The amusing part of course is that Vmware licensing server.... is a FlexLM server (which takes some vendor-specific plug-ins, which is how it can serve many applications).
As people have pointed out, many (sane) corps refuse to play ball with any software which requires anything remotely resembling the FlexLM licensing shit. Unfortunately sometimes there is no other choice... and sooner or later we are painfully taught that DRM is a method of turning the supposedly "legitimate" customers into masochists.
The sooner some Free Software equivalent of all the advanced VMware features shows up, the sooner we can leave the FlexLM people to gainfully employ their product to repeatedly insert and remove it from their hind orifices with high frequency.
Freedom is all good, and I am usually the first in line to promote Free Software, but what my customers need are high VM performance, High Availability, Vmotion, DRS, etc.
Unfortunately Vmware is pretty much the only game in town for all the advanced stuff.
The day when one of the Open Source solutions can pull all that stuff off will be the day I sold my last Vmware license because I actually hate the bastards with passion for their idiotic decisions regarding the whole unholy (Windows only) mess called "Virtual Center" and its associated (Windows only of course) license server crap, fruits of which retardation can be easily seen in this here episode.
Err... it was actually the Georgians deciding to "reclaim" South Ossetia. The Russians are mounting an counter offensive. But one would never expect USians to ever bother with details like this. They would just mess up their neat White Hat / Black Hat world.
Where's the outrage against Russia's invasion of a sovereign country?
Right out there with the Western oh-so-sanctimonious "outrage" at Serbs opposing the Kosovars declaring independence from Serbia. What's good for the goose...
This is only influential if the owners and higher levels of management of said mass media is making content decisions.
They are making hiring decisions, which in the end has the effect of contents decisions.
At one time, the press actually was an independent bastion of agnostic reporting that reported the facts while making opinions clear that they were someone's opinion.
Not at all. That was always merely the illusion you were supposed to labor under, but many people knew better all along. Chomsky made a whole career out of meticulously documenting this very lack of "agnostic" reporting in the US media for decades (granted, he looked for evidence of class warfare, but the point is universal). Frankly I do not think it is possible for a reporter to write anything with detachment. Personal attitude affects everything, from the choice of wording to the choice of what is "important" and what should be omitted. By these very means one can alter the story presented by a very large degree, while still being able to claim 100% adherence to "facts".
Here is a sample of the common wisdom of the time. It wasn't until after detractors pressed on that it was changed. No amount of liberal bias would have changed the run up at the time because the concept of Iraq not being a threat was new and counter to the ten years before. Iraq had been in the top ten list of states sponsoring terrorists since about 1996-98. Unfortunately, for some reasons the Patterns of Global Terrorism report before 2000 aren't available from the state department without doing a google search.
Again, all of this is US-centric "conventional wisdom", which has no relationship to an actually active press doing their job. Many, if not most, European papers did not get on board with that narrative and kept asking inconvenient questions, which is why the final UN vote went the way it did: the war was not authorized (contrary to tortured attempts by various demagogues to wring such meaning out of the previous vote which simply threatened more investigations and votes in case Iraq does not comply - one can easily see the contrast with an actual authorization of the previous Gulf War). And on and on and on.
Anyways, as of 2001-2003, the idea that Iraq was a threat wasn't disputed.
By whom? I do recall reading Canadian and European press articles full of questions about this very thing, the overarching narrative being that Saddam was confined and presented little credible threat to his neighbors and no threat at all to the US. That was and still is the "prevailing" (but by no means unopposed by member outfits of the Murdoch media empire and others like it) opinion in much of Canada and Europe.
By saying that the US-centric narrative "wasn't disputed" you only strengthen my argument of the total lock-step and lack of diversity of opinions in the US conglomerate media!
Also, self-serving "reports" concocted by the very people whose careers depend on labeling every second nation in the world as a "threat" for opposing US industrial and military interests bear little credence on the matter.
How serious of a threat and whether violence (war) was warranted is mostly the only things in dispute.
See above. Most in Europe (and I dare say around the world) believe that Saddam was on his way out and Iraq posed no long-range threat whatsoever and that the US, backed by certain pan-national interests, unilaterally fabricated its casus belli for its own purposes. That is the prevailing global opinion, by a far margin.
So you might have just as well expected and then gotten disappointed when the media failed to question the outcome of WWII or if America ever gained independence from England. The only real question that isn't being asked here is how long has the fraud been perpetrated before Bush Took Offi
That fact of the matter is that modern journalism is getting sloppy and more opinion is being added to news articles. This opinion usually sides with the author of the stories and you will find more liberal reporters working at the same places as well as conservative reporters doing the same.
Which reasoning only works until you realize that nearly all of the gigantic mass-media is owned by "conservatives" who have full control over upper management of these media companies (who naturally also happen to be nearly exclusively "conservative") who in turn have full control over whom they hire to be "journalists".
I'm not sure you can find a media outlet in America that isn't biased to some degree. It is even getting to be the case in other places around the world too.
