trademark law, copyright law, intellectual property: it is such an absurd, useless pox on civilization. i foresee and fervently hope that history will write of this century about how the whole concept of intellectual property law became abolished. it's such useless wasteful, lawyer mongering nonsense by trolls
we really need to just lose the entire concept of intellectual property from our societies. it is utterly destructive to the free flow of culture and ideas and does NOT do what it purports to do: protect creators. no, it empowers litigious rent-seeking parasites. so much wasted money energy and time
Trademark law purports to protect consumers. When I buy Coca-Cola, I just might want actual Coca-Cola. When I buy a Tiffany lamp, I just might want an actual Tiffany lamp.
Once you allow barely distinguishable knock-offs, you make it infinitely harder for me to discern whether I'm buying the genuine article or a counterfeit. The fact that you may actually want to buy a counterfeit, typically a luxury good, has been deemed to be less important due to this eminantly reasonable position with regard to day-to-day items. Counterfeit Nestle Carnation dried milk, now with extra-yummy Chinese melamine, is far more destructive than trademark law's damage to "the free flow of the culture of ideas."
Making a comment about a co-workers boobs in NOT harassment. Slapping a co-worker's ass is NOT harassment (but it may be assault).
According to you, or according to something more generally applicable such as U.S. law? Because according to the latter, both of those clearly are. Just a friendly bit of FYI from an actual lawyer.
The Irish rejected the treaty so they held a second vote 6 months later, so they could get the "yes" vote desired.
You object to this, why? Because it was the same treaty (if you ignore the concessions that Ireland sought after the initial rejection)? Because it was only 16 months (not 6)? Both? Does it matter that turnout was six percent greater the second time around, and that the vote swung from slight (53%) to robust (67%) majority from the one to the other?
I mean, you're either implying some serious skullduggery was involved in causing 265000 no votes to disappear (and 465000 yes votes to appear) or that some overriding principle must be exercised to prevent an electorate from having the opportunity to change its mind.
NOW it appears they'll use the same approach with ACTA: It matters not how the EU Parliament votes, we'll just rewrite it and submit it a second time or third time until we get a "yes". Of course the U.S. ain't much better: TARP failed the first time so they rewrote it and tried a second time. When the Supreme Court rejects a law as unconstitutional, the Congress simply passes the law a second time (minus the objectionable bits).
Your implied alternative is that the part of the legislation that is not rewritten should be prohibited from becoming law? The part that is struck down as being unconstitutional should not be rewritten to become constitutional? For how long? And why?
Governance has never been a "once and for all" proposition. You're going to have to justify an expectation that is so divorced from history and reality, rather than simply hinting at the evils of dark forces operating behind the scenes. Pick your issue, and it's been defeated at least one before, and probably will be again.
And do you really believe that just because you've provided evidence of such necessity, the parent's won't threaten to sue regardless, wasting massive amounts of money?
The parent can't 'sue' until they've exhausted the administrative remedies. In any event, a lawsuit would cost the parent at least as much money, since one of the school district or the Department of Education will have lawyers who are well versed in IDEA. It's farcical to claim that parents have more resources available to them than the resources available to school districts themselves.
The whole point of these legal threats may just be to say "i can waste a lot of your money", as to dissuade any real action, even if the reason was legitimate...
What legal threat? The OP complained that the parents brought a lawyer to special education team meeting. All the "legal threats" appeared to be suppositions by the teacher based upon that fact. The alternative is that you cut off the parents from all recourse whatsoever. They cannot hire their own professional to advise them, they cannot have an adminstrative appeal before a neutral hearing officer, and they cannot file a civil appeal if the regulations were not followed or if there is no substantial evidence to support pulling their child out of a normal classroom setting.
That is not the law, nor should it be. You have no idea how hard it is to have an administrative decision overtuned in the courts, nor of the resources available to schools through regional service centers and state Departments of Education. The teacher wants to blame the parents for disagreeing with the IEP team, but isn't willing to take the matter outside the district and in front of a neutral party... it's not sarcasm you're detecting -- it's anger. This person is clearly unwilling to do their job, and is going to make the kid suffer for it if the kid happens to be in their class next year. The parents couldn't possibly have a valid concern -- they're simply defiant jerks. "[W]hat choice did we have?"
Are you really naive enough to believe that's what ANY of this is about?
I mean, seriously?
Well, now it's about flushing $320000 of bail down the judicial drain. Not to mention the additional criminal charge (Bail Act offense, or whatever is applicable in the United Kingdom in this instance -- not my area of law).
We are going to have to request that you sign a disclaimer to the effect that the negative effects of this decision on both your child and on the classmates that he is disrupting is solely your responsibility.
"No."
Now what? I mean, it's a cute solution, but not one that remotely complies with the law, and not one that you can force the parents to sign.
There are a number of processes and solutions that are available -- this teacher simply wasn't willing to follow through on them. That is the school district's responsibility. End of story.
