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You Are Not a Lawyer
Paul Ohm is starting a new "very occasional" feature on the Freedom To Tinker blog called You Are Not a Lawyer — "In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system)." In the first installment, Ohm walks through the reasons why many techies' faith in the presence of "reasonable doubt" is so misplaced. "When techies think about criminal law, and in particular crimes committed online, they tend to fixate on [the 'beyond a reasonable doubt'] legal standard, dreaming up ways people can use technology to inject doubt into the evidence to avoid being convicted. I can't count how many conversations I have had with techies about things like the 'open wireless access point defense,' the 'trojaned computer defense,' the 'NAT-ted firewall defense,' and the 'dynamic IP address defense.' ... People who place stock in these theories and tools are neglecting an important drawback. There are another set of legal standards — the legal standards governing search and seizure — you should worry about long before you ever get to 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'"
Sounds like the piece should be called "Ohm's Law".
IANAL, but I think this guy is just wrong.
Disclaimers: I am a "techie" (whatever the hell that means). I do not pirate or violate copyright or IP laws to my knowledge. I am not a lawyer.
Why do I care about this? This confusingly assuming post is trying to say that techies are so stupid that they can only comprehend there being one piece of evidence in a trial and they think that if they cast doubt on this one piece of evidence then the accused is in the clear. I know this isn't true. If I prove that a screenshot of an IP address could be photoshopped yet there are logs upon logs provided by the ISP backing this up, I have done little if anything.
So draw a Venn diagram of all evidence (shadow-of-a-doubtable evidence unioned with unshadow-of-a-doubtable evidence) and show that if there exists any evidence outside of the shadow-of-a-doubtable circle than you're boned. That was essentially the only point you had in your windy post, correct? What else was there? A lesson on how police can opt to legally collect information regarding a case?
Thank you for the world class revelation, Paul. And also thank you for the imagery of "techies" being bumbling buffoons aping Perry Mason in their dreams. Perhaps my father was on to something when he tried to teach me that for all lawyers that exist none of them have any interest other than money and sucking the blood out of other people.
My work here is dung.
You mean the ones the Florida Highway Patroll pioneered ignoring back in the 80s, and which are now routinely ignored by law enforcement agencies nationwide? Trust me, I worry about those legal standards all the time...
Difference between them and us?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
IANAL
YANAL
then who the hell is a lawyer?
TWTHIAL?
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
*I post because I care
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Seriously if you are already tech minded why on God's Green Earth would you want to get involved with the legal profession if you could possibly avoid it?
Only yesterday I read an article (found through Reddit) called (paraphrasing) "You are not a macroeconomist - you are a geek" - about all the Reddit/Digg/whatever people that think they understand the economy and how to fix it.
-Daniel
I'm still lost for words on this one.
Y not?
I came here for a good argument
The fact that all the evidence the RIAA offers shows a link to the computer AND NOT THE USER seems to be something that people (lawyers, judges) IGNORE shows they don't actually care about the FACTS. Until you start taking photos of people through their webcams as they do naughty things, or come up with a way to show exclusive use of a devise or connection, then this still happens to be evidence wrongly taken into consideration.
Oh honey look... How cute... an angry slashdotter!
It sure does not sound like this guy is much of a lawyer based on that craptacular display of writing. He does not seem to back up any of his arguments with things a lawyer usually includes in a law article such as citations, jurisprudence, and you know, actual evidence.
I guess law school + blog = expert
This seems to amount to nothing more than "they can take your shit and look at it, and your defense lawyer will probably suck." I think it's fair to say that people who make claims about open access points and whatnot aren't stupid enough not to realize that, and are really just taking that bit for granted (as really anybody with a brain should).
I'm really left wondering what his point is. Does he really think people are assuming their shit won't even be searched? Well, thanks for that tip for all of the idiots out there I guess...
This is a high complement.
You Are Not a Technologist for lawyers. That would be especially educational on intellectual property where lawyers are often absolutely clueless as to what a "technology" or "invention" actually looks like and how easy it is to make something that they thing is super cool, which we actually know is pretty mundane.
A few years ago, I went into put-up-or-shut-up mode with a lawyer over DRM. She kept saying that we needed the DMCA because it would protect a growing market for "interchangeable, competitive, open DRM" or something to that effect. It basically boiled down to a pipe dream about DRM that is open to competition, not locked down to one vendor and that doesn't balkanize the marketplace. Yeah, I know. I should have asked her if she wanted a cherry on top and for me to add a pony to her list while she was at it.
When I asked her **how** that would happen, when so far, no one has accomplished that, she had no clue. None. I pointed out that it is absolutely ridiculous to think that you can just weave DRM into an OS, and that if you leave it in application space a la iTunes, no one else is forced to use it. Again, no clue.
Hopefully she and her colleagues got that pony...
I guess I'm too stupid to use GPL software.
The conviction rate in the the US above 98%
The conviction rate during the Spanish Inquisition was 96%.
Therefore, either we're really good at identifying people, or "reasonable doubt" has become unreasonably weak defense.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Here's my summary:
"Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" may get you acquitted in the end, but that doesn't apply to all the things that happen to you BEFORE the trial: Cooling your heels in jail while charged, having every piece of technology you own seized as evidence, incredibly high legal fees, yada yada.
So, I guess the summary of the summary is:
Keep yer nose clean.
I suppose if you look at all the RIAA cases that routinely pop up here on /. you can easily see what he's talking about: look at all the costs and hardships those accuesed have to go through... The old lady who had probably never even listened to an mp3 in her life could probably attest to the pain. No reasonable jury would ever have convicted her, but that didn't stop the RIAA from causing her a big bunch of trouble.
The Digital Sorceress
Yes, I'm an engineer, but I also studied law. I have thought about becoming a patent attorney, but I haven't taken the bar exam yet in my state. I'm so tired of people who stand on a soapbox and proclaim how much they had to learn about [CS|IT|other technical field] while simultaneously spouting blatant lies when it comes to law. Guess what? Lawyers aren't stupid, they have doctoral degrees, and most of the people on slashdot in the CS/IT fields who pretend to know the law do not.
How irksome that judges, juries and lawyers should have to learn how technology works in order to do their jobs properly.
Yes, people do have to use an ounce of cation online. Installing virus-checkers and securing your Wi-Fi are very important security measures.
However, if we are entering an era where the justice system simply can't be bothered learning anything about the most basic computer technology, we're entering an era of wrongful convictions.
I remind everyone of the schoolteacher who was fired over spyware popups. It's time for the justice system to educate itself, not bury its head in ancient jurisprudence.
... than techies trying to play lawyer are lawyers who dismiss the contributions of their technical staff.
For the record IAAL (though not your lawyer) working in house at a company. Our "techies" are engineers, builders, power system analysts, traders, etc. Another word for these people is "clients." The legal department exists to further the interest of the company and enable our techies to do business. Sure, criminal prosecutions are different than commercial contracts, etc., but the principle is the same -- the lawyer exists to aid his client in getting the best possible deal. I think the difference in outlook often results from the fact that criminal defendants tend not to be those in society best equipped to aid in their own defense, but good attorneys do their best to bring their clients along.
If fact, the best thing about being a lawyer is helping your clients execute our common goals. Really, lawyers really provide the same service as good tech support -- except we help clients navigate the twisted corridors of the law instead of technology or computer code.
Actually yes, a whole lot of people who call themselves techies are stupid. They also think they are far more intelligent then they are. On top of that, many who call themselves techies believe they are so far above blue collar 'mouth breathers' that with very little work they can completely confuse them. I mean, hell, you just did something similar here. You assumed that the article writer must be an idiot because, well, you said so. Go ahead and rethink your logic and consider that perhaps something happened, maybe even several times, that prompted the writer to write what he did.
Most people are idiots, that they call themselves a techie doesn't change that.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
So draw a Venn diagram of all evidence (shadow-of-a-doubtable evidence unioned with unshadow-of-a-doubtable evidence) and show that if there exists any evidence outside of the shadow-of-a-doubtable circle than you're boned.
There's no measuring stick with "shadow of doubt" in our legal system, afaik. It's "beyond reasonable doubt", which is the amount of "Hrmm...." that would cause a reasonable person to suspect it might not be true.
Many times, lots of evidence with reasonable doubt can be compounded to produce beyond reasonable doubt due to sheer quantity.... where it's unreasonable to think someone not guilty would have so much evidence against him, even if it could have other explanations. Might want to get rid of all those ancient "how to hack into any computer" and "the anarchist's cookbook" texts you printed out... when your house is searched, they'll be used against you even if you forgot you had them.
(The unit "Hrmm...." is a small quantity of doubt.)
Basically what it seems this article is saying is "despite all the technical 'doubts' you may throw against the charges, your live will already be ruined by the seizure of your equipment and the trial-by-media that ensures various charges"
And sad as it is, that's probably a fairly true statement. Even here on slashdot I remember that when some guy stated that the kiddiepix on his computer came from a trojan that had massively owned his machine (and it was shown it had been fairly owned), many still believe that the possibility was too low.
From my own experience, it's not that impossible. Where I used to work, we had a contractor setup a machine in a horribly insecure way. The box was owned over the weekend, and when I got back to the office it was pretty much unfixable short of a full format. In addition, the filenames I did see before I wiped it were fairly disturbing.
So when you think about it, if your machine is owned, what is somebody going to do with it? The answer would be, "all sorts of things they wouldn't want to be caught doing with their own machine."
Now fast-forward to another event in my own life. I was at one time accused of shoplifting from a video store. The cop on the phone told me it was on camera, gave a description that could have well enough been me, and gave my license plate # as the vehicle identified. After a few days of trying to get things sorted out, and being constantly threatened by the police, I contacted the video store in question to see if the tape-in-question had been misplaced and not stolen. After talking to the manager, I found out that no tapes had been stolen at all, and that they never carried a tape by the name given (oh, and their cameras actually only monitor, not record). However, there was a file with the police, which I can only guess originated from somebody calling in a fake complaint.
It took the video-store owner calling the police dept up to get them to stop threatening me, and after that the calls just stopped (no apologies). If I hadn't called into the store to check on things myself, who knows how far it might have gone.
So if you're trusting the thoroughness of the legal system or the good sense of a jury to save your ass, think again. Even if you're innocent your life could still be ruined by a false accusation, a suspicion, or bad luck. When the police believe that you're guilty, they will come after you heatedly and often without regard for your potential innocence. The can lie to you, they can make your life miserable, and they aren't going to stop just because of some obscure "open wireless" defense.
I read this as a warning that such and such ironclad defenses are not the complete picture of how a prosecution would go, and to listen to your lawyers legal advice.
True, smart people would have thought this through. There is no shortage of dumb criminals, the newspaper is full of them. Particularly so for teenagers, I can't count how many times I've heard "ironclad" loopholes for smoking pot, carrying drugs, getting away with shoplifting that any reasonable person would know has to be BS. Living in California for most of my teenager years, you can't imagine how many times I've heard the "minors cannot enter into contracts" law used as a defense in ways that couldn't ever work. Everyone was a lawyer...
I think it's healthy to point out that this isn't a game, that there is no magic pixie dust to escape you from criminal activity. The subtext might be, if you're going to commit a crime, assume big brother is watching and think through how he's go about proving you guilty. Assume he's competant.
I suspect that in most of the cases this guy is writing about, the people caught never expected they'd be investigated. The likely compounded their problem with lame defenses after the fact, because they're shocked/outraged/scared, and not listened to their lawyers advice, assuming he/she was too stupid to understand the technology. It comes across a bit weak that because one lawyer writes about the issue and clearly understands it, that should assume all lawyers would...but then I think he did a good job of explaining why it doesn't matter anyway.
[And no, I don't think "troll" is the right moderation for parent, although it could have been more civil]
The problem I have with any grouping is that it always degenerates to stereotypes. And before you know it, you are the stereotype, simply because you're grouped with those people. I'm not saying that there are not lawyers that are not sharks, and that there are not techies that teach, but that because of these assholes in each camp along with the stereotype, everyone in that group carries the blame.
This is all fine if made in good humor, but when it gets personal, or taken too far, the result is enemies and flaming rather than meaningful discussion. Simply put, there is no discussion if either side or both sides choose to close their minds to criticism.
Because you are now a pile of smoking computer parts.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Keeping your nose clean doesn't always work. If they have enough suspicions the police (or the RIAA, whatever) will do their best to nail you to the ground, which includes all the above.
As you mentioned: "the old lady who had probably never even listened to an mp3 in her life could probably attest to the pain"
Innocence is no defense against having your life ruined by invasive investigation, reputation-destroying accusation, and many other such things.
There's no measuring stick with "shadow of doubt" in our legal system, afaik. It's "beyond reasonable doubt", which is the amount of "Hrmm...." that would cause a reasonable person to suspect it might not be true.
You are correct, your metric is so much more measurable.
To fall for whatever they're told to.
There was a murder conviction here last week, with...
No witnesses
No body
No physical evidence
Remember kids, this is Jersey, the Wiretap State.