This situation has existed since the first Gutenberg press went into operation. And it is obvious to anyone on Europe, where newspapers are "affiliated" with political parties (and sometimes outright owned by them as is the case with Socialists and Communists who cannot count on many big-business affiliations). The difference is of course in the fact that none of these media outlets attempt to pretend to be "fair and balanced", nor does the public expect them to. That is why people read various papers and try to form their own opinions, instead of moaning about how the media is "biased". Only in the US such things occur due to some nationalistic delusion of the press being somehow above and beyond the class warfare, followed by runaway consolidation of all media in fewer and fewer hands (which is a key part of the long term strategy of these so-called "conservatives").
That diversification of views is what (at least in principle) prevents the phenomenon of jingoistic, uncritical lock-step "coverage" which was characteristic of the US media in the run-up to the Iraq war. No major media outlet asked pointed questions and no one dissented for fear of being branded as "unpatriotic". US really needs some true "leftist" mass media desperately, even just to wake people out of their American Idol stupor.
Cops arrest 9 married couples for having sex thanks to an anonymous tip claiming they were prostitutes. No evidence of prostitution was found, just a bunch of people having sex in a jacuzzi.
In that case an actual crime was committed ("lewd behavior"). Your beef here is with stupid laws written by Victorian prudes, hyperventilating Puritanists, hypocritical Christianists and other fundamentalist religious wackos. The anonymous tip (probably by a member of one of these above mentioned groups) is wholly tangential.
So cops don't go and arrest a doctor because someone puts a gun in their car and calls from a payphone to claim the doctor was waving it at them? Of course, they let him go, but almost certainly the arrest remains on his record and reputation.
The important point of distinction here is that the "tipster" not only lobbed the anonymous accusations but also planted physical "evidence". That was because he/she fully realized that anonymous accusations lack any credence on their own. Which is was my point.
Ignoring the cases above, how many thefts and murders happen every day?
Which has to do with a discussion about credence of anonymous accusations how precisely?
A letter was also sent to the New York Post, a paper with a decidely conservative slant. You decide.
The US "conservatives" firmly believe (since being informed so by Rush, Bill O and FOX "News" in general etc) that all media has a nasty, horrible "liberal bias" (by which they mean "leftist" in the traditional sense of political affiliations and which stance they accuse the center-right US Democratic party of, calling them "communist" etc).
It is one of the most prominent examples of these "conservatives" utter inability to perform any sort of logical reasoning and their complete lack of exposure to actual "leftist" media. Not only that, but the dunces are actually proud of their estrangement from logic and information, wearing their stupidity like a badge of honor.
Anonymous tip lines work for the cops, and what can be more of an attack on a character than reporting that they committed a crime?
Which of course works only if the crime was actually committed. In which case this has nothing to do with defamation or libel as the accusation is true. Otherwise the cops come investigating and quickly find the allegations false... upon which they turn to trying to find out who the "tipster" was to get him and to "explain" to him what they think of people who try to use the cops as tools.
You may be sure of the merits of your suit, but unsure that the "facts" (note my quotes) will support the outcome you want. Therefore you may still want to reduce media exposure.
Which, again, is anathemical to any attempts at defending the supposed virtues of your character. If you yourself are unsure as to validity of all the scorn then likely there is a large grain of truth to the accusations, or your claims of supposed harm are greatly inflated. Or both.
My assertion stands.
Of course, we may both be right: their intent could be to reduce media exposure, and an anonymous libel suit makes no sense. Until the courts decide, we won't know... and even then, there may be doubts.
More I read about this case more convinced I become that the women are spoiled, self-absorbed, narcissistic, domineering jackasses complete with an unhealthy dose of paranoia, their bruised fragile egos demanding that any and all of their detractors' futures must be ruined and their foes destroyed financially just to show them "who's the boss".
It is the equivalent of some has-been starlet suing the Internets because one accidentally drug-free morning she happened to come in contact with this "computer thing" where she found out that some anonymous idiot called her "a talentless bitch" (which just so happens to be true) and made sexual suggestions about her in some obscure forum in some trash strewn dark corner of the net.
Sounds like they had reason to believe him to be the administrator, since he claimed to be.
Except of course WSJ talks about hearsay from DeWitt who talks about hearsay from "some blogger" etc. Furthermore the bulk of the complaints was supposedly targeted at yet another website called "T4 Talent" or some such, not AutoAdmit proper. Note that Cohen, who is the actual owner and admin of the AutoAdmit site, was not sued by the harpies. As it turned out the reason for the suit was their mistaken impression that Ciolli was a pseudonymous poster (the wilting lilies admitted so much when they dropped their suit against him).
Then I suggest Mr. Colli sue them...
Err... I quoted you from the lawsuit papers filed by him.
No matter how much you assert it, it's not going to come true.
Really? Prove it. Demonstrate how one can perform a credible anonymous attack on someone else's character without some verifiable (and thus non-anonymous or in public domain) evidence.
