Actually, the best bet nowdays seems to be typing a word the way you think it's spelled in as a Google search. They'll generally correct it for you; for instance typing "numonya" brings a prompt for "pneumonia." The old "look it up in the dictionary" doesn't work unless you already have a pretty good idea of how the word is spelled.
IMHO, the important words in trout007's quotation from the Constitution are: "for limited Times." Once Congress passed the "Let's Protect Steamboat Willy while Pretending We're Doing Something for Sonny Bono Act," the time limitations for copyright protection became ludicrous. Unfortunately, a law that fails to make sense to ordinary individuals becomes virtually impossible to enforce without continually adding new and more draconian punishments. SOPA and PIPA were the Congressional equivalents of "those who laugh on the Sabbath day shall be confined to the Stocks for eight hours" and thus deserving of the reactions they induced.
Luckily, the Supremes of that era didn't accept that analogy. With current group on the bench, it's much better for individuals to block the law before it's enacted and some "person" like the RIAA figures out a way to get SCOTUS to come up with reasons why "piracy" should be punished by drawing and quartering.
"why are judges not elected instead of appointed?"
Because elections require campaigns which require funds which then tend to influence the candidates in favor of those who provided the funds, which hurts the impartiality required of judges. The best system is one in which judges are appointed but then have to run for retention every so often (4 years is typical). That means the electorate can get rid of the really bad judges but it's not a popularity contest to choose a successor.
It was the people's demands following 9/11 that gave Congress the nerve to pass the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001." And, for anyone who hasn't read the USA PATRIOT ACT, I sincerely recommend that you set aside some time to read through it at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ056.107.pdf and then we can all chat again about the Constitution.
Bits and bites in a particular combination are recognized by law as an object worthy of legal protection in the form of copyright and/or patent. Taking, without my permission, all of the bits and bytes that I have arranged in a particular unique combination is theft in just the same way that copying down various bits and bytes of information about you (the information regarding your birth, your social security number, and your driving privileges) is theft of your identity. You may not recognize the theft until I start using those bits and bytes by cleaning out your bank account or getting credit cards in your name, but it was truly theft all the time.
I agree, lorenlal. One of the typical Congressional rules for violation of statutes is the guilty defendant has to pay treble damages--three times the actual damages. IMHO, the judge was right in that actual damages was the cost of a license, so three times the license fee would be appropriate.
Someone needs to tell these dreamers:
1. Read the terms of the document giving you the shares to see when they vest;
2. Figure out where you'll get the money to buy the shares so you can sell them (sometimes you can do a cashless exchange but you have to know
a. who will arrange this for you, and
b. how much money it's going to cost you to have someone make the exchange
3. Realize that there are insider lock out periods after the IPO and before and after every quarterly report (any employee with options is an insider)
4. Profit? ?
IMHO, the USA PATRIOT ACT (not shouting, that's the acronym for the ridiculously long name of the Act) is just as constitutional as the Alien and Sedition Acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts, which were also rushed through in the guise of protecting US citizens. If only our congress-folk had spent as much time thinking about the constitution as they did about the acronym!
The wording is broad, but that may very well be to make sure that they can reasonably catch it all and respond.
But if it's too broad, an affected customer can try to get a court to throw it out on grounds of ambiguity! Now do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around. That's what its all about!
In my experience, it hasn't been the merchants doing these add-ons; it's the credit card companies themselves. For instance, I call BigBank, the issuer of my Visa card, to make sure that my last payment was credited on time. I'm transferred to a customer rep who answers the question and then says, "By the way, I see that you're entitled to join our travel savings plan... [blah, blah, blah about the great features of the plan]. You can have a free trial starting tomorrow." If you say anything except, "No, no, no," they automatically sign you up and then, after 10 or 25 days, X Travel Co. starts adding a "nominal fee" of $29.95 ("only pennies a day") to your card. If X Travel Co. is an "affiliate" of BigBank and you failed to opt out when BigBank sent you the notice of its privacy policies, then you don't really have much recourse except to call BigBank, talk someone into giving you the contact information for X Travel Co., and then contacting them to stop charging you.