When we present the principal, then superintendent, then school board with evidence, research and suggestions, they all agree that he needs to be in a self-contained classroom.... So, we call a meeting with the parents, special needs advocate and a ROE representative just to cover all of our bases. What do the parents also bring to the meeting? A lawyer.
How dare they. Two parents, who presumably are not professional educators, are invited to meet with three professional educators. Those three also consulted with three other professionals and/or administrators prior to the meeting, whereas the parents dared to get independent advice from one other person who was versed in disabilities law and had a clear duty to represent their interests. It's just not fair, I tell you.
Why? Because if we pulled their child away from his friends (he has none), then they would sue fast, sue hard, and sue often.
Possibly. There's that pesky "least restrictive environment" requirement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). You know, the requirement that means that you cannot declare little Johnny to be a "special ed" student and banish him to the furthest corners of the public school for perpetuity -- or more to the point until he ages out and gets dumped on the rest of society. The requirement that means that you have to mainstream him with educational aides or at least provide him with at least some appropriate exposure to his peers. Crazy damn requirement.
In this day of reduced spending, teachers being paraded around like well, like someone that's paraded around for public scorn, what choice did we have?
Here's a hint: to do your job. If you believed that placement in a special education classroom was necessary, then your job was to demonstrate that that placement is necessary, not to railroad the parents. If the placement was necessary, it could surely survive some scrutiny from "a lawyer" during an assessment or IEP meeting. Rumor has it that school districts and Departments of Education even employ their own laywers versed in IDEA.
Realistically, the other 25 sets of parents should be able to say, "no, you assholes, your child does not get to sap mine."
Realistically, you are supposed to make decision concerning the educational welfare of that child and objectively defend it in front of your state's Department of Education per IDEA. Realistically, the other 25 parents don't get a say because 536 other people enacted a law for very good reasons that these parents were bright enough to use as intended. You threw in the towel instead of doing the necessary work.
I've dealt with IDEA. I'm aware of the process and procedures and the fact that a school can implement an IEP over the parent's objections. You're not getting any sympathy from me for folding in the face of token resistance during one meeting.
If activation works in the release preview like it did in the consumer preview, there will only be one "activation key" for the publicly downloadable copy. Presumably, that key activates it for the limited time period and each copy will expire or de-activate on whatever their target date is.
What you're suggesting is about as far from piracy as you could get. I personally 'pirated' the consumer preview because the tail end of the official download (which I tried 3 times on that release day) was corrupted by whoever's transparent proxy service I had the joy of unknowingly using. Probably Time Warner's, as I've had corruption isses with other large downloads from official sources for other software.
Odds of Microsoft coming after you for torrenting freely available 'free' previews are pretty darn low. They have bigger fish to fry.
Can you please return your geek credentials? The judge didn't tell the jury Google was guilty,
True. But on the point that the jury did find (that, before considering the fair use defense and assuming that APIs are copyrightable), the judge essentially directed the jury that Google had infringed. The jury instructions included both: 1. An instruction that, on the issue of the "API copyright" point, infringement should be found if the defendant had access to the copyright-protected work and the alleged-infringing work was substantially similar, and 2. A note that Google had admitted that the APIs at issue were substantially similar to those that the jury was instructed to assume were protected.
If Google admitted that the APIs were substantially similar, then the instruction was perfectly correct. Why should the jury not be reminded that a party admitted an essential element of a judgment of infringement?
The grandparent wrongly attributed the request for a mistrial to the content of the jury instructions. That is not why Google is asking for a mistrial in the copyright phase. Google essentially argued that APIs are not copyrightable (question of law for the judge to resolve, as you touched upon) and that even if the APIs were copyrightable, the use was fair use (question of fact for the jury to resolve). In order for fair use to be relevant, there has to be a prima facie case for copyright infringement. As I understand it Google has conditionally admitted that there is such a case, and raised its fair use defense. The request for a mistrial is due to the fact that the jury did not resolve the key question before it -- was the copyright infringment (if the API is protected by copyright) excused as fair use.
If the jury hangs on a key judgment, it is normal to request a mistrial since the question must be resolved by the jury (absent settlement or agreement by the parties to convert the issue to one to be resolved by a bench decision). A hung verdict does not tranlate into either "guilty" or "not guilty" (in the terms of the discussion -- there is no finding of "guilt" as such in a civil case). A new trial can be held and directed only to the copyright aspect at a later date (assuming no other jury-related issues arise), and the patent phase can proceed.
Why not sue the developer, you know, the one that made the app, created a (presumably) deceptive money making scheme and made all of the actual money from these purchases.
Apple reviews the apps, takes a 30% cut from the purchases, and took until IOS 4.3 to add an option not to cache a password for 15 minutes. Apple also chose to enable in-app purchases (with the cached password) by defaut. Why not sue both?
