So what steps should George Harrison have taken to prevent himself from accidentally sampling "He's So Fine" in his own song "My Sweet Lord"?
That's an excellent question. The short answer is that "subconscious copying" is bullshit and Harrison should have won that case.
It's worthwhile to note that this wasn't a sampling case per se, it was copying of the composition (subconsciously, no less), not the sound recording**. Harrison was accused of taking the melody for "My Sweet Lord" from some back recess of his mind where "He's So Fine" was still echoing, unbeknownst to him. I've listened to the songs, and yeah they're similar. Not so similar that I would find infringement absent evidence of actual copying i.e. knowledge, intent, bad faith, etc.
<rant>
Being a musician myself, I can confidently tell you that with music, there is nothing new under the sun. There is a finite number of note combinations ("chords"), a finite number of chord progressions with a reasonable number of steps (say, 6 or less), and, while both are objectively large sets, only a small subset of both would sound pleasing to the human ear. That set is further reduced by tonal equivalence--you get about the same mileage out of Am and Am7, or Cmaj in 1st or 3rd position.
Pretty much any ordering of chords that you could classify as "commercially viable" has been played, many times, in many different styles, by many people. While ultimately the combination of melody (notes) + harmony (chords) + tempo + arrangement + timbre/tone + lyrics is infinitely variable, it is remarkably hard to write a song that is truly original in chords and melody and sounds decent to human beings.
Music, like science, is a whole lot of standing on the shoulders of your predecessors. And what your predecessors have done is exactly what people in your culture are tuned to like. Unless an artist is bursting with uncommonly rare musical genius, the "new" songs she writes are going to be made entirely from the DNA of the music that came before her. There are only so many ways of doing D - C - G - D, but there are thousands of songs based on just that. Should Lynyrd Skynyrd get to sue them all because, hey, Sweet Home Alabama?
So I think it's shitty to charge George Harrison with copying The Chiffons, especially since he didn't know he was doing it (independent creation is a defense to infringement). Yes, RHCP's "Dani California" sounds like Tom Petty's "Last Dance", and yes Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" sounds like Madonna's "Express Yourself"--but pretty much every other song we've ever heard is, like, spooky close to some prior song if we look hard enough.
</rant>
**I'm not sure how anyone could ever "subconsciously" insert the actual audio from another song into their own, so sampling is always a conscious choice to appropriate another's music. This may be one reason why some courts treat sampling with such disdain compared to (logically equivalent) copying of compositions.
Agreed. Music is at the far right end of the factual <---> creative scale, and US judges have been especially strident and hard-line about music sampling in particular ("if you're going to sample, get license, period!"). Whereas, footage of a soccer goal is both factual and newsworthy. There may be copyright in the broadcast, but this is not cut from the same cloth as music, poetry, painting, etc. This isn't sampling either; that would be more like "autotune the news." Thus a short goal clip should fall under fair use in the United States.
EU/UK fair use ("fair dealing") law is different than US, in part because they don't have a 1st Amendment. They do allow for news reporting, comment, and criticism. However, across the pond their copyright exceptions (of which fair use is one) tend to be stricter and much more... I guess you'd call it "enumerated," in the sense that they list out acceptable use cases. OTOH, they have a way better "compulsory" (-ish) licensing system in the UK, covering a broader range of materials and uses than the U.S. (which covers mostly song compositions and certain broadcaster licenses).
Hey/. devs: could we maybe take the <a>link</a> [website you're linking to] format that's currently in comments, and drop that into summaries? The first link in this article is to a startlingly loud YouTube video, and it would be helpful to know on this and other links where I'm headed beforehand.
Yes, I could've checked the status bar first, but then you could say that about comment links.
Great law review article. I gave a "brief" analysis above for why it's probably still OK to tape a call where you're the consumer in a one-party state, calling customer service that happens to be in California (probably applies to other two-party states as well). If you're the business doing the taping, or... if you're trying to tape your ex-husband who lives in Connecticut... all bets are off.
