Yeah, I think the entertainment industry and the high-tech industry are two areas where the rules can get weird. Microsoft's case was pretty clear-cut abuse of the system, though.
I don't know that I'd call that "worse," since the purpose is to protect/provide for the employee. As I understand it, the goal is to ensure that employees are taken care of, but to recognize that in cases of legitimate contractor relationships it would be inappropriate to burden the client with those costs. The kind of contract you're describing doesn't sound generally legitimate to me.
There are specific rules and laws (which vary by state to some degree, I believe) that regulate whether a relationship is an employer/employee relationship or not. In general, the more tightly controlled a worker's schedule is and the less freedom to direct his/her own tasks, the harder it will be to call it a contractor relationship. It can be tricky in some cases, but by and large it'd be difficult to get away with that. If you're required to report to work at 9am and do what your boss tells you when and how he tells you to do it, you probably can't be classified as a contractor.
If Amazon is so successful at this that no one else can compete, then that does create a problem. However, that competition doesn't have to be brick and mortar stores---if those are less efficient and unable to compete on their own benefits, then they will and perhaps should die out. That doesn't preclude web-based competition for Amazon.
(Note: "should" is a tricky word. I like many of the benefits of brick and mortar bookstores, but the real question is whether we are willing to pay the premium to support their business model in order to keep them afloat. If not, then for all that we might moan about it, it's inevitable that they'll die.)
Scrutiny is fine. When that scrutiny is composed non-science and crackpot theories, it's not scientific and it's not legitimate debate regardless of what is on the line. That's what the article was putting forth.
A real, informed debate is fine, as is a cost-benefit analysis. Those are elements of the correct way to respond to a potential threat like global warming. Finding some fringe crackpot whose non-science agrees with your political position and then holding that up as evidence is irresponsible.
You've nailed it. Simply being technically superior doesn't sell a product, nor should it. The fax, for all its technical shortcomings, works. Furthermore, the shortcomings are known to be acceptable for the business goals of the users. The costs associated with the long distance fees, etc, are negligible for most of these guys; if not, they're billing a customer for them somehow. The scan quality is adequate, so that's not a compelling reason to change.
If the report was accurate, this argument doesn't wash in this case. They posted (or claim to have posted) sufficient transit police who had functioning radios to provide emergency support.
Yep, and if you know how they can uphold it other than by doing their best to provide correct interpretations of its language---i.e., weigh in---please give me some idea what you mean.
Contrary to your claim in the sibling post, the Constitution cannot be fully understood by simply reading through it. Many of its terms, while apparently simple, are couched in legal background and have given rise to centuries of precedents that would create a quagmire if great care were not taken to ensure consistency with when possible. Obviously incorrect decisions should be overturned, as they are on occasion.
Even among people who spend their lives studying it, there is rarely complete consensus on the meaning of the Constitution as it applies to a nontrivial case. Claiming, as you seem to be, that the "correct" interpretation should simply be applied is unworkable.
It's been a long time since I've been here, but in case you're still around... I'm simply not appealing to authority the way you suggest at all. I'm not suggesting the infallibility of the SC.
My main point is in the latter paragraph, specifically that BeanThere's idea that we can just let the Constitution speak for itself is naive and unworkable. *Somebody* has to be given the power and responsibility to have the final word on how to understand it and how to apply its "plain language" (paraphrasing from one of the replies there), and in our system, it is the SC that collectively serves as that somebody. If the Executive and Legislative branches aren't doing that job, the SC had damn well better "weigh in" to set them straight.
My first paragraph is the one that's giving you trouble, I think, leading to your accusation of appeal to authority. You're not using that term correctly: appeal to authority would be concluding that a logical conclusion is correct because, say, the Supreme Court said so, QED. It's not the same as saying that, in general, I'd rather trust jurisprudential experts to do a better job understanding the full context of a decision. Constitutional law is far more complex than just reading the words on the page and figuring it out, if you want to do it right, that is. There are over two centuries of interpretations and decisions that, like it or not, help to define the language on that document. While we all certainly do have the right and responsibility to keep an eye on the justices and watch for abuse, very few of us have the background needed to understand the precedents and legal implications of many of the cases that make it to the SC.
