It's the fault of the people that engaged this lawyer that they paid so much. If they wanted a cheaper lawyer, a cheaper lawyer was almost certainly available.
It doesn't make sense when people blame lawyers - the job of a lawyer is to zealously defend the interests of their client. If lawyers made their own decisions about the merit of a client's case, there would be a two-level judicial system - which is insane. When a fat person sues McDonald's for being fat - blame the fat person, not the lawyer. If you think society is too litigious, blame society.
Also, there is no functioning legal system on this planet that doesn't require specialized professionals. Maybe you could develop one?
Also if your boss invents the algorithm, and you just implement, you're effectively fungible. So while you may be an excellent programmer, worth the pretty solid $150k pay, you could also be fungible with all other excellent programmers (of which there are many). In this case, your value-add is just programming, and you should be paid appropriately.
The majority of HFT is done by a series of smaller firms. These are generally not the JPMs or the Goldman Sachs of the world (though banks may having small hft operations). They are significantly smaller firms that roll over their entire portfolio many times a day. Renaissance Technologies, IMC, Getco, and others - those are the big players. For them, there is real financial risk. The principals have their own skin in the game. If they fail, they not only lose their own money, but their ability to conduct further fundraising is significantly impaired.
With the lone exceptions of Citadel and DE Shaw, it is not large financial companies that do HFT. It is small quant shops or proprietary trading firms. The managers of these firms do not have golden parachutes. Often at least some fraction of the investment comes from their own investments. So when the firm goes bust, they lose their money, their jobs, and their reputations. (this is all from last month's Institutional Investor profile of HFT - check it out, it's very interesting)
It really shouldn't be news that someone is making an argument in their case. Anyone can make an argument - that doesn't mean it's right. And the standards on due process for damages are pretty wishy-washy. So, while I'm not saying this wouldn't be good news if it were ultimately upheld, it's not really news that someone is bringing it up. 99% of all class actions are arguments made by plaintiffs' lawyers that are garbage, which never go anywhere.
How could anyone really think this is a good idea? AT&T has effectively admitted that the data usage growth for smartphones is above the rate that their data network will be able to grow. Using more data intensive applications will only show them how correct they are ("Look how much data will be used in the future when more people are streaming data")
In addition, what if this actually interferes with an emergency call?
Sorry that this might not be anti-corporate enough, but Operation Chokehold really isn't a great idea.
Borrowing money is not a bad move. You have to look into the corporate finance of it. For one, if you can assume that a company makes money at least at the rate it borrows (MS is borrowing at what 5%? 6%?). Interest payments on debt are deductible, meaning MS is only paying (1-corporate tax rate)% after taxes, so by borrowing it gains the present value of tax savings on the money it's borrowed. This directly adds to the corporate valuation of the company. Meanwhile, sitting on cash, when the company has a weighted average cost of capital to meet, has negative valuation for the company.
Intellectual property laws are not uniform around the world. That was one of the "I feel that the law is this way" arguments. You might wonder "where does this guy get off saying all this?" I'm a lawyer.
It's not patent law, as you claim. A patent would have expired years ago. Also, Scrabble was denied a patent by the PTO. I don't know what copyrights are claimed, but there are several claims that could be raised, including the look of the board as an artistic expression. The Scrabulous board uses the same colors and pieces as Scrabble. Clearly there are a number of trademark issues. It's not clear why you brushed those claims aside, maybe you don't know the law and you just felt that it was a certain way? Is Scrabulous too similar to Scrabble? Maybe. Is the use of the word Scrab in conjunction with a crossword game a trademark violation - probably.
Mattel and Hasbro's position, obviously, is that there is a violation of their intellectual property in one form or another. They will raise both copyright and trademark claims. But you're sorely mistaken if you think their primary goal is to disgorge the makers of Scrabulous of the ~$300,000 per year that they make off the game. They sell 1 to 2 million Scrabble boards per year. They want it taken offline, and they don't need to sue in India for that. Different circuits in the US have different bodies of law. Mattel and Hasbro will have their pick of the one with precedent most supportive of their claims. The Scrabulous makers will likely not have many grounds for removal.