[B]ecause this case does not involve the isolated recording of a personal telephone call
by an out-of-state individual in a nonbusiness setting, or the recording of a phone call
by an out-of-state business that has a reasonable, individualized basis for believing that
a particular caller is engaged in criminal or wrongful conduct, we have no occasion to
determine how the comparative impairment analysis would apply in those or other
comparable settings.
Off the bat, IAABNQAL (I am almost but not quite a lawyer, took the bar but no results until Oct.) so take this with as many grains of salt as you feel appropriate. This isn't legal advice, etc etc.
The short answer is, this is pretty much unsettled law, but there is good reason to believe that the knowledge and status of the caller (i.e. business vs individual) would matter. The Wiki article cites Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006) for the proposition that, at least if one caller is in CA, its stricter two-party law still applies to out-of-state callers trying to (legally, in their own jurisdictions) record phone calls with CA residents. However, that is too broad a generalization.
The defendant in that case was Smith Barney, a national brokerage (corporation) with independently sufficient contacts for CA to exercise personal jurisdiction over it anyway ("SSB 'systematically and continually does business' in California, and SSB does not deny that it maintains numerous offices and does extensive business in this state"). SSB was conversing with clients in CA (two-party), but making and receiving calls in GA (one-party), and the CA Supreme Court found that there were compelling reasons not to let a company doing business in CA escape the CA privacy law, much less a business with offices in CA that could conveniently "outsource" its calls to other states (pretty much gutting the law). On a technical point of law, this was also a ruling reversing the trial court's dismissal of plaintiff's case, merely allowing the case to proceed and not addressing many of SSB's factual arguments (like "hey, this isn't what the legislature meant by 'confidential communication'").
However, look at it from the out-of-state consumer perspective and everything changes. Lets make the easy assumption that you don't have any presence, property, or business dealings in the two-party state of CA. First, from a personal jurisdiction standpoint, if someone from an unknown location (oops it's CA, gotcha!) is calling you in your one-party state, you have not established minimum contacts with California because you did not purposefully avail yourself of CA's laws—you didn't contact CA on purpose!
What if you know they're calling from CA? You're hardly directing any activity at CA by answering the phone. What if you're the one making the call and it's an 800 number to a destination unknown? This happens all the time, on the same day I'll make three calls to customer service and get centers in Illinois, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania. Well, you still haven't directed your action at CA if the call winds up there. In all these cases, it would be nigh-impossible for a CA business to make a case against you, because you (almost certainly) didn't establish minimum contacts with California such that the CA courts could exercise its long-arm jurisdiction against you. Even if you had a contract with this company with a CA forum selection clause, it would be a huge stretch; you consented to CA jurisdiction to settle disputes over that contract, you didn't say "I submit to the laws and jurisdiction of California for everything ever."
What if you're a consumer in a one-party state, knowingly calling a number in a two-party state, to discuss business you have with that company? Well, I would wager you're still in the clear, and in fact I record a significant number of customer service calls as I sit in my one-party state, regardless of where the representative is located or what the telephone number is. I do this in order to protect against the abuses in TFA, "forgetful" supervisors, etc., and I do not worry about the wiretapping laws of some distant state. Why? Well, even though they might be able
That's... spot on AC! From the very little I read (TFS, a few comments above, skimmed the scimag recap), the fourth-hand recounts of this guy's theories sound wrong (and rather 1920's eugenics-y) to me. But then I'm not a geneticist or any sort of biologist, and almost everything in modern science would sound wrong to a neophyte in that field. I move faster and time moves slower?? Really cold helium exhibits "anti-gravity" properties?? We have 10x more bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies???
Assuming this author proposed a testable and falsifiable theory (e.g. "These traits statistically correlate with these genes, and I have controlled for all non-genetic factors like environment, diet, etc"; contra "This race is better because $deity says so"), the proper rebuttal is "We went over your analysis, and you failed to control for X" or "What you're suggesting is a plausible idea but it's wholly unsupported by the data and studies you cite" or "Here's where your use of these statistics is inapt because it means X and not Y like you think."
