I'm not certain if it's volume or percentage. I'm not the one who came up with that saying. However, as a general rule of thumb the Supreme Court won't even hear an appeal unless there is a circuit split on the issue (or they think it's just downright wrong, but that happens less often). What I suspect is the case is that the 9th circuit is the most common one to split from other circuits, and is the one most often found to be in the wrong in those situations.
But I'm certainly no scholar of 9th Circuit history. And yes, I'd rather be wrong 17 times out of 100 than 4 out of 10. In fact, I'd rather be wrong 50 times out of 100 than 4 out of 10. Wrong half the time out of 100 means you are often wrong, but you are a hard worker. Wrong 40% of the time out of 10 cases heard means you are not only wrong pretty frequently, but you are lazy, and I hate laziness and dishonesty more than any other human traits.
Just a note to those discussing this - the Betamax case was before Sony was seduced by the Dark Side, and the company was the "good guy" in that case. Is Sony any part of the RIAA or MPAA? Has this come full circle?
As much as it would like to believe the contrary, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to which the parent referred, is not the United States Supreme Court. Had you actually read the comment to which you replied, you would know that.
The only problem is that the 9th Circuit is the most-reversed circuit there is. Their logic here is good and their result is just, but that doesn't mean they won't find out that they were wrong once again.
Yeah...after about -15 or so it really stops mattering.
"There are places colder than here and hotter than here - but there few places colder and hotter than here"... and North Dakota is one of them. The good thing is that there's not a climate in the world we're not adapted to.
(I assume that you are not a relocated Nodak. If my statistically insignificant chance of being wrong in that assumption is made good, I apologize.)
There is a very good reason that North Dakota is the 4th least populous state in America (AK, VT, and WY have fewer people). When I was home over Christmas (as I was smart enough to leave the state to work after college and now for law school), the coldest it got when I was awake was -41F without the wind chill. But it does get colder than that sometimes.
The real problem with ND is not how cold it gets, but rather that it has an enormous temperature range. Real temperatures, not corrected for "how it feels" due to humidity (which we lack) or wind (which we have in spades), range from -60F in a bad, but not horrendously rare winter up to 110F in a bad, but not horrendously rare summer. Phoenix, AZ gets up past 120, but rarely below 40. The North Pole may get well below -100, but rarely above -20. In each case, you have an 80-degree-Fahrenheit range of temperatures over the course of a year. North Dakota has more than twice that range.
That over half a million people tolerate it on a continuing basis confuses and infuriates the potentates of Omicron Persei VIII.
Ross Perot could probably find a way to make the US military financially self-sufficient. Here is the quote from his Wikipedia article, with grammatical errors and all:
Just prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the government of Iran imprisoned two of his employees in a contract dispute. Ross organized and sponsored a successful rescue. The rescue team was led by retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Arthur D. ('Bull') Simons. When the team couldn't find a way to extract their two prisoners, they decided to wait for a mob of pro-Ayatollah revolutionaries to storm the jail and free all 10,000 inmates, many of who were political prisoners. The two prisoners then connected with the rescue team, and the team spirited them out of Iran via a risky border crossing into Turkey. The exploit was recounted in a book, On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett, which became a best seller.
I just learned something else about him, though. The next paragraph in the article states:
In 1984, Perot bought one of the original signed copies of the Magna Carta, one of only a few to leave the United Kingdom. It is now on loan to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where it is on display with the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Ross Perot is a respectable man who doesn't forget those who enable his business sense to truly blossom - the men and women who work for him and the United States of America.
Your "small town" of 50,000 would make it the third largest city in my home state. The county seat of my home county, which is geographically twice the size of Rhode Island, only has 1,500 people.
That said, I don't think that, in a similar position if it existed there, the salary would be any less. You are almost certainly getting hosed, but with IT unemployment as it is you probably can't really threaten to leave and expect a raise. That's how economics work, and sometimes they suck.
Incidentally, why don't you move to a larger city? There certainly may be factors like a wife and kids involved, but it wouldn't hurt to look around a bit. I administered a lot less than 20 Linux boxes for a lot more than $28,000 in 2003.
