And strangely, the meeting was never mentioned during all the 9/11 commission reports making you really question what exactly they were actually hearing that was more important than the CIA director telling the National Security Advisor that Bin Laden was going to attack Americans.
Well, the 9/11 commission was busy hearing that the CIA director told the President of the United States that " Bin Ladin [was] Determined To Strike in US" in the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001.
So, in a way, this is not a piece of breaking news; it's just corroboration of existing knowledge: that there was high level intelliegence about Bin Laden as a domestic threat in the months and years before 9/11, with little specific action in response, save for what was then described as "wag the dog" attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan targets by President Clinton.
Yes, the point that the judge was trying to make was a public shaming of the two lawyers. The choice of the game, and the recommendation of the front steps of the courthouse is proof of that.
BUT . . . this type of stuff isn't entirely unheard of, and is even written into law in some locales:
Ray Urrizaga turned over the queen of clubs. Bob Swetich said "whoa," and flipped up the seven of diamonds. The two men shook hands.
And with that, a choice that split White Pine County voters right down the middle was settled Thursday by two men in blue jeans and a $1.99 deck of Streamline playing cards, bought the day before at Ely's V & S Variety store.
Urrizaga and Swetich have lived in the county for most of their lives, and each man received exactly 1,847 votes on Election Day. By drawing the high card, Urrizaga broke the tie and won a four-year term on the County Commission.
So considering Whedon's loyal following, perhaps it is no surprise Universal greenlit 'Serenity,' a big-screen spin-off to his cripplingly low-rated but much beloved 'Firefly.' The show only ran for a few episodes on The WB back in 2004, but became a hot seller on DVD.
Errr, the bad guys would be Fox, not the WB. I distinctly remember the totally inappropriate and half-assed Firefly promos in the middle of Fox Sunday NFL coverage, which would then go long and screw up the broadcast schedule.
As I see it, there is no point in this kind of evaluation of the speaker's personality. Good information should stand in its own two feet, and it should be easily verifiable. If it's not easily verifiable, then we should take it as a matter of taste.
Unh, I don't understand what you are saying. Any project seeking to expand human knowledge necessarily depends upon contributions from multiple sources; and those sources must be interrogated, evaluated and ranked. Evidence depends upon provenance, in law and arts and humanities and sciences alike. Have you heard the Newton quote, "If I have seen a little farther it is only because I have stood on the shoulder of giants"? The personages of the giants is important in the quote -- Newton does not say, "If I have seen a little farther it is only because I command a vast store of previously-established, easily verifiable knowledge." Rather, Newton judges the individuals whose work he builds upon as "giants" -- worthy of trust.
"Easily verifiable" information is not all that interesting; that would seem to me to rule out all theoretical work, much astro-physics, most quantum physics, any high-order neurological study, all philosophy, lots of psychology, and pretty much everything in historical study. Plus, it would require all intellectual projects to start de novo, from scratch. While that is occasionally a good idea (break down orthodoxy by starting from scratch!) it seems unnecessarily limiting and atomistic. Is there no one from whom you can learn? Do you have no criteria by which to judge some research better than others? Can you not evaluate methodology, preeminance, the critical faculties of other humans?
Anyhow, what exactly would be wrong with a Christian republic?
Well, for one thing, I wouldn't be a citizen of a Christian republic. I'd either be an oppressed minority, an ex-patriate, or the courageous leader of a rag-tag rebel army dedicated to the overthrow of the religious power structure.
(Sorry, I just flipped past Red Dawn on some channel earlier tonight. Got carried away.)
Benjamin Franklin (who, let it be known to all the gentle readers, was decidedly NOT a Christian or a religious man)
No, I don't think that's correct either. It's difficult to describe any man of letters of that period as being neither christian nor religious. The language of the King James Bible, the allegories and tropes, examples and references, were pervasive. Franklin was certainly a contrarian, and hardly devout -- but I don't think describing him as neither Christian nor religious makes any sense.
An older secondary source on this might be The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn.
