Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff?
on
KDE 4.0 RC 1 Released
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· Score: 1
according to KDE fanboys, beta means that it compiles and release candidate means they've decided what features are going in.
Presumably this has something to do with English not being the first language of a large chunk of (most?) KDE developers. A release candidate is a candidate for release. It's hugely disappointing to see the "RC 1" headline and then find out it's not an RC as the rest of the world defines it.
Something that compiles... hell, there's not a name for that. I guess the nearest name would be a "build", but a build typically goes through multiple statuses. At the risk of stating the obvious the usual statuses are "alpha" testing which is "internal" (in open source this is just a recommendation of course), and "beta", which includes external testing, "release candidate" where QA has cleared the build for release if nothing major crops up during the candidacy period, and "production" (aka "release"). If the build is known never to be intended to be promoted to production then it can't be a release candidate.
Labelling something not intended for release as a "release candidate" is deceptive - hardly a good look for anybody.
there's a reason why handwritten modifications to contracts are generally initialled by both parties
Type up a new version of the signature page, adding a new final clause:
All other clauses are null and void unless, prior to the seventh day after the employee signs this document, the entire area of Washington DC is destroyed by a meteor strike.
Give it to them eight days after you signed it. Hey, somebody who asks you to sign this document is not respecting you, why should you show any more respect?
While one may claim a common law trademark and notify others that the user considers the mark a trademark, the enforceability is extremely limited.
It probably bears explaining so that all the non-lawyer-types on/. can understand why there are apparently conflicting opinions on this. The conflict is really one of semantics rather than of substance.
While a trademark, properly so called under United States Federal Law, requires registration, it is possible to use an identifying mark in trade without registration and obtain some protection under the common law tort of passing off. Common law is State law in the United States, so this protection will be given under the laws of individual States not under the Federal system. The protection of registered trade marks under the Federal system is more comprehensive than that afforded by the tort of passing off. Identifying you mark with "TM" gives people notice of your claim to the mark and they can decide for themselves whether they wish to risk a suit.
Of course with the mess that is US federalism some States will have their own trademark registration systems in place.
Now TINLA, if you want legal advice retain an attorney (or solicitor), but generally the tort of passing off requires that the defendant have intended to make somebody else believe that their product or service was in fact the product or service of the plaintiff. So if the "simpledog.com" web site is badged that way then it may be that the domain name has acquired sufficient association with that particular service to give rise to a possible action for passing off if some prospective defendant were to create a site with a similar domain name, similar badging and a similar service.
On top of this there may be issues with unrelated statutes, as in Australia where a prohibition exists against misleading or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce (and "misleading" here includes inadvertently misleading conduct).
Seriously, taking into account the number of stars, the number of planets orbiting the stars, and the span of time that they're likely to be spewing radio waves, the task is monumental compared to any resources that SETI may get.
The number of stars has no effect on the time taken to identify a civilisation. The population density of the galaxy does. It doesn't matter how many stars there are, if every hundredth star system has an earth-like planet, with a life-form that is emitting radio waves, chances are you will have success after checking just 100 stars. The thing is we have no real way of knowing what the real statistic is until we've found a few, or at least until we've found one that is transmitting us the Encyclopedia Galactica's chapter that has this information.
You do [need to register it before pursuing legal action in the US]? News to me. Could you cite a reference?
17 USC 411 prevents the action (only applies to "United States works", which includes works first published in the United States) and 17 USC 412 prevents access to particular remedies (affects works first published anywhere).
Despite what has been said elsewhere, there is an option for statutory damages (17 USC 504(a)(2) and 17 USC 504(c)), which is one of the remedies subject to 17 USC 412.
Interestingly even without statutory damages US copyright law allows for double-recovery of some amounts since the copyright holder can claim both their actual damages and the infringer's profits without either being set-off against the other (17 USC 504(b)). In the case where the copyright holder claims their own lost profits from the infringement and the infringer's profits from the infringement there is double recovery.
