Yeah, technically they're withholding your data from a third party even after your authorization. But if you consider the vast majority of Facebook users, don't you think most of them need this kind of hand-holding? These are people who would authorize a complete disclosure of most of their personal information on Facebook to take a "Which Twilight Character Are You?" quiz. If anything, I think Facebook should be even more stingy, even if you choose to authorize disclosure. If you really really really really really wanted to give a third party your personal information, then you can usually do so yourself, without the third party acquiring that information through Facebook.
Now, I don't know how power.com works, nor did I RTFA, but I assume it requires certain information from Facebook that is not really yours. Information such as links to your profile, your friends' profiles, pictures, groups, what-have-you. Such information is probably strictly Facebook's property. Without such information, power.com would be useless anyway.
At any rate, as I said, if you really wanted to give your personal information to a third party, you can do so without the help of Facebook. Facebook's stinginess at releasing personal information is a good thing, and I think they should go even further in their stinginess. Personal information sometimes isn't removed from third party apps even after removal of the app, and I think Facebook should start using the ban hammer on apps and developers who keep personal information even after deauthorization. I think such stinginess can only be a good thing, until they start withholding your personal information from you directly.
You may want to be more specific. I don't think anyone really argues against (3). The issue isn't whether the brain is a mass of cells, but whether (3a) the mind is anything over and above that mass of cells. Both the physicalist and the dualist can accept (3), but they would vehemently disagree over (3a).
I'm not sure why you think philosophers think too highly of functionalism. It is a philosophy that works for many areas of interest. I personally don't think that functionalism fully captures all the relevant issues in the philosophy of mind, but there is still a coherent and compelling argument from that side. Functionalism can help the physicalist account for subjective experiences like qualia.
I also don't think that it's fair to say that only religious people have a problem with (3) (or more precisely, my revised version, (3a); also, I'm aware you didn't say "only", but given the context, one would likely imply as such). I'm non-religious, but I tend to lean more towards the dualist position. Furthermore, the great empiricist David Hume may have argued against a substantivalist immaterial mind, but given his other philosophical works, I think he would not necessarily disagree with a property dualist position.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that your post shows exactly the problem with which the article is concerned. Incomplete oversimplifications of the matters at hand will tend not to be very substantially rich. I'm sure you have arguments to support your positions, and I have little doubt that they will probably be good arguments, but because you have oversimplified your position, the arguments become weak and insubstantial. In fact, in previewing my own post, my own briefly extended arguments are very philosophically weak as well. The important questions are as follows: Is it possible to reduce philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) complex arguments to newspaper- or blog-sized articles without undermining the sophistication and nuances of such arguments? Is it possible to do so keeping in mind that the readers or consumers of such articles have little to no background information about the matters at hand?
I'm currently working on a side project about the ethics of information dissemination and this is exactly the type of question in which I am interested. Is it ethical for a journalist or blogger or what-have-you (hereafter collectively known as "journalist" for ease) to provide incomplete information? This question is somewhat less controversial, because a journalist's job is, basically, to summarize and disseminate. But is it ethical for a journalist to disseminate incomplete information in a way that disproportionately favours one set of arguments over others? For example, if a study shows that a certain compound that is richly found in food xyz is good for you but other studies show that food xyz taken as a whole is bad for you, is it ethical for the journalist just to mention the first study without mentioning the latter studies? We hear about such stories all the time in headlines such as "Red wine may increase your life span!" or "One aspirin a day may reduce risks of heart attacks!"
To tie it back to your post, was it ethical for you to simplify the issues so much so that it seems to disproportionately favour your conclusion? The article's worries are not unfounded, and your short and succinct post shows exactly why that is so.
You might have minimized mistakes and/or costs, but you've certainly maximized your balls with that move. If someone did that at my university and the professor noticed it, they would've been kicked out immediately and gotten a permanent mark of plagiarism or deception on their transcript. In fact, even if the prof missed it originally and the university somehow found out afterwards, even years afterwards, they could revoke your degree for such ballsy academic dishonesty.
Kudos to you. For your gigantic cojones.
