paul schreiber

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 11 (b):

By presenting to the court (whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating) a pleading, written motion, or other paper, an attorney or unrepresented party is certifying that to the best of the person’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances,–

1. it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation;
2. the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions therein are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law;
3. the allegations and other factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, are likely to have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and
4. the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on a lack of information or belief.

Wikipedia has good coverage of this and related topics.

Winn Schwartau ditched Windows:

This is my first column written on a Mac – ever. Maybe I should have done it a long time ago, but I never said I was smart, just obstinate. I was a PC bigot.

But now, I’ve had it. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

In the coming weeks I’m going to keep a diary of an experiment my company began at 6 p.m. April 29, 2005 – an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft basher, either. I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.

Oh yeah, he’s blogging this.

AIM’s mobile device support is teh suck:

Your IM has been sent to my mobile device. When I receive it, I will be able to reply. Thanks for your IM! Want your IMs forwarded to your phone? Click here

I now have a handful of people on my buddy list who are visible but aren’t actually online, and neither Proteus nor iChat have any way of telling me they are on the phone.

If this is you, turn off AIM on your phone. It’s not doing anybody any good.

Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work:

Any way you look at it, Crunch Mode used as a long-term strategy is economically indefensible. Longer hours do not increase output except in the short term. Crunch does not make the product ship sooner — it makes the product ready later . Crunch does not make the product better — it makes the product worse . Crunch raises the odds of a significant error, like shipping software that erases customer’s hard drives, or deleting the source tree, or spilling Coke into a server that hasn’t been backed up recently, or setting the building on fire. (Yes, I’ve seen the first three of these actually happen in the last, bleary days of Crunch Mode. The fourth one is probably only a matter of time.)

Yes.

file under “ooops”…:

The US government is scrambling to find a way to close a loophole that allows convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders to receive Viagra at taxpayer expense.

A woman who founded a “no-kill” animal shelter has been charged with numerous violations after 200 dead cats were discovered rotting in garbage bags in her backyard.

The Homeland Security Authorization Act requires that more than 50 percent of the components in any end product bought by the Department of Homeland Security be produced or manufactured in the U.S. Oops:

“With this purchasing prohibition, I guess (the department) will have to learn to do without computers and cell phones,” ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement. “I cannot think of a single U.S. manufacturer that could meet this 50 percent threshold for these devices, and I doubt that those charged with protecting our safety here at home can either.”

Everyone’s favourite Canadian law professor Michael Geist calls attention to the recent Federal Court of Appeal decision on file sharing.

Graham Henderson of the CRIA says:

The judge has determined that uploading, downloading, it’s illegal.

But, wait! It’s not true:

Actually, the court did no such thing. Concluding its copyright discussion at paragraph 54, the court says:

“I make no such findings here and wish to make it clear that if this case proceeds further, it should be done on the basis that no findings to date on the issue of infringement have been made.”

An old (but good) article from Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.