Don't you know that only the person or organization with the most money is ever responsible?
A plaintiff will go after who ever has the deepest pockets, but that doesn't mean the plaintiff will recover from the defendant with the most money. In this case, however, it is likely that because the woman was invited to the contest, she was for legal purposes an invitee. There is a legal difference between the standard of care you have toward someone you randomly encounter on the street, for example, and someone you invite into your home, place of business, or perhaps a contest.
Just becuase there may be a higher standard of care in this case doesn't mean that the radio station will be found negligent. However, just because she signed waiver forms doesn't mean they will be automatically not be found negligent. Many people hold the mistaken belief that waivers of liability automatically protect the party drafting the waiver, but in actuality if the language of a waiver is nonobvious, or if it is weighted too far in favor of the rights of the drafting party, sections of the waiver can be ruled non-binding.
Police and prosecutors don't care what really happened because their job is to arrest and convict - that's what we reward them for. We'd be silly to expect anything different.
It's not a one-sided system. If the defense attorney wasn't utterly incompetent, the defendant wouldn't have lost the case.
If the New York Times says it, then it must be true -- NOT!
Are you saying that the NYT is incorrect, and Apple's own internal investigation did not clear Jobs? Or are you saying that somehow the NYT is biased in favor of Apple, and made up the entire story? Or are you actually talking about something completely unrelated to Apple, Steve Jobs, and the story at hand?
We all know that just because Apple cleared Jobs that doesn't mean there wasn't some wrongdoing on his part, but the NYT is merely reporting on what Apple found. Why do you think their reporting on this is innacurate?
I can tell you that Newsvine has a very interesting formula going for a user driven interactive news site.
I agree. The biggest problem is that the Newsvine community just feels too small. Part of this may be that people who enjoy thoughful, stimulating discussion have already been turned off by discussion boards in general (or are already in Slashdot, of course). While Yahoo! is taking down its boards, look at the absurd comments that permeate C|NET, for example. It's like watching third graders fling boogers at each other.
The real reason more sites don't go to effective moderation systems seems to be they truly want to provoke the most asenine, aggression-inducing responses possible, so as to keep the third graders coming back for more. There may be far more of the booger-flingers out there than there are reasonable people. Then again, it may be that once again the public is being underestimated by the pointy-haired bosses who run sites that provide an outlet for unmoderated booger-flinging. I hope it's the latter, but I fear the former may be true.
BTW, I don't know where the frack the whole booger-throwing theme came from. Am I trippin' on TheraFlu again?
Yeah yeah yeah - lawyer.. evil.. tell it to the birmingham five.. or any black kid attending school in the south.. or anyone who was arrested and found not guilty due to lack of evidence.
This is Slashdot. Lawyers ARE inherently evil here. The gestalt view is that when you're discussing lawyers in a given situation, there is really only *one* lawyer. That's the lawyer on the wrong side of the case. The other lawyer(s), representing the right side of the case, don't exist. Technophiles apparently are just as fond of having a whipping boy as any other demographic.
I'm also a law student, and the way I often explain lawyers and the law to most people is that the law is like plumbing. Everyone needs it, but nobody ever thinks about it until it's not working properly. The people who deal with the plumbing charge too much, they don't show up on time, and nobody really enjoys having to do business with them. You can do the plumbing yourself, but the more complicated the problem, the more important it is to have one of those stinky, dirty plumbers do it instead.
It is my view that most Americans (can't speak for people in other places, with other legal systems) don't often consider that the alternative to a complex and often unwieldy legal process is much less desirable.
Suffice to say, America invites criticism by braying to the entire world about how wonderful and free it is. Can you really blame people for taking the bait and engaging in some critical analysis of those claims?
Not all Americans loudly proclaim that America is the most wonderful, free nation on earth. Still, I can't blame people for taking the bait and ranting about America and Americans. Remember that while half of America thinks God is on our side, the other half is mad as hell at having our country hijacked by the Crackpot Right. I just like to know what the ranters are using as a point of comparison.
