Likewise, if there's good reason to believe that you have a different set of books in a safe, or perhaps a murder weapon - you can be compelled to give the combination. By providing the combination you are not confessing to fraud or murder - you already left that evidence; by not providing the combination you are standing in the way of the court to evaluate the evidence.

The fuzzy line is regarding whether there's reason to search in the first place (which is more of a question regarding the Fourth). Should the simple fact that a computer may have aided the crime be probable cause? Does there have to be evidence showing which computer was utilized (like only allowing the search of one computer behind a router's firewall instead of fishing in all of the computers - and what if there's multiple owners?...).

I think a really interesting test case would be if a criminal used a confession or otherwise key incriminating evidence as the pass phrase for an encrypted device. If they plead the Fifth, and then were compelled anyway - how much would be ruled inadmissible?

Number One Priority (and of most benefit to small parties like yours): Replace first past the post voting for selecting our representatives (because we are a representative republic) with something more effective in terms of game theory. I think instant run-off would work best for the American people given our history and what we are most likely to understand and adopt readily.

What's the impact on tech policy?

At the most fundamental level, tech policy should be data driven, and there is no more fundamental data than that provided by the voters. If we implement a voting system which will optimize the decisions made by members of the republic - instead of discounting a majority of the input - we have the framework to begin implementing data-driven policy in every other aspect. Otherwise - first past the post mathematically favors two opposing policies neither of which the majority of voters truly approve (rather we pick the lesser-of-evils). With a superior voting system, the constituents can indirectly favor their own tech policy (and you might get a good statistician to do some nice post-hock voting analysis to separate out the variables and tell you exactly what the people want for tech).

If you're asking for some direct policy advice - I'll post that elsewhere

Yeah - and all those stupid tests an EMT has to pass.

So, do you think the work was intended to be re-sold? If not, then by your own argument the copyright holder does have the right to deny copying for that purpose.

A specific selective test even in the middle of dementia (symptom) identifying Alzheimer's (disease) is beneficial. There's other causes of dementia, and (until now) Alzheimer's can only be conclusively diagnosed postmortem (currently advanced imaging is used to rule out other causes of dementia by process of elimination, but diagnosis isn't confirmed until the autopsy).

Also, a successful diagnosis early in the process can eliminate much of the fear and confusion about the source of the dementia. Of course you replace that with fear regarding the disease - but at least you don't have the confusion and often family/peer conflict arising from unknown (and perhaps unrealized) early stage dementia.

Finally, I'll address Nut Job (hello AC (starter of this thread) do you mind if I address you as Nut Job, perhaps NJ for short? That'll help differentiate between you and the other ACs in this thread).

Nut Job seems to want a treatment before diagnosis of a disease which progresses asymptomatically for many years. Now I personally would prefer my doctor to not put me through a regimen of medicine, radiation, chemotherapy, organ transplant (and additional organ transplant due to the failure induced by the new standard of preventative care) based on the idea that I may come down with symptoms at some point in the future. I suspect that other people and their physicians (and regulatory bodies) may also feel the same. Now NJ, you may be thinking that I've engaged in some hyperbole and perhaps skated across the line into a common logical fallacy or two, but I'm also willing to bet that my point has been communicated. So I'll end with QED which I believe is a Latin acronym for "neener, neener!"

Not quite the good old days. Back then there was usually a bit more thought and revision put into something before the effort of setting the type and hiring the engravers. Now it's as easy as pasting one's first draft into a slashdot comment - and we all know how well thought out and revised those are ;)

Pshaw, that's nothing. Once an editor sent me an article that had body text written in a sans-serif font!

I've got a few questions about how this hypothetical system you hint at might work:

How could we prevent self-reinforcement? (i.e. authors picking their like-thinkers and friends as reviewers)

How does a prospective reader know the aproximate strength of an article - keeping track of journal reputations is a pain, keeping track of individual reviewer quality is probably near-impossible

Could we avoid overwhelming "celebrity" reviewers? It seems that leaders in the field would give up email entirely if every prospective writer hit their inbox.

