> This isn't true.. as a matter of fact most law is > fairly easy to understand.
Aha.
So a fee simple subject to a condition subsequent is fairly easy to understand for a non-lawyer?
How about the parol evidence rule? Are non-lawyers familiar with this *vital* aspect of all contract law?
Hell, most non-lawyers don't even know the difference between slander and libel, much less the difference between an easement and a covenant.
Much of the law is deliberately written to be confusing so only lawyers can decipher it. Other aspects of law make use of important terms of art that a normal human being just isn't going to know.
There are good and bad reasons for this, but it is indeed true.
I am speaking as a former lawyer (UGA, class of 1998) who hated the job and started an internet gaming company. I am quite familiar with the topic.
> Are lawyers nerds? I'm seeing more and more > "Here's a link to some legal documents, enjoy!" on > the front page of slashdot.
Here's the situation.
1) Most people think they know the law. They know the law is important, they think THEY are important, therefore they understand the law.
This erroneous conclusion is one of the reasons so many people get themselves in severe legal trouble.
2) Computer Nerds are usually smart. High tech stuff is currently one of the hottest fields. Therefore, since they are smart in one of the hottest fields, they decide they are ESPECIALLY smart.
Since lawyers are "old tech", anything they do must be inferior to anything high tech. Thus, computer nerds conclude they understand the law better than lawyers.
The result of this is that nerds LOVE to discuss and debate the law. They run a few google searches and turn into Atticus Finch on roids.
Sadly, their conclusions are usually WAY off base because the law is written to be deliberately difficult to understand without a legal education.
3) The internet has turned many areas of law on its head. There is an intense struggle created by the deficiencies in traditional laws that worked fine before the internet and before computer popularity. Thus, law and technology are often the two main elements to a major news story. This means people interested in either one will often become interested in the other simply because of how it might impact them.
The war of the West (and Christendom) vs. the Middle East (and Islam) has been raging for hundreds of years. There are deep seated issues that have never been resolved.
If it weren't for oil, there wouldn't even be a conflict because the Middle East would be no different than Africa.
Clinton had the unbelieveably luck of presiding over the country during the dot-com boom. That isn't good management, that is enormous luck.
More importantly, the President has virtually ZERO power to significantly affect the economy. The President deserves about 1% of the credit or blame for whatever happens to the economy.
If people would learn that one fact, we would all be much better off.
None of the following Presidents deserve blame or credit for what happened economically during their Presidencies:
Reagan - doesn't deserve the credit Bush 1 - doesn't deserve the blame Clinton - doesn't deserve the credit Bush 2 - doesn't deserve the blame
Do you honestly think an airline is going to deliberately give you two seats and not even explicitly tell you about it?
You think a company is going to stealthily give you an additional $200-400 value on your ticket?
Come on, seriously. If they had a policy of "give big guys an extra seat" you can be sure whenever they did it they would tell you so you'd think "wow, this airline rules."
Furthermore, considering how many "equal rights for fat people" (*roll eyes*) organizations are constantly (and unsuccessfully) berating the airlines for extra room/seats, I highly doubt any airlines would just start randomly giving away extra seats for free.
Furthermore, 100kg (220lbs) is not that big compared to the size of the people in these fat organizations.
> catsidhe (454589) wrote: > You are not the world. Your laws are not the only laws. > Other countries also have histories. > > While your statement is true in the US, and I will take > your educated opinion over mine any day, it used not to > be, and may not still in England and possibly parts of > the Commonwealth.
Hi! The issue in this thread is the law that will affect a guy who lives in Austin, Texas (that is a part of the USA, by the way) and a story on his web site.
The relevant law here is US law (and Texas law). Not English law. Not Indonesian law. Not Canon Law. Not the Law of the Jungle. Not Moore's Law. Not even Godwin's Law!
> catsidhe (454589) wrote: > This is what a study of history does to you: > it hammers home that there is more to the world > than the here-and-now in your home town.
My undergraduated degree is in International Law and Politics. Over half my required courses were various world histories and world government classes. My wife is from Thailand, moved here when she was 3 and became a citizen at 25. My company has customers from over 50 countries. I don't think I am your typical American who doesn't give a damn about the rest of the world.
Of course, all of this is irrelevant because your tanget was just a smoke screen to cover up your factual error. At your little school you are probably one of the smarter children and thus you are used to being able to get away with these ridiculous subject changes. That won't cut it amongst adults without a drooling problem.