I'm glad to hear things are going so well in Canada. I met with some legal professionals from Canada a couple of years ago, and I was impressed with the civility not only of the people, but of the society at large. I had the same experience the few times I went to Ontario back in the 1990s. One of the problems with America is that we don't look past our own borders most of the time, so we often fail to see that our way isn't always the best way.
That you don't lynch-mob government officials that engage in gerrymandering is proof enough that you don't even care if your elections are even remotely representative.
I'm an American, and I'm not at all happy with the direction our country has been moving over the last several years. But America is also an easy target for criticism because of its huge footprint. The mistakes we make have more of an impact on people in other countries, but that doesn't mean we're alone in making mistakes. It does get tiresome reading rants about America when you don't know where the ranters are from. A simple preface like, "Here in the UK, where things are just peachy..." would be nice once in a while.
Bashing America is ludicrously easy, but it's not the height of integrity to take shots at Americans without at least revealing your own country of origin.
As an aside, perhaps you also underestimate the ability of the American system of government to right itself without resort to violence. You seem to think it would be reasonable to resort to the lynch mob, but I've seen the aftermath of a civil war up close. I prefer the pen to the sword.
The Presidents power with regards to his agenda is well defined. Simply throwing "political" in front of the word "agenda" is a cheap way of actually "politicizing" the issue as "big bad state" vs "little old us".
This is not about the big bad state vs. the people. It is about the President manipulating the CIA so it does not allow an ex-agent to bring into the public debate matters that the President finds unpalatable. It is yet another case of the Executive Branch under W routing around the rules of American government in the belief that the Executive should be able to do essentially do whatever it wants. I do think it holds water that the article was redacted specifically because it would cause some readers to question the President's policy with regard to Iran. Are you saying that the Executive redacted the article for legitimate national security reasons? That seems a rather difficult case to make.
"Politics" is not a dirty word to me, but if the President is stifling the public debate under the guise of national security, and in so doing compromising the CIA's ability to manage its own affairs, he is in essence treating the agency like his own fiefdom. The issue has already been politicized by the Executive's action in redacting the article when the CIA said there was no national security need to do so. If the CIA had simply disallowed publication of the article through normal means because it compromised national security, nobody, self included, would have been bothered by it.
The power grab by the Executive may seem fine now, if you feel that Bush is operating in the nation's best interest. But what happens when the next President steps in and uses the same broad powers in a way that doesn't suit you? That's the problem with stealth structural changes in government. They may seem alright at first if they fit your politics, but they can boomerang later.
Like it or not, the President is the Chief Executive and the CIA works for him at our behest.
True. But the President's power as Chief Executive is not absolute. For example, while he is the Commander in Chief, he could send American forces to invade the UK because he doesn't like the way they they spell the word "honour," Congress can make it a short expedition by disallowing military funds to be used in such an operation. Similarly, the Director of the CIA works for the President but has to answer to Congress for his actions. See the Carter-era CIA reforms, in which Congress was the primary mover.
The fact that the CIA operates under the Executive does not mean that the President should be allowed to use it to advance his domestic political agenda. The failure of the Cheney/Rumsfeld duplicate intelligence aparatus should be proof enough that oversight of the Executive serves a useful purpose.
While the NYT is free to publish almost anything they want, the co-author (by nature of his/her employment) is not, which was the problem in this situation.
Leverett is now at the New America Foundation, and left the CIA some time ago. Since he *used to* work at the CIA, the article had to be reviewed by the CIA. The CIA approved it. What is disconcerting in this instance is that the White House injected itself into the secrets review process. This raises flags because if the White House an override the CIA during the secrets review process, it could easily manipulate that ability for domestic political ends. Want to keep the discussion on Iran policy from going in a certain direction? Want to blunt an attack by a knowledgeable ex-CIA agent? Control the secrets review process.
