I just don't think any self-respecting lawyer would work for him. Can you imagine how awful he'd be as a client? God forbid you let him in the courtroom! You'd both be ejected for contempt of court: he for being himself, and you for being unable to keep him from being himself.
Considering they basically invented a new type of disbarment for him, I think his lawyer days are over.
Normally (in florida) they block you from trying to get your license back for 5 years, but the original trial recommended 10 years, and the referee, upon reviewing the evidence, recommended permanent disbarment, because 10 years wasn't enough. Even with the minimum disbarment, it would have been extremely unlikely for him to get re-certified...With this extraordinary disbarment? Impossible.
He may do something else, but it won't be law, not in this country.
Disbarment doesn't have anything to do with illegal activities...You should read the trial transcripts. I read them as a lark, because I get a kick out of JT's nutbaggery, but I lost my enjoyment about halfway through reading all the testimony from lawyers and judges about a truly obscene level of harassment.
It's clear that they felt that bringing a suit against him for libel and slander would only further his aims, so you see, for example, a prominent partner at a law firm, another member of which was involved in a suit against JT, being publicly accused of peddling pornographic materials to minors. A clear attempt at intimidation.
Likewise the Alabama case, when the judge revoked JT's pro hac vice after JT's blatantly contradicted the Judge's instructions regarding talking to the press, which also included some basic lies regarding his status on the case (the pro hac vice had not been approved when he started representing himself as the actual lawyer on the case, which he couldn't have been without the PHV). After the PHV was revoked, JT started making criminal racketeering charges against the judge, and the judge who had held the seat previously, who, as in the first case, wasn't even involved.
Imagine being dragged through the mud by a rabid, paranoid jackass who is just out to intimidate someone else whom you happen to know.
It's frankly amazing that he got away with it as long as he did. You'd think, if gamers were as violent as he swears we are, someone would have killed his dumb ass.
No one is more experienced at doing dirty footwork than IBM; they set that industry standard along with hundreds of others. That's what made the SCO thing so damn funny, and look at the outcome there...They didn't just not lose, they annihilated the poor bastards. Now remember who was using their money to prop up SCO? Microsoft. This is an old feud.
No, the reason IBM didn't blow a ton of money on it is because they had nothing to lose. Their desktop suite is a hobby project, whereas Microsoft's is their life blood. Now IBM is throwing their weight around, and may end up getting to eat their cake and have it too, all for a piddly outlay of cash.
I'm sure the bulk of it is just that we have more computers. I'd have thought Japan would have been higher though, if that were the primary factor, so maybe not.
Well, since most asteroid belt objects are rocky/metallic bodies, you could crash all of them into Mars and not make it in the least bit more livable than it is right now.
The problem with ubiquitous encryption is the same problem you always have when everything is "top security"...When everything is top security, nothing is top security.
I'm a big believer in encryption where it's appropriate, but if you force it everywhere people get sloppy with the data and their keys, and all kinds of crap.
Some are bad...SecuROM is absuively bad, and similar to what you describe.
But a lot of games with extensive add-ons have to talk to the internet a lot. If you buy WoW, you can just set up an account, add the keys, and download the entire game...This'll take a bit, even with their bittorrent interface.
Steam is basically the same thing applied to non-MMOs. You make a steam account, you attach your games to it, and anywhere you log in with that account, you can download and install your games. No more keeping up with keys or media. In a lot of ways, I think it's better than the traditional CD system, because of the whole media/keys issue, though obviously it's still inferior to pirating the game.
Still, I'd rather pay for the game, and if it's not abusive, I'm perfectly willing to do so.
No one learns anything from Valve/Steam. I was against Steam initially, but it's seductive because it's just so damn easy. All I have to do is log in, and it brings my games to me.
The lesson there to be learned is, if DRM makes your life easier, then people are more willing to put up with it. But if it makes your life harder? If it exists to screw you out of what you've already bought? Screw that.
Until the content providers remember that their supposed job is to provide CONTENT, then they're doomed to a declining market share and consumer antipathy.
Doesn't matter really. Power it from the ground; then you can feed the energy generated from it coming back down back into the system. Wouldn't be a net gain, obviously, but it would reduce the power requirements substantially.
