This is getting a bit off topic, but what the hell:)
I have a three-tap refridgerator for my homebrew, and I need to get arround to a fourth tap for the nitrogen mix for my stouts.
Superior Manufacturing (I think; it's superior something:) sells in low quantities to individuals. A simple tap handle is about $30, and the Guinness-slow-thingy is about $100. You can usually get them from homebrew shops as well, but they all tend to buy from superior and double or triple the price anyway:)
The expensive part is the CO2 cannister, but buy big; it will save you in the long term--filling a 20 lb cannister costs about a dollar more than a 5lb. On the other hand, it's not convenient to haul around . . .
>In other words, if the Supremes thought the 9th >was really over-reaching here, might they not >have taken the case anyway?
Not until it gets *really* extreme (though there are particular judges that are rumored to cause near-automatic certiori:)
The ninth cercuit is just plain huge; unless it's painfully obvious that something very bad happened, the court just can't handle that load.
The last figure I recall was about 1% of cases are accepted--requests from the ninth circuit total something like ten to twenty times that capacity.
What the court *prefers* to do is wait until different districts reach different conclusions, and there are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is that if all of the districts agree, it doesn't need to intervene anyway.
More importantly, though, the court's decision will be the last word for many years on the subject. By waiting, it is able to take into account the differing opinions reached by different courts, and consider why the results were different. If it takes the first case that comes along, the most important argument could be missing.
As for what portion of cases heard by the court are overturned, it varies wildly from year to year, as the court focuses on different types of cases. I really couldn't tell you what the current portion is, but when it faces split authority from different districts, at least one ruling gets a whack:)
hawk, esq., who doesn't think, that anybody could possibly construe anything in here as legal advice.
>The TCP/IP stack is a copy of that of Linux (but >the Hurd maintainers are having trouble keeping >up with the changes made to the Linux networking >code).
Hmm, does this mean that it is properly called "Linux/Hurd," and that Linus will start interrupting other speakers at conferences?:)
Microsoft did *not* lose an appeal here; the Supreme Court simply refused to hear the case--as it does with 99% of the cases that it is offered.
This generally gives *no* indication as to how the court would rule on the issue. Frequently, the court waits for conflicting opinions from differant appellate districts until it hears a topic.
For microsoft itself, it's the same result as losing--the lower court opinion stands. As for the future, however, keep in mind that the 9th district is the most frequently overrulled district in the country . . . (or at least it was last time I checked).
Neither did the dynamite in the blasting cases I mentioned. It caused an an action on the property of another, affecting that property. Causing the head in the disk drive to move is more than sufficient to fill the elements of trespass. Moving electrons as bits flip is probably also enough.
> and access has not been granted.
They *took* the access. Yes, the web is set up to allow this, but they had actual notice of lack of permission.
>If eBay want to protect the site then why don't >they refuse access to redirects from specific >sites or just refuse redirects full stop.
They could do that, though it takes resources to play the cat & mouse game that follows. But they don't have to under current law.
Re:lawyer: no new law needed (trespass)
on
Suing the Spammers
·
· Score: 2
permission to send me personal email is certainly implied. Permission to send me spam is *not* implied by custom. Permission to use my cerver to send *other* people spam in contravention of established norms of behavior can't even be argued to be implied, and is certainly trespass.
Re:lawyer: no new law needed (trespass)
on
Suing the Spammers
·
· Score: 2
I'm not suggesting analogies; I'm saying that current law applies in some of these cases. Sending a message through a server without at least implied permission is a trespass under current law.
*all* that is required for a contract is offer and acceptance; not any exchange. These can take many forms, including aceptance by performance. It is *entirely* possible to have a contract that you accept by sending packets.
hawk, esq.
"absolutely untrue" is absolute nonsense
on
Suing the Spammers
·
· Score: 2
Fortunately, you put this on a computer screen, rather than on one of the microeconomics finals being filled out in front of me as I type--you would have failed my class:)
That rates have dropped says *nothing* about whether prices are higher due to spam. Yes, they are lower than they used to be. This in no way suggests that prices would not be lower without spam, and very basic economics reveals that spam raises prices. The question isn't "are the prices higher?" but "how much higher are they?" (and maybe it's not enough to worry about.