Now, I didn't read the NYT letter either (making me the quintessential/. poster), but if their response was "We're uncomfortable with this" and not "Here's why your analysis is flawed" then it isn't science. The author does contend that the NYT letter misquotes and mischaracterizes specific portions of his work, and that there's yet to be any actual science refuting his central arguments. So if they want to debunk the guy, Step 1 is to establish exactly what he's arguing. Step 2 is to provide Stuff(TM) that is the product of the Scientific Method to counter his arguments, or logically establish that his arguments do not follow from such Stuff.
Correct, every sworn-in attorney is an officer of the court, with heightened ethical obligations. I don't think the subpoena power specifically is reserved for lawyers; if you represent yourself you can still subpoena witnesses.
I know there's some special stuff attorneys get to do by virtue of being officers of the court, but the main thing is actually practice law (represent clients) and keep nearly unassailable confidentiality (atty-client privilege). One of the gotchas is that your duty to the court (as an officer) trumps, so even though you have an utmost duty to keep client confidences, you still can't knowingly allow a client to perpetrate a fraud on the court.
I can't speak to those tests or their security procedures, but it may have less to do with the importance of the test itself than the power of the testmaker. Cisco is not an arm of my state's Supreme Court, and they don't have the power to e.g. look through all my civil and criminal records (sealed, juvenile, expunged, all of them), bring me up on perjury charges, or permaban me from practicing my profession if I try to hoodwink them. The state bar is, and they do have those powers.
Not defending ExamSoft, their practices ($100 one time use is BS) or their software (certainly hackable). Just saying the usual/. infosec calculus doesn't really apply. The upsides are marginal, the downsides are huge, and the number of law students who could actually tell you what virtual machines and buffer overflows are is vanishingly small. The tiny percent of aspiring lawyers with the skills and smarts to pull off an undetectable hack are more than capable of studying a few weeks and actually passing the thing.
I took the bar exam this week. My experience was that there are lots of restrictions on what you're allowed to bring in with you (in a clear ziplock bag), but they are not cavity searching you for violations, or even really looking at your bag at all. I.e. to a large degree they are trusting us to take the test honestly.
Now of course the nerds among us (you, me, most everyone else here) can think of clever ways someone could conceivably cheat—a tiny scroll in 4pt font rolled up into your pen, rules of law written in uv ink on your shirt sleeves and wearing special glasses, etc etc. But apart from the fact that it's completely unethical (which matters more to lawyers than pretty much every other profession), getting caught will get you banned for life (still with six-digit loan debt) and it wouldn't be all that helpful anyway. There's like a thousand pages of testable material and time is extremely limited. Unless you broke into the NCBE offices and stole the answers, cheating just won't be a very effective strategy.
Same goes for the computer/essay portion. Yes it's your device to which you have root access, a third party can never 100% verify security. Of course a 1337 haXor could trick the ExamSoft program into running on a VM or, hell, even hard solder something into the keyboard circuitry that sent a paragraph worth of text at the press of a key.
But this isn't spycraft, all they need to do is detect something (anything) hinky and then banhammer. Are you willing to bet 3 years of tuition on your certainty that you beat the program and that it logged nothing? And, again, there's another thousand pages of material being tested, in essays where you get 45min and 6500 characters (maybe 1200 words) each. It's a hell of a lot of potential downside and very little upside unless you burgled the bar examiners' offices. In which case, why are you trying to become a lawyer? You could be planning Oceans 15 right now.
That's pretty much the story. This particularly atrocious bit of police behavior occurred in Georgia. The cops were looking for drugs and a suspected drug dealer (dad, I think). IIRC, the cops couldn't get the door open, so they thought there was someone trying to physically block/barricade the door and tossed a flashbang into the room. Only, it wasn't a desperate meth cook pushing a barrel of methylamine against the door, but a toddler's crib that had been placed there by grandma. I don't remember if it came out why the crib was there (small house/trailer maybe?) but she certainly had no reason to know or think that LEOs were going to require that entryway for a tactical assault on the house.
