That's why I test it in IE...but IE is not standards compliant, and is not my favorite browser. I make sure that my pages will display in IE, but I will not write pages that only display in IE, or that look better in IE.
Most of the time, there isn't a problem, since I limit myself to basic nested tables and some CSS, but when IE screws it up, it is apparent that it is IE's problem; nested tables actually being drawn on top of one another, things like that.
It almost causes me physical pain when I have to use someone's computer, and all they have is IE. We'd do them all a favor by introducing them to Moz, and at least a part of that is making sure they have the same content available as they did in IE.
Re:excellent promotion for alternate browsers
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Next-Gen Pop-up Ads
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Hmm... Moz can't just block these kind of ads or all those javascript menus and other leditimate onMouseOver scripts that's quite common might stop working.
I can think of no legitimate time when a user expects to have an action taken because (s)he moved their mouse over an image, link, or button; actually, it is often the exact opposite. People may move the mouse over a link while deciding whether to follow it or not. Clicking == action, not mouse motion. If Moz blocked all redirects or pop-ups based on mouse overs, I strongly doubt that it would interfear with any but the most annoying scripts.
It's time for people to start moving away from tables to CSS and from.gif to.png.
No, it isn't. The browsers are not compatible with one another when it comes to CSS, and neither of them implement the full spec. Sometimes IE renders PNG, sometimes it doesn't. Until I can be sure that 99% of the people who come to my site see what I intend them to see, I'm sticking with tables, jpegs, and gifs.
How about sites that code for IE only, and won't display anything, or broken tables, or text layered on top of other text..
What really bugs me is when I get done coding something that tests just fine in Moz, and then see how IE's html-mangling features ruin what I thought was going to be a perfectly good layout.
Number three A home page that is just a logo to click on to go to the real home page. It is often large, slow and adds nothing (good) to the experience Number four Flash
I used to feel the same way you do; actually, I still feel the same way you do. When I hit the net, it's usually because I am looking for something particular, and the more hoops/pluggins I have to jump through to get to it, the more unhappy I become.
When I talk to the people that use my site, on the other hand, I find that at least a good number of them like the "ooh, shiney" parts of the web. I've actually had people ask me to restore the flash intro that the guy who ran the site before me made.
I find that splash pages (the ones that link to the "real" hompage) act almost like the cover of a book. People process images much more uickly than they do written words, and a splash page allows you make a more reliable first impression than some other methods; and if you compress your images, there is no reason it should take more than a few seconds to load. A splash page, properly compressed, can come in at under 40k.
I think the hallmark of good design these days is to wrap functionality in a pretty package; make sure that your site is useful/useable, but also make it attractive enough that your users know you care about both your content and their experience.
Qualified is native born, never a _convicted_ felon, and over 35... Those are the only qualifications. Most of the population is qualified to be president.
That's what's on paper. One also has to be an effective communicator, familiar with the legal system, charismatic, intelligent, etc...or at least able to convince people that you are.
The average person should not be incontrol of a nuclear arsenal. The average person should not be able to pardon a felon. The average person should not be able to do the majority of the things we expect our leaders to do. Unfortunatly, the majority of our leaders are also unqualified.
To assume that a man that is a plumer, or a bartender wouldn't make a good president is an example of the worst form of feudalism.
I do assume this, not because of their profession, but because of the fact that, statistically, there are very few people who are qualified.
Our leaders should inspire us, make us expect better of ourselves and out nation. They should not be a pack of paid-for vote-machines that sleep with their interns and snort the coke that they made illegal in their last term.
We should educate every child of this nation as if they are going to be president...
No, we should teach them reality; that if they have enough money, and enough backing from the well-entrenched political parties, and they manage to keep their sexual indiscretions quiet, they can be president. Maybe then they would get angry enough to change the system to one where anyone really could be president.
Personally I think that the represntatives and senators at every level should be picked like we pick juries now, randomly, and we should have 10 times more representatives now than we did 200 years ago, because our population has grown 10 times.
I actually kind of agree with you here; at least they would be normal people, people with real life experience and concerns, not someone with an agenda or a lobbyist to satisfy.
Further, those representatives should not gather in a single place, but instead be geographically dispersed and meet using an electronic forum. This prevents the lobyists from having them all grouped in one place, that is too easy a target.
