She and her lawyer, Jordan Glass, have signed and submitted a stipulation to dismiss with prejudice the case lodged against her by the RIAA
This means that her lawyer filed a motion to dismiss, which is a common practice. Federal judges often issue threats of sorts at parties which are dragging at the process, often ones for dismissal or default, which they are legally allowed to apply at their discretion in situations like this. So at minimum, the judge now has to decide whether to dismiss, the timetable of which is within her prejudice. If they lose, the RIAA will have 30 days to file notice of appeal. So this filing is complete non-news, because nothing outside of that docket has changed in this world as a result. Anybody not intimately familiar with the case and the judge's record who is trying to predict the the decision is completely off their rocker. Seriously, have Sundays become so bad around here that a sensationalist non-story from an overtly partisan website makes the front page?
You are not a troll for thinking the NYTimes are boneheads. However, you ARE a troll for not realizing that you could replace every instance of NYTimes in your statement with the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, SF Chronicle, or just about any mass media outlet. I certainly hope you do not hold any of the major media outlets in any particular significance above any other, they are all equally bad.
You are absolutely, one-hundred percent wrong. Class action lawsuits in the United States are the most sane and civil form of business-consumer conflict resolution this world has ever seen, and are in fact the only way in this country for consumers to get justice against unsavory businesses. If you knew anything in detail about class action lawsuits, there is no way you would ever espouse the opinion you do, period. The only way you could be under this perception is that you have been reading about nothing more than high-profile lawsuits, from Big Media no less, which are geared solely towards sensationalism, not facts.
Or perhaps the next time a Dell laptop battery explodes on your lap, you'll call a plumber to fight for your compensation.
I may get myself into so much debt and other trouble that I wind up being used by some foreign spy group
Actually, if your personal debt is high enough, you cannot get security clearance from the government. This is actually a significant problem in the US armed forces currently, as many servicemen take out "payday loans", and some are so far in debt that they do not have security clearance to go to Iraq.
Isn't the point of the Roomba that it doesn't need control?
Although I suppose it would be really useful if you added a servo arm, and could use the contraption to get yourself a beer without leaving your chair.
Right now, the Nintendo Wii is wooing the very people who have for so long opposed video games, on whatever grounds. Soccer moms around the country are picking up Wii-motes, playing the games, and having incredible amounts of fun. Along with dad, grandpa, and grandma.
I have a friend whose retirement-age parents, who have never touched a video game before, were introduced to the Wii - and four hours later, it was my friend who had to call it quits because they tired him out. Soon the video game market will reach far beyond the young-single-male demographic and into the general population, at which point people will figure out that video games are no more or less harmful than movies, or even books. People may just finally realize that perhaps if they won't take 6 year old Johnny to see Silence of the Lambs, they probably shouldn't let him play Resident Evil either.
It won't be very long before the anti-video game nuts fade into oblivion.
There are several companies out there which specialize in Document Imaging Software, specifically for searchable archive purposes. The primary problem is simply the manpower to write the number of conversion filters necessary to import external data formats into the database's internal format; the storage and search/retrieval problems are mostly solved already.
Disclaimer: I used to be an engineering intern at Laserfiche
To be ruled against for libel, it has to be proven that what you said was (a) factually untrue and (b) significantly damaging. The first requirement is as objective as it can get, the second not so much. The illegality of libel has about the same scale of censorship to it as the illegality of yelling FIRE in a crowded movie theater - yes, it may prevent somebody from excersising their speech, but it is not the type of speech which was intended to be protected by the First Amendment, and actually protecting them with the First Amendment would prove to be a detriment to society.
The idea is that you do have freedom of speech, but that does not absolve you of responsibility for what you say.
Any form of censoring inherently violates the right to free speech, for the simple reason that it is impossible to objectively define universally acceptable standards for censoring.
For example, take something which we, for the most part, can equally identify: Pornography. Now define it. If you're reaching for a dictionary, note that it will use the word "obscene" or somesuch - a subjective, qualitative adjective. To make the impossible even harder on yourself, try to come up with a strict definition that would clearly differentiate pornography from nude art. You can't.
There is a reason that former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart came up with the famous case-law definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it." I cannot think of a more ambiguous definition for something which we know so well, and if we can't even come up with a suitable definition for something so clear as pornography, how ever could we come up with a clear definition for anything else?
This should not surprise anybody, for the following reasons:
1) The SAT writing section gives a student only the opportunity to write a first draft.
