Law shouldn't be so unapproachable that normal people can't understand it. Normal people should be able to understand the laws they live by. Other than the procedural formalities of being in court, I don't know why an intelligent person shouldn't be perfectly capable of representing himself, pro se.
I think the problem here is just how specialized of an occupation lawyering is. It's no joke that law school lasts several years. The courts always try to help pro se litigants, but as someone below mentions from experience, it often doesn't work out.
I don't know if this is true in your case, sir, but technical people often discount how difficult, complicated, or intricate other fields can be.
After all, your attorney can't just jump in and start coding device drivers, right? It takes training and practise.
I am willing to consider the notion that there are a lot of things people think they need a lawyer for, but don't. Any suggestions?
These guys are huge. Huge I tell you. No longer do I have to use variables without initialization. Oh, sure, the computer is a so-called finite state machine alright, but the numbers lurking in my registers are eerily non-non-random. (For what it's worth, the mips risc 2000 had r0 always equal 0, but there wasn't too much further you could go with that.)
Instead of code like this:
int hours_worked, rate;
int payment = hours_worked * rate;
I can use a struts/jsp/xalan/soap/.Net enterprise engine to download non-random numbers by the truckload (okay, well, one non-random number) and assign, well... it... to my variables.
In a couple years the numbers sent back will be compatible with multiplying by a constant. I don't know where I'll get a constant other than "1", but still... it'll be huge.
(Seriously, I love noentropy.net. Please go buy a t-shirt)
Oh c'mon, don't be so harsh. What kind of nerd would he be if he didn't totally fuck up some ordinary word in an effort to sound like some tiresome know-it-all. See: boxen, virii.
Ah, yes, the pompous jackass factor (PJF). Many posters, especially the younger ones, try to boost their PJF with eleet-speekisms, references to "boxen", or -- quelle chose! -- a sig written in latin. This last is particularly galling when including the phrase "deus machinarum" or other computer-related terminology.
The older, more self-assured slashdot poster rises Zenlike above this silliness. He knows that it is the idiocy of his opinions which will send his PJF heavenward.
It's not that it doesn't work. All Fiats work fine until they bite the dust, and that usually happens quickly once they start to crumble.
What makes them bite the dust? Is it that the feds (whoever the "Feds" are for your particular currency) panic over some crisis and print too much money?
It always seemed to me that our system worked pretty well, and that gold-based money was problematic because it meant the money supply (literally!) was in the hands of caprice... that is, did somebody find a new gold mine or not. Fiat money can be used to manage the economy ("Say Alan, the economy seems a little sluggish. Let's lower interest rates and kick things up a little") in a way that gold-backed money can't.
Or am I missing something? I am certainly not an expert on these things, and would love to hear a spirited defense of Gold.
[...] since I'm the admin, it's my job to fix it. Of course since I have so much free time and generally do nothing all day except post on slashdot, this isn't a problem, right?
This was about to be funny and sarcastic until I got a desk in our company's IT department. I've never seen so many Slashdot sessions in one place before...;)
I'd love to see some statistics as to which external sites are hit by which departments. I know we have the technology to do this, but I doubt any company would want to take official cognizance of the obvious fact that workers web surf betimes.
I am no mechanic, and it would royally piss me off if the gas/brake pedals moved every time I brought the car into the shop. It also TOTALLY pisses me off if somebody moves my car seat from it's "perfect driving position." [...]
A few days ago I was looking at used cars. I got in an old '96 Saab 900, and started poking the steering column with the key. But nothing happened. There was no keyhole! I sat there feeling like a major chimp, hooting softly, morosely wishing for a banana, until my wife said, "How cool! They put the ignition between the seats."
And so after a nice test-drive we knuckle-walked off into the sunset. But I understand end-users of software much better now.
I think we need to make it a requirement for Americans to learn at least one foreign language.
There is one. You don't graduate high school without 2 years of a foreign language. At least this was the case in a little hick town in Utah back in the 80s. I don't know what the deal is in California these days.
