While I appreciate the humor of your reply, I am reminded that replies like this belittle the beneficial results of class action lawsuits.
Often in the verdict are requirements for the company being sued to change their practices. For example, changing their contract terms, or changing advertising content to be more accurate, or labeling products more clearly for safety, and so on. These are the actual intended results of the lawsuit, and they are often achieved. The goal of a class action lawsuit is NOT to give the class members money! If you want money for your grievance, excuse yourself from the class and sue the company directly yourself.
Sometimes the company also has to pay a fine and/or legal fees. These fines and fees can add up to a significant penalty for the company, even though the money does not result in a jackpot payoff for the class members. Again, the goal is not to enrich the class members, but rather to force the company to change its practices (and sometimes to punish bad behavior with a fine/fee as well).
The lawyers in this case are the mechanism by which class action lawsuits are enacted. Sometimes these cases can run for years, and involve actual large amounts of hours from employees at the law firm. It's true that being a lawyer can be lucrative, but it takes a lot of hours and since I learned more about it, I'd rather not do it myself. Given that, I don't begrudge them their money earned. (For reference, I'm a software engineer, not a lawyer.)
Where I said:
Your statistics are correct, however there is some additional information that should be considered.
The 9th Circuit Court processed (the courts say "terminated") 13,424 cases in 2006. That's right, over thirteen thousand. Out of thirteen thousand, 22 cases were heard by the Supreme Court, and 19 were reversed. That is not a bad record.
Also, note that the appeals process is designed to overturn incorrect decisions. For an example of this, see the statistics at this http://web.mit.edu/keithw/www/statestats.html page. Note the percentages of cases that are reversed or vacated for all courts.
The percentage of overturned cases should be higher for the Supreme Court, as they get to decide whether to review cases or not. This means they will mainly choose cases where they think they need to correct a bad decision, clarify a law, etc. So, having a high percentage of cases overturned by the Supreme Court means that the Supreme Court is doing its job well, not that the other courts are doing a bad job.
In my opinion, this game (and other games by Rockstar) include unnecessary violence. Further, I'd say it is too much violence and too graphic, both in depiction and in conception. Should it be illegal to make a game like this? I suppose not. But to use a long-worn phrase, just because you can does not mean you should. (I felt this way within the first few minutes of watching a friend play Grand Theft Auto, and Manhunt is worse, if anything.)
I believe it is ok for some things to be socially unacceptable even if they are legal, and depictions and promotions of realistic/graphic violence as entertainment should be one of those things. (ie, it is not the government's job to manage every aspect of people's behavior -- that is our own responsibility.)
There's some line here that is hard to describe, but something like Saving Private Ryan may not cross the line (violence is not glorified), while the Silence of the Lambs series probably does (the message is confusing as the serial killer is idolized). Likewise, Starcraft probably does not cross the line (clearly "fake" violence), but Manhunt 2 does (player initiates criminal violent acts to "win" the game).
This is clearly not a well-defined line that should be codified in law, rather a moral/social line that should be based on good judgement.
Whether there is a link between violent entertainment and actual acts of violence I cannot say, however promoting criminal and violent acts does provide some glorification of those things -- for example movies that glorify stealing cars. What is the effect? I don't have any data to say, but I think anyone who says there is zero impact on viewers/players is simply ignoring obvious connections between people and how they are influenced by their environment.
I guess it comes down to this: it is good to encourage people to have values that respect other people's lives, rights, and property. Does this kind of entertainment encourage such things? No. Rockstar may not feel like it is their responsibility to encourage good values, but I would counter and say that it is everyone's responsibility. (Yes, that means there are people and companies who I feel are not meeting that responsibility.)
Also, why make a game with realistic depictions of criminal violence and abuse when it is possible to make a best-selling game that has none of those things? The only reason I can think of is that the studios developing those games do not have the talent or ability to develop a best-selling game without using the crutch of realistic violence (because, despite my opinions, those features can increase sales).
