"People who write these kinds of things are well aware of what they can and can't do or say and still have no problems in making sure that their preferred supplier wins the contract without breaching the letter of the law. "
The problem they run into is when it becomes part of a question in a civil suit, where the dreaded test of "reasonable" comes into play.
It matters less that your words are strictly legal, and matters much, much more what a "reasonable person" understands. And if some kind of foul play is in question, your example could certainly be brought up by a plaintiff in a way that the defendant would be forced to explain to a jury and to a judge about how it's reasonable and not purposely exclusive, or whatever the problem is supposed to be.
I beg your pardon, but neither Google Docs nor Microsoft Word is a suitable alternative to vi, and certainly not to VIM. You speak of "vi and notepad.exe" as if they are equivalent. That's just plain insulting and ridiculous.
I was very surprised, though, to see that once they started using it, some of the people who had been the most doubtful, became the biggest advocates of the Gmail way. It's dramatic enough that if we wanted to go back to Exchange or Outlook or Entourage, there would be blood, and the execs, not IT, would be the ones protesting the loudest.
Once you do an honest cost/benefit analysis of (paid-for, corporate) Google mail, it's not a hard sell at all. The problem, if it is one, is persuading decision makers to actually be honest and disinterested in their analysis. That's often much, much more difficult than it should be.
>Would I suggest outlawing tequila because I won't drink it? No.
Is it legal to make tequila where you live? Or if it's legal to make distilled blue agave spirits where you live, is it legal to call the product "tequila?"
There are places where you can do hard time in the penitentiary for making tequila -- possibly far worse a punishment than you'd get for growing marijuana. Just how "legal" is that tequila?
"Doubtful. An 87 year old who suffered a hip fracture has a 50-50 chance of dying in the next year no matter how good the medical care. Yep, we can fix hip fractures - but it's a big, big stress to the system and lots of people can't hack it."
I still say a lawyer who is slimy enough to sue a six year old is plenty slimy enough to sue a doctor.
>The judge is an idiot and not fit to sit the bench.
The judge is smart enough to realize that a lawsuit against the kid will open up the woman's medical records to the court, and will demand testimony from the doctor who treated her, and who presumably didn't do everything possible to save her life. She didn't bleed out on the street under the kid's bike. She died after months of (mis)treatment by a quack. I think that's an important element to this story that's being overlooked because of the sensational nature of the child being sued.
My conjecture: The lawsuit against the child gives him a way to compel testimony from the doctor who treated the woman, and is a discovery vehicle for the woman's medical records. They aren't going after the kid's assets. They are looking for an angle to go after the doctor who treated the woman, didn't do everything possible to save her life, and let her die.
All of the people commenting on this story are focusing on the kid, and the weirdness of suing a six year old. Very few seem to be thinking like a lawyer (not just incarnately evil, but also greedy.)
Dollars to donuts says a malpractice element enters into this story.
When they sue the kid, they will be able to force the doctors who treated the woman to testify about their treatment. When the doctors admit under oath that they didn't do everything possible to save the woman's life, the kid becomes irrelevant. Next they will go after the doctors. It's very important to note that the woman died after being treated by them. They aren't suing the kid to get what the kid or the kid's family have - that is probably next to nothing anyway.
The 6 year old isn't competent to stand trial, but the doctors who treated the woman can be made to give testimony in this lawsuit. That testimony can be used against the doctors. Keep in mind, this woman died *after* receiving medical treatment. I'm willing to bet the plaintiff in this suit isn't interested in the kid. They have their sights on the doctors who didn't do everything they could to save the woman's life. That's where the money is. The kid is just one way to get them to talk under oath.
You can try, and run the risk of a jury finding that the plaintiff is being unreasonable and end up making an award to the defendant. Not sure this can happen in New York but I'd bet it's possible. More likely, it will be dismissed after a short in camera meeting before the first hearing starts out. That happens really often, in a lot of cases with more merits than this one. The plaintiffs *do* have to convince a judge that the lawsuit can deliver a remedy for their complaint, and the judge does get to decide that a case isn't reasonable and is a waste of the court's time.
