While I don't think that the rules of evidence are beyond reproach(in particular, I've always found it weird that jurors can't ask questions)
In some states, jurors can ask questions, in writing, through the judge. Whether the questions are posed to witnesses is at the judge's discretion. (Naturally, in any state jurors may ask the judge questions to clarify their instructions, but that's not what you meant.)
Actually, all kidding aside, yeah he is (wrong). Amusing, possibly. But wrong, definately.
He did the work under contract. Just as the work I do under contract isn't mine, neither was his.
His claim is that his contract did, in fact, give him rights to a portion of any licensed publication rights, and that these were not paid. Paramount, further, refuses to even give an accounting of licensing. I'm not sure why you think he'd be bound by your work contracts.
it is substantially difficult with current technology to implement the optical character recognition required to implement part (b).
Is not. Many cities already do this for red light cameras. It's established technology.
Furthermore, the privacy implications of tracking every motor vehicle in the Chicago Metropolitan Area are enormous.
Not so much. I don't generally think of driving down a city street as a very private thing. I'm sure the courts wouldn't agree with an expectation of privacy.
In order to assure a minimum of false positives, the State of Illinois would have to implement a comprehensive insurance-to-registration tag database that would be automatically updated by the insurance companies within seconds of issuing or changing a policy.
The logistics sound staggering until you realize that this database already exists. Thirteen states compel insurers to update it. InsureNet updates daily, so they wouldn't manage the "within seconds" criterion you demand, but luckily the registration pics don't have to be processed within seconds and the tickets need not
be mailed within seconds. (Advantage: Motorist. Caught by a camera? Quick! Buy insurance! I note that the system includes backdating protection, but if you buy on the same day, it sounds like you'd be all right.)
There is also problems with the handling out of state registration tags.
There would be, if the working database didn't already handle that:
(From InsureNet's FAQ:) What if I am traveling in another State?
If you are stopped in another State, your insurance status can be instantly and accurately verified by the law enforcement officer involved. NLETS is owned by all US States, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. It currently handles out-of-State queries.
(Back to qutoing Langel)While the "more than $200 million" figure is impressive, I would be even more impressed if they managed to collect 10% of that number.
What if they sent out more than that in fines? I suspect InsureNet's already accounted for this issue in the estimate.
IMO, the big technical issue with the proposal is the possibility of spoofing the cameras (which has been done with red-light cameras, most notably in Massachusetts and the UK).
My other major concern is oversight. It's in InsureNet's interest to send tickets, but the presumption should be in favor of the driver, and this needs to be clearly legislated. InsureNet should have statutory liability for mistakes, to make 'em easy to sue in small claims without a lawyer.
What does it mean to "open a JPG image with a file compression app"? I open WinZip and put the file in a new archive? Then I add some malicious program to the zip file? I don't see how this would work.
While the precise details escape me, it helps if you're aware that.jpg -is- a compressed format, in much the same way that.zip or.rar are compressed formats (although.jpg is deliberately designed to be a lossy compression format). Bitmaps (.bmp) and.tif are the major uncompressed image formats. When you decompress a.jpg, you end up with a.bmp or.tif.
I believe the overflow caused by that old virus was built into the compression algorithm. No need to decompress a.jpg first, in that case; start with a.bmp and compress it to.jpg, including the code to cause the overflow and make with the damage. You obviously cannot do this with standard compression programs; you'd need one written to insert the code within the compression process.
When the recipient tries t'look at the pretty picture, a specific piece of data from the image (which you put there) is too big for its buffer, and starts writing all willy-nilly onto adjacent memory. That "extra" data turns out to be the virus, and it's now resident in memory, able to execute with the same privileges as the user.
More or less. Buffer overflowery is a bit over my head, but I think that's a decent rough picture.
The whole point of being a cynic is that you don't believe in "anything" anymore, not that you just don't believe in the status quo, but do believe in the workability of fringe beliefs (such as those espoused by silly paul)
I think you're confusing cynicism with Cynicism, and confusing that with nihilism.
But as these rulings do not necessarily mean, as Facebook announced in a press release, that the courts have endorsed Facebook 'as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.'
huh?
I had to double-take that line myself. Poor phrasing, I'm sure. That sentence can (and I'm sure should) be parsed as:
Despite Facebook's press release that the courts have endorsed it 'as a reliable, secure, and private medium for communication', these rulings do not necessarily mean this is the case.
Why does this seem like something the same people protesting Sexual Education in our American schools, to kids EXACTLY the same age, would support?
