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Senate Takes Aim At P2P Providers
thejoelpatrol writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by everybody's favorite senator, Orrin Hatch, is moving to outlaw P2P entirely by making it illegal to produce such applications. Hatch says such firms 'think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal. Some think they can legally lure children into breaking the law with false promises of "free music."' So, when was the last time that Kazaa told kids to steal music? Shouldn't the parents be the ones looking out for their kids? The RIAA is (surprise!) in favor of this, while P2P groups are (surprise!) opposed."
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
and so do monkeys!... if you give them a gun. (thanks eddie izzard!)
My server is not working
I can't believe I'm saying this, and I'm not sure if it's your sig or not, but that 'evil' quote was used in a recent airing of "7th Heaven" on the WB. /proceeds to go watch hours of Kung Fu to rid self of WB memories
So I guess those DRM restrictions are just constitutional regulation.
Check out Findlaw for more information about the Second amendment.
(Disclaimer: This isn't how I personally feel, but its something to think about)
I call dibs on the lawsuit against Martin-Lockheed for enabling poorly behaved rulers to kill millions in a single blow and cause global extinction. Missles anyone? Not to mention the car manufacturers for encourging theft with their ready to use get-away wagons, just add gas.
Poor neighborhoods having crap schools is not just due to lack of money. It's more a social and cultural issue.
The kids in poor communities aren't encouraged to be good students, so they don't. It's all a part of a "culture of failure" they have. There was an excellent article about this in the Atlanta Journal/Constitution (written by a black guy, in case somebody wants complain about racism), which I'll summarize:
Black people have trained themselves into believing that "The Man" is keeping them down, even though that's no longer true. They teach their children to blame others for their faults, rather then themselves, and believe that everyone is "out to get them." This manifests itself in distrust for the police, claiming racial discrimination where none exists, refusing to accept responsibility for the actions of their children (e.g: "It's not my fault my kid became a drug dealer!"), and making it cool to be a poor student.
Here's an example: black people claim that the SAT is discriminatory because of cultural differences. At first glance, this seems true: black students do average lower on the SAT than other racial groups. However, they average lower on both verbal and math. You have to consider that the SAT tests logical reasoning rather than recalling specific knowledge (with the exception of basic math formulas and vocabulary). There is nothing cultural about math formulas, except that black people think it's cool not to learn them.
As for verbal, the questions are based on relationships between sentences in the passage - you don't have to have ever read the passage before, or know anything about the subject, to answer correctly. The closest thing to a legitimate complaint is the analogy section, because it depends on vocabulary. There still isn't an argument, however, beacuse other racial groups (e.g. asians, non-english europeans, etc) could have all the same complaints, yet they don't make them - and they have similar scores as native-english-speaking white people! (Anecdote: I'm a student at Georgia Tech, and the classroom I'm sitting in now has 13 non-white people (including the professor) and 11 white ones, so don't tell me non-white people can't do well on the SAT!)
I'm sorry that I had to talk specifically about black people, but I did beacuse there is unfortunately a correlation between low-income and black, especially in the city.
If you insist on blaming it on money, consider this: the school I graduated from is one of the best public schools in Georgia. Other schools, even in the same county, were very very bad. They all recieved the same amount of government funding. You know why mine was so much better? They got a substantial amount of funding by donation - on the order of $50 per student, per year. The poor schools didn't get this funding, because the parents in those school districts didn't care enough to give it, just as they didn't care enough to make sure their kids did their homework, or behaved in class, etc.
Recently, the county redistricted the schools, moving students from poor schools to better ones. You know what happened? The quality of the better schools went down, despite having the same teachers and the same equipment as before!
Throwing money at the issue won't solve the problem, because it's a cultural one.
Aside: spending the money more efficiently wouldn't hurt, though. As an example of what not to do, my school system gave every teacher a computer. One computer per classroom, for the teacher's use, despite the fact that it was intended to "encourage the use of technology in teaching." What was it actually used for? E-mail between the teachers. In the (extremely rare) circumstance that the teacher actually wanted to use the computers to help the student's learn, we had to borrow an old crappy one from the technology department. Examples: business simulation in economics class on a P-100 even though the t
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
'What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" do you not understand'
Where it says 'in the context of a well regulated militia', thats the part I don't understand.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
In fact, I think my excellent karma may be lost on this story, buy the time the mods are finished. Oh well.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
"I'm disappointed to say that I have relatives that think profiling (of Middle Eastern people in this case) is okay, "
Amen Brother! I also muss fess up to relatives that think it is 100% ok and look at me like I have a second head when I argue against it. My original argument was made in haste and annoyance, but I still believe that such profiling reflects more in the proflier than the profilie. Lumping people into groups is something that we can all be prone to if we are not careful. I know that I have made assumptions based on outward appearances before and I am not proud of it.
About the GMO food example. Labeling is something that compabnies will not do willingly. It is actually ironic; in the US there are these wonderful "Food Facts" labels that simply don't exist in Europe. If you buy a snickers bar in the US, it will tell you just how unhealthy it is. If you buy the same bar - remember; same company, same product - in Europe, there is absulutely squat re. nutritional info. I would actually expect the opposite.
I agree 100% on labeling of GMO products. If they can convince me that it is in my interest (e.g. enhanced nutritional value, etc) to buy/eat them, then I will. Otherwise I will pass them by on the premise that I do not plan on being the guenea pig. This is where I disagree with those in favor of an outright ban (the prevaling attitude in the EU). I actually once heard the argument that "people would end up buying them anyway". Well, I can put that box of crackers back on the shelf after reading the label, yet it is assumed that for my own good I do not have the discipline. Actually I just used this as an example to point out that there is no monopoly anywhere on government that tries to 'protect' its population from themselves.