Bull. He's adding load to their service without recompense. They have to pay for that, not him. What do you call that?
Library policy, apparently. Every person who uses that spectrum, whether they are in or out of the public library building is "adding load" without recompense. If they don't want people outside the building using their spectrum there are any number of ways to take care of that. If they don't want people using it at all, they don't provide it. Simple.
[How is this different] from when Sun withdrew from ISO/IEC and ECMA because they didn't want to give up any control over Java?
The difference is that Sun developed Java and didn't want the Java platform fragmented by "partners" (primarily Microsoft) who intended to use the committee system to limit the threat Java's cross-platform utility posed to their little bailiwicks.
Here, MS is doing the exact opposite. They haven't developed the technologies in question. Rather, they have (once again) used their position on a committee to get a view of where it is heading, waited until the standards process reached a certain point, started obtaining questionable patents that will make them the owners of that standard, then they withdraw in order to avoid losing the ability to enforce those patents. Understand now?
Will somebody stop modding the anti-Sun trolls up for saying nothing useful? Thank you.
Europeans not knowing where Florida is is a totally different thing to Americans not knowing where Sweeden is. One os a district, the other is a country.
Except that geographically, many American states are as large or larger than many European countries. So a European not knowing where Florida is is in fact comparable to an American not knowing where Sweden is, except in the mind of Europeans with the geographic equivalent of penis-envy over the size of the United States.
It is pretty much accepted knowledge worldwide that the vast majority of the US population has little concern with anything beyond its own borders. Just watch your average american 6'oclock newscast and count the international references. Compared to other countries' newscasts it should be embarassing.
Common contract law holds that each revison of a contract is a new offer. Your revision of the contract would not be binding on [company] unless they agreed to it. In fact, there would be no contract at all until they do agree, since by drafting a new agreement you obviously did not agree to the extant EULA.
Which means that you'd be guilty of fraud, and potentially liable for a significant sum--possibly the maximum ammount of damages [company] could have suffered from your fraud--$4 bililon.
Not so. The person who makes the counteroffer is simply engaging in the battle of the forms. All the modification of the EULA would accomplish (assuming that your jurisdiction isn't one that mindlessly passed UCITA) is to create a situation where no agreement is reached.
Merely modifying a contract provision doesn't give rise to damages, or else there could be no negotiation process.
True enough. But anybody reading please keep in mind that republicans have started going around trolling liberal-leaning blogs (like/.), parading as ultra-liberals. Their point is to give pep-talks such as this to sway the liberal votes away from Kerry, towards Bush.
Also please bear in mind that many advocates of John Kerry are trolling these boards accusing Ralph Nader supporters of being stalking horses for Republicans.
Better suggestion. Review each post on its own merits, not through a partisan lens. There's a shocking notion. Advocates for third party candidates, or those who believe that they should be voting their own conscience and not somebody else's, deserve better than they have gotten from the Kerry partisans on this board.
This brought to you by the Republican party, the political group led by an imbecile cokehead who didn't even have the balls to turn up to his cushy National Guard posting. I have little sympathy for their copyright complaint...
In other words, your view of an abuse of copyright is tainted by your politics. This is precisely why those who are abusing copyright law in this instance feel free to do so. They know that the hopeless zealots on both sides will provide them cover (and mod points on Slashdot) for changing the subject.
If Kerry and Bush have nothing to hide, then there is no reason to suppress the information in question. John Kerry has chosen to run on his war record. That makes his war record fair game, and photographs that remind people what he did right after coming home should be seen. Bush has been called on to defend his decision to go to war with Iraq, and as president, it is his duty to explain that decision. If he has given an awkward or unconvincing explanation, it is the the right of the American people to see that and make their own judgments.
Either way, the subject was the misuse of copyright law to suppress political speech and political debate. Your posting and those following it in the same thread which are discussing everything other than the issue of how copyright is being used to suppress free speech are all seriously off-topic, and should have been modded as such.
Settling on an international standard that is mutually agreed upon strengthens the companies within those nations because they don't have to cope with several sets of rules. Like the standardization on the Euro, it reduces complexity and ultimately is a good thing.
Sure, it helps the rich and powerful stay that way, keeps the small and weak from upsetting the apple cart, and assures that the status quo ante favors those already on the top of the heap.
Grrrrreat.
For my part, I think that a little anarchy is a good thing, for those who love freedom. It was the early "standardization" of the Chinese nation, united under the uniform rule of one Emperor, united under one authority, that caused the eventual stagnation of their culture. Similarly, the more "uniform" power and authority became in the Roman Empire, the more oppressive and rotten it became.
Voluntary standards, i.e., those that can be disregarded, are good. Involuntary standards, i.e. those that are backed up with bayonets, prisons, and all the powers of the modern State, are less good, particularly when their effect is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.
Sorry, this isn't a good thing from my point of view.
I think driving while watching a DVD could be a classic example of a reckless disregard for human life. The driver knew he was manuevering a ton of steel at high speed in a place where human beings were expected to be. I doubt that the DA had a choice in what charge to file, given both the letter and the spirit of the law.
Actually, you are mistaken. The DA had considerable leeway, and there is a growing and unfortunate tendency for prosecutors to overcharge defendants in order to force a plea bargain to the proper charge out of fear that a jury might convict on the harsher charge
Depraved heart murder should not be confused with manslaughter, as seems to be happening here. Depraved heart murder is the unlawful killing of another human being accompanied by extreme atrocity. That is, the person with the "depraved heart" must be engaging in an activity that not only creates an unjustifiable risk of serious bodily injury or death, but that activity must be one where a very high risk of causing death or serious bodily injury that will result in death. A depraved heart murder is one where all the elements of murder are present, including conduct that would normally be seen as intended to cause death, but where clear intent to kill is lacking.
Driving while watching a DVD is a classic example of negligent behavior, not of a depraved heart. Watching a DVD while driving, or doing just about anything while driving (including talking to other people in the car) can distract you and cause you to have an accident. While it may be foreseeable to the "reasonable person" that engaging in distracting activities while driving will cause an accident, it cannot be said that activity is one where it is HIGHLY LIKELY that a death will result. This isn't like going around shooting into crowds, or deliberately driving on a busy sidewalk, or putting lethal doses of poison into random medicine bottles on a pharmacy shelf or other activities where extreme malice can be implied because some level of intent to cause death or injury likely to result in death is clearly present, even though intent to kill a specific person is lacking.
