It's fast and comfortable, but it's also a boondoggle and heavily subsidized.
I don't know why people expect a rail system to turn a profit from user fees when the highways do not. (No, gas taxes are insufficient; in total, all user fees cover about half of the cost of the highway system.)
Re:Stock movement != health indicator
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Apple After Jobs
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You're a rare voice of sanity on Slashdot, when it comes to matters of the market. Work in finance?
Eh, New York is fine. It's only two days of testing, and other than that, it's just putting in the time. I'm not worrying about state passage percentages or stuff like that.
Yeah, this firm pre-bar summer plan seems ill-advised. Doing it over, I'd devote the summer to studying, or at least a combined regimen of studying and playing Xbox 360. It's not quite as crazy as it sounds, though -- I work forty hours a week, but it ends this Friday so I can crack the books. Thanks for the pointers to the other Virginia Law Libel show; I'll watch them when I get home tonight.
Anyway, I'm not going to try to keep this post topical -- it's not like anyone else is reading at this point anyway:). It's been a pleasure chatting with you!
Then you're not a lawyer. Don't say you are until you are licensed somewhere. You're relatively safe, because your disclaimer was right next to your claim, but still... that's not something to be even remotely careless about. Of the bar applications I've filled out (I'm licensed a couple of places; didn't fail and I would encourage you not to worry about it and to just do your best and be calm, because the bar exam is designed mainly to stress you into failure and allow past only those who can handle the stress with grace... but I digress), most ask whether your behavior has ever been "called into question" with respect to unauthorized practice of law. That's fairly broad, and it's better to be VERY safe than even a little sorry. Ehh, if you say so. It's hard for me to believe that anyone serious would construe idle posts like this about a matter as academic as this one as practicing law, and I think the disclaimer I included was pretty bullet-proof. It would also take an astonishingly competent C&F committee to link my bar application to my slashdot pseudonym, to the extent that as between the two, I'm rather more likely to believe in the tooth fairy. But I do appreciate the advice, and I think you're right that I should think of another word to describe my supra-lay understanding of the law.
Can you, with a straight face, make an argument that someone who accepts the terms of the GPL, even without privity with the copyright holder if that's possible since that's the person who has to actually grant you the license, creates a form of agreement that has intended third-party beneficiaries under the relevant contract-law doctrine? I can and, as you know from your studies, being able to make an argument with a straight face is all that really matters. Yeah, of course; if nothing else, law school is great at teaching you to keep a straight face as you argue the most outlandish of claims. The problem is that I can also argue, with as straight of a face, that the third-party beneficiary doctrine of contract law does NOT apply to copyright licenses, or that if it does, the doctrine comes with other unpleasant features of contract law such as a lack of statutory damages, a privity requirement, or any of the other features that make contract law inhospitable to the GPL. I'm not entirely convinced that making an argument with a straight face is all that really matters, either; certainly, as against small-time landlords or dot-coms, the plausibility of an argument and the prospect of litigation that can accompany it may be enough to dissuade them from proceeding further, but as against an established company with an incentive to fight, I'm pretty sure that speculation about how an actual court would rule is as or more important. Legal nastygrams to institutional players just aren't as impressive when they essentially threaten to extend the law against the recipient rather than apply it straightforwardly.
Good luck on the bar. Where are you taking it? If you are taking Bar/Bri (or not, but you'll appreciate this more if you are), my advice is not to take yourself any more seriously than this: Virginia Law Libel Show - Bar/Bri. Thanks! New York. I've watched that particular clip many times over the past few weeks, and it gets funnier each time -- though this may be in part because I become increasingly delerious the longer I keep a schedule of firm work during the day and BarBri at night.
Maybe it's also a contract in some cases, but a contract by itself would be inadequate to achieve the ends that the GPL achieves. For example, minors can often rescind contracts due to their infancy. But rescinding the GPL would mean only that you copied the code without a license and are therefore subject to a cause of action for copyright infringement. Similarly, the rules about assessing damages for breach would be difficult to apply to someone who breaks the GPL, since the coder likely expected to make no money off of their open-source code anyway. Different states also have different bodies of contract law, whereas only federal law applies copyright licenses. Contract law also creates privity issues; if A contracts to let B redistribute the code subject to certain conditions, but B redistributes to C in violation of those provisions, then A has a suit for breach against B but no suit against C or anyone who comes after C. If B is judgment proof, this creates a "license laundering" problem. Copyright law has no such privity issues.
