One type of ant poison works by slow poison- the workers eat some, carry it back to the nest, and share it with other ants. Eventually, all the ants in the colony have some, including the queen.
Then they all die.
If only we could find something like that which worked on MBAs.
I guess the larger context is important; that is to say, the US has been involved for almost 100 years in trying to influence politics and stability of the arabian peninsula. Nobody can guess how much money we've pissed away on bombs and guns and bribing officials to try to make things more friendly to us there, and damn it all if it hasn't totally backfired every single time...
Of course, this time was going to be different, because that cowardly traitor Dick Cheney and his evil henchmen were going to do the job right.
Or, when you put conflicting statements in front of anyone but a bunch of lawyers, everyone else will call shenanigans and point out you were full of crap from the get go?
That's kind of the point that I was going for. This tactic might work on paper in a courtroom, but not in the real world- the correct response in the realm of PR should be to attack Microsoft for failing to take a consistent position.
Imagine if Giuliani was asked for his position on abortion, and he said "1. I believe abortion should be legal and provided on-demand to anyone who requests it, and 2. Roe v. Wade must be overturned because abortion is murder." Sure, Tim Russert would just continue with his blowjob, but everyone else would flip out, becuase half of that statement MUST be a lie, but it's impossible to know which half.
I know of two main reasons to do things this way- the first one is efficiency. This style of pleading encourages both parties to put everything they have on the table right at the start, so that both sides know what the fight is really about. Imagine if MS does land in court over some infringement- they get sued for GPL3 violation, and they use only one of these excuses as a defense. The trial goes on for 5 years, and at the end of it, MS loses, and then they trot out the OTHER defense... new trial, 5 more years of bullshit in the courts... So it's more efficient for the courts to force the parties to do it all at once.
The other argument is discovery. US federal courts have liberal discovery rules, but you can only ask for stuff that's related to your case. So if you have multiple theories, you can potentially discover more evidence than you would if you only had the one theory. When "evidence" is defined as "corporate email discussing how to discriminate against employees, destroy competitors, and violate license agreements," more is generally better.
I think the reason it works in law is that it has become accepted legal shorthand to leave out the "if... elseif" part of the argument, and before the case gets to the point where you're going in front of a jury, you usually collapsed the arguments and settled down to one internally consistent theory. It would be disaster if you were on trial for murder, and your defense was "1. I wasn't actually there: here's a witness who saw me somewhere else, but if you don't believe that then 2. I shot him in self defense." Just becuase it's an acceptable formal logical contstruct doesn't mean that you wouldn't suffer because the jury evaluates your statement on a moral basis, and punish you for what they can't help but percieve as a lie.
Obviously this creates problems when the legalese so permeates a company's business that it starts leaking out around the edges. People are naturally repelled when you lie to them, and this kind of statement is the worst sort of PR because its necessary partial falsehood taints the entire message.
Did I say that all of the statements were contradictory?
no.
(a) and (d) can be true at the same time provided that the woman in question was not the plaintiff's wife. It is entirely consistent. The woman in question was not the plaintiff's wife, and the defendant did not _think_ that the woman in question was not the plaintiff's wife.
speck, eye, log, misplaced double negative- if the defendant thought the woman he slept with was the plaintiff's wife, he could not make statement (d). You're not allowed to change the facts to fit your argument.
So I'll assume the second bold "not" is a typo, and address that argument instead. While it is possible to construe a situation where (a) and (d) could be true, that situation does not comport with the context I gave in my original post. (d) implies that defendant actually slept with plaintiff's wife by offering an excuse or justification for the alleged transgression. To read it otherwise is to engage in unnecessary parsing.
I hate to be pedantic
So don't do it. You'll feel better. I'll freely admit that the wikipedia dog example is a more clearly defined example of contradictory statements [P: Your dog bit me! D: (a) my dog was tied up (b) I don't believe you were bitten (c) I don't have a dog], but that's not the way I heard the story.
In a lawsuit, it is possible to argue multiple theories of liability, or multiple theories of innocence. As long as each theory is internally consistent, they don't all have to be consistent with each other. It's the legal version of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks... and when you're just getting started, you don't want to leave stuff out by mistake, becuase there might be a chance that if you don't bring it up at the beginning you won't be allowed to bring it up later.
The classic example is: Your buddy says, "You bastard, you slept with my wife!" If this was a lawsuit, you might respond
a. No I didn't! b. You said that I could! c. She wasn't your wife! d. I thought she was someone else! e. I was insane!