2) The SAT writing section is almost always on an incredibly boring and uninspired topic, because the subject of the essay must be as equally accessible to all test-takers as possible. It's also quite obvious that it is hard to write well on a subject you could not care less about. The intersection of good writers and those interested in the topic has to be miniscule, if nonexistant.
3) The SAT writing section is graded based on grammatical correctness and the logical ordering of ideas. It takes no account of whether those ideas make canonical sense, only that they were ordered in a consistent and logical manner.
The SAT writing section can not gauge anything besides one's ability to write in the style of the MLA.
It's been said a million times, but I'll say it again: The SAT score only measures one's ability to take the SAT.
Disclosure: I am a recent college grad who did very well on the SATs.
A professor from my alma mater has been doing this for years - recording his lectures, then posting them to his website, on department servers. For free.
If you want a refresher course in Intro to CS, check this out. Disclaimer: I've never actually had this professor. . .
Rap/Hip-hop music too is often about an image - the clothes, the cars, the attitude, etc. - and not about the quality of the music.
I hope you know that the type of rap and hip-hop you talk about here is the kind which is foisted upon the airwaves by the recording industry, put on by the likes of 50 Cent, Chingy, etc. I used to dislike this genre myself for this reason.
Then a friend turned me on to good hip-hop. Like Common, Hieroglyphics, and Mos Def to name a few, real hip-hip artists who you rarely hear about through the mass publicity of the RIAA. These artists use intelligent beats and mixes combined with intelligent lyrics, often philosophical, and are actually a counterforce to the mass-market version of the genre - Common and Mos Def actually have lyrics about their college educations. If you want a nice starting point, I recommend Like Water for Chocolate or Be by Common, or Black for the First Time by Mos Def.
Anybody else greatly reminded of the Warning feature on AIM?
No, people aren't going to screw around with this at all, everybody will be fair and sensible and only use it when justified.
While I am in agreement with you that the Blaster variant creator should have to do the time, there are several problems with your argument:
1) We live in a democracy here in the US, with an independent judiciary. The basic purposes of an independent judiciary dates back to Locke and Voltaire, writers fresh in the minds of the Constitution's Framers. The purpose in point is that revenge is an unacceptable goal in punishment - this is why the victim does not dictate penalties. The purpose of incarceration is to a) protect society and b) force the perpetrator to think about his/her actions.
2) India is not at war with the Tamils. Sri Lanka, an independent island nation, is at war with Sri Lankan Tamil rebels. Indian Tamils, from the province of Tamil-Nadu, are not at war with the Indian government.
3) India has never sought revenge against Pakistan (they have never crossed the border), and that is probably the reason the two nations have not gone to nuclear war.
For all the lawyer bashing that goes on here, I'm surprised nobody bashes the insurance companies. Their normal behavior is far worse than that of any half-decent lawyer, and this is just another example.
The Supreme Court, constitutionally, actually has the least power delegated to it. It was fairly weak until the concept of "judicial review" was established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. In that case, the court found that a writ of mandamus, established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, was unconstitutional under Article III of the constitution. Since nobody challenged the court's declaring of a legislative act unconstitutional, it was held that they were allowed to do so, thus establishing said concept as doctrine. Do not confuse long-standing case law with the Constitution, they are far different things.
Google the case, you'll find oodles of information.
Also, around the mid 20th century (I forget when this took effect or any specifics), the court also changed its rules on standing (the right a person has to bring a case to court). Previously, it was a very narrow standard - the damages had to be real and specific to the plaintiff. The court expanded its power by broadening the rules on standing - this is what allows groups like the Sierra Club to bring suit against industry over environmental issues, despite not having any real damages to themselves.
But did anybody else notice the ad from Microsoft saying Windows Server 2003 outperforms Redhat? And then looked an inch lower to see it was on Slashdot's homepage?
Do you realize that doing this is probably a customs violation, unless you declare the purchase upon your return and pay the tax? At least, that's how it works when returning to the US, although many people don't declare these purchases. Whether it is moral to tax such things, that's another debate.