Neither drugs nor dad were found in the home, and toddler was severely injured (might still be in the hospital?) by the flashbang that was thrown directly into his crib. Mom and dad were elsewhere and I believe were later arrested on some kind of drug charges. This is all from memory, so a Google search might fill in some details.
Mod this up! My kingdom for mod points... this is both the correct U.S. rule and the correct application of the rule in the context of public figure defamation.
Er, what? Don't know what you're getting at with the "work for the IRS" bit. I'll admit that people (including friends and family) arguing from canned soundbites does agitate me, though I don't doubt you for a second when you say you don't personally listen to the source material. Again, the rant was not really directed at your post. But when you see, time and again, these pre-packaged chunks of partisan messaging being bandied about as if they were real arguments, it just comes off so brainwashy. FWIW I agree that losing all these emails in precisely this way seems highly suspicious.
I'm going to sidestep the actual debate here ("Lost Emails: Incompetence or Conspiracy?"), and just put it out there that using word-for-word talking points from conservative talk radio—like "the dog ate my homework"—makes it really hard to take an argument seriously.
If I wanted to know what Herman Cain's opinion was, I would have tuned in this morning to his show (which I did), to hear him say that this was like whining that "the dog ate my homework, and now I can't find my dog." And then, I could have also gotten Rush Limbaugh's sage opinion that this is a case of crying "the dog ate my homework." I'm sure Hannity is saying it right now, and O'Reilly will say it later.
Look, this may be a case of pure corruption and lies, unconstitutional targeting out of political spite reaching to the highest levels. If it is, LL should go to jail, those responsible should be prosecuted, and the conservative pundits will get my blessing to all simultaneously jizz in their pants.
I have my own gripes with Obama (NSA surveillance for starters), and I am open to well-reasoned arguments about his administration's failings. But using canned phraseology—written by people that measure and calculate how effectively various wordings can be used to rile up the base and grab soundbites—will get you nowhere.
Similarly short shrift goes to things like: calling all taxes and regulations "job killers"; sardonically calling Islam "the religion of peaaaace"; calling Obama "The Community Organizer"; chanting pithy-but-meaningless phrases like "Bush lied people died"; appending "-Gate" to the end of anything remotely controversial; and pretty much any pundit, politician, or political group calling anything "racist."
Note this rant is not personally directed at you, Applehu, but you just happen to be the winning 19th poster to use this straight-from-the-show-notes talk radio quote.
</rant>
Because a C&D is somehow damaging to the "IkeaHackers.net" brand beyond the obviously untenable position regarding their name? If IkeaHackers is serious about operating in good faith they will choose a similar but un-infringing name and go on with their lives.
It's not a slam dunk that IKH is infringing on the IKEA word mark. The general standard for TM infringement is likelihood of confusion (and possibly dilution in this case because it's a famous mark). It can be a complex analysis, but the brass tacks question is, "When people see the name and go to ikeahackers.net, do they think it's Ikea or Ikea-sponsored?"
This is (one of the reasons) why e.g. gripe sites are OK—when you go to ikeasucks.com, you're unlikely to be confused that the source is purporting to be IKEA. It's murkier with ikeahackers, but a disclaimer and a concerted effort to stay away from the markholder's logo, layout, and styling, can go a long way. Even for commercial (ad supported) use.
Slashdot Mirror
In this sense, what's "after big data" is a lovecraftian digital doomhoover wrought by the world's spy agencies.
So what steps should George Harrison have taken to prevent himself from accidentally sampling "He's So Fine" in his own song "My Sweet Lord"?
That's an excellent question. The short answer is that "subconscious copying" is bullshit and Harrison should have won that case.
