> It doesn't cost ANYTHING to defend yourself in court.
Clearly you've never defended yourself in court against a deep-pockets plaintiff. Perhaps you should refrain from commenting unless you know what you're talking about.
Someone with money to burn can bury you and the court under a blizzard of motions, subpoenas, and depositions, to most of which you will need to respond. Copying and filing fees alone in such a case can amount to many thousands of dollars.
Then there's the small matter of your own time. A plaintiff with money to burn can tie you up in court appearances and depositions for months on end. Will your employer understand if you only show up for work one or two days a week for six months?
See if you can find the answers to these questions by Googling about:
What has been the effect on the personal finances of
Keith Henson (L5 Society founder, among other things)
of exercising his free speech rights to criticize the
Church of Scientology ?
How did this effect come about ?
Who was Scamizdat (hint: it wasn't Grady Ward) ?
How many judisial motions did the Church of Scientology file
against Grady Ward in an effort to prove that he was Scamizdat ?
What impact did this have on Ward's finances ?
Who is Larry Wollersheim ?
How much was he awarded in his lawsuit(s) against the
Church of Scientology? (appealed all the way to the
Supreme Court; denied cert)
When did Scientology exhaust the appeals process ?
How much has Scientology actually paid to date ?
How many lawsuits, cross-complaints, and legal actions has
Wollersheim endured in his search for justice ?
I've been twenty-two years in Silicon Valley, and I'm _trying_ to keep going as a geek,but it gets tougher every year.
Technology companies have this inherent need to plan projects for the earliest possible completion. It's _always_ a race to market. There's _always_ schedule pressure.
When you're 22 or 25 and just out of school, single and with few responsibilities, "challenging" projects are fun, in that masochistic geek way that we'reall so familiar with. Possibilities are exciting; obstacles exist to be overcome. You're gaining mastery. You *know* that you can bring in on time if onlyyou work nights and weekends for nine months or so. Maybe a year...
So you work insanely hard for three years, maybe five, and the company "appreciates" it. And eventually that company goes under, or closes your division, or something, and you move on. (Those options? Never were worth very much, and you never sold any of them anyway.)
Then you're 37 and have young kids and a spouse who works. Your manager comes to you with a right-to-left project plan that you _know_ will require nights and weekends. Again. And you sigh, and sign up, and do the work -- it's familiar, you know the right way to do stuff, you know the problems and what the solutions cost, you know the tradeoffs. You do it, but it costs you -- you have to miss your kid's school talent show, you're not home nights, you have to work the week you had planned to take the family to the beach. Your spouse resents the hours, but they've promised you a sabbatical after only five years, and you've got lots of stock options.
Somewhere along the line you try management, and parts of it are OK, and parts of it you're real good at, but it's tiresome to work at such a high level of abstraction, where there's no right answers, only "issues". And it's soul-killing to watch your boss, and his boss, try to avoid understanding inconvenient facts. At some point you know, you _insist_ that the plan under discussion is unrealistic, because it is. You're not a team player. Your review is painful, for the first time ever. Back to engineering.
You work hard for a year, and they cancel the project. You work *really* hard on the next, critical, save-the-company project -- and they cancel that one too. You go to meetings for three weeks trying to define another product, and then that company folds. Your options are again worthless. The company stock you bought through the ESPP is worthless. You're burnt out emotionally, and your health could be better - a dozen years of sitting in a cubicle typing under fluorescents has taken its toll.
You resolve never again to sacrifice family life and emotional health in favor of working too hard. You limit your hours,never come in on weekends any more. You won't sign up for plans that demand sixty hour weeks -- but most of your co-workers are youngsters just out of school, and eat that stuff up. You look unmotivated and cynical by comparison -- in fact, you _are_ unmotivated and cynical. It's great doing stuff with your own kids for a couple years (but they're teenagers now, and don't have much time for you), but your reviews aren't much fun. They hand out options and you get damn few. You stop getting raises.
Then that company folds, and you're forty-nine years old, looking for another gig in a downturn. The companies that need you are looking for someone to come in and work _really_ _hard_ to save a project that's fallen behind schedule
but you could pull it off, with only
nine months or so of working nights and weekends.
Maybe a year...
----
All you young guys should read Tracy Kidder's excellent _The_Soul_Of_A_New_Machine_. Maybe read it twice.
