That was all part of the joke - in the program distributed to family & guests, it didn't SAY "John Harvard, Jedi Knight," it said "Latin Salutatory: Iohannes Harvard, Eques Iediensis." And then all the student programs had an insert with the transcript and an English translation. So we (the graduates) got to read along and laugh at all the dumb jokes (he called Yale the death star, yuk yuk), thus appearing to understand Latin like the good little Hahvahd sophisticates we're presumed to be. It wasn't "stupid," it was just a bit of a light inside joke.
BTW, can any other slashdotters who attended in a non-student capacity verify that you didn't get the translation? It was definitely an insert, and not part of the regular program, but obviously I can't be sure who got them and who didn't.
When a court cites "common law", they're saying that the principle is so well defined that they won't bother listing the case that set it, or in fact, that the origin is lost in antiquity.
Sometimes, but not in this case. They made a citation so prominent that it was included in the squib (where citations are usually omitted): Sony v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. at 486, which reads in part:
It is well established that liability for copyright infringement can be imposed on persons other than those who actually carry out the infringing activity. Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers, 222 U.S. 55, 62-63, 32 S.Ct. 20, 21-22, 56 L.Ed. 92 (1911); 3 M. Nimmer, Copyright 12.04[A] (1982); see Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 160, n. 11, 95 S.Ct. 2040, 2046, n. 11, 45 L.Ed.2d 84 (1975); Buck v. Jewell-LaSalle Realty Co., 283 U.S. 191, 198, 51 S.Ct. 410, 411, 75 L.Ed. 971 (1931). Although the liability provision of the 1976 Act provides simply that "[a]nyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner... is an infringer of the copyright," 17 U.S.C. 501(a), the House and Senate Reports demonstrate that Congress intended to retain judicial doctrines of contributory infringement. 1975 Senate Report 57; 1976 House Report 61.
So, there's the common law they're talking about. Now if you want to say, where is the support for those cases, my response is, it's turtles all the way down.
That's akin to saying soldiers who commit war crimes are just agents of the Gov't. Sure, legally that may be true, but doing something morally reprehensible just because someone's paying you/ordering you still makes you morally bankrupt.
Perhaps I should clarify. The standard to which lawyers are held is that they must practice "zealous advocacy" of their clients' interests (both in the civil and criminal areas, by the way). So once they've told you what their goals are, you have to pursue them to the extent possible within the law. That's the code of legal ethics. You HAVE to. Now, if you want to say the American system of legal ethics is morally bankrupt, you might have a point, but that's a whole other argument; the system what we've got right now.
Even within that standard, though, you have to be a zealous advocate "to the extent the law allows", which rules out things like purjury and participation in ongoing crimes. And frivolous litigation is forbidden, so I think someone might have a claim against these guys. But there's probably enough of a chance for them to win, that the litigation itself isn't "frivolous", so maybe we're just stuck with Darl McBride's lawsuits until his $31M runs out.
the share price of SCOX [fool.com] is still higher than it was pre-litigation. So Darl has actually increased shareholder value since the days before litigation.
Yikes! Well, countersuit for frivolous litigation, then. I wonder why IBM et al haven't tried that yet?
So let me get this straight, all you would need to do to fit this category is buy a single share of SCO stock? Hmmm......lets see.....
Technically yes, but the action you would seek would be called a "shareholder derivative" suit (google for more info), which is kind of a class action, and you'd be representing the interests of all shareholders (assuming your complaint is valid, and the actions of management really are hurting the stock value). So the concern about only recovering $3.50 or whatever, brought up by another poster in this thread, is probably not such a big deal. I don't know exactly how the calculus goes, but I think the damages would be the total amount knocked off the stock price for ALL shareholders, and the firm would take a cut of that. Consult your lawyer though.
It is true that derivative actions are usually pursued by the biggest shareholders, and I can imagine a judge tossing out your suit on the basis that you're not a "genuine" investor, but only bought a share in order to have standing to sue.
A recent example of a shareholder derivative action, by the way, was when a major investor sued Sinclair Broadcasting for planning to run that anti-Kerry documentary, on the premise that it cost them a lot of advertising. The next day Sinclair responded that they weren't showing the documentary, but only a "news feature" based on it, so draw your own conclusion about whether the suit worked.