Yeah, I went and read that blog. I'm still not sure I understand all of this. If it's not even a baby apocalypse, why is the zdnet story leading with the A$5000 scare figure? Why is the original letter so . . . abusive . . . that it evokes "paranoia" from some of the recipients? And why is there so little hard information from third sources on this? I still do not accept the constant referral to the lawyer's FAQ as an explanation of the lawyer's actions.
This story is just plain weird, even without bringing Scientology and claims (and counterclaims) of weird net stalking and character assassination into it. Then it just gets meta-weird.
On the other hand, your actions are bordering on libel and have already violated anti-vilification laws in this country.
Yeah, because that's what is going to help your argument about this lawyer being a good guy who advocates for privacy and common carrier protections: A threat of legal action with the intent of curbing free speech.
I think I just found my first Slashdot "freak", and you're it.
Yeah, QuantumG posted this same attempt at a refutation of the story elsewhere on this discussion. I still don't get it. You are attempting to refute a claim against a lawyer by referring us to the lawyer's FAQ. That's not an unbiased source.
And, really, what gives you the ability to speak for Linus Torvalds? You may indeed have that warrant, but you have given me no reason to believe so.
And I've seen no clear indication that these lawyers are representing the interests of Linus Torvalds. Can you give me authoritative information that will reassure me?
This is a really weird slashdot post and discussion. I'm very suspicious.
Okay, I'm really, really suspicious of the intent of the original post, the original actions of the lawyer, and the many comment posts. Especially parent, which attempts to clear up accusations against named lawyer by referring us to said lawyer's FAQ. Don't know if I trust that as an unbiased source.
Geez -- this is a confluence of three things I really distrust: lawyers, IP law, and Scientology. Add a politician or two, and it's Gotterdammerung.
Anybody got an authoritative source on this story? Any authoritative information at all?
I wrote a longish academic article which argues that students don't want to read lengthy assignments online. Ironically, you can read it online.
I called the realization that nobody wants to read really long assignments online a "blinding flash of the obvious" that lots of online education boosters don't seem to get.
Wait, I don't get it; how do I moderate the submitter as a Troll, now?
Re:Inside Baseball Leading /.ers to Law School?
on
SCO Missing 16,209 Files?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Umh, yeah, sorry about that. Definition of "inside baseball" for Non-USians and anyone else who is confused:
"Inside Baseball" is a phrase meant to describe insider knowledge about a topic; applied to politics and political campaigns as much to baseball itself. Often used to describe a journalist who covers a topic, be it baseball or whatever, from a privileged position. Political bloggers have been using the phrase recently to criticize journalists who gain access to an organization or topic, and then block other's access to the same topic.
(clicketyclicketygooglegoogle)
Here's a quick definition lifted from a review of the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang: inside baseball, "meaning the intricate knowledge and actions involved in an activity that are not usually known to the public, or, putting it another way, the boring technical details." Review
The point was to argue that many, many technically minded people are, through PJ et al., getting an insider's view of a trial-in-progress, a viewpoint generally only available to lawyers and lawyers-in-training. Surely this must result in (insert your preferred wild generalization and crazed extrapolation here), since some people really like the "boring technical details" of stuff.
This doesn't seem like a stunning development in the case; more of a minor "whoops" with a variety of possible explanations. The documents now seemingly not covered by privilege may or may not be informative, the "whoops" may or may not have been strategic and/or intentional, those documents still claimed as privileged may or may not be disputed based upon lack of information demonstrating the privilege. But it's still inside baseball: there's nothing so new here as to warrant a major news flash.
What is interesting, at least to me, is the possibility that The SCO Group has unwittingly created an entire generation of technically literate individuals who have also closely followed the inside working of a major lawsuit. Through PJ and Groklaw, and secondarily through/. and other sources, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of individuals have read actual court documents, debated the meaning of standing, venue, attorney-client privilege, chain of evidence, discovery, and god knows what else.
This must be resulting in some sort of predisposition in young technogeeks for law school, or at least for thinking about legal issues. I don't want to say that it's a substitute for sitting through a contract law course, or even a legal textbook, but reading a year of comments on Groklaw must be preparing generations of youngish technology people for pursuing law as a career. It's like a real-time moot court on technology issues. The technically-minded can be drawn to the law as just another complex system, one with its own terminology, protocols, communications systems, manuals. Possibly, through following the inside baseball of this case, they might develop enough of an interest in law to choose to hack that system.
