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Only a tone-deaf retard could call a song played in a different key, to a different tempo with clean major chords swapped out for heavily distorted power (fifth) chords "substantially similar".

The idea of disregarding the key, tempo, and what instrument something is played on is that changes to these are mechanical, in theory requiring much less creative effort than changes to a melody. See a collection of case law, especially the distressing Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music .

classical music (Mozart, Beethoven) gets ripped off all the time

Pre-1923 music gets ripped off because it lacks the special legal status afforded to music first published after that cutoff. Anything published before 1923 is in the public domain; anything published later is under perpetual copyright on Sonny Bono's installment plan.

Copyrighting sheet music is as pointless as copyrighting blocks of code

Case law in music and case law in computer programs differ. Because code has a useful function, short blocks of code have a thin copyright. CA v. Altai is the seminal case here.

I see a large amount of cognitive dissonance in your post.

Essentially what is going on here is that the copyright industry is trying to label those in favour of reform as extremists in an effort to shut them out.

This, at least, is true.

As history has shown, such tactics work very well--in the US in particular--where you can turn a debate completely on its head by proclaiming the exact opposite of what's going on. The best example of this is: "The Media has a Liberal Bias."

Hmm. Oddly enough, a long-term political science analysis done by UCLA (not exactly a "right-wing bastion") found quite the opposite.

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin

But that usually means that it is better that 1 innocent person should go to jail than 101 guilty people be let free (at least if we assume you are making the strongest argument you could of the form, which is the convention). There are always going to be false convictions unless there are no convictions at all -- putting a number on the fact only obscures that fact behind some quantitative-sounding reasoning that gives you very little insight into how to actually construct a criminal justice system that reliably imprisons the guilty and acquits the innocent.

As to the instant case, if the police have the evidence to seize the content of a safe inside your castle (presumably pursuant to a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate upon showing of probable caused by a sworn affiant) then they should have the right to look inside an encrypted hard drive. It's hard to see why the analogy doesn't hold over, especially since we have seen robust judicial supervision of such physical searches over the past 30 years (since the Warren Court).

See also (no affil w/ author): http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm

On a side note, if you do know something about history and technology, and you'd like to put your money where your mouth is and improve the quality of patent examination,

The government is in over it's head and bamboozled constantly with bullshit talk. The way to improve the system is to do away with it:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Ice Cube operates by observing visible Cerenkov radiation from electrons and muons created when high-energy neutrinos hit an atom in the ice, as they traverse the ice. Of course, ice being transparent to visible light is important here, and lunar regolith is opaque to visible light.

However it has been proposed to look for radio waves being emitted in a similar manner. Cerenkov radiation is caused by moving faster than the speed of light in the medium -- it's the "blue glow" if you look at the picture on that wikipedia link, and emits a broad spectrum of radiation, down into radio frequencies. Depending on the composition of the regolith, it may be transparent to radio waves. This can be done from the Earth by pointing your antenna at the moon, or from satellite(s) in orbit around the moon. You might be interested in the Goldstone project. So, at least with proposals I've heard about, getting people on the moon to make big holes is not an important component, but the surface of the moon may still be useful for similar experiments. You never know though, maybe tomorrow someone will post a new idea!

The great depression was extended for years due to to the action the government took to end it. Now we are doing the same thing again with the stimulus. Expect this recovery to last a while.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx

Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt's policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

That why the US was very smart and packed "financial gain" in for using p2p.
Use p2p and *anyone* is part of the "financial gain" by default ie the commercial-infringement category for running p2p.
The receipt of copyrighted works is the financial gain under p2p law :)
So even if the US court where ever to place weight on foreign laws, the "receiving any financial reward" aspect is gone.
I think this is it
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/hr2265.html
"The term 'financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works"

"Against intellectual monopoly" by Boldrin and Levine:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm

This book nicely sums up the arguments against patents :-)

Bear in mind that copyright holders are using economics arguments, which are always going to be perceived as being much stronger than "I don't like this law because I don't think it's very nice" arguments.

It's ironic you should say that, because economic arguments are the strongest arguments against copyright.

For example, there is no doubt that copyright terms are far, far too long to be beneficial to society. One or two decades is more than enough to give creators an incentive to create; having longer copyright terms than necessary will only prevent society from enjoying the full benefits of the works already created. (Read Against Intellectual Monopoly for more economic arguments.)