It works for civil law too.
A lesson on how police can opt to legally collect information regarding a case
Seems to me it's more that the collection of such information can be fairly invasive/damaging in itself.
they both work in a complex technical language
a programmer worth his salt knows most of the important classes and functions and syntax in a given language needed to get a programming task done, whether serving webpages or making an operating system run. a lawyer does exactly the same thing: he knows certain important case points, the usual range of legal maneuvers in case law, and the prevailing legal opinions, and he applies them to the given legal task at hand, whether criminal or civil
an ASP.NET C# programmer wouldn't jump in and start telling a C++ device driver how to do his work. with the same sort of humility in mind, techies really should learn a little more about the law before shooting their mouths off
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What case was that? I suspect there's more to it than you're presenting here. Hans Reiser was convicted with no body, and everyone here was shrieking about how stupid the jury was. Then Hans led the police to the body.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
. . . you won't be among the first against the wall when The Revolution comes.
Hard skills, like hacking Perl scripts to keep The Leader supplied with porn, will trump soft skills, like litigating about microwaving poodles.
Beware . . . it IS coming . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Yes I am a lawyer. The Venn Diagram of techies and lawyers has at least *some* intersection.
Change your name to Homer Junior! Your friends can call you Hoju
And also thank you for the imagery of "techies" being bumbling buffoons aping Perry Mason in their dreams.
He must read slashdot comments, because it looks like that to me, too, and I'm a nerd as well. You just have to chuckle at some of the stupid things that are said here, and I have to admit to being stupid sometimes too.
Perhaps my father was on to something when he tried to teach me that for all lawyers that exist none of them have any interest other than money and sucking the blood out of other people.
I'm afraid your father was wrong. Yes, there are bloodsuckers, but not all. When you need a lawyer, one will save you money. If you're getting divorced or forced into bankrupcy you NEED a lawyer.
When someone rear-ends your car and you have to go to the hospital, his insurance company is going to pay your medical bills and try to avoid even that. A lawyer will collect 3x the medical bills for "pain and suffering"; that's the law and it's your right. The insurance company will do whatever it can to avoid their responsibility. The doctor gets a third, the lawyer gets a third (half if it has to go to court) and you get a third (unless it goes to court).
If you get appendicitis are you going to read a few books and try to take out your own appendix?
I'm not a lawyer, but I've been divorced and then bankrupted. I NEEDED lawyers both times, and the money I spent was an investment. When you need a doctor you need a doctor. When you need a lawyer you need a lawyer.
Free Martian Whores!
Posted as AC so as not to karma whore:
Being Acquitted Versus Being Searched (YANAL)
By Paul Ohm - Posted on February 9th, 2009 at 6:45 am
With this post, I'm launching a new, (very) occasional series I'm calling YANAL, for "You Are Not A Lawyer." In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system).
I start with something from criminal law. As you probably already know, in the American criminal law system, as in most others, a jury must find a defendant guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" to convict. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is a famously high standard, and many guilty people are free today only because the evidence against them does not meet this standard.
When techies think about criminal law, and in particular crimes committed online, they tend to fixate on this legal standard, dreaming up ways people can use technology to inject doubt into the evidence to avoid being convicted. I can't count how many conversations I have had with techies about things like the "open wireless access point defense," the "trojaned computer defense," the "NAT-ted firewall defense," and the "dynamic IP address defense." Many people have talked excitedly to me about tools like TrackMeNot or more exotic methods which promise, at least in part, to inject jail-springing reasonable doubt onto a hard drive or into a network.
People who place stock in these theories and tools are neglecting an important drawback. There are another set of legal standards--the legal standards governing search and seizure--you should worry about long before you ever get to "beyond a reasonable doubt". Omitting a lot of detail, the police, even without going to a judge first, can obtain your name, address, and credit card number from your ISP if they can show the information is relevant to a criminal investigation. They can obtain transaction logs (think apache or sendmail logs) after convincing a judge the evidence is "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation." If they have probable cause--another famous, but often misunderstood standard--they can read all of your stored email, rifle through your bedroom dresser drawers, and image your hard drive. If they jump through a few other hoops, they can wiretap your telephone. Some of these standards aren't easy to meet, but all of them are well below the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for guilt.
So by the time you've had your Perry Mason moment in front of the jurors, somehow convincing them that the fact that you don't enable WiFi authentication means your neighbor could've sent the death threat, your life will have been turned upside down in many ways: The police will have searched your home and seized all of your computers. They will have examined all of the files on your hard drives and read all of the messages in your inboxes. (And if you have a shred of kiddie porn stored anywhere, the alleged death threat will be the least of your worries. I know, I know, the virus on your computer raises doubt that the kiddie porn is yours!) They will have arrested you and possibly incarcerated you pending trial. Guys with guns will have interviewed you and many of your friends, co-workers, and neighbors.
In addition, you will have been assigned an overworked public defender who has no time for far-fetched technological defenses and prefers you take a plea bargain, or you will have paid thousands of dollars to a private attorney who knows less than the public defender about technology, but who is "excited to learn" on your dime. Maybe, maybe, maybe after all of this, your lawyer convinces the judge or the jury. You're free! Congratulations?
The police and prosecutors run into many legal standards, many of which are much easier to satisfy than "beyond a reasonable doubt" and most of which are met long before they see an access point or notice a virus infection. By meeting any of these standards, they can seriously disrupt your life, even if they never end up putting you away.
Hmm, yeah, I guess I forgot I wasn't a lawyer. I'm glad I have /. to keep track of these sorts of things for me. Thanks ./ !
I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system).
What about writing a series to explain to lawyers they are not technical. How many times do lawyers misunderstand technology? Furthermore, I would argue it is the fault of lawyers that common folks cannot represent or understand the legal system. Doesn't it make sense to write laws the majority of common people can understand? A better use of time would be a series for lawyers that explains why the importance of spending the time and energy to draft clean and clear laws.
Respect the Constitution
I'm pretty curious about that too...
No eyewitnesses is pretty standard. (I am assuming that is what you meant, since every trial has some witnesses.)
No body is certainly no impediment for a murder conviction. If a murder conviction absolutely required a body, it would make it nearly impossible to convict any criminal with an IQ above 50. Disposing of a body isn't that tough.
However, convicting somebody with no evidence would be pretty bad.
SirWired
I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on your blanket statement about lawyers there.
What about techies who later become lawyers? I worked in IT for about 5 years while getting my CS degree. Programmed for a few years then decided to go to law school.
I originally went due to youthful dreams of fighting the man (RIAA) and while the real world has hardened me a bit (re 100k+ in student loans) I still would love to do it once I am financially stable.
Reiser is an excellent example of someone who should have had this explained to them. He thought he could get up on the stand and wave away a mountain of circumstantial evidence with implausible arguments that created (un)reasonable doubts.
"I removed the passenger seat so I could sleep in my car, not because it was covered in my wife's blood."
"But Mr. Reiser, after removing the seat, there's still a metal bar three inches off the floor that crosses the space. Are you telling us that you slept on that?"
"... Yes. Yes, I am."
"In a pool of water an inch deep?"
"I didn't say it was comfortable."
"Why was there water in the car?"
"I hosed out the interior."
"Why?"
"It was dirty after removing the passenger seat so I could sleep there."
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
OK, i'll bite.
I'm not a lawyer, I'm a computer scientist, but you can be damn sure that I'm going to give MY lawyer all the ammunition I can to defend me.
I'm going to have logs that "prove" I didn't do the crime.
I'm going to have "forensics" that "prove" my computers did not have the offending data in question.
I'm going to have hidden encrypted volumes 12-ways to Sunday - good luck getting to those without the NSA's help, or after my attorney tells me not to incriminate myself.
What most of my friends, who are attorneys, tell me is that law-enforcement is generally incompetent when it comes to investigating a case. Collecting evidence in a LEGAL manner is a complex and difficult process. These guys that barely made it out of the academy aren't lawyers and they will fuck it up. A good attorney will find a way to make the prosecution's evidence inadmissible.
Unfortunately, law is a complex thing. Gone are the days when the common man could defend himself. Today it's fight fire with fire.
-ted
No, he concluded that the article writer is an idiot because the writer made stupid assumptions.
"You can really, really screw someone over by framing them with something illegal, even if the fabrications fall apart long before the standard of reasonable doubt." Isn't that pretty much what he's saying?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I mean, hell, you just did something similar here. You assumed that the article writer must be an idiot because, well, you said so.
Uhhh, where the hell did I say that? Technically, I thanked him!
the amount of "Hrmm...." that would cause a reasonable person to suspect it might not be true.
The problem is, often the "reasonable people" in the Jury don't have enough imagination. Sometimes, they go on gut feeling -- it's an "I don't like this guy, I think he did it," rather than a "Well, the evidence actually seems to support that this guy did it."
If it's a single IP address in a log which might've been photoshopped, I don't think that should be admissible. If it's that, plus logs from the ISP, plus an eyewitness account, then it's starting to get into the realm of, either they did it, or there's a massive conspiracy to frame them.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A whole lot of "techies" (yourself included, apparently) are arrogant assholes who think they've got a lock on "how things work" more than anyone else... I think that's what he was driving at.
Honestly, I think you proved his point for him.
Why not put an actual number to it? Say, given a piece of evidence, 9 out of 10 suspects with that evidence against them would be guilty. That would be a 10% doubt. Now take 10 such pieces of evidence, run the math an you get 99/100 suspects would be guilty. So that brings the total down to a 1% doubt. The question is, at what percentage does "reasonable doubt" kick in?
There's no measuring stick with "shadow of doubt" in our legal system, afaik. It's "beyond reasonable doubt", which is the amount of "Hrmm...." that would cause a reasonable person to suspect it might not be true.
It's also important to recognize that "reasonable doubt" is not a mathematical certainty. So even if a screenshot could theoretically have been photoshopped in a conspirary with ISPs to manufacture logs, the fact that none of them have a motive to do so means it's presumed they didn't. Unless demonstrated otherwise.
And yes, innocent people do get convicted. But not usually from manufactured technical evidence and complex conspiracies involving legions, but from either planted evidence or flakey eye witnesses. The latter can simply be a person who saw you shortly after a crime and is so convinced you're guilty that they'll say they actually saw you commit it. This is enough to convict you if you have a prior record or otherwise automatically suspect to begin with.
If this happened to me, I'd patiently wait until my trial was over. And if ironclad proof wasn't presented at the trial that there was NO OTHER WAY than the crime for the evidence being there, I wouldn't shut up until the Supreme Court had heard the case. I'd also make damned sure that every newspaper in the jurisdiction knew everything about the case, and would work to make sure every public official involved was either investigated themselves or voted out at the next election. And I'd want enough money to be set up for life from the jurisdiction that was stupid enough to let their public officials have search warrants when there was still reasonable doubt as to innocence. There would be no secrets, no way for the public officials to hide. Because I've already made damned sure that I have nothing to hide.
In other words, in my defense, these "excuses" would be nothing more than simple truth, and I'd make sure every official involved would pay in some way very personal to them.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"Omitting a lot of detail, the police, even without going to a judge first, can obtain your name, address, and credit card number from your ISP if they can show the information is relevant to a criminal investigation."
Not if you're using someone else's, or a public, wireless connection with a minor amount of obfuscation (fake MAC address).
This article is pointless really... you can easily do a lot of illegal things on a PC with nearly complete anonymity, if you're smart about it.
The only example he gave was someone downloading kiddie porn or sending a death threat. Who does that anyways? Why do I care? Does he really realize how easy it would be to do either of those things with complete anonymity if you had any technical savvy and cared that much? What idiot would do that on his home computer without any obfuscation and think nobody could track it anyways?
I like what someone else said... start another blog back at him called "You are not Technically Savvy".
Burden of evidence can be a killer.
Sure, you're running an Open AP and your computer's been rooted. But they found the CP neatly categorized in a non-hidden folder on your desktop named 'fun stuff', CP on your work machine and logs showing you downloading it from your home machine and elsewhere, the same sorts of sites as at work. Said downloading occurs when you're at home or at work for the appropriate machine.
What are the odds that some outside party would do all that?
Even if I was trying to frame somebody*, I'd have a hard time faking all that even WITH the box rooted. Then there's always the chance they'll also have the control packets for the rootkit logged, which a competent lawyer with techie support would be able to argue.
*discounting that I don't really know how to find CP in the first place, much like I'm sure that if I went looking for dope/illegal guns/hooker I'd run into a police sting first. There are positives and negatives to running on the right side of the law my entire life. Got a good job; don't really know how to 'get away' with crimes. Then again, my 'street smart' cousin hasn't been too successful at the 'get away with it' part. I've never seen the inside of a jail or prison cell, I consider that something of a success.
I don't read AC A human right
Doing some simple math with those statistics, they tell us that if you don't plead guilty, there is a 70% chance you will get off. (Either the charges are dropped, or the DOJ loses in the courtroom.)
From those stats, I'd say it is possible our justice system is fairly healthy.