Wow... I already replied before pointing out how wrong you were, so I'll give you a chance to respond to that one, but you're seriously sticking your neck out here with a grossly uninformed opinion and making yourself look like an idiot.
Anonymity (even attempted one) precludes maintaining a "reputation", ergo it precludes a defense against "libel". By definition.
Neither are anonymous attacks on one's character credible, which precludes "libel". Also by definition.
This fundamental logic will not change, no matter what excuses, whining or name-calling you engage in.
Sorry, this is completely wrong. The two girls were named on the forum, and their pictures and class schedules were posted. Some of the posters even followed them to the gym, posted photos and their usual schedules, along with calls to rape them.
At that point their identity is widely known. Posting pictures and schedules defamation does not make. Posting anonymous calls to rape/murder/what-not of a random person is a daily (if not hourly) occurrence on pretty much every Internet forum, including Slashdot. None of this constitutes "libel" as libel requires the libelous assertions to be credible. Anonymous Internet posts are by definition not credible. Which I already pointed out many times.
The Jane Doe ploy now is an attempt to regain some of their privacy. But those of us who have been either following the case or done a little more research than you know exactly who they are.
Which, again, is in direct opposition to the presumed goal of the suit: restoring their character in the public view.
It boggles my mind that this very simple, basic, fundamental logical premise of defense against libel seems to escape you (and many others here) - the only way to do so is to prove the libelous assertions false. The only way to do that is to contrast your real character and actions against the accusations. And of course the only way to do that is to stand firm, in person, against the accusers. Anonymity is an anathema to such defense.
If, on the other hand, you intend to use courts as a blunt weapon to harm your detractors, without being able to prove their assertions false, everything changes and anonymity becomes an asset.
I take it you aren't a law student.
But of course, the land is divided into two classes of people: the Divinely Appointed Lawyer-Priests and the bleating sheep forever at the mercy of the Lords Of Law, the sheep of course having no say in the matter, remaining forever ignorant of the byzantine intricacies of the Divine Laws, understanding of which is "impossible" but adherence to which is absolutely demanded, right? Is this what you are trying to say?
Also: point out a singular legitimate (as opposed to "legal") "libel" or "defamation" suit filed (and won) anonymously.
That depends on what is sealed in the court records & what isn't.
The entire event was supposed to have occurred on public forums. There are no "sealed" records possible here whatsoever.
The whole point of filing Jane Doe is to distance their names from the libel in the posts, not to be anonymous.
The whole point of defending against libel is to prove the libelous assertions false and exact recompense. Not to somehow retroactively erase them from existence. You seem to have a difficulty grasping this.
Tacking their names to the top of hundreds of more documents that reference the posts is only going to bring those posts back to the top of the search list for their names.
Along with the victorious results of their lawsuit, the public recriminations of the accusers, the amounts of monetary damages they had to pay etc. That is the nature of libel suits, you cannot have your character defended without demolishing the accusations, and you cannot demolish the accusations if they remain censored. All that accomplishes is to give credence to the accusations and bring forth new accusations of abuse of the process of law.
If you can't understand that, then your being deliberately obtuse, have no understanding of how employers hire people, or are a troll.
You are being deliberately obtuse, have no understanding how employees hire people (one of the supposed "victims" was hired for $3080 a week at the peak of the supposed "scandal") and you are probably a troll.
Ciolli's an asshat who grabbed the first amendment flag and waved it over a stinking pile of shit screaming he has no duty to be a decent human being. That's fine and he probably didn't have a legal responsibility to pull down the posts when asked, doesn't make him less of an asshat
Except of course that he was not the administrator of the board in question, nor he posted any posts on the matter at all and was simply sued in error as the two hysterical harpies fired their lawsuits blindly at random targets: they assumed he was one of the posters with the handle of "pauliewalnuts" with no evidence to that effect. Once that became apparent, they dropped their suit. If anyone has grounds for a libel suit, it is him.
As for not filing it anonymously, he's not trying to disassociate his name from libelous comments about his sexual exploits which are the top selections for every search of his name.
Riiiiight. From the Colli's suit papers: "109: Mass media outlets, including Countdown with Keith Obermann and National Public Radio reported that Mr. Ciolli was guilty of defamation, copyright infringement and other torts...."
103. Ms. Heller alleged in the complaint filed in the Connecticut litigation that she had not received a summer associate position as a result of the Connecticut defendants' alleged conduct.
104. According to information compiled and released by the Yale Law School Career Development Office, however, Ms. Heller not only had obtained summer employment prior to initiating litigation, but was employed as a summer associate in the Palo Alto office of Morrison & Foerster, one of the nation's most prestigious law firms, where she earned a salary of $3,080 per week.
Guess that says something about whether the stuff harmed their reputations, huh?
Not only that, but the guy Cialli's (whom she sued) job offer was rescinded (leaving him jobless) due to their suit!
Which still makes no sense as far as the "Jane Doe"s and the "libel" suit is concerned. If the names are out, and you are concerned about your reputation, why hide? You have nothing to lose (your name is already out) and everything to gain.. if you are right. That is by standing boldly and proving the other guys being wrong you not only win the case, but also enhance your standing both in public opinion and (more importantly) in the legal profession you are supposedly trying to make a career in.
