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2) The story here is based on Microsoft's press release, describing their end of the settlement. Elliot Spitzer is busy right now, lessee, fining a radio station for a promotion in which participants, usually young women, took turns violently slapping each other.

Just more of the reasons why p2p is a friend to the indie and just a few of the many reasons why the big record companies are going the way of the dinosaurs.

CD Price fixing class action [antitrust] lawsuit against the big music labels settled:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-cd-settle ment.htm
http://www.musiccdsettlement.com/english/default.h tm

The full suit can be downloaded here(quite interesting I may add)
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2000/aug/aug08a_0 0_attach.pdf

And just in case you weren't sure how the music industry works (and why we are inundated with lackluster crap advertised on the knob.....errrr, i mean 'played' on the radio by big manufactured label artists)!!

We've all known for a long time that contemporary pop music stinks. We hear "hits" on the radio and wonder, "How can this be?" Now we know. And memos from both Sony's Columbia and Epic Records senior vice presidents of promotions circa 2002-2003 -- whose names are redacted in the reports but are well known in the industry -- spell out who to pay and what to pay them in order to get the company's records on the air.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163537,00.html

Recording industry titan Sony BMG Music Entertainment agreed Monday to pay $10 million and stop bribing radio stations to feature its artists in what a state official called a more sophisticated generation of the payola scandals of decades ago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/25/AR2005072501025.html?sub=AR

Not completely true. A few U.S. States (such as New York) have common law copyright protection for some works. See Capitol Records, Inc. v. Naxos of America, Inc., 372 F.3d 471 (2d Cir. 2004). http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/20 05/2005_02570.htm

In general, cattle are stupid. In general, people who sit in front of a house with their computer accessing the Internet from an open access point nearby know what they are doing, and they probably know that the person with that access likely doesn't want them using it.

But let's take the Internet free/open bit a little further.

So I have a wireless router on my house. It's unsecured. You're claiming that somehow, this gives someone the right to connect to it. Fine. But why does it give them the right to connect to my Internet service? Simply because the router routes information by default? Rubbish.

Let's move to analogies. My property doesn't have a fence around it, so in theory, anyone can come up to my garbage can and put things in it. People without trash service could, in theory, drive up to my house with their garbage bags and place them in my trash can. Then, when my trash service comes to collect the trash, they take the other person's trash away.

Around here, that's called "illegal dumping" (laws may vary from municipality to municipality). Even though my property is open, my trash can is unlocked, and I don't have a no-trespassing sign up, I could call the cops and have someone hauled away if I caught them putting trash in my trash can.

Let's look at another example, this time with a slightly more plentiful resource than the small space in my trash bin. How about water? I have a water hose on the outside of my property. If I caught someone using it, I could have them arrested, despite my lack of a fence, surveillance, or a posted sign that says that no one is allowed to use the water.

Now in both cases above, it's pretty plausible to argue that someone has to pay for the service, and that unauthorized use of the service may cost someone money. Why isn't the same said of computers? There are plenty of ISPs around that still use metered service, and even if there weren't, anyone using my unlimited service may be infringing on my use of it if I am doing anything on the network at the time.

Regardless, it looks like laws vary from state to state.

Texas, for example, seems to side with me. If you don't have the person's consent to access their computer, it is a crime to do so.

(a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly accesses a computer, computer network, or computer system without the effective consent of the owner.

New York, however, sides with you, as there must be a posted notice before computer trespass occurs.

I don't particularly care to go through all the laws, however there is a listing at http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/cip/hacklaw.htm , and suffice it to say, I tend to side with Texas on this one. I should be able to leave my computer and network unprotected and have people assume that I don't allow access unless I give it. I'm not saying it's smart to do so, but the default status should not be, "if I can get to it, I can use it."

Of course, the catch ultimately is that, even in states like Texas, does the SSID broadcast count as consent? Possibly, but the intent behind the law seems to be that active consent is required, so it's impossible to know how such a case would be interpreted.

When northern NY was hit by the massive ice storm in 1998, Spitzer laid down the law on price gouging really quick. And even went so far as to get peoples money refunded.http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2000/dec /dec11a_00.html

Check out his office's website at http://www.oag.state.ny.us/ Quite possibly the most helpful gov't webpage I've ever been on. Yeah, Spitzer is a good AG.. and I'm a Republican no less!

