They are trying to set up in the dome so they can provide relevant information about the dome. Like 'empty cots at the west wall' and 'dinner is being served'. Their intent was to relay messages from FEMA and the dome administration, although any sort of 'official' status seems unlikely at this point, but they can still repeat anything announced publicly.
And another important reason is so the people in the dome can talk to them. Either so they can help, via announcements for people, and, hell, so people can walk up and request music.
And they've made repeated proofs they aren't going to use resources. The dome brought up power, they said they'd run it off batteries, the dome brought up people fighting over radios, they provided free radios. If there are any other concerns, the dome would only have to bring them up.
That's why I propose a new Federal organization that people at all levels, from local to state to Federal (School busses, BTW, are state property, and local governments can't just run off with them.), report resources to. This organization would be in charge of creating disaster plans for all obvious disasters, and have the ability to make plans for new and unexpected disasters.
Then, during national disasters, locals would report problems to them (Perhaps we could give locals radios, and even have officals show up ASAP.), and this hypothetical organization could assigned resources, to make sure that they were used in an efficient manner as possible and that things like this don't happen again. It wouldn't need to provide any actual resources, as the resources already exist, it would just need to manage the resourced during the emergency.
We could call this the National Emergency Management Agency or the Federal Emergency Control Agency or something like that.
Of course, nowadays they'd insist on putting it under the Department of Homeland Pretend Security, and instead of a real emergency management expert, we'd probably end up with some political appointee whose last job was overseeing the National Rabbit Breeder's Association or something, and probably got fired from that.
A lot of 'enviromentalism' that people do on their own is complete and utter bullshit.
Saving water is one of these things unless you live in the desert. Someone once told me I should cut the water off while brushing my teeth. I laughed and pointed out I had well water and a septic tank. Water in becomes water out in a few months, and the only waste is the power to run the pump. I promised from now on to brush my teeth with the lights off.
Recycling paper is another one of those things. No paper recycling is even vaguely useful. Paper companies plant trees and pulp them, and it wastes less energy than shipping back the paper to the plant, where it also needs pulping. And, of course, burying paper underground reduces the amount of CO2 in the air.
Or people recycling glass, which has to be the stupidist thing to do in existence. Good Lord, we wouldn't want our silicon dioxide to end up buried in landfills, we might run out!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was wondering about the correctness of 'evacuees'. That was just weird sounding to me.
The problem isn't that they have been 'evacuated', the problem is, in fact, they have been left without a place to live, and must take refuge elsewhere.
If their problem was being evacuees, we could just put them back and solve their problem. Evacuees are just people who have exited somewhere because they were forced to.
Evacuees were what the people were who drove out were before the city was flooded. When they could not return, or after they got evacuated after staying in the city, they became refugees, people who were left without a home, money, or possessions because of some outside force.
And refugees only had negative connotations if you were an asshole anyway. Maybe instead of worrying about what these refugees are called, people should stop thinking 'refugees' are bad.
Let's not blithely let people get away with the concept that 'refugees==bad'.
While most relief organizations won't, the American Red Cross is not one of them. All the Red Crosses/Cresents were explicted created to provide aid to people injured during military actions.
They go way beyond what Doctors Without Borders do. (Not to diminish that excellent organization.) They send people into battlefields to retrieve the wounded. 100s of volunteers have been killed trying to save people.
The idea that the American Red Cross can't cope with flooding and looters is absurd. The Red Cross, any of them, should be allowed to go anywhere during any battle or emergency at any time they damn well want.
I actually should correct myself. I said 'The power's been around way before that'. This is incorrect:
The power has always been around for military invasion. If the Japanese land in San Fransisco, or the English invade through New York, or the Omicron Persein land in Kansas, the Feds have always had the power to completely ignore any local protests and send troups into New York or California or Kansas.
It's just 'recently' has that concept been applied to national disaster. Where 'recently' means 'for decades'.
People talking about when who asked for what are fucking idiots. Yes, the governor did ask for aid in time, and the Feds ignored it because she didn't fill out the forms correctly or some bullshit, but that's completely irrelevant.