Slashdot Mirror
They would be ripping off Brown students. You know, the largest playable Tetris game in the western hemisphere. Oh yeah, and it ran on Linux. :-P
----
Brown is the color of poo. - Chris
Yes, yes it is. - Brian
She and her lawyer, Jordan Glass, have signed and submitted a stipulation to dismiss with prejudice the case lodged against her by the RIAA
This means that her lawyer filed a motion to dismiss, which is a common practice. Federal judges often issue threats of sorts at parties which are dragging at the process, often ones for dismissal or default, which they are legally allowed to apply at their discretion in situations like this. So at minimum, the judge now has to decide whether to dismiss, the timetable of which is within her prejudice. If they lose, the RIAA will have 30 days to file notice of appeal. So this filing is complete non-news, because nothing outside of that docket has changed in this world as a result. Anybody not intimately familiar with the case and the judge's record who is trying to predict the the decision is completely off their rocker. Seriously, have Sundays become so bad around here that a sensationalist non-story from an overtly partisan website makes the front page?
---
Rabble rabble rabble
You are not a troll for thinking the NYTimes are boneheads. However, you ARE a troll for not realizing that you could replace every instance of NYTimes in your statement with the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, SF Chronicle, or just about any mass media outlet. I certainly hope you do not hold any of the major media outlets in any particular significance above any other, they are all equally bad.
You are absolutely, one-hundred percent wrong. Class action lawsuits in the United States are the most sane and civil form of business-consumer conflict resolution this world has ever seen, and are in fact the only way in this country for consumers to get justice against unsavory businesses. If you knew anything in detail about class action lawsuits, there is no way you would ever espouse the opinion you do, period. The only way you could be under this perception is that you have been reading about nothing more than high-profile lawsuits, from Big Media no less, which are geared solely towards sensationalism, not facts.
Or perhaps the next time a Dell laptop battery explodes on your lap, you'll call a plumber to fight for your compensation.
Blacklists Google you!
I may get myself into so much debt and other trouble that I wind up being used by some foreign spy group
Actually, if your personal debt is high enough, you cannot get security clearance from the government. This is actually a significant problem in the US armed forces currently, as many servicemen take out "payday loans", and some are so far in debt that they do not have security clearance to go to Iraq.
An anonymous reader writes
ZDNet's Paul Murphy
Anybody else have the feeling that the submitter is actually Paul Murphy?
Seems like Zonk has broken into the New Years champagne a bit early, and the standard for front-page stories went from infinitesimal to nil.
Isn't the point of the Roomba that it doesn't need control?
Although I suppose it would be really useful if you added a servo arm, and could use the contraption to get yourself a beer without leaving your chair.
Right now, the Nintendo Wii is wooing the very people who have for so long opposed video games, on whatever grounds. Soccer moms around the country are picking up Wii-motes, playing the games, and having incredible amounts of fun. Along with dad, grandpa, and grandma.
I have a friend whose retirement-age parents, who have never touched a video game before, were introduced to the Wii - and four hours later, it was my friend who had to call it quits because they tired him out. Soon the video game market will reach far beyond the young-single-male demographic and into the general population, at which point people will figure out that video games are no more or less harmful than movies, or even books. People may just finally realize that perhaps if they won't take 6 year old Johnny to see Silence of the Lambs, they probably shouldn't let him play Resident Evil either.
It won't be very long before the anti-video game nuts fade into oblivion.
It would be refreshing to see the New York Times discover the FSF, opensource.org, EFF, and other sources of computing expertise.
Somebody needed to try out the search engine on their front page.
Be warned that this is all highly subjective and biased opinion.
On Slashdot? Never. . .
There are several companies out there which specialize in Document Imaging Software, specifically for searchable archive purposes. The primary problem is simply the manpower to write the number of conversion filters necessary to import external data formats into the database's internal format; the storage and search/retrieval problems are mostly solved already.
Disclaimer: I used to be an engineering intern at Laserfiche
To be ruled against for libel, it has to be proven that what you said was (a) factually untrue and (b) significantly damaging. The first requirement is as objective as it can get, the second not so much. The illegality of libel has about the same scale of censorship to it as the illegality of yelling FIRE in a crowded movie theater - yes, it may prevent somebody from excersising their speech, but it is not the type of speech which was intended to be protected by the First Amendment, and actually protecting them with the First Amendment would prove to be a detriment to society. The idea is that you do have freedom of speech, but that does not absolve you of responsibility for what you say.
Any form of censoring inherently violates the right to free speech, for the simple reason that it is impossible to objectively define universally acceptable standards for censoring.
For example, take something which we, for the most part, can equally identify: Pornography. Now define it. If you're reaching for a dictionary, note that it will use the word "obscene" or somesuch - a subjective, qualitative adjective. To make the impossible even harder on yourself, try to come up with a strict definition that would clearly differentiate pornography from nude art. You can't.
There is a reason that former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart came up with the famous case-law definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it." I cannot think of a more ambiguous definition for something which we know so well, and if we can't even come up with a suitable definition for something so clear as pornography, how ever could we come up with a clear definition for anything else?