I have a theory that this is not so much about the kid, and much more about the fact that the victim died as a consequence of her surgery. The kid might not even be an issue, it might be a tactic to force expert testimony about medical treatment. I doubt the plaintiff is trying to get the kid's lunch money, but I'd make any bet you can cover that they are interested in going after the doctor that treated her before she died. That's where the money is. The suit against the kid might be a means to that end. All the reports I've seen focus on the kid and the weirdness of letting this suit go forward, but the detail that stands out to me is that she died (significantly!) after receiving medical care for her injuries. By suing the kid they might be able to compel testimony about the woman's treatment that might not be so simple if they tried to get it directly. Maybe they are hoping the doctors will say more in defense of the kid than they would if faced with making their own defense, and maybe the plaintiff is looking for that opening to go after the doctors.
I think he means "the board would keep going, dragging him along at full speed, boots, bindings, lanyard and all."
Hitting the snow doesn't always stop you or even slow you down much, and lots of pants and jackets make *excellent* sleds.
Even for an experienced skiier, learning to snowboard puts you in a lot of really sketchy situations where "in control" is not even close to describing it. One problem experienced skiiers have when they start boarding is they are used to pretty intense runs, and it doesn't occur to them how green they need to go. You've skiied on blacks every powder day since you were five years old. Now at 30, you want to snowboard, and it seems realistic to start on blues or even steep greens. Right away, you're in more trouble that you think, and everything you know works against you.
You get past this plateau pretty quickly, as you learn how to use your board edges and weight shifts, and in a season or two you're boarding pretty much anywhere you can ski, but before you get there, you get more than a few humbling moments sliding down the hill on your ass.
Nowadays if you start out boarding as a kid, you never face this obstacle. It might not even be understandable, but boarding can be *very* hard to pick up even for a really good skiier.
It could still be medical malpractice. The reports dwell on the kid, and don't say much about the fact that the victim died a significant time after receiving medical care. I wonder if the judge is allowing the case to go forward so that more attention can be cast on other details.
Judges in the USA have broad latitude in such choices, especially in civil cases that do not appear reasonable on their face. I think he's doing this as a form of protest. He could have rejected the case and stated his reasons (the "defendant was four years old at the time of the incident and there is no reasonable expectation that anything meaningful will come out of a lawsuit.")
Instead he forces the matter to go to the first hearing, and does so in a *very* loud manner, where it gets national exposure a couple of days before a contentious election. He knows damned well this case won't go past the first hearing (where is the New York jury that will find anything against the plaintiff, and what does a six year old have that can be awarded, and to whom?) But it sure will make some noise, and the noise is ("look at the terrible status quo! Vote the bums out on Tuesday!!")
Yeah, the judge had a choice. Judges don't have people waiting in the wings of the courtroom watching their every move, ready to haul them off if they make a wrong decision. The standards are *extremely* high for making actual claims about what a judge may or may not do. He could have dismissed this claim with prejudice and nothing at all would have happened to him, and you would never have heard about the incident. Look now, though. Everyone claiming the judge was evil or insane, or claiming that he had no choice in the matter, is missing the genius move of forcing the state into the position of having a national spotlight placed on a weak area of the law.
>Is this the problem with the lawyers, or is this a problem with the judge?
It might be a form of protest. The judge has just brought it to a national spotlight that the law allows (and maybe requires) him to permit a suit to go forward against a six year old for a liability incurred at age four. The judge knows damn well it won't get past the first hearing, but instead of sweeping the real issue under the rug, he has made it so that it *cannot* be ignored.
I don't think this judge is insane or inhuman as he's been made out to be. I think this might have been a stroke of genius that will end up with the insane laws being changed.
So, what is the solution? What should I do in order to improve the lives of factory workers in China? Please be specific.
"Stop buying Chinese consumer products" might sound good, but I'd make two points: I buy relatively few consumer products that are made in China, and if we (the West) stop buying their products it will cause their labor conditions to *decline* not *improve*.
When I got on this anti-China high horse a while back I did some investigation. I ended up with a shirt made in Thailand, an oil filter made in Israel, printer cartridges made in Ireland, food grown in California, Texas, and Ohio, it just went on and on -- all the stuff I assumed was made in China, wasn't. I was shocked.