Blather on as much as you want about the law in whichever country you prefer, but the issue here IS and has always been, US law.
You made a mistake. No big deal. If you had stopped there, you would would have simply been incorrect. With this post of yours, now you look like a desperate buffoon engaging in all sorts of foolishness to cover up your error.
Furthermore, you actually did specifically say that even in US law truth is no defense:
> catsidhe (454589) wrote: > IIRC, this was......merely copied by the US Lawmakers, > who made the new distinction between malicious and > innocent libel. Truth is still no defence
No, truth is a very nice, very effective defense.
P.S. It required herculean effort to resist the urge to make use of your amusingly ironic statement about having things "hammered home." I hope you are appreciative.
It is a shame that people think adding "IANAL" to a post is a substitute for even making an effort to research their statement.
First, I will say that I WAS a lawyer. I graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1998. I hated being a lawyer. I started my own company and make internet RPGs for a living. I think I made a good choice.
Second, a statement is not defamatory if it is true. For the MENSA people out there, defamation includes both slander and libel.
Thirdly, the statement does not even have to be literally true in all respects. It only has to be substantially true. See: Restatement of Torts, 2nd, Section 581 A, Comment f.
This is one of the stupidest ideas I have read in a long time.
When I buy a car, I care about the features of the car. Adding in stupid junk like 1000 hours of music is an annoyance, not something I would be happy about.
The key to selling music is selling it at a low enough price that people prefer the reliability and quality of purcahsed music to the hassle, unreliability, etc. of pirated music. It is truly as simple as that.
Academic Discussion of Gaming is a Good Thing
on
Got Game?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I am continually encouraged to see how gaming is getting serious treatment in areas of academia and business.
While there are downsides to this attention, for the most part it is legitimizing the industry and will hopefully result in gaming have equal or greater importance than television and movies (and god, what a relief it would be to minimize the power and influence of those morons).
All of this speculation really gets us no closer to any valuable knowledge than any probes, robots, or analysis from the past.
We really need to get some actual PEOPLE there to gather some real data. This photo interpretation is only a little bit better than Rorschach Ink blot for crying out loud.
The only real good that comes out of this is hopefully it will generate interest in the nimrods who don't see the value in getting some people on the planet.
>> Rinikusu wrote: >> >> A second scenario is the whole kiosk idea, where you go to >> someplace like Tower and burn-on-demand. What kind of >> storage would a device need??
>> Rinikusu wrote: >> >> I think it actually needs to be done like Kinko's. YOu put >> in your request, the "print service" fills it (by >> requesting/downloading the appropriate image in a secure >> fashion from a central server somewhere, then presses/burns >> the CD), and then you pick it up a day or two later.
With all due respect, you are really ignoring a host of superior technological options.
How about a website where you drop songs into a shopping cart where each song costs $X.XX plus an additional base fee of $Y.YY for each CD-R needed to handle the volume of data the songs you selected includes?
That would not require many (or any) "$11/hour employees".
The point is that CD-Rs represent a way to fill the gap between refusing to sell old music at all and churning out 10 million Britney Spears CDs.
There are two important conclusions to be made from this article:
1) As always, the very technologies that RIAA/MPAA complain about are often the source of their next, great revenue stream (like VHS).
and
2) What is so wrong about people being able to purchase otherwise out of print recordings? The argument is always that it is too expensive for them to fire up the huge CD presses (that are designed to crank CDs out by the thousands) to simply sell a handful of CDs. Why not take 1 master and burn it to 1 CDR and then charge an extra dollar or so?
It is amazing how the RIAA in particular seems to have this "sacred cow" of wanting to horde older music and make it unavailable even to PAYING customers.
Forget about filtering dirty words. Who cares. That's for bible thumpers with thin skins.
What I want to be able to do is get rid of previews, advertisements, FBI warnings, and 30 second long fancy animations at the menu screens.
When I sit down to watch a movie I want to see exactly what parts I want to watch, and not a bunch of crap some pencil pushing, jack booted, MPAA producer thinks I should be required to see.
Um...... Has the person who submitted this article ever read up on Jobs' political beliefs?
The guy is a full blown communist who still hangs onto his free-love hippy-days absurdities.
Furthermore, would you want someone to run the country who has the "Apple philosophy." I mean the guy is clueless. Apple makes gorgeous machines that are relatively stable and easy to use, and yet they are totally incapable of gaining ANY significant portion of the market.