It's far from my area of expertise within the law but I'm still a lawyer* with a basic understanding of the limits of contract law.
the license is not a contract. Is there a third-party beneficiary doctrine for license agreements? I've never heard of one, but it's a long way from my area of expertise.
The some of the smartest kids were just as bad as the dumbest kids. Instead of resorting to physical violence they went on verbal diatribes and basically were just being douches. Your overall point is well taken and, I think, absolutely correct, but I have to fight you on these two quoted setences. Being verbally abusive is cruel and immoral, but in general it is not nearly as bad as being physically abusive.
As I assumed the start would be at 00:00 UTC and was looking forward to the massive rush to download it being over and me being able to download it @ 0930 in work.
Instead after much fafing about I finally discover ON THE FORUMS the time is 1000 PST, IT WASN'T EVEN NOTED ON THE FRONT PAGE! Shock and horror! Call these evildoers to account at the Hague; no longer can this callous trampling of your fundamental human rights go unanswered!
PST and EST are standard units. If you're upset that it's hard for you to convert from PST/EST/PDT/EDT to UTC, well, it's just as hard for us to convert from UTC, and there are more of us here.
This is not like the metric/English dichotomy where the metric system is inherently easier because of its coincidence with base 10 counting; both time systems use the same hour-minute-second units and the only practical difference is who gets to call himself the center of the world.
Thanks for confirming that a sticker on your bumper does not reach psychic tentacles around the car, through your window, and into your amygdala to trigger bouts of psychosis. Because of your insight, we now understand that the study says something about the personality of people who affix the stickers, and not the insidious, mind-altering affects of the stickers themselves.
I am guessing that you do this because you feel that you own the road, and don't agree to sharing it with cyclists. Ill admit that you see cyclists doing stupid things sometimes, but nowhere near as stupid as car drivers, and a cyclist isn't likely to ram into you adn kill you. Cyclists are among the worst offenders of traffic laws, in my experience. From running red lights to running stop signs to failing to signal to driving the wrong way on roads to passing cars that are stopped at a red light by driving between the lanes to driving on sidewalks to driving full-speed through crosswalks at busy intersections, I have a hard time thinking of a rule that I do not regularly see cyclists violate with abandon. It's like they think they are beholden neither to car laws nor pedestrian laws but can pick and choose between them from second to second.
I'm good about it, I really am. I give them space, brake as hard as is necessary to avoid collisions, and never engage in mind-games or aggressive tactics. But I'd be lying if I said I never caught myself entertaining some dark fantasies that involve state-of-the-art ragdoll physics.
Not a bad idea. I was once driving 60 in 65 mph limit and on the right most lane, everyone was happy cruising on the other lanes except for one dude who was hell bent on me driving faster; when he brandished his gun it was enough motivation for me to take the next exit. I hope it was also motivation for you to call 911.
It's called reckless driving, and it's against the law. Worse, if you do something with the intent of causing an accident, it could be criminal assault with a deadly weapon. If someone dies, it could be vehicular homicide, negligent homicide, or voluntary manslaughter, depending on the state and what the prosecutors can prove.
The circumstances are few where you can intentionally do something that you know could cause serious injury or death to someone else without being guilty of a serious crime. Even when you plead something like self defense, you're no longer innocent until proven guilty -- you have the burden to prove (by a preponderance of the evidence, typically) that you actually and reasonably believed you were in danger and that your response was proportionate to the threat.
Anyone who sets out to cause injury on the basis of some sort of smartass legal theory is seriously taking his life into his hands.
(Obviously, I'm not your lawyer and this is not legal advice so much as a general observation about states' criminal law.)
In any case, the vision that Kurzweil offers (and other very smart people offer it too, such as Hans Moravec, Vernor Vinge, perhaps Marvin Minsky, and many others â" usually people who strike me as being overgrown teen-age sci-fi addicts, I have to say) is repugnant to me. On the surface it may sound very idealistic and utopian, but deep down I find it extremely selfish and greedy. âoeMe, me, me!â is how it sounds to me â" âoeI want to live forever!â But who knows? I don't even like thinking about this nutty technology-glorifying scenario, now usually called âoeThe Singularityâ (also called by some âoeThe Rapture of the Nerdsâ â" a great phrase!) â" it just gives me the creeps. Sorry! It strikes me that if you replace all the references to a technological singularity with references to the development of cancer therapies or penicillin, he sounds like a total nutjob -- but the logic is the same: humans hate suffering and dying and try to delay or avoid it as much as possible. Technology and human progress IS all about "me me me" -- because what greater purpose is there in the universe than advancing humanity? Seriously, what should we strive for other than the betterment of ourselves and of one another?
