In a different world, there would actually be a real effort to stop these immigrants and kill that economy, but realistically that is not going to happen, ever.
Hmm. I wonder what'll happen if a bad terrorist bombing or such occurs in the US and the perpetrator is documented (proven after the fact) as having come through the Mexican border?
Seems they've painted themselves into a corner, what with the terrorism alert, spending 100s of billions of dollars on the "war on terror", terrorism being in the news everyday, etc.
They'd have to do something about illegal immigration. The US public is a bunch of sheep about alot of what the Bush Admin. tells them, and they've been indoctrinated well since 9/11. They wouldn't settle for a lax response to this.
While WMD were the main reason given within the US for Gulf War II, it was not the reason given to the rest of the world. The reason given to the rest of the world was based on UNSC resolution 678 which authorized the use of force for Gulf War I. UNSC resolution 683 was the cease fire resolution and it only suspended the authorization to use force given in res. 678 (i.e. didn't withdraw it). Res. 683 had a requirement that Iraq return the area (not just Iraq) back to the state it had prior to the Kuwait invasion. The Bush admin. argued that since Iraq had not returned the area back to the state before Kuwait was invaded, the authorization to use force was reawakened.
It's a little more complicated than that, of course, but that is the general outline of the justification.
What happened is called jury nullification, and it is a long-established legal right that juries have. I personally think it's a lousy custom,...
As I'm sure you well know, jury nullification exists to allow citizens to not enforce unjust laws. As a side effect, it also sometimes gets applied to let off the guilty who appear nice or have charisma whereas it may not get used when the accused does not appear nice or is uncharismatic.
Remember also that many juries are not instructed that they have this right.
All in all, a very necessary doctrine I say. Think DMCA and some of the ways it is being utilized to combat undesired behavior due to the broadness of the law.
Seems a more accurate analogy would be if the landlord let her use the residence for free (as Yahoo! did with the email service) with the proviso that upon her death, her survivors did not have any rights in her belongings left in the residence.
Seems like it could be a reasonable contract that would be upheld by courts. But this would only apply to the extent of the girl's rights in any property left behind. 3rd parties having security interests in any property and people who loaned her property would still retain their rights of course.
Getting back to the email issue. So I guess, if any emails in the account didn't belong to the account owner, such as if a friend of the account owner used the account at times, then the Yahoo! clause would not cover such emails. But such people might also be guilty of trespassing or somesuch.
An email sent erroneously to the acount, for example - seems clear that Yahoo! wouldn't be able to justify not providing access to that by the legitimate intended owner.
Patents in the USA can only be filed under the inventor's name. Corporate inventors are not allowed (this is the way it should be, but some other countries do allow corporate inventors, so who knows, it may come to the US).
Since cookie placement is trespassing (trespassing has been upheld in the cyber environment), it seems users have the right to do whatever they want with the cookies.
Instead of filling them with bogus data, which doubleclick will simply ignore, what about forming a p2p network which trades doubleclick cookies with other users who want to obfuscate the records doubleclick has?
That way, "valid" IDs will result in doubleclick having accounts with data culled from multiple users, making them likely worthless except for popularity indexes.
That's why I gleefully 'forget' my membership cards at local grocery stores, and when prompted for my phone number, give others culled from the local phonebook.
Although multiple elections would be time consuming, thus a 'problem', we only vote for President once every 4 years and we might as well do the best we can.
Each election, it is a common complaint that there is no real choice, or that it is a choice between too evils. The only solution, I see, is to allow greater real access to unknowns.
As part of the solution, it seems to me that we should try and eliminate the benefit of wealth/backing in choosing candidates and the purpose should be to choose the best person for the job. I understand that some will argue that to be the best person for the job, they should have the backing of a major party so that they have pull in Congress. I disagree, it wasn't always that way, and the Consitution doesn't speak to the issue.
So my suggestion: everyone who wants to run in an election, such as for President, and who qualifies, gets equal exposure with all other candidates in the relevant media. For example, starting a set time before the election, all libraries and schools would be required to make available binders of all contestants. TV, newspapers, magazines, etc. would be required to run periodic presentations on all constestants, and they wouldn't be allowed to specially treat any one candidate. I know the 1st amendment is very implicated in this, but I ignore that for now. The idea is that every citizen can see basic info on all candidates with none getting special treatment. Then in the election, everyone votes for who they want. All that get more votes than a given threshold moves on. The point of this round is to weed out the chaff.
