Actually, as someone has previously said, what Google does is very different than what MS is talking about doing. Google doesn't scan all your email, mesh it with your profile you filled out to get the account, track every search you make using their service and then tie it all in on a private back end system to keep for who knows how long.
What Google does is scan what document (email or webpages with their ad code) you have open and target ads based on what is in the current page. They don't track you beyond what their servers do naturally and they are legally required to retain.
1) I can call email electro-letters but that doesn't make it new.
2)This will potentially have the opposite effect since when MS has a patent for it they will start charging people to use it, rather than people freely including emoticons in their emails like they currently do.
3) Given, but nothing reads this header yet and if they have to pay MS for the right to do so, they probably won't
I haven't checked, but I would expect so, especially with the DCMA still out there hunting people down. The reason MS left the door open for this to happen is precisely because it ties people to using Windows.
In reality, science often operates the same way, but the superior being is supposed to be the scientist instead of a god.
Wrong: any information provided by a scientist is thoroughly tested by other scientists in the same field to see if they get the same results. If they do the experiments are published in peer reviewed journals of science and accepted into the body of general knowledge. The key point here is that for it to become an accepted scientific theory, experiments or research must be performed and other people must be able to come to the same conclusion. Religion however must be taken on faith.
What was this quote related to? If I am understanding it properly, and without context I can't be completely sure, he is merely saying that, even if a scientific theory sounds absurd, if it is what the facts support it should be accepted. Again, the difference between science and religion (most times) is that religion decides the cause and looks at the effects while science looks at the effects and tries to determine a cause.
The PC as a plug and play appliance has been the gold standard for users for over twenty-five years.
The problem with the current state of computer security and spam can be summed up with the fact that this one very, horribly false statement is believed by the majority of people. No Windows system since the advent of common internet connections has ever been save as plug and play. I believe the average time for a computer that is just plugged in and connected to the internet to become a spam bot is down to four minutes, faster than you can download the patches from Windows Update (especially with all the extra DRM junk you have to go through now).
Read this article and if you still feel that computers are a plug and play appliance in more than image sell me some of the drug that you are using.
Last I checked there weren't any free tires on the market...
Also, tires are all comparably priced, ranging, for the standard ones they put on the car, between $30 and $50 per tire when you are buying 4; which adds at most $200 to a purchase that will run you about $10,000, thus +2%. An OS however ranges from $0 to $150+ (not OEM price, not actually sure what that is exactly) for a $400-$1000 purchase; Windows only options add a little less than 40% to 15%. Big difference in analogy IMO.
However, if this lawsuit does go through and HP loses (here's hoping) then every computer manufacturer that hopes to do business in France will have to care. This will mean either MS lessens its bulk licensing requirements, or everyone will face an increased PC cost. Either way its a win and a good precedent.
Also, if this winds up going before the whole EU, which I wouldn't be surprised, I can't see them ruling for HP and MS based on previous antitrust rulings.
I wouldn't be surprised if that did happen. From what I have read the original movie writers had wanted to make a trilogy, but the movie didn't do very well and the idea fell by the wayside. Now that the series have boosted the movie's popularity, distributors are more willing to finance a new movie. Of course, the series went a different direction than what the movie writers intended so the movie sequel will follow a different history. Here and here are a couple of the interviews with Devlin (original producer).
No, by unfortunately I mean its unfortunate that preaching hatred and bigotry is protected. Antisemitism, racism, sexism and religious hatred (and I mean true versions of these, not just saying that what Israel is doing is wrong, but saying that Jews are the root of all problems) are wrong. I find it unfortunate to have to protect oppressiveness like this in order to protect my right to speak and act freely.
Agreed, which is why a game that, from what I read in TFA, is actually done pretty poorly and is not quite of the same ilk as GTA should be treated comparably.
So if the suppression of religion in the name of political correctness is wrong, why is the suppression of religion in the name of supporting the majority right? That is what would happen if a state were to declare that a religion is the official religion of the state.
I have no problem with them treating prayer as a good thing. I have a problem with them treating everyone that isn't like them as less than human. I also have a problem with them saying that its ok to kill as long as you pray afterwards. For the record, I am not a big fan of FPS or games like GTA where killing is also just treated as a matter of course.
