It's called a "straw-man" argument: build an effigy of the real target (a scarecrow), shoot it down, and claim that you have made a real difference. Just as such straw-men have historically (sometimes) fooled people in war, they still do in arguments.
Sadly, today, straw-man arguments often seem to fool the one making the argument as much as others who are taken in by it. I suspect this is such a case.
In regard to certain provisions of the DMCA and other measures, someone please explain to me where they can find some long-standing legal principle that allows one interest group to make other parties separately responsible and liable for protecting the first group's interests? Because that's what they are doing here. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe any such legal right or principle exists. Which makes much, if not all, of the DMCA and certain other recent laws extremely questionable on the grounds of simple long-established legal principle.
Where else in law does anything like it exist? Are telephone companies liable if people play "illegally" copied tunes for their on-hold music? Of course not. For that matter, if someone is using a telephone modem or other direct means of communication, is the telephone company liable if the users transmit copyright-infringed material? Again, of course not.
Why? Because it is not reasonable. The telephone company is nothing but a "common carrier". They deliver data from one place to another; nothing more. Not only are they not responsible for the content of that data, they are specifically exempt from any responsibility, because end-users are solely responsible for what they send and receive.
Not only that, but it is illegal for telephone companies to use means to determine the contents of such transmissions, without a legal warrant. While other recent laws, themselves at least as questionable about the DMCA, pretend to authorize Federal authorities to intercept that information, it is still illegal for the telephone carrier itself to do so.
Why should ISPs be any different? Rationally, they fulfill the same "ecological niche" as a telephone company. They provide a service to carry data packets from one end user to another. And data repositories, if they are on the up-and-up, are also pretty much in the same boat; they act merely as storage places for private data that is uploaded and stored. There is no rational reason they should be responsible for any content, UNLESS they are knowingly and actively aiding and abetting crimes committed by someone else. Just as, for example, the owner of physical storage rental units is not responsible for the actual contents of said units (they make you sign a paper to that effect)... UNLESS they are knowingly aiding in the commission of crimes.
So the whole concept is bullshit from the start. ISPs and data repositories owe the RIAA and MPAA nothing, either ethically or in legal principle. There is not a single rational reason behind holding them responsible for user-generated content, EXCEPT the rational argument that it is the easiest place to stop it. But ease is not a binding legal principle. The US Supreme Court more than once has ruled that difficulty of enforcing a law is not an excuse to bypass long-standing legal precedent.
The only explanation for this kind of plan is under-the-table cronyism between big businesses and government, which has no place in justice. There is nothing in here for the consumer at all. No protection, no improvement of any market (on the contrary), and no recourse.
I should have been more specific. I was referring to the older style radial that had all the cylinders arranged in a circle. Some of the earlier ones even had a fixed crankshaft and the cylinders themselves spun with the prop for cooling.
"If, on the other hand, you want to get a search warrant to look for terrorist activities, the IP address is more than sufficient in giving probable cause for a search."
On the contrary: judge after judge in the past couple of years have ruled that an IP address alone is NOT probable cause. And properly so. It doesn't identify an individual, or even a household. My IP address is available to people all over my neighborhood, and vice versa: I have a network adapter that can access routers more than 2 blocks away.
I would say that the many cases of police busting down the wrong doors (most commonly in New York and Los Angeles, it often seems) would qualify as them doing exactly that... busting or trying to bust the wrong person based on evidence that hasn't been held up to a proper standard.
Not such a "good catch". The judge also made clear that the "good cause" standard is not met, which applies regardless of whether they intend to litigate. So even if he had been sympathetic about the "no intent to litigate" bit, he still would probably not have allowed discovery.
"Customers are usually assigned an IP address based on the MAC address of their cable/DSL modem, and packets destined for a different IP address generally won't be routed there. So I don't think it's as easy as you've described above."
Not even close. First, there aren't anywhere near enough IPv4 numbers to go around, especially today, and second, ISPs generally obtain their IP numbers in blocks, which would preclude handing them out them based on MAC address. Unless by "based on" you simply mean associating the two numbers in their IP tables. But the numbers themselves aren't even remotely similar in most cases.
"Do keep in mind that if there is actual intent and effort to prosecute, the judge would cooperate."
Very doubtful. If he meant that, he could simply have refused based on the perceived intent of the claimants to settle rather than litigate. Instead, he took the trouble of mentioning that it did not meet the "good cause" standard.
But the good cause standard applies whether they are litigating or not, so no, he probably would NOT "cooperate".
If you think there was "consensus" in 1981 about climate change, I invite you to go read some history.
The flap over global cooling was just drawing to a close, and frankly nobody really knew what the hell was going on. Sure there were people making predictions, but they were all over the map.