"The plaintiff here filed suit in April 2011, shortly after the issue came to light in the press and after it had already been fixed by Apple."
If that is the case, then this is nothing more than extortion by the plaintiff. If Apple addressed the issue quickly and effectively then there is no "lawsuit" needed nor warranted, especially if it is class action.
You do realize that you have at least 1-2 years in which to file a suit after you've been injured, so that filing a class action after you discover that you and a bunch of other people were injured is not extortion, but rational and appropriate. Its also far easier to justify a hiring a lawyer to pursue a case where a large number of people have been harmed then to either hire a lawyer to pursue a case worth only $200, or learn how to navigate small claims court on your own.
Also, define "quickly" and "effectively" -- these sorts of games pretty much existed in the app store from the get-go, and IOS 4.3 was released in March 2011. The iPad was released in April 2010, which ignores all the phones that came before it. Shall we google for the first complaints from iPhone users, or is 11 months sufficiently beyond "quickly" for you?
Additionally, the "father" is not worthy of that title. If he couldn't trust his daughter to not buy "in-app" upgrades, she shouldn't have a friggin iPhone to start with.
Screw you. I've bought an iPad for a four year old. Four year olds barely understand the concept of "money," much less what an in app purchase is. Fortunately it was an iPad 2, I'd read about the issue, and I configured the thing to always require a password (as well as to disable in app purchases, although frankly that just makes the times that you want to make them far more painful -- 1 password vs. exit, settings, restrictions, pin, switch, double-home, app, password).
You want to reward Apple (gatekeeper/reviewer of all, for a healthy 30%) and software developers like Zynga by freeing them from any responsibility to learn their own lesson and modify their own "get rich quick schemes." The parent and child deserve at least some blame, but the experts (i.e., Apple and developers) were being predatory and quite blameworthy. Is Apple's defense at trial going to be "we couldn't possibly foresee this issue since none of us have children"? Apple is all about the user experience, but does anyone other than an idiot, an addict, or a child buy a $99 consumable immediately after buying a "free" game? I'd love to see a demographic study of what goes on here.
It's irrelevant how much of a technical genius and/or disciplinarian you may be -- the law protects consumers who are average citizens from unconscionable acts, such as where a seller takes advantage of consumers "lack of knowledge, ability, experience, or capacity to a grossly unfair degree." (Use your mad skills to Google the phrase)
First time iPhone/iPad buyers are not going to have the knowledge or experience to know that their purchase password not only is cached to allow other app store purchases, but cached to allow in app purchases as well. First time iPhone/iPad buyers are not going to that there is an option to turn in-app purchases off. You buy an app for your kid, you hand the iPad to the kid to play the app once it's installed. Not 15 minutes later. You buy a free app, you don't expect progress in the app to essentially require you to buy "a basket of coins" for $99.
If people were such geniuses, then the default configuration would be require passwords to be entered immediately, and possibly to delve into the settings to enable in-app purchases. That's the more secure and fail safe configuration, after all. Why is that not the default? Because your average person is not a genius, does not have time to read a user manual, and learns by use and experiance. If they become annoyed, they might look for setting to chang
while the 16:9 folk just roll their eyes, and their monitor by 90 degrees, and put on a trollface.
It's not quite that easy. The 16:9 TN panel folk only do that if they are masochists. The "vertical" viewing angle on a TN display is usually substantially worse that the "horizontal" viewing angle on a TN display (color and brightness shifts are anisotropic) so that when they rotate their monitor by 90 degress virtually any horizontal shift from dead center causes problems.
The 16:9 IPS and PVA folk can do that, but the monitors cost 2-3x as much. The cheapest I've seen is a Dell (a 23 or 24" 16:10) eIPS that goes for $300. Before that, it was DELL (24" 16:10) IPS that went for $700.
Of course then those groups transmogrify into the response time and color accuracy people and start a whole new religiotechno war.
Thank you for the report. Unlike the linked articles, this is the first one I've seen that reports what happens with the water (steam) side of the process.
However, the report raises an even nastier set of issues:
Challenges and Weaknesses 1. The reverse reaction of Zn(g) with O2 limits overall conversion of Reaction (1); Using a gas quench to âoefreezeâ Zn prior to reaction with O2 poses major challenges with regard to recovery of sensible heat out of the solar reactor; It may be possible to use Zn metal powder to provide the quench, but development of this process is very challenging and would result in growth of particle size, thus reducing reactivity of Zn in Reaction (2). 2. [omitted] 3. Since inert gas is used to reduce the partial pressure of Zn(g) in the system so as to reduce the required reaction temperature (i.e. ~ 1750oC), it must be separated from produced O2 and recycled. recycled. 4. It may be possible to develop a high temperature O2 transport membrane for use within the reactor, but this is particularly difficult due to the presence of Zn vapor.