While I have a problem with people owning nukes it is due to residual radiation and the overall lack of effective storage and directional ability. What does directional ability have to do with freedom? Aren't nuclear arms still arms? Doesn't the second amendment talk about the right to bear arms? This is a convenient distinction for you, since it allows you to dodge a very uncomfortable result of your logic, but it's not an honest one.
To put it another way, if we came up with nuclear weapons that had no residual radiation, were easy to store safely, and could be aimed, you'd be okay with everyone owning one? Even if it meant that only a single crazy person could destroy a major metropolitan area?
Cars do not cause accidents, guns do not cause murder, pencils do not cause spelling errors and pie does not cause obesity. The actions undertaken with the use of the "tool" is the cause and the perpetrator is to blame, not the devices. If there were no car, there would be carriage accidents. If no gun, there would be knife attacks. If no pencil, then coal would be used to misspell things on cave walls. If no pie, they would simply have to eat cake:). While this is a fair point, it can be taken too far. Surely even the hardest of gun nuts would recognize the absurdity of selling nuclear bombs on the open market, for example. For each tool, there are the benefits of people being able to use it correctly, but there are also the harms of others using it incorrectly or maliciously. It's not enough to say "it's just a tool" and close the debate; the relevant argument is whether the benefits outweigh the harms.
Of course, putting together some sort of RPG given those inputs would be a hell of a challenge.... I don't think you'll see any real collision between the portable gaming and cell phone markets for quite a while, but rather see the two coexist with completely different styles and genres of games. What. Multitouch is like a mouse but better.. At the very least, most kinds of PC games should also work on the iPhone.
Sounds like a reasonable explanation. I'd add that people, for whatever reason, believe that a physical pen-and-paper signature has some sort of legal magic to it that simply writing out "I, [name], agree to be bound by the foregoing" does not. If even the tech-loving crowd here at Slashdot labors under this misapprehension -- as apparently it does -- then the more technophobic mainstream could only be less comfortable with contracts by email.
Chances are that banking laws will make the customer liable and they weren't involved. This is wrong in almost all circumstances, but it's irrelevant to the point, so I won't argue.
It is easy to repudiate a document transitted electronically unless crytographic safeguards are used. No it's not. Subpoenas for your computer, your email provider, my email provider, and my computer will reveal four separate copies of the email kept on four separate systems. If the email was sent in a corporate capacity, there are likely backups as well. Emails are, if anything, an awful lot easier to verify forensically than faxes. And as to the idea of handwriting experts verifying the signatures, well, read Bruce Schneier's article as to how likely THAT will be to succeed.
Finally, I don't know where you get the idea that emailed contracts haven't been tested in court. They have, and they're effective.
I see you don't understand the concept of simplifying something for a lay audience. That would be what I did Except that you wrongified it instead of simplifying it. And, by the way, you ARE a layperson in this debate.
and the concept behind what I wrote is most emphatically true. Not even slightly.
The SoF doesn't protect the signer, it protects the other party from the signer's potential fraud. This is your entire point, isn't it? It's painfully obvious even to laypeople that signing a contract creates an obligation.
And yes, this does shift the burden of proof, though they still have the burden of production to show that the signature (or mark, pedant) is "sufficient to bind the sender". I don't know what website you're reading this crap from, but the burden that matters -- and the one that we were both talking about when you used the phrase identity thief -- is the burden to demonstrate that a particular scribble is actually the alleged signer's signature, which remains on the party suing to enforce the contract. A different rule would be absurd. You were wrong.
And finally, if the other party has shown a writing sufficient to bind you, then either you're going to pay or you're going to find a third-party defendant to indemnify you. Yes, well, showing that the writing is "sufficient to bind you" is actually what we were talking about. You might as well have written "you're liable, given that you're liable."
And finally, what bearing does this have on my original point, why merchants are perfectly willing to take faxed signatures that could well be faked. Because your (incorrect) explanation of WHY merchants were willing to take faxed signatures was that the burden shifted to you, the signer, to prove that it wasn't your signature, and therefore the merchant was protected. That was your argument, and you were wrong.
