You can't totally absolve Microsoft for two reasons.
1. The reason app vendors do this is because that's the way Windows worked for years. Imagine a Unix program that required you to be root to run it. It wouldn't be very well received.
2. Microsoft provides no straightforward way to perform occasional administrative tasks when you are logged in as a normal user (like 'su' or 'sudo'). I never login as root on my linux machine because there is absolutely no reason to. If I need to do something administrative, I su.
Wrong. It is the largest and most successful scam possibly in the entire history of the world. I never much liked Al Gore, but remember his "lock box" plan? That's what it should have been but never was from the start. Now they are talking about high-paid individuals "indexing out" of social security because the system is broke after half a century of mismanagement. That means that if you are well paid, they will exact this tax of you under pain of imprisonment, promising you that it is being put in a savings account for you to draw from once you retire since you can't possibly be trusted to take care of your own retirement, and then when you retire, they will tell you, "Well, you made so much while you worked, we just assumed you would take care of your own retirement, so we spent it all."
Don't count on Social Security. The exact same scheme would have landed everybody from Roosevelt on down in prison if they were private actors.
I can't help but point out that you and the idiot the GP encountered are basically the exact same person. Just like Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken are basically the exact same person. Willful ignorance and bigotry afflict all parts of the political spectrum without prejudice. They are equal opportunity maladies
Nobody seems to have disputed the reasonableness of what IBM charged. The defense attorneys instead tried to make the argument that IBM "volunteered" to do the investigation since they were not the employer. The fact remains that IBM charged the company $20,350 for the investigation of the matter, which apparently the company paid. The company was out that money, he caused it out of spite and did it illegally. I have no sympathy for the guy. I'd say he got what he deserved.
The United States Constitution provides no guarantee of assistance of counsel in civil cases. A "genuinely conservative" judge would not make one up just because he thinks it's a good idea. That does not make the United States a "fascist" state. It just means that life is not always fair. Sometimes the guy with the most money wins. Occasionally the guy with the money loses, and then we get nice "feel-good" Sunday night specials out of it starring Susan Sarandon as Patricia Santangelo.
Now, he probably should have given her some better legal advice on how long this'd take and how much it'd cost, but I don't know how much cheaper it'd get.
It seems pretty clear that her attorney had hoped to get this case dismissed on a 12(b)(6) motion (lack of sufficient evidence). He was hoping they would just leave the woman alone at that point. If you go find the available court transcripts and read them, you can tell the judge is not fond of the RIAA attorneys or their suit. But she still has to follow the law, and her interpretation of the law is that this thing needs to go forward. Now the RIAA guys have put themselves in a real bind. These downloading suits are really a revenue-generating protection racket -- Give us money or we'll sue you. Most people just gave them the money. Now that somebody is fighting back, they can't just drop the suit, or it will look like they brought the suit in bad faith (which they did). So a very unsympathetic Goliath has to fight a very sympathetic David in front of a jury and live with the precedent they set. They will also be subject to discovery, which could be the source of all manner of fun. It may even help this lady to go pro se now. To the jury, it will look like the RIAA is persecuting this poor single mother who can't even afford an attorney (which they are).
I really take issue with the people implying (or outright stating) that this attorney was trying to scam this poor lady. As you pointed out, he likely has student loans to pay, and that debt is likely to be larger than many mortgages. Lawyers are expected to do some pro bono work, but they also have to make a living like everyone else. If everybody here is so altruistic, feel free to send this woman some of your own money so she can pay her attorney again.
That point of view is sexist, politically incorrect, and probably absolutely true. All of these "gender gap" studies (in any field) seem to start with the premise that every field of work should have basically a 50/50 gender split. I think that is patently absurd. The differences between men and women extend beyond just plumbing. My personal experience is fewer women enjoy computer science -- not because they're uneducated or incapable, but because they simply prefer to do something else. Should we be trying to force them into a field they don't enjoy just because it conforms to the way we think things should be? I think our loftiest goal should not be to promote a 50/50 gender split at all costs. Nor should it be to exactly match the demographic for any other group. It should be to make the profession available to anybody who cares to pursue it. If that means that only 1/4 to 1/3 of the profession is composed of women, as long as that reflects the actual number of women who wants to do it, there's nothing wrong with that. If we try to artificially inflate the number to 50% just because we arbitrarily decide that's what it should be, we end up with a lot of women in the field who would really rather be doing something else.
