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Because people use type 1 thinking to express themselves in daily intercourse

http://www.unc.edu/courses/2010spring/psyc/433/001/tutorials/leonard.html

and I am no different. I speak to people rapidly and fluidly, as we all do, and use words with meanings which are in turn largely derived from the common useage of people around me.

It has to be this way or you'll end up talking about the meaning of words instead of communicating what you meant to communicate.

Technically, what I said was wrong (but I knew the technical difference myself) , but conversationally, most people understood me as I intended to be understood and that's the whole point of communication.

In this particular context, maybe I should have broken it out because slashdotters are more technically literate (a good thing) and sometimes more literal (a BAD thing) than the average person.

*shurgs*.

I'll just leave this here.

If that's true, then who's misspelling the captions on all those cat pictures?

Your friendly neighborhood dog I suppose?

From his bio at
http://www.shepscenter.unc.edu/research_programs/mental_health/staff/bio/gauchat.html

"...including a study of what it is about science that alienates ideological conservatives and the political middle (moderates and independents) in the U.S."
So he has already decided his conclusion, and doesn't study liberals. You can scheme a study to make it fit a conclusion that you want.

Hey, he could be correct, and I don't care because I'm not "conservative" in any way discussed.
Also sad to see how all the comments basically digressed to broad stereotypes of one side calling the other "bad." /. really is becoming a crap pool of politics. Nearly ever article devolves into politics for some reason.

It seems clear that this article was a title first, and then they crafted the article around the title. No research or poll was done.

And you reached that conclusions without going to look at the actual study by Gauchat in "American Sociological Review". Admittedly it is a forthcoming publication, but here is the author's bio. I am sure that you can read the article in April if you like, and then take up any issues with the author.

I study the anti-science movement in both conservatives and liberals, and the although they are both equally anti-science in their own way, the conservatives have a powerful anti-science champions in fox, the evangelical movement, Beck, Limbaugh, and pretty much every conservative think-tank that I can think of.

All that propaganda has an effect.

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales - An Empirical Analysis:

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada:

Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P file-sharing and purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs and roughly one quarter were downloaded because they were not available for purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.

I'm sorry, it may be counter-intuitive that piracy has a zero or positive effect on music sales, but we can't ignore the facts.

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales - An Empirical Analysis:

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada:

Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P file-sharing and purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs and roughly one quarter were downloaded because they were not available for purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.

I don't understand what you mean with your comment about the physical media supply chain.

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." - John Adams.

Perpetuating this quotation in isolation is dishonest. See, for example here:

John Adams did, in fact, write the above words. But if you see those words in context, the meaning changes entirely. Here's the rest of the quotation:

Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!!' But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company--I mean hell.

In any event, I assume that was the poster above was getting at by "religious", was that these men were theists and their understanding of rights was that they are endowed by a Creator. That's pretty par for the course in the Enlightenment era.

Perhaps more to the point, it has been abundantly demonstrated that your average user doesn't have the slightest ability to distinguish between a trojan and a legitimate application(to be fair, most 'geeks' aren't too much better off, in terms of technical analysis; but at least they sometimes know where to go for advice).

Court orders are boring and sometimes require public disclosure to get. Spamming the internet with dozens of variants of "PHUCK the MAN Anon-t00lk1t l33t.exe" and "Ultimate untraceable blackhat.iso" bugged to send some of that fancy encrypted traffic straight to the boys in Quantico with the little curly ear-wires is easy...

If it comes to it, you can always get a court order(or a black bag and a charter flight from North Carolina; but if the history of cutekittensand/orporn.jpeg.exe is anything to go by, it will be much, much, easier to just start spreading malware disguised as tools for na'er-do-wells.

That's a hard case to make.

It's really not.

In addition, Hamas (a terrorist organization) won an election in Palestine.