Because... they did. This is funded largely by PEPFAR,* an organization legislated in '03 with strong bipartisan support, and signed into law by - that's right - Dubya Bush, who is a very vocal proponent of abstinence-only sex ed. Hee hee!
PEPFAR notes that they distribute 2.2 billion condoms from 2004 to 2008. Alas, President Bush was unable to hand-sign them all, but he did sign for renewed (and increased) funding late in '08.
*Okay, it's not clear how much of the bill PEPFAR's picking up. Warner Bros. appears to be footing the remainder. PEPFAR spends a lot, tho', overall; something over $9 billion a year at the moment.
How can you form any kind of social bonding in a company when your worth is distilled down to the results of some fucking mathematical formula?
Well, you go somewhere else for social bonding. I don't want to bond with most of the people with whom I work. Too many of 'em are yuppie-wannabes, puddingheads, and assholes.
You know what's dehumanizing? Expecting me to be best friends with people just because they're a couple cubes over. I don't take a job to get a new family or circle of friends. And using whether I bond as a performance metric is, to me, by far more dehumanizing than quantified performance metrics.
Companies have neither the right nor privilege to make determinations about my social life, personality (such as it is), or emotions. Demanding that folks are respectful to and assist one another is fine. Requiring friendship? No thanks.
If you want a friend, go find one. If your employees are hopelessly lonesome and productivity is sluggish as a result, that isn't my problem. Hire whores for 'em or something; don't pass the problem on to me.
I at least wouldn't want to work at a company like that.
I do. I would love to work in a business in which performance is not primarily determined by how well you schmooze. A company that encourages sharing information? Hell, yeah.
I've worked in far too many shops in which sharing information outside your immediate team is a good way to increase your workload while someone else takes credit for the final work. And far, far too many places in which buttlicking trumps performance. So quantifiable performance measurements are good, and one that encourages information sharing is very good.
While Obama's stimulus program is, it seems, gonna help fund this overpass (which is fine with me), note that this project was agreed on almost two years ago. Originally, MS was gonna eat 70% of the cost.
However, a revised estimate of the cost was somewhat higher than expected. The City of Redmond (not MS) decided to ask for stimulus money to offset this. After some initial talks, Redmond chose not to ask Microsoft for additional funding until they had pursued federal funds, which were assigned. (Redmond did not make up the difference itself because it cannot afford it.)
This is not a case of MS pushing Congress into funding their campus development. This is a case of Redmond deciding the project costs were a good investment for the city, and asking for stimulus money to make up a shortfall.
Note also that MS is expanding its campus in a huge project. The overpass is a small, small portion of what the company will ultimately spend. This is good for Redmond's economy, and the city wants to encourage the expansion.
I am not living anywhere near there, so I would curious to know how much of this traffic is made up of single person vehicles and how much is made up by multi-passenger vehicles like buses.
What Achromatic said: many MS employees (and permanent/semi-permanent contractors) use company shuttles once on campus. A few bicycle around, or walk if it isn't too far; the campus is beautiful. However, thousands upon thousands of non-MS employees go there every day, for conferences, contract work, pizza delivery, and so forth. The MS campus is huge and made up of a tangled mess of twisty little roads, all alike.
Traffic during the rush hours is horrific; it isn't so bad the rest of the time, but driving around the place is slow and frustrating if you aren't intimately familiar with it. As someone who used to have to drive down to Redmond occasionally during a stint with Accenture, I can totally see a cross-campus bridge being useful for non-employees (even aside from Achromatic's note about it reducing Redmond-proper's traffic).
So this isn't just a benefit for MS, although they will gain productivity from faster intracampus travel. I think it's a good project for Redmond as a whole.
Seattle's roads are not nearly as rough as folks're making out here, but some areas do need work. The Emerald City is tackling this partly by discouraging single-passenger cars, by limiting parking spaces and driving lanes, jacking up taxes on personal vehicles, and flinging money at public transportation.
The electric-type grid is prolly the most urgent public works issue there. Fortunately, an upgrade was already in the works, and part of the stimulus package will go toward that.
Overall, with MS chipping in half of the costs, I think this is one of the better deals we're getting for our tax dollars.
(The long form: While some Jews call themselves "Messianic Jews" or "Jews for Jesus", the rest of us call them "Christians". Make no mistake: Jesus has no place in Jewish teachings.)
