The first question is whether your notes are nearly all pure text or whether your notes include mathematical symbols, diagrams or pictures of some sort. If it's the latter, then your fastest, easiest, most flexible, lowest overhead input method is still pen and paper. If you go this route, get a good fountain pen and good quality paper. A fountain pen, unlike a ballpoint, can write with near-zero pressure, which means you can you can write for much longer before your hand starts to cramp up. That's a major advantage if you're sitting in classes taking notes for hours at a time. Good quality, inexpensive fountain pens include things like the Lamy Safari, Faber Castell Basic or Pilot Metropolitan. If you want to go up market a bit from there, I'd suggest having a look at the super-cool looking Namiki Falcon. Top quality paper means Clairefontaine or Rhodia (which are both owned by the same company). Leuchtturm is not quite as good, but still quite good and less expensive. The downside to pen and paper comes at the back end, in that you can't sort, search, copy and paste etc.
If you'd rather take notes on a laptop, then, like other commenters, I'd suggest Emacs Org Mode. Despite its intimidating reputation, learning the basics of Emacs is actually pretty easy and you need to know only a tiny percentage of the capabilities of Emacs in order to use Org mode. You can pick up those basics in 30 minutes and lots of people do useful work with Emacs without ever learning more than that. The upside is that Org Mode can do everything you describe, it's as customizable as any software you'll ever encounter and it stores everything in plain text mode that will always be accessible, not some proprietary binary format that will be unreadable if the software vendor ever goes out of business. Besides the initial learning curve, Org Mode (like any software) requires a bit more overhead effort on the front end compared to pen and paper, but you get your reward at the back end because you'll be able to search, sort, copy, paste, and slice and dice your notes however you like.
Personally, I'd go with Org Mode unless the nature of your notes (e.g. lots of pictures, flow charts etc.) makes keyboard input impractical. Even then you could consider Org Mode for the text plus pen and paper for the occasional picture/diagram, then scan the picture/diagram to pdf to include with your Org Mode notes later.
If you're interested in Emacs / Org Mode, then "Learning GNU Emacs" (3rd ed) is a bit old but still the best book out there on Emacs. Get that book plus download the Org Mode manual and maybe the latest Emacs manual from the FSF and that's all you'll need.
1) historically, a type of legal question known as an "equitable" claim (or equitable defense) has been decided by the judge, not a jury [for ancient historical reasons I won't get into here on Slashdot]
2) there are some cases which refer to copyright fair use as an equitable defense but it's not clear if those cases are using the term "equitable" as that term is used in (1)
3) some cases have put the fair use defense to the jury to decide, but without considering the issue I have described in (1) and (2)
4) I'd like the parties to tell me, in writing, what they think the correct answer to this issue is, and why
5) once I get the written submissions in (4), I'll decide whether the judge or the jury should rule on the copyright fair use defense
I love the way those guys can watch CSI and have no problem agreeing that a 99.9% DNA match "proves" the suspect is the real father and then turn around and claim that a 95% DNA match between a human and a chimpanzee is just Satan's plot to deceive you into believing in evolution.
One thing you need is a socially tolerant environment. Sergey Brin's father said in an interview that they left Russia because he didn't think his son, as a Jew, would ever be able to get a fair shake in Russia. In Silicon Valley no one cares what religion anyone is. How many nerds fresh out of college want to take a job in a dry county in rural Alabama?
"Guys like Dwight Whorley deserve to be in jail. I'm glad society isn't forced to tolerate his sickness."
I wonder how many millions of Americans have read Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" or seen the British TV mini-series "Queer as Folk" (which depicted sex between a 15 year old and a 29 year old) or watched the movie "y tu Mama Tambien" (which depicts teens having sex).
The feds are going to need a lot more prisons to hold all those people.
I think from now on whenever I read a post on Slashdot that mocks people as idiots for not being techologically sophisticated I'm going to think of the posts on this story, virtually all of which are completely clueless about the law in a way comparable to someone who doesn't know what an operating system is and thinks Microsoft Windows is somehow an inherent part of every computer.
It works like this. The statute of frauds is an ancient English statute that requires certain contracts to be in writing in order to be valid. Most contracts do not have to be in writing to be valid. However, back in the day, Parliament decided there was so much fraud based on suspicious witnesses showing up and swearing you really did promise to sell your estate for a pittance that something had to be done. What they did was enact the statute of frauds and since then, English contracts for certain things (such as the sale of land) must be in writing to be valid. The exact scope of that is actually quite complex, but that's the basic idea.