I guess they think the rest of us are assholes...But I digress.
The real worry about the Fundamentalist in power is the massively irrational decision making process. I mean, if you had a born again president, he might (hypothetically) take the first opportunity to invade a couple of muslim countries in the name of Go...er...I mean "freedom".
If you think that the world was created in 6 days, then you, frankly, are too ignorant to be president. It is as simple as that. We can't trust you with anything technological, because you clearly aren't wired to accept it.
Yep, that's me, I'm all into (church lady voice) Saaaaaaatan.
Hate to break it to you, but you and the Satanists are on the same side of the fence as far as I'm concerned. The idea of an immediate and personal god is frankly meaningless to me, and therefore so is the apocryphal devil.
I've got no significant beef with religion. Hell, I go to church more than most Christians because I think my kid needs to understand the material/spiritual dichotomy, and religion is the easiest way to instill that.
But there is a vast gulf between normal religion and Creationist bullshit. If you are such a zealot that you honestly believe that the world was literally created in 6 days, and is only 6000 years old, you do not need to be in public office in any form you need to be in a nuthouse.
I want the person with their finger on the button to think that they're going to murder billions, not send them all to happy fluffy fucking cloud world.
POTUS is no job for someone with a world view that's more conservative than the one espoused by the Catholic church.
I don't dislike C#; it's basically just Java, so if you like one, you'll probably like the other.
The documentation on the other hand...Just go buy a book, because the online docs are slow sadistic torture.
I used to think Java was a bit mean for just throwing out the big API and letting you fend for yourself, but C# throws out part of an API and examples that only cover part of what you need to know. It is extremely frustrating, and the fact that they clearly think it's better than Java's spartan lists of packages, classes, and their properties...That just makes it worse.
Agreed. I'd also add Perlmonks.org; it's not documentation per se but it's damn useful.
For java, you have to master the API...Even modules that other people write are often documented with javadoc, and look just the same. Once you use it for a while it becomes familiar.
Bear, Brin, and Benford are all talented, but there is a difference between extending Foundation and extending HHGTTG.
The problem with extending the Hitchhiker universe is that it's driven by character interaction and DA's sense of humor.
The first Foundation book was basically short stories, each with new characters, new settings, etc...Very easy to extend, just write a short story of your own. Make up your own characters, your own planet, whatever...All you have to do is genuflect toward psychohistory, Hari Seldon, and the fall of the empire. It's a historical backdrop that can accommodate any number of stories.
Now imagine someone else trying to write dialogue between Ford and Arthur.
It's so damn effective in america...I've seen a lot of people put forth opinions about why it's so effective, but the simple fact remains: smart people are viewed with suspicion. New ideas...Suspicious. Too much education...Lacking common sense.
I'm not one of those people who think that IQ trumps all; there are some very "dumb" smart people who I wouldn't want to see in the government in any form.
At the same time, people who are unwilling to listen to experts blow my mind. You may not agree, but if you don't listen to the joker who does it for a living, then how can you pretend to be able to make a good decision?
The gas tax thing was a great example: economists were practically unanimous about it being a bad idea (which is unusual), so Obama should have had this huge advantage in speaking about it..."I think this, and everyone who knows anything about it agrees with me, so I fucking ROCK!"
In a country that really values education and learning, that would have been a huge victory...Here it was a way in which his opponents could portray him as an out-of-touch smarty-pants.
I just can't believe it plays so well. In my mind, Obama's academic background is a good thing. I want a smart, thoughtful person in charge. I don't want another moron who can't comprehend cause and effect.
It's not all plastics; It's a simple subset. I did all the research earlier during the baby bottle scare, and it's not hard to get BPA free bottles, but it is hard to find canned goods (for example) that are BPA free.
This is one of those situations where I think there is enough concern to warrant labeling (at least) and sensible exploration of alternatives. There is no way to confirm the relationship without a series of long term studies, and there is nothing so amazing about BPA to justify keeping it.
I just shot soda out my nose. The Austrian school? Give me a break. You've got Keynes and you've got the anti-Keynes (Friedman). Most respected modern economic thought can be divided into those camps.