I think the objection to a game like this is a moral stand and a moral argument, but that does not mean it is a bad argument.
I understand your position, but let me make a few comments.
Regarding "unconsionable," the 9th Circuit stated that they use a sliding scale to determine the level of unconsionability. It has two factors, the substantive and the procedural, and the sum of the two (in abstract terms) must be great enough to warrant a contract or contract term being unenforceable. Their position is that terms may have some level of unconscionability, but still be enforceable, but if the unconscionability is too large, then the terms become unenforceable.
Contracts of adhesion are a specific case, and while "take it or leave it" is a legitimate negotiating tactic, that does not change the fact that some contracts are contracts of adhesion. The classification of contracts as "contracts of adhesion" is very important and legitimate for helping to protect individuals that enter contracts with businesses, especially in the case of businesses that supply a necessary service, such as phone service.
In this case, the individual did not have a chance to negotiate with the business, which means that "take it or leave it" wasn't really a negotiating tactic, rather it was a statement that the business would not negotiate. This is part of what makes this a contract of adhesion, and it is important so that the individual has some recourse against unfair terms in the contract -- this is necessary because individuals need phone service and would be vulnerable to having to agree to very bad terms to get that service if there was not legal protection.
If an individual has a chance to read, modify, and negotiate the contract, then agreeing to mandatory binding arbitration is fine -- however if the individual does not have that chance, then the arbitration clause could limit their ability to seek recourse against the corporation (such as in a class action lawsuit or class action arbitration). In that case, the individual needs some protection by the law, which in this case is through the arbitration clause being ruled unenforceable. This is a Good Thing.
The 9th Circuit is actually not writing fresh law here. If you read the signed opinion, they are citing several other cases which have been decided in a similar fashion in the last 10 years, including from other jurisdictions.
Congress has stated that class action suits can proceed in both courts and arbitration, and has passed specific legislation to support arbitration as a valid alternative to courts (the Federal Arbitration Act). See the text of the 9th's opinion on this case for all of the references. (I think the class action rules are section 23 of some Federal rules, and they apply both to courts and to arbitration.)
Your statistics are correct, however there is some additional information that should be considered.
The 9th Circuit Court processed (the courts say "terminated") 13,424 cases in 2006. That's right, over thirteen thousand. Out of thirteen thousand, 22 cases were heard by the Supreme Court, and 19 were reversed. That is not a bad record.
Data here (choose 9th Circuit) and here (choose 2006).
Also, note that the appeals process is designed to overturn incorrect decisions. For an example of this, see the statistics at this page. Note the percentages of cases that are reversed or vacated for all courts.
The percentage of overturned cases should be higher for the Supreme Court, as they get to decide whether to review cases or not. This means they will mainly choose cases where they think they need to correct a bad decision, clarify a law, etc. So, having a high percentage of cases overturned by the Supreme Court means that the Supreme Court is doing its job well, not that the other courts are doing a bad job.
The 9th Circuit's decision on this one seems to be well-reasoned. You can read the decision
here.(PDF)
They basically state that the contact in question for this type of case must be a contract of adhesion, and they clearly define what that means. A contract of adhesion is defined as a contract between a party of greater bargaining power and a party of weaker power (ie, AT&T and a wireless subscriber), and the contract must be standardized for use with all equivalent parties of weaker power (ie, all wireless subscribers), and the presentation of that contract must be "take it or leave it" (ie, no chance to negotiate).
It is good to note that the ability to walk away from a contract does not change that the contract is a contract of adhesion, even if you accept that contract instead of walking away.
The court also adequately addresses the issue of marketplace alternatives, specifically stating that even if meaningful alternative services exist (ie, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc), that this does not change the fact that the contract may be procedurally unconsionable (a "contract of adhesion" is also stated as being automatically procedurally unconsionable to some degree).
