Thanks so much to everyone who responded! I’m going to try (over time) all of your suggestions, including DIY. This is a great community and I appreciate your help.
Basically he was nailed for wire fraud and his defense was... exotic. Upon conviction he sought a writ of certiorari so that the SCOTUS would hear his case on some pretty weird grounds.
At a glance it seems like a situation in which someone thought they found a technicality to enact what amounted to fraud, and are pissed that the law doesn’t work like a compiler. Their response is another “I found a bug in the code” move and again, the law isn’t working like a compiler.
I don’t think making over five thousand accounts and returning tens of thousands of ink cartridges was really behavior that anyone could have thought was honest. It does seems like the government responded pretty harshly, but the system is rough. As to guilt, he would appear to be guilty, and his argument is that despite committing fraud, no one was actually hurt. That might even be true, but also not how breaking the law works.
Your first link, while from the case, has little to do with the appeal. To illustrate, that document (#177) happened long before the trial, and now we’re up to #485. The rest of the response makes faulty assumptions.
Amazing how “fabricated evidence” goes in one ear and out the other. “Of course you’re guilty- the fabricated evidence proves it!”
When I first clicked through to your website and read its contents, based solely on what you had written, it was hard to come away with any impression that you had committed fraud. Reading the other court documents only reinforces that impression.
In the best possible light, I would assume that you believe yourself to have found a clever hack in a returns policy [1], and that what you're doing can't be fraud since everyone involved is making money off of it. But that's not really the basis of your appeal, especially not the SCOTUS petition. Instead, the thrust is more that the spreadsheet listing the amounts of what you allegedly defrauded was fabricated. Well, actually, that's not what you're appealing directly either. The appeal actually amounts to the spreadsheet could have been fabricated, so it should be excluded as evidence. That the claim being presented here is so narrow strongly prejudices me to believe that you (or at least your attorney) is conceding that you did commit fraud, and that you've got no reasonable basis to claim that the evidence is fabricated.
[1] My personal opinion of the evidence is that you in fact knew you were committing fraud when you did it, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that you were in fact innocent.
It’s not that I didn’t hear you, it’s that I don’t believe you. Your own behavior and manner of presenting yourself raises manynred flags that are only confirmed by the activities you admitted to.
I wonder how the people who thought the concern over what seemed likely to be a permanent “vacation” will spin this? Some were downright conspiratorial, selling the usual “shady forces putting out hit pieces” and “most shorted stock” limes.
Just once I’d like the conversation around Tesla to boil down to something other than tribalism.
Tesla has done some amazing things, and they show some really worrying signs. Too often though the conversation seems to be a kind of hyper-negative view posed against what increasingly feels like a Tesla/Musk cult. Nothing useful can come out of that, and it borrows the worst parts of something like the Blockchain discussion.
It’s been axiomatic for a while that if you care about privacy and security, a generally paranoid outlook is helpful where telecommunications are concerned. Just assume that unless it’s e2e encrypted and you trust the recipient to be as paranoid, that someone else is reading your communications. Assume that if it has a microphone and an internet connection someone else could use it to listen in. Assume 5-Eyes partners archive absolutely everything and may someday have a smart enough system to really use the data. Assume FB and Google and your ISP are spying on you and building profiles of you.
I’m not sure what else to say, but aside from people who have a stake in Google, or take skepticism to illogical extremes, this news can’t be surprising.
Japan is also a unique case in that they have a 99% conviction rate in criminal cases. The best research I’ve seem explains this in terms of extremes of prosecutorial discretion: only sure-win cases are taken to court. If you end up in a Japanese prison, you really really fucked up, broke the law, and provided the government with an open and-shut case.
As a result the “low crime rate” and “high conviction rate” are both somewhat artificial. A lot of crimes go unreported, or at the very least unprosecuted. Japan does have a relatively low crime rate, but the criminal element can often get away, especially if the victim is homeless, another criminal, or in some other way an outsider.
...which vampire hunk is going to hook up with which vampire babe (or so I presume -- I actually haven't read/watched Twilight or any other supernatural romances).
With the sole exception of an added vampire/werewolf hunk you nailed it. The subject matter though is less problematic than the really abysmal writing. PKD didn’t always have the best writing style, but made up for it with content. Twilight is derivative content delivered in appalling fashion.
He lost the presidential election, but was then appointed chancellor by Hindenburg after the Nazis won most of the government through the electoral process. Chancellor of Germany is roughly equivalent to president of the US (Angela Merkel is chancellor). After that civil liberties were revoked.
So he was not elected, but he was legally appointed and as a result of overwhelming electoral victories by his party. Just another example of the non-equivalence of “legal” and “moral” in all cases.
It is a salient point as a response to the post:
There are already checks and balances. Unfortunately Congress and a sizeable portion of the public are with him. He is not a dictator, he legitimately won the election and I can see good support for him on my Facebook "friends"
The failure of government to stand up to a dangerous and deranged populist is relevant IMO. When that populist then leads the government, it’s time to at least be concerned. I doubt that Trump is worthy of direct comparison to Hitler beyond that point, but I’m also glad that I don’t live in the US right now!
IIRC Mythbusters had an episode about this “son of a gun” myth and concluded that it was essentially impossible. It still makes an amazing story. Like all virgin births I expect the truth was either that it was entirely fabricated, or it was real insofar as the woman in question didn’t want to publically give up her “virtue” (which given the periods involved, is understandable). Plus you as a bonus you get long odds on starting a religion.