This would be OK, becuase even though (d) seems to contradict (a), that doesn't automatically mean that (a) is invalid, even though BOTH statements can't be true at the same time. These are all alternative theories of how you might avoid blame/liability for the act, and in filing or responding to lawsuits, this practice is known as alternative pleading.
In that context, Microsoft's GPLv3 statement doesn't need to be consistent- although it is unusual to see this kind of logical construct outside of a court document. The press release reads like they're anticipating a lawsuit, and they're trying to get their story straight ahead of time... In this situation, their story is plausible deniability. and it doesn't matter which alternative theory ends up working, as long as one of them does the job.
So it's perfectly legit for MS to use alternate theories to justify their actions- it just reeks of bad faith when their public position is so openly contradictory. It does seem pretty odd that Microsoft is using legal tactics to write their press releases- almost like they've got something to hide.
The innocuous-seeming bun, even, is so loaded with refined carbohydrates that you might as well be eating your hamburger in the middle of a donut sliced in half.
We used to do exactly that- In California 2 or 3 years ago, it was not uncommon to find a krispy kreme donut shop across the street from a In N Out burger joint. So you go buy a case of donuts, take them into In N Out, and ask the counter monkey to make you a cheeseburger on one of the donuts...
You should get at least a little bit of standing in ConLaw 1. I know I did. To establish standing, a plaintiff must show:
1. actual harm 2. redressability 3. and that the remedy sought would actually correct the harm. (there's a little aside that says it can't be general harm suffered by all taxpayers, e.g. that federal income tax goes to pay for aid to Israel, but I don't think that could be used to deal with the issues raised in this case. Unless they really are tapping everyone's phones, which the government won't admit even if it's true... so I think we can forget about that part.)
Seems like it's the first prong that has the catch-22 here, saying that you can't show harm. The current SCOTUS has shown some willingness (Roberts and Strip-Search-Sammy in particular, but also predictably Thomas) to limit standing, but in the recent Mass v. EPA case, Massachussetts and the other states won, even though Roberts argued that they had no standing to sue. Justice Kennedy sided with the progressive wing of the court to rule against the Bush EPA.
So, the analysis that we should game out here is whether Kennedy's rulings tend to favor free-speech interests, or whether he is willing to overlook those questions in order to uphold state secrets claims? Although, I could be persuaded that Scalia might play an unexpected spoiler role in this case, so that it would come out 6-3 if Kennedy goes along with the ACLU. Nino is crazy and he hates those damn hippies, but he might hate totalitarianism even more.
Well, one of the problems is that Nancy Pelosi has a conflict of interest in impeaching both Bush and Cheney. It's like this:
The order of succession is: 1. President (Bush) 2. VP (Cheney) 3. Speaker of the House of Representatives (Pelosi)
But, an impeachment must start in the House of Representatives. So if Pelosi is leading a simultaneous impeachment of both Bush and Cheney, she could be accused (legitimately or not, doesn't matter) with trying to use parlimentary games to install herself as President. So, in this instance she can't focus on what the country needs most, becuase her very attention could prevent the effort from succeeding. Ironic, no?
Pelosi has stated that impeachment is "off the table," in part to prevent this conflict from arising. If the political will to begin impeachment arises elsewhere in the house (see, for example, Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment that target Cheney) she can perhaps be persuaded to reluctantly allow debate on the issue. However, I can't understand any reason that her statement should apply to Cheney or to Gonzales.
If you forget your college experience within a couple of years of graduating, it obvioulsy didn't scar you deeply enough to make a difference.
I did my undergrad at CalTech. I'll never forget. I still break out in goosebumps and my mouth goes dry every time I hear "The Ride of the Valkyries." I just finished my first year of law school, and it was like tiddlywinks compared to Tech.
And with your reaction, companies don't even need to implement a "don't hire bipolar people because they 're unstable" policy, because by requiring the screen you opt out yourself.
That being said, I've never submitted to a health screen as part of a job.
The book is only boring becuase Diamond makes his basic point in the first chapter, and then repeats the same damn point as the explanation for every cultural disparity that he cites as distinguishing between people from ancestral central Eurasia and, for example, ancestral Mexico.
I'll ruin it for you: the point is that there were significantly more square miles of easily travelled arable land in the same climate zone accessible to people on the eurasian landmass than there was available to the Incas and Mayans. Since there was more land in eurasia, the people there had a wider variety of high-protein foods, which allowed for more leisure time to develop technologies. They also just happened to have more high-protein crops and easily domesticable animals like horses, cows, sheep, and goats. So all of these facts worked together to give southern europeans/north africans an insurmountable advantage in nutrition, which led to more leisure time, which led to better technology, which led to better nutrition, which led to more leisure time... lather, rinse, repeat.
