Source: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202631211450?rss=rss_nlj
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Tuesday, May 27, 2014
High Court Leaves New York's Online Sales Tax Law in Place
Dec. 2 was an extraordinary day for Amazon.com: Cyber Monday sales reached new heights, its fanciful plan to use drones to make deliveries was creating buzz -- and then the U.S. Supreme Court spoiled it all by turning down Amazon's challenge to online sales taxes.
Monday, May 26, 2014
The Evolution Of Electronic Monitoring Devices
The device, which was first created for positive reinforcement, is now used by courts as a cost-effective way to send people home and free up jail space.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/22/314874232/the-history-of-electronic-monitoring-devices?ft=1&f=1070
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Panel Presentation Pointers for Legal Professionals
Tom and Dennis do a lot of speaking, often as part of a panel. Most presentations these days take the form of a panel or other multi-speaker format. Presenting with others is quite different from presenting alone. In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss the advantages and disadvantages of panel presentations, how to prepare for and avoid common pitfalls and practical tips for novice and veteran presenters.
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Apple Says Workers Brought Bag Checks on Themselves
Retail workers who didn't want to wait for security screenings could have left their bags and iPhones at home, the company's lawyers told Judge William Alsup in fighting claims for off-the-clock wages.
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Kansas' Unauthorized LL.M. Program Draws ABA Censure
The University of Kansas School of Law must pay a $50,000 fine for admitting two foreign attorneys into a new LL.M. program that the American Bar Association had not approved.
Source: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202634055202?rss=rss_nlj
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Panel Presentation Pointers for Legal Professionals
Tom and Dennis do a lot of speaking, often as part of a panel. Most presentations these days take the form of a panel or other multi-speaker format. Presenting with others is quite different from presenting alone. In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss the advantages and disadvantages of panel presentations, how to prepare for and avoid common pitfalls and practical tips for novice and veteran presenters.
Affirmative action ban in state constitution violates US constitution (8-7)
Michigan voters adopted a state constitutional amendment that prohibits "all sex- and race-based preferences in public education, public employment, and public contracting."
The 6th Circuit (8-7) held this provision - as it relates to education - violates the 14th amendment's equal protection clause.
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action v. Univ of Michigan (6th Cir 11/15/2012)
(Plaintiffs limited their challenge to racial discrimination in public education.)
The court said that a black applicant could seek adoption of a constitutionally permissible race-conscious admissions policy only through the "lengthy, expensive, and arduous process" of amending the state constitution. On the other hand, someone wishing to change any other aspect of a university's admissions policy has four options - lobby the admissions committee, petition the leadership of the university, seek to influence the school's governing board, or initiate a statewide campaign to alter the state's constitution.
"The existence of such a comparative structural burden undermines the Equal Protection Clause's guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change."
Seven judges wrote five DISSENTING opinions. Six said that the majority relied on two US Supreme Court cases that "have no application here," and one said that the majority relied on "an extreme extension" of those cases. The cases are Hunter v. Erickson, 393 US 385 (1969), and Washington v. Seattle Sch Dist, 458 US 457 (1982).
Source: http://www.lawmemo.com/blog/2012/11/affirmative_act.html
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Former Obama Campaigner Tries Running For Himself In Iowa
Brad Anderson helped the president in Iowa in 2008 and 2012, but he's never campaigned on his own behalf. He cites Obama as an inspiration, but others might not be as quick to start their own races.
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Zimmerman: No Appeal From The Court of Public Opinion (Update)
George Zimmerman was acquitted on a Saturday night. Keyboards were pounded. Reporters reported. Pundits opined. And the jury in the court of public opinion rendered its verdict.
Almost no criminal lawyer, prosecution or defense, saw a second degree murder conviction coming. Education and experience condemns us to view evidence and law with detached logic, so there is no emotionalism, no reliance on "common sense," to fudge the proof.
While juries regularly reach verdicts that bear little relation to the facts, evidence and applicable law, mostly because it's a deeply flawed system, that didn't happen here. The best discussion of what happened that has been produced thus far comes from the Unwashed Advocate, Eric Mayer, who succinctly lays it out.
