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Justice Stevens reads the fine print

matthewbutterick.com

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Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#141

Post by lesam »

mschuster91 wrote: post #133
tinco wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my house on a contract that was based off the national standard contract for residence transactions. Deviations from the standard were clearly marked. Regardless the contract was read to me by the realtor when I signed for the intent to buy, and the most important points were reiterated by the notary when confirming the actual transaction. It was great I found it useful and comforting to know I was signing f…

House sales are complex enough that most people use common template contracts, simply because it makes the interaction with the required third parties (realtors, notaries, public record offices, lawyers, banks) more efficient by a large enough margin. Rental however? Almost everyone uses their own crap contracts or some decades old template contract, and usually there is no one involved except the landlord and the re…

I love Nova Scotia’s standard rental terms, with generous term for tenants:

> Use these forms to show the terms that must be part of any lease signed in Nova Scotia. The lease a landlord uses may look different, but must contain all the items shown here. If any of the items are not part of the lease a tenant signs, they apply anyway.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#142

Post by rileymat2 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #137
rileymat2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this a great example of what the OP was talking about? You did not get off because of absolute innocence, but “technical minutiae as if they are source code”. But it does answer the OPs question, some are better at navigating it.

I don't think it's "technical minutiae"; I was charged with an offence that I didn't commit. My advocate just took the trouble to read the Act that I was charged under. Given that the court knew I hadn't committed the offence I was charged with, it would certainly have been a miscarriage of justice to go on and convict me anyway, and I could have got it overturned on appeal.

Oh I agree, but the law was confusing enough that an official bungled the charges.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#143

Post by gigaflop »

mschuster91 wrote: post #133
tinco wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my house on a contract that was based off the national standard contract for residence transactions. Deviations from the standard were clearly marked. Regardless the contract was read to me by the realtor when I signed for the intent to buy, and the most important points were reiterated by the notary when confirming the actual transaction. It was great I found it useful and comforting to know I was signing f…

House sales are complex enough that most people use common template contracts, simply because it makes the interaction with the required third parties (realtors, notaries, public record offices, lawyers, banks) more efficient by a large enough margin. Rental however? Almost everyone uses their own crap contracts or some decades old template contract, and usually there is no one involved except the landlord and the re…

Either 2/3 or 3/3 of the apartments I've rented since graduating college have used a similar template to one another, where part of it comes down to checking boxes or filling in a blank space. They each had some variety of addendums, but shared a common core structure.

This was also at apartment complexes that had multiple units, so maybe it's different if you're renting from an individual for a one-off space.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#144

Post by account42 »

Joeri wrote: post #66
krageon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say trusting any kind of software with door locks(!) is a terrible idea. Yes, if you use home automation you should self host. No, if you secure your home you should not needlessly expand the attack surface.

Unless you have a door specifically designed to withstand burglary a crowbar will always be an easier door hack than figuring out a backdoor to your automation. There is no perfect security, only risk profiles. I would argue the risk profile of door lock automation is low enough not to be worthy of concern in most cases.

> Unless you have a door specifically designed to withstand burglary a crowbar will always be an easier door hack than figuring out a backdoor to your automation.

If your home is targeted specifically, yes. However, if a group hacks a cloud lock provider and then hits several homes using that without having to do something that looks supicious like physically breaking the door then it could be a lot safter and thus profitable for them.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#145

Post by CamelCaseName »

denton-scratch wrote: post #125
chinathrow wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where you charged for speeding afterwards?

No, she got me off. I was acquitted. The copper that was standing duty as the prosecutor wasn't briefed. He had an afternoon's-worth of cases to present, and he wasn't qualified to argue a case. And either I couldn't be re-charged because double-jeopardy, or it just wasn't worth the effort. Just as icing on the cake, my advocate was a stunningly beautiful redhead.

> Just as icing on the cake, my advocate was a stunningly beautiful redhead.

relevance?