The only possible reason to hide is if you are uncertain about the merits of your suit and thus remove any pretense of "libel" having occurred.
Which boils down to what I said before: a "libel" suit filed anonymously makes absolutely no sense. It is a contradiction in terms.
Ciolli's lawsuit is a different matter entirely: he is retaliating against the two who attacked him. His libel suit makes all the sense in the world. He did not attempt to file it anonymously.
The article notes that "the Jane Doe plaintiffs contend that the postings about them became etched into the first page of search engine results on their names," which strongly suggests that the posts
included their real names, not just their online handles. If so, then the Jane Doe thing is to further distance their names from the media and search engines.
Unless by "names" they meant "CuteLawBunny12" and "FlamingBlonde" or some other handle they had on that forum.
Look, if you are going to defend your reputation then the basic prerequisite is that you stand proudly by it. In every libel suit I ever heard of, it was some politician, industrialist, author etc who stood firm bristling with indignity at someone daring to challenge him/her in the court of public opinion. A "libel" suit in which "slander" occurred to people who do not wish to be known makes absolutely no sense.
Anonymity precludes a reputation, and as such it also precludes libel.
tl,dr: Making hateful statements against a particular identifiable group is illegal in Canada.
Unless of course the "identifiable group" happens to be Muslims and the person making the "hateful statements" in a national publication happens to be a Likudnik Zionist.
This is a pretty straightforward bit of libel...Even on the internets you have to be careful if you're explicitly slandering someone by name.
From the article and the court documents it appears that the plaintiffs are both "Jane Doe"s. That means that their identity was not explicitly known to everyone (else the Jane Doe ploy makes no sense) and that it is the supposed attacker's identity which is being exposed instead. Which makes the whole thing a legal equivalent of a tantrum (made possible by the fact that they were both law students). Libel is only applicable to a situation where some real person's reputation is being slandered by people who bid their credibility against the said person's. Which precludes anonymous attacks for they are not credible to begin with. If it were otherwise, the entire Internet would pretty much have to be shut down as nearly every forum on any topics on the planet contains phrases in the vain of "politician x is an idiot" by a poster named "Anonymous1213".
calm down a moment and check what you have typed in this block. feel the irony with what you are saying and how you are speaking. check how you are using curses and insults instead of logic to prove
your point. one should learn to act civil in a debate before commencing to defend any viewpoint.
I am perfectly calm. And the only logic that needs to be applied here is that I am dealing with a self-admitted jackass whose opinion of everyone but himself is so low as to not only spawn a belief that it is their role to decipher his lazily scribbled rants but also an attitude that they should be grateful for it! The irony on the other hand is in the fact that such an asshole, who feels himself entitled to denying all others around him basic common decency of following the rules of written language for their benefit, goes around whining about people feeling "entitled" to being able to earn a living after having invested years of effort into education.
I will not dignify any of this bullshit with responding to it, after it became clear in one of the other posts what your attitude towards others is. Fuck off.
You were claiming that education is "no effort". Now you are pretending that you meant something else.
if that education is able to produce valuable output. knowledge is just a stale, inert concept that is of no use, until it is applied in a needed area.
Which, without education, cannot be done.
your last sentence in that block puts out our difference in our approach. i omit shift key, and use the energy and time i saved to impart with more words to describe ideas, therefore increasing the level of interaction between the person debating with me. whereas you are getting clung on the capitalization. as you are very well able to understand what i type, there is no problem. and it seems to be so up to this point too.
You are an idiot. The reason capitalization exists is to make it easier for whomever you writing for to read what you write! And this is an exemplification of a truly moronic attitude you exhibit here, a self-centered narcissist whose entire life-style depends on offloading the work he is supposed to be doing onto others and then trying to profit from it. You are imparting words? None of what you've been blabbering on has been "imparted" anywhere, nor have you described any "ideas". In fact you are just another societal parasite whose whole purpose of life is to abuse others. I should have figured it out from your idolizing of anything businesses do and whining about anything people do to better themselves.
This discussion is over. Go "impart" your words on someone who is willing to put up with your stupidity.
you cant outsource jobs in a steel mill. you can only move the steel mill. thats not something new. corporations have been setting factories wherever labor or logistics are cheaper for a long time now. i dont think its relevant to outsourcing.
"Outsourcing" is an euphemism used for "move all the work abroad" in specific industries, such as IT. In others it simply is "move the factory abroad". They are one and the same, the only difference is that "outsourcing" is a marketing term for the old idea, designed so that people (like you) are confused into thing that it is somehow "a new thing". In fact it is a part of an ongoing class warfare by corporate owners and executives on everyone else below their station.
well, if companies moved themselves abroad, why not people are setting up new corporations and filling the void in the country instead of making a stampede to force corporations to bring the factories back ? what happened to the entrepreneurship ?