Increasingly, murder is the charge of preference whenever there is a criminal homicide, since murder charges garner headlines. My personal belief is that prosecutors that consistently overcharge defendants -- and many do -- should be disciplined by state bar organizations. It is unethical conduct, prejudicial to the defense, and is a disservice to the public. It serves no good purpose to muddy the distinctions between manslaughter and murder, as the confusion on this board demonstrates. How many people here would like to end up charged with murder for talking to the wife in the passenger seat when you should have been watching the road, hmm? The criminal law should serve justice, not vengeance. Charging someone guilty of manslaughter with murder is a perversion of justice, plain and simple.
If it was open season on everything, we would have nothing, we would still be in mud huts using two cups and a string to communicate. If there is no incentive for profit, most companies won't bother to make something.
There is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that patents are necessary to innovation, and there never has been. Check the literature, and you will find that inventors usually begin as people interested in solving a particular problem, not capitalists interested in filling their pockets. They come later, and the innovate very little. There's no money in it.
Patents are a product of the same economic thinking that produced the doctrine of mercantilism. Mercantilism was the loose economic theory that dominated 17th and 18th century Europe, founded on the idea that the wealth of nations. It promoted high tariffs on foreign goods, promotion of local markets, and other doctrines that would now be called "protectionist".
Adam Smith, of course, poked holes in the thinking behind mercantilism. Those who believe patents are necessary to progress are like those who believe protectionism is necessary to prosperity. It isn't sound thinking. Unfortunately, vested interests with a lot of money and power support patents like they once did the state-supported industries of the mercantilist era.
Like the mercantlists of an earlier era, those who support extensive patent protections encourage rent-seeking behavior, not risk-taking behavior, the consolidation of wealth, not the creating of wealth.
So thank you very much, but given that Seagate and Western Digital may be playing the patent card to put down a young and aggressive competitor with a better product, I see no reason to assume that Cornice is the bad guy here. Yes, obviously, something is up. WD and Seagate are afraid of Cornice. On the other hand, a lawsuit is evidence of nothing but that somebody wanted to sue somebody else, whether they have a case or not/P
You can turn off the 4KB stack and go back to the default behavior by recompiling the kernel with the proper option set, but default Linux distros based on 2.6 all use (to the best of my knowledge) 4KB stacks by default.
Not necessarily so. Mandrake's 2.6 kernel didn't have 4k stacks. And the newest Fedora 2 kernel has apparently removed the default 4k stacks as well, so this may be a "fix" that has been overtaken by events.
What's clear is that like all True Believers, Ken Brown will do anything possible to win, and he will never give up. He will not rest to his dying days to fight what he has started. He has put himself in a position he must defend. He is going to shout what he wants to anyone who will listen, and as most people are ignorant of the issue, many of them will.
I don't think you should assume that Brown is a True Believer.
A story about the "Whores for More" who pollute our public policy process.
In the late 1980's, I interned at a small but locally prominent "Beltway insider" political organization that was essentially a conservative/Republican foundation set up as a 501(c)(3) educational organization.
I was given a bird's eye view of how these groups, groups like ADTI, operate. Party or ideology aside, they all seem to work the same way.
It is all about money, ego, and, sometimes, ideas, precisely in that order.
I was amazed at how much time, effort, and energy was spent in the drive for getting money. Why did they need the money? To expand. For what purpose? To have more prominence and influence. Why? Well..it makes fundraising easier.
Don't misunderstand. I understood then and now that you need to raise money in order to operate. But I wasn't comfortable with the tactics used to obtain the money. The letters were frequently inflammatory and, I was surprised to find, sometimes simply wrong. The organization I was with wasn't the worst offender on that point, either. I saw some terrible stuff coming out of groups who were supposedly on the same side we were. There was certainly a lot for them to complain about, so why not keep it straight?
Moreover, I had open eyes, and I soon saw that there was a LOT of hypocrisy inside the Beltway. Many of these people pushed agendas that they didn't even come close to following.
Ego played a big role in all this. These "public policy" organizations are really an incestuous little bunch, where name-dropping, fancy titles, and building organizations with large fund-raising arms counted for more than substantive results. Any ideas that didn't come out of your "clique" were automatically bad. If you were part of the "clique", kissed the right asses, etc., you got ahead. If you weren't, don't bother, they weren't interested.
Appearances mattered. Real principles were a less important. When an Ohio congressman who was a noted conservative had to resign after being busted for having sex with a 13-year old black girl, there was a sympathy party for his staffers. All well and good, but for all the clucking of tongues, most of the comments were about how unfortunate it was that he'd done something that would hurt him politically. There was little comment on the fact that this married father had had sex with a young girl, and how just plain damn wrong that was. And nobody seemed to notice the hypocrisy. Why? Because of one too many people living in glass houses, preaching one thing for money and influence, and living another.
Where there ideas? Sure. There was a lot of talk. But the prevailing viewpoint was that principles should be compromised when it came time to "deal", because it was better to have something than nothing, right? And this is no doubt true, so long as compromise actually advances your ideas, but I noticed that many of the principles that these organizations pulled so many dollars from donors to support ended up in the waste basket when the time came to "deal".
I observed that this was a problem that crossed lines of party and ideology. Finding that policy wonking inside the Beltway was high-school magnified, played with millions of dollars and by people older than my parents, was disheartening to say the least.
"Whores for More" was and is my take on that experience after the fact. It is a take-off on the famous line by Bogart in Key Largo when he describes what motivated Edward G. Robinson's char
He is not being held on the patriot act, but a much older late 80's U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
You are correct, and the summary is not. This has nothing to do with Ashcroft, and in most respects, this looks like a standard homicide investigation.
There is a serious problem on Slashdot, which is that anything that bashes the Bush administration or a member of that administration gets posted without somebody doing a bullshit check.
Sorry, but I have to lay this at the doorstep o f the moderators. Way to screw up again guys. Check these things before you approve them, ok?
Just once I'd like to hear a well reasoned out anti-nuclear position.
You won't. All anti-nuclear power arguments I've heard or seen in print are essentially reactionary and paranoid ravings that confuse nuclear power with nuclear weapons and depend on popular fears of new technologies. It is quintessentially luddite mindset. There aren't any rational arguments against nuclear power. There may be rational arguments against certain power plants or techniques for using that power, but the argument never really gets that far. Fear of nuclear power isn't based on reasoned argument, and those who argue most strongly against nuclear power are fully aware of this.
Al Franken skewered Colmes in his book Lie and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I suggest that you read that before trotting out Colmes as evidence that Fox is not biased.
HAHAHA!
Citing Al Franken as an unbiased news source. Good one. Getting all those folks to give you "Insightful" rather than "Funny" mod points just makes the joke better. Cite Al Jazeera or the former Iraqi Information Minister next time. You'll grab those anti-U.S. mod points and get great laughs from those who understand you must be joking
Patents are one of the few ways new, little companies and inventors can get into the market. Without them the only entities that would ever make money are the established players.
