The confusion here is "reporting" versus "threatening." You can be held liable for "threatening" even if you are seeking something you are entitled to, and even if you are truthful about the thing you would report, and even if the actions you threaten to report are bad or illegal or breaches of contract.
It is the threat-for-gain that is the crime. Is it a fine line? Yes, it is. For example, you may include, on your invoices, the information that you report defaults to credit-reporting-agencies and/or to Dun & Bradstreet. But you may not call someone who is asserting objections to your invoice, and threaten to contact their investors unless they pay up. That is extortion.
Finally, let me repeat: threatening to report someone's non-payment to their financial backers (actual or prospective), or making such a report, will absolutely, positively NOT accomplish anything positive, and the risks of negative responses (whether criminal complaints, or lawsuits, or nefarious revenge tactics) are NOT worth the potential satisfaction from trying to screw with the deadbeat's business.
Echnin suggest confronting the client by threatening to report their wrongdoing. I disagree, emphatically, since this might constitute extortion, which is a crime.
California Penal Code Section 518:
Extortion is the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, or the obtaining of an official act of a public officer, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of
official right.
California Penal Code Section 519:
Fear, such as will constitute extortion, may be induced by a
threat, either:
To do an unlawful injury to the person or property of the
individual threatened or of a third person; or,
To accuse the individual threatened, or any relative of his, or
member of his family, of any crime; or,
To expose, or to impute to him or them any deformity, disgrace
or crime; or,
First, if you call the client and threaten to report the non-payment to the financial backers unless you get paid, you are most likely engaging in extortion, a crime.
Second, if you just go ahead and call and report the non-payment, your goal is clearly to interfere with the existing relationship between the company and its backers. The company might sue you (for interference with contract, interference with prospective economic advantage, defamation, etc.) and of course they have the money to fight and you don't. Can they win? If what you say is truthful, probably not.
Of course, if you file suit against the client, for breach of contract, your filing of a lawsuit will be a matter of public record, and your attorney might find it necessary to schedule depositions or subpoena the financial backers for some reason, in which case the financial backers would find out. It is possible that your filing a lawsuit might trigger a termination clause in the financing arrangement, but the I can't imagine how the mere filing of a legitimate lawsuit to collect money owed, without more, could be actionable under any theories unrelated to the lawsuit (e.g. you could get sued for malicious prosecution or punished under the SLAPP statute or court rules if your lawsuit is thrown out, but you can't be sued for defamation just for filing a lawsuit).
Do you have an obligation to report the non-payment? Absent some additional information, I don't think so. You might have an obligation to speak up, if you have any kind of relationship with the financial backers, or if you made some statements to them, or if you are aware that your name and reputation were represented to the backers in order to get the funding.
It appears that you are, in fact, ending your relationship with the client. If you are not going to sue them for the money owed, then you should probably just move on and learn from the experience. If you are going to sue them, let your lawyer handle the matter, and don't try to take actions that could cause you more problems down the road.
Yeah, you're mad, and the client is scum. You can gain nothing from bitching to the money-guys, period, and you can lose a lot.
Re:Agree: Time Travel, Holodeck, and Q plots suck
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Star Trek: Pick A Plot
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· Score: 2
In fairness, in that episode, and the one in which Leonardo da Vinco was "stolen," I think the idea was that the superior thieves intentionally deleted the Doctor's program (and other stuff) from Voyager's computer (after copying it) because they didn't want Voyager to retain those valuable assets.
And arguably, it's easier to design software like that (self-modifying code, no less) if you know you'll never need to re-integrate two versions. That makes sense when the Doctor is "transferred" between the ship's computer and the holo-emitter, though again it would make sense to keep a backup copy in each place just in case the program is deleted in the other. That's the paradox we see when we have two Kirks, two Spocks, two Rikers, etc. -- from the moment of duplication (or division, in Kirk's case), it should really be impossible to safely re-integrate the two, because they've had difference experiences and their neural pathways are thus different.
But the notion of sending the Doctor's program through an alien communications grid and NOT keeping a copy locally, is simply nuts. Why not send the program through, and keep the copy running locally -- there really was no need to send the entire program BACK to Voyager, just the data that Starfleet wanted to send back.
By the way, I never quite understood how the doctor's mobile emitter could be left on a planet far from Voyager for hundreds of years before he was re-activated and could defend Voyager from blame for a race war -- and yet still be on Voyager all along. Since the mobile emitter is "future technology" and presumably thus can't be copied, I can't comprehend how it could be in two places at one time. Any ideas? or are we just supposed to assume that that one episode was an "alternative timeline" and pretend it never happened when watching all the other episodes?
Bad news: my understanding is that congressional districts do not terminate along neat zip-code boundaries. At one time, my zip code was divided between TWO congressmen, TWO state senators, and THREE state assemblypersons. Thus, to do proper mapping, you need street-address level divisions or perhaps precinct maps. I would think that if you buy voter-registration data from the counties (states?) it would designate what district each voteris in.
Of course, you could simply alter the letter for multi-district zip codes, urging the voter to vote for whichever of these candidates is on their ballot, but that might seem awkward.
Generally, politicians don't campaign very heavily in this town because of the split, and instead concentrate their campaigning in places where all the voters are in the "right" district.
If you rely just on general mailing addresses, be aware that many folks have a mailing address different than there residence and voting address. I've almost always had a P.O. Box, and when I lived in San Francisco and Oakland, the zip code for the PO Box was different from my home. If your list may include office addresses, then things get even more complicated, due to commuting patterns.
Finally, the U.S. post office often assigns zip codes based on their carrier routes, and not based on political boundaries. Thus, a number of homes in unincorporated areas adjacent to Danville and San Ramon, California, in the Tassajara Valley, are politically in those Contra Costa County political districts, yet they share my Pleasanton zip code, which is in Alameda County.
Agree: Time Travel, Holodeck, and Q plots suck
on
Star Trek: Pick A Plot
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· Score: 3, Insightful
One of the reasons Voyager was so interesting, at least when it launched, was that it didn't do what so many Sci-Fi films have done before: it didn't rescue the heroes. But then they had episodes where things went really bad for the crew, and they got fixed by time travel, and of course the final episode was simply absurd on about a zillion levels.
Some of the holodeck subplots were interesting - the notion of 'addiction' by Lieutenant Barclay in ST:TNG. Extending the technology by introducing the Doctor in Voyager seemed okay, but then extending to other "photonic life" in several different ways became strange: apparently there was some photonic life that didn't appear to require actual computers or holo-emitters (the absurd episode in which Janeway must become a B-movie queen), and then later we again see photonic beings who do require computers/holo-emitters.
Of course, the real issue is that so many sci-fi plot points are impossible under the laws of physics as they are generally known (whether we're talking about the 1960's or 2002): faster-than-light travel, time travel, transporters, warp fields, subspace communication. Breaking the rules is what enables the plots to get interesting, and of course we all hope/believe/fantasize that what we imagine might one day be possible, since any sufficiently advanced technology is magic (Clarke).
What I find most troubling are gaping inconsistencies, often made worse by implausible explanations. In one episode, the scanners can identify a single individual among billions on a planet with super-advanced technology, and then in the next they can't scan to find out what's inside a wad of Kleenex (exaggeration).