When northern NY was hit by the massive ice storm in 1998, Spitzer laid down the law on price gouging really quick. And even went so far as to get peoples money refunded.http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2000/dec /dec11a_00.html

Check out his office's website at http://www.oag.state.ny.us/ Quite possibly the most helpful gov't webpage I've ever been on. Yeah, Spitzer is a good AG.. and I'm a Republican no less!

In case you're wondering who's in your neighborhood...

Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Alabama [state.al.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Alaska [state.ak.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Arizona [az.gov]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Arkansas [megans-law.net]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of California [ca.gov]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Colorado [state.co.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Connecticut [state.ct.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Delaware [state.de.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Florida [state.fl.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Georgia [ganet.org]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Hawaii [megans-law.net]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Idaho [state.id.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Illinois [state.il.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Indiana [in.gov]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Iowa [iowasexoffender.com]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Kansas [accesskansas.org]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Kentucky [state.ky.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Louisiana [lsp.org]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Maine [megans-law.net]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Maryland [state.md.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Massachusetts [mass.gov]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Michigan [state.mi.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Minnesota [state.mn.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Mississippi [state.ms.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Missouri [missouri.gov]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Montana [state.mt.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Nebraska [state.ne.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of Nevada [nvsexoffenders.gov]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of New Hampshire [nh.gov]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of New Jersey [njsp.org]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of New Mexico [state.nm.us]
Registered Sex Offenders In The State Of New York [sta

Okay, let's use that metaphor. The postman has 50 lbs of mail for you every day. 45 lbs are fraudulent or advertising some sort of snake oil/porn site. Your mailbox holds 7 lbs of mail. The postmaster has a list of people who send mail to every email address on the face of the earth and a good number of addresses that don't exist. The postman takes those sending addresses and uses them to weed out roughly 40 lbs of mail, so your mailbox is only half full of crap instead of 90%. Unfortunately, you just lost 30% of your mail because it wouldn't fit.

Then deliver 7 pounds of mail per day over a 7 (and some fraction) day period. This is totally irrelevant though, because if something won't fit in your mailbox, the postman will come to your door and tell you about the package or packages and require you to sign for them because they couldn't be transmitted to their legal receptacle (the mailbox).

Irrelevant. Nobody expects that email is a reliable transport, and sending mail is no proof of receipt. The legal status of email is largely irrelevant to the question.

Um, what?

I did a google search on e-mail site:.gov and came up with tons of results. Here's one:
http://www.doiu.nbc.gov/orientation/email.html
This page describes the Department of the Interior's email policy.
They say: e-mail systems are highly reliable for transmitting messages.
They also say: Q4. If my outgoing message is a record, should I ask for a return receipt to make sure that the person I sent it to got it?

A4. It is not necessary to ask for a return receipt or read receipt in e-mail any more than it is necessary in hard copy. We don't send all letters certified mail. If it is important to document for the record the time that a message was opened, then that receipt must be retained along with the message for as long as the message is retained. You also need to have some means of linking the receipt to the message so it is clear what outgoing message the receipt documents.

So they acknowledge openly that the mail could be intercepted in transit, just as postal mail could, but they still consider it to be highly reliable.

From a state government website (Kentucky):
http://www.kdla.ky.gov/recmanagement/tutorial/emai l.htm
Electronic Mail (e-mail) is an important communication tool for conducting government business in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Increasingly, government agencies use e-mail systems to distribute memos, circulate drafts, disseminate directives, transfer official documents, send external correspondence, and support various aspects of government operations.

Disseminate directives? Transfer OFFICIAL documents?

The office of the attorney general in New York began accepting document service by email in 2003:
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/serviceag/serviceag.htm l
Except as set forth in paragraph 2, below, beginning January 1, 2003, the Attorney General's Office will participate in the Court of Claims' Filing by Electronic Means (FBEM) pilot project and will accept service by e-mail of the following documents

Digging back into the internet stone age, is this article from the year 2000, Judge allows subpoenas delivered via email. If Y2K wasn't your bag though, 2002 saw a different judge uphold the validity of process serving by e-mail.

Do I need to keep going to illustrate how totally wrong you are not only about the reliability of email, but of the perceived reliability of email? (I shouldn't have to, but this is slashdot, after all)

As to the l

New York state already has something similar in substance to this. You simply fill out the IT-100 form, fill in your wages earned for the year and sent it to the state. They take the info provided, and send you a complete statement of what taxes you paid with annotated explanations.

