LimeWire Antitrust Claims Against RIAA Dismissed

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The antitrust counterclaims imposed by Lime Wire against the RIAA record companies have been dismissed. In a 45-page decision (pdf), the Court relied principally upon the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly that 'A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.' Ironically, the Twombly decision was the authority upon which the RIAA's copyright infringement complaint was dismissed in Interscope v. Rodriguez."

Comments

pjwalen sez...

[Creepy Crawler]

stay off my side? I agree with that LimeWire is saying, and I like LimeWire, but their business model is based off illegally downloading music, for the most part. I don't feel like I want this business model fighting fo rour rights. It doesn't give legitimacy to our side.

Re:pjwalen sez...

[sm62704]

Except that LimeWire is and can be used for indie music thats creators WISH to be heard. Indies don't have radio; until recently they had Internet Radio and P2P, but now don't even have Internet Radio, now that the RIAA and its labels have bought legislation from "your" representatives that effectively killed any US based Internat Radio stations.

I, for one, wish that people would STOP putting the RIAA's crap in their "share" lists. But of course, so long as the average clueless computer user doesn't even know that they're actually sharing music, thinking it's just a place to download from, it's not going to happen.

I mean, how in the hell is anybody going to find that great somg named "scatterbrain" that I can't remember who recorded? Do you have any idea how damned many songs have that name? Of course, if you write a song named "scatterbnrain" and your band records your song and you place it on LimeWire, the RIAA is likely to sue you for uploading one of their "scatterbrain"s. You're going to get sued for uploading your own damned song!

Which is really their aim. They can't really give a shit if you download something you can sample from the radio more easily. If you want to find new indie music you're going to get sued.

My "share list" has hundreds of songs. Their creators specifically thanked me when I told them I was putting them on the internet. Of course, none of these guys would touch the thieves at the major labels with a ten foot pole.

-mcgrew

Re:pjwalen sez...

[Anonymous Coward]

Limewire really sucks. I honestly do not know why anybody would use it; as long as they're using old, outdated technology, they might as well just download the original version of napster and use that, instead.
Limewire is essentially the Macintosh of filesharing applications - that is to say, very few people use it, and those who do only do so because they know nothing about the subject or because it's the trendy thing to do.
Get yourself a better filesharing application;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

Re:pjwalen sez...

[sm62704]

The particular app in use is of no regard to the discussion. The GP used Limewire, but you can substitute any P2P app in the comment and its veracity stands.

Personally, I prefer Morpheus, because you can set it to NOT share downloaded files. If I'm trying to download an indie file and download an RIAA file by mistake, I don't want to have to pay a $4000 fine for clicking on the wrong file.

There's no way to know whether or not any particular file is legit or not until you have DLed it, and then you can only tell if you recognise the song. Say you're trying to find "Napster of Puppets", a scathing parody of Metallica's song that its creators emailed me after I posted a completely different "Napster of Puppets in my old abandoned Quake site, and get Metallica's song instead. Should you have to pay the RIAA label? With Morpheus you don't have to worry about miustakenly downloading some hack's putrid garbage and get sued for the mistake.

Emule is great for movies (download "Star Wreck - In The Pirkinning" if you haven't seen it yet) but not so good for smaller, MP3 sized files.

English Please.

[fsulawndart]

'A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.' Anyone have an English translation? Maybe I just need my coffee.

Re:English Please.

[ByOhTek]

you aren't the only one. It strikes me that can cover the bulk of evidence in some cases, or at least making it useful.

Reading that increased my desire to take a nap. I need to talk to my boss about getting a cot installed in my cubicle.

Re:English Please.

[morgan_greywolf]

That means, basically, that the party that's suing or countersuing (LimeWire) has to show reasons why they should get relief (usually money) and that those reason need to be more than just name calling and saying "you owe me money, you owe me money!"

Re:English Please.

[tbg58]

Means that the plaintiff can't use boilerplate (form letter) verbiage as a complaint. In other words, the complaint is too generic or abstract and fails to state specifics, and is therefore not actionable. At least that's how it sounds to this layperson - IANAL.

Re:English Please.