One of the absurd, and often annoying, plot devices that is also sometimes one of the more amusing, is the notion that this crew of a few hundred (really just a dozen or so people who seem to actually do everything) can invent new technologies in a few hours, with half the ship's systems disabled, while huge teams of dedicated scientists with vast resources could not accomplish such work (apparently the only major technology invented by humans but NOT invented on Enterprise or Voyager, was the non-damaging warp technology that was introduced on Voyager).
No question about it: the last episode of "Enterprise" last year took away just about everything that showed promise in the series: the notion that they were less advanced, less able, less knowledgeable than the later crews.
Hmm. When most of the big blockbuster movies are released, my local Regal Cinemas offers them on the Imax screen, at least one showing per day -- thus I saw Pearl Harbor on Imax, and at least one other (plus Gladiator, but that was its special re-release for Imax).
But when I went to buy my "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" ticket, they said that Lucas wasn't allowing any Imax showings, arguing that the film quality was not up to par for that format. I assume they are doing a different film format, but I also can't imagine paying another $9 or $10 to see a movie I've seen before. (I'd gladly have paid the full-price ticket to see it on Imax originally, rather than paying the matinee price for the regular viewing.)
As I think about it, I'm not sure which scenes would benefit especially from Imax. The war scenes in "Pearl Harbor" were cool at that size, and Gladiator was OK at that size.
I went shopping for an electric or hybrid car a few years back, after seeing ads for the Honda and Saturn electric vehicles in Sierra magazine. Both turned out to be scams: the Honda was never actually available to regular consumers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and production on the Saturn was quite limited. The dealers strongly discouraged purchase, discouraged anyone from signing up for the waiting list, yet they had long waiting lists anyway (requests which were never filled).
The prices were also absurd: the Saturn EV-1 was available only by lease, at a montly lease rate that was TWICE the monthly rate for a regular Saturn ($399 vs $199, at that time), and at the end of the 36-month lease term, the EV-1 had to be returned -- there was no purchase option, since GM didn't want electric cars to be "out there." The net effect was that the "real cost" of an EV-1 was triple the cost of a comparable Saturn gasoline-powered car.
Later, the Honda and Toyota hybrids were marketed in a similar manner: not really available to consumers (most dealers can't get them), and priced at least twice the level of the comparable "regular" car sold by the same company.
So what's really happening? The car manufacturers are playing a combined political/legal game, in order to avoid meeting California's requirements. The task is simple: the auto makers pretend to seriously explore alternative power technologies, and they pretend to offer them for sale, but they deliberately set prices at unreasonable levels, and when demand turns out to be extremely strong anyway, they discontinue the vehicle model, falsely claiming that consumers don't want these vehicles.
If California ever sought to enforce its requirements (which seems quite unlikely), the manufacturers would go straight to court, claiming that the standards are unreasonable, and they will claim that they made all reasonable efforts to try to meet the standards.
It's a shell game, and Ford's decision to buy and then dismantle one of the few viable companies offering alternative-fuel cars, is just another clear sign that the automakers won't tolerate any attempt to "do the right thing."
While I detest spam, I have to point out that it seems quite unlikely to me that prohibitions or restrictions on political spam would be upheld by the courts.
The standard law -- spammers must honor opt-out requests, with penalties (civil or criminal) for those who continue to send spam to people who have opted out -- would surely hold up, but who among us wants to opt-out with each and every current and potential candidate for political office (not just in the USA, but around the world)?
And there is also a long tradition in support of anonymous political speech in the USA, which naturally presents a new set of issues for those who choose to distribute attack ads, slate cards, or whatever, anonymously via spam.
I've actually thought since 1995 that the internet provides a unique and wonderful opportunity for effective political campaigning, at least for candidates who have more substance than fluff (perhaps that answers my question -- very few candidates really want close scrutiny).
And most intriguing here, apart from the notion of anonymous attack ads, is the common practice of "political dirty tricks." Imagine if a supporter of the Republican candidate sent a broadcast-spam purporting to favor the Democratic candidate, in order to generate negative responses? What if the same fellow goes one step further, launching an "obvious" forged spam on behalf of the Republican candidate, in order to make people think that the Democrat is a dirty trickster?
And the dirty tricks are almost limitless. One common technique is the "election-eve attack" in which false (often ridiculous) rumors or reports are circulated, with the hope that the person who hears it will not hear any rebuttal. Imagine a flood of emails on the evening before, and the day of, an election campaign.
Wow.
A mostly-unrelated story: I once got a brochure in my BankAmerica statement, urging me to vote against an anti-ATM-fee ordinance in San Francisco (I don't live there and can't vote there). The brochure contained false statements -- among them, a false claim that BofA doesn't get any fee from other banks when customers of other banks use its ATMs, apart from the surcharge fee (in fact, there is a system of compensation and fees, and of course there are banks like Washington Mutual which are satisfied with those inter-bank fees and don't charge any surcharge to other banks' customers using its ATMs). I called the SF election office, and was told that no action can be taken, even against clearly false campaign statements like this one. In other words, lying is actually okay!
Huh? Another logical fallacy -- you decide that when I mention that many failed dot-coms spent money on TV and radio advertising wastefully, I am saying that all spending by failed dot-coms was wrong. That's not what I said.
My point was that the fact that money was spent on something (be it spam or TV ads) is not proof that it works. I was not suggesting that spending money always fails, nor that all TV advertising campaigns by dot-coms failed (though the latter is pretty nearly my belief).
You wrote: Would any company even mildly intrested in making money simply flush money down the toilet like that? -- and this is a damn good question, which was constantly on my mind from 1996 through 2001. Quite clearly, there was some ridiculous spending going on, stuff I would consider "flushing," but mostly there was also money being spent on advertising by people who didn't understand how to effectively spend money on advertising.
I will admit one key point: much of the money spent on TV and radio advertising, although it did not succeed in driving profitable sales to the companies, did succeed in raising the company's profile enough to help boost the stock price in the IPO and aftermarket, which is not altogether a "wrong" thing to do (though I don't like it much).
But the real point I was making is that people often make mistakes, and I certainly believe that people who send spam expecting to make money are making a mistake -- not because it's immoral or illegal (which it is), but because they will not, in fact, make money. People try to make money in many different ways in our world, and often some of those people are "uneducated" or "ignorant" or they simply don't "do the math" -- which is what most spammers claim was their mistake.
Logical Failure: If They Do It, It Must Work
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Spam Doesn't Work?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
> If Spam didn't work, why do I get a > hundred pieces of it every morning?
> Someone is buying.
Wrong. The fact that people send huge volumes of spam does not mean anyone is buying. Indeed, most spam comes from people who have been duped by list-sellers and email-sending-service sellers, into believing the same logical mistake.
Dozens of dot-com companies spent tens of millions of dollars on TV and radio advertising. They wouldn't do that unless it worked, right? But if that's true, why did they all go bankrupt, and why did so some report that they spent more money on advertising than they received in gross sales?
For a clever spammer, it costs almost nothing to send spam, so the mere prospect of a single sale is enough to justify sending millions of spams. For a stupid spammer who believes what the remailer or list-seller says, spamming is a bad business decision, just as many folks who advertise in the newspaper or yellow pages would probably not do so if they tracked the results and compared the cost.
The culprits for spam are ignorance and greed, not actual profit.
Not just the chair - fix the desk, too!
on
Painless Chairs?
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· Score: 3, Informative
You can buy the greatest super-supportive super-adjustable chair, but it's worthless if you end up positioning it inappropriately because you must fit into a narrow slot at your computer table, desk, or credenza.