According to the Constitution, it doesn't even matter if Wal-mart were actively promoting it. The only thing in the Constitution is that the government cannot promote one religion over another (not that that has ever stopped them...). Wal-mart, the Left Behind people, even Satanists-R-Us are fully within their Constitutional rights to promote whatever religion they want.
I thought it would be a cold day in their Hell before I did but...
Unfortunately, creating this game is Constitutionally protected free speech, and selling it is completely up to Wal-Mart and other retailers. I think it was done in very poor taste but should be treated no differently than GTA or any other games that are similarly in bad taste.
urrently, sex offenders in many states have to disclose publically their actual physical address, including Virginia.
True, but this information is not allowed to be used to keep an offender from using public facilities.
Your argument seems to be that if we can't completely solve a problem, don't do anything about it at all!
No, if you read my arguement, you will see that it is that this solution doesn't fix the problem any better than adding duct tape to a leaking dam will fix the dam. My arguement is that it will restrict the rights of too many people and do too little to actually solve the problem for a total net loss in effectiveness.
Not the case. They would probably be prevented from using sites that are extremely kid-friendly.
You mean kid friendly sites like Yahoo? Or kid friendly messaging systems like AOL? And where do you draw the line of kid friendliness? Most of the sites pedophiles seem to be cruising are used by anyone (claiming to be) 13 to who knows how old.
I'm not seeing much monetary costs, since we're not talking about a monitoring system, just a database.
Here is a link to the current budget for MS's current sex offender registry maintenance budget. It costs them nearly 4 million dollars a year to make sure it is up to date. And that is for one maybe two addresses per offender. Imagine if they also had to maintain an untold number of emails as well. A database does no good if it is not maintained. It will quickly become just a random bunch of data that is unreliable. At the very least you will have to pay for the servers to maintain it, technicians to keep it running, developers to create interfaces for it, and bandwidth so it is accessible. Not to mention security measures to keep the wrong people from accessing the data and all sorts of other things.
As for liberties, the right to live without big brother watching you evaporated when they molested a kid. Same for the ability to interact with kids in the future.
Since when do sex offender registries only hold lists of pedophiles, any sex offender gets added to it. This would include pedophiles, yes, but also statitory rape convicts (22 yo has sex with a consenting 17 yo without his knowledge, wrong but not pedophelia, at least not intentionally) and other rape convictions (guy gets a girl drunk and takes advantage of her, still wrong, but still not pedophelia). These people don't have the same rate of repeat that pedophiles do, but they lose all the same rights.
Like I said in a previous post, there needs to be legal reforms, but this is the wrong way to do it. There needs to be better ways to try and sentence these people before you try and remove all their rights. This is the very reason there is an amendment protecting people from cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, in these cases, it is more often ignored.
The term marriage is the legal term for this sort of union. Giving homosexuals the right to "civil unions" but not to "marriages" leaves the door wide open for limiting of rights on civil unions but leaving heterosexual marriages alone. Unfortunately you are right that the religious reich doesn't realize this and thus fight on religious grounds something that is a legal issue. But trying to give it a different name for one group of people won't help matters, and may in the long run hurt.
As far as abolishing marriage licenses, marriage is a legal state, and carries many legal consequences, thus the need for legal documents like marriage licenses. The state takes no part in the religious side of things, make whatever promises you want to keep between yourselves and god. But when it comes to all the other issues, like taxes, child custody, and other legal rights, the state has to be involved.
It also gives providers and hosts (like MySpace) the ability to potentially subscribe to a list (a la Do Not Call) and keep them out.
This would just be a "scarlet letter" like program online for people convicted of sexual crimes (remember that these lists don't just include pedophiles, or even violent crimes). Removing a person's ability to live because they were formerly convicted of a crime and have served their sentence is unconstitutional.
It does keep pedos from striking again, in that it lowers the burden of evidence for law enforcement. But it doesn't do it in an effective way. It would take a pedophile that intends to strike again less than an hour to find out enough information about someone through a myspace account to cause harm. On the other hand, all those people blacklisted in the previous section would be unable to do things most people normally can (send email, use IM, share information with their friends on social sites like myspace, etc.) Setting up laws like this only serve to punish the "innocent" while allowing the guilty free reign.
Yes, it is an extra conviction law enforcement can use, but the costs, both in liberties and actual money, are too great.