A recent conference of historians meeting in the bombed-out shell of a Hyatt hotel held a panel discussion on the cause of the downfall of human civilization as it was once known. The group uanimously traced the downfall of civilization to the following statement from the early part of this century:
Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by.
"What were they friggin' thiking!" exclaimed noted historian Dulcinea Bumkis. "I mean seriously -- wasn't there anybody who looked at this and thought, 'That's the most idiotic idea I've ever heard.'" Another historian noted that a little-known insurrectionist going by the handle "Zordak" on a popular message board advocated just such a position, but he was quickly drowned out by a chorus of six-year-olds chanting for Cocoa Puffs.
The Fourth Amendment has two very distinct clauses. The first bars "unreasonable" searches and seizures. There is a whole body of law that tells us what is "reasonable" in different circumstances, but it is well settled that there are many cases where it is reasonable to search without a warrant. The clause of the 4th you quoted simply says if you get a warrant, it must be supported by probable cause. The existence of this clause creates a strong judicial preference for warrants -- a judge will require a warrant if there was any practical way to get one under the circumstances. But there are many "reasonable" searches that require neither a warrant nor even probable cause.
Every time there is a story about a patent, it is inevitable that somebody cries "prior art" because they saw some element of the patent in some totally different context 20 years ago. The people who do this generally have no idea how the patent system works. Yes, serialized content is well known. Fast food is well known. That does not mean that the combination of serialized content and fast food is not patentable. I know you're thinking, "I could have come up with that if I thought about it," but you didn't, did you? Nor did Paramount or Fox, both of which had a lot to gain by coming up with this idea and patenting it. Somebody at Disney thought of doing this and reduced it to practice, presumably before anybody else. If you have a better definition of novelty that can be applied in a fair and uniform system, I'd like to hear it. So far I haven't. Just a lot of grousing about the way the system is.
Now, I'm not saying that all patents are valid or even that this one necessarily is (I am not well versed in the fast food arts). Clearly, some patents are invalid. There are proceedings in the USPTO and in the courts that make those decisions quite regularly. But the fact that the combination of two existing elements appears obvious to you after somebody else put them together doesn't mean a lot. If it did, then no artificial chemical compound would be patentable, since they're all composed of well-known naturally occuring elements. The system is NOT designed to protect only major, earth-shattering breakthroughs. Most breakthroughs are a culmination of many, many incremental improvements. For example, the Pentium IV with HT is a major improvement over the 8085, but it didn't happen all at once. Most inventions don't. So maybe this is a silly plan, maybe it isn't. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. But can anybody point out why this specifically is less valid than any other business method patent?
Don't worry though. The same lawyers who created this system have a solution for the problems they created. I think it involves more laws or something.
Actually, I don't know many lawyers who like the medical tort liability "reform" if they are involved in health care litigation on either side. I live in Texas, and in health care litigation, Texas is famous for two things. First, for being the "Wild West" of litigation back in the day (everybody was suing everybody). Second, for being a pioneering state of "health care tort reform." That's code word for "protect the medical liability insurance companies." Since Texas passed HB4 in 2003, health care costs have NOT gone down in the state. It is not easier to see a doctor or practice medicine. The only ones who have benefitted have been the insurance companies.
How severe is this reform? Let's say you go in for a major surgery, and let's say the lead physician comes in hopped up on cocaine, and slices your spinal cord and leaves you paralyzed for life. Let's also say that the hospital that contracted with him knew that he was a cocaine user but didn't do anything about it. And let's say you're the sole bread-winner for your family, you're 30, and you're making about $75,000 per year. You're rightly outraged and want to sue this doctor and hospital into oblivion, but you live in Texas. What is the absolute most you and your family can recover from these quacks? $500,000 adjusted for inflation from 1978 (about $1.5M today). The only thing you can recover above and beyond that is continuing medical expenses. That may sound like a lot, but remember that probably at least half of that will go to pay your lawyer and the litigation expenses, which leaves you with a grand total of maybe 10 years' pay at your current salary to compensate you for a disability that will linger for the rest of your life. So blame the greedy lawyer for taking so much, right? Except the lawyer works on contingency, which means that this lawsuit has to pay for itself and all the ones that end up not paying at all -- take that system away and poor people have no access to the legal system. Also, the doctor can demand that certain portions of the judgment be apportioned over time, and if he gets lucky and you die, his obligation to pay dies with you. Even better, there is a strong motivation for the doctor to kill you instead of maim you, since if he kills you, he can't get stuck with recurring medical expenses.
