Why not set the legal standard as a reasonable person's expectations of the useful length of a message? It seems to me that the problem here is that people use e-mail both for the very ephemeral and for more long-lasting purposes, and that a single standard would be doomed to failure.
If I digitally sign a message to enter into a contract, I expect that message to be retained basically indefinitely. If I send my boss a message questioning the legality of a chunk of code in our software, I expect that message to cover my butt as long as the underlying issue is legally relevent. If I send my boss a message questioning his intelligence in relation to his NCAA-tournament picks in the office pool, I expect that message to be irrelevent much sooner.
One of the problems with relying on events such as deletion is that this is rarely an action that I have sole control over. Programs (Word) may retain some of my deletions as part of the file for some time. System admins may back up my system in mid-stream and capture the deleted text. Messages sent to a small group, i.e. a mailing list, may be subsequently archived and made available to a much wider audience with a very different context. Recipients may delete messages regularly or store them for years on end. Rules of evidence should not be influence by these actions which are not under my control.
One of the nice aspects of human to human correspondence is that the brain naturally applies these sorts of algorithms, remembering the important stuff while purging the silly. When we communicate to each other via various technological devices, paper, e-mail, telephone, we naturally assume that this sort of filtering is going on. The law should recognize these reasonable expectations just as it does with various privacy rules.
In the United States, we have a judicial wing which handles all cases that revolve around taxation, which runs parallel to the standard criminal justice system. Presumably, this separation was deemed necessary once the tax law became sufficiently complicated as to require specialized judges and lawyers. Today, these specialized court officers appear quite capable of handling very complicated cases with lots of expert testimony that results in generally reasonable & predictable decisions.
Do you believe that we need a similiar judicial wing to handle the increasingly complicated and specialized cases brought on by new technology?
Which leads me to believe that either 1) Most people disagree with you 2) Not enough people are aware of the problem You are free to try to convince those who disagree with you or to educate those who are uninformed. Those are the liberties generations have fought and died for. You are not free to prevent them from choosing differently than you. That is the liberty of tyrants and that is the right Mr. Bove seeks.
Corporations are at least as democratic as any government. If you dislike their policies, their products, or what have you, simply don't spend your money there. Convince others to vote with their wallets. Corporations are amoral-- they'll do whatever their customers want. There's a reason the Montgomery bus boycott was among the first successful battles of the Civil Rights era-- the oppressor was a corporation. Enough customers stopped utilizing the company's service that the corporation had no choice but to give in. Despite the racism of those running the company, the customers proved that they held the real power. Governments can and do ignore the oppressed while retaining power, often ignoring the oppressed in order to retain that power). Corporations who ignore their customers will quickly find themselves bankrupt. Your last line says it all: "And if people weren't so desperate to have tasty burgers with 0 effort required, there wouldn't be giant companies walking all over us so much." People all over the world vote every day to buy from McDonalds, not because they are threatened with imprisonment and torture, but because they've made a rational decision for themselves. What could be more democratic? The fact that you disagree with the outcome does not imply that you are being oppressed.
If cracking offense is considered a felony, then the cracker would face a murder charge. Otherwise, it would probably be manslaughter. From Oran's Dictionary of the Law-- Felony-murder rule The principle that if one (even accidently) kills another while committing a felony, then the killing is murder. The misdemeanor-manslaughter rule is similar: if one (even accidently) kills another while committing a misdemeanor, then the killing is at least manslaughter.
I think it's more a matter of the software price correlating more strongly with the usefulness of the product to the individual customer. Let's take Photoshop for example. Right now, it costs roughly $600, so only high-end customers buy it, since they're the only ones that can dervie $600 worth of benefit. Certainly, there exist people who could derive, say, $200 worth of benefit by using either a basic subset of features or by using it only for a short period of time. Every now and then, I might need to play with an image or two, but I probably wouldn't derive more than a few dollars worth of benefit. Adobe would sincerly love to keep selling all its $600 licenses, sell a bunch more $200 licenses, and even more $5 licenses. If people rent software and pay based on the feature set they need and the length of time they use the software, they can do exactly that. For a high-end customer, the price probably won't change much. For the low-end or occasional customer, though, there's the possibility of getting access to professional-quality tools at amateur prices.