SirWired
Laws governing search and seizure, like where the cops can get a warrant and grab whatever evidence they need to support their case. But if something doesn't support their case, its ignored.
The open WiFi access point is a good example: If you can see megabytes of kiddie porn downloaded to a wireless access point and you seize the poor schmuck's laptop containing said porn and an exhaustive search of said laptop fails to turn up a hidden proxy trojaned onto said laptop by a third party that could explain the porn, then you've got a case. If the cops are too stupid to understand what a proxy is, let alone think of looking for one, their case is lost. Yeah, right.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm a lawyer, and I'm getting a kick out of these replies, etc.
A technique that defence lawyers use is to attack the legitimacy of the gathering of the evidence. Succeed there, and it all becomes inadmissible, and the prosecution fails.
Never mind your fucking Venn diagrams.
That, I believe, settles the matter.
I hate my flatmate
I basically agree with you, but I think your description of the problem is oversimplified and misleading. People are not monolithically "smart" or "stupid". Everybody's smart and stupid about different things. Like those wizards in the Harry Potter books that can master complicated magic spells, but can't mail a letter. What turns smart people into assholes is when they assume their smartness in one field automatically transfers to another.
I think computer techies are particularly bad this way because they tend to be self-taught. Often the most effective strategy for learning a technology is to just sit down and fiddle with it. Or they read a book that was probably written by another self-taught techie that often gets details wrong (how many of you can correctly define "ASCII"?) but gets enough essentials right to get the job done.
What techies don't get is that this style of learning just doesn't work with the law. Even if you understand a legal principle (and when techies try to understand something as abstract as a legal principle they often get it wrong) you don't have a practical understanding of its proper application in every context. Lawyers spend years studying and arguing about this stuff, and even so they have to specialize in order to develop any real expertise.
Cause you know it was the lawyer that dashed the "reasonable doubt" defense by explaining the holes in the theories of the accused. It wasn't another techie helping him explain to the jury exactly how they were being misled....
Actually yes, a whole lot of people who call themselves techies are stupid. They also think they are far more intelligent then they are. On top of that, many who call themselves techies believe they are so far above blue collar 'mouth breathers' that with very little work they can completely confuse them. I mean, hell, you just did something similar here. You assumed that the article writer must be an idiot because, well, you said so. Go ahead and rethink your logic and consider that perhaps something happened, maybe even several times, that prompted the writer to write what he did. Most people are idiots, that they call themselves a techie doesn't change that.
I love your signature.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
Do. Not. Talk. To. Cops.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE
This takes an hour to watch, but well worth your time. In these videos a lawyer and then a cop explain very clearly why talking to cops never works in your favor. Watch it. Learn it. Live it.
As far as the article is concerned: He is bringing up old news that being put through the legal wringer will cost you time, money, and reputation in the community that you can not get back - even if you are innocent and/or found innocent. The best bet is to not do the crime (though if you watch the videos you will see that it is just about impossible to avoid breaking all laws).
Good luck.
It occurs to me that the lesson on how police can opt to legally collect information is a huge wake-up call for some people; and the fact that the police can do so without actually formally charging you with a crime is scary to some.
Myself, since I don't make such mistakes and know my own innocence, I'd look upon such a search as winning the lottery- a chance to test the 4th Amendment in civil court *AND* maybe make a few bucks after my lawyer has been paid.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Never mind your fucking Venn diagrams.
!?
*squints his eyes*
You just made a powerful enemy.
Smart people make mistakes too. More often in areas where they lack expertise. Even though in an abstract way you know all these things, in practice, they elude many people who really ought to know better. Just ask Hans Reiser how well his cunning plan worked out in practice.
As a techie, have you ever run across an otherwise intelligent person who wants to argue with you about why their network/computer/whatever doesn't work the way they think it should? Did you ever get frustrated because, despite the fact that this is what you studied to do, spent the last five (ten, thirty) years doing, etc., etc., they think they know more about networking/programming/computer security than you?
Now, as a techie, did it ever occur that some times, in arenas other than tech, it is *you* (and me -- I'm not pointing fingers) that is the know-it-all who just doesn't get it?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
In case you haven't noticed, the standard for a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty." In a civil case, it's "the preponderance of evidence," which is an even lower standard. Nowhere in American law is there a standard of "beyond the shadow of a doubt." I'm not saying your idea is wrong, just that you're not expressing it correctly.
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I just took my car in for service, and the service rep's name was "Paul McCartney". I asked him if he got a lot of flak over the name, and then I dropped it.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Given the commentary on the Reiser trial, I think his assumption is a pretty safe bet. Techies, especially on Slashdot, regularly come up with stupid and asinine ideas about the legal system. Myself included.
Good! I don't pirate IP laws either. No resale value.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
trying to say that techies are so stupid that they can only comprehend there being one piece of evidence in a trial and they think that if they cast doubt on this one piece of evidence then the accused is in the clear.
Unfortunately, the norm seems to be one piece of evidence. For example:
If I prove that a screenshot of an IP address could be photoshopped yet there are logs upon logs provided by the ISP backing this up, I have done little if anything.
Now, granted, I would rather the standard be set a little higher than the logs of a single ISP, but you've got a point.
But, often, it's just that single photoshoppable screenshot. Or, it only takes that one screenshot to convince the ISP to turn over those logs -- depending on the logs, I would usually hope it would take more proof to get into my private stuff.
Thank you for the world class revelation, Paul.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, mostly because he's Slashdotted, so it might be a very good article. Even if it's not, it's still not a bad theme.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
IAAL - a patent lawyer to be precise. Here's what I would love all jurors and engineers to know.
(1) A patent case is almost never about stealing someone else's technology. Most lay people don't understand this and think that if you've been accused of patent infringement it's because you stole their technology. (Note that the other side will still accuse you of stealing their technology.)
(2) Patent cases are civil cases and must be proven only by a preponderance of the evidence. This is not the "beyond a reasonable doubt standard" we hear about more often.
(3) Invalidity must be proven by a higher standard - clear and convincing evidence - because there is a (largely unjustified) presumption that the Patent Office got it right.
(4) The *claims* of a patent (those numbered paragraphs at the end) define the invention, not the stuff that comes before it. Just because the patent describes a particular device doesn't mean they are limited to that device. Read the claims. (There are naturally some subtleties here.)
(5) Major patent cases that involve fundamental technologies are like death penalty cases for companies because, if they are found to infringe a valid patent, the Court can order them to stop (called an injunction). This could naturally wreck your business. So even if you are 90% sure (which is an absurdly high confidence level) that you will not infringe or will invalidate a patent, it might still be completely rational to settle. By way of example, if I told you there was a 90% chance that you will cross a street and not get hit by a bus, would that inspire confidence? What if you had to cross the street 10 times a year? It doesn't mean you thought the patentee had a good case.
Anyways, there are a lot of these. This is a great idea.
And there is a problem that reasonable people can be convinced by a good lawyer to think an I.P. address is equivalent to a fingerprint and a DNA sample combined when in reality, anyone can take on my I.P. address.
Likewise, the presence of a file called "Sympathy For The Devil.mp3" does not mean that I actually have the song. And likewise, the presence of the song on my computer doesn't mean that I put it there (give me 2 minutes access to your windows computer and I can put stuff on there that would ruin your life-- especially with the new ruling that a cartoon of bart simpson screwing marge simpson is child porn).
People are really ignorant of computers. Computers, and now photographs, and increasingly, video tapes, and just about any kind of evidence can be fabricated. It's amazing to me that they can put Oliver Reed's face on another actor in a movie, yet people still take a video tape as gospel.
It's hard to believe anything any more since DNA tests have shown how often human witnesses are wrong.
It's a good reason for jury nullification (which you should never admit you will do- they'll just strike you- killing your right to jury nullification).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Go ahead and rethink your logic and consider that perhaps something happened, maybe even several times, that prompted the writer to write what he did.
He was dropped on his head as a child?
Disclaimer: I have not RTFA since their server is borked.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Don't get butt hurt about being called a techie, because thats what you are, and despite there being myriads of lawyers of various shades and colors, that is what they are and they have to deal with the stereo type associated with it.
And unless you have a JD, have passed the BAR and happen to be a techie, then the author is right: You are NOT a lawyer, no matter how much you think you know about law.
Plus, I don't think the author ever claimed to be a techie. Just someone like me who happens to read /. because he is a nerd.
1) Dear Techie, everything you think you know about law is probably incorrect. You are NOT a professional in law, also called lawyer. Forget "CSI" forget "law and order"
2) Don't ask anything but "am I arrested?" and if yes "I want a lawyer" that is it.
3) did I mention get a lawyer and shut the fuck up ? Even policemen admit anything you say, ANYTHING, will be filtered and used against you. Even policemen admit you should shut up and get a lawyer.
4) whatever you think of beyond reasonable doubt and so on : forget it. Get a professional. Also called Lawyer. Follow his/her advice.
Maybe after all this was only 2 points. But that all you need to know.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm sorry, but facts are facts and the way things work are they way that they work. I'm sorry, but no, you cannot tie a single IP address to a single person and a single piece of activity no matter how hard you try and no matter how many times you say it. It's a bummer for all those companies selling detection systems that trawl file sharing networks to the RIAA, and it would be lovely and simple if only it were true, but it isn't. It's funny that a lawyer is placing his faith in 'infallible' technology without understanding how that technology works, without understanding that it doesn't provide proof in the way that he thinks that it does and that he's deriding the very people who understand how it works. It won't make systems like this any less flawed:
;-).
http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/uwcse_dmca_tr.pdf
He mentions kiddie porn, but of course, that's always the politically correct thing to say
He's right that search and seizure will provide much more solid evidence so I wonder why he even bothers trying to dismiss other technical arguments other than to stroke his own ego about him being 'right'. However, there is ample evidence that there are some pretty terrible trojans out there that will do some pretty damn dodgy things to your machine. You'd have to be stupid and let your computer get in a pretty bad state, but then, most people do. Things are not as cut and dried as he thinks they are in the technology world and it strikes me as rather dangerous when a lawyer starts writing something that says "You're guilty, don't bother" regarding something where he has no clue how things actually work.
There's very little in the way of evidence in that piece of writing for starters and he hasn't 'walked through' anything. Without willingness to back up 'facts' with knowledge of what you're dealing with, whether it be medical matters, engineering or IT, then you're on a rocky road.
Are you willing to go to jail over your 5th amendment rights, or not? That is the only real question. If you are, then destroy evidence, refuse to give up encryption keys, do whatever.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You doubt that techies are ignorant? Perhaps you should read slashdot.
For example, I design CPUs. Every time I read a slashdot story about processors, I'm aghast at the ignorance that self-proclaimed techies have about the object of their lust. Virtually all of them.
My brother is an anti-trust attorney. When I discussed some of the issues surrounding the Microsoft antitrust case, he quickly dismissed the vast majority of the arguments that you see raised on slashdot by self-proclaimed techies who are fond of saying lawyers and judges just "don't get it".
He contends, with good reason, that it's the techies who "don't get it". Judges and lawyers hire expert witnesses to explain technology to them. Armchair lawyers just make half-assed assumptions about the way the law works.
So while some techies are not stupid, many (most?) are ignorant of the real legal issues.
I do find it interesting that so often legal battles exist solely due to each parties lawyers insisting that their view of the law is the correct view. And the sick part is that those lawyers earn big bucks when they are wrong as well as when they prevail. For the ultimate try Florida condo law and see how many lawyers are certain that either side of an issue will win.
For those that think they're smarter than cops or lawyers
I'd like to introduce you to somebody you may be familiar with who thought so true.
Don't commit a crime thinking you're too smart to be caught (don't commit a crime period). These days another good rule probably would also be "don't do things to bring suspicion on yourself" (even if you're innocent the ensuing circus could mess up your life, as per TFA).
So, let's assume you've discredited Ohm to some degree. But, is that degree relevant? The general points you've made to do so have some merit. However, Mr. Ohm is probably a lot closer to having the pulse of the US legal community that you or I. Therefore, even if he's done work for the RIAA, Exxon/Mobil, Altria, SCO, *and* Lord Cheney himself, his legal insights are going to carry more weight than ours. Why? Because he (probably) has much more extensive experience in how DAs, courts, and Federal/State/Local law enforcement work than we do.
Hell, even a law professor at Liberty University - of all places - has a leg up on 99.007% of the citizens when it comes time to decide: 1) am I about to step into the kimchee, and 2) if I do, what my odds are of keeping my okole and my assets out of harms way.
Luke, help me take this mask off
That doesn't make them stupid. It just means that they've no experience with the Muggle postal system and didn't know how it worked.
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While what you say is consistent with the rules of formal logic, that really doesn't matter. The question is, is it reasonable to believe that someone else put that file on your computer, or that a file named "Sympathy For The Devil.mp3" is not the Rolling Stone song. At first glance, I'd say that those assertions are not reasonable. Therefore, your defense will need to show that they are reasonable explanations, by providing evidence that there was an intrusion or that you have a time stamped copy of the file that has something other than that particular song.
