Re:I wonder if the framers of the constitution...
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 1
A corporation is, under law, a "natural person" that has rights distinct from those of the persons who comprise it.
In Florida, at least, a corporation is a body corporate, distinct from a natural person. A natural person is what we think of as a natural person, as opposed to an artificial construct.
Note, by the way, that Pam Anderson would be considered a natural person, various modifications notwithstanding.
In court documents, a corporate person will often be identified as ``a Florida corporation'' while a natural person is often identified as ``a Florida resident''. See filings at http://www.payer.org/wvha/suit/ for examples.
I had to write an app that had the ability to walk through NT's process table... So I went to MSDN, and started searching. Very quickly I had an explanation
Not the best available example. Under linux, walking through the process table may be done with ls(1) or readdir(3).
In many locales private companies actually own the copyright on the law! They typically sell you a copy for a few hundred dollars, and it is not legal to distribute a copy of the law to anyone else as a public service, as doing so would violate copyright.
I believe that you may be mistaken. See Veeck v Southern Building Code
(Fed 5th Cir, #99-40632, 07-Jun-2002) for information on this subject.
In short, the 5th Circuit said that you may distribute the code of a municipal entity, without regard to the copyright of the author, so long as you distribute it as the code of that municipal entity.
In the year 2000, Florida had some problems with their election returns (tho nothing as massive as the problems of the September, 2002, primary).
Statistical Information
In November, 2000, Union County had about 5000 voters distributed amongst 11 precincts, which meant that on average they had about 450 people per precinct.
(This is similar to the large county where I live, except that we have far more precincts.)
By way of comparison, in September 2002, Dade County had 754 precincts; the number of voters and intended voters is uncertain, but it appears to have been fewer than 300000, or about 400 per precinct.
History in Union County
During the November, 2000, election, Union used a system where each voter got a piece of paper and a marker.
The paper had lists of candidates together with empty check-boxes next to the names. Voters marked their preference and deposited the papers in ballot boxes.
When the polls closed, the workers opened the ballot boxes, sorted the papers according to the marking for the first race, and counted them.
They then shuffled the papers back together, sorted them according to the markings for the second race, and counted them.
This sorting and counting was done for each race.
In November, 2000, the people in Union were in bed by midnight. No one doubted the correctness of their results.
In September, 2002, Union County employed a system known as ``iVotronic'', details of which are unclear. Unfortunately, only about 2000 people voted in the Democrat primary.
In September, 2002, Union County had results by 21.00 (9 p.m.) the day after the election.
Scale this to a general election (5000 as opposed to 2000 voters), and one can reasonably expect results by Friday afternoon.
It is not clear that electronic ballot counting is in fact beneficial.
Part of the September, 2002 delay in Union was due to the fact that the machine counted everyone as a Republican. It was necessary to count ballots by hand. Fortunately, the system did provide for a paper ballot which could be counted.
Insupportable Speculation
For Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, a system of electronic voting which does not produce any paper has several advantages, not least of which is the speed with which a re-count can be done.
The same incorrect totals from each machine may be read and re-added in minutes, and no time-consuming counting of ballots is required.
A properly programmed machine also offers better assurance about the outcome of the election. Dade in particular appreciates this, though there are other counties where voters have made mistakes.
In Volusia, for instance, it was necessary in 1996 for the Sheriff to have his deputies correct absentee ballots where the voter had voted for the wrong candidate.
Much safer, if one wants to affect the out-come in a close race, is to specially program only a few of the machines. The chance of detection is minimal, because testing only selects a very small number of units. The candidate that arranges for the machine to correct 30% of the votes for his opponent, but only on 10% of the machines, and only after the machine has been running for 2 1/2 hours, will be very unlikely to get caught. He's also going to win an otherwise close race.
The system used in Union in 2000 does not admit of such automatic ballot correction: if a precinct had a certain number of voters, and the ballot box does not contain that number of papers, then you know that Something Happened.