Nope. First of all, contracts will be governed by the law of a given jurisdiction. Most contracts will state on the contract which jurisdiction that is. For example, many contracts in the US explicitly claim they will be governed by Delaware law. Oil contracts are often governed by Texas law. I presume that the same could be done, and your contract could explicitly say "Governed by Her Royal Majesty's British Law." or "Governed by the laws of California." and it would work, either way.
However, which court hears a case is independent of which jurisdiction's law governs the case. If you purposefully avail yourself of the laws of a given jurisdiction, you should be subject to jurisdiction there, at least under claims relating to your availment. In the car example, you couldn't sue the foreign company in US court for defamation it is doing in the other country. But you could sue in US court for the car exploding on your driveway.
If you do a significant amount of contract work with parties in other countries, I would recommend you seek a lawyer's advice regarding the contracts; preferably a lawyer with experience dealing with international contract law.
That won't work. Would you really pay money to see almost exclusively the crappiest article submissions? I mean, it's a really good business model (people paying to do your job for you), but I can't see it resulting in a lot of subscription renewals.
You can get a judgment, no problem. The hard part is enforcing it. In the US federal court system, you can sue a foreign company and the US federal courts will assert jurisdiction over it if that company has passed a given legal test, which I will refrain from enumerating here in any way, but essentially covers cases over the specific involvement that company has within the US. For instance, a company that sells cars in America would be subject to jurisdiction here. It's my first thought that the federal courts would assert jurisdiction over outsourcing firms, as well.
The problem is that, even if you get a judgment against the foreign company, how are you going to enforce it? The courts can't imprison them for contempt, because they're in another country. Extradition for contempt? Ha, I wish.
So, if you get a judgment against a foreign company, you'd have to go over there with Vince and collect on it the hard way, anyhow. Why not save the legal fees and just go over there in the first place, without having to file any expensive lawsuits in federal court?
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Everything I just said could possibly be wrong, but may not be, and is in no way intended as any form of advice, legal or otherwise. If you believe anything I've said in this comment, you assume all risks and liability that may ensue, be they personal, civil, criminal, or otherwise. I have also never played a lawyer on TV. Confusing me with someone who has would be flattering, but incorrect and foolish.
Politicians are all hypocrites. That's the general rule - now, let's apply it.
American conservatives, in theory, stand for the principles on which the country was founded, even if it means restricting the rights guaranteed by its founding.
American liberals, on the other hand, stand for individual rights, unless that right is not politically correct, in which case they don't.
As to the gun issue - Ronald Reagan signed the single worst gun ban in our history, and it didn't sunset like Clinton's "assault weapon" ban did. It is illegal for individuals to own any machinegun manufactured after a certain date in 1986 when the law took effect. But Reagan is held up as one of the greatest conservative politicians of the past century.
Then you look at the hypocrites on the other side. John Kerry is pretty typical for a Democrat when it comes to gun control issues. Diane Feinstein is a lot more ambitious, but we'll stick to the average: Kerry wants to ban all "assault weapons" and all other semi-auto rifles and pistols that he possibly can. However, he owns a few of his own.
The problem is that the Republicans are too pro-big-business (tort reform, immigration, etc.) and the Democrats are too stuffy and elitist. (John Kerry: "I don't sail anything under 200 feet anymore." to an American soldier who offered him a ride on his 30-foot yacht.) Somehow, we manage to continually elect people who have everyone's interests but ours in mind.
The Libertarian Party has finally started focusing on things other than drugs, but even they do not have a solid grasp on the Constitution, national security, or economics (at least they're better at the latter than Republicans ("Deficit spending is the only way to pump the economy.") and Democrats ("It's the Republicans' fault, even though we had a Congressional majority and the Presidency that brought it about."))
I really am going to have to start my own political party - unfortunately, so many urban Americans don't deserve security or liberty, according to Benjamin Franklin and their complete willingness to trade all of their rights just to hide from their own personal vigilance.