Hamas, like the Mullahs, must pray everyday in thanks for the inept moves of the US and Israel that keep bolstering their popularity. I am not asking you to like them, just to manage to think through the reality of the system in terms more complicated than those of a comic-book morality tale.

Furthermore, Muslim Brotherhood won majority of seats in the Egyptian parliament.

And the Muslim Brotherhood is linked to terrorism how, exactly? Are you just throwing everything at the wall hoping something will stick?

A few years ago when the Irish were still blowing each other up over religion one might have made a similar statements about Catholics and Protestants, or religious people in general. Religion can complicate violent struggles, but it doesnt actually tend to cause them. Only when the underlying reasons for the violence are addressed does it tend to get better - quite independent of the rise or fall of religion.

Oooh, actually if they capture video on the way up and nothing is moving they could do a 3d model like this http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/urbanscape/

The basic idea is to take a computational chemistry package and run it through a genetic algorithm to search for suitable candidates that solve certain problems.

Here, try mine.

Chembench is a web-based computational chemistry tool, runs genetic algorithm based models (among others).
The physics were over my head, too, but that wasn't a problem. We used commercial descriptor calculation tools for a while. Now the open-source chemical descriptors provided in CDK are getting good enough to replace those.

That photo should flat out be public domain at this time regardless of whether the photographer is a live or dead.

Maybe.

Personally, I think the guy shouldn't have settled. He should have dared the person to sue him -- yes, it's a risk, but I think things were strongly in his favor, and while yes, it would cost to defend such a suit properly, it would also cost to launch such a suit properly, and so the photographer would probably realize that it wasn't worth the risk.

Doing larger sorting operations usually involve breaking the problem into multiple data sets, then merging the sorted subsets back together again. If done right, you can get each of the GPU units working on sorting their own piece most of the time. The UNC results are typical, and note that data sizes to be sorted now are much, much larger than the right side of their graph--so the slower growing runtime is even more important.

Also, sorting time can take up a lot of the CPU resources on a busy database server, so being able to offload that portion to the GPU means more CPU time available for other tasks.

A December 2010 paper, "Uncovering Spoken Phrases in Encrypted Voice over IP Conversations", takes a similar approach.

The article was published in ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, PDF version.

The paper details a gap in the security of VBR compressed encrypted VoIP streams. The authors had earlier found that it is possible to determine the language that is spoken on such a VoIP call, based on packet lengths. Now they have expanded their research and show that itâ(TM)s possible to detect entire spoken phrases during a VoIP call. On average, their method achieved recall of 50% and precision of 51% for a wide variety of phrases spoken by a diverse collection of speakers (some phrases are easier to detect than others; the recall various from 0% to 98%, depending on length of the phrase and the speaker). In other words: they can detect fairly well if a certain phrase is being used in a conversation, even though the VoIP conversation is encrypted.

It'd be difficult to do. In North Carolina, like in about dozen or so other States, counties and municipalities can only do what has been explicitly permitted by the General Assembly (Dillon's Rule; Do North Carolina Local Governments Need Home Rule? (Popular Government Fall 2006); Dillon's Rule is Dead! Long Live Dillon's Rule! (Bell 1995)). If the General Assembly is silent, they can't do it.

The other problem is that even if they could do it, the contract would have to get bid out. And you know the existing providers will underbid everyone else in order to keep someone else from getting in.

It'd be difficult to do. In North Carolina, like in about dozen or so other States, counties and municipalities can only do what has been explicitly permitted by the General Assembly (Dillon's Rule; Do North Carolina Local Governments Need Home Rule? (Popular Government Fall 2006); Dillon's Rule is Dead! Long Live Dillon's Rule! (Bell 1995)). If the General Assembly is silent, they can't do it.

The other problem is that even if they could do it, the contract would have to get bid out. And you know the existing providers will underbid everyone else in order to keep someone else from getting in.

Do you have a reference for Sarah Palin's position on fruit fly research? I would be fascinated to see that.