This medical liability reform is so egregious that we had amended the Texas Constitution to allow it. Why? Because the Texas Constitution has an "open courts" provision that can be used to overrule a law that unfairly denies people recovery of legitimate claims. The insurance lobbyists who wrote this law knew it was unfair and unconstitutional, so they scared Texans into passing an amendment that specifically exempts this kind of quackery from the "open courts" provision (the line was, "Pass this amendment, or grandma won't be able to buy medicine anymore"). Ironically, old people are actually hurt by this because they won't even be able to get up to the $1.5M. They'll get between $250k and $500k in 2005 dollars because they won't have lost wages to recover.
The amazing thing was, even in the old Wild West days, about 6% of doctors accounted for about 50% of all health care liability judgments paid out (one doctor in Houston was called "The Butcher" in legal circles). Yet for a period of over 5 years, not a single doctor had his license to practice medicine revoked in the state. Were there opportunists and frivolous lawsuits and unethical plaintiffs and lawyers? You betcha. But let's not lay all the blame on the lawyers. The medical profession was unwilling to police itself, but a lot of legitimate claims for people who are truly injured are now effectively barred because insurance companies convinced us to blame the lawyers.
Isn't this like patenting using paint to protect the outside of your house?
Not really. It's more like a patent on using paint to protect your fridge or something. The fact that RFID tags are used for identification, and the fact that TV remotes can benefit from individualized preferences do not together make the idea "obvious" for patent purposes. There must be a documented motivation to combine the technologies, or the practice of combining them must be known to a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art. Patents aren't designed to just protect major scientific breakthroughs. They protect things like incremental improvements and integration of technologies, as long as you are the first one to think of doing it. That's by design. If you don't like it, call your congressperson and let him/her know (preferably with a large donation, at which point he/she will actually listen to you).
Or you could think for a few minutes, come up with some new idea of your own, like a car climate control system that adjusts different zones based on recorded preferences of persons in those zones as identified by their RFID tags, reduce it to practice (important step that people sometimes forget) and file your own patent. Of course, you can't use that idea since I thought it up, unless you reduce it to practice and you can prove that I abandoned my own effort to reduce it to practice. But you should be able to think up your own.
even they are starting to pander to religious groups.
Funny thing, that. You are a politician in a country where the vast majority of the people at least casually believe in some kind of God, and you find that you have to pretend that you represent their views if you want them to keep electing you. It's representative government, and it's the worst form of government on Earth, except all the others.
So... If a game rewards me with points enough times for killing cops and hookers (thereby telling me it's okay), I'll eventually start believing it's okay to kill cops and hookers, and then it becomes okay to kill cops and hookers?
I wouldn't expect EULAs to be declared generally invalid. More likely, they will be treated like any other form contract when and if they are tested in court. Which is why nobody wants to test them in court. Courts recognize the necessity of form contracts as a matter of public policy. They're necessary for doing business in a mass consumption economy. But the court also recognizes that NOBODY READS THEM. So courts will generally only enforce those parts of a form contract that a reasonably prudent consumer would expect. Anything that wouldn't be expected will generally have to be prominently displayed and separately agreed to. Which means if Sony wants you to agree to let them root your computer, they probably have to tell you expressly that they intend to do so and have a big button that says, "Yes, install subversive spyware" before a judge would charge the consumer with having agreed. In which case, Sony is almost certainly in violation of laws that they and their buddies flagrantly purchased.
You claim that Microsoft has no trademark on Windows. That's irrelevant. The guy decided not to fight.
Not necessarily. If the only reason Microsoft C&D'd him was because they wanted to use his name for another product, this guy might (MIGHT) have a claim for fraudulent inducement, in which case he could avoid the contract in which he signed over his rights to "Windows Defender." Microsoft was not obligated to reveal to him why they wanted the name, but if the threat of litigation was made in bad faith with the sole intent to induce him to sign away his rights in a name they wanted and knew they didn't have a right to use, then there was contractual fraud. It would be a tough case to prove, and in the process you might have to prove that Microsoft's trademark in "Windows" is invalid and that they knew it was invalid. But if you could meet those minor hurdles, Lyttle might be able to get his name back. Anybody want to represent the guy?