Knowing that Something Happened is of course not, without more, sufficient. The Sheriff in 1996
received the benefit of the corrected absentee ballots, which were essential to the outcome.
I might argue that the knowledge did make a difference: he saw the hand-writing on the wall, and did not run again in 2000.
Not knowing that Something Happened is of course essential to the security of those who must needs have election results adjusted.
The email address would be something
like ftobin@23523523523525.
This is next to useless. I don't think
anyone will want to put that on his card,
as opposed to, say,
NAME@my.domain.org
because the latter is way more
memorable.
The chosen name, both for web sites and
for e-mail, needs to be memorable and
easy for humans to use. I don't expect
to see a billboard saying ``use google
to look up DESCRIPTION'' any time soon.
And of course there is the question of
how I'd use google if we went to the
new scheme - would someone be so
clever as to reserve ``easy'' numbers?
Judges frequently don't know what the true ``intent'' of laws really are. They read the text, and interpret the text. Judges don't go back to the congressional records to find out what the lawmakers' intent was...
Actually, they do. And the lawyers generally do argue intent when a law's constitutionality is in question.
I urge you to be sued, and to defend yourself successfully in a constitutional challenge, that you may have more experience in the area in which you speak. Yes, I have done these things. And yes, it is rather a lot of work.
I am not a lawyer, but I play one in front of certain judges in the 7th Circuit in Florida.
Territories are also more or less free to leave the US entirely (and have done so several times in the 20th century)
If memory serves, the states that make up the U.S. are no longer free to leave.
In fact,unless I am very much mistaken, the war of the northern aggression was fought to prevent the departure of certain of the territories. There has been no announced change of policy on that matter since the 1860s.
in many cases you'd get summary judgements (where the judge finds for you because the other side didn't show up to court).
That's a default judgment.
Summary judgment is where the matter is determined on the basis of law because there are no material facts in dispute. For instance, if you both agree that he sent unsolicited e-mail, but he argues that his acts do not fall under the purview of an anti-spam law, the matter may be appropriate for summary judgment.
Normally, in such a case, both sides will submit briefs and oral arguments may be had. However, no factual evidence, including witnesses, need be adduced for summary judgment.
You should not enter into summary procedure without first consulting with a real attorney. Advice on slashdot may be provided by persons who are not licensed to practice law in your state.
disclaimer Andrews is not a lawyer, though he plays one in front of certain judges. see http://www.payer.org/wvha/suit for information.
I'm off to find the Judge's e-mail so that I can
tell him of the situation he may put me and many
others in.
I don't think so. If he has an e-mail address,
he's not giving it out to receive feedback on a
pending case.
If you must be heard in the matter, you will have
to follow certain rules. First, of course, is
that you must prepare a piece of paper with the
following information:
(a) case number
(b) case style (eg Smith, Plaintiff, v. Jones, Defendant or in re: BankruptCo, Inc.)
(c) identification of yourself, and relationship
to case, and the paper (eg Defendant Andrews' Motion for Partial Relief #2)
Given the above paper, you write what you must,
and then follow it with a page that says, in
essence,
``I certify that a copy hereof has been furnished
by <method>
to the parties listed below'', sign it, and list
the parties in the matter.
The original goes to the clerk of the court,
copies to all parties as indicated.
If you do not do this,
the Judge can not consider your claims.
Writing e-mail to Hizzonner, absent the
above, is considered ex parte
communication and is normally forbidden.
The normal remedy is for the court to
disregard it.
Having reported many, many spammers to them, and
having also done the occasional follow-up checks,
I can assure you that it would be hard to find a
more spam-friendly provider than UUNET.
They reliably send out a form letter saying how
they deplore spam, &c., and that is the extent of
their action. Check on the spam-vertised web
site, and it's still there, reached via UUNET.
I beg to differ. In Florida, home of PBC's now widely infamous ``butterfly ballot'', we have 67 counties. Of those, one used an advanced system of ballots where people were issued pieces of paper with pre-printed candidate names upon entry to the polling place. The people who were issued the pieces of paper made marks beside those names which most pleased or least displeased them.