To quote the woman herself, from her 10/24/2008 policy speech in support of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA):

"You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

She made no specific reference but it can be presumed she is referring to the 2008 appropriation for research into controlling the olive fruit fly by California Rep Mike Thompson, of which ~$211,000 did in fact go to research performed in France. The olive fruit fly is a harmful pest that causes considerable damage to crops in California and many other places. Rep Thompson defended this appropriation and it's allocation as follows:

"The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries. I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s. This is not uncommon; the USDA has several international research facilities throughout the world, including Australia, China and Argentina.”

This says nothing of the valuable research into genetics and other biological systems that frequently utilize the more common drosophilla fruit fly, such as this, which could actually lead to treatment for the very people she claims to be supporting in the aforementioned speech. This dismissive attitude toward legitimate and useful science is very disturbing in a publicly elected official who should have a mature and non-simplistic understanding of how science and technology policy lead to practical benefits. But it would appear she either has a grade school understanding of the topic, or she was attempting to manipulate her constituency through sound bites that give the impression of a scrappy everywoman fighting senseless waste of taxpayer money. If the former, she is unqualified to participate and should keep quiet. If the latter, her image is tarnished by hypocrisy. (WARNING: PDF. See $1.5M in FY08 and $400K in FY09 for fighting invasive species in Alaska)

...rather than a Daily Kos Obamista screed...

Your bias is evident and name calling simply makes your argument less credible

Yes, let's talk about politicizing science:

Supporting your views I found:

http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2007/03/21/politicizing-science/

Indeed, your entire argument appears to presented there.

The left does it even more egregiously:

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/08/is-there-no-limit-to-obama-epas-politicization-of-science/

The first is a scathing indictment of BOTH parties for trying to force the square peg of science into the round holes of their ideologies. The second is simply evidence for more of the same on one side of the political spectrum. I'm not sure what your point is here...are you trying to counter my statement or simply restating what I said? Maybe I wasn't clear initially, so I'll make up for it now - I find the politically motivated manipulation of science to conform with an ideology to be a

yes, that's the official line, and if you look at cancer rates in the surrounding area it seems to be true. But if you look specifically at areas downwind of the plant during the event, it's a different story. But you won't hear the industry or the so-called regulators discussing that.

The conference version of the paper appeared in IEEE S&P 2008.

http://cs.unc.edu/~fabian/papers/oakland08.pdf

Is Tony Kushner one of your detractors? I thought Angels in America gave a pretty sympathetic view of Mormons, and even some Mormons agree. http://www.unc.edu/~jcduffy/angels.pdf

Well...

"This goes against claims of major health benefits from consuming foods and particularly supplements that contain antioxidants."/quote?

Good thing that worms in a lab are so biologically analogous to humans. Time to stop eating tomatoes, broccoli, and spinach

You share a majority (75%) of your genes with worms, you worm!

We can even swap human and worm genes and they continue to work.

the small creature also is a complex, multicelled organism that carries many genes that also exist in humans, and function in the same way.

As a result, the worm provides a crucial keyhole view of the vast world of genetics, said Robert H. Waterston, who led a team at the Washington University Medical School in St. Louis that joined with British scientists to map the worm's genes.

``This worm is really an animal just as we are,'' said Waterston. ``It has muscles and many different kinds of cells. And it also ages, just as we do. By and large, it uses the same genes that we do.''

By studying genes shared by worm and human, researchers will learn at a molecular level what can go wrong and how to fix it. Such microscopic studies are virtually impossible in humans.

``Half of the disease genes in humans have identifiable counterparts in this worm,'' said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He said researchers into many human diseases will be able to use the humble worm as a way of learning how to prevent, treat and cure the illnesses of man.

``I don't think that it is an overstatement to say that the hopes of the parents of a child with a birth defect, the hopes of a young man with a family history of cancer and the hopes of a couple caring for aging parents are advanced'' by this new understanding of the C. elegans, Collins said.