Lobbying should be illegal. Full stop. End of story. Petition the government? Sure. Buy the government? Hell no.
This alone would remove the advantage that incumbents hold now.
That's another problem that needs to be addressed. I forget the rate of incumbant re-election, but it is at least 60%.
What it really means in this case is that the prosecuting attorney AND the Grand Jury both decided there was probably cause, but the verdict didn't agree.
Last time I was in a law class, it was said that a prosecutor could get an indictment against a ham sandwich froma grand jury. They are rubber stamps.
Brin's humanism teaches that anyone can grow up to be president.
No, that's not true, only those over the age of 35 and born citizens of the United States can be president. But, within that set, every president so far has been one of any. I don't think you have much of a point.
I do, but people generally don't want to admit it.
We have had, depending on how you count, 43 presidents in the entire history of the country. The census beuro reports that there were 284,796,887 people living in america in 2001 alone. I can say, with almost statistical certainty, that if you pick a random american, he or she is not, and never will, be the president of the united states.
In a romantic story, everyone wants to be the hero, the knight, the wizard, etc. Brin points out that, in reality, the reader would never be one of those people; we are the surfs, the extras, the cannon fodder.
In humanism, everyone wants to be the best, the one who excells, the one everyone else recognises. I am pointing out that we are not going to be those people, either. We are going to be the cubical dwellers, the storekeepers, the janitors. The people in power are those born into wealthy families, the children of politicians and CEOs, etc.
We wax elloquent about how, in a free society, you have unlimited potential, but this is simply not true. There are very few people who are qualified to be President, and of those qualified, very few will ever hold the office.
Now, it's not all dark and dim; I'm actually fairly optimistic about my life and where I'm going. But I harbor no illusion about a humanistic society magically making everything fair. The only difference is I don't need a sword to fight the powers that be, I need a lawyer.
I did, until the "well-educated nobility" got ahold of it.
The problems with our educational system are a direct consequence of people who have lots of education but little to no real life experience pushing their theories into practice.
Brin didn't miss the boat, he saw LOTR for what it was, dilineating fundamental lies about good and evil:P
LotR shows that some people have the ability to rse above circumstances and defeat a foe for the common good. Furthermore, it suggests that such people are rare.
Brin's humanism teaches that anyone can grow up to be president.
I'm being short here, but which do you think is more realistic? And which makes for a better story?
If they want to sue over this, why not sue beer companies because you're not immediately surrounded by half-naked babes as soon as you open an ice cold Bud?
Beer comercials imply that drinking Bud will make you sexier. Bonzai flat-out states that your computer is broadcasting an IP address, unoptimised, etc, and does so in a way that misrepresents the advertisment as an OS-Level error. Different game.
My brother is reasonably clued-in about computers, but the last time I sat down at his box, he had a stack of pop-up waiting for his attention, a host of Windows Messenger ads waiting to be shut down, Bonzai Buddy or Gator or something crawling around his screen...I almost felt physically ill.
I like computers. They have this kind of elegance to them; they do what I tell them to, they make my life easier. But most people don't get to enjoy this experience. Most people have a little trouble understanding computers to begin with, and now folks lite Bonzai are making the experience even worse. These spyware/crapware/adware/etc are at least distracting people from whatever they are on the computer for, and at worst invading their privacy.
And possibly the worst thing is, people are being trained to except this as normal. The first time I saw something pop up on my machine, I figured out what was causing it, reformatted my hard drive, and made sure to never re-install the offending software. AdAware can't beat a good old fashioned OS Reinstall. But my brother didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about all of this garbage on his machine. TV has ads, after all, why wouldn't his computer?
Actually, FatWallet's plan is probably "win, so WalMart shuts the hell up."
Now, it would be nice if this resulted in the DMCA getting tossed, but I see a better possible scenario:
FatWallet Wins. WalMart appleal. Appelate judge also sides with FatWallet, broadening the jurisdiction where the DMCA has been overturned. Walmart continues to appleal until the DMCA is overturned across the USA.
You see, you don't have to loose the initial round in order to overturn something. If you win, even in the lowest court, it sets a precedent. Then, if it goes to appeal, you have the added ammunition of saying "see, this first judge agreed with me." Of course, IANAL, so YMMV.
True, I did overlook the altruistic and well intentioned, such as yourself. Still, you hit on another problem:
The problem is, there are so many abuses of the system that if we were to take on every case that came to us, we would never sleep or eat, much less make a decent living.
