Posts by Tom 13 7544 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
That would be because you are unaware of the leniency of the US court systems. I would.
We routinely see lawyers on tv rack up the possible sum of time a defendant COULD serve if convicted of all charges running into hundreds of years. Then 4 years later when the pre-trial, trial, and appeals are done, the convicted perp gets 3 years less time served plus potential time off for good behavior and possible parole after 1 year of time served (which includes any time spent in detention prior to the trial).
Sentence in the US are as a-political as sentences in the UK.
Prosecutors don't set sentences, Judges do, based on both statutory dictates and prevailing attitudes. And that happens only IF a civilian jury finds him guilty. Assuming sentence is passed, there are still multiple paths to appeal the conviction and the sentence. After or concurrent with those appeals you may also request either Executive leniency or pardon. Prosecutors ALWAYS ask for the maximum sentence possible (possible being defined only in the mind of the prosecutor) because the Defense will always be arguing for none.
Well, the rationale isn't really for security. It's for marketing purposes. But they say it's for security. And since it's a common question for authorization when you call the bank to check your balance (varies between social security, zip code and last four of either of those), people accept it is a valid security authorization. Just like they accept mother's maiden name,.
Downvoted because I'm the low level HelpDesk Monkey who gets called in to fix crap when you "highly technical" users frack it up while ignoring company policy. Also because it some of you other "highly technical" programmers who shaft us with home grown software that causes us to KEEP users on IE8 and Java 1.5.16.
Not anonymous because I know who where the bodies are.
Nits:
The imperial presidency started well before FDR. Some trace the socialist problem to Wilson, others to the other Roosevelt, some even to Lincoln. You are correct that by FDR it was certainly under way, and only committed socialist/communists deny it. If you are sticking strictly with "imperial" that goes back to at least Andrew Jackson who used the office to destroy the National Bank (perhaps a good thing, perhaps not) in defiance of Congress.
The drone issue is a mixed bag. If the American is in foreign territory and known to be helping the enemy, that is engaged in subversion against the US, I have no problem dropping a drone on him. The presumption of innocence only goes so far, and it's right out the window when war starts.
Presidents have ALWAYS had the power to suspend habeas corpus. Washington himself suspended it during the Whiskey Rebellion, which he put down with US troops. Moreover, this is an assertion of suspending habeus corpus for foreign agents, a claim I find specious at best. He isn't routinely suspending it for US citizens who aren't known to be acting as foreign agents.
The Constitution also allows for the creation of "other courts" which is essentially what the national security letter system is. It may be being used to liberally, but that is an issue separate from the authority of Congress to create such an alternate system.
I concur that executive orders have been used too much, and the example you site is particularly egregious. I will note however that progressives/socialists/communists have long been at work undermining that right and the courts have generally supported this. The history goes all the way back to Miller, a case that if a lower court today were to treat the defense the way SCOTUS treated the defense in Miller, the presiding judge would be subject to a STERN rebuke and even possibly disciplinary action from the Bar. Such is the way of dictators and their sycophants who will rule when a free people refuse to hold their government accountable. We failed miserably on that count in the last election.
Actually you can make a better argument that SPAM is a form of free speech than that DDOS is.
SPAM at least meets the criteria that it is communicating. Where it falls down is that it forces the recipient to pay for the speech, which is not permissible under classical property rights concepts. And if you throw out the private property rights it still falls under the problem of the free commons.
Meh. Started well, but the writers didn't know what to do with it, sort of like an Alan Moore comic book arc.
By the second season it's all about frelling in space coupled with yet another version of a war to end all wars. Recovered somewhat in 3rd season, but by then it was too late. I like Ben and Claudia, and the muppets were cool. And I really, really wanted it to succeed, but Hollywood can't seem to handle that.
Even in original Trek, you had to have not a suspension of disbelief but an eager suppression of it.
- Would no scientists ever return to portal through time that would show you the history of the Universe?
- Would anyone not copy the archives from "The World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky"? Or the planet for the acknowledged schlock episode "Spock's Brain"
Granted Next Gen was even worse, but original Trek was bad enough on that front to begin with.
And yet I love the show.
