Hello prospective plaintiffs. Yes, you can sue spyware scum. Yes, it is trespassing as well as unauthorized computer access (bet you thought a 502 was a DUI). Yes, many lawyers will take your spyware case if you 1) can prove liability); 2) have a defendant with deep (but not too deep) pockets; 3) have provable damages. Best course of action, though, is to have a whole bunch of people sue the offender at once in small claims court for $5000 each (no lawyers allowed).
Pinball machines need to be CLEANED and POLISHED regularly in order to play well. If you see a dirty pinball machine, please politely complain to the bartender/arcade manager etc. Thank you for your time.
They DID back up the data. Hey, think Santa Cruz, you naturally think RELIABILITY. But the 8" hard sector floppy was hidden in a VW microbus where it was inadvertently resectored by a dog named Fang; the 9-track mag tape was cut into strips to decorate the maypole; and someone is still staring at the CD-ROM looking at all the pretty colors.
Waving my arms and shouting "Turista! American!" was enough to get an Argentinian Customs supervisor to pull me and my luggage off the Secondary Inspection line at EZE and throw me out onto the street. It's really not a bad country -- the Recoleta section of Bs.As. reminds one of Greenwich Village or SF, complete with street vendors and mimes, except nicer -- and the place will probably be dirt cheap once the Argentinian peso floats 40-50% down in value as is predicted.
Fortunately, we don't need a ballot initiative to be able to use Medical Antimatter. While not yet covered by most insurance plans, the US government is on record as supporting the Antidrug. Just snort some, you'll really blow your mind!
The judicial system is, more than ever, highly politicized. Conservative/Republican judges tend to side with the realtively strong (district attorneys, employers, insurance companies, intellectual property behemoths) while liberal/Democratic judges tend to favor the relatively weak (employees, people accused of crimes, people who were injured by the wrongful acts or omissions of others). Individual members of the jury pool come from both sides. Plaintiffs' lawyers, like me, tend to disfavor engineers and programmers as jurors because they, in general, tend to discount that which cannot be easily quantified such as "pain and suffering" -- even where persons are clearly entitled to collect for their very real pain and suffering. Insurance companies tend to disfavor prospective jurors who are thought to be overly emotional such as social workers and teachers. There is a place for all types of people in the judicial system, and most of the time it works fairly well. Big, rich companies would like to eliminate jury trials and class actions -- the only vehicles by which ordinary people can realistically hope to obtain justice in many types of disputes. For example, many "arbitration" contract clauses often force individuals to use unfair dispute resolution systems: you and Exxon have an "equal" right to pay the arbitrator thousands of dollars up front to have your case heard.
Companies get certified in SEI-CMM (the Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model) to get that government contract -- and then they quickly abandon or pay lip service to the CMM principles. The whole point of SEI-CMM is that you have to have a non-dilbert organizational structure in order to achieve "maturity" resulting in the organization's being "capable" of developing more stable code and of achieving more control over project costs and schedules. The irony is, the companies who need SEI-CMM certification the most, the big government and defense contractors, tend to be the same companies who foster immature corporate policies such as frequent mass layoffs, no training, illusory stock option programs, a culture of blame, and lousy HMO plans that don't cover anything.
It would work like this: Say you have a dispute over an eBay transaction with somebody who lives 3000 miles away on the other side of the country. You go to your local [main] post office and file a small claims case. The post office serves the defendant for you by certified mail. On the day set for hearing, you go back to your post office and you are sent to a Federal Small Claims hearing room which has a camera, two video screens, and a flatbed scanner. One video monitor is teleconferenced to the defendant's local post office and shows the defendant, the other screen shows the face of a Federal small claims judge or magistrate (who could be physically located anywhere). The judge hears both sides and renders a decision just like in a live small claims court. The court's judgment could be enforced nationwide. Any documents that need to be shown to the judge are placed on the scanner. You set the jurisdictional limit at say $5000, same as in a California small claims court. No lawyers allowed, just like in a real small claims court (unless one of the parties happens to be a lawyer). With a system like this, it would be convenient and speedy to litigate your garden variety eBay-type dispute as well as lots of other interstate disputes that are inconvenient to hear in real courts 'cause of the distance involved. This would also prevent big corporations from taking advantage of consumers with those pesky "forum selection" contract clauses that wipe-out consumers' legal rights by forcing them to sue in some distant forum like King County, Wash.