And even as I say that, I think some of their decisions (recent and otherwise) have been hogwash. Certainly even experts can err, whether honestly or otherwise. Still, as I said before, the point is that you can't just expect the Constitution to magically stand up for itself.
I'm going to go ahead and guess that they know a little more about the Constitution than you do, and may be aware of subtleties of its interpretation that cloud the issue.
Even if you believe it's blatant, the Supreme Court has the final say on Constitutionality, so when the Executive and Legislative branches get it wrong, it's kinda important they "weigh in" on the issue... The Constitution is just a piece of paper with a description of some ideas. It doesn't *do* anything by itself.
They may not be able to claim damages, but I'm fairly sure they can also keep the infringer from continuing the infringement. They might still "win" (in the cashing in sense) if Apple decides it's cheaper to buy them out than bother defending, which is not an implausible outcome.
Or, maybe they actually just want to stop the infringement. Of course, I didn't bother reading much of the article so I don't know, I am just making conversation.:-)
They need to do more than take a passing glance. That Apple operates in a nationwide (and beyond) market means they have a lot of work to do---but it's not extraordinary to expect a company with the resources to operate in that many markets to be able to do proper research in all of them.
And if you want to get technical about "look" versus "scour," consider that they lose their case if they fail to identify a valid (and conflicting) trademark in one of those markets, registered or not. Sure, it's only for the applicable market of the valid trademark, but as far as I know there's no claim they can make that "we looked hard enough" if they missed a use that was significant enough to qualify as a trademark. So if I were launching a major national (or global) project like this, I think I'd scour, not just look.
Sure there is: in addition to possibly assisting in your defense later, it serves a less cynical purpose: it helps others easily identify your claim to the mark when they're doing their research. This improves the odds that they realize the mark is in use and prevents having anything to defend. Sometimes we forget that this is the main goal of most trademark holders: it's pretty rare to have a windfall by suing to defend an infringed trademark.
Why didn't these guys register? Who knows, maybe they're up to no good, but it seems more likely they just didn't think it was necessary or didn't think about it. A lot of companies like this are run by relatively unsophisticated businesspeople (I don't mean this as a slur, just that they are not up on the intricacies and nuance of IP law, etc, and are chiefly interested in operating their business). It doesn't seem farfetched that they were happy to plug along with their business, happily using their trademark and were never aware of the other registration until they read in some news source that Apple was about to "steal" their name on a massive scale. IANAL, so I could be wrong, but I don't believe a trademark holder has to actively monitor for registrations or go to extraordinary lengths to make sure there are no infringements to be aware of --- I think they just have to defend the mark if they become aware of infringement.
The issue with taping your kid at the park is that you're going to incidentally record other people in the background. Did you specifically obtain consent from each of them, or did you reasonably assume that they could see you were making a recording and therefore it was not a secret recording?
Is that why we have murderer checkpoints on the sidewalk? After all, the police aren't telepathic so how else will they ever catch anyone who is a murderer?
Only sort of---they're surface-mail-only unless they're being shipped with the device they're intended to operate. Whatever the details, as of a couple months ago Digi-Key will not ship them via USPS.
They used to charge $5 or $10 for orders under $25 or so. I think they dropped that last I checked. For small orders, with USPS shipping it can be quite reasonable now. Unfortunately, the last such order I had involved lithium batteries, which the USPS will not ship. Oh well.
The government has set up a system by which it can prevent me from re-claiming a constitutionally protected right because I waived it on one occasion.