In fact, researchers studying the worm identified genes that have been linked to Alzheimer's disease, to aging and to some forms of cancer, Waterston said.

``The only reason we know about some proteins in Alzheimer's disease is because there are related proteins in the worms, and the function of these proteins had been determined,'' he said.

In terms of the gene-mapping's significance to science in general and to biology in particular, Collins said: ``This is like landing on the moon.''

Collins said that by understanding what happens in the worm cells, researchers also learn what happens in human cells. Of the 5,000 best-known human genes, 75 percent have matches in the worm, Collins said.

-- Barbie

Because they already have laser scanners on board, also seen on the us versions, and video related ways of making 3D data...and I can only assume they have a lower resolution video to go with those pictures.

You think they'd shovel in the truckloads of cash it takes to map practically every street in the world and *not* take 3d data!?

There has been research and even products made to do the same thing in recognizing the distinct patterns or each users' typing. I recall first hearing of this in the early 90s, and it probably goes back further than this. Here's two examples:
http://cs.unc.edu/~fabian/papers/fgcs.pdf
http://www.securitysoftwarezone.com/keystroke-recognition-review273-7.html

These passive biometrics are all great(TM) solutions -- they take advantage of highly idiosyncratic, repetitive, and difficult to forge characteristics of each individual, and use technology to accurately recognize these characteristics and authenticate their targets.

Except these solutions fail at unacceptable rates when they encounter real-world exceptions. As mentioned by others, gait and keystroke cadence are both consistent, but easily changed by injury, illness, drugs, varying clothing, and just mood.

At least this research group recognizes this and points to the need for a *suite* of passive biometric indicators. But, they think a 1% false positive error rate is acceptable -- one chance in 100 that the thief gets in!?! It needs to be at least 3 orders of magnitude better.

Looks to me like another example of technologists getting enamored of their technology and failing to actually solve the basic problem.

Fucked up the link when I attempted to de-Googlize it. The fuckup is pretty obvious, but just for completeness here it is:

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

Until you can somehow show that piracy results in lost sales, which has never successfully been done, perhaps you should shut your cakehole

It has been done: http://www.unc.edu/~cigar%25/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf. The jist of it: The top artists actually gain sales from piracy, the bottom artists lose sales (~5000 downloads:1 lost sale), the net effect is essentially zero. Still, to the artists losing money I don't think they care much about the net effect.

I agree with your premise, and calling it theft is still wrong and probably an attempt to hijack the debate--but hyperbole on either side is not appropriate. It does result in lost sales. Some. Sometimes.

I apologize, it appears you brought up "Criminal Copyright Infringement",which this case and the overwhelming majority of copyright infringement cases aren't, while the standard for this sort of case has been substantially lowered (in 1909,1982 and again in 1997) you aren't going to see that many of those cases for people infringing by file sharing.

ME1: Didn't you hear me? I said they couldn't get laid in a monkey whorehouse carrying a bag of bananas.

On the internet nobody knows you're a dog (or a monkey.)

It shouldn't be too hard to charge a small battery through induction. We already saw an example of this when Richard Box used induction for his fluorescent light art, and it's not an uncommon subject for questions on underaduate E&M exams.

This study shows how the east coast turtles make their way to the gulf stream using; visual cues, wave direction and (finally) magnetic direction:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/oceanweb/turtles/offshr.html

They do not show any info on how they make their way back.
What information are you using to determine that they will just wander back to the gulf?

At the very least this will give a great study on the 'homing' tendencies of turtles. Do they reurn to where they were hatched (learned behavior) or do they return to where their genetic forebearers lived (genetic imprinting)?

What advantage do you see to allowing them to die? Is it simply less work for humans? And if those people were not already actively invovled in fixing the well or cleaning up sludge, what negative effect could it have on those efforts?