Especially sanctimonious people like liberal politicians, who want to dictate values to the rest of us cause we are too dumb to understand.
This is so true - liberals just love dictating values. After all, liberals are the ones who attached conditions on foreign and community aid so that only organisations who advocate abstinence can get it, and no way in hell will they get anything if they hand out condoms. Liberals are the ones who insist that everybody should regularly attend church and decry the fact that fewer people want to attend church. Liberals are the ones who like to tell homosexuals that their lifestyle is impure and wrong and they should never be allowed to marry or even have civil unions.
Damn those liberals for trying to force us to adhere to their set of values. Damn them for making laws that try to enforce those values and refusing to change the law to let the rest of us decide for ourselves what our values should be.
All you really need is a motivated, talented, sociopathic personality that believes a doomsday device is to his or her benefit or furthers his goals.
Specifically, all you need is one eco-terrorist who believes that mankind is doing so much damage to the environment that humanity must be wiped out to preserve all the other life on the planet. Fortunately there are none of those in existence...
Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?
I won't destroy all of humanity. The virus I will create will just destroy all males except me. Then it will be my responsibility to repopulate the planet. Snoo-snoo galore. Bwahahahahaha.
99% of the people who post a reply have never filed a patent in their life. Yes, they're idiots.
The problem with idiots is that they are usually too stupid to recognise their own idiocy.
In my experience it is idiots that file patents believing their trivial, worthless idea actually merits one. Smart people are more likely to realise that what while they may have been pretty clever coming up with a particular thing, that doesn't mean it's so innovative it merits the protection of a statutory monopoly, and are less likely (for a variety of social reasons that I am sure are beyond you) to pretend otherwise in order to cheat the system.
Based on the abstract, LISTSERV would seem to be prior art. As I recall LISTSERV could indeed respond to commands in the content of messages, forwarding messages lacking valid commands to the list operator. Even if LISTSERV and Majordomo do not implement all of the claims, they would certainly provide part of the evidentiary basis for invalidating the patent on grounds of obviousness.
Going through the claim, many of the claims are obviously just plain silly. Take as an example claim 5 which is for "The method of claim 4, wherein the sub-categories include product service subject matter and product sales subject matter". That adds nothing even remotely capable of being described as an inventive step to claim 4 and so it necessarily stands or falls together with claim 4.
Even if there is some implementation that is much more involved and complex than the descriptions in the patent, the patent has to be interpreted standing alone, not in the context of an external implementation, and in that context the stuff that's there involves no innovation, let alone invention, and lacks anything even slightly complex.
I am not going to go through all 66 claims since the first 20 or so are so silly as to make it not worth my time examining all of them in detail. Suffice it to say, Amy Rice and Julie Hsu (the "inventors") are indeed idiots if they think there's anything meriting a patent here.
So apparently their goal was to buy the shittiest computer company in existence, but they were stymied in that goal so they bought the second shittiest.
Instant runoff also helps to entrench the two-party system. The real fix is Condorcet voting, which is the only known method that is based around the idea that the candidate who wins should be the one who gains the support of a majority when pitted directly against each other candidate. As a side effect it tends to make extremists of either persuasion unelectable.
I can't think of a time where, as an ordinary person, I've needed to know the details on what constitutes hearsay under the Federal Rules of Evidence and when hearsay is admissible.
True, although when my wife went to testify in a court case last year I gave her a brief explanation of the hearsay rule. The defendant, who was running his own case, asked her about something that was not within her personal knowledge so she answered "I don't know, you would have to ask them," which elicited a chuckle from the judge and all of the legal practitioners in the room (if she didn't know the hearsay rule, she'd have just said "I don't know", which wouldn't have been nearly as funny).
I guess you've gotta be a lawyer to see the humour though.