You see, the president can declare something a national disaster, and send in FEMA and troups, even the goddamn Army in addition to the Nat. Guard. No permission of local authorities needed, no Congresional oversight, no nothing.
Read that several times if you don't understand it. It's very very important.
It is now called 'An Event of National Importance', but the power's been around way before that, the 2004 law (That Bush's own cabinet came up with.) just combined the various national disaster, terrorist attack, and military invasion into one concept.
He can do anything for ten days, unless Congress makes him stop. I'll repeat: The president can literally take over parts of this country with the military (Not the National Guard, the whole military.) for ten days or until Congress says no. With no cooperation from the locals.
Obviously, if the local government doesn't like this, it won't coordinate that well with FEMA, but as FEMA's idea of 'coordination' is apparently 'do nothing whatsoever', that doesn't really seem important.
Jesus, people, there's a reason that FEMA was behind all the big conspiracy theories 10 years ago. The theory was that the President was going to fake a national disaster and take over certain parts of the country, because, under the law, he can. (Although, as the conspiracy theory people ignore, they're still subject to the various laws of this country and the local juridictions they're in.)
First person to mention any local response problems get a boot to the head. Yes, local governments tend to fail in national disasters. That's why we have FEMA, to come in and say 'Hey, we need you to send those resources there, and those over there', and any local failure doesn't excuse FEMA's complete and utter cockup.
The Democrats kept protestors away their convention. No one has the right to go to a party convention unless the party lets them. Conventions are not open to random people.
I agree, that keeping them back from the streets raises large first amendment concerns. People needed to be able to get to the convention, but people protesting the convention have just as much right to be on the sidewalk as anyone else. (Note there were permits being given out for scheduled marches and protests.)
So it's a balancing act, and the Democrats were going too far. They need to block off a pathway, keep everyone out of it who does not have an invite to the convention, and let anyone else do what they want anywhere but on the path. (Well, or on the street.)
And, of all people, the damn Democrats need to remember what happens when they let the reaction to protestors at a convention get out of hand, or do I need to mention 1968?
However, this is nothing compared to what Bush is doing, where he's keeping 'dissenters' away from public events in public places. No one who disagrees with the president can get within 100 yards of the man. People get corralled for wearing t-shirts and having bumper stickers, or carrying the wrong kind of sign.
There's a difference in refusing to reveal sources, even ones who admitted they have commited various crimes, and going along with criminals as they commit crimes.
Hell, there's even a difference between being an unrelated observer of crimes in progress, and enabling a crime by listening to someone break the law by telling you classified information. (Note, 'enabling', not 'committing'.)
There's even a difference between refusing to reveal who was commiting a crime by revealing classified information when it was a whistleblower inside the government, and when it was the administration looking for a political gain.
Miller went so far past acceptable behavior it's not funny. She even went past 'Pentagon Papers' behavior...for a lie to discredit a dissenter. (Yes, let's send our husband on a vacation to fabulous Niger. An all-expenses paid trip, although, since the country is so poor, that actually works out to like 200 dollars for two weeks, plus air-fare. See the lovely sights like...uranium mines! And...um...hungry people! Sometimes there are paved roads!)
And, you'll notice, no one even wants to arrest her...they just want her to tell them who commited a crime in front of her face.
And I don't believe you about Sweden's law in that regard. So a journalist can reveal classified information, and not only do they not have to say who told them, but you're not allowed to investigate who told them?
I think you're rather seriously misinterpeting any laws in that regard. Either that or you guys don't have the concept of 'classified information'.
However, everything else is dead on. The US is becoming much less free.
It's saying mod it up or down. Aka on the vertical axis. Down is vertical as much as up.
As opposed to, I guess, modding it sideways. Or back-and-fro. Or modding louder and quieter, or brighter and darker, or chicken soup and croutons...
Of course, you can't actually mod anything up or down. Posts merely have more or less moderation points, as that is not a measurement of anything except itself, and certainly not a measure of height.
Ahem.
Anyway. MOD PARENT ORTHOGONAL TO THE RATING SYSTEM
Wait a minute, the Republicans are the party of accountablity, so only they are allowed to call for people to be fired.
If you call for anyone to be fired in the current administration, you are obviously a member of the fringe-left, thus not a member for the party of accountablity, and thus not allowed to call for people to be fired.