No. It can require that you uphold a voluntary agreement into which you freely entered and received some form of compensation for. If you do not do so, it may help enforce the terms of the contract that apply should you break the agreement. Doing this simply does not require that the government would be otherwise permitted to require you to take (or not take) the action that you agreed to. I'm sorry if you don't like that, but that's just not how the Constitution works.
That's not to say the "contracts" being discussed here specifically are valid or enforceable. However, the problem would not be that the government lacks the power to enforce contracts that happen to involve speech.
That's no different than cops telling a suspect that because he said something previously when they asked him a question, he had waived his Miranda rights and couldn't use the 5th amendment to avoid answering a question they're asking him now.
Actually it's almost entirely different.
It's wrong. Waiving a constitutional right does not prohibit me from re-claiming that right at any time.
You still have that right, and Congress has not and cannot pass a law preventing you from exercising it. The Judicial and Executive branches, however, might well hold you accountable for the result of doing so if it breaks any contracts into which you have entered.
Your summary is incorrect. It should be "...since they don't apply the basic principles of usability, which have nothing to do with particular interface metaphors or technologies, they are making simpleminded mistakes."
It has nothing to do with abandoning the old desktop environment, and everything to do with giving poor feedback, providing arbitrary interfaces that don't provide cues to the user, not providing consistent behavior in similar situations, etc. These are problems that have more to do with understanding how users think and learn and applying that to the interface design.
It depends on your perspective. It's "relativity" because most measurements you make *are* relative to your reference frame, only the speed of light (and various invariant quantities) are absolute.
The relativity that SR and GR deal with is different in kind than the "peculiarities" of quantum mechanics. And, the previous post was correct: the observation-related uncertainties of QM are (mostly) only important when systems get to microscopic scales. Yes, the same microscopic laws apply to macroscopic physics, but in most cases the effects of large number statistics swamp out the "peculiar" effects and the systems are indistinguishable from classical (or relativistic) systems.
Even ignoring all that, it's incorrect to say that any of it is "subjective." What seems to be true is that the observer is inescapably a part of the system he's observing, and sometimes funny things happen as a result of that. Observers may disagree about details (times, speeds, etc) due to relativity and differing reference frames, but once an event has occurred, anyone who is in a position to observe it will agree about what happened, and can calculate objectively what an observer in a different reference frame would report.
In some cases, old bills are useful. For example, when applying for permanent residence and then citizenship for a spouse, having several years of joint bills can be extremely helpful for demonstrating that your relationship is legitimate.
The problem with speed calculations is that it depends on the assumption that your clock is precisely accurate, in much the same way that Radar depends on calibration. For a ticket to be issued, it should be necessary to have at least two corroborating pieces of evidence.
While I agree that there needs to be confirmation from an independent sensor, the precision requirements for the clock are not terribly stringent. You don't need accurate absolute time, only an accurate rate. That's not technically challenging, even with inexpensive electronics.
Ideally, a speeding ticket should require an actual human witness as well. Why? Because if speeding in an area doesn't present a high enough risk to be worth putting an officer out there to patrol it, one could reasonably argue that the limit is not providing a significant safety benefit, and therefore, should not even be legally enforceable in the first place.
Maybe, maybe not, but in every place I know of the law essentially says you may drive as fast as is safe given the conditions, but no faster than the posted limit. As long as that limit is set sensibly, I don't have a problem with that. Speed traps where the speed limit is arbitrarily reduced with the sole intent of tricking people into tickets should not be permitted, but I don't really buy the argument that it's somehow unjust to require a driver to keep it under 65 mph on the highway.
Yes, and the blog linked above spends a lot of time going into detail why a blanket application of the state law to their email might not be consistent with the legitimate goals of the University or even the purpose of the law. I agree with you, as does the professor involved, that the open records/FOIA laws are crucial to protect the public interest. Here, however, there are real conflicts between the public's right to know and the academic's need for confidential discussions, both with students and with colleagues.
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Yeah, I think the entertainment industry and the high-tech industry are two areas where the rules can get weird. Microsoft's case was pretty clear-cut abuse of the system, though.