Acquittal was the right verdict in this case, no matter how much you feel Zimmerman acted out of prejudice, or how terrible it is that a young man was killed.
But the court of public opinion rendered its opinion on twitter following the verdict. For those who embrace the "wisdom of crowds," consider its holding:
1. Trayvon Martin's family should appeal the verdict, up to the Supreme Court if necessary.
2. On appeal, they can make George Zimmerman testify.
3. Then, George Zimmerman will be convicted because a young man is dead.
It's not that people intentionally determined that the Constitution should be ignored. It's that the crowds have no clue. Maybe they slept through civics class. Maybe they don't remember. Maybe they don't care. But less than ten days after we celebrated the independence of this nation, the court of public opinion has decided they don't like them.
There will be no appeal because of the double jeopardy clause, which precludes it. Zimmerman did not have to testify, and will never have to testify in a criminal prosecution, because he has the right not to testify. And most sadly, the fact that a young man is dead does not compel the conclusion that someone be convicted of a crime.
So much for the adoration of crowdsourcing, or the desiderata that the public can be entrusted with the handling of the law. In the court of public opinion, assumption runs rampant, as people get their own "feel" for right and wrong, and then become so entrenched in their own bias that they refuse to consider the hard details of evidence and proof. People need no trial to tell them what happened. They hear a story and whatever gut reaction they have to it becomes their reality.
As it turns out, much of what was told about the death of Trayvon Martin is either false or mired in mystery. When left with the proposition that we will never know what "really" happened, the significance is that the prosecution then lacks evidence to prove its case. But Trayvon is dead, so it's unfair since he can't tell his side of the story? True, but that doesn't change the requirement that a defendant be proven guilty. The rule is not proof if its available, assumption if it's not. Except in the court of public opinion.
Is there nothing left to do? There is the possibility of a civil suit for wrongful death by Trayvon Martin's family, just as Nicole Brown Simpson's family sued O.J. The standard of proof is lower, "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt," but the outcome will be money damages at worst, not conviction of a crime and imprisonment.
There is also the possibility of a prosecution in federal court for violating Trayvon Martin's civil right to live by shooting him, under the dreaded dual sovereignty that allows the feds a shot if the state fails to convict. That's what happened to LAPD Sgt. Stacey Koon in the Rodney King beating.
Will either of these happen? Time will tell. The former seems far more likely than the latter, but Trayvon's family may be more legally sophisticated by this point, such that they realize the difficulty that exists with providing evidence to prove their claim. It's not that they can't believe, but they can't prove.
As show trials go, this one has generated plenty of fodder for television heads to fill the empty minutes between commercials. But it has also shown that the court of public opinion can't be trusted. Americans still don't understand their own system. They don't get that the rights they want for themselves have to be given to people they despise as well. They refuse to accept that someone they feel with absolute certainty is guilty can be properly acquitted.
Did George Zimmerman have hate in his heart? Who knows. I don't. Neither do you, no matter how strongly you believe you do. But he wasn't proven to have killed Trayvon Martin because of his ill will toward a young black man, and when that happens under our system, acquittal must follow. Yet the court of public opinion refused to accept the verdict, instead pushing its million member jury deeper into ignorance.
There is one truth that neither conviction nor acquittal can change:
Update: Already this morning, television news has broadcast the twits of New York City politicians and candidates following the verdict. They have the potential to enlighten, to calm, to inform. Instead, they are pandering and inflaming the passions and ignorance of the public, playing the confirmation bias card.
Whether they too lack a working grasp of our legal system, or know better and just don't care, is unclear. Either way, a million people could end the day stupider than it began. Is it worth a vote? Don't answer.
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Almost no criminal lawyer, prosecution or defense, saw a second degree murder conviction coming. Education and experience condemns us to view evidence and law with detached logic, so there is no emotionalism, no reliance on "common sense," to fudge the proof.
While juries regularly reach verdicts that bear little relation to the facts, evidence and applicable law, mostly because it's a deeply flawed system, that didn't happen here. The best discussion of what happened that has been produced thus far comes from the Unwashed Advocate, Eric Mayer, who succinctly lays it out.
Acquittal was the right verdict in this case, no matter how much you feel Zimmerman acted out of prejudice, or how terrible it is that a young man was killed.