The Austrians are a bunch of mystical cranks who don't believe in things like economic models, but instead try to prove the stuff objectively using deduction. Even most libertarians don't buy into the Austrian school: just because Ron Paul liked it, doesn't mean everyone does.
We're talking economists, not businessmen. The economist is the annoying guy who sits in the corner and tells you things you don't want to hear, not the boss.
At the heart of it all economists are academics. It's a very theoretical field, not known for accurate short range predictions. Drawing a distinction based solely on where they work, like all "real world economists" (a phrase which I've never even seen before) are fiscally conservative, and all university economists are Keynesian hippies...That just doesn't make sense.
Most non-university economics has very little to do with the academic Keynes/Friedman debate, and a lot more to do with predictive market modeling.
It's in the power point presentation. The higher their income, the more likely they were to prefer Obama, though it wasn't statistically much different from the fact that 66% just liked Obama better.
Economists are (nearly) all in favor of free trade, which is generally considered to be conservative.
Some believe in the government using money to drive the economy by investing in local projects and social programs(a la Keynes), and this is pretty "liberal". Others believe in low taxes and small government, which is "conservative".
I think the real problem is that the true fiscal conservatives are all independents these days, so while it's clearly acceptable to be an economist and a democrat, it's not so acceptable to be an economist and a republican. If you add up the libertarians, independents, and republicans you come pretty close to a 50/50 split. That's pretty representative of the academic split between Keynes and Friedman these days.
If you're Keynesian, you believe that government spending and stimulus is a good thing (and are thus more inclined to the Dems), and if you're more inclined to Friedman (small government, low taxes, non-intervention), then you're pretty much forced to the Independents, since the Republicans are (for the last 20 years) irresponsible spenders, and that's hard to justify if you're an economist.
I think also academics and other intelligentsia types tend to skew democrat (since the dems don't call them elitist for doing all that thinking), so that will add to the bias as well.
By and large, I think it's pretty clear that the majority of economists are solidly pro-Obama...Even the independents went for Obama by more than 2 to 1 (according to the breakdown), and on the rest of the issues, the independents side with Obama on everything but taxes and international trade (I myself like Obama, but I think his stance on international trade sucks.)
We're not talking about a priori knowledge here; there is no bootstrapping problem because we can always appeal to the external world for validation. If the first factoid is that all purple unicorns have 84 teeth, we can confidently dismiss it as false due to the lack of empirical evidence for the existence of unicorns, as opposed to being forced to allow it because it is a deductively true statement (given the lack of unicorns).
I agree with the sibling post (and Wittgenstein as well): the sentence is mental masturbation, and should be treated with the indignity it deserves. Deductive truth has little place in the inductive world.
Working on the floor in a box store is low skill, regardless of what you do. If you had real skillz, they'd have you in a back room where you wouldn't have to answer questions about camcorders.
Though the last time I was there with my wife, looking at camcorders (my copious geek research having been rejected on the principle that a 7.00 an hour employee must somehow know more than me about cameras), we had no less than 4 salespeople wander by, listen to a question, and then go off in search of someone who knew what they were talking about.
Judging by the direction they took upon leaving us, that person resided anywhere in the store except where we were. Box store "experts" are in real danger of being replaced by the product reviews on the average e-commerce site.
I didn't have unrealistic expectations; I specifically laid out the difference between a winmodem and a modem at the beginning of the conversation. I didn't do the alpha geek thing and ask for a modem, then berate the poor schmuck when he led me to the winmodem section.
After I carefully explained what I was looking for, I got inexpertly bs'd and then told that I needed new hardware if I still cared about things like modems. It's hardly the only time it's happened to me; I don't care if they don't know, but they inevitably make things up when they have no clue.
On the aforementioned KVM switch incident, they told me (first) that there was no such thing, and I should buy a monitor, then (second) that if there was, as I was insisting, such a thing, they didn't have any in the store. They had 4 different kinds, as it happened, though they were all kinda crappy.
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I just don't think any self-respecting lawyer would work for him. Can you imagine how awful he'd be as a client? God forbid you let him in the courtroom! You'd both be ejected for contempt of court: he for being himself, and you for being unable to keep him from being himself.