For starters, just consider the effects of promissory estoppel
Promissory estoppel is not a part of contract law, although it may be taught in a contract law class and it may have practical results that are similar to some of those arising from a contract.
The vast majority of legal contracts in the US do not involve a signature.
True, but promissory estoppel does not come into it.
A license is not a type of contract, at least not in the USA.
I bet you're regretting posting this given all of the crud it has generated. Now IAAL, and what you say here is basically right - very basically. Your detail is better, but still gets some things wrong. On the other hand a lot of the responses you got are not right either and some seem rather abusive about something that is a lot more complex than they seem to understand.
"License" is just lawyer-speak for "permission". If you give somebody a "license" you are just giving them permission to do something that would otherwise be a violation of your rights. A license strictly so called never amounts to a contract.
Where this gets murkier is that most software licenses are designed to give you rights in return for trading away others. If it seeks to restrict rights you already have, then absent a narrow range of exceptions the license will have to also be a contract. While it might be headed up "License", it may attempt to be a contract and in certain circumstances might become one.
As an example, in Australia under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s47B, a person who has bought a copy of a computer program has the legal right to load it onto a computer and run it for ordinary use. In such a case the user does not need the separate license, and so does not need to rely on or agree to it. But there is a catch - under s47B(2) any license from the copyright holder can revoke this permission. In a well-written license agreement designed for Australian laws one of the first things in the agreement will be an explicit revocation of all implied or statutory rights to the extent permitted by law. You then have to rely on the rights explicitly granted in the license to use the software, and if there are any other terms in that license that take rights away from you or impose obligations on you, your reliance on the license will effectively make it a contract.
In the US the equivalent statutory right appears in 17 USC 117, but there seems to be nothing corresponding to the Australian provision that allows this right to be revoked by the license. This has some interesting consequences for Microsoft's EULAs in the US (except in the case of multi-user installations from the same media where 17 USC 117 might not apply because making copies on additional systems may not be "an essential step in the utilisation of the computer program").
In the case of the GPL, however, the whole thing is premised on the fact that the person to be bound is redistributing. This is not covered by the s47B (in Australia) or 17 USC 117 (in the US) statutory rights and would be a breach of copyright if done without a license. You have to rely on the license to redistribute. In the least favourable view to the copyright holder, the license is a conditional one for which, if all of the terms are not adhered to by somebody redistributing the software, the copyright holder could sue for breach of copyright. However the GPL is also reasonably viewed as a contract which you breach by redistributing without adhering to its terms, and in with the grace periods for violations in GPLv3 this may be the preferable view, and if so viewed the copyright holder could sue for breach of contract. The only difference between these approaches is going to be in the amount of damages, and in fact the options for damages in copyright law are generally more favourable to the copyright holder, especially where, as in the case of the GPL, the copyright holder has no damages, which is no doubt one of the reasons the GPL explicitly revokes the right to redistribute as a consequence of breach.
So in summary, a license is not a contract, but a document that purports to be a license may in fact contain the terms of a contract and the fact that the document is headed "license" will not alter that.
It is also not true that a signature is necessary to form a contract. You don't even need writing, although lawyers prefer writing and signature because it makes it easier to prove the existence of a contract in a court.
What management really want is support (i.e. someone on the end of the phone who knows how to fix it).
They also want Santa Claus to personally deliver them a nice shiny Lexus for Christmas, with the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy singing Christmas Carols in the back seat.
Seriously, has telephone support ever known how to fix anything?
Actually it is more likely that a good Linux support shop will be able to fix a problem than that Windows tech support will be able to fix something. In the absolute worst case, the back room people Linux shop can get access to the source code and see what's not working. While that could theoretically happen at Microsoft - they could get development to look at it - it won't.
Windows 98, with IE4, was just the first time IE wasn't complete and total crap
I'd go the other way. IE2 was the best IE there was. It was lightweight and fast. By the time they got to IE4 they had decided to modularise it in such a way that the combination of components was many, many times bulkier and slower than IE2. Since IE2, every release has been worse than the previous one.
