I'm not endorsing it. There's nothing wrong with quoting fraud though (not making a statement either way about the above quote though). How else do you bring it to light?

I'm still of the opinion that nearly every criminal in prison can claim his or her rights were violated (and most if not all of them are likely correct one way or another). Should we let them all out? Erase or ignore or deny their convictions?

There is no objective basis to treat Armstrong's claim one way and every other criminal making essentially the same claim another way. Being a smart economist isn't enough.

If someone asks if he has any criminal convictions and he says no, he is lying. If that's the basis of some economic advantage, he'd likely be guilty of fraud.

You plead guilty to something in court, and it isn't overturned (even if, on its merits, it could be overturned), you have a conviction. Which he does, and which the original post on this topic correctly stated.

Let it go. You are not personally responsible for his status as a convicted criminal. Why do you even make such a big deal about it? Why not the thousands or even millions of other people whose rights are violated, and probably many is worse ways than his?

How about this:

According to court records, he has a criminal conviction.

Does that make you feel better?

See above.

There was no shit trolling, just being accurate about his criminal record. That set you off, for reasons unknown.

I really didn't know about his trying to weasel out of his criminal record by claiming "My rights has been violated!" like every two bit criminal in the slammer (and most of them are probably right, but also largely guilty in fact), but it makes me lose a bit of respect for him. He's still a smart economist though, no taking that away.

Sorry dude, but you did that. You're responsible for your own well being, so learn some restraint, eh?

Who appointed you advocate for Armstrong's constitutional rights anyway? He's not the first one to get a raw deal from the system, and won't be the last. If you take personal responsibility for every injustice in the world, you're gonna tie up a lot more days.

The unlock_time stuff works the same in all cryptonotes afaik, except maybe XDN, which has implemented their "savings accounts on the blockchain" idea (when you lock you get interest).

The MINED_MONEY_UNLOCK is a bit different. That locks newly-mined coins so chains of transactions aren't broken if those coins cease to exist after a chain reorg. Before using those coins the chain has to settle/mature a bit.

I don't really know of the purpose for unlock_time feature though.

There are definitely parts of the upcoming fork that are not ready and need to be in binaries otherwise people running the "new' binaries may fork the network. There may also be a few outstanding bugs and build issues, but I'm not sure about that, as a bunch of those have been resolved in the past week or two, so that may be getting close to ready now.

The core team ultimately makes the call but I don't think any of us (nor any of the other developers working on it) believe it is ready yet so there isn't a close call to be made.

Actually no, you could just leave well enough alone when I said that he had been convicted but is not necessarily disreputable because that is a factually correct statement.

And as I said, stuff he posts on his blog does not count as a credible evidence or a valid legal argument. It's one sided, selectively reported, not subject to cross examination, unauthenticated, etc. and may even be completely made up.

He does have a tendency to make things up too.

Google for "you are supposed to plead in your own words". The only hit for that phrase on the entire internet is from his blog. He made it up.

The Supreme Court has explicitly endorsed negotiated plea agreements (contracts, which may be drafted by either party, as long as agreed by both), as well as the structured questioning of the defendant by the judge that the agreement is being entered into voluntarily, there is actual guilt, etc.

The court transcript disagrees. Provide evidence to the contrary that doesn't come from his blog (not under oath, not cross examined, years later, he can say whatever the hell he wants), otherwise this argument is just a bunch of fluff. It may, in theory, even be 100% correct, but without evidence it is still fluff.

Well yes virtually everyone is committing crimes and could probably be convicted even if the trial process were completely fair.

Again, not fair, but fair and sane and legal are distinct concepts.

There's the jailhouse lawyer version, and the real world version.

The whole system is not fair. It's terribly corrupt. It's abused. It is what it is.

So we open up the prisons and let them all out? Because I'm pretty sure that very few convictions in our system occur without some form of abuse, if you look carefully enough. As AP said, it's become institutionalized. (Even fewer without some claimed abuse.)

For the second time, the authority of the courts over all disputes, including disputes arising under the Constitution itself, is established right in the Constitution.