Frequently stated, never proven, and contrary to all available evidence.
New little companies that try to enforce patents will find that they themselves are in violation of a large, established player's much larger patent portfolio and unable to match the large, established player's legal war chest.
Unless the new, little company produces nothing but patent litigation, in which case, they are unlikely to infringe on a patent, and equally unlikely to do anything useful with the ones they own. Is that what you are defending?
I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty. I don't want to live in a permanent state of fear, generated by a megalomaniacal American government taking advantage of the majority low IQ populous' capacity for being brainwashed.
Then please feel free to kill yourself, and spare of the rest of us your maudlin ranting.
American culture does not value intellect. In a country dominated by dogmatic religion and banal entertainment, anyone with half a brain is looked down upon for wasting tax dollars or being too "nerdy." Image is what matters, not content.
Dogmatic religion was the origin of public education and our major universities. Harvard was founded to train protestant missionaries. Collective schooling was intended to assure that Protestant church members had sufficient education to read the Bible for themselves without having to depend on a priest for interpretation. Those goals later expanded, but don't get your history wrong on this. Without dogmatic religion, little of what is good in American education could have come to be.
Your comments about creativity and standardized testing miss the point -- standardized testing is an attempt to return to an older educational standard that emphasized learning necessary information in primary and secondary education as a foundation for more creative problem solving later. You can't test creativity, and frankly, you can't really teach it. You can encourage it, and that is a good thing. But information is necessary for creativity. There's nothing wrong with trying to hold schools accountable for teaching facts so that students have the knowledge they need to be creative in useful ways.
Public education is inevitably impersonal. This is where the decline is living standards hurts us as a nation. Those two-income households lose the contribution that a stay-at-home parent could make to the children's education through personal attention. Some people poo-poo traditional households, but the successes that home-schooled children achieve in testing are a clear indication that parents are the single most important factor in a child's education. Maybe we Americans should stop chasing free-market fairy tales and focus on securing tangible economic gains for ordinary people that directly relate to quality of life.
Your comment is largely a rant against the Bush administration, and problems with the American educational system considerably pre-date the present administration. You disregard history.
American preeminence in scientific advancement is largely a creature of the Second World War. The tremendous industrial base and enormous sums of money that the U.S. had to spend on super-weapons programs inevitably cascaded downwards.
But there is more to it than that. Look at the names of scientists and engineers in the Manhattan Project or various space programs such as Mercury or Apollo, and you will see a lot of foreign names.
The U.S. has had the benefit of being able to draw the best and brightest from other lands. They came to live here because of comparitive intellectual freedom and better living conditions. Nazi Germany and a racist Imperial Japan did tremendous damage to their own war efforts because they drove away or supressed scientists whose race or class or beliefs didn't meet their standards. The Communist bloc hampered their own scientists and engineers, or lost them to us outright through defection or flight.
I expect that extreme Islamic countries shall experience the same problem. However, conditions have improved in many other places, and not surprisingly, we can no longer count on folks choosing to stay in the U.S if things are okay at home. The ironic side effect of making the world safe for democracy is that it has made the world safe for bright and creative people to do what they do in places other than the U.S.
Oh, and to suggest that the U.S. is being a "bully" is simply silly. Again, your comment lacks historical perspective. Go read a good history book on what the British did in Ireland and India, or the Dutch did in Indonesia, or the French did in North Africa, or the Germans did in East Africa/Tanzania before you bash the U.S. The U.S., for a great power, has proven remarkably restrained and generous by historical standards.
think loser pays is a good idea, but some other things need to be added as well:
Actually, "loser pays" is a term that seems to get constantly misstated here on Slashdot. "Loser pays" refers to parties, not their attorneys, when that term is used here in the States. I've previously discussed why "loser pays" isn't a real solution to the problem, since it limits access to the courts by increasing the risks to the poorer party. Anybody who has boodles of money to spend on a bad lawsuit has boodles of money to spend on paying the opponent's attorneys fees too. It won't discourage "rolling the dice"; rather, it will discourage those of limited means from taking the risk of losing in order to resolve a dispute. Eliminate the courts as a dispute resolution mechanism, and don't be surprised at the nasty things that may result when people take matters into their own hands.
1. An agency will be set up to oversee the state Bar... They will track how many frivilous suits a laywer is involved in and sanction attorneys who, say, take 5 of them to court that get tossed or they lose invoking loser pays. Sanctions should include suspensions and eventual disbarment.
I'm not sure why this kind of lawyer-bashing nonsense gets modded up on Slashdot, but I guess I'll just have to feed the troll. The posting isn't even that coherent--it looks like the proposals were just thrown together. I'll simply address them one at a time since some variation of them pops up like daisies on this web board.
Lawyers in every state are already regulated by their state, through an agency of the courts called the Bar. The Bar is not just some lawyer collective in the manner that the AMA is for doctors. Moreover, lawyers who practice before the U.S.P.T.O. are regulated by that organization as well. More bureaucrats is not an answer, and sanctioning the attorney because his client has lost a case is simply stupid.
"Frivolous" is in the eye of the beholder, and one man's frivolous lawsuit is another's legitimate long-shot claim. As I have stated elsewhere, in our system of laws, there are a large class of cases where the law is uncertain or where a party is seeking a good-faith change to judge-made law. Since the people who really benefit from our liberal system of justice are the poorest amond us, creating a system where lawyers are discouraged from taking hard cases for poor people will only guarantee that the lawyers will only work for the wealthy and powerful.
2. Loser pays should only be invoked under these circumstances:
1. The loser reprsesents a corporation
2. The loser has means (more than a $5 million net worth) in the case of it being an individual.
So now we are corporation-bashing in an effort to get around the problems that a loser pays system poses for poor individuals? For your information, the overwhelming majority of corporations in the U.S. are NOT multi-million dollar organizations. Most are small companies or even individuals who are seeking to engage in business while limiting their liability. Your suggestion would simply encourage the creation of shell corporations for the express purpose of avoiding liability for litigation. Not a good idea.
Besides, the notion of creating a system of justice that takes account of status based on wealth is obnoxious to the very idea of liberty and equality before the law. It is, fortunately, an idea that has no chance. If it did, you can be assured that the wealthy and powerful would make sure that the system favored them, not the vast majority of citizens. Look at what Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy want to do with copyright infringement prosecutions. They want to make the DOJ a tax-payer funded agency for prosecuting civil claims for the private benefit of copyright holders, at a lower standard of proof. That's what your suggestion leads to. The wealthy and powerful get what they want, and the rest of us inherit the dirt.
I think -- and I'm really serious -- Sun should probably be looking at open sourcing Java as a response to Mono, if for no other reason.