You can always read my profile - it explains the name issue (tom / the online me ... or you can read through my journal for more details :-)

you certainly don't have any will or respect for yourself or the law.

riiiight ... even though I quoted the actual laws in question wrt your "felony copyright" claim in my emailed response.

As for "bringing justice" - you simply have no grounds for a claim of felony copyright theft, as I explained in private, but since you insist ...

http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/copy-corner66.htm

The most recent amendment to criminal copyright infringement was the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 (NetAct) which made it a felony to reproduce or distribute copies of copyrighted works electronically regardless of whether the defendant had a profit motive. Thus, it changed the 100-year standard regarding profit motive but retained the element of willfulness. The ease of infringement on the Internet was the primary reason for criminalizing noncommercial infringement as well as recognition of other motivations a nonprofit defendant might have such as anti-copyright or anti-corporate sentiment, trying to make a name in the Internet world and wanting to be a cyber renegade. So, the infringement must be either:

1. for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain or
2. involve the reproduction or distribution of one or more copies of a work or works within a 180-day period with a total retail value of $1,000.

Commercial infringers are subject to higher penalties, however. A commercially motivated infringer can receive up to a five-year federal prison term and $250,000 in fines; a noncommercial willful infringer is subject to up to a one-year prison term and $100,000 in fines. The prison term maximum for repeat infringers is up to 10 years for commercially motivated ones and up to six years for noncommercial infringers.

There was no commercial advantage or private financial gain that I can see, and you haven't claimed any such case, and the images in question have no retail value.

Further:

There are four essential elements required to prove felony copyright infringement:

1. that a registered copyright exists,
2. that the defendant infringed by reproduction or distribution of the copyrighted work,
3. that the defendant acted willfully and
4. that the works infringed were at least 10 copies of one or more copyrighted works with a total value of $2,500 within a 180-day period.

Willfulness continues to be a very illusive concept, but the statute provides no definition. Case law illustrates that certain type of evidence generally is relevant to prove that defendant's conduct was willful. For example, that the defendant had legal notice that conduct similar to his was infringement or that he had actual notice that his conduct was illegal. However, under Section 506(a) of the Act, "evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement."

So, unless you went and registered the images in question with the copyright office ahead of time, you lack standing to make a complaint of felony copyright theft. Just being the copyright holder as per the Bern convention is not sufficient - prior documented copyright registration is mandatory for a felony claim.

i witnessed him commit a felony, a felony specifically against my personal rights. . until a judge acquits him of that crime

If you're talking about re-posting pictures elsewhere that don't have a US Copyright registration and have no commercial value, you did NOT witness him "commit a felony". If it's something else, I'm listening, bu

1 cubic mile is about 26 billion barrels.

Clarification: the Google estimate is for oil barrels. There are several definitions of barrel in use, all with the same abbreviation (bbl). See http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictB.html
US official = 119.24 L; US oil = 158.99 L; Imperial = 163.66 L; UK beer = 166.36 L; UK wine = 119.24 L (same as US standard)
Then there are various "dry" barrel sizes, and special sizes for fish, pork, cement, etc.

This should mess up there magnetic mapping abilities with any luck they will just follow the power lines straight to the Wind farms and into my belly. http://www.unc.edu/depts/oceanweb/lobsters/

We may soon need similar lessons here in the UK when we want to access those filtered sites suspected of potentially hosting copyrighted material. Damn, that sounds sad.

Hate to break it to you but most web sites you could ever even think of accessing will be hosting copyrighted material. That's right not just potentially hosting copyrighted material but actually hanging up copyrighted material for anyone to download.

To avoid getting copyrighted material, you'd have to find a country that did not sign the Berne Convention treaty, but even then the material might be under copyright. Alternately, even the countries in the Berne Convention treaty might have material online that has been made Public Domain either because the copyright expire or the rights holder (not the creator) put it into the public domain. Even then you'll have to download (and read) pages of copyrighted information to get at the PD stuff.

