Problem is, there's so much politics in the peer-review process already that the argument isn't entirely unbelievable, it's just highly unlikely. Anyone with an ear to the ground hears rumblings about science bankrolled by organizations with an agenda and presented as neutral, or about people who have been denied publication because someone on an editorial board was doing the same work and didn't want to get scooped, or about selection of big names for journals because they were big names rather than because their work was great, or about confirmation bias in clinical trials where a doc will almost subconsciously discount symptoms he doesn't like.

Obviously it's not enough to invalidate science, but the political problems make results less trustworthy and gives farfetched conspiracy theories (i.e. no global warming) a ring of truth to them. That's enough to keep them alive among the ignorant, especially because most people don't have time to learn the science themselves.

Killing people in an organization usually makes the organization weaker. So, too, does the expenditure of resources. These are the premises on which war is based. Whether it is done with swords, machine guns, bioweapons, nukes, or drones.

The choice of weapon may alter the truth of that premise by altering the willingness of people to fund, to assist, to kill for, or to die for those organizations. It will also alter the cost per kill.

As a tool, drones obviously help to kill people. The question is whether they are cost-effective and what the psychological consequences are.

Parts of the DOJ are very highly respected. The SG's office (which I think is technically part of Justice) and the Civil Right's Division, for example. And even in the slightly less-highly-respected parts, there are some very highly respected and incredibly nice people.

There are also at least some assholes and even some incompetents, but the asshole bit is kind of a natural consequence of how the US criminal justice system works. The assholes generally mean well, but they are too quick to trample on the rights of an accused criminal. This is less of a problem on the federal level, however, than it is locally.

On the other hand, courts don't give you six strikes, either. =)

IIRC, roundabouts tend to result in having more accidents but the accidents that you have are much less serious. So they're a better choice for spreading risk.

Legal malpractice claims happen, although less often than makes sense. Kind of like how doctors stick together, but you can still find doctors who testify against serious malpractice.

The ad litem attorneys were two public interest groups--Public Citizen and the EFF. Most of the attorneys there work there for well below what they would command on the private market.

Actually, the appellate court didn't agree--they just said that the attorney suing the does had waived his right to make the arguments he made on appeal, because he hadn't made them below and on-time.

In other words, he lost the appeal on a technicality. He might well have lost it on the merits as well, but it never got that far.

The only especially notable thing about this is a circuit court on record talking about the pattern of abusive litigation in mass-porn lawsuits.

There are thousands of people doing everything from volunteering to help at the local soup kitchen to working for change on massive human rights abuses to defending the wrongly accused.

Charity is a field with far more available in the way of hands than in the way of money. Could it use more hands? Sure. But there still isn't enough money to fund all the people that want to do the work, even at the low salaries most people who work in the related fields accept because that's what they want to be doing.

*shrugs* Certainly there's nothing *preventing* it from involving nukes. It's just unlikely. :)

No, generally courts won't allow double recovery--negligence would be a backup theory in case you didn't win the statutory damages, since you'd have to prove actual harm, which would be much smaller than statutory damages. But if you got them, they wouldn't let you also get negligence damages.

The negligence/willfulness distinction I also think doesn't work, though it sounds intuitively good. IIRC, civil copyright uses willfulness to increase damages, but actually has strict liability. You're right that the double jeopardy thing doesn't apply because it's a civil case.

People get accused of negligence all the time--getting in an accident, not maintaining a sidewalk, pretty much anything.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a negligence claim here, it would just be a hard sell. Negligence arises when someone has a duty, they breach the duty, and the breach is the cause of a forseeable harm to the plaintiff.

It doesn't have to involve nukes, and usually it doesn't.

So there would be two big hurdles for a plaintiff here: (1) a duty to keep one's internet connection secure and (2) the idea that there has actually been harm.

The judge bought an argument that the copyright law created a way for people to recover for the harm involved here, so the copyright statute overrules the ability to file a common-law negligence action. (Statutes trump common law). It's not a bad argument, although it's also not a surefire-win. (And as an on-point district court decision, the ruling is persuasive, but not binding on other courts.)

Disclaimer: IANAL, this isn't legal advice, laws vary by state, and you and I are both partially wrong.

They may be going faster than you when they pass, but their behavior can result in an accident where you hit them anyway. This occurs where they are slowing down or you are speeding up, meaning it is possible for the vehicles to collide despite the fact that they are passing you. This frequently occurs when you are overtaking a vehicle in the lane next to you moving more slowly than yours (usually the right lane in the United States), and someone behind that vehicle in that lane comes up and slips into your lane in front of you, relying on you to change your velocity or acceleration in order not to be hit, or allowing an unacceptably thin margin of error.

How is stealing a keyless car possible unless they don't bother to spend a few bucks on implementing a good friend-or-foe system? (Which would be much cheaper then what they charge for an electronic "key")

We used to believe the sun was powered by gravitational potential energy, giving us 10K years or so of solar system life. Then a geologist and and astronomer were chatting one day, and the geologist asked about the age of the solar system...

As it turns out, the rocks were all older than the solar system. So they knew something was weird.