It's not possible to avoid breaking the law, and nearly impossible to even hold every law in a particular region in ones head.
True, and even the ones people think they know, most often they do not. For example, how often have you, when trying to change lanes, had somebody in the other lane increase speed to try to prevent you doing so. They think they have the right of way so they are allowed to do this, but in reality they're engaging in menacing driving which is likely to get them some custodial time if caught, as opposed to the fine for somebody who wasn't giving way (all subject to variances in local laws, of course). And don't get me started on roundabouts - almost nobody in Sydney seems to understand the rules for using them.
Our system is massivly broken in that respect.
A good chunk of the laws are there to tell people to do things that they ought to be doing anyway. If people would just be decent to eachother many of them would not be necessary. Unfortunately most people are dishonest when they get the opportunity (ever found paper money and kept it?), hence the laws.
Do you think women should really stop wearing pants there because the laws says they can't?
Yes, please.
Re:Patent Business Model
on
Patents Don't Pay
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Why do you think lawyers usually prod you to settle out of court? Because it is invariably better for you?
It depends. If you are the plaintiff in a case prosecuted on a contingency basis in the US model it may be better for the law firm to settle early, but if you pay an hourly rate (as you will as the defendant or if you opt for the hourly rate) it is better for them to take the case to trial.
Of course the best long term plan for a law firm is to build up a reputation for success that brings clients in the door.
I suspect the original poster was pointing out that Bush labours under some major delusions. Of course "Thou shalt not kill" gets abandoned pretty quickly in Leviticus, but really, putting the civil and criminal codes of ancient Israel into a religious text was a pretty dumb idea all around anyway.
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according to KDE fanboys, beta means that it compiles and release candidate means they've decided what features are going in.
Presumably this has something to do with English not being the first language of a large chunk of (most?) KDE developers. A release candidate is a candidate for release. It's hugely disappointing to see the "RC 1" headline and then find out it's not an RC as the rest of the world defines it.
Something that compiles... hell, there's not a name for that. I guess the nearest name would be a "build", but a build typically goes through multiple statuses. At the risk of stating the obvious the usual statuses are "alpha" testing which is "internal" (in open source this is just a recommendation of course), and "beta", which includes external testing, "release candidate" where QA has cleared the build for release if nothing major crops up during the candidacy period, and "production" (aka "release"). If the build is known never to be intended to be promoted to production then it can't be a release candidate.
Labelling something not intended for release as a "release candidate" is deceptive - hardly a good look for anybody.
there's a reason why handwritten modifications to contracts are generally initialled by both parties
Type up a new version of the signature page, adding a new final clause:
Give it to them eight days after you signed it. Hey, somebody who asks you to sign this document is not respecting you, why should you show any more respect?
Come on, the top invention of 2007 has got to be Orbo.
While one may claim a common law trademark and notify others that the user considers the mark a trademark, the enforceability is extremely limited.
It probably bears explaining so that all the non-lawyer-types on /. can understand why there are apparently conflicting opinions on this. The conflict is really one of semantics rather than of substance.
While a trademark, properly so called under United States Federal Law, requires registration, it is possible to use an identifying mark in trade without registration and obtain some protection under the common law tort of passing off. Common law is State law in the United States, so this protection will be given under the laws of individual States not under the Federal system. The protection of registered trade marks under the Federal system is more comprehensive than that afforded by the tort of passing off. Identifying you mark with "TM" gives people notice of your claim to the mark and they can decide for themselves whether they wish to risk a suit.
Of course with the mess that is US federalism some States will have their own trademark registration systems in place.
Now TINLA, if you want legal advice retain an attorney (or solicitor), but generally the tort of passing off requires that the defendant have intended to make somebody else believe that their product or service was in fact the product or service of the plaintiff. So if the "simpledog.com" web site is badged that way then it may be that the domain name has acquired sufficient association with that particular service to give rise to a possible action for passing off if some prospective defendant were to create a site with a similar domain name, similar badging and a similar service.