I'll add (although the report does discuss conversion efficiency generally) that conversion efficiency will be very poor since you have flash/boil liquid water into 400 C steam to produce ZnO and hydrogen from the second step. You're putting a lot of effort into producing hot oxygen and hot hydrogen, and then you have to compress/cool the hydrogen for storage in a fuel cell or tank.
Also, keep in mind, ZnO is not a salt. It will not dissociate in liquid water to form Zn ions. Also, Zn when added to water will not form zinc hydroxide.
The ZnO bond is primarily ionic. It is generally insoluble in water, but it is most certaily a salt.
And Zn when added to water will most certainly form zinc hydroxide, particularly when powdered or added as a vapor. It may not form zinc hydroxide in supercritical steam above 800 C, but you did not specify that and I clearly referred to aqueous systems. Water spontaneously disscociates to yield the hydronium and hydroxide that forms the zinc hydroxide skin on bulk zinc metal. It's not a rapid process, as I already suggested, but your blanket statement is wrong.
If this system is truely closed with respect to zinc, then the zinc hydroxide has to be converted into zinc oxide or somehow directly smelted back into zinc vapor. That's the missing element from the article in my opinion.
Just to be clear, chemically this is not hard:
Zn(OH)2 -> ZnO + H2O at about 800 C (this is a calcination reaction)
It's a materials handling issue. Dewatering a sludge, drying a dewatered sludge, and, if necessary, calcining the zinc hydroxide separately from forming the zinc metal, all involve some technically complicated additional steps.
The zinc is then reacted with water to produce zinc oxide and hydrogen.
Zn(vapor)+H2O -> H2 + ZnO
Nope. Zn(OH)2. You have to do something else to convert the hydroxide into an oxide.
I agree that you can't simply condense the Zn vapor into a liquid or solid. In normal thermal smelting the metal is chemically reduced to draw off the oxygen using a reducing agent such as carbon monoxide. At very high temperatures, you can force a metal oxide to form a plasma of dissociated ions, but as you indicated something has to draw off or separate the oxygen, and something also has to donate electrons to the zinc ion plasma. Might be a set of high temperature electrodes?
You burn zinc metal. Really. The zinc oxide and tower are not the interesting part. That is simply an alternative method of smelting a source of zinc to obtain zinc metal.
The deeper linked articles say "the hoppers will feed zinc oxide powder (a benign substance resembling baking soda) onto the ceramic layer, causing a reaction that decomposes the powder into pure zinc vapor. In a subsequent step, the zinc will be reacted with water to produce solar hydrogen."
Ok.
Zn(s) + 2H+ -> Zn2+(aq) + H2(g)
but
Zn2+ + 2OH- -> Zn(OH)2(s)
So the water that's left over will contain a zinc hydroxide particulate (or sludge).
The zinc hydroxide is an emission. Might be better than a gaseous emission, but it's still a waste product. If this system is truely closed with respect to zinc, then the zinc hydroxide has to be converted into zinc oxide or somehow directly smelted back into zinc vapor. That's the missing element from the article in my opinion.
Other questions: how fast is the aquoeous reaction (toss zinc in a glass of water -- it's slow at standard temperature and pressure); what is the equilibrium pressue of H2 above the liquid (if it's a low partial pressure, then you need to both maintain a vacuum over the liquid and compress the drawn-off gas); what is the net energy output of H2 versus the input of heat (assuming that you close the system with respect to zinc by drying and converting the sludge back to zinc metal).
if the law isn't so fucking convoluted and obtuse and hidden away, how the hell are the lawyer vampire class ever going to justify being a drain on society by requiring you to consult a lawyer before doing anything?
Regulatory capture was invented by the lawyer class. That's why the first thing a sane society would do is outlaw lawyers.
You* elect the poiliticians that enact such complicated laws and the bureaucracy that uses your ignorance of the laws to do things pretty much how they want to do them.
Although I deal with 'regulators' on a daily basis, I have only applied the law as written rather than lobbying for new codes, rules, or procedures. Like most lawyers, I'm essentially a guide concerning a subject that people have no interest in learning about until they have a very specific need, and even then are not interested in doing the leg work of learning it themselves. You may as well outlaw tourist guides, reference librarians, and historians. The only thing they do is filter information that is convoluted, obtuse, and hidden away as well.
*Not you specifically, but the collective you that responds to political pandering and is loathe to acutally think through issues or accept a difficult compromise. [snark]You specifically have failed to think through the lawyer issue, and the second thing a sane society would do is outlaw your ability to vote.[/snark]
Make a public records request for the book. If the copying fees are substantial, make sure to request to inspect, rather than receive copies, of the book.
In states that have public records laws, the code enforement officer's library is your library, so long as the material documents the 'operations' of the public office. Any code that is referenced by the building code pretty much automatically documents the enforement operations of the office, and is fair game with reasonable notice. In the state where I practice, the penalties for non-compliance can also be rather punative.
