Let's face facts - "bullying" is a bit of a BS term anyway. Once you get out into the real world "gimme your money or I'm gonna hit you" is robbery (up to nine years in California). You haven't been bullied, you've been mugged.
Teasing and all that? You try that in your workplace and let us know how long before HR wants a few words with you. If you won't put up with it in your workplace, why do you expect your kids to put up with it in theirs?
Irrelevant. Everything that is on facebook was put there by somebody who chose to put it there. If they put it on public display, then they chose to put it on public display. It's published, therefore it is public. This public information is available to anybody and everybody. As long as the school does not require the students to friend them or turn over passwords, what's the issue?
The article seems to tapdance around that angle (particularly on how they know which accounts are tied to which student), so it may be as innocent as "show me all postings from people who list "SchoolX" as their school (and countermeasures might be as simple as changing security settings and blocking "Geo Listening"). Quick search of the school board site only says that they block social media at school.
So really, some local hacker-space needs to put out a quick "how to keep your school from snooping all over your shite" primer as a good-will measure.
That said, this could teach students two very important things: reputation management and subterfuge. These are good things to know in an emergent surveillance state.
I'll also be amused to see how long it takes for someone to successfully troll the monitors. Get to work kids!
Which is the entire point of autotune. Fix the rare slip. Unfortunately, far too many talentless hacks pushed by record executives because they have "the right look" can only perform with autotune turned up to eleven.
A certain amount of blame has to be put on audience here, for insisting that the live performance sounds *exactly* like the album track. Used to be, small mistakes were part of the live experience. Now that autotune prevents mistakes, what matter does it make if you're fixing one note or every other note?
My question is this- why should musicians (or athletes, etc.) make millions of dollars for making music?
The same reason sports stars make millions of dollars.
Also, don't confuse "musician" with "performer".
I mean, if you aren't even practicing your material to create segments you can play back basically the same way multiple times, upon request -- aren't you conveniently skipping over a standard prerequisite of being a musician?
Actually sounds a fair bit like jazz or blues improv to me.
Not making a funny - you get a bunch of jazz musicians together, and you'll get about what you describe - the bare minimum of chord structure and a whole lot of people doing their own thing. (I've heard a song opened by "OK, twelve-bar blues in A - two three four").
My argument is that there are at least as many reasons for wanting to compel a defendant to testify. And I don't see the argument for why there should be a sacred right of the defendant not to answer questions, but not for third-party witnesses. (Some people on these boards keep saying things like "Because that's self-incrimination!", as if repeating the definition somehow amounts to an argument.)
As an example, let's put you on the stand - question #1 is "What crimes have you committed?"
Remember, perjury is a crime in itself, so don't forget anything...
So paying someone not to testify would be illegal. Now, if witnesses had the option of not testifying, you might be worried that they would illegally take cash under the table to refuse to testify. That's true, but we already have the equivalent problem in the existing system, where witnesses can be forced to testify but you could just as easily bribe them to lie on the stand.
Except that under the current plan, we're both committing a crime (one is bribing, the other is perjury). If a person can choose whether to testify or not, I don't see how that's bribery rather than just ol' fashioned lobbying. (And we haven't touched the more obvious underhanded "Hey, I'd like to hire you for $$$$ money for this job starting out of state" methods - if you aren't compelled to testify, it's a lot easier to just make it too inconvenient to bother coming back.)
Well, here's a difference: there is a cost to the defendant if they're forced to testify (self-incrimination). What is the equivalent cost to the witness?
And a more interesting question - what happens if the witness is forced to the stand and declines to take the oath? Can the government force you to take the oath under duress?
Well yes if the defendant is guilty and they're forced to testify, they might get caught, but is that a bad thing? Unless a law is really unjust, dont' we want guilty people to get caught? If you're worried that someone innocent will be put on the stand, declare their innocence, and then get railroaded anyway, I already responded to this in the original article -- if the court is corrupt or incompetent enough to railroad you without sufficient evidence, they can do that with or without your testimony.
I think you're sidestepping a couple points here. It's entirely possible that there are any number of reasons I don't want the guilty person to get caught. You mention "unjust law". Let's add "close friend/family member" and "I don't want to get involved" as the obvious reasons why a person may want an *accused* person to go free, but society at a whole doesn't.