You are proving the article author's point - geeks tend to focus on the problem as if it was a formal logic problem, when it is much more.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
That doesn't make them stupid.
I didn't say that it did. In fact, I was arguing that nobody is completely "smart" or "stupid". Though you might be an exception.
It's easy to cast stones - especially if you're using a blunderbus. You're guaranteed to hit your target, along with most of the landscape.
So how about you -stop- throwing stones and -start- by stating some specifics. What is wrong with people's ideas on CPU design? You say "virtually all", so presumably you're including me, as I consider myself part of this "great vast all" of which you speak. Specify for me which aspect(s) of CPU design I am ignorant on. Links to the posts of interest would be valuable, but a summary of what I have said versus the reality would be enlightening.
The same goes for your brother. You say "many of the arguments" can be dismissed. I do not want a carefully edited micro-selection of arguments, because that shows clearly that "many" is a blatant falsehood. Show me proof that "many" has any validity in this, that you didn't simply produce for your brother a rundown of the least of the points raised on here (or even points never raised on here at all) in order to find something for your brother to reject.
Ah, but no. Anyone willing to bandy words that are clearly a slam against everyone and yet worded so as to weasel out of any counter-claim has no interest in admitting they're not right. So, no, I don't believe you'll show any clear-cut evidence. If you reply at all, it'll be with further vagueness dressed up to look like definitive statements.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As someone who started attending law school and reading Slashdot at roughly the same time, I can say that judges and attorneys are a lot more reasonable and thoughtful about their opinions than Slashdot commenters. This is partly because they must learn how to focus on the issues that are pragmatically important in a case (e. g. whether taking a particular action will result in extremely negative consequences), and dispense with irrelevancies (e. g. whether lawyers are smarter than techies) or they will incur important real-world consequences. I suppose you can think about how nobody understands you because of your superior intelligence while you await trial in a jail cell just as well as you can in your mother's basement. It will have just as much relevance to your real-world situation in either case.
As always, XKCD has already covered this. ;)
And I'd like to be the king of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat.
In many normal situations, the judge isn't out to screw you - if you didn't do anything wrong. I've been able to waive my rights and get the ADA to recommend $0 fines. The judge went with that - no court costs.
OTOH, I wasn't carrying drugs at the time and was only a little pissy towards to cop. It was clear to the ADA and judge that I'd gotten an abusive cop with a "bad day" based on the 5 ticket he wrote me. None were moving violations.
I took "constitutional law" in college and carefully listened during the 2-weeks of "where to hide your drugs" sessions. In short, keep illegal drugs at home, away from sight from door and never invite a cop inside your home, even for a drink of water, if you may have drugs inside. Be polite and step outside to discuss anything with them.
I also have just left parties before the cops arrived. Mine was dumb luck, but it happened 4 times, so perhaps I just know how to leave a party at the peak?
... then you are likely to be eaten by a grue!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Here's what's missing from the article and the posts here so far. If you don't have the money to hire a private lawyer, your hopes of having an illegal search thrown out, or having technical evidence introduced, or going to trial, or having your case decided on its merits in any meaningful way, is nothing more than a NICE FANTASY. The public defender is not going to do anything for you except tell you what you're going to plead guilty to, and how much time you'll get.
(iaal)
I don't know about a behavioural psychologist named "Obama", one could name this effect after.
Argumentum ad hominem. How persuasive.
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if you are making a joke or if you are totally serious
in which case
reply=joke?"haha":"get a life";
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Read TFA before writing something like this.
Please.
Paul pointed out a few technicalities of the law, just like slashdotters love pointing out technicalities of computers etc.
Using a "get out of jail free" technical defense means that you got put in jail in the first place; even if you are not sent to prison, you can be charged, arraigned, harassed, etc based on evidence that will never meet "shadow of a doubt" standards.
Seagoon: Shut up Eccles!
Eccles: Shut up Eccles!
:-(
My response
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I am not a lawyer - you are right. But your argument is that techies should stop bringing up legitimate subtleties in technical legal arguments because the police can preemptively search your shit and ruin your reputation, even if you are ultimately acquitted of charges? What?
When you wrote "define ASCII", did you then mean define as in, explain that it's a way of encoding characters (a character-encoding scheme) with an expanded explanation about what a character-encoding scheme is or did you really mean "do you know what ASCII is an abbreviation of?" (American Standard Code for Information Interchange btw)?
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
PROTIP: Memorizing Latin phrases doesn't actually mean you didn't manage to completely miss the point of the post by quoting the example of his point, then reiterating the point he was trying to make.
It's been a long time.
>This confusingly assuming post is trying to say that techies are so stupid that they can only comprehend there being one piece of evidence in a trial and they think that if they cast doubt on this one piece of evidence then the accused is in the clear.
No. The point is that by the time you present the defense you think is so logical, your life has already been reduced to a shambles. I've seen people going through the system. He's right.
>for all lawyers that exist none of them have any interest other than money and sucking the blood out of other people.
If so, all the more reason to pay attention when someone tells you not to risk legal trouble.
If I ever meet someone who doesn't think they've got a better handle on what's going on than everyone else, I'll let you know.
It's been a long time.
is also a complex society
it is impossible to be rich without also being complex
also, a complex society must, by necessity, have a complex legal code
it is not possible to satisfy the legal needs of a complex economic and social system with a simple set of laws
therefore, if you wish to live in a rich western society, it is completely impossible for your legal system to be easily understood by the common man
you need to accept that and make peace with that fact. it is completely unavoidable
you must have a dedicated legal profession dedicated to the study and interpretation of the law. the common man cannot be expected to have the time to completely absorb and understand the unavoidably inescapably complex legal code
in a related way, it always makes me laugh to hear simpletons talk about replacing the complex tax code with a flat sales tax. in a complex economy (again complexity is NECESSARY in order to be rich) there are myriad ways to obtain income. so lets imagine the simpletons win, scrap the complex tax code, and replace it with a flat sales tax. all of a sudden, you have all these yahoos able to make money without paying a dime of taxes. then, the exact same simpletons asking for a simple tax code would whine and complain about the tax code being unfair, about freeloaders on the system
you don't want your laws and taxes to be unfair? then accept that it is complex. being complex means it is beyond the easy understanding of the uninitiated layman. all of these observations are completely inescapable facts of life. you need to understand, accept, and make peace with these observations
fair and complex, or simple and unfair. those are your choices in taxes and law. pick one. but no, sorry, you don't get a fair and simple tax code, you don't get a fair and simple legal code. such a tax code or legal code is completely impossible in a complex society, which is the only kind of society in which you can enjoy a comfortable standard of living
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...but the parent should be modded back up. The GP post is ridiculous. You won't use GPL software because you can't understand the license without a patent lawyer? Then, of course, you must not use any software at all, because they ALL have licenses, and none of them are any less complex than the GPL. And with the GPL, you don't even have to accept the damn license to use the product! So it doesn't really matter whether you understand it or not.
So it's not reasonable to believe that "Sympathy For The Devil.mp3" is an audiobook of Holly Lisle's novel by that name? The title enough, combined with the fame of the song, is sufficient to convict beyond reasonable doubt? That's harsh.
All this persecutor in the YANAL blog is saying is that there ain't no justice, and it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, innocent or guilty they can fuck up your life. That's true, but it doesn't really take a lawyer to know it -- or a non-lawyer not to.
In other news, Kruger and Dunning grossly over-estimated the accuracy of their tests and results ;P.
Hans's plan:
1) Kill wife
2) Hide body where cops can't find it
3) Throw up smokescreen in court
4) Don't testify at trial in such a way that makes me look like a murdering loon.
You'd have thought 1, 2 and 3 were the hard ones, but sometimes the simplest things trip you up...
But aren't you really arguing that everyone has some level of ignorance rather than stupidity? Someone might well be very smart, whatever that means, but have no knowledge of the workings of a particular system. That's different from the general understanding of what "stupid" would mean.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
I'm far from a police apologist, but exactly how are the police supposed to charge you with a crime if they have no evidence? And how are they supposed to gather evidence if they have to charge you, first?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
IANAL, but I'll throw in my commentary...
Some other things that will throw the technical types off is that a lot of law is written to be intentionally obsfucated. So even if you somehow do understand it, it doesn't always guarantee that running the courts may interpret it in that way. In other cases there is a lot of poorly written law that is designed by lobbyists and passed by incomprehensive legislators such that it is inherently injust/unethical to begin with. Such malformed law flys against what would be either fair or logical. So note that (fair or just) != (what is legal). (If you think getting some software manufacturer to hear you out on an annoying bug is hard, try to get a bad law removed from an entrenched system that somehow thinks it's ok to begin with. Good luck if you try fighting though!)
Unlike in math or most of the sciences, rules in law are also malleable, and can be subverted. So it requires constant exposure so one knows how to game the system. If it were made so that people following common-sense could figure out the stuff, I don't think we'd be in much need of overly expensive lawyers.
How?
Because there ARE at least two reasons for your noted action:
a) The lawyer was right
b) The OP was right
And they can BOTH be correct!
I'm not the grandparent, but I do process control for a living, which requires me to understand industrial processes. It's always shocking to me how ignorant people on slashdot can be about basic industry. I'd give specific examples, but we're talking "Not even wrong" sort of wrongness.
One time, I was having a discussion about the environmental impact of cardboard manufacturing. This guy is sure that chlorine dioxide is a horrible side-effect of this industry. Cardboard is made out of unbleached kraft pulp, and thus no bleaching agents are used.
Another time, I showed that the amount of renewable and nuclear energy on the planet isn't enough to support even a few critical industries, let alone do so and heat our homes or transport the raw goods to where they need to go. Someone actually tried to tell me that the photo-voltaic cell industry will double every year for 40 years, so we'll soon have more than the entire world electricity generating capacity just in PV cells. That's what I call "Not even wrong".
Most slashdotters tend to have a poor understanding of electronics, as well. In a recent thread I explained a technique that's been used by tradesmen for decades to connect LEDs directly to a 120VAC source, and slashdotters came from far and wide to explain why the common practice was impossible and wouldn't work.
Given slashdotters don't even know how to bias an LED with a resistor, I wouldn't be even remotely surprised to find they don't know about CPU design.
It's been a long time.
Ironically, had there been a bunch of techies on the jury the morons would have let him go. Seriously, even after he led them to the body there were people still saying he shouldn't have been convicted.
I get their argument and all - you can be convicted for the wrong reasons. The thing is that in this case once the evidence was presented it was stunningly clear he was guilty, but all these geeky dweebs don't understand how evidence works.
Uhhh, where the hell did I say that? Technically, I thanked him!
Another thing some alleged techies don't get is that most humans understand sarcasm.
Actually yes, a whole lot of people who call themselves techies are stupid.
Actually, every person who calls himself "techie" is stupid. But the average person who creates technology is smarter than the average lawyer.
But wait. I am a lawyer (JD) AND a computer professional (Systems Admin). How bout them apples...
--I like turtles...
Everybody's smart and stupid about different things. Like those wizards in the Harry Potter books that can master complicated magic spells, but can't mail a letter.
A "wizards in Harry Potter" analogy? Seriously?
Wow.
the Jury... I didn't commit (THAT) crime... And, to demonstrate my innocence, please allow me to call on a HIGHER power..... Please, don't be shock...
OHHHHHMMMM... OHHHHMMM..... Ger-ghe.. Qua-jeh.... hamni-ram-ooo-doool... OHHHHMMMM.. OOOOHHHHMMMM...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
You misunderstand. I'd let them go ahead and search. Let them go ahead and charge me. Wait and bide my time. Wait to present my innocence before a jury and be judged not guilty.
THEN I'd sue the pants off the judge and officers involved based on the 4th Amendment, since they obviously gathered false evidence.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Unfortunately, the PDF is not searchable, but feel free to read "Its Just in Time" but Martin Armstrong. (google for pdf link)
His Wikipedia page is not very flattering, but the idea is that there is a government conspiracy theory to keep him silenced. He was a well-respected financial analyst until he run a muck. It seems when your theories are too good, where they can detect manipulation, and can be used for manipulation, some people take issue with that. Anyway, its a free read. Have at it.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
1) "You are not an economist"
2) "You are not a political scientist or expert in public choice theory"
3) "You are not a businessperson"
4) "You are not a pick-up artist"
Sigh. In addition to your poor reading skills, understanding of logical principles sucks. I argued that your post was clueless, therefore you're an idiot. That's exactly the opposite of an ad homminen argument, which would go "you're an idiot, therefore your post is clueless".
You must be very careful to apply the term ad hominem correctly, because people often do it wrong. Here are two schematic arguments:
The first one is an ad hominem argument. The second one is just pointing out that the argument you want us to accept is invalid, and that this is sufficient grounds for concluding that you are stupid.
Are you adequate?
Neither of those answers counts as a complete definition. Both might form part of one. But since there are many character encodings, a basic definition would have to say something about how ASCII differs from other encodings. A key detail would be the number of bits you need to represent an ASCII character, something most people get wrong.
