…….

I Am Not A Lawyer…. I am a computer scientist.

Yeah, an actual scientist. I didn’t study “Information Technology” or “Information Systems”, I studied “Computer Science”.

I’ve written in so many different computer languages that I’ve forgotten the names of some of them. My first language was PolySci basic, followed by Apple Basic. I quickly moved into 6502 machine code on an Apple II and a KIM. I learned 8080 and Z80.

I wrote my first interpreter back around 1978. It was written in 6502 machine code with the built-in assembler on the Apple II. It was designed for a custom op/amp system to control a model solar home heating system. The next major code I wrote was for the QC department at Planters Peanuts. This was at a time when the only computers in the plant were mainframes and the personally owned Apple II, the head of QC brought in.

Somewhere in that time frame, I learned COBOL.

Shortly thereafter, I headed off to University.

At University, I learned Pascal, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN V, a couple of different assembly languages. I had the pleasure of entering a boot program into the boot panel manually. The CDC 6500, and 750 had a panel of toggle switches, you entered the boot program by toggling each bit on that panel. There was just enough space to cause the system to read a block of data from a mag tape and then execute that block of code.

I loved every minute of my time at University. As a broke collage kid I ate well, had all the stereo toys I wanted, had a new car. I even had a girlfriend from time to time.

I’ve never stopped learning. Likewise, I figure that when I stop learning, it will be three days after my funeral.

Computer stuff is how I make my money, it is how I spend my time. I do other stuff for a break and to have actual physical results.

This blog has become very important to me. I’m sure you all are tired of reading my IANAL breakdowns of different cases. 4000 words in part II last night. It was a hard battle to learn how to find the resources to write about these cases. Along the way, I’ve become obsessed with saving you from having to repeat that battle.

To that end, I had to find the right tools. I’ve paid for some of them. Some of them I’ve paid for by providing coding skills.

Let’s take a look at the current pile of crap I’m working with in an attempt to make my life easier.

First, I purchased “languageTool”. This is an open-source grammar checking tool, it is one of the reasons that my writing seems to have improved. It not only catches spelling errors, it also catches wrong words spelled correctly, as well as making me actually put commas in where they belong. It is a powerful tool.

If you don’t write 2000+ word documents, the free version will work for you, very nicely.

The next tool I started working with was PACER. I don’t use it anymore except as a source for CourtListener.

I’ve started providing code to CourtListener. It is written in Python using the Django framework. This has only required me to get better at Python, and Django. It also required that I go out and really learn BootStrap 3 and CSS.

CSS is a description language. You provide it with a magic selector, and it will apply different attributes to the selected item. I’ve had to become much better at writing good selectors and designing webpages to have the right types of selectors.

Of course, you don’t like boring pages. You want them to be interesting and responsive. That meant learning a bit of JavaScript.

JavaScript is a language designed to make webpages interactive. It is designed to allow you to do the simplest of things to a webpage. When a person toggles that check-button, display a hidden element with buttons. Except that those buttons are actually anchors that we’ve used CSS to make look like buttons. When you click on those buttons, it takes you to a new page.

This is the start of dropdown menus.

To make all of this happen reasonably, JavaScript was writing to be asynchronous. In addition, it was written for people that didn’t want to think about strong variable typing. This means that the variable “tmp” can hold a string and then later it can hold an integer, still later a floating-point number, and still later a complex object.

Oh, a variable can also hold a “function” so you can use a variable as if it is a function.

This sucks.

Historically, computer software was written to take input and produce output. If you wrote a program to add two numbers, the program would ask “First Number:”, “Second Number:” and then it would print “The sum is:” with the sum printed.

The software determined what was going to happen next.

This is no longer the case, you control what happens next. You are writing an email, you stop in the middle of a word, click on the insert image button, upload an image into your email, go back to writing, click on a different program, watch the cat video, reply to the video, click back to your email, decide to do some formatting, then go back to writing.

You all suck. If you would just do the things in exactly the right order to make the computer happy, life would be so much easier.

So back to the learning curve.

I wanted to have “good citations” to provide you with good links and the ability to look up other cases and references. CourtListener didn’t provide that. I added it.

But I found out that “they” don’t actually use citations the way I want to use them. KOONS v. PLATKIN, 1:22-cv-07464, (D.N.J.) has some 130 different docket entries. Somewhere between 50% and 75% of them are actual documents.