It's worthwhile to note that this wasn't a sampling case per se, it was copying of the composition (subconsciously, no less), not the sound recording**. Harrison was accused of taking the melody for "My Sweet Lord" from some back recess of his mind where "He's So Fine" was still echoing, unbeknownst to him. I've listened to the songs, and yeah they're similar. Not so similar that I would find infringement absent evidence of actual copying i.e. knowledge, intent, bad faith, etc.
<rant>
Being a musician myself, I can confidently tell you that with music, there is nothing new under the sun. There is a finite number of note combinations ("chords"), a finite number of chord progressions with a reasonable number of steps (say, 6 or less), and, while both are objectively large sets, only a small subset of both would sound pleasing to the human ear. That set is further reduced by tonal equivalence--you get about the same mileage out of Am and Am7, or Cmaj in 1st or 3rd position.
Pretty much any ordering of chords that you could classify as "commercially viable" has been played, many times, in many different styles, by many people. While ultimately the combination of melody (notes) + harmony (chords) + tempo + arrangement + timbre/tone + lyrics is infinitely variable, it is remarkably hard to write a song that is truly original in chords and melody and sounds decent to human beings.
Music, like science, is a whole lot of standing on the shoulders of your predecessors. And what your predecessors have done is exactly what people in your culture are tuned to like. Unless an artist is bursting with uncommonly rare musical genius, the "new" songs she writes are going to be made entirely from the DNA of the music that came before her. There are only so many ways of doing D - C - G - D, but there are thousands of songs based on just that. Should Lynyrd Skynyrd get to sue them all because, hey, Sweet Home Alabama?
So I think it's shitty to charge George Harrison with copying The Chiffons, especially since he didn't know he was doing it (independent creation is a defense to infringement). Yes, RHCP's "Dani California" sounds like Tom Petty's "Last Dance", and yes Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" sounds like Madonna's "Express Yourself"--but pretty much every other song we've ever heard is, like, spooky close to some prior song if we look hard enough.
</rant>
**I'm not sure how anyone could ever "subconsciously" insert the actual audio from another song into their own, so sampling is always a conscious choice to appropriate another's music. This may be one reason why some courts treat sampling with such disdain compared to (logically equivalent) copying of compositions.
This is not a troll. There should be a +1 "Not Actually Trolling"
That parallel is deeply +1 Insightful. Damn son!
Agreed. Music is at the far right end of the factual <---> creative scale, and US judges have been especially strident and hard-line about music sampling in particular ("if you're going to sample, get license, period!"). Whereas, footage of a soccer goal is both factual and newsworthy. There may be copyright in the broadcast, but this is not cut from the same cloth as music, poetry, painting, etc. This isn't sampling either; that would be more like "autotune the news." Thus a short goal clip should fall under fair use in the United States.
EU/UK fair use ("fair dealing") law is different than US, in part because they don't have a 1st Amendment. They do allow for news reporting, comment, and criticism. However, across the pond their copyright exceptions (of which fair use is one) tend to be stricter and much more... I guess you'd call it "enumerated," in the sense that they list out acceptable use cases. OTOH, they have a way better "compulsory" (-ish) licensing system in the UK, covering a broader range of materials and uses than the U.S. (which covers mostly song compositions and certain broadcaster licenses).
Hey /. devs: could we maybe take the <a>link</a> [website you're linking to] format that's currently in comments, and drop that into summaries? The first link in this article is to a startlingly loud YouTube video, and it would be helpful to know on this and other links where I'm headed beforehand.
Yes, I could've checked the status bar first, but then you could say that about comment links.
Agh spent my last mod point before seeing this! AC you get sharper every day.
Great law review article. I gave a "brief" analysis above for why it's probably still OK to tape a call where you're the consumer in a one-party state, calling customer service that happens to be in California (probably applies to other two-party states as well). If you're the business doing the taping, or... if you're trying to tape your ex-husband who lives in Connecticut... all bets are off.