It's mostly a matter of lobbying. For example, here in the EU, record companies approached politicians with scary-sounding numbers of how much the industry loses on pirating, explained how many people would lose their jobs if it continued, and got an extension to the copyright of music performances. So now Elvis Presley's recordings are kept out of the public domain for a few more decades (yes, the copyright to Elvis Presleys recordings are held by a German music company). The politicians themselves were too uninformed to see through the layers of bullshit.

> The answer is FIX the system. Now.

The answer is to delete the system. Completely. End the patent system.

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

My god, Wine has no use whatsoever

Both distribution and creating copies fall under infringement. That would be Title 17 section 106 of US law, and that's the same across the globe. Downloading is creating a copy. Uploading and downloading are essentially equivalent under copyright law.

if you were responsible for downloads, every time you open a webpage, you would open yourself up to liability

Correct.
Unbelievable, but essentially correct.

If someone were actually to sue you in court in such a situation, you would pretty much two avenues of defense under U.S. law. Either a Fair Use defense or an Innocent Infringer defense. Note that in either case the law starts from an assumption of guilt and then places the burden upon you to prove your defense.

A Fair Use defense could probably work under these circumstances, and if it does your liability is zero. However the concept of Fair use is a somewhat peculiar fit for these circumstances. Fair Use is not really intended to fix this kind of problem. Innocent Infringer status is actually the "correct" defense to fit this situation. The circumstances you described would give you an instant slam-dunk win on claiming Innocent Infringer status.

And guess how fucked up copyright law is? Under the law an an Innocent Infringer is someone who, through no fault of his own, has technically committed copyright infringement. No fault, no guilt, just an ordinary innocent person who was lied to or given infringing material by some other guilty party. And under US law that means you technically did infringe on someone's copyright. You admitted to this when you laid out the situation. And under those circumstances, IF you prove yourself to be an Innocent Infringer, US law states that the judge is permitted to lower the statutory liability from the standard $750 minimum to a $200 minimum.

US LAW, TITLE 17, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 504, SUBSECTION C, PARAGRAPH 2

And if you think it's insane for you to be liable for $200 damages in your example after proving your Innocent Infringer status, just be glad your example wasn't P2P. If you engage in multiple infringements on P2P you are going to fall under the NET Act. And the NET Act was literally written by copyright industry lawyers, and they slipped in a trick-clause to redefine P2P as "financial gain". And that shoves you under the statutory category originally intended to deal with commercial copyright infringement enterprises. And this commercial infringement statute is a criminal infringement statute. It is a felony infringement statute. If you engage in multiple P2P infringements you technically fall under criminal copyright infringement imposing up to 1, 3, or 5 years in prison depending largely on the number of files involved. Ah, and the sentence is generally doubled on a second offense, up to 10 years in prison.

Here's a link to the Net Act. Pay particular attention to the clause that redefines "financial gain". Note how virtually anyone who has ever touched P2P gets magically swept into the commercial-infringement category.

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We can look as far as we can go back in space/time (see NOVA Hunting Teh edge of space and we end with widely scattered light that we cannot see past. Then we go the route of looking at the very very small (see LHC LHC experiments video

So as much as what is all happening in 2012 (what we know scientifically) there is also our point in evolution and science where we see a millionth of a second past the big bang.

When will we and the Aliens be ready to meet?

When they don't have to prove to us what we will then know ourselves.

When you think of it, neither the big bang theorist or the religious creationist are completely correct, as the honesty of teh matter is a bit of both.
Who do you think gave us the content to write our religious texts? And based on their own evolution and advanced technology just as we will be able to look back in hindsight.

Looking back in space time we see widely scattered light -- like what Genesis describes. go figure..

As a footnote, I read this the other night and was quite impressed with it. This will mostly appeal to slashdotters with low digit IDs and mild Aspergers, if such a creature exists.

The Art and Science of Cause and Effect

Note that he takes a long view of science as I do. The key slide that just popped into mind is slide 49 with the text:

However, carve a chunk from it, say the object part, and we can talk about the motion of the hand CAUSING this light ray to change angle.

The precautionary principle is fundamentally interventionist. However, the focus of precaution is necessarily a human construct, which depends upon how the image is sliced. This claim is heavily supported in the presentation as a whole.

This insight courtesy of Judea Pearl, who is becoming known as one of the giants of AI. He's a major influence on the recent work of Daphne Koller. Under no circumstances check out the accomplishments of Daphne Koller if you're feeling low about your productivity in the recent week or decade. She's just polished off a nice 1,200 page tome http://www.amazon.com/Probabilistic-Graphical-Models-Principles-Computation/dp/0262013193/">Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning). I'd rush out to buy this, but I'm not sure my ego can handle the blow.