For the same reason for which the "outsourced" IT workers to not spring into setting up "competitive' companies to get their jobs back: the pre-requisite for "competition" is that your wage matches that of the $20-a-month worker in Whateverdecrepidstan to where your old job went to. Game over.
yes you can go bankrupt if you dont play your cards right. but then again this goes for any kind of business. if you try to make it big, you can also break it big.
Most people do not (seriously anyway) want to "make it big". They just want day-to-day life being comfortable and their children being raised happy, healthy and with good prospects of happy life ahead of them. That is it!
Your entire "solution" (of people taking wild risks with their lives - also called "getting into business" - and then losing in the crap shoot which business is - and I know for having run no less but 8 different companies in my career, some successful, some not) is not acceptable to anyone but an unmarried 20 year old with "nothing to lose". Anyone trying this crap with a family to feed is simply an idiot, and in a vast majority of cases he or she will end up divorced, lose custody of the kids and more likely then not end up destitute (either financially or morally) at the end of it. There are very, very few "winners" in this, i.e. people for whom the personal cost of "running the business" does not by far exceed any value they got back out of it. Money (and work) is supposed to be only a small fraction of our lives. That is the truth about this whole "entrepreneurial spirit" bullshit (the propaganda I once long time ago believed myself - when I was being young and stupid).
reliability, good reputation is paramount for anything related to i.t.. have a good reputation, and youll get increasing business. if you try to grow fast at this stage, you totally mess it up. get reputation that is over a certain threshold, and you may see that clients wont quit nagging you to get their jobs done by you, even if your demands are high.
Dude, you make me laugh. See above. I have far more experience at this then you can imagine. "Reliability and good reputation"?! Hah! Factor in back-stabbing politics amongst the top echelons of your corporate customers, add in crazy (as in mentally off to another planet) managers assigned for you to work with, etc and so on. Then add your best customer (a large pan-national company) ordering over a $1 million of hardware and software for a large project the start of which you've been waiting for a year (on the usual terms they insist on i.e. NET30) you delivering it, and then they going bankrupt the following week - actual case which happened to one of my companies. What you do amounts to less then 50% of the control you have over your IT business! If you do not understand this you are unprepared to be in such a business (which I seriously doubt that you
What the hell? America has never had a free market, or anything approaching one.
Never claimed so. Only that some people are trying to make it happen. Also, truly "free" market is impossible in practice (as opposed to in theory, which is true for many other utopian - or in this case distopian, scenarios).
A free market isn't a cure-all, but it *is* the only justifiable way to conduct your relationships with other people. The reason being, that you do not own other people or their labor. The only just way of convincing them to trade their goods and labor with you is to offer them something in return, not to threaten them with theft and imprisonment. Libertarians are the only ones that do *not* treat other people as mere objects.
This is a logical fallacy resulting from gross over-simplifications (which Libertarians are really fond of). There are many situations in which the unrestricted "free market" spontaneously devolves into (for all practical purposes permanent) monopolies, as there are many conditions under which the "free willing" participants get conned or cornered by other "free willing" players into permanent no-win situations which for all intents and purposes result in indentured slavery. All of which happened historically in times and places where no governmental oversight existed and "free market" was able to take full hold.
Slashdot Mirror
The amusing part of course is that Vmware licensing server .... is a FlexLM server (which takes some vendor-specific plug-ins, which is how it can serve many applications).
As people have pointed out, many (sane) corps refuse to play ball with any software which requires anything remotely resembling the FlexLM licensing shit. Unfortunately sometimes there is no other choice ... and sooner or later we are painfully taught that DRM is a method of turning the supposedly "legitimate" customers into masochists.
The sooner some Free Software equivalent of all the advanced VMware features shows up, the sooner we can leave the FlexLM people to gainfully employ their product to repeatedly insert and remove it from their hind orifices with high frequency.
Freedom is all good, and I am usually the first in line to promote Free Software, but what my customers need are high VM performance, High Availability, Vmotion, DRS, etc.
Unfortunately Vmware is pretty much the only game in town for all the advanced stuff.
The day when one of the Open Source solutions can pull all that stuff off will be the day I sold my last Vmware license because I actually hate the bastards with passion for their idiotic decisions regarding the whole unholy (Windows only) mess called "Virtual Center" and its associated (Windows only of course) license server crap, fruits of which retardation can be easily seen in this here episode.
Err... it was actually the Georgians deciding to "reclaim" South Ossetia. The Russians are mounting an counter offensive. But one would never expect USians to ever bother with details like this. They would just mess up their neat White Hat / Black Hat world.
Right out there with the Western oh-so-sanctimonious "outrage" at Serbs opposing the Kosovars declaring independence from Serbia. What's good for the goose...
They are making hiring decisions, which in the end has the effect of contents decisions.
