All they had to do was find 12 citizens just like themselves.
The federal jury is essentially creation of the federal courts.
You do not get to handcraft your own:
In civil cases, each party shall be entitled to three peremptory challenges.... All challenges for cause or favor, whether to the array or panel or to individual jurors, shall be determined by the court. 1870. Challenges
The federal juror is 18 or over, a US citizen resident in the district for at least one year, writes and speaks English with reasonable proficiency and is physically and mentally fit for service. 1865. Qualifications for jury service
You could make a persuasive case for the geek being the idiot in court - to the despair of his consul and the joy of his opponent -
and the most common mistake he is likely to make is to show contempt for the jury.
No doubt there will now have to be a third trial, and no doubt the unreasonableness of the verdict will lend support to those arguing that the RIAA's statutory damages theory is unconstitutional.
The plaintiff has taken this case twice to a jury on essentially the same set of facts - and each time the defendant has been pounded into the ground.
It is no longer a theory when statutory damages are written into the law.
The trial court or the court of appeal can reduce the damages without ever touching the constitutional question. The chances that the case will reach any higher are about the same as winning the weekly Jackpot Lotto.
that would start treating Internet providers like a utility and stop the use of caps
The regulated utility isn't required to deliver unlimited gas, electric, and water service to your home - without regard to cost or competing demands on its resources.
In RIAA:s case everyone is guilty until proven innocent in the supreme court.
This is not "Insightful." It is just plain stupid.
There is no such thing as a verdict of guilt or innocence in a civil trial. There is simply a finding of fact for the plaintiff or the defendant.
The plaintiff claims that he has been injured. The defendant makes his response. That is all there is to it, really.
The court of appeal does not retry the facts. It wasn't there to judge your credibility. If the jury thinks you are a lying bastard and crooked as a dog's hind leg - well, that is their decision to make.
The court of appeal only decides matters of law. The Supreme Court only decides questions of national and constitutional significance. That is a freedom the state court of appeal does not have.
For the geek it is an uphill slog.
That the RIAA has your IP address is not conclusive proof that you uploaded an infringing file.
But in a civil trial the RIAA only has to persuade the jury that this - more likely than not - is what happened.
The geek also knows that this is probably what happened.
That puts him two strikes down when he asks the Supremes to declare that - as a matter of law - an IP address is not good enough evidence to support the verdict.
It would surely have amused - but not surprised - Orwell to hear cries of "Thoughtcrime!" raised when a real crime is being prosecuted.
I'd wager that is actually Microsofts main intended user, not individuals/concerned parents. Microsoft: the only halfway innovative technologies they ever come up with are tools of repression.
This is just too much.
But you got it half right.
If you want to control the user, you don't begin with the client, you begin with the server.
The network. The backbone.
That is why the administrator is universally despised.
But on which side of the equation will you usually find the geek - and *NIX?
Why would they do that when they could just make it an "urgent system security update" in the first place?
Windows Update presents a concise and intelligible explanation of the updates ready to be downloaded or ready to be installed - with a link to more detailed information.
There is a clear separation of priority updates from the rest.
You are not presented with a half dozen or so check boxes to install Chrome, Safari, OpenOffice, etc., etc., etc.
I must say, a federal government agency actually worked; albeit to the tune of two billion dollars.
The spectrum sale was quite successful from the government's point of view.
The migration to digital frees a lot of space for other uses - and the geek - the techie - directly and indirectly is quite obviously one of the prime beneficiaries.
Since he rarely admits to ever watching broadcast TV - I am not quite sure what he is complaining about.
That's the crazy amount of damage Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Real and the MPEG4 LA have collectively wreaked on the web at large.
You can't stop these guys.
Napster. Amazon, Hulu, MySpace, Twitter - something new - something corporate - it has happened before. It will happen again.
And to perfectly blunt, the damage they cause is mostly to the geek's bruised ego - he can't let go the thought that the Internet was once his private playground.
The geek places his bets on Dirac - while Flash becomes the de facto standard for video.
The entrepreneur takes the hyper-sonic out of L.A. He can afford it - and he doesn't give a damn about political correctness.
The standards committee the bone-breaker local from Hampstead.
The standards committee is riven by ideological, economic, corporate and nationalist rivalries. It tends to codify existing practice. It tries to please everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
All they had to do was find 12 citizens just like themselves.
The federal jury is essentially creation of the federal courts.
You do not get to handcraft your own:
In civil cases, each party shall be entitled to three peremptory challenges. ... All challenges for cause or favor, whether to the array or panel or to individual jurors, shall be determined by the court. 1870. Challenges
The federal juror is 18 or over, a US citizen resident in the district for at least one year, writes and speaks English with reasonable proficiency and is physically and mentally fit for service. 1865. Qualifications for jury service
You could make a persuasive case for the geek being the idiot in court - to the despair of his consul and the joy of his opponent -
and the most common mistake he is likely to make is to show contempt for the jury.