[Arnoud Engelfriet]

When you accuse someone of violating a law, you have to show where and how he did that. You usually do this by copy&pasting the text of the statute and explaining how each element applies to what your opponent did. For example, for the cause of action "copyright infringement" you need to prove three elements: (1) your copyright ownership to the work, (2) defendant's access to the work, and (3) similarity with your original. What the court here says is that you have to do more than say "I own the copyright in the work. Defendant had access to it, and what he has published is very similar to my work." That's a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action. Arnoud

Re:English Please.

[MathFox]

Furthermore, You can not just say "work", you have to specify the work like in "Slashdot comment #21571179"

Re:English Please.

[chitokutai]

Or in other words:
FIRE....BAD!

Re:English Please.

[AKAImBatman]

BEER...GOOD!
NAPSTER...<ah, heck. you know the rest.>

Re:English Please.

[westlake]

A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.' Anyone have an English translation?

The geek in court cobbles together words and phrases he half-remembers from reading the Wikipedia and thinks that is enough. The court has its own dictionaries and encyclopedias, what it needs from you is a clearly reasoned and fully-formed argument for legal relief.

Re:English Please.

[sm62704]

Maybe I just need my coffee

No, it's just like my saying to my friend Mike that if he adds RAM and defragments his hard drive his computer may run faster and he says "huh? What's a "hard drive? And what do I have to ram it with"?

And like my cluelessly expecting Mike to know what RAM is, what a hard drive is (I used to talk about someone's hard drive and they'd pull out a floppy and say "this?") and about file fragmentation and seeing their eyes glaze over when I explained it, a lawyer will expect us to understand legaleze. It's perfectly understandable English to him.

But just like a lot of nerds would be out of a job if everyone understood computers, there would be a lot less legal work if we all understood legalese, or if the laws themselves were understandable to non-lawyers.

-mcgrew

Re:English Please.

[pilgrim23]

Money...lawyer...money....lawyer....

    'When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful
tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor
less.'
Lewis Carroll Through the Lookign Glass

Wait, what?

[necro81]

A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.

Maybe it's the lack of coffee this morning, maybe it's the fact that I didn't get a degree in Legalese Obfuscation, but: What on Earth is this sentence trying to say? Of all the things to say about this motion dismissal, why include this in the summary?

A little further research seems to indicate that the anti-trust charges were kicked out not because the judge ruled that the RIAA isn't an anti-trust organization - the argument didn't get that far. Instead, the judge ruled that Limewire hadn't really given much cause (i.e., hadn't provided enough factual argument) to investigate the matter further. Any lawyers on the group want to delve deeper?

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point of lawyer-talk anyways, so that laws can technically* be in english? Whats wrong with pig latin? Seriously I wonder if there is some really good reason for all the heretoforthwiths and stuff, like, if you can examine it carefully and find that more often than not - all that crazy talk is necessary for unambiguity or something..

Re:Wait, what?

[The Only Druid]

Here's a basic legal summary of why Twombly is the active issue here:

Before Twombly, a case called Conley was the dominant SCOTUS case explaining exactly what standards a Plaintiff's court pleadings must satisfy in order to, in our parlance, "state a claim". In truth, Conley was extremely ambiguous, and for years the courts had decried it as a waste of time and money.

Twombly has now established that pleadings must, as a bare minimum, describe enough alleged facts so that - when the court assumes all of them to be true for the sake of a Motion to Dismiss - the pleadings allege a "plausible" claim. This means it has to be slightly more than "possible": for example, it's possible that I am in fact Bill Gates, but it's simply not plausible

Now, the most practical effect of Twombly in district courts around the country so far (it's an August 2007 decision) has been that it is no longer sufficient to simply say "The defendant did X to me", and then simply list the alleged components of X as defined by law. Instead, plaintiffs now have to allege sufficient facts that move it across that fine line.

Here, the Judge has simply stated that the Plaintiff has filed to properly allege his complaint; this is no different than if the Plaintiff had alleged rape but failed to allege forceful sexual assault.

Re:Wait, what?

[The Only Druid]

You're extremely mistaken: some "lawyer speak", i.e. jargon, is utterly required for the same reason that it's required in engineering, in medicine, etc.

Jargon allows for a specificity that colloquial language simply cannot possess: for example, by having specific meanings of words like "pleadings" or "plausibility", the Courts possess a uniformity across the nation that would be lost if each individual court were permitted to say "well, to me, 'plausible' means X".