While a lot of public terminals have IE, many of them have Firefox or are Macs, and you cannot run anything else, even if IE is installed or installable.
Likewise, the people using Firefox can't run extensions to fake IE. Because it's a public terminal.
Yeah, heaven forbid that FEMA expects anyone to file claims at any point in time. That's just crazy talk!
What the fuck do they do at FEMA all day?
I mean, I've already heard the lying Republican talking points that it's not FEMAs job to provide anything during disasters, when it is quite clearly their job to provide coordination between all the local people, which they completely failed to do. (Yes, the locals screwed up before the disaster, and couldn't get anything done after. That's half the reason we have FEMA.)
Now, apparently, they're getting blindsided by the fact that, after a disaster, people want to file claims.
So what, exactly, are they prepared for? Not helping during disasters, not helping poeple after disasters. Are they in fact prepared for anything at all?
There should have been a 'disaster relief filing area' on their website a decade ago that works in every web browser known to man. Saying 'Oh, they just threw that up' would work if this was the Library of Congress or the Patent Office trying to deal with a disaster. But FEMA is the part of the government that's supposed to be prepared for disasters.
I think you need to read some contract law. Purchases in a retail situtation are usually required by consumer protection laws to be 'contract for sales', sans some sort of explicit contract. Which this court seems to understand.
What they appear to have missed, hwoever, is that contract for sales must have money on one side and a physical item on the other, and nothing else. Not a promise to return the item, not a promise to follow words printed on the box, not even validating parking, nothing but goods for money.
If it has any other sort of terms, it's not a contract for sales, and thus, thanks to various laws, cannot be formed merely by standing in a checkout and handing them money in return for a physical item. You want to bind anyone to any other sort of contract in store, they either must sign it, or the situtation must clearly not involve them collecting physical goods, having them tallied up, and walking out of the store with them after paying money.
Jesus. Hasn't anyone ever heard of 'consumer protection laws'? Stores can't just make up contract terms on the fly. There's all sorts of laws about what the default is, and what they can alter by stamping on the item and walls (For example, labeling things 'AS-IS' disclaims any warranty for purpose.), and what they can't do without making the customer pull out a pen and sign something.
Once there's actually a printed contract, of course, the store can do almost anything it wants in it. But not until then. (The courts do not trust oral contracts at checkout.)
Yes, but that was a) a picture, which doesn't serve any purpose, instead of a software program, which does serve a prupose, to whit, enabling the printer to talk to the carrtridge, and b) pre-DMCA, which changed everything.
Did people not even pay attention to the original DMCA court case, or did you just not get that was what I was talking about? This is the second case, I was talking about the first, the one against clone cartridge makers.
Lexmark includes, inside printer cartridges, a ROM chip, containing a computer program. The printer downloads this program from the chip and executed it, allowing the printer to communicate with the cartridge. And, yes, that was thrown out of court because the fake ROM program the competitors wrote, and even the original programs, did not appear to allow to any 'access' to a copyrighted work except the software itself, and that stayed in the printer.
Lexmark tried to set it up like CSS, but got it exactly backwards. Making clone DVD with CSS on them is not illegal. (Actually, it's a patent violation, as encoding with CSS is patented. But it's not illegal under the DMCA.) What Lexmark actually accomplished by doing that was to make it illegal to use their cartridges in other printers, like it's illegal to play CSS encoded DVDs in other DVD players, which seems a rather unlikely turn of events with Lexmark cartridges. (1)
And you are confused about DivX. Cracking DivX's single play DVD is not illegal under contract law, as no purchaser of that ever signed a contract, and we didn't have this soon-to-be-reversed and brain-dead legal ruling asserting that words on a box form a contract. Cracking DivX's single play DVDs was illegal solely under the same reason DeCSS is...the DMCA. It would be circumventing an access control device.
Likewise, Lexmark, if they were clever, could indeed bring back the DMCA. All they would need is two 'devices', both of which talk to each other, and have access control devices, one side of which is replaced with each cartridge. While the printer is allowed to access any code on the cartridge (What they argued against in court.), the cartridge is not logically allowed to circumvent the printer's access control.