Every county in New York State (and a few cities) have different sales taxes on top of the state rate of 4%. See this 0.4MB PDF, Publication 718, for more information.

As far as I know, most states in the union have this same problem.

That's what you call an "incurable optimist". What about the last 10 years of US legislative or judicial history makes you think that the big media companies will ever let copyright expire? See, for instance, Capitol Records vs. Naxos

What O'Gara did is without a doubt unethical, and I for one don't mourn her firing. However, notwithstanding PJ's fears of becoming a suicide victim, I don't see where this rises to the level of stalking. According to New York, in order for it to be stalking, the perpetrator has to have been "previously clearly informed to cease that conduct." Taking a phone number from a published press release, using it to get an address and then knocking on the door is not stalking. Even getting a forwarding address from a property manager and then knocking on that door is not stalking. If O'Gara made threats and repeatedly showed up at PJ's door after being told not to come back, it'd be a different story. This is unethical, but I don't see where it's illegal.

If I were P.J., I'd be filing charges on O'Gara right now. Her actions are likely sufficient to fall under 18 USC 875(c), the Interstate Stalking Punishment and Prevention Act of 1996. She traveled across state lines in an effort to violate the privacy of an individual who has quite reasonable fear for her safety. O'Gara may also be liable under New York's anti-stalking laws as well.

At the very least, I'd be filing for a restraining order by now.

Furthermore, Sys-Con was exceptionally negligent in ever allowing that sort of thing to be published. Not only is it a gross and blatant violation of journalistic ethics, but it's quite possibly opened them up to a devastating legal action.

It's beyond disgusting that something like that would ever be published - most bloggers wouldn't dream of pulling crap like that, but to have a supposedly "professional" organization allow potentially libelous and obviously private information to be disseminated is absolutely unconscionable.

A note from mom is worth 4 points. (Assuming that note is a properly signed MV-45 form. http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/idlicense.htm#idpoint s )

This isn't the law as it is taught to state troopers in New York:

Keep in mind that since the law is very specific about sexual conduct or "lewd exhibition," images that simply contain nudity ("nature" pictures) are not considered child pornography in New York State. Internet Crimes Against Children

But, to be blunt, I think your post is pure fantasy. State Laws on Obscenity, Child Pornography and Harassment

I'm surprised nowhere in the writeup does it mention that Spitzer works for the New York State government, not the US Federal Government. There is a difference.

http://www.oag.state.ny.us/

The Attorney General of the US would never stand up for citizens.

For one, most schools are funded through property taxes, so if property values do not keep up with inflation (or assessments are not updated every year), then the school will effectively be getting less money.

The tax rate goes up if assessments go down, but the levy (the total amount of revenue raised) stays the same, unless it's changed through the political process.

MapQuest was supplied with imagery by GlobeXplorer. Both Keyhole (hence Google) and GlobeXplorer use a mix of public and private sources, so some of what you see on one service is also on the other. For example, many states have started taking their own aerial photos, which are made available online. I live in NY, and Google shows me the same image of my house that I can get more easily from NYSGIS (at 1 foot resolution, too, whereas Google only goes down to 1 meter). GlobeXplorer, however, has 6 inch resolution imagery for my area (which was in turn acquired from AirPhotoUSA, I believe), so they show that instead. In general, different imagery providers will have different groups of datasets, some of which overlap, so some areas will have the same imagery and some will not.

about the state HILLARY CLINTON is in charge of

When did New Yorkers vote United StatesSenator Clinton into the governors office? I think State Governor Pataki would be surprised to see Senator Clinton sitting at his desk.

I'm not sure about Florida tax law, but chances are the income is taxable by both states.

Just be sure to fill out your NY IT-112-R and NY will give you a tax credit against the Florida taxes.

Sense of proportion - Copyright infringement: Max 3 years, Murder - 25 to Life. I see a sense of proportion

You can get probation for some pretty serious crimes, including attempted murder and rape. I think the sense of perspective is a bit out of whack here.

I never thought my state's Attorney General had a penchant for stargazing. Or naming telescopes after himself.

I don't know how current your coal prices are, but go look up the latest spot prices; they're avidly profit-taking in the wake of skyrocketing natural gas, and they've got a lot of room to keep doing so...