I was rather encouraged to see other people following my own earlier train of thought. 20km puts a quadrotor out of the running, even if wind velocity did not.
Also, for mountainous terrain, you would not want a glider-style wing plan. A flatter, more slippery design such as used for "slope soarers" would seem to fit the bill most appropriately. For the kind of fuel capacity needed, I will make a rough guess and say you would probably want something in the 1.5 meter wingspan range. X-country flight competitions in the 2-meter range have been around for years.
The big obstacle here is the control of flight dynamics. There is plenty of open-source software out there for quadrotors, but I don't know about fixed-wings. I have seen some very expensive navigation implementations in the industry rags, but I suspect that if DIYers can do a quadrotor, they can do a fixed-wing as well. I suspect the main issue is that you need to make your craft steer toward the programmed flightline, more aggressively the larger the deviation, with buffering and without exceeding the design requirements of the craft. That last part is probably the trickiest.
If this is really mountainous country then you probably need very accurate, 3-axis GPS (for altitude), or some kind of ground-sensing scheme to keep from running into a hillside. I suspect the more sophisticated GPS is probably the way to go. But that also requires carefully planned routes. You will want to stay away from hillsides, preferably routing it straight along the valleys between mountains or mountain ridges.
The equipment is out there. Modern liquid fuel model engines are definitely available in any size you may want. They even make radial
And finally: autonomous navigation via GPS is already out in small drones that are on the market, but they probably aren't in your price range. Not that they could not be... I think the current commercial builders are taking advantage of the topic's fledgeling status to gouge people.
So what that all leads me to is, I would:
(1) consider a fixed-wing plane in the 1.5m to 2m wingspan range.
(2) Make sure it's a style and plan that can accommodate an engine large enough to make the range you are talking about. Keep in mind that you are working against the law of diminishing returns to a certain degree: the larger the engine you put on, the more fuel you will need for it, which requires a larger engine, which requires more fuel. In practice, there are solutions to such things, but I suggest always getting an engine that is at least a little more powerful than you think you'll need. Not a lot, but some. Otherwise you will end up with a sudden gust of wind slamming it against a hillside.
Also, what I call the "Land Cruiser" effect can occur: if it is underpowered, the engine will struggle too hard to perform the way you want and thus use more fuel than an engine designed with that torque and rpm in the center of its range. (I hereby officially christen this effect after the old-school Toyota Land Cruiser, which had a huge 6-cylinder engine that struggled to do things that were well within the design parameters of the rest of the vehicle. But with a 3rd-party kit, the stock 6-cylinder could be replaced with a V-8 of close to the same displacement, which was not only physically smaller than the original, but actually had quite a bit more horsepower and ALSO got significantly better gas mileage. It was a win-win. The original Toyota engine was designed such that common U.S. off-road scenarios were at the fringes of its performance curve, rather than the middle where it was most efficient.)
(3) You don't want realtime telemetry at a 20km range. That would be (a) way too heavy, and (b) too expensive. Instead, you will want your on-board cameras to record the video to storage for retrieval and viewing later. And there are ways to overlay not just the clock on the video, but on-board sensor readouts, as well.
Artificial scarcity is nothing new, nor is it a "violation" of the principles of supply and demand. Rather, it is a well-known exception, called monopolistic (or in this case oligopolistic) business practices, which are made possible by lack of competition.
In a situation like this, where prices are kept artificially high, there is little or no competition to jump in and undercut the other players. So regular market forces to not come to bear. There is nothing at all strange about this.
"Getting a licensed electrician whenever you mess with your wiring is only smart, too."
My butt. Wiring a house is inherently very simple, especially these days with outlets you plug the wires straight into, and good wire nuts. The only reason for a "licensed" electrician is to keep them making Union wages.
I've wired a number of houses, and haven't burned one down yet. Find out what the code in your area is, and use one standard gauge larger wire. (I.e., if code mandates 14 g wire use 12 g.) It's slightly more expensive but it will last for years.
Put in more electrical outlets than code calls for, and never use a breaker larger than code calls for.
The only other tools you need are a good hefty pair of needle nose pliers with side cutter, a pocket knife, heavy duty wire stripper, and a flat blade screwdriver.
Wiring a home is simpler than learning how to program a VCR (if anybody even remembers those, these days). Licenses are a joke.
Why should I be charming to panhandlers who probably had more money stashed away than me? Who had the gall to ask me for food while hauling around a 150-pound dog?
I can be quite charming when it's called for. That wasn't it.
Considering that none of the IPCC's predictions -- not a single one -- has come even close to reality since their first Assessment Report back in the 90s, I very much doubt the label "experts" is appropriate.