Sending out resumes to lots of email addresses listed in the want ads isn't spam, but it will piss off some ISPs unless and until you explain things to them. This is not the problem it used to be, since the number of IT want ads is asymptotically approaching zero and has been ever since GWB was anointed President. Returning autoresponder mail that claims the co. will keep my resume on file, now THAT's spam.
Most of the comments from y'all are really heartless and negative, not only as to the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, but towards disabled people in general. I bet most of you are under 35, no, make that under 25, and healthy. Some day, real soon now, you will have your very own pillbox with 7 compartments representing days of the week, and I bet that WHEN you are over 45 you will find yourself, at least once and probably several times, looking for a gig and suddenly realizing it's no picnic anymore. The Supreme Court decision may or may not make sense as applied to this plaintiff, whose basic problem was that she answered a bunch of trick questions at her deposition like admitting she could brush her teeth when the real issue should have been whether she could hold her arms high above her head and work on a moving assembly line for 8 hours a day with carpal tunnel syndrome. The reality of employment litigation is that you, the employee (don't assume you won't ever be a plaintiff in court) and your lawyer, if you can afford one (no rational attorney takes employment cases on contingency) will be up against the Man and his unlimited litigation budget. You will spend so many days at your deposition your head will swim, being grilled about every sordid and non-sordid irrelevant detail of your life, and you will finally admit you can brush your teeth, just to get out of there. Assuming your lawyer wins all of the motions to throw out your case that they will file, and you actually get to plead your case to a jury, and there are no Slashdot types on the jury, you will then get to wait for 5 more years while the corporation appeals.
For example: I know a woman who is an IT project manager who has a medical condition that limits her walking. She can walk, but it is very painful for her. Recently her company decided to move to
new quarters. Everyone knows she has a handicapped parking placard -- surprise! The new office space is up two flights of stairs, quite (illegally) inaccessible. When she asked for a reasonable accommodation, the snide remarks and gossip came quickly. "You don't look so disabled." "It's only two flights of stairs." "Why didn't you tell anybody you were handicapped?" She has now been assigned to a differerent, accessible building but there are no other employees assigned to this building, it is empty office space, she has no PC! Not even a -chair-. They didn't fire her, yet, but she gets to do -nothing-. Yeah, she gets paid, but don't try and tell me you wouldn't go bugfuck stir crazy.
Today's Supreme Court ruling is yet another victory for the strong who would oppress the weak. It will embolden employers to play bullshit games like this with human beings and their livelihoods and families. Disabled people will be made to produce reams of privacy-invading medical reports to justify their claims for reasonable accommodation, which will be denied. And if you are one of those cruel people who would mock and ridicule the disabled among us, might I remind you that there but for the grace of God go you. It only takes one bodysurfing or rock-climbing or bike accident. IAAL.
Libel and slander are subsets of defamation. Libel is defamation by means of publishing, e.g. printed or broadcast (or netcast) dissemination of a harmful and nonprivileged untruth. Slander is defamation by means of spoken words. Truth is a complete defense to all forms of defamation. Privilege can be a defense, for example if the defamation is made from the witness stand in a court case or by a Congresscritter speaking on the floor or in committee (really, see Article I Section 6 of the US Constitution). Finally, it is harder to make a defamation lawsuit stick if the defamee is a "public figure." There are related civil wrongs ("torts") such as "invasion of privacy" and "intentional infliction of emotional distress" under which even true statements can be actionable. IAAL. And remember kids, in order to win your lawsuit, even for a false and defamatory statement, you have to have suffered damages such as provable economic loss (e.g. losing your job), or really severe emotional distress.
I haven't seen anybody come up with a worthwhile satellite hack: here's one.
You introduce 2-3 minutes of digital delay into the video signal, prior to the uplink, on the feed from your local racetrack. Then, you call up your beard at one of the big sportsbooks in Vegas and have him bet, past-post, on the winning horse.
