If you actually read the bill, the only violation of this bill that could lead to life imprisonment is covered in Section 12, which specifically mentions that this sentence may be imposed on someone who "knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause serious bodily injury from conduct in violation of" trafficking counterfeit goods or services. That seems pretty damn reasonable to me. But hey...what do I know? I just RTFB.
Yeah, and they'll charge you with that after one of the SWAT guys stubs his toe after breaking into your house to arrest you for . To me, it sounds like a ridiculous new law that serves no good purpose. We already have laws against assaulting an officer. This is just dumb.
Well, that depends on how you look at it. They will be providing the extra content for a monthly fee, instead of selling expansions, no? So It's the same thing GW is doing, but just collecting the money a little differently.
Actually, they had better be putting out a HELL OF A LOT more content than Guild Wars for that price. You'd normally pay 20-30 bucks for an expansion, and see maybe one or two of them a year normally. You'll be paying 120 bucks a year for Hellgate. Are they really gonna give you three to four times as much new content? Good quality stuff? I'll believe that when I see it.
So, the Government wants to research fusion. They don't want to hire all the scientists and fund the entire project. They just want to give someone $1b and reap the rewards. The problem is that it costs a company $2b to get a working product.
If the taxpayers want it, they can purchase it outright. They should have that option. But it'll cost a lot more than an additional $1b. The company took the risk. If they dumped $4b and got nothing, they'd eat it. If they succeed, they should benefit.
That depends entirely on what sort of contract it is. If the company bid on a contract and said they could do the work for $1B, then they should deliver for that price. In this case, it seems that the people have already paid for the information, and it was previously available, but isn't any longer. So that's a whole different case.
Oh yeah, it's different because we claim to have the moral high gro... no wait. They do too. Never mind.
That was my point. That both sides do the same thing, but that there is also a lot more behind it, and oversimplifying doesn't help the situation. However, as others have pointed out, the GP didn't actually imply that he was talking about any particular side, so that was just my mistake. I think I was just in a mindset that had me thinking in that way from another discussion I was involved in on another site, so it was right for me to get modded down.
while simultaneously dehumazing whole groups of people who only differ from ourselves culturally and/or geographically.
Wow, way to oversimplify things. I can do that too! You left out their tendency to try to blow us up. I think that's one of the bigger factors there. Also their tendency to dehumanize us as infidels and what have you. That's probably another one. See? See how I did that? How I left out a lot of details, complexity and history of the situation and simply painted one side as behaving in a violent, irrational way?
A telling observation, since it was gorilla arm that pretty much killed the touchscreen as a primary input device (except for applications where the user only spends a short time using the device, such as ATM screens).
On a related note, I just spent a week walking around various facilities for 8 hours a day holding a tablet PC and entering data using the touchscreen and onscreen keypad as needed. While the screen-tapping wasn't too bad as long as I could rest my wrist against the tablet (which helped with accuracy), I found that my left arm, the one I carried the tablet with, was cramping up pretty badly. I started calling it "tablet elbow", as it was my elbow that was feeling the most strain from cradling the tablet in a position where I could enter the data. Some sort of tablet sling or something might have been nice to help with that, as long as it could hold it in the right position.
That's not how the warez scene works. It's all about taking credit and releasing before anyone else. Contributing to a common repository is likely not very interesting.
This isn't like cracking really. There's no real challenge to it. I still suspect that it will get done, simply because people want it, and there are people that can do it. They'll find ways to get their name attached to it, they always do. It's not easy to set it up, but that probably won't matter, as there will be real demand for it, even by the people that have the drives capable of ripping the movies. As for keeping up, they'll get the stuff that most people want, and nobody will care about the rest.
Because no one is forcing you to go out and buy this junk. If you don't like the deal, don't get the movie.
Contracts are not one-sided. They don't state any deal up front when you buy a DVD. They say "own it on DVD". So making it illegal for me to make use of copyrighted material in a way that is consistent with the law regarding fair use isn't something that should just be understood or accepted. That's why the DMCA is just bad law.
