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If they had specific knowledge that crimes had been committed, and who committed them, then they may have been aiding the criminal activity. If someone had suggested to them that something like that might have been going on, but gave no specifics whatsoever, then not so much.

No. That is not the standard. This is:

DUTY OF CARE OF PROPRIETOR OF BUSINESS
The proprietor of a business establishment owes a duty of care to customers when they come upon the business premises at the proprietor's express or implied invitation. This duty of care requires the proprietor to exercise reasonable care to discover whether accidental, negligent or intentionally harmful acts of third persons are occurring or are likely to occur on the business premises. If a proprietor knows, or should know that such acts are occurring or are likely to occur, the proprietor has the further duty to either give the customer a warning adequate to enable the visitor to avoid the harm, or otherwise to protect the visitor against such harm.

This has nothing to do with aiding the criminal activity. This has very little to do with whether they had specific knowledge of crimes. This has to do with whether they invested reasonable effort into determining whether a risk was likely to be present, and warned their customers of the risk. If someone suggest that something like that might have been going on, then for various values of might (with a threshold between more likely than not and lottery odds), they very well could be liable.

There is this mass group-think happening here were 99% of the posters say something about how it is just harmless fun.

Well, it isn't. People get badly hurt by them. Esophageal injury from a plastic bottle containing dry ice. One of the children in this case nearly died. If you do a Google search for 'dry ice injury' or 'dry ice accident' you can find plenty. Such as this one from Dry Ice Experiments Feedback:

I was reading your web page about the accident involving the dry ice and the loss of the woman's sight. On July 3, 1999 a similar accident happened in my family.
My then three year old son was seriously injured, He lost one of his eyes, his right thumb was 75% severed and broken, his left thumb was 50% severed and he had a gash about 4 inches long on his stomach. I had also never heard of this and was mortified. My son is now doing wonderful and we are very vocal about it to let people know what can happen with what I found out after the fact to be called "dry ice bombs".
Angela Hinkhouse

Lots of accidents on video at YouTube.

Yeah. All good harmless fun.

Not.

You would be wrong. http://www.west.net/~smith/distress.htm. This guy meets the major criterion, it's outrageous and specifically intended to cause emotional distress with no possible other motivation.

Unfortunately George carlin (and most modern christians) never seriously studied religion, if any of you read Bertrand Russell he had respect for a small little known christian groupd called the christadelphians, who actually did serious historical research into the nature of christian beliefs and what the bible actually taught. Early christians did not believe in hell at all.

http://www.west.net/~antipas/books/chris_astray/ca_lec03.html

Contracts must be a two way street to be legally binding. What do you get in return for signing this? More money? I'd guess not. If you want to see an interesting blank look on your boss' face, ask him what you're getting in return.

In legal terms, this is referred to as a Bargained-for Exchange.

AFAIK, this merely adds "teeth" to the contract, but it can still likely be enforced without a bargained-for exchange.

IANAL

Enough acronyms?

Well, there is a slight difference between that and a dismissal on merits. If it was the latter, Facebook could claim res judicata, but if it was due to something procedural like, say, pleadings being filed out of time, the Plaintiffs could re-file the suit.

Nature still abhors a vacuum. It's just that 0.000...0001% matter is the best she can do with the available resources.

I wrote a paper about this once.

The entire universe is "vacuum" if by "vacuum" you mean the absence of "solid, extended" matter.

Matter isn't solid. It's make of loosely bound atoms. Even atoms aren't solid. They're tiny nuclei surrounded by lots of "empty" space, filled only with infinitesimal electrons (i.e. point-particles, with a size of precisely zero) and the forces they exert. Those forces are what keep other atoms from occupying the same space, and what give the atoms the appearance of being solid. We all know that much around here.

But the nuclei themselves are composed of separate nucleons bound together by nuclear forces, and it's just those forces which keep nuclei from occupying the same space, same as the electromagnetic force keeps atoms "solid". Inside the nucleus is still more "empty" space.

But those nucleons themselves are just bundles of quarks held together by still different nuclear forces.

Quarks, however, are infinitesimal point-particles, just like electrons. They occupy no space; they're just points of zero extension.