I know you're kidding but it's still a sad commentary on the way the legal profession has undermined the economy. Those lawyers have done nothing for SCO and yet they have greatly enriched themselves from shareholders' money.
And who do you blame for this? The first response to jump to mind should be "whatever jackass decided to pay the lawyers so much for such a hopeless lawsuit". An old saw in the legal profession is that the reason lawyers are such assholes, is that clients are such assholes (see my profile for more about my stake in the whole debate). A lawyer is the agent of his client's interests in the legal realm; simply that and nothing more.
Here's a question for some legal expert. Since Boies et al were paid in stock a while back, they are now a major stockholder in SCO, 25% as I recall. I wonder if they can therefore be sued by any parties who have a grievance against SCO?
No. As another poster said in this thread, the very point of setting up a corporation is to establish a firewall for legal liability. There are a couple of recourses, though:
1) If you think the lawsuit is truly malicious and has no plausible basis in fact, you could sue SCO et al for bringing a frivolous suit, but you would have to have standing (i.e., actually be injured yourself). You could accomplish that several ways, but being an IBM principal or employee, or someone else whose livelihood "depends" on Linux would be a good start.
2) If you are a shareholder of SCO, you could bring an action against the board of directors, personally as individuals and in their role as directors, and probably McBride and other "wayward" executives. The basis for this would be that the management of SCO is doing things that are actually against its shareholders' best interests (as confirmed by the miserable performance of SCO stock), and thus violating securities regulations.
See how it always comes back to the company, not the lawyers? It's because they can only be as mean as SCO tells them to be. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that someone hasn't tried #2 yet; I guess there's always the hypothetical possibility they'll prevail and make some money, but it seems much more likely that they're tilting at windmills and wasting money that would be much better spent on, oh, R&D or something.
Sloppy operation is a risk, as is insufficient inspection and monitoring. Another potential issue is underfunding (especially with privatised operation) of safety measures. Even if abundant government funds were thrown at the task, there's the risk they'd be abused or redirected to other things and still leave safety underfunded and undermonitored.
Fair enough, I guess, but as the parent (or its parent or something) started to point out, at what point does it stop making sense to be adverse to this small risk, when the alternative is the constant harm that coal and oil ARE doing to us all the time? Particulate waste contributes to cancer and other respiratory problems, right now every day. Huge amounts of CO2 from combustion fundamentally alter the earth's chemistry and trap more heat in the atmosphere, every day right now. How safe would any energy source X have to be to be worth switching, in your calculus?
With nuclear power, the only people who are even at RISK are the plant workers. Of course I wouldn't assert that their lives are worth less or anything, but it seems better to put fewer people at risk, rather than harming millions day in and day out like we do now. Even Chernobyl only killed less than 40 people in the immediate vicinity of the plant (yes, I know there were other serious consequences of Chernobyl), and the plants we currently use in the West are way, WAY safer than that.
Of course it would be hubris to assert that nuclear power was completely safe, but relatively speaking, it is quite safe. Ridiculously safe.
I'll note that when correcting my excerpt, you declined to add in "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" which is what folks like you seem to omit when they bring up the subject.
Actually, I was conceding the fact that we're discussing the 2nd amendment, which everyone understands to grant "the right to keep and bear arms." Not pretending it doesn't.
I fail to see how the beginning of the amendment, which lays out its purpose, sufficiently modifies "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" to the point where you conclude that it's okay to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
I fail to see another logical way to interpret it. There's a tenet of Constitutional construction that all the words in there, are in there for a reason and you must interpret them in a way that's meaningful. If the "right... to keep and bear arms" wasn't modified by the need to maintain a militia, then why was the militia clause attached to it?
I'm guessing that if I had, I'd fall squarely into your definition of "people who shouldn't have guns."
Not at all actually. I fully recognize that the vast majority of gun owners use their weapons responsibly and don't endanger themselves or their neighbors. But I do maintain that the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with keeping weapons for "personal protection"; that's the job of the police and it's obviously best performed by them.
The ridiculous number of handgun deaths in densely populated areas and in association with other crimes demonstrates a strong public policy need to regulate gun ownership, and I just believe that this is possible without infringement on the 2nd amendment, logically construed.
I just made another post about 10 USC 311 elsewhere in this thread. Just for kicks I'll go read it though... yep, I maintain that if you adhere to that definition of militia, then you have to concede that no man over 45, and no woman not a member of the National Guard, has a Constitutional right to own a gun.