What needs to happen are intelligent laws and accurate punishments for these convicts, not weak, easily circumvented laws like this. If the courts were better able to determine and punish convicts that are likely to strike again, that would do a much better job of protecting people than this stopgap.
This isn't being put in place to monitor chat rooms. It may be used for this and may be effective, but I doubt it. As long as using that registered email won't prevent them from entering said chat room, they have no reason to not use the registered email. Unless they start flagging convicted sexual predators while they are online it won't do anything. But doing this would be no different than making them wear a scarlet letter in public.
This law, at least as it is being marketed, is just being put in place to prevent sexual predators from getting accounts on myspace. In this respect it is useless.
As to your second point, its not that the law won't protect against any sexual predators, its the fact that it is easy enough to get around that it will only restrict the rights of the "minor" offenders who are reformed, or who were wrongly convicted, or that sort of thing, but does absolutely nothing to restrict the ability for those that are dangerous to strike again, or to strike in the first place. In fact, if it gives a false sense of complacency, it makes it easier for them.
The reason this law will be useful is it can't be effectively enforced. Are you going to require that convicted sexual predators are monitored 24/7? If thats the case why have this silly rule? It would take me, as others have said, 30 seconds to create a new anonymous email account. They then are free to register with myspace, and do whatever they want again. It would take near constant monitoring to catch this. I could have 100s of email accounts registered with VA, but all it takes is one unregistered one to get in.
This also does nothing to protect against those who have not yet been convicted of sexual abuse. If the illusion of security is all you want, enjoy your dream world, but that will just make you less safe.
If you read TFA, you would notice that its not the loss of the ability to consume lactose, it was the gaining of the ability to consume lactose. And evolution works both ways, both in the loss of detrimental traits (like the loss of creating melatonin in populations closer to the poles) and the spread of positive traits like from this article.
If you believe there is natural selection, and you don't believe in determinism, you are left with evolution as the only "guiding" (evolution has no goal other than survival so calling it guiding is a bit strong) force.
about the way the music industry is set up right now is why the artists are paid by the distributors as opposed to the other way around. The artists have created the music and should have full control over what happens to that music. They should be paying the distributors/production companies/etc. to handle the things they do.
As I see it, and this may just be the way I buy music, the reason I buy or don't buy music is because I like the artist, or I have heard something from them and want to hear more. I don't buy an artist because Sony or BMG is distributing it (although that may make me not want to buy an artist's CD). The recording industry should be paid for the service they provide and the artists should be the ones in the drivers seat. If the artist doesn't want full control, well thats what agents are for, right?
Actually, there are a couple of things wrong with this argument.
1) Our country was founded on (among other things) the belief that people are innocent until proven guilty by a jury of their peers. This means that laws put in place to protect suspects on trial are in place to protect the innocent at the expense of protecting some guilty. To change those standards would undermine the Constitution. Things like allowing torture of people, without even the slightest burden of proof goes against everything every soldier has died for in the past 200+ years of this country.
2) I do not support a judicial rewriting of the second amendment, I do however support the judicial branch's constitutional power to interpret the Constitution. That was the entire purpose of the judicial branch. Thus the Supreme Court has the right to say that a law (that must be passed by Congress) banning Joe Shmo from owning automatic rifles, that have nothing to do with "A well regulated militia". Saying that the second amendment allows anyone and their brother to own whatever weapons they like is reinterpreting the Constitution more than limiting the availability of such weapons. (Disclaimer, I don't believe that owning firearms should be illegal, I fully support the right to own weapons, but I do believe that it should be regulated and that weapons designed only to kill other people should be more firmly regulated, if not fully restricted).
3) Using the phrase "for the people, by the people..." the way you did takes it fully out of context. Our government has never been a direct democracy. In a direct democracy, every person would vote on every issue that comes up. Our government is a Constitutional Republic, meaning we (the people) elect representatives (the "by the people") who are supposed to support our interests (the "for the people"). Often this doesn't mean doing exactly what we want, this often means doing what is best for all. If you go the other way it simply becomes mob rule and would likely fall into anarchy.
Our founding fathers knew what they were doing. Read their words (not the propaganda the far right wants to feed you) and you would understand liberals a bit better.
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Actually, as someone has previously said, what Google does is very different than what MS is talking about doing. Google doesn't scan all your email, mesh it with your profile you filled out to get the account, track every search you make using their service and then tie it all in on a private back end system to keep for who knows how long.