Think of it like SSL handshaking. Each end needs a key from the other end. Lexmark originally made it one way, and sadly picked the wrong way, probably because they didn't want to include a computer inside the cartridge.
In fact, if they were clever, the cartridge could store what it got from the printer. Thus making any circumvention the circumvention of a copy control device in the printer.
1) Possibly it's even illegal to use clone cartridges in hypothetical clone printers, or for clone printers to exist at all, as they would have to circumvent the access control devices in Lexmark cartridges, but that entire realm of speculation is rather moot at this moment, as no one in their right mind would build those.
That's only a contradiction if retails sales were coverted solely by contract law, which they are not, like I said.;)
The contractual offer is made at the end.
Consumer protection law, however, forbids one price being marked on an item and it silently being rung up at another.
So while they made one offer, and it was accepted, that offer was in fact made in violation of the law.
To further prove this isn't a normal contract sitution, this does not void the contract, but instead they must remedy the sitution by adjusting the already paid amount, and in some states they have to give you some extra money as an incentive for them not to do it.
Which is why all those people talking about how 'sales' are 'contracts' are missing the point. 'Sales' are as much contracts as 'insurance' is contracts or 'renting houses' is contracts. Those all have additional laws on top of contract laws.
I can sit down and write out a contract with you that will enable us to interact in any legal way. For example, I could require you to sleep on the floor instead of a bed for two months, with me sitting next to you to make sure you followed the terms of the contract.
I could not, however, put that in a house rental contract, as it is not legal to regulate completely random actions of people within houses you rent them, nor it is legal for require them to allow me to observe them, due to abuse in the past by landlords. Some restrictions, yes, any and all, no.
Likewise, I cannot contractually require you to refrain from pregnancy or I will cancel your health insurance, even though such a clause is legal in an acting contract. Either actual abuses or threats of abuses have given us laws about that.
For you to sell your goods in a retail venue is therefore, at best, misleading ("bait-and-switch," anyone?).
And, at worse, it is a violation of consumer protection laws.
BTW, in your article, you should mention that copying software, as required to use it, is now explictly legal. It doesn't need to be assumed under fair use.
And I've been with the 'use a minor' forever. I think everyone should do it, not just people who actually have minors laying around. Go out and hire one.
I used to be a big fan of 'modify the installer', but that actually appears to me to be a 'copy control device' and thus illegal to bypass under the DMCA.
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They could, however, trivially walk up to a radio station that was broadcasting inside and 'post' announcements.
And another important reason is so the people in the dome can talk to them. Either so they can help, via announcements for people, and, hell, so people can walk up and request music.
And they've made repeated proofs they aren't going to use resources. The dome brought up power, they said they'd run it off batteries, the dome brought up people fighting over radios, they provided free radios. If there are any other concerns, the dome would only have to bring them up.
They also, out of the goodness of their hearts, are giving away a large amount of radios. (Radios that could be tuned to any station, mind you.)
Then, during national disasters, locals would report problems to them (Perhaps we could give locals radios, and even have officals show up ASAP.), and this hypothetical organization could assigned resources, to make sure that they were used in an efficient manner as possible and that things like this don't happen again. It wouldn't need to provide any actual resources, as the resources already exist, it would just need to manage the resourced during the emergency.
We could call this the National Emergency Management Agency or the Federal Emergency Control Agency or something like that.
Of course, nowadays they'd insist on putting it under the Department of Homeland Pretend Security, and instead of a real emergency management expert, we'd probably end up with some political appointee whose last job was overseeing the National Rabbit Breeder's Association or something, and probably got fired from that.
Because I have astonishing bladder control.
Either that, or I said that backwards.
Saving water is one of these things unless you live in the desert. Someone once told me I should cut the water off while brushing my teeth. I laughed and pointed out I had well water and a septic tank. Water in becomes water out in a few months, and the only waste is the power to run the pump. I promised from now on to brush my teeth with the lights off.
Recycling paper is another one of those things. No paper recycling is even vaguely useful. Paper companies plant trees and pulp them, and it wastes less energy than shipping back the paper to the plant, where it also needs pulping. And, of course, burying paper underground reduces the amount of CO2 in the air.