Consulting The Jargon File entries for bogosity and micro-Lenat,
we see that the uLenat is the everyday unit of bogosity,
and that it is named for Doug Lenat, whose project Cyc is.
I tend to agree with Reid, myself.
ob book: For a literary treatment of a connectionist machine
that may or may not resemble Cyc,
see Richard Powers _Galatea_2.2_
> The constitution protects private individuals
> against unwarranted search and seizure.
> No contract between two private parties can
> supercede that protection. Therefore, those
> portions of the contract are as legally
> binding as if they had never been put there in > the first place.
Tell it to Dennis Erlich and Arnaldo Lerma and
to Bob Penney, whose homes were searched and
whose computers, disks, and paper records were
seized by privately employed goons pursuant
to _ex_parte_ writs of seizure --
all on the basis of flimsily-documented
allegations of copyright violations.
I used to think that the courts would preserve
and defend our Constitutional rights.
However, I've watched the steady erosion of those
rights over the last thirty years, and rarely
indeed are rights recovered once surrendered.
The Fourth Amendment is perhaps the best example.
In the name of the "War on Drugs", law
enforcement can now permanently seize the property
of those merely _suspected_ of crimes, and sell
the seized assets, keeping the proceeds, without
legal hindrance.
Even if the suspect is never charged.
Even if the suspect is ultimately acquitted.
The highest courts have upheld this doctrine
of "Civil Forfeiture", which I think would have
astonished the authors of the Fourth Amendment.
John Perry Barlow did this take on the
current state of our rights back in 1993.
Things have only gotten worse.
Slashdot Mirror
> It doesn't cost ANYTHING to defend yourself in court.
:
Clearly you've never defended yourself in court against a
deep-pockets plaintiff. Perhaps you should refrain from
commenting unless you know what you're talking about.
Someone with money to burn can bury you and the court under
a blizzard of motions, subpoenas, and depositions, to most of
which you will need to respond. Copying and filing fees
alone in such a case can amount to many thousands of dollars.
Then there's the small matter of your own time.
A plaintiff with money to burn can tie you up in court
appearances and depositions for months on end.
Will your employer understand if you only show up for
work one or two days a week for six months?
See if you can find the answers to these questions
by Googling about
What has been the effect on the personal finances of
Keith Henson (L5 Society founder, among other things)
of exercising his free speech rights to criticize the
Church of Scientology ?
How did this effect come about ?
Who was Scamizdat (hint: it wasn't Grady Ward) ?
How many judisial motions did the Church of Scientology file
against Grady Ward in an effort to prove that he was Scamizdat ?
What impact did this have on Ward's finances ?
Who is Larry Wollersheim ?
How much was he awarded in his lawsuit(s) against the
Church of Scientology? (appealed all the way to the
Supreme Court; denied cert)
When did Scientology exhaust the appeals process ?
How much has Scientology actually paid to date ?
How many lawsuits, cross-complaints, and legal actions has
Wollersheim endured in his search for justice ?
I've been twenty-two years in Silicon Valley, and I'm _trying_ to keep
...
...
going as a geek,but it gets tougher every year.
Technology companies have this inherent need to plan projects for the
earliest possible completion.
It's _always_ a race to market.
There's _always_ schedule pressure.
When you're 22 or 25 and just out of school, single and with few
responsibilities, "challenging" projects are fun, in that masochistic
geek way that we'reall so familiar with. Possibilities are exciting;
obstacles exist to be overcome. You're gaining mastery.
You *know* that you can bring in on time if onlyyou work nights and weekends
for nine months or so. Maybe a year
So you work insanely hard for three years, maybe five, and the company "appreciates" it. And eventually that company goes under, or closes your
division, or something, and you move on. (Those options? Never were worth
very much, and you never sold any of them anyway.)
Then you're 37 and have young kids and a spouse who works.
Your manager comes to you with a right-to-left project plan that you _know_
will require nights and weekends. Again. And you sigh, and sign up, and do
the work -- it's familiar, you know the right way to do stuff, you know the
problems and what the solutions cost, you know the tradeoffs.
You do it, but it costs you -- you have to miss your kid's school talent show,
you're not home nights, you have to work the week you had planned to take the
family to the beach. Your spouse resents the hours, but they've promised you a
sabbatical after only five years, and you've got lots of stock options.
