Yesterday I was reading an article about this case that stated Newegg didn't even bother to call their witnesses to dispute the amount of damages that would've been caused by their patent violation. It gave the impression that they were so confident that they had roundly destroyed the plaintiff's arguments that they didn't even bother to follow standard operating procedure for how to fight these types of cases.
On one hand, it's yet another nail in the coffin of innovation in our country. On the other hand, shame on Newegg's lawyers for being so hubris.
I was confused by that as well. I agreed that, from what I read, that they made the plaintiff's arguments look quite silly. I would say the plaintiff's lawyer half argued Newegg's case for them with his whole a patent is still valid if prior art was a secret thing.
My current thought was they planned to appeal from the beginning to get it out of that district. Why waste time in a district you know there's an automatic 80% chance you're going to lose?
I grew up and live in the lower right 1/3 of the US and his depiction is not that far off. Based on totally made up statistics that I'm pulling from my nether regions right now I'd guess at least one jury member had the exact thought the GP mentioned, while at least a few others just subconsciously would not lend credibility to the "dirty hippy."
Releasing information can be civil disobedience and imho should be shown leniency when it is. I don't suggest that I'm the one that should determine whether something should qualify as civil disobedience or not, but there's some wisdom to the idea that the court should not harshly punish someone who technically broke the law for the greater good. Your intent is often a factor in not only what you are convicted of but also the sentence handed to you.
I oppose most prison sentences, but not strictly prisons. I'm curious what your alternative is?
For clarity, I'm for rehabilitation and not retribution -- it gains us nothing. When it comes to drug crimes and youthful offenders, community service and rehab seem like far better things than X days/months/years in jail with a grabbag of offenders running the gamut from arsony to grand theft to smoking a joint. And while I think the purpose of imprisoning them should be to offer rehabilitation, would you not imprison murderers or would you put them in mental health institutions rather than "prisons"?
Thanks for the link. That's actually a pretty good enumeration of my issues with the current system in the US. I don't think I'd go so far as to say eliminate all prisons, the sorts of prisons we have today are not the sort that we should be using.
It would be a crime anywhere, but not likely to receive a 10-year sentence. As far as I know, the only sentence approaching that length issued in Denmark for a non-violent crime in recent years was Stein Bagger, who was sentenced to 7 years for defrauding investors of about $250 million, then fleeing to Dubai. His sentence was that high because it was very clearly willful fraud on a large scale intended to enrich himself, and included a number of subsidiary elements such as invented degrees, faked financial information, tax fraud, etc.
It makes me very angry that this known scumbag tries to associate himself with a true hero like Aaron Swartz, so in my opinion he is getting what he deserves, regardless of drug law incarcerations.
Look, in cases like this, we have to stick up for the scoundrels, because that's when the common behavior of the system is borne out. It's easy to make exceptions for a pretty face, but if you want real change you have to look at how it affects the worst people.
This has nothing to do with exceptions for a pretty face. If you cede the high ground then you are worse than nothing in terms of helping your cause, as has been born out through history over and over.
You'd consider releasing credit card numbers of all subscribers to an organization you don't like to be "civil disobedience"? Even if you accept the (deeply flawed IMHO) premise that Stratfor was an evil shadowy organization, it's clients are a step removed and clearly not all of them had bad intentions (I know because I was a subscriber). Next time your employer or a company you are a client of does something bad, I assume you won't mind if I leak your personal information under the guise of civil disobedience.
Agreed. I have a number of clients who are subscribers. They made better business decisions by virtue of reading the output of a group of talented forecasters.
These weren't businesses looking to crush people who voted a certain way, these were businesses who may have had a supplier in Japan and wanted more rational, reasoned coverage of Fukushima than most everyone else was providing. Or, companies that employ Latin American immigrants and wanted a more nuanced view of the future than the standard "instant voting blocs good!/evil brown people bad!" narrative.
The whole point of civil disobedience as a form of protest is to suffer the legal consequences of a law in order to demonstrate its injustice.
If Jeremy Hammond had hacked Stratfor for the express purpose if getting arrested, in order to demonstrate the injustice of computer crime law, your comment would be right on. But that's not what he did, or why he did it.
It can but don't try to brush it away with "therefore what I did wasn't illegal" which is what Mr. Hammond sounds like he is trying to do. The only thing that he and Aaron have in common is what they did was illegal.
For the millionth time. If you're going to tell me you don't trust me to work from home you'd better not be pushing to outsource to India. I mean how can you trust someone on the other side of the planet but you can't trust me 10 miles away?
I think it's because programmers in India cost less than you. It's easier to trust someone that cost less - if they screw up you've lost considerably less money.
Is this not the case with all three big players in the smartphone market? I don't have an iphone but my ipod sure seems useless without an account with Apple. It's the same account I use for itunes, apps on my macbook pro, and their developer network. I presume MSFT has a similar situation with a live account. People are just upset because their Google account happens to have some social features to it. I've personally never seen anything force me to post anything on G+, it just sort of comes with my gmail account. It's completely non-intrusive. The fact that it's associated with a social network I don't use is inconsequential. It's also associated with their news and finance products which I don't use. The only nuisance that has ever come up is when some app wants to authenticate with google it wants to know all about my circles or whatever. This is pretty much the exact same behavior as what comes with facebook authentication except with G+ circles I can tell it not to share all my circles.
> People are just upset because their Google account happens to have some social features to it.
And that isn't worrying to you? People can add you to their G+ circles and there's no way to stay hidden. So Google gets to collect all the information about people you associate with in order to sell your personal info better (to the NSA, among others)
If it worried me particularly I'd simply not have a Google device. If a distrust in a G+ account was enough to put me off then letting their code handle my phone and tablet in general would be a no-no for me too.
I'm under no illusions that there is much I can do to stop Google tracking me, occasionally pushing stuff at me addverts and so forth), and trying to "lock me in" where possible, as I use my stock Android devices. I'm sure both MS and Apple either d the same sort of thing or will as soon as opportunity presents itself.
I'm not saying it is right of course, just that if it is a particular problem for you then it should inform your decisions before buying a device. Also I suspect buying and returning devices as a form of protest is not seen the same on relevant internal reports, and is likely to inconvenience your retailer more than the manufacturer, so if you wish to protest the behaviour you will find simply not buying to be more effective.
"The majority of people prefer it this way" seems like the perfect justification for a coding standard. Consistency is way more important to me than perfectly matching up with some specific ideal.
I had the opposite experience. Working long hours never got me a raise or promotion. Successful projects got me raises and promotions, but I generally don't need to work even 40 hours to make that happen. Once I lifted my head up out of the code and started taking a more business approach to my work rather than engineering approach, that's when my value and income skyrocketed. The guys I know that rack up those 50+ hour weeks every single week get the same 3% raise they've always gotten and most of them are pretty bitter about it.
This is why hitching yourself to the wrong boss can be extremely detrimental to your career. A good boss would compensate and promote any 50+ hour rockstar performer for making him look good. As the organization gets bigger, the manager with the most senior people often wins, regardless of competency. If a boss is not giving out raises and fighting for promotions, he is going to have to play out more political capital in order to get anything done, or to cover his ass when shit doesn't get done.
On one hand, it's yet another nail in the coffin of innovation in our country. On the other hand, shame on Newegg's lawyers for being so hubris.