Fair use means that if you happen to do something that would otherwise violate copyright, you're okay. It doesn't mean that the creator of a work has some sort of responsibility to guarantee your ability to do so.
That's the thing that is so wrong about the DMCA. It not only allows the distributors of the works to make it difficult for you to exercise your fair use rights (which doesn't really concern me), it also makes it trivial for them to make it ILLEGAL for you to exercise those rights. All they have to do is implement the most trivial of measures to protect the content and you're suddenly a criminal if you circumvent that protection to make a copy, even for purposes covered by fair use.
What good does it do you if the warez scene does this, anyway? Are you going to google for keys every time you want to watch one of your movies, or what?
No, whatever software you use for ripping the discs will just be able to automatically download new keys from some source in a country that won't go after such a server. People with the cracked drives will just upload new keys as they get them. There will probably be some forum for requesting keys as well. Kind of like FreeDB for AACS keys. There aren't that many titles out there on these new formats yet, so they'll probably be able to keep up with most of the new releases.
Of course. Software patents are evil! Or do you really think it's more important to smack microsoft than to fight for principles?
If software patents are evil, then we shouldn't be rooting for Microsoft to win the case. We should be hoping they lose and it makes them start pushing for reform of the system.
It doesn't take 30 minutes to explain to any non-technical person the concept of "the date of this article is earlier than the date their patent was filed on".
No, but it would take a lot longer than that to convince them that the documents cover the patent claims in question, especially if Verizon is claiming otherwise.
If Vonage held the patents, they would be playing it just as hard-ball as Verizon.
Of course. But that's not the point. People want Vonage to win because the system is broken and in serious need of fixing. It's being abused in order to squash competition, which is bad for all of us.
Is it possible a bystander would try to pick it up and start firing wildly? Is it possible for the shooter to pick it up as an additional firearm and ammunition? More guns means more opportunities to shoot guns. It's hard to say that this is a good thing.
I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying that it's better than being defenseless and dying anyway, which is what happened to those people. They had no defense, and nowhere to run. I can't imagine what that would have been like. Some chance would have been better than no chance.
It seems a bit unfair to call it a lapse--we don't know all the details yet,
I'm not sure I'd call it a lapse on the part of the police. They responded to what seemed to be an isolated case. I'm more likely to blame the school for not notifying people to stay put and not come to class, but I'm going to reserve judgment on that as well until I hear all the facts. Regardless, it certainly does illustrate the point that either way, the police show up after you're dead and take lots of pictures. They don't usually arrive in time to save you, and even if they do, they may not do so because they generally don't know what's going on when they get there and aren't going to go charging in.
The world is much better without vigilantes. Didn't we learn since the lynchings?
Trying to protect people from an imminent threat such as someone shooting at them is not vigilantism. Look it up. And since it actually seemed helped in that case, I don't think your argument is holding up too well.
In this case, no one knew what the gunman looked like or where he was, and the gunman was moving. There would be a much higher risk of "friendly fire" casualties in this case. It's not like the bad guys have devil horns and the civilians carrying weapons have halos so you know what to shoot at.
The people he was shooting at knew what he looked like. If they'd had the ability to defend themselves, I'm sure they would be very willing to do so and take their chances regarding friendly fire. The unfriendly fire certainly was going to kill them if they didn't. It might have been over in less than a minute if someone had had the ability to fight back. Nobody did. So they died.
Anyway, this went off a bit from what I'm replying to. All I ask is that people think about it. Hell, talk to some soldiers and ask them how it was when they were in there first combat experience. Keep in mind, those guys are going under MONTHS of training, not a simple course to see if they can shoot straight.
