The web was officially launched in 1990. The web's killer app was information exchange, and it was used for that purpose even before the web existed; see for example Compuserve, AOL, Usenet, the academic webs between universities that predated the "Internet."
Amazon launched in 1994. Ebay 1995. Netflix 1997. Google 1998.
In contrast, 10+ years on, and cryptocurrency still hasn't demonstrated a compelling use case beyond money laundering and collecting ransom payments. If anything, the one thing crytocurrency has demonstrated is how flexible and resilient our existing old school financial system is.
If a professional job pays $400k, there's absolutely no way you can keep it with less than about a $300k (pre-tax) lifestyle, and that's if you're really good.
That is some of the most bizarre logic I've ever read. In what reality do people spend $300k to keep a $400k job? People who live a $300k lifestyle do so because they want the lifestyle and stick with the job to maintain that lifestyle, not vice versa? This is true of lawyers, doctors, and accountants.
If you have kids, your bosses will ask where they go to school and it will affect your promotion chances.
You must have worked for some seriously messed up companies. That is definitely not the norm in any of the industries I have worked in; if any of those firms tried something like that they'd lose all of their best people.
In fact, the major reason why it pays so much is because that is the economic cost of doing what the job requires (living in an expensive area, hiring a maid so you aren't distracted by chores).
What? No. A job pays that much because if they don't pay that much the employee will go to someone who pays them more to do the same work.
What we'd expect based on our knowledge of markets is that people would have to spend $1/year to keep a $1/year job.
That is nonsensical. People only take a job that would require them to break-even at the end of the year due to job-related expenses if they have no other employment options. Even in the unlikely event that is happening right now, it is due to the unique circumstances of the Great Recession inflating unemployment rolls, and is definitely not affecting all industries equally.
This is a deeper problem than people think. It's not just about "discipline" or will. There are people out there who are just severely below average in financial sense and, while they can play the social gymnastics necessary to get the $500k+ jobs, they can't make $1.00 without spending $1.10 (at any income level).
People don't spend more than they make to keep their job. They spend more than they make to live a lifestyle. The job supports the lifestyle, not the other way around.
Wherein HN is introduced to the concept of a "compulsory license" which makes this all okay (www.copyright.gov/circs/circ73.pdf).
Generally, the compulsory license requires royalties to be paid to the original copyrightholder of a musical work. It does not require the original rights holder to be publicly credited.
For examples of compulsory licensing in action, see...nearly every rap, hip-hop, or R&B song released in the past decade...
AOE2 uses a "tick-based" system for synchronising input/commands, so it is possible to use websockets for multiplayer RTS simply by increasing the length of each tick. I believe AOE2 and SC2 used ticks of 200 ms or 250 ms; more modern RTS games use tick length of 100 ms.
Generally, in each tick player (or AI) input is received and then transmitted to the server or all other players. In the next tick, that input is then processed by each player's individual simulation of the game world.
A tick-based system does a decent job of handling latency by distracting the player the delay between input and processing through audio confirmation of the order or through a response/transition animation. It would not work for games requiring low-latency, i.e., FPS shooters.
Agreed. The solution to a bad law is usually to get rid of the law and start again from the ground-up. Amending a law leaves open the possibility of missing out on critical flaws.
alpb, check your plugins. With WP SuperCache running you should be able to easily handle thousands of concurrent visitors, even on a virtual server or shared hosting accounting.
Unfortunately, some of the plugins that ship with WP by default (i.e., some of the comments plugins) do not work well with caching; you have to swap them out for third-party equivalents that are designed with caching in mind.
Minor correction: A U.S. Attorney is an employee of the DOJ, not the White House. While the DOJ is an executive agency under the supervision and oversight of the WH, the WH does not have any say in the day-to-day operations of the DOJ or in prosecutorial decisions. If the WH had such control, there would have been no reason for Ford to pardon Nixon.
The population of the state of Oregon is roughly 3.8 million. The population of the SF Bay area alone is roughly 7.1 million.
I genuinely wonder what California has done so differently to end up doing so badly when they have twice as much tax revenue per person.
Prop 13 (the first one), and various other initiatives that require tax revenue to be spent on pet projects rather than going into the general fund. Also, for most of the past 2 decades, a minority party with just enough power to effectively veto any budgets.
It's a useful vehicle for starting the process, bringing attention to the issue, clearly explaining what and why, providing a single point of action for people to focus on, and gauging support.
What would be more useful is actually contacting your Congressperson and telling them. If you want you can simply read the petition. But signing this petition won't accomplish anything.
If all that goes well and the petition gets enough signatures and visibility, then that's a good point to segue off into the more difficult organizational problem of getting all those people to actually call their rep.
Why do you need to organize getting people to call? Just call them. Once you've called them, ask or convince (gently) two other people to call. Critical mass to get the ball rolling is usually about two dozen calls on the same issue (simply because so few people actually bother to use the phone for this anymore).
In your words, he can "move the needle" and...that's it. He can't eliminate the law, he can't change the law, and he if he were to order the DOJ to stop enforcing the law, the Republican-dominated House could impeach him (because the impeachment is a political process).