The number of well-paid, drag-it-out-till-they-die lawyers vastly outnumbers those such as yourself. Also, if pro-bono work is required, then you are more likely to meet up with a lawyer who is doing his duty and going about his business than a lawyer who is fighting the good fight and defending the rights of the common man.
That is at least a start. It doesn't solve the problem of being able to buy better councel, but it is a start.
Something needs to be done to level the playing field. I hate to even mutter it, as it smacks of government-overintervention, but I am almost coming to believe that there should be court-appointed attorneys for both sides. This isn't a case of government-vs-civillian, where the government could toss someone away for a few years by giving them intentionally inadequate council, it's a case of civilian-vs-civillian, with the government as a (hopefully) neutral third party. If both sides had to make do with the same resources, then it would be the law that determined the outcome of legal preceedings, not money.
Truly sad. I wish someone would make it a requirement that, to hold a law licence, you must do X% of your time as pro bono.
In some places, I believe that that is a requierment. It doesn't solve the problem, though; who do you think has more incentive to pur heart, soul, and interns into a case; MegaCorp's well-paid, well-fed, and on-retainer lawyers, or Joe Blow's unpaid, let's-get-this-case-over-with-so- I-can-go-back-to-making-money lawyer?
Couple this with the 'just world' mentality, so prevailent in our culture today. The 'just world' mentality states that people have assets and wealth (or lack thereof) in amounts they deserve.
I used to subscribe to this worldview; I still hold one form of it. I believe that if a person earns something, they are entitled to it's use.
Unfortunatly, how much you contribute to something, and how much you recieve for your constribution, are now two very different things. I have a friend who wrote a multi-million dollar program, but the company he worked for recieved the vast majority of the profits for his work. This is unfair.
How often does some uncaring yokel chime in with, "Yeah well, I know [Walmart] is loaded with cash and lawyers, but thats because they worked hard and made all the money, so they deserve an advantage."
This is where it gets sticky. I really don't begrudge WalMart the money they have earned. I believe that they have compteted, for the most part, fairly. The fact that other companies or people do not have the resources to compete in the market is not unfair, it's business.
This does not apply, however, to the law. The law is supposed to provide equal protection to everyone. While I do not begrudge WalMart thier money, I do begrudge their ability to mainpulate the legal system with it.
Before we can fix the inequality with respect to access to legal defence, I think you have to get more people understanding that being rich or being poor doesn't neccessarily denote what you contibuted to your society, nor it the world 'just' in this manner.
This is very true. Back when I was a bright-eyed high-schooler, I used to think that the Free Market (TM) magically rewarded the people who deserved to be rewarded. I now know that this is not always the case; in fact, it may very well be more the exception than the rule. In school, they teach you about the American Spirit, self-reliance, and the value of the individual; or at least they used to. But in the real world, it's all about corporate mergers and seeing who can throw the most cash around.
Too often you see people equating success and wealth with deservedness, so in many people's eyes, your complaints arn't a problem at all.. the richer person _should_ have an advantage according to certain people.
That is, in some cases, true, but I am more disturbed by the facts 1. that so few people realize the advantage the rich have in the legal system, and 2. that so few people that do know, care.
A judge can reject a case if she thinks it is frivolous, *plus* a defendant can counter-sue for any bills incurred. It's not perfect, but it does work pretty well.
Not well enough. There is an overriding fear of being sued in America, so much so that recieving a letter saying "We will persue legal action" is more often than not enough to persuade someone to take a course of action.
Also, we shouldn't have to rely on a judge to recognise that a case is frivolous; it's wonderful when it happens, but the legal system should be fair enough that, even when a case goes to trial, the verdict comes down on the side of the person with the best legal argument, not the person with the best legal team, or the person who can afford to drag the case out the longest.
Yet another reason why the DMCA is WAY TOO broad in its scope. And another reason lawyers need to educated themselves on technology.
I don't think so; the DMCA is overly broad, but I don't think the DMCA actually applies in this case. The problem with this is the fact that, even though the operators of bigfatwallet.com may be right, they cannot afford to prove it in a court of law. The real problem in this case is not the scope of the DMCA, but the fact that "justice" has a cover charge; if you can't afford the lwayers, you don't get in the door.