Your intuition - that law is complicated - is correct, but you're firmly wrong in light of hundreds of years of debate in philosophy of language. It is firmly settled - with literally no dispute by any philosopher any more - that the specificity of a term is inversely related to the ease of understanding, because the more specific a term is the more collateral information is necessary in order to understand that term's definition. Put simpler, the more narrowly you define a term (e.g. "plausibility" here), the more information any reader must possess in order to understand what is meant by that term.

The side effect of this is that in fields that require a great deal of specificity - e.g. the professions (medicine, law) or the trade fields (engineering, masonry, etc.) - then there is a great deal of collateral information that readers need to understand in order to comprehend what is going on.

Re:Wait, what?

[The Only Druid]

Ironically, I now must apologize to the AC I was replying to: I somehow misread his tone, and thought he was directly criticizing jargon, when in fact he was guessing that jargon is valuable. My mistake.

Re:Wait, what?

[boris111]

As a techy who has complained about lawyer jargon before... after reading your post I'm a little more sympathetic to it now. My coworkers get frustrated with me when I use technical jargon, but I'm just being specific to avoid ambiguity.

Of course I would like my Project Managers to beef up their technical glossary. So many occasions they look at me like I'm speaking Japanese.

Re:Wait, what?

[lubricated]

unlike a technical manual everyone is expected to follow the law.

Re:Wait, what?

[Tim C]

Yes, but the basic concepts - don't take stuff that doesn't belong to you, don't hurt people unnecessarily, don't burn down buildings, don't copy CDs or movies, etc - are pretty easy to understand. You do not need to understand all the minute details of what goes on in a court case, you just need to know enough not to do anything illegal enough to get caught and prosecuted.

For example, you don't need to know the difference between say fraud and embezzlement to know that stealing money from work is wrong, or between manslaughter and murder (and the various degrees of murder) to know that stabbing someone because they looked at you funny is wrong. (If there are complicated legal requirements specific to your job, then it's part of your job to know them, but that doesn't apply to most people.)

Re:Wait, what?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do. Maybe it's the lack of coffee this morning, maybe it's the fact that I didn't get a degree in Legalese Obfuscation, but: What on Earth is this sentence trying to say? Of all the things to say about this motion dismissal, why include this in the summary? A little further research seems to indicate that the anti-trust charges were kicked out not because the judge ruled that the RIAA isn't an anti-trust organization - the argument didn't get that far. Instead, the judge ruled that Limewire hadn't really given much cause (i.e., hadn't provided enough factual argument) to investigate the matter further. Any lawyers on the group want to delve deeper? Exactly. The Court is saying that the initial claim -- the pleading -- did not have enough meat on its bones. The Court is also saying that, now that Lime Wire has gotten some evidence, if it feels it now has enough meat to put in a good amended pleading, it can make a motion for permission to do so, showing the Judge the new evidence it would be using.

Re:Wait, what?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Here's a basic legal summary of why Twombly is the active issue here: Before Twombly, a case called Conley was the dominant SCOTUS case explaining exactly what standards a Plaintiff's court pleadings must satisfy in order to, in our parlance, "state a claim". In truth, Conley was extremely ambiguous, and for years the courts had decried it as a waste of time and money. Twombly has now established that pleadings must, as a bare minimum, describe enough alleged facts so that - when the court assumes all of them to be true for the sake of a Motion to Dismiss - the pleadings allege a "plausible" claim. This means it has to be slightly more than "possible": for example, it's possible that I am in fact Bill Gates, but it's simply not plausible Now, the most practical effect of Twombly in district courts around the country so far (it's an August 2007 decision) has been that it is no longer sufficient to simply say "The defendant did X to me", and then simply list the alleged components of X as defined by law. Instead, plaintiffs now have to allege sufficient facts that move it across that fine line. Here, the Judge has simply stated that the Plaintiff has filed to properly allege his complaint; this is no different than if the Plaintiff had alleged rape but failed to allege forceful sexual assault. And what is most fascinating is that it was this same Twombly decision that led to the demise of the RIAA's own, now deceased, boilerplate "making available" complaint.

Re:Wait, what?

[DragonWriter]

Here, the Judge has simply stated that the Plaintiff has filed to properly allege his complaint; this is no different than if the Plaintiff had alleged rape but failed to allege forceful sexual assault.