Creating a "bad" file with a given MD5 is, by design, an extremely difficult task. Since an MD5 hash is 128 bits, one would have to create somewhere on the order of 2^^127 random files to have even odds of coming up with one with a given hash. This is computationally impossible.
I don't think the riaa would do it that way. They'd create large random files, calculate the md5 hash, then troll p2p networks for a mp3, any mp3, which has the same md5. Now they can rename their large random file and have a competing version of file random-song.mp3 with the same md5.
I was visiting the Computer Science department at the University of Pennsylvania, and a professor had just been shown a paper on this vulnerability, written by another professor.
I can't understand it either. I mean, the professor had his secret paper under lock and ke-- oh.
The simple solution is to have a special "troll" flag on accounts. When someone is flagged as a troll, they can post as normal, but *only they can see their posts*.
In related news, the entire European culture for the past 1000 years sued Disney due to it's embrace and extend propiatization of classic public domain fairy tales.
Don't be silly. European culture can go and make another Cinderella movie anytime it wants. What it can't do is sell copies of Disney's Cinderella movie, or make a Mickey Mouse movie (though that's as much a trademark issue as anything else).
European culture should get back to it's job: creating new fairy tales which are gruesome and violent, then waiting several centuries for some German academics to tone them down, then waiting for Disney to make them into a watchable movie.
Doesn't this only work if all development is done by the company itself? That is, if I take the open version released by company C and make fixes, C can't use those fixes back in the closed version unless I specifically give him permission (otherwise it is gpl-blocked).
Hey I'll just fork the code and start my own company off the GPL code, and undercut C.
Yes.. But this is not how its supposed to work. This method has exactly the same problems that the traditional proprietry business model has. They are still charging for information that they are not giving you permission to share. Instead of a restrictive licence on the software, this is a restrictive licence on the information about the software.
... presumably, they don't want one guy to buy the documentation and publish it for free on the Internet. It's not so much different from what the O'Reilly guys do, except that WebGUI throws in the actual free software to boot.
If you ask me, it's kind of a slender reed for WebGUI to lean their revenue stream on, but their motivations here are understandable, and not really evil. Just think of them as a book publisher and all is well, yes?
Nicotine is the most addictive substance on the planet, yet the physical addiction is gone after 3 days of not smoking. It's all mental after that.
The instructions for the urine test for smokers (actually doesn't test nicotine, but some other byproduct of smoking) mention that the test will work for about 1-3 months after your last cig. So don't be too sanguine about concluding that after 3 days there is no physical component to the draw of cigs.
At the time McD's coffee was heated to 190 degrees farenheit, just short of boiling and a full 50 degrees over what people usually heat their coffee at home (something to do with flavour lasting longer when super heated).
This is the part that always makes me smile. Y'see, I have a good old-fashioned old-school coffee pot at home. The kind you put on the range, and when the water boils the expanding steam whistles through the spout, warning me that my water is ready.
And those pansies at McDonalds pan out at a measley 180F.
Point being, an old lady -- having grown up with teakettles, etc -- should be the first to realize that they use hot water to make coffee.
We'd have a lot less lawsuit idiocy if the money from punitive damages weren't shared out between plaintiff and lawyer. Just a thought.
What I find amazing is that this story is more "news worthy" than Denmarks resent law (passed on 11/12-02) and enforced from 22/12-02, whick makes it illegal to import or resell music CDs, DVDs, books and comics from outside EU.
They are afraid of American culture somehow "taking over". Take that as you will, but it seems somehow un-neighborly. It's sad that it is an EU country leading the way to block the free contest of ideas, in order to shore up their feeble tribal identity.
Slightly OT, but I sometimes wonder if Americans (USA) realize just how many people outside of their country look to America (USA) with a growing distaste. Oops, mod -1 unamerikan.
Oh please. Slashdot is a place where it is easy, safe, and fun to be anti-American.