Hasn't it been proven enough that a closed architecture is NEVER the way to long term success in a consumer market? The only time such a thing has even been successful in the short term is when you wield monopoly power (like the DVD consortium).
Really now. This is an absolutely horrendous idea.
If someone takes the time and makes the effort to post the full text before it gets slashdotted, I appreciate it. This is especially true if they are quoting from a page that is membership required.
Why shouldn't such a person get a little bit of karma for doing something that helps everyone?
Slashdot Mirror
> This isn't true.. as a matter of fact most law is
> fairly easy to understand.
Aha.
So a fee simple subject to a condition subsequent is fairly easy to understand for a non-lawyer?
How about the parol evidence rule? Are non-lawyers familiar with this *vital* aspect of all contract law?
Hell, most non-lawyers don't even know the difference between slander and libel, much less the difference between an easement and a covenant.
Much of the law is deliberately written to be confusing so only lawyers can decipher it. Other aspects of law make use of important terms of art that a normal human being just isn't going to know.
There are good and bad reasons for this, but it is indeed true.
I am speaking as a former lawyer (UGA, class of 1998) who hated the job and started an internet gaming company. I am quite familiar with the topic.
> Are lawyers nerds? I'm seeing more and more
> "Here's a link to some legal documents, enjoy!" on
> the front page of slashdot.
Here's the situation.
1) Most people think they know the law. They know the law is important, they think THEY are important, therefore they understand the law.
This erroneous conclusion is one of the reasons so many people get themselves in severe legal trouble.
2) Computer Nerds are usually smart. High tech stuff is currently one of the hottest fields. Therefore, since they are smart in one of the hottest fields, they decide they are ESPECIALLY smart.
Since lawyers are "old tech", anything they do must be inferior to anything high tech. Thus, computer nerds conclude they understand the law better than lawyers.
The result of this is that nerds LOVE to discuss and debate the law. They run a few google searches and turn into Atticus Finch on roids.
Sadly, their conclusions are usually WAY off base because the law is written to be deliberately difficult to understand without a legal education.
3) The internet has turned many areas of law on its head. There is an intense struggle created by the deficiencies in traditional laws that worked fine before the internet and before computer popularity. Thus, law and technology are often the two main elements to a major news story. This means people interested in either one will often become interested in the other simply because of how it might impact them.
> There is nothing amazing about it,
Too bad hundreds of millions of folks disagree, eh?
Anti-fanboi trolls are even worse than fanbois.
> until "the workers control the means of
> production" - the people who actually create value > are systematically ripped off.
Workers already control the means of production in the only sector where that system works...... the unemployed sector.
There ain't no business without investors, management, the entrepreneur who started the business, etc.
You commies need to get that through your thick skulls.
Star Wars isn't that good of a film?
You gotta love the anti-fanboys who are so desperate to stand out that they have to out-criticise the world.
Star Wars was an amazing film. Even today it is a pleasure to watch.
The only crappy part is that Lucas is too much of an ass to release the original trilogy on DVD.
> Thanks a lot Reagan.
Whatever nimrod.
Ever hear of the crusades?
The war of the West (and Christendom) vs. the Middle East (and Islam) has been raging for hundreds of years. There are deep seated issues that have never been resolved.
If it weren't for oil, there wouldn't even be a conflict because the Middle East would be no different than Africa.
Give me a break.
Clinton had the unbelieveably luck of presiding over the country during the dot-com boom. That isn't good management, that is enormous luck.
More importantly, the President has virtually ZERO power to significantly affect the economy. The President deserves about 1% of the credit or blame for whatever happens to the economy.
If people would learn that one fact, we would all be much better off.
None of the following Presidents deserve blame or credit for what happened economically during their Presidencies:
Reagan - doesn't deserve the credit
Bush 1 - doesn't deserve the blame
Clinton - doesn't deserve the credit
Bush 2 - doesn't deserve the blame
There you go. Totally fair and bipartisan.
Whoops! These two expenses are tax deductible:
Mortgage: $8544
Education savings: $4800
Also, your $700/month on groceries is at least $100-200 too high.
Finally, you only need to save $100/month per kid to have an enormous amount of money saved up after 18 years.
This nets you $400-$500 more per month or $4,800 to $6,00 per year in less expenses.
You also gain a couple thousand from the tax deductions you forgot about.
Do you honestly think an airline is going to deliberately give you two seats and not even explicitly tell you about it?
You think a company is going to stealthily give you an additional $200-400 value on your ticket?