But the court of public opinion rendered its opinion on twitter following the verdict. For those who embrace the "wisdom of crowds," consider its holding:
1. Trayvon Martin's family should appeal the verdict, up to the Supreme Court if necessary.
2. On appeal, they can make George Zimmerman testify.
3. Then, George Zimmerman will be convicted because a young man is dead.
It's not that people intentionally determined that the Constitution should be ignored. It's that the crowds have no clue. Maybe they slept through civics class. Maybe they don't remember. Maybe they don't care. But less than ten days after we celebrated the independence of this nation, the court of public opinion has decided they don't like them.
There will be no appeal because of the double jeopardy clause, which precludes it. Zimmerman did not have to testify, and will never have to testify in a criminal prosecution, because he has the right not to testify. And most sadly, the fact that a young man is dead does not compel the conclusion that someone be convicted of a crime.
So much for the adoration of crowdsourcing, or the desiderata that the public can be entrusted with the handling of the law. In the court of public opinion, assumption runs rampant, as people get their own "feel" for right and wrong, and then become so entrenched in their own bias that they refuse to consider the hard details of evidence and proof. People need no trial to tell them what happened. They hear a story and whatever gut reaction they have to it becomes their reality.
As it turns out, much of what was told about the death of Trayvon Martin is either false or mired in mystery. When left with the proposition that we will never know what "really" happened, the significance is that the prosecution then lacks evidence to prove its case. But Trayvon is dead, so it's unfair since he can't tell his side of the story? True, but that doesn't change the requirement that a defendant be proven guilty. The rule is not proof if its available, assumption if it's not. Except in the court of public opinion.
Is there nothing left to do? There is the possibility of a civil suit for wrongful death by Trayvon Martin's family, just as Nicole Brown Simpson's family sued O.J. The standard of proof is lower, "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt," but the outcome will be money damages at worst, not conviction of a crime and imprisonment.
There is also the possibility of a prosecution in federal court for violating Trayvon Martin's civil right to live by shooting him, under the dreaded dual sovereignty that allows the feds a shot if the state fails to convict. That's what happened to LAPD Sgt. Stacey Koon in the Rodney King beating.
Will either of these happen? Time will tell. The former seems far more likely than the latter, but Trayvon's family may be more legally sophisticated by this point, such that they realize the difficulty that exists with providing evidence to prove their claim. It's not that they can't believe, but they can't prove.
As show trials go, this one has generated plenty of fodder for television heads to fill the empty minutes between commercials. But it has also shown that the court of public opinion can't be trusted. Americans still don't understand their own system. They don't get that the rights they want for themselves have to be given to people they despise as well. They refuse to accept that someone they feel with absolute certainty is guilty can be properly acquitted.
Did George Zimmerman have hate in his heart? Who knows. I don't. Neither do you, no matter how strongly you believe you do. But he wasn't proven to have killed Trayvon Martin because of his ill will toward a young black man, and when that happens under our system, acquittal must follow. Yet the court of public opinion refused to accept the verdict, instead pushing its million member jury deeper into ignorance.
There is one truth that neither conviction nor acquittal can change:
A young man named Trayvon died. He didn’t need to die. That is both tragic and sad.And there is another truth that twitter cannot change. For all the vast information that has become available to us by virtue of the internet, there is no wisdom of the crowds.
Update: Already this morning, television news has broadcast the twits of New York City politicians and candidates following the verdict. They have the potential to enlighten, to calm, to inform. Instead, they are pandering and inflaming the passions and ignorance of the public, playing the confirmation bias card.
Whether they too lack a working grasp of our legal system, or know better and just don't care, is unclear. Either way, a million people could end the day stupider than it began. Is it worth a vote? Don't answer.
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Former Obama Campaigner Tries Running For Himself In Iowa
Brad Anderson helped the president in Iowa in 2008 and 2012, but he's never campaigned on his own behalf. He cites Obama as an inspiration, but others might not be as quick to start their own races.
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Appeals Court Questions Solicitor General in Motorola Antitrust Case
Normally, judges assume that if the U.S. Solicitor General says he’s speaking for the executive branch when he's making a legal argument, he means it. But apparently, that's not always the case.