You don't get to decide whether his conviction was proper. He doesn't get to decide (and certainly not by posting his "legal arguments" on a blog). The courts get to decide.

To claim otherwise is to deny the structure of Constitution itself (Article 3, specifically).

Be an anarchist if you like. I have nothing against anarchists. But don't claim to be a constitutionalist while denying the authority of the courts of the judicial branch to rule on legal disputes (including ones of a constitutional nature).


I never said his conviction was ethical. And what AP said, while amusing, is also pretty much true. What is legal and what is ethical and/or sane are not the same thing.


Yeah that's pretty much true. But I object to TPTB's approach on this because the conclusion of that approach is useless. So many cases disregard the Constitution in one way or another (if you look hard enough for something, probably almost all of them) that if you are going to view court convictions as not being "real" convictions you might as well just tear down the prisons and let everyone out.

Fine, then he should go to court, prove it, and have his conviction overturned. Until that happens, he's a convicted criminal. If you ask me, given the degree of injustice in our system, that is often a badge of honor.

The system is unfair and quite clearly corrupt in many ways. For example, in one of those other blog posts you just quoted (another non-sequteur with respect to his case but I'll play along):


I'm pretty sure that is largely true. We do have an actual statement from the former Attorney General about "too big to jail" after all. Which makes it all very unfair, but doesn't change the fact of his conviction.

Sorry, but his statements on a blog don't count as legally anything. It's a damn blog, not a courtroom.

Did he go to court and prove his claim of unconstitutional misconduct?

If not then the conviction stands.

Furthermore I see no evidence whatsoever that he did not have the option to refuse the plea and go to trial, as a trial date had been set.

Sure, and by its own terms, the courts get to decide. Has his conviction been vacated?

Don't bother with your non-sequeturs.

If you don't have a court document vacating his conviction anything further that you post is a bunch of opinion.

You are arguing that he was wrongly convicted. That's nice but he was still convinced. Has the conviction been thrown out? If not, then he stands convicted with a criminal record. The previous poster on the thread was correct (at least as to the conviction; again, whether it is dishonorable is another matter).

Furthermore your quoted passage about him not having a trial was a complete non-sequteur. He pled guilty, despite having the option of a trial for which there was already a date set.

Sorry, the guy is smart and insightful, but he's also convicted criminal. (But who knows depending on your point of view maybe that is a badge of honor!) It does not good to try to spin it any other way.

That's incorrect. He was held in civil contempt for seven years, then pled guilty (i.e. convicted), and then was sentenced to 5 years in prison for that conviction. In the transcript of his plea hearing he was told he could still plead not guilty and get a trial (in fact he even had a trial date):



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/58/Armstrong_guilty_plea.pdf

Was it fair? Quite possibly not, but he does have a criminal conviction on his record. That is a fact.

TPTB his guilty plea counts as a conviction. You don't need a trial to be convicted.

Dishonorable is subjective though. If you think the charges were bullshit then there is nothing dishonorable about being (wrongly) convicted of them.

Yes, but this is your higher-prioritized principle, not theirs. People who value (a degree of) collectivism see your adherence to extreme individual non-agression as evil (as in selfish, anti-social, etc.). There is a symmetry, not in the principles themselves, but in how people value them. At least acknowledge it.

It isn't impossible people are in fact being brainwashed, confused, raped, oppressed, exploited, etc. and that has certainly happened in history. I actually doubt this in the case of most of Europe today.

Maybe, as we discussed earlier, the people who left for various other parts of the world (and I suppose are still leaving) have influenced the mix of people left behind. A large portion of the people living in Europe today, even intelligent and well informed ones, hold sincere values more compatible with a (fairly significant) degree of collectivism than strict individual non-aggression and find the latter distasteful at best, evil at worst. This is somewhat less true in the US, but still true to an extent.

It is clear as you have pointed out in the past that we have mostly run out of frontiers, which have generally been the mechanism by which uncompromisable incompatibilities between value systems have been resolved, outside of genocide (people with one set of values leave). That may turn ugly. I guess it already is.