I remember implementing communications code for packet radio modems way back in th' day... circa 1989, at 1200-9600 b/s.
The big problem with mobile radio sysems (particularly in urban environments) is Raleigh Fading, otherwise known as "picket fencing" noise. What happens is that one receives the radio signal via multiple paths, reflected from buildings in the "urban jungle". Sometimes these signals interfere constructively, and sometimes destructively. When driving, in an urban environment, one tends to move from areas of constructive to destructive interferance and back again, on a surprisingly regular basis. The effect is called "Raleigh Fading", after the statistical distribution of constructive and destructive zones. On an analog voice radio channel, it sounds like someone running a stick past a picket fence, hence "picket fencing noise". Of course, in environments with less opportunities for radio signal reflections, the effect is less predictible, but it still happens.
Naturally, transmitting and receiving a checksummed packet while driving through one of the areas of destructive interferance is, well, a challenge. If the non-acknowlegement retransmission rate, and speed are just so, you'll never get a packet through.
There are two ways of dealing with this: spacial diversity antennas (multiple antennas separated at carefully computed distances so that one is always in an area of constructive interferance when the other is in an area of destructive interferance), and interleaved error correcting codes. The spacial diversity antennas work well at the higher VHF and greater frequencies, because the distance between individual antennas isn't all that great. However, at frequencies of around 150 Mhz and lower, the required distance between individual antennas is too great to allow for automobile mounting. So, one uses interleaved error correcting codes (generally Reed Solomon), and hopes that one travels between zones of constructive and destructive interferance "fast enough". Yes, there is a mimumum driving speed related to data rate, carrier frequency, and error correcting code and interleave chosen, below which the system would not work. One generally picks an error correcting code so that the minimum speed is low enough that it would be practical to stop in an area of constructive interferance.
As I recall, at least one rural police force in Quebec, Canada was outfitted with the equipment we produced. Needless to say, the fade rate was not a problem when "Enos" (well, Jean-Guy in the Quebecois version of "Dukes of Hazzard") was in in "hot pursuit".
No, we did not interface the modem to the cruise control to ensure the vehicle was moving "fast enough", though it was damn tempting...
Of course, at modern data rates and carrier frequencies, spacial diversity antennas are a far better choice to combat this problem (and why wireless data network interfaces usually have two antennas).
I contested a moving violation traffic ticket once. The ticket was $75, and it cost me $300 to hire my lawyer. I could have probably represented myself in this case (I have done so in the past, actually, generally in small claims court), but as a foreigner in the U.S. it was (and is) important to keep a clean criminal record, so I hired a lawyer. I wasn't trying something sneaky -- I had a clear case (someone accelerated to intentionally prevent me from making a lane change clearly signalled and with plenty of room, then tried to pass me on the left shoulder (where there was none), and ended up hitting me -- because I made the lane change, the cop "automatically" wrote me the ticket), but felt that it was better to have proper representation).
Hey, I resemble that remark! (Though, I would have been far more harsh in crapping on Canada.)
And, yes, I'd rather die starving in an American gutter, than have so much of my hard-earned money taken from me in the form of "taxes for free healthcare", that I don't have enough left to spend for real medical care necesasry to save my own life. I'll do my damndest to ensure that neither I, my wife, or our kids (at least one of which is fortunate enough to be an American citizen), don't get murdered by the Canadian government the way my father was.
There's little desire "go back" anyway: I'd be jailed. See, Canada requires a husband to support a wife in the manner to which she has become accustomed and there is no way I could earn the salary in Canada that I earn in the U.S. The penalty is jail until you make the required salary. The idea is that the threat of jail forces married men to earn more to feed the tax monster and avoid incarceration.
One of the many treaties between Canada and the U.S. stipulates that when there is a cross-border dispute, and communication is sent (by post, courier, etc.) from one party to another in response to a request for payment, or redress, venue is established in the requestor's jurisdiction.