At the end of the day, in 11 precincts around the county, the pieces of paper were sorted and counted. First, the papers were sorted according to the selection in the first race, then counted. The papers were then sorted according to the selection in the second race, and again counted. This advanced procedure (known as ``tabulation'') was performed for each race on the ballot.
The number of voters per precinct worked out to about 500. Union County had its results reported before midnight. No one doubted the results: the counts were quite reasonably accurate.
In Volusia County, which used a similar system except that the pieces of paper were counted by machine, we had results but not the same week as the election. We also had about 500 voters per precinct. There were disputes about the accuracy of the results, though in the weeks following the election they were pretty well settled.
So tell me, if Union can correctly hand-count their ballots and be home before midnight, why should we believe your claim that it'd take too long? If they had results before the machine-count counties, why should we believe that machine counting is better and faster faster?
Consider also the problem of Dade County. If you were to provide a balloting method which did not leave countable pieces of paper, do you believe that there is any chance of honest results?
It should be noted that here, in Florida, the right to inspect and copy public records is enshrined in 119.07, F.S., and legislative power to abridge that right is restricted by A1S24, Constitution of Florida. Together, these provisions are often called ``Open Records''.
I should not care to undertake the challenge
of defending the proposition: A law or ordinance adopting a building code, together with the code so adopted, is not a public record. Given the choice, I'll defend instead the proposition that the earth is flat (and not just in peninsular Florida!).
I am not a lawyer, though when it comes to Open Government issues I do play one in front of certain judges. [http://www.payer.org/wvha/suit]
Isn't it amusing, also, that the
Chicago Tribune
article cited above forces formatting to a very
much useless default? Two columns (right and
left) surrounding text, formatted to be too wide
to display on a nice big screen without scrolling
left and right.
Well, yes, this does tend to support the thesis
that folks coming from a print background tend
to force-format things, and that the result is
usually bad.
and the way around it will be illegal thanks to the DCMA.
Not surprising. Of course the way around, last time, was to cut a trace on the circuit board. Are you going to make the pointy blade of my pocket knife illegal?
The time before that, you clipped the wire to
a certain diode.
OK, so it probably is illegal. You're still going to have a hard time collecting all of the pocket knives and diagonal cutters out there.
) [ have worked in security dept; response time
) not the issue -- problem is fake accounts ]
My experience with UUNET (admittedly some months
old by now) is that they really did nothing about
spammers. It wasn't fake accounts: it was that
UUNET sent out a ``we're working on it'' form
reply, followed by no action whatsoever.
Spammers are sending spam for a reason: they wish
to ultimately receive money. If there is no way
to get money to them, then there is no purpose to
their efforts.
Thus, even with fake credit card accounts, there
must needs be a method of going from the spam to
a real person, else how could the spammer obtain
his revenue?
Slashdot Mirror
Note, by the way, that Pam Anderson would be considered a natural person, various modifications notwithstanding.
In court documents, a corporate person will often be identified as ``a Florida corporation'' while a natural person is often identified as ``a Florida resident''. See filings at http://www.payer.org/wvha/suit/ for examples.
Not the best available example. Under linux, walking through the process table may be done with ls(1) or readdir(3).
I believe that you may be mistaken. See
Veeck v Southern Building Code
(Fed 5th Cir, #99-40632, 07-Jun-2002)
for information on this subject.
In short, the 5th Circuit said that you may
distribute the code of a municipal entity,
without regard to the copyright of the author,
so long as you distribute it as the code of
that municipal entity.
In the year 2000, Florida had some problems with their election returns (tho nothing as massive as the problems of the September, 2002, primary).
Statistical Information
In November, 2000, Union County had about 5000 voters distributed amongst 11 precincts, which meant that on average they had about 450 people per precinct. (This is similar to the large county where I live, except that we have far more precincts.)