I can't mod you up, but I would if I could on the end comment alone. That said, there is more to the firearm industry immunity from liability than meets the eye...
There are two situations in which gun companies get sued when a person is injured by a gun. In the first situation, he was shot by someone else. I would have to dig through my notes, but a solid legal argument can be made for either side in this case as to whether the intervening criminal or tortious act of the person shooting the gun cuts off liability from the gun manufacturer. The immunity bills are aimed at this situation.
However, a second scenario can, and does, occur. Suppose I am out at the shooting range with my new $150 pistol (for the non-gun people here: that's extremely cheap (not as in inexpensive), and I would personally not buy a new gun for less than $400, for the reasons that follow...) and on the third shot the chamber fails to contain the explosing and the slide is blown up, pieces of shrapnel being peeled off and thrown into my hand, arm, and face. Clearly, the manufacturer should be held liable for selling a completely unsafe product. I am not convinced that the bills in question still allow lawsuits in this scenario, and that's bad.
What needs to happen is a definite regime set out that says that the intervening criminal (and probably throw in intentionally tortious) acts of a third party cut off all liability from the plaintiff to the product manufacturer. If it's Glock's fault that I'm injured, I should be able to recover from Glock. But if Jimmy shoots me with a Glock, I should not be able to recover from Glock, barring some level of criminal negligence by Glock such as giving out free pistols to escaped felons or something.
Lisp did it first, but it's good to know other functional languages haven't lost the spirit. There's a book by Paul Graham entitled On Lisp. It was available in PDF for free for a while, and likely still is. Read it - it will make you a better programmer in any language.
With the bottom-up paradigm like this, what you essentially end up with is an extremely high-level language that is the single best language in which to write your program, and you don't have to worry about syntax because the underlying language (be it Lisp or Haskell or whatever else) handles it for you. Not to mention that you get a compiler and runtime for free, as well.
People actually Meta-Moderate?;) Thanks for the good point, and the compliment - I wish it had been flawless, as that would be cut the number of replies in half, but I do think there is a direct relationship between quality and accuracy of content and how seriously a medium is taken. Slashdot is low on both counts.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not certain if it's volume or percentage. I'm not the one who came up with that saying. However, as a general rule of thumb the Supreme Court won't even hear an appeal unless there is a circuit split on the issue (or they think it's just downright wrong, but that happens less often). What I suspect is the case is that the 9th circuit is the most common one to split from other circuits, and is the one most often found to be in the wrong in those situations.
But I'm certainly no scholar of 9th Circuit history. And yes, I'd rather be wrong 17 times out of 100 than 4 out of 10. In fact, I'd rather be wrong 50 times out of 100 than 4 out of 10. Wrong half the time out of 100 means you are often wrong, but you are a hard worker. Wrong 40% of the time out of 10 cases heard means you are not only wrong pretty frequently, but you are lazy, and I hate laziness and dishonesty more than any other human traits.
Just a note to those discussing this - the Betamax case was before Sony was seduced by the Dark Side, and the company was the "good guy" in that case. Is Sony any part of the RIAA or MPAA? Has this come full circle?
Justice Kennedy was apparently never involved in the Betamax case at any level.
;) That's what I found, scanning said citation of the 9th's opinion.
I concur.
As much as it would like to believe the contrary, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to which the parent referred, is not the United States Supreme Court. Had you actually read the comment to which you replied, you would know that.
The only problem is that the 9th Circuit is the most-reversed circuit there is. Their logic here is good and their result is just, but that doesn't mean they won't find out that they were wrong once again.
Yeah...after about -15 or so it really stops mattering.
... and North Dakota is one of them. The good thing is that there's not a climate in the world we're not adapted to.
"There are places colder than here and hotter than here - but there few places colder and hotter than here"
(I assume that you are not a relocated Nodak. If my statistically insignificant chance of being wrong in that assumption is made good, I apologize.)
There is a very good reason that North Dakota is the 4th least populous state in America (AK, VT, and WY have fewer people). When I was home over Christmas (as I was smart enough to leave the state to work after college and now for law school), the coldest it got when I was awake was -41F without the wind chill. But it does get colder than that sometimes.
