Freedom of speech, in the United States at least, is not given to citizens so that they can harm other people's reputations or hold them accountable for their actions. It is there so that actions by the government can be openly criticized and constructive dialog be established between (and amongst) citizens and the government, without fear of reprisal. It is there for the betterment of everyone. If there is no benefit to society, no protection is granted.
There is no basis for this analysis in either the Constitution, or the subsequent jurisprudence interpreting and applying the Constitution. One of the most common and important uses of speech is to hold others publicly accountable for their actions. Harming someone's reputation is often a completely legitimate pursuit. In the United States, all speech is protected by default. Small exceptions are carved out for certain narrow classes of speech which are either unprotected (obscenity) or only partially protected (commercial speech). One of the unprotected classes of speech is defamation - knowingly false statements that damage someone's reputation. That narrow exception is sufficient to address the circumstance where someone attempts to use speech as a weapon to exact a personal vendetta by spreading lies. However, there is no concept in the U.S. law of a wrong for spreading unpleasant truths. Rightly so. The negative judgment that comes to pass in such a case is derived from the subject's own acts, not from the speaker's acts. If these people had not murdered a man, nobody would be thinking ill of them.
Add to the insult the fact that there are no web stores that would sell non-DRM music to a linux user in Finland (I'd love it if someone proves me wrong, btw).
There is an overwhelming tendency for courts to set aside defaults in favor of deciding a case on its merits. Unless the defendant has actually decided not to present a defense, issuing a default judgment subverts the purpose of the justice system, and is an undesirable result. Default judgments are intended to allow worthy plaintiffs to recover when a defendant refuses to participate in the legal process. So, even if this service is likely technically proper, the court will use any possible excuse to overturn the default and actually litigate the case. With that said, there may actually be serious questions about the validity of service in this case. In most states, service on a corporation must be made to the registered agent, an individual designated to receive all official communications. If this was simply sent to the corporate headquarters and received by a secretary, that is not likely to be legally proper service.
The dichotomy between nerds and jocks is a false one, and it has been for some time. The stereotypes assert that "jocks" who are socially active, athletic, and attractive must not have any interest in technology, be smart, or value intellectual pursuits. Likewise, "nerds" who are smart and dedicated to learning must be slobs, socially awkward, and unattractive. This hasn't been the case at any time in the last decade or so that I've been paying attention. Some of the smartest and most academically successful people at my high school, who went on to attend highly prestigious universities, some to study science and engineering, were also athletic, social, attractive people. Many of the socially awkward nerds were not smart and did not value learning. In college, a significant percentage of my incredibly smart engineering colleagues had been high school football stars, loved to party, and were quite successful in relationships.
Now that I'm in law school, it's clear that my fellow students value intelligence (including technical knowledge) right along with social prowess and appearance. The entire spectrum of personal attributes is not only respected, but expected in these circles. I believe this has been the norm among high-performing, successful people for quite some time now - it's not even clear that the jock-nerd dichotomy every really existed the way it is portrayed. As far as I can tell, the real divide has everything to do with social skills and nothing to do with intelligence.
I would best describe my first-hand experience as a "laughably mild cold, without the annoyance of a stuffy nose"
You got lucky. I had it over the summer. Even having started Tamiflu within 24 hours of the first symptoms, it was a solid week of awfulness, followed by another week and a half of suckiness. I lost 8 pounds in the first four days. Extremely unpleasant. By far, the sickest I've been since scarlet fever.
why don't they just try a 1km ground based test first? I can't imagine this is safe for the chopper. Much needless complication for testing the technology.
Because gravity goes down, not sideways? Seriously, that's simply not even remotely comparable. The entire challenge here is to climb a straight, vertical cable against a 1G vertical acceleration. Crawling along a horizontal catenary-shaped cable with a 1G sideways acceleration is a completely different problem to solve.
Here's the issue: the only place where questions of law are settled is a court room. Which in turn means that the only way to find out whether something is unsupported by law is to file a lawsuit and see where the chips fall.