Ask yourself whether the cost to the customer outways the additional price the customer must pay. In most cases, this boils down to two factors-- the type of manual and the type of user.
Is the manual designed as a tutorial? If so, most users will want to read only small sections at a time to glean one particular bit of information and will only want to do so a few times at most. This type of search is made much easier by the search facilities of electronic docs, particularly since users are unlikely to know exactly what they're looking for. Assuming you would sell a paperless package for less than a package containing printed manuals, it certainly looks to be in the customer's interest to forgo the manual.
Is the manual designed to be a reference? If so, most readers will consult rather broader sections many times. They'll want the ability to annotate, which is still best done on paper. They'll want the ability to peruse the docs for long periods of time, so that image quality becomes important. The cost of printed manuals is less important in this case because a well-done manual will allow the customer to avoid buying a 3rd party reference. In this case, it seems clearly in the customer's best interest to ship printed docs.
Is the software targeted at rank newbies or experienced hackers? Novice users will never open a printed manual and will rarely look at electronic docs. Shipping them printed manuals is generally a waste of paper. Power users are much more likely to crack a book, both because they're accustomed to looking in docs for answers rather than calling the help desk and because they have the necessary context to find the information via the table of contents or index. Power users are more likely to read or browse larger sections of documentation for longer periods, which means that printed docs are more useful.
Are the intended users more likely to be corporate or individuals? Corporate users are likely to have various support options available which they'll use before opening a book-- other workers, IT staff, help desks, etc. (Note that I accept rather than condone this behavior) Shipping them printed docs is pointless. Individuals are likely to have many fewer support options and will thus be more likely to use a printed manual if one is available.
Ask yourself how often the docs will be used and how. Then determine whether printed manuals or electronic documents are better suited to the task. It's unlikely that there's a blanket "correct" answer.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not set the legal standard as a reasonable person's expectations of the useful length of a message? It seems to me that the problem here is that people use e-mail both for the very ephemeral and for more long-lasting purposes, and that a single standard would be doomed to failure. If I digitally sign a message to enter into a contract, I expect that message to be retained basically indefinitely. If I send my boss a message questioning the legality of a chunk of code in our software, I expect that message to cover my butt as long as the underlying issue is legally relevent. If I send my boss a message questioning his intelligence in relation to his NCAA-tournament picks in the office pool, I expect that message to be irrelevent much sooner. One of the problems with relying on events such as deletion is that this is rarely an action that I have sole control over. Programs (Word) may retain some of my deletions as part of the file for some time. System admins may back up my system in mid-stream and capture the deleted text. Messages sent to a small group, i.e. a mailing list, may be subsequently archived and made available to a much wider audience with a very different context. Recipients may delete messages regularly or store them for years on end. Rules of evidence should not be influence by these actions which are not under my control. One of the nice aspects of human to human correspondence is that the brain naturally applies these sorts of algorithms, remembering the important stuff while purging the silly. When we communicate to each other via various technological devices, paper, e-mail, telephone, we naturally assume that this sort of filtering is going on. The law should recognize these reasonable expectations just as it does with various privacy rules.
From the NORSAR site jabber01 cites above-
This explosion had a magnitude of 3.5 on the Richter scale, corresponding to about 1-2 tons of explosive in water.
I have no idea which of these figures is more accurate, though I'd lean toward the NORSAR version. Anyone have more definitive numbers?
In the United States, we have a judicial wing which handles all cases that revolve around taxation, which runs parallel to the standard criminal justice system. Presumably, this separation was deemed necessary once the tax law became sufficiently complicated as to require specialized judges and lawyers. Today, these specialized court officers appear quite capable of handling very complicated cases with lots of expert testimony that results in generally reasonable & predictable decisions.
Do you believe that we need a similiar judicial wing to handle the increasingly complicated and specialized cases brought on by new technology?