Or, perhaps Alice knows that the search of Bob's possessions will reveal a crime* Alice committed (that is unrelated to what they're after Bob for). Under current law she can't plead the Fifth (because Bob's offense doesn't relate to her), but being forced to testify *does* incriminate her (because her crime will come to light)
Or, what may be happening in this case: The prosecution can make a case against Bob, but not Alice. They charge Bob, compel Alice to testify, hoping that enough details come to light that they can later make the case against Alice.
1. "If witnesses are allowed the option of not testifying, all a criminal needs to do to avoid conviction is convince the witnesses not to testify. I'll leave it up to you to think of ways he could do that (many of which, if not testifying is an option, would be perfectly legal)." I don't think this makes sense. Just because it's legal to do X does not mean it's legal to intimidate someone into doing X. It's legal for Bob to give you his wallet but not legal for you to coerce him into doing it.
Sure it does. I'm Mr. Moneypants. I commit a crime in front of a witness (that doesn't directly affect you - you were just a bystander). I send my lawyer/accountant/flunky to the witness and say "hey, here's a check for ten million bucks in exchange for you not testifying." How many people in the US are going to turn that down, particularly if they're not emotionally attached to the crime?
2. All your points about the difficulty of prosecuting a case without third-party witnesses, are correct, however I addressed this in the article -- this is basically an argument that if you had to choose between compelling testimony from a defendant and compelling testimony from third-party witnesses, you would choose testimony from third-party witnesses just because there are often more of them, and no hope of getting a conviction otherwise. However, since you don't actually have to choose between the two, my question is: Is there a principled argument, from first principles about rights of the state vs. rights of the individual, as to why we should be allowed to require answers from third party witnesses but not defendants? If we require answers from third party witnesses because those answers are valuable, why can't we require answers from the defendant if they might be valuable too?
Well, here's a difference: there is a cost to the defendant if they're forced to testify (self-incrimination). What is the equivalent cost to the witness?
And a more interesting question - what happens if the witness is forced to the stand and declines to take the oath? Can the government force you to take the oath under duress?
Maybe because there are no worthwhile Wii U games compared to the 3DS?
This.
The Wii U is fine as a console (yes, yes, it doesn't have a gazillion pixels or whatever), and there are some great examples of what you can do with the tablet-screen. There's just no damned games for the thing.
Not quite. They are obligated to pay you for the time that you work. That is all. If you give two weeks notice, and they walk you out the door and ask you not to come back, they are not obligated to pay for the rest of that time. Otherwise people would give 5 years notice when they think they are about to be fired.
Not in my corner of the world - the notice is limited to the legally-required amount (two weeks) unless specified to be more in the employment contract, but if I give notice and they walk me out the door that day, I still get paid for that time. It's actually not that uncommon, particularly in management and sales (areas where they don't want you making decisions for the last couple weeks).
If only to have mod points...
Here's the thing to remember - if you're on salary, you are not paid by the hour. And odds are your employer didn't write specific hours into your contract, because they always want to squeeze extra hours out of you for free. (Or to be more charitable, to have some flexibility.)
The last time I had a boss try the "expected hours" line on me (which if memory serves was after staying multiple hours late over several days, and then coming in a half-hour later the next day), I simply suggested that if he was concerned that I wasn't at work enough, we should change my employment to hourly. I'll punch in and punch out (for lunch and breaks too!), and in a month we'll see who's coming out ahead.
Subject never came up again.
1 If I'm the hiring person and you don't give your current employer notice then I'll assume that you are a snake and will do the same to me later, regardless of whether I would need knowledge transition at that point. You're talking a professional (knowledge) position here, right?
On the other hand, most jobs I've got (knowledge or otherwise) want you ASAP - if you can get out of your old job sooner all the better for them.
On a more practical note, I've seen people get punted the day they gave notice (in one case, for "business confidentiality reasons", in the other because the employee had vacation pre-booked and the company preferred to get them off the benefits sooner rather than later). Modern corporations have made it quite clear that their loyalty to employees is on a day-to-day basis. (Small companies are a different kettle of fish.)
2 How sure are you that you won't ever want the old job as a reference? I've been surprised at how well some older references have worked for me.
Can you even get a job as a reference anymore? Last I checked corps wouldn't give a reference (beyond "confirm dates of employment"). (And again, working for Real People instead of Paper People changes your mileage.)
There's no way that'll happen "for real", but if that's not part of the next Red Nose (or whatever that charity they do shorts for every year), something is Terribly Wrong with the universe.
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry up is not nailed down. -- Collis P. Huntingdon, railroad tycoon