Or, if you can't or won't or are too chicken or can't afford the terabytes of RAM necessary for all that digital delay, this is what you do. You find some rich crook, say Doyle Lonigan. You have somebody, say Robert Redford, convince him that you actually do have 3 minutes of DDL in front of the feed from Aqueduct or Churchill Downs or wherever. You take Lonigan to this big telco-room full of equipment racks and introduce him to Ray Walston who, you explain, is a crooked videotech who is in on the scam. Then you get Paul Newman to set up a "big store" that is an identical replica of the sports book at Caesars. You call Lonigan on his cell phone and give him a convincer (a winning bet). This puts Lonigan "on the send," and he comes back to the store with a wad of dough. You then ring up Lonigan and tell him to place the money on [your favorite horse]. But the horse actually comes in 2nd. When Lonigan complains, you tell him you told him to -place- the money, you idiot. Then bogus cops come in and shoot Redford "dead." Lonigan splits and is never seen again. Redford, Newman, et al. split the take. The best part is, you don't really have to haxor the bird or even buy any RAM.
Simply give the pimply-faced store clerk (who has been trained to ask for a name, address and phone number even if you are paying cash) the address and phone number of the White House. To this day, they probably get dozens of Radio Shack catalogs addressed to Ben Franklin 'cause of me. Try and keep a straight face as you are asked how to spell "Pennsylvania Avenue."
The so-called broadband airline service will be so slow, and priced so expensively, that you will never want to use it -- kinda like the Wireless Web feature on your cell phone that you never use except when your kids play with the phone and you get a bill for $14 for 3 minutes of Wireless Web... or the time you actually tried to surf the Web with your cell phone, nothing happened, and you got a bill for $17.
They must be making a fortune from the $10/min pay phones nobody ever uses, to come up with this one!
Also, the router boxes will be placed under coach seats in such a way as to cut into your other ankle (the ankle that is not already up against the stereo distribution amp).
Correct, the NY Supreme Court is the lowest court (maybe it's called that so lawyers can brag to clients, Hey, I took your case all the way to the Supreme Court!)...
But the highest NYS court is not the "Superior Court," it's the NY Court of Appeals. IAAL.
1. You won't be able to take it through the drive-thru at Jack In The Box.
2. Your kryptonite lock (the one you still have from when your bike was stolen) won't protect your $3000 Segway Human Transporter either.
3. They will make you buy liability insurance.
4. They will tax it and make you buy stickers, driver's licenses, and/or license tags.
5. They won't let you drive it on the sidewalk.
6. They won't let you drive it on the street either.
7. They will pass a law requiring the manufacturer to cripple the speed to 5 miles an hour and you will have to hot-wire the sucker to get the rated 12 mph out of it.
8. You won't be able to drink and scoot (not legally). Stuff that was legal to do while walking will be illegal while riding. Cops will search IT riders freely, vehicle occupants have far fewer Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures than do pedestrians.
9. They will make you wear a helmet.
10. The TV networks will cover Segway polo matches and they will be even more boring than TV golf.
11. You and I will be dead of old age before needed ancillary businesses like a) public parking and charging facilities and b) reasonably priced rentals at tourist attractions and hotels will exist.
So if I develop software for Windows, does that mean Bill G. can come along and declare all the previously written Windows software obsolete like he did with DOS? Lest anyone forget, many thousands of useful DOS applications, representing millios of man-hours of development effort, had to be trashed because of MS' decision to abandon DOS. And when you hit "Print" in a DOS program, stuff would actually print (now, not 5 or 10 or 15 minutes from now.......)
Take it from someone who owned a Seiko Messagewatch which turned into useless tin: Make sure the wireless protocol is open. Make sure you won't get stuck if the S/P goes belly up.
As a lawyer I would love to see a service such that I can call up this company and give them the URL whenever I see a page that I think will have value as court evidence. The company charges me a nominal fee and caches the page. Thereafter, they will be willing to competently testify or sign an affidavit that such-and-so data was indeed posted on such-and-so page on whatever date.
> You can get away with pretty much anything in the courts and all you need is a shitload of money and more time than the guy you're sueing can spare.
There -are- such things as lawsuits for false arrest and malicious prosecution. For example, when and if Mr. Skylarov eventually walks, Adobe may well have to write him a big check for having had him thrown in jail in the first place. And the courts work better than you think. Yes, big law firms have the advantage over solo-practice, not-even-secretarial-help lawyers like me. But there are lots of ways to prosecute and defend lawsuits on the cheap, and it -is- often possible in America for the little guy to get your case in front of a jury or a fair judge.
