No idea if he's actually the one that came up with this idea (and I generally don't like his writing), but I am surprised no one has mentioned the approach that Farhad Manjoo outlines in this Slate article. Basically, you come up with a phrase about each website/system and then type the acronym for that phrase. For example, for Bank of America, "I can't believe that quote from the head of the subprime mortgage division" becomes Icbt"fthotsmd.
It doesn't generate the most secure passwords possible (it's hard to come up with phrases that use symbols or multiple capitalized words), but its a pretty good way to create (and remember!) a unique password for each system.
As an aside, I am still flabbergasted that Citibank's student loan system will not let you have a password longer than eight characters. It occurs to me every time I login.
The age difference is actually more or less explained for everyone. McCoy is a significantly older recruit for whom Star Fleet is a second career. Kirk doesn't appear to be as old as McCoy, but he screwed around for some time before joining up, and his youth as a captain can be attributed to being the greatest thing since sliced bread. Scotty had enough of a "career" in Star Fleet for him to be a bit older (although the actor doesn't look old enough). Chekov is exactly 17, so he could easily be 15-20 years younger than McCoy and 10 younger than Kirk/Scotty. Sulu is the hardest, since he doesn't look as young as Chekov. In fact he looks just about Kirk's age, but we get no back story for him, so it's possible he was a bit older when he enlisted.
Generally, on the list of plot holes, I would put their age differences toward the bottom, way behind the weak plot behind the crisis driving the movie, "Red Matter", and Kirk and old-Spock finding each other randomly on a frozen moon. (In fact, the little thing that really bugged me was that the second "monster" on that moon continued to pursue Kirk instead of eating the significantly larger mammal that had been pursuing Kirk.)
It's pretty hard to take this article seriously considering the number of glaring copy errors. If the authors couldn't be bothered to reread what they wrote, how much time did they put into researching and considering the list itself?
And some people learn a single rule and never learn that it is not universal. Grammar school, elementary school, middle school, and high school are all compound nouns. Some compound nouns are widely hyphenated, some are not, and some are widely accepted written either way. Here's a more-complicated-but-more-useful set of rules for when to use a hyphen.:), But as its author notes, the rules are in flux.
Everyone's entitled to an opinion as to how fast we should collectively permit our language to (d)evolve. But when your going too be an grammar-Nazi, its important that you did it write.
The "lot of people" you deride for dropping the hyphen include the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. It's time to ease up on the attitude or go join a community that speaks exclusively Middle English--excuse me, "Middle-English".
No, his point is that if cell phones became efficient enough to be powered by piezo power, it would make more sense to stick a AAA in and get 700-800 hours of use.
Indeed, if only more 45-year-old litigation attorneys would stop practicing, set up small businesses, wait for an evil corporation to sue them, and then commit themselves to a financially ruinous lawsuit just to make a point, then the world would be a better place.
You get what you pay for -just look at the quality of the free editing of that summary. lexisnexis; "any serious law students"; "free online copies . . . for free".
1) For what it's worth, the anecdotal evidence among lawyers is that pro se litigants are given a lot of procedural latitude by judges.
2) The first option for the bond amount is not subsumed by the second. Judgment amount plus costs is greater than twice the amount in controversy when the amount in controversy is less than fees. (e.g. you sue for $50 and filing fees are $100). Generally, and certainly at the federal level, the amount in controversy means the amount you're suing for. So if you sued for 2k, the amount in controversy is 2k, even if the judge awards you 1200.
3) Small claims court is intended to allow easier access to courts and speedy resolutions with an acknowledged sacrifice of consistency and procedural fairness. The idea is that there are lots of claims that are two small to justify the expense and delay of filing in a "regular" court but that we want people to be able to resolve. Good news for the author though. If he really wants to, he can make a federal case out of this. Because the law authorizing statutory damages is federal, he can file these suits in federal court.
4) Juries largely serve the purpose that the author's proposal purports to. However the law defines "spam", it will almost certainly be a jury question as to whether the communications at issue were in fact spam.
But, the big problem with this proposal is that it's incredibly impractical for the law to operate at that level of specificity. For example, what happens when the spammers start sending emails with no subject? Can you accurately describe every possible form of fraud? We make laws that are "ambiguous" because we need them to cover all the behavior that we're targeting. We rely on judges and juries to apply the laws in a manner consistent with the intent of the legislature. It's not a perfect system, and there's probably always room to make laws that are less ambiguous but still sufficiently general. However, the level of specificity that the author is proposing would drown us in laws and still leave big loopholes.