Even though your testicular mass is something to marvel at, it was still a stupid and unethical thing to do. I'm not sure you should be so proud of it, openly or secretly.
To be fair, the title did say could. The Phantom could end up the most popular console ever. Duke Nukem Forever could end up the most popular game ever.
You'd think video evidence would be enough to expose and convict police officers on a power trip. But a look at the Robert Dziekanski case that many Canadians have been following for the past year and a half shows otherwise. There is a video of the incident that has been made public by a witness at the scene. Immediately after the incident, the RCMP made multiple statements that were blatantly inconsistent with the video evidence (e.g., it was originally claimed that Dziekanski kept throwing objects around after the RCMP arrived, which was conclusively shown to be false by the video.) and testimony from other emergency response personnel (e.g., the RCMP claimed that an officer was properly monitoring Dziekanski's vitals until medical help arrived. It turned out that the officer in question did not renew his expired first aid certification, and a fireman later testified that the RCMP officers barred him from any attempt to check Dziekanski's vitals.). The Crown prosecutors opted to not pursue criminal charges related to the death of Robert Dziekanski. There is an inquiry investigating the circumstances in the case that is currently underway, but the prosecutors have thus far maintained that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction. In fact, the RCMP threatened not to participate in the inquiry until the Crown decided whether or not to pursue criminal charges.
Of course, the whole situation has not been resolved yet, as the judge overseeing the inquiry may be able to make recommendations based on his findings. But this situation has left many Canadians with very shaky feelings about the RCMP force as a whole.
And to drive the point home even further: They don't have to negate video evidence in court if they can keep it out of court.
For that mass of folks out there, especially the women, this may be the only computer book they ever find interesting. Someone like that would probably rate it a ten. I found the focus too narrow and the title set up expectations I didn't think it met so I've knocked it down to seven.
If you found the focus to narrow, does the book claim to cover more ground? If not, then that issue can simply be explained by the fact that you are not their targeted audience. If you think that the title set up certain expectations, it is simply a case of you judging the book by its cover. That you are not their intended audience is not any fault of the book, if they did not claim that you are their intended audience.
If you think it's a 10 for their intended audience, then rate it a 10, with the caveat that the book has a specific type of audience in mind (which you have done very well throughout the review). I just don't see why you would possibly lower its rating simply because you are not their target audience.
It depends on the individual judge. Normally, of course, judges supposed to look at all the evidence and arguments presented, the relevant case law, and use those as the bases for their decision. They do, however, sometimes come up with a decision based on their own biases, then try to work their way backwards and come up with reasons to support their decision. Sometimes it is evident when this type of situation occurs, but you can never really be sure.
In this case, if the children - err, sorry, hackers - continue their unnecessary and foolhardy assault on these organizations' sites, it may prompt the judge to look at the defendents in a harsher light than necessary. If criminals (or at the very least, immoral hackers) are backing TPB, then why is it a stretch to say that TPB has been assisting in some form of not-perfectly-legal activity?
I'm not saying this will happen for sure, nor am I saying that it is likely to happen. It is, however, a distinct possibility. The actions of these children - again, sorry, hackers - are putting TPB in a much more difficult situation than they need to be. They are shooting themselves in the foot, and taking TPB down with them.
Bennett Hasleton thinks that education and legal training have no impact on how legitimate a person's opinion on legal matters is. His style of writing is very flawed in that it contains fallacies, appeals to emotion, and numerous grammatical errors. He doesn't link to the actual case file, so I can only assume that all of his commentary is based solely on the National Post article. This type of second-hand analysis is unreliable, as it relies on the interpretation of the journalist in question. He also does not recognize how the legal system views expert evidence - that is, it treats it as "opinion evidence" as opposed to "real evidence", the differences between which I will not delve into here.
I'm not going to go further, as I think it would be unnecessary and a complete waste of time. This is basically a very long rant on a subject in which he is nowhere near qualified to provide an in-depth analysis. I am not a lawyer, but I am a Criminology student at the University of Toronto, studying under one of the more prominent defence lawyers in the country (one of Maher Arar's lawyers) on legal procedure. Of course, if you're Bennett Hasleton though, that doesn't mean anything.