In any market with any competition between vendors, higher costs mean higher prices.
By sending the spam into the U.S., the spammer has subjected itself to U.S. law, and potential judgments.
Once a judgment is issued, *any* asset--such as the payments from the next round of spam, web banner royalties, credit card proceeds, and the like an be attached (seized) in payment of the judgment.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need that, see an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
We don't really need new laws--trespass will do it (see my coment in the ebay section). However, "joinder" is an issue that needs a change either legislatively or through court rules. It's not worth suing over a single spam. On the other hand, if an ISP could go in with spam for ll of its subscribers at once, it could be efficient.
Then again, an ISP might require an assignment of rights today to allow it to do this, crediting back part of the proceeds to subscribers' bills . . .
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice on this matter, see a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction.
There are old cases like this dealing with newspapers. One newspaper would buy an early edition of the others, find out what happened, and write stories with that information. As I recall, the ruling was that this was unfair competition--not that a copyright was violated. Part of this was because the used news appeared in a paper competing with the original--had they waited until the next day, the case would have been different. Taking real-time information from another web site would seem comparable.
Also, if there is a script parsing the othr site's representation of the weather, then producing its own representation in a deterministic manner, this would seem to be a derived work by definition.
Finally, though I haven't paid much attention to them, there have been cases finding that real-time scores of sporting events are intellectual property of the league, and can not be broadcast by other services.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
There is no need for a statute to sue for trespass here--the Common Law has recognized "trespass against chattels" as far back as we have records. Kicking a man's dog could qualify.
The law also does not require personal contact. "Tresspass vi et armis" (sp? haven't used the phrase in ten years . ..) covers a trespass with a "thing" caused by the tortfeasor's actions. Even air can qualify as a thing--this was the cause of action used for windows broken by concussion from dynamite blasts and the like.
Finally, note that this is civil, not criminal trespass. Generally no warning need be given. While trespass requires specific intent, it is the *act* that causes the trespass, not result of the act or the knowledge of ownership by another that matters. If I take a step, believing that I remain on my own property, but actually cross the line into yours, I've committed trespass. OTOH, if I suddenly fall and happen to land on your property, there is no intentional act, and no trespass.
I'm actually surprised at how few of these we see; trespass is trhe obvious cause of action for computer intrusion.
That's short term survival only, though. THe nutrients are there (and I think it's about half that quantity, actually), but you'll be pmping alcohol in faster than your body can remove it, pickling yourself in fairly short order.
Though I did know someone who thought his ~15-20 pints of homebrew a day wasn't drinking a lot . . . . (and peg homebrew at about 1.5 times the strenght of guiness, which is actually a fairly light beer--it's just very dark . ..)
. . . *does* improve your health, at least if it's the real, unfiltered, stuff. *huge* proteins, yeast, just about everythign good for you except meat. Aside from whole milk, it's tough to think of anything better for you . . . .
[no, american beer does *not* have any resemblance to ale . . . ]
obtrivia: hangovers may be milder/nonexistent with unfiltered, bottle-conditioned ale or lager--the yeast is full of vitamin B, the shortage of which is a cause of hangovers. On the other hand, yeast are better than coffee for keeping you, err, regular . .
As it was announced agt the time, they drew from NetBSD (and contribued tons of bugfixes back), but since then they seem to have announced that they wil be syncing releases with FreeBSD.
Think about it. Microsoft has spent ten years copyingApple, which has now gone to a *BSD with macos/X. Do you really think ms will make a separate decision *this* time? A different *BSD, perhaps. Linxu? why on earth would they do that?
I've never met anyone who was really botherd by ghe GPL attaching to code that *descends* from the GPL's code. Some don't like this, but I've never seen *that* part come under attack.
The problem is collateral infection. You can't put together a bunch of pieces to do something if one of them is GPL; that piece requires that all of the pieces necessary to normal function then be GPL'd.
"GPL compatible" really means "GPL assimilable"--that it can be relicensed under the GPL.
hawk, who things that RMS and Bill Gates are the same person. Have *you* ever seen them together in the same place?:)
>It doesn't matter that Netscape doesn't know your >email address. If it checks your email, the hole >is there.