Your rebuttal, however, really proved my original point. Every claim you made was wrong - and that didn't stop you from saying it as though you had some authority.
What bothers me about these discussions on Slashdot is that 99% of the time, it's people that aren't lawyers, and don't really have a sense of what the law actually is.
"I feel that the law is this way" really isn't a valid argument. Can either the parent or the GP point to some precedent - legislation, caselaw or anything to support their positions (no, not Wikipedia)? What jurisdiction would this be filed in? Is there any jurisdiction that would support Mattel or Hasbro's position? If so, I'm pretty sure minimum contacts would be satisfied there. These are all important questions before you can start to argue abstractly on law you don't know about.
This is a despicable distortion of the truth. I'm just as liberal as the next guy, and I don't much care for Cheney et al., but you simply cannot say, in good conscience, that they only people getting killed are insurgents and American Soldiers. See this, for example. The Sunnis and the Shiites hate each other, and they indiscriminately attack each other's civilians, markets, temples etc., often with the sole aim of killing members of the other group.
Maybe you were just trying to be funny, but with the increased public awareness of KBR, and newly focused congressional oversight over the group, it's certainly not getting "great" for the "upper classes" either.
FYI, the difference between your quote and mine is that you cited to the American Depository Receipts of SAP, not their actual stock. This is a depository receipt for the stock, not an actual share - but the price is generally a very close proxy to it. (See Wikipedia ADR entry)
Microsoft has been convicted, very recently, of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. See US v. Microsoft (D.C. Cir. 2001). It violated section 2 of the Sherman antitrust act with predatory practices. It attempted to monopolize the browser market, illegally tied its browser, created exclusive dealings contracts that, while not on their face unreasonable, contributed to the section 2 violation. The court dismissed only the leveraging claim.
I think your biggest understanding is that you don't have to be a monopoly to violate Sherman. Section 2 prohibits monopolization and attempts to monopolize. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire... to monopolize any part of trade... shall be deemed guilty... Liability ensues when a company monopolizes or comes dangerously close to doing so.
This case, of course, deals with Iowa law, and not Federal law, but the same principles apply. Antitrust law is all about stopping anticompetitive behavior. If you act anti-competitively, then it causes harm to the market which means that your premise of a rational consumer buying the product that they see fit at the price they see fit no longer applies.
He actually uses Hebrew from time to time. When he was singing the Kazakh national anthem at the minor league baseball game, a lot of the words were from a Hebrew song.
Two examples of such copyright collection societies are:
ASCAP and BMI.
One issue with them is that they are very expensive - often they will demand a certain percentage of revenue. They were even sued for being trusts - and ASCAP lost. So they are not without their faults.
The article seemed all over the place - in dealing both with google earth and google maps. In any case, I just tried maps.ask.com today and it seems pretty good - it does both walking and driving directions with the satellite and scrolling shenanigans that everyone else uses. It also lets you plot out routes with up to 10 destinations. It's at least worth a try.
First of all, I am a lawyer. We are dealing with a US-based publication and a US-based website, so US laws apply without question. I don't care about the laws in other countries, because they are not based on the US notions of fairness or justice, nor are they relevant for settling the issue at hand. However, the answer to your question is actually one of tort settlement. One of the main theories behind tort settlement is to have loss spreading when possible. Whenever the buck can be passed to insurance - which is composed of thousands of individuals paying, thereby creating a guaratee that there will be payment - tort law is happy. Similarly in the case of recordable media, the justification in your district is that the tariff is for loss spreading. While you may not like it, that's the way it is. You have power over electing your legislators, and if it mattered enough to enough people, then it would change. As it is, people seem content enough with the arrangement. I can support this with a lot more than I'm doing right now, but I'm probably a lot more familiar with legal writings than you, and I don't feel like it, so just trust me. Therefore, the recording industry is not "stealing" from you. It is enacting loss spreading for the infringement that probabilistically results from recordable media purchases. Your jurisdiction is happy with that, and it's not theft by any sense of the word. Theft (larceny) requires a wrongful taking (for example, see the PLNY Section 155.05). Wrongful always means against the law - so if the law allows it is not theft. The law allows (mandates) the tariff, so it is not theft. You may not like it, but you also don't write the laws. You can't arbitrarily define a moral wrong and then decide that the law should accord with what you feel - that's just not how functioning societies with established judicial systems work. Sorry. I'm not being a hypocrite in any sense of the word. Your accusation is actually somewhat confusing. I'm a legal realist. The New York Times in no way is ambiguous about the fact that all of its work is copyrighted. In fact, they even have a section through which you can buy a right to their copy. Taking their work without said right is theft because it is against the law. The RIAA or whatever the equivalent is in whatever country you are from is also acting in accordance with the law. Your argument about copyright term etc. being stealing is nonsense. You WANT it to be stealing (which also doesn't make any sense, because they own the copyright - you can't steal something you own) because you want the public to have general ownership rights, but that's not the way things are. Vote for it, and someday you might be right. Today you are not.