Considering they basically invented a new type of disbarment for him, I think his lawyer days are over.
Normally (in florida) they block you from trying to get your license back for 5 years, but the original trial recommended 10 years, and the referee, upon reviewing the evidence, recommended permanent disbarment, because 10 years wasn't enough. Even with the minimum disbarment, it would have been extremely unlikely for him to get re-certified...With this extraordinary disbarment? Impossible.
He may do something else, but it won't be law, not in this country.
Disbarment doesn't have anything to do with illegal activities...You should read the trial transcripts. I read them as a lark, because I get a kick out of JT's nutbaggery, but I lost my enjoyment about halfway through reading all the testimony from lawyers and judges about a truly obscene level of harassment.
It's clear that they felt that bringing a suit against him for libel and slander would only further his aims, so you see, for example, a prominent partner at a law firm, another member of which was involved in a suit against JT, being publicly accused of peddling pornographic materials to minors. A clear attempt at intimidation.
Likewise the Alabama case, when the judge revoked JT's pro hac vice after JT's blatantly contradicted the Judge's instructions regarding talking to the press, which also included some basic lies regarding his status on the case (the pro hac vice had not been approved when he started representing himself as the actual lawyer on the case, which he couldn't have been without the PHV). After the PHV was revoked, JT started making criminal racketeering charges against the judge, and the judge who had held the seat previously, who, as in the first case, wasn't even involved.
Imagine being dragged through the mud by a rabid, paranoid jackass who is just out to intimidate someone else whom you happen to know.
Here is a link to the Referee Report Recommending his disbarment (pdf warning). It's part funny, and part disgusting.
It's frankly amazing that he got away with it as long as he did. You'd think, if gamers were as violent as he swears we are, someone would have killed his dumb ass.
No one is more experienced at doing dirty footwork than IBM; they set that industry standard along with hundreds of others. That's what made the SCO thing so damn funny, and look at the outcome there...They didn't just not lose, they annihilated the poor bastards. Now remember who was using their money to prop up SCO? Microsoft. This is an old feud.
No, the reason IBM didn't blow a ton of money on it is because they had nothing to lose. Their desktop suite is a hobby project, whereas Microsoft's is their life blood. Now IBM is throwing their weight around, and may end up getting to eat their cake and have it too, all for a piddly outlay of cash.
Who looks smart now?
We're #1!
We're #1!
I'm sure the bulk of it is just that we have more computers. I'd have thought Japan would have been higher though, if that were the primary factor, so maybe not.
Well, since most asteroid belt objects are rocky/metallic bodies, you could crash all of them into Mars and not make it in the least bit more livable than it is right now.
Now maybe water bearing Kuiper belt objects...
The problem with ubiquitous encryption is the same problem you always have when everything is "top security"...When everything is top security, nothing is top security.
I'm a big believer in encryption where it's appropriate, but if you force it everywhere people get sloppy with the data and their keys, and all kinds of crap.
Some are bad...SecuROM is absuively bad, and similar to what you describe.
But a lot of games with extensive add-ons have to talk to the internet a lot. If you buy WoW, you can just set up an account, add the keys, and download the entire game...This'll take a bit, even with their bittorrent interface.
Steam is basically the same thing applied to non-MMOs. You make a steam account, you attach your games to it, and anywhere you log in with that account, you can download and install your games. No more keeping up with keys or media. In a lot of ways, I think it's better than the traditional CD system, because of the whole media/keys issue, though obviously it's still inferior to pirating the game.
Still, I'd rather pay for the game, and if it's not abusive, I'm perfectly willing to do so.
No one learns anything from Valve/Steam. I was against Steam initially, but it's seductive because it's just so damn easy. All I have to do is log in, and it brings my games to me.
The lesson there to be learned is, if DRM makes your life easier, then people are more willing to put up with it. But if it makes your life harder? If it exists to screw you out of what you've already bought? Screw that.
Until the content providers remember that their supposed job is to provide CONTENT, then they're doomed to a declining market share and consumer antipathy.
Doesn't matter really. Power it from the ground; then you can feed the energy generated from it coming back down back into the system. Wouldn't be a net gain, obviously, but it would reduce the power requirements substantially.