Straight From The Hole
It's far easier to wrap your head around torture when it involves the infliction of active pain. That doesn't make passive pain, the infliction of often unbearable psychological punishment, an less torturous. And it happens regularly, and many time arbitrarily, as explained in an op-ed by Wilbert Rideau, who served 44 years for manslaughter in Louisiana.
Before you dismiss Rideau as a killer who deserved whatever he got, bear in mind that stories from the inside aren't told by saints. Every once in a while, a former inmate emerges with the erudition necessary to put into words the world that most of us never knew existed. When this happens, it's a window through which we need to look. Rideau offers a view of solitary confinement, the hole.
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Before you dismiss Rideau as a killer who deserved whatever he got, bear in mind that stories from the inside aren't told by saints. Every once in a while, a former inmate emerges with the erudition necessary to put into words the world that most of us never knew existed. When this happens, it's a window through which we need to look. Rideau offers a view of solitary confinement, the hole.
I know something about solitary confinement, because I’ve been there. I spent a total of 12 years in various solitary confinement cells. And I can tell you that isolating a human being for years in a barren cell the size of a small bathroom is the cruelest thing you can do to a person.Deprived of all human contact, you lose your feeling of connectedness to the world. You lose your ability to make small talk, even with the guard who shoves your meal through the slot in the door. You live entirely in your head, for there is nothing else. You talk to yourself, answer yourself. You become paranoid, depressed, sleepless. To ward off madness, you must give your mind something to do. In 1970, I counted the 358 rivets that held my steel cell together, over and over. Every time the walls seemed to be closing in on me, I counted them again, to give my mind something to fasten on to.
Without having been there, it's likely inconceivable to understand what happens to a mind in isolation. Some of us have trouble being alone for an hour, an evening, a day. Add day upon day, year upon year. But not the way it is for us, where we still have access to television or internet, even if there is no other living person around. No, this is completely different.
But to add insult to injury, don't leap to the assumption that if a prisoner ends up in the hole, he must have done something pretty bad to deserve it.
In a world where authorities exercise absolute power and demand abject obedience, prisoners are almost always going to be on the losing side, and they know it.
The typical inmate doesn’t want trouble. He has little to gain and too much to lose: his job, his visits, his recreation time, his phone privileges, his right to buy tuna, ramen and stale bread at inflated prices in the commissary. The ways even a bystander to the most peaceful protest can be punished are limited only by the imagination of the authorities.
Punishment can be deserved or not. There's no due process in prison. There's no one to complain to about being punished based on a false accusation, a trumped up allegation, a guard pissed off by an attitude. Authorities own the lives of prisoners, and can be as harsh as they want to be, as arbitrary as they feel like. And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
Rideau explains that the prison protests in California are an outgrowth of a system run amok and no other means of addressing their grievance.
And yet, sometimes things get so bad that prisoners feel compelled to protest, with work stoppages, riots or hunger strikes. On July 8, some 30,000 inmates in the custody of the California Department of Corrections went on a hunger strike to demand improvements in prison conditions. Their biggest complaint was the runaway use of solitary confinement, the fact that thousands of prisoners are consigned to this cruelty indefinitely, some for decades.
While prisoners are sentenced to incarceration, no judge sentences them to isolation for decades. There is no requirement that any neutral party review the decision to inflict this torture on another human being. It can be imposed for a sound reason or no reason at all. Who is to disagree? But no matter what the reason or nonreason, to put a person in the hole for years, for decades, is to impose psychological torture of a terrible kind on a human being. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, the prisoner can do about it.
In California, inmates did the only thing left for them to do, protest. Not too many of us care about what happened to "criminals." After all, bad dudes who did bad things to other people. A pox on them. They get what they deserve and their out of sight, out of mind. But there is good reason to give them just a little bit of though. For one thing, they are still people, and we are still purportedly a civilized society that doesn't condone the needless brutal treatment of people. But if you lack anything remotely resembling empathy, than do it for your own sake:
Why should you be concerned about the inhumane conditions of prolonged solitary confinement, with all the social, emotional and mental deterioration that it entails? Well, every year men from California’s Pelican Bay and other supermax prisons around the nation are released directly from the vacuum of their cells into free society, to live and work among you and your loved ones. As a matter of self-preservation, maybe we should all join the prisoners’ request for rehabilitative opportunities that will improve the mental health of those in solitary.