It's not really fair to call this a dupe. This submission links to an article that provides commentary on the phenomenon of server naming, and the previous/. submission was cited as a particular example in that article. The article and previous submission are not of the same type. It is like saying that a documentary on the phenomenon of the Super Bowl is one and the same as a particular instance of a Super Bowl. You are making a category mistake by doing so. E.g., when I say "The phenomenon of the Super Bowl is generally exciting" and "Super Bowl XLIII was exciting", I am clearly not saying the same thing in both instances. Likewise, an article that says, basically, "The phenomenon of server naming conventions is generally very interesting" and another article that says "What is your particular server naming convention?" are clearly not saying the same thing.
This submission is, in my mind, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not a dupe of the previous submission that you linked.
The way the U.S. Constitution is set up is quite unique with regards to international treatises and agreements. Once the U.S. enters into an international treatise, it is not only bound to act in accordance with the treatise in international relations, but the treatise also becomes a law of the land. And not only is it a law of the land, it is considered on par with other constitutional law, i.e., supreme over other laws.
Because of this very unique structure (I am unaware of other major political players with similar constitutional provisions), the U.S. tends to have more of a vested interest in either trying to change the terms of an agreement so that it falls more in line with their own laws, or to abstain entirely from an international treatise (e.g., Kyoto).
Sorry, I guess the second-to-last consonant in my second formation of "night" got filtered out. It's supposed to be the IPA symbol for the palatal-velar fricative, if any of you cared/were wondering.
Americans leave out the "u" in colour, armour, neighbour, etc. We no longer pronounce "night" as [ni:xt] or [ni:t] (IPA). We could come up with a huge number of examples, but why bother? Language evolves over time, words lose or gain meaning. It's a natural process. You'd think an academic institution would understand this simple concept, but I guess grabbing headlines is more important than practicing proper academia.
Emoticons are just an evolution of a new language. It's actually quite extraordinary. We have now created symbols that can represent simple meanings cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, and these symbols are popularized in large part by the youth of the world. They are creating a whole new language right before our eyes. I wouldn't be surprised if we would soon be able to communicate simple messages between different cultures that speak different languages via symbols (some would argue we already can). It's a shame that institutions such as this one and the "get off my damn lawn" crowd are ridiculing such an extraordinary example of the human ability to adapt and break down communicative barriers.
I don't know about that. There are, I think, definitely things that we haven't even begun to imagine. I mean, a couple of centuries ago, they could've only imagined "horseless carriages". I don't think they could even grasp the concept of a nanocar back then, or nano-anything for that matter.
It's pretty pessimistic to think that all that we can achieve is only what we can imagine at the moment. There will probably be more out there for us to discover. Don't worry.
I know this is getting OT, but your line of argument is less-than-satisfying. While I can grant your point that an arm is alive in the same way as an unthinking fetus is, your arm does not possess the potential to become a sentient being. A fetus does have such a potential. Such a potential for sentience is different than, say, a sperm or an egg in that a sperm or egg will not lead to sentience by themselves without some form of interference, viz., coitus and conception. A fetus, if left to grow normally in a mother's womb, that is, will lead to a sentient life unless some disease or physical trauma or abortion or other sort of interference prevents it from becoming so. We can not say the same about arms or sperm or eggs.
I am pro-choice as well, but your argument seems to miss the crux of the argument against abortion.
TFA specifically stated that the suit was filed "against Adam Guerbuez of Montreal and his business." Not having read the actual case file, I'm just going to assume that Facebook did file a suit against both Guerbuez AND his business. In such a case, I don't know if he can just hide behind his corporation (if it is incorporated).
IIRC, in Canada, if you are ordered to pay damages, the court order is permanent until you manage to pay it off or you die. The order survives through bankruptcy, so you can't just declare and have it magically wiped away. Does anyone know whether the U.S. has a similar system?
I agree with your points. I do think that recording movies seems to be a "higher level" offence than simply electronically distributing them. If I were to see someone opening utorrent and sharing a movie, I wouldn't bat an eye*. But if I saw someone set up a video cam to record the movie, I would probably report him to theatre security.