As always, the case against Intellectual Monopoly:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

(Not that I'm against it all, but sometimes you have hear from people on one extreme to balance out the extremist corps like Disney, etc.)

Found it. The universe is expanding and the objects move inside the universe with it's expansion, so they're not traveling faster than the speed of light. It's like a passenger on a train might walk to the front of the train at a rate of 1mph in relation to the train, but since the train is moving at 60mph the passenger is moving at 61 mph in relation to the ground.

And it explains why mercury is liquid: http://voh.chem.ucla.edu/vohtar/fall02/classes/172/pdf/172rpint.pdf

Capitalism works, in theory, by survival of the fittest and is subject directly to consumers' support providing for their self-interests. It is the perfect solution for creating the fittest organizations to provide the goods and services people want at a price they want. It is fueled by people's selfish needs to grow and prosper by working hard as well as their selfish needs for goods, services, and the perception of wealth. It's really the only system that allows for a certain level of greed. Socialism is perfect in a perfect world with a benevolent, wise dictator where everyone agrees that we should all do equal work for equal pay and equal outcome... and the dictator tells us all what we should make, how much, and of what kind, shape, color, etc. etc.

The standards I use to say other systems do not work is that there hasn't been one yet that worked. The USSR tried and failed. Do you know that there was once a glass company that told its workers they would be paid by the hour, so they worked long hours and produced almost nothing? Then they were told they would be paid by the square inch produced, so they produced thin sheets of glass that would easily snap. Then they were told they'd be paid by the weight of the glass, so they added lead and other heavy metals to the glass and made it too thick to fit into standard window sizes. Eventually, they had to state every specification for the product and how much to be produced. It would've been so much easier if the company's income were based on the demand. Command Production and Quotas implemented by the USSR had detrimental consequences USSR

All systems have flaws -- they just take time to surface. Even capitalism requires government interference to provide laws to prevent monopolies, price-fixing, fraud, etc... but I have yet to hear of a system that works better to allow the masses to prosper.

Actually there is. Watch this video: The battle of the diets: Is anyone winning at losing? by Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, a vegetarian, who presents the results of the largest and longest-ever comparison of four popular diets showing that Atkins was the most effective.

At over an hour, I'm not watching that damn video. I was able to find the paper with a quick search, however: http://gornbein.bol.ucla.edu/assn6-Atkins%20vs%20Zone.pdf

The study was done for 12 months... Others have gone to 24 months or more, so Gardner's is certainly NOT the longest. I'm not motivated to determine if his was the largest.

It states that "mean 12-month weight loss was significantly different between the Atkins and Zone diets (P .05)." However, the raw figures show that the difference in the two diets was not substantially outside the margin of error. I wish I had more time to review it and the other citation you provided.

Give it a parachute and external airbags then just crash it into Mars and be done with it...

"Crashes" would be right. MSL is too heavy for airbag landing, I'm afraid.

We had real problems with the airbag system for even the MER, and MSL is twice as large in all dimensions.

It's that cube-square thing-- "a horse splashes". (--Haldane)

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

And, and a tip of my hat to Microsoft "innovation".

A few days ago I was reading about some of the algorithms for doing this, shown at Siggraph in recent years. I think it's real.

Many patents are there not for suing the ass off the competition but to protect yourself from getting attacked.

Which only became a problem with the invention of patents in the first place and keeps getting worse.

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm

And as for your friends anecdotal casual observations, how about an actual study on the effect of light rail on crime in Los Angeles: http://www.its.ucla.edu/research/rpubs/pubdetails.cfm?ID=53
(I can use google too, but I obviously found a source quite a bit more credible than a right wing blog citing a mayor in an interview regarding a specific case, with no information whatsoever regarding other factors, or even if the situation was the same before light rail was built)

From the abstract:
"At the end, the study establishes that the transit line has not had significant impacts on crime trends or crime dislocation in the station neighborhoods, and has not transported crime from the inner city to the suburbs."

Rick Roll? http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x1922.xml What does he have to do with it?
Was he the first guy to Rick Roll someone?
Hit me up, butch: http://jamals.massive.blogspot.com/

There can be no legit copyright enforcement, because the very concept of copyright is immoral and nonsensical in the first place, and ought to be abolished.

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/charneyreport.html from 1979 seems pretty close to what is being said now.

Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

It shouldn't even need fair use, given that the State of California and its universities enjoy sovereign immunity from copyright and patent suits. I'm not quite sure why they capitulated in light of that.

> No problem, I'll just put the movie up on the class website." It's not exactly shocking that someone objected to that.

Actually, it's still pretty unreasonable, because the videos on the class website are only available on campus and not (easily) saved (unless you have a stream ripper for media furnace or something). That link is in the submission, but it seems like people are busy pointing out that the videos in question are commercial videos that are class assignments (rather than videos of lectures) while ignoring the fact that they're not just distributing these videos to all and sundry. They're only letting students watch them.

Thank you.... made me wish I had mod points. Pretty sure this will bubble up anyway. This essay addresses the principles behind conservatism / money "aristocracy" and I think covers some of the same forces that we see in corporations striving to define the rules of the game (laws) for everybody.

Once again, you're quoting amateurs who don't know what they're talking about. In this case, West Virginia Office of Miner's Safety chief engineer, Monte Hieb. Here's his webpage. Now, you might be asking yourself why you're getting your science data from a mine safety engineer. If not, you probably should!

Here's the huge blunders he makes in his numbers:

1) He only credits a small portion of the CO2 to anthropogenic emissions. Why? He doesn't say it, but one can only assume that it's because natural emissions are higher than anthropogenic emissions. The problem with this argument is that natural emissions of CO2 are nearly perfectly balanced with natural sinks of CO2; that's why CO2 levels have historically fluctuated by such small amounts on the order of thousands of years. We haven't had CO2 levels this high in at least the past 15 million years. Picture a half-full bathtub draining water at a constant rate, with water being added to it at the same rate. The level of the tub remains the same. Now start adding extra water -- even a small amount. The bathtub will steadily fill up. Our emissions are not matched by corresponding sinks.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere are very easily measured. Past levels are very readily measured from air bubbles trapped in ice cores. Here's what you see. That's the addition to the atmosphere that is not balanced out by a corresponding CO2 sink. The atmosphere's C13/C12 ratio changed 1/5th as much in the entire last glacial as it changed in the past 150 years (the C13/C12 ratio shows how much of our atmosphere is made of old, deep carbon rather than fresh surface carbon).

You should also know that Hieb faked this graph. Go compare his graph to the DOE's that he "cites". He adds a "natural" and "manmade" column that exists nowhere on his reference, thus making it sound like the DOE believes what he's trying to imply.

2) He does no calculations to determine his water vapor forcing. None of his references are primary sources, and in fact, one of them states that the elimination of CO2 entirely from our atmosphere would lower heat-trapping efficiency by 12% and elimination of water vapor would lower it by 36%. That said, all of his references for the "95%" number trace back, ultimately, to "Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models" (Ramaswamy, 1993). Please pay attention to the title. Solar radiation absorption. That is, incoming radiation, not outgoing. Here's the abstract. You probably don't have access to the full paper, but I do. The very first line is, "A proper representation of the absorption of solar radiation in the atmosphere is important to determine accurately the radiative fluxes and heating rates in weather forecasting and climate models." Got that? Solar, not re-radiated infrared from Earth's surface. The greenhouse effect is based on absorbing as *little* solar radiation as possible and as *much* re-radiated infrared as possible.

Want real references and numbers for the *total* greenhouse contribution? Here you go. For a more layman's version, here. These numbers all come from first principles.

I hate to dump on Hieb so hard for this, but this is what you get when you go to a coal mine safety engineer for science.

3) As has been mentioned to you before, and is something Hieb completely ignores, water vapor is not forcing. It's feedb

Dang! Should have previewed. There was supposed to be a link for distance determining methods, but I fouled it up. Sorry.

In fact, they are spread out somewhat in appearance because there is no "vanishing point" as you might have in a drawing with a road or rail tracks. The smaller universe of that time has to be spread over the same amount of sky so there is some magnification to make this happen. Try putting different redshifts in here http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html and look at how the scale changes (kpc/" is kiloparsecs per arcsecond). You can plot it on some paper and see how it changes.

Red herring. Potatoes are not a food that most herbivores can eat; they're roots. Most herbivores, like cows, eat only plants growing above ground: leaves, grass, etc. Only a few animals, like wild pigs and moles, eat tubers naturally.

More importantly, tubers like potatoes are very hard to digest by most animals, including humans. That's why humans invented "cooking", to make the starchy tuber turn into something more easily digested and absorbed. Some believe this was an important part of human evolution:

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pennisi_99.html

Being able to give away, bogart, lend or to borrow, pass as inheritance, or roll up and smoke a book is possible because the book is yours because you own it and the Doctrine of First Sale formalizes these possibilities.