Direct solar energy availability matches extremely well with peak demand in most parts of the United State - for an example in Long Island, see SEIA's comments to the NYRPS, or the studies in the biography at Small Is Profitable. Have you seen data which contradicts this empirical work?

Less than 1% of on-grid solar installations involve battery storage in any way - and tehy haven't since the late 1970s. Your objections to chemical batteries in regards to solar energy are about as technically legitimate as objections to automobiles because of their noisy superchargers and NOS injectors.

The direct current to alternating current inverter (sans storage outside perhaps a small capacitor) also ties into the grid, where energy storage is handled. As for scalability at end use, they're coming up on half a dozen megawatt-plus rooftop installations.

I wish it were simpler to overcool, deoxygenate, and otherwise destroy the downstream ecosystems of major watersheds, induce greenhouse methane production in the benthic layer of reservoirs, remove thousands of acres from the public domain and ecosystem, regulate discharges for the use of dozens of interested parties without overroding the channel, eliminate the reproductive cycle of economically important fish species and negotiate dozens of irrigation, intrastate, and international water treaties, all while creating an enormous target for natural disaster or intentional sabotage, but it isn't;

=P Intra-resource ragging aside, no power source is simple, nor free, but you should be up to date on your competitors, and there's no point to trotting out technical objections that are dated or untrue...

So were are all the good open source EDMS?

Exactly! New York State (where I live) has sales tax exemption for the hardware I buy for work. Not quite a refund, but, just as good.

Oh wait Congress sends federal funds to local schools.

In the event that the administrator is acting as an agent of Congress, then the instructions Congress can give him are indeed limited by the first amendment. However, the specific comment to which I was responding was: "Once you talk government, you talk first amendment", and it is emphatically false.

The first amendment ONLY applies to the federal government. There are other levels of government that are completely immune to it.

In your view, the police department could walk in to the local newspaper

No. In my view, the police department is a function of state government, and the state constitution provides it's own promise of freedom of speech completely separate from the first amendment of the national constitution.

Indeed, the fact that each state independently created it's own Freedom of Speech right proves that I'm correct: because if the national Constitution's Bill of Rights applied to all levels of government, there would've been no need for the states to provide a Bill of Rights as well! It'd have been redundant.

Section 1 of the the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Nothing you quoted there contradicts me in anyway. No state shall abridge those protections... the protection is specifically that "Congress shall make no law restricting freedom of speech"... therefore states cannot make a law allowing Congress to abridge freedom of speech. But the state can still do so on its own, because the Constitution has no protection against it.

Note that in the Bill of Rights, only 1 of the 10 amendments applies to national, state, and local governments equally: the right to bear arms cannot be infringed by anyone. All the other rights are protected solely from infringement by the federal Congres.

Note further that most states of the USA provide their own guarantee of freedom of the press, but this is not "the First Amendement". In New York, for example, it's the eigth amendment.

You're probably thinking of the common law concept that the finder of lost property acquires title to that property that is good against all but the true owner. Some (many? most? all?) states in the U.S. have statutes that at the very least add some stipulations to this concept.

For example, in New York State, the law states that if you find something worth $20 or more you must within 10 days either return it to the owner (if the owner is known), or bring it to a police station. If you do not, you are guilty of a misdemeanor and can be sentenced to six months in jail. So yes, not returning found items is a criminal offense in New York State.

The police then hold on to the item for a set period of time (varying from three months to three years based on its value), and if at the end of that period the owner has not claimed it, you as the finder get title to it (make sure you pick it up quickly, though -- after 10 days the cops get to sell it). You can read the text of the applicable law here.

Microsoft's $10b is a lot, but it's nowhere near New York.

Actual statistics show that men are more likely to cause car accidents regardless of whether alcohol is involved.

(warning: the following is not backed up with links because I can't find the info right now, so mod me down if you want)

Notice that you got modded up, not down. You are thinking that slashdot moderators are a bunch of rational males who will evaluate your post based on its substance. As it turns out, you got modded "informative" despite the fact that your unsubstantiated assertions are contradicted by actual accident statistics.

Why? Because emotionally, it's hard for us males to accept that women don't get into as many accidents as males, whether you look at complete smash-ups or reversing into lampposts. So we concoct a fiction to help our mental model of the world to be more favorable to ourselves. This is not rationality.