By way of comparison, in September 2002, Dade County had 754 precincts; the number of voters and intended voters is uncertain, but it appears to have been fewer than 300000, or about 400 per precinct.
History in Union County
During the November, 2000, election, Union used a system where each voter got a piece of paper and a marker. The paper had lists of candidates together with empty check-boxes next to the names. Voters marked their preference and deposited the papers in ballot boxes.
When the polls closed, the workers opened the ballot boxes, sorted the papers according to the marking for the first race, and counted them. They then shuffled the papers back together, sorted them according to the markings for the second race, and counted them. This sorting and counting was done for each race.
In November, 2000, the people in Union were in bed by midnight. No one doubted the correctness of their results.
In September, 2002, Union County employed a system known as ``iVotronic'', details of which are unclear. Unfortunately, only about 2000 people voted in the Democrat primary.
In September, 2002, Union County had results by 21.00 (9 p.m.) the day after the election. Scale this to a general election (5000 as opposed to 2000 voters), and one can reasonably expect results by Friday afternoon.
It is not clear that electronic ballot counting is in fact beneficial.
Part of the September, 2002 delay in Union was due to the fact that the machine counted everyone as a Republican. It was necessary to count ballots by hand. Fortunately, the system did provide for a paper ballot which could be counted.
Insupportable Speculation
For Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, a system of electronic voting which does not produce any paper has several advantages, not least of which is the speed with which a re-count can be done. The same incorrect totals from each machine may be read and re-added in minutes, and no time-consuming counting of ballots is required.
A properly programmed machine also offers better assurance about the outcome of the election. Dade in particular appreciates this, though there are other counties where voters have made mistakes. In Volusia, for instance, it was necessary in 1996 for the Sheriff to have his deputies correct absentee ballots where the voter had voted for the wrong candidate.
Much safer, if one wants to affect the out-come in a close race, is to specially program only a few of the machines. The chance of detection is minimal, because testing only selects a very small number of units. The candidate that arranges for the machine to correct 30% of the votes for his opponent, but only on 10% of the machines, and only after the machine has been running for 2 1/2 hours, will be very unlikely to get caught. He's also going to win an otherwise close race.
The system used in Union in 2000 does not admit of such automatic ballot correction: if a precinct had a certain number of voters, and the ballot box does not contain that number of papers, then you know that Something Happened.
Knowing that Something Happened is of course not, without more, sufficient. The Sheriff in 1996 received the benefit of the corrected absentee ballots, which were essential to the outcome. I might argue that the knowledge did make a difference: he saw the hand-writing on the wall, and did not run again in 2000.
Not knowing that Something Happened is of course essential to the security of those who must needs have election results adjusted.
This won't work for e-mail: do you think that sendmail will run a google search and make an intelligent choice as to which domain hosts ``ftobin''?
I urge you to be sued, and to defend yourself successfully in a constitutional challenge, that you may have more experience in the area in which you speak. Yes, I have done these things. And yes, it is rather a lot of work.
I am not a lawyer, but I play one in front of certain judges in the 7th Circuit in Florida.
If memory serves, the states that make up the U.S. are no longer free to leave.
In fact,unless I am very much mistaken, the war of the northern aggression was fought to prevent the departure of certain of the territories. There has been no announced change of policy on that matter since the 1860s.
That's a default judgment.
Summary judgment is where the matter is determined on the basis of law because there are no material facts in dispute. For instance, if you both agree that he sent unsolicited e-mail, but he argues that his acts do not fall under the purview of an anti-spam law, the matter may be appropriate for summary judgment.
Normally, in such a case, both sides will submit briefs and oral arguments may be had. However, no factual evidence, including witnesses, need be adduced for summary judgment.
You should not enter into summary procedure without first consulting with a real attorney. Advice on slashdot may be provided by persons who are not licensed to practice law in your state.
disclaimer Andrews is not a lawyer, though he plays one in front of certain judges. see http://www.payer.org/wvha/suit for information.
