@ScottPack Further proof that SCOTUS is really nothing but a bunch of politicians. Only politicians could have figured a way to grant federal benefits to gay married couples without actually weighing in on whether or not gay marriage should be legal in general.
The status of DOMA is still a bit unclear to me. Media seems to be saying it's struck down wholesale. I'm not sure the ruling is quite so broad. However, I haven't read the whole thing either. There's this thing called "work" that society says I should probably be doing instead right now.
> In a 5-4 ruling in United States v. Windsor, the court struck down a provision of the 17-year-old Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that denies federal benefits -- like Social Security benefits or the ability to file joint tax returns -- to same-sex couples legally married.
So they did two things that were kind of interesting. By striking down the provision that denied federal spousal rights to same sex couples they made a declaration that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutional.
Refusing to hear the Prop8 case means that they deferred to the lower courts decision, which was to strike it down ( selectively so in some situations apparently).
Strictly speaking, they just said allowing the federal government to treat certain marriages, as recognized by the states, differently than others is unconstitutional.
@ScottPack Again, strictly speaking, this is not the case. They refused to hear it because it wasn't brought to them correctly, not because they thought the lower court was or wasn't correct in their ruling.
It makes me wonder if the 5th vote was on the fence and the combo punch was to bring it over. Allowing one group of judges to keep their social justice cred whilest allowing the other judges to keep their conservative cred.
@ton.yeung SCOTUS' decision enforces federal benefits for married gay couples. Legalizing or banning gay marriage itself is still up to the states at this point.
I can understand that some people are skeptical to allow gay couples to adopt children (I don't mind that either) but marriage is not something which involves anyone else
@ton.yeung About 2-3 years later we got parties :)
I was actually pretty freaked out when we first moved to Ohio. Just 8 months after we were married, and moved to a new state, we got to vote on a state DOMA. The original text of that amendment could easily have been interpreted to invalidate our marriage, since it was not performed by a religious official.
So... Windows 8.1 allows you to accept incoming Skype calls from the lock screen. Anyone else wondering if there might be an exploitable hole there somewhere?
and agreed, C.G.P Grey explains FPTP and alternative voting systems exceedingly well.
in the UK we generally have the Labour party running things most of the time, then occasionally flick over to the Conservatives every 30 years or so when the Labour guys fuck up hard (e.g. continuing to spend ludicrously after the recession hit) and once every 70 years or so we elect or minority-elect (see: current coalition with Con / Lib-Dem) some 3rd party.
so we're barely even 2-party.
we're 1 party for the good times and 1 party for the bad times
and a third party most people don't listen to, but only get in when both parties fuck up royally.
@Iszi I'll be watching them (again!) on my phone on the way home.
@ton.yeung essentially the alternative vote is statistically fairer, and helps smaller parties gain traction
I disagree.
the current systems are favourable to the powerful and wealthy because the powerful and wealthy are in charge of maintaining the system.
everyone in power wants to maintain the power they have, and get more power.
everyone with money wants to maintain the income they have, and get more money.
@ton.yeung if he's doing it for informed reasons, then he is a wise man.
though many people just don't vote out of ignorance for politics.
> Questions asking us to break the security of a specific system for you are off-topic unless they demonstrate an understanding of the concepts involved and clearly identify a specific problem.
@LucasKauffman both parties are polar extremes in terms of world view (conservative vs. liberal) and therefore don't really have to make any important policies.
@LucasKauffman sure, but when was the last time you saw a REALLY out-there policy during elections? it's all "more money on education" and "a better tomorrow" and all the shiny unicorn farts and stock pictures of clouds they can come up with.
@ton.yeung it's a new close-vote option for when we VtC on questions that are poor quality
@Polynomial ehm, I did last elections and the same will happen with the upcoming ones. Why do you think we didn't have a government for more than 500 days :p
nope because it got really complex, the main party involved in Flanders was a moderate nationalist party who wants to prevent money transfers from Flanders to Wallonia and on the long term move to a confederate system rather than being one country. BUT they only had 28.5% (which is huge since most parties only got like 8-10%)
@ScottPack now here's the funny bit, in Wallonia they had a socialist party who did exactly the same thing who were completely opposite of the flemish nationalist party. But they to had a large portion of votes in Wallonia (Flanders and Wallonia have different parties) normally after the elections you need to form an alliance with enough parties to have most of the votes on your side
but because both of the parties were so opposed to eachother they needed to make alliances which smaller parties
which made it even more difficult
in the end a few flemish parties went together with the socialist party and the nationalist party went into opposition
results are now that they expect the nationalist party to get even more votes than last time. And they might even get so much votes they will control 40% of the parliament on their own
The good part about the 500 days without government was that they couldn't pass any expenses which needed to be done by the government. So we ended up spending almost no money, which lowered our national deficit substantially
And the people in the system are the ones who are able to change it.
It's pretty circular. The system needs to change because it's too self-serving. However the only people that are able to change the system are the ones benefiting from it.
One of our custom off topic close reasons is the following:
Questions asking us to break the security of a specific system for you are off-topic unless they demonstrate an understanding of the concepts involved and clearly identify a specific problem.
However, isn't the purpose of this site...
There are quite a lot of extensions about browser extensions and add-ons. However, there's no tag dedicated to them.
I want to create and add the browser-extensions tag to the relevant questions. However, since I don't have free edit privileges yet, this is going to put some load on the reviewer...
Whatabout:
Questions asking us to break the security of a specific system without
demonstrating an understanding of the concepts involved and without
clearly identifying a specific problem, are considered off-topic.
@RoryAlsop Oh, sweet. The only reason why I wanna know about the wiring is because I've never heard of the shop who has replaced the engine. If the wiring job sucks, I'm gonna hate it.
It is being speculated that one of the ways that NSA leaker Edward Snowden may have created his "insurance policy"--distributing sensitive documents to various individuals with instructions to disseminate them should anything happen to him--is through the use of a partial key escrow.
The concep...
@RoryAlsop do you know within the EU legislation of people can be held liable at a personal level for "not adequately protecting personal information". For instance, someone decided to not have patch management, as a result tons of personal information was leaked due to a breach. Can this person be held liable for that?
@LucasKauffman As far as I know not yet (unless they are one of the approved persons for that function in their organisation) but it is proposed in the updated data protection legislation due out next year
One of our custom off topic close reasons is the following:
Questions asking us to break the security of a specific system for you are off-topic unless they demonstrate an understanding of the concepts involved and clearly identify a specific problem.
However, isn't the purpose of this site...
Whatabout:
Questions asking us to break the security of a specific system without
demonstrating an understanding of the concepts involved and without
clearly identifying a specific problem, are considered off-topic.
It is being speculated that one of the ways that NSA leaker Edward Snowden may have created his "insurance policy"--distributing sensitive documents to various individuals with instructions to disseminate them should anything happen to him--is through the use of a partial key escrow.
The concep...