While we believe that sale prices are facts and can not be copyrighted, We have made the business decision to comply with the dmca notifications.
Our reasoning for this is very simple - Our mission is to serve consumers - If we were to choose to fight this battle, It would require more resources than are available - and we would no longer be able to serve consumers.
This speaks more to the flaws in the legal system itself than it does to the DMCA. The legal system has esentially become a means of controling people with significantly less money than you. Time and time again, we hear some variant of "we believe we are right, but we don't have the resources to prove it."
The system no longer provides equal protection to all; "justice," as it were, can be purchased. Witness PanIP'sattempts to bullyweb merchants, or the OJ Simpson case.
The DMCA is bad; nearly all of us believe so. In the end, however, it is simply one item from the overly-expensive toolchest that is the american legal system. The average American can afford a hammer, but the mega-companies all have power tools. The legal system is designed to see who has the better legal case, but the sad fact is that many cases never actually get to that point; the entry level is simply to high. Joe Blow running his web site from his basement may have the best legal argument in the world for why he should be allowed to print the sale prices of items, but he cannot afford the cadre of lawyers to ensure that that aregument gets heard. Joe Blow might be right, but that doesn't matter; the company that opposes him can simply drag out the legal preceedings long enough to bankrupt him.
Ideally, when something like this happens, the defendant would be able to go before a judge and say "All I'm doing is reporting the facts," and the judge would say "case dismissed." Instead, they go before the judge and say "All I'm doing is reporting the facts," and the claiment says "that's not what my stable of lawyers say..."
The really depressing thing is that, even though I can see the system is broken, I really have no idea what to do about it. The system needs to be reformed, but I'm not entierly sure where to start.
If Linux had an exploit that allowed someone to ssh into your box, su to root, then fsck your harddrive, and a patch wasn't released yet, would you be pissed off that bugtraq posted the code to exploit the bug?
No, and here's why; if I have working code that roots my box, I can start looking for ways to prevent it from running. Know yourself. Know your enemy. The easiest way to beat something is to study it.
Now, that isn't an option in the case of IE, but I don't run it anyway. Still, there is at least some value in being shown how to exploit a vulnerability; it proves that it is real. I could send out an email tomorrow saying "Mozilla has a huge security bug that allows arbitrary execution of malicious VBScript," but unless I show you how, most (technical) people will assume I am blowing smoke. If I put up some code that demonstrates it, though, most (technical) people will say "crap, better 1. stop using Mozilla, or 2. get to hacking out a fix."
Cost of production is why there will be a greater supply at $10 than at $5. Say thata widget costs $4 to make and market...profit at $5 is $1. Not a lot of incentive to manufacture widgets. At $10, however, profit per widget is $6...and because widgets are now more lucrative, there will be more people willing to produce them, creating a greater supply.
Not so...perfect competition simply means that consumers have perfect knowledge of and access to each competing supplier, and that cost is the only factor determining who the consumer will buy from.
And according to my economics textbook, in perfect competition, no company ever makes a profit. After all, if one company was selling their goods at a price that brought them a profit, than some other company should be able to sell for less, and naturally everyone would buy from the cheaper company.
You economics textbook is wrong. Theoretically, one company could always undercut the other, eventually selling everything at, or even below, cost, but this never happens unless a large company is dumping the market.
Basically, it goes like this: if you can sell a widget for $5.00, companies will be willing to produce 100 of them. If you can sell a widget for $10.00, companies will be willing to produce 1,000 of them. If you can sell a widget for $15.00, companies will be willing to produce 1,000,000. (Just example numbers). Now, if a widget sells for $5.00, comsumers will be willing to purchase 1,000,000 of them. If a widget sells for $10.00, comsumers will be willing to purchase 1,000 of them. If widgets sell for $15.00, consumers will be willing to buy 100 of them.
Because supply meets demand at $10.00, that is what the average market price for a widget will be. If you try to sell them for more, you are going to have left-over stock, and if you try to buy them for less, companies are not going to bother producing them.
In perfect competition, therefore, every company makes a profit, but not a profit so great that it hurts the consumer. Unfortunatly, perfect competition is, for the most part,a pipe dream. Fortunatly, the good people running state governments are trying to tax internet sales again, which, as we all know, will make the market much better for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why I test it in IE...but IE is not standards compliant, and is not my favorite browser. I make sure that my pages will display in IE, but I will not write pages that only display in IE, or that look better in IE.