It's hard-core science, too. Look at the scientifical results:
The report stated, "Some changes in muscle tension were quite dramatic While this was happening, the participants faces also tensed visibly, with the teeth clenched together and the muscles around the mouth becoming taught. These are physically uncomfortable situations that reduce concentration and increase feelings of anger."
Apple may negate this advantage somewhat with their iTV box, but it would have to sell a lot of units to compare to the 360's already-substantial install base.
True indeed. I wasn't really comparing iTV to the 360, but your argument makes sense if the point of comparison is iTV (or whatever it winds up being called) to the 360. I'm not sure that the device is the point of comparison, per se. The service is the real lynchpin of success or failure, imho. Right now iTunes has the lead because of the tight integration between iTunes and the iPod. There are many iTunes users who listen to music and watch video on their computers, but I'm not sure how it stacks up in that regard against the 360. Apple seems to be building out a system wherein the service is the hub, and various types of hardware tap into it. Microsoft, on the other hand, is leading with the hardware, using the 360 as the point of entry to the service. Apple has the advantage of versatility and mobility, while Microsoft has the advantage in connecting directly to the TV. Ultimately I think Apple may have a more successful strategy, because the TV is an inherently limited device, and I don't think the business model for consoles will survive past the next few years.
Then again, I've been wrong many times before. It's going to be an interesting battle to watch.
They arbitrarily set the list at 10 entries, even though there may be only 3 quality products, or 52 quality products
They encourage lazy thinking, by comparing apples to oranges
They have become so common that any one top 10 list becomes indistinguishable from any other top 10 list
They almost never include any sort of ranking criteria, so readers don't know if the decisions were made on the basis of *cough* advertising dollars or a more rigorous standard
NOTHING illegal about making a site called mp3s4free.net.
In the United States, Grokster was decided in large part because of the overall effect of Grokster's marketing of its service. The "inducement to infringe" was proven by Grokster advertising, which compared it to Napster and in effect said, "Hey, Napster is illegal and got shut down, but you can do the same stuff at our wonderful site that you used to be able to do at Napster!" Many legal commentators have noted that if Grokster hadn't so obviously stepped on its crank, the US Supreme Court might have decided the case differently. Instead of begging to be sued, they should have touted the non-infringing uses of the service, such as sharing public domain content.
People jump all over courts for being "stupid" when they don't see the obvious. The mp3s4free name in itself obviously isn't illegal. But it seems that mp3s4free was engaged in rather obvious and stupid inducement to infringe, and the "we're just linking to other sites" argument is a poor smokescreen for the fact that it was a clearinghouse for infringing activity. Your repetition of the word NOTHING doesn't change that.
Filesharing services need to get smart about the law if they want to win these cases. They need to build the services carefully, bringing in partners (such as Archive.org for example) who can provide a wide range of files (think academic uses, archiving of public domain works, sharing of user-created materials). The more a P2P service can show that it is really about distribution of useful content, rather than mere inducement to infringe copyrighted works, the easier it will be to de-stigmatize P2P services in general. In the mean time, the courts and the public at large will look at P2P as a technology used primarily to infringe on copyrighted works.
If MS were to incorporate free content (sans DRM), offer MUCH larger hard drives for the 360 (120 GB+), and improve their interface (adding search capability, and RSS feed-like subscription option, etc. like iTunes) they would be the kings.
The first barrier to MS dominating the download market is that in order to use the wonderful service, you have to buy an XBox 360. Non-gamers (and there are a few of them out there) are uninterested in buying a console merely to replicate features they can already get on their computer.
Agreed. But the next time I see the phrase "repeat after me" on Slashdot, I'm going to go down to Fry's and sling giant vats of flaming bat guano all over the aisles until the police drag me away, kicking and screaming, babbling on about trite, overused expressions on Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you know that only the person or organization with the most money is ever responsible?