What Google does is scan what document (email or webpages with their ad code) you have open and target ads based on what is in the current page. They don't track you beyond what their servers do naturally and they are legally required to retain.
you mean like this?
1) I can call email electro-letters but that doesn't make it new.
2)This will potentially have the opposite effect since when MS has a patent for it they will start charging people to use it, rather than people freely including emoticons in their emails like they currently do.
3) Given, but nothing reads this header yet and if they have to pay MS for the right to do so, they probably won't
I haven't checked, but I would expect so, especially with the DCMA still out there hunting people down. The reason MS left the door open for this to happen is precisely because it ties people to using Windows.
apart from expanded audience, that is
Is there any other game for a company that makes money off of the number of people who view your ads?
In reality, science often operates the same way, but the superior being is supposed to be the scientist instead of a god.
Wrong: any information provided by a scientist is thoroughly tested by other scientists in the same field to see if they get the same results. If they do the experiments are published in peer reviewed journals of science and accepted into the body of general knowledge. The key point here is that for it to become an accepted scientific theory, experiments or research must be performed and other people must be able to come to the same conclusion. Religion however must be taken on faith.
What was this quote related to? If I am understanding it properly, and without context I can't be completely sure, he is merely saying that, even if a scientific theory sounds absurd, if it is what the facts support it should be accepted. Again, the difference between science and religion (most times) is that religion decides the cause and looks at the effects while science looks at the effects and tries to determine a cause.
The PC as a plug and play appliance has been the gold standard for users for over twenty-five years.
The problem with the current state of computer security and spam can be summed up with the fact that this one very, horribly false statement is believed by the majority of people. No Windows system since the advent of common internet connections has ever been save as plug and play. I believe the average time for a computer that is just plugged in and connected to the internet to become a spam bot is down to four minutes, faster than you can download the patches from Windows Update (especially with all the extra DRM junk you have to go through now).
Read this article and if you still feel that computers are a plug and play appliance in more than image sell me some of the drug that you are using.
Last I checked there weren't any free tires on the market...
Also, tires are all comparably priced, ranging, for the standard ones they put on the car, between $30 and $50 per tire when you are buying 4; which adds at most $200 to a purchase that will run you about $10,000, thus +2%. An OS however ranges from $0 to $150+ (not OEM price, not actually sure what that is exactly) for a $400-$1000 purchase; Windows only options add a little less than 40% to 15%. Big difference in analogy IMO.
However, if this lawsuit does go through and HP loses (here's hoping) then every computer manufacturer that hopes to do business in France will have to care. This will mean either MS lessens its bulk licensing requirements, or everyone will face an increased PC cost. Either way its a win and a good precedent.
Also, if this winds up going before the whole EU, which I wouldn't be surprised, I can't see them ruling for HP and MS based on previous antitrust rulings.
I wouldn't be surprised if that did happen. From what I have read the original movie writers had wanted to make a trilogy, but the movie didn't do very well and the idea fell by the wayside. Now that the series have boosted the movie's popularity, distributors are more willing to finance a new movie. Of course, the series went a different direction than what the movie writers intended so the movie sequel will follow a different history. Here and here are a couple of the interviews with Devlin (original producer).
No, by unfortunately I mean its unfortunate that preaching hatred and bigotry is protected. Antisemitism, racism, sexism and religious hatred (and I mean true versions of these, not just saying that what Israel is doing is wrong, but saying that Jews are the root of all problems) are wrong. I find it unfortunate to have to protect oppressiveness like this in order to protect my right to speak and act freely.
Agreed, which is why a game that, from what I read in TFA, is actually done pretty poorly and is not quite of the same ilk as GTA should be treated comparably.
So if the suppression of religion in the name of political correctness is wrong, why is the suppression of religion in the name of supporting the majority right? That is what would happen if a state were to declare that a religion is the official religion of the state.
I have no problem with them treating prayer as a good thing. I have a problem with them treating everyone that isn't like them as less than human. I also have a problem with them saying that its ok to kill as long as you pray afterwards. For the record, I am not a big fan of FPS or games like GTA where killing is also just treated as a matter of course.