Alternately you can just download as much copyrighted material as you want. Try starting from these sites:

• SourceForge
• CreativeCommons
• Linux Kernel Archives
• arXiv
• Ubuntu
• Fedora
• NetBSD
• Oracle
• Sun
• Haiku
• Internet Archive
• and so on

And remember, there's more where that came from.

Inform yourself.

Canadian survey and study, which shows a direct positive influence on purchases due to downloading.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html

The key findings of above study

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9086/canadian_govt_study_p2p_increases_cd_sales/

A Harvard Business School study with clear proof that sales are affected by downloads, for the positive.

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

A recent Norweigen school of management study, which shows not only are filesharers increasing sales they themselves are the largest purchasers of that media.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86009/study-pirates-buy-10-times-more-music-than-they-steal/

This may sound in your head as something quite insightful, however when its broken down its clear it has very little meaning at all. Are you suggesting that the initial profit increase is somehow not an increase in sales? Or are you suggesting that a higher initial profit has nothing to do with sales? Or is it a preemptive statement and you are hoping to deflect arguments about current profit increases by the big media houses? Furthermore how does this statement help your case? You are agreeing and disagreeing with yourself in the same sentence.

AI researcher and music buff Douglas Hofstadter (of "Godel, Escher, Bach" and "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies") wrote a paper about his experience with another researcher's music program, EMI. Hofstadter made the same argument that truly great music depends on human emotion, and that a music composer AI would only imitate superficial things like frequently-used note patterns. He came away troubled, though, because EMI was able to copy deeper patterns and produce fairly decent imitations of dead composers' style. His AI research has focused on basic aspects of creativity and how to avoid ELIZA-like shallowness, so the thought of a composer producing worthwhile music without human-like experiences raises the disturbing question of whether music is really something "wrung from the depths of the soul" or something more formulaic and simplistic.

> What is your angle?

Hard to tell, Ray. But if he's Thaetetus, does that make you Socrates? :]

Seriously, though, there are about a zillion Dan Roses out there. Mostly he appears to spend his time making random legal comments on Slashdot among a handful of others. Seems like he *might* be at UNC School of Law. The email has an extra dot, but I think Gmail ignores those. If that's true, he's part of the Lambda Law Students Association (a legal association for homosexuals), which doesn't really explain his interest in the RIAA & copyrights. That said, Google is giving some very strange results, so who knows?

That said, this exchange was pretty ugly for Tenenbaum. I assume it's what he's talking about. Of course, I see nothing in there admitting specifically to violating the distribution right. And I don't have a court transcript, either, which I trust more than random internet reports about the case.

I say that because there are other things out there like this story which claims that "Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson has conceded in a letter to the US Department of Justice that his client, accused peer-to-peer infringer Joel Tenenbaum, "downloaded music for [his] own enjoyment."" which points to this letter on your website. The problem is that I've read the letter three times and I can't find that "quote" in it anywhere, unless they got it by cutting out the phrase "is alleged to have," which would make their quote the same kind of dishonesty that led to $312,000 in sanctions recently.

I should not assume bad things (like ignorance or lack of intelligence), so I assume lack of information, which is no shame. :)

Let me formalize your statements (commas used as logic element separators):
1. There is a form of downloading, that is illegal. — Paradigm (Assumption)
2. “Putting out” (in this case) means “freely offered on the Internet“ — Paradigm (Agreed)
3. The game was put out, a week before. — Paradigm (Agreed. Based on TFA)
4. Putting out that game, a week before, surely, counted a lot of illegal downloading. — Paradigm (With “surely” as a weasel word and a stand-in for an actual basis.)
5. Putting out that game, a week before, surely, counted people not buying the game. — Ditto
6. People not buying the game and/or illegally downloading it, causes actual damages to companies. — Paradigm (Assumption)
7. Actual damages result in lost money for those companies. — Paradigm (Agreed)
8. One can sue for damages / lost money, caused by someone else. — Paradigm (Generally accepted in out community. I do not agree on a physical level, but I will follow community rules as I am not a part of this.)
9. So there’s nothing wrong to be found, with them suing him. — Conclusion (Following)

I disagree with every single of your paradigms where I wrote “(Assumption)”, and especially the “surely” ones.