Yep, it's a conflict of interest, and lawyers who helped draft the law are barred from representing someone in a case concerning it by the Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
But at a larger level, how small do you think the legal community is? The vast majority of practicing lawyers never have anything to do with the drafting of laws; this conflict applies only to very small percentage of lawyers. Yes the plaintiff's bar lobbies for pro-plaintiff legislation, but industry groups lobby for pro-defendant legislation. The fact that lawyers are involved in drafting the laws is not a significant source of pork-barrel legislation.
IANAL, but I am a law student and this claim rather inflammatory. If you read the link for "search incident to arrest" in the summary, you'll see the trend of the Supreme Court's cases has been to narrow the scope of permissible search under this doctrine. Basically, it stems from the very practical consideration that when arresting someone, officers need to secure the immediate area and they might discover evidence either on the defendant's person or in plain sight.
Yes, the iphone and laptops increase the amount of information a person is likely to have on her, but it's not a new issue. As a couple of posters have pointed out, the same problem arises when the arrestee is carrying a notebook or briefcase with documents. Given the Supreme Court's narrow cases on this doctrine, it seems unlikely that they're going to allow admission of the embezzlement evidence the police found on your iphone when they arrested you for drunk driving.
Don't worry, the technology he developed is much better than the technology described in the article.
"We were sitting around thinking of ways to obfuscate the description about how our system worked so the spammers would be misdirected," he said. "So I came up with receiver reputation as something that might sound plausible. Then as I thought about it more and more, the more sense it made to me."
Whatever the brilliant technology he came up with is, this is just the obfuscating, fake description of it.
Copyright attaches the moment you write something down, so there's no question that the original poster has a copyright in the code. Depending on the nature of the forum in which the code was posted and the context of the post itself, there may be an argument for an implied license, but that's a pretty hairy question.
Okay, I am only a law student, but reading the poem aloud in class clearly falls under the "face-to-face teaching" limitation of the performance right. (17 USC 110(1)). Yes it's probably also fair use, but you don't even need to go there.
I agree it's a fascinating question, I don't know of any other cases, and don't have time to do all the research right now. There's an interesting Wired article about a case where standing won't be an issue (because the government accidentally gave the plaintiff a transcript of one of his own phone calls!). So I suppose it's possible that that case could be used to decide the constitutionality of the program without needing to resolve the standing issue.
I am a law student, not a lawyer, and standing is dealt with in upper level courses that I haven't taken yet, but Wikipedia provides the following nugget that seems to answer your question
The Court developed a two-part test to determine whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue. First, because a taxpayer alleges injury only by virtue of his liability for taxes, the Court held that "a taxpayer will be a proper party to allege the unconstitutionality only of exercises of congressional power under the taxing and spending clause of Art. I, 8, of the Constitution." *479 Id., at 102, 88 S.Ct., at 1954. Second, the Court required the taxpayer to "show that the challenged enactment exceeds specific constitutional limitations upon the exercise of the taxing and spending power and not simply that the enactment is generally beyond the powers delegated to Congress by Art. I, 8." Id., at 102-103, 88 S.Ct., at 1954."
(note, the article is about Flast v. Cohen but the case quoted is Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464 (1982)).
It would seem to me that the reasoning goes something like this "you're claiming harm via the payment of taxes, so the harm has to be directly related to the payment of taxes. This means that the violation you're claiming has to be a violation of Congress's constitional authority to tax or to spend. Sorry, any old violation of the Constitution won't do."
Now is that sane? Maybe not, but you asked for a legal argument, not a sane one.
You pay "extra" because T-Mobile still has to operate a voip server and route your call. But those of us who make lots of calls from an area with wifi coverage can save money by changing to a plan with far fewer minutes and adding the $10 wifi option.
This is an outstanding development if you use your cell as a primary line and you have wifi at home. I hope it delivers as promised!
What you say is true, but they still need the sphere because a standard for the kilogram already exists. This is a two step process. Step 1: create a formula that defines mass in the abstract. Step 2: calibrate that formula as closely as possible to the existing standard.
Step 2 is only necessary to ensure consistency between the new definition of the kilogram and the old (so that a kilogram doesn't suddenly weigh more or less than it used to). If they were creating an entirely new unit of mass, they wouldn't need the sphere, but because the current definition of a kilogram is an object, they need to create an object and count the atoms.