You don't want to play the "my e-penis is bigger than yours" game with me. Well, the devil on my left shoulder certainly does, since I know my law school is a lot more impressive than your second-tier med school in general, let alone in an argument over the law.
So, why do companies accept easily faked signatures by fax? They have a signature, so you're bound to the agreement. The burden of proof is on you if you want to prove the signature was faked, not them, so they're protected. They'll either get paid by you, or you'll find the identity thief and they'll get paid by him or her. This is wrong on so many levels it's ridiculous. First, a "signature," as I said, can be any number of things; there's no reason to require a pen-and-paper signature to bind you to a contract, which is, of course what the discussion is actually about. Second, the burden of proof is most certainly not on you to prove that any scribble that any schmoe claims is your signature is in fact not. Hopefully you can understand why this would be terrible policy -- and if not, then I'm sure I can come up with a signed, written statement from you saying otherwise. Third, disproving that a signature is yours does not require that you hunt down the identity thief. Fourth, even if you did, there's no reason to think that would mean financial satisfaction for the other party, as the identity thief could be out of the jurisdiction, bankrupt, or otherwise judgment-proof.
I do know what I'm talking about. I wish we could compare our credentials, as I think it would be rather humorous, particularly given your BU email address, but suffice it to say I actually attended a law school, and it was a very good one, and I did very well there.
That's ridiculous. Far more contracts occur online than in writing. Every single purchase from Amazon.com, every single bid on an auction at eBay, and every sale that occurs over craigslist happens without a physical pen-and-paper signature. There is no doubt that these are valid orders.
And it's not all small transactions, either. Amateur and professional traders alike make trades worth vast sums of money online. Even wire transfers, which can be billions of dollars, happen over the phone and online within hours.
The idea that emailed contracts aren't enforceable -- or even that there's reasonable fear of them not being enforceable -- is just plain wrong.
In the US it is a State by State issue. Some States have inacted legislation that provides for faxed documents being legal. The same could be said on an international level.
There are US federal laws and regulations on the issue but there are many and they are usually department of the federal government specific. Again, I'd like to see a cite if you're claiming that ANY state recognizes faxed contracts but not email.
Requiring a signature comes out of the old contract law of the Statute of Frauds, which requires certain contracts (not all) to be in writing, with a signature by the person to be bound to the contract. "Signature" can be any written confirmation that you agree to be bound.
Check it out:
Signature Requirement "Signature" merely means any authentication which identifies the party to be charged. Even a letterhead or an "X" will do, provided it is placed on the wriiting with the intent to authenticate it. (Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Cole 457 A.2d 656, 663 (Conn.,1983).) http://www.west.net/~smith/frauds.htm
Slashdot Mirror
It's fast and comfortable, but it's also a boondoggle and heavily subsidized.
I don't know why people expect a rail system to turn a profit from user fees when the highways do not. (No, gas taxes are insufficient; in total, all user fees cover about half of the cost of the highway system.)
You're a rare voice of sanity on Slashdot, when it comes to matters of the market. Work in finance?
Eh, New York is fine. It's only two days of testing, and other than that, it's just putting in the time. I'm not worrying about state passage percentages or stuff like that.
Yeah, this firm pre-bar summer plan seems ill-advised. Doing it over, I'd devote the summer to studying, or at least a combined regimen of studying and playing Xbox 360. It's not quite as crazy as it sounds, though -- I work forty hours a week, but it ends this Friday so I can crack the books. Thanks for the pointers to the other Virginia Law Libel show; I'll watch them when I get home tonight.
Anyway, I'm not going to try to keep this post topical -- it's not like anyone else is reading at this point anyway :). It's been a pleasure chatting with you!
Maybe it's also a contract in some cases, but a contract by itself would be inadequate to achieve the ends that the GPL achieves. For example, minors can often rescind contracts due to their infancy. But rescinding the GPL would mean only that you copied the code without a license and are therefore subject to a cause of action for copyright infringement. Similarly, the rules about assessing damages for breach would be difficult to apply to someone who breaks the GPL, since the coder likely expected to make no money off of their open-source code anyway. Different states also have different bodies of contract law, whereas only federal law applies copyright licenses. Contract law also creates privity issues; if A contracts to let B redistribute the code subject to certain conditions, but B redistributes to C in violation of those provisions, then A has a suit for breach against B but no suit against C or anyone who comes after C. If B is judgment proof, this creates a "license laundering" problem. Copyright law has no such privity issues.