I have a really nice chair, but like an idiot I have a lousy desk with a slide-out computer drawer that is TOO LOW for me. Thus, I have to lower the chair so my legs are not comfortable, and this causes my back to curl, and the armrests on the chair are just a smidge too low so my arms and shoulders aren't aligned right....
I know better (I researched and prepared a 150-page annotated bibliography and a 70-page thesis on the subject of "legal liability for health effects of computer use" back in 1989), but I keep telling myself that this setup is just temporary, I will change things Really Soon Now, and now it's been 3 years in this configuration.
This is not absurd. At about that same time, someone sent out a child-porn spam listing an address -- with the specific (successful) goal of creating intense harassment for the residents of that home. I don't see any reporters listing the home address for WorldCom's officers.
Actually, I saw the irony but clearly this is the most efficient (and probably the only workable) method for notifying the class. It also provides a mechanism to cross-check the claimants -- make sure the claimant's fax number is on the list, confirm that the claimant owns that phone number (and isn't just an employee or passer-by or lucky guesser), and pay the money.
Any other method of notice would either be inadequate (newspaper ads, for example), or would be much more invasive of privacy (compelling the phone company to release the mailing addresses of the owners of these 33,000 phone numbers).
As tempting as it is to "attack" spammers, consider carefully whether it really makes sense to stoop to their level and engage in illegal activity yourself.
I remain upset that in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, we gave in and gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted: a less free society, in which armed guards are present in many public places, and where many more people are now afraid of people with brown skin or different beliefs. I'm also unhappy that we killed many more thousands of already-victimized civilians in an overkill campaign against Afghanistan. "Oh yeah? My trillion-dollar army can beat up your army of children with sticks."
Likewise, adopting the spammer's illegal attack strategies serves only to reduce us to their level. I am not a criminal, I am not someone who harasses other people, even people who engage in illegal harassment of me.
Certainly, do what's legal: call spammers and complain, send complaints to the ISP and backbone providers (and follow up when it appears an ISP has "dropped the ball"), and of course fax removal requests back to the junk faxers. If you want to yell or use profanity in your calls and emails and faxes, that's probably legal in most places.
But sending death threats, flooding spammers with millions of copies of their own spam, or launching DNS attacks on their servers. Don't become "one of them" because then there are more criminals and fewer good guys.
This all sank in (for me) back in 1996, during the absurd "Yuri Rutman" (Thinner hair, el cheepo, the first Joe-job) spam-then-harassment campaigns. At one point, I posted a web page (which I deleted several years ago) that listed all the information about Mr. Rutman (most of it gathered by others and posted in isolated bits in the net-abuse newsgroup). One of the items was his home address (in addition to his office address, which was probably a mail drop). When I actually got Mr. Rutman on the phone, he asked me to remove his home address, claiming that he had children and feared for their safety -- because he feared that people might engage in physical retribution in response to his repeated, irrational, illegal, and vicious retribution against joes.com and Hurricane Electric. I decided then and there that although I owed Mr. Rutman no courtesy or respect, I would not do anything to endanger any human being's physical safety, especially children (whether or not they really existed), and so I removed his home address (though it was still available in the newsgroups, where a diligent anti-spammer might find it -- but I didn't want the information on my web site where someone stupid and simple might use it to do something stupid and simple. (Though there was no publicity, for his actions, Mr. Rutman was charged and convicted of a crime in Illinois, just a slap on the wrist but worse than what happens 99.999% of spammers.)
Yes, spammers do some crazy and evil things -- like Sanford "Spamford" Wallace filing a frivolous lawsuit against me just to get publicity (he quickly abandoned it), thus scaring off a bidder for my former dot-com business "because we don't want to buy a lawsuit." The next offer for my business was $175,000 less, and I had to pay $5,000 in legal fees to respond before Wallace abandoned the suit. Did I feel like doing something stupid and simple? Of course. But I didn't do it, because I am NOT like these cretins. Life sucks, sometimes, but the solution is NOT to do more sucking.
If the article is correct that the company is required fax a notice of the settlement to all 33,000 fax numbers that the illegal faxes were sent to, then there is actually a reasonable chance that a large portion of those people will actually make claims (assuming that the list actually reflects fax numbers, and also assuming that there is no "proof" requirement imposed, which would eliminate all but a handful of claims since most folks throw junk faxes away).
I was particularly alarmed by the language "up to" $500 per fax -- it sounds like not everyone will get the statutory damages. Where is the actual text of the settlement? Where is the text of the "notice" fax? (If it turns out that people must "prove up" their damages, and only get a nickel or a dollar for making a claim based on lost paper and ink, then this is a fraud.)
But clearly, this should scare off a lot of the junk-faxers. I am now getting 8 to 10 junk faxes per week, most of which contain "opt-out" instructions that do not work. The stock-promotion-scam faxes never contain any valid contact information at all, and most of the others just have a voice mail box which promises but never actually makes a callback.
Re: Why no ccTLD for SeaLand? (.sea?)
on
HavenCo Doing Well
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· Score: 5, Informative
Until you asked, I had believed ccTLDs were only granted to nations that are recognized by some other government or international body (hence Cuba gets a ccTLD despite lack of US government recognition). But it turns out that once again, I was wrong, sort of: top-level domains are available for any two-letter country code recognized under ISO 3166 (http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166m a/index.html).
ISO 3166 is the "authority" because that's what IANA decided (thus shifting the burden of recognizing nations to another standards-organization). See http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld.htm (where you'll find a link to IANA's decision enabling the.ps ccTLD for the Palestinian Territory). See also http://www.caslon.com.au/domainsprofile.htm
No Question about legal status of SeaLand/HavenCo
on
HavenCo Doing Well
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm baffled by the occasional references to Sealand and its failed claim to "haven" status. Every court case brought has established that Sealand is not recognized as an independent nation, and residents are not exempt from taxes, laws, etc. of other nations (especially Britain).
My understanding is that anyone foolish enough to "reside" on the platform is pretty much stuck with all the obligations of the nation where they have citizenship (e.g. US citizens can't renounce citizenship by moving there, and still owe taxes and can get hauled into court in the USA).
At the same time, the typical protections of a government are not available -- I don't think the British government accepts any duty to defend or rescue,
In addition, since Sealand is not recognized by any internation body as a "nation," the British or US or any other government seeking to put a "Sealand resident" on trial could probably decide to swoop in with a helicopter and assault team and remove that person. A recent US court case found that it was illegal for DEA agents to swoop into Mexico and kidnap a Mexican national for trial here, but the case rested on the sovereign rights of Mexico as a nation. (Mr. Noriega used the same argument but failed.)
This is one of those situations that doesn't even come close to being a "close case."
> enforcing a 100% exclusion from even mentioning anything remotly religious in a publicly owned establishmment <
Fortunately, there are no such exclusions, and nobody is trying to impose such an exclusion. Of course, people who want to encourage or mandate religious intrusion into public classrooms and other public activities, despite the U.S. Constitution's "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, will argue that doing so violates free speech. It does not. Students pray every day in their classrooms, and during classroom discussions, students may discuss religion in appropriate context, and may object to activities that aren't allowed by their religion.
When courts act to enforce the U.S. Constitution's "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, they are doing nothing revolutionary or radical, and they are not "anti-religion." Indeed, many of the strongest opponents of government religious activity, are protestant religious leaders: they recognize that although they might seem to "win" because it is their religious views that government usually seeks to promote, any such victory is transitory, as politicians may seek to use the power of government to distort their religious beliefs, and of course in the future some other religion may gain the upper hand.