>Isn't sitting an all around unnatural posture to begin with?
If you know anyone from China, note how they sit when there is no chair. It's as worthwhile to learn to emulate this sitting posture as any martial art or Tai Chi or Yoga.
I don't know what I *need*, but I like to be able to adjust the seat back so that it is at a fixed angle, but not at 90 degrees. I also prefer an adjustable lumbar support, adjustable on three axes and rigidity. As for the swivel, I like to have stops that limit the range of the swivel. Once I have the vertical position of the chair set, I want to LOCK it so that nobody else can adjust it. I like casters, as long as they have brakes. There are materials that I like much more than leather or artificial leather. I want to be able to completely remove the arms, or at least to adjust them so that they are out of my way.
There are chairs from the 1940s that I could sit in for 14 hours a day. There are $500 office chairs that will make me need physical therapy after a few days of a few hours a day. A chair is a very individual thing, and for me, it's not just about comfort but about health -- specifically, avoiding a recurring Thoracic Outlet Syndrome issue that I don't want to talk about here.
Steel and plywood. But the plywood veneers were bonded with an epoxy, so the surfaces were much more dense and resilient than just wood. The parts were assembled with heavy duty steel rivets, not bolts. The writing surfaces could be rehabilitated by varnishing (also with an epoxy) and they survived *generations* of carved-in graffiti. (I went to a high school where a couple of local celebrities had gone, and you could find their names carved into a couple of desks, more than a decade later -- it was kind of cool.)
The feet of these desks were also essentially big rivets. And they were pretty heavy. You wouldn't lift one just to move it around, you'd drag it.
Slashdot Mirror
"People who write these kinds of things are well aware of what they can and can't do or say and still have no problems in making sure that their preferred supplier wins the contract without breaching the letter of the law. "
The problem they run into is when it becomes part of a question in a civil suit, where the dreaded test of "reasonable" comes into play.
It matters less that your words are strictly legal, and matters much, much more what a "reasonable person" understands. And if some kind of foul play is in question, your example could certainly be brought up by a plaintiff in a way that the defendant would be forced to explain to a jury and to a judge about how it's reasonable and not purposely exclusive, or whatever the problem is supposed to be.
I beg your pardon, but neither Google Docs nor Microsoft Word is a suitable alternative to vi, and certainly not to VIM.
You speak of "vi and notepad.exe" as if they are equivalent. That's just plain insulting and ridiculous.
Either way, if the choices are yours to make, do you choose government work?
I was very surprised, though, to see that once they started using it, some of the people who had been the most doubtful, became the biggest advocates of the Gmail way. It's dramatic enough that if we wanted to go back to Exchange or Outlook or Entourage, there would be blood, and the execs, not IT, would be the ones protesting the loudest.
Once you do an honest cost/benefit analysis of (paid-for, corporate) Google mail, it's not a hard sell at all. The problem, if it is one, is persuading decision makers to actually be honest and disinterested in their analysis. That's often much, much more difficult than it should be.
>Would I suggest outlawing tequila because I won't drink it? No.
Is it legal to make tequila where you live? Or if it's legal to make distilled blue agave spirits where you live, is it legal to call the product "tequila?"
There are places where you can do hard time in the penitentiary for making tequila -- possibly far worse a punishment than you'd get for growing marijuana. Just how "legal" is that tequila?
"Doubtful. An 87 year old who suffered a hip fracture has a 50-50 chance of dying in the next year no matter how good the medical care. Yep, we can fix hip fractures - but it's a big, big stress to the system and lots of people can't hack it."
I still say a lawyer who is slimy enough to sue a six year old is plenty slimy enough to sue a doctor.
>The judge is an idiot and not fit to sit the bench.
The judge is smart enough to realize that a lawsuit against the kid will open up the woman's medical records to the court, and will demand testimony from the doctor who treated her, and who presumably didn't do everything possible to save her life. She didn't bleed out on the street under the kid's bike. She died after months of (mis)treatment by a quack. I think that's an important element to this story that's being overlooked because of the sensational nature of the child being sued.