At the time of the American revolution, much law was not in the form of statutes enacted by legislatures, but rather based on precedent, that is to say decisions previously rendered by the courts. That's part of what makes it a common law system. After the revolution, US state courts couldn't operate in a legal vacuum, so they continued to rely on English common law decisions for many years, not because they were obligated to do so, but because they had to come up with rules for dealing with situations, and English common law was a familar, readily acccessible source of such rules. Many states had reception statutes that instructed their courts to look to English common law precisely because they needed a source of law to apply and couldn't make up an entire legal system from scratch. Obviously today American courts don't need to look at English common law anymore except in certain very rare situations as we have over 200 years of our own cases to look at now. However, we still have an analogous situation today in which the courts of one state will sometimes look at the decisions of another state for guidance where an issue is coming up for the first time. It's not because the other state's decisions are binding, but because they might have some good ideas and good reasoning that are worth adopting.
Today, most if not all states have enacted their own statute of frauds. The terms vary from state to state but the basic idea is the same, namely that certain contracts must be in writing to be valid. Whole books have been written on the statue of frauds. Visit the library of your local law school if you want to see more analysis than you ever imagined was possible on this issue.
They don't sound very impressed with Creative's claim.
"The "breaking news" e-mail alert issued to reporters Tuesday morning by Creative Labs was bound to attract attention.
It trumpeted news that the company had received a patent for an important interface used in portable media players. The alert named Apple Computer four times, noting that Creative Labs had applied for its patent well before Apple's iPod hit the market. The implication, as subtle as a freight train, was that Creative planned to assert its patent against Apple.
The news alert included instructions for an afternoon conference call, presumably to discuss the matter with Creative executives. This was big news and scads of reporters, including many from the national media, were lured into calling. But rather than discuss what was promised, Creative used the opportunity to shill for a new line of handheld digital entertainment products, which were barely mentioned in the patent news alert."
and
"Since Creative itself stoked the flames by naming Apple and the iPod in the headline of its news release, the company was repeatedly asked whether it planned to sue Apple to recover royalties. But McHugh stayed on message, preferring instead to leverage its captive audience by discussing its upcoming products. "
I don't think Apple's going to be throwing any royalties in Creative's direction any time soon.
Because, unlike the other products you list, the Constitution specifically granted the states the power to regulate alcohol sales as part of the amendment that repealed prohibition. Hence the Supreme Court had to decide if this superceded the Commerce Clause that reserves to Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court said it didn't, which means states (on this issue at least) have to treat alcohol like other products, i.e. no discrimination against out of state producers.
Judge Kimball issued an order// Judge Kimball made a decision
regarding SCO's Ex Parte Motion to Adjourn the April 21, 2005 Argument on SCO's Motion to Amend its Complaint// A complaint is the document you use to start a lawsuit in federal court - it states what your claim is about. SCO wanted to revise its complaint in some way. April 21, 2005 was the date set for the parties to argue over whether it should be allowed to amend. SCO asked the court (lawyers say "brought a motion") to adjourn (i.e. postpone) that date. "Ex parte" means they didn't notify the other side that they were asking for a postponement - normally not a good idea. Despite the other side not being present, SCO still lost.
This is a purely procedural ruling. All it means is the arguments over whether SCO can amend will go ahead on April 21, 2005 as scheduled.
"Groklaw has up an article stating that judge Kimball has issued an order regarding SCO's Ex Parte Motion to Adjourn the April 21, 2005 Argument on SCO's Motion to Amend Its Complaint: The Motion is denied. SCO has finally filed its 10Q." From the article: "The court declines to adjourn the hearing. Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that SCO's Ex Parte Motion to Adjourn the April 21, 2005 Argument on SCO's Motion to Amend Its Complaint is DENIED. In addition to hearing SCO's Motion to Amend its Complaint and SCO's Motion to Compel the Deposition of Samuel Palmisano at the April 21, 2005 hearing, the parties are hereby NOTIFIED that the court will also hear argument regarding the parties' Proposed Scheduling Orders."
I'll be curious to see how that principle enables you to set a minimum age for getting married, or speed limits on the highways, or a tax rate, or any number of other things that governments do every day.
Virtually all state legislation has some impact on interstate commerce. Speed limits affect companies travelling through the state, minimum wage laws affect out of state business operating in the state etc. That doesn't mean that the state legislation is invalid. There's a vast realm of things that states are free to legislate upon if Congress doesn't pre-empt them, even things that incidentally affect inter-state commerce, and relatively few things so closely connected to interstate commerce that states cannot legislate in those areas even if Congress hasn't.
