I doubt that FightForRock is in competition with HardRock. I also doubt that they copied all of Hard Rock's meta data (that might be bad news if he did).
His letter is a bit off-the-cuff, but it's also reasonably respectful. He essentially said "this is silly -- I Think I'm in the right, hard rock is a generic phrase (very generic in my world) and I reserve the right to put it back if you're out to lunch on this.
Now, most lawyers will tell you that it's a bad idea to talk to lawyers without lawyers of your own present -- and you may find yourself putting your foot on a legal landmine, but if you pay attention and do your homework, it's actually a surprisingly predictable space. On the other hand, it's good for lawyers' bottom line to convince you to punt all your communications thru lawyers.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think he took a reasonable tack in his letter, and it's unlikely to come back and bite him.
Lawyers will often ask you do do more than they really have the right to ask you to. If you tell them to go away in such cases, they'll usually go looking for easier pickings. (btw: I think that changing 'hardrock' to 'hard rock' and telling them that he did so was probably a good thing.)
Returning the fines of lawbreakiers and then giving them free rent to boot doesn't count as sane cuts to me. The liberals are seriously messing over this province, and the only reason we're not hearing more about it is that the big newspapers (like the Province and the Sun) are in the pockets of their friends.
If this had been the NDP government, the Fish Farm fiasco would have been all over the front page, and the criminal investigation over the Liberal governments handling of the sale of BC rail would never have left the front page. -- then there's all their other shenanigans.
Many people conveniently forget/gloss over the fact that the second most deadly terrorist attack in the US was comitted by a blonde-haired blue-eyed ex-US Marine (and probably a Republican to boot!).
Thing is, he wasn't an arab, so they didn't pass all these nasty laws to deal with terrorism back then, because it would have been too obvious to realize that the ultimate victims of these laws are going to be the average US citizen, not some vague foreigh 'they'.
for an interesting parallel between the early history of the third Reich and the goings on of the Bush administration around 9/11,
This pretty little rant.
What these people were upset about wasn't really the fact that they got the letters from the ambulance^w paddy-wagon chasers. If I was bogusly arrested and didn't have the phone numbers of a good lawyer or two, these letters might be, to a certain extent, a real relief.
What upset them was the fact that the letters from the paddy-wagon chasers arrived before a phone call from the sheriff's department. This is a 'get your priorities straight' call, not `don't give lawyers the names of the arrested' call.
In the context of the Patriot act, I'd be happy to know that at least someone with a vested interest in giving me at least some sort of support was likely to be informed of my arrest.
The problem isn't with donations per se, it's with the fact that large donations can lead to a (perception of) politicians being behoven to their donors (( "I gave your campaign $20,000, so why aren't you voting for my toxic waste plant?" )). People need to be aware of things like this. For smaller donations, anonymity is fine (IMHO).
Generally, it's not a question of whether the politicians know who the top donors to their campaign are.. It's only a question of whether the public knows.
I'm thinking that this list may only apply to people who asked for a reciept. If you got a reciept (and donated more than a week or two ago), please raise your hand. er......
((it may also be that donating to failed nomination campaigns may be treated differently than donating generally to a full candidate or party)).
This is mostly an issue with large donations. For BC provincial elections donations of less than $50 can be anonymous. Donations of over $50 must be recorded (can't remember what happens to a $50 donation). Donations of between $50 and some higher threshold are recorded but not published. Donations over the second threshold are explicitly published. This allows people to make small, personal, donations anonymously but records who a politician is likely to be especially behoven to.
At any rate... I would probably not discriminate based on someone's politics... I get along fine with the "Psycho Seattle Liberals" that I work with everyday... we have fun poking at each other's politics. But I would support the right of someone to choose who works for them.
Getting 'flamed' for your political views is a healthy part of free speech. Getting fired (or not hired) for them is censorship and a violation of your civil rights.
I can, however, understand it for someone working for the DNC, but that's because the essence of the job is politics -- Hiring a Republican to work for the DNC (or vice versa) would be like hiring a botanist for a chemical analysis position (or vice versa).