Go say "hi" to the guy who moved in down the block kids. So what if he spent the last two decades in the hole and seems a bit odd. I'm sure he'll get over it.
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Source: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/07/17/straight-from-the-hole.aspx?ref=rss
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High Court Leaves New York's Online Sales Tax Law in Place
Dec. 2 was an extraordinary day for Amazon.com: Cyber Monday sales reached new heights, its fanciful plan to use drones to make deliveries was creating buzz -- and then the U.S. Supreme Court spoiled it all by turning down Amazon's challenge to online sales taxes.
Source: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202631211450?rss=rss_nlj
ICC rules it may prosecute Gaddafi's son
[JURIST] The International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] ruled [judgment, PDF] Wednesday that the case against Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi [BBC backgrounder] may proceed in the ICC and that Libyan authorities must immediately surrender Saif al-Islam to The Hague. Saif al-Islam is being tried on multiple crimes against humanity associated with the 2011 revolt in his home country. A majority of the ICC Appeals Chamber, with one dissenting opinion, rejected all four grounds of appeal brought by the...
Source: http://jurist.org/paperchase/2014/05/icc-rules-it-may-prosecute-gaddafis-son.php
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Teenage Mischief Can Lead To Jail Time In Tennessee
Teenagers get in trouble for skipping school, breaking curfew or buying cigarettes, but in one Tennessee county, that can mean jail. Susan Ferriss reported on this for the Center for Public Integrity.
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GM, Delphi Seek Consolidation in Texas Ignition-Switch Cases
General Motors Co. and Delphi Automotive PLC joined legal forces Wednesday and jointly asked the Texas Supreme Court to consolidate all faulty ignition-switch lawsuits pending in that state. The two companies said consolidating the cases so that one judge hears all pretrial issues will "facilitate the uniform and fair resolution of the ignition switch actions." Both have also asked all litigation to cease until the consolidation request has been heard.
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ENERGY LAW: A SPECIAL REPORT: Digging In
Invigorated exploration for more resources is delivering plenty of work to the legal industry. Our report highlights changes in the law of importance to the attorneys who handle the matters.
Source: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202626153260?rss=rss_nlj
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Saturday, May 24, 2014
Welcome Back, Spitzer
Nature abhors a vacuum, and Eliot Spitzer didn't have much to do after his foray into TV punditry crashed and burned, a few times. It was a match made in...New York. The disgraced former governor, marauding attorney general, overly ambitious assistant district attorney, horn-dog hypocrite and liar, now wants to do the books for New York City.
Well, not really do the books, as he wants to use the oversight authority of the Comptroller's office to once again become the sheriff of something. He got a lot of mileage out of playing sheriff, as the public loves the pretense of someone in public officer "fixing" the people they hate. Few were able to create targets of derision better than Spitzer, enough so that when he used bazookas to go after flies, even innocent flies, the only sound from the groundlings was applause.
At Cato, Walter Olson reminds us of who this Spitzer guy was before his fall from grace. But hubris never takes a day off, so Spitzer made his pitch:
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Well, not really do the books, as he wants to use the oversight authority of the Comptroller's office to once again become the sheriff of something. He got a lot of mileage out of playing sheriff, as the public loves the pretense of someone in public officer "fixing" the people they hate. Few were able to create targets of derision better than Spitzer, enough so that when he used bazookas to go after flies, even innocent flies, the only sound from the groundlings was applause.
At Cato, Walter Olson reminds us of who this Spitzer guy was before his fall from grace. But hubris never takes a day off, so Spitzer made his pitch:
On “CBS This Morning,” Spitzer said, “I sinned, I owned up to it, I looked them in the eye, I resigned, I held myself accountable. I think that was the only right thing to do. There’s a record there that I hope they will look to and say, ‘yes, the comptroller’s position is one that fits his skill set and we hope that we can bring him back for public service.’”Some might think the generous thing to do, particularly from someone inclined toward redemption as befits a criminal defense lawyer, would be to accept his concession of wrongdoing, the price he paid by giving up the post of governor with his wife (could she be described as cuckolded?) forced to stand next to him as if this wasn't a humiliation so far beyond anything she could ever imagine happening to her.
