know it's not exactly a big seller anymore, so I suspect it quietly receives a new "version X" upgrade and only briefly hits store shelves before dying out.... but only 2-3 years ago, I'm pretty sure I saw a new version of it at the local Office Depot or OfficeMax?
So here's what I don't get (and maybe a lawyer or wannabe-lawyer can explain it to me). We have the first amendment which protects us from government interference in speech. If I criticize a government official or policy the government is not allowed to retaliate in any way. Yet for some reason.... the private sector can?
Traditionally, the sovereign cannot be sued. He is the law or he is above the law. He can do anything, say anything, and you have no recourse.
2) That the respondent knew the statement was false. If you make a false statement, but can show you believed it to be true, that can get you off the hook for libel.
It only goes to the question of malice.
Your belief must be "reasonable." Which more or less boils down to the consensus opinion of the jury.
3) That the statement was made with the intent of causing harm. If you make a false statement as a joke, that's not libel, you have to intend to cause harm.
The law of torts isn't about what you intended to do. It's about accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
You only have to prove "actual malice" if the plaintiff is a public figure - and the courts seem increasingly willing to cast anyone in that role who is not directly participating in an open - heated - political debate.
If there was, in fact, mold in the apartment then the landlord is done right here.
Not if the mold was the product of her own poor housekeeping.
Not if she failed to notify your landlord of the problem. Not if she failed to give him time enough to solve the problem.
Not that I believe this particular conspiracy theory, but if this was an elected judge rather than an appointed one, it may be possible.
A note on impeachment in the federal system:
Since 1797 the House of Representatives has impeached sixteen federal officials. These include two presidents, a cabinet member, a senator, a justice of the Supreme Court, and eleven federal judges. Of those, the Senate has convicted and removed seven, all of them judges. Not included in this list are the office holders who have resigned rather than face impeachment, most notably, President Richard M. Nixon. Of thirty-five attempts at impeachment, only nine have come to trial. Because it cripples Congress with a lengthy trial, impeachment is infrequent. Many officials, seeing the writing on the wall, resign rather than face the ignominy of a public trial.A Short History of Impeachment
So what do you think would happen if I stole a CD from Wal-Mart and they found out about it? They would probably charge me a few hundred dollars
But if WalMart was the publisher, do you think they would forgive the retail value of the copies you distributed to 15,000 of your closest friends on the P2P nets? More likely they would attempt to extract every penny of the judgment from you if it took from now until the day the last trump blows.
The RIAA's "objection" came in the form of a new pool quietly installed in the judge's backyard, more than likely...
If I may be permitted to misquote Isaac Asimov:
Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the incompetent.
It really isn't that hard to understand:
Under American law, the geek with a broadband connection doesn't have the right to a free digital download copy of WALL-E.
Nor does he have the right to upload his screener of the Transformers to 15,000 of his closest friends on the P2P nets.
The geek is cheap and he feeds on the thrill - and that is what lands him in court.
Netflix lists 100,000 DVDs and 2,000 Blu-Ray discs.
For about $15 a month he could build a substantial personal collection which would be of interest to no one so long as it remains within his home network.
Mind you, that's still a five fingered discount, and not Fair Use.
Her response was basically that individuals have no inalienable rights and that the Supreme Court exists to interpret laws as passed by Congress This is a patently false, legal positivist notion in direct conflict with the US Constitution that has infected the judicial system
The phrase "inalienable rights" belongs to the Declaration of Independence" not the Constitution.
The distinction is between a theory of natural rights and that of a government defined and created by the those it will govern:
"We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...."
There are no inalienable rights in a government by compact. The First Amendment is no more sacrosanct than the Eighteenth - Prohibition.
It can be repealed - and the rules are the same.
It conflicts with John Marshall's interpretation of the Constitution - but an unequivocal grant of judicial review isn't to be found in the text.
Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture Before you mod Plunky's post all the way to -1, consider that The Walt Disney Company was one of the two biggest advocates of the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998
So what?
The studio couldn't stop Rogers and Hammerstein from producing their own musical version of Cinderella.
The geek will damn the industry for its reliance on sequels - and with his next breath demand the right to strip mine the product for his own derivative works.
I'd really like to see sources for your numbers here. Because three million Windows XO laptops are being distributed in India:
A movement to get rural poor children learning on the screen using a state of the art laptops has begun in the country.
Every fourth child in the world who needs screen based learning environment is in India.
A US-based non profit organization called One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is planning to distribute three million XO laptops, each costing Rupees 11000, among children entering schools by the end of 2009.
It has already distributed 1000 laptops in 20 schools in UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on an experimental basis.
Its ultimate mission is to ensure that all school children, aged between five and 12, are able to effectively engage with their own personal laptop.
Each XO PC comes with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office pre-loaded, besides many other features.