That is not a correct conclusion. Questions of law are only settled by the court, but many questions have already been settled. An attorney's job is to research existing law (both statutes and prior cases that have been decided in court) and make a prediction about what should happen if a new case is taken to court. Sometimes it's impossible to reach a conclusion, other times the conclusion is nearly certain; usually it's in between. The rules of ethics and of civil procedure prohibit attorneys from bringing suit when their argument is unsupported by existing law or a reasonable extension of existing law. This is rarely enforced with vigor, because there is often some type of legitimate argument that can be made to support even a very weak case - but not always.
But I don't think that anyone here knows enough law to unequivocally state that this claim is unsupported by law.
Don't be too sure about that. I'm not a trademark attorney, so I wouldn't venture a conclusive opinion about this case without doing some additional research first - but some here may be qualified to do so. With that said, my prior post was not intended to state that this case is meritless. I don't think it is. I think it's weak, but plausible. It's weak on the facts, not the law. If I were SPARC's attorney, I would have discouraged them from pursuing it.
Aren't you required to vigorously defend your trademark or else stand to lose it?
Yeah, it may be ridiculous, and yeah, a judge may decide that it is indeed ridiculous as well. But they -still- have to go through these claims in order to vigorously defend.
Vigorous defense of one's trademark does not demand that one pursue ridiculous or even questionable claims. All it means is that you can't knowingly allow violation of your trademark, then attempt to enforce it later. Where a case appears legally questionable, or outright stupid, there is absolutely no duty to pursue it. All the normal rules of civil procedure apply, including Rule 11. "Vigorous defense of trademark" is not a defense for filing a claim unsupported by law.
Well that's all fine and dandy that the court orders them to do this. I hereby order them to bring me a cake on my birthday, too. What more authority does the Dutch court have than I? Even more importantly, perhaps, how do they intend to enforce the court order, even if they do have jurisdiction? I thought there was an article recently that TPB had moved their operations to some "untouchable" hosting facility somewhere. This is not like an international case against a large and established company with substantial assets in a particular location that can be seized to pay a judgment. These guys are as close to anonymous as you can get and still be an actual legal entity.
The stories in the article don't seem unique to software at all. That type and degree of weirdness shows up in every type of work, techie or not. People are just strange! We all know our families are strange - we've either adapted and become oblivious, or moved on. With coworkers, however, we are forced to interact daily with a group of random people we don't get to choose individually. That exposes us to a broad cross-section of societal weirdness that we aren't used to, and we notice it. I think everyone has had this experience to some extent. That's one reason The Office is such a popular show; we can all identify the Michael Scotts and Dwight Schrutes in our lives.
If the vaccine doesn't reduce mortality, as this study suggests, then that indicates that the vaccine doesn't do anything.
Really? If it doesn't prevent death, its worthless? That's essentially the opposite of what this (admittedly bad) article argues - that the vaccine doesn't save those who get it because they wouldn't have died anyways. What it saves them from is the illness (which is way bad enough to justify the vaccine, even without risk of death), and the risk of spreading the illness to others, like the sickly and elderly who do not get the vaccine. It looks like the study we really need is one correlating the incidence of flu mortality in an entire population with the incidence of vaccination throughout that population, If there's enough variability in vaccination rates between a few otherwise-similar large cities, that shouldn't be too hard to do.
Please don't "include support"
You're writing the spec, REQUIRE THAT IT BE USED.
We're in the 21st century, security should no longer be an after thought.
What if I don't want to encrypt something? You think I should be required to, even if there's absolutely no reason to do it in a particular application? Encryption is simply not required in every context. Recall that, until the last decade or so, most wireless voice systems used plain analog radios which could be received with common equipment - and it rarely caused problems. I'll choose whether to encrypt, thank you very much.
The question from a legal standpoint (and I'm not taking sides) is whether or not this product in its entirety is considered "building upon" Wikipedia.
Again, I'm not taking sides here, but anyone who thinks this is cut and dry has not read the license agreement.