Most of the time, there isn't a problem, since I limit myself to basic nested tables and some CSS, but when IE screws it up, it is apparent that it is IE's problem; nested tables actually being drawn on top of one another, things like that.
It almost causes me physical pain when I have to use someone's computer, and all they have is IE. We'd do them all a favor by introducing them to Moz, and at least a part of that is making sure they have the same content available as they did in IE.
Hmm... Moz can't just block these kind of ads or all those javascript menus and other leditimate onMouseOver scripts that's quite common might stop working.
I can think of no legitimate time when a user expects to have an action taken because (s)he moved their mouse over an image, link, or button; actually, it is often the exact opposite. People may move the mouse over a link while deciding whether to follow it or not. Clicking == action, not mouse motion. If Moz blocked all redirects or pop-ups based on mouse overs, I strongly doubt that it would interfear with any but the most annoying scripts.
It's time for people to start moving away from tables to CSS and from .gif to .png.
No, it isn't. The browsers are not compatible with one another when it comes to CSS, and neither of them implement the full spec. Sometimes IE renders PNG, sometimes it doesn't. Until I can be sure that 99% of the people who come to my site see what I intend them to see, I'm sticking with tables, jpegs, and gifs.
How about sites that code for IE only, and won't display anything, or broken tables, or text layered on top of other text..
What really bugs me is when I get done coding something that tests just fine in Moz, and then see how IE's html-mangling features ruin what I thought was going to be a perfectly good layout.
Number three
A home page that is just a logo to click on to go to the real home page. It is often large, slow and adds nothing (good) to the experience
Number four
Flash
I used to feel the same way you do; actually, I still feel the same way you do. When I hit the net, it's usually because I am looking for something particular, and the more hoops/pluggins I have to jump through to get to it, the more unhappy I become.
When I talk to the people that use my site, on the other hand, I find that at least a good number of them like the "ooh, shiney" parts of the web. I've actually had people ask me to restore the flash intro that the guy who ran the site before me made.
I find that splash pages (the ones that link to the "real" hompage) act almost like the cover of a book. People process images much more uickly than they do written words, and a splash page allows you make a more reliable first impression than some other methods; and if you compress your images, there is no reason it should take more than a few seconds to load. A splash page, properly compressed, can come in at under 40k.
I think the hallmark of good design these days is to wrap functionality in a pretty package; make sure that your site is useful/useable, but also make it attractive enough that your users know you care about both your content and their experience.
Qualified is native born, never a _convicted_ felon, and over 35... Those are the only qualifications. Most of the population is qualified to be president.
That's what's on paper. One also has to be an effective communicator, familiar with the legal system, charismatic, intelligent, etc...or at least able to convince people that you are.
The average person should not be incontrol of a nuclear arsenal. The average person should not be able to pardon a felon. The average person should not be able to do the majority of the things we expect our leaders to do. Unfortunatly, the majority of our leaders are also unqualified.
To assume that a man that is a plumer, or a bartender wouldn't make a good president is an example of the worst form of feudalism.
I do assume this, not because of their profession, but because of the fact that, statistically, there are very few people who are qualified.
Our leaders should inspire us, make us expect better of ourselves and out nation. They should not be a pack of paid-for vote-machines that sleep with their interns and snort the coke that they made illegal in their last term.
We should educate every child of this nation as if they are going to be president...
No, we should teach them reality; that if they have enough money, and enough backing from the well-entrenched political parties, and they manage to keep their sexual indiscretions quiet, they can be president. Maybe then they would get angry enough to change the system to one where anyone really could be president.
Personally I think that the represntatives and senators at every level should be picked like we pick juries now, randomly, and we should have 10 times more representatives now than we did 200 years ago, because our population has grown 10 times.
I actually kind of agree with you here; at least they would be normal people, people with real life experience and concerns, not someone with an agenda or a lobbyist to satisfy.
Further, those representatives should not gather in a single place, but instead be geographically dispersed and meet using an electronic forum. This prevents the lobyists from having them all grouped in one place, that is too easy a target.
Lobbying should be illegal. Full stop. End of story. Petition the government? Sure. Buy the government? Hell no.
This alone would remove the advantage that incumbents hold now.
That's another problem that needs to be addressed. I forget the rate of incumbant re-election, but it is at least 60%.