I highly recommend the London Transport Museum, but probably not for the reasons train buffs (railfans?) would suggest. It's a spectacular repository for historical graphic design . . ..
Well, yes and no. Yes, it is true that revolutionary-era documents made distinctions between individuals and corporations. However, for more than a hundred years, corporations have been legal entities in their own right in the United States and elsewhere. So, for example, corporations can be named in lawsuits, and individuals can act as agents, or in the name of, a corporation. It is a legal fiction, in a sense, but corporations are indeed persons. See US Supreme Court, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 1886. That's 118 US 394.
Hmmmm, let's see. For a primer on this, I'd suggest Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom. New York: Norton, 1988.
Corporate Personality in the 20th Century. Edited by ROSS GRANTHAM and CHARLES RICKETT. [Oxford: Hart Publishing. 1998.] Reviewed in the Cambridge Law Journal 58, no. 1 (1999): 222-259
Capitalism without the Capitalist: The Joint Stock Company Share and the Emergence of the Modern Doctrine of Separate Corporate Personality. The Journal of legal history. 17, no. 1, (April 01, 1996): 41
ARTICLES - Persons, Things and Corporations: The Corporate Personality Controversy and Comparative Corporate Governance. The American journal of comparative law. 47, no. 4, (1999): 583.
Okay, this 1993 Business Week article notes that Lockwood's suit against American Airlines was funded in part by a parent corporation which sought investor's support. So, the business plan there is not only to get settlement cash from cowardly small businesses, but also to seek investment money from people who believe your suit has merit (or that you'll get settlement money). This is, well . . . slimy.
Investors wanted - For lawsuits
Business Week; New York; Nov 15, 1993; Himelstein, Linda;
Page 78
Looking for an exotic investment? Forget about rare coins, race horses, and celebrity autographs. How about a lawsuit? You don't even have to sue anybody -- you just have to put your money down on somebody who is.
That's the premise behind a handful of companies that invest in intellectual property suits brought by inventors against large corporations. Some of the investment firms engage in the practice for their own account, while others try to entice individuals through limited partnerships. The practice, confined to feuds over patents, trademarks, and copyrights, is giving companies indigestion. "This is just an attempt at opportunism," says Gary A. Hecker, a lawyer for Novell Inc., which is fighting a patent-infringement suit financed with private funds. "To carve up and sell off the potential outcome of a piece of patent litigation as if it were a lottery ticket is not serving the patent system." SLOW PROCESS. Many small inventors would beg to differ. A lot of lawyers will gladly take personal-injury suits on a contingency-fee basis, but intellectual-property litigation is too time-consuming and costly for that approach. That leaves financially strapped inventors with little recourse when they believe their inventions have been ripped off.
Take the case of Roger E. Billings. The Independence (Mo.) inventor is suing Novell and one of its customers, Bank of America, for unlawfully using technology he claims to have developed -- a client-server system that allows computers to share information through a central computer. Intellectual Property Reserve Corp., a Louisville (Ky.) firm, is one of the parties funding Billings' case, which he estimates may be worth $ 62.5 billion in damages. So far, the returns have been more modest, with BofA recently agreeing to pay $ 125,000 for a license. Billings says even that settlement wouldn't have been possible without his backers, who have spent well in excess of $ 500,000 on the case. For its part, Novell has pledged to fight on, arguing that its product has nothing to do with Billings' invention.
Like it or not, investing in litigation is catching on. Where else can you find a success rate of 75.6%? That's the percentage of cases won by patent holders, according to a data base set up by Intellectual Property to evaluate the risks and likelihood of recovery in such cases. The data base includes about 7,700 patent cases brought over the last 17 years. "In large cases, you can easily have 2, 5, or 10 times the amount invested returned within a year," says Marc E. Brown, a patent lawyer with clients funded by Intellectual Property.