While in Washington state, I had an ongoing dispute with an insurance company in Canada that refused to stop renewing a tenants policy on a house I rented for six months two years prior. Worse, they kept witdrawing premium payments from a bank account owned by a sister-subsidiary of the same parent company. They wanted proof that I no longer live there, lest my "required homeowners' policy lapse." WTF?! I rented the damn place. No matter...
When I wrote and mailed a formal complaint, they had the gaul to send yet another automatic renewal notice to my new address in WA. Gotcha! No longer would I have to file suit in small claims court in Ontario... I could now do it in Washington state! They cancelled the policy and refunded my money very shortly after that, and sent a very nice letter of apology.
I can just imagine one of their lawyers telling their droid, "You mailed what!?! To where!?!" (Well, they probably didn't, but it's fun to think they did.)
The key is not inside the disk image. One enters into a key negotiation sequence with the DVDROM drive to get the keys necessary from an unreadable portion of the disk.
Now, it is possible to decrypt the disk, by cracking the keys, without entering into this key negotiation with the drive, but I would consider that "cheating" -- might as well store the data unencrypted.
Yeah, but are they transcrypting the DVDs so they can use their own encryption mechanism? Otherwise, how does the player get the DVD CSS keys without an initial access to a DVD? I suppose the jukebox could push them to all players when reading a DVD, by default. Is that what happens?
I've always thought the right thing to do is store the DVD copies encrypted on the jukebox, and unlock access at the few restricted client machines that can authenticate with the jukebox.
Of course, this can be done at the client, by sticking a DVD in the playback client. The client, of course caches the keys extracted from that DVD, so this only has to be done once. For large numbers of DVDs on the jukebox that one wants to make accessable to a given client, just burn a CD (or DVD) with the whole set of keys that the client can cache, or explicitly push the keys to the known authenticated clients (or some desired subset thereof).
I never said I had a mug worth looking at. Gives the wife a good deal of confidence that I won't "cheat" (HTF would have me?). 'Course says a lot about her level of "desperation", but that's another flame.
There's a toll road around Toronto, Ontario, that uses RFID readers in much the same way.
However, it also reads license plates directly if you don't have an RFID tag. One receives a bill in the mail (with a surcharge for not being "in" the system) at the end of the month.
Dunno about out of province drivers. I guess Canadian ones are tracked down and fined or jailed. (Americans probably just get a fist shaken at them, as they cross the border back into the U.S., thinking to themselves "nyeah, nyeah, nheah, nyeaaah, nyeah!).
Canuks complain about the cost of maintaining the bridge to Buffalo from the Canadian side. Yanks have the smarts to put a toll on their side of the bridge. Why did I have to be born north of the 49th and surrounded by pinko idiots?
Sigh. (Insightful, no! Troll! But wait, insightful... Aw, screw it, I'll take Troll for -5 karma, Alex.).
Extended warranties are generally a rip-off, considering their high cost and low liklihood of having a warranty-covered failure. IOW, while a form of insurance, the premium is damn expensive.
Now, having paid that damn expensive premium, and having a covered failure, you should damn well expect gold-plated service.
Personally, I don't purchase extended warranties, but TEHO. However, it doesn't surprise me that the sleaze related to the high premiums extends to having claims settled.
So old people are supposed to hold on to the cheque for a month before spending it if they don't want their estate to cough up money?
Pretty much. Consider it payment in advance to make sure one isn't paid late.
Of course, there's nothing wrong in spending it as soon as it's received, but it does mean that there may be a one month social security claim against the estate in the event of one's demise.
This does not strike me as unfair, though demanding it shortly after death is a bit insensitive. (If it were a small personal debt, I'd let it go, for example.) Then again, an executor needs to deal with financial issues anyway, and should expect indifference to the state of the deceased, from claimnants against the estate.