I predict that niche will be filled by the sales of goodies
Woo, it's late. I meant to add that I suspect we'll start seeing such things more often with non-MMOs. "Preorder Half-Life 6 now and get - for a limited time - this Gordon Freeman action figure, with crowbar-swinging action!"
I mean, seriously, who doesn't like those shiny boxes with the manual, maps and stuff like that? And having the original packaging even many years later? We're talking about some serious bragging rights here.
That's a good point. Any market need will rarely go unfulfilled for long. I predict that niche will be filled by the sales of goodies; various iterations of these have floated on the market already, usually with a real-life and in-game component. Warcraft trading cards, City of Heroes goodie packs, and Kingdom of Loathing feelies all come to mind. Some of these are limited in nature, giving purchasers the souvenier feeling.
(Of those, the KoL ones hit the mark best, IMO, but I'm a sucker for toys.)
I'd buy it as it's a solid backup of all of the content up until this point. My system gets hosed, no problem; I'll pop this disk in and update a couple of patches instead of a whole new game client.
I... uh, this is just my thoughts, mind, but I think if you're willing to purchase a hard-copy CD of downloadable software you already own a license to, you're in the minority.
Does it cost 20%-30% more when a EU resident downloads an Adobe product form their store than if a US resident does the same? I don't think so.
I don't think so either: Photoshop CS4 costs $699.00 in the US for direct download from Adobe, or EUR 887.12, the equivalent of $1115.00. That's considerably more than 30%. The VAT accounts for about EUR 110 of the difference, tho'.
ZDNet (God, I hate referring to ZDNet) did an article on the pricing imbalance last year. A 50% premium for products in Europe seems t'be standard for them.
Most other companies charge more for downloadable software in Europe than in the US, although the VAT generally accounts for most of the difference.
This summary is laughably inaccurate, biased, and sensational.
I hate to agree with this, but I do. I'd like to add that the article is equally inaccurate, biased, and sensational, and was submitted to/. by the article's author.
The/. editor should've seen Big Red Flags all over this one. Even if he is completely oblivious to the story, the glaring math error, the concept of a public-domain monopoly, and... and all the stupid should have been warning signs.
Thank you for the link to the agreement itself. The blog post linked in the summary links in turn, and apparantly by accident, to a useful, if biased, article that includes the email from the Authors Guild regarding the settlement.
It gets used in various ways in various contexts. I don't tend to use it for things that can't possibly win (barring incompetent counsel, etc., etc.).
Fair enough. Although my point was, originally, that a defamation suit for a true statement can win, if you can't prove it. A true statement is actionable under that definition.
4: a state of the United States --used officially of Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia
Yeesh.
A state can do what it wants with its own law. But *never* suggest anything from Massachusetts, California, or New York as being representative of typical state law. For the most part, they are, but those are the three most likely to do something entirely on their own.
Never did; I wrote "some states", then when challenged dug up Massachusettes as an example.
Anyway, my "sure you're a lawyer?" comment was meant t'be a flip response t'your very broad and off-the-cuff comment; I do apologize if y'took offense. We agree, in any case, that the defense has t'prove truth when used, which I felt was important t'point out.
In the US, truth is a defense, as I stated above. While one can get to trial suing over a true statement, he cannot win if the speaker can show that it was true.
Hrm; I could be misunderstanding the word "actionable"; I was under the impression that it meant, more or less, "can get to trial". In any case, I mainly intended to clarify that making a true statement isn't necessarily a shield; sufficient proof of truth is.
The "malice" factors are for federal constitutional law, which puts first amendment limits on defamation actions by public figures.
Check out Noonan v. Staples. Massachusettes is a state, last time I checked, and includes a malice requirement.
I'm a lawyer; (snip) "They spit on their burgers before serving." is defamatory (and actionable unless true).
Sure you're a lawyer? I'm not, but that sounds actionable regardless. Truth is, in most states, a complete defense against such an action, but you'd better be ready to demonstrate that it's true - or "true without malice" (whatever that means) in some states.
Since the burden of proof of a defamation defense is on the accused, companies have been known to sue even in the case of true statements, gambling that nobody'll be able to sufficiently demonstrate truth.
And this proves a major prejudice about non-Americans: Most of you immediately assume that anyone on the internet who makes an idiotic or misinformed comment is American.
In fairness, the guy's handle is "ScrewMaster", so he prolly is American.
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't think that the rules of evidence are beyond reproach(in particular, I've always found it weird that jurors can't ask questions)
In some states, jurors can ask questions, in writing, through the judge. Whether the questions are posed to witnesses is at the judge's discretion. (Naturally, in any state jurors may ask the judge questions to clarify their instructions, but that's not what you meant.)