Note, for a contract or clause of a contract to be unenforceable, it has to be both substantively and procedurally unconsionable to enough of a degree as to be ruled unenforceable. Please read the court's decision and other documents to learn more about legal unconsionability.
On the issue of arbitration, the court seems to treat arbitration with respect, and cites several cases where arbitration was used and also lists some favorable reasons for people and companies to use arbitration. This is clearly not a case of the court dismissing arbitration -- this is a case where the members of the class who want to sue AT&T would be at a severe disadvantage if they were required to use individual arbitration. Note, AT&T stated that they did not want to use class arbitration to resolve the issue, they specifically wanted individual arbitration. The court actually presents opinions supporting class arbitration at one point in the decision.
This decision makes sense, and shows that terms that are included in contracts of adhesion are vulnerable to being ruled unenforceable. This is good news from the consumer standpoint, and does not weaken arbitration or consumer's rights in any way I can see.
I understand your frustration, however this is a case of the system clearly working in favor of the consumer. If you read the court's decision, they are very clear that this type of clause (no class-action lawsuits/arbitration) in this type of contract (contract of adhesion) is not going to be enforcable.
In short, this is exactly what you are looking for in terms of curtailing abuse by corporations.
The system is more than the President and Congress, it is also the Judiciary, and the courts are supposed to provide the check on their power. In this case, it appears to be working. Read the decision, you will be impressed. (And the 9th Circuit seems to be on track on this one, even including a URL in their decision that shows class arbitrations currently listed on the American Arbitration Association website!)
Here is some actual information about face recognition to answer these concerns. Yes, current face recognition software and techniques can handle the situations you have described, and also identical twins. Links:
Face Recognition Vendor Test with actual tests and results. http://frvt.org/
HowStuffWorks page on face recognition. See page 3 on Surface Texture Analysis to see how changes in face features do not break face recognition using that method. (ie, the distance between your eyes, shape of your eyes, skin texture on cheeks and forehead, etc. are all used to recognize a face.) http://computer.howstuffworks.com/facial-recogniti on.htm
Brief introduction discussing 2D and 3D face biometrics. Notes how 3D imaging of faces defeats someone using a photo to fake the system. http://www.3dface.org/home/introduction.html
Also, some of these articles mention "liveness." This is a test where the camera takes multiple images, or is actually a video camera where every frame is analyzed (yes, you can analyze almost every frame in decent quality video for faces on a regular desktop PC). The algorithm looks for blinking eyes, slight movements in head position, etc, to ensure that the subject is "alive" and not a photo/fake.
Last note, the Surface Texture Analysis method can distinguish between identical twins. One company, Identix, has publicly tested this and challenged twins to present themselves to be identified. The system successfully identified each twin differently from the other. Even considering makeup, etc. (I can't find a good link for the test results, though there are several statements by Identix that their software ABIS 3.0 can distinguish between identical twins.)
Preview: your odds of dying each time you get on a commercial flight are: 1 in 523,810. (See below.)
Here is the source of the "1 in 5051" figure cited by the GP. http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm
The methodology is also explained on that page. (Note, the NSC has many other interesting statistics and reports on this and related topics.)
Basically, the number of airplane crash deaths in the US was divided by the entire population of the US in the year of the study (2003). The data was presented in two forms, annual odds of dying a particular way and lifetime odds of dying a particular way. This means that all of the following discussion is directly relevant only to someone living (and/or dying!) in the US.
The airplane crash numbers were 1 in 391,981 (annual odds) and 1 in 5051 (lifetime odds). This means that the "1 in 5051" figure is the odds of a given person that died having died in a plane crash.
The odds of a person who died in a given year having died in a plane crash are 1 in 391,981. These numbers are NOT directly translatable into an individual's odds of dying each time they get onto an airplane. For that, you would have to know how many flights over US territory there are in a given year and how many plane crashes occur in that same time (since the odds of dying are roughly equal to the odds of a plane crash).