An aside: American Express was very understanding when I called to arrange payment for my father's last bill in the month of his death, offering deferment for "as long as necessary". My father took his excellent credit rating very seriously in life, and would have not wanted the inconvenience of his death to impact it negatively, so I payed it for him on time. I considered that part of fullfilling his last wishes. (No, I did not file a claim against his estate for reimbursement: the major beneficiary being his widow, my mother.)
I know how to spel. What I don't know is how to type. Typos get through. (This was submitted as banged out without any fixex. Note the 'spel' and 'fixex'.)
He violated copyright (by making a copy of copyright information -- AOL certainly has a right to what is called an "aggregation copyright" on the data) and propably made unauthorized use of computer systems to do so.
I doubt he stole anything, or transported stolen property across state lines.
Stealing would have entailed taking the data from a source within AOL and wiping that source clean.
Civil suits against deceased persons can easily be refiled against their estates, and if the suit is sucessfull, there is now a claim against the estate. Guess what, you just inherited a loss against your inheritance (though it can't exceed it).
Further more, while the executor does not inherit the suit, they have a fiducary duty to the estate to handle it when the estate is served. This can be a real problem because if the executor does not handle it "properly" (i.e. gives up and settles without a fight), the beneficaries can have a good case for suing the executor. It can turn into a real "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of problem for the executor: spend too much of the estates assets in defense and get sued. Spend too little, and lose the case, and get sued. Furthermore the will may limit the executor's freedoms in responding (though this can be a blessing for the executor as they can't be held liable for performance of duty if they are restrained from performing said duty).
It should have been obvious when mentioning defendents that I was referring to all present (deceased) and possible future defendents (the estate) in this case.
The bottom line is that judges do not like to see their courts clogged with frivolous cases because some now-present defendent blew off a plaintif. Due process is slow, and while necessary to protect everyone's rights, takes up the court's time (well the time of court clerks until a case comes to trial). Most reasonable people try to stave off likely problems they see on the horizon. I can not see the court looking disfavourably at a defendent that took steps to try to avert a trial for a case without merit.
It was a relative of one of the parties who took that step; she was under no obligation to be involved in the suit in any way; the only argument that could be made otherwise is if she was the executor of her mother's estate, and had not yet signed off.
I had assumed that she was the executor of the estate, otherwise, you (and other posters) are correct in that there was no compelling reason for her to respond.
As for not having to respond, without a summons, this is likely true, but I still think that a judge would not look favorably on a defendent that could have taken simple steps to try to make a suit "go away".
Yes, the plaintif has to go through due process, and would have found out that the defendent was deceased when attempting service. But, having done so, might be motivated to sue the estate upon seeing a non-cooperative defendent. (If they didn't tell us she was dead, what else are they hiding?) Discovery could be a real burden on the estate, not to mention holding up probate.
If the plaintif was out to make an example, and strike fear into would-be "pirates", any legal excuse to burden the defense, even if the case had no merit, could be used to show that they play "hardball" with "zero tolerance" for "pirates" and those that "do not cooperate". The idea is not necessarily to go to trial, but to get the defense to cry "Uncle!" and settle. Remember, settlement for the plaintif in a case without merit is as much of a victory as one at trial, if not more so.
I'd think that a call for summary dismissal on the part of the defense would be far easier if they could show no grounds for the plaintif's burdensome discovery phase. I suppose one could try to play hardball with the **AA on principle, but they're bigger and meaner than most. Would it not be better to play the part of cooperative, innocent victim to earn the sympathy of the judge? Espescially if it was not burdensome to do so?
Remember, the plaintif wants a settlement, and the defense wants the suit dropped or dismissed (preferably with prejudice). Anything the defense can do to improve their odds strikes me as a good strategy.
She should have let the whole thing go to court. It would make the RIAA look far sillier when a computer illiterate dead woman's name is cleared in front of a judge rather than before hand.
IANAL (Surprise, surprise, surprise!), but I'd think the judge would be rather upset if one of the parties could have taken simple, reasonable, steps, that would have a good chance of the suit being dropped before hogging the court's time. Faxing a death certificate looks like a simple, reasonable, step. (Personally, I'dve sent a notarized copy by registered mail as well).