Or people recycling glass, which has to be the stupidist thing to do in existence. Good Lord, we wouldn't want our silicon dioxide to end up buried in landfills, we might run out!
The problem isn't that they have been 'evacuated', the problem is, in fact, they have been left without a place to live, and must take refuge elsewhere.
If their problem was being evacuees, we could just put them back and solve their problem. Evacuees are just people who have exited somewhere because they were forced to.
Evacuees were what the people were who drove out were before the city was flooded. When they could not return, or after they got evacuated after staying in the city, they became refugees, people who were left without a home, money, or possessions because of some outside force.
And refugees only had negative connotations if you were an asshole anyway. Maybe instead of worrying about what these refugees are called, people should stop thinking 'refugees' are bad.
Let's not blithely let people get away with the concept that 'refugees==bad'.
They go way beyond what Doctors Without Borders do. (Not to diminish that excellent organization.) They send people into battlefields to retrieve the wounded. 100s of volunteers have been killed trying to save people.
The idea that the American Red Cross can't cope with flooding and looters is absurd. The Red Cross, any of them, should be allowed to go anywhere during any battle or emergency at any time they damn well want.
I'm no longer calling for the resignation of the current administration.
I now am calling for the ritual suicide of the administration.
Seriously, people, start spreading this idea. Call the radio stations, write the papers. Demand the administration commit suicide to atone for this.
They won't, of course, but maybe some of the outrage we feel will start getting through to some of the corporate cronies ruining the government.
The power has always been around for military invasion. If the Japanese land in San Fransisco, or the English invade through New York, or the Omicron Persein land in Kansas, the Feds have always had the power to completely ignore any local protests and send troups into New York or California or Kansas.
It's just 'recently' has that concept been applied to national disaster. Where 'recently' means 'for decades'.
People talking about when who asked for what are fucking idiots. Yes, the governor did ask for aid in time, and the Feds ignored it because she didn't fill out the forms correctly or some bullshit, but that's completely irrelevant.
You see, the president can declare something a national disaster, and send in FEMA and troups, even the goddamn Army in addition to the Nat. Guard. No permission of local authorities needed, no Congresional oversight, no nothing.
Read that several times if you don't understand it. It's very very important.
It is now called 'An Event of National Importance', but the power's been around way before that, the 2004 law (That Bush's own cabinet came up with.) just combined the various national disaster, terrorist attack, and military invasion into one concept.
He can do anything for ten days, unless Congress makes him stop. I'll repeat: The president can literally take over parts of this country with the military (Not the National Guard, the whole military.) for ten days or until Congress says no. With no cooperation from the locals.
Obviously, if the local government doesn't like this, it won't coordinate that well with FEMA, but as FEMA's idea of 'coordination' is apparently 'do nothing whatsoever', that doesn't really seem important.
Jesus, people, there's a reason that FEMA was behind all the big conspiracy theories 10 years ago. The theory was that the President was going to fake a national disaster and take over certain parts of the country, because, under the law, he can. (Although, as the conspiracy theory people ignore, they're still subject to the various laws of this country and the local juridictions they're in.)
First person to mention any local response problems get a boot to the head. Yes, local governments tend to fail in national disasters. That's why we have FEMA, to come in and say 'Hey, we need you to send those resources there, and those over there', and any local failure doesn't excuse FEMA's complete and utter cockup.
The Democrats kept protestors away their convention. No one has the right to go to a party convention unless the party lets them. Conventions are not open to random people.
I agree, that keeping them back from the streets raises large first amendment concerns. People needed to be able to get to the convention, but people protesting the convention have just as much right to be on the sidewalk as anyone else. (Note there were permits being given out for scheduled marches and protests.)
So it's a balancing act, and the Democrats were going too far. They need to block off a pathway, keep everyone out of it who does not have an invite to the convention, and let anyone else do what they want anywhere but on the path. (Well, or on the street.)
And, of all people, the damn Democrats need to remember what happens when they let the reaction to protestors at a convention get out of hand, or do I need to mention 1968?