My conjecture: The lawsuit against the child gives him a way to compel testimony from the doctor who treated the woman, and is a discovery vehicle for the woman's medical records.
They aren't going after the kid's assets. They are looking for an angle to go after the doctor who treated the woman, didn't do everything possible to save her life, and let her die.
All of the people commenting on this story are focusing on the kid, and the weirdness of suing a six year old. Very few seem to be thinking like a lawyer (not just incarnately evil, but also greedy.)
Dollars to donuts says a malpractice element enters into this story.
When they sue the kid, they will be able to force the doctors who treated the woman to testify about their treatment. When the doctors admit under oath that they didn't do everything possible to save the woman's life, the kid becomes irrelevant. Next they will go after the doctors. It's very important to note that the woman died after being treated by them. They aren't suing the kid to get what the kid or the kid's family have - that is probably next to nothing anyway.
The 6 year old isn't competent to stand trial, but the doctors who treated the woman can be made to give testimony in this lawsuit. That testimony can be used against the doctors. Keep in mind, this woman died *after* receiving medical treatment. I'm willing to bet the plaintiff in this suit isn't interested in the kid. They have their sights on the doctors who didn't do everything they could to save the woman's life. That's where the money is. The kid is just one way to get them to talk under oath.
You can try, and run the risk of a jury finding that the plaintiff is being unreasonable and end up making an award to the defendant. Not sure this can happen in New York but I'd bet it's possible.
More likely, it will be dismissed after a short in camera meeting before the first hearing starts out. That happens really often, in a lot of cases with more merits than this one. The plaintiffs *do* have to convince a judge that the lawsuit can deliver a remedy for their complaint, and the judge does get to decide that a case isn't reasonable and is a waste of the court's time.
I have a theory that this is not so much about the kid, and much more about the fact that the victim died as a consequence of her surgery. The kid might not even be an issue, it might be a tactic to force expert testimony about medical treatment. I doubt the plaintiff is trying to get the kid's lunch money, but I'd make any bet you can cover that they are interested in going after the doctor that treated her before she died. That's where the money is. The suit against the kid might be a means to that end. All the reports I've seen focus on the kid and the weirdness of letting this suit go forward, but the detail that stands out to me is that she died (significantly!) after receiving medical care for her injuries. By suing the kid they might be able to compel testimony about the woman's treatment that might not be so simple if they tried to get it directly. Maybe they are hoping the doctors will say more in defense of the kid than they would if faced with making their own defense, and maybe the plaintiff is looking for that opening to go after the doctors.
I think he means "the board would keep going, dragging him along at full speed, boots, bindings, lanyard and all."
Hitting the snow doesn't always stop you or even slow you down much, and lots of pants and jackets make *excellent* sleds.
Even for an experienced skiier, learning to snowboard puts you in a lot of really sketchy situations where "in control" is not even close to describing it.
One problem experienced skiiers have when they start boarding is they are used to pretty intense runs, and it doesn't occur to them how green they need to go.
You've skiied on blacks every powder day since you were five years old. Now at 30, you want to snowboard, and it seems realistic to start on blues or even steep greens.
Right away, you're in more trouble that you think, and everything you know works against you.
You get past this plateau pretty quickly, as you learn how to use your board edges and weight shifts, and in a season or two you're boarding pretty much anywhere you can ski, but before you get there, you get more than a few humbling moments sliding down the hill on your ass.
Nowadays if you start out boarding as a kid, you never face this obstacle. It might not even be understandable, but boarding can be *very* hard to pick up even for a really good skiier.
A better question would be "what is the total net worth of this particular 6 year old's immediate family?"
If they own even modest property in New York, that could be millions of dollars.
>The truth is that this was an accident.
It could still be medical malpractice. The reports dwell on the kid, and don't say much about the fact that the victim died a significant time after receiving medical care. I wonder if the judge is allowing the case to go forward so that more attention can be cast on other details.
Judges in the USA have broad latitude in such choices, especially in civil cases that do not appear reasonable on their face.
I think he's doing this as a form of protest. He could have rejected the case and stated his reasons (the "defendant was four years old at the time of the incident and there is no reasonable expectation that anything meaningful will come out of a lawsuit.")
