re-writes, etc.
Because that is of course the only alternative. I'm starting to wonder whether you're ticking off a list of logical fallacies here, you've already managed a Straw man, Either or and False analogy.
That had nothing to do with sunsetting laws, and everything to do with the fact that our Congress is made up of, essentially, narcissistic 5th graders.
Ad hominem.
I'll take your final point though I was thinking of the budget not the fiscal cliff. In other countries the previous budget continues to run until a new one is in place. As a result the running government can't be held hostage to the whim of Senator Bob on an off day. It's not always a simple case of "yea or nay?"
Er, no. Sunset clauses are a terrible waste of government time. Just think about it - if every law you pass gets a sunset clause, that means cumulatively over time you're spending a bigger and bigger portion of your time renewing previous laws to make them still active. You end up with situations like the US "fiscal cliff" - which miraculously every other mature democracy on Earth manages to avoid.
Any good law will be a good law for a long period of time. If it becomes not a good law, repeal it. If you're not sure it's a good enough law to last, don't pass it.
Is it just me, or does it seem like everyone now-a-days is trying very hard to come up with new methodologies and paradigms and web 6.5isms, so they can get their 5 minutes in the lime light?
That's nothing. My new product turns the light plaid.
You think a person's contribution to society is directly proportional to disposable income (Miley Cyrus > Van Gogh)
You would rather keep someone alive who inherited vast quantities of wealth (and does nothing) vs. someone who started with nothing and now has a job cleaning floors
You don't like people who clean floors
You want your pizzas served by people with diseases
...preferably from a pizza shop that doesn't clean it's floors
Your utopian dream (I'm calling it Cyrocracy) might just be fair if a) everyone started their life with the same opportunities and wealth; b) all money was redistributed on death (no inheritance). But that smells an awful lot like government intervention so I guess your weird little fantasy can stay just that.
The majority disagreeing with you |= a conspiracy.
The scientists are free to study what they like (in so far as permitted by their funding). This is a deliberately scuppered study on the effects of climate change on Nebraska. By ignoring the elephant in the room the results become next to useless, even dangerous. Since scientific careers are built on usefulness of research taking this on = ~ 3yr of career down the pan for nothing. "They should study it anyway! Scientific curiosity! Every angle!" Yes, and they should also study whether there are fairies on the moon and whether the solution to this whole climate change thing is copper bracelets or setting fire to icebergs. Nobody has checked that right?! Right!
There are an infinite amount of things to study. Scientists have to use their judgement, based on evidence and experience to determine the validity of a line of investigation.
Your boss comes in tomorrow and says "Hey 'phairy, we've got a problem with the network think we're getting hacked." All the evidence points to Chinese hackers, there are even posts all over Netcraft confirming it. "But," your boss continues, "my new business partner is Chinese so don't bring them into it". "I want the report on my desk pronto - and if it doesn't help fix the problem you're fired!*"
I guess you'll just buckle down and write that report?
*fudged to fit the analogy. Feel free to replace with "you can spend the next 3 years upgrading our network to block everything (except Chinese hackers). If it doesn't solve the problem you're fired!"
Grant money is grant money, and publications are publications.
That couldn't be less true if it tried. A PhD/post-doc spent outputting useless intentionally-crippled research is not the basis of a successful career.
I am sure there are many grad students / post docs willing to take on this research.
Find one. I hear Nebraska has some money to spend.
The video on the EFF site gives instructions for downloading a Vidalia Bundle for Mac - but this doesn't exist on the Tor website. The only downloads that I can see available are the 'Tor Browser Bundle' which is an auto-launching Tor node and browser combination.
So you can't run a node without a Tor browser window open all the time?
The Independent is another good UK paper. It seems positioned slightly less left/more liberal/more free market compared to the Guardian (my take). They also make a point of having intelligent dissenting opinions in the paper - so you get to see well reasoned arguments from different sides instead of a battle of talking-heads-who-shout-loudest.
Well, yes. But this thread was about an attempt to elicit an admission of guilt. Which presumes there is some guilt to admit on your part (you cannot 'admit' something you have done, cf. confess) So, in this hypothetical situation, you are driving in some way illegally e.g. speeding. So, the question still stands. If you are pulled over speeding and do not know why you were pulled over, are you now not liable for driving "without due care an attention".
It of course depends on whether driving without due care and attention is better than knowingly driving over the speed limit.
It's not too bad. Slashdot does look dated these days, though that's up to individual taste whether it's a 'bad thing'.
Anyway, two things jump out:
It needs to be adaptive (i.e. fit the window) rather than be fixed width. Slashdot is about the comments and the comments are nested. Nesting means you need width.
Drop the sidebar on the story pages - or use an abbreviated one and stack the comments full-width underneath the story and 'sidebar'. Sort of like, well, it is now.