How would you see revisions handled? For example, I review X and say "pretty good, but I want to see better stats on the data here. And you should discuss the implications of...", they revise (and the paper's better) and then I (and others) recommend acceptance; the paper's then published in a finished and citable form. If every time the author responds to a publicly review gives a different version of X, then there's an added headache with the readers (who may have to re-read old papers in addition to reading new ones) and citations which could get confusing - Author, "Title" Publication Source, Date, revision (X, X1, ..., X23.b7, etc...).

I think there's quite a bit of merit in self publishing for true peer review (and not just articles, but how about self published peer reviewed theses? Peer-field accredited qualifications for the people who are learning more from open online courses and textbooks? A true meritocracy of talent, knowledge, and expertise). But we'd need to get these things sorted out if we don't want HR departments throwing out CVs with a list of self published articles and self declared Ph.D.s.

I've been told off of author-pays journals (like PLOS) by supervisors and collaborators due to the money. This is especially true with preliminary studies (i.e. really extra novel) because there isn't a grant for the research yet, but it's exactly these sort of "hey look at this cool new area that still has lots of low-hanging fruit" kind of articles that would benefit most from open access (both for exposure and for the spirit of science).

Fortunately neither of the association journals I'm attached to are with Elsivier (although their management has been farmed out to slightly less massive publishing groups). If they were, I think I'd still review for them because I don't have to vote with my feet (I can vote with my vote). On the other hand, if my associations were the ones trapped in the "Elsivier captured our whole journal and we don't have rights to it anymore" boat - then I think I'd vote with my feet too.

I feel bad for the people who's professional organizations gave away all rights to their own journal... but nobody accused a group of scientists as being more cunning in a business sense than the guys who wear a tie and non-white jacket all the time.

I used to live in a state where that wasn't allowed and I used to tip based on service (generally 5% to 20% on a scale of pretty-bad to excellent). I now live in a state where the minimum wage for tipped employees is very low (federal is $2.13, states listed also) and I feel that a high percentage tip is mandatory (i.e. 20%) - anything else seems grossly unfair to the wait staff.

Set a portion (or all) of the corporate tax rate based on the ratio of CEO (or executive) salary to non-executive (or even non-management) average compensation.

The laws are already on your side: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/open-wifi-and-copyright-liability-setting-record

As the courts have already demonstrated: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/judge-copyright-troll-cant-bully-internet-subscriber-bogus-legal-theory

You aren't liable and you'll probably get a successful good free lawyer (well free to you) if anyone gives you grief.

Worried about your door kicked in? I'd say it's your civic duty - and if my reasons aren't good enough for you, maybe you'd consider the optional counter-suits like winning the lottery

It's a trap!

Pride? Spite? No, it's inertia, and the Imperial/Standard system has a lot of mass, I mean weight behind it ;)

Some units have more inertia than others - I mean most of us don't care if it's centipoise or pascal seconds for viscosity, but at a glance - from the most fundamental part of our brain's framework for visual estimation - we know we're getting cheated if we're only see four liters instead of a gallon.

It's that fundamental sensory calibration we were taught in infancy and todlery (I'm allowed to make up a word from time to time - I say so, QED) so the only way the change will really happen is via generational change - so we need to pull Standard units out of school entirely other than footnotes and charts in the back of a textbook. Note that changing the education system won't get the first round of students, but that first round will be the right smarty-pants age to correct their parents when the parents try to inoculate the second or third child in the family.

As an aside, I was in Wales several years ago helping direct a small project for kids (which means it was the old men doing the building) and because of the tape measure I had with me - I did all of the design in ft/in and converted it to metric. The old guys saw my notes and thanked me for going through the trouble of giving them proper units to work with (not the metric ones). So it is indeed a generational change, and not quite complete yet even in the UK.