They probably missed the parts about "only" and "tasks" because they're not there.

Marbury v. Madison found that the power is there, but it's not in the text. (And as a practical matter, a judge that takes an oath to defend a constitution must necessarily have the ability to determine if a law he's asked to apply complies with that constitution; issuing an order applying an unconstitutional law would both violate the oath and be beyond his authority derived from the constitution . . .)

Furthermore, in US practice, all courts, state and federal, make such reviews. The USC is simply the final, not sole, arbiter for the federal constitution.

And this is all irrelevant anyway: federal income taxation is authorized by the US Constitution itself, not a statute (it's implemented by statute under that authority), while the federal constitution has nothing to do with state income taxation . . .

hawk, esq.

"code red worm ..."

Those words gave me a twinge of nostalgia.
Yes, I just got a bit sentimental about an old buffer overflow.
Sysadmin Things (tm)... :-)

What galls me the most is the panty-wetting over a government-granted monopoly trying to maintain its government granted monopoly when that very same government tries to compete using taxpayer dollars as a subsidy.

The outrage should be against government involvement period. If governments didn't grant local monopolies, there would be real competition among the real companies, and no perceived need for the government competition which is only competitive because it has the taxpayer subsidy.

The problem with being obvious about it is that there's a very large overlap between the populations of people who would spike someone's drink and people who turn psycho when they see drinks being tested. Without the ability to be discreet, merely performing the test puts a person in danger.

It's more discreet than using a special straw, which seems to have been the predecessor (at least in spirit) of this new method.

What you see at that link is only the last panel. The story was revealed frame-by-frame over a much longer period of time.

I do think it would be nice if xkcd made the whole thing available, but others have managed. The Wikipedia link above can point you at some of them.

Does this mean it's time to give up what you kids call "First Edition"?

Nah. I'm still not convinced there's a reason to use those new-fangled books instead of the three books, supplements, and a touch (but not too much!) of Arduin & Spellcaster's Bible.

damn newbies

hawk, off to nuke his dandelions

http://www.kcet.org/news/redef...

This is Vine we're talking about. Wouldn't you need like six of the videos just to capture the announcer shouting "GOOOOOOOAL!!1!!!"?

As to faxes, handwritten business communications are not at all unusual among older companies, due to the fact that typing kanji was not as straightforward process 20 years ago as it is today.

I've sent telegrams in Japan, but only to couples who were getting married and whose wedding I couldn't attend. I've never seen them used for other things, but a wedding is likely to have a few telegrams read at the reception.

How can anyone pay lip service to free markets by regulating them?

The problem is that government regulates them as monopolies. They create the problem in the first lace by creating the monopoly, then offer to fix the problem by adding regulation. If it were a truly free market, without government sponsored monopolies, regulation wouldn't be nessary.

Look up the history of AT&T, how they were acting like a bully, but when the lawsuits began to have an effect and counter their actions, they begged the government to regulate them as a monopoly. If the government had just said no, they would have been brought to heel within a few years; the market would have worked.

It never ceases to amaze me how often I am amazed at people who cannot grasp this simple concept, that government specialized in correcting problems it created. Even that great social experiment, US alcohol prohibition from 1920-1933, was not ended by repealing the prohibition, but by changing outright prohibition to regulation.

Gee, Apple has been dying *far* longer than that . . . :)

hawk

What effect does the userland have on the TCP/IP stack?

Or, alternately, the resources to railroad members of the public into prison cells at the behest of politically connected corporate leaders.

The district attorney doesn't advocate for victims of crime. The district attorney is an advocate for the state prosecuting people accused of committing crimes. That's a critical distinction when you consider that the victims often have little or no say in whether or how the accused is charged and tried.

Nobody stole the movie. The studio still has it. What someone did was copy the movie without the permission of the copyright holder, thereby committing copyright infringement, which is a civil matter. Or at least it would be if our government weren't the enforcement wing of its benevolent corporate benefactors.