My wife is an elementary school teacher. She had to take "restraint training" and I asked her what that was. It's training to "restrain" an unruly and potentially violent student. But here's the thing, she's not allowed to touch the student! The student can physically assualt her and the other children in the classroom, but she can't grab him by the wrist.
I don't know about everywhere, but in many places, the actual law is that teachers have every bit as much legal right to touch students to maintain discpline as a parent would, and certainly can restrain them (they can't inflict corporal punishment.) Lots of districts, though, apply hyperrestrictive policies for two reasons (1) they are afraid not of what is illegal but what might be close enough to the edge that someone might file a lawsuit that might cost the district some money even if the lawsuit ultimately fails, so they want to draw the lines in policy ridiculously far back from the law [often far enough back that I'm surprised there aren't more lawsuits for inaction that gets students in their care hurt], and (2) it gives them a hammer to blame controversial actions on individual teachers, by prohibiting as much as possible under the policy, while if something turns out right, the policy gets ignored.
The Asst Principal should be fired right now, for setting such a bad example. What ever happened to "Sticks and stones...".
Um, its still a common thing people say to children that doesn't mean its okay to lie, or that people don't have, or shouldn't avail themselves, of legal recourse when they are attacked.
She is a grown adult. At no time is she in any danger by this myspace page, and any judge will recognize that.
Since the cause of action is "libel" rather than, say, "assault", the presence of some kind of danger other than the reputational harm that defamation produces is completely irrelevant.
It's all completely harmless. At no time is she at risk for a financial loss by the page, and she won't be in the future. Nobody can prove any harm was done whatsoever. Sure, some bloggers are committing libel, but that's not the same as calling somebody a lesbian.
Proof of actual harm is not required where the false claim falls into one of the categories of "libel per se" that are legally presumed to be inherently harmful. Generally, false accusations of homosexuality have been in that category, and while there appears to be some signs of movement on that issue, it apparently is still the case under Texas law.
However by seeking to retaliate against the students, she is displaying a very poor moral character and bad judgement.
I don't see how it is poor moral character or bad judgement to sue someone who has legally wronged you in this way.
"X/Windows" is not the same "Windows"; the existence of "X/Windows" as a term for a proprietary product in use (trademarked or not) in the area "Windows" existed was targetting in is not the same thing as "Windows" already being a generic term for the thing Microsoft was seeking to trademark it as a label for.
Hormel was really applying for a grossly abusive trademark that is akin to someone trying to trademark "tissue" as used to refer to a tissue, today in 2006, when the word has been in general use for countless years.
Its nothing like Microsoft trademarking Windows for its GUI product.
The rejection was based on the fact that the term was already common in the domain the trademark was applied for.
So if "Windows" or "DOS" was already common as a non-proprietary term for a computer OS when Microsoft applied for the relevant trademarks (actually, "DOS" might have been, but Microsoft's trademark was for "MS-DOS", not just "DOS"), you would have an analogy.
For what it's worth, I am firmly against legislating anything based on subjective properties such as intent, I just don't quite get your logic.
So, IOW, killing in self-defense, killing in the heat of passion, and killing in a deliberately planned retribution for the victim having looked at you wrong 20 years earlier, all ought to be treated the same, since intent and other similar subjective factors are the only differences?
Maybe as a society we should stop focusing on blame quite so much and focus MORE on the 'why' surrounding the behavior.
Seems to me the "why" is in large part "they thought they could get away with it without consequences". While there are cases where punishment isn't conducive to correcting behavior, this doesn't seem to be one of them. Further, not punishing would encourage other similar behavior.
The principal's blaming the students for supposed 'improper' behavior, and the students' retribution for it are really part of the same problem.
First, the behavior is clearly and unmistakeably improper: its dishonest, is deliberately hurtful, and its almost certainly illegal. There is no need for "supposed" here, or scare quotes around "improper".
Second, what "same problem" do you imagine is the source of both the actions that you apparently see as equally wrong?
But their competitors in other fields - antivirus (McAffee, Symantec, Norton), accounting (Quicken), PDF and presentation tools (Adobe) - greatly benefit from the limitations placed on Windows by antitrust settlements.
Only because Microsoft actually is a monopoly in certain existing fields (primarily, the desktop OS market.)
Since Microsoft can't use their OS monopoly to further other monopolies, they have to compete on a much more level playing field with others to sell their software. So to those companies, MS's OS monopoly is actually a win-win: They have a dominant platform to build their own software towards, and they don't have to worry about competing with built-in software.
