It should also be noted that some trial court decisions are more persuasive than others. This isn't an area where it matters, but the classic example if a federal court looking to the decision of the lowest-level court in the state for some good, old-fashioned Erie guidance. But any legal writing ex cathedra, as I like to call it, from a court at any level is going to inform other courts what to do. If one court says that your damages are excessive as a matter of law, you will have an uphill battle in the next court to convince its judge that the other judge was wrong. It can be done, but even non-binding precedent against you is harder to fight than a clean slate ever was.
I'm going to step in and correct one thing. I wouldn't say that he's given "legal advice" here at all. That's a special creature that includes all sorts of ethical duties. What he has done, though, is provide a great deal of legal information, clarification, and insight. I would hate for a good deed to turn into a regret by people confusing legal information for advice. At the very least, he can be appreciated for being a contributing member of the community where most people in his position would not bother.
Sorry for the delay in my response. I didn't notice that you had replied. Your well-reasoned response makes you the exception to the rule that people who complain about ex post facto laws (or most other legal topics) on Slashdot have no clue what they're talking about. I have no disagreement to lodge with your comment - just wanted to say that I appreciate someone who doesn't fit the mold.:)
Hey now... North Dakota isn't quite the lowest population density in the country! There are three states lower.:P But you are right. The only way to cover the vast heartland of the USA is a shitload of GSM towers that rival wind farms as eyesores or CDMA. People from places other than Russia, Australia, Canada, and rural Africa generally can't comprehend the vastness of the part of the USA between New York and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, we also have the most populous and heavily developed area in the western hemisphere to deal with.
The history of cellular phone service in the USA bears this out, of course. There were many small regional carriers that dealt with the idiosyncrasies of the regions they served. One by one, these have been swallowed up by larger carriers to reach the present state, where nearly every carrier is national in scope and the major players are still eating up anyone smaller. Cellular One was my carrier a decade ago. Alltel acquired their assets, and Verizon acquired all of Alltel that it could without antitrust issues, with AT&T taking the rest.
As an Alltel customer whose local service is supposedly being transferred to AT&T to avoid a Verizon monopoly, my thought is that 2012 will be the year that the iPhone is available here. Not before then because a CDMA iPhone would not be a fast thing to pull off and because, in order for GSM coverage to match the CDMA coverage that Alltel has here, they will need something like 4 times as many towers and those will take time to set up. Meanwhile, the Nexus One on Verizon is a very promising option for 2011, when it's had 6 months to work out bugs on that network.
The real problem is that the vast majority of people familiar with Unix would (a) not have recognized fsn as being the front-end of a Unix system and (b) immediately have closed it and found their way to a shell, where they could spend less time navigating through an unknown directory structure and more time using the tools that they located with find. But that makes for a boring movie. What they should have done is left out that one line. Oh, and made the kids the ages they were in the novel so that their cutesy lines didn't come off as evidence of developmental challenge.
Agreed. I'm just very careful with forms of 'pedant' because of the off chance that I might accidentally stumble into a word that looks like it has that as its root but in reality comes from 'pederast'. And as much as I enjoy being the former, I have no connection whatever to the latter. =)
Damn. I'm usually the Latin pedant and knew I was wrong this morning but was in too much of a hurry to think of why. You are, of course, quite correct. That said, while we're engaging in pedantry, I don't believe that pedanticness is a word.:)
Bison are from the genus Bison. Buffalo are apparently from the geni Syncerus (African buffalo) or Bubalus (water buffalo and its smaller cousins). But since they are all from the Bovinae subfamily and "buffalo" includes more than one genus, I personally don't see why it's so incorrect to refer to the bison as the American buffalo.
Exactly. The person and his claims should be evaluated independently. You shouldn't disbelieve everything an astrologer says just because he's an astrologer, nor should you believe everything that a whale biologist says just because he's a whale biologist.
That will go down substantially if they start charging or manage to opt-out of being aggregated. I for one have only ever read articles printed by Detroit Free Press, Baltimore Sun, the Huffington Post, and others because they are aggregated by Google and free for me to view online. That says nothing to the smaller operations that I definitely wouldn't pay to see aggregated.
By doing these things you'll stretch your vacation dollars farther, be more in touch with the local culture, have a good time, and help disadvantage people just trying to make an honest living.
I like the way you think. Or did you mean to add a 'd' in there?;)
It's a side point to your long comment, but I do have to ask: Do you even know what an ex post facto law is? Give some recent examples to demonstrate that you do.
The shocking thing isn't that the editors edited your submission to contain the wrong link. The shocking thing is that they edited a submission at all. It's a start.
This is not a "law review article" - it is a "note." Published law review articles by students are extremely rare. Law review articles are also generally quite a bit longer and more in-depth. When a student who works on the school's law review writes something and it gets published, it is usually called a "note" or a "comment," specifically to distinguish it from the actual articles, which themselves are usually the product of a law professor or, in some cases, a practicing attorney.
But that's just pedantry at its finest. Mr. Couillard's note is now on my reading list and he should be proud of having tackled a controversial subject and certainly of having been published in a prestigious law review.
Slashdot Mirror
It should also be noted that some trial court decisions are more persuasive than others. This isn't an area where it matters, but the classic example if a federal court looking to the decision of the lowest-level court in the state for some good, old-fashioned Erie guidance. But any legal writing ex cathedra, as I like to call it, from a court at any level is going to inform other courts what to do. If one court says that your damages are excessive as a matter of law, you will have an uphill battle in the next court to convince its judge that the other judge was wrong. It can be done, but even non-binding precedent against you is harder to fight than a clean slate ever was.