I dunno where you live, but the last time I called 911, I was talking to an operator within about 15 seconds. (I live in Vancouver BC). I'd be willing to call a 30 minute wait obscene.
There's a big difference between a step in the right direction and a completed journey. It does not negate the first step to encourage and describe the second, the third, the fourth, . . . . . .
You don't need the DVD codes to make a physical duplicate (Which is, I expect, what many pirates do). The DMCA simply removes from the average consumer
our constitutional right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Re:Slashdotters==Curmudgeons?
on
iPod Mini Sells Out
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
They've got CD players that do fine while jogging, so I'm sure you can do much the same thing with a submini HD. I wouldn't suggest putting a running card into a tennis ball, but I'm going to presume that they're designed to survive the kind of G forces that they'd get from being clipped to a jogger's chest.
Note, that the physics is easier for a smaller disk than it is for a large one. It's like the difference between dropping an elephant 10 feet and dropping a cat the same distance.
It's also pretty sleezy for him to refuse to give them to domain name, as if they should pay him more than the $20 bucks it cost him to register it.
I'm not going to disagree too much with 'sleazy'. On the other hand, there's a difference between sleazy and illegal.
Well there is the slight detail of him refusing to turn over data they contributed, as well as purchasing the site in his own name.
AFIK He put out the money for the domain name, and he spent the time and energy doing the admin. If they haven't paid him for it, then they don't have the right to it (yet). OTOH If it was paid for with a county PO, then it's theirs.
As for the data that they fed to him, they should still have a copy of it. It may not be as well organized as his copy is, but that's what he's asking for the big money for. The work of organizing the data is copyright him, and they don't have rights to that.
They're free to reorganize their own data.
As for the $10K to repaint their police cars etc.: That's a business decision.. It's cheaper than paying him what he was asking for for his work, so it is/was a barganing point.
I'm not going to defend this guy as a paragon of virtue, but if I was a ambulance-chasing lawyer who lived in the area, I'd probably give a serious look to suing the sheriff's department on a contingency basis. For 50% of the proceeds of the lawsuit, I'd even consider defending him too.
(IANAL, so you can take the above with appropriate seasoning)
Re:Slashdotters==Curmudgeons?
on
iPod Mini Sells Out
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
While many here on/. felt that the mini was overpriced and pointed out that for $50 extra, you could buy a regular iPod with 15GB of storage instead of the 4 GB of the mini,
From a geek "my pod's bigger than your pod", point of view, this might make some sense.. From a consumer "I want something to listen to while I'm jogging" point of view, 4GB is how many hours of ogg audio?? Chances are that you're gonna have to change your batteries long before you have to change your playlist.
15GB is so that I can backup my home partition with a decade's worth of email... Not many people are going to care to do that.
The fact that I've got enough storage for a day's worth of music and a knoppix image for $50.00 less than a full sized ipod sounds just peachy to me.
And they return a URL that MSN MAKES MONEY OFF OF when they effectively force an otherwise innocuous search to return pure
porn
when searching for something innocuous like Xfree86.
.
If there was ever a reason to tell people to not use MSN search, I'd say that this is a good one.
What other innocuous terms are going to find our kids facing down a porn search engine? What happens if they decide that Mr. Rogers is competition?
Sorry -- If I want porn at least I'll go to someplace honest about it like autopr0n.com.
On the other hand, if you ever wanted a good excuse to look for porn....
Honest mom! I was looking for "GCC" and MSN somehow pointed me
here !!!
Naderites will break the Democratic party completely.
No. It's the electoral system that's broken, and the Democrats are finally suffering from that breakage.
It might work in a parliamentary democracy, but in the US it will lead to one party getting in power forever. Stagnation is never good, I can tell you that like someone who lived in Soviet Union
If Nader keeps running at the Federal level, it will force the Democrats who control state legislatures to change the way that the vote distributes electors to vote for the president (can't remember the term exactly -- I'm a Canadian).
The problem isn't that Nader is running. The problem is that the US has an electoral system where, if you're not happy with what the top two parties are doing, you have two choices about how to waste your vote:
You can either vote with your conscience, knowing that there's no way in h*ll that your choice will win, or
You can vote for the lesser of the two evils, in hopes of preventing the greater evil from getting in.