Presuming that rape were, in the jurisdicition applicable to the analogy, defined as, say, "a sexual assault committed through use or threat of force", its more like the Judge saying that the problem is that the Plaintiff alleged "rape" and merely stated in his complaint "On such and such date, Defendant sexually assaulted me through use or threat of force." The problem isn't that the elements of the offense weren't alleged, but that they were alleged in the form of a recitation with no specificity as to how the Defendant had acted which met the elements.

(The rest of your description is correct, but the analogy at the end seemed to miss the point.)

Re:Wait, what?

[lubricated]

If it really is that simple neither do the lawyers. How is don't copy CD's in the same league as all that other stuff? Most people don't know enough not to copy cd's from a friend. Not to record a live performance. Not to take pictures of shit they see. etc. . .

Re:Wait, what?

[celtic_hackr]

So what you're saying is that the word "is" is too specific to be understood by people. That would explain why Bill Clinton asked for a definition of that word. And of course the word female is so specific that no one really knows what it means. Especially nerds, geeks and hackers, who live inside their computers.

Re:Wait, what?

[vokyvsd]

If you'll recall, I brought this up when the RIAA's boilerplate complaints were dismissed: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=297303&cid=20597841

My same arguments apply here - the Bell Atlantic decision is a very bad thing, and using it to dismiss Limewire's suit proves the exact point I raised back then.

Re:Serves them right

[Ginger Unicorn]

i rather foolishly followed these links just out of morbid curiosity (i knew it was spam but i thought ff2.0.0.11, adblock plus, noscript, cookiesafe, avg, spybot, spywareblaster, OpenDNS, comodo2 would protect me) and it managed to lock up firefox to the point that i could close it by clicking the close window icon, but the process was stuck running. i killed it in taskmanager and am running avg and spybot checks now but just thought i'd warn anyone who thinks they're invincible to malformed websites that this one might still get through. it might just be conicidence but just thought i'd warn you.

Re:Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most Slashdotters will be safe, because we simply don't RTFA.

Re:Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

There was some Java in there. That may be the cause.

from the order

[nomadic]

The notion of "antitrust injury" grew from the recognition that a competitor may be injured not only by prohibited anticompetitive activity, but also by competition itself, and that the antitrust laws were not intended to afford the latter injuries a remedy. See Balaklaw v. Lovell, 14 F.3d 793, 797 (2d Cir. 1994). Antitrust injury, then, simply means "injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants' acts unlawful." Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 489 (1977); accord Paycom, 467 F.3d at 290. To demonstrate antitrust injury, "a plaintiff must show (1) an injury-in-fact; (2) that has been caused by the violation; and (3) that is the type of injury contemplated by the statute." Blue Tree Hotels Inv., Ltd. v. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., 369 F.3d 212, 220 (2d Cir. 2004). The antitrust injury requirement thus ensures that a "plaintiff can recover only if the loss stems from a competition-reducing aspect or effect of the defendant's behavior." Atlantic Richfield Co. v. USA Petroleum Co., 495 U.S. 328, 344 (1990).
...
As described above, Lime Wire alleges a conspiracy among counter-defendants to fix prices for licenses at both the wholesale and retail levels. At the wholesale level, Lime Wire alleges that counter-defendants used their joint ventures, MusicNet and pressplay, "to effect a price-fixing arrangement among horizontal competitors" (FAC 36) -- i.e., among the record companies themselves.14 Although such a horizontal price-fixing arrangement is per se unlawful under 1 of the Sherman Act, see Leegin Creative Leather Prods. v. PSKS, Inc., ___ U.S. ___,Lime Wire has not established that it suffered injury-in-fact as a Case 1:06-cv-05936-GEL Document 51 Filed 12/03/2007 Page 14 of 45 omitted). "Restraints that are per se unlawful include horizontal agreements among competitors to fix prices or to divide markets." Id. (citations omitted). Although Lime Wire asserts in 16 its memorandum of law in opposition to the motion to dismiss that counter-defendants have "all refused to grant [Lime Wire] licenses to their catalogs of recorded music even at . . . artificially high prices" (Counter-P. Mem. 6), this allegation does not appear in the FAC itself, and thus cannot be considered by the Court in evaluating counterdefendants' motion to dismiss. See Brass v. Am. Film Techs., Inc., 987 F.2d 142, 150 (2d Cir. 1993) (noting that on motion to dismiss, consideration of factual allegations is limited to those allegations contained in complaint). 15 result of counter-defendants' purported arrangement. See Atlantic Richfield, 495 U.S. at 342 (noting that the "per se rule is a method of determining whether 1 of the Sherman Act has been violated, but it does not indicate whether a private plaintiff has suffered antitrust injury").