I know everyone is into fair use etc., but I think you should think again when you are just stealing someone else's content. This is not fair use and I would like to see someone provide any rationale other than "I shoulde be able use stuff however I want!" as a reasonable basis for why stealing some other company's work should be justifiable. The point of all this is that you really shouldn't mod up stolen content - especially if it belongs to some server that is clearly not going to crash through a slashdotting.
If MS doesn't pay the fine, then they are breaking the law in the EU, and may be subject to more serious actions. If they want to keep doing business in the EU, they have to pay the fine. It's definitely not a good business decision for them to pull out of all of the EU. It's just like how Texas can sue Sony BMG.
In some senses, that's true, but England has is a far more plaintiff-friendly nation for libel (click) Ali G (Sasha Cohen), for example may ACTUALLY be at risk for libel if Kazakhstan can obtain jurisdiction over him in England.
I don't understand why he does it, but the parent copies all his posts from high scoring previous posts in the anti-slash db. He's a fraud - don't mod him up.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the fault of the people that engaged this lawyer that they paid so much. If they wanted a cheaper lawyer, a cheaper lawyer was almost certainly available.
It doesn't make sense when people blame lawyers - the job of a lawyer is to zealously defend the interests of their client. If lawyers made their own decisions about the merit of a client's case, there would be a two-level judicial system - which is insane. When a fat person sues McDonald's for being fat - blame the fat person, not the lawyer. If you think society is too litigious, blame society.
Also, there is no functioning legal system on this planet that doesn't require specialized professionals. Maybe you could develop one?
Also if your boss invents the algorithm, and you just implement, you're effectively fungible. So while you may be an excellent programmer, worth the pretty solid $150k pay, you could also be fungible with all other excellent programmers (of which there are many). In this case, your value-add is just programming, and you should be paid appropriately.
The majority of HFT is done by a series of smaller firms. These are generally not the JPMs or the Goldman Sachs of the world (though banks may having small hft operations). They are significantly smaller firms that roll over their entire portfolio many times a day. Renaissance Technologies, IMC, Getco, and others - those are the big players. For them, there is real financial risk. The principals have their own skin in the game. If they fail, they not only lose their own money, but their ability to conduct further fundraising is significantly impaired.
With the lone exceptions of Citadel and DE Shaw, it is not large financial companies that do HFT. It is small quant shops or proprietary trading firms. The managers of these firms do not have golden parachutes. Often at least some fraction of the investment comes from their own investments. So when the firm goes bust, they lose their money, their jobs, and their reputations. (this is all from last month's Institutional Investor profile of HFT - check it out, it's very interesting)
It really shouldn't be news that someone is making an argument in their case. Anyone can make an argument - that doesn't mean it's right. And the standards on due process for damages are pretty wishy-washy. So, while I'm not saying this wouldn't be good news if it were ultimately upheld, it's not really news that someone is bringing it up. 99% of all class actions are arguments made by plaintiffs' lawyers that are garbage, which never go anywhere.
How could anyone really think this is a good idea? AT&T has effectively admitted that the data usage growth for smartphones is above the rate that their data network will be able to grow. Using more data intensive applications will only show them how correct they are ("Look how much data will be used in the future when more people are streaming data")
In addition, what if this actually interferes with an emergency call?
