You link deals with affidavits, where you are making sworn statement and wish to qualify something you don't have direct knowledge of. Complaints aren't written that way, a complaint is presented as a set of facts.
You clearly didn't read the link:
information and belief n. a phrase often used in legal pleadings (complaints and answers in a lawsuit), declarations under penalty of perjury, and affidavits under oath, in which the person making the statement or allegation qualifies it. In effect, he/she says: "I am only stating what I have been told, and I believe it." This makes clear about which statements he/she does not have sure-fire, personal knowledge (perhaps it is just hearsay or surmise) and protects the maker of the statement from claims of outright falsehood or perjury. The typical phraseology is: "Plaintiff is informed and believes, and upon such information and belief, alleges that defendant diverted the funds to his own use."
Note that the three examples of places where it is used are: 1) Legal pleadings (complaints and answers), 2) Declarations under penalty of perjury, and 3) Affidavits under oath
Pleadings (including complaints) are the very first thing referred to in the link which you claim only deals with affidavits but not complaints.
Complaints are in fact written that way, as the examples I presented in response to your other response to the same comment demonstrate.
I'm not saying they need evidence, I'm saying they need to clearly and succintly explain what the alleged tort is. Instead they claim that they have a belief. I've seen a bunch of complaints and they aren't usually worded like this.
I've seen a bunch of complaints, and they are a mixed bag, but references to "information and belief" aren't all that uncommon. Here are a few examples from a quick googling:
Write a program with multiple logically inconsistent statements and it will collapse in a screaming heap. But when mounting a legal defence (or attack), you're allowed make logically incompatible statements.
Not really; for the most part, you are allowed to, for instance, argue that one of two (or more) logically inconsistent scenarios is the case and present the arguments for each. It's not really at all analogous to much in programming, because if you right a program you are ordering the computer what to do, and of course you can't order it to do two incompatible things without bad things happening.
When you are making a legal argument you are asking the court to do something, and there is no contradiction in saying, citing proper authority for each contention: 1) You should throw out this claim entirely, because the facts the plaintiff alleges don't justify the kind of action he has brought; 2) If, somehow, you manage to find that such an action is justified by the allegations, you can't allow the punitive damages the plaintiff is seeking, because the kind of action the plaintiff has brought is one that doesn't allow punitive damages; and finally 3) Even if you ignore the fact that the plaintiff isn't allowed to seek punitive damages for this kind of claim, the amoung of punitive damages the plaintiff is seeking exceeds the maximum punitive damages allowed based on its relation to the actual damages claimed.
Or, for an analogy that might make it something that is understandable from a programmer's perspective rather than the foreign art of "feces-flinging" you make it out to be, consider that often enough the lawyers job is something like pointing out why the other sides "program" is wrong. So, you point out the bug that gets hit first, then the bug that would get hit if that one was fixed, and then...
Of course, the difference is that whether or not a legal argument is "correct" is less amenable to unequivocal testing than (most, at least) computer code.
So they're alleging that they believe something ? Shouldn't their allegation be "Defendant illegally downloaded our stuff" and not "We believe the defendant illegally downloaded our stuff".
One initiating a lawsuit is not required to have evidence establishing the truth of every claim before filing a complaint (that's what discovery to develop evidence and trials are for); those things that the plaintiff does in fact believe and will seek to establish as fact, but which the plaintiff cannot state as certain facts, are often qualified in complaints as being stated on "information or belief" or some close variation on that phrasing.
It's not bad writing, its domain-specific writing.
If I were the judge I'd be included to say "Believe whatever you want, case closed!"
Its probably a good thing you aren't a judge, then.
Note that the US also has a "piracy tax" on certain recordable media that is connected to the provisions of law that allow noncommercial individual sharing of recorded copyright-protected audio (but using a computer in the reproduction is explicitly excluded) under the Audio Home Recording Act.
The only genocide situation there is the fact that Hamas, Hesbollah, Iran, and similar parties don't even recognize the rights of Israelis to exist, and they frequently call for extermination.
Er, no, they don't recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist, and frequently call for the people of Israel to be pushed out of the area they currently occupy; this is little different than the frequent calls on the Israeli Right, which have abated a bit in the last few years, for the displacement of the Palestinian population (under the innocuous name of the policy of "transfer") out of the occupied territories to be absorbed into existing Arab states to allow Israel more breathing room.
Just as an observation, you see several PS3 fans say that you can't buy a PC that outperforms the PS3...