I don't believe in God, but I respect those who have religious faith. But I would like to believe that I have equal respect for Christians (of all demoninations), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintos, and any other faith, whether monotheistic or not. Including the language "under God" is much more offensive to someone who believes in a religion that does not worship "the One God," than it could ever offend me as an atheist. Mandating a pledge to God (or to a flag) is also an insult to those who believe in free will, choice, and self-determination, or who have critical thinking skills.
On another list, someone wrote:
> In its ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 1954 act of Congress that inserted the phrase "under God" after the phrase "one nation" in the pledge. <
It is disappointing that so many of the TV news accounts this evening ignore the 1954 amendment, and falsely state that the pledge has contained the "Under God" wording for more than a century.
I have always been uncomfortable -- at least since the seventh grade -- saying those two words. More recently, as someone educated in the law (yes, I am a lawyer) and as someone who has taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, I do not believe that our Constitution places our country "under God" but expressly separates church and state. There were earlier cases prohibiting schools from compelling students to recite the pledge or salute the flag if it conflicted with their religious beliefs (for example, some religious groups refuse to salute the flag because they view the flag as a "graven image" (false idol) prohibited by the Second Commandment).
This case, like the school prayer cases, revolved around the implied endorsement, pressure, and stigma involved when the pledge and its "under God" language are recited in public classrooms.
To be honest, I've never understood why anyone thinks it is appropriate to demand that school children (many of them non-citizens), pledge allegiance to the "flag," as this helps reinforce the belief that if someone is waving the flag, we must blindly follow them, and criticizing the flag-waver is somehow "un-American." Even in this "revolutionary" ruling, the court did not prohibit schools from having a flag-salute ceremony that includes reciting a "pledge of allegiance to the flag" without the "under God" language.
Unfortunately, there is little doubt among legal scholars, or in my mind, that an "en banc" panel of the 9th Circuit will reverse this ruling, or if they do not, then the U.S. Supreme Court will gladly reverse it. As my former Constitutional Law professor (Boalt Hall's Jesse Choper) said in several TV interviews today, the Supreme Court will certainly view this language as "too small" to be worth ruling invalid -- oddly enough, arguably consistent with the Court's repeated hints that in order for Congress to prohibit flag-burning, it must first decide if the flag will be the "one thing" that they will prohibit desecrating (and Congressmen have too many sacred cows that they won't sacrifice to that trivial issue).
The most disappointing thing about the "person on the street" interviews I saw on the news today, is that the questions posed by the newspersons were about "making it illegal for children to recite the pledge of allegiance," which is not what the ruling said. Why can't people understand the difference between censoring people who want to recite the pledge without state compulsion (free speech) and the state compelling someone to say something that they do not believe, in direct contradiction to the "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses of the first amendment -- or regulating people's beliefs or speech (which is what Congress was really trying to do in 1954, to oppose the "Godless communists" and reinforce the widespread belief that you must believe in "the One God" to be a "real" American)?
Note that I have no objection that members of my local Rotary Club recite the pledge (including the "under God" language) and one of our members is asked to say a prayer each week -- I can respect the decision of the majority of a private club's members on these points, though that when we recited the pledge during a visit by two dozen guests from our Mexican "sister city," some of our guests were visibly uncomfortable. (For a year or more, our Rotary Club had a humorous running debate about how long the pause should be before "under God.") Some weeks, the prayer is expressly Christian, once it was explicitly Muslim, most weeks it is quite generic, and occasionally, it is a non-religious statement or "thought.")
On another list, someone wrote:
> The founders of this country -- or whoever -- were quite right not to include that phrase in the "Pledge of Allegiance" originally. <
The reference to "the founders" jarred me, because I had thought the Pledge of Allegiance was created after the civil war (hence the "indivisible" language).
Worldcom is MCI and UUNET. MCI is the first of the competitive long distance companies and the second largest telecom. UUNET is the first commercial ISP and one of the largest. Both may just go away now.
Actually, in one key way, UUNET is already gone. UUNET has always been one of the main channels for spam broadcasting (maybe because they were first, maybe because they were biggest, maybe because their sales staff accepted anyone (including previously-terminated customers), maybe because their abuse department was slow, I'm not sure).
But during the past few months, I've seen no responsive action to abuse and spamming complaints. It appears that Worldcom may simply have closed down the abuse department.
At one point, I researched (lots of tracerts) and then concluded that more than 90% of the spam I get, comes from servers whose internet connections are through UUNET.
If I could just shut off the pipe to block everything coming from any UUNET/Alter.net/Worldcom customer, I'd do it. I think that single step would eliminate 90% of incoming spam and probably only a handful of legitimate emails.
It probably is illegal (or ought to be) to have a webcam positioned so that the general public can get a view of someone's private property (even the back yard) that is not otherwise available to the general public. Just because I can view my neighbor in the shower if I peek from my attic window, doesn't mean it's reasonable (or legal) to broadcast that image to the world.
The core issue here, regarding the weather webcam, is what is the right thing to do, and I don't really see any doubt: the original post mentions that it is possible, though inconvenient, to reposition the cameras, and actually implies that repositioning the cameras would provide a better picture of the weather. Just do it.
There is another issue with webcams that I think needs to be pointed out: consider that the weirdest people may view your webcam. For example, if you have a webcam that shows the traffic on your street, and the picture includes the sidewalk, a pedophile could use the webcam to profile when the local schoolkids walk to school, and to get a nice look to decide which one to abduct. Yes, it's extremely unlikely, but how would you feel the next day if that happened?
Also, someone wrote:
>> In fact, it's legal in most places to videotape people nude in the shower if you can see them from your property.<<
I didn't see the usual "IANAL" disclaimer, but let me be clear on this: I am a lawyer, and I am quite certain that it WOULD be illegal (in California, at least, and probably in nearly ever U.S. state) to set up a webcam that peers into the neighbor's shower, even through an open window (note my shift from "videotape" to "webcam"). You might be legally able to videotape the neighbor in his shower, for example, to create evidence that your neighbor is indecently exposing himself to your family (one would assume that you'd not need to do this just to support of your request to the neighbor that he install a curtain or blinds). But you could not legally videotape your neighbor in the shower and show it to others for entertainment.
Cost is an issue, but not the only issue
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Cradle to Cradle
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Someone wrote:
> people aren't going to jump for it unless it costs the same or less
I disagree. A huge segment of the population, possibly even a majority, is willing to pay extra for environmental benefits. The question is not "if," but "how much?"
There are two problems: First, there is the "raw" cost difference (how many extra dollars for the biodegradable upholstery), and second, there is the "hidden" cost difference (difference in life span -- longer or shorter -- or difference in net energy cost from using the "environmental-friendly" product)
I'd gladly buy an electric car, for example, if the cost were 20% more than the cost for a regular car (alas, the difference is more like 60% currently, and the environmental "advantages" are not entirely clear since the batteries are not biodegradable).
Alas, there is an economic battle going on: the automobile and oil industries are fiercely resisting any change, and they are cleverly pricing alternatives so that they will appear "unaffordable" or to defend their false claims that "nobody wants electric cars" etc.
Circuit City does not sell TiVo, except the special version for DirecTV. As I noted in the essay that I linked to in my original reply here, there was still a store display at the Good Guys promoting TiVo and DirecTV when I visited the store, but the sales clerk assured me that both products had been discontinued, and my only option for PVRs would require that I buy DirecTV.