Actually, my impression is that Mono is just one more aspect of Ximian's strategy of making Windows work-alike/interoperable programs. Java was unsuitable to their plans precisely because Microsoft is using.Net. Simple as that.
Whether that approach is a GOOD IDEA is a different matter. I'll stick with Java for my own stuff, thanks.
Mono will always be second best, playing catchup with MS's implementation. With Java, you can get the "real thing" straight from the source.
0 - Number of more successful on-line music services
Sorry, but I think allofmp3.com is probably every bit as much successful. In fact, I think that given that they sell the music cheaply and will rip it to any lossy or lossless format you want, iTunes days are numbered. It is just a matter of time before DRM'd $0.99 tunes are dead in the water. Oh, and under the Berne convention, this is legal in your country if they are a signatory. Don't pay attention to FUD to the contrary.
It might be a nice service, but I won't recommend using it. If they do not have a deal with the RIAA equivalent in what ever country you're in, it is a waste of money.
HAHAHA. Good one.
You were joking right? I mean, you DO know that you are posting to Slashdot?
The first time I thought it was a parody, but it's really an insightful look at Internationalization, cross-platform build environments, and other things important to free software.
This is why you see so much interest in moving to higher level languages for application development, ones with large standard APIs that include easy internationalization support, among other things. The Java and Mono/Pnetlib/.NET platforms make it easier to accomplish this with much, much less code, and without having to worry about providing extensive building infrastructure for multiple platforms. Simply compile to bytecode and distribute. Install the current Sun JRE or JDK on a RPM-based system and it even installs Java WebStart and adds executable JAR-file support to GNOME for you.
Really, what's the difference between deCSS and PlayFair? I don't recall anyone posting that Jon Johansen was guilty.
Because it is Apple, silly. If you haven't noticed, there are a vocal minority of Apple fanatics who will rail against Microsoft, sneer at Sun, and express contempt for closed platforms and unfree software, UNTIL it touches on their Apple fetish.
There is no company that has proven itself more dedicated to proprietary platforms than Apple Computer. They sued clone makers out of existence, and continue to maintain an expensive, proprietary hardware platform. That proprietary character continued with their software as well, until Mac OSX came along; OSX is not, however, free software, it simply uses free software as a basis.
In their own little corner of the software world, Apple has proven itself as bad as Microsoft currently is, and as bad as IBM or Sun ever have been in the past. But Apple fantics don't ever see the contradictions in their point of view. Not everyone who uses an Apple is a fanatic of course, but you can identify the ones who are pretty quickly. I'm sure you will see a few respond to this post with various non sequiturs and ad hominems.
For my part, I say kudos to Jon for striking yet another blow for freedom. The only way we will keep information free is by crippling the ability of the wealthy and powerful to control it absolutely. It was the impossibility of locking down things entirely that kept Big Media and Big Government honest in the past, and left the little people some freedom to innovate and create. Let them have the power to lock down ANYTHING absolutely, and we are just one step away from Big Brother and the world of 1984.
Big Crime exists, and will also steal, usually by greasing the palms of powerful interests in whatever cultures they operate in. That will never change. Massive copyright violations for profit will be with us always. What people should wonder about, and fear, is the single-minded focus that has arisen on preventing INDIVIDUALS from making copies.
I think it may be time for the US to seriously consider implementing a "Loser Pays" system in civil court. Basically, if you, as a lawyer, pursue what is found to be suit with insufficient legal merit, then you are liable for all the costs of the case, including the other sides fees, plus any penalty the court finds suitable.
IAAL, and you seem a little confused as to what a "Loser Pays" system is.
A "loser pays" system is one in which the losing litigant, not the lawyer for the litigant, pays the attorney's fees and court costs of the prevailing side. This is also known as "fee-shifting".
Such a system seems to have an intrinsic appeal to certain people, particularly to those who really don't understand how the U.S. legal system works.
The U.S. legal system is a combination of statutes and judge-made law. A large amount of U.S. law is judge-made, particularly in the area of tort, and new legal theories and new causes of action are an important part of the development of that kind of law.
Right now, U.S. citizens enjoy a liberal civil justice system in which any person may make a claim in good faith. The price for that system is that there are some who will abuse it.
A general "loser pays" approach would of course stifle that process of creating new law. It can be argued that is appropriate, since legislation should be the prerogative of legislatures. However, with more and more legislators coming from non-legal backgrounds, and the increasing nastiness and contentiousness of politics, statutes are becoming more complex and often require interpretation, which means that somebody, somewhere, has to make certain arguments about matters for which there isn't any precedent as of yet. Judge-made law is thus unavoidable, if only as a matter of interpretation.
So you see, a "loser pays" system creates a problem. We already have laws that allow recoveries against people who file meritless lawsuits or who prosecute an action in bad faith. But if the U.S. legal system had always employed a "loser pays" approach, many legal decisions that we now take for granted could never have happened; for instance, the NAACP would have been bankrupted by their many losses long before Brown v. Board of Education.
Now in reading the post I am responding to, I cannot help but think that the poster operates under the misconception that attorneys have some crystal ball that allows them to know whether a client has a meritorious case when the client comes in and hires the attorney, prior to the conduct of discovery or a hearing or anything else. You wouldn't want an attorney have to prejudge YOUR case, I assure you. An attorney is a hired expert, not a judge or jury. It is clients that drive litigation, not attorneys. The litigiousness of U.S. society is a direct result of both the increasing assumption of power by the judicial branch, which encourages the seeking of judicial rather than legislative or private solutions to social problems, and the expansion of legislation of all kinds that began in the mid-20th century, a result of a "progressive" mindset that sees legislation/State coercion as the solution to persistent human problems. More law makes more litigation, it's just that simple.
Yes, the fact that there are so many attorneys in the U.S. now, and that they are all hungry for work, means that litigants have far more access to our overburdened courts than they used to. But the reason that there are so many more attorneys is that the policy of the courts and state governments has been to increase competition in the legal services field in the public interest. There are more law schools than there once were. Various court decisions going back to the '60's prohibited minimum fee schedules, non-compete agreements, and other anti-competitive practices between lawyers.
I am not saying that there shouldn't be reform, but a universal "loser pays" system is a cure that is worse than the disease. Eliminating conti
Sorry, but this isn't true, and it hasn't been true for a while now. Java on the client is perfectly viable now, thanks to increases in processing power, improvements in the Java Platform API, and improvements to the Hotspot JIT. If you want to see an example of a complex, viable Java GUI, PCGen is a good example. Google around a little and you'll find a lot of others.
Saying that Java is "too slow" or "klutzy" for GUI apps is old old news, and no longer the case. Let's not spread any more FUD on that issue please.
Slashdot Mirror
Bull. He's adding load to their service without recompense. They have to pay for that, not him. What do you call that?