If you think it's to hard to hide it what about hiding it at the neighbors apartment? Good luck with happening to bring that back for investigation ..
This dumb-ass solution exposes your neighbor to search and seizure and criminal prosecution - almost certainly on the federal felony charge.
He will be questioned. He will be watched. He will rat you out.
But the basis of the argument that invalidation of a patent has to be done at a higher level is because the courts think the patent office do their job well.
The patent office don't bother doing their job well because they assume that a court case will sort it out.
So stop with the "the patent must be Ok else it wouldn't have been granted" at least until the patent office do their job well.
"Ignorance" implies a lack of understanding, "stupidity" implies a lack of skill. I don't consider myself ignorant about how cars work, but when it comes to fixing them, I consider myself a total idiot, and call in a professional.
1) You are not a trial attorney
2) You are not a criminal attorney
3) You are not to be construed as legal advice
and my personal favorite...
4) Not enough sand.
-- ;^)
Toro
Interesting piece, and the main reason I've transitioned from an IT background into cyberlaw. There are certainly a lot of ways the law can be twisted and somebody needs to be out there twisting it in a way that makes sense from the IT perspective.
Congratulations for correctly identifying the point of his post!
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Having to do with the legal system...
I drove a vomit comet for a company. The vehicle had been in numerous accidents from many different drivers. I was driving to a stop down a steep winding hill. All of a sudden the wheel would not turn, through the guard-rail and over the side I went. Sliding sideways about 40' until the truck came to a stop next to a propane tank. I was ok but shaken. Mechanics said that the A-Frame on the front suspension had been cracked for a while based on the fact there was rust in between the break. Fast forward to my - yes - trial. No lawyer, affidavit from licensed and certified mechanic and my truthful testimony were no match for the responding officer ( a mechanic when his oil needed changing - tires rotated etc), said it was obviously my fault and that the damaged A-Frame was caused by the accident. Judge found me guilty pending appeal. Cut to me getting a lawyer. She took my statement then the transcript wrote it up and sent it to the judge - I am not guilty as the evidence and my lawyers written statement said so, and after paying her $500 for her paragraphs, I was not guilty.
Is the legal system skewed and screwed? Yes.
Am I bitter? Yes.
Do I consult attorneys whenever legal issues are involved? Yes, yes I do.
There are good attorneys everywhere, they are usually busy though.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
"Another time, I showed that the amount of renewable and nuclear energy on the planet isn't enough to support even a few critical industries, let alone do so and heat our homes or transport the raw goods to where they need to go."
I would LOVE to see how you showed this, since it is, quite clearly, bullshit. CURRENT methods of utilizing renewable energy sources don't provide enough power to handle out CURRENT critical industries, and certainly don't provide enough energy to let us ship 20 tons of corn flakes halfway around the world because we don't feel like growing and producing locally. Advances in technology will increase the efficiency or renewable power generation, and (hopefully) corporate responsibility and personal sensibility will lead to more local production. Cost is by far the biggest barrier--the up-front costs of being responsible are always higher than the up-front costs of being irresponsible.
From an ideological standpoint, fighting against "renewable" energy sources is retarded, simply because by engaging in the debate you admit that we are mostly reliant on non-renewables, and should become entirely reliant on non-renewables. Because it's not like a non-renwable resource would ever run out, now is it?
And don't complain about my use of the phrase "run out". I mean that the costs of extraction will skyrocket to the point where it's no longer viable to use them.
Legal reasoning is very different from the kind of reasoning done by ordinary computer programmers. Computer languages are formal languages, with precise mathematical definitions of what symbols occur in them, which sequences of symbols are well-formed expressions of the language, and what the semantics of the code is (in the worst case, where these things are not defined independently of the implementation, the compiler, runtime system and machine architecture act together impose such a semantics).
Legal language and reasoning is nothing at all like that. It is all informal logic and non-monotonic reasoning, using imperfect analogies to exemplars and prototypes ("precedent"). There is considerable vagueness built into the practice, because the built-in assumption is that the future will bring unanticipated circumstances that will not be easy to reconcile with the precedents set today.
Are you adequate?
Ok, but you've only shown that -some- Slashdotters are ignorant. The distribution of IQs is not an unbiased bell curve (since there are IQs in excess of 200 and none that are negative - well, so long as you don't consider politicians as qualifying as humans). However, because 100 is the average, there must be more people with an IQ below 100 than above for that to hold.
It's reasonable to suppose that IQs on Slashdot follow the distribution seen in the general population, so yes, that means that you'll see more stupid posts than sensible ones. But if you claim that "most" posts are stupid, you are arguing that Slashdot is dumber than the general population. Frankly, you could probably replace half of Slashdot with amoebas and still be better than the general population.
As for renewable and nuclear power, that depends on how you perform the calculations. For example, take solar power. Much of that power will be used for heating. But running water through a copper pipe along a tube where half the tube acts as a reflective surface with a focal point of the pipe, you can heat up the water with far greater efficiency than the theoretical limit of solar panels, let alone solar panels linked to an electrical heater to heat water.
You're still limited by the energy being put in, and your conversion is still bounded, but one very simple high-efficiency conversion will be superior to multiple low-efficiency conversions.
By nuclear power, you mean nuclear fission. There is no shortage of fuel for nuclear fusion, unless you know something about the water table that the rest of us don't. I'm also assuming that by "on the planet", you mean what has been constructed and is currently in operation, rather than what could be got from a fission reactor if it were built to be efficient rather than cheap.
If the Governments of the world stopped farking around and got down to business, we could have plenty of fission capacity in very short order and could have fusion reactors on the grid (not for testing, but for actual consumer use) within 5-10 years.
The only reason the reactor being built in France will take so long is because it's being designed to be "perfect" (which is never the right way to do things). There should be four or five such reactors being assembled quickly at staggered intervals such that data from one can be used to update the design of the next. Stepwise refine! Monolithic design/test methods don't work.
LEDs are limited by current, not voltage, if I recall my electronics correctly. Personally, though, if you're going to use high voltages, you're better off with thermionic valves. You have more control over where, when and how it lights up.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I would be happy to go through the process of explaining it to you, but you've already agreed with me. Your second sentence disagrees with your first.
Starry-eyed futurism doesn't change the realities of today.
The three critical industries I chose:
Ammonia production for fertilizer to feed the current world population would have to be done through electrolysis because right now it's done almost exclusively through natural gas
Portland cement would need to be converted to electric heating, where it's done almost exclusively through coal or oil.
Iron smelting still being done with coal or oil would have to be converted to electric heating.
These three industries at current production levels would use the world's supply of non-hydrocarbon derived electricity.
FTA
"Omitting a lot of detail, the police, even without going to a judge first, can obtain your name, address, and credit card number from your ISP if they can show the information is relevant to a criminal investigation."
IANAL, but I know this is more often then not, false. If the Police show up to a Cable ISP(not sure about telco's, but I believe they are under similar laws), they will HAVE to have a subpoena before even being told that the person is a customer. And if they do get a Court Order, they cannot get transactional data, i.e. Logs. I know this because, while I am not a lawyer, I got to work with them and with Law enforcement day in and day out for a major US cable company.
But that plays out before the judge - and almost all of it before the trial.
Excluding relevant evidence is not something a judge wants to do - your argument has to be very compelling.
The odds are that what you want out will come in.
I reckon this is quite an unfounded statement but it's what I deal with on a daily basis... The thing is, I'm not happy at all with the idea that I'm going to be defended and tried by someone who can't grasp boolean logic basics and calls it "chinese" or "code". As of law being abstract, what about, say, the Command Processor design pattern for abstraction?
Seriously, have you ever read their books? Their teacher's writings? I've never read US law school material, but around here? There are words in it I don't even think can be translated. There is no discussion. Teachers (they have to be addressed as Mr. Professor Doctor - literal translation) are complete masters of the student's fate. There is no scientific discussion. Enough rant though. Bottom line is: law is complicated because most people making laws and applying laws are perfectly ignorant of the most basic principles of logic and they don't have the slightest clue of what critical thinking and scientific method is. Combine the awareness of these principles with the internal know-how of how courts, investigations and police works and, there, you have a top lawyer. This works really easy for doctors too (M.D.'s)...
A 1/4w resistor is virtually free and virtually indestructible. As long as I can remember, my father, a red seal instrument mechanic, has used this simple device in series with an LED when he wants a voltage indicator on an extension cord. It limits current to the levels required, and works great. A vacuum tube sounds like a horribly large, horribly expensive solution to a problem which can be solved with a basic electronic component. Everyone wants to stick a 5 dollar part on their 1 dollar LED. It's ridiculous.
As for the rest, the problem isn't that the electricity manufacturing capacity is lowered as much as the energy requirements of industry are so massively subsidized by fossil fuels. Ammonia production is a key industry because humanity requires nitrogen fertilizer to continue to feed itself. To replace the natural gas feedstock with electrolysis would take virtually all the renewable electricity generation on the planet(non-nuclear). There are a huge number of industries like this, hidden but relying on fossil fuels to keep energy inputs from being insanely high. The other two I chose for my little case study were Portland cement which requires massive amounts of natural gas, coal, or fuel oil to heat the lime rock to the proper temperature, and steel smelting, which also requires large amounts of natural gas or fuel oil or coal.
Ignorance isn't genetic. It's easily solved. It just takes the understanding that you don't understand everything, so if you're interested, read up.
It's been a long time.
Actually, that's a point that's even in the summary. Guess who'll seize your computer and maybe arrest you, long before you get to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" to a jury? Right, the DOJ, according to _their_ interpretation of the law.
Yes, some years later you might even get your computer back, and/or be let to go free. Was it worth the inconvenience?
Now also take a guess how many blogs and newspapers and news sites will carry a story like "John Smith arrested for kiddie porn", and how long it'll be easy to find by Google. Do you think your neighbours will go by reasonable doubt before trying to run you out of town anyway? IIRC in England they tried to run a doctor out of town because her job title said "paeditrician" (i.e., child doctor) and apparently nobody knew it's not the same thing as "paedophile". I also recall cases where they glued posters on someone's house and tried to make their life hell because they found a completely different person by the same name accused of a sex crime.
And do you think many HR departments will even get to the part where they listen to how you was aquitted for reasonable doubt? Most companies out there aren't looking for a reason to hire you, they're looking for any pretext to drop your resume from the pile. There is advice and there are practices out there ranging from tarot and numerology, to "shuffle them and drop the bottom half", to the gravity well test (drop the pile in the stair well and eliminate the lower half of the mess.) _Anything_ that doesn't explicitly say "discriminates against minority Y" is good because it can't be acted in court. Dropping an accused paedophile to avoid the potential PR problem? I can see people jumping on such an oportunity.
Additionally I'd argue that even "beyond reasonable doubt" should be taken with a lot more skepticism IMHO. In most of the cases it'll only be a jurry of your peers only if you're a complete moron too. It won't be libertarian network admins listening to your case there. It'll be people who don't know their elbow from their arse about the technology involved, and in some cases who take pride in being computer-illiterate and go to great lengths to avoid looking like they understand _anything_ about computers. (It's actually fashionable to be computer illiterate lately.) It'll be people who don't know the difference between "we traced the kiddie porn downloads to his computer" and the fact that they only have the IP Address from the ISP. And again some who'll never admit understanding something as nerdy, that even if they did.
"Reasonable doubt" can end up meaning little more than "I like the DA more than his lawyer" or "the prosecution's expert witness looked smarter."
There _have_ been people who landed in jail for stuff where even the most elementary knowledge of statistics would have provided ample doubt, and/or where the prosecution's expert witness was demonstrably talking out the arse. E.g., I remember a case about a nurse in an emergency ward which got to actually go to jail because an above-average number of people died during her shift. There was no evidence whatsoever that she did anything wrong there, but "OMG, X people died during her shifts" was enough for the jury to send her to jail.
You'll be judged by people who are emotional like that. It doesn't take too many who get in a "OMG, paedophilia, die, die, die" tizzy to not even listen to your arguments that you actually just let your access point wide open to camouflage your P2P music downloads.
Of course, it can go the other way too, because judgments based on stupidity and ignorance are inherently random. But do you really want to bet your freedom on it?
And to come back on topic, especially if he's from the DOJ, he's probably seen more trials than you or I did. And I wouldn't be surprised if half of them were the "sentenced by a jury of emotional morons" kind. If he says that "beyond reasonable doubt" doesn't mean as bulletproof as you think, he _might_ have some experience to base that on.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"stupidity" implies a lack of skill
Actually, I think lack of skill could be stupidity or ignorance. Stupidity is a lack of ability to understand. Is someone is mathematically stupid, it's not that they haven't tried to understand it, it's that they DID try to understand it and were not able to. This would be a "lack of skill" due to stupidity. However, ignorance also manifests itself as "lack of skill". I, for example, am ignorant of car repair. That doesn't mean I couldn't understand it if I tried, but I haven't, so I don't know. But because I don't know of it, I lack car repair skill.
I think it's better to define stupidity as "the inability to understand".