And yet, while his announcement has produced no end of hilarity in some circles, it should be taken with brutal seriousness. George Santayana's warning comes to mind, though it strikes me as needing a slight adjustment here. It's not that we've forgotten the past of Eliot Spitzer, but maybe we just can't muster the will to reject him despite the past. There just isn't anyone else around who has enough name recognition, star stature, to interest us, unless Kim Kardashian jumps into the race.
It's not that there aren't other people whose ideas are worthy of our political consideration, but, heck, Americans need to be spoonfed what they think because critical thought makes our head hurt and takes us away from important bonding time at fast food restaurants and in front of computer gaming consoles.
"Spitzer? Yeah, I remember that name. He was, like, somebody once, right? Pass me a beer."
Even local newspapers aren't particularly outraged. In fact, because of what the New York Post calls a "talent drought," they are preparing to do what they never do: forgive. Newsday says his candidacy is "worth a look," a curious position given its rush to convict the amorphous unindicted and forgive the admitted criminal. The Daily News takes a more level headed approach, relating the hard facts of his failures as governor to the job of comptroller to remind people that Spitzer would be a disaster even if he wasn't pond scum otherwise.
Since SJ isn't political, you might wonder why I've written a post about Spitzer, who wouldn't be eligible to vote no less run had he been prosecuted like a regular guy for what he did. Because Eliot Spitzer would be the first guy, aside from Rudy Giuliani and Joe McCarthy, to string you up for a millisecond of adoration.
Is it unduly hopeful to believe that the age of the popular appeal of the avenging angel is over? Is it wrong to hope that the public bloodlust for "getting" someone, anyone, so that we can pretend we've rid society of all the people who make our lives unpleasant and can go back to a time when we can only take for ourselves?
Eliot Spitzer reflected the worst of us. Then he was gone, destroyed by his own hand as the overly righteous should be. And now he's back? Will we reject him and all he represents because we've had enough of the avenging angels? Or are we as still as angry and mindless as we were when he was crowned governor?
Go away, Spitzer. Just go away.
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Source: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/07/09/welcome-back-spitzer.aspx?ref=rss
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End of Lifed
As some of you know (and I know you know because you write me angry emails and exasperated twits), Simple Justice hasn't worked well for months now. It takes forever for the posts to load, assuming they load at all. After trying to find out from my host, GoDaddy, why this is happening, I was eventually told that they had given up on the blogging program I use, stopped doing anything to maintain its efficacy a year ago, and were preparing to "End of Life" their involvement in blogging.
Mind you, this didn't stop GoDaddy from taking my money to use their program, but I digress.
Over the past couple of months, I have been involved in an effort to move SJ to a new platform over at WordPress with a new host. It had a few hitches along the way. My initial efforts involved some of the turnkey opportunities for blawgers, one of which involved spending huge sums of money because their business model is based on dopey law firms who buy into the "every lawyer needs a blawg or will die" vision of the future.
Since this isn't a marketing tool or money maker for me, there was no way I was going to throw thousands of dollars into this hole. My basic premise is that I write and people get to read, if they want, for free. While I am happy to provide the content for my own purposes, if not yours, I am not happy to pay through the nose to amuse readers.
Another wanted me as part of their stable of law blogs, which wouldn't have been so awful except that they quickly reneged on the deal offered when they saw the volume of traffic here. Reneging isn't something I can live with.
Lacking the mad computer skillz to make this happen on my own, a few people who had significant computer skills and enjoyed SJ offered to lend a hand and make a move happen. One gave me a lead on the big issues, but was too high on the pay grade to do the dirty work. Another was happy to make the nuts and bolts of a change happen.
After being well on the way, he suffered some personal problems and, well, disappeared on me. As in, went dark. I grew far more concerned about his welfare than I was about moving this blog. Some things are real, like a good person's well-being, and to this moment, I have no clue whether he is dead or alive. I hope he gets in touch with me soon. I'm still deeply concerned.