A lawyer once told me there is a big difference between "getting a judgment" and "getting the money". Can you figure out the difference?
Yes. There's also a big difference between being locked into 2 year contract even after you win the judgment and being terminated without a collectable penalty. Can you figure out the difference? From my prior post:
"Settle with us or we'll kick you out of our lousy service and appeal (without being able to introduce new evidence or arugment)" isn't much of a threat. The internet is rife with people looking for "material changes" in their contract in order to escape without paying an ETF, and he's only risking an $850 'paper' loss of his original award.
BTW: You go on to describe defending a judgment, which is not the point of the lawyer's quote. "Getting the money" is collections. "Getting the money" is trivial when the judgment debtor has readily identifiable assets. Really trivial.
Pity that the snarky comment had to come from an AC that won't bother to read the response.
In TFA, it is stated that AT&T's threat to discontinue his service is based on his admission of tethering, which is against the TOS he agreed to. Not that their tactics here aren't shady, but they do have a contractual basis (excuse) for the threat.
Two problems:
1. Terminating the contract is not going to nullify the money he was awarded for AT&T's violation of the original contract. He didn't get a judgment that forced AT&T to provide him with unlimited data, so terminating the contract only serves to release him from the obligation to pay for a capped service that he quite clearly dislikes. AT&T is presuming that he wants to remain an AT&T customer. Since TFA says that he doesn't care..
2. Thousands of others have tethered their phones, and AT&T's response has been not to terminate their service, but to require them to buy the approved tethering package. While the language of the contract may permit termination for violation of the TOS, AT&T has likely waived termination as a remedy for this sort of violation through its own announcements and actions. If AT&T terminates the contract and attempts to impose a termination fee, expect a second small claims case where there's a reasonable likelihood that AT&T loses.
"Settle with us or we'll kick you out of our lousy service and appeal (without being able to introduce new evidence or arugment)" isn't much of a threat. The internet is rife with people looking for "material changes" in their contract in order to escape without paying an ETF, and he's only risking an $850 'paper' loss of his original award.
In a large enough group, there are always "some people" (more than 1 person) who believes X.
Whether X is that they've been kidnapped by aliens or whatever. In a big enough group there will be "some people" who believe it.
So knock it off! If you cannot point to them, shut your mouth.
Yes, shut your mouth. There's no point in arguing that believing in X is wrong unless you can point to a specific individual with that belief. Forget that rational discourse would address the belief rather than the characteristics of the person(s) holding it. Forget that others may be on the fence concerning the belief or developing their own beliefs and would benefit from a discussion concerning the merits of the belief.
If you cannot point to the damn dirty hippy who believes it, then you have no license to speak.
Or not. Nobody needs your permission to use their mouth.
Slashdot Mirror
Trademark law purports to protect consumers. When I buy Coca-Cola, I just might want actual Coca-Cola. When I buy a Tiffany lamp, I just might want an actual Tiffany lamp.
Once you allow barely distinguishable knock-offs, you make it infinitely harder for me to discern whether I'm buying the genuine article or a counterfeit. The fact that you may actually want to buy a counterfeit, typically a luxury good, has been deemed to be less important due to this eminantly reasonable position with regard to day-to-day items. Counterfeit Nestle Carnation dried milk, now with extra-yummy Chinese melamine, is far more destructive than trademark law's damage to "the free flow of the culture of ideas."
According to you, or according to something more generally applicable such as U.S. law? Because according to the latter, both of those clearly are. Just a friendly bit of FYI from an actual lawyer.
The degree of self-contradiction that you've allowed yourself boggles the mind.
You object to this, why? Because it was the same treaty (if you ignore the concessions that Ireland sought after the initial rejection)? Because it was only 16 months (not 6)? Both? Does it matter that turnout was six percent greater the second time around, and that the vote swung from slight (53%) to robust (67%) majority from the one to the other?
I mean, you're either implying some serious skullduggery was involved in causing 265000 no votes to disappear (and 465000 yes votes to appear) or that some overriding principle must be exercised to prevent an electorate from having the opportunity to change its mind.
Your implied alternative is that the part of the legislation that is not rewritten should be prohibited from becoming law? The part that is struck down as being unconstitutional should not be rewritten to become constitutional? For how long? And why?
Governance has never been a "once and for all" proposition. You're going to have to justify an expectation that is so divorced from history and reality, rather than simply hinting at the evils of dark forces operating behind the scenes. Pick your issue, and it's been defeated at least one before, and probably will be again.
Mandatory due process hearing
Mandatory due process hearing after sustained discplinary action
The parent can't 'sue' until they've exhausted the administrative remedies. In any event, a lawsuit would cost the parent at least as much money, since one of the school district or the Department of Education will have lawyers who are well versed in IDEA. It's farcical to claim that parents have more resources available to them than the resources available to school districts themselves.