Nothing in the universe is "extended", and things are only "solid" to the point that nothing below a certain energy threshold can overcome the forces keeping things out of a certain part of space, i.e. "solid" is relative. There's just infinitesimal point-particles and the interactions (forces) between them. The rest of it is "empty" space. Though as that space is universally permeated by the forces of those point-particles (there's electromagnetic fields, albiet sometimes very weak, everywhere in the universe), and has effects of it's own (e.g. gravity, which also permeates the entire universe), it can hardly be called empty.

Two words: contributary negligence.

Everything I see regarding 'contributory negligence' refers to its use in personal injury cases, not in property theft cases.

http://dictionary.law.com/definition2.asp?selected =341
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_negligen ce
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c125.htm
http://insurance.cch.com/Rupps/contributory-neglig ence.htm
http://www.west.net/~smith/negligence.htm
http://www.criminal-law-lawyer-source.com/terms/co ntributory_neg.html

Even in situations of contributory negligence, the injured (suing) party must have been negligent to the point that they could have been injured apart from the injuring (sued) party.

Perhaps if I had left all my car doors standing open and the car parked in the middle of the street, I would be contributorially negligent. If it's parked in front my my house with the windows open and gets stolen, I'm not negligent. Apart from the actions of the person stealing my car, I would not be "injured."

As with Microsoft - apart from the actions of those who take malicious action against computers, those computers would not be compromised.

This is going a bit off topic, and I gather you're right in the point you're making in your post, but your title is all off. Centrifugal force *is* gravity.

Aside from the obvious bit about gravity = acceleration (as the "force" in centrifugal force is actually the centripetal force involved accelerating the object away from its inertial path) that inertial path itself is in fact caused by the effects of the gravity of the rest of the universe influencing the system in question. (I recently wrote a paper partly about this for a Philosophy of Space and Time class. It's online here [PDF] if you'd like to read it. For what it's worth, the paper got an A, and the professor was a physisicist. The bit about mass/inertia/gravity begins in the middle of page 6).

Thus the "centrifugal" force you experience pushing you against the walls (or the walls pushing on you) in the teacup ride at Disneyland is in every way the same thing as the effect you feel on your feet pushing you down on the ground (or the ground pushing back up on you). Both are electromagnetic forces interfering with your ability to follow a geodesic, and all geodesics are determined by the curvature of spacetime, i.e. gravity.

Didn't you know that an oral contract isn't worth the paper it's written on? :)

Of course most promises are enforceable, but it comes down to a test of credibility -- here between two engineers, so your loyalties must have cancelled out. Certain contracts must by law be in writing -- for sale of land, certain other contracts ... the Statute of Frauds is sometimes called the "statute for frauds". I wonder what annoyed the judge; perhaps he just didn't believe the testimony.

Should be obvious that you can be held to your word, but a lot of people, including some lawyers (one who wrote into Dear Abby said you couldn't collect on a debt without an IOU), will tell you that you have no rights unless it is in writing. Wrong, but get it in writing to maybe avoid a trial, you might not get a sympathetic jury, and what a waste of money.

(See I had to learn this stuff to pass a test a long time ago, and now you know it , too. :)

Actually the choice of HAM Radio Broadcast frequencies was neither small nor harmless.

I'm not entirely clear as to what this refers to, but are you saying that the frequencies that the people who worked on Sputnik decided to have it broadcast on were ones in use by Ham Operators?
The FCC was created in 1934. I found this link that may shed some light on the radio frequency situation around that time.

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Here are some links to get you started:


RATTERS.COM - Poser Links

A Mess of Poser Links

Poser Props Guild

Greylight Internet - Poser Stuff

Baumgarten Enterprises (Poser Stuff)

Paul Hafeli Poser 3 Inspirations - Great Poser Work

The Blacksmith - Poser Props

Paul Hafeli Poser Tutorials

Bushi's Graphics Homepage - Poser Stuff

Digital Puppet Magazine (Poser in Movie Making)

Poser Forum


This is where the real action is...

If you want the real scoop on virtual models, take a gander at what people are doing with Poser by Metacreations.

Here are some links to get you started:


RATTERS.COM - Poser Links

A Mess of Poser Links

Poser Props Guild

Greylight Internet - Poser Stuff

Baumgarten Enterprises (Poser Stuff)

Paul Hafeli Poser 3 Inspirations - Great Poser Work

The Blacksmith - Poser Props

Paul Hafeli Poser Tutorials

Bushi's Graphics Homepage - Poser Stuff

Digital Puppet Magazine (Poser in Movie Making)

Poser Forum


This is where the real action is...