"The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard"
So if the 2nd Amendment is specifically proscribed by 10 U.S.C. 311, do you concede that it only grants 17-to-45 year old males, and female members of the national gaurd, the right to keep and bear arms? No one else in the country has a (constitutional) right to own/possess a gun?
Yes they are ignorant of the fact that he follows another "satire" show, because they don't watch that other show.
Come on, if you change the channel 5 minutes early you can obviously tell that the previous show is either Crank Yankers or Reno 911. In fact it's so hard to miss these shows (neither of which I like) that I often miss the first couple minutes of The Daily Show in an effort to avoid them.
They tune in to his show and take it as news.
You're not giving the viewers nearly enough credit. I think when a show is on a network called Comedy Central, and the host explicitly and repeatedly calls it out as "fake news" (both during in-show commentary and in print ads and interviews), you're on notice that it's "satire", or at least not to be taken seriously.
Who are these banal Daily Show watchers you're referring to? Do you have a big crowd in your hometown who tell you, without irony, that Jon Stewart is the only newsman they trust anymore? No, I think you're setting up straw men here.
The whole point of Stewart's tirade is that hosts on a news network bear some degree of responsibility to the public to actually INFORM the public. The fact that Jon Stewart is not bound by this duty does not at all diminish his right to criticize its execution by those who are.
The Economist is biased. They also report facts and put journalists on the ground who ask questions.... When I read biased reporting I feel like I've eaten something with flavor. I either like or dislike the flavor but I know I've gotten nutrition.
I agree about the bias in European publications, particularly the Economist (which I love), because the bias is explicitly out there and you can take it into account when you read whatever newspaper. But there's something to be said for "objective journalism" as well, but objective as such, not "objective" as practiced these days in the US.
Most major news organizations here seem to interpret "objectivity" as "let each side yell for the same amount of time". At least Fox is more honest in calling this balance, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with objectivity -- which should be all about the facts, and hounding sources for verifiable claims. Alas, there's almost none of that and so our objective journalism has become a shambles.
> What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The part that goes "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" apparently, since that's what everyone omits when they talk about the 2nd amendment. Trained with a citizen's militia lately?
Ha! From that page: "If the OBJECT element used to load the control contains PARAM elements but none of the PARAM elements specify a source of data external to the current Web page, then the control does not access remote data" and so the user will not be prompted.
I suppose that this is one of the concessions they were required to make: plugin content that "specifies a source of data external to the current page" was probably convered specifically by the patent in question.
But here's the VERY NEXT sentence: "The OBJECT element for an ActiveX control has a new attribute: NOEXTERNALDATA. Specify true for this attribute to indicate that the control does not access remote data and that Internet Explorer should not prompt the user." Notice that this doesn't say "specify this tag and we'll CHECK to see if there's external data." It's basically a way to turn off the prompt, no questions asked.
In fact, the code example directly following specifies a "param url=", which sounds a helluva lot like a "source of external data" to me. Is it just me, or does this directly flout the entire point of the changes? I can't imagine that's an accident... I think MS just said "here, we'll change our default behavior, but we'll let users subvert the change starting now."
Whoa whoa whoa! I think you're jumping to conclusions here buddy. I'm sure most phone solicitors are very proprietous (and I'm not even kidding), especially debt collectors, but what that guy said happens all the time. What I'm going to say is going to be anecdotal evidence, but that's enough to disprove your claim that "all people who say this are lying" (which you're good enough to retract in your last paragraph, but is still a helluvan accusation).
A couple of years ago, I got repeated calls from a debt collector mentioning a fee for an ambulance trip that really wasn't ringing a bell with me (strike 1: they simply *left a message* about what the overdue bill was for; I would've asked but didn't have to).
I kept ignoring the messages, because I hadn't used any ambulance service, but finally they caught me at home one day. Once I had them on the phone, I explained that, and we chatted quite openly about an older gentleman with an unlisted number who'd had a heart attack, and not paid his bill. So strike 2: here I am now, after a brief conversation, and I know a guy's name, birthdate, hometown, and partial medical history. All without any attempt at all to defraud.
See, a lot can happen when an inexperienced, poorly educated phone operator talks to a curious customer. They probably could've been sued based on what they told me, but I obviously wasn't going for that; I just wanted the phone calls to stop. No idea what was on the mind of the old guy with the bum heart, though.