> The only way that this is going to change is if there's a mass voting out of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress
Voting out just the Republicans would help a
-lot-. You Nader voters can look forward to a long peonage under the yoke and lash of many a Bush-appointed judge to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Hello prospective plaintiffs. Yes, you can sue spyware scum. Yes, it is trespassing as well as unauthorized computer access (bet you thought a 502 was a DUI). Yes, many lawyers will take your spyware case if you 1) can prove liability); 2) have a defendant with deep (but not too deep) pockets; 3) have provable damages. Best course of action, though, is to have a whole bunch of people sue the offender at once in small claims court for $5000 each (no lawyers allowed).
Pinball machines need to be CLEANED and POLISHED regularly in order to play well. If you see a dirty pinball machine, please politely complain to the bartender/arcade manager etc. Thank you for your time.
They DID back up the data. Hey, think Santa Cruz, you naturally think RELIABILITY. But the 8" hard sector floppy was hidden in a VW microbus where it was inadvertently resectored by a dog named Fang; the 9-track mag tape was cut into strips to decorate the maypole; and someone is still staring at the CD-ROM looking at all the pretty colors.
Waving my arms and shouting "Turista! American!" was enough to get an Argentinian Customs supervisor to pull me and my luggage off the Secondary Inspection line at EZE and throw me out onto the street. It's really not a bad country -- the Recoleta section of Bs.As. reminds one of Greenwich Village or SF, complete with street vendors and mimes, except nicer -- and the place will probably be dirt cheap once the Argentinian peso floats 40-50% down in value as is predicted.
Fortunately, we don't need a ballot initiative to be able to use Medical Antimatter. While not yet covered by most insurance plans, the US government is on record as supporting the Antidrug. Just snort some, you'll really blow your mind!
The judicial system is, more than ever, highly politicized. Conservative/Republican judges tend to side with the realtively strong (district attorneys, employers, insurance companies, intellectual property behemoths) while liberal/Democratic judges tend to favor the relatively weak (employees, people accused of crimes, people who were injured by the wrongful acts or omissions of others). Individual members of the jury pool come from both sides. Plaintiffs' lawyers, like me, tend to disfavor engineers and programmers as jurors because they, in general, tend to discount that which cannot be easily quantified such as "pain and suffering" -- even where persons are clearly entitled to collect for their very real pain and suffering. Insurance companies tend to disfavor prospective jurors who are thought to be overly emotional such as social workers and teachers. There is a place for all types of people in the judicial system, and most of the time it works fairly well. Big, rich companies would like to eliminate jury trials and class actions -- the only vehicles by which ordinary people can realistically hope to obtain justice in many types of disputes. For example, many "arbitration" contract clauses often force individuals to use unfair dispute resolution systems: you and Exxon have an "equal" right to pay the arbitrator thousands of dollars up front to have your case heard.
Companies get certified in SEI-CMM (the Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model) to get that government contract -- and then they quickly abandon or pay lip service to the CMM principles. The whole point of SEI-CMM is that you have to have a non-dilbert organizational structure in order to achieve "maturity" resulting in the organization's being "capable" of developing more stable code and of achieving more control over project costs and schedules. The irony is, the companies who need SEI-CMM certification the most, the big government and defense contractors, tend to be the same companies who foster immature corporate policies such as frequent mass layoffs, no training, illusory stock option programs, a culture of blame, and lousy HMO plans that don't cover anything.
It would work like this: Say you have a dispute over an eBay transaction with somebody who lives 3000 miles away on the other side of the country. You go to your local [main] post office and file a small claims case. The post office serves the defendant for you by certified mail. On the day set for hearing, you go back to your post office and you are sent to a Federal Small Claims hearing room which has a camera, two video screens, and a flatbed scanner. One video monitor is teleconferenced to the defendant's local post office and shows the defendant, the other screen shows the face of a Federal small claims judge or magistrate (who could be physically located anywhere). The judge hears both sides and renders a decision just like in a live small claims court. The court's judgment could be enforced nationwide. Any documents that need to be shown to the judge are placed on the scanner. You set the jurisdictional limit at say $5000, same as in a California small claims court. No lawyers allowed, just like in a real small claims court (unless one of the parties happens to be a lawyer). With a system like this, it would be convenient and speedy to litigate your garden variety eBay-type dispute as well as lots of other interstate disputes that are inconvenient to hear in real courts 'cause of the distance involved. This would also prevent big corporations from taking advantage of consumers with those pesky "forum selection" contract clauses that wipe-out consumers' legal rights by forcing them to sue in some distant forum like King County, Wash.