Tackhead: Privacy is dead. Get over it. But if you don't like it, don't look to the constitution for a right to it, because it ain't there.

Of course not. Here's the Supreme Court's words on it, for anyone who continues to disagree with you:

From Katz v. United States: The Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional "right to privacy." That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all. Other provisions of the Constitution protect personal privacy from other forms of governmental invasion. But the protection of a person's general right to privacy - his right to be let alone by other people - is, like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States.

We CAN look to is STATE law. NYS law states that electronic communication does NOT include any communication through a tracking device. This then limits any argument based on similarities to telecommunications (as tracking devices are specifically excluded). Other than VERY limited and focused rights of privacy, New York State doesn't have a general provision for privacy. So that's useless (again, IANAL)

However, let's revisit the federal privacy issue. In Katz (and later Kyollo) employ: the Court tried to discover what the expectation of privacy would have been absent the use of the technology in question. Therefore, to determine the reasonable expectation of privacy in the case of location-tracking technology, one can ask these three questions: (1) Would it have been possible to obtain the same information without using the technology?; (2) If so, would it have been possible to use the data without additional computer processing?; and (3) If the alternate means of obtaining this information had been employed, or if the additional data processing had been performed, would either have constituted unreasonable surveillance?

In fact, in a case involving Ralph Nader (yes, him) [quoting from the above epic link]: The court recognized that there is a difference between merely observing someone who happens to be in public and invading that person's privacy. Citing the example of someone who tailed Nader into a bank and watched him withdraw cash: A person does not automatically make public everything he does merely by being in a public place, and the mere fact that Nader was in a bank did not give anyone the right to try to discover the amount of money he was withdrawing. On the other hand, if [Nader] acted in such a way as to reveal that fact to any casual observer, then it may not be said that the appellant intruded into his private sphere. Clearly there is a pronounced difference between observing, even deliberately following, someone who happens to be in public and "intruding" into one's "private sphere." In Nader, the court recognized that an invasion of privacy can happen in public as well as in private.

So this is complicated. It might seem the government did a reasonable thing (tailing on a road); at the same time, the New York Court fails to account that "A person does not automatically make public everything he does merely by being in a public place". At the same time, the travel is more public than the bank transaction cited as an example. While I'm worried about this (I don't like the behavior), I also wonder what there really is to stop it (unless it gets widely used out of control - which some judges on the court then said changes the privacy issue - see Katz)

I made my argument on #5. Mayhem is not free speech.

Holding up a sign is not mayhem. How dare you characterize civil protest and free speech as "mayhem"? You are so un-American that it disgusts me.

I will not discuss the PATRIOT act because opposition to the PATRIOT act is not based on reality or rationality.

My opposition is based on reality and rationality. It's based on cherishing the rights that our ancestors fought and died for. I provided concrete, rational reasons for opposition to the PATRIOT act. You are being irrational in your refusal to discuss it.

You're wrong about the first cell-phone ban

No, I am not, as you could see by reading this press release entitled GOVERNOR PATAKI SIGNS HISTORIC CELL PHONE BAN LEGISLATION: New York Becomes First State in Nation to Ban Hand-Held Cell Phones While Driving. You will note that it is on New York state's official web site.

Your claims that I "agree" with you on other issues are, at best, misrepresentations.

Since you have apparently decided that debating in an adult manner is not of interest to you, I shall bid you farewell. Have a nice day.

Yes. Recall the New York Attorney General's successful suit against Network Associates, challenging a EULA prohibiting posting benchmarks or reviews without consent.

"Judge Orders Software Developer to Remove and Stop Using Deceptive and Restrictive Clauses" - NY AG's office

These tactics seem to work very well on the elderly.

Here are a few examples:
http://seniorhealth.about.com/library/eldercare/bl _apact1.htm
and another http://aging.state.ny.us/news/letter/0109scam2.htm

Most people will just hang up, but as with email spam, it only takes a few suckers to make the whole system profitable for the scum.

The scum would really love to get a hold of phone listing so they could send out their "you have won a prize in our free give away" calls.