I was surprised to see a TiVo product sold by Amazon, since the TiVo folks assured me that their non-DirecTV unit was sold exclusively through Best Buy. I suppose I might be inclined to buy a TiVo through Amazon, if I believed the unit did what I wanted -- but if it then turns out that it doesn't do what I want, then I face the hassle of boxing it up and paying for return shipping (you can't use those Amazon USPS return labels if you want proof of shipping, I went through that with a purchase from Wal-Mart.com, and ended up paying for shipping both ways).
Oops, look again: Amazon does NOT sell the Sony TiVo unit. They have a listing on their site, showing a list price of $400 but there is no link to buy it or even pre-order it. Your only option is to buy a used unit from someone other than Amazon. Is this even the new TiVo technology, or is this the original version of TiVo with much less storage and which is already at the end of its life cycle (TiVo's promises last until the end of the product "lifetime," which means that whenever they decide the product is done, you lose any support, and program schedules need not be provided at any price.)
About Best Buy returns: Whenever I have bought any product from Best Buy, then discovered a defect (and I do mean defect, not just a change of mind), I have to argue for 20 minutes and escalate to the store manager before they refund the full purchase price. One time, I discovered at the register that the product wasn't actually what I wanted to buy promised, and they tried to charge me a 15% return fee! After some discussion, the buyer for Best Buy promised that I could, in fact, return the TiVo unit within 30 days for a full refund, if I bought it at Best Buy (I assume that if I wanted to exercise that right, I'd need to call the buyer in Minnesota and get him to talk to the store manager here).
But this begs the question: I still can't test it out before buying it, and it's not actually in stock at Best Buy anyway. What is a retail store here for, if not to show me and sell me the product?
Quite simply, I will not buy a complex product if the company requires that I do many hours of research and then buy the product without ever actually knowing how it will work until after I've bought it, installed it, and paid them additional money for a service subscription.
What I want is pretty simple: I want what Best Buy promises in its TV ads: the ability to actually try out a product in use at the store, before buying it. I'm not going to spend $400 for a TiVo or $700 for a ReplayTV if all I'm buying is a "pig in a poke." These companies are in business to sell their products, not to produce a product that people must buy, sight unseen, without knowing what the product really does and without much probability that the product will be useable six months later.
My essay made it pretty clear: after spending many hours doing research, I felt that it was not time to buy a PVR. Nothing anyone has said today has changed my mind, although I did learn one new thing (the fact that Amazon offers a Sony TiVo unit online).
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It is the threat-for-gain that is the crime. Is it a fine line? Yes, it is. For example, you may include, on your invoices, the information that you report defaults to credit-reporting-agencies and/or to Dun & Bradstreet. But you may not call someone who is asserting objections to your invoice, and threaten to contact their investors unless they pay up. That is extortion.
Finally, let me repeat: threatening to report someone's non-payment to their financial backers (actual or prospective), or making such a report, will absolutely, positively NOT accomplish anything positive, and the risks of negative responses (whether criminal complaints, or lawsuits, or nefarious revenge tactics) are NOT worth the potential satisfaction from trying to screw with the deadbeat's business.
It is not extortion to demand payment for services rendered. It is extortion to threaten someone -- read the statute.
California Penal Code Section 518:
California Penal Code Section 519:Second, if you just go ahead and call and report the non-payment, your goal is clearly to interfere with the existing relationship between the company and its backers. The company might sue you (for interference with contract, interference with prospective economic advantage, defamation, etc.) and of course they have the money to fight and you don't. Can they win? If what you say is truthful, probably not.
Of course, if you file suit against the client, for breach of contract, your filing of a lawsuit will be a matter of public record, and your attorney might find it necessary to schedule depositions or subpoena the financial backers for some reason, in which case the financial backers would find out. It is possible that your filing a lawsuit might trigger a termination clause in the financing arrangement, but the I can't imagine how the mere filing of a legitimate lawsuit to collect money owed, without more, could be actionable under any theories unrelated to the lawsuit (e.g. you could get sued for malicious prosecution or punished under the SLAPP statute or court rules if your lawsuit is thrown out, but you can't be sued for defamation just for filing a lawsuit).
Do you have an obligation to report the non-payment? Absent some additional information, I don't think so. You might have an obligation to speak up, if you have any kind of relationship with the financial backers, or if you made some statements to them, or if you are aware that your name and reputation were represented to the backers in order to get the funding.
It appears that you are, in fact, ending your relationship with the client. If you are not going to sue them for the money owed, then you should probably just move on and learn from the experience. If you are going to sue them, let your lawyer handle the matter, and don't try to take actions that could cause you more problems down the road.
Yeah, you're mad, and the client is scum. You can gain nothing from bitching to the money-guys, period, and you can lose a lot.
And arguably, it's easier to design software like that (self-modifying code, no less) if you know you'll never need to re-integrate two versions. That makes sense when the Doctor is "transferred" between the ship's computer and the holo-emitter, though again it would make sense to keep a backup copy in each place just in case the program is deleted in the other. That's the paradox we see when we have two Kirks, two Spocks, two Rikers, etc. -- from the moment of duplication (or division, in Kirk's case), it should really be impossible to safely re-integrate the two, because they've had difference experiences and their neural pathways are thus different.
But the notion of sending the Doctor's program through an alien communications grid and NOT keeping a copy locally, is simply nuts. Why not send the program through, and keep the copy running locally -- there really was no need to send the entire program BACK to Voyager, just the data that Starfleet wanted to send back.
By the way, I never quite understood how the doctor's mobile emitter could be left on a planet far from Voyager for hundreds of years before he was re-activated and could defend Voyager from blame for a race war -- and yet still be on Voyager all along. Since the mobile emitter is "future technology" and presumably thus can't be copied, I can't comprehend how it could be in two places at one time. Any ideas? or are we just supposed to assume that that one episode was an "alternative timeline" and pretend it never happened when watching all the other episodes?
Of course, you could simply alter the letter for multi-district zip codes, urging the voter to vote for whichever of these candidates is on their ballot, but that might seem awkward.
Generally, politicians don't campaign very heavily in this town because of the split, and instead concentrate their campaigning in places where all the voters are in the "right" district.
If you rely just on general mailing addresses, be aware that many folks have a mailing address different than there residence and voting address. I've almost always had a P.O. Box, and when I lived in San Francisco and Oakland, the zip code for the PO Box was different from my home. If your list may include office addresses, then things get even more complicated, due to commuting patterns.
Finally, the U.S. post office often assigns zip codes based on their carrier routes, and not based on political boundaries. Thus, a number of homes in unincorporated areas adjacent to Danville and San Ramon, California, in the Tassajara Valley, are politically in those Contra Costa County political districts, yet they share my Pleasanton zip code, which is in Alameda County.
Some of the holodeck subplots were interesting - the notion of 'addiction' by Lieutenant Barclay in ST:TNG. Extending the technology by introducing the Doctor in Voyager seemed okay, but then extending to other "photonic life" in several different ways became strange: apparently there was some photonic life that didn't appear to require actual computers or holo-emitters (the absurd episode in which Janeway must become a B-movie queen), and then later we again see photonic beings who do require computers/holo-emitters.