Instead he forces the matter to go to the first hearing, and does so in a *very* loud manner, where it gets national exposure a couple of days before a contentious election. He knows damned well this case won't go past the first hearing (where is the New York jury that will find anything against the plaintiff, and what does a six year old have that can be awarded, and to whom?) But it sure will make some noise, and the noise is ("look at the terrible status quo! Vote the bums out on Tuesday!!")
Yeah, the judge had a choice. Judges don't have people waiting in the wings of the courtroom watching their every move, ready to haul them off if they make a wrong decision. The standards are *extremely* high for making actual claims about what a judge may or may not do. He could have dismissed this claim with prejudice and nothing at all would have happened to him, and you would never have heard about the incident. Look now, though. Everyone claiming the judge was evil or insane, or claiming that he had no choice in the matter, is missing the genius move of forcing the state into the position of having a national spotlight placed on a weak area of the law.
>Is this the problem with the lawyers, or is this a problem with the judge?
It might be a form of protest. The judge has just brought it to a national spotlight that the law allows (and maybe requires) him to permit a suit to go forward against a six year old for a liability incurred at age four.
The judge knows damn well it won't get past the first hearing, but instead of sweeping the real issue under the rug, he has made it so that it *cannot* be ignored.
I don't think this judge is insane or inhuman as he's been made out to be. I think this might have been a stroke of genius that will end up with the insane laws being changed.
If that's not a typo I wish I had mod points.
So, what is the solution? What should I do in order to improve the lives of factory workers in China? Please be specific.
"Stop buying Chinese consumer products" might sound good, but I'd make two points: I buy relatively few consumer products that are made in China, and if we (the West) stop buying their products it will cause their labor conditions to *decline* not *improve*.
When I got on this anti-China high horse a while back I did some investigation. I ended up with a shirt made in Thailand, an oil filter made in Israel, printer cartridges made in Ireland, food grown in California, Texas, and Ohio, it just went on and on -- all the stuff I assumed was made in China, wasn't. I was shocked.
>Isn't sitting an all around unnatural posture to begin with?
If you know anyone from China, note how they sit when there is no chair. It's as worthwhile to learn to emulate this sitting posture as any martial art or Tai Chi or Yoga.
I don't know what I *need*, but I like to be able to adjust the seat back so that it is at a fixed angle, but not at 90 degrees.
I also prefer an adjustable lumbar support, adjustable on three axes and rigidity.
As for the swivel, I like to have stops that limit the range of the swivel. Once I have the vertical position of the chair set, I want to LOCK it so that nobody else can adjust it.
I like casters, as long as they have brakes. There are materials that I like much more than leather or artificial leather. I want to be able to completely remove the arms, or at least to adjust them so that they are out of my way.
There are chairs from the 1940s that I could sit in for 14 hours a day. There are $500 office chairs that will make me need physical therapy after a few days of a few hours a day. A chair is a very individual thing, and for me, it's not just about comfort but about health -- specifically, avoiding a recurring Thoracic Outlet Syndrome issue that I don't want to talk about here.
Yay! A Panopticon! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
You're comparing the national average wage to an average wage for a profession that calls for at least a Master's Degree.
Steel and plywood. But the plywood veneers were bonded with an epoxy, so the surfaces were much more dense and resilient than just wood. The parts were assembled with heavy duty steel rivets, not bolts.
The writing surfaces could be rehabilitated by varnishing (also with an epoxy) and they survived *generations* of carved-in graffiti. (I went to a high school where a couple of local celebrities had gone, and you could find their names carved into a couple of desks, more than a decade later -- it was kind of cool.)
The feet of these desks were also essentially big rivets. And they were pretty heavy. You wouldn't lift one just to move it around, you'd drag it.
>Somehow, and I'll let the Java folks give their idea about why, *every* *single* program I've ever seen that was written in Java manages to suck
Do you think JBoss sucks?
What do you think about Jira, or SugarCRM?
principle, n, [1a] : a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption
principal, n, [1e] : the person primarily or ultimately liable on a legal obligation