There's some sort of analog-to-digital metaphor involving OCR here but I can't figure it out.
IANAL but I am a law student taking his Civpro II exam tomorrow and this is significant unless it's overturned on appeal. The issue isn't the precedential value in terms of copyright, which is of course nil (even if the court had reached those issues) but it's value in future suits brought by DVD CAA. California permits "non-mutual defensive issue preclusion", so if DVD CCA sues anyone else who's signed an identical or very similar contract (which I assume would most if not all of the other manufacturers) the defendant in that suit can use point to this decision and say "this issue has been decided, this contract doesn't prohibit this conduct". In that regard it is significant because it lets all the manufacturers produce these type of products. Of course, as others have pointed out, they will fix this in future contracts.
Um, it's not insightful, it's wrong. Terms of use are similar to a contract (yes this is a oversimplification). You agree to do ( or refrain from doing) things that are "legal" (read not criminal) and they give you "use" of something.
This ridiculous combination of horrendous policy, tortured understanding of technology, and regulatory sophistication boggles the mind.
The best part is, rather than attack keyword advertising directly, the law creates an entirely new form of IP, the 'electronic registration mark':
Specifically, the law creates a new intellectual property right called an "electronic registration mark," defined as a "word, term, or name that represents a business, goods, or a service." . . . Once registered, an infringement occurs if another person "uses an electronic registration mark to cause the delivery or display of an advertisement for a business, goods, or a service: (i) of the same class, as defined in Section 70-3a-308, other than the business, goods, or service of the registrant of the electronic registration mark; or (ii) if that advertisement is likely to cause confusion between the business, goods, or service of the registrant of the electronic registration mark and the business, goods, or service advertised."
Luckily, the system is so loosely defined and, as TFA points out, directly in conflict with existing federal trademark law that it can't possibly stand. Apparently state legislators in Utah are available on the cheap, because I can't imagine the anti-keyword lobby has deep pockets. Maybe I can get some of this money, if only there were some way to cheaply deliver ads to this small group and only the small group...
While Diebold's claim sounds like BS, the term 'wrongful purchase' appears to have been pulled out of thin air (or perhaps another, less pleasant-smelling place). TFA doesn't mention 'wrongful purchase' and is not nearly as biased as the summary would suggest.
The relevant background here is that government purchasing decisions aren't like private ones. To avoid cronyism they are highly structured and have transparent selection criteria so that anyone can check the 'math' of these decisions. Diebold's claim is likely that, according to the selection criteria, they should have been awarded the contract and someone didn't follow the relevant regulations. It sounds like Diebold thought they had a lock on this contract and was surprised by the choice. The reasons given by MA government sound pretty legit and it seems likely to me that Diebold just wants to go on a fishing expedition hoping to find some sort of mistake in the process, but it's not as bizarre a claim as the summary makes it out to be.
Slashdot Mirror
No idea if he's actually the one that came up with this idea (and I generally don't like his writing), but I am surprised no one has mentioned the approach that Farhad Manjoo outlines in this Slate article. Basically, you come up with a phrase about each website/system and then type the acronym for that phrase. For example, for Bank of America, "I can't believe that quote from the head of the subprime mortgage division" becomes Icbt"fthotsmd.
It doesn't generate the most secure passwords possible (it's hard to come up with phrases that use symbols or multiple capitalized words), but its a pretty good way to create (and remember!) a unique password for each system.
As an aside, I am still flabbergasted that Citibank's student loan system will not let you have a password longer than eight characters. It occurs to me every time I login.
The age difference is actually more or less explained for everyone. McCoy is a significantly older recruit for whom Star Fleet is a second career. Kirk doesn't appear to be as old as McCoy, but he screwed around for some time before joining up, and his youth as a captain can be attributed to being the greatest thing since sliced bread. Scotty had enough of a "career" in Star Fleet for him to be a bit older (although the actor doesn't look old enough). Chekov is exactly 17, so he could easily be 15-20 years younger than McCoy and 10 younger than Kirk/Scotty. Sulu is the hardest, since he doesn't look as young as Chekov. In fact he looks just about Kirk's age, but we get no back story for him, so it's possible he was a bit older when he enlisted.
