It is, and it's a fair question. Assuming that this is a real seizure and not a hoax, the due process works like this:
0) Somebody allegedly uses property for an illegal purpose. By law, they are deemed to have transferred title to the United States Government by dint of the illegal activity (if in fact the illegal activity can be proved).
1) The government files for a seizure warrant in US District Court. The owner of the property (here, the domain) does not get a say, nor any notice that this is happening.
2) The government seizes the property and provides notice to the owner, if known, and any person who might have a claim on it. For example, if the property is a car with a bank lien, they must notify the owner and the bank.
3a) The government files a complaint for forfeiture in US District Court (or in state court). This is called an "in rem" action--meaning that it's not a lawsuit against an individual, but a suit to determine title to property. The United States claims that it owns the property because of the transfer-by-law that occurred at zero, supra. Anybody who disagrees can stake their claim. The judge determines who gets the stuff.
3b) The government doesn't file anything, and the owner sues the government for a civil rights violation by unlawful taking of property without due process. The suit proceeds as above.
===
The cases determining whether due process has to occur pre-seizure or post-seizure are complicated, and beyond the scope of this author's knowledge or this post.
For reference, I am a lawyer and have posted this explanation based on my legal study, but it should be considered scholarship (information for general knowledge) and not legal advice (information specific to an individual's problems). If you are in need of legal advice, you should consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction.
The full transcript of the interview is here. She never said a thing about body scanners on trains or transit, nor was she asked. She merely said that "we have to be thinking" about surface transportation security. You can read into that whatever you want, but the headline implies a comment that she simply did not make.
It's true, but very slowly. Think about how many thousands (dare I speculate, millions?) of these suits RIAA files each year before 268 United States District Judges in 94 different United States District Courts and 3 territorial courts.
In comparison to the onslaught of filings, the "judge says no to RIAA" stories are still just a trickle.
Of course, it's also possible that there's some selection bias in what gets reported. It would be interesting to see numbers on exactly how often these things get shot down, and how that has changed over time.
The more the courts resist their moves, the more people will stand up for their rights. Don't pull out your revolutionary songbook quite yet. Keep in mind that it wouldn't be news if judges were resisting this shit left and right. It's news because this judge did something uncommon.
>I really wonder how these kids do in school, or in real life?
I graduated the University of Iowa a year ago with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Astronomy, and did well enough to get into Cornell Law School, where I'm president one student organization, an officer in another, and made the dean's list both of my first two semesters.
I'm not the 13-year-old who makes dumb jokes about Chuck Norris in Barrens Chat and brags about his 5 level 60s and tells all the female characters "I bet ur a guy." There's such a thing as moderation in Azeroth, just like in the real world.
That is certainly not the case. UPS probably has a "composite trademark" on the logo on a brown background for their particular class
From Federal Trademark, serial #76-408109:
"The mark consists of the color chocolate brown, which is the approximate equivalent of Pantone Matching System 462C, as applied to the entire surface of vehicles and uniforms. The mark consists of the color brown alone." (emphasis mine)
As to classification, in the U.S. they are class 105, transportation services. My hypothetical plumbing service would be class 037, plumbing services. See http://tess2.uspto.gov/netahtml/tidm.html
1. Excessive breadth of coverage: people obtain trade mark registrations covering a wide range of goods and services, which locks other people out of using a similar name even where there's no real risk of confusion. As with spurious patents, an excessively wide trade mark can be challenged, but (also as with spurious patents) that's an expensive and time-consuming process.
I think this is just a mis-statement of the law, at least as it exists in the US. Now, I am not a lawyer nor a trademark law expert, but my understanding is that trademarks are limited in scope by geography and type of business. So for instance, the United Parcel Service has a trademark on the color brown, but only in the context of being a worldwide delivery service. If you wanted to use brown trucks for your plumbing service, you go right ahead. Likewise, Sew Fast, Sew Easy probably (hopefully!) loses any trademark claims that they actually file against ad hoc knitting groups, because their trademark is on a shop in NYC and an online presence for a knitting store.