Not at all. That was always merely the illusion you were supposed to labor under, but many people knew better all along. Chomsky made a whole career out of meticulously documenting this very lack of "agnostic" reporting in the US media for decades (granted, he looked for evidence of class warfare, but the point is universal). Frankly I do not think it is possible for a reporter to write anything with detachment. Personal attitude affects everything, from the choice of wording to the choice of what is "important" and what should be omitted. By these very means one can alter the story presented by a very large degree, while still being able to claim 100% adherence to "facts".
Again, all of this is US-centric "conventional wisdom", which has no relationship to an actually active press doing their job. Many, if not most, European papers did not get on board with that narrative and kept asking inconvenient questions, which is why the final UN vote went the way it did: the war was not authorized (contrary to tortured attempts by various demagogues to wring such meaning out of the previous vote which simply threatened more investigations and votes in case Iraq does not comply - one can easily see the contrast with an actual authorization of the previous Gulf War). And on and on and on.
By whom? I do recall reading Canadian and European press articles full of questions about this very thing, the overarching narrative being that Saddam was confined and presented little credible threat to his neighbors and no threat at all to the US. That was and still is the "prevailing" (but by no means unopposed by member outfits of the Murdoch media empire and others like it) opinion in much of Canada and Europe.
By saying that the US-centric narrative "wasn't disputed" you only strengthen my argument of the total lock-step and lack of diversity of opinions in the US conglomerate media!
Also, self-serving "reports" concocted by the very people whose careers depend on labeling every second nation in the world as a "threat" for opposing US industrial and military interests bear little credence on the matter.
See above. Most in Europe (and I dare say around the world) believe that Saddam was on his way out and Iraq posed no long-range threat whatsoever and that the US, backed by certain pan-national interests, unilaterally fabricated its casus belli for its own purposes. That is the prevailing global opinion, by a far margin.
Which reasoning only works until you realize that nearly all of the gigantic mass-media is owned by "conservatives" who have full control over upper management of these media companies (who naturally also happen to be nearly exclusively "conservative") who in turn have full control over whom they hire to be "journalists".
This situation has existed since the first Gutenberg press went into operation. And it is obvious to anyone on Europe, where newspapers are "affiliated" with political parties (and sometimes outright owned by them as is the case with Socialists and Communists who cannot count on many big-business affiliations). The difference is of course in the fact that none of these media outlets attempt to pretend to be "fair and balanced", nor does the public expect them to. That is why people read various papers and try to form their own opinions, instead of moaning about how the media is "biased". Only in the US such things occur due to some nationalistic delusion of the press being somehow above and beyond the class warfare, followed by runaway consolidation of all media in fewer and fewer hands (which is a key part of the long term strategy of these so-called "conservatives").
That diversification of views is what (at least in principle) prevents the phenomenon of jingoistic, uncritical lock-step "coverage" which was characteristic of the US media in the run-up to the Iraq war. No major media outlet asked pointed questions and no one dissented for fear of being branded as "unpatriotic". US really needs some true "leftist" mass media desperately, even just to wake people out of their American Idol stupor.
In that case an actual crime was committed ("lewd behavior"). Your beef here is with stupid laws written by Victorian prudes, hyperventilating Puritanists, hypocritical Christianists and other fundamentalist religious wackos. The anonymous tip (probably by a member of one of these above mentioned groups) is wholly tangential.
The important point of distinction here is that the "tipster" not only lobbed the anonymous accusations but also planted physical "evidence". That was because he/she fully realized that anonymous accusations lack any credence on their own. Which is was my point.
Which has to do with a discussion about credence of anonymous accusations how precisely?
The US "conservatives" firmly believe (since being informed so by Rush, Bill O and FOX "News" in general etc) that all media has a nasty, horrible "liberal bias" (by which they mean "leftist" in the traditional sense of political affiliations and which stance they accuse the center-right US Democratic party of, calling them "communist" etc).
It is one of the most prominent examples of these "conservatives" utter inability to perform any sort of logical reasoning and their complete lack of exposure to actual "leftist" media. Not only that, but the dunces are actually proud of their estrangement from logic and information, wearing their stupidity like a badge of honor.
Which of course works only if the crime was actually committed. In which case this has nothing to do with defamation or libel as the accusation is true. Otherwise the cops come investigating and quickly find the allegations false ... upon which they turn to trying to find out who the "tipster" was to get him and to "explain" to him what they think of people who try to use the cops as tools.
Which, again, is anathemical to any attempts at defending the supposed virtues of your character. If you yourself are unsure as to validity of all the scorn then likely there is a large grain of truth to the accusations, or your claims of supposed harm are greatly inflated. Or both.
My assertion stands.
More I read about this case more convinced I become that the women are spoiled, self-absorbed, narcissistic, domineering jackasses complete with an unhealthy dose of paranoia, their bruised fragile egos demanding that any and all of their detractors' futures must be ruined and their foes destroyed financially just to show them "who's the boss".
It is the equivalent of some has-been starlet suing the Internets because one accidentally drug-free morning she happened to come in contact with this "computer thing" where she found out that some anonymous idiot called her "a talentless bitch" (which just so happens to be true) and made sexual suggestions about her in some obscure forum in some trash strewn dark corner of the net.