Generally, on the list of plot holes, I would put their age differences toward the bottom, way behind the weak plot behind the crisis driving the movie, "Red Matter", and Kirk and old-Spock finding each other randomly on a frozen moon. (In fact, the little thing that really bugged me was that the second "monster" on that moon continued to pursue Kirk instead of eating the significantly larger mammal that had been pursuing Kirk.)
It's pretty hard to take this article seriously considering the number of glaring copy errors. If the authors couldn't be bothered to reread what they wrote, how much time did they put into researching and considering the list itself?
And some people learn a single rule and never learn that it is not universal. Grammar school, elementary school, middle school, and high school are all compound nouns. Some compound nouns are widely hyphenated, some are not, and some are widely accepted written either way. Here's a more-complicated-but-more-useful set of rules for when to use a hyphen. :), But as its author notes, the rules are in flux.
Everyone's entitled to an opinion as to how fast we should collectively permit our language to (d)evolve. But when your going too be an grammar-Nazi, its important that you did it write.
The "lot of people" you deride for dropping the hyphen include the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. It's time to ease up on the attitude or go join a community that speaks exclusively Middle English--excuse me, "Middle-English".
No, his point is that if cell phones became efficient enough to be powered by piezo power, it would make more sense to stick a AAA in and get 700-800 hours of use.
Indeed, if only more 45-year-old litigation attorneys would stop practicing, set up small businesses, wait for an evil corporation to sue them, and then commit themselves to a financially ruinous lawsuit just to make a point, then the world would be a better place.
/sarcasm.
You get what you pay for -just look at the quality of the free editing of that summary. lexisnexis; "any serious law students"; "free online copies . . . for free".
IAALStudent. Four quick points and one big beef:
1) For what it's worth, the anecdotal evidence among lawyers is that pro se litigants are given a lot of procedural latitude by judges.
2) The first option for the bond amount is not subsumed by the second. Judgment amount plus costs is greater than twice the amount in controversy when the amount in controversy is less than fees. (e.g. you sue for $50 and filing fees are $100). Generally, and certainly at the federal level, the amount in controversy means the amount you're suing for. So if you sued for 2k, the amount in controversy is 2k, even if the judge awards you 1200.
3) Small claims court is intended to allow easier access to courts and speedy resolutions with an acknowledged sacrifice of consistency and procedural fairness. The idea is that there are lots of claims that are two small to justify the expense and delay of filing in a "regular" court but that we want people to be able to resolve. Good news for the author though. If he really wants to, he can make a federal case out of this. Because the law authorizing statutory damages is federal, he can file these suits in federal court.
4) Juries largely serve the purpose that the author's proposal purports to. However the law defines "spam", it will almost certainly be a jury question as to whether the communications at issue were in fact spam.
But, the big problem with this proposal is that it's incredibly impractical for the law to operate at that level of specificity. For example, what happens when the spammers start sending emails with no subject? Can you accurately describe every possible form of fraud? We make laws that are "ambiguous" because we need them to cover all the behavior that we're targeting. We rely on judges and juries to apply the laws in a manner consistent with the intent of the legislature. It's not a perfect system, and there's probably always room to make laws that are less ambiguous but still sufficiently general. However, the level of specificity that the author is proposing would drown us in laws and still leave big loopholes.
Yep, it's a conflict of interest, and lawyers who helped draft the law are barred from representing someone in a case concerning it by the Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
But at a larger level, how small do you think the legal community is? The vast majority of practicing lawyers never have anything to do with the drafting of laws; this conflict applies only to very small percentage of lawyers. Yes the plaintiff's bar lobbies for pro-plaintiff legislation, but industry groups lobby for pro-defendant legislation. The fact that lawyers are involved in drafting the laws is not a significant source of pork-barrel legislation.
IANAL, but I am a law student and this claim rather inflammatory. If you read the link for "search incident to arrest" in the summary, you'll see the trend of the Supreme Court's cases has been to narrow the scope of permissible search under this doctrine. Basically, it stems from the very practical consideration that when arresting someone, officers need to secure the immediate area and they might discover evidence either on the defendant's person or in plain sight.
Yes, the iphone and laptops increase the amount of information a person is likely to have on her, but it's not a new issue. As a couple of posters have pointed out, the same problem arises when the arrestee is carrying a notebook or briefcase with documents. Given the Supreme Court's narrow cases on this doctrine, it seems unlikely that they're going to allow admission of the embezzlement evidence the police found on your iphone when they arrested you for drunk driving.