Frivolous litigation is not a problem unique to the so-called "intellectual property" rights. You see it in tort, contract, real estate, and every other area of the law. No amount of IP reform will eliminate the problem of frivolous and oppresive litigation.
Realistically, microsoft will not have to pull their product from the market. It just won't happen. They're better businessfolk and lawyers than that. RIM got dangerously close to having to make drastic changes in the Blackberry technology, but even they settled (after the trial judge's forceful expression of disgust that they were in court at all).
As far as the party with the deepest pockets winning, not necessarily true here or in any other trial. But it does help. A lot. More in the case where one party has deep pockets and the other has none, than when the difference is how many billions you have to throw around.
You're talking about rockets; the parent poster was talking about railguns. Very important difference, although I suppose you could have a vehicle with manoeuvring thursters get its original "kick" from a railgun.
Also, I would suppose, although I'm certainly amenable to seeing the numbers worked out, that the energy advantage from lifting this entire platform on balloons every time you wanted to use it would not outweigh the additional costs of the system as I mentioned above. Rockoons were a neat (although now obscolete) idea, but this is far more complicated than a rockoon.
Nasa has sent balloons into high orbit, without mass drivers.
AND, people at MIT have built mass drivers, and used them on terra firma! And other people have thought about using them on the moon.
That's what your links say. Oh, and an offhand comment, that "SSI is conducting a feasibility study on the use of an aerostatically supported mass driver for terrestrial launch of bulk payloads." Just that sentence, nothing more.
The reaction force from the launch would be enormous, though--F=m*a, so take whatever acceleration you impart to the payload, discount it by the fraction of the payload's mass over the platform's mass, and that's the acceleration you impart to the platform. Doesn't sound too bad until you think about an aerostatically supported platform trying to launch things into predictable orbits while oscillating all over the place from the reaction force of the launches.
Just make it heavier, you say? Bigger energy cost to get it up there in the first place. Bigger problem if it fals. Also, those aerostats aren't going to last forever, so the increased mass will also be an increast maintenence cost. Or, maybe you'd like to put stabilizing thrusters on the platform? What would fuel them? How would you get the fuel up there?
Who would staff a platform at an altitude of 30 miles? How would you get them up and down? How much would you pay them, given the hazardous nature of the work?
Also, you want to send the payloads to the platforms on balloons. My understanding is that balloons are great for getting things to high-altitude, so long as the radial coordinate is the ony one you care about. If you want them at a particular spot in the sky (say, your platform), you'd have to use something more manoeuvrable.
The Honorable Prof. Van Allen has long been a detractor of crewed spaceflight. This is old news. And not very surprising, either.
I am an Iowa Physics and astronomy student. Van Allen works only two floors up from me. Although I don't know him personally, I have certainly read the various articles and commentary posted by his door.
Why not surprising? Professor Van Allen is a pioneer of robotic spaceflight. As a plasma physicist, humans are of little use to him in any place other than on the ground doing data reduction. That's okay, but there are other scientific disciplines such as geology and SETI (which is certainly taken seriously among radio astronomers, contrary to some popular belief) where human investigators are hard to replace.
Is orbiting the earth in an elderly tin can a waste of our time and money? Maybe, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go to Mars.
Even if you don't believe that the scientific merits of spaceflight are worth the cost, consider the technological benefits. Attempting a new task of spaceflight is a technological challenge that yields benefits felt in every corner of society.
The only thing that can be said for the human cost is that astronauts do their jobs fully cognisant of the risk. They know they could be making more money in a safer job in the private sector, but they do it anyway. They have that "ideology of adventure" that Professor Van Allen does not.
When NASA sent out job offers for the astronaut class of 2004, candidates were asked if they would still want the job, even if there was a chance they would never fly in space. All but one said yes. These are people who are fully committed to the enterprise of crewed spaceflight, even at great personal risk. I for one would not stop them from voluntarily assuming that risk "in peace for all mankind." I would also happily join them.