I don't really get what is going on at the top of the front page. Are the stories with the images the 'most popular' or just a random selection with images? I typically scan read the stories looking for something that is interesting - hiding the summary behind an image will make me less likely to read not more.
In short I guess: change the design if you like, but keep the layout. It works.
I'm also surprised that you've appear to have opted not to use one of the layout frameworks (e.g. Foundation). Sure you can code it all up yourself but even the bare bones of Foundation would give you a layout the fundamentally 'just works' on different platforms.
The upper right area of Gnome Shellâ(TM)s top panel contained four separate items with their corresponding menus used for configuring sound, internet connections, power and user settings. This was bloated, fragmented and space consuming especially in the case of using extensions that need space on the right.
A new status menu that unifies all the above individual settings in one was imperative and we got it on 3.10!
...directly above a screenshot showing the top panel in question - which is 80% empty space.
Seems you can justify anything in UI design if you include the magic words "bloated, fragmented and space consuming" in your rationale.
Slashdot Mirror
Allegedly.
For the rule of law, he is innocent until proven guilty.
The only person who can know if he 'undoubtedly' did commit a crime are the judge and jury in court. If you let that go the second you think "He don't look right..." or "Well, I saw on the news that..." then you're throwing the whole judicial process on the scrapheap. This even applies if you "saw him do it" a.k.a. "I (think) I saw him do it and I'm (pretty) sure he did" - and even if he confesses.
It may seem like syntactic sugar but you'll do yourself a lot of good if you start inserting "allegedly" into any statement you make about an individual pre-trial - and subconsciously do so when reading other people's information-free opinionfacts. For the record I think he's guilty as sin of the law, but that the law is probably wrong.
Absolutelty. My house is wired so that when I plug in a high load device it electrocutes the neighbours kids. One of them nearly died when I got my new 8 slice toaster, I dread to think what would happen if I plugged in a car?!
Tesla should be ashamed of themselves!
Unfortunately, it's the boundaries of how un-newsworthy content can be and still be called "news".
Someone I've never heard of does dodgy SEO, gets banned by Google, then gets the ban lifted (+- unproven allegation of favouritism) and I'm supposed to give a shit?
Happens every day, almost entirely to other people I've never heard of either.
I was being facetious. But when you add the "Except the obvious shit" caveat you then introduce "who gets to decide what is obvious".
Perhaps we can all agree "I support sunset clauses on bad laws!" and be done with it?
I don't make that assumption at all (and I don't agree with it either). As I wrote elsewhere:
Sunset clauses increase legislative overhead. There are two outcomes from this that I can see:
From your post it sounds as though you are advocating for position #1 - that is by making politicians revisit their laws, fewer laws are passed and so the bad laws will be reduced. However, if we apply sunsetting to everything then we also lose good laws. If you think this is on balance an optimum solution then sunsetting is a strange way to approach it - you can have the same effect by simply reducing the numbers of politicians*. That also has the benefit of saving money.
(* the Constitution may have a problem with this - but that's something that can be dealt with when you sunset that and revisit it).
I fall more on the side of position #2 in that I want elected representatives to spend their time doing maximally useful work. I do think there are probably too many laws, but that the most efficient way to deal with that is through progressively revisiting and repealing those that are deemed counterproductive (by the same debate process as sunsetting). I would argue quite strongly that such review should be carried out.
Like the Constitution?
Just to clarify - I'm not against sunset clauses in all cases. But I am against the idea (expressed in the original post) that "There really should be sunset provisions on all laws." Some things don't need regular repeal - some laws are just that good. Like laws against murder. Similarly, short term laws to cover things (like getting back on topic corn subsidies) make sense as a short term financial instrument. There sunsetting makes sense - and gives a defined end point for companies that depend on the subsidy.
What I can't agree with is applying sunset clauses to laws that are intended to last. The solution to "Some laws are bad" is not "Let's make laws last for less time and then renew them!" it's "Let's make better laws". If a law is so bad you can't bear to enact it unless it is automatically repealed in 5 years - it's probably not a very good law. All this accomplishes is feeding short-termism, allowing politicians off the hook for their crap. "Hey I passed a law! (But don't worry it won't do any real harm because it'll be off the books before we see the consequences)."
Bundling these things into cumulative bills would mean they'll get so little oversight that they may as well be permanent. They're hardly read the first time, what makes you think anyone will pay attention to what the law says when it's on page 543?
Quite obviously, no. In bigpat's OP they stated that: "There really should be sunset provisions on all laws." This is clearly nonsensical. Or would you argue that there should be sunset provisions on the laws against murder? The Constitution? If not then you accept there is a class of laws for which sunset clauses don't apply (i.e. laws that will be a good law for a long period of time). "There really should be sunset provisions on all laws." is demonstrably false.
