When people get their panties in a twist about how much "wealth" the Walton family has it just shows they don't understand what wealth is.

Their "wealth" is paper. They could be worth X millions one day and X - a butt load of money the next. It has no impact on how much they can spend at lunch or whether they get the premium cable package or the standard. It's not cash. They'd have to sell or take out loans against their shares if they wanted to go buy a Private Jet or something like that.

So the fact they are worth a few billion in paper doesn't diminish your pay check at all.

That's what they would do if they had a functioning police department or legal system in France, but they haven't had that for many years. You might remember that they had a plague of thugs setting cars on fire a year or so ago, and the cops didn't even try to arrest any of them.

-jcr

The reason it is common, is that the French government routinely caves in to the demands of whomever throws the biggest tantrum, and the French voters routinely support the appeasement. In America, causing disruption and chaos is the best way to lose public sympathy for your cause. In France it is the best way to get it.

You jest... but in Texas, we have over 800,000 concealed carry permit holders... and gun battles don't break out, well, ever between them...

I know that sometimes on Slashdot, we get 'stuff that matters,' but can't we at least talk about the police drones involved in the situation? Or even that Uber is reportedly charging users a minimum $100 to get out of Sydney CBD. At least attempt to make it seem relevant please?

The interesting thing is that, if they are using outsourced servers strategically located in Asia to avoid the long arm of the law, that people should be able attack those same servers and do pretty much anything they want to them without fear of consequences. Being beyond the law is a double edged sword, and I personally would not bet against all the hackers on the Internet in that fight...

One of the religious prohibitions in Islam is making war with fire.

If this is used it will be interesting to see the effects on recruiting by the Islamic State and other anti-US organizations among those Muslims who are currently either opposed to them or unaligned.

Also: How do you keep a 30 kW laser, at any frequency, from blinding everybody in the general direction of the target? The last I heard, weapons that blind are banned by the current "laws of war" as recognized by the western powers - and that's been the major impeidment so far to deploying laser (and other directed energy) weapons. Has something changed? Or did the current administration just decide to play with the new toy despite past promises to the other kids?

why are americans such judgemental pricks?

when you've done your time, you've done your time. that should be the end of it and, aside from some very limited cases like not letting pedos work with kids, discrimination against former criminals should be illegal....even a fuckwit yank should be able to figure out that if ex-crims can't get jobs and have no choice but crime to support themselves then that's what they'll do.

North Korea is already sanctioned pretty hard. I'm curious what happens when a nation state attacks a multinational company. Do the nations that said company is registered in team up to respond? Do they elect a body to deal with it? And if so, how large does a multinational have to be to elicit such a response?

... a bird. And airplanes hit birds on approach almost every day. Certainly every week.

N417SW SKYWEST AIRLINES FLIGHT SKW2608 BOMBARDIER CL600 AIRCRAFT ON FINAL, STRUCK BIRDS, LANDED WITHOUT INCIDENT, DAMAGE TO AIRCRAFT IS MINOR, SACRAMENTO, CA
http://www.asias.faa.gov/pls/a...

UAVs (sometimes called "drones") shouldn't be operating around airports but the likelihood of one downing a transport category aircraft is just about zero.

We have two systems of law in this country: civil and military. Unless they're bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice - which applies only to those in the uniformed services of the US. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... for more details.

Short version: they're "civilians" whether they like it or not.

The police are under civil law, therefore they are "civilians" by the definition of the word.

I employ people in the USA in small IT and EE/IC specialty design shops. Most expert-level employees seem to come with white or grey hair. One of my IT geeks is a "MT Dew Diabetic." Avoiding the maintenance of medical records is simply not an option in the USA, given our laws and court rulings. We have to comply with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), keep records of workman's comp medical restrictions, including very specific information, on what an employee may and may not do as well as provide emergency information to first responders. While often inconvenient, these are requirements I cannot avoid. Some of my employees have medical conditions (heart conditions, organ replacement, severe allergies, diabetes, unusual prescriptions of controlled sumstances, etc.) that they want known and available to first responders showing up at the office if they collapse clutching their heart or go into a sugar coma. Complicating this, if one of your customers is a Federal agency or Defense, you must, by law, have a "zero tolerance policy" for controlled substances. All this requires records to prove or excuse. For government accusations, corporations are "effectively guilty" until they prove themselves innocent with appropriate record keeping. Making this even more difficult, USA court rulings say we're also not allowed to store this information in their personal files, but must keep it in a separate, access controlled file, otherwise we could get sued if that person missed a pay raise or promotion because it was available to anyone reviewing their service and discipline records. The separate files seem silly when the teams are small enough that everyone knows each other very well anyway. Also, what if the employee who first greets the medics from the ambulance don't have easy access the secured medical files? Isn't that an even worse problem? Sued if you do. Sued if you don't. Sued if you didn't do it the nuanced way a team of $300/hr attorneys thinks you should have half-way done it. Nuisance suits are common in the USA.

As a practical matter, a lot of valuable talent is not healthy. Many experts are experts because they have been at a speciality for 30-60yrs. If you have an employee that has an epileptic seizure, you don't want the rest of the team to stand there confused and gawking. You want them to recognize it and intervening to protect that individual's head and spine from injury. I had an employee with mental health issues under the care of a psychiatrist. While she was physically 100% capable (she was young and athletic) yet she was restricted from certain emotionally triggering situations. You want their supervisor trained know what those are and how to avoid it. You want a written record, periodically refreshed, that her supervisor knows and understands. You could say "I don't want to deal with that" but then you lose out on some great talent. Imagine a physics institute that didn't want to deal with maintaining medical records for Stephan Hawking.