I don't think, however, that he should have received jail time. One upshot of Canada's system of sentencing is that it allows judges to be very creative. IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but IAACS (I am a Criminology student), so here is a quick and dirty lesson on Canadian law. The relevant statute is s. 432.1 in the Criminal Code of Canada, which states:
432. (1) A person who, without the consent of the theatre manager, records in a movie theatre a performance of a cinematographic work within the meaning of section 2 of the Copyright Act or its soundtrack
(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years; or
(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
An indictable offence is similar to a felony. If the Crown (the prosecutor) decides to proceed by indictment, the accused is given certain rights, such as the right to choose to be tried by jury or by judge, the right to be tried in a federal court, the right to a preliminary hearing, etc. In this case, the maximum jail term if the Crown elected to proceed by indictment is only 2 years. If the Crown elects to proceed by summary (similar to a misdemeanor), the rule in the Criminal Code is that the maximum jail term is two years less a day, and the accused does not need to be given the rights mentioned above. I did not read the actual case, but I'm pretty sure that the Crown elected to proceed by summary in order to avoid all the hassle of having a trial by indictment, considering the punishment would be similar either way.
Maximum sentences are extremely rare in the Canadian justice system, and jail time is generally considered a last resort, especially in summary convictions. If we considered the closest possible world (i.e., similar judge with similar leniency, etc.), the sentence for jail time would probably be considerably less than 6 months. Considering that it was his first offence, with no evidence of past or potential future offences, and that he is a relatively young adult, I can't imagine a jail sentence of more than 3 months. Judges often take into consideration the impact that jail time would have on your life (job, family, etc), on top of the already stigmatizing effect of a conviction. In this case, it is likely that the judge thought that a jail sentence would do more harm than good to the individual, that the psychological effect of being put through the system, and that a significant fine was enough to "teach him a lesson", as it were. Considering the fine requested by the Crown was only $2000, it is probably the case that the accused could not reasonably have afforded to pay a fine much higher than $2000, which would make the current fine a significant amount. Plus, as someone in his age-range, I would think that it sucks to not be able to carry around a phone with a video camera, which most new phones have nowadays.
* I, personally, would not bat an eye. Most of the people I have been in contact with (Canadians) would probably not bat an eye. The few Americans that I have talked to (on WoW, admittedly), however, seem to be pretty averse to P2P. I've gotten reactions like "Isn't it illegal?" or "Aren't you afraid of getting caught?" or other similar statements. It seems, on an anecdotal, probably unreliable sense, that the average Canadian is more lenient towards P2P than the average American.
Perhaps you misunderstood the poorly worded summary. There are two ways to read the summary: 1) You cannot create video footage in a theatre; or 2) You cannot create video footage of a movie that is being shown in a theatre. The statute is as follows (emphasis mine):
432. (1) A person who, without the consent of the theatre manager, records in a movie theatre a performance of a cinematographic work within the meaning of section 2 of the Copyright Act or its soundtrack
(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years; or
(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
The statute states clearly that you can't create video footage of the movies that are being shown on the screen of the theatre, rather than not being allowed to create video footage in a theatre. If you wanted to create video footage in a theatre, it's fine so long as you have the permission of the theatre, and there is no movie being shown in said theatre (unless you have permission from the copyright holder and/or the movie has gone into the public domain). There are no more or less hoops to jump through than before, because recording movies shown in a theatre for the purpose of distribution was illegal prior to the amendment, IIRC.
This wasn't a crime where anyone's right to physical security was threatened. Police just took their time to investigate, gathered evidence, and made a case against the accused. I don't see what's wrong with this. I'm GLAD it took this long. It means the police didn't take (m)any short cuts. This is just what due diligence by the police looks like. We still have some semblance of it in Canada.
Of course, if we were to look at the flip-side, 18% of the people who got their hands on World of Goo purchased it, whereas only 8% of those who got their hands on the other game purchased it. That's over DOUBLE the rate of purchase.