At this point, maybe allow each contestant an equal amount of money to run campaigns. Again, every contestant has an equal chance at exposure with equal money, but now the regulation of what information can be presented is loosened. And then we have a second voting. This could be the final one, as per the voting method du jour, or there could be a few more qualifying rounds to keep narrowing the pool.
Doing elections in stages, like this, would allow total black horses who are unknown to gain exposure. Even if they don't ultimately win, their competition is sure to make sure the entrenched party platforms get stirred up a bit.
Why don't you post your letter(s) so that others can use it/them as a starting point. I've wanted to write my congresscritters for some time on this issue but haven't had the time to write a substantive letter (I would want to research the issue and cite as many supportive news sources as I could find.) I also want to write my Commonwealth legislators on the same issue (we use paperless voting - at least we did last election)
The other side of the issue, I guess, is that the staffers probably just tally up constituent views on issues, so maybe all the effort in supporting our position would be wasted. We could always encourage/.ers to send copies to whoever is on whatever committee deals with this issue - I would bet well-reasoned arguments wouldn't be overlooked there.
I've seen others post letter prototypes on/. before on other issues, and I'm sure it helps a few others to actually join in and participate. There's been alot on the Diebold issue - maybe with each new occurance, we could update a prototype letter.
I wouldn't mind longer legs (statistically, being taller means being treated better, getting a better salary, and all sorts of social perks).
I forget where I saw this, but somewhere, wanna-be stewardesses who are too short can become taller by having their legs broken and stretched before healing. I seem to recall that Chinese girls were involved.
Found a representative article. Sorry, this one's outcome is sad.
Just got back from a reception at Dow Lohnes in Washington, D.C. A partner there who does his work in online media was espousing these same ideas.
He was a prior counsel for Apple and just won a lawsuit for Tivo.
I came and went from his group several times during the evening. It seems a favorite statistic of his is that itunes recently sold its 100 millionth song but that p2p generates a billion copies a month. His solution? Have a subscription system - maybe 10 or 15 dollars a month. Everyone can copy p2p from other members - then the RIAA doesn't have to store anything, just have the central servers and maybe fingerprints to verify that songs are good copies. He thinks that would generate several billion a year for the RIAA, not bad compared to their yearly CD sales.
Where is the terror in "advertising terrorism?" People are not in danger of losing their lives to the Pepsi logo! Gah!
Well said. So what should it be called? Ambush Advertising? Pennys on the dollar advertising? Surprise Advertising?
Nah. It is just advertising. Advertising has always been about using existing infrastructure to get one's brand before appropriate audiences. Seems to me the so-called advertising terrorism is just old time advertising at it's best. Just happens to have millions involved...
With respect to your examples using Busch and Budweiser, these are both produced by the same company. I would imagine that in this particular case, they wouldn't have a problem with the alternative wear.
One big question I have is, for the purpose of non-profitable distribution, can an MP3 even be considered the original product? Because that seems to be part of the argument.
Although it may seem morally right that the RIAA should not be able to control shitty samplings, legally mp3s would be, at best, derivative works. I say at best as most courts probably don't even consider that mp3s are not the original work, they just count that as fact. Legally, a work is a derivative work if it is substantially similar to the original. Since mp3s would only be valuable to the end user if they resemble the original (even if the resemblence is not audiophile), then it seems that substantial simularity is a slam dunk.
And the copyright owner has the exclusive right of control over derivative works.
A little late, but I searched for the root olympic in the same paragraph as trademark in WestLaw and came up with 803 cases (federal and state/commonwealth).
Look though at 36 USC 220506 or here at Cornell - this statute gives certain exclusive word rights to the US Olympic Committee for various terms including Olympics, Olympiad, and among other things Pan-American. See (a)(4). Not only Olympics et al. but Pan-American? How outrageous is that?
There are however some exceptions in subsection (d) for prior use and limited other uses.
I may misunderstand your post, but I believe you are not right.
A copyrighted work is a product like any other and if the owner chooses to license it rather than sell it, he or she can do so under whatever terms are agreeable to him or her. So long as the licensee agrees, the license is binding within usual limits on such things (no duress, no incompetance, etc.).
And EULAs have been upheld in court. For example, see the shrinkwrap license upheld in ProCD v. Zeidenberg.
We are just living in an uber-conservative / uber-republican / Bushist era where corporations get what they pretty much want (within plausible reason).
</obvious>
These laws favoring corporations (and others favoring government) which are getting passed are further being upheld by the judiciary, for the most part - although there are a few victories for the oppressed (the Grokster/Morpheus case; the case that struck down warrentless infared imaging of private property).