You can ask them to retire as nicely as you please, but what leverage are you going to hold over them to force it? You can't threaten to fire them if they don't resign. You can't discipline them. By Article III, you can't even reduce their pay. They are absolutely free and independent. Maybe you have a little tidbit of personal information? Perhaps you know that one of the justices has a gay lover. So what? They're never up for re-election or "re-nomination." They don't have to worry about approval ratings. And importantly, even if there was some allegation of misconduct, a ruling by itself can NEVER be misconduct for a judge. By definition, the cases before them are controversies. That means that people disagree. They cannot be held negatively accountable for doing their jobs. A judge can issue the most unfair and egregious They are pretty much invincible. That's why one of our professors calls them "The Little Dictators."
The courts of appeals in one circuit tend to respect other circuits' decisions so that they don't create a schism
Sometimes, unless they disagree with them, in which case, they do what they want to do. Stare decisis refers to precedent binding in a jurisdiction. 2nd Circuit decisions are not stare decisis for any other circuit. They are persuasive authority, which means they carry as much weight as the judges decide to let them carry.
so that they don't create a schism among circuits, as such schisms tend to result in decisions getting overturned and circuit judges getting fired.
By definition, if the Supreme Court hears a case where there is a diametric split, somebody gets overturned. Beyond some bruised egos, there really isn't much consequence. As for firing Circuit judges -- They are Article III judges. That means their term of service ends on one of: a) They are convicted of an impeachable offense (almost never happens), b) They get tired of the black robes and decide to retire or c) They fall over dead at the height of their power and influence, Rhenquist style. You do not "fire" Article III judges. Nobody has that authority. That's by design.
Not necessarily. It would just mean that the law in the 5th Circuit is different than the law in the 2nd Circuit. It happens quite frequently. When you start getting lots of divergent rules in the circuits, the Supreme Court often will sometimes intervene and issue a consistent ruling, but not always.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't totally absolve Microsoft for two reasons.
1. The reason app vendors do this is because that's the way Windows worked for years. Imagine a Unix program that required you to be root to run it. It wouldn't be very well received.
2. Microsoft provides no straightforward way to perform occasional administrative tasks when you are logged in as a normal user (like 'su' or 'sudo'). I never login as root on my linux machine because there is absolutely no reason to. If I need to do something administrative, I su.
Wrong. It is the largest and most successful scam possibly in the entire history of the world. I never much liked Al Gore, but remember his "lock box" plan? That's what it should have been but never was from the start. Now they are talking about high-paid individuals "indexing out" of social security because the system is broke after half a century of mismanagement. That means that if you are well paid, they will exact this tax of you under pain of imprisonment, promising you that it is being put in a savings account for you to draw from once you retire since you can't possibly be trusted to take care of your own retirement, and then when you retire, they will tell you, "Well, you made so much while you worked, we just assumed you would take care of your own retirement, so we spent it all." Don't count on Social Security. The exact same scheme would have landed everybody from Roosevelt on down in prison if they were private actors.
I can't help but point out that you and the idiot the GP encountered are basically the exact same person. Just like Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken are basically the exact same person. Willful ignorance and bigotry afflict all parts of the political spectrum without prejudice. They are equal opportunity maladies
Nobody seems to have disputed the reasonableness of what IBM charged. The defense attorneys instead tried to make the argument that IBM "volunteered" to do the investigation since they were not the employer. The fact remains that IBM charged the company $20,350 for the investigation of the matter, which apparently the company paid. The company was out that money, he caused it out of spite and did it illegally. I have no sympathy for the guy. I'd say he got what he deserved.
The ACLU
Well yes, they could have done that, but then they would have been unable to leverage their OS monopoly to acquire a web browser monopoly.
The United States Constitution provides no guarantee of assistance of counsel in civil cases. A "genuinely conservative" judge would not make one up just because he thinks it's a good idea. That does not make the United States a "fascist" state. It just means that life is not always fair. Sometimes the guy with the most money wins. Occasionally the guy with the money loses, and then we get nice "feel-good" Sunday night specials out of it starring Susan Sarandon as Patricia Santangelo.
If you are charged with a crime, the government is obligated to provide you an attorney. So there is no reason to proceed pro se.