That has been the experience of another litigation investment outfit, WBX Partners. WBX, in San Rafael, Calif., has raked in more than $ 9 million from suits alleging infringement of the water bed patent. To bring the cases, WBX raised more than $ 1 million in a limited partnership that includes the water bed's creator. Thirty more suits are pending. Patent Protection Institute, a companion company, is trying to unearth other litigation opportunities. An unrelated firm, Patent Enforcement Fund, in Fairfield, Conn., uses its capital to buy stakes in patents. Because all these firms can claim ownership in the patents, they get around laws in some states that ban sharing proceeds from suits with third parties, a practice known as champerty.
At Intellectual Property Reserve, inventors' claims must be considered not only valid, but valuable. In exchange for legal fees and court costs, patent holders give up as much as 40% of the recovery -- an arrangement comparable to contingency fees used by plaintiff lawyers. The resources of target defendants must also be evaluated. "We do a very extensive investigation to be sure the case is justified," says company President Robert W. Fletcher. "These are not frivolous suits."
GOING AWRY? All these firms contend they are helping small-time inventors by forcing corporations to pay them properly for their innovations. But companies and their lawyers say that making profits from suits perverts the judicial process, which is intended to compensate injured parties, not make investors rich. "Once you start syndicating hurts and wrongs, the whole theory behind the justice system goes awry," says Michael Epstein, who defends companies against patent-infringement suits.
But what happens when inventors want protection from future infringers? Fletcher has the answer with Intellectual Property Insurance Services Corp., a firm that writes insurance policies triggered in the event of litigation. The policies work like most others, with patent holders paying premiums for a desired amount and type of coverage. A $ 500,000 policy to insure one patent, for instance, costs $ 3,043 annually. Since 1991, the company has insured about 1,000 patents and is collecting some $ 500,000 in premiums a year.
With resources mounting for individual inventors, corporations may feel they need to brace financially for an avalanche of patent litigation. But not to worry. Another firm plans to offer corporate defendants insurance coverage for such suits by the end of the year.
URL: http://www.businessweek.com/index.html
GRAPHIC: Illustration, BETTING ON LITIGATION Intellectual Property Reserve Corp., one of several companies that invest in patent litigation, receives up to 40% of the recovery if a suit is successful. Some suits Intellectual Property is currently funding:
LAWRENCE B. LOCKWOOD VS. AMERICAN AIRLINES INC.: Invention used on airline's reservation system that allows travel agents to view photos of hotels, restaurant menus, and other information on their personal terminals.
INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE VS. NOVEL INC. AND BANK OF AMERICA: Client-server system enables computers to share information through a centralized computer. BofA settled case by purchasing a license for $ 125,000.
DENNIS MERINO VS. MARCHON INC. AND TOYS 'R' US: Bump in a water slide sold as the Crocodile Mile with the Boomerang Bump.
ALTON WHEELER VS. POLAROID CORP.: Superimposed images on instant photos.
LOAD-DATE: November 12, 1993
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, how I wish I were clever . . .
Still waiting to figure out if you can take the sky from me.
How, exactly, can one "unveil" a classified, secret project?
And strangely, the meeting was never mentioned during all the 9/11 commission reports making you really question what exactly they were actually hearing that was more important than the CIA director telling the National Security Advisor that Bin Laden was going to attack Americans.
Well, the 9/11 commission was busy hearing that the CIA director told the President of the United States that " Bin Ladin [was] Determined To Strike in US" in the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001.
So, in a way, this is not a piece of breaking news; it's just corroboration of existing knowledge: that there was high level intelliegence about Bin Laden as a domestic threat in the months and years before 9/11, with little specific action in response, save for what was then described as "wag the dog" attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan targets by President Clinton.
Honestly, NOTHING is to stupid to be actually real. Submitter must have been on the series of tubes long enough to understand that by now.
BUT . . . this type of stuff isn't entirely unheard of, and is even written into law in some locales:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Nov-0
Holy crap, that was a lot of links. I mean, how many links can you have from a single page?
Anybody want to guess an over/under on the number of links of that page? 500? 400? A thousand?
As I see it, there is no point in this kind of evaluation of the speaker's personality. Good information should stand in its own two feet, and it should be easily verifiable. If it's not easily verifiable, then we should take it as a matter of taste.