I'm going to step in and correct one thing. I wouldn't say that he's given "legal advice" here at all. That's a special creature that includes all sorts of ethical duties. What he has done, though, is provide a great deal of legal information, clarification, and insight. I would hate for a good deed to turn into a regret by people confusing legal information for advice. At the very least, he can be appreciated for being a contributing member of the community where most people in his position would not bother.
Sorry for the delay in my response. I didn't notice that you had replied. Your well-reasoned response makes you the exception to the rule that people who complain about ex post facto laws (or most other legal topics) on Slashdot have no clue what they're talking about. I have no disagreement to lodge with your comment - just wanted to say that I appreciate someone who doesn't fit the mold. :)
They should have called their club "Nonymous" instead. Then they wouldn't look so dumb.
Fair enough. I hadn't used fsn enough to know that it told you size and age. That's actually pretty cool. Is there a Mac port? ;)
Hey now ... North Dakota isn't quite the lowest population density in the country! There are three states lower. :P But you are right. The only way to cover the vast heartland of the USA is a shitload of GSM towers that rival wind farms as eyesores or CDMA. People from places other than Russia, Australia, Canada, and rural Africa generally can't comprehend the vastness of the part of the USA between New York and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, we also have the most populous and heavily developed area in the western hemisphere to deal with.
The history of cellular phone service in the USA bears this out, of course. There were many small regional carriers that dealt with the idiosyncrasies of the regions they served. One by one, these have been swallowed up by larger carriers to reach the present state, where nearly every carrier is national in scope and the major players are still eating up anyone smaller. Cellular One was my carrier a decade ago. Alltel acquired their assets, and Verizon acquired all of Alltel that it could without antitrust issues, with AT&T taking the rest.
As an Alltel customer whose local service is supposedly being transferred to AT&T to avoid a Verizon monopoly, my thought is that 2012 will be the year that the iPhone is available here. Not before then because a CDMA iPhone would not be a fast thing to pull off and because, in order for GSM coverage to match the CDMA coverage that Alltel has here, they will need something like 4 times as many towers and those will take time to set up. Meanwhile, the Nexus One on Verizon is a very promising option for 2011, when it's had 6 months to work out bugs on that network.
The real problem is that the vast majority of people familiar with Unix would (a) not have recognized fsn as being the front-end of a Unix system and (b) immediately have closed it and found their way to a shell, where they could spend less time navigating through an unknown directory structure and more time using the tools that they located with find. But that makes for a boring movie. What they should have done is left out that one line. Oh, and made the kids the ages they were in the novel so that their cutesy lines didn't come off as evidence of developmental challenge.
Agreed. I'm just very careful with forms of 'pedant' because of the off chance that I might accidentally stumble into a word that looks like it has that as its root but in reality comes from 'pederast'. And as much as I enjoy being the former, I have no connection whatever to the latter. =)
Damn. I'm usually the Latin pedant and knew I was wrong this morning but was in too much of a hurry to think of why. You are, of course, quite correct. That said, while we're engaging in pedantry, I don't believe that pedanticness is a word. :)
Bison are from the genus Bison. Buffalo are apparently from the geni Syncerus (African buffalo) or Bubalus (water buffalo and its smaller cousins). But since they are all from the Bovinae subfamily and "buffalo" includes more than one genus, I personally don't see why it's so incorrect to refer to the bison as the American buffalo.
Exactly. The person and his claims should be evaluated independently. You shouldn't disbelieve everything an astrologer says just because he's an astrologer, nor should you believe everything that a whale biologist says just because he's a whale biologist.
I usually read "scientists" as "astrologers" to ensure that I don't fall victim to any kind of argument to authority. :P
Sorry about the redundant mod. I hate getting those when I couldn't have known that I was second in line.
It sounds delicious.
That will go down substantially if they start charging or manage to opt-out of being aggregated. I for one have only ever read articles printed by Detroit Free Press, Baltimore Sun, the Huffington Post, and others because they are aggregated by Google and free for me to view online. That says nothing to the smaller operations that I definitely wouldn't pay to see aggregated.
Give a man a fish, and you've fed him for a day; teach a man not to let you steal his fish, and you've fed him for life?
American politics at the moment is a two-song playlist on infinite repeat. The other song is by Living Colour and goes something like this.
Vote with your dollars! This year, pay your taxes in hope. And if the IRS comes after you for that, you can pay them in change.
By doing these things you'll stretch your vacation dollars farther, be more in touch with the local culture, have a good time, and help disadvantage people just trying to make an honest living.
I like the way you think. Or did you mean to add a 'd' in there? ;)
It's a side point to your long comment, but I do have to ask: Do you even know what an ex post facto law is? Give some recent examples to demonstrate that you do.
The shocking thing isn't that the editors edited your submission to contain the wrong link. The shocking thing is that they edited a submission at all. It's a start.
So kdawson posted a bunch of ill-informed sensationalism and invective on the Slashdot front page? I'm shocked.
This is not a "law review article" - it is a "note." Published law review articles by students are extremely rare. Law review articles are also generally quite a bit longer and more in-depth. When a student who works on the school's law review writes something and it gets published, it is usually called a "note" or a "comment," specifically to distinguish it from the actual articles, which themselves are usually the product of a law professor or, in some cases, a practicing attorney.
But that's just pedantry at its finest. Mr. Couillard's note is now on my reading list and he should be proud of having tackled a controversial subject and certainly of having been published in a prestigious law review.
I don't pay much attention to the Doomsday Clock, but I am thankful that it exists, for exactly one reason: Two Minutes to Midnight is a great song.