Come on, seriously. If they had a policy of "give big guys an extra seat" you can be sure whenever they did it they would tell you so you'd think "wow, this airline rules."
Furthermore, considering how many "equal rights for fat people" (*roll eyes*) organizations are constantly (and unsuccessfully) berating the airlines for extra room/seats, I highly doubt any airlines would just start randomly giving away extra seats for free.
Furthermore, 100kg (220lbs) is not that big compared to the size of the people in these fat organizations.
> catsidhe (454589) wrote:
...merely copied by the US Lawmakers,
> You are not the world. Your laws are not the only laws.
> Other countries also have histories.
>
> While your statement is true in the US, and I will take
> your educated opinion over mine any day, it used not to
> be, and may not still in England and possibly parts of
> the Commonwealth.
Hi! The issue in this thread is the law that will affect a guy who lives in Austin, Texas (that is a part of the USA, by the way) and a story on his web site.
The relevant law here is US law (and Texas law). Not English law. Not Indonesian law. Not Canon Law. Not the Law of the Jungle. Not Moore's Law. Not even Godwin's Law!
> catsidhe (454589) wrote:
> This is what a study of history does to you:
> it hammers home that there is more to the world
> than the here-and-now in your home town.
My undergraduated degree is in International Law and Politics. Over half my required courses were various world histories and world government classes. My wife is from Thailand, moved here when she was 3 and became a citizen at 25. My company has customers from over 50 countries. I don't think I am your typical American who doesn't give a damn about the rest of the world.
Of course, all of this is irrelevant because your tanget was just a smoke screen to cover up your factual error. At your little school you are probably one of the smarter children and thus you are used to being able to get away with these ridiculous subject changes. That won't cut it amongst adults without a drooling problem.
Blather on as much as you want about the law in whichever country you prefer, but the issue here IS and has always been, US law.
You made a mistake. No big deal. If you had stopped there, you would would have simply been incorrect. With this post of yours, now you look like a desperate buffoon engaging in all sorts of foolishness to cover up your error.
Furthermore, you actually did specifically say that even in US law truth is no defense:
> catsidhe (454589) wrote:
> IIRC, this was...
> who made the new distinction between malicious and
> innocent libel. Truth is still no defence
No, truth is a very nice, very effective defense.
P.S. It required herculean effort to resist the urge to make use of your amusingly ironic statement about having things "hammered home." I hope you are appreciative.
It is a shame that people think adding "IANAL" to a post is a substitute for even making an effort to research their statement.
First, I will say that I WAS a lawyer. I graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1998. I hated being a lawyer. I started my own company and make internet RPGs for a living. I think I made a good choice.
Second, a statement is not defamatory if it is true. For the MENSA people out there, defamation includes both slander and libel.
Thirdly, the statement does not even have to be literally true in all respects. It only has to be substantially true. See: Restatement of Torts, 2nd, Section 581 A, Comment f.
In case anyone thought Diablo 2 was no longer relevant in the PC market:
c kh awkdown/news_6026076.html
u er generals/news_6026444.html
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/deltaforcebla
Best-selling PC games for the week of April 13-19, 2003:
Rank / Title / Publisher / Average Price
1 / Delta Force: Black Hawk Down / NovaLogic / $39
2/ Command & Conquer: Generals / EA / $46
3/ The Sims Deluxe / EA / $44
4 / The Sims: Unleashed / EA / $29
5 / Battlefield 1942 / EA / $47
6 / Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets / EA / $18
7 / Zoo Tycoon / Microsoft / $28
8 / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation / Ubi Soft / $30
9 / Diablo II / Vivendi Universal / $21
10 / Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos / Vivendi Universal / $39
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/commandconq
Best-selling PC games for the week of April 20-26, 2003:
Rank / Title / Publisher / Average Price
1/ Command & Conquer: Generals / EA / $46
2/ The Sims Deluxe / EA / $42
3 / Delta Force: Black Hawk Down / NovaLogic / $39
4 / The Sims: Unleashed / EA / $29
5 / Battlefield 1942 / EA / $47
6 / Diablo II / Vivendi Universal / $21
7 / Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos / Vivendi Universal / $36
8 / Zoo Tycoon / Microsoft / $27
9 / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation / Ubi Soft / $30
10 / Battlefield 1942: The Road to Rome / EA / $19
-----------
That's right. #6 and #9 for the most recent weeks of PC sales data.