It does raise kind of an akward issue: what do you do in the case of mistaken identity? They really shouldn't be distributing ANY information about anyone's credit without verifying that they're speaking to that party. And you (as a consumer) probably shouldn't just give away your SSN to some caller who says you owe money. So how is the situation to be resolved?
Um... this is a joke, right? I mean, you are familiar with CGI and stuff?
Re:I'm still waiting for my paperless office
on
What's Always Next?
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· Score: 3, Informative
It's deeper than that. I started my own company a while back, just to do some programming consulting, and I had everything *I* needed in a "paperless office" suite of applications on my computer. However, the IRS still requires printed receipts and invoices, so I had to print everything anyway, even though it didn't do me any good in that format.
Actually, I guess technically I didn't HAVE to, since I didn't get audited in 2002 (yet). But if I did, and had no paper trail... look out! So yeah, coworkers demanding paper are annoying, but the IRS demanding it is a serious problem.
Make sure you bill promptly and accurately and be sure to charge late charges on accounts. If a customer becomes past due do not perform further work for them. You can't work for free and make a living.
It's difficult to overstate how important this is. At some point, if you keep this up, you'll run into a customer who doesn't pay. Hopefully they'll short you $50 instead of $500, but learn your lesson when it happens.
Be "gentle but firm" with your billing terms; travel with blank invoices that specify "payment is due within 30 days" for those people who don't pay you in cash immediately. If someone gets huffy about it, just say you're being careful because you've "been stung before" (soon enough that'll be true anyway).
Then definitely don't work for people who haven't paid you. Just don't do it. IF they have a good reason and agree to pay you on a SPECIFIC DATE after the due date, you may continue to do additional work (and bill them) up until that agreed date. But then, you gotta stop. Don't get walked on. It's hard; you'll develop a rapport with these people, and you don't want to be a dick. But don't work for free. Just don't.
I've got a LOT more information, if anybody would like it. I'm currently involved in a lawsuit...
Hey, could you hit me with some of that? Or at least some links to where you found it? My email address is readily deduced from my homepage, linked above...
It's his stand on ideological purity that have safeguarded us many times in the past.
I don't deny that ESR may have "ideological purity," but his mechanism for propagating and defending it, stinks. Calling McBride "stupid" and his evidence "crap" aren't ideologically pure statements, they're rhetorically sloppy, easily dismissed ones.
Incidentally, I originally typed "ideological puree." Band name?
Seriously. His rhetoric is weak. This whole screed could have been summed up in the phrase, "there is no conspiracy against SCO, merely a group of people with a demonstrable common interest in overturning its policies."
But instead, it's a thousand-word, sophomoric rant accusing Darl McBride of being not as "smart" as people at IBM, boasting that he (Raymond) isn't afraid of lawyers, and topping it all off with that non sequitor about Utah.
It's just inflammatory. It takes a kernel of well-reasoned argument and wraps it up in several layers of immature hubris and bravado. I can't imagine this having any positive effect on anyone with a degree of pertinence in the case at hand; like much of his work, I suspect its real purpose is to inspire populist support and reinforcement for ESR's own ego.
I think the only thing I want to read by ESR from now on is fetchmail.
What?! This is offtopic now, but please, for the love of god, don't start a farm if you want to make money. You'll sink thousands into working the land, acquiring equipment, buying seed... then find that there is almost no margin at all. You'll basically have to apply subsidies, and even those go disproportionately to the richest existing farmers.
Please, stay away from agriculture. Ugh. Better to buy up cheap (or even "distressed") land near a city and just sit until the suburbs creep out to it.
You know, I'm not sure what position you were applying for, but if there's customer interaction, they may have a point. I mean come on. Suit and tie, pony tail, earring, and beard (even a neat trimmed one)? You look like a professional gambler or illicit diamond dealer. If skinny, add "heroin dealer" and "evil genius" to the list; if husky, add "mob enforcer" and "silent Bob," none of which are really "clean cut." And I haven't even met you!
Man. Seriously. I think I'm going to start a little side-business, telling people what stereotypes they resemble, so at least they walk into an interview KNOWING.
Yes a predictive tool. Basicially, this a way to measure the current "worth" of a particualar idea by using a market-type game theory.
So should, for example, meterology be done this way, too? Should we assign "worth" to the ideas that it will rain tonight, or not rain tonight? Will that improve our weather predicting ability?