If MS didn't have an OS monopoly, MS couldn't squish them by bundling, since they could approach a viable competing OS and make a deal to be bundled. The things Microsoft's competitors in its non-monopoly fields are protected against Microsoft doing with its monopoly wouldn't be particularly big threats if Microsoft didn't have a monopoly to do them with.
There was a time when information was distributed with books. Students would read them and learn... Too much to ask?
Yeah, and I supposed if you lived before computers and heard of a university prohibiting students access to books that most people had access to and that would be educationally useful, you'd dismiss it with comment about how people used to get their knowledge transmitted orally from the elders, and would it be too much to ask if students just went back to doing that...
Not for MS but for MS's competitors. Can't really claim MS is a monopoly anymore if there's 100 million systems running a non-MS OS.
100 million machines in developing countries running a non-MS OS won't, in and of themselves, change anything about whether or not Microsoft has a monopoly on some market in interstate commerce in the US. Likewise, I'd image they won't directly affect whether it has a monopoly under the terms relevant in EU law, either.
OTOH, it make Microsoft safer from anti-trust actions in Thailand, but I'm not sure that's a really big deal.
The only way it affects Microsoft's legal monopoly status in the West is if the increased Linux base globally leads to more development for and of Linux, and more acceptance of the platform in the West, and Microsft actually has substantial real competitition.
Which, of course, will not be bad for some of Microsoft's competitors, though it may be bad for others.
That means that they are free to do as they please, for the most part, when it comes to locking people out of their OS.
If Microsoft is not a real monopoly, locking "people" (providers of services or products that might compete with them outside of the OS market) out of their OS may be less likely to be illegal, but only for the precise reason that it's less likely to do anything but cost Microsoft further OS marketshare, particularly against open OS's that very much do not lock people out.
There is a reason that anti-competitiveness statutes focus more on monopolies: without the market power associated with a monopoly, lots of anti-competitive behaviors are counterproductive.
Not the best market when the people involved have no money.
The people involved don't mostly have no money. They certainly will tend to have very little money by Western standards, but then (especially if its not retail boxes), software often has a very low marginal cost to deliver, so there may still be value in reaching such a market.
If people don't want to vote, there is something wrong with the political/electoral system. Compulsory voting may make the problem less evident, but it doesn't deal with the problem.
If they pull off 100 million laptops, Microsoft can no longer claim dominance in the desktop...
sure they can. Just not on the laptop.
Though certainly a hundred million low-end Linux machines in use might change a lot in the marketplace, both as a source and a market for new software.
That is true, but this language is intended to prevent a company from deliberately raising artificial barriers to potential competitors. Care was taken in writing both the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act to assure that no businessman who "got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could" would be punished.
Right: my point was that it wasn't completely true that it the only thing criminal about monopoly was leveraging an existing monopoly. I wasn't trying to say that merely having a monopoly is necessarily criminal.
I do know that the downgrade from 19" to 17" at my work has really hurt my productivity (apparently, the people that made the decision thoght of it as an "upgrade" from CRTs to flat screens.)
And if I recall correctly, just being a monopoly is not an Evil Thing of itself.
Actually, monopolizing, attempting to monopolize, or conspiring to monopolize any aspect of interstate commerce is a federal felony, for which corporations may be fined up to $10,000,000 and individuals punished with fines of up to $350,000 and imprisonment for up to 3 years: see 15 USC 2.
Microsoft was not sued for implementing the open PDF standard. They were sued for anti-competative bundling of tools that just happen to use that format.
Were they ever actually sued? I thought it was "Microsoft was in talks with Adobe, and, from the progress of those talks, expected that Adobe might at some point in the future file some antitrust suit against them either in the US or in the EU over bundling PDF functionality, so they decided to take it out before that could happen."
Juries don't decide the judgement in a case like this, the jury just decides innocent or guilty.
No, actually, juries in civil cases don't decide "innocent or guilty", since that's not even an issue. They often do find both the fact and the amount of liability.
With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network
I can see distributing computing over a wireless network, but I've yet to see anyone distribute computers that way.
Would surely cut down on shipping costs, though: just download that new laptop...
But Adobe has no grounds to sue MS because MS is using a competing format - the Word format and Excel format were both MS, too.
An antitrust suit is not an IP suit; if they are accused of leveraging their monopoly in one market to attempt to monopolize another market, it makes no legal difference to those charges, or Adobe's ability to secure remedy for the harm it suffers or is threatened with through that action, whether they are using an Adobe-created format or a Microsoft-created one to do that.
It's only libel in the US if she can be proven to have known that what she said wasn't true.
