But wait: shouldn't it be the charge of the plaintiff to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the speech was indeed libel (false and malicious)?

To be fair, Chrome is at version 23 now. I'd say no one thinks of that browser as the "grandfather".

Really, people put way too much stock in version numbers, especially for projects with rapid release cycles.

And so begins the Great War of Semantics (undeclared)!

*gets popcorn*

A reason for opposing testing as the sole metric is that no one yet has found a completely fair and practical way to do it. Additionally, statewide testing usually means that all but the brightest students have to spend the majority of their schooling being taught how to take the test, rather than actually learning anything.

It's Facebook Connect, which is a pretty standard login method now...

I don't quite understand the level of hate against the MPAA.

I understand the hate against the RIAA, because the only real cost in producing a record is equipment, which is normally handled by the small recording studios anyway (which typically get paid at the point of recording). In the age of digital distribution, the RIAA seems pointless, since it does little to protect artists but seems to only benefit outdated middle men.

But at the moment, bankrolling a Hollywood-quality movie is no small undertaking; if the movie studios have no way of knowing that they'll recoup expenses, how can they shell out the money? (As an aside: we're already seeing some of this manifested as an aversion to financing risk-taking movies. Hence the endless sequels, remakes, and formulaic movies.). While I'll concede that the MPAA members have taken a very long time to make it easy to legally download movies (feeding piracy in the meantime), we're not at the point where high-quality movies can be made without the middle men surviving and taking in profits.

In the future, I'm sure the MPAA will become just as useless and antiquated as the RIAA. But for now, they serve a useful purpose.

But oil is consumed, and is absolutely certain to run out. Lithium can be recovered by recharging the cell, and even once the cell reaches the end of its lifetime, the lithium hasn't gone anywhere and could be recovered.

Besides, no one familiar with energy economics is pushing lithium-ion/next-gen for large-scale installations (read: grid storage), which is where the plan to use lithium-ion would certainly unravel. Once you move larger than a car, fuel cells are much more feasible.

The point of SETI@home is to make use of otherwise unused CPU time. This new application is much more hands-on, allowing for human-based pattern identification (we are awfully good at that, after all).

Or doesn't get cable, or even own a TV. I stream every show I watch from Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime Instant.

It happens further up the chain, too: I had a professor in undergrad who found out, from his TA, that a good percentage of students were cheating on his exams. He went berserk, called out every single one of them, and told them they were receiving an "F" for the term.

Turns out a couple of them had a nice little chat with the department chair, and suddenly the professor was instructed to allow them back into class, and give them no less than a "D" on the exam (which would allow them to pass the class; only a 2.0 average was required to graduate). I guess keeping the matriculation rate high among upperclassmen meant more to the department than academic honesty...

Can you? In the same article (penal code) you cited:

(a)(3) refers to

Note that I did not hightlight (a)(1), which refers to just a bit more than bruises. In the same section:

By this law, which you cited, the girl was not a child. She was, however, disabled, so (a)(3) is the area you should be looking at. Seems like this is what the district attorney knew, which is why the statue of limitations expired. This all means that the statute of limitations is 5 years, since it was not a first-degree felony.

You make the claim in a sub-post that this crime is somehow elevated to a first-degree felony. Care to cite how? The law seems to spell things out pretty clearly here.

According to a quote from the district attorney from the Texas county in question:

Also according to the article:

According to the link you posted (emphasis mine):

I don't agree with beating children, and especially disabled children, but the crime was not severe enough under current laws to be a felony, and the statute of limitations expired.

Yes, the Mainstream Media is carefully covering up the biggest story, copyright infringement, and instead focusing on the lesser evil, battery against a 16-year-old suffering from ataxic cerebral palsy.

Depends which game you're gambling on...