In short, yes. Same goes for the Namco, C64, and other things like that that you see sold in most "reputable" stores. Although I see you use quotes around reputable, although a store such as wal mart may have a reputation.... I wouldn't necessarily trust their knowledge of the law because of this. As an anecdote for Wal-Mart in specific... My local Wal Mart sells a good number of spin fishing tackle items that contain lead. I know they sell more than one, but, one item in specific is a lead weighted indicator that I have bought. The catch is, lead fishing tackle (especially weights) is illegal in New York State [state.ny.us] (where I live). The more specialized local fishing tackle establishment (my local fly shop) knows the laws surrounding fishing (and probably has more concern for the effects of using lead tackle) more closely and doesn't sell a single lead item. The moral of this little comparison is: Just because a company is big and "reputable", doesn't mean that they don't ever break the law. (and as an aside: those 'classic-games-in-a-joystick' are probably legal, they sure use a lot of the atari/nintendo/etc branding, and that branding always seems to get a lot of attention from the copyright watch dogs.)

Thankfully when you need a new board, a link will come up to Epson.com to buy more.

In all seriousness, I find it interesting that this process cuts down "a large volume of photoresist, developer, etchants, stripping agents and other chemicals" needed for the process.

However, is this based on earlier processes or IBM's improvements in recent years?

In 2001 . "Michael Cummings, James Fuller, Jr., Timothy Krush, Mike Longo, Thomas Lyons, Curt Miller, Paul Speranza, William Wike, James Wilson, and Michael Wozniak of Endicott, New York, share $50,000 for developing and qualifying a new process that eliminated solvent use from the manufacture of ultra fine pitch (UFP) wire bond chip carrier products. A first in the industry, the team's innovations included the investigation and qualification of a dry film resist that achieves UFP's stringent photolithography specifications, while being compatible with existing printed wire board manufacturing steps. Benefits include, on an annual basis, avoiding 5.2 million pounds of chemical use, 5.6 million pounds of industrial and hazardous waste generation and off-site transport, and 110,000 pounds of process air emissions while saving over $5.6 million."

More info on here as well.

I think if you "overpromise" in order to gain business advantages worth billions of dollars, that counts as "cheated and lied". In fact, it might count as "fraud".

I don't think there's a law like that, unless you're talking about coworkers, and even then, it's really just a civil matter, not a criminal one.

Walmart actually turns out to be a great place to meet girls (not that I have actually done that). That may seem a little weird, but I don't really think it's a mental disorder, either.

Now, if you are just grabbing girls and trying to hump them (and skipping the "talk to them" and "get them to go somewhere" steps), then you probably would be breaking the law, but it be that you just "don't get out much" rather than you have an actual mental defect. You will probably end up with a criminal record, too, if you don't learn very fast. So you will have a record as a sex offender, and registered as such, and your name and address will end up on the Internet on the sex offender registry, which many states have.

In that case, whether your medical records are somehow less than fully secure may be the least of your problems.

Which is patently unsafe and, at least in NYC, illegal.

An excerpt from thissection of motorcycle law.

Section 1252. Operating motorcycles on roadways laned for traffic.

(b) The operator of a motorcycle shall not overtake and pass in the same lane occupied by the vehicle being overtaken.

Just thought you should know.

The main line of the New York State Thruway is 426 miles long and you only encounter booths upon entering and exiting.

Orrin Hatch wants to destroy your computer in order to please his friends (read campaign contributors) in the recording and movie industry. This particular reactionary thought it might be a good idea for those who feel their copyright is being infringed by these decentralized perr-to-peer networks ought to be legally able to write virus code that will destroy users' computers.

On the other hand there's Elliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York who found that many artists and writers were not being paid royalties because record companies had failed to maintain contact with the performers and had stopped making required payments.

I have a very good friend who is a CPA and worked as an auditor for a large CPA firm here in NYC. One particularly famous rock band from Long Island (long since broken up) had a member not too long ago who ran into a rather obnoxious member of the press (read papparizzi) who shoved him, then sued him when he struck back (he only hit him because he was trying to recover hos balance, honest).

The band member contacted their lawyer, who he had not spoken to for years due to the band's breakup. The lawyer told him that it would cost $5,000 to represent him and when could he expect the check?

The former rocker's answer was, "But I'm broke!

The lawyer rummaged around a bit and pulled out a standard contract which has a paragraph indicating that the band may audit the record company's books at any time and that the expense must be borne by the recording company if the band felt that there was any malfeasance.

The lawyer then asked the band member when the last time he had received a royalty check was.