This is just because the political pressures of the corporations arn't being properly opposed by a counteractive public force, yet.
I think if you look back in history, you can see that society often goes through phases. This is perhaps like people do. For example, many people have cravings (chocolate ice cream, anyone?) and may binge when they get the chance. But afterwards, they may not eat the same thing for awhile.
Sooner or later (hopefully sooner), we will get into an era either where individual rights will again be seen as a good thing or when public pressure will mount and things will begin to change. Even if the laws don't change, when more moderate judges populate the courts, reasonable judicial exceptions will be made.
At least I hope so. The problem with laws seen as extreme when implemented is that people growing up under them may not find them as outrageous as their parents did. For example, income tax laws or anti-slavery laws. (I'm not advocating slavery laws, just noting that public opinion since the Civil War is very much against slavery whereas previously, presumably, the public either supported it in the slave areas or at least were not upset enough to force change - growing up post-bellum under the anti-slavery laws likely hastened the change in what was acceptable to people)
I certainly could see some authorities trying that, but hopefully most of them have higher priorities on their mind, such as fighting violent crime.
Your wording reminds me of an incident that hit the media here a few days ago. A woman (a minority and scientist for the government) was arrested for eating a candy bar in the subway. She allegedly said what you said - that the officer should go and work on some crime that mattered. An article on the incident.
Class action lawsuits are designed to fill a purpose.
One is that many people who otherwise would not bring a suit or attempt compensation for injury can have their injuries addressed in court.
Additionally, class actions, not requiring the active participation of most class members, saves alot of people, lawyers, and courts the time and effort of suit. Imagine if all the members of a class action suit had to bring separate suits, with separate lawyers, in separate courts?
A third is that class actions can be used to redress injuries that warrent only low damages - thus if each person had to bring their own suit, they wouldn't as the cost of litigation would be more than the damages. But who's to say that a small injury to millions isn't more worthy a cause to remedy than a large injury to one or a few?
All this said, class actions have their problems, such as when plaintiffs who didn't even know about the suit while pending are asked to pay more than they will receive. Another problem is notice - a class member who didn't know about a suit and thus didn't opt out is later estopped from bringing his/her own suit even though they may not agree with the class action judgement.
I like your ideas, have had similar ones (as I imagine many drivers have had) for decades.
I always thought that there should be bar lights, red for breaking; blue, green, white, or whatever for acceleration. And have them keyed to a standard applicable to all makes - e.g. three lights of red would mean a certain standard amount of deceleration.
The other thing I always wish for is that trucks and such have a screen on the back showing their view of what's in front of them. Then when you get behind an idiot who is going slow and has no one in front, you know you should/can pass. For those who think this would be dangerous for some reason, remember that most drivers do this already with cars in front, as you can see through them from back to front.
Heh, heh. Maybe the screen could be incorporated into the Toyota idea - if you're pissed off at the person behind you, you could switch to a shot of your face and mouth "fuck off" rather than having the car mimic the emotion.
One last thing that I always wanted were "excuse me" lights. You know, for when you're the dick who cut someone else off (for a good reason, of course!).
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. I wonder what'll happen if a bad terrorist bombing or such occurs in the US and the perpetrator is documented (proven after the fact) as having come through the Mexican border?
Seems they've painted themselves into a corner, what with the terrorism alert, spending 100s of billions of dollars on the "war on terror", terrorism being in the news everyday, etc.
They'd have to do something about illegal immigration. The US public is a bunch of sheep about alot of what the Bush Admin. tells them, and they've been indoctrinated well since 9/11. They wouldn't settle for a lax response to this.
It's a little more complicated than that, of course, but that is the general outline of the justification.
As I'm sure you well know, jury nullification exists to allow citizens to not enforce unjust laws. As a side effect, it also sometimes gets applied to let off the guilty who appear nice or have charisma whereas it may not get used when the accused does not appear nice or is uncharismatic.
Remember also that many juries are not instructed that they have this right.
All in all, a very necessary doctrine I say. Think DMCA and some of the ways it is being utilized to combat undesired behavior due to the broadness of the law.
As general information for any reader that doesn't know, masks on other than holidays are generally prohibited by law in many jurisdictions.
How broad the ordinances are and whether there are exceptions (i.e. as for Muslim women) also varies.
They seem to be susceptible to 1st amendment challenges, though.
Klan's old Kentucky haunts ban hoods in public
With a 'Hi-Oh, Silver!' ACLU Challenges Michigan Anti-Mask Law on Behalf of "Lone Ranger" Protesters
Anti-mask laws are spreading
Seems like it could be a reasonable contract that would be upheld by courts. But this would only apply to the extent of the girl's rights in any property left behind. 3rd parties having security interests in any property and people who loaned her property would still retain their rights of course.