If you think the U.S. Supreme Court is going to say you don't have to pay income tax, dream on.
But first, read Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991) describing these "I don't have to pay income tax" arguments as obviously frivolous, followed by United States v. Cheek, 3 F.3d 1057 (7th Cir. 1993), the decision upholding Mr. Cheek's prison sentence.
"The other fact is lawyers do not produce new products in a society. They are a result of people being greedy and utterly miserable to one another. The state of the legal profession in Canada is not as bad as the USA - the concept of "nominal" damages still exists."
Engineers don't produce new products either in that they don't personally build what they design. If you count designs or programs as products, I don't see why a lawyer's contract or prospectus or articles of incorporation wouldn't qualify as a product as well.
Also, since you're presumably not greedy or miserable towards other people, you will no doubt forego retaining a lawyer when you want to buy a house, or draft a will, or get divorced, or get some advice about the absurdly one sided employment agreement your employer has presented to you.
Actually there are lots of Supreme Court cases striking down laws on the basis of gender discrimination. Equal protection works for everyone, it's just that gender doesn't get the "strict scrutiny" that race classifications do but a law can still be unconstitutional even on the lesser standard applicable to gender discrimination.
I hereby volunteer to spill coffee on myself in return for $400,000. Sure she was hurt, but $400,000 for being out of commission for 8 days? That's probably more than she could earn in 8 years.
That's why New York City has an ordinance prohibiting discrimination in renting apartments on the basis of the renter's profession, precisely because landlords were refusing to rent to lawyers.
Now what would be really nifty would be for them to start offering Lotus Smartsuite - still an excellent choice even if IBM doesn't seem to be very interested in marketing it. Were it not for file formats I'd take Lotus Word Pro over MS Word any day of the week.
I'm still using the HP 12C calculator I bought for use in university around 1988 and it still works perfectly. It's an awesome calculator. I have two others as backup but the original just won't quit.
Slashdot Mirror
Los Angeles is a great city. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The weather alone is awesome, the other stuff is a bonus.
The first question is whether your notes are nearly all pure text or whether your notes include mathematical symbols, diagrams or pictures of some sort. If it's the latter, then your fastest, easiest, most flexible, lowest overhead input method is still pen and paper. If you go this route, get a good fountain pen and good quality paper. A fountain pen, unlike a ballpoint, can write with near-zero pressure, which means you can you can write for much longer before your hand starts to cramp up. That's a major advantage if you're sitting in classes taking notes for hours at a time. Good quality, inexpensive fountain pens include things like the Lamy Safari, Faber Castell Basic or Pilot Metropolitan. If you want to go up market a bit from there, I'd suggest having a look at the super-cool looking Namiki Falcon. Top quality paper means Clairefontaine or Rhodia (which are both owned by the same company). Leuchtturm is not quite as good, but still quite good and less expensive. The downside to pen and paper comes at the back end, in that you can't sort, search, copy and paste etc.
If you'd rather take notes on a laptop, then, like other commenters, I'd suggest Emacs Org Mode. Despite its intimidating reputation, learning the basics of Emacs is actually pretty easy and you need to know only a tiny percentage of the capabilities of Emacs in order to use Org mode. You can pick up those basics in 30 minutes and lots of people do useful work with Emacs without ever learning more than that. The upside is that Org Mode can do everything you describe, it's as customizable as any software you'll ever encounter and it stores everything in plain text mode that will always be accessible, not some proprietary binary format that will be unreadable if the software vendor ever goes out of business. Besides the initial learning curve, Org Mode (like any software) requires a bit more overhead effort on the front end compared to pen and paper, but you get your reward at the back end because you'll be able to search, sort, copy, paste, and slice and dice your notes however you like.
Personally, I'd go with Org Mode unless the nature of your notes (e.g. lots of pictures, flow charts etc.) makes keyboard input impractical. Even then you could consider Org Mode for the text plus pen and paper for the occasional picture/diagram, then scan the picture/diagram to pdf to include with your Org Mode notes later.
If you're interested in Emacs / Org Mode, then "Learning GNU Emacs" (3rd ed) is a bit old but still the best book out there on Emacs. Get that book plus download the Org Mode manual and maybe the latest Emacs manual from the FSF and that's all you'll need.
is The Economist.