Even the American kids jump in, out of genuine protest (over what? aren't we plundering the world for their benefit;), or peer pressure, hard to tell sometimes. There seems to be a double standard where every other country has to be understood in its own context, but "Duh US juzzt sux man".
Just so's you know, Americans are aware that other people, especially Europeans, often raise an eyebrow at us. Out of politeness due a senile ancestor, we rarely mention how impressed we are by this.
COMMENTATOR 1: Okay, it looks like Scott is making his move. He's reaching into the mini-fridge. Let's see what he has in his arsenal. It's probably a Jolt... It's... It's...
COMMENTATOR 2: Oh my God! He pulled out a Mountain Dew! Folks, jaws are dropping.
COMMENTATOR 1: But don't count out Jimmy yet from the Canadian team... he's... he's... Yes! he's pulled out the Perl manual. Ooh... looks like it's only Perl 5. I don't know what he's thinking.
COMMENTATOR 2: Sacrificing features for stability. That's a rare move in this sport...
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I don't know if this is true in your case, sir, but technical people often discount how difficult, complicated, or intricate other fields can be.
After all, your attorney can't just jump in and start coding device drivers, right? It takes training and practise.
I am willing to consider the notion that there are a lot of things people think they need a lawyer for, but don't. Any suggestions?
Instead of code like this: I can use a struts/jsp/xalan/soap/.Net enterprise engine to download non-random numbers by the truckload (okay, well, one non-random number) and assign, well
In a couple years the numbers sent back will be compatible with multiplying by a constant. I don't know where I'll get a constant other than "1", but still... it'll be huge.
(Seriously, I love noentropy.net. Please go buy a t-shirt)
I mean <exasperation>really</exasperation>!
The older, more self-assured slashdot poster rises Zenlike above this silliness. He knows that it is the idiocy of his opinions which will send his PJF heavenward.
It always seemed to me that our system worked pretty well, and that gold-based money was problematic because it meant the money supply (literally!) was in the hands of caprice
Or am I missing something? I am certainly not an expert on these things, and would love to hear a spirited defense of Gold.
Of course, what I'm really afraid of is that my wife may be the highest bidder. "What's this? You bought a pak of cigarettes, 3 beers and a Maxim?"
I'd love to see some statistics as to which external sites are hit by which departments. I know we have the technology to do this, but I doubt any company would want to take official cognizance of the obvious fact that workers web surf betimes.
And so after a nice test-drive we knuckle-walked off into the sunset. But I understand end-users of software much better now.
Just a thought...
Guys?
Guys?
European culture should get back to it's job: creating new fairy tales which are gruesome and violent, then waiting several centuries for some German academics to tone them down, then waiting for Disney to make them into a watchable movie.
Doesn't this only work if all development is done by the company itself? That is, if I take the open version released by company C and make fixes, C can't use those fixes back in the closed version unless I specifically give him permission (otherwise it is gpl-blocked).
Hey I'll just fork the code and start my own company off the GPL code, and undercut C.
Uh-oh.
If you ask me, it's kind of a slender reed for WebGUI to lean their revenue stream on, but their motivations here are understandable, and not really evil. Just think of them as a book publisher and all is well, yes?
Just a data point here.
And those pansies at McDonalds pan out at a measley 180F.
Point being, an old lady -- having grown up with teakettles, etc -- should be the first to realize that they use hot water to make coffee.
We'd have a lot less lawsuit idiocy if the money from punitive damages weren't shared out between plaintiff and lawyer. Just a thought.
Shame on them.
Even the American kids jump in, out of genuine protest (over what? aren't we plundering the world for their benefit
Just so's you know, Americans are aware that other people, especially Europeans, often raise an eyebrow at us. Out of politeness due a senile ancestor, we rarely mention how impressed we are by this.
COMMENTATOR 2: Oh my God! He pulled out a Mountain Dew! Folks, jaws are dropping.
COMMENTATOR 1: But don't count out Jimmy yet from the Canadian team... he's
COMMENTATOR 2: Sacrificing features for stability. That's a rare move in this sport...