Getting back to the email issue. So I guess, if any emails in the account didn't belong to the account owner, such as if a friend of the account owner used the account at times, then the Yahoo! clause would not cover such emails. But such people might also be guilty of trespassing or somesuch.
An email sent erroneously to the acount, for example - seems clear that Yahoo! wouldn't be able to justify not providing access to that by the legitimate intended owner.
Patents in the USA can only be filed under the inventor's name. Corporate inventors are not allowed (this is the way it should be, but some other countries do allow corporate inventors, so who knows, it may come to the US).
Instead of filling them with bogus data, which doubleclick will simply ignore, what about forming a p2p network which trades doubleclick cookies with other users who want to obfuscate the records doubleclick has?
That way, "valid" IDs will result in doubleclick having accounts with data culled from multiple users, making them likely worthless except for popularity indexes.
That's why I gleefully 'forget' my membership cards at local grocery stores, and when prompted for my phone number, give others culled from the local phonebook.
VA Senators
VA Delegates
You can use the "Whose my legislator?" page to find out your employees, I mean representatives, if you don't know.
Each election, it is a common complaint that there is no real choice, or that it is a choice between too evils. The only solution, I see, is to allow greater real access to unknowns.
As part of the solution, it seems to me that we should try and eliminate the benefit of wealth/backing in choosing candidates and the purpose should be to choose the best person for the job. I understand that some will argue that to be the best person for the job, they should have the backing of a major party so that they have pull in Congress. I disagree, it wasn't always that way, and the Consitution doesn't speak to the issue.
So my suggestion: everyone who wants to run in an election, such as for President, and who qualifies, gets equal exposure with all other candidates in the relevant media. For example, starting a set time before the election, all libraries and schools would be required to make available binders of all contestants. TV, newspapers, magazines, etc. would be required to run periodic presentations on all constestants, and they wouldn't be allowed to specially treat any one candidate. I know the 1st amendment is very implicated in this, but I ignore that for now. The idea is that every citizen can see basic info on all candidates with none getting special treatment. Then in the election, everyone votes for who they want. All that get more votes than a given threshold moves on. The point of this round is to weed out the chaff.
At this point, maybe allow each contestant an equal amount of money to run campaigns. Again, every contestant has an equal chance at exposure with equal money, but now the regulation of what information can be presented is loosened. And then we have a second voting. This could be the final one, as per the voting method du jour, or there could be a few more qualifying rounds to keep narrowing the pool.
Doing elections in stages, like this, would allow total black horses who are unknown to gain exposure. Even if they don't ultimately win, their competition is sure to make sure the entrenched party platforms get stirred up a bit.
The other side of the issue, I guess, is that the staffers probably just tally up constituent views on issues, so maybe all the effort in supporting our position would be wasted. We could always encourage /.ers to send copies to whoever is on whatever committee deals with this issue - I would bet well-reasoned arguments wouldn't be overlooked there.
I've seen others post letter prototypes on /. before on other issues, and I'm sure it helps a few others to actually join in and participate. There's been alot on the Diebold issue - maybe with each new occurance, we could update a prototype letter.
After thinking about it for a second, I'm sure this will be tried very soon somewhere.
I forget where I saw this, but somewhere, wanna-be stewardesses who are too short can become taller by having their legs broken and stretched before healing. I seem to recall that Chinese girls were involved.
Found a representative article. Sorry, this one's outcome is sad.
He was a prior counsel for Apple and just won a lawsuit for Tivo.
I came and went from his group several times during the evening. It seems a favorite statistic of his is that itunes recently sold its 100 millionth song but that p2p generates a billion copies a month. His solution? Have a subscription system - maybe 10 or 15 dollars a month. Everyone can copy p2p from other members - then the RIAA doesn't have to store anything, just have the central servers and maybe fingerprints to verify that songs are good copies. He thinks that would generate several billion a year for the RIAA, not bad compared to their yearly CD sales.
Well said. So what should it be called? Ambush Advertising? Pennys on the dollar advertising? Surprise Advertising?
Nah. It is just advertising. Advertising has always been about using existing infrastructure to get one's brand before appropriate audiences. Seems to me the so-called advertising terrorism is just old time advertising at it's best. Just happens to have millions involved ...
As I said in another post, I'm amazed they have the rights to "Pan-American".