No, you misunderstand. They didn't gather false evidence, they gathered evidence insufficient to support the charges that were filed against you, so a jury found you "not guilty" of those charges. Nobody violated your 4th amendment rights in this scenario.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Then you made a error in phrasing the question. If you as someone "what is the definition of [insert acronym here]", the common response would be to give the words making up the acronym. Don't be a douche trying to look clever by pretending to ask for one type of answer when you want another.
"What's six plus six?"
"twelve"
"No, it's an arithmetic problem"
All this persecutor in the YANAL blog is saying is that there ain't no justice, and it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, innocent or guilty they can fuck up your life.
I think the audience for the article wasn't the innocent caught in the middle, but the idiots who think they could get away with whatever because of these technical defenses. His point was, even if you might be able to mount such a defense, that defense WILL NOT interfere with gathering evidence... evidence which might blow apart your technical defense. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is required to get a guilty verdict, but not to get a warrant.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I'd love to quibble with you about the definition of "definition", but I don't want to.
You say you are a lawyer but your username is TenDollarMan? Something doesn't make sense here.
I think the point here is that whatever you do in your home can be discovered when people invade your home. Trying to hide it is like trying to hide drugs in your toilet cistern: you might think it's smart, but everyone has thought of it already. As a corollary, I'd like to add another point: stick to your goddamn principles, people! If you truly believe it's OK to download something, or possess that government information, or whatever, then for your own sake and everyone else's, fight for that principle. I mean, most of those who download stuff for free do seem to believe that it should be freely available. Why act like you believe in the law, and simply flaunt or hide from it? Stand up and say it's wrong, and you might stand a chance when you encourage others to take a stand with you. Lie, and no one will stand with you, because they'll recognise no truth in your actions to stand with.
Did you maybe click on the wrong "reply" link? Because you seem to be replying to somebody who said that "lawyers are smart, everybody else is dumb". Which isn't even remotely what I said.
Saying 8 isn't really wrong, since ASCII can mean extended ASCII in some situations. Knowing that the basic ASCII uses 7 bits is more of a technicality. Of course if you're going to claim that you know the connection between ASCII and UTF-8, you'd better know that since UTF-8 uses that last bit to determine how many bytes it needs to represent that character. Knowing the number of bits in a UTF-8 character is a much harder question. Now if you're talking about knowing which bit you have to flip to change the case of an ASCII letter or which two bits you have to flip to turn a single digit number into its ASCII character equivalent or vice versa, I'm sure that would be something that most people wouldn't be able to tell you.
The point of this, other than spouting random knowledge that I've picked up over the years at the slightest prompting, is that there are very few subjects that people can know completely...there's usually a depth of knowledge that will mean that some people know a subject better than others or in a different way from others.
And you are ignoring known behavior of the RIAA and their agent in taking screen shots of files on another computer and convincing a jury that a screenshot of a program on MY computer proves beyond a reasonable doubt that you were breaking the law on YOUR computer.
Of course it is reasonable to believe someone planted evidence. Evidence gets planted all the time. Cops throw down drugs, guns, etc. and get caught doing it regularly.
Seriously, you would be just the kind of gullible fool I hope isn't on my jury. You remind me of the lady we all argued with for a few hours who finally said, "But the defense hasn't PROVED the defendent is innocent!"
I agree with you- a good lawyer can get an ignorant jury to convict you of anything. They don't have a clue that a screenshot you created isn't good evidence of lawbreaking on my computer.
It's the classic "on the internet" problem-- you add "on the internet" to anything and everyone loses all sense of logic and reason.
Yes-- the problem is lying prosecutors and plaintiff lawyers lacking ethics, ignorant defense lawyers, ignorant juries, and lying, lawbreaking, Media Sentry companies fabricating data and not going to jail for a decade over it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Reiser is kind of an extreme case, in that his explanations didn't pass the laugh test. Most of what this guy seems to be talking about are things that at various times have actually held up court. We're not talking about trying to come up with circumstantial explanations for why there was blood on your driveway and a missing seat in your car on the same weekend your wife disappeared, but coming up with circumstantial explanations for why someone else might've been downloading something through your open wireless access point.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think even if we ignore these issues, which are significant), techies seem to forget another important factor. There's a prosecutor. And this is someone who knows the law and, like a chess grandmaster, thinks several moves ahead. So the techy thinks "I shall commit something that may be a crime and use a bizarre interpretation of the English language and a tortured analogy as my defence."
However, the prosecutor mind works along he lines of "I shall charge him with a more easily provable crime that he has also committed. He may try to pull a bizarre redefinition as a defence, so I shall point out legal decisions in similar cases that support my argument. It's possible that he will also do the same either because he's had the sense to pay for a legal expert or he's actually not as stupid as I expect, so I'll research all the cases that may support his innocence and find strong arguments about why they are different."
"Harry Potter books that can master complicated magic spells, but can't mail a letter."
I don't know what is scarier, the fact that you missed the point, or the fact that I know you missed the point.
Crime only pays if you are smart AND mean.
If you are just smart, you might make as much as you could at a regular job. You need mean to be able to screw over the right people to make big bucks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Another time, I showed that the amount of renewable and nuclear energy on the planet isn't enough to support even a few critical industries, let alone do so and heat our homes or transport the raw goods to where they need to go."
That's not true. In fact we can meet it with industrial solar thermal.
I would love to see your 'proof' about the nuclear side of that argument.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
IQ testing doesn't work that way.
Step wise refine can not work in large engineering project with rapid follow development, becasue that thing that can be improved will almost always depend on earlier developed part of the process.
Industrial solar thermal is really the way to go, along with IFRs. The US could be energy independed in 15 years. 5-10 is a little optimistic.
You only ahve so many experts and experienced people.
I doubt there is enough knowledgeable people in the world to be building more then 10 plants at a time, globally.
Solar thermal OTOH, doesn't require much specialized knowledge for 95% of the project.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You only have so many people, but you have an endless supply of chocolate-covered espresso coffee beans.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wow, okay, I retract my earlier statement that convicting without physical evidence is necessarily bad. From that newspaper article, a conviction certainly looks reasonable. (I couldn't pass actual judgement since I wasn't at the trial.) Certainly the constitution does not require physical evidence to convict.
Unless every single one of the many witnesses were co-conspirators, it seems fairly solid.
Yes, one of the star witnesses was about a confession, but the other witnesses certainly testified about some behavior that backs up the confession.
SirWired
Why would you have to say how ASCII differs from other encodings? You can implement the ASCII encoding scheme without the knowledge of any others.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
That is not necessarily a 70% acquittal rate. Dropping charges after they were filed certainly sounds like it would also show up in that stat.
That is not to say filing charges and then later dropping them isn't bad, just that I don't think that the 70% means they fail that often during trial.
SirWired
For the LED, yes, you're correct. If all you want is a single LED for an on/off measure, then a single cheap component is all you need. If, on the other hand, you wanted a scale readout, you still only need a single vaccuum tube but might need half a dozen or more LEDs or more. Eventually, the tube becomes cheaper.
Yes, the hidden costs you mention are important to factor in. Eliminating ammonia production would devastate the food supply available, but this would have the benefit of reducing human population to something sensible, so it's not all bad.
But assuming you're not wanting this to happen, coal and other fossil fuels will necessarily be consumed and might as well generate power whilst they are doing so. However, you only need as many such power stations as generate the necessary byproduct, and you can tailor the type of burn to maximize the byproduct even if it reduces the overall power-generating capability, as power then becomes the real byproduct.
Portland cement is an interesting one. The Romans added volcanic ash to powdered limestone, as the ash reacts with water to chemically generate massive amounts of heat, producing an effect very similar to Portland cement. Not necessarily as high a grade and definitely not as uniform in quality, but still definitely an innovative way of working.
They appear to have used a method developed by the Egyptians, who poured the tops of pyramids into place before allowing what is essentially cement to solidify, but adapted it - likely as a result of an experiment or accidental discovery somewhere around Vesuvius.
This does not mean we can just substitute Roman technology for modern technology - although given the really crappy cement people use, there are occasions when this might not be such a bad idea. What it does mean is that Portland cement will likely borrow other techniques to become more energy-efficient, in time.
Steel smelting - well, there you have me stumped. I don't know of any alternative methods for producing or handling high-grade steel. It's energy-hungry and always has been. If you don't mind it being a little "hot" in other ways, I suppose you could reprocess nuclear fuel rods to produce a sub-critical mass. The heat from the thermonuclear activity should be ample, but it's hard to say what atomic nuclei will be in the "steel" afterwards, or what you do with the three axe-wielding arms it has grown.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not necessarily mean; the truly mean types generally end up dead or in prison. What you need is a sort of psychopathic ruthlessness.
Even then, engaging in regular criminal activity ups your chances of being murdered in the USA something like a 100X... Hmm... Let's pull up some figures...
I base this on this post, per the FBI 60-80% of murders are felon on felon.
This one suggests that there are ~1.6 million felons denied the right to vote.*
Going by the 300 Million of our population, and round up to 2 million felons(some states don't remove the ability to vote, so the 1.6 is an underestimate. Anyways, we're looking at a category making up .7% of the population consisting of OVER HALF the murder victims... By my calcs, that's 148 times more likely to be murdered if you're a felon. Ouch, huh?
As for the being smart part; many criminals, even if they aren't caught by the police, end up earning less than the average fast food employee. Being caught and spending time in jail/prison, legal costs, etc... Makes even many of the 'more successful' ones rather poor earners.
*I have to say that I wish I could have found better sources, but even if the magnitudes are correct, it points out how dangerous doing felony stuff can be.
I don't read AC A human right
Sigh. I'm tired of arguing with people who quibble with my use of this word or that, but aren't even trying to understand what I'm saying.
Try describing ASCII to me. Start with telling me how many ASCII characters there are (including control characters). Specifying this number as a power of 2 is fine (and yes, that's a hint.)
Search and seizure. I have the manuals from the FBI et al on this subject.
Back when I worked for the state AG's office I can't tell you how many times I got called in to help with I.T. related cases.
That said, as far as WAP's go, I've snorted and pen tested mine. If someone is determined enough they can break into a WAP2 protected system. Doesn't take a whole lot of CPU cycles.
neither legal or computing
just legal system has posed a greater power in the society than the computers do
if some day computer rules.....there will be computer-legal system........for u to learn......
> Did you know that plaintiffs are actually less successful in the E.D.Texas than elsewhere (and yes, it's Eastern, not Western where the majority of patent suits are filed)? No, you couldn't know that, or you wouldn't be making this argument.
Unfortunately, you neglect to mention that far more cases are settled prior to trial in that "rocket docket." And, even after the increase in settlements, plaintiffs STILL have almost as much success there as they do elsewhere, even though only the strongest cases are left.
Believe it or not, the Eastern District of Texas does not attract a disproportionate amount of patent lawsuits for no reason. And the townsfolk love it. It brings a ton of money into the local economy...
Yes, you're right that it being a "rocket docket" with little else to do makes it attractive and federal law (more or less) allows this sort of forum shopping. But please don't point to a "clean" floor when most of the cases have been swept under the rug by getting settled as soon as they find out they're fighting it in ED Texas.
If this moron is a lawyer, look elsewhere.
All he does in this post is point out that before you get to court, you get jerked around by the legal system via search and seizure, lame public defenders, etc.
Well, fucking DUH! Anybody who's stupid enough not to know that deserves to be in prison.
This is "legal information for techies"? No, this is "stupid shit you should know if you have a brain at all" or "legal information on Sarah Palin's level".
Complete fucking waste of a read.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
But what about the breadth of domain issue? Understanding a narrow domain of discourse requires having been exposed to it, and successfully reached an understanding. But once the domain is broad enough, everyone has been exposed to it.
From your example, you could be ignorant of how to rebuild a carburator (on a car old enough to have one). That doesn't say anything much about stupidity, in fact it could be argued that you were more intelligent for choosing not to master a skill that is becoming less and less needed with each passing year. But, suppose you lack the skill to change a tire, or even to put fuel in a car. At some point, not picking up a few of the basics needed for emergencies becomes stupidity, not just ignorance. This is still assuming you own a car or drive one frequently enough that not mastering these basics becomes a serious risk factor, of course. If you lived all your life in a city with good public transit, and never even got a driver's liscence, the line gets drawn pretty broadly. But it's always there somewhere.
There are things any person of normal experience and mental capabilty masters. You could be ignorant of what the initials FDIC stand for in the US financial system, but if you somehow made it to adulthood without understanding banks charge interest for borrowing money, that's not ignorance anymore. You could be ignorant of what the court case Plessy v Ferguson was about, but if you're surprised there's a law against practicing law without a liscense, that's not normally just ignorance. You may not know the 3 point fowl rule - that's ignorance. Asking why the football team is playing inside, with a round ball is stupidity.
Now you can make up examples of people who would be genuinely ignorant but not stupid in any of those cases. Maybe the example is an Inuit exchange student who has never seen ground not covered by snow, but did very well on an IQ test and can presumably master any of these ideas with just a little work. But these cases are exotically crafted exceptions.