However, this is nothing compared to what Bush is doing, where he's keeping 'dissenters' away from public events in public places. No one who disagrees with the president can get within 100 yards of the man. People get corralled for wearing t-shirts and having bumper stickers, or carrying the wrong kind of sign.
And the whole 'torture' thing.
And executing people on shoddy evidence.
Wait, were you being sarcastic? When did healthcare and education become inconsequential?
There's a difference in refusing to reveal sources, even ones who admitted they have commited various crimes, and going along with criminals as they commit crimes.
Hell, there's even a difference between being an unrelated observer of crimes in progress, and enabling a crime by listening to someone break the law by telling you classified information. (Note, 'enabling', not 'committing'.)
There's even a difference between refusing to reveal who was commiting a crime by revealing classified information when it was a whistleblower inside the government, and when it was the administration looking for a political gain.
Miller went so far past acceptable behavior it's not funny. She even went past 'Pentagon Papers' behavior...for a lie to discredit a dissenter. (Yes, let's send our husband on a vacation to fabulous Niger. An all-expenses paid trip, although, since the country is so poor, that actually works out to like 200 dollars for two weeks, plus air-fare. See the lovely sights like...uranium mines! And...um...hungry people! Sometimes there are paved roads!)
And, you'll notice, no one even wants to arrest her...they just want her to tell them who commited a crime in front of her face.
And I don't believe you about Sweden's law in that regard. So a journalist can reveal classified information, and not only do they not have to say who told them, but you're not allowed to investigate who told them?
I think you're rather seriously misinterpeting any laws in that regard. Either that or you guys don't have the concept of 'classified information'.
However, everything else is dead on. The US is becoming much less free.
It's saying mod it up or down. Aka on the vertical axis. Down is vertical as much as up.
As opposed to, I guess, modding it sideways. Or back-and-fro. Or modding louder and quieter, or brighter and darker, or chicken soup and croutons...
Of course, you can't actually mod anything up or down. Posts merely have more or less moderation points, as that is not a measurement of anything except itself, and certainly not a measure of height.
Ahem.
Anyway. MOD PARENT ORTHOGONAL TO THE RATING SYSTEM
Wait a minute, the Republicans are the party of accountablity, so only they are allowed to call for people to be fired.
If you call for anyone to be fired in the current administration, you are obviously a member of the fringe-left, thus not a member for the party of accountablity, and thus not allowed to call for people to be fired.
While a lot of public terminals have IE, many of them have Firefox or are Macs, and you cannot run anything else, even if IE is installed or installable.
Likewise, the people using Firefox can't run extensions to fake IE. Because it's a public terminal.
What the fuck do they do at FEMA all day?
I mean, I've already heard the lying Republican talking points that it's not FEMAs job to provide anything during disasters, when it is quite clearly their job to provide coordination between all the local people, which they completely failed to do. (Yes, the locals screwed up before the disaster, and couldn't get anything done after. That's half the reason we have FEMA.)
Now, apparently, they're getting blindsided by the fact that, after a disaster, people want to file claims.
So what, exactly, are they prepared for? Not helping during disasters, not helping poeple after disasters. Are they in fact prepared for anything at all?
There should have been a 'disaster relief filing area' on their website a decade ago that works in every web browser known to man. Saying 'Oh, they just threw that up' would work if this was the Library of Congress or the Patent Office trying to deal with a disaster. But FEMA is the part of the government that's supposed to be prepared for disasters.
Really? Can you eject Mac removable media, if it has no eject button, without going to the decktop?
What they appear to have missed, hwoever, is that contract for sales must have money on one side and a physical item on the other, and nothing else. Not a promise to return the item, not a promise to follow words printed on the box, not even validating parking, nothing but goods for money.
If it has any other sort of terms, it's not a contract for sales, and thus, thanks to various laws, cannot be formed merely by standing in a checkout and handing them money in return for a physical item. You want to bind anyone to any other sort of contract in store, they either must sign it, or the situtation must clearly not involve them collecting physical goods, having them tallied up, and walking out of the store with them after paying money.
Jesus. Hasn't anyone ever heard of 'consumer protection laws'? Stores can't just make up contract terms on the fly. There's all sorts of laws about what the default is, and what they can alter by stamping on the item and walls (For example, labeling things 'AS-IS' disclaims any warranty for purpose.), and what they can't do without making the customer pull out a pen and sign something.