A plaintiff will go after who ever has the deepest pockets, but that doesn't mean the plaintiff will recover from the defendant with the most money. In this case, however, it is likely that because the woman was invited to the contest, she was for legal purposes an invitee. There is a legal difference between the standard of care you have toward someone you randomly encounter on the street, for example, and someone you invite into your home, place of business, or perhaps a contest.
Just becuase there may be a higher standard of care in this case doesn't mean that the radio station will be found negligent. However, just because she signed waiver forms doesn't mean they will be automatically not be found negligent. Many people hold the mistaken belief that waivers of liability automatically protect the party drafting the waiver, but in actuality if the language of a waiver is nonobvious, or if it is weighted too far in favor of the rights of the drafting party, sections of the waiver can be ruled non-binding.
Police and prosecutors don't care what really happened because their job is to arrest and convict - that's what we reward them for. We'd be silly to expect anything different.
It's not a one-sided system. If the defense attorney wasn't utterly incompetent, the defendant wouldn't have lost the case.
No Verizon. No hardware keypad. Lame.
I should have put a charming ;-) in there to show the tongue firmly in cheek.
Could Britain, rather than the US, be the main front of the battle against censorship in 2007?
I thought such stupidity was the exclusive domain of the United States.
And people said Ford didn't have a chance.
If the New York Times says it, then it must be true -- NOT!
Are you saying that the NYT is incorrect, and Apple's own internal investigation did not clear Jobs? Or are you saying that somehow the NYT is biased in favor of Apple, and made up the entire story? Or are you actually talking about something completely unrelated to Apple, Steve Jobs, and the story at hand?
We all know that just because Apple cleared Jobs that doesn't mean there wasn't some wrongdoing on his part, but the NYT is merely reporting on what Apple found. Why do you think their reporting on this is innacurate?
I can tell you that Newsvine has a very interesting formula going for a user driven interactive news site.
I agree. The biggest problem is that the Newsvine community just feels too small. Part of this may be that people who enjoy thoughful, stimulating discussion have already been turned off by discussion boards in general (or are already in Slashdot, of course). While Yahoo! is taking down its boards, look at the absurd comments that permeate C|NET, for example. It's like watching third graders fling boogers at each other.
The real reason more sites don't go to effective moderation systems seems to be they truly want to provoke the most asenine, aggression-inducing responses possible, so as to keep the third graders coming back for more. There may be far more of the booger-flingers out there than there are reasonable people. Then again, it may be that once again the public is being underestimated by the pointy-haired bosses who run sites that provide an outlet for unmoderated booger-flinging. I hope it's the latter, but I fear the former may be true.
BTW, I don't know where the frack the whole booger-throwing theme came from. Am I trippin' on TheraFlu again?
I know I don't.
That was a big one for a while.
Seems now the rumors have flipped on that one.
Yeah yeah yeah - lawyer.. evil.. tell it to the birmingham five.. or any black kid attending school in the south.. or anyone who was arrested and found not guilty due to lack of evidence.
This is Slashdot. Lawyers ARE inherently evil here. The gestalt view is that when you're discussing lawyers in a given situation, there is really only *one* lawyer. That's the lawyer on the wrong side of the case. The other lawyer(s), representing the right side of the case, don't exist. Technophiles apparently are just as fond of having a whipping boy as any other demographic.
I'm also a law student, and the way I often explain lawyers and the law to most people is that the law is like plumbing. Everyone needs it, but nobody ever thinks about it until it's not working properly. The people who deal with the plumbing charge too much, they don't show up on time, and nobody really enjoys having to do business with them. You can do the plumbing yourself, but the more complicated the problem, the more important it is to have one of those stinky, dirty plumbers do it instead.
It is my view that most Americans (can't speak for people in other places, with other legal systems) don't often consider that the alternative to a complex and often unwieldy legal process is much less desirable.
Suffice to say, America invites criticism by braying to the entire world about how wonderful and free it is. Can you really blame people for taking the bait and engaging in some critical analysis of those claims?