It's only required to be proven if the charges are contested; if, say, the defendant fails to appear in response to the lawsuit, the no one should be surprised by a default judgement.
As for politicians, I believe just about anything you say against them is fair game since it can be construed as a political metaphor.
Not quite. Any public figure, included a politician, has a high bar to prove defamation under the New York Times v. Sullivan standards, which require a showing of actual malice as well as falsity. But that's not absolute license to print anything you want regardless of truth.
It seems the more volatile the medium is, the more 'free' you are to do whatever you want.
While the distinction between libel and slander do have to do with the volatility of the medium, the most important distinctions, as far as what you can get away with, in defamation law in the US have to do with the subject matter (whether its a public concern or private) and the subject person (whether they are a public figure or not).
I still have difficulty with this "you can't do that, because you're a monopoly" thinking.
Maybe it would help your ability to get that thinking if you were to substitute "felon" every time you hear the word "monopoly". From US Code, Title 15, Section 2:
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
You write a report using a canned coporate template that requires no extra effort. You can share it with others and they can change it without any special effort.
That's a nice theory, though I've never seen it work well. I've never been in an office, large or small, where MS Office templates were designed well, or consistently used. All too often, the "templates" are built by people who treat them like a prototype of a regular document, and use the easiest way to acheive visual appearances in a document, rather than defining styles, and even when styles are designed, lots of people don't use them and instead use direct format changes to acheive the appearance they want.
Word makes structural styling possible, but its usually easier (in the short-term: to get the right look in your WYSIWYG view) to do the formatting directly (though its harder to maintain, and easier to get lots of small inconsistencies that aren't apparent till you print the whole document and look at it), and most users seem to have learned the direct formatting more than the use of styles and structure.
As a result, maintenance of large Word documents that have had lots of hands on them over a decade (or more) is generally a nightmare of epic proportions.
That's one advantage of LaTeX even in the "standard template with no effort" role: if someone supplies a LaTeX document class to use, the easiest way to get results is usually going to be use structure and work with the class, rather than trying to fight it and apply appearance-based markup on your own.
On the other hand, TeX would feel cumbersome if all you are doing is writing an office memo.
I dunno, since I don't have it in the office, I've never used it for an office memo, but in most offices I've worked in, it'd be no more cumbersome to use TeX with a supplied document class than Word with a supplied template, and probably significantly less cumbersome.
Of course, to put together a TeX document class probably would take more skill than producing the Word memo templates used in most environments I've experienced.
I'd actually argue that setup is generally more of a layout program with some word processing features. MS Word is not intended for exacting layout, LaTeX is. If you want exacting layout, you should compare LaTeX to tools designed to do that.
The main advantage I find in my use for LaTeX over Word isn't exacting layout (yeah, its better at that than Word, too, though that's rarely all that important to me), but in ease of describing, perceiving, and maintaining structure when working with documents.
Ahh, but LaTeX is not the most common markup tool used.
That hardly matters if the purpose is to compare LaTeX in specific to WYSIWYG editing environments in common use.
You can compare MS Word and OpenOffice Writer because they are designed for the same thing.
You can meaningfully and usefully compare any tools that are, or even can be, used for the same purpose, regardless of what they are designed for.
LaTeX was designed to layout books. MSWord was not.
Yes, and yet some people use MSWord to layout books, so they can certainly be compared for that purpose. And people use LaTeX for lots of the things MSWord is used for that are not laying out books, too, and they can therefore be compared for all those purposes, as well, regardless of which was "designed for" which purpose.
Comparing it to Framemaker or Quark or InDesign is a lot more appropriate.
If the context is "comparing tools for laying out books without regard to cost", then yes, I'd agree.
Most users are incapable of finding and installing a LaTeX environment.
I doubt that any user who learns of LaTeX is incapable of learning how to install, say, ProTeXt, in a few minutes, but even so, unless you are talking about a home environment, there is no need, in most environments, for every user that would use LaTeX to find and install a LaTeX environment. I really have no idea what point you think you are making here.
LaTeX is quite simply painful for certain tasks, especially for graphics because graphics do not fit well into the markup model.