Unh, I don't understand what you are saying. Any project seeking to expand human knowledge necessarily depends upon contributions from multiple sources; and those sources must be interrogated, evaluated and ranked. Evidence depends upon provenance, in law and arts and humanities and sciences alike. Have you heard the Newton quote, "If I have seen a little farther it is only because I have stood on the shoulder of giants"? The personages of the giants is important in the quote -- Newton does not say, "If I have seen a little farther it is only because I command a vast store of previously-established, easily verifiable knowledge." Rather, Newton judges the individuals whose work he builds upon as "giants" -- worthy of trust.
"Easily verifiable" information is not all that interesting; that would seem to me to rule out all theoretical work, much astro-physics, most quantum physics, any high-order neurological study, all philosophy, lots of psychology, and pretty much everything in historical study. Plus, it would require all intellectual projects to start de novo, from scratch. While that is occasionally a good idea (break down orthodoxy by starting from scratch!) it seems unnecessarily limiting and atomistic. Is there no one from whom you can learn? Do you have no criteria by which to judge some research better than others? Can you not evaluate methodology, preeminance, the critical faculties of other humans?
Anyhow, what exactly would be wrong with a Christian republic?
Well, for one thing, I wouldn't be a citizen of a Christian republic. I'd either be an oppressed minority, an ex-patriate, or the courageous leader of a rag-tag rebel army dedicated to the overthrow of the religious power structure.
(Sorry, I just flipped past Red Dawn on some channel earlier tonight. Got carried away.)
Jefferson was an atheist.
No, Jefferson was a deist. It's different.
Benjamin Franklin (who, let it be known to all the gentle readers, was decidedly NOT a Christian or a religious man)
No, I don't think that's correct either. It's difficult to describe any man of letters of that period as being neither christian nor religious. The language of the King James Bible, the allegories and tropes, examples and references, were pervasive. Franklin was certainly a contrarian, and hardly devout -- but I don't think describing him as neither Christian nor religious makes any sense.
An older secondary source on this might be The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn.
Because publishers (both slashdot and zdnet) often like to make stories sound more catastrophic than they actually are, so as to get more readers.
That is an excellent point.
Yeah, I went and read that blog. I'm still not sure I understand all of this. If it's not even a baby apocalypse, why is the zdnet story leading with the A$5000 scare figure? Why is the original letter so . . . abusive . . . that it evokes "paranoia" from some of the recipients? And why is there so little hard information from third sources on this? I still do not accept the constant referral to the lawyer's FAQ as an explanation of the lawyer's actions.
This story is just plain weird, even without bringing Scientology and claims (and counterclaims) of weird net stalking and character assassination into it. Then it just gets meta-weird.
On the other hand, your actions are bordering on libel and have already violated anti-vilification laws in this country.
Yeah, because that's what is going to help your argument about this lawyer being a good guy who advocates for privacy and common carrier protections: A threat of legal action with the intent of curbing free speech.
I think I just found my first Slashdot "freak", and you're it.
Yeah, QuantumG posted this same attempt at a refutation of the story elsewhere on this discussion. I still don't get it. You are attempting to refute a claim against a lawyer by referring us to the lawyer's FAQ. That's not an unbiased source.
And, really, what gives you the ability to speak for Linus Torvalds? You may indeed have that warrant, but you have given me no reason to believe so.
And I've seen no clear indication that these lawyers are representing the interests of Linus Torvalds. Can you give me authoritative information that will reassure me?
This is a really weird slashdot post and discussion. I'm very suspicious.
Okay, I'm really, really suspicious of the intent of the original post, the original actions of the lawyer, and the many comment posts. Especially parent, which attempts to clear up accusations against named lawyer by referring us to said lawyer's FAQ. Don't know if I trust that as an unbiased source.
Geez -- this is a confluence of three things I really distrust: lawyers, IP law, and Scientology. Add a politician or two, and it's Gotterdammerung.
Anybody got an authoritative source on this story? Any authoritative information at all?
Fortunately, I keep my users numbered for just such an emergency.
- clevernickname
I object to your fiendishly clever reverse plagiarism!