Of course, the real issue is that so many sci-fi plot points are impossible under the laws of physics as they are generally known (whether we're talking about the 1960's or 2002): faster-than-light travel, time travel, transporters, warp fields, subspace communication. Breaking the rules is what enables the plots to get interesting, and of course we all hope/believe/fantasize that what we imagine might one day be possible, since any sufficiently advanced technology is magic (Clarke).
What I find most troubling are gaping inconsistencies, often made worse by implausible explanations. In one episode, the scanners can identify a single individual among billions on a planet with super-advanced technology, and then in the next they can't scan to find out what's inside a wad of Kleenex (exaggeration).
One of the absurd, and often annoying, plot devices that is also sometimes one of the more amusing, is the notion that this crew of a few hundred (really just a dozen or so people who seem to actually do everything) can invent new technologies in a few hours, with half the ship's systems disabled, while huge teams of dedicated scientists with vast resources could not accomplish such work (apparently the only major technology invented by humans but NOT invented on Enterprise or Voyager, was the non-damaging warp technology that was introduced on Voyager).
No question about it: the last episode of "Enterprise" last year took away just about everything that showed promise in the series: the notion that they were less advanced, less able, less knowledgeable than the later crews.
But when I went to buy my "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" ticket, they said that Lucas wasn't allowing any Imax showings, arguing that the film quality was not up to par for that format. I assume they are doing a different film format, but I also can't imagine paying another $9 or $10 to see a movie I've seen before. (I'd gladly have paid the full-price ticket to see it on Imax originally, rather than paying the matinee price for the regular viewing.)
As I think about it, I'm not sure which scenes would benefit especially from Imax. The war scenes in "Pearl Harbor" were cool at that size, and Gladiator was OK at that size.
The prices were also absurd: the Saturn EV-1 was available only by lease, at a montly lease rate that was TWICE the monthly rate for a regular Saturn ($399 vs $199, at that time), and at the end of the 36-month lease term, the EV-1 had to be returned -- there was no purchase option, since GM didn't want electric cars to be "out there." The net effect was that the "real cost" of an EV-1 was triple the cost of a comparable Saturn gasoline-powered car.
Later, the Honda and Toyota hybrids were marketed in a similar manner: not really available to consumers (most dealers can't get them), and priced at least twice the level of the comparable "regular" car sold by the same company.
So what's really happening? The car manufacturers are playing a combined political/legal game, in order to avoid meeting California's requirements. The task is simple: the auto makers pretend to seriously explore alternative power technologies, and they pretend to offer them for sale, but they deliberately set prices at unreasonable levels, and when demand turns out to be extremely strong anyway, they discontinue the vehicle model, falsely claiming that consumers don't want these vehicles.
If California ever sought to enforce its requirements (which seems quite unlikely), the manufacturers would go straight to court, claiming that the standards are unreasonable, and they will claim that they made all reasonable efforts to try to meet the standards.
It's a shell game, and Ford's decision to buy and then dismantle one of the few viable companies offering alternative-fuel cars, is just another clear sign that the automakers won't tolerate any attempt to "do the right thing."
The standard law -- spammers must honor opt-out requests, with penalties (civil or criminal) for those who continue to send spam to people who have opted out -- would surely hold up, but who among us wants to opt-out with each and every current and potential candidate for political office (not just in the USA, but around the world)?
And there is also a long tradition in support of anonymous political speech in the USA, which naturally presents a new set of issues for those who choose to distribute attack ads, slate cards, or whatever, anonymously via spam.
I've actually thought since 1995 that the internet provides a unique and wonderful opportunity for effective political campaigning, at least for candidates who have more substance than fluff (perhaps that answers my question -- very few candidates really want close scrutiny).
And most intriguing here, apart from the notion of anonymous attack ads, is the common practice of "political dirty tricks." Imagine if a supporter of the Republican candidate sent a broadcast-spam purporting to favor the Democratic candidate, in order to generate negative responses? What if the same fellow goes one step further, launching an "obvious" forged spam on behalf of the Republican candidate, in order to make people think that the Democrat is a dirty trickster?
And the dirty tricks are almost limitless. One common technique is the "election-eve attack" in which false (often ridiculous) rumors or reports are circulated, with the hope that the person who hears it will not hear any rebuttal. Imagine a flood of emails on the evening before, and the day of, an election campaign.
Wow.
A mostly-unrelated story: I once got a brochure in my BankAmerica statement, urging me to vote against an anti-ATM-fee ordinance in San Francisco (I don't live there and can't vote there). The brochure contained false statements -- among them, a false claim that BofA doesn't get any fee from other banks when customers of other banks use its ATMs, apart from the surcharge fee (in fact, there is a system of compensation and fees, and of course there are banks like Washington Mutual which are satisfied with those inter-bank fees and don't charge any surcharge to other banks' customers using its ATMs). I called the SF election office, and was told that no action can be taken, even against clearly false campaign statements like this one. In other words, lying is actually okay!
My point was that the fact that money was spent on something (be it spam or TV ads) is not proof that it works. I was not suggesting that spending money always fails, nor that all TV advertising campaigns by dot-coms failed (though the latter is pretty nearly my belief).
You wrote: Would any company even mildly intrested in making money simply flush money down the toilet like that? -- and this is a damn good question, which was constantly on my mind from 1996 through 2001. Quite clearly, there was some ridiculous spending going on, stuff I would consider "flushing," but mostly there was also money being spent on advertising by people who didn't understand how to effectively spend money on advertising.
I will admit one key point: much of the money spent on TV and radio advertising, although it did not succeed in driving profitable sales to the companies, did succeed in raising the company's profile enough to help boost the stock price in the IPO and aftermarket, which is not altogether a "wrong" thing to do (though I don't like it much).
But the real point I was making is that people often make mistakes, and I certainly believe that people who send spam expecting to make money are making a mistake -- not because it's immoral or illegal (which it is), but because they will not, in fact, make money. People try to make money in many different ways in our world, and often some of those people are "uneducated" or "ignorant" or they simply don't "do the math" -- which is what most spammers claim was their mistake.
> hundred pieces of it every morning? > Someone is buying.
Wrong. The fact that people send huge volumes of spam does not mean anyone is buying. Indeed, most spam comes from people who have been duped by list-sellers and email-sending-service sellers, into believing the same logical mistake.
Dozens of dot-com companies spent tens of millions of dollars on TV and radio advertising. They wouldn't do that unless it worked, right? But if that's true, why did they all go bankrupt, and why did so some report that they spent more money on advertising than they received in gross sales?
For a clever spammer, it costs almost nothing to send spam, so the mere prospect of a single sale is enough to justify sending millions of spams. For a stupid spammer who believes what the remailer or list-seller says, spamming is a bad business decision, just as many folks who advertise in the newspaper or yellow pages would probably not do so if they tracked the results and compared the cost.
The culprits for spam are ignorance and greed, not actual profit.
I have a really nice chair, but like an idiot I have a lousy desk with a slide-out computer drawer that is TOO LOW for me. Thus, I have to lower the chair so my legs are not comfortable, and this causes my back to curl, and the armrests on the chair are just a smidge too low so my arms and shoulders aren't aligned right....
I know better (I researched and prepared a 150-page annotated bibliography and a 70-page thesis on the subject of "legal liability for health effects of computer use" back in 1989), but I keep telling myself that this setup is just temporary, I will change things Really Soon Now, and now it's been 3 years in this configuration.
[Sound of head banging against wall.]