Consider this docket entry:

That is all there is for this docket entry. Translated, it says: the United States Court of Appeals has assigned case number 23-1900 to docket entry 126, the defendants’ Notice to the District Court that they were appealing. The circuit court considers that to be a restricted document.

At docket entry 124 it says:

This, though, has a document attached to it. A 254-page PDF full of dense legal speak. When I left off last night, there was still another 100 pages of the document to read. I’m not going to.

So, I’m feeling pretty good about adding better citations. Then the subject-matter experts let me have it with all 7 barrels from a mini-gun. It seems that I’m not doing citations correctly. This is absolutely true. Why is it true? Because there isn’t a “right way” to do citations, there are thousands. The tool I started using only has 43. Its parent project has thousands.

This led to another language to learn. “CSL” This is Citation Style Language. This is written in XML. I was keen to learn it because I wanted to have it create citations for me. Above is the citation as pulled from Courtlistener. Here is a citation pulled and formatted with a custom CSL program:

—KOONS v. PLATKIN, No. 1:22-cv-07464, Doc. 124 (D.N.J.),

If I want a different version, I can use the shorter version: —KOONS v. PLATKIN

If I want the shortest version, I do that manually: — Id.

The first one is a simple drag and drop. The second one is a drag and drop else where, then copy and paste. Yuck.

I started looking into how to do “fix” it and found a different thing. Zotero.org has an API that will provide me with a citation when I ask for one.

Except that I don’t use “Zotero”, I use “Juris-M”. The version I use has extensions specifically for legal citations.

They even have a plugin for Firefox and Chrome to allow you to click a button and download the citation and link to the document to Juris-M. Juris-M then syncs with Zotero to add your citation into the cloud.

But the plugin doesn’t work with CourtListener. So, I wrote a new JavaScript “translator” to make it work. Did I mention I hate JavaScript? JavaScript is now using “promises” which are new to me. Not the concepts, just the implementation. Which lead to me learning still more JavaScript. Now in the context of software that was interacting with multiple Internet servers, as well as scrapping the Document Object Model of the webpage.

I have things mostly working, except I don’t. I’m not pulling the correct stuff and putting it in the correct places. Close, but not good enough.

Here is the issue in a nutshell. Legal citations require you to use the correct abbreviations. You can’t write “Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit” in a citation, you must write it as “7th Cir.” It isn’t “District Court, D. Connecticut” it is “D. Conn.”. I have to extract that information from CourtListener and put it in exactly the right place. Which might require me to use the CourtListener API rather than scrapping the information from the WebPage.

It might be easier to add metadata to the pages from CourtListener, rather than scrapping for it.

Regardless, I can’t get things to work for me with Zotero because I don’t have the right CSL in Zotero.

Which takes us to what I really want to be able to do.

I aim to be able to add citation markers to my articles. I want them to be quick and easy to add. Instead of putting the citation in place, I put something like [Xcite item=”14815850/IBYFACFI” at=5]. There would be a different version for using a paragraph locator instead of a page locator.

I put that marker every place I’m citing that case. I don’t worry about short, long, or anything else. If the cites follow one another, then the following cites would be written as Id. with locator. If there was an intervening citation, it would use a short form. Then it would switch to using Id. again. It could then create a good bibliography at the end of the document.

With this goal in mind, I tried “ZotPress”. It almost works. Not well enough to actually use. This means that what I want to do is modify ZotPress to interact with my own Zotero data server. It’s open source! Except that it isn’t maintained for others to use. There are no instructions on how to use it. It is written in PHP. But the version of PHP isn’t exactly right. And it has a major dependency on a framework that is no longer being supported.

In the process of looking through this, I found something called a “citation server”. Well, wouldn’t you know, they don’t actually do any of the citation processing within Zotero. Nope, they make a network API call to the cite server.

The cite server is available as open source. I download it and created a Docker image. Another technology with its own language. It works great. Except it doesn’t like my Juris-M CSL because it isn’t the correct version.

Which meant that I had to make the cite server run in a docker container. Did I mention I dislike JavaScript? Did I mention that JavaScript was designed to manipulate a web browser’s DOM in real time? Did I mention that it is an asynchronous nightmare?