1) Accepted when assuming that those laws itself are legal, with which I strongly disagree, since they are based on the faulty assumption, that information/ideas/data would be treatable like real physical/meatspace objects, when they are virtual/bitspace objects. And following from that, that one could own/possess and control such data, that by definition, is out of one’s control and can’t be owned.
4) Putting out something does not necessarily result in actual download. But because of its very high likelyness, let’s assume actual download happened. With the limitation, of not being able to make any assumptions about the actual number.
5) Putting out something has no relation to actual buying behavior or even has a positive effect, as was conclusively shown by [1], [2], amongst others.
6) Offering something for sale does not in any way guarantee a sale. So not buying it does never equal damage, but is the natural default situation. Just like walking past a sausage stand, and not buying one, does not equal damage to the sausage seller. And just like buying a replica of something, does not equal damage to the original producer. One can just as well not buy something, when no other alternative is available. Imagine someone who wants to buy it, but does not have the money to buy it. He would not have bought it (for that price) anyway. So your logic is strongly faulty here.
Conclusion: Since there was no damage and loss of anything, that can even remotely be proven, it is, in our community, not acceptable to sue that person.

Some research with VR googles was done eight years ago:

Ultrasound augmented realityWired had an article just last year

Total Recall had a giant screen that did an X-ray to just the bones of the person plus metal objects. The latest volume visualization techniques will map all the muscles and major blood vessels, as well as synovial joints.

Embassy personnel are representatives of their countries. The diplomatic immunity is just something they threw in to benefit themselves. It also makes negotiating easier because the diplomats can't be beheaded like they used to be. If they screw up or get caught spying or kill some family in a drunk driving accident, they can be declared "persona non grata" and expelled. This happens regularly.

Also of note is reciprocity. America grants diplomatic immunity but also receives it at embassies abroad. Where is the equality with a non-state actor like INTERPOL? How do you declare them persona non grata and expel them? Where would they go to, they're an international organization just like the UN.

This is just a move towards internationalisation. The dream of the UN and other transnational progressivists is sort of a Star Trek-type or Futurama-type "Earth Government". It's not like they're making a big secret of it, either. I mean, what the hell, US law has just been trumped! An in a very incomprehensible way, too. "deleting from the first sentence the words "except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act" and the semicolon that immediately precedes them." WTH is this crap? What happened to Obama's vaunted transparency in government?

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

I will completely level with you. You don't know what I believe. I have surface thoughts and I present them to be interpreted and play with the dynamics of conversation gaining the advantage where I can and rebuilding where I am weak. I have my agenda. I want to see people organize to improve our lot at humans. The public domain is a singular issue that could reinforce this goal. It must be liberated by any means necessary. How we go about this in tangential. PLEASE continue this discussion, I respect and am fully engaged with you because you have demonstrated completely to me that you are not a sheep. Thank you.

See: Here for some background material to show some mutual terms for us both to understand as we continue this conversation.

This following wiki quote relates to what is missing:

"The public domain is most often discussed in contrast to works whose use is restricted by copyright. Under modern law, most original works of art, literature, music, etc. are covered by copyright from the time of their creation for a limited period of time (which varies by country). When the copyright expires, the work enters the public domain. It is estimated that currently, of all the books found in the world's libraries, only about 15% are in the public domain, even though only 10% of all books are still in print; the remaining 75% are books which remain unavailable because they are still under copyright protection."

The parent is correct, but a bit terse. I thought I'd elaborate a bit:

"Federal Reserve Board data shows that:

* More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
* Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
* Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."