The answer, from a legal standpoint, is simply no. Anyone who thinks this isn't cut and dried has not studied copyright law. What can and cannot constitute a derivative work is well settled. Derivative works contain the parent work in some fashion (even if it is largely transformed). The hardware here is not made from a transformation or modification of Wikipedia. That doesn't even make sense. This hardware could have been designed without making use of Wikipedia whatsoever (and it probably was). Part of the reason copyright isn't even applicable to this situation is because of the nonsensical nature of the "argument" that hardware could be derivative of a copyrighted creative work - copyright does not cover physical objects. Patents cover physical objects. The hardware cannot violate Wikipedia's content copyright any more than Wikipedia can violate a patent implemented in this hardware.
According to the rules of open source... all derivative works must also be open source.
This is hardware. Does that mean that the design, specifications and technology used are also open source?
That's an easy question! Answer: No.
First, the hardware is not derived from Wikipedia. That's just silly. Second, even if it were "derivative" in some sense of the word, hardware itself is not copyrightable, and thus not subject to the GPL in any meaningful sense.
That misinterprets the theory, by falling for the news author's anthropomorphism on the universe. The theory isn't that the universe is actually a conscious being that throws a wrench in the works and makes the LHC break just in the nick of time. The theory really is that in every multiverse where the LHC works correctly, the multiverse is destroyed by the abominable bosons. We are all riding through a series of universes in which the LHC repeatedly fails to work. At each point where a quantum event occurs which eventually leads to the LHC either working or failing, the universe splits and our consciousness follows the branch where the LHC fails, because existence is extinguished in the other branch. Is this somehow more solidly believable than the author's "sentient universe messing with stuff" explanation? Probably not.
One of the BB posts, noted that falsely issuing DMCA notices might be construed as abuse of process. If any real lawyers are lurking out there, could this be used as a counter tactic? What is the likely hood that you could make such a charge stick to the plantif or their counsel?
The DMCA itself provides for penalties, both civil and criminal, for false takedown notices - it's perjury, and probably tortious interference with a business relationship. However, this case is not so clear-cut. They reproduced the ad in its entirety, unmodified. The fact that they subsequently ridiculed it may or may not really make this fair use. Most likely it does, but arguments exist both ways. Thus, there is enough law to make the takedown notice non-perjury.
The world's full of interesting geeky stuff to do. One of the least interesting things you can do is to waste time forcing a machine to do something it's not designed for.
And here I though that was the MOST interesting thing to do, and one of the most geeky. Guess I've been wasting all my free time! I should find a hobby that's actually interesting.
The judge "vacated" the jury's decision? How is that legal?
If the jury considers improper factors in making their decision, the judge can invalidate the verdict and either have a new trial or, under some circumstances, enter a verdict directly. For example, if the jury explicitly considers the race of the parties in reaching a verdict (or considers inadmissible evidence, or bases the verdict on how cute the attorneys are, or whatever), it's not valid.
I have never heard of this concept that a judge can tell a jury "you're wrong, I'm finding the defendant guilty"
A judge in a criminal case cannot enter a guilty verdict when the jury finds otherwise. This is a civil case. The procedure and factors that a judge must consider under these circumstances are very rigidly established and are subject to completely fresh review on appeal.
In fact, a major legal concept, jury nullification relies on the idea that a jury can disobey a judge.
And they can, but not just for any old reason. A jury is not supposed to be a group of 12 ignorant tyrants with absolute power and no bounds on their authority. Like judges, juries make specific decisions, within specific boundaries, following specific rules. When they don't, their decisions are not upheld.
Because that's the degree of precision necessary when working with analog electronics that aren't intended to function as timing devices. Anything more precise would be unnecessary, anything less would be insufficient.
'... and if not lost they're too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the "features" have been rendered useless.'
I feel like this with just about every portable device these days. Am I the only one?