Library policy, apparently. Every person who uses that spectrum, whether they are in or out of the public library building is "adding load" without recompense. If they don't want people outside the building using their spectrum there are any number of ways to take care of that. If they don't want people using it at all, they don't provide it. Simple.
It is evident that you didn't RTFA.
[How is this different] from when Sun withdrew from ISO/IEC and ECMA because they didn't want to give up any control over Java?
The difference is that Sun developed Java and didn't want the Java platform fragmented by "partners" (primarily Microsoft) who intended to use the committee system to limit the threat Java's cross-platform utility posed to their little bailiwicks.
Here, MS is doing the exact opposite. They haven't developed the technologies in question. Rather, they have (once again) used their position on a committee to get a view of where it is heading, waited until the standards process reached a certain point, started obtaining questionable patents that will make them the owners of that standard, then they withdraw in order to avoid losing the ability to enforce those patents. Understand now?
Will somebody stop modding the anti-Sun trolls up for saying nothing useful? Thank you.
Europeans not knowing where Florida is is a totally different thing to Americans not knowing where Sweeden is. One os a district, the other is a country.
Except that geographically, many American states are as large or larger than many European countries. So a European not knowing where Florida is is in fact comparable to an American not knowing where Sweden is, except in the mind of Europeans with the geographic equivalent of penis-envy over the size of the United States.
It is pretty much accepted knowledge worldwide that the vast majority of the US population has little concern with anything beyond its own borders. Just watch your average american 6'oclock newscast and count the international references. Compared to other countries' newscasts it should be embarassing.
Yup. Penis envy. I rest my case.
Common contract law holds that each revison of a contract is a new offer. Your revision of the contract would not be binding on [company] unless they agreed to it. In fact, there would be no contract at all until they do agree, since by drafting a new agreement you obviously did not agree to the extant EULA.
Which means that you'd be guilty of fraud, and potentially liable for a significant sum--possibly the maximum ammount of damages [company] could have suffered from your fraud--$4 bililon.
Not so. The person who makes the counteroffer is simply engaging in the battle of the forms. All the modification of the EULA would accomplish (assuming that your jurisdiction isn't one that mindlessly passed UCITA) is to create a situation where no agreement is reached.
Merely modifying a contract provision doesn't give rise to damages, or else there could be no negotiation process.
True enough. But anybody reading please keep in mind that republicans have started going around trolling liberal-leaning blogs (like /.), parading as ultra-liberals. Their point is to give pep-talks such as this to sway the liberal votes away from Kerry, towards Bush.
Also please bear in mind that many advocates of John Kerry are trolling these boards accusing Ralph Nader supporters of being stalking horses for Republicans.
Better suggestion. Review each post on its own merits, not through a partisan lens. There's a shocking notion. Advocates for third party candidates, or those who believe that they should be voting their own conscience and not somebody else's, deserve better than they have gotten from the Kerry partisans on this board.
This brought to you by the Republican party, the political group led by an imbecile cokehead who didn't even have the balls to turn up to his cushy National Guard posting. I have little sympathy for their copyright complaint...
In other words, your view of an abuse of copyright is tainted by your politics. This is precisely why those who are abusing copyright law in this instance feel free to do so. They know that the hopeless zealots on both sides will provide them cover (and mod points on Slashdot) for changing the subject.
If Kerry and Bush have nothing to hide, then there is no reason to suppress the information in question. John Kerry has chosen to run on his war record. That makes his war record fair game, and photographs that remind people what he did right after coming home should be seen. Bush has been called on to defend his decision to go to war with Iraq, and as president, it is his duty to explain that decision. If he has given an awkward or unconvincing explanation, it is the the right of the American people to see that and make their own judgments.
Either way, the subject was the misuse of copyright law to suppress political speech and political debate. Your posting and those following it in the same thread which are discussing everything other than the issue of how copyright is being used to suppress free speech are all seriously off-topic, and should have been modded as such.
Settling on an international standard that is mutually agreed upon strengthens the companies within those nations because they don't have to cope with several sets of rules. Like the standardization on the Euro, it reduces complexity and ultimately is a good thing.
Sure, it helps the rich and powerful stay that way, keeps the small and weak from upsetting the apple cart, and assures that the status quo ante favors those already on the top of the heap.
Grrrrreat.
For my part, I think that a little anarchy is a good thing, for those who love freedom. It was the early "standardization" of the Chinese nation, united under the uniform rule of one Emperor, united under one authority, that caused the eventual stagnation of their culture. Similarly, the more "uniform" power and authority became in the Roman Empire, the more oppressive and rotten it became.
Voluntary standards, i.e., those that can be disregarded, are good. Involuntary standards, i.e. those that are backed up with bayonets, prisons, and all the powers of the modern State, are less good, particularly when their effect is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.
Sorry, this isn't a good thing from my point of view.
I think driving while watching a DVD could be a classic example of a reckless disregard for human life. The driver knew he was manuevering a ton of steel at high speed in a place where human beings were expected to be. I doubt that the DA had a choice in what charge to file, given both the letter and the spirit of the law.
Actually, you are mistaken. The DA had considerable leeway, and there is a growing and unfortunate tendency for prosecutors to overcharge defendants in order to force a plea bargain to the proper charge out of fear that a jury might convict on the harsher charge
Depraved heart murder should not be confused with manslaughter, as seems to be happening here. Depraved heart murder is the unlawful killing of another human being accompanied by extreme atrocity. That is, the person with the "depraved heart" must be engaging in an activity that not only creates an unjustifiable risk of serious bodily injury or death, but that activity must be one where a very high risk of causing death or serious bodily injury that will result in death. A depraved heart murder is one where all the elements of murder are present, including conduct that would normally be seen as intended to cause death, but where clear intent to kill is lacking.
Driving while watching a DVD is a classic example of negligent behavior, not of a depraved heart. Watching a DVD while driving, or doing just about anything while driving (including talking to other people in the car) can distract you and cause you to have an accident. While it may be foreseeable to the "reasonable person" that engaging in distracting activities while driving will cause an accident, it cannot be said that activity is one where it is HIGHLY LIKELY that a death will result. This isn't like going around shooting into crowds, or deliberately driving on a busy sidewalk, or putting lethal doses of poison into random medicine bottles on a pharmacy shelf or other activities where extreme malice can be implied because some level of intent to cause death or injury likely to result in death is clearly present, even though intent to kill a specific person is lacking.