Well, it really depends on where you are. Didn't you watch the Olympics in Beijing? The sky there was gre...... OH, you were being sarcastic. Heh. Clever.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, technically they're withholding your data from a third party even after your authorization. But if you consider the vast majority of Facebook users, don't you think most of them need this kind of hand-holding? These are people who would authorize a complete disclosure of most of their personal information on Facebook to take a "Which Twilight Character Are You?" quiz. If anything, I think Facebook should be even more stingy, even if you choose to authorize disclosure. If you really really really really really wanted to give a third party your personal information, then you can usually do so yourself, without the third party acquiring that information through Facebook.
Now, I don't know how power.com works, nor did I RTFA, but I assume it requires certain information from Facebook that is not really yours. Information such as links to your profile, your friends' profiles, pictures, groups, what-have-you. Such information is probably strictly Facebook's property. Without such information, power.com would be useless anyway.
At any rate, as I said, if you really wanted to give your personal information to a third party, you can do so without the help of Facebook. Facebook's stinginess at releasing personal information is a good thing, and I think they should go even further in their stinginess. Personal information sometimes isn't removed from third party apps even after removal of the app, and I think Facebook should start using the ban hammer on apps and developers who keep personal information even after deauthorization. I think such stinginess can only be a good thing, until they start withholding your personal information from you directly.
You may want to be more specific. I don't think anyone really argues against (3). The issue isn't whether the brain is a mass of cells, but whether (3a) the mind is anything over and above that mass of cells. Both the physicalist and the dualist can accept (3), but they would vehemently disagree over (3a).
I'm not sure why you think philosophers think too highly of functionalism. It is a philosophy that works for many areas of interest. I personally don't think that functionalism fully captures all the relevant issues in the philosophy of mind, but there is still a coherent and compelling argument from that side. Functionalism can help the physicalist account for subjective experiences like qualia.
I also don't think that it's fair to say that only religious people have a problem with (3) (or more precisely, my revised version, (3a); also, I'm aware you didn't say "only", but given the context, one would likely imply as such). I'm non-religious, but I tend to lean more towards the dualist position. Furthermore, the great empiricist David Hume may have argued against a substantivalist immaterial mind, but given his other philosophical works, I think he would not necessarily disagree with a property dualist position.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that your post shows exactly the problem with which the article is concerned. Incomplete oversimplifications of the matters at hand will tend not to be very substantially rich. I'm sure you have arguments to support your positions, and I have little doubt that they will probably be good arguments, but because you have oversimplified your position, the arguments become weak and insubstantial. In fact, in previewing my own post, my own briefly extended arguments are very philosophically weak as well. The important questions are as follows: Is it possible to reduce philosophically (and perhaps scientifically) complex arguments to newspaper- or blog-sized articles without undermining the sophistication and nuances of such arguments? Is it possible to do so keeping in mind that the readers or consumers of such articles have little to no background information about the matters at hand?
I'm currently working on a side project about the ethics of information dissemination and this is exactly the type of question in which I am interested. Is it ethical for a journalist or blogger or what-have-you (hereafter collectively known as "journalist" for ease) to provide incomplete information? This question is somewhat less controversial, because a journalist's job is, basically, to summarize and disseminate. But is it ethical for a journalist to disseminate incomplete information in a way that disproportionately favours one set of arguments over others? For example, if a study shows that a certain compound that is richly found in food xyz is good for you but other studies show that food xyz taken as a whole is bad for you, is it ethical for the journalist just to mention the first study without mentioning the latter studies? We hear about such stories all the time in headlines such as "Red wine may increase your life span!" or "One aspirin a day may reduce risks of heart attacks!"
To tie it back to your post, was it ethical for you to simplify the issues so much so that it seems to disproportionately favour your conclusion? The article's worries are not unfounded, and your short and succinct post shows exactly why that is so.
You might have minimized mistakes and/or costs, but you've certainly maximized your balls with that move. If someone did that at my university and the professor noticed it, they would've been kicked out immediately and gotten a permanent mark of plagiarism or deception on their transcript. In fact, even if the prof missed it originally and the university somehow found out afterwards, even years afterwards, they could revoke your degree for such ballsy academic dishonesty.
Kudos to you. For your gigantic cojones.