I don't know that I'd call that "worse," since the purpose is to protect/provide for the employee. As I understand it, the goal is to ensure that employees are taken care of, but to recognize that in cases of legitimate contractor relationships it would be inappropriate to burden the client with those costs. The kind of contract you're describing doesn't sound generally legitimate to me.
There are specific rules and laws (which vary by state to some degree, I believe) that regulate whether a relationship is an employer/employee relationship or not. In general, the more tightly controlled a worker's schedule is and the less freedom to direct his/her own tasks, the harder it will be to call it a contractor relationship. It can be tricky in some cases, but by and large it'd be difficult to get away with that. If you're required to report to work at 9am and do what your boss tells you when and how he tells you to do it, you probably can't be classified as a contractor.
If Amazon is so successful at this that no one else can compete, then that does create a problem. However, that competition doesn't have to be brick and mortar stores---if those are less efficient and unable to compete on their own benefits, then they will and perhaps should die out. That doesn't preclude web-based competition for Amazon.
(Note: "should" is a tricky word. I like many of the benefits of brick and mortar bookstores, but the real question is whether we are willing to pay the premium to support their business model in order to keep them afloat. If not, then for all that we might moan about it, it's inevitable that they'll die.)
Scrutiny is fine. When that scrutiny is composed non-science and crackpot theories, it's not scientific and it's not legitimate debate regardless of what is on the line. That's what the article was putting forth.
A real, informed debate is fine, as is a cost-benefit analysis. Those are elements of the correct way to respond to a potential threat like global warming. Finding some fringe crackpot whose non-science agrees with your political position and then holding that up as evidence is irresponsible.
You've nailed it. Simply being technically superior doesn't sell a product, nor should it. The fax, for all its technical shortcomings, works. Furthermore, the shortcomings are known to be acceptable for the business goals of the users. The costs associated with the long distance fees, etc, are negligible for most of these guys; if not, they're billing a customer for them somehow. The scan quality is adequate, so that's not a compelling reason to change.
If the report was accurate, this argument doesn't wash in this case. They posted (or claim to have posted) sufficient transit police who had functioning radios to provide emergency support.
Yes indeed. Unfortunately, this is the 9th circuit court, so odds are better than chance that it gets reversed on appeal.
Yep, and if you know how they can uphold it other than by doing their best to provide correct interpretations of its language---i.e., weigh in---please give me some idea what you mean.
Contrary to your claim in the sibling post, the Constitution cannot be fully understood by simply reading through it. Many of its terms, while apparently simple, are couched in legal background and have given rise to centuries of precedents that would create a quagmire if great care were not taken to ensure consistency with when possible. Obviously incorrect decisions should be overturned, as they are on occasion.
Even among people who spend their lives studying it, there is rarely complete consensus on the meaning of the Constitution as it applies to a nontrivial case. Claiming, as you seem to be, that the "correct" interpretation should simply be applied is unworkable.
It's been a long time since I've been here, but in case you're still around... I'm simply not appealing to authority the way you suggest at all. I'm not suggesting the infallibility of the SC.
My main point is in the latter paragraph, specifically that BeanThere's idea that we can just let the Constitution speak for itself is naive and unworkable. *Somebody* has to be given the power and responsibility to have the final word on how to understand it and how to apply its "plain language" (paraphrasing from one of the replies there), and in our system, it is the SC that collectively serves as that somebody. If the Executive and Legislative branches aren't doing that job, the SC had damn well better "weigh in" to set them straight.
My first paragraph is the one that's giving you trouble, I think, leading to your accusation of appeal to authority. You're not using that term correctly: appeal to authority would be concluding that a logical conclusion is correct because, say, the Supreme Court said so, QED. It's not the same as saying that, in general, I'd rather trust jurisprudential experts to do a better job understanding the full context of a decision. Constitutional law is far more complex than just reading the words on the page and figuring it out, if you want to do it right, that is. There are over two centuries of interpretations and decisions that, like it or not, help to define the language on that document. While we all certainly do have the right and responsibility to keep an eye on the justices and watch for abuse, very few of us have the background needed to understand the precedents and legal implications of many of the cases that make it to the SC.