The only difference I see between the two examples is that an individual actor couldn't (typically) influence the whether, while you could influence the outcome of the terrorist-prediction one by... undertaking a terrorist act.
Slashdot Mirror
That was all part of the joke - in the program distributed to family & guests, it didn't SAY "John Harvard, Jedi Knight," it said "Latin Salutatory: Iohannes Harvard, Eques Iediensis." And then all the student programs had an insert with the transcript and an English translation. So we (the graduates) got to read along and laugh at all the dumb jokes (he called Yale the death star, yuk yuk), thus appearing to understand Latin like the good little Hahvahd sophisticates we're presumed to be. It wasn't "stupid," it was just a bit of a light inside joke.
BTW, can any other slashdotters who attended in a non-student capacity verify that you didn't get the translation? It was definitely an insert, and not part of the regular program, but obviously I can't be sure who got them and who didn't.
Sometimes, but not in this case. They made a citation so prominent that it was included in the squib (where citations are usually omitted): Sony v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. at 486, which reads in part:
So, there's the common law they're talking about. Now if you want to say, where is the support for those cases, my response is, it's turtles all the way down.
That's akin to saying soldiers who commit war crimes are just agents of the Gov't. Sure, legally that may be true, but doing something morally reprehensible just because someone's paying you/ordering you still makes you morally bankrupt.
Perhaps I should clarify. The standard to which lawyers are held is that they must practice "zealous advocacy" of their clients' interests (both in the civil and criminal areas, by the way). So once they've told you what their goals are, you have to pursue them to the extent possible within the law. That's the code of legal ethics. You HAVE to. Now, if you want to say the American system of legal ethics is morally bankrupt, you might have a point, but that's a whole other argument; the system what we've got right now.
Even within that standard, though, you have to be a zealous advocate "to the extent the law allows", which rules out things like purjury and participation in ongoing crimes. And frivolous litigation is forbidden, so I think someone might have a claim against these guys. But there's probably enough of a chance for them to win, that the litigation itself isn't "frivolous", so maybe we're just stuck with Darl McBride's lawsuits until his $31M runs out.
the share price of SCOX [fool.com] is still higher than it was pre-litigation. So Darl has actually increased shareholder value since the days before litigation.
Yikes! Well, countersuit for frivolous litigation, then. I wonder why IBM et al haven't tried that yet?
So let me get this straight, all you would need to do to fit this category is buy a single share of SCO stock? Hmmm......lets see.....
Technically yes, but the action you would seek would be called a "shareholder derivative" suit (google for more info), which is kind of a class action, and you'd be representing the interests of all shareholders (assuming your complaint is valid, and the actions of management really are hurting the stock value). So the concern about only recovering $3.50 or whatever, brought up by another poster in this thread, is probably not such a big deal. I don't know exactly how the calculus goes, but I think the damages would be the total amount knocked off the stock price for ALL shareholders, and the firm would take a cut of that. Consult your lawyer though.
It is true that derivative actions are usually pursued by the biggest shareholders, and I can imagine a judge tossing out your suit on the basis that you're not a "genuine" investor, but only bought a share in order to have standing to sue.
A recent example of a shareholder derivative action, by the way, was when a major investor sued Sinclair Broadcasting for planning to run that anti-Kerry documentary, on the premise that it cost them a lot of advertising. The next day Sinclair responded that they weren't showing the documentary, but only a "news feature" based on it, so draw your own conclusion about whether the suit worked.
I know you're kidding but it's still a sad commentary on the way the legal profession has undermined the economy. Those lawyers have done nothing for SCO and yet they have greatly enriched themselves from shareholders' money.
And who do you blame for this? The first response to jump to mind should be "whatever jackass decided to pay the lawyers so much for such a hopeless lawsuit". An old saw in the legal profession is that the reason lawyers are such assholes, is that clients are such assholes (see my profile for more about my stake in the whole debate). A lawyer is the agent of his client's interests in the legal realm; simply that and nothing more.
Here's a question for some legal expert. Since Boies et al were paid in stock a while back, they are now a major stockholder in SCO, 25% as I recall. I wonder if they can therefore be sued by any parties who have a grievance against SCO?