On top of this there may be issues with unrelated statutes, as in Australia where a prohibition exists against misleading or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce (and "misleading" here includes inadvertently misleading conduct).
Seriously, taking into account the number of stars, the number of planets orbiting the stars, and the span of time that they're likely to be spewing radio waves, the task is monumental compared to any resources that SETI may get.
The number of stars has no effect on the time taken to identify a civilisation. The population density of the galaxy does. It doesn't matter how many stars there are, if every hundredth star system has an earth-like planet, with a life-form that is emitting radio waves, chances are you will have success after checking just 100 stars. The thing is we have no real way of knowing what the real statistic is until we've found a few, or at least until we've found one that is transmitting us the Encyclopedia Galactica's chapter that has this information.
You do [need to register it before pursuing legal action in the US]? News to me. Could you cite a reference?
17 USC 411 prevents the action (only applies to "United States works", which includes works first published in the United States) and 17 USC 412 prevents access to particular remedies (affects works first published anywhere).
Despite what has been said elsewhere, there is an option for statutory damages (17 USC 504(a)(2) and 17 USC 504(c)), which is one of the remedies subject to 17 USC 412.
Interestingly even without statutory damages US copyright law allows for double-recovery of some amounts since the copyright holder can claim both their actual damages and the infringer's profits without either being set-off against the other (17 USC 504(b)). In the case where the copyright holder claims their own lost profits from the infringement and the infringer's profits from the infringement there is double recovery.
That depends: What's a labium?
OK, you're clearly a geek, and clearly belong here.
My left labium is swollen, do I have the clap?
This person seems to be a geek who fantasises that there might actually be a woman somewhere on /.
Especially sanctimonious people like liberal politicians, who want to dictate values to the rest of us cause we are too dumb to understand.
This is so true - liberals just love dictating values. After all, liberals are the ones who attached conditions on foreign and community aid so that only organisations who advocate abstinence can get it, and no way in hell will they get anything if they hand out condoms. Liberals are the ones who insist that everybody should regularly attend church and decry the fact that fewer people want to attend church. Liberals are the ones who like to tell homosexuals that their lifestyle is impure and wrong and they should never be allowed to marry or even have civil unions.
Damn those liberals for trying to force us to adhere to their set of values. Damn them for making laws that try to enforce those values and refusing to change the law to let the rest of us decide for ourselves what our values should be.
I actually believe that intelligent life is very improbable
Hell, based on all the empirical evidence I think it safe to assume that intelligent life is impossible, deity or no deity.
All you really need is a motivated, talented, sociopathic personality that believes a doomsday device is to his or her benefit or furthers his goals.
Specifically, all you need is one eco-terrorist who believes that mankind is doing so much damage to the environment that humanity must be wiped out to preserve all the other life on the planet. Fortunately there are none of those in existence...
Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?
I won't destroy all of humanity. The virus I will create will just destroy all males except me. Then it will be my responsibility to repopulate the planet. Snoo-snoo galore. Bwahahahahaha.
99% of the people who post a reply have never filed a patent in their life. Yes, they're idiots.
The problem with idiots is that they are usually too stupid to recognise their own idiocy.
In my experience it is idiots that file patents believing their trivial, worthless idea actually merits one. Smart people are more likely to realise that what while they may have been pretty clever coming up with a particular thing, that doesn't mean it's so innovative it merits the protection of a statutory monopoly, and are less likely (for a variety of social reasons that I am sure are beyond you) to pretend otherwise in order to cheat the system.
Based on the abstract, LISTSERV would seem to be prior art. As I recall LISTSERV could indeed respond to commands in the content of messages, forwarding messages lacking valid commands to the list operator. Even if LISTSERV and Majordomo do not implement all of the claims, they would certainly provide part of the evidentiary basis for invalidating the patent on grounds of obviousness.
