Actually, there is legal precedent on Google's side. Check out the Kelly v. Arriba Soft ruling from the 9th circuit a couple of years ago.
Granted, this is a novel area of law, so there is no guarantee that the court in Google's situation won't be able to distinguish this case from Google Print, but at least its a start.
Light rail doesn't do well with hills? Don't tell this to the poor folks in San Francisco, who have been stuck with six light rail lines in their city not known for its flatness--particularly those who ride the J-Church line every day over Dolores Heights.
This was essentially a human-scale version of the explosive trace detector that they currently use on luggage. The air jets are designed to dislodge trace particles/explosives residue that might be attached to your clothing, which could indicate that you were either carrying a bomb or were working around one recently (or were playing golf on a recently fertilized golf course).
As far as not explaining what it was, shame on them. SFO is not known for great security staff--a little known fact is that the "TSA employees" at SFO are not really employed by the government, but via a contractor (just like the old way--SFO is one of the "test" airports for the third-party contract system). Not that TSA staff are universally stellar (some are better than others), but I always find that the SFO folks are at the bottom of the barrel.
Well, its definitely not true everywhere--many colleges and universities do take their FERPA responsibilities seriously. I also worked in an administrative/deans office while an undergrad, and we would never give grades out to anyone other than the student (unless authorized by the student). Occasionally, parents would call and beg to find out how their children were doing (or even to find out if they were actually registered for class that semester...), but we were not allowed to (and did not) disclose any student records.
This is an idea with merit, but depends on one critical fact...the ability to identify the purported rights-holder. It can frequently be harder to license (and use) abandoned material than copyrighted material which is actively guarded. At least if it is actively guarded, there is someone you can turn to and try to negotiate a deal with ("I'll pay you $1000 if I can publish this poem in my next novel"). With abandoned works, there is frequently no identifiable person to negoitate with--it is impossible to notify an unidentified individual or corporation. Indeed, private investigators get a lot of business from IP attorneys trying to trace down IP owners (IAAIPL--I am an IP lawyer--and speak from personal knowledge).
Even works that seem straightforward can turn difficult, since authors/creators of works frequently have (intentionally or unintentionally) given/sold the copyright to someone else as a work-for-hire or under some other scheme. Companies that may have owned the copyright at one point get bought out, merged, split up, etc.
As Slate pointed out, many SUVs driving on California's roads (not necessarily highways, though) shouldn't even be there.
Although it is not a perfect proxy, gas taxes are a relatively good measure of the amount of wear a specific vehicle causes on the roads--heavier vehicles tend to use more fuel per mile, resulting in a higher tax per mile. Although the connection is less strong to congestion, there is still some correlation between acceleration and vehicle weight (and a lot of congestion is caused because trucks and other slower-accelerating vehicles take more time getting back up to speed, slowing down all the more-capable lighter cars behind them--this is actually the main premise behind the Bay Bridge metering lights).
I was trained as a poll worker in NYC a few years ago (I was a student at the time, and had nothing better to do with a random Tuesday), but let me tell you, after going through the process, I have way less faith in the lever machines than I did as an innocent yet ignorant voter.
First off, as people pointed out above, the numbers are manually tallied at the end of the evening. The poll workers use a key to unlock the machine, and little windows appear with the individual tallies. These tallies are transcribed to a paper 'canvas,' and then transcribed again at the Board of Elections office. Granted, the voting machines are not reset until the election is certified, so it is possible to return to the source to review the count, but it is just as likely that an innocent error such as that caused by transposing two digits may never get caught.
More importantly, however, is that similar to touch screen voting, much of what happens with a lever machine during an election is of the Big Black Box variety. Beyond a master counter which is supposed to advance one count for every person who voted, there is really no way of knowing if the machine is functioning correctly. It is wholly possible that a counter for a particular candidate or ballot measure is malfunctioning, resulting in an undercount or overcount. More importantly, no individul record is kept of each vote (similar to the touch screen systems), so it is impossible to go back and 'recreate the voters intent' as you can with paper/optical scan systems.
Further, these machines are getting old and are notoriously unreliable. These machines jam somewhat frequently, and the 'official' method of clearing these jams is to force the red handle (the master voting control that unlocks/registers the votes for an individual voter) back and forth until the machine is operating normally. Of course, each time you do this, a new 'vote' is registered on the machine--presumably, it would be treated as a blank ballot, but once again, with the black box nature of the lever machines, one never is quite sure.
Finally, there is the people aspect. In NYC, there are so few registered Repulicans (particularly in Manhattan) that it is quite common practice for the Board of Elections to designate a Democrat as a 'Republican for the day.' In other words, a precinct that is supposed to have two Democratic and two Republican poll workers may end up having three Democrats and one Republican, or even four Democrats and no Republicans working!
According to this New York Times article to be published tomorrow, Bush had received intel in the past few days that North Korea was preparing to test a nuclear device.
Linking job stress and mental health, its interesting to note that attorneys (typically a high strung bunch) experience the highest rate of depression among all professions in the United States (I quickly found an older news article on this issue via google, but I know that there are a couple of scientific studies which have also confirmed this).
Interestingly, it seems that it is the profession itself that causes the depression. In one study I read a few years back, when individuals were assessed the summer before law school, they showed rates of depression equivalent to the general population, but even after just the first year of law school, let alone once they graduated, rates of depression jumped to anywhere from 20-40 percent of the population studied.