This is not absurd. At about that same time, someone sent out a child-porn spam listing an address -- with the specific (successful) goal of creating intense harassment for the residents of that home. I don't see any reporters listing the home address for WorldCom's officers.
Any other method of notice would either be inadequate (newspaper ads, for example), or would be much more invasive of privacy (compelling the phone company to release the mailing addresses of the owners of these 33,000 phone numbers).
I remain upset that in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, we gave in and gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted: a less free society, in which armed guards are present in many public places, and where many more people are now afraid of people with brown skin or different beliefs. I'm also unhappy that we killed many more thousands of already-victimized civilians in an overkill campaign against Afghanistan. "Oh yeah? My trillion-dollar army can beat up your army of children with sticks."
Likewise, adopting the spammer's illegal attack strategies serves only to reduce us to their level. I am not a criminal, I am not someone who harasses other people, even people who engage in illegal harassment of me.
Certainly, do what's legal: call spammers and complain, send complaints to the ISP and backbone providers (and follow up when it appears an ISP has "dropped the ball"), and of course fax removal requests back to the junk faxers. If you want to yell or use profanity in your calls and emails and faxes, that's probably legal in most places.
But sending death threats, flooding spammers with millions of copies of their own spam, or launching DNS attacks on their servers. Don't become "one of them" because then there are more criminals and fewer good guys.
This all sank in (for me) back in 1996, during the absurd "Yuri Rutman" (Thinner hair, el cheepo, the first Joe-job) spam-then-harassment campaigns. At one point, I posted a web page (which I deleted several years ago) that listed all the information about Mr. Rutman (most of it gathered by others and posted in isolated bits in the net-abuse newsgroup). One of the items was his home address (in addition to his office address, which was probably a mail drop). When I actually got Mr. Rutman on the phone, he asked me to remove his home address, claiming that he had children and feared for their safety -- because he feared that people might engage in physical retribution in response to his repeated, irrational, illegal, and vicious retribution against joes.com and Hurricane Electric. I decided then and there that although I owed Mr. Rutman no courtesy or respect, I would not do anything to endanger any human being's physical safety, especially children (whether or not they really existed), and so I removed his home address (though it was still available in the newsgroups, where a diligent anti-spammer might find it -- but I didn't want the information on my web site where someone stupid and simple might use it to do something stupid and simple. (Though there was no publicity, for his actions, Mr. Rutman was charged and convicted of a crime in Illinois, just a slap on the wrist but worse than what happens 99.999% of spammers.)
Yes, spammers do some crazy and evil things -- like Sanford "Spamford" Wallace filing a frivolous lawsuit against me just to get publicity (he quickly abandoned it), thus scaring off a bidder for my former dot-com business "because we don't want to buy a lawsuit." The next offer for my business was $175,000 less, and I had to pay $5,000 in legal fees to respond before Wallace abandoned the suit. Did I feel like doing something stupid and simple? Of course. But I didn't do it, because I am NOT like these cretins. Life sucks, sometimes, but the solution is NOT to do more sucking.
I was particularly alarmed by the language "up to" $500 per fax -- it sounds like not everyone will get the statutory damages. Where is the actual text of the settlement? Where is the text of the "notice" fax? (If it turns out that people must "prove up" their damages, and only get a nickel or a dollar for making a claim based on lost paper and ink, then this is a fraud.)
But clearly, this should scare off a lot of the junk-faxers. I am now getting 8 to 10 junk faxes per week, most of which contain "opt-out" instructions that do not work. The stock-promotion-scam faxes never contain any valid contact information at all, and most of the others just have a voice mail box which promises but never actually makes a callback.
Sealand is not on the list (which can be viewed at http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma /02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html).
ISO 3166 is the "authority" because that's what IANA decided (thus shifting the burden of recognizing nations to another standards-organization). See http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld.htm (where you'll find a link to IANA's decision enabling the .ps ccTLD for the Palestinian Territory). See also http://www.caslon.com.au/domainsprofile.htm
My understanding is that anyone foolish enough to "reside" on the platform is pretty much stuck with all the obligations of the nation where they have citizenship (e.g. US citizens can't renounce citizenship by moving there, and still owe taxes and can get hauled into court in the USA).
At the same time, the typical protections of a government are not available -- I don't think the British government accepts any duty to defend or rescue,
In addition, since Sealand is not recognized by any internation body as a "nation," the British or US or any other government seeking to put a "Sealand resident" on trial could probably decide to swoop in with a helicopter and assault team and remove that person. A recent US court case found that it was illegal for DEA agents to swoop into Mexico and kidnap a Mexican national for trial here, but the case rested on the sovereign rights of Mexico as a nation. (Mr. Noriega used the same argument but failed.)
This is one of those situations that doesn't even come close to being a "close case."
Fortunately, there are no such exclusions, and nobody is trying to impose such an exclusion. Of course, people who want to encourage or mandate religious intrusion into public classrooms and other public activities, despite the U.S. Constitution's "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, will argue that doing so violates free speech. It does not. Students pray every day in their classrooms, and during classroom discussions, students may discuss religion in appropriate context, and may object to activities that aren't allowed by their religion.
When courts act to enforce the U.S. Constitution's "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, they are doing nothing revolutionary or radical, and they are not "anti-religion." Indeed, many of the strongest opponents of government religious activity, are protestant religious leaders: they recognize that although they might seem to "win" because it is their religious views that government usually seeks to promote, any such victory is transitory, as politicians may seek to use the power of government to distort their religious beliefs, and of course in the future some other religion may gain the upper hand.
I don't believe in God, but I respect those who have religious faith. But I would like to believe that I have equal respect for Christians (of all demoninations), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintos, and any other faith, whether monotheistic or not. Including the language "under God" is much more offensive to someone who believes in a religion that does not worship "the One God," than it could ever offend me as an atheist. Mandating a pledge to God (or to a flag) is also an insult to those who believe in free will, choice, and self-determination, or who have critical thinking skills.
> In its ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 1954 act of Congress that inserted the phrase "under God" after the phrase "one nation" in the pledge. <
It is disappointing that so many of the TV news accounts this evening ignore the 1954 amendment, and falsely state that the pledge has contained the "Under God" wording for more than a century.
I have always been uncomfortable -- at least since the seventh grade -- saying those two words. More recently, as someone educated in the law (yes, I am a lawyer) and as someone who has taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, I do not believe that our Constitution places our country "under God" but expressly separates church and state. There were earlier cases prohibiting schools from compelling students to recite the pledge or salute the flag if it conflicted with their religious beliefs (for example, some religious groups refuse to salute the flag because they view the flag as a "graven image" (false idol) prohibited by the Second Commandment).
This case, like the school prayer cases, revolved around the implied endorsement, pressure, and stigma involved when the pledge and its "under God" language are recited in public classrooms.
To be honest, I've never understood why anyone thinks it is appropriate to demand that school children (many of them non-citizens), pledge allegiance to the "flag," as this helps reinforce the belief that if someone is waving the flag, we must blindly follow them, and criticizing the flag-waver is somehow "un-American." Even in this "revolutionary" ruling, the court did not prohibit schools from having a flag-salute ceremony that includes reciting a "pledge of allegiance to the flag" without the "under God" language.