It would need to know the email in some way to retrieve it, wouldn't it?
>I send HTML email to you@you.com with an image at >the URL http://me.com/emailtrack/4321
Ack. I'm intolerant of mime, let alone HTML. you send me HTML, I tell you to go away. And I certainly wouldn't use a client that would automatically open something . . .
>My server says "oh,/emailtrack/4321 was sent to >you@you.com so now I'll put a cookie on that >machine that relates to you@you.com
mmm, cookies. Junkbuster is hungry. There are exactly three sites allowed to set cookies . . .
Netscape doesn't know my email address. java and javascript are disabled. And whenever anything blinks at me, I check the url and feed something to junkbuster to prevent it from happening again (sorry, hemos--yours blink, too:)
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jursidiction.
>If each company decided to work together then >nothing really has changed! Maybe it was cheaper >for Bill Gates to let the DoJ split the company >rather than do it himself!
This would require actual trusts, which we haven't seen for a *very* long time. Roughly, the trust was formed by transferring control of a handful of companies to the trustees, who could then run them as a single unit, acting as a monopoly. The trust was necesary, as otherwise each firm would "cheat" by overproducing.
The same thing would apply to the split pieces of microsoft. The interests of the IE and windows companies woudl be different. The only way to get them to operate as a joint monopoly would be to somehow hand over control of the joint unit.
However, trusts are easy to catch; there are too many controls requried to keep a low profile.
Hmm, maybe I should have labeled this with my economist hat instead of as a lawyer:)
Today, legal firms *are* being switched over, kicking & screaming, to Word. Not because they want to, but because clients keep sending them.doc files and wanting them back.
[btw, the firm in question isn't a law firm, so you shouldn'thave covered that bet:) ]
>The PC did pioneer the use of an attractive and >readable 24x80 display,
No it didn't. This had been standard on CP/M machines for years (except for the osborn, which only showed 52 of the 80 at a tiime on its silly 5" screen, horizontally scrolling with the cursor . ..)
Slashdot Mirror
This is getting a bit off topic, but what the hell :)
:) sells in low quantities to individuals. A simple tap handle is about $30, and the Guinness-slow-thingy is about $100. You can usually get them from homebrew shops as well, but they all tend to buy from superior and double or triple the price anyway :)
I have a three-tap refridgerator for my homebrew, and I need to get arround to a fourth tap for the nitrogen mix for my stouts.
Superior Manufacturing (I think; it's superior something
The expensive part is the CO2 cannister, but buy big; it will save you in the long term--filling a 20 lb cannister costs about a dollar more than a 5lb. On the other hand, it's not convenient to haul around . . .
>In other words, if the Supremes thought the 9th
:)
:)
>was really over-reaching here, might they not
>have taken the case anyway?
Not until it gets *really* extreme (though there are particular judges that are rumored to cause near-automatic certiori
The ninth cercuit is just plain huge; unless it's painfully obvious that something very bad happened, the court just can't handle that load.
The last figure I recall was about 1% of cases are accepted--requests from the ninth circuit total something like ten to twenty times that capacity.
What the court *prefers* to do is wait until different districts reach different conclusions, and there are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is that if all of the districts agree, it doesn't need to intervene anyway.
More importantly, though, the court's decision will be the last word for many years on the subject. By waiting, it is able to take into account the differing opinions reached by different courts, and consider why the results were different. If it takes the first case that comes along, the most important argument could be missing.
As for what portion of cases heard by the court are overturned, it varies wildly from year to year, as the court focuses on different types of cases. I really couldn't tell you what the current portion is, but when it faces split authority from different districts, at least one ruling gets a whack
hawk, esq., who doesn't think, that anybody could possibly construe anything in here as legal advice.
--but it hopes to be promoted to major in the near future :)
hawk, who should really be preparing tomorrow's lectures instead of reading this . . .
>The TCP/IP stack is a copy of that of Linux (but
:)
>the Hurd maintainers are having trouble keeping
>up with the changes made to the Linux networking
>code).
Hmm, does this mean that it is properly called "Linux/Hurd," and that Linus will start interrupting other speakers at conferences?