Yep, and that's exactly how clinical drug trials are done: they're just a bunch of anecdotal accounts of people who tried out drug X and what side effects they experienced.
Reputable clinical drug trials always have at least two groups of people in similar circumstances; in the case of just drug X versus no treatment, 1/2 of of the group get drug X and the other half get a placebo. The experimenters record the anecdotal accounts of side effects from each group. If the the same percentage of each group have the same side effect, then that effect is probably not due to drug X.
I'm talking about peer review, university grants, and the esoteric publishing/journaling system that goes on with such a process.
As to the last item on your list, it's frustrating to find an apparent link to the discussion of a scientific subject in which I'm interested and then notice that the link takes me to Springerlink or Elsevier or one of those other sites that will allow me 24-hour access to the article for a mere $24.50. I thought that legislation had been passed a few years back that entitled the public the right to access scientific articles where federal monies had paid for the research. If so, it must require 100% federal money -- the 2% kicked in by CorporationX must disqualify the public's right.
I hate to break this to you but Sarasota is on the west coast of Florida and Bermuda is off the east coast. The Everglades, which is full of alligators and pythons, lies between them.
I sincerely hope the inventor manages to make it a bit cheaper to own before this thing hits the streets....
Folks better not try "hitting the streets" anywhere except the bike lanes. 13mph seems to be about par with the average golf cart and we all know they're not street legal. In fact, I'd guess that a nice Amish horse and buggy could pass this Yike, except that it would probably break that old rule about "don't scare the horses."
Interesting that many agree with you that Trademarks are "mostly useful" when they, unlike all the other forms of "intellectual property," have infinite duration.
notable trademarks that have been used for a long time include LÃwenbrÃu, which claims use since 1383, and Stella Artois, which claims use since 1366.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark.
IMHO, the difference is that copyrights and patents prevent consumers from the free use of the invention or ideas covered while Trademarks are used to give consumers confidence that the product that they're purchasing or using is indeed the genuine article (or, in recent years, a facsimile of a product that they wanted to purchase or use).
Okay, we all agree that we have a right of free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. However, this case seems to fall within a clear exception to that rule, as enunciated by Justice Holmes in Schenk v. United States. "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." In other words, your right to free speech ends at the point where it's likely to put me in danger. This woman was trying to make it impossible to keep the police from doing their drug enforcement duties and her method of doing so put the police officers and their families in danger.
I agree that the avatar for E looks like he's"'threatening' or' unstrustworthy," rather than truly evil. IMHO, anyone must be psycopathic/sociopathic in order to be truly evil. And, as we know from seeing people like Ted Bundy in the flesh, their evil nature does not show through. Bundy looked like a college kid -- in fact, one reason that allowed him to catch so many of his victims was that he appeared trustworthy and totally non-threatening.
Near the end of the article, Bringsjord says that if he creates a robot/android based on his AI creation, he'll be sure to follow Asimov's three rules of robotics. However, I don't believe that an "evil" robot would ever follow Rule 1, let alone the other two.
Forget about the 1st Amendment challenge -- you don't even get to that issue until somebody figures out a way to enforce the law. How can they tell that the name and photo I'm using on Facebook, for example, are really mine. If I'm a registered sex offender joining one of the social networks to cruise for victims, I'm probably not going to tell the truth.
Your analysis reads like that of a practicing attorney--succint and well-reasoned--but then you say
How this author went on a 33 page 'analysis' about this, I'll never know.
If you'd suffered through three years of law school, you should know that almost every law school professor can write 33 pages of 'analysis' on just about any subject and if they can find a case or two to cite, they can usually drag it out to fifty or sixty pages.
The next time you send an "infelicitously worded" email, you can just blame it on IBM.
Speaking of "infelicitously worded," did you notice that the all of the changed examples (i.e., the second through fourth) start to sound like an instruction manual that has been poorly translated into English?
The other major brands HP, Compaq that kind of surprises me because you couldn't just take that fancy laptop back to HP or Compaq and get a refund.