Satish Jha, President and C.E.O, OLPC India, said the project is funded by a number of sponsor organizations, including AMD, Bright star Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, Microsoft, SES, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat.
Hopefully everyone else learnt the lesson. If you want to compete with Microsoft/Intel/etc you have to strike quickly.
I've never been quite sure whether Negroponte saw his primary mission as facilitating basic education in the grade school classroom or leading the third world masses into the Promised Land of Linux and FOSS.
Part of OLPC had always been that the entire software stack could be modified, and that users could learn about it and share ideas to make their own platform better.
The Afghan girl risks her life learning how to read and write.
It is the basics of a grade school education which transform and modernize a society.
In these simple things are the roots of independence, power and survival.
That is where your focus needs to be.
The geek builds a machine that reflects his own needs and values and thinks that he has created something universal.
Sugar was the name for the new learning-oriented graphical interface that OLPC was building, but it was also the name for the entire XO operating system, one tiny part of which was Sugar the GUI
It was one hell of an important part.
OLPC was presented to the third world education minister as a take it or leave it proposition:
The kid friendly hardware, the constructivist philosophy of education and the Sugar UI which was supposed to bring it all together.
To question the UI exposes the fragility of the entire project.
The competition's argument:
"We have a laptop and a software bundle that wouldn't look out of place in the higher grades, the Internet cafe or at work."
"The UI is based on the standard desktop metaphor, which kids tend to pick up very quickly."
"The rest is up to you."
"We aren't going to tell you how your teachers should teach - we aren't going to tell you what they should teach."
I used to really like Slashdot, but the quality of the submissions is really taking an ugly tone. Who do we blame?
I think it comes down to a hard, bitter core of envy and frustration.
Windows runs everything of interest in FOSS. It offers the user an enormous, rock-solid back list of commercial software.
Freeware and shareware are still viable on the PC platform - think of the success of programs like SolSuite on Download.com.
Windows is the smorgasbord. The bazaar.
That's the only meaning of software freedom that will ever be intelligible to the user.
The geek will rant and rage over DRM - but to the consumer all it really means is that he can play protected media content over a super-fast HDMI link to his home theater audio system and HDTV.
Netflix catalogs 100,000 DVD titles, 2,000 in Blu-Ray. Why the hell am I downloading a mediocre DiVX rip over the P2P nets?
WalMart is a lost cause - one of many.
Not one Linux netbook to be had online or in their stores.
53 desktops eligible for a free upgrade to Win 7 - and laptops in proportion. Serious contenders for mass market sales - with hardware that is unquestionably up to the job.
Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle. Microsoft, middle-class value. Linux remains a question mark.
Slashdot Mirror
The iPhone app store has been a great thing, but slam after slam of bad press against it is slowly turning the opinion of the technically inclined
if the "technically inclined" - aka the geek - was really the iPod's target audience that might actually count for something - but as it stands....
know it's not exactly a big seller anymore, so I suspect it quietly receives a new "version X" upgrade and only briefly hits store shelves before dying out.... but only 2-3 years ago, I'm pretty sure I saw a new version of it at the local Office Depot or OfficeMax?
Oregon Trail never "dies out."
Bestsellers in Games for Children
So here's what I don't get (and maybe a lawyer or wannabe-lawyer can explain it to me). We have the first amendment which protects us from government interference in speech. If I criticize a government official or policy the government is not allowed to retaliate in any way. Yet for some reason.... the private sector can?
Traditionally, the sovereign cannot be sued. He is the law or he is above the law. He can do anything, say anything, and you have no recourse.
Sigh. For "prove" substitute "demonstrate," for "willing," "unwilling."
2) That the respondent knew the statement was false. If you make a false statement, but can show you believed it to be true, that can get you off the hook for libel.
It only goes to the question of malice.
Your belief must be "reasonable." Which more or less boils down to the consensus opinion of the jury.
3) That the statement was made with the intent of causing harm. If you make a false statement as a joke, that's not libel, you have to intend to cause harm.
The law of torts isn't about what you intended to do. It's about accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
You only have to prove "actual malice" if the plaintiff is a public figure -
and the courts seem increasingly willing to cast anyone in that role who is not directly participating in an open - heated - political debate.
If there was, in fact, mold in the apartment then the landlord is done right here.
Not if the mold was the product of her own poor housekeeping.
Not if she failed to notify your landlord of the problem. Not if she failed to give him time enough to solve the problem.
Not that I believe this particular conspiracy theory, but if this was an elected judge rather than an appointed one, it may be possible.