James Van Allen did this back in 1953. Not carrying humans, but his "rockoons" got instruments relatively high up in the atmosphere for not much money.
By the way, contrary to popular assumption Dr. Van Allen is still alive and still working at the University of Iowa as a professor emeritus. His autobiography is here
But, you probably assume microsoft cares about home users. Not very much. Look at any major software or hardware company and ask how much of their revenues come from home users versus corporate purchasing. In commercial software development, corporate purchasing will make or break your marketshare.
From a footnote on the source link in the article (here):
Very happy constitutes those who rated their level of happiness as 10 out of 10. Respondents were asked to grade their level of happiness on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being very unhappy and 10 being very happy
Unhappy constitutes those who rated their level of happiness from 1-3 out of 10.
I'm very curious to see the numbers on those who rated 8 of 10 or higher.
Section 3a allows software programs to determine whether the user is licensed or authorized to use them (i.e. collecting information is not the main purpose of the program)
Section 3b allows software for technical support purposes on the user's request.
How does this "allow most spyware as legal?" The infamous gator, for example, is neither.
It should be noted that this isn't some arcane lore that nobody uses anymore, either. The Q-signals are required knowledge for ham radio operators (although only a few of the most common ones are actually on the test.) Nonetheless, several of them are so common as to have come into common use in voice communications (up to and including face-to-face meatworld chatting) by hams. These include:
QSL: "Please Confirm", or "I confirm", or, a card that a ham sends to another as a written acknowledgement of communications.
QTH: "What is your location", or "My location is", or just "location"
QRM: Interference
QRZ: "Who's calling me?" (see also qrz.com, a popular resource for looking up ham callsigns.)
YL: Young Lady (any female) XYL: Wife OM: Old man (any male) DX: Long-distance (how far varies by frequency, but usually means another country)
These are more like photon torpedos than phasers. Really, neither is a good analogy, since they don't damage personnell. As for warp drive, NASA's working on it, at least, when Congress funds them.
I can't speak for all of the telcos, but if you get your DSL from Qwest you can still get your ISP service from any of a number of competing local, regional, and national providers.
See the RPM HOWTO at rpm.org for instructions on how to build your own RPM. It's really not hard. Or just use the supplied installer. Having mozilla as a non-rpm package is not the end of the world.
See also my other reply in this thread, about the nature of corporations.
I'll be the first to admit that Microsoft has some nasty business practices that need to be stopped. That said, this DOES NOT MEAN that everything Microsoft does is inherently evil, just because they are Microsoft.
As far as your comments regarding what "the internet is NOT about" and what "the internet is supposed to be," I would remind you that the internet is what it is. Technologies evolve, and the internet is probably the best example. The internet is a big enough place to accomodate peer-to-peer as well as client-server models.
Being required to use your ISP's SMTP server is not a big deal. SMTP security helps fight spam, and really, one SMTP server is as good as another, as long as the mail gets where it's going.
As a civil libertarian and a reasonable person, I respect your right to disagree with me. Please do so freely and openly, but understand that grandstanding and declaring that my speech will mean the end of the free world and the eventual domination of Microsoft is not constructive and serves only to weaken your point (good points stand on their own, without such outrageous claims stapled to them.)
>It's a fucking forwarding alias. I CANNOT SEND MAIL FROM IT.
Yes you can. Just about any mailer lets you set the "from" address to whatever you want.
>He's obviously a fucking liar and DID buy a scavenged email CD from someone, or else they did a web harvest themselves.
Unless somebody else opted in from your mail address. Or you accidentally entered it on a web form and forgot to uncheck the "opt-in" checkbox.
This kind of ire and anti-corporate attitude is not in any way constructive. Big corporations are a permanent part of our economic system, and in many cases, provide useful goods and services that we all enjoy (major airlines, for instance). I'll be the first to admit that in some cases the corps well overstep their bounds and need to be put in their place (cf Microsoft, SCO, RIAA); but the vast majority of them are in it to make money, which they do best by serving the customer's interest. And when you have a personal problem with a corp, it usually doesn't mean the corp is bad, it means somebody isn't doing their job. Call customer service, write the CEO, and usually things work out in the end.