"However, 'proof' is statistical. When we can only ever say that something exists with statistical certainty (e.g. 6.5 sigmas), then it's going to be tough, if not impossible to falsify."
I don't know of a more diplomatic way to say this: That is simply wrong.
Scientific proof is impossible, and always has been. Science cannot be proved, only disproved. Your example is of something that is difficult to verify, not something that's difficult to falsify. Those are two very different things.
6.5 sigmas is good "proof" indeed, as such things go. But that's far from "unfalsiable". On the contrary: it takes only ONE counterexample to falsify. The fact that there currently is no such counterexample is part of the evidence in favor. But "proof"? Not on your life.
"Funny how the Right love science when it produces weapons to bomb brown people, or enriches multinational corporations. But go NUTS if it means that their rich friends endure more regulation."
Funny how many people mistake Libertarians for right-wing.
Your statement shows just how little you know about their actual politics.
"Works even better if you have a dog with you while panhandling."
No, it doesn't.
I was once approached by a pair of teenagers with a huge (but friendly) Rottweiler. They asked for money. I asked them what it was for. They said food.
That pissed me off. I pointed at the dog and said "There's 150 pounds of meat on the hoof, right there."
If you can afford to feed a dog as large as yourself, you should not be begging for food.
(A) Anybody who thinks an electronic voting system is viable and secure today is obviously an idiot.
(B) The people running for election obviously think electronic voting is a good thing.
(C) = (A) AND (B): Therefore, only idiots are running for office.
--
"There are two parties: "The Stupid Party and the Evil Party. Once in a while they get together and do something that is Stupid AND Evil. This is called 'bipartisanship'." -- Thomas E. Woods
Slashdot Mirror
It's called a "straw-man" argument: build an effigy of the real target (a scarecrow), shoot it down, and claim that you have made a real difference. Just as such straw-men have historically (sometimes) fooled people in war, they still do in arguments.
Sadly, today, straw-man arguments often seem to fool the one making the argument as much as others who are taken in by it. I suspect this is such a case.
In regard to certain provisions of the DMCA and other measures, someone please explain to me where they can find some long-standing legal principle that allows one interest group to make other parties separately responsible and liable for protecting the first group's interests? Because that's what they are doing here. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe any such legal right or principle exists. Which makes much, if not all, of the DMCA and certain other recent laws extremely questionable on the grounds of simple long-established legal principle.
Where else in law does anything like it exist? Are telephone companies liable if people play "illegally" copied tunes for their on-hold music? Of course not. For that matter, if someone is using a telephone modem or other direct means of communication, is the telephone company liable if the users transmit copyright-infringed material? Again, of course not.
Why? Because it is not reasonable. The telephone company is nothing but a "common carrier". They deliver data from one place to another; nothing more. Not only are they not responsible for the content of that data, they are specifically exempt from any responsibility, because end-users are solely responsible for what they send and receive.
Not only that, but it is illegal for telephone companies to use means to determine the contents of such transmissions, without a legal warrant. While other recent laws, themselves at least as questionable about the DMCA, pretend to authorize Federal authorities to intercept that information, it is still illegal for the telephone carrier itself to do so.
Why should ISPs be any different? Rationally, they fulfill the same "ecological niche" as a telephone company. They provide a service to carry data packets from one end user to another. And data repositories, if they are on the up-and-up, are also pretty much in the same boat; they act merely as storage places for private data that is uploaded and stored. There is no rational reason they should be responsible for any content, UNLESS they are knowingly and actively aiding and abetting crimes committed by someone else. Just as, for example, the owner of physical storage rental units is not responsible for the actual contents of said units (they make you sign a paper to that effect)... UNLESS they are knowingly aiding in the commission of crimes.
So the whole concept is bullshit from the start. ISPs and data repositories owe the RIAA and MPAA nothing, either ethically or in legal principle. There is not a single rational reason behind holding them responsible for user-generated content, EXCEPT the rational argument that it is the easiest place to stop it. But ease is not a binding legal principle. The US Supreme Court more than once has ruled that difficulty of enforcing a law is not an excuse to bypass long-standing legal precedent.
The only explanation for this kind of plan is under-the-table cronyism between big businesses and government, which has no place in justice. There is nothing in here for the consumer at all. No protection, no improvement of any market (on the contrary), and no recourse.
It's just bad.
I should have been more specific. I was referring to the older style radial that had all the cylinders arranged in a circle. Some of the earlier ones even had a fixed crankshaft and the cylinders themselves spun with the prop for cooling.