If you want to argue that laws against murder get sunset clauses attached and renewed on a decade-by-decade basis assuming "Senator Bob" remembers please do, but I want it as a car analogy.
Because that is of course the only alternative. I'm starting to wonder whether you're ticking off a list of logical fallacies here, you've already managed a Straw man, Either or and False analogy.
Ad hominem.
I'll take your final point though I was thinking of the budget not the fiscal cliff. In other countries the previous budget continues to run until a new one is in place. As a result the running government can't be held hostage to the whim of Senator Bob on an off day. It's not always a simple case of "yea or nay?"
Er, no. Sunset clauses are a terrible waste of government time. Just think about it - if every law you pass gets a sunset clause, that means cumulatively over time you're spending a bigger and bigger portion of your time renewing previous laws to make them still active. You end up with situations like the US "fiscal cliff" - which miraculously every other mature democracy on Earth manages to avoid.
Any good law will be a good law for a long period of time. If it becomes not a good law, repeal it. If you're not sure it's a good enough law to last, don't pass it.
That's nothing. My new product turns the light plaid.
Competition is good but if the government is doing it this must be socialism.
Does it also detect Slashdot dupes?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/20/161244/google-patents-fooling-friends-with-snooping-chatbots
I said. Does it also detect Slashdot dupes?
Sounds great!
So, to summarize...
Your utopian dream (I'm calling it Cyrocracy) might just be fair if a) everyone started their life with the same opportunities and wealth; b) all money was redistributed on death (no inheritance). But that smells an awful lot like government intervention so I guess your weird little fantasy can stay just that.
The majority disagreeing with you |= a conspiracy.
The scientists are free to study what they like (in so far as permitted by their funding). This is a deliberately scuppered study on the effects of climate change on Nebraska. By ignoring the elephant in the room the results become next to useless, even dangerous. Since scientific careers are built on usefulness of research taking this on = ~ 3yr of career down the pan for nothing. "They should study it anyway! Scientific curiosity! Every angle!" Yes, and they should also study whether there are fairies on the moon and whether the solution to this whole climate change thing is copper bracelets or setting fire to icebergs. Nobody has checked that right?! Right!
There are an infinite amount of things to study. Scientists have to use their judgement, based on evidence and experience to determine the validity of a line of investigation.
I guess you'll just buckle down and write that report?
*fudged to fit the analogy. Feel free to replace with "you can spend the next 3 years upgrading our network to block everything (except Chinese hackers). If it doesn't solve the problem you're fired!"
That couldn't be less true if it tried. A PhD/post-doc spent outputting useless intentionally-crippled research is not the basis of a successful career.
Find one. I hear Nebraska has some money to spend.
Thanks for the link - that cleared things up nicely.
The Tor site is a tad jargon heavy methinks.
The video on the EFF site gives instructions for downloading a Vidalia Bundle for Mac - but this doesn't exist on the Tor website. The only downloads that I can see available are the 'Tor Browser Bundle' which is an auto-launching Tor node and browser combination.
So you can't run a node without a Tor browser window open all the time?
The Independent is another good UK paper. It seems positioned slightly less left/more liberal/more free market compared to the Guardian (my take). They also make a point of having intelligent dissenting opinions in the paper - so you get to see well reasoned arguments from different sides instead of a battle of talking-heads-who-shout-loudest.
Makes a good reading companion to the Guardian.
Adding noise to your sample doesn't improve its accuracy.
Well, yes. But this thread was about an attempt to elicit an admission of guilt. Which presumes there is some guilt to admit on your part (you cannot 'admit' something you have done, cf. confess) So, in this hypothetical situation, you are driving in some way illegally e.g. speeding. So, the question still stands. If you are pulled over speeding and do not know why you were pulled over, are you now not liable for driving "without due care an attention".
It of course depends on whether driving without due care and attention is better than knowingly driving over the speed limit.
None of which I claim to know, just curious.
Although, if you answer "No" to that question don't you open yourself up to liability for "driving without due care and attention"?
The only winning move is not to play...
What else would it indicate?
It's not too bad. Slashdot does look dated these days, though that's up to individual taste whether it's a 'bad thing'.
Anyway, two things jump out:
In short I guess: change the design if you like, but keep the layout. It works.
I'm also surprised that you've appear to have opted not to use one of the layout frameworks (e.g. Foundation). Sure you can code it all up yourself but even the bare bones of Foundation would give you a layout the fundamentally 'just works' on different platforms.
You're not adding noise, you're adding data.
Say hello... ...to the slippery slope!
My favourite bit of the linked article...
Seems you can justify anything in UI design if you include the magic words "bloated, fragmented and space consuming" in your rationale.