If nothing else, when K-Mart spams you, you know whom to sue. The big problem with most spam is if you don't know where it's coming from, you're powerless to stop it.
Slashdot Mirror
It is, and it's a fair question. Assuming that this is a real seizure and not a hoax, the due process works like this:
0) Somebody allegedly uses property for an illegal purpose. By law, they are deemed to have transferred title to the United States Government by dint of the illegal activity (if in fact the illegal activity can be proved).
1) The government files for a seizure warrant in US District Court. The owner of the property (here, the domain) does not get a say, nor any notice that this is happening.
2) The government seizes the property and provides notice to the owner, if known, and any person who might have a claim on it. For example, if the property is a car with a bank lien, they must notify the owner and the bank.
3a) The government files a complaint for forfeiture in US District Court (or in state court). This is called an "in rem" action--meaning that it's not a lawsuit against an individual, but a suit to determine title to property. The United States claims that it owns the property because of the transfer-by-law that occurred at zero, supra. Anybody who disagrees can stake their claim. The judge determines who gets the stuff.
3b) The government doesn't file anything, and the owner sues the government for a civil rights violation by unlawful taking of property without due process. The suit proceeds as above.
===
The cases determining whether due process has to occur pre-seizure or post-seizure are complicated, and beyond the scope of this author's knowledge or this post.
For reference, I am a lawyer and have posted this explanation based on my legal study, but it should be considered scholarship (information for general knowledge) and not legal advice (information specific to an individual's problems). If you are in need of legal advice, you should consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction.
The full transcript of the interview is here. She never said a thing about body scanners on trains or transit, nor was she asked. She merely said that "we have to be thinking" about surface transportation security. You can read into that whatever you want, but the headline implies a comment that she simply did not make.
It's true, but very slowly. Think about how many thousands (dare I speculate, millions?) of these suits RIAA files each year before 268 United States District Judges in 94 different United States District Courts and 3 territorial courts. In comparison to the onslaught of filings, the "judge says no to RIAA" stories are still just a trickle. Of course, it's also possible that there's some selection bias in what gets reported. It would be interesting to see numbers on exactly how often these things get shot down, and how that has changed over time.
>I really wonder how these kids do in school, or in real life?
I graduated the University of Iowa a year ago with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Astronomy, and did well enough to get into Cornell Law School, where I'm president one student organization, an officer in another, and made the dean's list both of my first two semesters.
I'm not the 13-year-old who makes dumb jokes about Chuck Norris in Barrens Chat and brags about his 5 level 60s and tells all the female characters "I bet ur a guy." There's such a thing as moderation in Azeroth, just like in the real world.
From Federal Trademark, serial #76-408109:
"The mark consists of the color chocolate brown, which is the approximate equivalent of Pantone Matching System 462C, as applied to the entire surface of vehicles and uniforms. The mark consists of the color brown alone." (emphasis mine)
As to classification, in the U.S. they are class 105, transportation services. My hypothetical plumbing service would be class 037, plumbing services. See http://tess2.uspto.gov/netahtml/tidm.html
I think this is just a mis-statement of the law, at least as it exists in the US. Now, I am not a lawyer nor a trademark law expert, but my understanding is that trademarks are limited in scope by geography and type of business. So for instance, the United Parcel Service has a trademark on the color brown, but only in the context of being a worldwide delivery service. If you wanted to use brown trucks for your plumbing service, you go right ahead. Likewise, Sew Fast, Sew Easy probably (hopefully!) loses any trademark claims that they actually file against ad hoc knitting groups, because their trademark is on a shop in NYC and an online presence for a knitting store.
Frivolous litigation is not a problem unique to the so-called "intellectual property" rights. You see it in tort, contract, real estate, and every other area of the law. No amount of IP reform will eliminate the problem of frivolous and oppresive litigation.