A note on impeachment in the federal system:
Since 1797 the House of Representatives has impeached sixteen federal officials. These include two presidents, a cabinet member, a senator, a justice of the Supreme Court, and eleven federal judges. Of those, the Senate has convicted and removed seven, all of them judges. Not included in this list are the office holders who have resigned rather than face impeachment, most notably, President Richard M. Nixon. Of thirty-five attempts at impeachment, only nine have come to trial. Because it cripples Congress with a lengthy trial, impeachment is infrequent. Many officials, seeing the writing on the wall, resign rather than face the ignominy of a public trial. A Short History of Impeachment
Impeachments of Federal Judges
The first - and I think the only - federal judge to be convicted of bribery was District Judge Robert F. Collins in 1991. Federal judge is first ever convicted of taking bribe
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the role of a trial attorney is to defend the client, not to try to make some wild social statement.
Two guys that will have the judge reaching for some Southern Comfort;
The law professor who thinks he would have made a hotshot trial attorney.
The defendant who also thinks he would have made a hotshot trial attorney.
Then why am I seeing 113 sources for what is unmistakably the same file?
I can't get netflix in my country.
Do you have a postal service?
If you do, you have viable model for starting your own small business.
They often don't have the subtitles for the local launages either. I guess the Zones weren't fine grained enough.
There are eight DVD Region codes and countries. and 136 DVD language codes.
Raiding the neighbor's apple orchard to bake a pie for the church social isn't sharing. It's theft.
So what do you think would happen if I stole a CD from Wal-Mart and they found out about it? They would probably charge me a few hundred dollars
But if WalMart was the publisher, do you think they would forgive the retail value of the copies you distributed to 15,000 of your closest friends on the P2P nets? More likely they would attempt to extract every penny of the judgment from you if it took from now until the day the last trump blows.
The RIAA's "objection" came in the form of a new pool quietly installed in the judge's backyard, more than likely...
If I may be permitted to misquote Isaac Asimov:
Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the incompetent.
It really isn't that hard to understand:
Under American law, the geek with a broadband connection doesn't have the right to a free digital download copy of WALL-E.
Nor does he have the right to upload his screener of the Transformers to 15,000 of his closest friends on the P2P nets.
The geek is cheap and he feeds on the thrill - and that is what lands him in court.
Netflix lists 100,000 DVDs and 2,000 Blu-Ray discs.
For about $15 a month he could build a substantial personal collection which would be of interest to no one so long as it remains within his home network.
Mind you, that's still a five fingered discount, and not Fair Use.
Her response was basically that individuals have no inalienable rights and that the Supreme Court exists to interpret laws as passed by Congress
This is a patently false, legal positivist notion in direct conflict with the US Constitution that has infected the judicial system
The phrase "inalienable rights" belongs to the Declaration of Independence" not the Constitution.
The distinction is between a theory of natural rights and that of a government defined and created by the those it will govern:
"We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...."
There are no inalienable rights in a government by compact. The First Amendment is no more sacrosanct than the Eighteenth - Prohibition.
It can be repealed - and the rules are the same.
It conflicts with John Marshall's interpretation of the Constitution - but an unequivocal grant of judicial review isn't to be found in the text.
And then he drops something the size of a cigarette pack into the drink or into the sand and it's all gone. They need to make sure they buy 2.
Not a problem.
This is a business where a Nikon lens can set you back $5-$10,000, easy - and the $30,000 lens isn't unknown. Sigma Ultra-Telephoto Lens
Do not give Disney your money, they will only use it to steal your culture
Before you mod Plunky's post all the way to -1, consider that The Walt Disney Company was one of the two biggest advocates of the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998
So what?
The studio couldn't stop Rogers and Hammerstein from producing their own musical version of Cinderella.
The geek will damn the industry for its reliance on sequels -
and with his next breath demand the right to strip mine the product for his own derivative works.
If it weren't for Windows' stranglehold, OS design would be probably a decade ahead of where it is now
Linux isn't to be found anywhere on site. But Walmart.com lists 53 desktops and 43 laptops eligible for a free upgrade to Win 7.
The most interesting, perhaps, is a $1300 64 Bit Vista Toshiba Satellite with a 64 GB SSD and 320 GB HDD. 4/8 GB RAM.
[The cheapest Walmart netbook is a $238 Win XP Acer with 512 MB RAM and an 8 GB SSD.]
Win 98 SE was released in May 1999.
I don't know how the consumer OS advances faster than the commodity tech it both advances and supports.
I don't see Linux and OSX as being a decade ahead of Win 7 - despite following their own line of development.
_____
US-based outfit to distribute three million laptops to poor Indian rural kids
There are a few hundred Windows powered ones.
I'd really like to see sources for your numbers here. Because three million Windows XO laptops are being distributed in India:
A movement to get rural poor children learning on the screen using a state of the art laptops has begun in the country.
Every fourth child in the world who needs screen based learning environment is in India.
A US-based non profit organization called One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is planning to distribute three million XO laptops, each costing Rupees 11000, among children entering schools by the end of 2009.