Even though your testicular mass is something to marvel at, it was still a stupid and unethical thing to do. I'm not sure you should be so proud of it, openly or secretly.
Hate to reply to myself, but I just noticed TFA uses "might" instead of "could". I think those two words are interchangeable enough, though.
To be fair, the title did say could. The Phantom could end up the most popular console ever. Duke Nukem Forever could end up the most popular game ever.
Words are fun!
You'd think video evidence would be enough to expose and convict police officers on a power trip. But a look at the Robert Dziekanski case that many Canadians have been following for the past year and a half shows otherwise. There is a video of the incident that has been made public by a witness at the scene. Immediately after the incident, the RCMP made multiple statements that were blatantly inconsistent with the video evidence (e.g., it was originally claimed that Dziekanski kept throwing objects around after the RCMP arrived, which was conclusively shown to be false by the video.) and testimony from other emergency response personnel (e.g., the RCMP claimed that an officer was properly monitoring Dziekanski's vitals until medical help arrived. It turned out that the officer in question did not renew his expired first aid certification, and a fireman later testified that the RCMP officers barred him from any attempt to check Dziekanski's vitals.). The Crown prosecutors opted to not pursue criminal charges related to the death of Robert Dziekanski. There is an inquiry investigating the circumstances in the case that is currently underway, but the prosecutors have thus far maintained that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction. In fact, the RCMP threatened not to participate in the inquiry until the Crown decided whether or not to pursue criminal charges.
Of course, the whole situation has not been resolved yet, as the judge overseeing the inquiry may be able to make recommendations based on his findings. But this situation has left many Canadians with very shaky feelings about the RCMP force as a whole.
And to drive the point home even further: They don't have to negate video evidence in court if they can keep it out of court.
A nation-wide cloud? That sounds pretty bad. I heard the fumes were toxic, that's why I stopped making it in my basement. ... OH! MeSh cloud. I see.
I would, but then I would have to kill you, comrade. Our national secrets are safe from your translations of the Google.
If you found the focus to narrow, does the book claim to cover more ground? If not, then that issue can simply be explained by the fact that you are not their targeted audience. If you think that the title set up certain expectations, it is simply a case of you judging the book by its cover. That you are not their intended audience is not any fault of the book, if they did not claim that you are their intended audience.
If you think it's a 10 for their intended audience, then rate it a 10, with the caveat that the book has a specific type of audience in mind (which you have done very well throughout the review). I just don't see why you would possibly lower its rating simply because you are not their target audience.
It depends on the individual judge. Normally, of course, judges supposed to look at all the evidence and arguments presented, the relevant case law, and use those as the bases for their decision. They do, however, sometimes come up with a decision based on their own biases, then try to work their way backwards and come up with reasons to support their decision. Sometimes it is evident when this type of situation occurs, but you can never really be sure.
In this case, if the children - err, sorry, hackers - continue their unnecessary and foolhardy assault on these organizations' sites, it may prompt the judge to look at the defendents in a harsher light than necessary. If criminals (or at the very least, immoral hackers) are backing TPB, then why is it a stretch to say that TPB has been assisting in some form of not-perfectly-legal activity?
I'm not saying this will happen for sure, nor am I saying that it is likely to happen. It is, however, a distinct possibility. The actions of these children - again, sorry, hackers - are putting TPB in a much more difficult situation than they need to be. They are shooting themselves in the foot, and taking TPB down with them.
Bennett Hasleton thinks that education and legal training have no impact on how legitimate a person's opinion on legal matters is. His style of writing is very flawed in that it contains fallacies, appeals to emotion, and numerous grammatical errors. He doesn't link to the actual case file, so I can only assume that all of his commentary is based solely on the National Post article. This type of second-hand analysis is unreliable, as it relies on the interpretation of the journalist in question. He also does not recognize how the legal system views expert evidence - that is, it treats it as "opinion evidence" as opposed to "real evidence", the differences between which I will not delve into here.