That's about right. My iPhone is disastrous in that respect. Why? Because the developers put flashy graphics above UI speed. Any display change on an iPhone requires a brief rendered screen change effect - a sweep, or dissolve, or fly-away. The effect may only take a tenth of a second, but the device takes a full second or more to process it! Every button press, a pop-up graphic of the button. WHY???? There is more than enough processing power in all modern portable devices to handle all the operational functions of the device and to run the UI faster than any human could require. The temptation to use all that processing power to push the boundaries with chrome is rendering the devices even slower than previous generations of handheld technology, regardless of the improved hardware. Mobile developers: Back to basics, folks. Focus on what matters.
If the TELCOs broke the law by willingly participating in the warrentless wiretapping, then there is NOTHING retroactive about this. What IS unconstitutional is that there was an act passed by congress saying that the TELCOs cannot be punished.
Care to back that up with a citation? Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution prohibits the passage of ex post facto laws, which are those that criminalize an act which has already occurred (or increase the punishment for an act occurring prior to the legislation). The legislature most certainly can decriminalize prior acts, however. To do so is not ex post facto, because it does not impose a penalty on anyone for acts already committed. This occurs frequently. It is not clear, however, that congress could now re-criminalize what it previously granted immunity for - to do so may implicate 5th and 6th amendment issues if the responsible parties have disclosed information about their actions in the meantime in reliance on the immunity granted by congress. Even though the wiretapping was illegal when they did it, congress' grant of immunity may not be constitutionally reversible.
Yes, that hypothetical does change the outcome. However, I do not have the opportunity to choose only "wild and free" cows to eat. Most do come from factory farms. Even plenty of non-factory farms are just as bad. As far as the continuum of sentience, I draw the line right about at fish. I'm completely fine with eating aquatic invertebrates, and much prefer to do so over fish, which I'm somewhat uncomfortable with. Birds are biologically very similar to fish, but seem to have a higher level of consciousness and respond to pain almost identically to mammals - unlike fish. So I don't eat them.
Slashdot Mirror
Freedom of speech, in the United States at least, is not given to citizens so that they can harm other people's reputations or hold them accountable for their actions. It is there so that actions by the government can be openly criticized and constructive dialog be established between (and amongst) citizens and the government, without fear of reprisal. It is there for the betterment of everyone. If there is no benefit to society, no protection is granted.
There is no basis for this analysis in either the Constitution, or the subsequent jurisprudence interpreting and applying the Constitution. One of the most common and important uses of speech is to hold others publicly accountable for their actions. Harming someone's reputation is often a completely legitimate pursuit. In the United States, all speech is protected by default. Small exceptions are carved out for certain narrow classes of speech which are either unprotected (obscenity) or only partially protected (commercial speech). One of the unprotected classes of speech is defamation - knowingly false statements that damage someone's reputation. That narrow exception is sufficient to address the circumstance where someone attempts to use speech as a weapon to exact a personal vendetta by spreading lies. However, there is no concept in the U.S. law of a wrong for spreading unpleasant truths. Rightly so. The negative judgment that comes to pass in such a case is derived from the subject's own acts, not from the speaker's acts. If these people had not murdered a man, nobody would be thinking ill of them.
www.gomusic.ru
There is an overwhelming tendency for courts to set aside defaults in favor of deciding a case on its merits. Unless the defendant has actually decided not to present a defense, issuing a default judgment subverts the purpose of the justice system, and is an undesirable result. Default judgments are intended to allow worthy plaintiffs to recover when a defendant refuses to participate in the legal process. So, even if this service is likely technically proper, the court will use any possible excuse to overturn the default and actually litigate the case. With that said, there may actually be serious questions about the validity of service in this case. In most states, service on a corporation must be made to the registered agent, an individual designated to receive all official communications. If this was simply sent to the corporate headquarters and received by a secretary, that is not likely to be legally proper service.