And that's why Spain conquered Mexico and not the other way around.
They sent me an email this morning saying I can save by paying a year in advance. Not a good idea now...
If Vonage can show that the Verizon patents are frivolous, customer sentiment like that will be evidence that Vonage can use in their countersuit for tortious interference...
I didn't see this in the parent post: what products are at issue here? Everyone seems to assume this is about counterfeit DVDs. Does it make a difference if it is consumer goods or textiles manufactured in china, like counterfeit Nike sneakers and T-shirts, or Oakley sunglasses, or Calvin Klein tuxedos? I mean, you can only spend so much time watching movies. Most of us wear shoes all day long.
and page five of that article has some useful examples of what line twitter and combing artifacts actually look like.
A lot of comments here seem to be in the vein of "Well, who cares if X is four pixels wide, or three pixels, or only two? Trigonometry says I can't see the difference so why should I care?" As the image of the skiier shows, the important difference between interlaced frames and progressive scan isn't imporant when you're dealing with a line that has pixels in both half-frames. You get noticable problems (line twitter) when an edge is only one pixel tall, and it only shows up on alternating frames. You're sure as hell going to notice when stuff flickers in and out of existance.
Combing is more irritating to me, becuase it happens a lot more frequently. Any time you have a sharp edge in motion across the screen, the interlaced picture is noticeably fuzzy. That's the tomato pic, and the faces at the bottom of the page...
Slashdot Mirror
One type of ant poison works by slow poison- the workers eat some, carry it back to the nest, and share it with other ants. Eventually, all the ants in the colony have some, including the queen.
Then they all die.
If only we could find something like that which worked on MBAs.
When you're finished, ask him how he appreciates being treated to a lecture about being a thief during time that is supposed to be his.
and then AK47.
Heh. and NOW I get mod points.
I guess the larger context is important; that is to say, the US has been involved for almost 100 years in trying to influence politics and stability of the arabian peninsula. Nobody can guess how much money we've pissed away on bombs and guns and bribing officials to try to make things more friendly to us there, and damn it all if it hasn't totally backfired every single time...
Of course, this time was going to be different, because that cowardly traitor Dick Cheney and his evil henchmen were going to do the job right.
as usual the US is left to pick up the pieces and pay the bills in both dollars and lives.
Ok, but you're begging the question: why are we there AT ALL? Seriously, why bother? Who cares if it's a mess and they want to kill each other?
Oh, right, the oil.
and ship each copy to a different place...
Have you met my penis bird?
Wonder what she's got on Denny that earned her this job offer? Maybe she booked the hotel rooms for his "visits" with future voters.
Hillary Clinton, who stands a very good chance of being elected in 2008?
Not if she has all of her assets frozen as a result of speaking out against the war. The Pentagon has accused her, in print, of "boosting enemy propaganda." That can't be far away from "undermining efforts to promote political reform..."
I-ANALY.
For the Dobbs gold-standard alternative liability case, see Summers v. Tice, 199 P.2d 1 (Cal.1948).
Or, when you put conflicting statements in front of anyone but a bunch of lawyers, everyone else will call shenanigans and point out you were full of crap from the get go?
That's kind of the point that I was going for. This tactic might work on paper in a courtroom, but not in the real world- the correct response in the realm of PR should be to attack Microsoft for failing to take a consistent position.
Imagine if Giuliani was asked for his position on abortion, and he said "1. I believe abortion should be legal and provided on-demand to anyone who requests it, and 2. Roe v. Wade must be overturned because abortion is murder." Sure, Tim Russert would just continue with his blowjob, but everyone else would flip out, becuase half of that statement MUST be a lie, but it's impossible to know which half.
I know of two main reasons to do things this way- the first one is efficiency. This style of pleading encourages both parties to put everything they have on the table right at the start, so that both sides know what the fight is really about. Imagine if MS does land in court over some infringement- they get sued for GPL3 violation, and they use only one of these excuses as a defense. The trial goes on for 5 years, and at the end of it, MS loses, and then they trot out the OTHER defense... new trial, 5 more years of bullshit in the courts... So it's more efficient for the courts to force the parties to do it all at once.
The other argument is discovery. US federal courts have liberal discovery rules, but you can only ask for stuff that's related to your case. So if you have multiple theories, you can potentially discover more evidence than you would if you only had the one theory. When "evidence" is defined as "corporate email discussing how to discriminate against employees, destroy competitors, and violate license agreements," more is generally better.