"If, on the other hand, you want to get a search warrant to look for terrorist activities, the IP address is more than sufficient in giving probable cause for a search."
On the contrary: judge after judge in the past couple of years have ruled that an IP address alone is NOT probable cause. And properly so. It doesn't identify an individual, or even a household. My IP address is available to people all over my neighborhood, and vice versa: I have a network adapter that can access routers more than 2 blocks away.
I would say that the many cases of police busting down the wrong doors (most commonly in New York and Los Angeles, it often seems) would qualify as them doing exactly that... busting or trying to bust the wrong person based on evidence that hasn't been held up to a proper standard.
Not such a "good catch". The judge also made clear that the "good cause" standard is not met, which applies regardless of whether they intend to litigate. So even if he had been sympathetic about the "no intent to litigate" bit, he still would probably not have allowed discovery.
"Customers are usually assigned an IP address based on the MAC address of their cable/DSL modem, and packets destined for a different IP address generally won't be routed there. So I don't think it's as easy as you've described above."
Not even close. First, there aren't anywhere near enough IPv4 numbers to go around, especially today, and second, ISPs generally obtain their IP numbers in blocks, which would preclude handing them out them based on MAC address. Unless by "based on" you simply mean associating the two numbers in their IP tables. But the numbers themselves aren't even remotely similar in most cases.
"Do keep in mind that if there is actual intent and effort to prosecute, the judge would cooperate."
Very doubtful. If he meant that, he could simply have refused based on the perceived intent of the claimants to settle rather than litigate. Instead, he took the trouble of mentioning that it did not meet the "good cause" standard.
But the good cause standard applies whether they are litigating or not, so no, he probably would NOT "cooperate".
If you think there was "consensus" in 1981 about climate change, I invite you to go read some history.
The flap over global cooling was just drawing to a close, and frankly nobody really knew what the hell was going on. Sure there were people making predictions, but they were all over the map.
That was supposed to say:
"They even make radial 4-stroke piston engines, which did not exist during the days of radial engines for real planes."
I was rather encouraged to see other people following my own earlier train of thought. 20km puts a quadrotor out of the running, even if wind velocity did not.
Also, for mountainous terrain, you would not want a glider-style wing plan. A flatter, more slippery design such as used for "slope soarers" would seem to fit the bill most appropriately. For the kind of fuel capacity needed, I will make a rough guess and say you would probably want something in the 1.5 meter wingspan range. X-country flight competitions in the 2-meter range have been around for years.
The big obstacle here is the control of flight dynamics. There is plenty of open-source software out there for quadrotors, but I don't know about fixed-wings. I have seen some very expensive navigation implementations in the industry rags, but I suspect that if DIYers can do a quadrotor, they can do a fixed-wing as well. I suspect the main issue is that you need to make your craft steer toward the programmed flightline, more aggressively the larger the deviation, with buffering and without exceeding the design requirements of the craft. That last part is probably the trickiest.
If this is really mountainous country then you probably need very accurate, 3-axis GPS (for altitude), or some kind of ground-sensing scheme to keep from running into a hillside. I suspect the more sophisticated GPS is probably the way to go. But that also requires carefully planned routes. You will want to stay away from hillsides, preferably routing it straight along the valleys between mountains or mountain ridges.
The equipment is out there. Modern liquid fuel model engines are definitely available in any size you may want. They even make radial
And finally: autonomous navigation via GPS is already out in small drones that are on the market, but they probably aren't in your price range. Not that they could not be... I think the current commercial builders are taking advantage of the topic's fledgeling status to gouge people.
So what that all leads me to is, I would:
(1) consider a fixed-wing plane in the 1.5m to 2m wingspan range.
(2) Make sure it's a style and plan that can accommodate an engine large enough to make the range you are talking about. Keep in mind that you are working against the law of diminishing returns to a certain degree: the larger the engine you put on, the more fuel you will need for it, which requires a larger engine, which requires more fuel. In practice, there are solutions to such things, but I suggest always getting an engine that is at least a little more powerful than you think you'll need. Not a lot, but some. Otherwise you will end up with a sudden gust of wind slamming it against a hillside.
Also, what I call the "Land Cruiser" effect can occur: if it is underpowered, the engine will struggle too hard to perform the way you want and thus use more fuel than an engine designed with that torque and rpm in the center of its range. (I hereby officially christen this effect after the old-school Toyota Land Cruiser, which had a huge 6-cylinder engine that struggled to do things that were well within the design parameters of the rest of the vehicle. But with a 3rd-party kit, the stock 6-cylinder could be replaced with a V-8 of close to the same displacement, which was not only physically smaller than the original, but actually had quite a bit more horsepower and ALSO got significantly better gas mileage. It was a win-win. The original Toyota engine was designed such that common U.S. off-road scenarios were at the fringes of its performance curve, rather than the middle where it was most efficient.)