What legal threat? The OP complained that the parents brought a lawyer to special education team meeting. All the "legal threats" appeared to be suppositions by the teacher based upon that fact. The alternative is that you cut off the parents from all recourse whatsoever. They cannot hire their own professional to advise them, they cannot have an adminstrative appeal before a neutral hearing officer, and they cannot file a civil appeal if the regulations were not followed or if there is no substantial evidence to support pulling their child out of a normal classroom setting.
That is not the law, nor should it be. You have no idea how hard it is to have an administrative decision overtuned in the courts, nor of the resources available to schools through regional service centers and state Departments of Education. The teacher wants to blame the parents for disagreeing with the IEP team, but isn't willing to take the matter outside the district and in front of a neutral party... it's not sarcasm you're detecting -- it's anger. This person is clearly unwilling to do their job, and is going to make the kid suffer for it if the kid happens to be in their class next year. The parents couldn't possibly have a valid concern -- they're simply defiant jerks. "[W]hat choice did we have?"
Well, now it's about flushing $320000 of bail down the judicial drain. Not to mention the additional criminal charge (Bail Act offense, or whatever is applicable in the United Kingdom in this instance -- not my area of law).
"No."
Now what? I mean, it's a cute solution, but not one that remotely complies with the law, and not one that you can force the parents to sign.
There are a number of processes and solutions that are available -- this teacher simply wasn't willing to follow through on them. That is the school district's responsibility. End of story.
How dare they. Two parents, who presumably are not professional educators, are invited to meet with three professional educators. Those three also consulted with three other professionals and/or administrators prior to the meeting, whereas the parents dared to get independent advice from one other person who was versed in disabilities law and had a clear duty to represent their interests. It's just not fair, I tell you.
Possibly. There's that pesky "least restrictive environment" requirement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). You know, the requirement that means that you cannot declare little Johnny to be a "special ed" student and banish him to the furthest corners of the public school for perpetuity -- or more to the point until he ages out and gets dumped on the rest of society. The requirement that means that you have to mainstream him with educational aides or at least provide him with at least some appropriate exposure to his peers. Crazy damn requirement.
Here's a hint: to do your job. If you believed that placement in a special education classroom was necessary, then your job was to demonstrate that that placement is necessary, not to railroad the parents. If the placement was necessary, it could surely survive some scrutiny from "a lawyer" during an assessment or IEP meeting. Rumor has it that school districts and Departments of Education even employ their own laywers versed in IDEA.
Realistically, you are supposed to make decision concerning the educational welfare of that child and objectively defend it in front of your state's Department of Education per IDEA. Realistically, the other 25 parents don't get a say because 536 other people enacted a law for very good reasons that these parents were bright enough to use as intended. You threw in the towel instead of doing the necessary work.
I've dealt with IDEA. I'm aware of the process and procedures and the fact that a school can implement an IEP over the parent's objections. You're not getting any sympathy from me for folding in the face of token resistance during one meeting.
If activation works in the release preview like it did in the consumer preview, there will only be one "activation key" for the publicly downloadable copy. Presumably, that key activates it for the limited time period and each copy will expire or de-activate on whatever their target date is.
What you're suggesting is about as far from piracy as you could get. I personally 'pirated' the consumer preview because the tail end of the official download (which I tried 3 times on that release day) was corrupted by whoever's transparent proxy service I had the joy of unknowingly using. Probably Time Warner's, as I've had corruption isses with other large downloads from official sources for other software.
Odds of Microsoft coming after you for torrenting freely available 'free' previews are pretty darn low. They have bigger fish to fry.
If Google admitted that the APIs were substantially similar, then the instruction was perfectly correct. Why should the jury not be reminded that a party admitted an essential element of a judgment of infringement?
The grandparent wrongly attributed the request for a mistrial to the content of the jury instructions. That is not why Google is asking for a mistrial in the copyright phase. Google essentially argued that APIs are not copyrightable (question of law for the judge to resolve, as you touched upon) and that even if the APIs were copyrightable, the use was fair use (question of fact for the jury to resolve). In order for fair use to be relevant, there has to be a prima facie case for copyright infringement. As I understand it Google has conditionally admitted that there is such a case, and raised its fair use defense. The request for a mistrial is due to the fact that the jury did not resolve the key question before it -- was the copyright infringment (if the API is protected by copyright) excused as fair use.
If the jury hangs on a key judgment, it is normal to request a mistrial since the question must be resolved by the jury (absent settlement or agreement by the parties to convert the issue to one to be resolved by a bench decision). A hung verdict does not tranlate into either "guilty" or "not guilty" (in the terms of the discussion -- there is no finding of "guilt" as such in a civil case). A new trial can be held and directed only to the copyright aspect at a later date (assuming no other jury-related issues arise), and the patent phase can proceed.
As if the latter necessarily means the former.
I will not take parenting advice from an AC.