The Consumerist is just taking advantage of Systemax's poor wording of a policy that NewEgg also has. HP, for instance, might provide that all warranty issues with their products must sent by the original purchaser to the HP technical folks. In that case, it would waste time and money if you sent it to Systemax, they sent it back to you and you then sent it to HP. Plus, in all that shipping, the package might get broken or the warranty may have run out.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the best bet nowdays seems to be typing a word the way you think it's spelled in as a Google search. They'll generally correct it for you; for instance typing "numonya" brings a prompt for "pneumonia." The old "look it up in the dictionary" doesn't work unless you already have a pretty good idea of how the word is spelled.
IMHO, the important words in trout007's quotation from the Constitution are: "for limited Times." Once Congress passed the "Let's Protect Steamboat Willy while Pretending We're Doing Something for Sonny Bono Act," the time limitations for copyright protection became ludicrous. Unfortunately, a law that fails to make sense to ordinary individuals becomes virtually impossible to enforce without continually adding new and more draconian punishments. SOPA and PIPA were the Congressional equivalents of "those who laugh on the Sabbath day shall be confined to the Stocks for eight hours" and thus deserving of the reactions they induced.
Luckily, the Supremes of that era didn't accept that analogy. With current group on the bench, it's much better for individuals to block the law before it's enacted and some "person" like the RIAA figures out a way to get SCOTUS to come up with reasons why "piracy" should be punished by drawing and quartering.
"why are judges not elected instead of appointed?"
Because elections require campaigns which require funds which then tend to influence the candidates in favor of those who provided the funds, which hurts the impartiality required of judges. The best system is one in which judges are appointed but then have to run for retention every so often (4 years is typical). That means the electorate can get rid of the really bad judges but it's not a popularity contest to choose a successor.
It was the people's demands following 9/11 that gave Congress the nerve to pass the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001." And, for anyone who hasn't read the USA PATRIOT ACT, I sincerely recommend that you set aside some time to read through it at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ056.107.pdf and then we can all chat again about the Constitution.
Bits and bites in a particular combination are recognized by law as an object worthy of legal protection in the form of copyright and/or patent. Taking, without my permission, all of the bits and bytes that I have arranged in a particular unique combination is theft in just the same way that copying down various bits and bytes of information about you (the information regarding your birth, your social security number, and your driving privileges) is theft of your identity. You may not recognize the theft until I start using those bits and bytes by cleaning out your bank account or getting credit cards in your name, but it was truly theft all the time.
I agree, lorenlal. One of the typical Congressional rules for violation of statutes is the guilty defendant has to pay treble damages--three times the actual damages. IMHO, the judge was right in that actual damages was the cost of a license, so three times the license fee would be appropriate.
Someone needs to tell these dreamers:
1. Read the terms of the document giving you the shares to see when they vest;
2. Figure out where you'll get the money to buy the shares so you can sell them (sometimes you can do a cashless exchange but you have to know
a. who will arrange this for you, and
b. how much money it's going to cost you to have someone make the exchange
3. Realize that there are insider lock out periods after the IPO and before and after every quarterly report (any employee with options is an insider)
4. Profit? ?
IMHO, the USA PATRIOT ACT (not shouting, that's the acronym for the ridiculously long name of the Act) is just as constitutional as the Alien and Sedition Acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts, which were also rushed through in the guise of protecting US citizens. If only our congress-folk had spent as much time thinking about the constitution as they did about the acronym!
The wording is broad, but that may very well be to make sure that they can reasonably catch it all and respond.
But if it's too broad, an affected customer can try to get a court to throw it out on grounds of ambiguity! Now do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around. That's what its all about!
In my experience, it hasn't been the merchants doing these add-ons; it's the credit card companies themselves. For instance, I call BigBank, the issuer of my Visa card, to make sure that my last payment was credited on time. I'm transferred to a customer rep who answers the question and then says, "By the way, I see that you're entitled to join our travel savings plan ... [blah, blah, blah about the great features of the plan]. You can have a free trial starting tomorrow." If you say anything except, "No, no, no," they automatically sign you up and then, after 10 or 25 days, X Travel Co. starts adding a "nominal fee" of $29.95 ("only pennies a day") to your card. If X Travel Co. is an "affiliate" of BigBank and you failed to opt out when BigBank sent you the notice of its privacy policies, then you don't really have much recourse except to call BigBank, talk someone into giving you the contact information for X Travel Co., and then contacting them to stop charging you.