Armed with that evidence, the defense would probably have a good chance at having the case dropped with prejudice by a pissed off judge if the plaintiff decided to pursue it anyway.
The requirement is to maintain a "wife in the manner to which she has become accustomed". This applies before divorce (as well as after, for ex-wives), and is intended to prevent husbands from abandoning wives -- there being a right to support even before divorce. And, it's the government, not the ex, that determines the standard -- I know of a case where someone was jailed for failing to pay CA$60,000 child support annually on a salary of CA$45,000: the ex found a school in Switzerland with tuition at CA$5,000 a month, which would have better met the special needs of the couple's daughter, currently in the father's custody, and attending the best special needs school in Canada he could afford. (They divorced because of the daughter's special needs). Ex won custody and a variance for an additional CA$5,000 child support a month so the daughter could attend a "more suitable" school.
Of course, the support order could not be met, and the father was jailed until he would meet it. Damn liberal Canadian judges. Not surprisingly, the daughter does not attend the Swiss school, and furthermore can no longer afford to attend her former school. Both children (he had a normal son as well), as well as ex wife are now worse off because there are no support payments. (They get welfare at the taxpayers' expense).
This stems from a seeming innocent requirement that children are entitled to the "best" care.
I have a standard for employers as well -- I generally don't work for people who don't read. Furthermore, I have rejected job offers when the interview was not sufficiently difficult or thorough -- I've worked side by side with morons as well as geniuses, and I prefer the latter.
Yes, I am opinionated, and I speak my mind. It's saved various employers million$ in the past -- at least those that listened. The rest, well, they're history.
Now, excuse my, while I improve my present employers bottom line through automation.
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The big problem with mobile radio sysems (particularly in urban environments) is Raleigh Fading, otherwise known as "picket fencing" noise. What happens is that one receives the radio signal via multiple paths, reflected from buildings in the "urban jungle". Sometimes these signals interfere constructively, and sometimes destructively. When driving, in an urban environment, one tends to move from areas of constructive to destructive interferance and back again, on a surprisingly regular basis. The effect is called "Raleigh Fading", after the statistical distribution of constructive and destructive zones. On an analog voice radio channel, it sounds like someone running a stick past a picket fence, hence "picket fencing noise". Of course, in environments with less opportunities for radio signal reflections, the effect is less predictible, but it still happens.
Naturally, transmitting and receiving a checksummed packet while driving through one of the areas of destructive interferance is, well, a challenge. If the non-acknowlegement retransmission rate, and speed are just so, you'll never get a packet through.
There are two ways of dealing with this: spacial diversity antennas (multiple antennas separated at carefully computed distances so that one is always in an area of constructive interferance when the other is in an area of destructive interferance), and interleaved error correcting codes. The spacial diversity antennas work well at the higher VHF and greater frequencies, because the distance between individual antennas isn't all that great. However, at frequencies of around 150 Mhz and lower, the required distance between individual antennas is too great to allow for automobile mounting. So, one uses interleaved error correcting codes (generally Reed Solomon), and hopes that one travels between zones of constructive and destructive interferance "fast enough". Yes, there is a mimumum driving speed related to data rate, carrier frequency, and error correcting code and interleave chosen, below which the system would not work. One generally picks an error correcting code so that the minimum speed is low enough that it would be practical to stop in an area of constructive interferance.
As I recall, at least one rural police force in Quebec, Canada was outfitted with the equipment we produced. Needless to say, the fade rate was not a problem when "Enos" (well, Jean-Guy in the Quebecois version of "Dukes of Hazzard") was in in "hot pursuit".
No, we did not interface the modem to the cruise control to ensure the vehicle was moving "fast enough", though it was damn tempting...
Of course, at modern data rates and carrier frequencies, spacial diversity antennas are a far better choice to combat this problem (and why wireless data network interfaces usually have two antennas).