What the decision is saying is this:
1) historically, a type of legal question known as an "equitable" claim (or equitable defense) has been decided by the judge, not a jury [for ancient historical reasons I won't get into here on Slashdot]
2) there are some cases which refer to copyright fair use as an equitable defense but it's not clear if those cases are using the term "equitable" as that term is used in (1)
3) some cases have put the fair use defense to the jury to decide, but without considering the issue I have described in (1) and (2)
4) I'd like the parties to tell me, in writing, what they think the correct answer to this issue is, and why
5) once I get the written submissions in (4), I'll decide whether the judge or the jury should rule on the copyright fair use defense
I love the way those guys can watch CSI and have no problem agreeing that a 99.9% DNA match "proves" the suspect is the real father and then turn around and claim that a 95% DNA match between a human and a chimpanzee is just Satan's plot to deceive you into believing in evolution.
One thing you need is a socially tolerant environment. Sergey Brin's father said in an interview that they left Russia because he didn't think his son, as a Jew, would ever be able to get a fair shake in Russia. In Silicon Valley no one cares what religion anyone is. How many nerds fresh out of college want to take a job in a dry county in rural Alabama?
House of Flying Daggers was a great movie.
"Guys like Dwight Whorley deserve to be in jail. I'm glad society isn't forced to tolerate his sickness."
I wonder how many millions of Americans have read Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" or seen the British TV mini-series "Queer as Folk" (which depicted sex between a 15 year old and a 29 year old) or watched the movie "y tu Mama Tambien" (which depicts teens having sex).
The feds are going to need a lot more prisons to hold all those people.
I think from now on whenever I read a post on Slashdot that mocks people as idiots for not being techologically sophisticated I'm going to think of the posts on this story, virtually all of which are completely clueless about the law in a way comparable to someone who doesn't know what an operating system is and thinks Microsoft Windows is somehow an inherent part of every computer.
It works like this. The statute of frauds is an ancient English statute that requires certain contracts to be in writing in order to be valid. Most contracts do not have to be in writing to be valid. However, back in the day, Parliament decided there was so much fraud based on suspicious witnesses showing up and swearing you really did promise to sell your estate for a pittance that something had to be done. What they did was enact the statute of frauds and since then, English contracts for certain things (such as the sale of land) must be in writing to be valid. The exact scope of that is actually quite complex, but that's the basic idea.
At the time of the American revolution, much law was not in the form of statutes enacted by legislatures, but rather based on precedent, that is to say decisions previously rendered by the courts. That's part of what makes it a common law system. After the revolution, US state courts couldn't operate in a legal vacuum, so they continued to rely on English common law decisions for many years, not because they were obligated to do so, but because they had to come up with rules for dealing with situations, and English common law was a familar, readily acccessible source of such rules. Many states had reception statutes that instructed their courts to look to English common law precisely because they needed a source of law to apply and couldn't make up an entire legal system from scratch.
Obviously today American courts don't need to look at English common law anymore except in certain very rare situations as we have over 200 years of our own cases to look at now. However, we still have an analogous situation today in which the courts of one state will sometimes look at the decisions of another state for guidance where an issue is coming up for the first time. It's not because the other state's decisions are binding, but because they might have some good ideas and good reasoning that are worth adopting.
Today, most if not all states have enacted their own statute of frauds. The terms vary from state to state but the basic idea is the same, namely that certain contracts must be in writing to be valid. Whole books have been written on the statue of frauds. Visit the library of your local law school if you want to see more analysis than you ever imagined was possible on this issue.
Here's a quote from a Forbes Magazine article on the subject
r tner=yahootix)
(http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/08/31/
creative-patent-switch-cx_dl_0831creative.html?pa
They don't sound very impressed with Creative's claim.
"The "breaking news" e-mail alert issued to reporters Tuesday morning by Creative Labs was bound to attract attention.
It trumpeted news that the company had received a patent for an important interface used in portable media players. The alert named Apple Computer four times, noting that Creative Labs had applied for its patent well before Apple's iPod hit the market. The implication, as subtle as a freight train, was that Creative planned to assert its patent against Apple.
The news alert included instructions for an afternoon conference call, presumably to discuss the matter with Creative executives. This was big news and scads of reporters, including many from the national media, were lured into calling. But rather than discuss what was promised, Creative used the opportunity to shill for a new line of handheld digital entertainment products, which were barely mentioned in the patent news alert."
and
"Since Creative itself stoked the flames by naming Apple and the iPod in the headline of its news release, the company was repeatedly asked whether it planned to sue Apple to recover royalties. But McHugh stayed on message, preferring instead to leverage its captive audience by discussing its upcoming products. "
I don't think Apple's going to be throwing any royalties in Creative's direction any time soon.
Another brilliant parody from The Onion - brilliant because it so accurately illustrates the mind set of the religious right.