It seems pretty clear that her attorney had hoped to get this case dismissed on a 12(b)(6) motion (lack of sufficient evidence). He was hoping they would just leave the woman alone at that point. If you go find the available court transcripts and read them, you can tell the judge is not fond of the RIAA attorneys or their suit. But she still has to follow the law, and her interpretation of the law is that this thing needs to go forward. Now the RIAA guys have put themselves in a real bind. These downloading suits are really a revenue-generating protection racket -- Give us money or we'll sue you. Most people just gave them the money. Now that somebody is fighting back, they can't just drop the suit, or it will look like they brought the suit in bad faith (which they did). So a very unsympathetic Goliath has to fight a very sympathetic David in front of a jury and live with the precedent they set. They will also be subject to discovery, which could be the source of all manner of fun. It may even help this lady to go pro se now. To the jury, it will look like the RIAA is persecuting this poor single mother who can't even afford an attorney (which they are).
I really take issue with the people implying (or outright stating) that this attorney was trying to scam this poor lady. As you pointed out, he likely has student loans to pay, and that debt is likely to be larger than many mortgages. Lawyers are expected to do some pro bono work, but they also have to make a living like everyone else. If everybody here is so altruistic, feel free to send this woman some of your own money so she can pay her attorney again.
That point of view is sexist, politically incorrect, and probably absolutely true. All of these "gender gap" studies (in any field) seem to start with the premise that every field of work should have basically a 50/50 gender split. I think that is patently absurd. The differences between men and women extend beyond just plumbing. My personal experience is fewer women enjoy computer science -- not because they're uneducated or incapable, but because they simply prefer to do something else. Should we be trying to force them into a field they don't enjoy just because it conforms to the way we think things should be? I think our loftiest goal should not be to promote a 50/50 gender split at all costs. Nor should it be to exactly match the demographic for any other group. It should be to make the profession available to anybody who cares to pursue it. If that means that only 1/4 to 1/3 of the profession is composed of women, as long as that reflects the actual number of women who wants to do it, there's nothing wrong with that. If we try to artificially inflate the number to 50% just because we arbitrarily decide that's what it should be, we end up with a lot of women in the field who would really rather be doing something else.
Best. Science Fiction. Ever.
For Immediate Release.
A recent conference of historians meeting in the bombed-out shell of a Hyatt hotel held a panel discussion on the cause of the downfall of human civilization as it was once known. The group uanimously traced the downfall of civilization to the following statement from the early part of this century:
"What were they friggin' thiking!" exclaimed noted historian Dulcinea Bumkis. "I mean seriously -- wasn't there anybody who looked at this and thought, 'That's the most idiotic idea I've ever heard.'" Another historian noted that a little-known insurrectionist going by the handle "Zordak" on a popular message board advocated just such a position, but he was quickly drowned out by a chorus of six-year-olds chanting for Cocoa Puffs.The Fourth Amendment has two very distinct clauses. The first bars "unreasonable" searches and seizures. There is a whole body of law that tells us what is "reasonable" in different circumstances, but it is well settled that there are many cases where it is reasonable to search without a warrant. The clause of the 4th you quoted simply says if you get a warrant, it must be supported by probable cause. The existence of this clause creates a strong judicial preference for warrants -- a judge will require a warrant if there was any practical way to get one under the circumstances. But there are many "reasonable" searches that require neither a warrant nor even probable cause.
Now, I'm not saying that all patents are valid or even that this one necessarily is (I am not well versed in the fast food arts). Clearly, some patents are invalid. There are proceedings in the USPTO and in the courts that make those decisions quite regularly. But the fact that the combination of two existing elements appears obvious to you after somebody else put them together doesn't mean a lot. If it did, then no artificial chemical compound would be patentable, since they're all composed of well-known naturally occuring elements. The system is NOT designed to protect only major, earth-shattering breakthroughs. Most breakthroughs are a culmination of many, many incremental improvements. For example, the Pentium IV with HT is a major improvement over the 8085, but it didn't happen all at once. Most inventions don't. So maybe this is a silly plan, maybe it isn't. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. But can anybody point out why this specifically is less valid than any other business method patent?