Increasingly, murder is the charge of preference whenever there is a criminal homicide, since murder charges garner headlines. My personal belief is that prosecutors that consistently overcharge defendants -- and many do -- should be disciplined by state bar organizations. It is unethical conduct, prejudicial to the defense, and is a disservice to the public. It serves no good purpose to muddy the distinctions between manslaughter and murder, as the confusion on this board demonstrates. How many people here would like to end up charged with murder for talking to the wife in the passenger seat when you should have been watching the road, hmm? The criminal law should serve justice, not vengeance. Charging someone guilty of manslaughter with murder is a perversion of justice, plain and simple.
If it was open season on everything, we would have nothing, we would still be in mud huts using two cups and a string to communicate. If there is no incentive for profit, most companies won't bother to make something.
There is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that patents are necessary to innovation, and there never has been. Check the literature, and you will find that inventors usually begin as people interested in solving a particular problem, not capitalists interested in filling their pockets. They come later, and the innovate very little. There's no money in it.
Patents are a product of the same economic thinking that produced the doctrine of mercantilism. Mercantilism was the loose economic theory that dominated 17th and 18th century Europe, founded on the idea that the wealth of nations. It promoted high tariffs on foreign goods, promotion of local markets, and other doctrines that would now be called "protectionist".
Adam Smith, of course, poked holes in the thinking behind mercantilism. Those who believe patents are necessary to progress are like those who believe protectionism is necessary to prosperity. It isn't sound thinking. Unfortunately, vested interests with a lot of money and power support patents like they once did the state-supported industries of the mercantilist era.
Like the mercantlists of an earlier era, those who support extensive patent protections encourage rent-seeking behavior, not risk-taking behavior, the consolidation of wealth, not the creating of wealth.
So thank you very much, but given that Seagate and Western Digital may be playing the patent card to put down a young and aggressive competitor with a better product, I see no reason to assume that Cornice is the bad guy here. Yes, obviously, something is up. WD and Seagate are afraid of Cornice. On the other hand, a lawsuit is evidence of nothing but that somebody wanted to sue somebody else, whether they have a case or not/P
You can turn off the 4KB stack and go back to the default behavior by recompiling the kernel with the proper option set, but default Linux distros based on 2.6 all use (to the best of my knowledge) 4KB stacks by default.
Not necessarily so. Mandrake's 2.6 kernel didn't have 4k stacks. And the newest Fedora 2 kernel has apparently removed the default 4k stacks as well, so this may be a "fix" that has been overtaken by events.
What's clear is that like all True Believers, Ken Brown will do anything possible to win, and he will never give up. He will not rest to his dying days to fight what he has started. He has put himself in a position he must defend. He is going to shout what he wants to anyone who will listen, and as most people are ignorant of the issue, many of them will.
I don't think you should assume that Brown is a True Believer.
A story about the "Whores for More" who pollute our public policy process.
In the late 1980's, I interned at a small but locally prominent "Beltway insider" political organization that was essentially a conservative/Republican foundation set up as a 501(c)(3) educational organization.
I was given a bird's eye view of how these groups, groups like ADTI, operate. Party or ideology aside, they all seem to work the same way.
It is all about money, ego, and, sometimes, ideas, precisely in that order.
I was amazed at how much time, effort, and energy was spent in the drive for getting money. Why did they need the money? To expand. For what purpose? To have more prominence and influence. Why? Well..it makes fundraising easier.
Don't misunderstand. I understood then and now that you need to raise money in order to operate. But I wasn't comfortable with the tactics used to obtain the money. The letters were frequently inflammatory and, I was surprised to find, sometimes simply wrong. The organization I was with wasn't the worst offender on that point, either. I saw some terrible stuff coming out of groups who were supposedly on the same side we were. There was certainly a lot for them to complain about, so why not keep it straight?
Moreover, I had open eyes, and I soon saw that there was a LOT of hypocrisy inside the Beltway. Many of these people pushed agendas that they didn't even come close to following.
Ego played a big role in all this. These "public policy" organizations are really an incestuous little bunch, where name-dropping, fancy titles, and building organizations with large fund-raising arms counted for more than substantive results. Any ideas that didn't come out of your "clique" were automatically bad. If you were part of the "clique", kissed the right asses, etc., you got ahead. If you weren't, don't bother, they weren't interested.
Appearances mattered. Real principles were a less important. When an Ohio congressman who was a noted conservative had to resign after being busted for having sex with a 13-year old black girl, there was a sympathy party for his staffers. All well and good, but for all the clucking of tongues, most of the comments were about how unfortunate it was that he'd done something that would hurt him politically. There was little comment on the fact that this married father had had sex with a young girl, and how just plain damn wrong that was. And nobody seemed to notice the hypocrisy. Why? Because of one too many people living in glass houses, preaching one thing for money and influence, and living another.
Where there ideas? Sure. There was a lot of talk. But the prevailing viewpoint was that principles should be compromised when it came time to "deal", because it was better to have something than nothing, right? And this is no doubt true, so long as compromise actually advances your ideas, but I noticed that many of the principles that these organizations pulled so many dollars from donors to support ended up in the waste basket when the time came to "deal".
I observed that this was a problem that crossed lines of party and ideology. Finding that policy wonking inside the Beltway was high-school magnified, played with millions of dollars and by people older than my parents, was disheartening to say the least.
"Whores for More" was and is my take on that experience after the fact. It is a take-off on the famous line by Bogart in Key Largo when he describes what motivated Edward G. Robinson's char
He is not being held on the patriot act, but a much older late 80's U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
You are correct, and the summary is not. This has nothing to do with Ashcroft, and in most respects, this looks like a standard homicide investigation.
There is a serious problem on Slashdot, which is that anything that bashes the Bush administration or a member of that administration gets posted without somebody doing a bullshit check.
Sorry, but I have to lay this at the doorstep o f the moderators. Way to screw up again guys. Check these things before you approve them, ok?
Just once I'd like to hear a well reasoned out anti-nuclear position.
You won't. All anti-nuclear power arguments I've heard or seen in print are essentially reactionary and paranoid ravings that confuse nuclear power with nuclear weapons and depend on popular fears of new technologies. It is quintessentially luddite mindset. There aren't any rational arguments against nuclear power. There may be rational arguments against certain power plants or techniques for using that power, but the argument never really gets that far. Fear of nuclear power isn't based on reasoned argument, and those who argue most strongly against nuclear power are fully aware of this.
Al Franken skewered Colmes in his book Lie and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I suggest that you read that before trotting out Colmes as evidence that Fox is not biased.
HAHAHA!
Citing Al Franken as an unbiased news source. Good one. Getting all those folks to give you "Insightful" rather than "Funny" mod points just makes the joke better. Cite Al Jazeera or the former Iraqi Information Minister next time. You'll grab those anti-U.S. mod points and get great laughs from those who understand you must be joking
Patents are one of the few ways new, little companies and inventors can get into the market. Without them the only entities that would ever make money are the established players.