It wasn't easy stuff. GoDaddy's system was proprietary, and didn't play nice with anyone else's system. While GoDaddy had developed an export feature to move content to WordPress, they found out that it wasn't particularly "robust," and that my rather extensive content crashed the system. It could handle about 100 blog posts. I had well over 5000. Nobody at GoDaddy anticipated someone as prolific as me.
But when their general counsel explained that I probably wasn't a great choice of people to piss off, they put some developers on the task of creating a means of moving my content. It took a couple of weeks, but they eventually managed to pull it off. It was a decidedly less than perfect solution, as they were able to include my posts and the comments, but they couldn't manage to get the contents to thread (or nest, if you prefer) at WordPress. Bear this in mind later, so no one bitches at me about the comments. It just couldn't be done.
Many people have suggested their hosts, web designers, programs, whatever, to fix the disaster of using GoDaddy. While I appreciated the concern, it wasn't really helpful after the first few thousand suggestions. Most of my griping had to do with prodding GoDaddy to keep SJ working, at least minimally, until a move could be completed. This wasn't a bleg for suggestions, but deliberate effort to poke GoDaddy by a wee bit of public shaming for their inability to do what they took money to do.
Finally, I was hooked up with a guy who, for a fee, would do what was needed to finish the move. We were on the same page, and although it irks me that I have to pay someone to do the work, I wasn't ready to let SJ die and didn't want to see the content created over the past seven plus years disappear when SJ went dark. But my new guy developed some personal issues that pulled his attention away from making the move happen, I began to think I was a curse to computer people (or maybe computer people were a curse to me?).
It appears that we're are all getting on the same page now, and provided an alien invasion, healthcare crisis or zombie Armageddon doesn't happen in the next couple of days, I anticipate that SJ will move to its new home.
It's not yet clear to me how easily I will accommodate to WordPress. I know, tons of you have told me how easy it is, but I'm an old dog and new tricks come hard. Heck, it took me a few hours to figure out how to use the "intuitive" wheel of an iPod. Yes, I can be that clueless.
I anticipate that there will a day or two, maybe more, when nothing will appear at SJ. It's not that I've quit or gone fishing. I'm not dead yet. It's just that there will be down time while all this happens, while the internet figures out that I've moved to a new home and redirects you to the right address.
There will be problems in the future as well. Images will be missing. Links will be broken. Formatting will get all screwed up do to differences in coding between GoDaddy and WordPress. It will be annoying to you. Me too, probably more so. But short of going back over the more than 5000 posts and cleaning up the mess by hand, there isn't much I can do to prevent the problems. I am not inclined to spend my time that way. Sorry, but we will all have to suck it up.
I hope this makes things a little clearer for readers, and I apologize for the problems, delays and frustration caused by GoDaddy's sucking. I've been working on it for months now, and I hope we've come to the end of the nightmare. In any event, it's better than being End of Lifed by GoDaddy.
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Mind you, this didn't stop GoDaddy from taking my money to use their program, but I digress.
Over the past couple of months, I have been involved in an effort to move SJ to a new platform over at WordPress with a new host. It had a few hitches along the way. My initial efforts involved some of the turnkey opportunities for blawgers, one of which involved spending huge sums of money because their business model is based on dopey law firms who buy into the "every lawyer needs a blawg or will die" vision of the future.
Since this isn't a marketing tool or money maker for me, there was no way I was going to throw thousands of dollars into this hole. My basic premise is that I write and people get to read, if they want, for free. While I am happy to provide the content for my own purposes, if not yours, I am not happy to pay through the nose to amuse readers.
Another wanted me as part of their stable of law blogs, which wouldn't have been so awful except that they quickly reneged on the deal offered when they saw the volume of traffic here. Reneging isn't something I can live with.
Lacking the mad computer skillz to make this happen on my own, a few people who had significant computer skills and enjoyed SJ offered to lend a hand and make a move happen. One gave me a lead on the big issues, but was too high on the pay grade to do the dirty work. Another was happy to make the nuts and bolts of a change happen.
After being well on the way, he suffered some personal problems and, well, disappeared on me. As in, went dark. I grew far more concerned about his welfare than I was about moving this blog. Some things are real, like a good person's well-being, and to this moment, I have no clue whether he is dead or alive. I hope he gets in touch with me soon. I'm still deeply concerned.