For an exact calculation, you'd need to know how many people flew on those flights (the aggregate would be ok), and how many people died in crashes (again, the aggregate is ok). From that, you could determine the odds of dying on any given plane flight.
The FAA also has some interesting data. The target safety rate for the U.S. is 0.010 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures (appears to include all flights, commercial and private, even though the statistic is called the "Commercial Airline Fatal Accident Rate"), though the current rate in 2007 is 0.023 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures.
See the "Airline Fatal Accident Rate" PDF on the linked page.
For the below data, FAA/NTSB reports were used. Much more data is available at these sites for anyone who wants to do more analysis. For example, the commercial data below is a summary of Part 121, Part 135, and On-demand Part 135. The accident rates were much higher for the "On-demand Part 135" which not what we typically fly as commercial passengers.
Commercial Air Carriers:
Background data in 2003 (rounded to nearest whole million/billion):
639 million passengers boarded commercial airplanes
8 billion miles were flown
11 million departures
23 million flight hours
Accidents:
Total: 130
Fatal: 21
Deaths: 66
Fatal accidents per departure: 1.9091x10^(-6) (1 in 523,810)
Fatal accidents per hour: 9.130x1-^(-7) (1 in 1,095,239)
General Aviation:
Total Accidents: 1739
Fatal Accidents: 352
Injuries:
Fatal: 632
Serious: 324
Minor: 523
Involved but Not Injured: 1697
I think you have interpreted the Sec. 8 text incorrectly. It means that it does not create any new rights, but it does not remove any existing rights. So, for example, a Sunni insurgent group that has its funds frozen in the U.S. could not sue the U.S. government unless they already had a right to do that (such as being sponsored by a person in the U.S., in which case the person in the U.S. could still challenge the action in a U.S. court).
If you have your assets frozen under this order, and you live in the U.S., you can definitely bring legal action against the U.S. government to defend yourself, and even seek compensation.
All existing legal options are still open to you, none of them have been removed. But no new ones are created.
Related to defending yourself in court after your assets have been frozen, you are entitled to request to pay for your defense out of the frozen assets. A description of this is included in:
under "B. The Asset Freeze" which states that the court has discretion over whether to grant the request. This case ruling (from the 9th Circuit) includes the statement (with references) "A district court may, within its discretion, forbid or limit payment of attorney fees out of frozen assets."
I'm sure there are many more court cases which involve rulings related to paying for funds out of frozen assets, but that one I cited was the first one I found in my Google search.
Based on some further reading, it appears that in the case I cited and in some other cases, access to frozen funds is primarily restricted based on the "unclean hands" principle -- meaning, basically, if the court believes that the money that was frozen was acquired through underhanded, illegal, harmful, or other "bad" methods, then the court will be unwilling to grant access to those funds. The assumption there seems to be that the money that was frozen may need to be used to reimburse or pay back to people who were taken advantage of during the acquisition of the money.
Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but the information I've presented was taken from reading legal documents.
Your post may have been mainly humorous, but it bears a thoughtful response based on the moderation.
A quick review of the MP3 players currenty for sale at Amazon and Best Buy shows that every MP3 player except for the iPods plays WMA. Maybe "nobody cares," but WMA was pushed very hard as a candidate for the leading digital music standard. It would not be unreasonable to claim that the main reason it failed to become the de facto standard is because of Apple's iPod and iTunes Music Store. (Which use AAC, a codec definition which is a standard.)
Also, although the market share of the segment is small, WMA-based stores do sell a lot of digital music tracks. See http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/30/Technology/Digit al_music_users_f.shtml for some music store market shares in 2006, giving WMA around 15%, MP3 around 10%, and iTunes (AAC) around 70%. (Yes, I know that a lot of digital music collections were converted from CD's in whatever format the user chose, but it is hard to measure those collections.)