[duck]
Microsoft did *not* lose an appeal here; the Supreme Court simply refused to hear the case--as it does with 99% of the cases that it is offered.
This generally gives *no* indication as to how the court would rule on the issue. Frequently, the court waits for conflicting opinions from differant appellate districts until it hears a topic.
For microsoft itself, it's the same result as losing--the lower court opinion stands. As for the future, however, keep in mind that the 9th district is the most frequently overrulled district in the country . . . (or at least it was last time I checked).
>The search engine has not 'entered' the server,
Neither did the dynamite in the blasting cases I mentioned. It caused an an action on the property of another, affecting that property. Causing the head in the disk drive to move is more than sufficient to fill the elements of trespass. Moving electrons as bits flip is probably also enough.
> and access has not been granted.
They *took* the access. Yes, the web is set up to allow this, but they had actual notice of lack of permission.
>If eBay want to protect the site then why don't
>they refuse access to redirects from specific >sites or just refuse redirects full stop.
They could do that, though it takes resources to play the cat & mouse game that follows. But they don't have to under current law.
permission to send me personal email is certainly implied. Permission to send me spam is *not* implied by custom. Permission to use my cerver to send *other* people spam in contravention of established norms of behavior can't even be argued to be implied, and is certainly trespass.
I'm not suggesting analogies; I'm saying that current law applies in some of these cases. Sending a message through a server without at least implied permission is a trespass under current law.
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. Etc.
*all* that is required for a contract is offer and acceptance; not any exchange. These can take many forms, including aceptance by performance. It is *entirely* possible to have a contract that you accept by sending packets.
hawk, esq.
Fortunately, you put this on a computer screen, rather than on one of the microeconomics finals being filled out in front of me as I type--you would have failed my class :)
That rates have dropped says *nothing* about whether prices are higher due to spam. Yes, they are lower than they used to be. This in no way suggests that prices would not be lower without spam, and very basic economics reveals that spam raises prices. The question isn't "are the prices higher?" but "how much higher are they?" (and maybe it's not enough to worry about.
In any market with any competition between vendors, higher costs mean higher prices.
hawk, writing as an economics professor this time
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice.
By sending the spam into the U.S., the spammer has subjected itself to U.S. law, and potential judgments.
Once a judgment is issued, *any* asset--such as the payments from the next round of spam, web banner royalties, credit card proceeds, and the like an be attached (seized) in payment of the judgment.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need that, see an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
We don't really need new laws--trespass will do it (see my coment in the ebay section). However, "joinder" is an issue that needs a change either legislatively or through court rules. It's not worth suing over a single spam. On the other hand, if an ISP could go in with spam for ll of its subscribers at once, it could be efficient.
Then again, an ISP might require an assignment of rights today to allow it to do this, crediting back part of the proceeds to subscribers' bills . . .
hawk, esq.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice on this matter, see a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction.
There are old cases like this dealing with newspapers. One newspaper would buy an early edition of the others, find out what happened, and write stories with that information. As I recall, the ruling was that this was unfair competition--not that a copyright was violated. Part of this was because the used news appeared in a paper competing with the original--had they waited until the next day, the case would have been different. Taking real-time information from another web site would seem comparable.
Also, if there is a script parsing the othr site's representation of the weather, then producing its own representation in a deterministic manner, this would seem to be a derived work by definition.
Finally, though I haven't paid much attention to them, there have been cases finding that real-time scores of sporting events are intellectual property of the league, and can not be broadcast by other services.
hawk, esq.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
.) covers a trespass with a "thing" caused by the tortfeasor's actions. Even air can qualify as a thing--this was the cause of action used for windows broken by concussion from dynamite blasts and the like.
There is no need for a statute to sue for trespass here--the Common Law has recognized "trespass against chattels" as far back as we have records. Kicking a man's dog could qualify.
The law also does not require personal contact. "Tresspass vi et armis" (sp? haven't used the phrase in ten years . .
Finally, note that this is civil, not criminal trespass. Generally no warning need be given. While trespass requires specific intent, it is the *act* that causes the trespass, not result of the act or the knowledge of ownership by another that matters. If I take a step, believing that I remain on my own property, but actually cross the line into yours, I've committed trespass. OTOH, if I suddenly fall and happen to land on your property, there is no intentional act, and no trespass.