Pretty amazing for a 3 year old game.
ARGH.
/. finally start MIRRORING the small sites they post articles about?
When will
Bwhaahahahaha. OMG that would be hilarious.
I can imagine it now:
Hillary Rosen shot dead today by who was enraged when the RIAA's music deletion scripts erased his "Manifesto for a New Tomorrow."
I seriously hope the RIAA does try to go the cyberwar route.
They will get absolutely and utterly bent over and destroyed if they open that Pandora's Box.
Please RIAA... I am begging you... Start a "cyberwar."
This is one of the stupidest ideas I have read in a long time.
When I buy a car, I care about the features of the car. Adding in stupid junk like 1000 hours of music is an annoyance, not something I would be happy about.
The key to selling music is selling it at a low enough price that people prefer the reliability and quality of purcahsed music to the hassle, unreliability, etc. of pirated music. It is truly as simple as that.
I am continually encouraged to see how gaming is getting serious treatment in areas of academia and business.
While there are downsides to this attention, for the most part it is legitimizing the industry and will hopefully result in gaming have equal or greater importance than television and movies (and god, what a relief it would be to minimize the power and influence of those morons).
All of this speculation really gets us no closer to any valuable knowledge than any probes, robots, or analysis from the past.
We really need to get some actual PEOPLE there to gather some real data. This photo interpretation is only a little bit better than Rorschach Ink blot for crying out loud.
The only real good that comes out of this is hopefully it will generate interest in the nimrods who don't see the value in getting some people on the planet.
To quote Arnold: "Get your butt to Mars!"
>> Rinikusu wrote:
>>
>> A second scenario is the whole kiosk idea, where you go to
>> someplace like Tower and burn-on-demand. What kind of
>> storage would a device need??
>> Rinikusu wrote:
>>
>> I think it actually needs to be done like Kinko's. YOu put
>> in your request, the "print service" fills it (by
>> requesting/downloading the appropriate image in a secure
>> fashion from a central server somewhere, then presses/burns
>> the CD), and then you pick it up a day or two later.
With all due respect, you are really ignoring a host of superior technological options.
How about a website where you drop songs into a shopping cart where each song costs $X.XX plus an additional base fee of $Y.YY for each CD-R needed to handle the volume of data the songs you selected includes?
That would not require many (or any) "$11/hour employees".
The point is that CD-Rs represent a way to fill the gap between refusing to sell old music at all and churning out 10 million Britney Spears CDs.
There are two important conclusions to be made from this article:
1) As always, the very technologies that RIAA/MPAA complain about are often the source of their next, great revenue stream (like VHS).
and
2) What is so wrong about people being able to purchase otherwise out of print recordings? The argument is always that it is too expensive for them to fire up the huge CD presses (that are designed to crank CDs out by the thousands) to simply sell a handful of CDs. Why not take 1 master and burn it to 1 CDR and then charge an extra dollar or so?
It is amazing how the RIAA in particular seems to have this "sacred cow" of wanting to horde older music and make it unavailable even to PAYING customers.
This is at least the THIRD time you have pimped this book.
You are so biased it is getting really ridiculous.
It might help you to read the article :).
You will not pay for every email you send out. You will pay if the person on the other end did not want it.
Forget about filtering dirty words. Who cares. That's for bible thumpers with thin skins.
What I want to be able to do is get rid of previews, advertisements, FBI warnings, and 30 second long fancy animations at the menu screens.
When I sit down to watch a movie I want to see exactly what parts I want to watch, and not a bunch of crap some pencil pushing, jack booted, MPAA producer thinks I should be required to see.
Um...... Has the person who submitted this article ever read up on Jobs' political beliefs?
The guy is a full blown communist who still hangs onto his free-love hippy-days absurdities.
Furthermore, would you want someone to run the country who has the "Apple philosophy." I mean the guy is clueless. Apple makes gorgeous machines that are relatively stable and easy to use, and yet they are totally incapable of gaining ANY significant portion of the market.
Hasn't it been proven enough that a closed architecture is NEVER the way to long term success in a consumer market? The only time such a thing has even been successful in the short term is when you wield monopoly power (like the DVD consortium).
Really now. This is an absolutely horrendous idea.
Seriously... why post as anonymous?
If someone takes the time and makes the effort to post the full text before it gets slashdotted, I appreciate it. This is especially true if they are quoting from a page that is membership required.
Why shouldn't such a person get a little bit of karma for doing something that helps everyone?