[B]ecause this case does not involve the isolated recording of a personal telephone call by an out-of-state individual in a nonbusiness setting, or the recording of a phone call by an out-of-state business that has a reasonable, individualized basis for believing that a particular caller is engaged in criminal or wrongful conduct, we have no occasion to determine how the comparative impairment analysis would apply in those or other comparable settings.
Off the bat, IAABNQAL (I am almost but not quite a lawyer, took the bar but no results until Oct.) so take this with as many grains of salt as you feel appropriate. This isn't legal advice, etc etc.
The short answer is, this is pretty much unsettled law, but there is good reason to believe that the knowledge and status of the caller (i.e. business vs individual) would matter. The Wiki article cites Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006) for the proposition that, at least if one caller is in CA, its stricter two-party law still applies to out-of-state callers trying to (legally, in their own jurisdictions) record phone calls with CA residents. However, that is too broad a generalization.
The defendant in that case was Smith Barney, a national brokerage (corporation) with independently sufficient contacts for CA to exercise personal jurisdiction over it anyway ("SSB 'systematically and continually does business' in California, and SSB does not deny that it maintains numerous offices and does extensive business in this state"). SSB was conversing with clients in CA (two-party), but making and receiving calls in GA (one-party), and the CA Supreme Court found that there were compelling reasons not to let a company doing business in CA escape the CA privacy law, much less a business with offices in CA that could conveniently "outsource" its calls to other states (pretty much gutting the law). On a technical point of law, this was also a ruling reversing the trial court's dismissal of plaintiff's case, merely allowing the case to proceed and not addressing many of SSB's factual arguments (like "hey, this isn't what the legislature meant by 'confidential communication'").
However, look at it from the out-of-state consumer perspective and everything changes. Lets make the easy assumption that you don't have any presence, property, or business dealings in the two-party state of CA. First, from a personal jurisdiction standpoint, if someone from an unknown location (oops it's CA, gotcha!) is calling you in your one-party state, you have not established minimum contacts with California because you did not purposefully avail yourself of CA's laws—you didn't contact CA on purpose!
What if you know they're calling from CA? You're hardly directing any activity at CA by answering the phone. What if you're the one making the call and it's an 800 number to a destination unknown? This happens all the time, on the same day I'll make three calls to customer service and get centers in Illinois, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania. Well, you still haven't directed your action at CA if the call winds up there. In all these cases, it would be nigh-impossible for a CA business to make a case against you, because you (almost certainly) didn't establish minimum contacts with California such that the CA courts could exercise its long-arm jurisdiction against you. Even if you had a contract with this company with a CA forum selection clause, it would be a huge stretch; you consented to CA jurisdiction to settle disputes over that contract, you didn't say "I submit to the laws and jurisdiction of California for everything ever."
What if you're a consumer in a one-party state, knowingly calling a number in a two-party state, to discuss business you have with that company? Well, I would wager you're still in the clear, and in fact I record a significant number of customer service calls as I sit in my one-party state, regardless of where the representative is located or what the telephone number is. I do this in order to protect against the abuses in TFA, "forgetful" supervisors, etc., and I do not worry about the wiretapping laws of some distant state. Why? Well, even though they might be able
That's... spot on AC! From the very little I read (TFS, a few comments above, skimmed the scimag recap), the fourth-hand recounts of this guy's theories sound wrong (and rather 1920's eugenics-y) to me. But then I'm not a geneticist or any sort of biologist, and almost everything in modern science would sound wrong to a neophyte in that field. I move faster and time moves slower?? Really cold helium exhibits "anti-gravity" properties?? We have 10x more bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies???
/. poster), but if their response was "We're uncomfortable with this" and not "Here's why your analysis is flawed" then it isn't science. The author does contend that the NYT letter misquotes and mischaracterizes specific portions of his work, and that there's yet to be any actual science refuting his central arguments. So if they want to debunk the guy, Step 1 is to establish exactly what he's arguing. Step 2 is to provide Stuff(TM) that is the product of the Scientific Method to counter his arguments, or logically establish that his arguments do not follow from such Stuff.