Sending out resumes to lots of email addresses listed in the want ads isn't spam, but it will piss off some ISPs unless and until you explain things to them. This is not the problem it used to be, since the number of IT want ads is asymptotically approaching zero and has been ever since GWB was anointed President. Returning autoresponder mail that claims the co. will keep my resume on file, now THAT's spam.
For example: I know a woman who is an IT project manager who has a medical condition that limits her walking. She can walk, but it is very painful for her. Recently her company decided to move to
new quarters. Everyone knows she has a handicapped parking placard -- surprise! The new office space is up two flights of stairs, quite (illegally) inaccessible. When she asked for a reasonable accommodation, the snide remarks and gossip came quickly. "You don't look so disabled." "It's only two flights of stairs." "Why didn't you tell anybody you were handicapped?" She has now been assigned to a differerent, accessible building but there are no other employees assigned to this building, it is empty office space, she has no PC! Not even a -chair-. They didn't fire her, yet, but she gets to do -nothing-. Yeah, she gets paid, but don't try and tell me you wouldn't go bugfuck stir crazy.
Today's Supreme Court ruling is yet another victory for the strong who would oppress the weak. It will embolden employers to play bullshit games like this with human beings and their livelihoods and families. Disabled people will be made to produce reams of privacy-invading medical reports to justify their claims for reasonable accommodation, which will be denied. And if you are one of those cruel people who would mock and ridicule the disabled among us, might I remind you that there but for the grace of God go you. It only takes one bodysurfing or rock-climbing or bike accident. IAAL.
Libel and slander are subsets of defamation. Libel is defamation by means of publishing, e.g. printed or broadcast (or netcast) dissemination of a harmful and nonprivileged untruth. Slander is defamation by means of spoken words. Truth is a complete defense to all forms of defamation. Privilege can be a defense, for example if the defamation is made from the witness stand in a court case or by a Congresscritter speaking on the floor or in committee (really, see Article I Section 6 of the US Constitution). Finally, it is harder to make a defamation lawsuit stick if the defamee is a "public figure." There are related civil wrongs ("torts") such as "invasion of privacy" and "intentional infliction of emotional distress" under which even true statements can be actionable. IAAL. And remember kids, in order to win your lawsuit, even for a false and defamatory statement, you have to have suffered damages such as provable economic loss (e.g. losing your job), or really severe emotional distress.
I don't know who wins, but I'd sell short:
-- Companies that make custom trailers to serve as star dressing rooms.
-- Agents.
-- Malibu real estate.
-- Pro makeup, hair, and costume-related companies.
-- Set design and construction companies.
-- SAG and AFTRA. Well, maybe not AFTRA, you still have to hire talent to do the voice-overs -- for now.
I haven't seen anybody come up with a worthwhile satellite hack: here's one.
You introduce 2-3 minutes of digital delay into the video signal, prior to the uplink, on the feed from your local racetrack. Then, you call up your beard at one of the big sportsbooks in Vegas and have him bet, past-post, on the winning horse.
Or, if you can't or won't or are too chicken or can't afford the terabytes of RAM necessary for all that digital delay, this is what you do. You find some rich crook, say Doyle Lonigan. You have somebody, say Robert Redford, convince him that you actually do have 3 minutes of DDL in front of the feed from Aqueduct or Churchill Downs or wherever. You take Lonigan to this big telco-room full of equipment racks and introduce him to Ray Walston who, you explain, is a crooked videotech who is in on the scam. Then you get Paul Newman to set up a "big store" that is an identical replica of the sports book at Caesars. You call Lonigan on his cell phone and give him a convincer (a winning bet). This puts Lonigan "on the send," and he comes back to the store with a wad of dough. You then ring up Lonigan and tell him to place the money on [your favorite horse]. But the horse actually comes in 2nd. When Lonigan complains, you tell him you told him to -place- the money, you idiot. Then bogus cops come in and shoot Redford "dead." Lonigan splits and is never seen again. Redford, Newman, et al. split the take. The best part is, you don't really have to haxor the bird or even buy any RAM.
