That gun certainly should not have been packed loaded, and not packed so carelessly that it could just fall out like that; there was a small but non-zero chance that it could have gone off when it hit the tarmac or some other hard surface (depending on the state of the safety catch and a few other things) and injured somebody.
I see nothing wrong with a checked bag containing an unloaded gun. What's it gonna do, bluff the other suitcases into handing over their jewels?
"If they are so simple minded as to not understand technology enough to know how to [avoid inadvertently recording a child's name], they really get what they deserve. Stop asking for kids names [sic], and you won't have to worry if you stored them or not."
Really? So you could design a comment section or visitor log that would allow children to type in anything except their real names? Without knowing their real names beforehand? This technology of which you speak is truly wondrous, and your understanding of it is mighty indeed.
I have no sympathy for anyone in this case but the judge. Panera and the shopping center took some vague, imprecisely defined commonplace ideas ("This is a sandwich.", "That restaurant sells food too much like ours.") and built a contract around them. Now a borderline case (which they could easily have foreseen) throws them right into court.
I hope they've both learned from their mistake, but I doubt it. They'll both try for "clearer" (i.e. more complicated) language in the future contracts, which will increase the billable hours involved and do absolutely nothing to solve the underlying problem.
It's to Braehead's credit that they changed the policy, and so quickly (although I foresee problems with "friends and family"). But I have to wonder... if they have the power to do away with the policy -- that is, it's not mandated by law -- then why did they enact it in the first place? To please the customers? Are Scottish shoppers as stupid about security as Americans, or just camera-shy?
I was puzzled by the fact that this comment seemed to have almost nothing to do with the article (the government of Taiwan a small inventor?) until I did a little searching and found the same comment posted verbatim at several other blogs.
Is there a noun like "troll", but more pejorative?
Wait a second... this just might work. A patent pool is a protection scheme, it allows the owner of the pool to shake down businesses for money-- but a government does that anyway. So a government-owned pool is sort of like a toxic waste dump, a place to put patents where they can't hurt anyone. Once the government is routinely buying new patents, it might have an incentive not to issue them carelessly. The next step might be either to require inventors to surrender their patents (something I disagree with on principle, but that might be a practical good in this case), or else raise the bar higher and higher until it's granting patents only for real and valuable inventions. Manufacturers would flock to Taiwan, other nations would follow suit, international treaties would merge the pools, and eventually the smarter member nations would realize that their patent offices are a pure cost and start pinching them off...
Technically, according to the letter of the law -- and I know the letter of the law isn't winning many fights against the government these days--, things may be classified "Secret" (or above) if their exposure would cause serious harm to the security of the nation.
Just think what that secret interpretation must look like to pass that threshold...
"Digital Restrictions Management should preferably be outlawed, as it is a type of fraud nullifying consumer and citizen rights, but at least, it must always be legal to circumvent."
I certainly agree with the second part, that circumvention should be legal-- what I do with a sequence of bits in the privacy of my own home is nobody's business but mine.
But I actually disagree with the first part. If I assemble, say, an album of public domain photographs, surely that should be legal. Whom have I harmed? If I keep that album to myself, or destroy it, surely that should be legal. If I build a self-destruct mechanism into it, that should be perfectly legal too. And if I then sell it, not mentioning to the buyer that the album will resist being lent, or that it will turn to dust in a year, then I'm certainly guilty of fraud. But if I tell the buyer up front about the rigging, and the buyer is still willing to buy, then whom have I defrauded? What rights have I violated? (And before suggesting that people have a right to public domain material, or a right to buy things without DRM, please reread the part about my right to destroy the album without selling it).
E-mail is highly reliable. And the sad fact is that nobody cares about security. PGP (free and open-source) gives Fort Knox security and is quite easy to use, but just try persuading your correspondents to encrypt/decrypt e-mail with it. And don't get me started about the legality of cryptographic signatures.
The Post Office would have been smarter to play up a quality of paper mail which can't easily be surpassed by e-mail: charm. There is something about holding a letter in your hand, a piece of paper prepared by the hands of someone you know, with the handwriting you recognize, the tidiness or wildness, the post-scriptum crammed in at the bottom, the creases and finger-smudges, maybe the yellowing at the edges. I have a letter my grandfather wrote to my grandmother when he was stationed in London during WWII; he wrote it on the day they announced victory in Europe, and he describes the street scenes and celebrations in a youthful longhand, similar to but different from the inscriptions in some of his books from when he was an old man. In another month I'll write a letter to a couple of my little nieces inviting them (and their parents, natch) to a Christmas party. I'll use my favorite pen and let myself go a little with the capital letters, and maybe add a sketch or two. That's what paper is still best at.
If this is the kind of story the police spin in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, just imagine the liberties they may take when there's no evidence (that hasn't passed through their hands), and it's their word against that of a shifty-looking prisoner.
Something to remember the next time you serve on a jury.
"It is believed that this posting also has a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and/or substantial disruption of school activities and/or be constituted as a threat."
Apart from the bad grammar (the poster expected something?) they seem to imply that a crude satirical "warning" logo, if left up on the professor's door, would spark a riot. Is that university really such a soap-bubble that a poster on a door could plunge it into chaos? Not even a violent, pornographic, culturally insensitive poster inspired by Craven, Mapplethorpe and Hitler, not a brilliantly insightful, insidiously persuasive instrument of subversion by Samuel Clemens, Thomas Paine and the agit-prop department of MI6, just this dumb thing? I should go there with a few pages of Ginsberg and threaten to read them on the steps of the student center and reduce the whole campus to a smoking ruin unless they make me a Professor Emeritus.