The real problem with ND is not how cold it gets, but rather that it has an enormous temperature range. Real temperatures, not corrected for "how it feels" due to humidity (which we lack) or wind (which we have in spades), range from -60F in a bad, but not horrendously rare winter up to 110F in a bad, but not horrendously rare summer. Phoenix, AZ gets up past 120, but rarely below 40. The North Pole may get well below -100, but rarely above -20. In each case, you have an 80-degree-Fahrenheit range of temperatures over the course of a year. North Dakota has more than twice that range.
That over half a million people tolerate it on a continuing basis confuses and infuriates the potentates of Omicron Persei VIII.
Your "small town" of 50,000 would make it the third largest city in my home state. The county seat of my home county, which is geographically twice the size of Rhode Island, only has 1,500 people.
That said, I don't think that, in a similar position if it existed there, the salary would be any less. You are almost certainly getting hosed, but with IT unemployment as it is you probably can't really threaten to leave and expect a raise. That's how economics work, and sometimes they suck.
Incidentally, why don't you move to a larger city? There certainly may be factors like a wife and kids involved, but it wouldn't hurt to look around a bit. I administered a lot less than 20 Linux boxes for a lot more than $28,000 in 2003.
Nope. First of all, contracts will be governed by the law of a given jurisdiction. Most contracts will state on the contract which jurisdiction that is. For example, many contracts in the US explicitly claim they will be governed by Delaware law. Oil contracts are often governed by Texas law. I presume that the same could be done, and your contract could explicitly say "Governed by Her Royal Majesty's British Law." or "Governed by the laws of California." and it would work, either way.
However, which court hears a case is independent of which jurisdiction's law governs the case. If you purposefully avail yourself of the laws of a given jurisdiction, you should be subject to jurisdiction there, at least under claims relating to your availment. In the car example, you couldn't sue the foreign company in US court for defamation it is doing in the other country. But you could sue in US court for the car exploding on your driveway.
If you do a significant amount of contract work with parties in other countries, I would recommend you seek a lawyer's advice regarding the contracts; preferably a lawyer with experience dealing with international contract law.
Why not just lease a commando squad from Ross Perot?
That won't work. Would you really pay money to see almost exclusively the crappiest article submissions? I mean, it's a really good business model (people paying to do your job for you), but I can't see it resulting in a lot of subscription renewals.
You can get a judgment, no problem. The hard part is enforcing it. In the US federal court system, you can sue a foreign company and the US federal courts will assert jurisdiction over it if that company has passed a given legal test, which I will refrain from enumerating here in any way, but essentially covers cases over the specific involvement that company has within the US. For instance, a company that sells cars in America would be subject to jurisdiction here. It's my first thought that the federal courts would assert jurisdiction over outsourcing firms, as well.
The problem is that, even if you get a judgment against the foreign company, how are you going to enforce it? The courts can't imprison them for contempt, because they're in another country. Extradition for contempt? Ha, I wish.
So, if you get a judgment against a foreign company, you'd have to go over there with Vince and collect on it the hard way, anyhow. Why not save the legal fees and just go over there in the first place, without having to file any expensive lawsuits in federal court?
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Everything I just said could possibly be wrong, but may not be, and is in no way intended as any form of advice, legal or otherwise. If you believe anything I've said in this comment, you assume all risks and liability that may ensue, be they personal, civil, criminal, or otherwise. I have also never played a lawyer on TV. Confusing me with someone who has would be flattering, but incorrect and foolish.
Well, it was more than that, but you're right. It was simple, effective, and popup-free.
A simple example should suffice: "If you don't stop misspelling 'braking', I'll be breaking your nose."
Forget Xanadu. Gopher is the true overlord of Internet protocols.
Like I was saying - she's a lot worse so it wouldn't be objective to use her as an example. But damn, she sure is ugly!
Politicians are all hypocrites. That's the general rule - now, let's apply it.
American conservatives, in theory, stand for the principles on which the country was founded, even if it means restricting the rights guaranteed by its founding.