No. As another poster said in this thread, the very point of setting up a corporation is to establish a firewall for legal liability. There are a couple of recourses, though:
1) If you think the lawsuit is truly malicious and has no plausible basis in fact, you could sue SCO et al for bringing a frivolous suit, but you would have to have standing (i.e., actually be injured yourself). You could accomplish that several ways, but being an IBM principal or employee, or someone else whose livelihood "depends" on Linux would be a good start.
2) If you are a shareholder of SCO, you could bring an action against the board of directors, personally as individuals and in their role as directors, and probably McBride and other "wayward" executives. The basis for this would be that the management of SCO is doing things that are actually against its shareholders' best interests (as confirmed by the miserable performance of SCO stock), and thus violating securities regulations.
See how it always comes back to the company, not the lawyers? It's because they can only be as mean as SCO tells them to be. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that someone hasn't tried #2 yet; I guess there's always the hypothetical possibility they'll prevail and make some money, but it seems much more likely that they're tilting at windmills and wasting money that would be much better spent on, oh, R&D or something.
Sloppy operation is a risk, as is insufficient inspection and monitoring. Another potential issue is underfunding (especially with privatised operation) of safety measures. Even if abundant government funds were thrown at the task, there's the risk they'd be abused or redirected to other things and still leave safety underfunded and undermonitored.
Fair enough, I guess, but as the parent (or its parent or something) started to point out, at what point does it stop making sense to be adverse to this small risk, when the alternative is the constant harm that coal and oil ARE doing to us all the time? Particulate waste contributes to cancer and other respiratory problems, right now every day. Huge amounts of CO2 from combustion fundamentally alter the earth's chemistry and trap more heat in the atmosphere, every day right now. How safe would any energy source X have to be to be worth switching, in your calculus?
With nuclear power, the only people who are even at RISK are the plant workers. Of course I wouldn't assert that their lives are worth less or anything, but it seems better to put fewer people at risk, rather than harming millions day in and day out like we do now. Even Chernobyl only killed less than 40 people in the immediate vicinity of the plant (yes, I know there were other serious consequences of Chernobyl), and the plants we currently use in the West are way, WAY safer than that.
Of course it would be hubris to assert that nuclear power was completely safe, but relatively speaking, it is quite safe. Ridiculously safe.
One of the most often 'brushed under the rug' issues is that there has never been a sucessful breeder reactor.
h tml (search for "plutonium")
... oh. Touche'. Guess it depends on your definition of "success" ;-)
On the contrary! See, e.g.,
http://home.uchicago.edu/~cmcfaul/quiz.html (search for "breeder")
http://www.nyx.net/~drwalker/990519.scavhunt.nyt.
They all cost massive amounts of money and then make less fuel than they use...
I'll note that when correcting my excerpt, you declined to add in "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" which is what folks like you seem to omit when they bring up the subject.
Actually, I was conceding the fact that we're discussing the 2nd amendment, which everyone understands to grant "the right to keep and bear arms." Not pretending it doesn't.
I fail to see how the beginning of the amendment, which lays out its purpose, sufficiently modifies "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" to the point where you conclude that it's okay to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
I fail to see another logical way to interpret it. There's a tenet of Constitutional construction that all the words in there, are in there for a reason and you must interpret them in a way that's meaningful. If the "right... to keep and bear arms" wasn't modified by the need to maintain a militia, then why was the militia clause attached to it?
I'm guessing that if I had, I'd fall squarely into your definition of "people who shouldn't have guns."
Not at all actually. I fully recognize that the vast majority of gun owners use their weapons responsibly and don't endanger themselves or their neighbors. But I do maintain that the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with keeping weapons for "personal protection"; that's the job of the police and it's obviously best performed by them.
The ridiculous number of handgun deaths in densely populated areas and in association with other crimes demonstrates a strong public policy need to regulate gun ownership, and I just believe that this is possible without infringement on the 2nd amendment, logically construed.
I just made another post about 10 USC 311 elsewhere in this thread. Just for kicks I'll go read it though... yep, I maintain that if you adhere to that definition of militia, then you have to concede that no man over 45, and no woman not a member of the National Guard, has a Constitutional right to own a gun.
"The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard"
So if the 2nd Amendment is specifically proscribed by 10 U.S.C. 311, do you concede that it only grants 17-to-45 year old males, and female members of the national gaurd, the right to keep and bear arms? No one else in the country has a (constitutional) right to own/possess a gun?