Except of course WSJ talks about hearsay from DeWitt who talks about hearsay from "some blogger" etc. Furthermore the bulk of the complaints was supposedly targeted at yet another website called "T4 Talent" or some such, not AutoAdmit proper. Note that Cohen, who is the actual owner and admin of the AutoAdmit site, was not sued by the harpies. As it turned out the reason for the suit was their mistaken impression that Ciolli was a pseudonymous poster (the wilting lilies admitted so much when they dropped their suit against him).
Err ... I quoted you from the lawsuit papers filed by him.
Really? Prove it. Demonstrate how one can perform a credible anonymous attack on someone else's character without some verifiable (and thus non-anonymous or in public domain) evidence.
Anonymity (even attempted one) precludes maintaining a "reputation", ergo it precludes a defense against "libel". By definition.
Neither are anonymous attacks on one's character credible, which precludes "libel". Also by definition.
This fundamental logic will not change, no matter what excuses, whining or name-calling you engage in.
At that point their identity is widely known. Posting pictures and schedules defamation does not make. Posting anonymous calls to rape/murder/what-not of a random person is a daily (if not hourly) occurrence on pretty much every Internet forum, including Slashdot. None of this constitutes "libel" as libel requires the libelous assertions to be credible. Anonymous Internet posts are by definition not credible. Which I already pointed out many times.
Which, again, is in direct opposition to the presumed goal of the suit: restoring their character in the public view.
It boggles my mind that this very simple, basic, fundamental logical premise of defense against libel seems to escape you (and many others here) - the only way to do so is to prove the libelous assertions false. The only way to do that is to contrast your real character and actions against the accusations. And of course the only way to do that is to stand firm, in person, against the accusers. Anonymity is an anathema to such defense.
If, on the other hand, you intend to use courts as a blunt weapon to harm your detractors, without being able to prove their assertions false, everything changes and anonymity becomes an asset.
But of course, the land is divided into two classes of people: the Divinely Appointed Lawyer-Priests and the bleating sheep forever at the mercy of the Lords Of Law, the sheep of course having no say in the matter, remaining forever ignorant of the byzantine intricacies of the Divine Laws, understanding of which is "impossible" but adherence to which is absolutely demanded, right? Is this what you are trying to say?
Also: point out a singular legitimate (as opposed to "legal") "libel" or "defamation" suit filed (and won) anonymously.
The entire event was supposed to have occurred on public forums. There are no "sealed" records possible here whatsoever.
The whole point of defending against libel is to prove the libelous assertions false and exact recompense. Not to somehow retroactively erase them from existence. You seem to have a difficulty grasping this.
Along with the victorious results of their lawsuit, the public recriminations of the accusers, the amounts of monetary damages they had to pay etc. That is the nature of libel suits, you cannot have your character defended without demolishing the accusations, and you cannot demolish the accusations if they remain censored. All that accomplishes is to give credence to the accusations and bring forth new accusations of abuse of the process of law.
You are being deliberately obtuse, have no understanding how employees hire people (one of the supposed "victims" was hired for $3080 a week at the peak of the supposed "scandal") and you are probably a troll.
Except of course that he was not the administrator of the board in question, nor he posted any posts on the matter at all and was simply sued in error as the two hysterical harpies fired their lawsuits blindly at random targets: they assumed he was one of the posters with the handle of "pauliewalnuts" with no evidence to that effect. Once that became apparent, they dropped their suit. If anyone has grounds for a libel suit, it is him.
Riiiiight. From the Colli's suit papers: "109: Mass media outlets, including Countdown with Keith Obermann and National Public Radio reported that Mr. Ciolli was guilty of defamation, copyright infringement and other torts ...."
Not only that, but the guy Cialli's (whom she sued) job offer was rescinded (leaving him jobless) due to their suit!
Which still makes no sense as far as the "Jane Doe"s and the "libel" suit is concerned. If the names are out, and you are concerned about your reputation, why hide? You have nothing to lose (your name is already out) and everything to gain .. if you are right. That is by standing boldly and proving the other guys being wrong you not only win the case, but also enhance your standing both in public opinion and (more importantly) in the legal profession you are supposedly trying to make a career in.
The only possible reason to hide is if you are uncertain about the merits of your suit and thus remove any pretense of "libel" having occurred.
Which boils down to what I said before: a "libel" suit filed anonymously makes absolutely no sense. It is a contradiction in terms.
Ciolli's lawsuit is a different matter entirely: he is retaliating against the two who attacked him. His libel suit makes all the sense in the world. He did not attempt to file it anonymously.
Unless by "names" they meant "CuteLawBunny12" and "FlamingBlonde" or some other handle they had on that forum.
Look, if you are going to defend your reputation then the basic prerequisite is that you stand proudly by it. In every libel suit I ever heard of, it was some politician, industrialist, author etc who stood firm bristling with indignity at someone daring to challenge him/her in the court of public opinion. A "libel" suit in which "slander" occurred to people who do not wish to be known makes absolutely no sense.