According to the Constitution, it doesn't even matter if Wal-mart were actively promoting it. The only thing in the Constitution is that the government cannot promote one religion over another (not that that has ever stopped them...). Wal-mart, the Left Behind people, even Satanists-R-Us are fully within their Constitutional rights to promote whatever religion they want.
I thought it would be a cold day in their Hell before I did but...
Unfortunately, creating this game is Constitutionally protected free speech, and selling it is completely up to Wal-Mart and other retailers. I think it was done in very poor taste but should be treated no differently than GTA or any other games that are similarly in bad taste.
urrently, sex offenders in many states have to disclose publically their actual physical address, including Virginia.
True, but this information is not allowed to be used to keep an offender from using public facilities.
Your argument seems to be that if we can't completely solve a problem, don't do anything about it at all!
No, if you read my arguement, you will see that it is that this solution doesn't fix the problem any better than adding duct tape to a leaking dam will fix the dam. My arguement is that it will restrict the rights of too many people and do too little to actually solve the problem for a total net loss in effectiveness.
Not the case. They would probably be prevented from using sites that are extremely kid-friendly.
You mean kid friendly sites like Yahoo? Or kid friendly messaging systems like AOL? And where do you draw the line of kid friendliness? Most of the sites pedophiles seem to be cruising are used by anyone (claiming to be) 13 to who knows how old.
I'm not seeing much monetary costs, since we're not talking about a monitoring system, just a database.
Here is a link to the current budget for MS's current sex offender registry maintenance budget. It costs them nearly 4 million dollars a year to make sure it is up to date. And that is for one maybe two addresses per offender. Imagine if they also had to maintain an untold number of emails as well. A database does no good if it is not maintained. It will quickly become just a random bunch of data that is unreliable. At the very least you will have to pay for the servers to maintain it, technicians to keep it running, developers to create interfaces for it, and bandwidth so it is accessible. Not to mention security measures to keep the wrong people from accessing the data and all sorts of other things.
As for liberties, the right to live without big brother watching you evaporated when they molested a kid. Same for the ability to interact with kids in the future.
Since when do sex offender registries only hold lists of pedophiles, any sex offender gets added to it. This would include pedophiles, yes, but also statitory rape convicts (22 yo has sex with a consenting 17 yo without his knowledge, wrong but not pedophelia, at least not intentionally) and other rape convictions (guy gets a girl drunk and takes advantage of her, still wrong, but still not pedophelia). These people don't have the same rate of repeat that pedophiles do, but they lose all the same rights.
Like I said in a previous post, there needs to be legal reforms, but this is the wrong way to do it. There needs to be better ways to try and sentence these people before you try and remove all their rights. This is the very reason there is an amendment protecting people from cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, in these cases, it is more often ignored.
The term marriage is the legal term for this sort of union. Giving homosexuals the right to "civil unions" but not to "marriages" leaves the door wide open for limiting of rights on civil unions but leaving heterosexual marriages alone. Unfortunately you are right that the religious reich doesn't realize this and thus fight on religious grounds something that is a legal issue. But trying to give it a different name for one group of people won't help matters, and may in the long run hurt.
As far as abolishing marriage licenses, marriage is a legal state, and carries many legal consequences, thus the need for legal documents like marriage licenses. The state takes no part in the religious side of things, make whatever promises you want to keep between yourselves and god. But when it comes to all the other issues, like taxes, child custody, and other legal rights, the state has to be involved.
It also gives providers and hosts (like MySpace) the ability to potentially subscribe to a list (a la Do Not Call) and keep them out.
This would just be a "scarlet letter" like program online for people convicted of sexual crimes (remember that these lists don't just include pedophiles, or even violent crimes). Removing a person's ability to live because they were formerly convicted of a crime and have served their sentence is unconstitutional.
It does keep pedos from striking again, in that it lowers the burden of evidence for law enforcement. But it doesn't do it in an effective way. It would take a pedophile that intends to strike again less than an hour to find out enough information about someone through a myspace account to cause harm. On the other hand, all those people blacklisted in the previous section would be unable to do things most people normally can (send email, use IM, share information with their friends on social sites like myspace, etc.) Setting up laws like this only serve to punish the "innocent" while allowing the guilty free reign.
Yes, it is an extra conviction law enforcement can use, but the costs, both in liberties and actual money, are too great.