Considering that total digital music sales were about 581 million digital tracks, that still means a lot of WMA tracks out there, about 87 million. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117956655.html?c ategoryid=16&cs=1 Note that this gives AAC downloads about 406 million tracks downloaded, so it would also not be unreasonable to claim that many iPod owners listen to AAC. (Links do not specify region, but data appears to be U.S. only.)
Slashdot Mirror
While I appreciate the humor of your reply, I am reminded that replies like this belittle the beneficial results of class action lawsuits.
Often in the verdict are requirements for the company being sued to change their practices. For example, changing their contract terms, or changing advertising content to be more accurate, or labeling products more clearly for safety, and so on. These are the actual intended results of the lawsuit, and they are often achieved. The goal of a class action lawsuit is NOT to give the class members money! If you want money for your grievance, excuse yourself from the class and sue the company directly yourself.
Sometimes the company also has to pay a fine and/or legal fees. These fines and fees can add up to a significant penalty for the company, even though the money does not result in a jackpot payoff for the class members. Again, the goal is not to enrich the class members, but rather to force the company to change its practices (and sometimes to punish bad behavior with a fine/fee as well).
The lawyers in this case are the mechanism by which class action lawsuits are enacted. Sometimes these cases can run for years, and involve actual large amounts of hours from employees at the law firm. It's true that being a lawyer can be lucrative, but it takes a lot of hours and since I learned more about it, I'd rather not do it myself. Given that, I don't begrudge them their money earned. (For reference, I'm a software engineer, not a lawyer.)
Thanks for reading.
See my post at: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=273917&cid=20289001
Where I said:
Your statistics are correct, however there is some additional information that should be considered.
The 9th Circuit Court processed (the courts say "terminated") 13,424 cases in 2006. That's right, over thirteen thousand. Out of thirteen thousand, 22 cases were heard by the Supreme Court, and 19 were reversed. That is not a bad record.
Data here http://www.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/cmsa2006.pl (choose 9th Circuit) and here http://www.uscourts.gov/judbususc/judbus.html (choose 2006).
Also, note that the appeals process is designed to overturn incorrect decisions. For an example of this, see the statistics at this http://web.mit.edu/keithw/www/statestats.html page. Note the percentages of cases that are reversed or vacated for all courts.
The percentage of overturned cases should be higher for the Supreme Court, as they get to decide whether to review cases or not. This means they will mainly choose cases where they think they need to correct a bad decision, clarify a law, etc. So, having a high percentage of cases overturned by the Supreme Court means that the Supreme Court is doing its job well, not that the other courts are doing a bad job.
In my opinion, this game (and other games by Rockstar) include unnecessary violence. Further, I'd say it is too much violence and too graphic, both in depiction and in conception. Should it be illegal to make a game like this? I suppose not. But to use a long-worn phrase, just because you can does not mean you should. (I felt this way within the first few minutes of watching a friend play Grand Theft Auto, and Manhunt is worse, if anything.)
I believe it is ok for some things to be socially unacceptable even if they are legal, and depictions and promotions of realistic/graphic violence as entertainment should be one of those things. (ie, it is not the government's job to manage every aspect of people's behavior -- that is our own responsibility.)
There's some line here that is hard to describe, but something like Saving Private Ryan may not cross the line (violence is not glorified), while the Silence of the Lambs series probably does (the message is confusing as the serial killer is idolized). Likewise, Starcraft probably does not cross the line (clearly "fake" violence), but Manhunt 2 does (player initiates criminal violent acts to "win" the game).
This is clearly not a well-defined line that should be codified in law, rather a moral/social line that should be based on good judgement.
Whether there is a link between violent entertainment and actual acts of violence I cannot say, however promoting criminal and violent acts does provide some glorification of those things -- for example movies that glorify stealing cars. What is the effect? I don't have any data to say, but I think anyone who says there is zero impact on viewers/players is simply ignoring obvious connections between people and how they are influenced by their environment.