Somewhere along the line you try management, and parts of it are OK,
and parts of it you're real good at, but it's tiresome to work at such a high
level of abstraction, where there's no right answers, only "issues". And it's
soul-killing to watch your boss, and his boss, try to avoid understanding
inconvenient facts. At some point you know, you _insist_ that the plan under
discussion is unrealistic, because it is. You're not a team player.
Your review is painful, for the first time ever.
Back to engineering.
You work hard for a year, and they cancel the project.
You work *really* hard on the next, critical, save-the-company project --
and they cancel that one too. You go to meetings for three weeks trying to
define another product, and then that company folds. Your options are again
worthless. The company stock you bought through the ESPP is worthless.
You're burnt out emotionally, and your health could be better -
a dozen years of sitting in a cubicle typing under fluorescents
has taken its toll.
You resolve never again to sacrifice family life and emotional health in favor
of working too hard. You limit your hours,never come in on weekends any more.
You won't sign up for plans that demand sixty hour weeks -- but most of your
co-workers are youngsters just out of school, and eat that stuff up. You look
unmotivated and cynical by comparison -- in fact, you _are_ unmotivated and
cynical. It's great doing stuff with your own kids for a couple years (but
they're teenagers now, and don't have much time for you), but your reviews
aren't much fun. They hand out options and you get damn few. You stop getting
raises.
Then that company folds, and you're forty-nine years old, looking for another gig
in a downturn. The companies that need you are looking for someone to come in
and work _really_ _hard_ to save a project that's fallen behind schedule
but you could pull it off, with only
nine months or so of working nights and weekends.
Maybe a year
----
All you young guys should read Tracy Kidder's excellent
_The_Soul_Of_A_New_Machine_. Maybe read it twice.
Before the Jargon File there was HAKMEM
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem
IEN 137,
ON HOLY WARS AND A PLEA FOR PEACE
Danny Cohen 1 April 1980
Top Google
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/sigc
If you want to fool around with FORTH
on your own and for free, take a look at
Phil Burk's
public domain pForth
Of course it won't work.
Do you think that will make any difference?
You are insufficiently cynical.
They will _still_ use this "technology"
to develop "profiles" that they
will use as a basis for detaining people,
even though it doesn't work.
Seminal?
On Holy Wars and a Plea For Peace
Danny Cohen 1980
http://www.op.net/docs/RFCs/ien-137
> (I know there are the man pages,
> but the man pages can be very criptic sometimes
BUGS:
You can tune a filesystem,
but you can't tune a fish.
Consulting The Jargon File entries for
bogosity and micro-Lenat,
we see that the uLenat is the everyday unit of bogosity,
and that it is named for Doug Lenat, whose project Cyc is.
I tend to agree with Reid, myself.
ob book: For a literary treatment of a connectionist machine
that may or may not resemble Cyc,
see Richard Powers _Galatea_2.2_
ob.book
_Lucifer's_Hammer_ Niven
one of the best in the genre
a perfect beach novel, too.
> The constitution protects private individuals
> against unwarranted search and seizure.
> No contract between two private parties can
> supercede that protection. Therefore, those
> portions of the contract are as legally
> binding as if they had never been put there in > the first place.
Tell it to Dennis Erlich and Arnaldo Lerma and
to Bob Penney, whose homes were searched and
whose computers, disks, and paper records were
seized by privately employed goons pursuant
to _ex_parte_ writs of seizure --
all on the basis of flimsily-documented
allegations of copyright violations.
I used to think that the courts would preserve
and defend our Constitutional rights.
However, I've watched the steady erosion of those
rights over the last thirty years, and rarely
indeed are rights recovered once surrendered.
The Fourth Amendment is perhaps the best example.
In the name of the "War on Drugs", law
enforcement can now permanently seize the property
of those merely _suspected_ of crimes, and sell
the seized assets, keeping the proceeds, without
legal hindrance.
Even if the suspect is never charged.
Even if the suspect is ultimately acquitted.
The highest courts have upheld this doctrine
of "Civil Forfeiture", which I think would have
astonished the authors of the Fourth Amendment.
John Perry Barlow did this take on the
current state of our rights back in 1993.
Things have only gotten worse.
Read it and weep.