Not all Americans loudly proclaim that America is the most wonderful, free nation on earth. Still, I can't blame people for taking the bait and ranting about America and Americans. Remember that while half of America thinks God is on our side, the other half is mad as hell at having our country hijacked by the Crackpot Right. I just like to know what the ranters are using as a point of comparison.
I'm glad to hear things are going so well in Canada. I met with some legal professionals from Canada a couple of years ago, and I was impressed with the civility not only of the people, but of the society at large. I had the same experience the few times I went to Ontario back in the 1990s. One of the problems with America is that we don't look past our own borders most of the time, so we often fail to see that our way isn't always the best way.
That you don't lynch-mob government officials that engage in gerrymandering is proof enough that you don't even care if your elections are even remotely representative.
I'm an American, and I'm not at all happy with the direction our country has been moving over the last several years. But America is also an easy target for criticism because of its huge footprint. The mistakes we make have more of an impact on people in other countries, but that doesn't mean we're alone in making mistakes. It does get tiresome reading rants about America when you don't know where the ranters are from. A simple preface like, "Here in the UK, where things are just peachy..." would be nice once in a while.
Bashing America is ludicrously easy, but it's not the height of integrity to take shots at Americans without at least revealing your own country of origin.
As an aside, perhaps you also underestimate the ability of the American system of government to right itself without resort to violence. You seem to think it would be reasonable to resort to the lynch mob, but I've seen the aftermath of a civil war up close. I prefer the pen to the sword.
The Presidents power with regards to his agenda is well defined. Simply throwing "political" in front of the word "agenda" is a cheap way of actually "politicizing" the issue as "big bad state" vs "little old us".
This is not about the big bad state vs. the people. It is about the President manipulating the CIA so it does not allow an ex-agent to bring into the public debate matters that the President finds unpalatable. It is yet another case of the Executive Branch under W routing around the rules of American government in the belief that the Executive should be able to do essentially do whatever it wants. I do think it holds water that the article was redacted specifically because it would cause some readers to question the President's policy with regard to Iran. Are you saying that the Executive redacted the article for legitimate national security reasons? That seems a rather difficult case to make.
"Politics" is not a dirty word to me, but if the President is stifling the public debate under the guise of national security, and in so doing compromising the CIA's ability to manage its own affairs, he is in essence treating the agency like his own fiefdom. The issue has already been politicized by the Executive's action in redacting the article when the CIA said there was no national security need to do so. If the CIA had simply disallowed publication of the article through normal means because it compromised national security, nobody, self included, would have been bothered by it.
The power grab by the Executive may seem fine now, if you feel that Bush is operating in the nation's best interest. But what happens when the next President steps in and uses the same broad powers in a way that doesn't suit you? That's the problem with stealth structural changes in government. They may seem alright at first if they fit your politics, but they can boomerang later.
Like most Best Buy customers, I should be able to afford this package. At $15,000 it's a steal, really.
Like it or not, the President is the Chief Executive and the CIA works for him at our behest.
True. But the President's power as Chief Executive is not absolute. For example, while he is the Commander in Chief, he could send American forces to invade the UK because he doesn't like the way they they spell the word "honour," Congress can make it a short expedition by disallowing military funds to be used in such an operation. Similarly, the Director of the CIA works for the President but has to answer to Congress for his actions. See the Carter-era CIA reforms, in which Congress was the primary mover.
The fact that the CIA operates under the Executive does not mean that the President should be allowed to use it to advance his domestic political agenda. The failure of the Cheney/Rumsfeld duplicate intelligence aparatus should be proof enough that oversight of the Executive serves a useful purpose.
While the NYT is free to publish almost anything they want, the co-author (by nature of his/her employment) is not, which was the problem in this situation.
Leverett is now at the New America Foundation, and left the CIA some time ago. Since he *used to* work at the CIA, the article had to be reviewed by the CIA. The CIA approved it. What is disconcerting in this instance is that the White House injected itself into the secrets review process. This raises flags because if the White House an override the CIA during the secrets review process, it could easily manipulate that ability for domestic political ends. Want to keep the discussion on Iran policy from going in a certain direction? Want to blunt an attack by a knowledgeable ex-CIA agent? Control the secrets review process.