Spacebatman, now that would be news!
He's Batman.
Actually, all kidding aside, yeah he is (wrong). Amusing, possibly. But wrong, definately.
He did the work under contract. Just as the work I do under contract isn't mine, neither was his.
His claim is that his contract did, in fact, give him rights to a portion of any licensed publication rights, and that these were not paid. Paramount, further, refuses to even give an accounting of licensing. I'm not sure why you think he'd be bound by your work contracts.
Has someone on the Aussie's Government been playing Paranoia recently?
ACMA is your friend.
Trust ACMA.
If you do not trust ACMA, your computer may be used as erosion control.
ACMA is your friend.
(Back to qutoing Langel)
I meant quoting Valen0, of course. :P
it is substantially difficult with current technology to implement the optical character recognition required to implement part (b).
Is not. Many cities already do this for red light cameras. It's established technology.
Furthermore, the privacy implications of tracking every motor vehicle in the Chicago Metropolitan Area are enormous.
Not so much. I don't generally think of driving down a city street as a very private thing. I'm sure the courts wouldn't agree with an expectation of privacy.
In order to assure a minimum of false positives, the State of Illinois would have to implement a comprehensive insurance-to-registration tag database that would be automatically updated by the insurance companies within seconds of issuing or changing a policy.
The logistics sound staggering until you realize that this database already exists. Thirteen states compel insurers to update it. InsureNet updates daily, so they wouldn't manage the "within seconds" criterion you demand, but luckily the registration pics don't have to be processed within seconds and the tickets need not be mailed within seconds. (Advantage: Motorist. Caught by a camera? Quick! Buy insurance! I note that the system includes backdating protection, but if you buy on the same day, it sounds like you'd be all right.)
There is also problems with the handling out of state registration tags.
There would be, if the working database didn't already handle that:
(From InsureNet's FAQ:) What if I am traveling in another State?
If you are stopped in another State, your insurance status can be instantly and accurately verified by the law enforcement officer involved. NLETS is owned by all US States, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. It currently handles out-of-State queries.
(Back to qutoing Langel)While the "more than $200 million" figure is impressive, I would be even more impressed if they managed to collect 10% of that number.
What if they sent out more than that in fines? I suspect InsureNet's already accounted for this issue in the estimate.
IMO, the big technical issue with the proposal is the possibility of spoofing the cameras (which has been done with red-light cameras, most notably in Massachusetts and the UK).
My other major concern is oversight. It's in InsureNet's interest to send tickets, but the presumption should be in favor of the driver, and this needs to be clearly legislated. InsureNet should have statutory liability for mistakes, to make 'em easy to sue in small claims without a lawyer.
What does it mean to "open a JPG image with a file compression app"? I open WinZip and put the file in a new archive? Then I add some malicious program to the zip file? I don't see how this would work.
While the precise details escape me, it helps if you're aware that .jpg -is- a compressed format, in much the same way that .zip or .rar are compressed formats (although .jpg is deliberately designed to be a lossy compression format). Bitmaps (.bmp) and .tif are the major uncompressed image formats. When you decompress a .jpg, you end up with a .bmp or .tif.
I believe the overflow caused by that old virus was built into the compression algorithm. No need to decompress a .jpg first, in that case; start with a .bmp and compress it to .jpg, including the code to cause the overflow and make with the damage. You obviously cannot do this with standard compression programs; you'd need one written to insert the code within the compression process.
When the recipient tries t'look at the pretty picture, a specific piece of data from the image (which you put there) is too big for its buffer, and starts writing all willy-nilly onto adjacent memory. That "extra" data turns out to be the virus, and it's now resident in memory, able to execute with the same privileges as the user.
More or less. Buffer overflowery is a bit over my head, but I think that's a decent rough picture.
The whole point of being a cynic is that you don't believe in "anything" anymore, not that you just don't believe in the status quo, but do believe in the workability of fringe beliefs (such as those espoused by silly paul)
I think you're confusing cynicism with Cynicism, and confusing that with nihilism.
But as these rulings do not necessarily mean, as Facebook announced in a press release, that the courts have endorsed Facebook 'as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.'
huh?
I had to double-take that line myself. Poor phrasing, I'm sure. That sentence can (and I'm sure should) be parsed as:
Despite Facebook's press release that the courts have endorsed it 'as a reliable, secure, and private medium for communication', these rulings do not necessarily mean this is the case.