Although Lime Wire "actively solicited licensed content" from "independent labels and artists" and "independent retailers/distributors" (FAC 44), the FAC contains no allegation that Lime Wire ever attempted to obtain or purchase a license from any of the counter-defendants or their respective joint ventures.16 Lime Wire's retail competitors may have "faced excessive wholesale prices" for licenses as a result of the alleged price-fixing scheme (id. 36), but Lime Wire itself has not alleged any facts demonstrating that it suffered such harm. Although Lime Wire's attempt to obtain hashes from counter-defendants suggests that it intended eventually to obtain licenses from them, nothing in Lime Wire's pleading indicates that it has, in fact, sought (or imminently will seek) such licenses from counter-defendants. Accordingly, Lime Wire cannot claim that it has suffered injury-in-fact as a result of counter-defendants' wholesale pricefixing scheme.

"You wouldn't steal a handbag"

[Anonymous Coward]

So will the RIAA/MPAA/BPI/etc all shut the feck up about "copyright theft" "piracy" and "making available is the same as copying"? When will they actually COUNT the losses and prove them rather than just say "our profits are down, and all due to Ms Smith at 59 Dewson St, London"?

Re:Serves them right

[Ginger Unicorn]

it was links in the GGP's post i was referring to

Re:Serves them right

[Ginger Unicorn]

thanks for that - i just ticked the "forbid java" option in noscript now so hopefully that will save me from junk like this in future.

LOL, Limewire!

[autophile]

LOL, Limewire

Re:LOL, Limewire!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Catchy.

Re:Serves them right

[Ginger Unicorn]

yeah it was the java, now i can see the "informative" and "insightful" content

A first year law student's explanation

[MunchMunch]

I'll give it a shot,

Basically, before Bell Atlantic, the bar for filing a lawsuit(1) was very low. If you could outline the factors for a 'cause of action' (e.g., for, say, a tort battery claim, you'd say that the Defendant 1) intentionally 2) made contact which 3) caused harm--for the antitrust claim, I'm sure they're much more complicated), that would be sufficient to at least allow the suit to continue. If you fail to assert that those factors were met, or if there was no factual basis for what you stated, your claim could be dismissed--but the bar was set extremely low in favor of allowing suits to continue. All you had to do was basically state how you think you'd been wronged, and not have to prove much of anything. Discovery would start, the defendant would have to produce emails and documents relating to your claim, and if evidence (or lack thereof) showed that your claim was groundless, it could still be thrown out via summary judgment without having to go to trial.

The Bell Atlantic decision is a little vague, but it seems to raise the bar. It says that there has to be some evidence to support the claim factors if the lawsuit is even going to go to discovery. The issue with this is that, when a corporation has all of the evidence, they're not going to turn it over willingly. If, in a hypothetical, you have a high suspicion of an antitrust violation occurring, however reasonable, unless you had some hard evidence beforehand you can't file suit. Before Bell, you could file the suit and discovery would commence, and if the evidence existed the company would have to turn it over. Now, you have to somehow get the evidence beforehand.

Some may argue it's fairer, since claims can't be brought 'on a whim,' or to harass by starting expensive litigation without any evidence. But in cases where there seems to be strong indications of antitrust, but no direct evidence BEFORE discovery, it could be protecting the companies from answering for their conduct.

______________________________

1. I haven't read the Bell Atlantic decision for awhile, so I can't remember if it was just related to antitrust cases. Either way, that's what's relevant here.

But I actually have finals starting tomorrow, so maybe I should get back to studying...

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you and again I say fuck you.

The parent was OT but you're just a bitch. I frequent slashdot (I've been here since 2000) and love sports and have played them all my life. I played football in HS and ran XC and ended up getting a science degree and am now working on my PhD. Guess what? I watch NFL every sunday and follow college basketball heavily. Guess what else, I don't like sci-fi.

"jocks are retarded illiterates." no they are not anymore than nerds are unsocial basement dwellers. stereotypes are shit.

Sorry, but I can't just let something like this slide. Hopefully one day your holier than thou shit will die. Nerds are no better than anyone elseyet you think you are and thats the problem.

Once again, fuck you.

