Comment Re:Gerrymandering (Score 1) 215
It's dishonest, but not fraud. Fraud includes an element of secrecy or misleading, not just rigging the system to your benefit.
It's dishonest, but not fraud. Fraud includes an element of secrecy or misleading, not just rigging the system to your benefit.
Actually, that isn't how it turns out at all: there is no "ghetto" established, as the laws that the prevailing governing body passes will apply to the entire incorporated area (city, county, state, whatever). The key difference is that without the gerrymandering, there will be no voice in that governing body to represent the extreme minority's interests at all. So it's actually anti-segregationist, since it gives the minority a stronger voice than they would have otherwise.
That's a horrible way to fix the problem. It's better to have a proportional system, where parties are awarded seats in the government/state/county in proportion to the popular vote. The problem only occurs in winner-takes-all systems in the first place.
If we accept gerrymandering to give certain minorities a vote, we're also giving politicians an excuse for abusing the system to further their own power.
And yes, it's segregationist. Segregation means you separate ethnic groups. Having good intentions or giving the group a stronger vote doesn't change that.
Gerrymandering can be used for good too such as creating voting districts consisting of mostly Blacks or other minorities so they can elect a (favored minority) representative and have a say in the political process.
You mean, so the blacks become "equal but separate"?
Interesting perhaps, but not useful. The party that WON using any detectible vote fraud will not let you change anything, certainly not the outcome and probably not even vote methodology, or credential checking in future elections. In fact they probably won't give you access to voting detail numbers at all once it becomes common knowledge that such analysis is possible.
Just because a party won by fraud, it doesn't mean they become dictators for life and can block every attempt to fix the system. Sooner or later another party will win, and the cheating party can't make their manipulations too obvious.
That's a good point.
But... isn't the cost of the pilot a huge part?
Good point.
I picture you without a girlfriend and stuck in a dead-end job, where the only relief for your frustration is trolling people on Internet forums.
We keep reading that they're being investigated, charged, "fined", but cut to the chase: what actual sums have left Microsoft's account and gone into the Brussels swill trough?
The summary says $1.28 billion, i.e, just slightly more than Apple got from Samsung in a patent lawsuit where the jury didn't understand how prior art worked.
How do you figure? Microsoft clearly violated the terms of the ruling, which resulted in a fine. Are you objecting to
a) the court's interpretation of the law?
b) the anti-monopoly laws in effect in the EU?
c) anti-monopoly laws in general?
$1.28 billion? No problem, Microsoft can win that back with a patent suit or two !
Don't know about Portugal, but in Sweden, small-scale copyright infringement for personal use is a criminal offense, as well as a civil liability. In fact, it needs to be a criminal offense in order to force the ISPs to reveal the identity behind an IP address.
(Making copies for personal use is only allowed in Sweden if you make them directly off an authorised copy, e.g, a store-bought DVD. If you make copies by downloading off the Internet, private use is not a defence.)
In Swedish law, "personal use" means you can make a few copies for your family and closest friends. More than that, and you infringe copyright. To qualify for "commercial use", you need to actually earn money from it, and it will result in a harsher punishment.
That hardly seems like an exception. The extraditing country agrees not to enforce the death penalty. An exception would be if it was a "we won't*wink wink* execute him" statement.
Yes, and that probably happens too.
I'm not sure the CIA will give a shit - they'll come in anyway, kidnap the people, and drop them off at the torture camps.
That's preposterous. That's not at all how it works. The US government will make a diplomatic call to the local government, who will conveniently lose the prisoners or forget what the local law says, and THEN CIA will kidnap them and drop them off at torture camps.
That's exactly what happened to two asylum seekers in Sweden, who were illegally handed over to the CIA by Swedish authorities and fell off the map.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