Sorry that this might not be anti-corporate enough, but Operation Chokehold really isn't a great idea.
Borrowing money is not a bad move. You have to look into the corporate finance of it. For one, if you can assume that a company makes money at least at the rate it borrows (MS is borrowing at what 5%? 6%?). Interest payments on debt are deductible, meaning MS is only paying (1-corporate tax rate)% after taxes, so by borrowing it gains the present value of tax savings on the money it's borrowed. This directly adds to the corporate valuation of the company. Meanwhile, sitting on cash, when the company has a weighted average cost of capital to meet, has negative valuation for the company.
Intellectual property laws are not uniform around the world. That was one of the "I feel that the law is this way" arguments. You might wonder "where does this guy get off saying all this?" I'm a lawyer.
It's not patent law, as you claim. A patent would have expired years ago. Also, Scrabble was denied a patent by the PTO. I don't know what copyrights are claimed, but there are several claims that could be raised, including the look of the board as an artistic expression. The Scrabulous board uses the same colors and pieces as Scrabble. Clearly there are a number of trademark issues. It's not clear why you brushed those claims aside, maybe you don't know the law and you just felt that it was a certain way? Is Scrabulous too similar to Scrabble? Maybe. Is the use of the word Scrab in conjunction with a crossword game a trademark violation - probably.
Mattel and Hasbro's position, obviously, is that there is a violation of their intellectual property in one form or another. They will raise both copyright and trademark claims. But you're sorely mistaken if you think their primary goal is to disgorge the makers of Scrabulous of the ~$300,000 per year that they make off the game. They sell 1 to 2 million Scrabble boards per year. They want it taken offline, and they don't need to sue in India for that. Different circuits in the US have different bodies of law. Mattel and Hasbro will have their pick of the one with precedent most supportive of their claims. The Scrabulous makers will likely not have many grounds for removal.
Your rebuttal, however, really proved my original point. Every claim you made was wrong - and that didn't stop you from saying it as though you had some authority.
What bothers me about these discussions on Slashdot is that 99% of the time, it's people that aren't lawyers, and don't really have a sense of what the law actually is.
"I feel that the law is this way" really isn't a valid argument. Can either the parent or the GP point to some precedent - legislation, caselaw or anything to support their positions (no, not Wikipedia)? What jurisdiction would this be filed in? Is there any jurisdiction that would support Mattel or Hasbro's position? If so, I'm pretty sure minimum contacts would be satisfied there. These are all important questions before you can start to argue abstractly on law you don't know about.
This is a despicable distortion of the truth. I'm just as liberal as the next guy, and I don't much care for Cheney et al., but you simply cannot say, in good conscience, that they only people getting killed are insurgents and American Soldiers. See this, for example. The Sunnis and the Shiites hate each other, and they indiscriminately attack each other's civilians, markets, temples etc., often with the sole aim of killing members of the other group. Maybe you were just trying to be funny, but with the increased public awareness of KBR, and newly focused congressional oversight over the group, it's certainly not getting "great" for the "upper classes" either.
FYI, the difference between your quote and mine is that you cited to the American Depository Receipts of SAP, not their actual stock. This is a depository receipt for the stock, not an actual share - but the price is generally a very close proxy to it. (See Wikipedia ADR entry)
Do some research before you say things like that. SAP's market cap is 57.09B, ORCL is 95.82B.
Microsoft has been convicted, very recently, of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. See US v. Microsoft (D.C. Cir. 2001). It violated section 2 of the Sherman antitrust act with predatory practices. It attempted to monopolize the browser market, illegally tied its browser, created exclusive dealings contracts that, while not on their face unreasonable, contributed to the section 2 violation. The court dismissed only the leveraging claim. ... to monopolize any part of trade ... shall be deemed guilty... Liability ensues when a company monopolizes or comes dangerously close to doing so.
I think your biggest understanding is that you don't have to be a monopoly to violate Sherman. Section 2 prohibits monopolization and attempts to monopolize. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire
This case, of course, deals with Iowa law, and not Federal law, but the same principles apply. Antitrust law is all about stopping anticompetitive behavior. If you act anti-competitively, then it causes harm to the market which means that your premise of a rational consumer buying the product that they see fit at the price they see fit no longer applies.