One of the many things wrong with digital restrictions management (drm) technologies is that it tries to do an end run around the democratic process and eliminate these rights, some of which are codified in the Constitution. Some would assert that not only is the constitution the foundation upon which the country has been built, but also that it represents freedom and democracy itself. So these affronts by Bill Gatesists and the other 'freedom-hating' (tm) digital taliban, can be considered as affronts to the US itself if not also to higher ideals.

It may sound harsh to some fanbois, but step back and take off that 'with a computer' clause and see if what they are doing is acceptable. If not, then you know what to do.

Wait, you mean that two songs sounding the same isn't only annoying, it actually constitutes a crime?

Music plagiarism is not a crime in the United States because criminal copyright infringement requires willful mens rea. But it's still a tort, as shown in these cases.

So you think they'd still be sued if everybody used freely-licensed music

Yes, because ASCAP will be able to dig up something non-free that was written in the past 95 years and happens to sound like the freely-licensed music, making the free license invalid. We could end up with another Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music on our hands.

As Commodore Decker said in Star Trek (The Doomsday Machine):

"There was... but not anymore!!!"

Reading some reports indicate that scientists think it obliterated a chunk of the Rockies as the hotspot moved and erupted.

And contrary to popular belief, it does NOT sit under mountains right now. It sits under plateaus, open plains, and a self made lake.

Anyway, there are two possibilities... the hotspot conveniently followed a massive empty path through a pre-existing valley in the Rockies - or like many scientists believe, it MADE that path.

Look at these two maps... note the state borders when you do as they are not centered to match each other. Look at the mountains, and the big valley that sits between the western range and the south-eastern range on the Google Maps one... and match that valley to the other map that shows the path of the hotspot and it's eruptions.

Oddly enough, the paths match pretty darn well

Google Maps

Yellowstone Huckleberry Hotspot Path

The simple logic of realizing it is unlikely an unthinking thing (North American plate movement) caused a stationary hotspot to follow a pre-defined path (the valley) aside, the fact is, we've found rock dust miles and miles away embedded in the rhiolite (sp?).

So, like how Mount St Helens destroyed half of it's mountain when it recently exploded with a tiny amount of force in comparison to Yellowstone... it is very likely that the thin plateaus and dirt that sits on Yellowstone wouldnt be blown to smithereens.

For instance, what you will find missing along the Yellowstone hotspot's line of travel are... oh, such minor things as... an entire section of the mountain range it sits in.

I was wondering if you were exaggerating, so I looked up the map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=yellowstone&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=44.60973,63.28125&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Yellowstone,+Portland,+Multnomah,+Oregon&ll=43.47684,-113.411865&spn=5.133958,7.910156&t=p&z=7

Yeah, that's just a little bit creepy right there.

(Compare with http://geodyn.ess.ucla.edu/~hernlund/humphreys-nicemap.jpg)

For good reading about causality check out http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/home.htm, in particular the slides from a lecture on the subject as it relates to robotics. Read down to the part about smoking and cancer. I think he has a pretty good handle on Causation vs Correlation.

Try this and this - the second one cites temperatures of 262F.

This happened in Pakistan, where a Chinese manufacturer used the same IMEI number on thousands of cell phones of a particularly cheap model (The model was cloned from a Nokia phone and cloned its IMEI # as well). One day in July 2008, one customer had his cellphone stolen and reported it to Pakistan Telcom Authority, who promptly banned that device using its IMEI number. Result: Mayhem for other owners who owned the same model of phone, as they were all banned at the same time. There were unhappy customers storming dozens of mobile phone stores and sales of Chinese-made phones came to a complete stop for a few days. An archive of the mayhem that ensued is still saved here: http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-southasia.asp?parentid=94421

WWII pulled us out of the great depression(which by the way seems to have been caused largely by over confidence in Free Market Deregulation.) The "New Deal" managed kept us from collapsing into abject anarchy.

You should do your own homework. Some economists believe the New Deal made the Great Depression worse than it would have been. FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate. Obama repeating mistakes of Great Depression.

What we face today is a throw back to 1929. Same shit.