I actually like Brooks and some of the episodes in the series. I'd say the truth of the matter is it started going downhill with season 1 of Next Gen, but managed to recover after they booted Roddenberry far enough upstairs that he didn't really affect the show. But they over corrected in DS9, jumped the shark in Voyager, and went Rod Serling with Enterprise. Enterprise was probably the most disappointing because Bakula is a good actor and I loved him in Quantum Leap. But even a great actor can only do so much to save a show where none of the writers or producers actually care about the original on which it is based.
Not off topic at all.
The two are inextricably linked in time and network infighting and their influences on each other. B5 was kicking DS9's ass, and Majel Barrett didn't like it. One particular instance of this is DS9 grabbing an actor JMS had signed on for a couple of parts in two seasons. As a result, JMS decided to kill the character (Sheridan's conspiracy contact) off screen and bring in a replacement. DS9 did adopt the story arcs JMS pioneered in tv. (Weird part is, JMS didn't really think of it as pioneering, because his source material for the show draws most heavily on Greek and Roman mythology. It's even one of the things he commented on in his blogs at the time, noting he sought out a new translation of either the Iliad or the Odyssey in his teen years. He couldn't understand why people weren't using staggered arcs across a series instead of only within an episode.) And JMS said some nice things about DS9 and probably even consulted with them on some things. He certainly turned the tenor of the series to the more upbeat than the foreboding one season 1 had. (Personally I loved season 1 and it took me a while to warm up to the new guy.)
True, but that was a double-edged sword.
Part of why the original series worked was because Roddenberry pushed that angle, while the studio pushed back. When they started Next Gen the studios bowed down to the exalted high priest -- and the episodes were pretty much crap. Without serious conflict drama loses its impact. Yes DS9 took it farther than Roddenberry would have allowed, and yes the franchise suffered for it. But less so than it did with Voyager and Enterprises lack of a timeline editor. I understand why the latest Star Trek movie was required to reboot the series - they boxed themselves into so many corners they needed a clean break. But I still didn't like it, and you're right: I don't trust the new writers to stay true to what the original Star Trek was, Roddenberry's vision tempered by the network moguls.
More yes than no, but still both. The story was plotted well in advance. JMS had been thinking about it for years. But the shows themselves were written at the time, edited and adapted as needed. Sometimes it shows, most of the time they pulled it off incredibly well.
JMS also probably did more than anybody else in the industry to meld the web to the broadcast work. Checking his blog was almost as important a part of watching the show as watching the show was. And there was never any question about who was leading whom on story arc. JMS led, DS9 followed. Don't get me wrong, I like many of the DS9 shows and actually started watching it again on Netflix. But I have no doubt that B5 was the far better show, even season 1. Although I do agree Turner really screwed the pooch when they wouldn't fund season 5, and that in some way Sci-Fi screwed it even more when they did fund it after JMS edited 4 & 5 into the final season for Turner.
Laptops are bigger than notebooks, or at least were when reporters adopted the sexier marketing lingo. I remember that idiot who use to write opposite Dvorak at PC Magazine going on and on and on about how superior notebooks were to laptops and would therefore replace both laptops and desktops.
That certainly part of it. Until recently my typical behavior was to come home, turn on Fox News, and start making supper for me and my roomie. When I actually sit down to watch I might play something we dvr'ed earlier. Or if I'm not even interested in the DVR list, pop in a DVD or browse Netflix. Oddly enough the DVDs are usually tv series we've purchased (Original Trek, SG, SG2, Andomeda, Dr. Who, B5, Lois and Clark, White Collar, Psych, etc.). And there are times when I'm multi-tasking tv and internet (usually because I'm not especially interested in my roomie's current tv choice).
Now at one time we were a Nielson family with the actual monitoring stuff wired into the tv and vcr. When we were we made DAMN sure the tv was on and tuned to the appropriate channels for certain shows (B5, and Crossfire) even if we weren't in the room at the time. If it was stuff we knew was popular we played it straight. But for our interests that were consistently being canceled before we became a Nielsen family, we made sure we were counted.
Actually, the reason most people think Monopoly sucks is that they DON'T play by the official rules. Play by them and the game will end, frequently in under 2 hours.