On the post: Loaded Gun Falls Out Of Checked Bag. Feeling Secure At Airports Yet?
haplophobia
I see nothing wrong with a checked bag containing an unloaded gun. What's it gonna do, bluff the other suitcases into handing over their jewels?
On the post: National Writers Union Drops Huffington Post Boycott After Discovering That No One Cared
Oh come on, give them credit for having a little dignity, and not coming back quietly as if they'd never stormed away.
On the post: The Unintended Consequences Of Trying To Overprotect Children From The Internet
Re:
Really? So you could design a comment section or visitor log that would allow children to type in anything except their real names? Without knowing their real names beforehand? This technology of which you speak is truly wondrous, and your understanding of it is mighty indeed.
On the post: Why Some 'Easy' Legal Questions Aren't Always So Easy: Is A Burrito A Sandwich?
any way you slice it
I hope they've both learned from their mistake, but I doubt it. They'll both try for "clearer" (i.e. more complicated) language in the future contracts, which will increase the billable hours involved and do absolutely nothing to solve the underlying problem.
On the post: DailyDirt: Cures To Whatever Ails You...
what more do you want?
On the post: Company Thanks Guy Who Alerted Them To Big Security Flaw By Sending The Cops... And The Bill
Re: I've done that
On the post: ICANN Takes Over Time Zone Database; Dares Astrolabe To Sue
I see your stock falling... falling...
On the post: Woman Sues Airline Over Flight Turbulence
right this way
On the post: DailyDirt: Eating Like A King...
what a jerk
On the post: Take Picture Of Your 4-Year-Old Daughter Eating Ice Cream... Get Investigated Under Terrorism Act [Updated]
Wee image o' my bonie Betty
On the post: Confused Indian Anti-Piracy Group Asks Us To Remove Article It Doesn't Like From Some Other Blog
Re:
Also, it's "Indians' mouths" (unless he's one of those multi-headed Indian princes you see in the movies).
On the post: What A Waste: Taiwan Plans To Create A 'Patent Bank' To Protect Taiwanese Companies Against Patent Lawsuits
Re: another biased article
Is there a noun like "troll", but more pejorative?
On the post: What A Waste: Taiwan Plans To Create A 'Patent Bank' To Protect Taiwanese Companies Against Patent Lawsuits
It's so crazy...
I can dream, can't I?
On the post: NYTimes Sues The Federal Government For Refusing To Reveal Its Secret Interpretation Of The PATRIOT Act
Not that it matters, but...
Just think what that secret interpretation must look like to pass that threshold...
On the post: Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: freedom of thought
On the post: Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright
Re: Re: freedom of thought
On the post: Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright
freedom of thought
I certainly agree with the second part, that circumvention should be legal-- what I do with a sequence of bits in the privacy of my own home is nobody's business but mine.
But I actually disagree with the first part. If I assemble, say, an album of public domain photographs, surely that should be legal. Whom have I harmed? If I keep that album to myself, or destroy it, surely that should be legal. If I build a self-destruct mechanism into it, that should be perfectly legal too. And if I then sell it, not mentioning to the buyer that the album will resist being lent, or that it will turn to dust in a year, then I'm certainly guilty of fraud. But if I tell the buyer up front about the rigging, and the buyer is still willing to buy, then whom have I defrauded? What rights have I violated? (And before suggesting that people have a right to public domain material, or a right to buy things without DRM, please reread the part about my right to destroy the album without selling it).
On the post: New US Postal Service Ad Campaign: Email Sucks, So Mail Stuff Instead
know what business you're in
The Post Office would have been smarter to play up a quality of paper mail which can't easily be surpassed by e-mail: charm. There is something about holding a letter in your hand, a piece of paper prepared by the hands of someone you know, with the handwriting you recognize, the tidiness or wildness, the post-scriptum crammed in at the bottom, the creases and finger-smudges, maybe the yellowing at the edges. I have a letter my grandfather wrote to my grandmother when he was stationed in London during WWII; he wrote it on the day they announced victory in Europe, and he describes the street scenes and celebrations in a youthful longhand, similar to but different from the inscriptions in some of his books from when he was an old man. In another month I'll write a letter to a couple of my little nieces inviting them (and their parents, natch) to a Christmas party. I'll use my favorite pen and let myself go a little with the capital letters, and maybe add a sketch or two. That's what paper is still best at.
On the post: Phony Bologna: More Evidence Of Indiscriminate Pepper Spraying, As Police Defend Actions
"So there I was..."
Something to remember the next time you serve on a jury.
On the post: University Police & Administration Freak Out Over Nathan Fillion Firefly Poster; Censor, Threaten Professor
don't need no gun
Apart from the bad grammar (the poster expected something?) they seem to imply that a crude satirical "warning" logo, if left up on the professor's door, would spark a riot. Is that university really such a soap-bubble that a poster on a door could plunge it into chaos? Not even a violent, pornographic, culturally insensitive poster inspired by Craven, Mapplethorpe and Hitler, not a brilliantly insightful, insidiously persuasive instrument of subversion by Samuel Clemens, Thomas Paine and the agit-prop department of MI6, just this dumb thing? I should go there with a few pages of Ginsberg and threaten to read them on the steps of the student center and reduce the whole campus to a smoking ruin unless they make me a Professor Emeritus.
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