No doubt there will now have to be a third trial, and no doubt the unreasonableness of the verdict will lend support to those arguing that the RIAA's statutory damages theory is unconstitutional.
The plaintiff has taken this case twice to a jury on essentially the same set of facts - and each time the defendant has been pounded into the ground.
It is no longer a theory when statutory damages are written into the law.
The trial court or the court of appeal can reduce the damages without ever touching the constitutional question. The chances that the case will reach any higher are about the same as winning the weekly Jackpot Lotto.
that would start treating Internet providers like a utility and stop the use of caps
The regulated utility isn't required to deliver unlimited gas, electric, and water service to your home - without regard to cost or competing demands on its resources.
If I download the same CD online I'll get slammed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
You stole one disk from WalMart, retail value $20.
You uploaded one disk to 15,000,000 of your closest friends on the P2P nets. Retail value $1 a track through iTunes.
You did it for the bragging rights or the meet some arbritrary upload/download ratio on your P2P net.
Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. ain't gonna cut it.
The goods have to be factory-fresh.
If you think it worth arguing that the download isn't still in your shared files folder, go ahead.
But, if you benefit from a crime, you share responsibility for the damages which flow from that crime.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
In RIAA:s case everyone is guilty until proven innocent in the supreme court.
This is not "Insightful." It is just plain stupid.
There is no such thing as a verdict of guilt or innocence in a civil trial. There is simply a finding of fact for the plaintiff or the defendant.
The plaintiff claims that he has been injured. The defendant makes his response. That is all there is to it, really.
The court of appeal does not retry the facts. It wasn't there to judge your credibility. If the jury thinks you are a lying bastard and crooked as a dog's hind leg - well, that is their decision to make.
The court of appeal only decides matters of law. The Supreme Court only decides questions of national and constitutional significance. That is a freedom the state court of appeal does not have.
For the geek it is an uphill slog.
That the RIAA has your IP address is not conclusive proof that you uploaded an infringing file.
But in a civil trial the RIAA only has to persuade the jury that this - more likely than not - is what happened.
The geek also knows that this is probably what happened.
That puts him two strikes down when he asks the Supremes to declare that - as a matter of law - an IP address is not good enough evidence to support the verdict.
If she is innocent until proven guilty - why does she have to give up her hard-drive and "prove" her innocence? Nobody is forced to prove innocence
There is no such thing as a verdict of guilt or innocence in a civil trial. There is a finding of fact for the plaintiff or the defendant.
The jury is simply being asked to decide whose version of the events is more likely to be true.
Not most likely. Not certain.
This is why the geek's lovingly handcrafted but increasingly implausible technical arguments go down for the count.
The hard drive is evidence.
The general rule in any trial is that all relevant evidence should be brought out into the open for everyone to see.
If you have been keeping two sets of books, the plaintiff and the jury gets to look at both.
If you have been caught substituting A for B then the jury is permitted to draw the obvious conclusion.
The granting of a new trial doesn't really mean that you get a clean slate - every lie you told - every blunder you made - conveniently forgotten.
John Carmack!
Carmark can design a great game engine. But it's been a while since iD has released a great game.
I don't mean this to be smug or smartass
This works only if your core business apps are available for OSX.
But I have to ask why it makes sense to leave the door wide open to the installation of any random piece of software.
If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.
But isn't this simply another way of saying that it's the guy paying the bills who gets to make the big decisions?
Flash is everywhere and the tools are mature.
Silverlight in Beta has about a forty per-cent share. To the user, having to download these plug-ins doesn't even register as a speed bump.
Whether it makes sense to shoehorn everything into a "standard" browser design strikes me as a question worth asking.
The geek may call them "walled gardens." I tend to think of them as islands.
Distinct communities.
Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, The Sims and so on.
I have a strong suspicion that as these communities evolve they are going to want - and they are going to choose - the tools that work best for them -
whether the geek likes it or not.
What a way to get into the hearts and hands of millions of users worldwide!
An adolescent obsession with porn seems to be one of the defining qualities of the geek.
Playing against the stereotype can be very profitable. Case in point: The Wii and the hard-core gamer.
It would surely have amused - but not surprised - Orwell to hear cries of "Thoughtcrime!" raised when a real crime is being prosecuted.
I'd wager that is actually Microsofts main intended user, not individuals/concerned parents. Microsoft: the only halfway innovative technologies they ever come up with are tools of repression.
This is just too much.
But you got it half right.
If you want to control the user, you don't begin with the client, you begin with the server.
The network. The backbone.
That is why the administrator is universally despised.
But on which side of the equation will you usually find the geek - and *NIX?
I bought the this USB sound system - the first of its kind -on close-out. It was the perfect choice for a small apartment.
Frankly I don't think most Apple users are up to that sort of
thing.
The easily serviced - but hernia-inducing - tower case is on the fast track to extinction.