American liberals, on the other hand, stand for individual rights, unless that right is not politically correct, in which case they don't.
As to the gun issue - Ronald Reagan signed the single worst gun ban in our history, and it didn't sunset like Clinton's "assault weapon" ban did. It is illegal for individuals to own any machinegun manufactured after a certain date in 1986 when the law took effect. But Reagan is held up as one of the greatest conservative politicians of the past century.
Then you look at the hypocrites on the other side. John Kerry is pretty typical for a Democrat when it comes to gun control issues. Diane Feinstein is a lot more ambitious, but we'll stick to the average: Kerry wants to ban all "assault weapons" and all other semi-auto rifles and pistols that he possibly can. However, he owns a few of his own.
The problem is that the Republicans are too pro-big-business (tort reform, immigration, etc.) and the Democrats are too stuffy and elitist. (John Kerry: "I don't sail anything under 200 feet anymore." to an American soldier who offered him a ride on his 30-foot yacht.) Somehow, we manage to continually elect people who have everyone's interests but ours in mind.
The Libertarian Party has finally started focusing on things other than drugs, but even they do not have a solid grasp on the Constitution, national security, or economics (at least they're better at the latter than Republicans ("Deficit spending is the only way to pump the economy.") and Democrats ("It's the Republicans' fault, even though we had a Congressional majority and the Presidency that brought it about."))
I really am going to have to start my own political party - unfortunately, so many urban Americans don't deserve security or liberty, according to Benjamin Franklin and their complete willingness to trade all of their rights just to hide from their own personal vigilance.
I can't mod you up, but I would if I could on the end comment alone. That said, there is more to the firearm industry immunity from liability than meets the eye...
There are two situations in which gun companies get sued when a person is injured by a gun. In the first situation, he was shot by someone else. I would have to dig through my notes, but a solid legal argument can be made for either side in this case as to whether the intervening criminal or tortious act of the person shooting the gun cuts off liability from the gun manufacturer. The immunity bills are aimed at this situation.
However, a second scenario can, and does, occur. Suppose I am out at the shooting range with my new $150 pistol (for the non-gun people here: that's extremely cheap (not as in inexpensive), and I would personally not buy a new gun for less than $400, for the reasons that follow...) and on the third shot the chamber fails to contain the explosing and the slide is blown up, pieces of shrapnel being peeled off and thrown into my hand, arm, and face. Clearly, the manufacturer should be held liable for selling a completely unsafe product. I am not convinced that the bills in question still allow lawsuits in this scenario, and that's bad.
What needs to happen is a definite regime set out that says that the intervening criminal (and probably throw in intentionally tortious) acts of a third party cut off all liability from the plaintiff to the product manufacturer. If it's Glock's fault that I'm injured, I should be able to recover from Glock. But if Jimmy shoots me with a Glock, I should not be able to recover from Glock, barring some level of criminal negligence by Glock such as giving out free pistols to escaped felons or something.
Lisp did it first, but it's good to know other functional languages haven't lost the spirit. There's a book by Paul Graham entitled On Lisp. It was available in PDF for free for a while, and likely still is. Read it - it will make you a better programmer in any language.
With the bottom-up paradigm like this, what you essentially end up with is an extremely high-level language that is the single best language in which to write your program, and you don't have to worry about syntax because the underlying language (be it Lisp or Haskell or whatever else) handles it for you. Not to mention that you get a compiler and runtime for free, as well.
Yes, it does. I haven't found anything that a hyped-up new language brags about that Common Lisp hasn't done better for a decade or longer.
People actually Meta-Moderate? ;) Thanks for the good point, and the compliment - I wish it had been flawless, as that would be cut the number of replies in half, but I do think there is a direct relationship between quality and accuracy of content and how seriously a medium is taken. Slashdot is low on both counts.
Did you not get my joke, or are you just ignoring it for the sake of pointing out the obvious?
I'm starting a pool. Paypal me your support so we can put a solid bid in on this. It's for the consortium, and you all have a share. ;)
I was only trying to be charitable. :)