Posts by Tom 13

Re:except with me as Supreme Chancellor of Earth

I wouldn't want that type of government either. Too many decisions I'd need to make for other people. So, much as our current one has its problems, I'll stick with it.

Re: that shy, shrinking violet of a liberal president

Fascists have never worried about killing each other. They only worry about making sure they are the ones who strike first.

Re: is that the birth record of Obama was a forgery,

I think the explanation is simpler than that. I think the public certificate has been altered, but the information on it is correct. I think that because of when it was issued, it would have listed his race as "negro" instead of "black". Because at the time the certificate was issued, calling a negro "black" was worse than calling him a "n***er" is now. But with the change in the cultural status of the words, somebody in his campaign took offense, and photoshopped it to the now politically correct term "black".

Re: "just how black is he?"

It seems to be a frequent question for Clarence Thomas. Yet he has actual roots being described.

Joe Biden of all people got this one right: he's a black man who talks like white people most of the time and black people when he needs to. If he talked only one or the other he'd never be president. The white liberals wouldn't have voted for him because "he wasn't' educated enough" if he only spoke like Jesse Jackson, and the black people wouldn't have racistly voted as a single block for him if he spoke like Joe Biden.

Re: his race wasn't an issue at the election

I have to disagree with that. It's just that the racism doesn't fit the current LSM template. If The Big 0 were white instead of black, he never would have been elected. When Bill Clinton said someone like him would have been bringing in the coffee in most political organizations, it was one of the few truths he ever told. I don't think Bill Clinton is particularly racist. I think he sees and instantaneously evaluates everyone on the basis of what that person can do for him politically. Women... well that's a different story. But even then it would be his SECOND evaluation of them.

Re: a USA or Europe issue

I'm inclined to say it is mostly a USA or Europe issue for pretty much the reasons you've outlined: so far we are the only places that have advanced the issue far enough that you get a fair bit of mixing without wholesale riots breaking out to the point that you have to segregate according to race to keep the peace. It's not that we are more evil than other places, it is that we are less.

In addition to your notes about monitoring, I have to re-emphasize the end note on the article. If you are engaged in counter-spying for your country, you go looking for exactly the sorts of people you'd expect to be infiltrating. I'd expect the infiltrator to try to build as patriotic a resume as possible to get to the best information he can. It's what Philby and Hiss did.

Re: 4 million small-claims damage suits.

which is why their lawyers would then apply for the class action status.

@ frank ly

Yes it is. You should file suit against MS. Maybe find some friends to join in a class action suit. And the secret settlement between the two should be irrelevant to your charges against MS as you were injured separately from their injury against NoIP.

Re: no copy of the Saturn V engine prints.

NASA has again found the prints for the Saturn V. I don't have a reference link, I think it was about 10 years back.

Re: they'd only seize the related accounts

Well, that's what they tell us. That's not the way the law is written. And there have been cases in which assets have been seized and there isn't clear proof that the owner of the asset was part of the criminal activity. In the case of PayPal, because it involves so many people, I tend to believe they would limit the number of accounts seized, but not because that's what the law says or out of any goodness of their heart. I think they wouldn't do it because they don't want that many people to know how truly arbitrary the process can be. If enough people know that, there might actually be an outcry to change the law.

Re: if the CEO of Paypal were charged with similar crimes

Depends on the circumstances. If the crimes are external to the operation of PayPal, then no they wouldn't be seized. BUT if the feds have sufficient evidence that PayPal is just a front organization for laundering drug money, yes they COULD.

IANAL either. It seems to me lawyers are the only ones who don't get the "something just doesn't feel right about this" feeling.

Re: UK law is even worse

Actually that makes them exactly equivalent, because under RICO that's what they do. Most common use is in a drug sting. Regardless of who owned the property (including vehicles driven that may have been stolen) the feds can seize anything that was used to facilitate the deal. They've also started to use it in underage drinking convictions. If the police pick up Eddie Jr for drunk driving and he's in daddy's car, they just might seize daddy's car.

@Paul 87

Progressives have no one to blame but themselves for that outcome. When you make a mockery of protecting citizens by turning loose criminals on the basis that it is better to release 10 mass murders than convict 1 innocent person of jaywalking, the citizens are prone to believing the authorities when they come and say "the only way we can stop The Mob is if we are granted these draconian RICO powers. Otherwise their lawyers will run circles around our underpaid prosecutors in court."

Re: "Rockstar and Take-Two’s use of her likeness was done solely to make money"

Except that in the US, that isn't a valid basis for a lawsuit. Especially as a public figure she is very, very subject to the parody exception.

Re: "Rockstar and Take-Two’s use of her likeness was done solely to make money"

I was thinking along the same line: character doesn't look skanky enough to be Lindsay.

Even if it did, in the US: Parody!

Re: requesting consent

The fact that requesting consent alters the outcome of the observation is well established in psychology. It's part of why they typically write the consent forms in a vague way before you sign them. Then they tell you they are testing for something when in fact they are testing for something else. A prime example is the experiment where they told the actual test subjects that they would be assisting a certified authority in questioning people who had committed a crime that resulted in its victims being in imminent danger. The subject was then asked to run the dials on an electroshock mechanism to encourage the criminal (who was in actuality an actor/actress) to tell the truth. They got the test subjects to turn up the dial to lethal levels with fair ease. If they had told the test subjects it was a test of their own morality, they would likely not have gotten those results. (I'd contend they'd have gotten different results if the alleged perp had been connected to a real machine and the pain and suffering had been real instead of an actor, but that's not relevant to the main point.)

The thing is, even though we KNOW informed consent is an obstacle to gathering accurate data, we as a society have decided it is more important to require informed consent than gather the information. This isn't merely theoretical. You can hunt down quite a few horror stories when informed consent is not required. The most prominent one to recently get a public film is probably the Tuskegee Airmen and of course the ultimate extreme is some of the experiments the Nazi's ran on "undesirables" in WW2.

Re: PR and leveraged never-never rather than actual money

That sounds like a good description of Bitcoin to me.

Re: No other law that I'm aware of works this way.

First up, it's "eminent" domain not "imminent" as your link name clearly indicates. The difference is IMPORTANT. Next up, no eminent domain is not like this either. There is a class which is and that is RICO, but even there the comparison is not quite near enough. Even under RICO there have to be prior legal convictions. That doesn't apply in this case.

Re: Fucked

If I might suggest?

Don't send it directly. First contact your law firm (if you don't have one I recommend Dewey, Suem, and Howe) and have them send the bill as an attachment to an official letter.

Re: Microsoft can grab the entire domain

Only when they also own the judge. Which it seems in this case they do.

Re: That's bat-shit insane.

Welcome to Harry Reid's Nevada.

Re: collateral damage

Please find yourself a good US lawyer and sue them. I mean that honestly as a crazy 'Merkin. With luck you might even get a few of their legal eagles disbarred for perjury in court. Or better yet get the judge who allowed this removed and disbarred for life.

Re: they couldn't be arsed

No, MS couldn't be arsed to contact Vitalwerks about the domains.

I fully expect this decision to be overturned on appeal. The fact that Vitalwerks was unaware even of the lawsuit until AFTER the judgement was rendered is the only relevant fact in this case. The judgment is a clear violation of the 4th amendment.