The average Mac or Windows was never much inclined to crack it open anyway.
The standards committee moves at the pace of the GNU Hurd.
It is typically riven by corporate, nationalist and ideological rivalries.
It tries to please everyone - which means that it tends to codify existing standards and practices.
Did I mention that the committee moves very slowly?
The entrepreneur knows how to push the bounds, how get it in gear - and once up to speed you can't stop him.
Engineers need the challenge of having other people improve upon their ideas.
Of course, they do.
That is why patents are public records.
But you don't need a "standard" to make that happen.
You only need a working example - something that inspires others to come up with something better.
The "standard" too easily becomes the excuse for the second-rate, the pedantic, the uninspired.
Oh please, Project Natal didn't take off years ago when it was called EyeToy, what makes you think it'll take off now ?
The E3 Project Natal - Milo Demo with Peter Molyneux is pretty damned impressive.
Why would they do that when they could just make it an "urgent system security update" in the first place?
Windows Update presents a concise and intelligible explanation of the updates ready to be downloaded or ready to be installed - with a link to more detailed information.
There is a clear separation of priority updates from the rest.
You are not presented with a half dozen or so check boxes to install Chrome, Safari, OpenOffice, etc., etc., etc.
there was really no significant difference between picture quality between VHS and Beta on the average TV of the day
You had RF input only. No comb filtering.
Resolution around, what, 330 lines? Not much changed since the B&W demos at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
It's a "loser mentality" that tries to protect the notebook market that's already in "race to the bottom" mode.
I seem to recall the geek saying that Linux had a lock on the netboook market.
Until XP and the Atom started kicking butt.
How about - this time - we wait and see how well the next generation "mini laptop" sells.
In a deep recession the market for the $99 gadget - the Blue Light special on Aisle 3 - often just dies.
Any chance we can blame Slashdot for VHS too?
Extended play trumped video quality.
It was "good enough."
That has always been the geek's first line of defense for the second-rate.
This case seems like the exact type of case the RIAA avoids like the plague.
Why should they?
They won the first round.
The defendant came gift-wrapped to the stand for cross-examination.
If you were the plaintiff's attorney, every word, every gesture - coined pure gold.
The plaintiff only needs only enough evidence to come in for the jury to belive their side of the story.
The plaintiff has a much simpler story to tell - and simpler usually wins.
But, when lawyers can't be tech savvy, why can't they hire tech people to explain to them where the (technical) holes in suits lie?
The civil jury simply weighs the probabilites.
It is never enough to argue that anything is possible.
The geek has to persuade the jury that his explanation is more beliveable than the plaintiff's.
The geek thinks of himself as the smartest guy in the room - and, man, does it show!
He is two strikes down before he even comes to bat.
The geek constructs overly-complex and increasingly fanciful scenarios that display a certain perverted ingenuity -
but come across as sun-baked bullshit in court.
Trials are always about people. Square pegs in round holes. The jury will belive your defense only if it consistent with who and what you are.
I must say, a federal government agency actually worked; albeit to the tune of two billion dollars.
The spectrum sale was quite successful from the government's point of view.
The migration to digital frees a lot of space for other uses - and the geek - the techie - directly and indirectly is quite obviously one of the prime beneficiaries.
Since he rarely admits to ever watching broadcast TV - I am not quite sure what he is complaining about.
Isn't the whole idea of a good spy not to make the targets feel like they're being watched?
Actually, it can be quite productive to rattle the chains now and then. People make mistakes when they are spooked.
As long as we don't feel like we're being watched, everything's all right then.
There are times and places when no one really objects much to being watched - but will object to an show of force.
The blimp floating lazily overhead just isn't that intimidating.
The only bad guys they catch will be the ones up in the nosebleed section sitting alone with their girlfriends...
I believe the scenario is Alfred Hitchcock's:
The crowd at a tennis match is following the action.
Back and forth, back and forth, their heads and bodies constantly on the move, bobbing, twisting, in unison with the play.
All but one....
The killer is in the crowd, but he is not truly part of the crowd, and that is a subtle and important distinction.
It can be a useful - practical - distinction.
Something you can see, something you can act on.
That's the crazy amount of damage Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Real and the MPEG4 LA have collectively wreaked on the web at large.
You can't stop these guys.
Napster. Amazon, Hulu, MySpace, Twitter - something new - something corporate - it has happened before. It will happen again.
And to perfectly blunt, the damage they cause is mostly to the geek's bruised ego - he can't let go the thought that the Internet was once his private playground.
The geek places his bets on Dirac -
while Flash becomes the de facto standard for video.
The entrepreneur takes the hyper-sonic out of L.A. He can afford it - and he doesn't give a damn about political correctness.
The standards committee the bone-breaker local from Hampstead.
The standards committee is riven by ideological, economic, corporate and nationalist rivalries. It tends to codify existing practice. It tries to please everyone.
Much is left open to interpretation.
It achieves too little and moves too late.