I call shenanigans:
Yes they are ignorant of the fact that he follows another "satire" show, because they don't watch that other show.
Come on, if you change the channel 5 minutes early you can obviously tell that the previous show is either Crank Yankers or Reno 911. In fact it's so hard to miss these shows (neither of which I like) that I often miss the first couple minutes of The Daily Show in an effort to avoid them.
They tune in to his show and take it as news.
You're not giving the viewers nearly enough credit. I think when a show is on a network called Comedy Central, and the host explicitly and repeatedly calls it out as "fake news" (both during in-show commentary and in print ads and interviews), you're on notice that it's "satire", or at least not to be taken seriously.
Who are these banal Daily Show watchers you're referring to? Do you have a big crowd in your hometown who tell you, without irony, that Jon Stewart is the only newsman they trust anymore? No, I think you're setting up straw men here.
The whole point of Stewart's tirade is that hosts on a news network bear some degree of responsibility to the public to actually INFORM the public. The fact that Jon Stewart is not bound by this duty does not at all diminish his right to criticize its execution by those who are.
The Economist is biased. They also report facts and put journalists on the ground who ask questions.... When I read biased reporting I feel like I've eaten something with flavor. I either like or dislike the flavor but I know I've gotten nutrition.
I agree about the bias in European publications, particularly the Economist (which I love), because the bias is explicitly out there and you can take it into account when you read whatever newspaper. But there's something to be said for "objective journalism" as well, but objective as such, not "objective" as practiced these days in the US.
Most major news organizations here seem to interpret "objectivity" as "let each side yell for the same amount of time". At least Fox is more honest in calling this balance, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with objectivity -- which should be all about the facts, and hounding sources for verifiable claims. Alas, there's almost none of that and so our objective journalism has become a shambles.
I'd love it if we could have a "fact bias".
> What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The part that goes "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" apparently, since that's what everyone omits when they talk about the 2nd amendment. Trained with a citizen's militia lately?
Ha! From that page: "If the OBJECT element used to load the control contains PARAM elements but none of the PARAM elements specify a source of data external to the current Web page, then the control does not access remote data" and so the user will not be prompted.
I suppose that this is one of the concessions they were required to make: plugin content that "specifies a source of data external to the current page" was probably convered specifically by the patent in question.
But here's the VERY NEXT sentence: "The OBJECT element for an ActiveX control has a new attribute: NOEXTERNALDATA. Specify true for this attribute to indicate that the control does not access remote data and that Internet Explorer should not prompt the user." Notice that this doesn't say "specify this tag and we'll CHECK to see if there's external data." It's basically a way to turn off the prompt, no questions asked.
In fact, the code example directly following specifies a "param url=", which sounds a helluva lot like a "source of external data" to me. Is it just me, or does this directly flout the entire point of the changes? I can't imagine that's an accident... I think MS just said "here, we'll change our default behavior, but we'll let users subvert the change starting now."
Ha!
Other interpretations?
Whoa whoa whoa! I think you're jumping to conclusions here buddy. I'm sure most phone solicitors are very proprietous (and I'm not even kidding), especially debt collectors, but what that guy said happens all the time. What I'm going to say is going to be anecdotal evidence, but that's enough to disprove your claim that "all people who say this are lying" (which you're good enough to retract in your last paragraph, but is still a helluvan accusation).
A couple of years ago, I got repeated calls from a debt collector mentioning a fee for an ambulance trip that really wasn't ringing a bell with me (strike 1: they simply *left a message* about what the overdue bill was for; I would've asked but didn't have to).
I kept ignoring the messages, because I hadn't used any ambulance service, but finally they caught me at home one day. Once I had them on the phone, I explained that, and we chatted quite openly about an older gentleman with an unlisted number who'd had a heart attack, and not paid his bill. So strike 2: here I am now, after a brief conversation, and I know a guy's name, birthdate, hometown, and partial medical history. All without any attempt at all to defraud.
See, a lot can happen when an inexperienced, poorly educated phone operator talks to a curious customer. They probably could've been sued based on what they told me, but I obviously wasn't going for that; I just wanted the phone calls to stop. No idea what was on the mind of the old guy with the bum heart, though.
It does raise kind of an akward issue: what do you do in the case of mistaken identity? They really shouldn't be distributing ANY information about anyone's credit without verifying that they're speaking to that party. And you (as a consumer) probably shouldn't just give away your SSN to some caller who says you owe money. So how is the situation to be resolved?