- http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

The stats don't back up the idea that any public institution or law bears the brunt of the responsibility for problematic lending.

It also doesn't make much sense. Take the fingers pointed at the CRA. It didn't force banks to make risky loans. They could deny an application based on income, credit rating, or any other relevant factors. What it *did* force them to avoid was "red-lining": denying loans based on the current living location (used as a proxy for the applicant's race). A person's race and living location might have some correlation with risk of defaulting, but as we all know here on slashdot, correlation is not causation, and a responsible financial institution would deal with the more directly relevant information: an individual's income/asset information and their credit history.

Here's some other links:

http://www.ptmortgage.com/blog/2008/10/01/pointing-fingers-was-it-cra-and-minority-lending-that-caused-the-mortgage-mess/
http://debatebothsides.com/showthread.php?t=73500
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis
http://www.frbsf.org/news/speeches/2008/0331.html
http://www.ccc.unc.edu/news/news.021809.php
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/Commentary/2000/1100.htm
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/ls564.htm

Wikipedia also has a summary.

What reports of sexism have there been? Are you raising the subject of sexism just based on the fact that only 1.5% of FOSS developers are women?

For decades, it has been accepted, that statistics is evidence. Recognizing, that there can be legitimate differences in inclinations towards certain activities among genders is a big no-no. The only exception is made for negative inclinations — such as increased aggressiveness — among males, or positive — such as attention to detail — among females, err, scratch that — "female" has a "male" in it — the proper term is womyns.

That the same testosterone (or whatever it really is), that makes males more aggressive on average may also make them more determined scientists or more involved FOSS-developers, is not mentioned... Or, perhaps, one needs to have been nerdy and suffer from bullying — something girls rarely have to go through — in school to look for a recreational outlet online.

Whatever the real reasons for disparity, claiming "sexism" in FOSS — the activity, that's done almost exclusively via Internet, where nobody knows your real gender (nor race, for that matter, nor even species!), is beyond stupid, of course. But by pointing this out, a person — myself included after I typed the previous sentence — automatically becomes a "sexist in denial". I guess, I need therapy now...

Lastly, the 1.5% is not bad — among FreeBSD-project, for example, there were 0 (zero!) females, last time I checked. The situation only "improved" a little bit, when one guy (from San Francisco, of all places), announced his gender- (and name-) change...

1. We are happy when anyone gets laid
2. The heterosexual geeks aren't threatened. I mean if we can't get girls to find us attractive no gay guy would.
3. Decreases denominator in available (girl/guy) ratio.

4. We respect anyone who can double their wardrobe without having to go shopping.
5. Geeks recognize that diversity can produce great results - not just pertaining to homosexuality.
6. From our parents' basement, we all look the same - like an Arial 11 font. (obligatory reference)
7. There are bigger targets for our hatred and bigotry.

Uh.. the inch is technically an SI unit. It is defined as exactly 2.54 cm.

No, it's not. SI uses the metre for length measurement, and nothing else. You can alter it with the various prefixes, and there's is only one thousand meters in a kilometre, not twenty-four more.

The "inch" from the United States customary units is defined as 2.54 centimetres, but it doesn't make it part of the SI..

Inch goes a helluva lot farther back than the US. http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/custom.html

The standards compliant way.

The great thing about standards is that there's so many to choose from.

BTW, OttoBib rocks.

I'm a tall minority male. In every job I have ever held, I have made as much as if not more than my peers because I'm good at what I do and I know how much my work is worth.

"On the internet, no one knows if you're a dog."

http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html

Any claim on any internet forum where membership in any group is asserted is, at best, highly suspicious. By extension, any experiential claim dependent upon the factuality of membership in said group is also, at best, highly suspicious.

Cf course, no one on Slashdot would ever dissemble to make a point.

Developed out of UNC http://www.cs.unc.edu/~smithja/FaceTop.html

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~smithja/FaceTop.html