It's far from my area of expertise within the law but I'm still a lawyer* with a basic understanding of the limits of contract law.
* Just graduated; haven't taken the bar yet.
the license is not a contract. Is there a third-party beneficiary doctrine for license agreements? I've never heard of one, but it's a long way from my area of expertise.
Just because you can use the content doesn't mean you can use the name. Go after them for trademark infringement and take all their earth moneys.
Instead after much fafing about I finally discover ON THE FORUMS the time is 1000 PST, IT WASN'T EVEN NOTED ON THE FRONT PAGE! Shock and horror! Call these evildoers to account at the Hague; no longer can this callous trampling of your fundamental human rights go unanswered!
PST and EST are standard units. If you're upset that it's hard for you to convert from PST/EST/PDT/EDT to UTC, well, it's just as hard for us to convert from UTC, and there are more of us here.
This is not like the metric/English dichotomy where the metric system is inherently easier because of its coincidence with base 10 counting; both time systems use the same hour-minute-second units and the only practical difference is who gets to call himself the center of the world.
Thanks for confirming that a sticker on your bumper does not reach psychic tentacles around the car, through your window, and into your amygdala to trigger bouts of psychosis. Because of your insight, we now understand that the study says something about the personality of people who affix the stickers, and not the insidious, mind-altering affects of the stickers themselves.
I'm good about it, I really am. I give them space, brake as hard as is necessary to avoid collisions, and never engage in mind-games or aggressive tactics. But I'd be lying if I said I never caught myself entertaining some dark fantasies that involve state-of-the-art ragdoll physics.
The circumstances are few where you can intentionally do something that you know could cause serious injury or death to someone else without being guilty of a serious crime. Even when you plead something like self defense, you're no longer innocent until proven guilty -- you have the burden to prove (by a preponderance of the evidence, typically) that you actually and reasonably believed you were in danger and that your response was proportionate to the threat.
Anyone who sets out to cause injury on the basis of some sort of smartass legal theory is seriously taking his life into his hands.
(Obviously, I'm not your lawyer and this is not legal advice so much as a general observation about states' criminal law.)
To put it another way, if we came up with nuclear weapons that had no residual radiation, were easy to store safely, and could be aimed, you'd be okay with everyone owning one? Even if it meant that only a single crazy person could destroy a major metropolitan area?
You're nuts.
I don't think you'll see any real collision between the portable gaming and cell phone markets for quite a while, but rather see the two coexist with completely different styles and genres of games. What. Multitouch is like a mouse but better.. At the very least, most kinds of PC games should also work on the iPhone.
Sounds like a reasonable explanation. I'd add that people, for whatever reason, believe that a physical pen-and-paper signature has some sort of legal magic to it that simply writing out "I, [name], agree to be bound by the foregoing" does not. If even the tech-loving crowd here at Slashdot labors under this misapprehension -- as apparently it does -- then the more technophobic mainstream could only be less comfortable with contracts by email.
Finally, I don't know where you get the idea that emailed contracts haven't been tested in court. They have, and they're effective.
I do know what I'm talking about. I wish we could compare our credentials, as I think it would be rather humorous, particularly given your BU email address, but suffice it to say I actually attended a law school, and it was a very good one, and I did very well there.
That's ridiculous. Far more contracts occur online than in writing. Every single purchase from Amazon.com, every single bid on an auction at eBay, and every sale that occurs over craigslist happens without a physical pen-and-paper signature. There is no doubt that these are valid orders.
And it's not all small transactions, either. Amateur and professional traders alike make trades worth vast sums of money online. Even wire transfers, which can be billions of dollars, happen over the phone and online within hours.
The idea that emailed contracts aren't enforceable -- or even that there's reasonable fear of them not being enforceable -- is just plain wrong.
There are US federal laws and regulations on the issue but there are many and they are usually department of the federal government specific. Again, I'd like to see a cite if you're claiming that ANY state recognizes faxed contracts but not email.
Check it out: Signature Requirement
"Signature" merely means any authentication which identifies the party to be charged. Even a letterhead or an "X" will do, provided it is placed on the wriiting with the intent to authenticate it. (Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Cole 457 A.2d 656, 663 (Conn.,1983).) http://www.west.net/~smith/frauds.htm