The dichotomy between nerds and jocks is a false one, and it has been for some time. The stereotypes assert that "jocks" who are socially active, athletic, and attractive must not have any interest in technology, be smart, or value intellectual pursuits. Likewise, "nerds" who are smart and dedicated to learning must be slobs, socially awkward, and unattractive. This hasn't been the case at any time in the last decade or so that I've been paying attention. Some of the smartest and most academically successful people at my high school, who went on to attend highly prestigious universities, some to study science and engineering, were also athletic, social, attractive people. Many of the socially awkward nerds were not smart and did not value learning. In college, a significant percentage of my incredibly smart engineering colleagues had been high school football stars, loved to party, and were quite successful in relationships.
Now that I'm in law school, it's clear that my fellow students value intelligence (including technical knowledge) right along with social prowess and appearance. The entire spectrum of personal attributes is not only respected, but expected in these circles. I believe this has been the norm among high-performing, successful people for quite some time now - it's not even clear that the jock-nerd dichotomy every really existed the way it is portrayed. As far as I can tell, the real divide has everything to do with social skills and nothing to do with intelligence.
For all we know, he could be an employee of Fox News.
Did you watch the video? I think he is. He sure likes to emphasize that the UN is the devil!
...and if we're not careful, we'll lose. That still has consequences even with the real cold war over.
I would best describe my first-hand experience as a "laughably mild cold, without the annoyance of a stuffy nose"
You got lucky. I had it over the summer. Even having started Tamiflu within 24 hours of the first symptoms, it was a solid week of awfulness, followed by another week and a half of suckiness. I lost 8 pounds in the first four days. Extremely unpleasant. By far, the sickest I've been since scarlet fever.
why don't they just try a 1km ground based test first? I can't imagine this is safe for the chopper. Much needless complication for testing the technology.
Because gravity goes down, not sideways? Seriously, that's simply not even remotely comparable. The entire challenge here is to climb a straight, vertical cable against a 1G vertical acceleration. Crawling along a horizontal catenary-shaped cable with a 1G sideways acceleration is a completely different problem to solve.
Here's the issue: the only place where questions of law are settled is a court room. Which in turn means that the only way to find out whether something is unsupported by law is to file a lawsuit and see where the chips fall.
That is not a correct conclusion. Questions of law are only settled by the court, but many questions have already been settled. An attorney's job is to research existing law (both statutes and prior cases that have been decided in court) and make a prediction about what should happen if a new case is taken to court. Sometimes it's impossible to reach a conclusion, other times the conclusion is nearly certain; usually it's in between. The rules of ethics and of civil procedure prohibit attorneys from bringing suit when their argument is unsupported by existing law or a reasonable extension of existing law. This is rarely enforced with vigor, because there is often some type of legitimate argument that can be made to support even a very weak case - but not always.
But I don't think that anyone here knows enough law to unequivocally state that this claim is unsupported by law.
Don't be too sure about that. I'm not a trademark attorney, so I wouldn't venture a conclusive opinion about this case without doing some additional research first - but some here may be qualified to do so. With that said, my prior post was not intended to state that this case is meritless. I don't think it is. I think it's weak, but plausible. It's weak on the facts, not the law. If I were SPARC's attorney, I would have discouraged them from pursuing it.
Aren't you required to vigorously defend your trademark or else stand to lose it?
Yeah, it may be ridiculous, and yeah, a judge may decide that it is indeed ridiculous as well. But they -still- have to go through these claims in order to vigorously defend.
Vigorous defense of one's trademark does not demand that one pursue ridiculous or even questionable claims. All it means is that you can't knowingly allow violation of your trademark, then attempt to enforce it later. Where a case appears legally questionable, or outright stupid, there is absolutely no duty to pursue it. All the normal rules of civil procedure apply, including Rule 11. "Vigorous defense of trademark" is not a defense for filing a claim unsupported by law.
Well that's all fine and dandy that the court orders them to do this. I hereby order them to bring me a cake on my birthday, too. What more authority does the Dutch court have than I? Even more importantly, perhaps, how do they intend to enforce the court order, even if they do have jurisdiction? I thought there was an article recently that TPB had moved their operations to some "untouchable" hosting facility somewhere. This is not like an international case against a large and established company with substantial assets in a particular location that can be seized to pay a judgment. These guys are as close to anonymous as you can get and still be an actual legal entity.