As for the other comments...I stand by them. My reasons are laid out in those comments and others on the same threads and if you choose to cherry-pick phrases from select comments instead of reading them together then there is nothing I can do to stop you.
I have 3 sudoku apps on my phone; I can tell you what you are missing: scratch marks. At higher difficulties, it is absolutely necessary to be able to note eliminations or possibilities within a square. Without that, the best you can hope for is casual sudoku player, but soduku is by nature not a game for casual players.
The Piers Morgan petition was only a softball to those capable of rational thought. To the many people who signed it, it was a legitimate petition. The purpose of raising the signature limit was to prevent petitions like that from reaching the point at which the WH has obligated itself to respond.
It's an uninformed comment by some woman taking advantage of the case to burnish her own image.
However, if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for me. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies.
Technically, this is correct, since federal sentencing laws limit the judge's discretion to raise or lower prison sentences. They actually have a table indexed by "points" which the judge must use to determine the length of the sentence. Thus, in order for the prosecution to honor a plea for 6-7 months, it would necessarily have entailed that all of the (other) charges either be dropped or reduced to their misdemeanor equivalents. (Note that if you read her CV, she hasn't handled a case in the federal courts since the sentencing guidelines were issued.)
Two weeks after the Secret Service raided his house in conjunction with the investigation led by Heymann into the theft of tens of thousands of credit card numbers, James was found dead.
Innocent people do not kill themselves when confronted with the possibility of a trial. They kill themselves after they have lost at trial. This other hacker (Jonathan James) didn't even wait until they pressed charges.
It's not a matter of the prosecutor being overzealous. It's a matter of hackers being far more susceptible to suicidal tendencies than others in the face of extreme social conflict.
California became a one-party state in 2012. Prior to 2012, it was very much a two-party state, and the problems date as far back as the 1990s, when it was still considered a swing state.
You are. You're skipping the most important part of the criminal process: the trial.
* don't bet on a fair trial, even if you're completely innocent. *
Hyperbole, and dangerous exaggeration. The "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard is a very high standard. I've won jury trials where the evidence all supported the prosecution's case (seriously, I had no evidence) but was not sufficient to reach this standard. Federal judges are even stricter at forcing federal prosecutors to satisfy this standard--they'll frequently dismiss the case without even letting the jury deliberate.
If you think jury trials are patently unfair, you need to actually go down to a courtroom and watch the jury trials. You'll learn a lot, and you'll discover that the justice system is not even remotely as lopsided as you think it is...once you get to the trial stage. (But yes, it's definitely lopsided in favor of the prosecution at every stage before trial.
Pursuant to constitutional law, you are required to start with the charges first, so the defendant knows what they are being accused of and can prepare a defense.
In some but not all jurisdictions, prosecutors may offer "plea bargains" that reduce the sentence, or reduce or drop some of the charges, in lieu of proceeding to trial. In some jurisdictions (i.e., large portions of Texas), there are no plea bargains; you always go to trial.
Maximum sentence is set by law, as a matter of constitutional rights. Thus, your solution would simply restrict plea bargains to not being any shorter than 1/2 of the maximum sentence (in Aaron's case, 16 years).
Making the counts non-severable is a legal and constitutional impossibility. Double jeopardy requires the prosecutor to charge you with all possible crimes arising from a single act (or intertwined set of acts) in the same criminal proceedings. Once those criminal proceedings have been adjudicated (i.e., a guilty plea, a conviction, a not-guilty verdict, or charges dismissed with prejudice), the prosecutor cannot ever charge you again for any other crimes arising from that act. Your solution would either require them to choose which charges to pursue and which charges to drop forever. That's fine in cases like Aaron's, but that's not something you want when you're dealing with a rapist or a murderer (i.e, cases far more common than Aaron's).
Finally, the last suggestion, is not simply politically unpalatable, it is economically impossible. Most criminals are actually guilty; making the prosecution pay for every defense would increase the costs of the criminal justice system 1000fold. A better solution: make the prosecution pay the defense costs where (a) a defendant that is found not guilty or actually innocent, (b) a hung jury trial, if the prosecution does not refile, or (c) the prosecution drops charges before trial. This would accomplish what you want in a realistic manner (and is actually already the law in some jurisdictions).
Getting rid of plea bargaining doesn't make the problem better; it makes it worse by removing any compromise between walking away and the maximum sentence.
From my own experience: in mental committment proceedings, there is no halfway point between letting the defendant stay free and committing them to a mental hospital. Consequently, the prosecutor's office simply never negotiates; they take every case to trial.
When a legislator say they will "look" at something, it means they don't intend to actually do anything about it but are simply attempting to pacify their constituents by promising something.
Amazon launched in 1994. Ebay 1995. Netflix 1997. Google 1998.
In contrast, 10+ years on, and cryptocurrency still hasn't demonstrated a compelling use case beyond money laundering and collecting ransom payments. If anything, the one thing crytocurrency has demonstrated is how flexible and resilient our existing old school financial system is.