I guess it comes down to this: it is good to encourage people to have values that respect other people's lives, rights, and property. Does this kind of entertainment encourage such things? No. Rockstar may not feel like it is their responsibility to encourage good values, but I would counter and say that it is everyone's responsibility. (Yes, that means there are people and companies who I feel are not meeting that responsibility.)
Also, why make a game with realistic depictions of criminal violence and abuse when it is possible to make a best-selling game that has none of those things? The only reason I can think of is that the studios developing those games do not have the talent or ability to develop a best-selling game without using the crutch of realistic violence (because, despite my opinions, those features can increase sales).
I think the objection to a game like this is a moral stand and a moral argument, but that does not mean it is a bad argument.
Regarding "unconsionable," the 9th Circuit stated that they use a sliding scale to determine the level of unconsionability. It has two factors, the substantive and the procedural, and the sum of the two (in abstract terms) must be great enough to warrant a contract or contract term being unenforceable. Their position is that terms may have some level of unconscionability, but still be enforceable, but if the unconscionability is too large, then the terms become unenforceable.
Contracts of adhesion are a specific case, and while "take it or leave it" is a legitimate negotiating tactic, that does not change the fact that some contracts are contracts of adhesion. The classification of contracts as "contracts of adhesion" is very important and legitimate for helping to protect individuals that enter contracts with businesses, especially in the case of businesses that supply a necessary service, such as phone service.
In this case, the individual did not have a chance to negotiate with the business, which means that "take it or leave it" wasn't really a negotiating tactic, rather it was a statement that the business would not negotiate. This is part of what makes this a contract of adhesion, and it is important so that the individual has some recourse against unfair terms in the contract -- this is necessary because individuals need phone service and would be vulnerable to having to agree to very bad terms to get that service if there was not legal protection.
If an individual has a chance to read, modify, and negotiate the contract, then agreeing to mandatory binding arbitration is fine -- however if the individual does not have that chance, then the arbitration clause could limit their ability to seek recourse against the corporation (such as in a class action lawsuit or class action arbitration). In that case, the individual needs some protection by the law, which in this case is through the arbitration clause being ruled unenforceable. This is a Good Thing.
The 9th Circuit is actually not writing fresh law here. If you read the signed opinion, they are citing several other cases which have been decided in a similar fashion in the last 10 years, including from other jurisdictions.
Congress has stated that class action suits can proceed in both courts and arbitration, and has passed specific legislation to support arbitration as a valid alternative to courts (the Federal Arbitration Act). See the text of the 9th's opinion on this case for all of the references. (I think the class action rules are section 23 of some Federal rules, and they apply both to courts and to arbitration.)
The 9th Circuit Court processed (the courts say "terminated") 13,424 cases in 2006. That's right, over thirteen thousand. Out of thirteen thousand, 22 cases were heard by the Supreme Court, and 19 were reversed. That is not a bad record.
Data here (choose 9th Circuit) and here (choose 2006).
Also, note that the appeals process is designed to overturn incorrect decisions. For an example of this, see the statistics at this page. Note the percentages of cases that are reversed or vacated for all courts.
The percentage of overturned cases should be higher for the Supreme Court, as they get to decide whether to review cases or not. This means they will mainly choose cases where they think they need to correct a bad decision, clarify a law, etc. So, having a high percentage of cases overturned by the Supreme Court means that the Supreme Court is doing its job well, not that the other courts are doing a bad job.
They basically state that the contact in question for this type of case must be a contract of adhesion, and they clearly define what that means. A contract of adhesion is defined as a contract between a party of greater bargaining power and a party of weaker power (ie, AT&T and a wireless subscriber), and the contract must be standardized for use with all equivalent parties of weaker power (ie, all wireless subscribers), and the presentation of that contract must be "take it or leave it" (ie, no chance to negotiate).
It is good to note that the ability to walk away from a contract does not change that the contract is a contract of adhesion, even if you accept that contract instead of walking away.