Cite Server is written in JavaScript. The citation processor, citeproc, is written in JavaScript. I’m not working on integrating their cite server with Juris-M’s citeproc. It isn’t going as well as I would like.

And that ends today’s rang.

Still too long at 2000 words. It didn’t take as long to write as I didn’t have to dig through as much legal speak. Hope you are having a wonderful weekend.

I’ve been hearing this song on my Google music play lists. The music was nice, it had a good sorry.

I dislike their politics. Still good music.

I was TDY a large part of Friday and again on Sunday. There is an article started, but it has been slow-going. I’m learning some new tools that will accelerate things in the future.

Back at University, I was very unhappy. I was under the impression that I would be moving from a music desert to a music mecca. I could not have been more mistaken.

I went to High School listening to WCMS, 99.9FM (Almost Perfect Radio). Their original jingle was that they were the Western, Country Music Station.

There was no country station at University. It was almost like it was a leftest enclave. I listened to many different radio stations, mostly I listened to albums and those new fangled things, CDs.

One day, I heard a haunting love song come over the airwaves. It was the first song I had heard on American radio in a foreign language, German. There was even a line in it regarding Captain Kirk… I loved that song.

https://youtu.be/HPm4MoU-JVM

Nobody knew what she was singing, but it was had an energy that was fun and powerful.

Later, they released the same song in English.

Some asshole did it again. Another school shooting.

The 14-year-old asshole got a hold of his father’s guns, went back to the school and killed eight kids along with a security guard.

The police have arrested the asshole. When arrested, he had a target list of kids he intended to kill and where they were going to be located at the time.

In addition to two guns, he also had a couple of Molotov cocktails.

There were an additional six students injured. At least one is in serious condition.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the community as they deal with this tragedy in the Balkan region of Serbia.

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Postscript: there was a second school shooting in Serbia shortly after this one.

I’ve been listening for songs with a connection to firearms. I’ve noticed that there are far too many songs that imply that somebody is going to get shot for disrespecting somebody else.

I was up far too late for yesterday’s post, around 0200. Which was better than the night before when I was up until 0330 getting that post out.

The following links will contain some older news articles, mostly because I’ve not had a link dump in a while. Hopefully, something interesting in the dump

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Matt Driscoll, over at The News Tribune out of Tacoma, Washington, has an opinion.

The reason you are angry about an emergency bill that bans most/all semi-automatic rifles in the state of Washington is because you are selfish.

There you have it, reason and decency prevailed when the legislature passed and the Governor signed into law a bill that strips you of your Second Amendment protected rights. Of course, he has to mislead by saying more than 50 assault-style weapons were banned.

First, the ban lists not just firearms by name, but entire classes of weapons. It doesn’t ban the Colt AR-15, instead it bans AR15, M16, or M4 in all forms — Washington State, 1240-S. In addition, it also bans by feature, some of those features are:

• semi-automatic rifle with an overall length of less than 30 inches
• “Assault weapon” conversion kits, part, or combination of parts
• A semi-automatic center fire rifle that accepts a detachable magazine and has one or more of the following:
  • Pistol grip
  • Thumbhole stock
  • Folding or telescoping stock
  • Forward grip
  • Any sort of muzzle device
  • thread barrel
  • Grenade or flare launcher
  • A barrel shroud unless it on a fudd gun
• A semi-automatic rifle that has a fixed magazine that accepts more than 10 rounds
• And more!!! Including pistols

This bans almost all modern semi-automatic rifles. It seems to be even worse when it comes to pistols. Their definition of a “shroud” would include most slides. If your semi-auto, center fire pistol, takes a detachable magazine, it is an assault weapon under Washington State law.

Matt says this is reason and decency in action.

You are giving up so little for what this law will actually do. Let’s see what Matt thinks this law will do.

Umm, nothing. He doesn’t actually say what he thinks this law will do.

Don’t miss this little gem, that one that every gun infringer puts out there, the “it is just a start”. There’s also little question that reducing gun deaths in America will take more than new regulations… — Matt

You have a politicized cultural gun fetish. I promise you that it is not a gun fetish, at least mine isn’t.

And he closes with standards, he gets to define what “the right to keep and bear arms.” means. Besides, it is just a small price to pay for you to give up some of your rights.