I think the reason it works in law is that it has become accepted legal shorthand to leave out the "if... elseif" part of the argument, and before the case gets to the point where you're going in front of a jury, you usually collapsed the arguments and settled down to one internally consistent theory. It would be disaster if you were on trial for murder, and your defense was "1. I wasn't actually there: here's a witness who saw me somewhere else, but if you don't believe that then 2. I shot him in self defense." Just becuase it's an acceptable formal logical contstruct doesn't mean that you wouldn't suffer because the jury evaluates your statement on a moral basis, and punish you for what they can't help but percieve as a lie.
Obviously this creates problems when the legalese so permeates a company's business that it starts leaking out around the edges. People are naturally repelled when you lie to them, and this kind of statement is the worst sort of PR because its necessary partial falsehood taints the entire message.
avast!
Did I say that all of the statements were contradictory?
no.
(a) and (d) can be true at the same time provided that the woman in question was not the plaintiff's wife. It is entirely consistent. The woman in question was not the plaintiff's wife, and the defendant did not _think_ that the woman in question was not the plaintiff's wife.
speck, eye, log, misplaced double negative- if the defendant thought the woman he slept with was the plaintiff's wife, he could not make statement (d). You're not allowed to change the facts to fit your argument.
So I'll assume the second bold "not" is a typo, and address that argument instead. While it is possible to construe a situation where (a) and (d) could be true, that situation does not comport with the context I gave in my original post. (d) implies that defendant actually slept with plaintiff's wife by offering an excuse or justification for the alleged transgression. To read it otherwise is to engage in unnecessary parsing.
I hate to be pedantic
So don't do it. You'll feel better. I'll freely admit that the wikipedia dog example is a more clearly defined example of contradictory statements [P: Your dog bit me! D: (a) my dog was tied up (b) I don't believe you were bitten (c) I don't have a dog], but that's not the way I heard the story.
I'm not a lawyer, yet.
In a lawsuit, it is possible to argue multiple theories of liability, or multiple theories of innocence. As long as each theory is internally consistent, they don't all have to be consistent with each other. It's the legal version of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks... and when you're just getting started, you don't want to leave stuff out by mistake, becuase there might be a chance that if you don't bring it up at the beginning you won't be allowed to bring it up later.
The classic example is: Your buddy says, "You bastard, you slept with my wife!" If this was a lawsuit, you might respond
a. No I didn't!
b. You said that I could!
c. She wasn't your wife!
d. I thought she was someone else!
e. I was insane!
This would be OK, becuase even though (d) seems to contradict (a), that doesn't automatically mean that (a) is invalid, even though BOTH statements can't be true at the same time. These are all alternative theories of how you might avoid blame/liability for the act, and in filing or responding to lawsuits, this practice is known as alternative pleading.
In that context, Microsoft's GPLv3 statement doesn't need to be consistent- although it is unusual to see this kind of logical construct outside of a court document. The press release reads like they're anticipating a lawsuit, and they're trying to get their story straight ahead of time... In this situation, their story is plausible deniability. and it doesn't matter which alternative theory ends up working, as long as one of them does the job.
So it's perfectly legit for MS to use alternate theories to justify their actions- it just reeks of bad faith when their public position is so openly contradictory. It does seem pretty odd that Microsoft is using legal tactics to write their press releases- almost like they've got something to hide.
The innocuous-seeming bun, even, is so loaded with refined carbohydrates that you might as well be eating your hamburger in the middle of a donut sliced in half.
We used to do exactly that- In California 2 or 3 years ago, it was not uncommon to find a krispy kreme donut shop across the street from a In N Out burger joint. So you go buy a case of donuts, take them into In N Out, and ask the counter monkey to make you a cheeseburger on one of the donuts...
Voila! instant donut burger heart attack!
Yeah, but they don't have to chase you if you step on one by accident.
Well, when Jesus tells you to shoot those abortion doctors, you don't have to blow yourself up to get the job done.
You should get at least a little bit of standing in ConLaw 1. I know I did. To establish standing, a plaintiff must show:
1. actual harm
2. redressability
3. and that the remedy sought would actually correct the harm.
(there's a little aside that says it can't be general harm suffered by all taxpayers, e.g. that federal income tax goes to pay for aid to Israel, but I don't think that could be used to deal with the issues raised in this case. Unless they really are tapping everyone's phones, which the government won't admit even if it's true... so I think we can forget about that part.)