Once there's actually a printed contract, of course, the store can do almost anything it wants in it. But not until then. (The courts do not trust oral contracts at checkout.)
Yes, but that was a) a picture, which doesn't serve any purpose, instead of a software program, which does serve a prupose, to whit, enabling the printer to talk to the carrtridge, and b) pre-DMCA, which changed everything.
Lexmark includes, inside printer cartridges, a ROM chip, containing a computer program. The printer downloads this program from the chip and executed it, allowing the printer to communicate with the cartridge. And, yes, that was thrown out of court because the fake ROM program the competitors wrote, and even the original programs, did not appear to allow to any 'access' to a copyrighted work except the software itself, and that stayed in the printer.
Lexmark tried to set it up like CSS, but got it exactly backwards. Making clone DVD with CSS on them is not illegal. (Actually, it's a patent violation, as encoding with CSS is patented. But it's not illegal under the DMCA.) What Lexmark actually accomplished by doing that was to make it illegal to use their cartridges in other printers, like it's illegal to play CSS encoded DVDs in other DVD players, which seems a rather unlikely turn of events with Lexmark cartridges. (1)
And you are confused about DivX. Cracking DivX's single play DVD is not illegal under contract law, as no purchaser of that ever signed a contract, and we didn't have this soon-to-be-reversed and brain-dead legal ruling asserting that words on a box form a contract. Cracking DivX's single play DVDs was illegal solely under the same reason DeCSS is...the DMCA. It would be circumventing an access control device.
Likewise, Lexmark, if they were clever, could indeed bring back the DMCA. All they would need is two 'devices', both of which talk to each other, and have access control devices, one side of which is replaced with each cartridge. While the printer is allowed to access any code on the cartridge (What they argued against in court.), the cartridge is not logically allowed to circumvent the printer's access control.
Think of it like SSL handshaking. Each end needs a key from the other end. Lexmark originally made it one way, and sadly picked the wrong way, probably because they didn't want to include a computer inside the cartridge.
In fact, if they were clever, the cartridge could store what it got from the printer. Thus making any circumvention the circumvention of a copy control device in the printer.
1) Possibly it's even illegal to use clone cartridges in hypothetical clone printers, or for clone printers to exist at all, as they would have to circumvent the access control devices in Lexmark cartridges, but that entire realm of speculation is rather moot at this moment, as no one in their right mind would build those.
I'm also a former intelligence officer, and neither of you are lying.
The contractual offer is made at the end.
Consumer protection law, however, forbids one price being marked on an item and it silently being rung up at another.
So while they made one offer, and it was accepted, that offer was in fact made in violation of the law.
To further prove this isn't a normal contract sitution, this does not void the contract, but instead they must remedy the sitution by adjusting the already paid amount, and in some states they have to give you some extra money as an incentive for them not to do it.
Which is why all those people talking about how 'sales' are 'contracts' are missing the point. 'Sales' are as much contracts as 'insurance' is contracts or 'renting houses' is contracts. Those all have additional laws on top of contract laws.
I can sit down and write out a contract with you that will enable us to interact in any legal way. For example, I could require you to sleep on the floor instead of a bed for two months, with me sitting next to you to make sure you followed the terms of the contract.
I could not, however, put that in a house rental contract, as it is not legal to regulate completely random actions of people within houses you rent them, nor it is legal for require them to allow me to observe them, due to abuse in the past by landlords. Some restrictions, yes, any and all, no.
Likewise, I cannot contractually require you to refrain from pregnancy or I will cancel your health insurance, even though such a clause is legal in an acting contract. Either actual abuses or threats of abuses have given us laws about that.
And, at worse, it is a violation of consumer protection laws.
BTW, in your article, you should mention that copying software, as required to use it, is now explictly legal. It doesn't need to be assumed under fair use.
And I've been with the 'use a minor' forever. I think everyone should do it, not just people who actually have minors laying around. Go out and hire one.
I used to be a big fan of 'modify the installer', but that actually appears to me to be a 'copy control device' and thus illegal to bypass under the DMCA.