I'm not going to go further, as I think it would be unnecessary and a complete waste of time. This is basically a very long rant on a subject in which he is nowhere near qualified to provide an in-depth analysis. I am not a lawyer, but I am a Criminology student at the University of Toronto, studying under one of the more prominent defence lawyers in the country (one of Maher Arar's lawyers) on legal procedure. Of course, if you're Bennett Hasleton though, that doesn't mean anything.
It's not really fair to call this a dupe. This submission links to an article that provides commentary on the phenomenon of server naming, and the previous /. submission was cited as a particular example in that article. The article and previous submission are not of the same type. It is like saying that a documentary on the phenomenon of the Super Bowl is one and the same as a particular instance of a Super Bowl. You are making a category mistake by doing so. E.g., when I say "The phenomenon of the Super Bowl is generally exciting" and "Super Bowl XLIII was exciting", I am clearly not saying the same thing in both instances. Likewise, an article that says, basically, "The phenomenon of server naming conventions is generally very interesting" and another article that says "What is your particular server naming convention?" are clearly not saying the same thing.
This submission is, in my mind, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not a dupe of the previous submission that you linked.
The way the U.S. Constitution is set up is quite unique with regards to international treatises and agreements. Once the U.S. enters into an international treatise, it is not only bound to act in accordance with the treatise in international relations, but the treatise also becomes a law of the land. And not only is it a law of the land, it is considered on par with other constitutional law, i.e., supreme over other laws.
Because of this very unique structure (I am unaware of other major political players with similar constitutional provisions), the U.S. tends to have more of a vested interest in either trying to change the terms of an agreement so that it falls more in line with their own laws, or to abstain entirely from an international treatise (e.g., Kyoto).
Sorry, I guess the second-to-last consonant in my second formation of "night" got filtered out. It's supposed to be the IPA symbol for the palatal-velar fricative, if any of you cared/were wondering.
Americans leave out the "u" in colour, armour, neighbour, etc. We no longer pronounce "night" as [ni:xt] or [ni:t] (IPA). We could come up with a huge number of examples, but why bother? Language evolves over time, words lose or gain meaning. It's a natural process. You'd think an academic institution would understand this simple concept, but I guess grabbing headlines is more important than practicing proper academia.
Emoticons are just an evolution of a new language. It's actually quite extraordinary. We have now created symbols that can represent simple meanings cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, and these symbols are popularized in large part by the youth of the world. They are creating a whole new language right before our eyes. I wouldn't be surprised if we would soon be able to communicate simple messages between different cultures that speak different languages via symbols (some would argue we already can). It's a shame that institutions such as this one and the "get off my damn lawn" crowd are ridiculing such an extraordinary example of the human ability to adapt and break down communicative barriers.
I don't know about that. There are, I think, definitely things that we haven't even begun to imagine. I mean, a couple of centuries ago, they could've only imagined "horseless carriages". I don't think they could even grasp the concept of a nanocar back then, or nano-anything for that matter.
It's pretty pessimistic to think that all that we can achieve is only what we can imagine at the moment. There will probably be more out there for us to discover. Don't worry.
Oh boy! I can't wait to find out!
I know this is getting OT, but your line of argument is less-than-satisfying. While I can grant your point that an arm is alive in the same way as an unthinking fetus is, your arm does not possess the potential to become a sentient being. A fetus does have such a potential. Such a potential for sentience is different than, say, a sperm or an egg in that a sperm or egg will not lead to sentience by themselves without some form of interference, viz., coitus and conception. A fetus, if left to grow normally in a mother's womb, that is, will lead to a sentient life unless some disease or physical trauma or abortion or other sort of interference prevents it from becoming so. We can not say the same about arms or sperm or eggs.
I am pro-choice as well, but your argument seems to miss the crux of the argument against abortion.
Where do I sign up?
Follow the guys in fancy black suits and shades to the white unmarked van? Sure!
TFA specifically stated that the suit was filed "against Adam Guerbuez of Montreal and his business." Not having read the actual case file, I'm just going to assume that Facebook did file a suit against both Guerbuez AND his business. In such a case, I don't know if he can just hide behind his corporation (if it is incorporated).
IIRC, in Canada, if you are ordered to pay damages, the court order is permanent until you manage to pay it off or you die. The order survives through bankruptcy, so you can't just declare and have it magically wiped away. Does anyone know whether the U.S. has a similar system?