It has already distributed 1000 laptops in 20 schools in UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on an experimental basis.
Its ultimate mission is to ensure that all school children, aged between five and 12, are able to effectively engage with their own personal laptop.
Each XO PC comes with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office pre-loaded, besides many other features.
Satish Jha, President and C.E.O, OLPC India, said the project is funded by a number of sponsor organizations, including AMD, Bright star Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, Microsoft, SES, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat.
Each company has donated two million dollars. Microsoft is contributing through its features that are fitted into the XOs. US-based outfit to distribute three million laptops to poor Indian rural kids [July 10, 2009]
I can't even begin to imagine how this story got over-looked. It's a huge, crushing - decisive - win for Microsoft and Negroponte.
Hopefully everyone else learnt the lesson. If you want to compete with Microsoft/Intel/etc you have to strike quickly.
I've never been quite sure whether Negroponte saw his primary mission as facilitating basic education in the grade school classroom or leading the third world masses into the Promised Land of Linux and FOSS.
The researchers first conducted an online survey of more than 400 Web surfers, to learn what they thought about certificate warnings.
How much credence can you give an online survey?
You could reasonably argue that respondents are a self-selected and overly trusting audience to begin with.
The Standard wasn't simply a brand name - it defined the product. This mattered in the days when gasoline fueled your kitchen stove.
The Standard product was predictable and safe. It was sold, unadulterated, in honest weights and measures.
The consumer price - at the pump or by the barrel was quite good. Operating costs for your Model T were about 1 cent a mile.
The Standard first success was with kerosene - as a lamp oil, adulterated - explosive - kerosene was a much-feared killer.
This is the reason why the stealth startup was invented.
The stealth start-up demands stealth funding - usually from someone on the inside.
OLPC needed at minimum a public commitment from an Asian OEM to design and build the display.
No way that was going to happen without hyping sales prospects into the millions and tens of millions of units.
No way that tech wasn't going to surface later in less charitable-minded projects.
Part of OLPC had always been that the entire software stack could be modified, and that users could learn about it and share ideas to make their own platform better.
The Afghan girl risks her life learning how to read and write.
It is the basics of a grade school education which transform and modernize a society.
In these simple things are the roots of independence, power and survival.
That is where your focus needs to be.
The geek builds a machine that reflects his own needs and values and thinks that he has created something universal.
If they'd just made the widget, put it into production, and focused on the sales, they would have made a difference.
They built the widget. They put it up for sale. Nothing much happened.
Confirmed sales to date about 1.4 million:
Uruguay 300,000
Peru 290,000
Columbia 165,000
Rwanda 100,000
Sales outside the Americas have been pathetic.
G1G1 167,000 [Distributed in seemingly random 3 to 20K clumps. I can't bring myself to take this part of the program seriously.]
Summary of laptop orders
The demand for Windows came from the third world education minister - the guy who is expected to sign the purchase order for 300,000 units.
Sugar was the name for the new learning-oriented graphical interface that OLPC was building, but it was also the name for the entire XO operating system, one tiny part of which was Sugar the GUI
It was one hell of an important part.
OLPC was presented to the third world education minister as a take it or leave it proposition:
The kid friendly hardware, the constructivist philosophy of education and the Sugar UI which was supposed to bring it all together.
To question the UI exposes the fragility of the entire project.
The competition's argument:
"We have a laptop and a software bundle that wouldn't look out of place in the higher grades, the Internet cafe or at work."
"The UI is based on the standard desktop metaphor, which kids tend to pick up very quickly."
"The rest is up to you."
"We aren't going to tell you how your teachers should teach - we aren't going to tell you what they should teach."
I used to really like Slashdot, but the quality of the submissions is really taking an ugly tone. Who do we blame?
I think it comes down to a hard, bitter core of envy and frustration.
Windows runs everything of interest in FOSS. It offers the user an enormous, rock-solid back list of commercial software.
Freeware and shareware are still viable on the PC platform - think of the success of programs like SolSuite on Download.com.
Windows is the smorgasbord. The bazaar.
That's the only meaning of software freedom that will ever be intelligible to the user.
The geek will rant and rage over DRM - but to the consumer all it really means is that he can play protected media content over a super-fast HDMI link to his home theater audio system and HDTV.
Netflix catalogs 100,000 DVD titles, 2,000 in Blu-Ray. Why the hell am I downloading a mediocre DiVX rip over the P2P nets?
WalMart is a lost cause - one of many.
Not one Linux netbook to be had online or in their stores.
53 desktops eligible for a free upgrade to Win 7 - and laptops in proportion. Serious contenders for mass market sales - with hardware that is unquestionably up to the job.
Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle. Microsoft, middle-class value. Linux remains a question mark.