What we have now is different than in 1929. In 1929-30 congress passed and President Herbert Hoover signed the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, even though more than a thousand economists warned him to veto it, which slowed international trade. When the US passed this act other nations passed their own protectionist laws. US export businesses watched as their exports shrank, they thus had to lay off workers or went out of business. This harmed other businesses such as suppliers. Like it or not international trade is necessary to a thriving economy today and has been that way for a long tyme.

As for Mr. Fusion? How about some cleaner cheaper fission first.

Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies. Even in countries that do not have the US's environmental regulations nuclear power isn't profitable without subsidies. "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

And that's a reprint on the Free Market CATO Institute of a Forbes magazine article. Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant's reactor 3, being built by the French government owned Areva, was due to be compleated this year but now is not scheduled to be compleated until 2012. It is already $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget.

You ask about cheaper energy, the cheapest and cleanest energy is the negawatt. Unfortunately that depends on people conserving power and most Americans will not do that.

Falcon

... did not say that 1/10th or even 1/100th of the people in jail should be guilty!

I've tried, I really have. I just cannot understand what you're saying. I think I know what you're trying to say, but your words are not bringing you there.

I know that the common interpretation of that quote is letting guilty people go free to prevent imprisoning the innocent, but as I have already discussed, the logical extrapolation is how many guilty can go free before imprisoning an innocent? That is what I am getting at.

I think there should be no limit, that no innocent should be imprisoned. Blackstone clearly differs in that 10 guilty should go free per innocent. If you'd read that link, you'd see the construction of this argument in more detail.

Really, though, it's an entirely academic debate. There is no magical metric of law that lets 10 guilty people free per innocent or something. The law pretty much lets the rich free and imprisons the poor. But that's an entirely different debate.

Well, if you say that 10 guilty go free per innocent, then 11 guilty would be too many. Therefore, for every 11 guilty people punished, there should be one innocent punished. I know it's a bit of an explicitly literal interpretation, but that aspect of that quote has always bothered me. It seems to imply that there's some upper limit on the number of guilty to go free per innocent. The link I used goes into much more detail here.

I would suggest that we should have no limit on the number of guilty to go free per innocent. But that's not really going to happen. It still hold that it's stupid that the system has to be this way.

It would be nice if everyone was just honest all the time. And it rained donuts. And I won the lottery. Shame that won't happen.

Our justice system is built on the premise that it is better to let 10 guilty people go free than to punish one innocent person.

So, something like 9% of prisoners in jail being innocent is a good target? I believe the quote you were referring to was actually:

Isn't that what the OP said? He's not saying 1 in 10 people in jail are innocent and that's a good target, he's saying it's better that 10 guilty people go free than have 1 innocent person locked up... your reply confuses me...

Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer

- English jurist William Blackstone, from a UCLA page

Which is stupid. There should be no innocent people in jail. Period. People spend their lives in prison for crimes they didn't commit, because the legal system is mass producing justice. It's not good.

Again, even with your quote, isn't it saying there should be no innocent people in jail, period? You call the quote stupid and then agree with it - again, I'm confused. Perhaps I didn't get enough sleep last night...

Our justice system is built on the premise that it is better to let 10 guilty people go free than to punish one innocent person.

So, something like 9% of prisoners in jail being innocent is a good target? I believe the quote you were referring to was actually:

Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer

- English jurist William Blackstone, from a UCLA page

Which is stupid. There should be no innocent people in jail. Period. People spend their lives in prison for crimes they didn't commit, because the legal system is mass producing justice. It's not good.

UCLA disagrees with your facts on the depression.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx

So do others.

I fail to see how Maddow spoon feeding her opinions with her brand of humor has anything to do with free thinking liberal. Does that mean I can make fun of people with Tourette's, Just Like Rachel? Can I call anyone who disagrees with me a racist?

Strong women, lesbian or not, need not rely on scaring the white man if their ideals are just. That's the difference between second wave feminists and the victim-laden third wave feminists.

Victim-styled liberals hate white men who understand history, perspective, and nuance and see past the false wisdom of the chattering carcasses put before them on cable news.

From Dr. Ozcan's list of refereed papers :

Lensfree on-chip cytometry towards wireless health

I'm genuinely curious.

Don't worry that you can't see a business model without copyright: the so-called Captains of Industry can't see one either. The easy answer to your question of how people could be expected to make a living without worrying about copyright is found by reading a blog called TechDirt. There are plenty of examples there, and it's a good starting point if you're interested in this topic.

Mandatory reading for the topic of copyright and patent protections is a 10-chapter book found at Against Monopoly.

I have not been keeping it updated, but I occasionally add stuff to my journal as well.