Assuming this author proposed a testable and falsifiable theory (e.g. "These traits statistically correlate with these genes, and I have controlled for all non-genetic factors like environment, diet, etc"; contra "This race is better because $deity says so"), the proper rebuttal is "We went over your analysis, and you failed to control for X" or "What you're suggesting is a plausible idea but it's wholly unsupported by the data and studies you cite" or "Here's where your use of these statistics is inapt because it means X and not Y like you think."
Now, I didn't read the NYT letter either (making me the quintessential
Correct, every sworn-in attorney is an officer of the court, with heightened ethical obligations. I don't think the subpoena power specifically is reserved for lawyers; if you represent yourself you can still subpoena witnesses.
I know there's some special stuff attorneys get to do by virtue of being officers of the court, but the main thing is actually practice law (represent clients) and keep nearly unassailable confidentiality (atty-client privilege). One of the gotchas is that your duty to the court (as an officer) trumps, so even though you have an utmost duty to keep client confidences, you still can't knowingly allow a client to perpetrate a fraud on the court.
I can't speak to those tests or their security procedures, but it may have less to do with the importance of the test itself than the power of the testmaker. Cisco is not an arm of my state's Supreme Court, and they don't have the power to e.g. look through all my civil and criminal records (sealed, juvenile, expunged, all of them), bring me up on perjury charges, or permaban me from practicing my profession if I try to hoodwink them. The state bar is, and they do have those powers.
/. infosec calculus doesn't really apply. The upsides are marginal, the downsides are huge, and the number of law students who could actually tell you what virtual machines and buffer overflows are is vanishingly small. The tiny percent of aspiring lawyers with the skills and smarts to pull off an undetectable hack are more than capable of studying a few weeks and actually passing the thing.
Not defending ExamSoft, their practices ($100 one time use is BS) or their software (certainly hackable). Just saying the usual
I took the bar exam this week. My experience was that there are lots of restrictions on what you're allowed to bring in with you (in a clear ziplock bag), but they are not cavity searching you for violations, or even really looking at your bag at all. I.e. to a large degree they are trusting us to take the test honestly.
Now of course the nerds among us (you, me, most everyone else here) can think of clever ways someone could conceivably cheat—a tiny scroll in 4pt font rolled up into your pen, rules of law written in uv ink on your shirt sleeves and wearing special glasses, etc etc. But apart from the fact that it's completely unethical (which matters more to lawyers than pretty much every other profession), getting caught will get you banned for life (still with six-digit loan debt) and it wouldn't be all that helpful anyway. There's like a thousand pages of testable material and time is extremely limited. Unless you broke into the NCBE offices and stole the answers, cheating just won't be a very effective strategy.
Same goes for the computer/essay portion. Yes it's your device to which you have root access, a third party can never 100% verify security. Of course a 1337 haXor could trick the ExamSoft program into running on a VM or, hell, even hard solder something into the keyboard circuitry that sent a paragraph worth of text at the press of a key.
But this isn't spycraft, all they need to do is detect something (anything) hinky and then banhammer. Are you willing to bet 3 years of tuition on your certainty that you beat the program and that it logged nothing? And, again, there's another thousand pages of material being tested, in essays where you get 45min and 6500 characters (maybe 1200 words) each. It's a hell of a lot of potential downside and very little upside unless you burgled the bar examiners' offices. In which case, why are you trying to become a lawyer? You could be planning Oceans 15 right now.
+1 Interesting. Cancels out my WTF misclick -1 Flamebait...
Grammar pedantry usually adds nothing to a conversation, but there should be a special "-1 Irregardless" moderation.
That's pretty much the story. This particularly atrocious bit of police behavior occurred in Georgia. The cops were looking for drugs and a suspected drug dealer (dad, I think). IIRC, the cops couldn't get the door open, so they thought there was someone trying to physically block/barricade the door and tossed a flashbang into the room. Only, it wasn't a desperate meth cook pushing a barrel of methylamine against the door, but a toddler's crib that had been placed there by grandma. I don't remember if it came out why the crib was there (small house/trailer maybe?) but she certainly had no reason to know or think that LEOs were going to require that entryway for a tactical assault on the house.