What needs to happen are intelligent laws and accurate punishments for these convicts, not weak, easily circumvented laws like this. If the courts were better able to determine and punish convicts that are likely to strike again, that would do a much better job of protecting people than this stopgap.
This isn't being put in place to monitor chat rooms. It may be used for this and may be effective, but I doubt it. As long as using that registered email won't prevent them from entering said chat room, they have no reason to not use the registered email. Unless they start flagging convicted sexual predators while they are online it won't do anything. But doing this would be no different than making them wear a scarlet letter in public.
This law, at least as it is being marketed, is just being put in place to prevent sexual predators from getting accounts on myspace. In this respect it is useless.
As to your second point, its not that the law won't protect against any sexual predators, its the fact that it is easy enough to get around that it will only restrict the rights of the "minor" offenders who are reformed, or who were wrongly convicted, or that sort of thing, but does absolutely nothing to restrict the ability for those that are dangerous to strike again, or to strike in the first place. In fact, if it gives a false sense of complacency, it makes it easier for them.
The reason this law will be useful is it can't be effectively enforced. Are you going to require that convicted sexual predators are monitored 24/7? If thats the case why have this silly rule? It would take me, as others have said, 30 seconds to create a new anonymous email account. They then are free to register with myspace, and do whatever they want again. It would take near constant monitoring to catch this. I could have 100s of email accounts registered with VA, but all it takes is one unregistered one to get in.
This also does nothing to protect against those who have not yet been convicted of sexual abuse. If the illusion of security is all you want, enjoy your dream world, but that will just make you less safe.
Lets see:
Dragons - loud, obnoxious, and best avoided.
I would say its that North America section near the top of the center. AKA Myspace.
If you read TFA, you would notice that its not the loss of the ability to consume lactose, it was the gaining of the ability to consume lactose. And evolution works both ways, both in the loss of detrimental traits (like the loss of creating melatonin in populations closer to the poles) and the spread of positive traits like from this article.
If you believe there is natural selection, and you don't believe in determinism, you are left with evolution as the only "guiding" (evolution has no goal other than survival so calling it guiding is a bit strong) force.
about the way the music industry is set up right now is why the artists are paid by the distributors as opposed to the other way around. The artists have created the music and should have full control over what happens to that music. They should be paying the distributors/production companies/etc. to handle the things they do.
As I see it, and this may just be the way I buy music, the reason I buy or don't buy music is because I like the artist, or I have heard something from them and want to hear more. I don't buy an artist because Sony or BMG is distributing it (although that may make me not want to buy an artist's CD). The recording industry should be paid for the service they provide and the artists should be the ones in the drivers seat. If the artist doesn't want full control, well thats what agents are for, right?
Actually, there are a couple of things wrong with this argument.
1) Our country was founded on (among other things) the belief that people are innocent until proven guilty by a jury of their peers. This means that laws put in place to protect suspects on trial are in place to protect the innocent at the expense of protecting some guilty. To change those standards would undermine the Constitution. Things like allowing torture of people, without even the slightest burden of proof goes against everything every soldier has died for in the past 200+ years of this country.
2) I do not support a judicial rewriting of the second amendment, I do however support the judicial branch's constitutional power to interpret the Constitution. That was the entire purpose of the judicial branch. Thus the Supreme Court has the right to say that a law (that must be passed by Congress) banning Joe Shmo from owning automatic rifles, that have nothing to do with "A well regulated militia". Saying that the second amendment allows anyone and their brother to own whatever weapons they like is reinterpreting the Constitution more than limiting the availability of such weapons. (Disclaimer, I don't believe that owning firearms should be illegal, I fully support the right to own weapons, but I do believe that it should be regulated and that weapons designed only to kill other people should be more firmly regulated, if not fully restricted).
3) Using the phrase "for the people, by the people..." the way you did takes it fully out of context. Our government has never been a direct democracy. In a direct democracy, every person would vote on every issue that comes up. Our government is a Constitutional Republic, meaning we (the people) elect representatives (the "by the people") who are supposed to support our interests (the "for the people"). Often this doesn't mean doing exactly what we want, this often means doing what is best for all. If you go the other way it simply becomes mob rule and would likely fall into anarchy.
Our founding fathers knew what they were doing. Read their words (not the propaganda the far right wants to feed you) and you would understand liberals a bit better.