I contested a moving violation traffic ticket once. The ticket was $75, and it cost me $300 to hire my lawyer. I could have probably represented myself in this case (I have done so in the past, actually, generally in small claims court), but as a foreigner in the U.S. it was (and is) important to keep a clean criminal record, so I hired a lawyer. I wasn't trying something sneaky -- I had a clear case (someone accelerated to intentionally prevent me from making a lane change clearly signalled and with plenty of room, then tried to pass me on the left shoulder (where there was none), and ended up hitting me -- because I made the lane change, the cop "automatically" wrote me the ticket), but felt that it was better to have proper representation).
A person who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.
"WTF? For what??"
"Criminal Copyright Infringement!!"
"Huh?"
"You posted millions of copies of Star Wars III on the intarnat!"
"Yeah... so?"
"That's copyright infringment! You'ze goin down!!"
"Ah, no. I own it."
"???"
"I own Star Wars III. I can do with it what I want."
"Er, no. You may own the DVD, but not the movie. You're coming with us."
"No, I own the movie. I followed the TV ad: 'Own it on DVD today!' By 'it', they mean the movie. So, I own the DVD, and what's on it, the movie."
"Tell it to th' judge!"
later...
"Your honour, I own the movie. Look at the TV ad that caused me to buy it."
"You have a copy of that ad?"
"Sure, watch!"
"GUILTY!"
"WTF, er, I mean, why, your honour? I own the movie, no?"
"The movie, yes. You're guilty of copyright infringement for showing me the ad that says you own the movie. You don't own the ad. Take him away!!"
And, yes, I'd rather die starving in an American gutter, than have so much of my hard-earned money taken from me in the form of "taxes for free healthcare", that I don't have enough left to spend for real medical care necesasry to save my own life. I'll do my damndest to ensure that neither I, my wife, or our kids (at least one of which is fortunate enough to be an American citizen), don't get murdered by the Canadian government the way my father was.
There's little desire "go back" anyway: I'd be jailed. See, Canada requires a husband to support a wife in the manner to which she has become accustomed and there is no way I could earn the salary in Canada that I earn in the U.S. The penalty is jail until you make the required salary. The idea is that the threat of jail forces married men to earn more to feed the tax monster and avoid incarceration.
One of the many treaties between Canada and the U.S. stipulates that when there is a cross-border dispute, and communication is sent (by post, courier, etc.) from one party to another in response to a request for payment, or redress, venue is established in the requestor's jurisdiction.
While in Washington state, I had an ongoing dispute with an insurance company in Canada that refused to stop renewing a tenants policy on a house I rented for six months two years prior. Worse, they kept witdrawing premium payments from a bank account owned by a sister-subsidiary of the same parent company. They wanted proof that I no longer live there, lest my "required homeowners' policy lapse." WTF?! I rented the damn place. No matter...
When I wrote and mailed a formal complaint, they had the gaul to send yet another automatic renewal notice to my new address in WA. Gotcha! No longer would I have to file suit in small claims court in Ontario... I could now do it in Washington state! They cancelled the policy and refunded my money very shortly after that, and sent a very nice letter of apology.
I can just imagine one of their lawyers telling their droid, "You mailed what!?! To where!?!" (Well, they probably didn't, but it's fun to think they did.)
For sales to be binding, there must be a fitness for use, unless this is expressly waived by the purchaser (i.e. you're buying scrap).
The contract of sale not being executed by the seller, you have every right to return the product and get your money back.
No, IANAL.
Now, it is possible to decrypt the disk, by cracking the keys, without entering into this key negotiation with the drive, but I would consider that "cheating" -- might as well store the data unencrypted.
Yeah, but are they transcrypting the DVDs so they can use their own encryption mechanism? Otherwise, how does the player get the DVD CSS keys without an initial access to a DVD? I suppose the jukebox could push them to all players when reading a DVD, by default. Is that what happens?