Going through the claim, many of the claims are obviously just plain silly. Take as an example claim 5 which is for "The method of claim 4, wherein the sub-categories include product service subject matter and product sales subject matter". That adds nothing even remotely capable of being described as an inventive step to claim 4 and so it necessarily stands or falls together with claim 4.
Even if there is some implementation that is much more involved and complex than the descriptions in the patent, the patent has to be interpreted standing alone, not in the context of an external implementation, and in that context the stuff that's there involves no innovation, let alone invention, and lacks anything even slightly complex.
I am not going to go through all 66 claims since the first 20 or so are so silly as to make it not worth my time examining all of them in detail. Suffice it to say, Amy Rice and Julie Hsu (the "inventors") are indeed idiots if they think there's anything meriting a patent here.
So apparently their goal was to buy the shittiest computer company in existence, but they were stymied in that goal so they bought the second shittiest.
They bought themselves?!?!?!
I vaguely remember something about it having to mix with the common garbage before it becomes fair game (though that could just be from a movie...).
You did indeed see it in a 1983 movie starring Michael Douglas. Wait a few years and you can see the new, improved version.
The patch? Instant Run-off Voting.
Instant runoff also helps to entrench the two-party system. The real fix is Condorcet voting, which is the only known method that is based around the idea that the candidate who wins should be the one who gains the support of a majority when pitted directly against each other candidate. As a side effect it tends to make extremists of either persuasion unelectable.
I can't think of a time where, as an ordinary person, I've needed to know the details on what constitutes hearsay under the Federal Rules of Evidence and when hearsay is admissible.
True, although when my wife went to testify in a court case last year I gave her a brief explanation of the hearsay rule. The defendant, who was running his own case, asked her about something that was not within her personal knowledge so she answered "I don't know, you would have to ask them," which elicited a chuckle from the judge and all of the legal practitioners in the room (if she didn't know the hearsay rule, she'd have just said "I don't know", which wouldn't have been nearly as funny).
I guess you've gotta be a lawyer to see the humour though.
For starters, just consider the effects of promissory estoppel
Promissory estoppel is not a part of contract law, although it may be taught in a contract law class and it may have practical results that are similar to some of those arising from a contract.
The vast majority of legal contracts in the US do not involve a signature.
True, but promissory estoppel does not come into it.
A license is not a type of contract, at least not in the USA.
I bet you're regretting posting this given all of the crud it has generated. Now IAAL, and what you say here is basically right - very basically. Your detail is better, but still gets some things wrong. On the other hand a lot of the responses you got are not right either and some seem rather abusive about something that is a lot more complex than they seem to understand.
"License" is just lawyer-speak for "permission". If you give somebody a "license" you are just giving them permission to do something that would otherwise be a violation of your rights. A license strictly so called never amounts to a contract.
Where this gets murkier is that most software licenses are designed to give you rights in return for trading away others. If it seeks to restrict rights you already have, then absent a narrow range of exceptions the license will have to also be a contract. While it might be headed up "License", it may attempt to be a contract and in certain circumstances might become one.
As an example, in Australia under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s47B, a person who has bought a copy of a computer program has the legal right to load it onto a computer and run it for ordinary use. In such a case the user does not need the separate license, and so does not need to rely on or agree to it. But there is a catch - under s47B(2) any license from the copyright holder can revoke this permission. In a well-written license agreement designed for Australian laws one of the first things in the agreement will be an explicit revocation of all implied or statutory rights to the extent permitted by law. You then have to rely on the rights explicitly granted in the license to use the software, and if there are any other terms in that license that take rights away from you or impose obligations on you, your reliance on the license will effectively make it a contract.