Anonymity precludes a reputation, and as such it also precludes libel.
Unless of course the "identifiable group" happens to be Muslims and the person making the "hateful statements" in a national publication happens to be a Likudnik Zionist.
From the article and the court documents it appears that the plaintiffs are both "Jane Doe"s. That means that their identity was not explicitly known to everyone (else the Jane Doe ploy makes no sense) and that it is the supposed attacker's identity which is being exposed instead. Which makes the whole thing a legal equivalent of a tantrum (made possible by the fact that they were both law students). Libel is only applicable to a situation where some real person's reputation is being slandered by people who bid their credibility against the said person's. Which precludes anonymous attacks for they are not credible to begin with. If it were otherwise, the entire Internet would pretty much have to be shut down as nearly every forum on any topics on the planet contains phrases in the vain of "politician x is an idiot" by a poster named "Anonymous1213".
I am perfectly calm. And the only logic that needs to be applied here is that I am dealing with a self-admitted jackass whose opinion of everyone but himself is so low as to not only spawn a belief that it is their role to decipher his lazily scribbled rants but also an attitude that they should be grateful for it! The irony on the other hand is in the fact that such an asshole, who feels himself entitled to denying all others around him basic common decency of following the rules of written language for their benefit, goes around whining about people feeling "entitled" to being able to earn a living after having invested years of effort into education.
Beyond words.
I will not dignify any of this bullshit with responding to it, after it became clear in one of the other posts what your attitude towards others is. Fuck off.
You were claiming that education is "no effort". Now you are pretending that you meant something else.
Which, without education, cannot be done.
You are an idiot. The reason capitalization exists is to make it easier for whomever you writing for to read what you write! And this is an exemplification of a truly moronic attitude you exhibit here, a self-centered narcissist whose entire life-style depends on offloading the work he is supposed to be doing onto others and then trying to profit from it. You are imparting words? None of what you've been blabbering on has been "imparted" anywhere, nor have you described any "ideas". In fact you are just another societal parasite whose whole purpose of life is to abuse others. I should have figured it out from your idolizing of anything businesses do and whining about anything people do to better themselves.
This discussion is over. Go "impart" your words on someone who is willing to put up with your stupidity.
"Outsourcing" is an euphemism used for "move all the work abroad" in specific industries, such as IT. In others it simply is "move the factory abroad". They are one and the same, the only difference is that "outsourcing" is a marketing term for the old idea, designed so that people (like you) are confused into thing that it is somehow "a new thing". In fact it is a part of an ongoing class warfare by corporate owners and executives on everyone else below their station.
For the same reason for which the "outsourced" IT workers to not spring into setting up "competitive' companies to get their jobs back: the pre-requisite for "competition" is that your wage matches that of the $20-a-month worker in Whateverdecrepidstan to where your old job went to. Game over.
Most people do not (seriously anyway) want to "make it big". They just want day-to-day life being comfortable and their children being raised happy, healthy and with good prospects of happy life ahead of them. That is it!
Your entire "solution" (of people taking wild risks with their lives - also called "getting into business" - and then losing in the crap shoot which business is - and I know for having run no less but 8 different companies in my career, some successful, some not) is not acceptable to anyone but an unmarried 20 year old with "nothing to lose". Anyone trying this crap with a family to feed is simply an idiot, and in a vast majority of cases he or she will end up divorced, lose custody of the kids and more likely then not end up destitute (either financially or morally) at the end of it. There are very, very few "winners" in this, i.e. people for whom the personal cost of "running the business" does not by far exceed any value they got back out of it. Money (and work) is supposed to be only a small fraction of our lives. That is the truth about this whole "entrepreneurial spirit" bullshit (the propaganda I once long time ago believed myself - when I was being young and stupid).
Dude, you make me laugh. See above. I have far more experience at this then you can imagine. "Reliability and good reputation"?! Hah! Factor in back-stabbing politics amongst the top echelons of your corporate customers, add in crazy (as in mentally off to another planet) managers assigned for you to work with, etc and so on. Then add your best customer (a large pan-national company) ordering over a $1 million of hardware and software for a large project the start of which you've been waiting for a year (on the usual terms they insist on i.e. NET30) you delivering it, and then they going bankrupt the following week - actual case which happened to one of my companies. What you do amounts to less then 50% of the control you have over your IT business! If you do not understand this you are unprepared to be in such a business (which I seriously doubt that you
Never claimed so. Only that some people are trying to make it happen. Also, truly "free" market is impossible in practice (as opposed to in theory, which is true for many other utopian - or in this case distopian, scenarios).
This is a logical fallacy resulting from gross over-simplifications (which Libertarians are really fond of). There are many situations in which the unrestricted "free market" spontaneously devolves into (for all practical purposes permanent) monopolies, as there are many conditions under which the "free willing" participants get conned or cornered by other "free willing" players into permanent no-win situations which for all intents and purposes result in indentured slavery. All of which happened historically in times and places where no governmental oversight existed and "free market" was able to take full hold.