I picked up the EA game for the PC a while back and can regularly win the game on all levels, usually in under 45 minutes.
Pfft!
Try Titan
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103/titan
or if you can find a set of Second Edition rules with counters and book Star Fleet Battles
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/31684/star-fleet-battles-volume-ii
or better yet War in the Pacific and play the full war campaign
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22843/war-in-the-pacific-second-edition
Sadly, I can't remember the name of the Avalon Hill game that was the mother of all nightmares and was completely unplayable until it came out for the Mac II. You were colonizing and conquering worlds (sf game) but you couldn't play it because of all the bookkeeping for production and development of ships.
As it has ever been with England. It might be a bit beyond your reckoning, but 200+ years ago, one of the undercurrents of revolution were fed by similar realities: England didn't grow much stuff, but it imported and processed much of it and made it difficult or illegal for its colonies to do likewise. You keep the high value work and farm out the low value work. It is the way of the world. Possibly because there are locations for which the "low value work" pays a rich man's wages in comparison to his country-mates.
The outcome was that it is plausible the skin was key to the way the Hindenberg went up, but it takes both the skin AND the hydrogen to get the disaster. Essentially the skin acts like a fast fuse while the hydrogen still provides the bulk of the explosive charge.
Even AT&T has problems building elasticity that can handle losing a large chunk of their normal bandwidth. The expectation is for random single failures that account for maybe 1% of the load. They get good at dealing with those. But kill 25% instantaneously and the cascade failures start taking down the rest of the system. Sure they stress test it in a VM lab, but for some reason the real world never seems to work that way. And you rarely get real world
No it shouldn't be that way, but all too often it is.
Granted 6pm < 10 pm on Friday would probably be better depending on the business, that's still better than 4am>8am Monday morning.
Of course the guys I really feel sorry for are the point of sale vendors for fast food joints. My friend's migration schedule is always 3am to done with training before and after.
Actually, that's your problem right there. Instead of recognizing how much good she did for you and the rest of the world, you've spent the last 20+ years remediating her actions instead of building on them to increase your productivity.
Sadly, you've been less efficient at it on your side of the pond than we've been on ours. With the result that while you might have started somewhat closer to the Cliffs of Financial Armageddon, it looks like we're going over before you do. Even more unfortunate for you, once we do, you haven't got a chance either.
Then you mustn't be a very good engineer. I thought engineers were supposed to be good with logic and numbers.
Let's try a simpler example.
Say your company could afford a total compensation package for you of 10,000 units in 2008. Of that 10,000 units, they have to pay 3,000 units directly to the government in taxes. In addition they have to pay for certain things like insurance and workers compensation (non-cash benefits to you) in the amount of 2,000 units. That leaves you with 5,000 units in pay.
Now jump up to 2012 where the company can you 13,000 units. Meanwhile your benefits have gone up to 3000 units. And the taxes the company has to pay directly to the government have gone up to 5,000 units. That means you still only make 5,000 units in pay.
I'm sure you would, because that's part of the smoke and mirrors to keep you excited, and get you to the barricades where you can be used as canon fodder to advance the goals of the socialist dictators.
But if you're really looking for some enlightenment, perhaps you should study the materials at the following link:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/defending-the-dream-why-income-inequality-does-not-threaten-opportunity
I'm reasonably certain my then 50 year old mother was NOT looking for porn when she did that search that set her active desktop wallpaper to a then popular porn site.
That I as an experienced web surfer would have expected that possibility when searching for "special girl" in an entirely different matter. (She was trying to search the local hard drive for a picture she had saved of my brother's wife. She put that in the description when she used some piece of cataloging software that came either with a camera or an inkjet printer.)
While I'll grant that probably accounts for a great deal more than the researchers attribute to it, some of them probably are women who would never be caught wearing clothing like that at home let alone in public. The real world has real, lasting consequences. Yes, men should control themselves, but wear clothing like that in public and your chances of being raped go up, so you don't do it. Act like a floozie and there are adverse consequences. In the virtual world none of that happens.