Really, where? The only time I've seen anything like that is in response to the inevitable "anything you can do on a PS3 you can do cheaper on a PC" where the response is that you can't buy a sub-$600 PC that outperforms a PS3.
Hmm.. I sure haven't extensively studied the founding fathers of the US, but it's my understanding that they were quite driven to establish liberty, and not simply driven by greed or a lust for power.
I didn't say anything about the US founding fathers in particular, I said both types of revolt are often shaped by certain processes. OTOH, every revolutions leaders, now matter how self-interested their goals actually are, of course mouth propaganda that appeals to the masses with noble ideals. Often (even when they are serving their self-interest) they likely believe it, too, the human mind has a vast capacity for rationalizing self-interest in idealistic terms. And, of course, the leaders of many revolutions of any kind are going to be a diverse bunch, not a bunch of people whose motives, overt and deeper, are all identical.
In any case, I think arguing details of the specific motivations of the American revolution in response to a discussion of the relation of the Chinese situation with general trends it what motivates or produces rebellion is somewhat pointless if it isn't grounded in anything broader than the particular motivation of particular American leaders.
Huh. I could have sworn most of the founding fathers in the US were wealthy land owners.
The "American Revolution" was a regional separatist movement, which has a bit of a different dynamic than other "revolutions". Still, there is a bit of a point there: both types of revolts are often driven by the at least moderately well-off who see themselves as positioned to be even more well-off if the revolution succeeds, but rely on the plight of the badly off who are easily driven to resent either the physically distant (in the case of regional separatist movements) or socially distant (in other revolutions) ruling class for foot soldiers, though in revolutions other than regional separatist movements, the plight of the poor versus the apparent position of the rich generally has to be very bad, because there is otherwise generally less of a distinct clash of identity between the people revolting and those they are revolting against (though clear differences race, religion, or similar identity between the ruled and the rulers can facilitate in creating a clash that can drive rebellion with less of a visible economic divide.)
Muslims think that once they conquer a region, they own it for all time, even if it reconquered later.
Um, I don't remember Muslims demanding soveriegnty over territory that that they'd lost over 2,000 years previously based on their past conquest.
So, while Muslims may have the problem you describe, it certainly isn't unique to them, even among, say, major monotheistic religions of Middle Eastern origin.
It probably has something to do with Nintendo trying to do things in a new way, while Sony/MS are "just" doing the things they do better. Novelty and originality does count.
"Novelty" often counts a lot more two insiders than to the buying public, which is one reason that in entertainment fields in general, "critical acclaim" and "commercial success" are only occasionally found in the same place.
Of course, the northern part of the South American continent used to basically be an unmitigated hell of human sacrifice that valued individual human life less than China (or the US, for that matter) does today.
Presuming that you are referring to the example usually cited for this kind of thing in pre-Columbian America, don't you mean the soutehrn part of the continent of North America, not the northern part of South America?
The very political and military leaders who create assassination weapons will use them on... each other.
That's not really that bad, after all, if anyone deserves it...
The bigger problem is that the political and military leaders who create assassination weapons will continue to use them on "terrorists", the definition of which will slowly expand as those leaders feel threatened from more directions.
Will it be able to arrest, charge, and try the terrorist in a court of law? If it can't, you're building an assassination weapon, and you are building up criminals into enemies.
Assassination is already the state policy of Israel, and enthusiastically pursued, and it was even in the occupied palestinian territories before they were granted some shadow of nominal self-rule that provided Israel some PR cover for not trying to arrest and prosecute suspects. So its unsurprising that they are creating an assassination weapon. Assassination is a central feature of their policy.
You don't fight criminals by gunning them down in the street.
Well, you might not, but then, you aren't Israel.
Israel's been doing this for decades, and will continue doing it for the foreseeable future. Whether or not it is either civilized or effective doesn't seem factor into the decision-making process.
Pretty much any Linux geek will tell you that's a load of jibberish, not unlike the SCO case. But, should it come to Microsoft and Novell going to court over this, couldn't this still spell trouble for Novell?
Sure, especially since deals like this often, as I understand, include covenants not to challenge IP claims of the side that claims that it has IP involved; part of what is being "bought" is the other side yielding to the claim that the other side owns the IP rights at issue.
A lengthy trial isn't cheap (and neither are out-of-court settlements). And the worst case scenario - maybe this could even spell trouble for Linux itself?
If the FUD is successful, regardless of the merits, it could slow Linux adoption in enterprise environments, sure, that's the whole point of the exercise.