Unfortunately, there is little doubt among legal scholars, or in my mind, that an "en banc" panel of the 9th Circuit will reverse this ruling, or if they do not, then the U.S. Supreme Court will gladly reverse it. As my former Constitutional Law professor (Boalt Hall's Jesse Choper) said in several TV interviews today, the Supreme Court will certainly view this language as "too small" to be worth ruling invalid -- oddly enough, arguably consistent with the Court's repeated hints that in order for Congress to prohibit flag-burning, it must first decide if the flag will be the "one thing" that they will prohibit desecrating (and Congressmen have too many sacred cows that they won't sacrifice to that trivial issue).
The most disappointing thing about the "person on the street" interviews I saw on the news today, is that the questions posed by the newspersons were about "making it illegal for children to recite the pledge of allegiance," which is not what the ruling said. Why can't people understand the difference between censoring people who want to recite the pledge without state compulsion (free speech) and the state compelling someone to say something that they do not believe, in direct contradiction to the "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses of the first amendment -- or regulating people's beliefs or speech (which is what Congress was really trying to do in 1954, to oppose the "Godless communists" and reinforce the widespread belief that you must believe in "the One God" to be a "real" American)?
Note that I have no objection that members of my local Rotary Club recite the pledge (including the "under God" language) and one of our members is asked to say a prayer each week -- I can respect the decision of the majority of a private club's members on these points, though that when we recited the pledge during a visit by two dozen guests from our Mexican "sister city," some of our guests were visibly uncomfortable. (For a year or more, our Rotary Club had a humorous running debate about how long the pause should be before "under God.") Some weeks, the prayer is expressly Christian, once it was explicitly Muslim, most weeks it is quite generic, and occasionally, it is a non-religious statement or "thought.")
On another list, someone wrote:
> The founders of this country -- or whoever -- were quite right not to include that phrase in the "Pledge of Allegiance" originally. <
The reference to "the founders" jarred me, because I had thought the Pledge of Allegiance was created after the civil war (hence the "indivisible" language).
Apparently, we were both wrong: according to "A Short History of the Pledge of Allegiance" ( http://www.vineyard.net/vineyard/history/pledge.ht m ), the pledge was written (apparently by a Socialist, no less) in 1892. Of course, that's just what someone said on a web page. See also http://www.google.com/search?q=+history+%22pledge+ of+allegiance%22+under+God+indivisible
Actually, in one key way, UUNET is already gone. UUNET has always been one of the main channels for spam broadcasting (maybe because they were first, maybe because they were biggest, maybe because their sales staff accepted anyone (including previously-terminated customers), maybe because their abuse department was slow, I'm not sure).
But during the past few months, I've seen no responsive action to abuse and spamming complaints. It appears that Worldcom may simply have closed down the abuse department.
At one point, I researched (lots of tracerts) and then concluded that more than 90% of the spam I get, comes from servers whose internet connections are through UUNET.
If I could just shut off the pipe to block everything coming from any UUNET/Alter.net/Worldcom customer, I'd do it. I think that single step would eliminate 90% of incoming spam and probably only a handful of legitimate emails.
The core issue here, regarding the weather webcam, is what is the right thing to do, and I don't really see any doubt: the original post mentions that it is possible, though inconvenient, to reposition the cameras, and actually implies that repositioning the cameras would provide a better picture of the weather. Just do it.
There is another issue with webcams that I think needs to be pointed out: consider that the weirdest people may view your webcam. For example, if you have a webcam that shows the traffic on your street, and the picture includes the sidewalk, a pedophile could use the webcam to profile when the local schoolkids walk to school, and to get a nice look to decide which one to abduct. Yes, it's extremely unlikely, but how would you feel the next day if that happened?
Also, someone wrote:
>> In fact, it's legal in most places to videotape people nude in the shower if you can see them from your property.<<
I didn't see the usual "IANAL" disclaimer, but let me be clear on this: I am a lawyer, and I am quite certain that it WOULD be illegal (in California, at least, and probably in nearly ever U.S. state) to set up a webcam that peers into the neighbor's shower, even through an open window (note my shift from "videotape" to "webcam"). You might be legally able to videotape the neighbor in his shower, for example, to create evidence that your neighbor is indecently exposing himself to your family (one would assume that you'd not need to do this just to support of your request to the neighbor that he install a curtain or blinds). But you could not legally videotape your neighbor in the shower and show it to others for entertainment.
> people aren't going to jump for it unless it costs the same or less
I disagree. A huge segment of the population, possibly even a majority, is willing to pay extra for environmental benefits. The question is not "if," but "how much?"
There are two problems: First, there is the "raw" cost difference (how many extra dollars for the biodegradable upholstery), and second, there is the "hidden" cost difference (difference in life span -- longer or shorter -- or difference in net energy cost from using the "environmental-friendly" product)
I'd gladly buy an electric car, for example, if the cost were 20% more than the cost for a regular car (alas, the difference is more like 60% currently, and the environmental "advantages" are not entirely clear since the batteries are not biodegradable).
Alas, there is an economic battle going on: the automobile and oil industries are fiercely resisting any change, and they are cleverly pricing alternatives so that they will appear "unaffordable" or to defend their false claims that "nobody wants electric cars" etc.
I'm planning to buy this book today.
I was surprised to see a TiVo product sold by Amazon, since the TiVo folks assured me that their non-DirecTV unit was sold exclusively through Best Buy. I suppose I might be inclined to buy a TiVo through Amazon, if I believed the unit did what I wanted -- but if it then turns out that it doesn't do what I want, then I face the hassle of boxing it up and paying for return shipping (you can't use those Amazon USPS return labels if you want proof of shipping, I went through that with a purchase from Wal-Mart.com, and ended up paying for shipping both ways).
Oops, look again: Amazon does NOT sell the Sony TiVo unit. They have a listing on their site, showing a list price of $400 but there is no link to buy it or even pre-order it. Your only option is to buy a used unit from someone other than Amazon. Is this even the new TiVo technology, or is this the original version of TiVo with much less storage and which is already at the end of its life cycle (TiVo's promises last until the end of the product "lifetime," which means that whenever they decide the product is done, you lose any support, and program schedules need not be provided at any price.)
About Best Buy returns: Whenever I have bought any product from Best Buy, then discovered a defect (and I do mean defect, not just a change of mind), I have to argue for 20 minutes and escalate to the store manager before they refund the full purchase price. One time, I discovered at the register that the product wasn't actually what I wanted to buy promised, and they tried to charge me a 15% return fee! After some discussion, the buyer for Best Buy promised that I could, in fact, return the TiVo unit within 30 days for a full refund, if I bought it at Best Buy (I assume that if I wanted to exercise that right, I'd need to call the buyer in Minnesota and get him to talk to the store manager here).
But this begs the question: I still can't test it out before buying it, and it's not actually in stock at Best Buy anyway. What is a retail store here for, if not to show me and sell me the product?
Quite simply, I will not buy a complex product if the company requires that I do many hours of research and then buy the product without ever actually knowing how it will work until after I've bought it, installed it, and paid them additional money for a service subscription.
What I want is pretty simple: I want what Best Buy promises in its TV ads: the ability to actually try out a product in use at the store, before buying it. I'm not going to spend $400 for a TiVo or $700 for a ReplayTV if all I'm buying is a "pig in a poke." These companies are in business to sell their products, not to produce a product that people must buy, sight unseen, without knowing what the product really does and without much probability that the product will be useable six months later.
My essay made it pretty clear: after spending many hours doing research, I felt that it was not time to buy a PVR. Nothing anyone has said today has changed my mind, although I did learn one new thing (the fact that Amazon offers a Sony TiVo unit online).