I called the realization that nobody wants to read really long assignments online a "blinding flash of the obvious" that lots of online education boosters don't seem to get.
Wait, I don't get it; how do I moderate the submitter as a Troll, now?
Umh, yeah, sorry about that. Definition of "inside baseball" for Non-USians and anyone else who is confused:
"Inside Baseball" is a phrase meant to describe insider knowledge about a topic; applied to politics and political campaigns as much to baseball itself. Often used to describe a journalist who covers a topic, be it baseball or whatever, from a privileged position. Political bloggers have been using the phrase recently to criticize journalists who gain access to an organization or topic, and then block other's access to the same topic.
(clicketyclicketygooglegoogle)
Here's a quick definition lifted from a review of the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang: inside baseball, "meaning the intricate knowledge and actions involved in an activity that are not usually known to the public, or, putting it another way, the boring technical details." Review
The point was to argue that many, many technically minded people are, through PJ et al., getting an insider's view of a trial-in-progress, a viewpoint generally only available to lawyers and lawyers-in-training. Surely this must result in (insert your preferred wild generalization and crazed extrapolation here), since some people really like the "boring technical details" of stuff.
This doesn't seem like a stunning development in the case; more of a minor "whoops" with a variety of possible explanations. The documents now seemingly not covered by privilege may or may not be informative, the "whoops" may or may not have been strategic and/or intentional, those documents still claimed as privileged may or may not be disputed based upon lack of information demonstrating the privilege. But it's still inside baseball: there's nothing so new here as to warrant a major news flash.
/. and other sources, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of individuals have read actual court documents, debated the meaning of standing, venue, attorney-client privilege, chain of evidence, discovery, and god knows what else.
What is interesting, at least to me, is the possibility that The SCO Group has unwittingly created an entire generation of technically literate individuals who have also closely followed the inside working of a major lawsuit. Through PJ and Groklaw, and secondarily through
This must be resulting in some sort of predisposition in young technogeeks for law school, or at least for thinking about legal issues. I don't want to say that it's a substitute for sitting through a contract law course, or even a legal textbook, but reading a year of comments on Groklaw must be preparing generations of youngish technology people for pursuing law as a career. It's like a real-time moot court on technology issues. The technically-minded can be drawn to the law as just another complex system, one with its own terminology, protocols, communications systems, manuals. Possibly, through following the inside baseball of this case, they might develop enough of an interest in law to choose to hack that system.
We'll call them the "SCO generation".
I highly recommend the London Transport Museum, but probably not for the reasons train buffs (railfans?) would suggest. It's a spectacular repository for historical graphic design . . . .
Well, yes and no. Yes, it is true that revolutionary-era documents made distinctions between individuals and corporations. However, for more than a hundred years, corporations have been legal entities in their own right in the United States and elsewhere. So, for example, corporations can be named in lawsuits, and individuals can act as agents, or in the name of, a corporation. It is a legal fiction, in a sense, but corporations are indeed persons. See US Supreme Court, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 1886. That's 118 US 394.
Hmmmm, let's see. For a primer on this, I'd suggest Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom. New York: Norton, 1988.
A critical view can be found here.
Some more citations. Sorry, it's a sickness.
Corporate Personality in the 20th Century. Edited by ROSS GRANTHAM and CHARLES RICKETT. [Oxford: Hart Publishing. 1998.] Reviewed in the Cambridge Law Journal 58, no. 1 (1999): 222-259
Capitalism without the Capitalist: The Joint Stock Company Share and the Emergence of the Modern Doctrine of Separate Corporate Personality. The Journal of legal history. 17, no. 1, (April 01, 1996): 41
ARTICLES - Persons, Things and Corporations: The Corporate Personality Controversy and Comparative Corporate Governance. The American journal of comparative law. 47, no. 4, (1999): 583.
Okay, this 1993 Business Week article notes that Lockwood's suit against American Airlines was funded in part by a parent corporation which sought investor's support. So, the business plan there is not only to get settlement cash from cowardly small businesses, but also to seek investment money from people who believe your suit has merit (or that you'll get settlement money). This is, well . . . slimy.