Why does this seem like something the same people protesting Sexual Education in our American schools, to kids EXACTLY the same age, would support?
Because... they did. This is funded largely by PEPFAR,* an organization legislated in '03 with strong bipartisan support, and signed into law by - that's right - Dubya Bush, who is a very vocal proponent of abstinence-only sex ed. Hee hee!
PEPFAR notes that they distribute 2.2 billion condoms from 2004 to 2008. Alas, President Bush was unable to hand-sign them all, but he did sign for renewed (and increased) funding late in '08.
*Okay, it's not clear how much of the bill PEPFAR's picking up. Warner Bros. appears to be footing the remainder. PEPFAR spends a lot, tho', overall; something over $9 billion a year at the moment.
How can you form any kind of social bonding in a company when your worth is distilled down to the results of some fucking mathematical formula?
Well, you go somewhere else for social bonding. I don't want to bond with most of the people with whom I work. Too many of 'em are yuppie-wannabes, puddingheads, and assholes.
You know what's dehumanizing? Expecting me to be best friends with people just because they're a couple cubes over. I don't take a job to get a new family or circle of friends. And using whether I bond as a performance metric is, to me, by far more dehumanizing than quantified performance metrics.
Companies have neither the right nor privilege to make determinations about my social life, personality (such as it is), or emotions. Demanding that folks are respectful to and assist one another is fine. Requiring friendship? No thanks.
If you want a friend, go find one. If your employees are hopelessly lonesome and productivity is sluggish as a result, that isn't my problem. Hire whores for 'em or something; don't pass the problem on to me.
I at least wouldn't want to work at a company like that.
I do. I would love to work in a business in which performance is not primarily determined by how well you schmooze. A company that encourages sharing information? Hell, yeah.
I've worked in far too many shops in which sharing information outside your immediate team is a good way to increase your workload while someone else takes credit for the final work. And far, far too many places in which buttlicking trumps performance. So quantifiable performance measurements are good, and one that encourages information sharing is very good.
Assuming it works, of course.
However, a revised estimate of the cost was somewhat higher than expected. The City of Redmond (not MS) decided to ask for stimulus money to offset this. After some initial talks, Redmond chose not to ask Microsoft for additional funding until they had pursued federal funds, which were assigned. (Redmond did not make up the difference itself because it cannot afford it.)
This is not a case of MS pushing Congress into funding their campus development. This is a case of Redmond deciding the project costs were a good investment for the city, and asking for stimulus money to make up a shortfall.
Note also that MS is expanding its campus in a huge project. The overpass is a small, small portion of what the company will ultimately spend. This is good for Redmond's economy, and the city wants to encourage the expansion.
I am not living anywhere near there, so I would curious to know how much of this traffic is made up of single person vehicles and how much is made up by multi-passenger vehicles like buses.
What Achromatic said: many MS employees (and permanent/semi-permanent contractors) use company shuttles once on campus. A few bicycle around, or walk if it isn't too far; the campus is beautiful. However, thousands upon thousands of non-MS employees go there every day, for conferences, contract work, pizza delivery, and so forth. The MS campus is huge and made up of a tangled mess of twisty little roads, all alike.
Traffic during the rush hours is horrific; it isn't so bad the rest of the time, but driving around the place is slow and frustrating if you aren't intimately familiar with it. As someone who used to have to drive down to Redmond occasionally during a stint with Accenture, I can totally see a cross-campus bridge being useful for non-employees (even aside from Achromatic's note about it reducing Redmond-proper's traffic).
So this isn't just a benefit for MS, although they will gain productivity from faster intracampus travel. I think it's a good project for Redmond as a whole.
Seattle's roads are not nearly as rough as folks're making out here, but some areas do need work. The Emerald City is tackling this partly by discouraging single-passenger cars, by limiting parking spaces and driving lanes, jacking up taxes on personal vehicles, and flinging money at public transportation.
The electric-type grid is prolly the most urgent public works issue there. Fortunately, an upgrade was already in the works, and part of the stimulus package will go toward that.
Overall, with MS chipping in half of the costs, I think this is one of the better deals we're getting for our tax dollars.
I guess it should be odorless then?
Methane is odorless, yes. The smell second-most commonly associated with it, the smell of an unlit gas range, is added for safety.
Jews and Muslims consider Christ to be a prophet.
We what.
(The long form: While some Jews call themselves "Messianic Jews" or "Jews for Jesus", the rest of us call them "Christians". Make no mistake: Jesus has no place in Jewish teachings.)