Um... this is a joke, right? I mean, you are familiar with CGI and stuff?
It's deeper than that. I started my own company a while back, just to do some programming consulting, and I had everything *I* needed in a "paperless office" suite of applications on my computer. However, the IRS still requires printed receipts and invoices, so I had to print everything anyway, even though it didn't do me any good in that format.
Actually, I guess technically I didn't HAVE to, since I didn't get audited in 2002 (yet). But if I did, and had no paper trail... look out! So yeah, coworkers demanding paper are annoying, but the IRS demanding it is a serious problem.
Make sure you bill promptly and accurately and be sure to charge late charges on accounts. If a customer becomes past due do not perform further work for them. You can't work for free and make a living.
It's difficult to overstate how important this is. At some point, if you keep this up, you'll run into a customer who doesn't pay. Hopefully they'll short you $50 instead of $500, but learn your lesson when it happens.
Be "gentle but firm" with your billing terms; travel with blank invoices that specify "payment is due within 30 days" for those people who don't pay you in cash immediately. If someone gets huffy about it, just say you're being careful because you've "been stung before" (soon enough that'll be true anyway).
Then definitely don't work for people who haven't paid you. Just don't do it. IF they have a good reason and agree to pay you on a SPECIFIC DATE after the due date, you may continue to do additional work (and bill them) up until that agreed date. But then, you gotta stop. Don't get walked on. It's hard; you'll develop a rapport with these people, and you don't want to be a dick. But don't work for free. Just don't.
I've got a LOT more information, if anybody would like it. I'm currently involved in a lawsuit...
Hey, could you hit me with some of that? Or at least some links to where you found it? My email address is readily deduced from my homepage, linked above...
It's his stand on ideological purity that have safeguarded us many times in the past.
I don't deny that ESR may have "ideological purity," but his mechanism for propagating and defending it, stinks. Calling McBride "stupid" and his evidence "crap" aren't ideologically pure statements, they're rhetorically sloppy, easily dismissed ones.
Incidentally, I originally typed "ideological puree." Band name?
Seriously. His rhetoric is weak. This whole screed could have been summed up in the phrase, "there is no conspiracy against SCO, merely a group of people with a demonstrable common interest in overturning its policies."
But instead, it's a thousand-word, sophomoric rant accusing Darl McBride of being not as "smart" as people at IBM, boasting that he (Raymond) isn't afraid of lawyers, and topping it all off with that non sequitor about Utah.
It's just inflammatory. It takes a kernel of well-reasoned argument and wraps it up in several layers of immature hubris and bravado. I can't imagine this having any positive effect on anyone with a degree of pertinence in the case at hand; like much of his work, I suspect its real purpose is to inspire populist support and reinforcement for ESR's own ego.
I think the only thing I want to read by ESR from now on is fetchmail.
What?! This is offtopic now, but please, for the love of god, don't start a farm if you want to make money. You'll sink thousands into working the land, acquiring equipment, buying seed... then find that there is almost no margin at all. You'll basically have to apply subsidies, and even those go disproportionately to the richest existing farmers.
Please, stay away from agriculture. Ugh. Better to buy up cheap (or even "distressed") land near a city and just sit until the suburbs creep out to it.
Fascinated by team counting? You'll want to check this out, then.
You know, I'm not sure what position you were applying for, but if there's customer interaction, they may have a point. I mean come on. Suit and tie, pony tail, earring, and beard (even a neat trimmed one)? You look like a professional gambler or illicit diamond dealer. If skinny, add "heroin dealer" and "evil genius" to the list; if husky, add "mob enforcer" and "silent Bob," none of which are really "clean cut." And I haven't even met you!
Man. Seriously. I think I'm going to start a little side-business, telling people what stereotypes they resemble, so at least they walk into an interview KNOWING.
Yes a predictive tool. Basicially, this a way to measure the current "worth" of a particualar idea by using a market-type game theory.
So should, for example, meterology be done this way, too? Should we assign "worth" to the ideas that it will rain tonight, or not rain tonight? Will that improve our weather predicting ability?
The only difference I see between the two examples is that an individual actor couldn't (typically) influence the whether, while you could influence the outcome of the terrorist-prediction one by... undertaking a terrorist act.
Great.