Neither drugs nor dad were found in the home, and toddler was severely injured (might still be in the hospital?) by the flashbang that was thrown directly into his crib. Mom and dad were elsewhere and I believe were later arrested on some kind of drug charges. This is all from memory, so a Google search might fill in some details.
Or for monetary relief from an incompetent doctor.
Ha! Totally heard this ^ as part of a matter-of-fact radio exchange:
"Permission to fuck this."
"Permission granted."
"Fucking this."
"Fuck on, soldier."
You hoser, you should worry less about White Walkers than Red Riders, dontcha know?
Mod this up! My kingdom for mod points... this is both the correct U.S. rule and the correct application of the rule in the context of public figure defamation.
Er, what? Don't know what you're getting at with the "work for the IRS" bit. I'll admit that people (including friends and family) arguing from canned soundbites does agitate me, though I don't doubt you for a second when you say you don't personally listen to the source material. Again, the rant was not really directed at your post. But when you see, time and again, these pre-packaged chunks of partisan messaging being bandied about as if they were real arguments, it just comes off so brainwashy. FWIW I agree that losing all these emails in precisely this way seems highly suspicious.
I'm going to sidestep the actual debate here ("Lost Emails: Incompetence or Conspiracy?"), and just put it out there that using word-for-word talking points from conservative talk radio—like "the dog ate my homework"—makes it really hard to take an argument seriously.
If I wanted to know what Herman Cain's opinion was, I would have tuned in this morning to his show (which I did), to hear him say that this was like whining that "the dog ate my homework, and now I can't find my dog." And then, I could have also gotten Rush Limbaugh's sage opinion that this is a case of crying "the dog ate my homework." I'm sure Hannity is saying it right now, and O'Reilly will say it later.
Look, this may be a case of pure corruption and lies, unconstitutional targeting out of political spite reaching to the highest levels. If it is, LL should go to jail, those responsible should be prosecuted, and the conservative pundits will get my blessing to all simultaneously jizz in their pants.
I have my own gripes with Obama (NSA surveillance for starters), and I am open to well-reasoned arguments about his administration's failings. But using canned phraseology—written by people that measure and calculate how effectively various wordings can be used to rile up the base and grab soundbites—will get you nowhere.
Similarly short shrift goes to things like: calling all taxes and regulations "job killers"; sardonically calling Islam "the religion of peaaaace"; calling Obama "The Community Organizer"; chanting pithy-but-meaningless phrases like "Bush lied people died"; appending "-Gate" to the end of anything remotely controversial; and pretty much any pundit, politician, or political group calling anything "racist."
Note this rant is not personally directed at you, Applehu, but you just happen to be the winning 19th poster to use this straight-from-the-show-notes talk radio quote.
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Because a C&D is somehow damaging to the "IkeaHackers.net" brand beyond the obviously untenable position regarding their name? If IkeaHackers is serious about operating in good faith they will choose a similar but un-infringing name and go on with their lives.
It's not a slam dunk that IKH is infringing on the IKEA word mark. The general standard for TM infringement is likelihood of confusion (and possibly dilution in this case because it's a famous mark). It can be a complex analysis, but the brass tacks question is, "When people see the name and go to ikeahackers.net, do they think it's Ikea or Ikea-sponsored?"
This is (one of the reasons) why e.g. gripe sites are OK—when you go to ikeasucks.com, you're unlikely to be confused that the source is purporting to be IKEA. It's murkier with ikeahackers, but a disclaimer and a concerted effort to stay away from the markholder's logo, layout, and styling, can go a long way. Even for commercial (ad supported) use.
I'm eagerly the day when all communication on the internet can be done either via cat pictures or quoting memes
we're getting closer and closer.
FTFY. Such meta.