The stories in the article don't seem unique to software at all. That type and degree of weirdness shows up in every type of work, techie or not. People are just strange! We all know our families are strange - we've either adapted and become oblivious, or moved on. With coworkers, however, we are forced to interact daily with a group of random people we don't get to choose individually. That exposes us to a broad cross-section of societal weirdness that we aren't used to, and we notice it. I think everyone has had this experience to some extent. That's one reason The Office is such a popular show; we can all identify the Michael Scotts and Dwight Schrutes in our lives.
If the vaccine doesn't reduce mortality, as this study suggests, then that indicates that the vaccine doesn't do anything.
Really? If it doesn't prevent death, its worthless? That's essentially the opposite of what this (admittedly bad) article argues - that the vaccine doesn't save those who get it because they wouldn't have died anyways. What it saves them from is the illness (which is way bad enough to justify the vaccine, even without risk of death), and the risk of spreading the illness to others, like the sickly and elderly who do not get the vaccine. It looks like the study we really need is one correlating the incidence of flu mortality in an entire population with the incidence of vaccination throughout that population, If there's enough variability in vaccination rates between a few otherwise-similar large cities, that shouldn't be too hard to do.
Please don't "include support" You're writing the spec, REQUIRE THAT IT BE USED.
We're in the 21st century, security should no longer be an after thought.
What if I don't want to encrypt something? You think I should be required to, even if there's absolutely no reason to do it in a particular application? Encryption is simply not required in every context. Recall that, until the last decade or so, most wireless voice systems used plain analog radios which could be received with common equipment - and it rarely caused problems. I'll choose whether to encrypt, thank you very much.
The question from a legal standpoint (and I'm not taking sides) is whether or not this product in its entirety is considered "building upon" Wikipedia.
Again, I'm not taking sides here, but anyone who thinks this is cut and dry has not read the license agreement.
The answer, from a legal standpoint, is simply no. Anyone who thinks this isn't cut and dried has not studied copyright law. What can and cannot constitute a derivative work is well settled. Derivative works contain the parent work in some fashion (even if it is largely transformed). The hardware here is not made from a transformation or modification of Wikipedia. That doesn't even make sense. This hardware could have been designed without making use of Wikipedia whatsoever (and it probably was). Part of the reason copyright isn't even applicable to this situation is because of the nonsensical nature of the "argument" that hardware could be derivative of a copyrighted creative work - copyright does not cover physical objects. Patents cover physical objects. The hardware cannot violate Wikipedia's content copyright any more than Wikipedia can violate a patent implemented in this hardware.
According to the rules of open source... all derivative works must also be open source.
This is hardware. Does that mean that the design, specifications and technology used are also open source?
That's an easy question! Answer: No.
First, the hardware is not derived from Wikipedia. That's just silly. Second, even if it were "derivative" in some sense of the word, hardware itself is not copyrightable, and thus not subject to the GPL in any meaningful sense.
That misinterprets the theory, by falling for the news author's anthropomorphism on the universe. The theory isn't that the universe is actually a conscious being that throws a wrench in the works and makes the LHC break just in the nick of time. The theory really is that in every multiverse where the LHC works correctly, the multiverse is destroyed by the abominable bosons. We are all riding through a series of universes in which the LHC repeatedly fails to work. At each point where a quantum event occurs which eventually leads to the LHC either working or failing, the universe splits and our consciousness follows the branch where the LHC fails, because existence is extinguished in the other branch. Is this somehow more solidly believable than the author's "sentient universe messing with stuff" explanation? Probably not.
One of the BB posts, noted that falsely issuing DMCA notices might be construed as abuse of process. If any real lawyers are lurking out there, could this be used as a counter tactic? What is the likely hood that you could make such a charge stick to the plantif or their counsel?