And even as I say that, I think some of their decisions (recent and otherwise) have been hogwash. Certainly even experts can err, whether honestly or otherwise. Still, as I said before, the point is that you can't just expect the Constitution to magically stand up for itself.
I'm going to go ahead and guess that they know a little more about the Constitution than you do, and may be aware of subtleties of its interpretation that cloud the issue.
Even if you believe it's blatant, the Supreme Court has the final say on Constitutionality, so when the Executive and Legislative branches get it wrong, it's kinda important they "weigh in" on the issue... The Constitution is just a piece of paper with a description of some ideas. It doesn't *do* anything by itself.
They may not be able to claim damages, but I'm fairly sure they can also keep the infringer from continuing the infringement. They might still "win" (in the cashing in sense) if Apple decides it's cheaper to buy them out than bother defending, which is not an implausible outcome.
Or, maybe they actually just want to stop the infringement. Of course, I didn't bother reading much of the article so I don't know, I am just making conversation. :-)
They need to do more than take a passing glance. That Apple operates in a nationwide (and beyond) market means they have a lot of work to do---but it's not extraordinary to expect a company with the resources to operate in that many markets to be able to do proper research in all of them.
And if you want to get technical about "look" versus "scour," consider that they lose their case if they fail to identify a valid (and conflicting) trademark in one of those markets, registered or not. Sure, it's only for the applicable market of the valid trademark, but as far as I know there's no claim they can make that "we looked hard enough" if they missed a use that was significant enough to qualify as a trademark. So if I were launching a major national (or global) project like this, I think I'd scour, not just look.
Sure there is: in addition to possibly assisting in your defense later, it serves a less cynical purpose: it helps others easily identify your claim to the mark when they're doing their research. This improves the odds that they realize the mark is in use and prevents having anything to defend. Sometimes we forget that this is the main goal of most trademark holders: it's pretty rare to have a windfall by suing to defend an infringed trademark.
Why didn't these guys register? Who knows, maybe they're up to no good, but it seems more likely they just didn't think it was necessary or didn't think about it. A lot of companies like this are run by relatively unsophisticated businesspeople (I don't mean this as a slur, just that they are not up on the intricacies and nuance of IP law, etc, and are chiefly interested in operating their business). It doesn't seem farfetched that they were happy to plug along with their business, happily using their trademark and were never aware of the other registration until they read in some news source that Apple was about to "steal" their name on a massive scale. IANAL, so I could be wrong, but I don't believe a trademark holder has to actively monitor for registrations or go to extraordinary lengths to make sure there are no infringements to be aware of --- I think they just have to defend the mark if they become aware of infringement.
It actually really is their responsibility to scour the markets in which they plan do business looking for use of the trademark they intend to use.
The issue with taping your kid at the park is that you're going to incidentally record other people in the background. Did you specifically obtain consent from each of them, or did you reasonably assume that they could see you were making a recording and therefore it was not a secret recording?
Is that why we have murderer checkpoints on the sidewalk? After all, the police aren't telepathic so how else will they ever catch anyone who is a murderer?
Only sort of---they're surface-mail-only unless they're being shipped with the device they're intended to operate. Whatever the details, as of a couple months ago Digi-Key will not ship them via USPS.
They used to charge $5 or $10 for orders under $25 or so. I think they dropped that last I checked. For small orders, with USPS shipping it can be quite reasonable now. Unfortunately, the last such order I had involved lithium batteries, which the USPS will not ship. Oh well.
The government has set up a system by which it can prevent me from re-claiming a constitutionally protected right because I waived it on one occasion.