Wanna share your thoughts on how you came to this conclusion? It seems pretty ridiculous to me. There are many things you can say about Bill Gates, but claiming that he is simply a management type that doesn't know anything about how computers work is definitely not one of them.
Er, "Bill doesn't know personal computers any better than the average hospital administrator knows the human immune system" does not imply "that he is simply a management type that doesn't know anything about how computers work". Hospital administrators are not infrequently themselves physicians, after all. They just aren't, as a class (individuals may be exceptional) particularly the most accomplished among physicians at innovating in the non-administrative aspects of healthcare.
Likewise, Gates clearly has some technical background, but hardly, from a technical perspective, one of the great innovators, personally, in the computing field.
Not everyone starts college immediately after high school, and not everyone finishes in exactly four years.
And not everyone takes until 18 to graduate from high school, and not everyone goes to college at all. A sizable percentage of under 25s are not students, and a sizable percentage of those that are have a life that extends beyond campus.
Further, it seems that what this offers is not simply a "notification" as the contact crosses into or out of the range, as I read it, it gives you a realtime update of position, whenever they are within the range you specify (from, per TFA, a minimum of 0.5 mile to a maximum of 25 miles).
Lack of knowledge about a phone? Get real. This is the under-25 crowd we're talking about.
You mean like the one that was, less than an hour ago, complaining to me about how much they hate getting a new phone, and trying to figure out all it can do and how to do it?
...can anyone here tell me what makes this even remotely (pardon the expression) a GOOD idea?
Having had my wife become ill when commuting home and having had her call on her cell phone only able to tell me that she was parked, and near some trees, and unable to stay awake, I can certainly see a good use for this.
We have been using technology to bring people closer, but there are some advantages to keeping one's distance.
Apparently, you can deactivate the feature that provides your information. Admittedly, I'd prefer a more fine-grained control than the article suggests, but then I'm not going to rush to be an early adopter. The general technology and concept is good and useful, and to allow you to keep your distance, if you want.
Say I want one of AMD's chips in my headless server, am I going to have to buy a more expensive processor because it has a high powered GPU that I don't want or need?
Probably AMD will continue to make GPU-less chips for headless servers and specialized applications where no GPU is needed, just as (for a while, at least) Intel made 486SX chips which were 486s without the FPU, when FPUs were first build into CPUs. Although with the emergence of ideas to leverage GPUs for non-display applications, I wouldn't be surprised if such a model were, like the 486SX with FPUs, merely a short-term transition to a future where GPUs are part of the processor in most general purpose computers.
What if I want to build a system with a good processor to start, but due to budget reasons want to hold off on buying a good video card?
You'll be in the same place that people wanting a good general purpose processor that wanted to save money by not buying an FPU right away were once FPUs became standard features: SOL. OTOH, its quite possible that the CPU+GPU combo units will be enough less expensive than CPU + GPU separately that they'll justify the extra expense for most purchasers.
Combining the CPU and GPU may make sense for embedded systems or as a replacement for integrated graphics, but I cannot see it working for those who prefer to have specific components based on other factors.
Probably, but the former are the overwhelming majority of the market, and the latter a small minority. Is it worth it to manufacturers to not serve the first well in order to cater to the latter? Perhaps not.
But since when do CUSTOMERS get sued for patent infringement? Last I checked it was only the vendors of infringing products that could get sued for patent infringement.
Generally, in US law, "whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent." [35 USC 271(a); emphasis added]
No, I merely presume that the software which the FSF owns the copyright on will move to GPL v3.
Right, you assume that the Linux community will move to the GPL v3 for that software. The FSF, of course, can control which version of the license it releases new versions under, but has no control over the rest of the community. You assume that without Novell forking the code there won't already be a GPL v2 vs. GPL v3 fork of those key pieces of software you list that are now out in the wild under a GPL v2 license with the "or any later version" clause: otherwise, Novell having to rely on the GPL v2 wouldn't deprive them of the community benefit.
My point was that there appears to be considerable ambivalence about the new restrictions in the GPL v3, and a GPL v2 vs. GPL v3 split of many of those things you list isn't quite possible whatever Novell does. Given that, Novell likely wouldn't have to fork anything (or at least, not all the things you list) itself, since some, many, or perhaps all of them are likely to be forked anyway for reasons entirely independent of Novell's patent deal with Microsoft.