Whoa. That's some advanced sheot!
It's hard-core science, too. Look at the scientifical results:
The report stated, "Some changes in muscle tension were quite dramatic While this was happening, the participants faces also tensed visibly, with the teeth clenched together and the muscles around the mouth becoming taught. These are physically uncomfortable situations that reduce concentration and increase feelings of anger."
I'm surprised that nobody has ever done anything like this before!
Name me one person in the real world who is completely evil, other than Hitler.
Easy. Bob Saget.
Apple may negate this advantage somewhat with their iTV box, but it would have to sell a lot of units to compare to the 360's already-substantial install base.
True indeed. I wasn't really comparing iTV to the 360, but your argument makes sense if the point of comparison is iTV (or whatever it winds up being called) to the 360. I'm not sure that the device is the point of comparison, per se. The service is the real lynchpin of success or failure, imho. Right now iTunes has the lead because of the tight integration between iTunes and the iPod. There are many iTunes users who listen to music and watch video on their computers, but I'm not sure how it stacks up in that regard against the 360. Apple seems to be building out a system wherein the service is the hub, and various types of hardware tap into it. Microsoft, on the other hand, is leading with the hardware, using the 360 as the point of entry to the service. Apple has the advantage of versatility and mobility, while Microsoft has the advantage in connecting directly to the TV. Ultimately I think Apple may have a more successful strategy, because the TV is an inherently limited device, and I don't think the business model for consoles will survive past the next few years.
Then again, I've been wrong many times before. It's going to be an interesting battle to watch.
NOTHING illegal about making a site called mp3s4free.net.
In the United States, Grokster was decided in large part because of the overall effect of Grokster's marketing of its service. The "inducement to infringe" was proven by Grokster advertising, which compared it to Napster and in effect said, "Hey, Napster is illegal and got shut down, but you can do the same stuff at our wonderful site that you used to be able to do at Napster!" Many legal commentators have noted that if Grokster hadn't so obviously stepped on its crank, the US Supreme Court might have decided the case differently. Instead of begging to be sued, they should have touted the non-infringing uses of the service, such as sharing public domain content.
People jump all over courts for being "stupid" when they don't see the obvious. The mp3s4free name in itself obviously isn't illegal. But it seems that mp3s4free was engaged in rather obvious and stupid inducement to infringe, and the "we're just linking to other sites" argument is a poor smokescreen for the fact that it was a clearinghouse for infringing activity. Your repetition of the word NOTHING doesn't change that.
Filesharing services need to get smart about the law if they want to win these cases. They need to build the services carefully, bringing in partners (such as Archive.org for example) who can provide a wide range of files (think academic uses, archiving of public domain works, sharing of user-created materials). The more a P2P service can show that it is really about distribution of useful content, rather than mere inducement to infringe copyrighted works, the easier it will be to de-stigmatize P2P services in general. In the mean time, the courts and the public at large will look at P2P as a technology used primarily to infringe on copyrighted works.
If MS were to incorporate free content (sans DRM), offer MUCH larger hard drives for the 360 (120 GB+), and improve their interface (adding search capability, and RSS feed-like subscription option, etc. like iTunes) they would be the kings.
The first barrier to MS dominating the download market is that in order to use the wonderful service, you have to buy an XBox 360. Non-gamers (and there are a few of them out there) are uninterested in buying a console merely to replicate features they can already get on their computer.
Can you bail me out of jail?
Non-techies don't care about this shit. (x3)
Agreed. But the next time I see the phrase "repeat after me" on Slashdot, I'm going to go down to Fry's and sling giant vats of flaming bat guano all over the aisles until the police drag me away, kicking and screaming, babbling on about trite, overused expressions on Slashdot.