Of course, this can be done at the client, by sticking a DVD in the playback client. The client, of course caches the keys extracted from that DVD, so this only has to be done once. For large numbers of DVDs on the jukebox that one wants to make accessable to a given client, just burn a CD (or DVD) with the whole set of keys that the client can cache, or explicitly push the keys to the known authenticated clients (or some desired subset thereof).
Sheesh, this isn't rocket science.
I never said I had a mug worth looking at. Gives the wife a good deal of confidence that I won't "cheat" (HTF would have me?). 'Course says a lot about her level of "desperation", but that's another flame.
However, it also reads license plates directly if you don't have an RFID tag. One receives a bill in the mail (with a surcharge for not being "in" the system) at the end of the month.
Dunno about out of province drivers. I guess Canadian ones are tracked down and fined or jailed. (Americans probably just get a fist shaken at them, as they cross the border back into the U.S., thinking to themselves "nyeah, nyeah, nheah, nyeaaah, nyeah!).
Canuks complain about the cost of maintaining the bridge to Buffalo from the Canadian side. Yanks have the smarts to put a toll on their side of the bridge. Why did I have to be born north of the 49th and surrounded by pinko idiots? Sigh. (Insightful, no! Troll! But wait, insightful... Aw, screw it, I'll take Troll for -5 karma, Alex.).
Extended warranties are generally a rip-off, considering their high cost and low liklihood of having a warranty-covered failure. IOW, while a form of insurance, the premium is damn expensive.
Now, having paid that damn expensive premium, and having a covered failure, you should damn well expect gold-plated service.
Personally, I don't purchase extended warranties, but TEHO. However, it doesn't surprise me that the sleaze related to the high premiums extends to having claims settled.
No, I don't think my wife would like that, and my kids would likely be confused.
"Mommy: do people come apart like machines?" "No." "Then why is Daddy on the phone bragging about how he screwed the ass off his secretary?"
(I am soooo dating myself.)
Pretty much. Consider it payment in advance to make sure one isn't paid late.
Of course, there's nothing wrong in spending it as soon as it's received, but it does mean that there may be a one month social security claim against the estate in the event of one's demise.
This does not strike me as unfair, though demanding it shortly after death is a bit insensitive. (If it were a small personal debt, I'd let it go, for example.) Then again, an executor needs to deal with financial issues anyway, and should expect indifference to the state of the deceased, from claimnants against the estate.
An aside: American Express was very understanding when I called to arrange payment for my father's last bill in the month of his death, offering deferment for "as long as necessary". My father took his excellent credit rating very seriously in life, and would have not wanted the inconvenience of his death to impact it negatively, so I payed it for him on time. I considered that part of fullfilling his last wishes. (No, I did not file a claim against his estate for reimbursement: the major beneficiary being his widow, my mother.)
I know how to spel. What I don't know is how to type. Typos get through. (This was submitted as banged out without any fixex. Note the 'spel' and 'fixex'.)
IIRC, the cheque you receive is for the next month.
I doubt he stole anything, or transported stolen property across state lines.
Stealing would have entailed taking the data from a source within AOL and wiping that source clean.
It gets dicey if the executor had reason to believe that a suit was forthcoming. Acting in good faith and all.
Actually, you do.
Civil suits against deceased persons can easily be refiled against their estates, and if the suit is sucessfull, there is now a claim against the estate. Guess what, you just inherited a loss against your inheritance (though it can't exceed it).
Further more, while the executor does not inherit the suit, they have a fiducary duty to the estate to handle it when the estate is served. This can be a real problem because if the executor does not handle it "properly" (i.e. gives up and settles without a fight), the beneficaries can have a good case for suing the executor. It can turn into a real "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of problem for the executor: spend too much of the estates assets in defense and get sued. Spend too little, and lose the case, and get sued. Furthermore the will may limit the executor's freedoms in responding (though this can be a blessing for the executor as they can't be held liable for performance of duty if they are restrained from performing said duty).
It should have been obvious when mentioning defendents that I was referring to all present (deceased) and possible future defendents (the estate) in this case.