Since I've never had to shoot anyone, I can't really imagine what it's like. I can only suspect that it's probably better than being dead. I know where you're coming from when thinking about how to handle things when you don't really think that anyone should just be able to go buy a gun, and yet you know that people can get them illegally anyway, especially if they plan to use them illegally. I've thought about this for a long time. What it comes down to for me is that I have to believe that I have a right and a responsibility to defend myself, my family, my home. Nobody is going to shoulder that responsibility for me. Not the police. Not the government in any form. They aren't obligated to or even capable of defending me. So if it's all on me, I should have the right to own a gun for that purpose, as there is really nothing else that can do the job as effectively. Both as a deterrent, and as a last resort.
There were a panic, you know, and if everybody were having guns in their hands and willing to shoot...
Then the guy probably wouldn't have tried it in the first place, or he would have been shot seconds after he started shooting. People licensed to carry a concealed weapon are trained well enough to know how to use it. Yes, it's possible that someone else could be hit as well, but the guy would have been dead or incapacitated long before he was able to kill over 30 people.
Gun nuts seem to enjoy contemplating the "firefight with an oppressive overlord" fantasy.
Yeah, that's pretty farfetched? It's not like a bunch of guys with small arms and homemade explosives could cause any trouble for the most powerful military in the world, right? Right?
Repeat after me: problem has persisted for years. Problem not related to hardware. Problem unrelated to how Windows is configured, what drivers are used or what kind of settings are used. Nobody has any idea what's causing it, and that includes you.
Translation: You've missed the problem because you don't know how to diagnose a PC problem properly. One of the things you've ruled out shouldn't have been ruled out. There's no such thing as an unfixable problem.
well, you can't exactly grow guns, so it's not that simple,
The vast majority of drugs aren't grown here either. They're smuggled in. Not trying to oversimplify it. Just pointing out the flawed thinking of the parent.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and they'll charge you with that after one of the SWAT guys stubs his toe after breaking into your house to arrest you for . To me, it sounds like a ridiculous new law that serves no good purpose. We already have laws against assaulting an officer. This is just dumb.
Actually, they had better be putting out a HELL OF A LOT more content than Guild Wars for that price. You'd normally pay 20-30 bucks for an expansion, and see maybe one or two of them a year normally. You'll be paying 120 bucks a year for Hellgate. Are they really gonna give you three to four times as much new content? Good quality stuff? I'll believe that when I see it.
That depends entirely on what sort of contract it is. If the company bid on a contract and said they could do the work for $1B, then they should deliver for that price. In this case, it seems that the people have already paid for the information, and it was previously available, but isn't any longer. So that's a whole different case.
They just get lobbyists to create policy for them for "free".
That was my point. That both sides do the same thing, but that there is also a lot more behind it, and oversimplifying doesn't help the situation. However, as others have pointed out, the GP didn't actually imply that he was talking about any particular side, so that was just my mistake. I think I was just in a mindset that had me thinking in that way from another discussion I was involved in on another site, so it was right for me to get modded down.
Wow, way to oversimplify things. I can do that too! You left out their tendency to try to blow us up. I think that's one of the bigger factors there. Also their tendency to dehumanize us as infidels and what have you. That's probably another one. See? See how I did that? How I left out a lot of details, complexity and history of the situation and simply painted one side as behaving in a violent, irrational way?
On a related note, I just spent a week walking around various facilities for 8 hours a day holding a tablet PC and entering data using the touchscreen and onscreen keypad as needed. While the screen-tapping wasn't too bad as long as I could rest my wrist against the tablet (which helped with accuracy), I found that my left arm, the one I carried the tablet with, was cramping up pretty badly. I started calling it "tablet elbow", as it was my elbow that was feeling the most strain from cradling the tablet in a position where I could enter the data. Some sort of tablet sling or something might have been nice to help with that, as long as it could hold it in the right position.
This isn't like cracking really. There's no real challenge to it. I still suspect that it will get done, simply because people want it, and there are people that can do it. They'll find ways to get their name attached to it, they always do. It's not easy to set it up, but that probably won't matter, as there will be real demand for it, even by the people that have the drives capable of ripping the movies. As for keeping up, they'll get the stuff that most people want, and nobody will care about the rest.