& n=2&ref=myy
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133
Because, unlike the other products you list, the Constitution specifically granted the states the power to regulate alcohol sales as part of the amendment that repealed prohibition. Hence the Supreme Court had to decide if this superceded the Commerce Clause that reserves to Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court said it didn't, which means states (on this issue at least) have to treat alcohol like other products, i.e. no discrimination against out of state producers.
But everyone knows Kansas is the place to be for top notch biological science...
Translation from legalese into English:
// Judge Kimball made a decision
// A complaint is the document you use to start a lawsuit in federal court - it states what your claim is about. SCO wanted to revise its complaint in some way. April 21, 2005 was the date set for the parties to argue over whether it should be allowed to amend. SCO asked the court (lawyers say "brought a motion") to adjourn (i.e. postpone) that date. "Ex parte" means they didn't notify the other side that they were asking for a postponement - normally not a good idea. Despite the other side not being present, SCO still lost.
Judge Kimball issued an order
regarding SCO's Ex Parte Motion to Adjourn the April 21, 2005 Argument on SCO's Motion to Amend its Complaint
This is a purely procedural ruling. All it means is the arguments over whether SCO can amend will go ahead on April 21, 2005 as scheduled.
"Groklaw has up an article stating that judge Kimball has issued an order regarding SCO's Ex Parte Motion to Adjourn the April 21, 2005 Argument on SCO's Motion to Amend Its Complaint: The Motion is denied. SCO has finally filed its 10Q." From the article: "The court declines to adjourn the hearing. Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that SCO's Ex Parte Motion to Adjourn the April 21, 2005 Argument on SCO's Motion to Amend Its Complaint is DENIED. In addition to hearing SCO's Motion to Amend its Complaint and SCO's Motion to Compel the Deposition of Samuel Palmisano at the April 21, 2005 hearing, the parties are hereby NOTIFIED that the court will also hear argument regarding the parties' Proposed Scheduling Orders."
November 23? Just before my exams???
Damn you Blizzard, DAMN YOU!!!
Care to specify any of these laws that you think ensure the "powers of the EULA"?
I'll be curious to see how that principle enables you to set a minimum age for getting married, or speed limits on the highways, or a tax rate, or any number of other things that governments do every day.
Virtually all state legislation has some impact on interstate commerce. Speed limits affect companies travelling through the state, minimum wage laws affect out of state business operating in the state etc. That doesn't mean that the state legislation is invalid. There's a vast realm of things that states are free to legislate upon if Congress doesn't pre-empt them, even things that incidentally affect inter-state commerce, and relatively few things so closely connected to interstate commerce that states cannot legislate in those areas even if Congress hasn't.
If you think the U.S. Supreme Court is going to say you don't have to pay income tax, dream on.
But first, read Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991) describing these "I don't have to pay income tax" arguments as obviously frivolous, followed by United States v. Cheek, 3 F.3d 1057 (7th Cir. 1993), the decision upholding Mr. Cheek's prison sentence.
"The other fact is lawyers do not produce new products in a society. They are a result of people being greedy and utterly miserable to one another. The state of the legal profession in Canada is not as bad as the USA - the concept of "nominal" damages still exists."
Engineers don't produce new products either in that they don't personally build what they design. If you count designs or programs as products, I don't see why a lawyer's contract or prospectus or articles of incorporation wouldn't qualify as a product as well.
Also, since you're presumably not greedy or miserable towards other people, you will no doubt forego retaining a lawyer when you want to buy a house, or draft a will, or get divorced, or get some advice about the absurdly one sided employment agreement your employer has presented to you.
Actually there are lots of Supreme Court cases striking down laws on the basis of gender discrimination. Equal protection works for everyone, it's just that gender doesn't get the "strict scrutiny" that race classifications do but a law can still be unconstitutional even on the lesser standard applicable to gender discrimination.
I hereby volunteer to spill coffee on myself in return for $400,000. Sure she was hurt, but $400,000 for being out of commission for 8 days? That's probably more than she could earn in 8 years.
That's why New York City has an ordinance prohibiting discrimination in renting apartments on the basis of the renter's profession, precisely because landlords were refusing to rent to lawyers.
Now what would be really nifty would be for them to start offering Lotus Smartsuite - still an excellent choice even if IBM doesn't seem to be very interested in marketing it. Were it not for file formats I'd take Lotus Word Pro over MS Word any day of the week.
I'm still using the HP 12C calculator I bought for use in university around 1988 and it still works perfectly. It's an awesome calculator. I have two others as backup but the original just won't quit.