In either case, your real intent is never registered
The current winner-take-all approach to delegates only really makes sense in a one party system. It's only barely workable in a two party system. If somebody like Nader doesn't force the question about the brokenness of the current system, then you'll continue to have the same broken system forever.
(see my sig)
With that said I know that your claim of their upbringing is bullshit. They are a very smart group of people that puts their duty to the US, outlined in the various policies and assignments, first hand.
What I said doesn't exclude them being intelligent, or following orders. On the other hand, getting ahead in the military, however, requires putting those first two ahead of expressing wisdom.
I think that it was Eisinhower who made famous the phrase: Walk quietly and carry a big stick
Unfortunately, the US now seems to have abandoned the first half of that maxim, and is only doing the latter. This bodes ill -- both for the world at large, and -- in the long term -- for the US.
The Pentagon folks do.
What they do, they do very well. What they don't do, they just don't do.
Slashdot Mirror
His letter is a bit off-the-cuff, but it's also reasonably respectful. He essentially said "this is silly -- I Think I'm in the right, hard rock is a generic phrase (very generic in my world) and I reserve the right to put it back if you're out to lunch on this.
Now, most lawyers will tell you that it's a bad idea to talk to lawyers without lawyers of your own present -- and you may find yourself putting your foot on a legal landmine, but if you pay attention and do your homework, it's actually a surprisingly predictable space. On the other hand, it's good for lawyers' bottom line to convince you to punt all your communications thru lawyers.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think he took a reasonable tack in his letter, and it's unlikely to come back and bite him.
Lawyers will often ask you do do more than they really have the right to ask you to. If you tell them to go away in such cases, they'll usually go looking for easier pickings. (btw: I think that changing 'hardrock' to 'hard rock' and telling them that he did so was probably a good thing.)
four.. Three to hold it down and one to rip it's header off.
(I really can't belive that nobody else said this, yet!)
I think you forgot Sarah McLauclin
sheesh!
If this had been the NDP government, the Fish Farm fiasco would have been all over the front page, and the criminal investigation over the Liberal governments handling of the sale of BC rail would never have left the front page. -- then there's all their other shenanigans.
You forgot the quotes around 'liberate'. That would explain your confusion
Thing is, he wasn't an arab, so they didn't pass all these nasty laws to deal with terrorism back then, because it would have been too obvious to realize that the ultimate victims of these laws are going to be the average US citizen, not some vague foreigh 'they'.
for an interesting parallel between the early history of the third Reich and the goings on of the Bush administration around 9/11, This pretty little rant.
What upset them was the fact that the letters from the paddy-wagon chasers arrived before a phone call from the sheriff's department. This is a 'get your priorities straight' call, not `don't give lawyers the names of the arrested' call.
In the context of the Patriot act, I'd be happy to know that at least someone with a vested interest in giving me at least some sort of support was likely to be informed of my arrest.
Donating to your local scout troop won't get your toxic waste plant passed (unless the scout troop is being run by the mayor's wife).
Generally, it's not a question of whether the politicians know who the top donors to their campaign are.. It's only a question of whether the public knows.
er......
((it may also be that donating to failed nomination campaigns may be treated differently than donating generally to a full candidate or party)).
This is mostly an issue with large donations. For BC provincial elections donations of less than $50 can be anonymous. Donations of over $50 must be recorded (can't remember what happens to a $50 donation). Donations of between $50 and some higher threshold are recorded but not published. Donations over the second threshold are explicitly published. This allows people to make small, personal, donations anonymously but records who a politician is likely to be especially behoven to.
Getting 'flamed' for your political views is a healthy part of free speech. Getting fired (or not hired) for them is censorship and a violation of your civil rights.
I can, however, understand it for someone working for the DNC, but that's because the essence of the job is politics -- Hiring a Republican to work for the DNC (or vice versa) would be like hiring a botanist for a chemical analysis position (or vice versa).
The correct form would be "Hear, hear!"