Yeah, Novell might decide to fork the entire GCC toolchain, the standard C libraries, the file utilities, the shell, the bootloader, and go it alone maintaining the entire system without the benefit of the Linux community.
You seem to presume the "Linux community" is going to seamlessly move as a herd from GPL v2 to GPL v3 for all of those things: that seems less than clear at this point. There's been a lot of back and forth about the desirability of lots of things in GPL v3, and for lots of widely used things that are licensed under GPL v2 with the "or any later version" clause, there may well be a v2/v3 fork whatever Novell does or doesn't do.
Slashdot Mirror
You clearly didn't read the link:
Note that the three examples of places where it is used are:
1) Legal pleadings (complaints and answers),
2) Declarations under penalty of perjury, and
3) Affidavits under oath
Pleadings (including complaints) are the very first thing referred to in the link which you claim only deals with affidavits but not complaints.
Complaints are in fact written that way, as the examples I presented in response to your other response to the same comment demonstrate.
I've seen a bunch of complaints, and they are a mixed bag, but references to "information and belief" aren't all that uncommon. Here are a few examples from a quick googling:
Raytheon v. John Does 1-21
Roadrunner v. Network Solutions
US v. Olivia Alaw, et al.
Macromedia v. Adobe Systems
British Telecom v. Prodigy
The use of allegations on "information and belief" is very common.
Not really; for the most part, you are allowed to, for instance, argue that one of two (or more) logically inconsistent scenarios is the case and present the arguments for each. It's not really at all analogous to much in programming, because if you right a program you are ordering the computer what to do, and of course you can't order it to do two incompatible things without bad things happening.
When you are making a legal argument you are asking the court to do something, and there is no contradiction in saying, citing proper authority for each contention:
1) You should throw out this claim entirely, because the facts the plaintiff alleges don't justify the kind of action he has brought;
2) If, somehow, you manage to find that such an action is justified by the allegations, you can't allow the punitive damages the plaintiff is seeking, because the kind of action the plaintiff has brought is one that doesn't allow punitive damages; and finally
3) Even if you ignore the fact that the plaintiff isn't allowed to seek punitive damages for this kind of claim, the amoung of punitive damages the plaintiff is seeking exceeds the maximum punitive damages allowed based on its relation to the actual damages claimed.
Or, for an analogy that might make it something that is understandable from a programmer's perspective rather than the foreign art of "feces-flinging" you make it out to be, consider that often enough the lawyers job is something like pointing out why the other sides "program" is wrong. So, you point out the bug that gets hit first, then the bug that would get hit if that one was fixed, and then...
Of course, the difference is that whether or not a legal argument is "correct" is less amenable to unequivocal testing than (most, at least) computer code.
One initiating a lawsuit is not required to have evidence establishing the truth of every claim before filing a complaint (that's what discovery to develop evidence and trials are for); those things that the plaintiff does in fact believe and will seek to establish as fact, but which the plaintiff cannot state as certain facts, are often qualified in complaints as being stated on "information or belief" or some close variation on that phrasing.
It's not bad writing, its domain-specific writing.
Its probably a good thing you aren't a judge, then.
Note that the US also has a "piracy tax" on certain recordable media that is connected to the provisions of law that allow noncommercial individual sharing of recorded copyright-protected audio (but using a computer in the reproduction is explicitly excluded) under the Audio Home Recording Act.
Er, no, they don't recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist, and frequently call for the people of Israel to be pushed out of the area they currently occupy; this is little different than the frequent calls on the Israeli Right, which have abated a bit in the last few years, for the displacement of the Palestinian population (under the innocuous name of the policy of "transfer") out of the occupied territories to be absorbed into existing Arab states to allow Israel more breathing room.
Really, where? The only time I've seen anything like that is in response to the inevitable "anything you can do on a PS3 you can do cheaper on a PC" where the response is that you can't buy a sub-$600 PC that outperforms a PS3.
I didn't say anything about the US founding fathers in particular, I said both types of revolt are often shaped by certain processes. OTOH, every revolutions leaders, now matter how self-interested their goals actually are, of course mouth propaganda that appeals to the masses with noble ideals. Often (even when they are serving their self-interest) they likely believe it, too, the human mind has a vast capacity for rationalizing self-interest in idealistic terms. And, of course, the leaders of many revolutions of any kind are going to be a diverse bunch, not a bunch of people whose motives, overt and deeper, are all identical.