What it really means in this case is that the prosecuting attorney AND the Grand Jury both decided there was probably cause, but the verdict didn't agree.
Last time I was in a law class, it was said that a prosecutor could get an indictment against a ham sandwich froma grand jury. They are rubber stamps.
Brin's humanism teaches that anyone can grow up to be president.
No, that's not true, only those over the age of 35 and born citizens of the United States can be president.
But, within that set, every president so far has been one of any. I don't think you have much of a point.
I do, but people generally don't want to admit it.
We have had, depending on how you count, 43 presidents in the entire history of the country. The census beuro reports that there were 284,796,887 people living in america in 2001 alone. I can say, with almost statistical certainty, that if you pick a random american, he or she is not, and never will, be the president of the united states.
In a romantic story, everyone wants to be the hero, the knight, the wizard, etc. Brin points out that, in reality, the reader would never be one of those people; we are the surfs, the extras, the cannon fodder.
In humanism, everyone wants to be the best, the one who excells, the one everyone else recognises. I am pointing out that we are not going to be those people, either. We are going to be the cubical dwellers, the storekeepers, the janitors. The people in power are those born into wealthy families, the children of politicians and CEOs, etc.
We wax elloquent about how, in a free society, you have unlimited potential, but this is simply not true. There are very few people who are qualified to be President, and of those qualified, very few will ever hold the office.
Now, it's not all dark and dim; I'm actually fairly optimistic about my life and where I'm going. But I harbor no illusion about a humanistic society magically making everything fair. The only difference is I don't need a sword to fight the powers that be, I need a lawyer.
I did, until the "well-educated nobility" got ahold of it.
The problems with our educational system are a direct consequence of people who have lots of education but little to no real life experience pushing their theories into practice.
Brin didn't miss the boat, he saw LOTR for what it was, dilineating fundamental lies about good and evil :P
LotR shows that some people have the ability to rse above circumstances and defeat a foe for the common good. Furthermore, it suggests that such people are rare.
Brin's humanism teaches that anyone can grow up to be president.
I'm being short here, but which do you think is more realistic? And which makes for a better story?
If they want to sue over this, why not sue beer companies because you're not immediately surrounded by half-naked babes as soon as you open an ice cold Bud?
Beer comercials imply that drinking Bud will make you sexier. Bonzai flat-out states that your computer is broadcasting an IP address, unoptimised, etc, and does so in a way that misrepresents the advertisment as an OS-Level error. Different game.
This is too true.
My brother is reasonably clued-in about computers, but the last time I sat down at his box, he had a stack of pop-up waiting for his attention, a host of Windows Messenger ads waiting to be shut down, Bonzai Buddy or Gator or something crawling around his screen...I almost felt physically ill.
I like computers. They have this kind of elegance to them; they do what I tell them to, they make my life easier. But most people don't get to enjoy this experience. Most people have a little trouble understanding computers to begin with, and now folks lite Bonzai are making the experience even worse. These spyware/crapware/adware/etc are at least distracting people from whatever they are on the computer for, and at worst invading their privacy.
And possibly the worst thing is, people are being trained to except this as normal. The first time I saw something pop up on my machine, I figured out what was causing it, reformatted my hard drive, and made sure to never re-install the offending software. AdAware can't beat a good old fashioned OS Reinstall. But my brother didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about all of this garbage on his machine. TV has ads, after all, why wouldn't his computer?
You're right. Open season.
looks around for an Analog Reprogramming Tool*
*Hammer
Actually, FatWallet's plan is probably "win, so WalMart shuts the hell up."
Now, it would be nice if this resulted in the DMCA getting tossed, but I see a better possible scenario:
FatWallet Wins. WalMart appleal.
Appelate judge also sides with FatWallet, broadening the jurisdiction where the DMCA has been overturned.
Walmart continues to appleal until the DMCA is overturned across the USA.
You see, you don't have to loose the initial round in order to overturn something. If you win, even in the lowest court, it sets a precedent. Then, if it goes to appeal, you have the added ammunition of saying "see, this first judge agreed with me." Of course, IANAL, so YMMV.
True, I did overlook the altruistic and well intentioned, such as yourself. Still, you hit on another problem:
The problem is, there are so many abuses of the system that if we were to take on every case that came to us, we would never sleep or eat, much less make a decent living.