Who is John Cabal?
There are some really smart people who didn't know when to keep their mouths shut when taken "out of their element". Just ask Hans Reiser, who I believe would have been found not guilty had he stayed off the witness stand.
And you are ignoring known behavior of the RIAA and their agent in taking screen shots of files on another computer and convincing a jury that a screenshot of a program on MY computer proves beyond a reasonable doubt that you were breaking the law on YOUR computer.
This isn't how the law works. An RIAA suit is a CIVIL action, not a CRIMINAL action. In a criminal suit, the burden of proof is high - 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. In a civil suit, the burden of proof is lower - 'preponderance of evidence'. This is why RIAA suits, while one might argue the defendants have broken the law, are not tried in criminal court. The burden of proving a case is too high for criminal court. They are tried in civil court, where the burden of proof is much lower. If you civilly sue someone for crashing their boat into your dock, you only have to prove to the jury that, by the preponderance of evidence, they crashed their boat into your dock.
A famous example of this is the OJ trial. OJ was found criminally 'not guilty', but was successfully sued in civil court for wrongful death.
geeks tend to focus on the problem as if it was a formal logic problem, when it is much more.
The law is not logical? You don't say!
OHSHITADHOMINEM! I must be wrong!
No, you happened to have been wrong even before the ad hom. Points for accuracy!
Dipshit.
Pot: Yo, kettle!
Kettle: What, pot?
Pot: YOU BLACK! I mean, you REALLY BLACK!
I'm not the best person to ask as I've done a couple of degrees in CompSci and have over 15 years of programming experience (well official, stick another 10 years on that when younger). I'm not one of your 'self-taught techies'. But I think you are wrong, most techies are very self-aware of their short-comings. I, for instance, can't draw for toffee.
However because we are scientists at heart we take everything as a challenge. Tell us that an open wi-fi can't be used as a legal loophole and we'll try and find a way of making it possible. Try saying you can't fit 10 postmen in a letterbox and somebody will write a geometric tessellation algorithm to find a solution. This is why techies often play devils advocate. This is also why girlfriends of techies often hurl solid projectiles towards their allegedly over-sized cranium.
Lawyers on the other hand don't care about spirit of the law, they concentrate on manipulating emotions. Whether a jury, or even a client not to drop a case losing him billable hours ("no seriously, you have a really strong case"). Sure they work hard and do a lot of research, but they are very selective in their use of the findings. Give them the same facts on two different sides of the case and they come up with two very different conclusions.
The techies can argue their way to what they think is the ideal solution, then just leave it to the lawyers as "just an implementation detail". :-)
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I see, as I suspected this is like one of those questions that some teachers in high school used to love asking random students in front of the whole class, you're deliberately trying to make sure that no matter what answer you get there's always some little detail they left out (because they thought it was obvious or too far from the original question) that you can "correct" them on.
Also, please note that I phrased my answer as a question, this was also deliberate as I suspected you were being vague to ensure that any answer given would "miss" something.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
What about those of us who are lawyers with JDs and LLMs?
True. And I didn't mean to imply that they were *actually* incompetent, just that a theoretically perfect prosecutor would never prefer charges that (s)he couldn't sustain in court, in which case the conviction rate (including pleadings) would be 100% -- BUT the system might still be just.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I noticed your sig.
You wrote a bunch of other stuff in that post but I didn't read it. Too busy fiddling with this reply thingy.
Camping on quad since 1996.
First, unless you have a company or big criminal problems, you're probably never going to put an attorney on retainer. Or at least, not in the way you're thinking of. An attorney might justifiably want some of the money up front (it goes in his trust account, which is monitored by the state bar association), but most services you go to an attorney for will be charged at his hourly rate, or at an agreed-upon price. E.g., "You seem to need only a simple Will, so let's call it $40?"
"Retaining" a lawyer is just giving him a chunk of change up front and requiring him* to work for you when you need his services. He's supposed to drop anything non-pressing he is doing and do stuff for you, taking money from his retainer fee as payment for service rendered.
Notably, retaining a lawyer also prevents other parties from hiring him against you, due to a conflict of interest. Big corporations afraid of getting sued will often retain all the best lawyers in a given region. Hurray corporate powermongering.
More to the subject though, most state bar associations have a Model Fee Schedule that attorneys can look at to base their fees on (the Supreme Court has said that it is illegal price fixing to do more than recommend.) Individuals will adjust the model fees by their experience and years of practice, typically, but it will give you an idea.
As for finding the best attorney for a given job... An attorney's reputation in the legal community is his bread and butter; other attorneys will be able to tell you which hacks to avoid. If you don't have any attorney/judge colleagues/friends/family members to ask, you can start with the phonebook. Pick one; the bar association for the state you are in will have records of any complaints / discipline a given member has received - a starting point at least.
Lawyers tend to forget that normal people don't deal with the tangle of the legal world on a day to day basis and indeed may have had the fortune to entirely avoid it. We'd just appreciate it if you'd remember that we aren't all wolves and RIAA jackals.
-- an Electrical Engineer and Attorney
*or her. Just for simplicity's sake.
They are incapable of understanding anything complicated, just limited for whatever reason. Gasoline huffers etc.
Other people are just as stupid.
They are incapable of understanding that some things are so complicated that they can't be understood. Arrogant fucks don't realize how stupid they are claiming to 'understand' complicated chaotic systems.
Everybody is narrowly stupid about something or other. They are just incapable of understanding complicated things in narrow fields. For example: I will never be better then a hack writer. I just don't do English worth a shit.
They are further perpetually ignorant about other things. They just have no interest in them. That is different from being incapable of learning those things. I will never spend any hours learning to play bagpipes. Maybe I am incapable at that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That'd probably face some voltage over current...
Unlike Microsoft's law division, where instead of R = V/I we have R = futile.
(SCNR)
I would say techies and law (and many other things) do not go well together. I have noticed that many (if not most) techies think binary. So true or false. Guilty/not guilty. The law does not work that way, although tv shows like to say so.
Most of what the law deals with is not murder amd even there each case will no be completely true/false.
I try always to explain to a techie that things are not always OR/OR, often they are AND/AND.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
'Don't fall under suspicion'
In the US. But not in any Commonwealth country - Canada, Australia etc etc.
There was Privy Council or something decision many years ago in the UK that allows even *illegally* obtained evidence to be used against an accused, and that decision was inherited by the common law systems of most (all?) Commonwealth countries. You'd have to prove that the evidence simply wasn't evidence (eg tampering) to get it thrown out. Good luck with that. Yes, they are supposed to get a warrant and there is ideally a documented chain of evidence. But if there isn't it won't necessarily torpedo their case. At least it was this way a few years ago, it may have changed but very unlikely, after all we are only losing rights lately. not gaining any.
None of this nice improper search etc stuff you have in the US. It's one area where the US system is vastly superior - for one thing it discourages cops from passing bribes to get evidence.
OTOH some countries still have a right to silence, which I believe is seriously weakened in the US and UK.
Again, the majority of my attorney friends all say that prosecutors will only bring cases they are sure of winning. This is especially true if the prosecutor in question has political ambitions beyond his/her current job. Why bring marginal cases you might lose? It only makes your conviction rate look weak.
If you make it to trial you've, most likely, already lost.
Two of my criminal law friends have not gone to a complete jury trial in over TWO years.
Prosecutors pick their battles, just like everyone else.
-ted
You misread the article. It isn't calling you an idiot, it is pointing out that the pain in your ass will begin long before you get to prison, and that it is likely to be expensive.
Perhaps you are, for some reason, projecting.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I don't know about a behavioural psychologist named "Obama", one could name this effect after [sic].
Some disorders, such as syphilis, are named not after the doctor who discovered it, but a patient who had the disorder.
And the shoe does fit: we have an incompetent individual who grossly overestimates his abilities. So I predict that the disorder will soon be renamed in his honor.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Dude, life is not a multiple choice test. Most teachers program students to think it is, since to them "teaching" means feeding students simplistic factoids and rewarding them when they regurgitate them upon demand. Such students tend to get all peevish when they encounter a real teacher, one who tries to teach actual thinking skills. Guess what? These teachers are not out to humiliate you. You're doing that to yourself.
I was trying to do something sort of similar when I tried to get people to define ASCII. My point — my only point — was that many techies use "ASCII" to refer to whatever character set they're actually using, which nowadays is usually an extension of ASCII, and which varies depending on your locale and platform.
Bold up the bits about specialty. Picking the wrong lawyer can actually end up hurting your case more than anything else. There is no such thing as a lawyer that knows every aspect of every law.
Most attorneys pick an area of law they are comfortable with and learn it, and only it, to the point of expertise. Asking them to represent you in a an area outside of their expertise is akin to asking a duck for directions - sure you might reach your destination, but you'll wade through a swamp to get there. A criminal trial lawyer who is flashy, well dressed, and quick on his feet in an OJ-style case, is likely to be helpless in front of a civil trial judge with a short fuse and a daily calendar of 300+ piss fights he's trying to get sorted by 5:00.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
But come on- a screenshot generated on my computer as evidence?
I could generate a screenshot on my computer of you doing anything.
RIAA's evidence is so weak for civil trials that they frequently withdraw if the person actually goes to court. They are really about extorting $3,000 from people who would probably have to spend $5,000 to defend themselves. Even tho they would successfully defend themselves it is not worth it.
It's legalized extortion and the game is starting to fall apart for RIAA as judges, juries, and lawyers are finally getting educated about the facts and are becoming aware of RIAA's abusive Z(and illegal) behavior.
And that is what needs to happen. People need to learn just how easy it is to put things on someone else's computer. And to learn how easy it is to spoof someone else. And how unreliable screenshots are.
---
Those were cheap. It will be a bit more expensive to actually execute a subpeona, to get the sheriffs to confiscate the person's computer, to perform forensics on the computer in a legally valid environment and that means a clear chain of custody-- the computer must be locked up when it isn't being analyzed and while it is being analyzed, it has to be by a neutral party, not a Media-sentry type party.
And that means when Riaa is wrong, the countersuit is going to sting like hell. And they are frequently wrong. They sue dead people, they sue people who do not own computers-- with so many actual infringers (thousands, tens of thousands, millions?), I'm astonished how terrible their track record is. They are not doing any due diligence at all.
It's like saying "a person with red hair assaulted me" and that's proof enough to launch a $3k civil suit against you (who have red hair). Sure you can defend yourself-- but it is too expensive to actually do so.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Here you go, I prepared the data so I could post it in my journal for future reference:
The human race has thrived on what is effectively borrowed time.
Fossil fuels are, everyone agrees, finite in supply. After we deplete our resources, they won't be replenished within the probable lifespan of the human race.
"Carrying capacity" is the maximum population an ecosystem can support before becoming unsustainable. You don't see it right away, but over time exceeding the carrying capacity of an ecosystem will cause the population to crash. For example, if an island has enough vegetation to sustainably feed 200 deer, you could get 201 deer and there wouldn't be an immediate destruction, but eventually the island would be stripped bare and the entire population would die out.
Once our reserves are depleted, the ability of the human race to feed itself will be restricted. We'll be suddenly trapped by the natural carrying capacity of the planet's ecosystems. It is essential that before then, the human race become technologically advanced enough to push the natural carrying capacity upwards to create enough food without fossil fuels, and equally essential that the human race manage their size to lower the target carrying capacity we'll need to reach with technology.
If the population keeps growing at the current rate and technology to increase the natural carrying capacity of our farming ecosystems without fossil fuels continues to be ignored, humanity will be destroyed.
We've got renewable power today. It's no magical source of infinite energy, even though it works extremely well for providing cheap renewable energy to places blessed to have the geography and the infrastructure.
Today, we exist in the numbers we do only because fossil fuels power our expansion. Without them, we'd have to rely on biofuels, which history shows us can't even provide enough power for a population a fraction of the current size.
Before fossil fuels were used to heat homes, wood was. That was the cause of deforestation in England -- with a much smaller population than today. After wood became impractical, coal was used. Similarly, after whale oil became much more difficult to procure, natural gas was used to light lanterns. Fossil fuels offset the fact that renewable sources of energy were all used in an unrenewable fashion. This devastation of renewable sources of energy was brought about by a population much much smaller than the population inhabiting the same area today. That's exactly the problem. Once the fossil fuels disappear, the population that was already sucking the natural renewable resources of the island dry is orders of magnitude larger, and will suffer. Even fish stocks have been decimated, leading to the collapse of fishing economies, like Newfoundland.
Many people will respond with their favourite pet vapourware technology. Year after year, we continue to be promised a flying car[1], but we don't get it. Don't rely on vapourware to provide energy for a population 6 times greater[2] than the one that deforested England[3] and brought whales to the brink of extinction[4].
I believe in technology, but I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe that technology is a perfect machine that will always provide us exactly the solution we desire. Much of the incredible advancement of the past couple centuries has been the elimination of biofuels in favour of cheaper fossil fuels.