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[charlesbakerharris]

Well, I'm glad someone has brought some maturity to this discussion.

If you don't like their business model....

[Khyber]

Then take the source code for LimeWire (since they do offer it,) change a couple flags, and then you have the PRO LimeWire for free. No need to pay them anything. I don't understand that particular little loophole of theirs, but hey, It certainly kills the nag screen and does make my downloads a bit speedier, so I won't complain.

Re:If you don't like their business model....

[beckerist]

An eye for an eye...

Re:If you don't like their business model....

[Khyber]

As if most of the whole world wasn't, already?

Re:If you don't like their business model....

[pravuil]

They already have. It's called Frostwire http://www.frostwire.com/

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[Anonymous Coward]

This is news for nerds of a sort, though. The Patriots (the other team) are known to cheat using spy cameras and radio surveillance and other nerdy gadgets. (They got caught, received a small fine, and are allowed to keep playing like nothing happened.) Add in various statistic gathering and sports are actually quite nerdy these days.

But what would you know. Sports involve social skills and team playing, something that software people seem incapable of.

"English Please."?

[porpnorber]

For the life of me (and believe me, I know about needing more coffee, so you hae my utter sympathy on that score) that's a normal English sentence. Some of these words may have technical legal nuances, but 'relief' and 'action' are the only words there that I would not have used in everyday speech in roughly these senses; and these two exceptions are ones that are found in almost every discussion of these matters here on slashdot, so presumably the readership has some familiarity with them by now!

Then again, I'm increasingly getting responses to comments here of the form 'you use big words and I refuse to read past the first sentence so you must be wrong.'

Yesterday we had an entire conversation about how some poor parent was remiss because their five year old was not yet a fluent reader.

Perhaps that missionary zeal was misplaced!

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[sm62704]

You have proven yourself unworthy of being here, Mr. Humorless Coward. Go away or I shall taunt youy again!

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[sm62704]

And I'm glad someone has a sense of humor! I was about to call for my own comment to be morderated as "flamebait!"

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[sm62704]

"Nerdy gadgets" do not make a nerd. Everyone uses nerdy gadgets. Nerds invent, repair, and modify (hack) them. Every bozo that ever taunted a kid destined to be the next Niel Armstrong* has a cell phone, a computer, and all the other stuff that would not exist were it not for nerds.

Just as every nerd-wannabe buys gadgets but would never in a million years dare to modify them even if he knew how, every jock wannabe studies scores and player statistics as if they actually somehow mattered, even though they'd have a coronary if they ever tried to do a pushup.

-mcgrew

*Niel Armstrong once said "I am and shall always be a pocket protector-wearing nerd!"

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[josteos]

I frequent slashdot (I've been here since 2000) and love sports and have played them all my life.
I played football in HS and ran XC and ended up getting a science degree and am now working on my PhD.

I was a NCAA wrestler in college, and currently play hockey with a bunch of Microsoft developers. My undergad is in Genetics, one masters is in Biology, and the other MS is in Computer Science. I'm all schooled out now, but once the kids are grown I may want to go back for further schoolin' in AI.

So I think this qualifies me to comment:

I don't like sci-fi.

FAIL.
Whatever your other successes, not liking sci-fi means I have to remove your Nerd Club membership card.

Did I see it?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I don't think so. Let me check again...
 
... nope, no "haha" tag. Funny that.

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[charlesbakerharris]

Morderated? Been reading too much Tolkien?

Why Limewire?

[Wolfdan72]

Dam, people still use Limewire, well in that case I fell sorry for those who still use limewire! NOT!

Re:Serves them right

[bidule]

Thanks a million for the negative moderation. Next time I won't make the effort to track where these come from.

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[Jim_Callahan]

What if you modify hardware and software for a living, but don't really give a damn with your personal gadgets unless they're actually underperforming, broken, or poorly optimized? What does that make you? Oh, right, an engineer.

Re:Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

(1.21 niggawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = one fast rail road

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[sm62704]

One can NEVER read too much Tolkien!

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[sm62704]

One can hardly be an engineer without also being a nerd. I guess it may be possible, but I never met a non-nerd engineer.

Re:Attention Ravens' fans, from an unbiases observ

[tehcyder]

I was a NCAA wrestler in college, and currently play hockey with a bunch of Microsoft developers.

Couldn't you just use a puck?