Well gosh, according to this pew study more than half of the fundies believe that more than half of everyone will go to heaven..
I guess they think the rest of us are assholes...But I digress.
The real worry about the Fundamentalist in power is the massively irrational decision making process. I mean, if you had a born again president, he might (hypothetically) take the first opportunity to invade a couple of muslim countries in the name of Go...er...I mean "freedom".
If you think that the world was created in 6 days, then you, frankly, are too ignorant to be president. It is as simple as that. We can't trust you with anything technological, because you clearly aren't wired to accept it.
Yep, that's me, I'm all into (church lady voice) Saaaaaaatan.
Hate to break it to you, but you and the Satanists are on the same side of the fence as far as I'm concerned. The idea of an immediate and personal god is frankly meaningless to me, and therefore so is the apocryphal devil.
I've got no significant beef with religion. Hell, I go to church more than most Christians because I think my kid needs to understand the material/spiritual dichotomy, and religion is the easiest way to instill that.
But there is a vast gulf between normal religion and Creationist bullshit. If you are such a zealot that you honestly believe that the world was literally created in 6 days, and is only 6000 years old, you do not need to be in public office in any form you need to be in a nuthouse.
I want the person with their finger on the button to think that they're going to murder billions, not send them all to happy fluffy fucking cloud world.
POTUS is no job for someone with a world view that's more conservative than the one espoused by the Catholic church.
I don't dislike C#; it's basically just Java, so if you like one, you'll probably like the other.
The documentation on the other hand...Just go buy a book, because the online docs are slow sadistic torture.
I used to think Java was a bit mean for just throwing out the big API and letting you fend for yourself, but C# throws out part of an API and examples that only cover part of what you need to know. It is extremely frustrating, and the fact that they clearly think it's better than Java's spartan lists of packages, classes, and their properties...That just makes it worse.
Agreed. I'd also add Perlmonks.org; it's not documentation per se but it's damn useful.
For java, you have to master the API...Even modules that other people write are often documented with javadoc, and look just the same. Once you use it for a while it becomes familiar.
Bear, Brin, and Benford are all talented, but there is a difference between extending Foundation and extending HHGTTG.
The problem with extending the Hitchhiker universe is that it's driven by character interaction and DA's sense of humor.
The first Foundation book was basically short stories, each with new characters, new settings, etc...Very easy to extend, just write a short story of your own. Make up your own characters, your own planet, whatever...All you have to do is genuflect toward psychohistory, Hari Seldon, and the fall of the empire. It's a historical backdrop that can accommodate any number of stories.
Now imagine someone else trying to write dialogue between Ford and Arthur.
Yea. It's like that.
It's so damn effective in america...I've seen a lot of people put forth opinions about why it's so effective, but the simple fact remains: smart people are viewed with suspicion. New ideas...Suspicious. Too much education...Lacking common sense.
I'm not one of those people who think that IQ trumps all; there are some very "dumb" smart people who I wouldn't want to see in the government in any form.
At the same time, people who are unwilling to listen to experts blow my mind. You may not agree, but if you don't listen to the joker who does it for a living, then how can you pretend to be able to make a good decision?
The gas tax thing was a great example: economists were practically unanimous about it being a bad idea (which is unusual), so Obama should have had this huge advantage in speaking about it..."I think this, and everyone who knows anything about it agrees with me, so I fucking ROCK!"
In a country that really values education and learning, that would have been a huge victory...Here it was a way in which his opponents could portray him as an out-of-touch smarty-pants.
I just can't believe it plays so well. In my mind, Obama's academic background is a good thing. I want a smart, thoughtful person in charge. I don't want another moron who can't comprehend cause and effect.
It's not all plastics; It's a simple subset. I did all the research earlier during the baby bottle scare, and it's not hard to get BPA free bottles, but it is hard to find canned goods (for example) that are BPA free.
This is one of those situations where I think there is enough concern to warrant labeling (at least) and sensible exploration of alternatives. There is no way to confirm the relationship without a series of long term studies, and there is nothing so amazing about BPA to justify keeping it.