I dunno where you live, but the last time I called 911, I was talking to an operator within about 15 seconds. (I live in Vancouver BC). I'd be willing to call a 30 minute wait obscene.
There's a big difference between a step in the right direction and a completed journey. It does not negate the first step to encourage and describe the second, the third, the fourth, . . . . . .
You don't need the DVD codes to make a physical duplicate (Which is, I expect, what many pirates do). The DMCA simply removes from the average consumer our constitutional right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Note, that the physics is easier for a smaller disk than it is for a large one. It's like the difference between dropping an elephant 10 feet and dropping a cat the same distance.
I'm not going to disagree too much with 'sleazy'. On the other hand, there's a difference between sleazy and illegal.
Well there is the slight detail of him refusing to turn over data they contributed, as well as purchasing the site in his own name.
AFIK He put out the money for the domain name, and he spent the time and energy doing the admin. If they haven't paid him for it, then they don't have the right to it (yet). OTOH If it was paid for with a county PO, then it's theirs.
As for the data that they fed to him, they should still have a copy of it. It may not be as well organized as his copy is, but that's what he's asking for the big money for. The work of organizing the data is copyright him, and they don't have rights to that.
They're free to reorganize their own data.
As for the $10K to repaint their police cars etc.: That's a business decision.. It's cheaper than paying him what he was asking for for his work, so it is/was a barganing point.
I'm not going to defend this guy as a paragon of virtue, but if I was a ambulance-chasing lawyer who lived in the area, I'd probably give a serious look to suing the sheriff's department on a contingency basis. For 50% of the proceeds of the lawsuit, I'd even consider defending him too.
(IANAL, so you can take the above with appropriate seasoning)
From a geek "my pod's bigger than your pod", point of view, this might make some sense.. From a consumer "I want something to listen to while I'm jogging" point of view, 4GB is how many hours of ogg audio?? Chances are that you're gonna have to change your batteries long before you have to change your playlist.
15GB is so that I can backup my home partition with a decade's worth of email... Not many people are going to care to do that.
The fact that I've got enough storage for a day's worth of music and a knoppix image for $50.00 less than a full sized ipod sounds just peachy to me.
The smaller package is just a bonus.
And they return a URL that MSN MAKES MONEY OFF OF when they effectively force an otherwise innocuous search to return pure porn when searching for something innocuous like Xfree86.
. If there was ever a reason to tell people to not use MSN search, I'd say that this is a good one.
What other innocuous terms are going to find our kids facing down a porn search engine? What happens if they decide that Mr. Rogers is competition?
Sorry -- If I want porn at least I'll go to someplace honest about it like autopr0n.com.
On the other hand, if you ever wanted a good excuse to look for porn....
guh!No. It's the electoral system that's broken, and the Democrats are finally suffering from that breakage.
It might work in a parliamentary democracy, but in the US it will lead to one party getting in power forever. Stagnation is never good, I can tell you that like someone who lived in Soviet Union
If Nader keeps running at the Federal level, it will force the Democrats who control state legislatures to change the way that the vote distributes electors to vote for the president (can't remember the term exactly -- I'm a Canadian).
The problem isn't that Nader is running. The problem is that the US has an electoral system where, if you're not happy with what the top two parties are doing, you have two choices about how to waste your vote:
-
You can either vote with your conscience, knowing that there's no way in h*ll that your choice will win, or
- You can vote for the lesser of the two evils, in hopes of preventing the greater evil from getting in.
In either case, your real intent is never registeredThe current winner-take-all approach to delegates only really makes sense in a one party system. It's only barely workable in a two party system. If somebody like Nader doesn't force the question about the brokenness of the current system, then you'll continue to have the same broken system forever.
(see my sig)
What I said doesn't exclude them being intelligent, or following orders. On the other hand, getting ahead in the military, however, requires putting those first two ahead of expressing wisdom.
I think that it was Eisinhower who made famous the phrase: Walk quietly and carry a big stick
Unfortunately, the US now seems to have abandoned the first half of that maxim, and is only doing the latter. This bodes ill -- both for the world at large, and -- in the long term -- for the US.
The Pentagon folks do.
What they do, they do very well. What they don't do, they just don't do.