The band member recalled the last one came in (and was all-too quickly spent) seven years before.

The lawyer suggested that the band had a strong case for malfeasance, as he, himself had seen someone purchase a CD of the band's music himself within the last year. My friend (the CPA) was hired and they found that the company typically under-reported album (later CD) sales when the band was active by 20%. Additionally, the recording company was on the hook for seven years of pretty good sales of the CDs made by the band as well as one anthology that the record company had produced that the band didn't know about.

This gave the band enough cash to put a little away in investments and also to initiate a comeback tour that was quite successful in both raising quick cash from venues as well as increasing their CD sales.

The RIAA says that the sales of CDs are dropping and that it's caused by peer networks. The movie industry said that fewer people were going to the movies and were purchasing videos and laserdiscs (later DVDs) because of home copying and later peer networks. I just cannot believe these theves.

Could the real reason why they say their sales are down be because they are underreporting sales in order to screw artists? Or is it that the current distribution model prevents anything compelling to the audience from ever being released? I wonder as I watch all of the caterwauling about copyright. Could it be that the only revenue stream they can come up with is through litigation instead of developing and releasing compelling content?

Actually, smart guy, an action that recklessly disregards human life and causes the death of another IS murder. It is termed "depraved indifference" murder, and states include it as a subsection of the murder laws. NYS for example:

PL 125.25-2 Under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person

learn the law before you complain about it

Libel used to be anything defamatory _even if it was true_.

The Zenger case is not a distraction; it's one of the basic developments of American law.

I do think the absolute defense principle has been somewhat re-absorbed back into English libel law as well, but the burden of proving it is true still rests on the defendant, not on the plaintiff as in the US.

Actually, New York City has one of the lowest crime rates of ANY big city in the USA. See This Link for more info. We do a lot of problems here, but NYPD has reducing crime every single year for over 20 years.

Here, here. But I think it's obvious this guy was more interested in the anti-commercial aspects of his project than in the technical ones...otherwise he'd have realized that raster maps -- which are just scanned images with coordinates added to the corners -- are far more readily available than vector maps, which are usually created BY HAND from raster maps. Which is what he's probably going to have to do if he doesn't just buy one outright: sit down with a copy of ArcInfo ($1500) and go line by line over a high def map, then cross reference the street info on another layer. A chore, for sure, but you only have to do it once. There are quite a few independent GIS consultants who will do the job for you for a fraction of the cost of said program...expect to pay $800 or so for the street map made from scratch.

Any way you look at it, it will be cheaper to buy the info if you want vectors AND street info. Get the town board behind you on this project! Get citizen support, the cost will be like $1 per resident I'm sure, well worth it. With these two in hand, you can get really good maps made up...and like I mentioned, you only need them made once (though you should update it once every six months or so along with new development).

Of course, you could get REALLY lucky, and discover somebody's already made really detailed digital maps of your area. The state and/or county probably have quite a bit, as might the USGS. Data from the USGS is free (though sometimes you have to pay for the bandwidth or media to get it), and many states have programs that provide free data IF AND ONLY IF you promise to give them any digitized maps you product (sound familiar? it's GPL for maps!). Here's the list for my county...you can also search that site for detailed (1 meter) orthoimagery that puts Terraserver to shame and 1:24 000 contour maps.

I believe most English writing standards state this, but you typically want to spell out the acronym before you use it in the rest of your text.

I'm 95% sure that your trolling but I'm going to bite anyway. I didn't mention it because it was covered in the story submission. This isn't even RTFA it's RTFS.

For the record when I said PSC I was refering to the New York State Public Service Commission. Why that wouldn't be clear to you given the context of the post is beyond me.

Wrong! The RIAA just lost a court case in which many artists weren't paid at all! Read this! If they raise the price I will no longer buy until the price goes down. I thought $.99 was too high, If they upset me enough I won't buy until the price is lower than that. That is the only answer they will understand.

Okay, ./ is f*cking up my postings now, and yes I did use the preview button...

New York State will not benefit from the interest or anything else. The money will sit in an escrow account until claimed.

Only if it hasn't been claimed after a number of years, then they follow these rules.

For New York, the money is passed on to the New York State comptrollers office, and they have a system for searching unclaimed funds. I'm taking a guess, but unclaimed funds for people in other states will be turned over to the comptroller/secretary of state/department of treasury for those states.