(3) You don't want realtime telemetry at a 20km range. That would be (a) way too heavy, and (b) too expensive. Instead, you will want your on-board cameras to record the video to storage for retrieval and viewing later. And there are ways to overlay not just the clock on the video, but on-board sensor readouts, as well.
So y
U.S. oil companies do not control the oil cartels. To suggest that they do is silly.
On the contrary: the cartels (controlled for the most part by middle-eastern interests) have been frequently known to piss off the oil companies.
Artificial scarcity is nothing new, nor is it a "violation" of the principles of supply and demand. Rather, it is a well-known exception, called monopolistic (or in this case oligopolistic) business practices, which are made possible by lack of competition.
In a situation like this, where prices are kept artificially high, there is little or no competition to jump in and undercut the other players. So regular market forces to not come to bear. There is nothing at all strange about this.
"In all seriousness, collusion is only illegal if A) someone notices, and B) the government decides to prosecute."
Nonsense. That's like saying murder is only illegal if you get caught.
Collusion might not get prosecuted, but it's still illegal.
And the oil cartels are not U.S. entities, so that argument is 100% straw-man.
(P.S. When I say "put in more outlets than code calls for", I don't mean more outlets per breaker. I mean more circuits and more breakers.)
"Getting a licensed electrician whenever you mess with your wiring is only smart, too."
My butt. Wiring a house is inherently very simple, especially these days with outlets you plug the wires straight into, and good wire nuts. The only reason for a "licensed" electrician is to keep them making Union wages.
I've wired a number of houses, and haven't burned one down yet. Find out what the code in your area is, and use one standard gauge larger wire. (I.e., if code mandates 14 g wire use 12 g.) It's slightly more expensive but it will last for years.
Put in more electrical outlets than code calls for, and never use a breaker larger than code calls for.
The only other tools you need are a good hefty pair of needle nose pliers with side cutter, a pocket knife, heavy duty wire stripper, and a flat blade screwdriver.
Wiring a home is simpler than learning how to program a VCR (if anybody even remembers those, these days). Licenses are a joke.
"All the insulation in the world (including replacing the windows and doors) is unlikely to cut that by even 25%."
Nonsense. Good sealing and insulation is likely to cut that by at least 67%.
It is amusing to me how a simple statement of easily verifiable fact can get modded "troll" on Slashdot.
Why should I be charming to panhandlers who probably had more money stashed away than me? Who had the gall to ask me for food while hauling around a 150-pound dog?
I can be quite charming when it's called for. That wasn't it.
Considering that none of the IPCC's predictions -- not a single one -- has come even close to reality since their first Assessment Report back in the 90s, I very much doubt the label "experts" is appropriate.
"However, 'proof' is statistical. When we can only ever say that something exists with statistical certainty (e.g. 6.5 sigmas), then it's going to be tough, if not impossible to falsify."
I don't know of a more diplomatic way to say this: That is simply wrong.
Scientific proof is impossible, and always has been. Science cannot be proved, only disproved. Your example is of something that is difficult to verify, not something that's difficult to falsify. Those are two very different things.
6.5 sigmas is good "proof" indeed, as such things go. But that's far from "unfalsiable". On the contrary: it takes only ONE counterexample to falsify. The fact that there currently is no such counterexample is part of the evidence in favor. But "proof"? Not on your life.
"Funny how the Right love science when it produces weapons to bomb brown people, or enriches multinational corporations. But go NUTS if it means that their rich friends endure more regulation."
Funny how many people mistake Libertarians for right-wing.
Your statement shows just how little you know about their actual politics.
(NO, I was not really suggesting they eat the dog. I was pointing out that if they're begging for food, they should not have a huge pet to feed, too.)
"Works even better if you have a dog with you while panhandling."
No, it doesn't.
I was once approached by a pair of teenagers with a huge (but friendly) Rottweiler. They asked for money. I asked them what it was for. They said food.
That pissed me off. I pointed at the dog and said "There's 150 pounds of meat on the hoof, right there."
If you can afford to feed a dog as large as yourself, you should not be begging for food.
(A) Anybody who thinks an electronic voting system is viable and secure today is obviously an idiot.
(B) The people running for election obviously think electronic voting is a good thing.
(C) = (A) AND (B): Therefore, only idiots are running for office.
--
"There are two parties: "The Stupid Party and the Evil Party. Once in a while they get together and do something that is Stupid AND Evil. This is called 'bipartisanship'." -- Thomas E. Woods