The bottom line is that judges do not like to see their courts clogged with frivolous cases because some now-present defendent blew off a plaintif. Due process is slow, and while necessary to protect everyone's rights, takes up the court's time (well the time of court clerks until a case comes to trial). Most reasonable people try to stave off likely problems they see on the horizon. I can not see the court looking disfavourably at a defendent that took steps to try to avert a trial for a case without merit.
I had assumed that she was the executor of the estate, otherwise, you (and other posters) are correct in that there was no compelling reason for her to respond.
As for not having to respond, without a summons, this is likely true, but I still think that a judge would not look favorably on a defendent that could have taken simple steps to try to make a suit "go away".
Yes, the plaintif has to go through due process, and would have found out that the defendent was deceased when attempting service. But, having done so, might be motivated to sue the estate upon seeing a non-cooperative defendent. (If they didn't tell us she was dead, what else are they hiding?) Discovery could be a real burden on the estate, not to mention holding up probate.
If the plaintif was out to make an example, and strike fear into would-be "pirates", any legal excuse to burden the defense, even if the case had no merit, could be used to show that they play "hardball" with "zero tolerance" for "pirates" and those that "do not cooperate". The idea is not necessarily to go to trial, but to get the defense to cry "Uncle!" and settle. Remember, settlement for the plaintif in a case without merit is as much of a victory as one at trial, if not more so.
I'd think that a call for summary dismissal on the part of the defense would be far easier if they could show no grounds for the plaintif's burdensome discovery phase. I suppose one could try to play hardball with the **AA on principle, but they're bigger and meaner than most. Would it not be better to play the part of cooperative, innocent victim to earn the sympathy of the judge? Espescially if it was not burdensome to do so?
Remember, the plaintif wants a settlement, and the defense wants the suit dropped or dismissed (preferably with prejudice). Anything the defense can do to improve their odds strikes me as a good strategy.
IANAL (Surprise, surprise, surprise!), but I'd think the judge would be rather upset if one of the parties could have taken simple, reasonable, steps, that would have a good chance of the suit being dropped before hogging the court's time. Faxing a death certificate looks like a simple, reasonable, step. (Personally, I'dve sent a notarized copy by registered mail as well).
Armed with that evidence, the defense would probably have a good chance at having the case dropped with prejudice by a pissed off judge if the plaintiff decided to pursue it anyway.
Fortunately, I am not paid on the basis of my spelling and proofreading.
The requirement is to maintain a "wife in the manner to which she has become accustomed". This applies before divorce (as well as after, for ex-wives), and is intended to prevent husbands from abandoning wives -- there being a right to support even before divorce. And, it's the government, not the ex, that determines the standard -- I know of a case where someone was jailed for failing to pay CA$60,000 child support annually on a salary of CA$45,000: the ex found a school in Switzerland with tuition at CA$5,000 a month, which would have better met the special needs of the couple's daughter, currently in the father's custody, and attending the best special needs school in Canada he could afford. (They divorced because of the daughter's special needs). Ex won custody and a variance for an additional CA$5,000 child support a month so the daughter could attend a "more suitable" school.
Of course, the support order could not be met, and the father was jailed until he would meet it. Damn liberal Canadian judges. Not surprisingly, the daughter does not attend the Swiss school, and furthermore can no longer afford to attend her former school. Both children (he had a normal son as well), as well as ex wife are now worse off because there are no support payments. (They get welfare at the taxpayers' expense).
This stems from a seeming innocent requirement that children are entitled to the "best" care.
I have a standard for employers as well -- I generally don't work for people who don't read. Furthermore, I have rejected job offers when the interview was not sufficiently difficult or thorough -- I've worked side by side with morons as well as geniuses, and I prefer the latter.
Yes, I am opinionated, and I speak my mind. It's saved various employers million$ in the past -- at least those that listened. The rest, well, they're history.
Now, excuse my, while I improve my present employers bottom line through automation.