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#146

Post by Retric »

aardvark179 wrote: post #108
Retric wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts don’t actually need to deal with vary many cases though. I suspect the average person needs to deal with the legal system for anything more complex than a speeding ticket less than once per decade. And as it turns out five minutes in front of a judge can easily handle: “The speed camera is showing a picture of a pickup truck, I drive an SUV.” It’s only a minute fraction of cases that take significant time to r…

So, looking at stats for England and Wales about 80% of homicide incidents result in one or more suspects being charged and a small number of those end up being acquitted (though it often takes some time for people to be charged). I guess that counts as significantly fewer, but wasn’t the impression I got from my initial reading of your post.

80% of incidents, but each incident can have multiple victims. 2020 for example had one unfortunate case of 39 people being found dead in a truck relating to human trafficking.

Anyway here’s Criminal court statistics up to 2019 that’s showing real downwards trends. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#147

Post by lordnacho »

denton-scratch wrote: post #137
rileymat2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this a great example of what the OP was talking about? You did not get off because of absolute innocence, but “technical minutiae as if they are source code”. But it does answer the OPs question, some are better at navigating it.

I don't think it's "technical minutiae"; I was charged with an offence that I didn't commit. My advocate just took the trouble to read the Act that I was charged under. Given that the court knew I hadn't committed the offence I was charged with, it would certainly have been a miscarriage of justice to go on and convict me anyway, and I could have got it overturned on appeal.

You said you were speeding, right? But somehow the judge can't just say "ah right, looks like it's the wrong traffic statute that's been filed. Here's a fine for whatever it was that you actually did, you can just settle it here or we do a proper trial if you disagree".

I mean of course we don't want people to be convicted of things they didn't do, but how is it ok for someone to get away with something they did do, just because some bureaucrat picked the wrong law?

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#148

Post by tzs »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #63
WalterBright wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once I learned how airplanes were actually designed and built, I felt much safer on them. Especially the 757, which I worked on.

How about helicopters? I definitely feel less willing to get on one after working near them.

I've never worked near helicopters, but they went on my "never take a job anywhere near these things" list after the third time I accidentally stuck my hands into the whirling blades of the ceiling fan in my living room.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#149

Post by mrep »

account42 wrote: post #144
Joeri wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have a door specifically designed to withstand burglary a crowbar will always be an easier door hack than figuring out a backdoor to your automation. There is no perfect security, only risk profiles. I would argue the risk profile of door lock automation is low enough not to be worthy of concern in most cases.

> Unless you have a door specifically designed to withstand burglary a crowbar will always be an easier door hack than figuring out a backdoor to your automation. If your home is targeted specifically, yes. However, if a group hacks a cloud lock provider and then hits several homes using that without having to do something that looks supicious like physically breaking the door then it could be a lot safter and thus p…

And so they what, rob a few houses which statistically probably won't be yours before their hack gets discovered? Sounds like way more effort than just breaking the door or picking the lock.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#150

Post by lbriner »

antattack wrote: post #135
lordnacho wrote: post #43

Someone needs to do something about the legal-industrial complex. It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. It's basically impossible to read the docs for all the services you buy, and even if you did you wouldn't know what it meant in terms of law. Yet we have lawyers talking through the technical minutiae as if they are source code. There's a huge d…

Part of a solution could be to require fine print and it's revisions to be posted online so it's easily accessible and up-to-date. Once fine-print is published we could have a review sites (similar to fact checking sites) that could extract the essence from the fine print and point out major points, issues, etc. Another, solution that would dis-incentivize 'kitchen-sink' contracts would be ability to invalidate whole…

You are massively over-simplifying the problem. Imagine someone put their contract online somewhere saying, "you must litigate in Miami-Dade County", what happens next? Is that lawful? Is it reasonable? Is it moral? You could easily have multiple legal professionals arguing about whether it is or isn't and at the end of the day, most people decide with their wallet anyway.

The reason we have Courts in many cases is to try and make decisions on grey areas in terms of what has already been decided elsewhere, you can't open-source that because even the judges won't agree.

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