Let's face it, the Bill-as-Borg icon is dated. Here's a recent photo that could be used instead...
Simply give the pimply-faced store clerk (who has been trained to ask for a name, address and phone number even if you are paying cash) the address and phone number of the White House. To this day, they probably get dozens of Radio Shack catalogs addressed to Ben Franklin 'cause of me. Try and keep a straight face as you are asked how to spell "Pennsylvania Avenue."
The so-called broadband airline service will be so slow, and priced so expensively, that you will never want to use it -- kinda like the Wireless Web feature on your cell phone that you never use except when your kids play with the phone and you get a bill for $14 for 3 minutes of Wireless Web... or the time you actually tried to surf the Web with your cell phone, nothing happened, and you got a bill for $17.
They must be making a fortune from the $10/min pay phones nobody ever uses, to come up with this one!
Also, the router boxes will be placed under coach seats in such a way as to cut into your other ankle (the ankle that is not already up against the stereo distribution amp).
Correct, the NY Supreme Court is the lowest court (maybe it's called that so lawyers can brag to clients, Hey, I took your case all the way to the Supreme Court!)...
But the highest NYS court is not the "Superior Court," it's the NY Court of Appeals. IAAL.
1. You won't be able to take it through the drive-thru at Jack In The Box.
2. Your kryptonite lock (the one you still have from when your bike was stolen) won't protect your $3000 Segway Human Transporter either.
3. They will make you buy liability insurance.
4. They will tax it and make you buy stickers, driver's licenses, and/or license tags.
5. They won't let you drive it on the sidewalk.
6. They won't let you drive it on the street either.
7. They will pass a law requiring the manufacturer to cripple the speed to 5 miles an hour and you will have to hot-wire the sucker to get the rated 12 mph out of it.
8. You won't be able to drink and scoot (not legally). Stuff that was legal to do while walking will be illegal while riding. Cops will search IT riders freely, vehicle occupants have far fewer Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures than do pedestrians.
9. They will make you wear a helmet.
10. The TV networks will cover Segway polo matches and they will be even more boring than TV golf.
11. You and I will be dead of old age before needed ancillary businesses like a) public parking and charging facilities and b) reasonably priced rentals at tourist attractions and hotels will exist.
So if I develop software for Windows, does that mean Bill G. can come along and declare all the previously written Windows software obsolete like he did with DOS? Lest anyone forget, many thousands of useful DOS applications, representing millios of man-hours of development effort, had to be trashed because of MS' decision to abandon DOS. And when you hit "Print" in a DOS program, stuff would actually print (now, not 5 or 10 or 15 minutes from now.......)
Take it from someone who owned a Seiko Messagewatch which turned into useless tin: Make sure the wireless protocol is open. Make sure you won't get stuck if the S/P goes belly up.
As a lawyer I would love to see a service such that I can call up this company and give them the URL whenever I see a page that I think will have value as court evidence. The company charges me a nominal fee and caches the page. Thereafter, they will be willing to competently testify or sign an affidavit that such-and-so data was indeed posted on such-and-so page on whatever date.
> You can get away with pretty much anything in the courts and all you need is a shitload of money and more time than the guy you're sueing can spare.
There -are- such things as lawsuits for false arrest and malicious prosecution. For example, when and if Mr. Skylarov eventually walks, Adobe may well have to write him a big check for having had him thrown in jail in the first place. And the courts work better than you think. Yes, big law firms have the advantage over solo-practice, not-even-secretarial-help lawyers like me. But there are lots of ways to prosecute and defend lawsuits on the cheap, and it -is- often possible in America for the little guy to get your case in front of a jury or a fair judge.
> The only way that this is going to change is if there's a mass voting out of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress
Voting out just the Republicans would help a
-lot-. You Nader voters can look forward to a long peonage under the yoke and lash of many a Bush-appointed judge to come.