I agree with your points. I do think that recording movies seems to be a "higher level" offence than simply electronically distributing them. If I were to see someone opening utorrent and sharing a movie, I wouldn't bat an eye*. But if I saw someone set up a video cam to record the movie, I would probably report him to theatre security.
I don't think, however, that he should have received jail time. One upshot of Canada's system of sentencing is that it allows judges to be very creative. IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but IAACS (I am a Criminology student), so here is a quick and dirty lesson on Canadian law. The relevant statute is s. 432.1 in the Criminal Code of Canada, which states:
An indictable offence is similar to a felony. If the Crown (the prosecutor) decides to proceed by indictment, the accused is given certain rights, such as the right to choose to be tried by jury or by judge, the right to be tried in a federal court, the right to a preliminary hearing, etc. In this case, the maximum jail term if the Crown elected to proceed by indictment is only 2 years. If the Crown elects to proceed by summary (similar to a misdemeanor), the rule in the Criminal Code is that the maximum jail term is two years less a day, and the accused does not need to be given the rights mentioned above. I did not read the actual case, but I'm pretty sure that the Crown elected to proceed by summary in order to avoid all the hassle of having a trial by indictment, considering the punishment would be similar either way.
Maximum sentences are extremely rare in the Canadian justice system, and jail time is generally considered a last resort, especially in summary convictions. If we considered the closest possible world (i.e., similar judge with similar leniency, etc.), the sentence for jail time would probably be considerably less than 6 months. Considering that it was his first offence, with no evidence of past or potential future offences, and that he is a relatively young adult, I can't imagine a jail sentence of more than 3 months. Judges often take into consideration the impact that jail time would have on your life (job, family, etc), on top of the already stigmatizing effect of a conviction. In this case, it is likely that the judge thought that a jail sentence would do more harm than good to the individual, that the psychological effect of being put through the system, and that a significant fine was enough to "teach him a lesson", as it were. Considering the fine requested by the Crown was only $2000, it is probably the case that the accused could not reasonably have afforded to pay a fine much higher than $2000, which would make the current fine a significant amount. Plus, as someone in his age-range, I would think that it sucks to not be able to carry around a phone with a video camera, which most new phones have nowadays.
* I, personally, would not bat an eye. Most of the people I have been in contact with (Canadians) would probably not bat an eye. The few Americans that I have talked to (on WoW, admittedly), however, seem to be pretty averse to P2P. I've gotten reactions like "Isn't it illegal?" or "Aren't you afraid of getting caught?" or other similar statements. It seems, on an anecdotal, probably unreliable sense, that the average Canadian is more lenient towards P2P than the average American.
Perhaps you misunderstood the poorly worded summary. There are two ways to read the summary: 1) You cannot create video footage in a theatre; or 2) You cannot create video footage of a movie that is being shown in a theatre. The statute is as follows (emphasis mine):
The statute states clearly that you can't create video footage of the movies that are being shown on the screen of the theatre, rather than not being allowed to create video footage in a theatre. If you wanted to create video footage in a theatre, it's fine so long as you have the permission of the theatre, and there is no movie being shown in said theatre (unless you have permission from the copyright holder and/or the movie has gone into the public domain). There are no more or less hoops to jump through than before, because recording movies shown in a theatre for the purpose of distribution was illegal prior to the amendment, IIRC.
This wasn't a crime where anyone's right to physical security was threatened. Police just took their time to investigate, gathered evidence, and made a case against the accused. I don't see what's wrong with this. I'm GLAD it took this long. It means the police didn't take (m)any short cuts. This is just what due diligence by the police looks like. We still have some semblance of it in Canada.
Of course, if we were to look at the flip-side, 18% of the people who got their hands on World of Goo purchased it, whereas only 8% of those who got their hands on the other game purchased it. That's over DOUBLE the rate of purchase.
It's all a matter of perspective.
Well, it really depends on where you are. Didn't you watch the Olympics in Beijing? The sky there was gre... ... OH, you were being sarcastic. Heh. Clever.