Realistically, microsoft will not have to pull their product from the market. It just won't happen. They're better businessfolk and lawyers than that. RIM got dangerously close to having to make drastic changes in the Blackberry technology, but even they settled (after the trial judge's forceful expression of disgust that they were in court at all).
As far as the party with the deepest pockets winning, not necessarily true here or in any other trial. But it does help. A lot. More in the case where one party has deep pockets and the other has none, than when the difference is how many billions you have to throw around.
Just this: where can I get oneathem jetpacks, and what are the chances of it exploding on my back?
You're talking about rockets; the parent poster was talking about railguns. Very important difference, although I suppose you could have a vehicle with manoeuvring thursters get its original "kick" from a railgun.
Also, I would suppose, although I'm certainly amenable to seeing the numbers worked out, that the energy advantage from lifting this entire platform on balloons every time you wanted to use it would not outweigh the additional costs of the system as I mentioned above. Rockoons were a neat (although now obscolete) idea, but this is far more complicated than a rockoon.
Nasa has sent balloons into high orbit, without mass drivers.
AND, people at MIT have built mass drivers, and used them on terra firma! And other people have thought about using them on the moon.
That's what your links say. Oh, and an offhand comment, that "SSI is conducting a feasibility study on the use of an aerostatically supported mass driver for terrestrial launch of bulk payloads." Just that sentence, nothing more.
The reaction force from the launch would be enormous, though--F=m*a, so take whatever acceleration you impart to the payload, discount it by the fraction of the payload's mass over the platform's mass, and that's the acceleration you impart to the platform. Doesn't sound too bad until you think about an aerostatically supported platform trying to launch things into predictable orbits while oscillating all over the place from the reaction force of the launches.
Just make it heavier, you say? Bigger energy cost to get it up there in the first place. Bigger problem if it fals. Also, those aerostats aren't going to last forever, so the increased mass will also be an increast maintenence cost. Or, maybe you'd like to put stabilizing thrusters on the platform? What would fuel them? How would you get the fuel up there?
Who would staff a platform at an altitude of 30 miles? How would you get them up and down? How much would you pay them, given the hazardous nature of the work?
Also, you want to send the payloads to the platforms on balloons. My understanding is that balloons are great for getting things to high-altitude, so long as the radial coordinate is the ony one you care about. If you want them at a particular spot in the sky (say, your platform), you'd have to use something more manoeuvrable.
The Honorable Prof. Van Allen has long been a detractor of crewed spaceflight. This is old news. And not very surprising, either.
I am an Iowa Physics and astronomy student. Van Allen works only two floors up from me. Although I don't know him personally, I have certainly read the various articles and commentary posted by his door.
Why not surprising? Professor Van Allen is a pioneer of robotic spaceflight. As a plasma physicist, humans are of little use to him in any place other than on the ground doing data reduction. That's okay, but there are other scientific disciplines such as geology and SETI (which is certainly taken seriously among radio astronomers, contrary to some popular belief) where human investigators are hard to replace.
Is orbiting the earth in an elderly tin can a waste of our time and money? Maybe, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go to Mars.
Even if you don't believe that the scientific merits of spaceflight are worth the cost, consider the technological benefits. Attempting a new task of spaceflight is a technological challenge that yields benefits felt in every corner of society.
The only thing that can be said for the human cost is that astronauts do their jobs fully cognisant of the risk. They know they could be making more money in a safer job in the private sector, but they do it anyway. They have that "ideology of adventure" that Professor Van Allen does not.
When NASA sent out job offers for the astronaut class of 2004, candidates were asked if they would still want the job, even if there was a chance they would never fly in space. All but one said yes. These are people who are fully committed to the enterprise of crewed spaceflight, even at great personal risk. I for one would not stop them from voluntarily assuming that risk "in peace for all mankind." I would also happily join them.
James Van Allen did this back in 1953. Not carrying humans, but his "rockoons" got instruments relatively high up in the atmosphere for not much money.