It wasn't easy stuff. GoDaddy's system was proprietary, and didn't play nice with anyone else's system. While GoDaddy had developed an export feature to move content to WordPress, they found out that it wasn't particularly "robust," and that my rather extensive content crashed the system. It could handle about 100 blog posts. I had well over 5000. Nobody at GoDaddy anticipated someone as prolific as me.
But when their general counsel explained that I probably wasn't a great choice of people to piss off, they put some developers on the task of creating a means of moving my content. It took a couple of weeks, but they eventually managed to pull it off. It was a decidedly less than perfect solution, as they were able to include my posts and the comments, but they couldn't manage to get the contents to thread (or nest, if you prefer) at WordPress. Bear this in mind later, so no one bitches at me about the comments. It just couldn't be done.
Many people have suggested their hosts, web designers, programs, whatever, to fix the disaster of using GoDaddy. While I appreciated the concern, it wasn't really helpful after the first few thousand suggestions. Most of my griping had to do with prodding GoDaddy to keep SJ working, at least minimally, until a move could be completed. This wasn't a bleg for suggestions, but deliberate effort to poke GoDaddy by a wee bit of public shaming for their inability to do what they took money to do.
Finally, I was hooked up with a guy who, for a fee, would do what was needed to finish the move. We were on the same page, and although it irks me that I have to pay someone to do the work, I wasn't ready to let SJ die and didn't want to see the content created over the past seven plus years disappear when SJ went dark. But my new guy developed some personal issues that pulled his attention away from making the move happen, I began to think I was a curse to computer people (or maybe computer people were a curse to me?).
It appears that we're are all getting on the same page now, and provided an alien invasion, healthcare crisis or zombie Armageddon doesn't happen in the next couple of days, I anticipate that SJ will move to its new home.
It's not yet clear to me how easily I will accommodate to WordPress. I know, tons of you have told me how easy it is, but I'm an old dog and new tricks come hard. Heck, it took me a few hours to figure out how to use the "intuitive" wheel of an iPod. Yes, I can be that clueless.
I anticipate that there will a day or two, maybe more, when nothing will appear at SJ. It's not that I've quit or gone fishing. I'm not dead yet. It's just that there will be down time while all this happens, while the internet figures out that I've moved to a new home and redirects you to the right address.
There will be problems in the future as well. Images will be missing. Links will be broken. Formatting will get all screwed up do to differences in coding between GoDaddy and WordPress. It will be annoying to you. Me too, probably more so. But short of going back over the more than 5000 posts and cleaning up the mess by hand, there isn't much I can do to prevent the problems. I am not inclined to spend my time that way. Sorry, but we will all have to suck it up.
I hope this makes things a little clearer for readers, and I apologize for the problems, delays and frustration caused by GoDaddy's sucking. I've been working on it for months now, and I hope we've come to the end of the nightmare. In any event, it's better than being End of Lifed by GoDaddy.
© 2007-13 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial & Newstex use only. The use of this feed on any other website is a copyright violation. If this feed is not via RSS reader or Newstex, it infringes the copyright.
Source: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/07/10/end-of-lifed.aspx?ref=rss
Sleeping, Or Passed Out? You Make The Call.
Was this gent sleeping or passed out? You make the call. As reported in The Brooklyn Paper’s Police Blotter for the 88th Precinct (Fort Greene–Clinton Hill):
The 46-year-old said he boarded the Brooklyn-bound train at Grand Central Station at 5 am. He told cops he was intoxicated and fell asleep shortly after boarding, and when he woke up the train had reached the end of the line at New Lots Avenue and turned around, according to a police report.
As he exited the train at Nevins Street, he discovered that his rear pocket had been cut and his wallet removed, the report says. The guy was out $350 cash, plus debit and credit cards, he said.
So, he was only awakened when the train got to the end of the line. And the thief was able to cut his pants and take his wallet unnoticed. The Juice is going with “passed out.”
Source: http://rss.justia.com/~r/LegalJuiceCom/~3/y6lo9XaRGg8/asdf-25.html
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