Copyright attaches the moment you write something down, so there's no question that the original poster has a copyright in the code. Depending on the nature of the forum in which the code was posted and the context of the post itself, there may be an argument for an implied license, but that's a pretty hairy question.
Okay, I am only a law student, but reading the poem aloud in class clearly falls under the "face-to-face teaching" limitation of the performance right. (17 USC 110(1)). Yes it's probably also fair use, but you don't even need to go there.
You expect a poster to RTFA just because they're linking to it? Pleeease, this is Slashdot.
This just proves once again that the only thing more dangerous than high blood sugar is following medical advice you find on teh internets.
Hey, the Netherlands is already doing more than its share of growing the green stuff that powers human trips into the heavens!
Plus, according to Wikipedia, Guinea-Bissau is the smallest, sufficiently-sized country.
I agree it's a fascinating question, I don't know of any other cases, and don't have time to do all the research right now. There's an interesting Wired article about a case where standing won't be an issue (because the government accidentally gave the plaintiff a transcript of one of his own phone calls!). So I suppose it's possible that that case could be used to decide the constitutionality of the program without needing to resolve the standing issue.
It would seem to me that the reasoning goes something like this "you're claiming harm via the payment of taxes, so the harm has to be directly related to the payment of taxes. This means that the violation you're claiming has to be a violation of Congress's constitional authority to tax or to spend. Sorry, any old violation of the Constitution won't do."
Now is that sane? Maybe not, but you asked for a legal argument, not a sane one.
You pay "extra" because T-Mobile still has to operate a voip server and route your call. But those of us who make lots of calls from an area with wifi coverage can save money by changing to a plan with far fewer minutes and adding the $10 wifi option.
This is an outstanding development if you use your cell as a primary line and you have wifi at home. I hope it delivers as promised!
What you say is true, but they still need the sphere because a standard for the kilogram already exists. This is a two step process.
Step 1: create a formula that defines mass in the abstract.
Step 2: calibrate that formula as closely as possible to the existing standard.
Step 2 is only necessary to ensure consistency between the new definition of the kilogram and the old (so that a kilogram doesn't suddenly weigh more or less than it used to). If they were creating an entirely new unit of mass, they wouldn't need the sphere, but because the current definition of a kilogram is an object, they need to create an object and count the atoms.
There's some sort of analog-to-digital metaphor involving OCR here but I can't figure it out.
IANAL but I am a law student taking his Civpro II exam tomorrow and this is significant unless it's overturned on appeal. The issue isn't the precedential value in terms of copyright, which is of course nil (even if the court had reached those issues) but it's value in future suits brought by DVD CAA. California permits "non-mutual defensive issue preclusion", so if DVD CCA sues anyone else who's signed an identical or very similar contract (which I assume would most if not all of the other manufacturers) the defendant in that suit can use point to this decision and say "this issue has been decided, this contract doesn't prohibit this conduct". In that regard it is significant because it lets all the manufacturers produce these type of products. Of course, as others have pointed out, they will fix this in future contracts.
Um, it's not insightful, it's wrong. Terms of use are similar to a contract (yes this is a oversimplification). You agree to do ( or refrain from doing) things that are "legal" (read not criminal) and they give you "use" of something.
Only on /. would this comment be regarded as 'insightful' in a discussion of the methodologies of determining broadband penetration.
Even if it's not an excused absence, which is worse: detention or being held in contempt of court and having to pay a fine and possibly going to jail?
I agree that 24 hours notice is completely unreasonable, I'm just pointing out that detention is the least of this kid's worries.
While Diebold's claim sounds like BS, the term 'wrongful purchase' appears to have been pulled out of thin air (or perhaps another, less pleasant-smelling place). TFA doesn't mention 'wrongful purchase' and is not nearly as biased as the summary would suggest.
The relevant background here is that government purchasing decisions aren't like private ones. To avoid cronyism they are highly structured and have transparent selection criteria so that anyone can check the 'math' of these decisions. Diebold's claim is likely that, according to the selection criteria, they should have been awarded the contract and someone didn't follow the relevant regulations. It sounds like Diebold thought they had a lock on this contract and was surprised by the choice. The reasons given by MA government sound pretty legit and it seems likely to me that Diebold just wants to go on a fishing expedition hoping to find some sort of mistake in the process, but it's not as bizarre a claim as the summary makes it out to be.