This should not surprise anybody, for the following reasons:
1) The SAT writing section gives a student only the opportunity to write a first draft.
2) The SAT writing section is almost always on an incredibly boring and uninspired topic, because the subject of the essay must be as equally accessible to all test-takers as possible. It's also quite obvious that it is hard to write well on a subject you could not care less about. The intersection of good writers and those interested in the topic has to be miniscule, if nonexistant.
3) The SAT writing section is graded based on grammatical correctness and the logical ordering of ideas. It takes no account of whether those ideas make canonical sense, only that they were ordered in a consistent and logical manner.
The SAT writing section can not gauge anything besides one's ability to write in the style of the MLA.
It's been said a million times, but I'll say it again: The SAT score only measures one's ability to take the SAT.
Disclosure: I am a recent college grad who did very well on the SATs.
A professor from my alma mater has been doing this for years - recording his lectures, then posting them to his website, on department servers. For free.
If you want a refresher course in Intro to CS, check this out. Disclaimer: I've never actually had this professor. . .
Rap/Hip-hop music too is often about an image - the clothes, the cars, the attitude, etc. - and not about the quality of the music.
I hope you know that the type of rap and hip-hop you talk about here is the kind which is foisted upon the airwaves by the recording industry, put on by the likes of 50 Cent, Chingy, etc. I used to dislike this genre myself for this reason.
Then a friend turned me on to good hip-hop. Like Common, Hieroglyphics, and Mos Def to name a few, real hip-hip artists who you rarely hear about through the mass publicity of the RIAA. These artists use intelligent beats and mixes combined with intelligent lyrics, often philosophical, and are actually a counterforce to the mass-market version of the genre - Common and Mos Def actually have lyrics about their college educations. If you want a nice starting point, I recommend Like Water for Chocolate or Be by Common, or Black for the First Time by Mos Def.
If they've done a 360, doesn't that mean they're still facing the same direction? Ahh, I love it when the math-tards use geometry analogies.
Anybody else greatly reminded of the Warning feature on AIM? No, people aren't going to screw around with this at all, everybody will be fair and sensible and only use it when justified.
Doors that swish open when you walk towards them
Haven't you been to a supermarket lately?
While I am in agreement with you that the Blaster variant creator should have to do the time, there are several problems with your argument:
1) We live in a democracy here in the US, with an independent judiciary. The basic purposes of an independent judiciary dates back to Locke and Voltaire, writers fresh in the minds of the Constitution's Framers. The purpose in point is that revenge is an unacceptable goal in punishment - this is why the victim does not dictate penalties. The purpose of incarceration is to a) protect society and b) force the perpetrator to think about his/her actions.
2) India is not at war with the Tamils. Sri Lanka, an independent island nation, is at war with Sri Lankan Tamil rebels. Indian Tamils, from the province of Tamil-Nadu, are not at war with the Indian government.
3) India has never sought revenge against Pakistan (they have never crossed the border), and that is probably the reason the two nations have not gone to nuclear war.
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
For all the lawyer bashing that goes on here, I'm surprised nobody bashes the insurance companies. Their normal behavior is far worse than that of any half-decent lawyer, and this is just another example.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
The Supreme Court, constitutionally, actually has the least power delegated to it. It was fairly weak until the concept of "judicial review" was established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. In that case, the court found that a writ of mandamus, established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, was unconstitutional under Article III of the constitution. Since nobody challenged the court's declaring of a legislative act unconstitutional, it was held that they were allowed to do so, thus establishing said concept as doctrine. Do not confuse long-standing case law with the Constitution, they are far different things.
Google the case, you'll find oodles of information.
Also, around the mid 20th century (I forget when this took effect or any specifics), the court also changed its rules on standing (the right a person has to bring a case to court). Previously, it was a very narrow standard - the damages had to be real and specific to the plaintiff. The court expanded its power by broadening the rules on standing - this is what allows groups like the Sierra Club to bring suit against industry over environmental issues, despite not having any real damages to themselves.
IANAL but I am a political junky.
But did anybody else notice the ad from Microsoft saying Windows Server 2003 outperforms Redhat? And then looked an inch lower to see it was on Slashdot's homepage?
Do you realize that doing this is probably a customs violation, unless you declare the purchase upon your return and pay the tax? At least, that's how it works when returning to the US, although many people don't declare these purchases. Whether it is moral to tax such things, that's another debate.