How severe is this reform? Let's say you go in for a major surgery, and let's say the lead physician comes in hopped up on cocaine, and slices your spinal cord and leaves you paralyzed for life. Let's also say that the hospital that contracted with him knew that he was a cocaine user but didn't do anything about it. And let's say you're the sole bread-winner for your family, you're 30, and you're making about $75,000 per year. You're rightly outraged and want to sue this doctor and hospital into oblivion, but you live in Texas. What is the absolute most you and your family can recover from these quacks? $500,000 adjusted for inflation from 1978 (about $1.5M today). The only thing you can recover above and beyond that is continuing medical expenses. That may sound like a lot, but remember that probably at least half of that will go to pay your lawyer and the litigation expenses, which leaves you with a grand total of maybe 10 years' pay at your current salary to compensate you for a disability that will linger for the rest of your life. So blame the greedy lawyer for taking so much, right? Except the lawyer works on contingency, which means that this lawsuit has to pay for itself and all the ones that end up not paying at all -- take that system away and poor people have no access to the legal system. Also, the doctor can demand that certain portions of the judgment be apportioned over time, and if he gets lucky and you die, his obligation to pay dies with you. Even better, there is a strong motivation for the doctor to kill you instead of maim you, since if he kills you, he can't get stuck with recurring medical expenses.
This medical liability reform is so egregious that we had amended the Texas Constitution to allow it. Why? Because the Texas Constitution has an "open courts" provision that can be used to overrule a law that unfairly denies people recovery of legitimate claims. The insurance lobbyists who wrote this law knew it was unfair and unconstitutional, so they scared Texans into passing an amendment that specifically exempts this kind of quackery from the "open courts" provision (the line was, "Pass this amendment, or grandma won't be able to buy medicine anymore"). Ironically, old people are actually hurt by this because they won't even be able to get up to the $1.5M. They'll get between $250k and $500k in 2005 dollars because they won't have lost wages to recover.
The amazing thing was, even in the old Wild West days, about 6% of doctors accounted for about 50% of all health care liability judgments paid out (one doctor in Houston was called "The Butcher" in legal circles). Yet for a period of over 5 years, not a single doctor had his license to practice medicine revoked in the state. Were there opportunists and frivolous lawsuits and unethical plaintiffs and lawyers? You betcha. But let's not lay all the blame on the lawyers. The medical profession was unwilling to police itself, but a lot of legitimate claims for people who are truly injured are now effectively barred because insurance companies convinced us to blame the lawyers.
Or you could think for a few minutes, come up with some new idea of your own, like a car climate control system that adjusts different zones based on recorded preferences of persons in those zones as identified by their RFID tags, reduce it to practice (important step that people sometimes forget) and file your own patent. Of course, you can't use that idea since I thought it up, unless you reduce it to practice and you can prove that I abandoned my own effort to reduce it to practice. But you should be able to think up your own.
Prove it!
So... If a game rewards me with points enough times for killing cops and hookers (thereby telling me it's okay), I'll eventually start believing it's okay to kill cops and hookers, and then it becomes okay to kill cops and hookers?
I wouldn't expect EULAs to be declared generally invalid. More likely, they will be treated like any other form contract when and if they are tested in court. Which is why nobody wants to test them in court. Courts recognize the necessity of form contracts as a matter of public policy. They're necessary for doing business in a mass consumption economy. But the court also recognizes that NOBODY READS THEM. So courts will generally only enforce those parts of a form contract that a reasonably prudent consumer would expect. Anything that wouldn't be expected will generally have to be prominently displayed and separately agreed to. Which means if Sony wants you to agree to let them root your computer, they probably have to tell you expressly that they intend to do so and have a big button that says, "Yes, install subversive spyware" before a judge would charge the consumer with having agreed. In which case, Sony is almost certainly in violation of laws that they and their buddies flagrantly purchased.
You can ask them to retire as nicely as you please, but what leverage are you going to hold over them to force it? You can't threaten to fire them if they don't resign. You can't discipline them. By Article III, you can't even reduce their pay. They are absolutely free and independent. Maybe you have a little tidbit of personal information? Perhaps you know that one of the justices has a gay lover. So what? They're never up for re-election or "re-nomination." They don't have to worry about approval ratings. And importantly, even if there was some allegation of misconduct, a ruling by itself can NEVER be misconduct for a judge. By definition, the cases before them are controversies. That means that people disagree. They cannot be held negatively accountable for doing their jobs. A judge can issue the most unfair and egregious They are pretty much invincible. That's why one of our professors calls them "The Little Dictators."
Not necessarily. It would just mean that the law in the 5th Circuit is different than the law in the 2nd Circuit. It happens quite frequently. When you start getting lots of divergent rules in the circuits, the Supreme Court often will sometimes intervene and issue a consistent ruling, but not always.