Which leads me to believe that either 1) Most people disagree with you 2) Not enough people are aware of the problem You are free to try to convince those who disagree with you or to educate those who are uninformed. Those are the liberties generations have fought and died for. You are not free to prevent them from choosing differently than you. That is the liberty of tyrants and that is the right Mr. Bove seeks.
Corporations are at least as democratic as any government. If you dislike their policies, their products, or what have you, simply don't spend your money there. Convince others to vote with their wallets. Corporations are amoral-- they'll do whatever their customers want. There's a reason the Montgomery bus boycott was among the first successful battles of the Civil Rights era-- the oppressor was a corporation. Enough customers stopped utilizing the company's service that the corporation had no choice but to give in. Despite the racism of those running the company, the customers proved that they held the real power. Governments can and do ignore the oppressed while retaining power, often ignoring the oppressed in order to retain that power). Corporations who ignore their customers will quickly find themselves bankrupt. Your last line says it all: "And if people weren't so desperate to have tasty burgers with 0 effort required, there wouldn't be giant companies walking all over us so much." People all over the world vote every day to buy from McDonalds, not because they are threatened with imprisonment and torture, but because they've made a rational decision for themselves. What could be more democratic? The fact that you disagree with the outcome does not imply that you are being oppressed.
If cracking offense is considered a felony, then the cracker would face a murder charge. Otherwise, it would probably be manslaughter. From Oran's Dictionary of the Law-- Felony-murder rule The principle that if one (even accidently) kills another while committing a felony, then the killing is murder. The misdemeanor-manslaughter rule is similar: if one (even accidently) kills another while committing a misdemeanor, then the killing is at least manslaughter.
I think it's more a matter of the software price correlating more strongly with the usefulness of the product to the individual customer. Let's take Photoshop for example. Right now, it costs roughly $600, so only high-end customers buy it, since they're the only ones that can dervie $600 worth of benefit. Certainly, there exist people who could derive, say, $200 worth of benefit by using either a basic subset of features or by using it only for a short period of time. Every now and then, I might need to play with an image or two, but I probably wouldn't derive more than a few dollars worth of benefit. Adobe would sincerly love to keep selling all its $600 licenses, sell a bunch more $200 licenses, and even more $5 licenses. If people rent software and pay based on the feature set they need and the length of time they use the software, they can do exactly that. For a high-end customer, the price probably won't change much. For the low-end or occasional customer, though, there's the possibility of getting access to professional-quality tools at amateur prices.
Ask yourself whether the cost to the customer outways the additional price the customer must pay. In most cases, this boils down to two factors-- the type of manual and the type of user.
Is the manual designed as a tutorial? If so, most users will want to read only small sections at a time to glean one particular bit of information and will only want to do so a few times at most. This type of search is made much easier by the search facilities of electronic docs, particularly since users are unlikely to know exactly what they're looking for. Assuming you would sell a paperless package for less than a package containing printed manuals, it certainly looks to be in the customer's interest to forgo the manual.
Is the manual designed to be a reference? If so, most readers will consult rather broader sections many times. They'll want the ability to annotate, which is still best done on paper. They'll want the ability to peruse the docs for long periods of time, so that image quality becomes important. The cost of printed manuals is less important in this case because a well-done manual will allow the customer to avoid buying a 3rd party reference. In this case, it seems clearly in the customer's best interest to ship printed docs.
Is the software targeted at rank newbies or experienced hackers? Novice users will never open a printed manual and will rarely look at electronic docs. Shipping them printed manuals is generally a waste of paper. Power users are much more likely to crack a book, both because they're accustomed to looking in docs for answers rather than calling the help desk and because they have the necessary context to find the information via the table of contents or index. Power users are more likely to read or browse larger sections of documentation for longer periods, which means that printed docs are more useful.
Are the intended users more likely to be corporate or individuals? Corporate users are likely to have various support options available which they'll use before opening a book-- other workers, IT staff, help desks, etc. (Note that I accept rather than condone this behavior) Shipping them printed docs is pointless. Individuals are likely to have many fewer support options and will thus be more likely to use a printed manual if one is available.
Ask yourself how often the docs will be used and how. Then determine whether printed manuals or electronic documents are better suited to the task. It's unlikely that there's a blanket "correct" answer.