Graphics are not a task. If you mean "editing graphics", then sure, LaTeX isn't an editor at all, and certainly not a graphics editor. If you mean placing graphics in a document, it seems to me it depends a lot on what you want to do with the graphics. But, yes, lots of tasks related to that are not the kind of things where the model of structure-to-appearance that LaTeX uses is particularly helpful for (OTOH, other tasks with graphics fit quite well with that model.)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about everywhere, but in many places, the actual law is that teachers have every bit as much legal right to touch students to maintain discpline as a parent would, and certainly can restrain them (they can't inflict corporal punishment.) Lots of districts, though, apply hyperrestrictive policies for two reasons (1) they are afraid not of what is illegal but what might be close enough to the edge that someone might file a lawsuit that might cost the district some money even if the lawsuit ultimately fails, so they want to draw the lines in policy ridiculously far back from the law [often far enough back that I'm surprised there aren't more lawsuits for inaction that gets students in their care hurt], and (2) it gives them a hammer to blame controversial actions on individual teachers, by prohibiting as much as possible under the policy, while if something turns out right, the policy gets ignored.
Um, its still a common thing people say to children that doesn't mean its okay to lie, or that people don't have, or shouldn't avail themselves, of legal recourse when they are attacked.
Since the cause of action is "libel" rather than, say, "assault", the presence of some kind of danger other than the reputational harm that defamation produces is completely irrelevant.
Proof of actual harm is not required where the false claim falls into one of the categories of "libel per se" that are legally presumed to be inherently harmful. Generally, false accusations of homosexuality have been in that category, and while there appears to be some signs of movement on that issue, it apparently is still the case under Texas law.
I don't see how it is poor moral character or bad judgement to sue someone who has legally wronged you in this way.
"X/Windows" is not the same "Windows"; the existence of "X/Windows" as a term for a proprietary product in use (trademarked or not) in the area "Windows" existed was targetting in is not the same thing as "Windows" already being a generic term for the thing Microsoft was seeking to trademark it as a label for. Hormel was really applying for a grossly abusive trademark that is akin to someone trying to trademark "tissue" as used to refer to a tissue, today in 2006, when the word has been in general use for countless years. Its nothing like Microsoft trademarking Windows for its GUI product.
The rejection was based on the fact that the term was already common in the domain the trademark was applied for.
So if "Windows" or "DOS" was already common as a non-proprietary term for a computer OS when Microsoft applied for the relevant trademarks (actually, "DOS" might have been, but Microsoft's trademark was for "MS-DOS", not just "DOS"), you would have an analogy.
So, IOW, killing in self-defense, killing in the heat of passion, and killing in a deliberately planned retribution for the victim having looked at you wrong 20 years earlier, all ought to be treated the same, since intent and other similar subjective factors are the only differences?
Seems to me the "why" is in large part "they thought they could get away with it without consequences". While there are cases where punishment isn't conducive to correcting behavior, this doesn't seem to be one of them. Further, not punishing would encourage other similar behavior.
First, the behavior is clearly and unmistakeably improper: its dishonest, is deliberately hurtful, and its almost certainly illegal. There is no need for "supposed" here, or scare quotes around "improper".
Second, what "same problem" do you imagine is the source of both the actions that you apparently see as equally wrong?
Only because Microsoft actually is a monopoly in certain existing fields (primarily, the desktop OS market.)
If MS didn't have an OS monopoly, MS couldn't squish them by bundling, since they could approach a viable competing OS and make a deal to be bundled. The things Microsoft's competitors in its non-monopoly fields are protected against Microsoft doing with its monopoly wouldn't be particularly big threats if Microsoft didn't have a monopoly to do them with.
Yeah, and I supposed if you lived before computers and heard of a university prohibiting students access to books that most people had access to and that would be educationally useful, you'd dismiss it with comment about how people used to get their knowledge transmitted orally from the elders, and would it be too much to ask if students just went back to doing that...
100 million machines in developing countries running a non-MS OS won't, in and of themselves, change anything about whether or not Microsoft has a monopoly on some market in interstate commerce in the US. Likewise, I'd image they won't directly affect whether it has a monopoly under the terms relevant in EU law, either.
OTOH, it make Microsoft safer from anti-trust actions in Thailand, but I'm not sure that's a really big deal.
The only way it affects Microsoft's legal monopoly status in the West is if the increased Linux base globally leads to more development for and of Linux, and more acceptance of the platform in the West, and Microsft actually has substantial real competitition.
Which, of course, will not be bad for some of Microsoft's competitors, though it may be bad for others.
If Microsoft is not a real monopoly, locking "people" (providers of services or products that might compete with them outside of the OS market) out of their OS may be less likely to be illegal, but only for the precise reason that it's less likely to do anything but cost Microsoft further OS marketshare, particularly against open OS's that very much do not lock people out.
There is a reason that anti-competitiveness statutes focus more on monopolies: without the market power associated with a monopoly, lots of anti-competitive behaviors are counterproductive.