No. It can require that you uphold a voluntary agreement into which you freely entered and received some form of compensation for. If you do not do so, it may help enforce the terms of the contract that apply should you break the agreement. Doing this simply does not require that the government would be otherwise permitted to require you to take (or not take) the action that you agreed to. I'm sorry if you don't like that, but that's just not how the Constitution works.
That's not to say the "contracts" being discussed here specifically are valid or enforceable. However, the problem would not be that the government lacks the power to enforce contracts that happen to involve speech.
That's no different than cops telling a suspect that because he said something previously when they asked him a question, he had waived his Miranda rights and couldn't use the 5th amendment to avoid answering a question they're asking him now.
Actually it's almost entirely different.
It's wrong. Waiving a constitutional right does not prohibit me from re-claiming that right at any time.
You still have that right, and Congress has not and cannot pass a law preventing you from exercising it. The Judicial and Executive branches, however, might well hold you accountable for the result of doing so if it breaks any contracts into which you have entered.
Your summary is incorrect. It should be "...since they don't apply the basic principles of usability, which have nothing to do with particular interface metaphors or technologies, they are making simpleminded mistakes."
It has nothing to do with abandoning the old desktop environment, and everything to do with giving poor feedback, providing arbitrary interfaces that don't provide cues to the user, not providing consistent behavior in similar situations, etc. These are problems that have more to do with understanding how users think and learn and applying that to the interface design.
It depends on your perspective. It's "relativity" because most measurements you make *are* relative to your reference frame, only the speed of light (and various invariant quantities) are absolute.
The relativity that SR and GR deal with is different in kind than the "peculiarities" of quantum mechanics. And, the previous post was correct: the observation-related uncertainties of QM are (mostly) only important when systems get to microscopic scales. Yes, the same microscopic laws apply to macroscopic physics, but in most cases the effects of large number statistics swamp out the "peculiar" effects and the systems are indistinguishable from classical (or relativistic) systems.
Even ignoring all that, it's incorrect to say that any of it is "subjective." What seems to be true is that the observer is inescapably a part of the system he's observing, and sometimes funny things happen as a result of that. Observers may disagree about details (times, speeds, etc) due to relativity and differing reference frames, but once an event has occurred, anyone who is in a position to observe it will agree about what happened, and can calculate objectively what an observer in a different reference frame would report.
In some cases, old bills are useful. For example, when applying for permanent residence and then citizenship for a spouse, having several years of joint bills can be extremely helpful for demonstrating that your relationship is legitimate.
The problem with speed calculations is that it depends on the assumption that your clock is precisely accurate, in much the same way that Radar depends on calibration. For a ticket to be issued, it should be necessary to have at least two corroborating pieces of evidence.
While I agree that there needs to be confirmation from an independent sensor, the precision requirements for the clock are not terribly stringent. You don't need accurate absolute time, only an accurate rate. That's not technically challenging, even with inexpensive electronics.
Ideally, a speeding ticket should require an actual human witness as well. Why? Because if speeding in an area doesn't present a high enough risk to be worth putting an officer out there to patrol it, one could reasonably argue that the limit is not providing a significant safety benefit, and therefore, should not even be legally enforceable in the first place.
Maybe, maybe not, but in every place I know of the law essentially says you may drive as fast as is safe given the conditions, but no faster than the posted limit. As long as that limit is set sensibly, I don't have a problem with that. Speed traps where the speed limit is arbitrarily reduced with the sole intent of tricking people into tickets should not be permitted, but I don't really buy the argument that it's somehow unjust to require a driver to keep it under 65 mph on the highway.
Yes, and the blog linked above spends a lot of time going into detail why a blanket application of the state law to their email might not be consistent with the legitimate goals of the University or even the purpose of the law. I agree with you, as does the professor involved, that the open records/FOIA laws are crucial to protect the public interest. Here, however, there are real conflicts between the public's right to know and the academic's need for confidential discussions, both with students and with colleagues.