I predict that niche will be filled by the sales of goodies
Woo, it's late. I meant to add that I suspect we'll start seeing such things more often with non-MMOs. "Preorder Half-Life 6 now and get - for a limited time - this Gordon Freeman action figure, with crowbar-swinging action!"
I mean, seriously, who doesn't like those shiny boxes with the manual, maps and stuff like that? And having the original packaging even many years later? We're talking about some serious bragging rights here.
That's a good point. Any market need will rarely go unfulfilled for long. I predict that niche will be filled by the sales of goodies; various iterations of these have floated on the market already, usually with a real-life and in-game component. Warcraft trading cards, City of Heroes goodie packs, and Kingdom of Loathing feelies all come to mind. Some of these are limited in nature, giving purchasers the souvenier feeling.
(Of those, the KoL ones hit the mark best, IMO, but I'm a sucker for toys.)
I'd buy it as it's a solid backup of all of the content up until this point. My system gets hosed, no problem; I'll pop this disk in and update a couple of patches instead of a whole new game client.
I... uh, this is just my thoughts, mind, but I think if you're willing to purchase a hard-copy CD of downloadable software you already own a license to, you're in the minority.
Does it cost 20%-30% more when a EU resident downloads an Adobe product form their store than if a US resident does the same? I don't think so.
I don't think so either: Photoshop CS4 costs $699.00 in the US for direct download from Adobe, or EUR 887.12, the equivalent of $1115.00. That's considerably more than 30%. The VAT accounts for about EUR 110 of the difference, tho'.
ZDNet (God, I hate referring to ZDNet) did an article on the pricing imbalance last year. A 50% premium for products in Europe seems t'be standard for them.
Most other companies charge more for downloadable software in Europe than in the US, although the VAT generally accounts for most of the difference.
This summary is laughably inaccurate, biased, and sensational.
I hate to agree with this, but I do. I'd like to add that the article is equally inaccurate, biased, and sensational, and was submitted to /. by the article's author.
The /. editor should've seen Big Red Flags all over this one. Even if he is completely oblivious to the story, the glaring math error, the concept of a public-domain monopoly, and... and all the stupid should have been warning signs.
Thank you for the link to the agreement itself. The blog post linked in the summary links in turn, and apparantly by accident, to a useful, if biased, article that includes the email from the Authors Guild regarding the settlement.
It gets used in various ways in various contexts. I don't tend to use it for things that can't possibly win (barring incompetent counsel, etc., etc.).
Fair enough. Although my point was, originally, that a defamation suit for a true statement can win, if you can't prove it. A true statement is actionable under that definition.
Actually, it styles itself a commonwealth :)
Hah! You are a lawyer. Definition of commonwealth:
4: a state of the United States --used officially of Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia
Yeesh.
A state can do what it wants with its own law. But *never* suggest anything from Massachusetts, California, or New York as being representative of typical state law. For the most part, they are, but those are the three most likely to do something entirely on their own.
Never did; I wrote "some states", then when challenged dug up Massachusettes as an example.
Anyway, my "sure you're a lawyer?" comment was meant t'be a flip response t'your very broad and off-the-cuff comment; I do apologize if y'took offense. We agree, in any case, that the defense has t'prove truth when used, which I felt was important t'point out.
In the US, truth is a defense, as I stated above. While one can get to trial suing over a true statement, he cannot win if the speaker can show that it was true.
Hrm; I could be misunderstanding the word "actionable"; I was under the impression that it meant, more or less, "can get to trial". In any case, I mainly intended to clarify that making a true statement isn't necessarily a shield; sufficient proof of truth is.
The "malice" factors are for federal constitutional law, which puts first amendment limits on defamation actions by public figures.
Check out Noonan v. Staples . Massachusettes is a state, last time I checked, and includes a malice requirement.
I'm a lawyer; (snip) "They spit on their burgers before serving." is defamatory (and actionable unless true).
Sure you're a lawyer? I'm not, but that sounds actionable regardless. Truth is, in most states, a complete defense against such an action, but you'd better be ready to demonstrate that it's true - or "true without malice" (whatever that means) in some states.
Since the burden of proof of a defamation defense is on the accused, companies have been known to sue even in the case of true statements, gambling that nobody'll be able to sufficiently demonstrate truth.
And this proves a major prejudice about non-Americans: Most of you immediately assume that anyone on the internet who makes an idiotic or misinformed comment is American.
In fairness, the guy's handle is "ScrewMaster", so he prolly is American.