The DMCA itself provides for penalties, both civil and criminal, for false takedown notices - it's perjury, and probably tortious interference with a business relationship. However, this case is not so clear-cut. They reproduced the ad in its entirety, unmodified. The fact that they subsequently ridiculed it may or may not really make this fair use. Most likely it does, but arguments exist both ways. Thus, there is enough law to make the takedown notice non-perjury.
The world's full of interesting geeky stuff to do. One of the least interesting things you can do is to waste time forcing a machine to do something it's not designed for.
And here I though that was the MOST interesting thing to do, and one of the most geeky. Guess I've been wasting all my free time! I should find a hobby that's actually interesting.
The judge "vacated" the jury's decision? How is that legal?
If the jury considers improper factors in making their decision, the judge can invalidate the verdict and either have a new trial or, under some circumstances, enter a verdict directly. For example, if the jury explicitly considers the race of the parties in reaching a verdict (or considers inadmissible evidence, or bases the verdict on how cute the attorneys are, or whatever), it's not valid.
I have never heard of this concept that a judge can tell a jury "you're wrong, I'm finding the defendant guilty"
A judge in a criminal case cannot enter a guilty verdict when the jury finds otherwise. This is a civil case. The procedure and factors that a judge must consider under these circumstances are very rigidly established and are subject to completely fresh review on appeal.
In fact, a major legal concept, jury nullification relies on the idea that a jury can disobey a judge.
And they can, but not just for any old reason. A jury is not supposed to be a group of 12 ignorant tyrants with absolute power and no bounds on their authority. Like judges, juries make specific decisions, within specific boundaries, following specific rules. When they don't, their decisions are not upheld.
Why a few seconds, why not an exact time?
Because that's the degree of precision necessary when working with analog electronics that aren't intended to function as timing devices. Anything more precise would be unnecessary, anything less would be insufficient.
'... and if not lost they're too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the "features" have been rendered useless.' I feel like this with just about every portable device these days. Am I the only one?
That's about right. My iPhone is disastrous in that respect. Why? Because the developers put flashy graphics above UI speed. Any display change on an iPhone requires a brief rendered screen change effect - a sweep, or dissolve, or fly-away. The effect may only take a tenth of a second, but the device takes a full second or more to process it! Every button press, a pop-up graphic of the button. WHY???? There is more than enough processing power in all modern portable devices to handle all the operational functions of the device and to run the UI faster than any human could require. The temptation to use all that processing power to push the boundaries with chrome is rendering the devices even slower than previous generations of handheld technology, regardless of the improved hardware. Mobile developers: Back to basics, folks. Focus on what matters.
If the TELCOs broke the law by willingly participating in the warrentless wiretapping, then there is NOTHING retroactive about this. What IS unconstitutional is that there was an act passed by congress saying that the TELCOs cannot be punished.
Care to back that up with a citation? Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution prohibits the passage of ex post facto laws, which are those that criminalize an act which has already occurred (or increase the punishment for an act occurring prior to the legislation). The legislature most certainly can decriminalize prior acts, however. To do so is not ex post facto, because it does not impose a penalty on anyone for acts already committed. This occurs frequently. It is not clear, however, that congress could now re-criminalize what it previously granted immunity for - to do so may implicate 5th and 6th amendment issues if the responsible parties have disclosed information about their actions in the meantime in reliance on the immunity granted by congress. Even though the wiretapping was illegal when they did it, congress' grant of immunity may not be constitutionally reversible.
That's 38,143 hours. Not great for LEDs, actually. Most newer white LEDs are rated for 50k to 100k hours.
Yes, that hypothetical does change the outcome. However, I do not have the opportunity to choose only "wild and free" cows to eat. Most do come from factory farms. Even plenty of non-factory farms are just as bad. As far as the continuum of sentience, I draw the line right about at fish. I'm completely fine with eating aquatic invertebrates, and much prefer to do so over fish, which I'm somewhat uncomfortable with. Birds are biologically very similar to fish, but seem to have a higher level of consciousness and respond to pain almost identically to mammals - unlike fish. So I don't eat them.