In any case, I think arguing details of the specific motivations of the American revolution in response to a discussion of the relation of the Chinese situation with general trends it what motivates or produces rebellion is somewhat pointless if it isn't grounded in anything broader than the particular motivation of particular American leaders.
Um, I don't remember Muslims demanding soveriegnty over territory that that they'd lost over 2,000 years previously based on their past conquest.
So, while Muslims may have the problem you describe, it certainly isn't unique to them, even among, say, major monotheistic religions of Middle Eastern origin.
You defend offensively: you send your robot killers to kill their robot-killer operators before their robot killers kill you.
Also, you build small autonomous robots designed to detect and attack enemy robot killers.
"Novelty" often counts a lot more two insiders than to the buying public, which is one reason that in entertainment fields in general, "critical acclaim" and "commercial success" are only occasionally found in the same place.
Presuming that you are referring to the example usually cited for this kind of thing in pre-Columbian America, don't you mean the soutehrn part of the continent of North America, not the northern part of South America?
That's not really that bad, after all, if anyone deserves it...
The bigger problem is that the political and military leaders who create assassination weapons will continue to use them on "terrorists", the definition of which will slowly expand as those leaders feel threatened from more directions.
Sure, especially since deals like this often, as I understand, include covenants not to challenge IP claims of the side that claims that it has IP involved; part of what is being "bought" is the other side yielding to the claim that the other side owns the IP rights at issue.
If the FUD is successful, regardless of the merits, it could slow Linux adoption in enterprise environments, sure, that's the whole point of the exercise.
Er, "Bill doesn't know personal computers any better than the average hospital administrator knows the human immune system" does not imply "that he is simply a management type that doesn't know anything about how computers work". Hospital administrators are not infrequently themselves physicians, after all. They just aren't, as a class (individuals may be exceptional) particularly the most accomplished among physicians at innovating in the non-administrative aspects of healthcare.
Likewise, Gates clearly has some technical background, but hardly, from a technical perspective, one of the great innovators, personally, in the computing field.
And not everyone takes until 18 to graduate from high school, and not everyone goes to college at all. A sizable percentage of under 25s are not students, and a sizable percentage of those that are have a life that extends beyond campus.
Further, it seems that what this offers is not simply a "notification" as the contact crosses into or out of the range, as I read it, it gives you a realtime update of position, whenever they are within the range you specify (from, per TFA, a minimum of 0.5 mile to a maximum of 25 miles).
Probably AMD will continue to make GPU-less chips for headless servers and specialized applications where no GPU is needed, just as (for a while, at least) Intel made 486SX chips which were 486s without the FPU, when FPUs were first build into CPUs. Although with the emergence of ideas to leverage GPUs for non-display applications, I wouldn't be surprised if such a model were, like the 486SX with FPUs, merely a short-term transition to a future where GPUs are part of the processor in most general purpose computers.
You'll be in the same place that people wanting a good general purpose processor that wanted to save money by not buying an FPU right away were once FPUs became standard features: SOL. OTOH, its quite possible that the CPU+GPU combo units will be enough less expensive than CPU + GPU separately that they'll justify the extra expense for most purchasers.
Probably, but the former are the overwhelming majority of the market, and the latter a small minority. Is it worth it to manufacturers to not serve the first well in order to cater to the latter? Perhaps not.
Generally, in US law, "whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent." [35 USC 271(a); emphasis added]
Right, you assume that the Linux community will move to the GPL v3 for that software. The FSF, of course, can control which version of the license it releases new versions under, but has no control over the rest of the community. You assume that without Novell forking the code there won't already be a GPL v2 vs. GPL v3 fork of those key pieces of software you list that are now out in the wild under a GPL v2 license with the "or any later version" clause: otherwise, Novell having to rely on the GPL v2 wouldn't deprive them of the community benefit.
My point was that there appears to be considerable ambivalence about the new restrictions in the GPL v3, and a GPL v2 vs. GPL v3 split of many of those things you list isn't quite possible whatever Novell does. Given that, Novell likely wouldn't have to fork anything (or at least, not all the things you list) itself, since some, many, or perhaps all of them are likely to be forked anyway for reasons entirely independent of Novell's patent deal with Microsoft.
You seem to presume the "Linux community" is going to seamlessly move as a herd from GPL v2 to GPL v3 for all of those things: that seems less than clear at this point. There's been a lot of back and forth about the desirability of lots of things in GPL v3, and for lots of widely used things that are licensed under GPL v2 with the "or any later version" clause, there may well be a v2/v3 fork whatever Novell does or doesn't do.