The court also adequately addresses the issue of marketplace alternatives, specifically stating that even if meaningful alternative services exist (ie, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc), that this does not change the fact that the contract may be procedurally unconsionable (a "contract of adhesion" is also stated as being automatically procedurally unconsionable to some degree).
Note, for a contract or clause of a contract to be unenforceable, it has to be both substantively and procedurally unconsionable to enough of a degree as to be ruled unenforceable. Please read the court's decision and other documents to learn more about legal unconsionability.
On the issue of arbitration, the court seems to treat arbitration with respect, and cites several cases where arbitration was used and also lists some favorable reasons for people and companies to use arbitration. This is clearly not a case of the court dismissing arbitration -- this is a case where the members of the class who want to sue AT&T would be at a severe disadvantage if they were required to use individual arbitration. Note, AT&T stated that they did not want to use class arbitration to resolve the issue, they specifically wanted individual arbitration. The court actually presents opinions supporting class arbitration at one point in the decision.
This decision makes sense, and shows that terms that are included in contracts of adhesion are vulnerable to being ruled unenforceable. This is good news from the consumer standpoint, and does not weaken arbitration or consumer's rights in any way I can see.
I am not a lawyer. I just RTFA.
In short, this is exactly what you are looking for in terms of curtailing abuse by corporations.
The system is more than the President and Congress, it is also the Judiciary, and the courts are supposed to provide the check on their power. In this case, it appears to be working. Read the decision, you will be impressed. (And the 9th Circuit seems to be on track on this one, even including a URL in their decision that shows class arbitrations currently listed on the American Arbitration Association website!)
Link to the court's decision. (PDF)
Face Recognition Vendor Test with actual tests and results.
http://frvt.org/
HowStuffWorks page on face recognition. See page 3 on Surface Texture Analysis to see how changes in face features do not break face recognition using that method. (ie, the distance between your eyes, shape of your eyes, skin texture on cheeks and forehead, etc. are all used to recognize a face.)i on.htm
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/facial-recognit
Brief introduction discussing 2D and 3D face biometrics. Notes how 3D imaging of faces defeats someone using a photo to fake the system.
http://www.3dface.org/home/introduction.html
MIT article talking about face recognition in detail (actually, discusses results of the FRVT 2006 test from first link).a rticle.aspx?id=18796
http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_
Also, some of these articles mention "liveness." This is a test where the camera takes multiple images, or is actually a video camera where every frame is analyzed (yes, you can analyze almost every frame in decent quality video for faces on a regular desktop PC). The algorithm looks for blinking eyes, slight movements in head position, etc, to ensure that the subject is "alive" and not a photo/fake.
Last note, the Surface Texture Analysis method can distinguish between identical twins. One company, Identix, has publicly tested this and challenged twins to present themselves to be identified. The system successfully identified each twin differently from the other. Even considering makeup, etc. (I can't find a good link for the test results, though there are several statements by Identix that their software ABIS 3.0 can distinguish between identical twins.)
Here is the source of the "1 in 5051" figure cited by the GP.
http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm
The methodology is also explained on that page. (Note, the NSC has many other interesting statistics and reports on this and related topics.)
Basically, the number of airplane crash deaths in the US was divided by the entire population of the US in the year of the study (2003). The data was presented in two forms, annual odds of dying a particular way and lifetime odds of dying a particular way. This means that all of the following discussion is directly relevant only to someone living (and/or dying!) in the US.
The airplane crash numbers were 1 in 391,981 (annual odds) and 1 in 5051 (lifetime odds). This means that the "1 in 5051" figure is the odds of a given person that died having died in a plane crash.
The odds of a person who died in a given year having died in a plane crash are 1 in 391,981. These numbers are NOT directly translatable into an individual's odds of dying each time they get onto an airplane. For that, you would have to know how many flights over US territory there are in a given year and how many plane crashes occur in that same time (since the odds of dying are roughly equal to the odds of a plane crash).