Frequently stated, never proven, and contrary to all available evidence.
New little companies that try to enforce patents will find that they themselves are in violation of a large, established player's much larger patent portfolio and unable to match the large, established player's legal war chest.
Unless the new, little company produces nothing but patent litigation, in which case, they are unlikely to infringe on a patent, and equally unlikely to do anything useful with the ones they own. Is that what you are defending?
I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty. I don't want to live in a permanent state of fear, generated by a megalomaniacal American government taking advantage of the majority low IQ populous' capacity for being brainwashed.
Then please feel free to kill yourself, and spare of the rest of us your maudlin ranting.
American culture does not value intellect. In a country dominated by dogmatic religion and banal entertainment, anyone with half a brain is looked down upon for wasting tax dollars or being too "nerdy." Image is what matters, not content.
Dogmatic religion was the origin of public education and our major universities. Harvard was founded to train protestant missionaries. Collective schooling was intended to assure that Protestant church members had sufficient education to read the Bible for themselves without having to depend on a priest for interpretation. Those goals later expanded, but don't get your history wrong on this. Without dogmatic religion, little of what is good in American education could have come to be.
Your comments about creativity and standardized testing miss the point -- standardized testing is an attempt to return to an older educational standard that emphasized learning necessary information in primary and secondary education as a foundation for more creative problem solving later. You can't test creativity, and frankly, you can't really teach it. You can encourage it, and that is a good thing. But information is necessary for creativity. There's nothing wrong with trying to hold schools accountable for teaching facts so that students have the knowledge they need to be creative in useful ways.
Public education is inevitably impersonal. This is where the decline is living standards hurts us as a nation. Those two-income households lose the contribution that a stay-at-home parent could make to the children's education through personal attention. Some people poo-poo traditional households, but the successes that home-schooled children achieve in testing are a clear indication that parents are the single most important factor in a child's education. Maybe we Americans should stop chasing free-market fairy tales and focus on securing tangible economic gains for ordinary people that directly relate to quality of life.
Your comment is largely a rant against the Bush administration, and problems with the American educational system considerably pre-date the present administration. You disregard history.
American preeminence in scientific advancement is largely a creature of the Second World War. The tremendous industrial base and enormous sums of money that the U.S. had to spend on super-weapons programs inevitably cascaded downwards.
But there is more to it than that. Look at the names of scientists and engineers in the Manhattan Project or various space programs such as Mercury or Apollo, and you will see a lot of foreign names.
The U.S. has had the benefit of being able to draw the best and brightest from other lands. They came to live here because of comparitive intellectual freedom and better living conditions. Nazi Germany and a racist Imperial Japan did tremendous damage to their own war efforts because they drove away or supressed scientists whose race or class or beliefs didn't meet their standards. The Communist bloc hampered their own scientists and engineers, or lost them to us outright through defection or flight.
I expect that extreme Islamic countries shall experience the same problem. However, conditions have improved in many other places, and not surprisingly, we can no longer count on folks choosing to stay in the U.S if things are okay at home. The ironic side effect of making the world safe for democracy is that it has made the world safe for bright and creative people to do what they do in places other than the U.S.
Oh, and to suggest that the U.S. is being a "bully" is simply silly. Again, your comment lacks historical perspective. Go read a good history book on what the British did in Ireland and India, or the Dutch did in Indonesia, or the French did in North Africa, or the Germans did in East Africa/Tanzania before you bash the U.S. The U.S., for a great power, has proven remarkably restrained and generous by historical standards.
Yes, it
think loser pays is a good idea, but some other things need to be added as well:
Actually, "loser pays" is a term that seems to get constantly misstated here on Slashdot. "Loser pays" refers to parties, not their attorneys, when that term is used here in the States. I've previously discussed why "loser pays" isn't a real solution to the problem, since it limits access to the courts by increasing the risks to the poorer party. Anybody who has boodles of money to spend on a bad lawsuit has boodles of money to spend on paying the opponent's attorneys fees too. It won't discourage "rolling the dice"; rather, it will discourage those of limited means from taking the risk of losing in order to resolve a dispute. Eliminate the courts as a dispute resolution mechanism, and don't be surprised at the nasty things that may result when people take matters into their own hands.
1. An agency will be set up to oversee the state Bar... They will track how many frivilous suits a laywer is involved in and sanction attorneys who, say, take 5 of them to court that get tossed or they lose invoking loser pays. Sanctions should include suspensions and eventual disbarment.
I'm not sure why this kind of lawyer-bashing nonsense gets modded up on Slashdot, but I guess I'll just have to feed the troll. The posting isn't even that coherent--it looks like the proposals were just thrown together. I'll simply address them one at a time since some variation of them pops up like daisies on this web board.
Lawyers in every state are already regulated by their state, through an agency of the courts called the Bar. The Bar is not just some lawyer collective in the manner that the AMA is for doctors. Moreover, lawyers who practice before the U.S.P.T.O. are regulated by that organization as well. More bureaucrats is not an answer, and sanctioning the attorney because his client has lost a case is simply stupid.
"Frivolous" is in the eye of the beholder, and one man's frivolous lawsuit is another's legitimate long-shot claim. As I have stated elsewhere, in our system of laws, there are a large class of cases where the law is uncertain or where a party is seeking a good-faith change to judge-made law. Since the people who really benefit from our liberal system of justice are the poorest amond us, creating a system where lawyers are discouraged from taking hard cases for poor people will only guarantee that the lawyers will only work for the wealthy and powerful.
2. Loser pays should only be invoked under these circumstances: 1. The loser reprsesents a corporation 2. The loser has means (more than a $5 million net worth) in the case of it being an individual.
So now we are corporation-bashing in an effort to get around the problems that a loser pays system poses for poor individuals? For your information, the overwhelming majority of corporations in the U.S. are NOT multi-million dollar organizations. Most are small companies or even individuals who are seeking to engage in business while limiting their liability. Your suggestion would simply encourage the creation of shell corporations for the express purpose of avoiding liability for litigation. Not a good idea.
Besides, the notion of creating a system of justice that takes account of status based on wealth is obnoxious to the very idea of liberty and equality before the law. It is, fortunately, an idea that has no chance. If it did, you can be assured that the wealthy and powerful would make sure that the system favored them, not the vast majority of citizens. Look at what Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy want to do with copyright infringement prosecutions. They want to make the DOJ a tax-payer funded agency for prosecuting civil claims for the private benefit of copyright holders, at a lower standard of proof. That's what your suggestion leads to. The wealthy and powerful get what they want, and the rest of us inherit the dirt.
Loser pays should be up to th
I think -- and I'm really serious -- Sun should probably be looking at open sourcing Java as a response to Mono, if for no other reason.