I just shot soda out my nose. The Austrian school? Give me a break. You've got Keynes and you've got the anti-Keynes (Friedman). Most respected modern economic thought can be divided into those camps.
The Austrians are a bunch of mystical cranks who don't believe in things like economic models, but instead try to prove the stuff objectively using deduction. Even most libertarians don't buy into the Austrian school: just because Ron Paul liked it, doesn't mean everyone does.
We're talking economists, not businessmen. The economist is the annoying guy who sits in the corner and tells you things you don't want to hear, not the boss.
At the heart of it all economists are academics. It's a very theoretical field, not known for accurate short range predictions. Drawing a distinction based solely on where they work, like all "real world economists" (a phrase which I've never even seen before) are fiscally conservative, and all university economists are Keynesian hippies...That just doesn't make sense.
Most non-university economics has very little to do with the academic Keynes/Friedman debate, and a lot more to do with predictive market modeling.
It's in the power point presentation. The higher their income, the more likely they were to prefer Obama, though it wasn't statistically much different from the fact that 66% just liked Obama better.
Tell it to Milton Friedman.
Economists are (nearly) all in favor of free trade, which is generally considered to be conservative.
Some believe in the government using money to drive the economy by investing in local projects and social programs(a la Keynes), and this is pretty "liberal". Others believe in low taxes and small government, which is "conservative".
I think the real problem is that the true fiscal conservatives are all independents these days, so while it's clearly acceptable to be an economist and a democrat, it's not so acceptable to be an economist and a republican. If you add up the libertarians, independents, and republicans you come pretty close to a 50/50 split. That's pretty representative of the academic split between Keynes and Friedman these days.
If you're Keynesian, you believe that government spending and stimulus is a good thing (and are thus more inclined to the Dems), and if you're more inclined to Friedman (small government, low taxes, non-intervention), then you're pretty much forced to the Independents, since the Republicans are (for the last 20 years) irresponsible spenders, and that's hard to justify if you're an economist.
I think also academics and other intelligentsia types tend to skew democrat (since the dems don't call them elitist for doing all that thinking), so that will add to the bias as well.
By and large, I think it's pretty clear that the majority of economists are solidly pro-Obama...Even the independents went for Obama by more than 2 to 1 (according to the breakdown), and on the rest of the issues, the independents side with Obama on everything but taxes and international trade (I myself like Obama, but I think his stance on international trade sucks.)
We're not talking about a priori knowledge here; there is no bootstrapping problem because we can always appeal to the external world for validation. If the first factoid is that all purple unicorns have 84 teeth, we can confidently dismiss it as false due to the lack of empirical evidence for the existence of unicorns, as opposed to being forced to allow it because it is a deductively true statement (given the lack of unicorns).
I agree with the sibling post (and Wittgenstein as well): the sentence is mental masturbation, and should be treated with the indignity it deserves. Deductive truth has little place in the inductive world.
Working on the floor in a box store is low skill, regardless of what you do. If you had real skillz, they'd have you in a back room where you wouldn't have to answer questions about camcorders.
Though the last time I was there with my wife, looking at camcorders (my copious geek research having been rejected on the principle that a 7.00 an hour employee must somehow know more than me about cameras), we had no less than 4 salespeople wander by, listen to a question, and then go off in search of someone who knew what they were talking about.
Judging by the direction they took upon leaving us, that person resided anywhere in the store except where we were. Box store "experts" are in real danger of being replaced by the product reviews on the average e-commerce site.
I didn't have unrealistic expectations; I specifically laid out the difference between a winmodem and a modem at the beginning of the conversation. I didn't do the alpha geek thing and ask for a modem, then berate the poor schmuck when he led me to the winmodem section.
After I carefully explained what I was looking for, I got inexpertly bs'd and then told that I needed new hardware if I still cared about things like modems. It's hardly the only time it's happened to me; I don't care if they don't know, but they inevitably make things up when they have no clue.
On the aforementioned KVM switch incident, they told me (first) that there was no such thing, and I should buy a monitor, then (second) that if there was, as I was insisting, such a thing, they didn't have any in the store. They had 4 different kinds, as it happened, though they were all kinda crappy.