The people involved don't mostly have no money. They certainly will tend to have very little money by Western standards, but then (especially if its not retail boxes), software often has a very low marginal cost to deliver, so there may still be value in reaching such a market.
If people don't want to vote, there is something wrong with the political/electoral system. Compulsory voting may make the problem less evident, but it doesn't deal with the problem.
sure they can. Just not on the laptop.
Though certainly a hundred million low-end Linux machines in use might change a lot in the marketplace, both as a source and a market for new software.
I do know that the downgrade from 19" to 17" at my work has really hurt my productivity (apparently, the people that made the decision thoght of it as an "upgrade" from CRTs to flat screens.)
Were they ever actually sued? I thought it was "Microsoft was in talks with Adobe, and, from the progress of those talks, expected that Adobe might at some point in the future file some antitrust suit against them either in the US or in the EU over bundling PDF functionality, so they decided to take it out before that could happen."
No, actually, juries in civil cases don't decide "innocent or guilty", since that's not even an issue. They often do find both the fact and the amount of liability.
An antitrust suit is not an IP suit; if they are accused of leveraging their monopoly in one market to attempt to monopolize another market, it makes no legal difference to those charges, or Adobe's ability to secure remedy for the harm it suffers or is threatened with through that action, whether they are using an Adobe-created format or a Microsoft-created one to do that.
Not quite. Any public figure, included a politician, has a high bar to prove defamation under the New York Times v. Sullivan standards, which require a showing of actual malice as well as falsity. But that's not absolute license to print anything you want regardless of truth.
While the distinction between libel and slander do have to do with the volatility of the medium, the most important distinctions, as far as what you can get away with, in defamation law in the US have to do with the subject matter (whether its a public concern or private) and the subject person (whether they are a public figure or not).
Maybe it would help your ability to get that thinking if you were to substitute "felon" every time you hear the word "monopoly". From US Code, Title 15, Section 2:
That's a nice theory, though I've never seen it work well. I've never been in an office, large or small, where MS Office templates were designed well, or consistently used. All too often, the "templates" are built by people who treat them like a prototype of a regular document, and use the easiest way to acheive visual appearances in a document, rather than defining styles, and even when styles are designed, lots of people don't use them and instead use direct format changes to acheive the appearance they want.
Word makes structural styling possible, but its usually easier (in the short-term: to get the right look in your WYSIWYG view) to do the formatting directly (though its harder to maintain, and easier to get lots of small inconsistencies that aren't apparent till you print the whole document and look at it), and most users seem to have learned the direct formatting more than the use of styles and structure.
As a result, maintenance of large Word documents that have had lots of hands on them over a decade (or more) is generally a nightmare of epic proportions.
That's one advantage of LaTeX even in the "standard template with no effort" role: if someone supplies a LaTeX document class to use, the easiest way to get results is usually going to be use structure and work with the class, rather than trying to fight it and apply appearance-based markup on your own.
I dunno, since I don't have it in the office, I've never used it for an office memo, but in most offices I've worked in, it'd be no more cumbersome to use TeX with a supplied document class than Word with a supplied template, and probably significantly less cumbersome.
Of course, to put together a TeX document class probably would take more skill than producing the Word memo templates used in most environments I've experienced.
The main advantage I find in my use for LaTeX over Word isn't exacting layout (yeah, its better at that than Word, too, though that's rarely all that important to me), but in ease of describing, perceiving, and maintaining structure when working with documents.
That hardly matters if the purpose is to compare LaTeX in specific to WYSIWYG editing environments in common use.
You can meaningfully and usefully compare any tools that are, or even can be, used for the same purpose, regardless of what they are designed for.
Yes, and yet some people use MSWord to layout books, so they can certainly be compared for that purpose. And people use LaTeX for lots of the things MSWord is used for that are not laying out books, too, and they can therefore be compared for all those purposes, as well, regardless of which was "designed for" which purpose.
If the context is "comparing tools for laying out books without regard to cost", then yes, I'd agree.
I doubt that any user who learns of LaTeX is incapable of learning how to install, say, ProTeXt, in a few minutes, but even so, unless you are talking about a home environment, there is no need, in most environments, for every user that would use LaTeX to find and install a LaTeX environment. I really have no idea what point you think you are making here.
Graphics are not a task. If you mean "editing graphics", then sure, LaTeX isn't an editor at all, and certainly not a graphics editor. If you mean placing graphics in a document, it seems to me it depends a lot on what you want to do with the graphics. But, yes, lots of tasks related to that are not the kind of things where the model of structure-to-appearance that LaTeX uses is particularly helpful for (OTOH, other tasks with graphics fit quite well with that model.)