The number of well-paid, drag-it-out-till-they-die lawyers vastly outnumbers those such as yourself. Also, if pro-bono work is required, then you are more likely to meet up with a lawyer who is doing his duty and going about his business than a lawyer who is fighting the good fight and defending the rights of the common man.
That is at least a start. It doesn't solve the problem of being able to buy better councel, but it is a start.
Something needs to be done to level the playing field. I hate to even mutter it, as it smacks of government-overintervention, but I am almost coming to believe that there should be court-appointed attorneys for both sides. This isn't a case of government-vs-civillian, where the government could toss someone away for a few years by giving them intentionally inadequate council, it's a case of civilian-vs-civillian, with the government as a (hopefully) neutral third party. If both sides had to make do with the same resources, then it would be the law that determined the outcome of legal preceedings, not money.
Truly sad. I wish someone would make it a requirement that, to hold a law licence, you must do X% of your time as pro bono.
In some places, I believe that that is a requierment. It doesn't solve the problem, though; who do you think has more incentive to pur heart, soul, and interns into a case; MegaCorp's well-paid, well-fed, and on-retainer lawyers, or Joe Blow's unpaid, let's-get-this-case-over-with-so- I-can-go-back-to-making-money
lawyer?
Couple this with the 'just world' mentality, so prevailent in our culture today. The 'just world' mentality states that people have assets and wealth (or lack thereof) in amounts they deserve.
.. the richer person _should_ have an advantage according to certain people.
I used to subscribe to this worldview; I still hold one form of it. I believe that if a person earns something, they are entitled to it's use.
Unfortunatly, how much you contribute to something, and how much you recieve for your constribution, are now two very different things. I have a friend who wrote a multi-million dollar program, but the company he worked for recieved the vast majority of the profits for his work. This is unfair.
How often does some uncaring yokel chime in with, "Yeah well, I know [Walmart] is loaded with cash and lawyers, but thats because they worked hard and made all the money, so they deserve an advantage."
This is where it gets sticky. I really don't begrudge WalMart the money they have earned. I believe that they have compteted, for the most part, fairly. The fact that other companies or people do not have the resources to compete in the market is not unfair, it's business.
This does not apply, however, to the law. The law is supposed to provide equal protection to everyone. While I do not begrudge WalMart thier money, I do begrudge their ability to mainpulate the legal system with it.
Before we can fix the inequality with respect to access to legal defence, I think you have to get more people understanding that being rich or being poor doesn't neccessarily denote what you contibuted to your society, nor it the world 'just' in this manner.
This is very true. Back when I was a bright-eyed high-schooler, I used to think that the Free Market (TM) magically rewarded the people who deserved to be rewarded. I now know that this is not always the case; in fact, it may very well be more the exception than the rule. In school, they teach you about the American Spirit, self-reliance, and the value of the individual; or at least they used to. But in the real world, it's all about corporate mergers and seeing who can throw the most cash around.
Too often you see people equating success and wealth with deservedness, so in many people's eyes, your complaints arn't a problem at all
That is, in some cases, true, but I am more disturbed by the facts 1. that so few people realize the advantage the rich have in the legal system, and 2. that so few people that do know, care.
A judge can reject a case if she thinks it is frivolous, *plus* a defendant can counter-sue for any bills incurred. It's not perfect, but it does work pretty well.
Not well enough. There is an overriding fear of being sued in America, so much so that recieving a letter saying "We will persue legal action" is more often than not enough to persuade someone to take a course of action.
Also, we shouldn't have to rely on a judge to recognise that a case is frivolous; it's wonderful when it happens, but the legal system should be fair enough that, even when a case goes to trial, the verdict comes down on the side of the person with the best legal argument, not the person with the best legal team, or the person who can afford to drag the case out the longest.
Googling for black friday sale price list comparison shopping yeilded, towads the bottom of the page, this link, which in turn linked to...crap, it was deleted after the poster was emailed. They work fast...
Yet another reason why the DMCA is WAY TOO broad in its scope. And another reason lawyers need to educated themselves on technology.
I don't think so; the DMCA is overly broad, but I don't think the DMCA actually applies in this case. The problem with this is the fact that, even though the operators of bigfatwallet.com may be right, they cannot afford to prove it in a court of law. The real problem in this case is not the scope of the DMCA, but the fact that "justice" has a cover charge; if you can't afford the lwayers, you don't get in the door.