In a non-computer RPG I played once upon a time, the most conservative of the female players played a seductive floozie in game. In fact one of the funniest moments in our play happened when her character tried to seduce my uber-geek, no social skills character. She rolled a straight up success to seduce him. I said "Brooke looks up and says 'you're not a computer' and goes back to hacking away on his computer.' This was followed by me rolling a critical success and much laughter.
Another case study: Felica Day and The Guild. The character in the RPG is much more of a flirt than the character she plays in the script. Which mirrors her actions in real life. She may be happy to toss off an innuendo or three while talking on stage, but when some asks 'does the drapery match the curtains' he gets escorted out of the room (and probably by fans if security isn't fast enough).
I'd like to disagree with you because if the bill did infringe on the First amendment, it is by definition unconstitutional. Unfortunately, given the string of recent rulings (Kelo, Obamacare), that no longer seems to be sufficient grounds for SCOTUS to act, so I can't.
what history has proven is that the only inherent barrier to entry is government granting someone a monopoly. They can do it directly like they once did with AT&T, or they hide their actions in obscure regulations handled out of public site and manipulated by lobbyists and lawyers. Wyden's proposal clearly falls into the second category and duped like Ian fall for it all the time.
Nothing that is ever delegated to faceless apparatchiks benefits the public.
A law that requires companies to fully disclose their data caps (even the constantly adjusting ones based on how many standard deviations you are from the mean/median user) sure. But not turning it all over to the FCC who have no place on the internet.
No, you don't. All of those cultures are much more prone to treat the citizen as subject than the citizen as supreme. Couple that change with some of the dreck from Hollywood, the violent video games, and a more generalized if it feels good do it attitude and you wind up with what we have. Also, while those societies may have the diversity across the spectrum, they don't have it within the region. Those territorial boundaries are important. And in Britain, those places where that cultural diversity is going up are precisely the flash points for more violence.
Direct accomplice in the sense of ordering the CIA to find a nut job and set him loose on the school? No.
Accomplice in the sense that what happened is the inevitable result of their cumulative asinine policies? Absolutely. Politicians are supposed to take the time to sketch out those consequences before they advocate their policies, and we're supposed to hold them accountable when they don't. Unfortunately almost no politicians do the first, and we have too few citizens doing the second.
No, but they do make a difference, particularly when couple with the prevailing gun phobia from government elites.
There was a study done, don't remember who or where, and it came to one conclusion that in retrospect makes sense: video games train for higher kill ratios than we had before them. You get more points for kill shots in the games, so they train you to take those shots. I don't think that is grounds to ban them, but we do need to recognize the effect when working out how to protect people. The other part of course is that before the mass hoplophobia, you were likely to find guns on campuses. So for instance, on one college campus shooting incident a student was able to retrieve his rifle and kill the shooter before the body count went over 20.
The most important reform we won't get. All of these mass killers (from the Texas Bell tower shooter through Columbine, and now Newton) exhibited pronounced signs of depression, anger, and desire to kill lots of people. What's needed is a better ability/requirement for psychologist/psychiatrists to commit these disturbed people to secure facilities to deal with their issues.
If progressives like Neil McAllister admit that he wasn't a kid, they lose one of their emotional hooks to override logic in their jihad against guns. Just like they ignore that according to the Brady Center Connecticut has the 5th best gun controls in the nation. And amongst the states which surround it, 3 rank higher and only Vermont below the median for the country. So "tough" gun controls didn't help any of those kids one damn bit.
In fact, Wayne Pierre was right: there was only one thing that was going to stop that punk from killing more kids: an armed adult who was already inside the building, prepared and equipped to shoot the S.O.B on sight. Yes, posting armed police officers inside every school would bust already over-burdened government budgets, so that's not really an answer either. But it might point at one that would work: allowing teachers and/or faculty at schools to carry weapons. Concealed carry holders seems like a good point from which to start. Based on police statistics they are more law abiding than your average citizen in the first place. Couple that with appropriate training requirements and you can probably accomplish the same goal at an affordable cost to the government. The only obstacle to this rational solution is the inordinate fear of guns from people like Neil. And apparently most Brits too even though your own current experiences should inform you otherwise.
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