Actually, my impression is that Mono is just one more aspect of Ximian's strategy of making Windows work-alike/interoperable programs. Java was unsuitable to their plans precisely because Microsoft is using .Net. Simple as that.
Whether that approach is a GOOD IDEA is a different matter. I'll stick with Java for my own stuff, thanks.
Mono will always be second best, playing catchup with MS's implementation. With Java, you can get the "real thing" straight from the source.
0 - Number of more successful on-line music services
Sorry, but I think allofmp3.com is probably every bit as much successful. In fact, I think that given that they sell the music cheaply and will rip it to any lossy or lossless format you want, iTunes days are numbered. It is just a matter of time before DRM'd $0.99 tunes are dead in the water. Oh, and under the Berne convention, this is legal in your country if they are a signatory. Don't pay attention to FUD to the contrary.
It might be a nice service, but I won't recommend using it. If they do not have a deal with the RIAA equivalent in what ever country you're in, it is a waste of money.
HAHAHA. Good one.
You were joking right? I mean, you DO know that you are posting to Slashdot?
The first time I thought it was a parody, but it's really an insightful look at Internationalization, cross-platform build environments, and other things important to free software.
This is why you see so much interest in moving to higher level languages for application development, ones with large standard APIs that include easy internationalization support, among other things. The Java and Mono/Pnetlib/.NET platforms make it easier to accomplish this with much, much less code, and without having to worry about providing extensive building infrastructure for multiple platforms. Simply compile to bytecode and distribute. Install the current Sun JRE or JDK on a RPM-based system and it even installs Java WebStart and adds executable JAR-file support to GNOME for you.
Really, what's the difference between deCSS and PlayFair? I don't recall anyone posting that Jon Johansen was guilty.
Because it is Apple, silly. If you haven't noticed, there are a vocal minority of Apple fanatics who will rail against Microsoft, sneer at Sun, and express contempt for closed platforms and unfree software, UNTIL it touches on their Apple fetish.
There is no company that has proven itself more dedicated to proprietary platforms than Apple Computer. They sued clone makers out of existence, and continue to maintain an expensive, proprietary hardware platform. That proprietary character continued with their software as well, until Mac OSX came along; OSX is not, however, free software, it simply uses free software as a basis.
In their own little corner of the software world, Apple has proven itself as bad as Microsoft currently is, and as bad as IBM or Sun ever have been in the past. But Apple fantics don't ever see the contradictions in their point of view. Not everyone who uses an Apple is a fanatic of course, but you can identify the ones who are pretty quickly. I'm sure you will see a few respond to this post with various non sequiturs and ad hominems.
For my part, I say kudos to Jon for striking yet another blow for freedom. The only way we will keep information free is by crippling the ability of the wealthy and powerful to control it absolutely. It was the impossibility of locking down things entirely that kept Big Media and Big Government honest in the past, and left the little people some freedom to innovate and create. Let them have the power to lock down ANYTHING absolutely, and we are just one step away from Big Brother and the world of 1984.
Big Crime exists, and will also steal, usually by greasing the palms of powerful interests in whatever cultures they operate in. That will never change. Massive copyright violations for profit will be with us always. What people should wonder about, and fear, is the single-minded focus that has arisen on preventing INDIVIDUALS from making copies.
I think it may be time for the US to seriously consider implementing a "Loser Pays" system in civil court. Basically, if you, as a lawyer, pursue what is found to be suit with insufficient legal merit, then you are liable for all the costs of the case, including the other sides fees, plus any penalty the court finds suitable.
IAAL, and you seem a little confused as to what a "Loser Pays" system is.
A "loser pays" system is one in which the losing litigant, not the lawyer for the litigant, pays the attorney's fees and court costs of the prevailing side. This is also known as "fee-shifting".
Such a system seems to have an intrinsic appeal to certain people, particularly to those who really don't understand how the U.S. legal system works.
The U.S. legal system is a combination of statutes and judge-made law. A large amount of U.S. law is judge-made, particularly in the area of tort, and new legal theories and new causes of action are an important part of the development of that kind of law.
Right now, U.S. citizens enjoy a liberal civil justice system in which any person may make a claim in good faith. The price for that system is that there are some who will abuse it.
A general "loser pays" approach would of course stifle that process of creating new law. It can be argued that is appropriate, since legislation should be the prerogative of legislatures. However, with more and more legislators coming from non-legal backgrounds, and the increasing nastiness and contentiousness of politics, statutes are becoming more complex and often require interpretation, which means that somebody, somewhere, has to make certain arguments about matters for which there isn't any precedent as of yet. Judge-made law is thus unavoidable, if only as a matter of interpretation.
So you see, a "loser pays" system creates a problem. We already have laws that allow recoveries against people who file meritless lawsuits or who prosecute an action in bad faith. But if the U.S. legal system had always employed a "loser pays" approach, many legal decisions that we now take for granted could never have happened; for instance, the NAACP would have been bankrupted by their many losses long before Brown v. Board of Education.
Now in reading the post I am responding to, I cannot help but think that the poster operates under the misconception that attorneys have some crystal ball that allows them to know whether a client has a meritorious case when the client comes in and hires the attorney, prior to the conduct of discovery or a hearing or anything else. You wouldn't want an attorney have to prejudge YOUR case, I assure you. An attorney is a hired expert, not a judge or jury. It is clients that drive litigation, not attorneys. The litigiousness of U.S. society is a direct result of both the increasing assumption of power by the judicial branch, which encourages the seeking of judicial rather than legislative or private solutions to social problems, and the expansion of legislation of all kinds that began in the mid-20th century, a result of a "progressive" mindset that sees legislation/State coercion as the solution to persistent human problems. More law makes more litigation, it's just that simple.
Yes, the fact that there are so many attorneys in the U.S. now, and that they are all hungry for work, means that litigants have far more access to our overburdened courts than they used to. But the reason that there are so many more attorneys is that the policy of the courts and state governments has been to increase competition in the legal services field in the public interest. There are more law schools than there once were. Various court decisions going back to the '60's prohibited minimum fee schedules, non-compete agreements, and other anti-competitive practices between lawyers.
I am not saying that there shouldn't be reform, but a universal "loser pays" system is a cure that is worse than the disease. Eliminating conti
Java isn't viable as a GUI language. :)
Sorry, but this isn't true, and it hasn't been true for a while now. Java on the client is perfectly viable now, thanks to increases in processing power, improvements in the Java Platform API, and improvements to the Hotspot JIT. If you want to see an example of a complex, viable Java GUI, PCGen is a good example. Google around a little and you'll find a lot of others.
Saying that Java is "too slow" or "klutzy" for GUI apps is old old news, and no longer the case. Let's not spread any more FUD on that issue please.