From the link:
While we believe that sale prices are facts and can not be copyrighted, We have made the business decision to comply with the dmca notifications.
Our reasoning for this is very simple - Our mission is to serve consumers - If we were to choose to fight this battle, It would require more resources than are available - and we would no longer be able to serve consumers.
This speaks more to the flaws in the legal system itself than it does to the DMCA. The legal system has esentially become a means of controling people with significantly less money than you. Time and time again, we hear some variant of "we believe we are right, but we don't have the resources to prove it."
The system no longer provides equal protection to all; "justice," as it were, can be purchased. Witness PanIP's attempts to bully web merchants, or the OJ Simpson case.
The DMCA is bad; nearly all of us believe so. In the end, however, it is simply one item from the overly-expensive toolchest that is the american legal system. The average American can afford a hammer, but the mega-companies all have power tools. The legal system is designed to see who has the better legal case, but the sad fact is that many cases never actually get to that point; the entry level is simply to high. Joe Blow running his web site from his basement may have the best legal argument in the world for why he should be allowed to print the sale prices of items, but he cannot afford the cadre of lawyers to ensure that that aregument gets heard. Joe Blow might be right, but that doesn't matter; the company that opposes him can simply drag out the legal preceedings long enough to bankrupt him.
Ideally, when something like this happens, the defendant would be able to go before a judge and say "All I'm doing is reporting the facts," and the judge would say "case dismissed." Instead, they go before the judge and say "All I'm doing is reporting the facts," and the claiment says "that's not what my stable of lawyers say..."
The really depressing thing is that, even though I can see the system is broken, I really have no idea what to do about it. The system needs to be reformed, but I'm not entierly sure where to start.
If Linux had an exploit that allowed someone to ssh into your box, su to root, then fsck your harddrive, and a patch wasn't released yet, would you be pissed off that bugtraq posted the code to exploit the bug?
No, and here's why; if I have working code that roots my box, I can start looking for ways to prevent it from running. Know yourself. Know your enemy. The easiest way to beat something is to study it.
Now, that isn't an option in the case of IE, but I don't run it anyway. Still, there is at least some value in being shown how to exploit a vulnerability; it proves that it is real. I could send out an email tomorrow saying "Mozilla has a huge security bug that allows arbitrary execution of malicious VBScript," but unless I show you how, most (technical) people will assume I am blowing smoke. If I put up some code that demonstrates it, though, most (technical) people will say "crap, better 1. stop using Mozilla, or 2. get to hacking out a fix."
Cost of production is why there will be a greater supply at $10 than at $5. Say thata widget costs $4 to make and market...profit at $5 is $1. Not a lot of incentive to manufacture widgets. At $10, however, profit per widget is $6...and because widgets are now more lucrative, there will be more people willing to produce them, creating a greater supply.
Not so...perfect competition simply means that consumers have perfect knowledge of and access to each competing supplier, and that cost is the only factor determining who the consumer will buy from.
And according to my economics textbook, in perfect competition, no company ever makes a profit. After all, if one company was selling their goods at a price that brought them a profit, than some other company should be able to sell for less, and naturally everyone would buy from the cheaper company.
You economics textbook is wrong. Theoretically, one company could always undercut the other, eventually selling everything at, or even below, cost, but this never happens unless a large company is dumping the market.
Basically, it goes like this: if you can sell a widget for $5.00, companies will be willing to produce 100 of them. If you can sell a widget for $10.00, companies will be willing to produce 1,000 of them. If you can sell a widget for $15.00, companies will be willing to produce 1,000,000. (Just example numbers). Now, if a widget sells for $5.00, comsumers will be willing to purchase 1,000,000 of them. If a widget sells for $10.00, comsumers will be willing to purchase 1,000 of them. If widgets sell for $15.00, consumers will be willing to buy 100 of them.
Because supply meets demand at $10.00, that is what the average market price for a widget will be. If you try to sell them for more, you are going to have left-over stock, and if you try to buy them for less, companies are not going to bother producing them.
In perfect competition, therefore, every company makes a profit, but not a profit so great that it hurts the consumer. Unfortunatly, perfect competition is, for the most part,a pipe dream. Fortunatly, the good people running state governments are trying to tax internet sales again, which, as we all know, will make the market much better for everyone.