I'm actually surprised at how few of these we see; trespass is trhe obvious cause of action for computer intrusion.
hawk, esq.
That's short term survival only, though. THe nutrients are there (and I think it's about half that quantity, actually), but you'll be pmping alcohol in faster than your body can remove it, pickling yourself in fairly short order.
.)
Though I did know someone who thought his ~15-20 pints of homebrew a day wasn't drinking a lot . . . . (and peg homebrew at about 1.5 times the strenght of guiness, which is actually a fairly light beer--it's just very dark . .
. . . *does* improve your health, at least if it's the real, unfiltered, stuff. *huge* proteins, yeast, just about everythign good for you except meat. Aside from whole milk, it's tough to think of anything better for you . . . .
[no, american beer does *not* have any resemblance to ale . . . ]
obtrivia: hangovers may be milder/nonexistent with unfiltered, bottle-conditioned ale or lager--the yeast is full of vitamin B, the shortage of which is a cause of hangovers. On the other hand, yeast are better than coffee for keeping you, err, regular . .
As it was announced agt the time, they drew from NetBSD (and contribued tons of bugfixes back), but since then they seem to have announced that they wil be syncing releases with FreeBSD.
Think about it. Microsoft has spent ten years copyingApple, which has now gone to a *BSD with macos/X. Do you really think ms will make a separate decision *this* time? A different *BSD, perhaps. Linxu? why on earth would they do that?
I've never met anyone who was really botherd by ghe GPL attaching to code that *descends* from the GPL's code. Some don't like this, but I've never seen *that* part come under attack.
:)
The problem is collateral infection. You can't put together a bunch of pieces to do something if one of them is GPL; that piece requires that all of the pieces necessary to normal function then be GPL'd.
"GPL compatible" really means "GPL assimilable"--that it can be relicensed under the GPL.
hawk, who things that RMS and Bill Gates are the same person. Have *you* ever seen them together in the same place?
That happened automatically when you posted--posting in a thread cancels all previous moderation by you.
>It doesn't matter that Netscape doesn't know your
/emailtrack/4321 was sent to
>email address. If it checks your email, the hole
>is there.
It would need to know the email in some way to retrieve it, wouldn't it?
>I send HTML email to you@you.com with an image at
>the URL http://me.com/emailtrack/4321
Ack. I'm intolerant of mime, let alone HTML. you send me HTML, I tell you to go away. And I certainly wouldn't use a client that would automatically open something . . .
>My server says "oh,
>you@you.com so now I'll put a cookie on that
>machine that relates to you@you.com
mmm, cookies. Junkbuster is hungry. There are exactly three sites allowed to set cookies . . .
Netscape doesn't know my email address. java and javascript are disabled. And whenever anything blinks at me, I check the url and feed something to junkbuster to prevent it from happening again (sorry, hemos--yours blink, too :)
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jursidiction.
:)
>If each company decided to work together then
>nothing really has changed! Maybe it was cheaper
>for Bill Gates to let the DoJ split the company
>rather than do it himself!
This would require actual trusts, which we haven't seen for a *very* long time. Roughly, the trust was formed by transferring control of a handful of companies to the trustees, who could then run them as a single unit, acting as a monopoly. The trust was necesary, as otherwise each firm would "cheat" by overproducing.
The same thing would apply to the split pieces of microsoft. The interests of the IE and windows companies woudl be different. The only way to get them to operate as a joint monopoly would be to somehow hand over control of the joint unit.
However, trusts are easy to catch; there are too many controls requried to keep a low profile.
Hmm, maybe I should have labeled this with my economist hat instead of as a lawyer
hawk, esq., also a professor of economics
Today, legal firms *are* being switched over, kicking & screaming, to Word. Not because they want to, but because clients keep sending them .doc files and wanting them back.
:) ]
[btw, the firm in question isn't a law firm, so you shouldn'thave covered that bet
>The PC did pioneer the use of an attractive and
.)
>readable 24x80 display,
No it didn't. This had been standard on CP/M machines for years (except for the osborn, which only showed 52 of the 80 at a tiime on its silly 5" screen, horizontally scrolling with the cursor . .