Seems like it's the first prong that has the catch-22 here, saying that you can't show harm. The current SCOTUS has shown some willingness (Roberts and Strip-Search-Sammy in particular, but also predictably Thomas) to limit standing, but in the recent Mass v. EPA case, Massachussetts and the other states won, even though Roberts argued that they had no standing to sue. Justice Kennedy sided with the progressive wing of the court to rule against the Bush EPA.
So, the analysis that we should game out here is whether Kennedy's rulings tend to favor free-speech interests, or whether he is willing to overlook those questions in order to uphold state secrets claims? Although, I could be persuaded that Scalia might play an unexpected spoiler role in this case, so that it would come out 6-3 if Kennedy goes along with the ACLU. Nino is crazy and he hates those damn hippies, but he might hate totalitarianism even more.
Well, one of the problems is that Nancy Pelosi has a conflict of interest in impeaching both Bush and Cheney. It's like this:
The order of succession is:
1. President (Bush)
2. VP (Cheney)
3. Speaker of the House of Representatives (Pelosi)
But, an impeachment must start in the House of Representatives. So if Pelosi is leading a simultaneous impeachment of both Bush and Cheney, she could be accused (legitimately or not, doesn't matter) with trying to use parlimentary games to install herself as President. So, in this instance she can't focus on what the country needs most, becuase her very attention could prevent the effort from succeeding. Ironic, no?
Pelosi has stated that impeachment is "off the table," in part to prevent this conflict from arising. If the political will to begin impeachment arises elsewhere in the house (see, for example, Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment that target Cheney) she can perhaps be persuaded to reluctantly allow debate on the issue. However, I can't understand any reason that her statement should apply to Cheney or to Gonzales.
If you forget your college experience within a couple of years of graduating, it obvioulsy didn't scar you deeply enough to make a difference.
I did my undergrad at CalTech. I'll never forget. I still break out in goosebumps and my mouth goes dry every time I hear "The Ride of the Valkyries." I just finished my first year of law school, and it was like tiddlywinks compared to Tech.
And with your reaction, companies don't even need to implement a "don't hire bipolar people because they 're unstable" policy, because by requiring the screen you opt out yourself.
That being said, I've never submitted to a health screen as part of a job.
The book is only boring becuase Diamond makes his basic point in the first chapter, and then repeats the same damn point as the explanation for every cultural disparity that he cites as distinguishing between people from ancestral central Eurasia and, for example, ancestral Mexico.
I'll ruin it for you: the point is that there were significantly more square miles of easily travelled arable land in the same climate zone accessible to people on the eurasian landmass than there was available to the Incas and Mayans. Since there was more land in eurasia, the people there had a wider variety of high-protein foods, which allowed for more leisure time to develop technologies. They also just happened to have more high-protein crops and easily domesticable animals like horses, cows, sheep, and goats. So all of these facts worked together to give southern europeans/north africans an insurmountable advantage in nutrition, which led to more leisure time, which led to better technology, which led to better nutrition, which led to more leisure time... lather, rinse, repeat.
And that's why Spain conquered Mexico and not the other way around.
Do you love it? I love it. I got [your credit card number] at Ross!
They sent me an email this morning saying I can save by paying a year in advance. Not a good idea now...
If Vonage can show that the Verizon patents are frivolous, customer sentiment like that will be evidence that Vonage can use in their countersuit for tortious interference...
(not a lawyer. yet.)
I didn't see this in the parent post: what products are at issue here? Everyone seems to assume this is about counterfeit DVDs. Does it make a difference if it is consumer goods or textiles manufactured in china, like counterfeit Nike sneakers and T-shirts, or Oakley sunglasses, or Calvin Klein tuxedos? I mean, you can only spend so much time watching movies. Most of us wear shoes all day long.
and page five of that article has some useful examples of what line twitter and combing artifacts actually look like.
A lot of comments here seem to be in the vein of "Well, who cares if X is four pixels wide, or three pixels, or only two? Trigonometry says I can't see the difference so why should I care?" As the image of the skiier shows, the important difference between interlaced frames and progressive scan isn't imporant when you're dealing with a line that has pixels in both half-frames. You get noticable problems (line twitter) when an edge is only one pixel tall, and it only shows up on alternating frames. You're sure as hell going to notice when stuff flickers in and out of existance.
Combing is more irritating to me, becuase it happens a lot more frequently. Any time you have a sharp edge in motion across the screen, the interlaced picture is noticeably fuzzy. That's the tomato pic, and the faces at the bottom of the page...