We're far past the carrying capacity of natural or man-made means of collecting solar energy. At our current rate, the amount of food we need just to feed outselves will double by 2080[5]. This is before we think about the amount of food that will have to be grown for conventional biofuels. The problem is that using biofuels with current technology is terribly inefficient. "In fact, even if the entire corn crop in the United States were used to make ethanol, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of current U.S. gasoline use."[6]
There's no free lunch -- literally. No matter how you roll the n
It's been a long time.
Dude, life is not a multiple choice test. Most teachers program students to think it is, since to them "teaching" means feeding students simplistic factoids and rewarding them when they regurgitate them upon demand. Such students tend to get all peevish when they encounter a real teacher, one who tries to teach actual thinking skills. Guess what? These teachers are not out to humiliate you. You're doing that to yourself.
Why are you talking about multiple choice tests? I pointed out that you asked an open-ended question which had a "proper" answer long enough that it seemed you were deliberately trying to make it hard to "properly" answer it. This resulted in that you could step in and point out that the person who answered you "missed" some tiny detail. Of course in most cases a knowledgeable individual answering your post would be likely to deliberately omit certain information in order not to get too long-winded. And I've had plenty of teachers (from junior high up through university) and bosses who would use questions like that to seemingly "demonstrate" how the student/employee had gaps in his/her knowledge or as a jumping-off point (while simultaneously giving everyone the impression that the person answering the question knew less than the person asking the question).
... is usually an extension of ASCII, and which varies depending on your locale and platform.
And I'm guessing a lot of people who read your post, me included, knew that damn well but didn't feel like launching into aforementioned long-winded explanation of every detail of ASCII, EASCII, UTF-8, ISO-8859-1 and their respective histories.
Conclusion: You're acting like a pompous ass who's trying to cover up the fact that you're being a dick and trying to belittle those answering you.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I came to the same conclusion you did -- we need to reduce the population of the planet.
I posted my exact calculations and sources on my journal.
It's been a long time.
....now, my journal contains the information in full form, with references.
It's been a long time.
I clicked the right button, thank you. I know you didn't say that "lawyers are smart, everyone else is dumb". And I didn't mean to imply the opposite in case you wonder. I just wanted to say that the fact that lawyers - and other classes too - pretty much lack the principles of scientific reasoning makes it hard for us that have it, to understand the matters in which they are specialists, and makes it hard for them sometimes to understand our perspective which, I must say, is most of the times right. Something as basic as a syllogism poses difficulties to a lot of wanna be lawyers around here. Could be that teaching here sucks - which it does - but the basic principle still applies to all "non-scientific" areas students. And this has nothing to do with being smart or dumb. It has all to do with the kind of education you get. I, for one, consider myself lucky of having a scientific background. It helps me a lot in sorting out what's probably true from what's certainly false in all things life. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions but still, I think the rule applies quite generally.
Funny: that's what I taught my kids about techies! They are all BOFH-types, right? Yearning to lord their technical expertise over the rest of us who played sports when we were growing up. Those assholes!
To expound a bit on what R2.0 said, recall that almost all proceedings for copyright infringement are civil. Thus, you need show only >50% assurance of the decision, rather than "beyond reasonable doubt."
If you have "Sympathy for the Devil.mp3" on your computer, I'd say there's at least a 50% likelihood, less other counterarguments ("I wrote a song with the same title, here, let me play it for you," e.g.), that you have the Rolling Stones song on your HDD.
What jurisdiction do you live in where 1/3 of pain and suffering damages go to the doctor(s) who worked on you and 1/6 goes to the court system?
And, limiting ourselves to federal IP laws, it's actually impossible to pirate them, as they are public domain. Oregon would claim dominion over their state's codification of local law, though!
But the disorder has already a name derived from the psychologists who first described and measured it. And they even state that it is a very common and normal behaviour for incompetent people. So why name it after a single person who happens to do something Dunning and Kruger measured as being average behaviour?
80% of all motorists consider themselves being better than average drivers. So why not call it after a person having a car accident?
I just wanted to say that the fact that lawyers - and other classes too - pretty much lack the principles of scientific reasoning makes it hard for us that have it, to understand the matters in which they are specialists, and makes it hard for them sometimes to understand our perspective which, I must say, is most of the times right.
I agree that lawyers tend to think differently than techies. And there are aspects of legal argument I'm not happy about. But to characterize the way techies think as "scientific reasoning" is ridiculous. What, we're more logical? Not from what I've seen on Slashdot! Better educated in the sciences? Broadly speaking that's true, but you still see techies recite some really stupid scientific howlers.
(Even scientists often get stupid about science when they talk about a field that don't have much training in. Don't get me started on Carl Sagan and anthropology.)
So basically, you are indeed saying that techies are smarter than lawyers, you're just hiding argument behind bigoted nonsense like "scientific reasoning". And that's precisely what I was arguing against.
Illinois, and my ex-wife was rear ended and had to sue. The award is based on medical bills. If you have, say, $5,000 in medical bills, you're awarded $15,000. $5k pays the medical bills, you and the lawyer split the rest.
Free Martian Whores!
...So why name it after a single person who happens to spectacularly incompetent -- AND egotistical?
There, fixed that for you.
The answer, of course, is because it's funny.
80% of all motorists consider themselves being better than average drivers. So why not call it after a person having a car accident?
Because it wouldn't be funny.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
I'm not the best person to ask as I've done a couple of degrees in CompSci and have over 15 years of programming experience (well official, stick another 10 years on that when younger). I'm not one of your 'self-taught techies'.
Then I suppose you probably know the right answer to the question. Then again, maybe you think you do, but don't really. So let me ask it one last time: how many characters in the ASCII character set? It's only fair that you make an honest effort to understand my argument before making me parse your counterargument.
I see. I wasn't aware of a jurisdiction that defines "pain and suffering" as thrice medical bills. You learn something new every day, huh?
That still doesn't change the fact that Hans Reiser was convicted without sufficient evidence, and what is more disturbing, without any investigation that would likely provide such evidence if police bothered to look for it.
Apparently most people can't accept a valid criticism of a process when it can somehow support even a slightest defense of something or someone that is evil or wrong. Same applies to criticism of idiotic laws and processes related to "terrorism", "sex offenders" and other similar scares.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Ok I'll bite. There are 128 characters in the ASCII character set including the null character.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Sigh. You just had to ruin my whole day by knowing the right answer, didn't you?
The point I was trying to make was that many techies seem to confuse ASCII with common 8 bit character sets, such as CP1252.
Hans Reiser was convicted because he got up on the stand and told obvious lies to the jury, who (correctly) reasoned that one doesn't lie in a murder case unless one's covering up a murder. If he hadn't taken the stand, he might've gotten off. Regardless, there was plenty of evidence to convict him, as many people realized who weren't invested in the idea that there's no difference between logical and reasonable doubt.
No criticism of a process is valid if the process itself is misunderstood, as many geeks do when the subject is the law. Thus, the OP.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I think this mindset is an easy trap for people that work well with computers to fall into (I know I've caught myself falling for it at times). The law, much like a programming language, config file, or program is a defined set of rules and behavior for dealing with a situation.
It states in concise, as-specific-as-possible terms what to do in situation X. The problem for the technically inclined is, I think, that we can get caught up enough in the technicality of the laws that we forget the human element. There isn't really a "buffer overflow" here. You may be right by the letter of the law but there's room for the judge, prosecuting lawyer, or jury to fudge the lines when they see something they think is wrong.
Turing machines still aren't so hot at that part.
who (correctly) reasoned that one doesn't lie in a murder case unless one's covering up a murder.
This is the most illogical claim I have ever heard about Hans Reiser -- and there are plenty of illogical things said about it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Howso illogical? When someone is charged with murder, and they tell gross lies in trying to explain away the evidence, isn't the most logical conclusion that they're covering something up, that the real explanation is being hidden? And in the case of a murder trial, what's more worth hiding than the fact that one committed murder?
Put another way, it's difficult to imagine what's worth covering up when the cost of covering it up is being found guilty of a murder you didn't commit.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
What Hans Reiser claimed would be recognized as a "lie" only if it was already proven that he killed Nina. Otherwise it's circular reasoning. In fact he merely was wrong and occasionally illogical -- however a person that charged with a murder may be wrong, illogical and still innocent. Worse yet, hiding something while being charged with murder is not the same as being guilty of murder -- one may hide something completely different.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You've created a double bind for the jury: They can't decide that he's lying until they decide that he killed Nina; if they can't decide his statements are lies, then they must accept his claims at face value; if they accept his claims at face value, they can't decide that he killed Nina. Therefore, all he has to do is claim he didn't kill Nina by claiming he couldn't, and no jury could convict him without a videotape of him strangling her.
In reality, the circumstantial case against him was strong, and he appeared to be lying in disputing the facts of that circumstantial case. I would have voted to convict, and I'm far, far from a law-and-order, hang-em-all type.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
BTW, I would be most interested in getting you started on Sagan and anthropology. Seriously. I have much respect for the man but he wasn't perfect. I think he would be the first to want to know as well.
I wanted to say that science generally makes a whole more sense than most laws, because it rests on what I called "scientific reasoning": no space for mystification, prejudice, incoherence and deceit.
There's no language problem here. You said what I thought you said. And it's nonsense. Science does mystification, prejudice, incoherence, and deceit all the time.
Their tools for detecting it are sort of better than in other fields, but that doesn't make scientists any less mystical, prejudiced, incoherence or dishonest — in a word, stupid — than people who don't use those tools.
All arguments are examined, criticized and eventually accepted or dropped in the most rational way possible.
Again, not true. Read about the history of phlogiston, cold fusion, and global warming. In each of these, scientists with a vested interest in a theoretical model simply refused to accept evidence that the model didn't work. In the case of cold fusion and global warming, there are still scientists who refuse to accept that debunked models are debunked.
In the case of global warming, there's still a public debate over which side is right. (There is or there isn't a scientific consenus, depending on who you talk to.) But clearly one "scientific" model or the other is bogus.
BTW, I would be most interested in getting you started on Sagan and anthropology.
Sorry, don't feel like it. Read The Dragons of Eden and decide for yourself.
You've created a double bind for the jury: They can't decide that he's lying until they decide that he killed Nina; if they can't decide his statements are lies, then they must accept his claims at face value; if they accept his claims at face value, they can't decide that he killed Nina. Therefore, all he has to do is claim he didn't kill Nina by claiming he couldn't, and no jury could convict him without a videotape of him strangling her.
There is a simple solution for this -- try to determine if he killed Nina, not if he is lying or not.
In reality, the circumstantial case against him was strong,
No, it was not. The evidence would not be sufficient to convict him if the jury was not hostile toward him -- and that hostility had nothing to do with the crime. It was possible to get more evidence, however police never bothered to do so -- they singled him out at the very beginning, spent untold amount of time following him (but only him), yet couldn't even take a sample of blood without messing up. Middle school kids provide better reasoning in essays than those detectives did in their investigation, so the whole trial mostly consisted of attorneys throwing feces at both Hans and Nina.
and he appeared to be lying in disputing the facts of that circumstantial case. I would have voted to convict,
He appeared to be frustrated and illogical. Neither is an evidence of a murder. If he was charged with "being an asshole" or "acting like an idiot", most of the trial would make much more sense.
and I'm far, far from a law-and-order, hang-em-all type.
You are that very "type" if you think that.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If he is accused of murder and he says he's innocent, then trying to determine whether or not he's lying is perfectly germane. If the DA says that X is circumstantial evidence of his guilt, and Reiser offers an innocent explanation, then judging whether or not he's lying is perfectly germane.
This is your speculation, unless you were on the jury. I don't feel particular hostility to Reiser, and all the evidence I heard of convinced me he was guilty of the crime he was accused of.
He appeared to be telling lies when explaining guilty-looking acts, and that is circumstantial evidence of guilt. You make it sound like the jury saw a confused, stressed out geek and felt hostile to him because of that. In reality, they simply didn't believe his explanations, and concluded from his lies that he was covering up a murder. Which he was.
Poison your own well, not mine.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
If he is accused of murder and he says he's innocent
If I was accused of that murder, I would say that I am innocent, too. And, being a foreigner, I would be perceived by that jury as a weird and threatening person who is likely to be lying to them. Does it mean, I have killed Nina?
, then trying to determine whether or not he's lying is perfectly germane.
By doing what, reading his mind? There is no reliable way to determine if a person is lying, other than finding out what the person was actually aware of -- and all witnesses in that trial were extremely unreliable, so the only way to be sure was to find evidence. In the end this wouldn't matter because lying about one thing does not prove lying about anything else, so instead of spewing bullshit about Hans and Nina's personal flaws they should have focused on actual evidence of a murder -- that police never bothered to provide.
This is your speculation, unless you were on the jury.
I don't have to be on the jury to see that their decision did not match the evidence.
Poison your own well, not mine.
I have already proven you wrong, so I merely state the fact that if you make a certain conclusion from insufficient evidence, you are a person who makes certain conclusion from insufficient evidence.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.