Contracts are not one-sided. They don't state any deal up front when you buy a DVD. They say "own it on DVD". So making it illegal for me to make use of copyrighted material in a way that is consistent with the law regarding fair use isn't something that should just be understood or accepted. That's why the DMCA is just bad law.
That's the thing that is so wrong about the DMCA. It not only allows the distributors of the works to make it difficult for you to exercise your fair use rights (which doesn't really concern me), it also makes it trivial for them to make it ILLEGAL for you to exercise those rights. All they have to do is implement the most trivial of measures to protect the content and you're suddenly a criminal if you circumvent that protection to make a copy, even for purposes covered by fair use.
No, whatever software you use for ripping the discs will just be able to automatically download new keys from some source in a country that won't go after such a server. People with the cracked drives will just upload new keys as they get them. There will probably be some forum for requesting keys as well. Kind of like FreeDB for AACS keys. There aren't that many titles out there on these new formats yet, so they'll probably be able to keep up with most of the new releases.
If software patents are evil, then we shouldn't be rooting for Microsoft to win the case. We should be hoping they lose and it makes them start pushing for reform of the system.
No, but it would take a lot longer than that to convince them that the documents cover the patent claims in question, especially if Verizon is claiming otherwise.
Of course. But that's not the point. People want Vonage to win because the system is broken and in serious need of fixing. It's being abused in order to squash competition, which is bad for all of us.
I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying that it's better than being defenseless and dying anyway, which is what happened to those people. They had no defense, and nowhere to run. I can't imagine what that would have been like. Some chance would have been better than no chance.
I'm not sure I'd call it a lapse on the part of the police. They responded to what seemed to be an isolated case. I'm more likely to blame the school for not notifying people to stay put and not come to class, but I'm going to reserve judgment on that as well until I hear all the facts. Regardless, it certainly does illustrate the point that either way, the police show up after you're dead and take lots of pictures. They don't usually arrive in time to save you, and even if they do, they may not do so because they generally don't know what's going on when they get there and aren't going to go charging in.
Trying to protect people from an imminent threat such as someone shooting at them is not vigilantism. Look it up. And since it actually seemed helped in that case, I don't think your argument is holding up too well.
The people he was shooting at knew what he looked like. If they'd had the ability to defend themselves, I'm sure they would be very willing to do so and take their chances regarding friendly fire. The unfriendly fire certainly was going to kill them if they didn't. It might have been over in less than a minute if someone had had the ability to fight back. Nobody did. So they died.
Since I've never had to shoot anyone, I can't really imagine what it's like. I can only suspect that it's probably better than being dead. I know where you're coming from when thinking about how to handle things when you don't really think that anyone should just be able to go buy a gun, and yet you know that people can get them illegally anyway, especially if they plan to use them illegally. I've thought about this for a long time. What it comes down to for me is that I have to believe that I have a right and a responsibility to defend myself, my family, my home. Nobody is going to shoulder that responsibility for me. Not the police. Not the government in any form. They aren't obligated to or even capable of defending me. So if it's all on me, I should have the right to own a gun for that purpose, as there is really nothing else that can do the job as effectively. Both as a deterrent, and as a last resort.
Better to have some chance to defend yourself than be one of those poor people there that had nowhere to run and no way to fight.
Then the guy probably wouldn't have tried it in the first place, or he would have been shot seconds after he started shooting. People licensed to carry a concealed weapon are trained well enough to know how to use it. Yes, it's possible that someone else could be hit as well, but the guy would have been dead or incapacitated long before he was able to kill over 30 people.
Yeah, that's pretty farfetched? It's not like a bunch of guys with small arms and homemade explosives could cause any trouble for the most powerful military in the world, right? Right?
Translation: You've missed the problem because you don't know how to diagnose a PC problem properly. One of the things you've ruled out shouldn't have been ruled out. There's no such thing as an unfixable problem.
The vast majority of drugs aren't grown here either. They're smuggled in. Not trying to oversimplify it. Just pointing out the flawed thinking of the parent.
Right, just like drugs being illegal for decades has made it so tough to get them today. You're kidding, right?