In the US the equivalent statutory right appears in 17 USC 117, but there seems to be nothing corresponding to the Australian provision that allows this right to be revoked by the license. This has some interesting consequences for Microsoft's EULAs in the US (except in the case of multi-user installations from the same media where 17 USC 117 might not apply because making copies on additional systems may not be "an essential step in the utilisation of the computer program").
In the case of the GPL, however, the whole thing is premised on the fact that the person to be bound is redistributing. This is not covered by the s47B (in Australia) or 17 USC 117 (in the US) statutory rights and would be a breach of copyright if done without a license. You have to rely on the license to redistribute. In the least favourable view to the copyright holder, the license is a conditional one for which, if all of the terms are not adhered to by somebody redistributing the software, the copyright holder could sue for breach of copyright. However the GPL is also reasonably viewed as a contract which you breach by redistributing without adhering to its terms, and in with the grace periods for violations in GPLv3 this may be the preferable view, and if so viewed the copyright holder could sue for breach of contract. The only difference between these approaches is going to be in the amount of damages, and in fact the options for damages in copyright law are generally more favourable to the copyright holder, especially where, as in the case of the GPL, the copyright holder has no damages, which is no doubt one of the reasons the GPL explicitly revokes the right to redistribute as a consequence of breach.
So in summary, a license is not a contract, but a document that purports to be a license may in fact contain the terms of a contract and the fact that the document is headed "license" will not alter that.
It is also not true that a signature is necessary to form a contract. You don't even need writing, although lawyers prefer writing and signature because it makes it easier to prove the existence of a contract in a court.
What management really want is support (i.e. someone on the end of the phone who knows how to fix it).
They also want Santa Claus to personally deliver them a nice shiny Lexus for Christmas, with the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy singing Christmas Carols in the back seat.
Seriously, has telephone support ever known how to fix anything?
Actually it is more likely that a good Linux support shop will be able to fix a problem than that Windows tech support will be able to fix something. In the absolute worst case, the back room people Linux shop can get access to the source code and see what's not working. While that could theoretically happen at Microsoft - they could get development to look at it - it won't.
Windows 98, with IE4, was just the first time IE wasn't complete and total crap
I'd go the other way. IE2 was the best IE there was. It was lightweight and fast. By the time they got to IE4 they had decided to modularise it in such a way that the combination of components was many, many times bulkier and slower than IE2. Since IE2, every release has been worse than the previous one.
It's not possible to avoid breaking the law, and nearly impossible to even hold every law in a particular region in ones head.
True, and even the ones people think they know, most often they do not. For example, how often have you, when trying to change lanes, had somebody in the other lane increase speed to try to prevent you doing so. They think they have the right of way so they are allowed to do this, but in reality they're engaging in menacing driving which is likely to get them some custodial time if caught, as opposed to the fine for somebody who wasn't giving way (all subject to variances in local laws, of course). And don't get me started on roundabouts - almost nobody in Sydney seems to understand the rules for using them.
Our system is massivly broken in that respect.
A good chunk of the laws are there to tell people to do things that they ought to be doing anyway. If people would just be decent to eachother many of them would not be necessary. Unfortunately most people are dishonest when they get the opportunity (ever found paper money and kept it?), hence the laws.
Obviously what they need is a giant Zorb.
Do you think women should really stop wearing pants there because the laws says they can't?
Yes, please.
Why do you think lawyers usually prod you to settle out of court? Because it is invariably better for you?
It depends. If you are the plaintiff in a case prosecuted on a contingency basis in the US model it may be better for the law firm to settle early, but if you pay an hourly rate (as you will as the defendant or if you opt for the hourly rate) it is better for them to take the case to trial.
Of course the best long term plan for a law firm is to build up a reputation for success that brings clients in the door.
Whatever happened to "Thou shalt not kill"?
I suspect the original poster was pointing out that Bush labours under some major delusions. Of course "Thou shalt not kill" gets abandoned pretty quickly in Leviticus, but really, putting the civil and criminal codes of ancient Israel into a religious text was a pretty dumb idea all around anyway.