During the American Airlines test, "we told everyone that the softer you speak, the better the conversation," Mr. Ford said. "Yet the moment we gave out the cellphones, they all started yelling."
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, there is legal precedent on Google's side. Check out the Kelly v. Arriba Soft ruling from the 9th circuit a couple of years ago. Granted, this is a novel area of law, so there is no guarantee that the court in Google's situation won't be able to distinguish this case from Google Print, but at least its a start.
Light rail doesn't do well with hills? Don't tell this to the poor folks in San Francisco, who have been stuck with six light rail lines in their city not known for its flatness--particularly those who ride the J-Church line every day over Dolores Heights.
This was essentially a human-scale version of the explosive trace detector that they currently use on luggage. The air jets are designed to dislodge trace particles/explosives residue that might be attached to your clothing, which could indicate that you were either carrying a bomb or were working around one recently (or were playing golf on a recently fertilized golf course).
As far as not explaining what it was, shame on them. SFO is not known for great security staff--a little known fact is that the "TSA employees" at SFO are not really employed by the government, but via a contractor (just like the old way--SFO is one of the "test" airports for the third-party contract system). Not that TSA staff are universally stellar (some are better than others), but I always find that the SFO folks are at the bottom of the barrel.
Well, its definitely not true everywhere--many colleges and universities do take their FERPA responsibilities seriously. I also worked in an administrative/deans office while an undergrad, and we would never give grades out to anyone other than the student (unless authorized by the student). Occasionally, parents would call and beg to find out how their children were doing (or even to find out if they were actually registered for class that semester...), but we were not allowed to (and did not) disclose any student records.
This is an idea with merit, but depends on one critical fact...the ability to identify the purported rights-holder. It can frequently be harder to license (and use) abandoned material than copyrighted material which is actively guarded. At least if it is actively guarded, there is someone you can turn to and try to negotiate a deal with ("I'll pay you $1000 if I can publish this poem in my next novel"). With abandoned works, there is frequently no identifiable person to negoitate with--it is impossible to notify an unidentified individual or corporation. Indeed, private investigators get a lot of business from IP attorneys trying to trace down IP owners (IAAIPL--I am an IP lawyer--and speak from personal knowledge).
Even works that seem straightforward can turn difficult, since authors/creators of works frequently have (intentionally or unintentionally) given/sold the copyright to someone else as a work-for-hire or under some other scheme. Companies that may have owned the copyright at one point get bought out, merged, split up, etc.
Although it is not a perfect proxy, gas taxes are a relatively good measure of the amount of wear a specific vehicle causes on the roads--heavier vehicles tend to use more fuel per mile, resulting in a higher tax per mile. Although the connection is less strong to congestion, there is still some correlation between acceleration and vehicle weight (and a lot of congestion is caused because trucks and other slower-accelerating vehicles take more time getting back up to speed, slowing down all the more-capable lighter cars behind them--this is actually the main premise behind the Bay Bridge metering lights).
I was trained as a poll worker in NYC a few years ago (I was a student at the time, and had nothing better to do with a random Tuesday), but let me tell you, after going through the process, I have way less faith in the lever machines than I did as an innocent yet ignorant voter.
First off, as people pointed out above, the numbers are manually tallied at the end of the evening. The poll workers use a key to unlock the machine, and little windows appear with the individual tallies. These tallies are transcribed to a paper 'canvas,' and then transcribed again at the Board of Elections office. Granted, the voting machines are not reset until the election is certified, so it is possible to return to the source to review the count, but it is just as likely that an innocent error such as that caused by transposing two digits may never get caught.
More importantly, however, is that similar to touch screen voting, much of what happens with a lever machine during an election is of the Big Black Box variety. Beyond a master counter which is supposed to advance one count for every person who voted, there is really no way of knowing if the machine is functioning correctly. It is wholly possible that a counter for a particular candidate or ballot measure is malfunctioning, resulting in an undercount or overcount. More importantly, no individul record is kept of each vote (similar to the touch screen systems), so it is impossible to go back and 'recreate the voters intent' as you can with paper/optical scan systems.
Further, these machines are getting old and are notoriously unreliable. These machines jam somewhat frequently, and the 'official' method of clearing these jams is to force the red handle (the master voting control that unlocks/registers the votes for an individual voter) back and forth until the machine is operating normally. Of course, each time you do this, a new 'vote' is registered on the machine--presumably, it would be treated as a blank ballot, but once again, with the black box nature of the lever machines, one never is quite sure.
Finally, there is the people aspect. In NYC, there are so few registered Repulicans (particularly in Manhattan) that it is quite common practice for the Board of Elections to designate a Democrat as a 'Republican for the day.' In other words, a precinct that is supposed to have two Democratic and two Republican poll workers may end up having three Democrats and one Republican, or even four Democrats and no Republicans working!
According to this New York Times article to be published tomorrow, Bush had received intel in the past few days that North Korea was preparing to test a nuclear device.
Interestingly, it seems that it is the profession itself that causes the depression. In one study I read a few years back, when individuals were assessed the summer before law school, they showed rates of depression equivalent to the general population, but even after just the first year of law school, let alone once they graduated, rates of depression jumped to anywhere from 20-40 percent of the population studied.
Need I say more?