Washington assault weapon ban about more than gun rights

I ran across Mean Mary when looking for Dueling Banjo’s. I wasn’t certain whether I liked her voice or not. Google added her to my rotation, and every once in a while I’d hear a song that I really liked. And then I would look, and it was Mean Mary.

She is a multi instrumentalist. She plays fiddle, banjo, and guitar. That’ve seen so far. She likely plays more.

As I looked through YouTube for more Mean Mary videos, I found a number of “Reacts to” videos. The opera singer was impressed with her voice. The pair of hard rockers were impressed with her playing. The others had similar statements.

And they almost all then went to, “Oh shit, she plays like that! That’s amazing.” when they got to the end.

This one is for all of you that have ever had to give a product pitch

She has a religious bend. This is a devil of song.

She is self-named. When she was younger, she wrote a song titled “Mean Mary from Alabama”. By younger, I mean 6. There is a video of her on some sort of local show at a very young age, being introduced as “Mean Mary St. James”.

I am not an expert in this. These are my own personal opinions.

Here is how I go about it:

First is the safety talk. This is where we go over the four rules until they have it. I do not go any further if they aren’t comfortable with the rules.

The next step is to let them handle different firearms. At this stage, they learn that they really, really should treat every firearm as loaded. They learn how to handle those firearms safely. They learn how to verify, for themselves, that the firearm is unloaded. They learn to keep the firearm pointed in a safe directly. They learn a bit about how it feels.

During this time, there is never more than one firearm out at a time.

We go through the different types of ammunition. This is partially to disprove the “AR-15 assault weapons fire the most deadly killing bullets!!!!”

At that point, I show them the .22LR we will be using for our first shots. The idea here is that I want them to see this as small and less scary.

We now move to the range. At the range, we will have four different firearms.

• .22LR semi-automatic pistol
• .22LR Bolt Action rifle
• 9 mm semi-automatic pistol
• .45cal semi-automatic pistol

There are many choices for .22LR semi-automatics. I choose to use a semi-automatic because that is what the rest of my primary pistols are. Yes, I have a few SAA style and one .357 Magnum revolver, but those are not my primary. Those are just for fun.

The next question is with regard to the manual of arms. When you look at .22LR pistols, you’ll find many different styles. For me, I needed a .22LR that had the same manual of arms as my other primary pistols.

What does this mean?

What this means is that everything that you have to do right with my primary firearms you need to do right with the training firearm.

For me, my primary firearm is a 1911. Because my primary is a 1911, my other firearms that I regularly use have 1911 style controls. I prefer a push button for a magazine release, just like the 1911. I want it to have a manual safety, just like my 1911. Likewise, I want it to have a slide release in nearly the same place as the 1911. And I want it to have good sights.

My choice was the M&P 22 Compact. Everything I needed for the manual of arms applies. In addition, it is just fun to shoot.

There are a number of .22LR rifles out there. Pick one that is of a comfortable size for you and the people you are training. I thought about getting a youth sized rifle, but by the time I was ready to do it, my kids didn’t need a youth sized rifle.

Start Slow

When starting, most of the time they want to start with a pistol. Starting with a pistol is a little easier in some ways.

Here is the big starting point, only put one round in the magazine the first time.

This person is going to pull the trigger. There will be a loud bang. You do not know what they are going to do next. Sometimes they will turn towards you, sweeping with the pistol, sometimes they will want to drop the pistol. Regardless of what happens, you want it to be as safe as possible.

I always stand where I can put a hand on their hand if they start to swing towards me, but that is not always the best choice.

Start with one round.

Once they have done one round a few times, then you can move to two rounds in the magazine. The idea, again, is to be safe.

During initial training, I normally do not put more than 5 rounds in the magazine. For you, it might not feel like anything to put 18 rounds of spicy 9 mm down range. For a new person, holding that pistol out for 15+ rounds can be tiring.

At this point, I will demonstrate the 9 mm and the .45. I only send one round down range. The idea is to let them hear that sound up close.

If it works for them, I will let them put a round down range from each of them.

From there we move to the rifle. This gives them a chance to better understand the loading process. We normally shoot offhanded because most of the time people don’t like to get prone. Depending on the range, we might be able to let them sit at a bench to shoot the rifle.

This is how I do it. Lots of talk beforehand. Lots of familiarization beforehand. It is about making them comfortable and to not do stupids or allowing them to do stupids.