Yep, and that's exactly how clinical drug trials are done: they're just a bunch of anecdotal accounts of people who tried out drug X and what side effects they experienced.
Reputable clinical drug trials always have at least two groups of people in similar circumstances; in the case of just drug X versus no treatment, 1/2 of of the group get drug X and the other half get a placebo. The experimenters record the anecdotal accounts of side effects from each group. If the the same percentage of each group have the same side effect, then that effect is probably not due to drug X.
I'm talking about peer review, university grants, and the esoteric publishing/journaling system that goes on with such a process.
As to the last item on your list, it's frustrating to find an apparent link to the discussion of a scientific subject in which I'm interested and then notice that the link takes me to Springerlink or Elsevier or one of those other sites that will allow me 24-hour access to the article for a mere $24.50. I thought that legislation had been passed a few years back that entitled the public the right to access scientific articles where federal monies had paid for the research. If so, it must require 100% federal money -- the 2% kicked in by CorporationX must disqualify the public's right.
I hate to break this to you but Sarasota is on the west coast of Florida and Bermuda is off the east coast. The Everglades, which is full of alligators and pythons, lies between them.
What does Loving v. Virginia have to do with having parties? I think you've been ingesting far too many unknown substances at the parties you attend.
I sincerely hope the inventor manages to make it a bit cheaper to own before this thing hits the streets....
Folks better not try "hitting the streets" anywhere except the bike lanes. 13mph seems to be about par with the average golf cart and we all know they're not street legal. In fact, I'd guess that a nice Amish horse and buggy could pass this Yike, except that it would probably break that old rule about "don't scare the horses."
notable trademarks that have been used for a long time include LÃwenbrÃu, which claims use since 1383, and Stella Artois, which claims use since 1366.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark. IMHO, the difference is that copyrights and patents prevent consumers from the free use of the invention or ideas covered while Trademarks are used to give consumers confidence that the product that they're purchasing or using is indeed the genuine article (or, in recent years, a facsimile of a product that they wanted to purchase or use).
Okay, we all agree that we have a right of free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. However, this case seems to fall within a clear exception to that rule, as enunciated by Justice Holmes in Schenk v. United States. "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." In other words, your right to free speech ends at the point where it's likely to put me in danger. This woman was trying to make it impossible to keep the police from doing their drug enforcement duties and her method of doing so put the police officers and their families in danger.
Near the end of the article, Bringsjord says that if he creates a robot/android based on his AI creation, he'll be sure to follow Asimov's three rules of robotics. However, I don't believe that an "evil" robot would ever follow Rule 1, let alone the other two.
Nah, just gauche.
All the other planets keep pointing and saying "You're doing it wrong!"
That's what folks always say about us lefthanders. And then you wonder why we're perturbed!
Forget about the 1st Amendment challenge -- you don't even get to that issue until somebody figures out a way to enforce the law. How can they tell that the name and photo I'm using on Facebook, for example, are really mine. If I'm a registered sex offender joining one of the social networks to cruise for victims, I'm probably not going to tell the truth.
How this author went on a 33 page 'analysis' about this, I'll never know.
If you'd suffered through three years of law school, you should know that almost every law school professor can write 33 pages of 'analysis' on just about any subject and if they can find a case or two to cite, they can usually drag it out to fifty or sixty pages.
The next time you send an "infelicitously worded" email, you can just blame it on IBM.
Speaking of "infelicitously worded," did you notice that the all of the changed examples (i.e., the second through fourth) start to sound like an instruction manual that has been poorly translated into English?
The other major brands HP, Compaq that kind of surprises me because you couldn't just take that fancy laptop back to HP or Compaq and get a refund.
The Consumerist is just taking advantage of Systemax's poor wording of a policy that NewEgg also has. HP, for instance, might provide that all warranty issues with their products must sent by the original purchaser to the HP technical folks. In that case, it would waste time and money if you sent it to Systemax, they sent it back to you and you then sent it to HP. Plus, in all that shipping, the package might get broken or the warranty may have run out.