For an exact calculation, you'd need to know how many people flew on those flights (the aggregate would be ok), and how many people died in crashes (again, the aggregate is ok). From that, you could determine the odds of dying on any given plane flight.
The FAA also has some interesting data. The target safety rate for the U.S. is 0.010 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures (appears to include all flights, commercial and private, even though the statistic is called the "Commercial Airline Fatal Accident Rate"), though the current rate in 2007 is 0.023 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures.
http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/accident_incide nt/
See the "Airline Fatal Accident Rate" PDF on the linked page.
For the below data, FAA/NTSB reports were used. Much more data is available at these sites for anyone who wants to do more analysis. For example, the commercial data below is a summary of Part 121, Part 135, and On-demand Part 135. The accident rates were much higher for the "On-demand Part 135" which not what we typically fly as commercial passengers.
Also: http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/A_Stat.htm has annual summarized reports.
The data for 2003 is:
Commercial Air Carriers:
Background data in 2003 (rounded to nearest whole million/billion):
639 million passengers boarded commercial airplanes
8 billion miles were flown
11 million departures
23 million flight hours
Accidents:
Total: 130
Fatal: 21
Deaths: 66
Fatal accidents per departure: 1.9091x10^(-6) (1 in 523,810)
Fatal accidents per hour: 9.130x1-^(-7) (1 in 1,095,239)
General Aviation:
Total Accidents: 1739
Fatal Accidents: 352
Injuries:
Fatal: 632
Serious: 324
Minor: 523
Involved but Not Injured: 1697
If you have your assets frozen under this order, and you live in the U.S., you can definitely bring legal action against the U.S. government to defend yourself, and even seek compensation.
All existing legal options are still open to you, none of them have been removed. But no new ones are created.
Related to defending yourself in court after your assets have been frozen, you are entitled to request to pay for your defense out of the frozen assets. A description of this is included in:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?n avby=search&case=/data2/circs/9th/9316961.html
under "B. The Asset Freeze" which states that the court has discretion over whether to grant the request. This case ruling (from the 9th Circuit) includes the statement (with references) "A district court may, within its discretion, forbid or limit payment of attorney fees out of frozen assets."
I'm sure there are many more court cases which involve rulings related to paying for funds out of frozen assets, but that one I cited was the first one I found in my Google search.
Based on some further reading, it appears that in the case I cited and in some other cases, access to frozen funds is primarily restricted based on the "unclean hands" principle -- meaning, basically, if the court believes that the money that was frozen was acquired through underhanded, illegal, harmful, or other "bad" methods, then the court will be unwilling to grant access to those funds. The assumption there seems to be that the money that was frozen may need to be used to reimburse or pay back to people who were taken advantage of during the acquisition of the money.
Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but the information I've presented was taken from reading legal documents.
A quick review of the MP3 players currenty for sale at Amazon and Best Buy shows that every MP3 player except for the iPods plays WMA. Maybe "nobody cares," but WMA was pushed very hard as a candidate for the leading digital music standard. It would not be unreasonable to claim that the main reason it failed to become the de facto standard is because of Apple's iPod and iTunes Music Store. (Which use AAC, a codec definition which is a standard.)
Also, although the market share of the segment is small, WMA-based stores do sell a lot of digital music tracks. See http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/30/Technology/Digit al_music_users_f.shtml for some music store market shares in 2006, giving WMA around 15%, MP3 around 10%, and iTunes (AAC) around 70%. (Yes, I know that a lot of digital music collections were converted from CD's in whatever format the user chose, but it is hard to measure those collections.)
Considering that total digital music sales were about 581 million digital tracks, that still means a lot of WMA tracks out there, about 87 million. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117956655.html?c ategoryid=16&cs=1 Note that this gives AAC downloads about 406 million tracks downloaded, so it would also not be unreasonable to claim that many iPod owners listen to AAC. (Links do not specify region, but data appears to be U.S. only.)