Apple reviews the apps, takes a 30% cut from the purchases, and took until IOS 4.3 to add an option not to cache a password for 15 minutes. Apple also chose to enable in-app purchases (with the cached password) by defaut. Why not sue both?
You do realize that you have at least 1-2 years in which to file a suit after you've been injured, so that filing a class action after you discover that you and a bunch of other people were injured is not extortion, but rational and appropriate. Its also far easier to justify a hiring a lawyer to pursue a case where a large number of people have been harmed then to either hire a lawyer to pursue a case worth only $200, or learn how to navigate small claims court on your own.
Also, define "quickly" and "effectively" -- these sorts of games pretty much existed in the app store from the get-go, and IOS 4.3 was released in March 2011. The iPad was released in April 2010, which ignores all the phones that came before it. Shall we google for the first complaints from iPhone users, or is 11 months sufficiently beyond "quickly" for you?
Screw you. I've bought an iPad for a four year old. Four year olds barely understand the concept of "money," much less what an in app purchase is. Fortunately it was an iPad 2, I'd read about the issue, and I configured the thing to always require a password (as well as to disable in app purchases, although frankly that just makes the times that you want to make them far more painful -- 1 password vs. exit, settings, restrictions, pin, switch, double-home, app, password).
You want to reward Apple (gatekeeper/reviewer of all, for a healthy 30%) and software developers like Zynga by freeing them from any responsibility to learn their own lesson and modify their own "get rich quick schemes." The parent and child deserve at least some blame, but the experts (i.e., Apple and developers) were being predatory and quite blameworthy. Is Apple's defense at trial going to be "we couldn't possibly foresee this issue since none of us have children"? Apple is all about the user experience, but does anyone other than an idiot, an addict, or a child buy a $99 consumable immediately after buying a "free" game? I'd love to see a demographic study of what goes on here.
It's irrelevant how much of a technical genius and/or disciplinarian you may be -- the law protects consumers who are average citizens from unconscionable acts, such as where a seller takes advantage of consumers "lack of knowledge, ability, experience, or capacity to a grossly unfair degree." (Use your mad skills to Google the phrase)
First time iPhone/iPad buyers are not going to have the knowledge or experience to know that their purchase password not only is cached to allow other app store purchases, but cached to allow in app purchases as well. First time iPhone/iPad buyers are not going to that there is an option to turn in-app purchases off. You buy an app for your kid, you hand the iPad to the kid to play the app once it's installed. Not 15 minutes later. You buy a free app, you don't expect progress in the app to essentially require you to buy "a basket of coins" for $99.
If people were such geniuses, then the default configuration would be require passwords to be entered immediately, and possibly to delve into the settings to enable in-app purchases. That's the more secure and fail safe configuration, after all. Why is that not the default? Because your average person is not a genius, does not have time to read a user manual, and learns by use and experiance. If they become annoyed, they might look for setting to chang
It's not quite that easy. The 16:9 TN panel folk only do that if they are masochists. The "vertical" viewing angle on a TN display is usually substantially worse that the "horizontal" viewing angle on a TN display (color and brightness shifts are anisotropic) so that when they rotate their monitor by 90 degress virtually any horizontal shift from dead center causes problems.
The 16:9 IPS and PVA folk can do that, but the monitors cost 2-3x as much. The cheapest I've seen is a Dell (a 23 or 24" 16:10) eIPS that goes for $300. Before that, it was DELL (24" 16:10) IPS that went for $700.
Of course then those groups transmogrify into the response time and color accuracy people and start a whole new religiotechno war.
Thank you for the report. Unlike the linked articles, this is the first one I've seen that reports what happens with the water (steam) side of the process.
However, the report raises an even nastier set of issues:
I'll add (although the report does discuss conversion efficiency generally) that conversion efficiency will be very poor since you have flash/boil liquid water into 400 C steam to produce ZnO and hydrogen from the second step. You're putting a lot of effort into producing hot oxygen and hot hydrogen, and then you have to compress/cool the hydrogen for storage in a fuel cell or tank.
The ZnO bond is primarily ionic. It is generally insoluble in water, but it is most certaily a salt.
And Zn when added to water will most certainly form zinc hydroxide, particularly when powdered or added as a vapor. It may not form zinc hydroxide in supercritical steam above 800 C, but you did not specify that and I clearly referred to aqueous systems. Water spontaneously disscociates to yield the hydronium and hydroxide that forms the zinc hydroxide skin on bulk zinc metal. It's not a rapid process, as I already suggested, but your blanket statement is wrong.
Just to be clear, chemically this is not hard:
Zn(OH)2 -> ZnO + H2O at about 800 C (this is a calcination reaction)
It's a materials handling issue. Dewatering a sludge, drying a dewatered sludge, and, if necessary, calcining the zinc hydroxide separately from forming the zinc metal, all involve some technically complicated additional steps.
Nope. Zn(OH)2. You have to do something else to convert the hydroxide into an oxide.