By the way, contrary to popular assumption Dr. Van Allen is still alive and still working at the University of Iowa as a professor emeritus. His autobiography is here
But, you probably assume microsoft cares about home users. Not very much. Look at any major software or hardware company and ask how much of their revenues come from home users versus corporate purchasing. In commercial software development, corporate purchasing will make or break your marketshare.
I'm very curious to see the numbers on those who rated 8 of 10 or higher.
RTFA.
Birthdate and zipcode are both explicitly considered as identifying information under this bill.
Section 3a allows software programs to determine whether the user is licensed or authorized to use them (i.e. collecting information is not the main purpose of the program)
Section 3b allows software for technical support purposes on the user's request.
How does this "allow most spyware as legal?" The infamous gator, for example, is neither.
>Of course you can't forget QSO ("QUE-so"), which means a conversation ("thank you for the QSO")
You wouldn't think so, but I guess I did.
Ethidium, AB0YT
It should be noted that this isn't some arcane lore that nobody uses anymore, either. The Q-signals are required knowledge for ham radio operators (although only a few of the most common ones are actually on the test.) Nonetheless, several of them are so common as to have come into common use in voice communications (up to and including face-to-face meatworld chatting) by hams. These include:
QSL: "Please Confirm", or "I confirm", or, a card that a ham sends to another as a written acknowledgement of communications.
QTH: "What is your location", or "My location is", or just "location"
QRM: Interference
QRZ: "Who's calling me?" (see also qrz.com, a popular resource for looking up ham callsigns.)
YL: Young Lady (any female)
XYL: Wife
OM: Old man (any male)
DX: Long-distance (how far varies by frequency, but usually means another country)
73: Best regards
Ethidium
My favorite is "Warning: Knee pads do not protect areas of the body that they do not cover"
I can't speak for all of the telcos, but if you get your DSL from Qwest you can still get your ISP service from any of a number of competing local, regional, and national providers.
See the RPM HOWTO at rpm.org for instructions on how to build your own RPM. It's really not hard. Or just use the supplied installer. Having mozilla as a non-rpm package is not the end of the world.
See also my other reply in this thread, about the nature of corporations.
I'll be the first to admit that Microsoft has some nasty business practices that need to be stopped. That said, this DOES NOT MEAN that everything Microsoft does is inherently evil, just because they are Microsoft.
As far as your comments regarding what "the internet is NOT about" and what "the internet is supposed to be," I would remind you that the internet is what it is. Technologies evolve, and the internet is probably the best example. The internet is a big enough place to accomodate peer-to-peer as well as client-server models.
Being required to use your ISP's SMTP server is not a big deal. SMTP security helps fight spam, and really, one SMTP server is as good as another, as long as the mail gets where it's going.
As a civil libertarian and a reasonable person, I respect your right to disagree with me. Please do so freely and openly, but understand that grandstanding and declaring that my speech will mean the end of the free world and the eventual domination of Microsoft is not constructive and serves only to weaken your point (good points stand on their own, without such outrageous claims stapled to them.)
>It's a fucking forwarding alias. I CANNOT SEND MAIL FROM IT.
Yes you can. Just about any mailer lets you set the "from" address to whatever you want.
>He's obviously a fucking liar and DID buy a scavenged email CD from someone, or else they did a web harvest themselves.
Unless somebody else opted in from your mail address. Or you accidentally entered it on a web form and forgot to uncheck the "opt-in" checkbox.
This kind of ire and anti-corporate attitude is not in any way constructive. Big corporations are a permanent part of our economic system, and in many cases, provide useful goods and services that we all enjoy (major airlines, for instance). I'll be the first to admit that in some cases the corps well overstep their bounds and need to be put in their place (cf Microsoft, SCO, RIAA); but the vast majority of them are in it to make money, which they do best by serving the customer's interest. And when you have a personal problem with a corp, it usually doesn't mean the corp is bad, it means somebody isn't doing their job. Call customer service, write the CEO, and usually things work out in the end.
If nothing else, when K-Mart spams you, you know whom to sue. The big problem with most spam is if you don't know where it's coming from, you're powerless to stop it.