I don't think so. If he has an e-mail address, he's not giving it out to receive feedback on a pending case.
If you must be heard in the matter, you will have to follow certain rules. First, of course, is that you must prepare a piece of paper with the following information:
(a) case number
(b) case style (eg Smith, Plaintiff, v. Jones, Defendant or in re: BankruptCo, Inc.)
(c) identification of yourself, and relationship to case, and the paper (eg Defendant Andrews' Motion for Partial Relief #2)
Given the above paper, you write what you must, and then follow it with a page that says, in essence, ``I certify that a copy hereof has been furnished by <method> to the parties listed below'', sign it, and list the parties in the matter.
The original goes to the clerk of the court, copies to all parties as indicated.
If you do not do this, the Judge can not consider your claims. Writing e-mail to Hizzonner, absent the above, is considered ex parte communication and is normally forbidden. The normal remedy is for the court to disregard it.
Having reported many, many spammers to them, and having also done the occasional follow-up checks, I can assure you that it would be hard to find a more spam-friendly provider than UUNET.
They reliably send out a form letter saying how they deplore spam, &c., and that is the extent of their action. Check on the spam-vertised web site, and it's still there, reached via UUNET.
I beg to differ. In Florida, home of PBC's now widely infamous ``butterfly ballot'', we have 67 counties. Of those, one used an advanced system of ballots where people were issued pieces of paper with pre-printed candidate names upon entry to the polling place. The people who were issued the pieces of paper made marks beside those names which most pleased or least displeased them.
At the end of the day, in 11 precincts around the county, the pieces of paper were sorted and counted. First, the papers were sorted according to the selection in the first race, then counted. The papers were then sorted according to the selection in the second race, and again counted. This advanced procedure (known as ``tabulation'') was performed for each race on the ballot.
The number of voters per precinct worked out to about 500. Union County had its results reported before midnight. No one doubted the results: the counts were quite reasonably accurate.
In Volusia County, which used a similar system except that the pieces of paper were counted by machine, we had results but not the same week as the election. We also had about 500 voters per precinct. There were disputes about the accuracy of the results, though in the weeks following the election they were pretty well settled.
So tell me, if Union can correctly hand-count their ballots and be home before midnight, why should we believe your claim that it'd take too long? If they had results before the machine-count counties, why should we believe that machine counting is better and faster faster?
Consider also the problem of Dade County. If you were to provide a balloting method which did not leave countable pieces of paper, do you believe that there is any chance of honest results?
I should not care to undertake the challenge of defending the proposition: A law or ordinance adopting a building code, together with the code so adopted, is not a public record. Given the choice, I'll defend instead the proposition that the earth is flat (and not just in peninsular Florida!).
I am not a lawyer, though when it comes to Open Government issues I do play one in front of certain judges. [http://www.payer.org/wvha/suit]
Isn't it amusing, also, that the Chicago Tribune article cited above forces formatting to a very much useless default? Two columns (right and left) surrounding text, formatted to be too wide to display on a nice big screen without scrolling left and right.
Well, yes, this does tend to support the thesis that folks coming from a print background tend to force-format things, and that the result is usually bad.
Not surprising. Of course the way around, last time, was to cut a trace on the circuit board. Are you going to make the pointy blade of my pocket knife illegal?
The time before that, you clipped the wire to a certain diode.
OK, so it probably is illegal. You're still going to have a hard time collecting all of the pocket knives and diagonal cutters out there.
) [ have worked in security dept; response time
) not the issue -- problem is fake accounts ]
My experience with UUNET (admittedly some months
old by now) is that they really did nothing about
spammers. It wasn't fake accounts: it was that
UUNET sent out a ``we're working on it'' form
reply, followed by no action whatsoever.
Spammers are sending spam for a reason: they wish
to ultimately receive money. If there is no way
to get money to them, then there is no purpose to
their efforts.
Thus, even with fake credit card accounts, there
must needs be a method of going from the spam to
a real person, else how could the spammer obtain
his revenue?