I agree that you can't simply condense the Zn vapor into a liquid or solid. In normal thermal smelting the metal is chemically reduced to draw off the oxygen using a reducing agent such as carbon monoxide. At very high temperatures, you can force a metal oxide to form a plasma of dissociated ions, but as you indicated something has to draw off or separate the oxygen, and something also has to donate electrons to the zinc ion plasma. Might be a set of high temperature electrodes?
You burn zinc metal. Really. The zinc oxide and tower are not the interesting part. That is simply an alternative method of smelting a source of zinc to obtain zinc metal.
The deeper linked articles say "the hoppers will feed zinc oxide powder (a benign substance resembling baking soda) onto the ceramic layer, causing a reaction that decomposes the powder into pure zinc vapor. In a subsequent step, the zinc will be reacted with water to produce solar hydrogen."
Ok.
Zn(s) + 2H+ -> Zn2+(aq) + H2(g)
but
Zn2+ + 2OH- -> Zn(OH)2(s)
So the water that's left over will contain a zinc hydroxide particulate (or sludge).
The zinc hydroxide is an emission. Might be better than a gaseous emission, but it's still a waste product. If this system is truely closed with respect to zinc, then the zinc hydroxide has to be converted into zinc oxide or somehow directly smelted back into zinc vapor. That's the missing element from the article in my opinion.
Other questions: how fast is the aquoeous reaction (toss zinc in a glass of water -- it's slow at standard temperature and pressure); what is the equilibrium pressue of H2 above the liquid (if it's a low partial pressure, then you need to both maintain a vacuum over the liquid and compress the drawn-off gas); what is the net energy output of H2 versus the input of heat (assuming that you close the system with respect to zinc by drying and converting the sludge back to zinc metal).
You* elect the poiliticians that enact such complicated laws and the bureaucracy that uses your ignorance of the laws to do things pretty much how they want to do them.
Although I deal with 'regulators' on a daily basis, I have only applied the law as written rather than lobbying for new codes, rules, or procedures. Like most lawyers, I'm essentially a guide concerning a subject that people have no interest in learning about until they have a very specific need, and even then are not interested in doing the leg work of learning it themselves. You may as well outlaw tourist guides, reference librarians, and historians. The only thing they do is filter information that is convoluted, obtuse, and hidden away as well.
*Not you specifically, but the collective you that responds to political pandering and is loathe to acutally think through issues or accept a difficult compromise. [snark]You specifically have failed to think through the lawyer issue, and the second thing a sane society would do is outlaw your ability to vote.[/snark]
Make a public records request for the book. If the copying fees are substantial, make sure to request to inspect, rather than receive copies, of the book.
In states that have public records laws, the code enforement officer's library is your library, so long as the material documents the 'operations' of the public office. Any code that is referenced by the building code pretty much automatically documents the enforement operations of the office, and is fair game with reasonable notice. In the state where I practice, the penalties for non-compliance can also be rather punative.
Yes. There's also a big difference between being locked into 2 year contract even after you win the judgment and being terminated without a collectable penalty. Can you figure out the difference? From my prior post:
BTW: You go on to describe defending a judgment, which is not the point of the lawyer's quote. "Getting the money" is collections. "Getting the money" is trivial when the judgment debtor has readily identifiable assets. Really trivial.
Pity that the snarky comment had to come from an AC that won't bother to read the response.
Two problems: 1. Terminating the contract is not going to nullify the money he was awarded for AT&T's violation of the original contract. He didn't get a judgment that forced AT&T to provide him with unlimited data, so terminating the contract only serves to release him from the obligation to pay for a capped service that he quite clearly dislikes. AT&T is presuming that he wants to remain an AT&T customer. Since TFA says that he doesn't care.. 2. Thousands of others have tethered their phones, and AT&T's response has been not to terminate their service, but to require them to buy the approved tethering package. While the language of the contract may permit termination for violation of the TOS, AT&T has likely waived termination as a remedy for this sort of violation through its own announcements and actions. If AT&T terminates the contract and attempts to impose a termination fee, expect a second small claims case where there's a reasonable likelihood that AT&T loses. "Settle with us or we'll kick you out of our lousy service and appeal (without being able to introduce new evidence or arugment)" isn't much of a threat. The internet is rife with people looking for "material changes" in their contract in order to escape without paying an ETF, and he's only risking an $850 'paper' loss of his original award.
Yes, shut your mouth. There's no point in arguing that believing in X is wrong unless you can point to a specific individual with that belief. Forget that rational discourse would address the belief rather than the characteristics of the person(s) holding it. Forget that others may be on the fence concerning the belief or developing their own beliefs and would benefit from a discussion concerning the merits of the belief.
If you cannot point to the damn dirty hippy who believes it, then you have no license to speak.
Or not. Nobody needs your permission to use their mouth.
Why does he bear the burden of proving your original question is relevant?
Hint: he doesn't.