He actually uses Hebrew from time to time. When he was singing the Kazakh national anthem at the minor league baseball game, a lot of the words were from a Hebrew song.
In South Korea, only old people use memes
Two examples of such copyright collection societies are: ASCAP and BMI. One issue with them is that they are very expensive - often they will demand a certain percentage of revenue. They were even sued for being trusts - and ASCAP lost. So they are not without their faults.
but then it would probably also miss grenades that were thrown at it.
The article seemed all over the place - in dealing both with google earth and google maps. In any case, I just tried maps.ask.com today and it seems pretty good - it does both walking and driving directions with the satellite and scrolling shenanigans that everyone else uses. It also lets you plot out routes with up to 10 destinations. It's at least worth a try.
First of all, I am a lawyer.
We are dealing with a US-based publication and a US-based website, so US laws apply without question. I don't care about the laws in other countries, because they are not based on the US notions of fairness or justice, nor are they relevant for settling the issue at hand.
However, the answer to your question is actually one of tort settlement. One of the main theories behind tort settlement is to have loss spreading when possible. Whenever the buck can be passed to insurance - which is composed of thousands of individuals paying, thereby creating a guaratee that there will be payment - tort law is happy. Similarly in the case of recordable media, the justification in your district is that the tariff is for loss spreading. While you may not like it, that's the way it is. You have power over electing your legislators, and if it mattered enough to enough people, then it would change. As it is, people seem content enough with the arrangement. I can support this with a lot more than I'm doing right now, but I'm probably a lot more familiar with legal writings than you, and I don't feel like it, so just trust me.
Therefore, the recording industry is not "stealing" from you. It is enacting loss spreading for the infringement that probabilistically results from recordable media purchases. Your jurisdiction is happy with that, and it's not theft by any sense of the word. Theft (larceny) requires a wrongful taking (for example, see the PLNY Section 155.05). Wrongful always means against the law - so if the law allows it is not theft. The law allows (mandates) the tariff, so it is not theft. You may not like it, but you also don't write the laws. You can't arbitrarily define a moral wrong and then decide that the law should accord with what you feel - that's just not how functioning societies with established judicial systems work. Sorry.
I'm not being a hypocrite in any sense of the word. Your accusation is actually somewhat confusing. I'm a legal realist. The New York Times in no way is ambiguous about the fact that all of its work is copyrighted. In fact, they even have a section through which you can buy a right to their copy. Taking their work without said right is theft because it is against the law. The RIAA or whatever the equivalent is in whatever country you are from is also acting in accordance with the law.
Your argument about copyright term etc. being stealing is nonsense. You WANT it to be stealing (which also doesn't make any sense, because they own the copyright - you can't steal something you own) because you want the public to have general ownership rights, but that's not the way things are. Vote for it, and someday you might be right. Today you are not.
I know everyone is into fair use etc., but I think you should think again when you are just stealing someone else's content. This is not fair use and I would like to see someone provide any rationale other than "I shoulde be able use stuff however I want!" as a reasonable basis for why stealing some other company's work should be justifiable.
The point of all this is that you really shouldn't mod up stolen content - especially if it belongs to some server that is clearly not going to crash through a slashdotting.
Not everyone buys the console the day it comes out.
If MS doesn't pay the fine, then they are breaking the law in the EU, and may be subject to more serious actions. If they want to keep doing business in the EU, they have to pay the fine. It's definitely not a good business decision for them to pull out of all of the EU. It's just like how Texas can sue Sony BMG.
In some senses, that's true, but England has is a far more plaintiff-friendly nation for libel (click)
Ali G (Sasha Cohen), for example may ACTUALLY be at risk for libel if Kazakhstan can obtain jurisdiction over him in England.
that sounds like it would be pretty useful - but I have no idea how to do it. How does one go about bookmarking with keywords?
I don't understand why he does it, but the parent copies all his posts from high scoring previous posts in the anti-slash db. He's a fraud - don't mod him up.