With respect to your examples using Busch and Budweiser, these are both produced by the same company. I would imagine that in this particular case, they wouldn't have a problem with the alternative wear.
Anything can get carried away without supervision by adults. Just ask any parent.
Although it may seem morally right that the RIAA should not be able to control shitty samplings, legally mp3s would be, at best, derivative works. I say at best as most courts probably don't even consider that mp3s are not the original work, they just count that as fact. Legally, a work is a derivative work if it is substantially similar to the original. Since mp3s would only be valuable to the end user if they resemble the original (even if the resemblence is not audiophile), then it seems that substantial simularity is a slam dunk.
And the copyright owner has the exclusive right of control over derivative works.
Look though at 36 USC 220506 or here at Cornell - this statute gives certain exclusive word rights to the US Olympic Committee for various terms including Olympics, Olympiad, and among other things Pan-American. See (a)(4). Not only Olympics et al. but Pan-American? How outrageous is that?
There are however some exceptions in subsection (d) for prior use and limited other uses.
A copyrighted work is a product like any other and if the owner chooses to license it rather than sell it, he or she can do so under whatever terms are agreeable to him or her. So long as the licensee agrees, the license is binding within usual limits on such things (no duress, no incompetance, etc.).
And EULAs have been upheld in court. For example, see the shrinkwrap license upheld in ProCD v. Zeidenberg.
What an amazing line. How the hell did he get to be president again?
We are just living in an uber-conservative / uber-republican / Bushist era where corporations get what they pretty much want (within plausible reason).
</obvious>
These laws favoring corporations (and others favoring government) which are getting passed are further being upheld by the judiciary, for the most part - although there are a few victories for the oppressed (the Grokster/Morpheus case; the case that struck down warrentless infared imaging of private property).
This is just because the political pressures of the corporations arn't being properly opposed by a counteractive public force, yet.
I think if you look back in history, you can see that society often goes through phases. This is perhaps like people do. For example, many people have cravings (chocolate ice cream, anyone?) and may binge when they get the chance. But afterwards, they may not eat the same thing for awhile.
Sooner or later (hopefully sooner), we will get into an era either where individual rights will again be seen as a good thing or when public pressure will mount and things will begin to change. Even if the laws don't change, when more moderate judges populate the courts, reasonable judicial exceptions will be made.
At least I hope so. The problem with laws seen as extreme when implemented is that people growing up under them may not find them as outrageous as their parents did. For example, income tax laws or anti-slavery laws. (I'm not advocating slavery laws, just noting that public opinion since the Civil War is very much against slavery whereas previously, presumably, the public either supported it in the slave areas or at least were not upset enough to force change - growing up post-bellum under the anti-slavery laws likely hastened the change in what was acceptable to people)
Your wording reminds me of an incident that hit the media here a few days ago. A woman (a minority and scientist for the government) was arrested for eating a candy bar in the subway. She allegedly said what you said - that the officer should go and work on some crime that mattered. An article on the incident.
One is that many people who otherwise would not bring a suit or attempt compensation for injury can have their injuries addressed in court.
Additionally, class actions, not requiring the active participation of most class members, saves alot of people, lawyers, and courts the time and effort of suit. Imagine if all the members of a class action suit had to bring separate suits, with separate lawyers, in separate courts?
A third is that class actions can be used to redress injuries that warrent only low damages - thus if each person had to bring their own suit, they wouldn't as the cost of litigation would be more than the damages. But who's to say that a small injury to millions isn't more worthy a cause to remedy than a large injury to one or a few?
All this said, class actions have their problems, such as when plaintiffs who didn't even know about the suit while pending are asked to pay more than they will receive. Another problem is notice - a class member who didn't know about a suit and thus didn't opt out is later estopped from bringing his/her own suit even though they may not agree with the class action judgement.
I always thought that there should be bar lights, red for breaking; blue, green, white, or whatever for acceleration. And have them keyed to a standard applicable to all makes - e.g. three lights of red would mean a certain standard amount of deceleration.
The other thing I always wish for is that trucks and such have a screen on the back showing their view of what's in front of them. Then when you get behind an idiot who is going slow and has no one in front, you know you should/can pass. For those who think this would be dangerous for some reason, remember that most drivers do this already with cars in front, as you can see through them from back to front.
Heh, heh. Maybe the screen could be incorporated into the Toyota idea - if you're pissed off at the person behind you, you could switch to a shot of your face and mouth "fuck off" rather than having the car mimic the emotion.
One last thing that I always wanted were "excuse me" lights. You know, for when you're the dick who cut someone else off (for a good reason, of course!).