Ah, but why is conception the line? After all, much like a feritlized egg will grow into a human being if required conditions are met, an unfertilized egg will do exactly the same if it's required conditions are met (which are exactly the same as the fertilized egg + being united with a sperm). A similar argument can be made for sperm being equally a person, each individually. Presuming we're nice enough to assume that heterosexual vaginal intercourse without contraception is due diligence to prevent murder (despite not causing every sperm emitted (or even necessarily any of them) to unite with an egg), then every un-impregnated female who isn't mating at every opportunity with every male possible is committing murder every month she isn't pregnant. Every male is committing genocide level murder any time they use contraception, as well as any time they masturbate. I DEMAND WE ARREST EVERYONE FOR KILLING BABIES!
Personally, I'd think the limit should be at the earliest point of recognizable structured synaptic activity, more or less the earliest point at which it is able to think or feel anything. The GGP claims that at 18 days, which is somewhat sooner than I thought it was known to occur (I'd always heard 9-15 weeks was typical for that).
At the same time, I think it's an ethical and moral grey area, and I don't think it's right to push my answers on everyone else.
Also, how does 25 weeks = 5 weeks, especially in something that grows several orders of magnitude in size at a nonlinear rate over the course of about 40 weeks?
I have little by way of large motor skills either, though the first time I played billiards my friend's friend though I was trying to trick him, because 90 percent of the game is applied trig, and whenever the ball would decide to go remotely where I intended it to I would look like some kind of pro. The rest of the time it just kind of went where it wanted and I failed...
Mine is basically a large cursive first initial, a squiggly with two peaks near the end, a large print last initial (I can never get a cursive T to look right) and a squiggly with a dip and a peak. All the peaks and dips are to match the peaks and dips in the letters of my name. If it's important to differentiate from my father, then there's a small superscript III at the end as well.
My great grandmother wrote everything in cursive without exception (died just a few years ago at the age of 100). It took me about 3 minutes per word to understand what was written, but unless she was writing in a tight space (say a card) it was very pretty writing.
Frankly, the real answer regarding code is that it needs to be either copyrightable or patentable, but not both. Both patents and copyrights need adjustments, beyond that. Patents probably need a variable term dependent on the industry to which it applies, and to be more thoroughly checked before being granted. Copyrights need a duration reduction as well, to something longer than patents but still life of author or shorter. Perhaps an XX years or life of author, whichever is longer (to keep "passing something to my children" as a means of encouraging output), with a requirement that a copy of the work be provided to the government as an "original" to be maintained for when the work reaches public domain, provided at some point during the copyrighted timespan. For software, the working published source alongside the tools/environment to make it compile and function is the necessary implementation or "original" required.
Sometimes someone needs to stick their nose in, usually when one side effectively holds all the cards. Look at the old "coal towns" in Appalachia: You worked for the mine, you were paid in mine store credit (can't change that, requiring business to pay people in actual money would be sticking your nose in) and live in mine owned housing that you were renting (they won't sell, and you don't have real money anyways so you'll rent from them and like it or be homeless). So, unless you wanted to be homeless and starving you would continue to work for the mine, whatever hours the mine asked, under whatever conditions the mine required, with no way out of it that didn't involve "homeless and starving" as a major transition phase. That is the kind of thing that happens when business/industry aren't kept on some kind of leash.
Ah, the Witches' Hammer. great work, everyone should read a translation of it. No, I'm being serious. It's an interesting read, and gives insight into the view of the time, from persons who were educated on the topic at the time.
Depending on the situation, this might be indicative of another cat behavior I've seen a lot: When a cat is in a room with a bunch of people it isn't very familiar with, it tends to go to the one who doesn't like cats. What it's really doing is going to the person who scares it the least, because all these strange people keep making noises at it and trying to paw at it, whereas only one person doesn't seem as threatening
The litter box thing is more a matter of giving them something that makes following instinct more convenient for them. Cats generally prefer to bury their waste. You give a cat a box of something sandy and easy to dig through where nothing else is, and it doesn't take much to get them to use it. My current kitty it literally amounted to setting him in the litter box once when we first brought him home. He only failed to use it twice after that, once was the first time someone carried him upstairs (personally I think he just didn't know how to find his box since he was half asleep in someone's arms when he went up) and the other time he locked himself in a bathroom, went on the rug beside the tub, and tried to bury it with the rug (he got it folded over -- close enough, I guess).
or if not the source code, some manner of pseudo code or other explicit, mathematical description of the precise algorithm used -- which only makes the "software = math = not patentable" argument more obvious.
Effectively, the argument amounts to "Math is a descriptive language. Software is a way of stating mathematical concepts. Software should accordingly be not patentable for precisely the same reason literature is."
The problem with your "what about the day before" argument is that you can keep applying it. At a certain point, we have to try almost every woman between menarche and menopause who isn't currently pregnant with a murder every month for her body expelling an egg during her period. Of course, most males are also committing $BIGNUM murders every time they masturbate or use contraception. We'll be nice and assume that males not using contraception are doing due diligence to not murder endless potential children.
You left PvP out of that picture, and the continuous arguments about changes to one effecting the others as well as the PvE (small group), PvE (raid), and PvP segmetns all claiming each other require no skill to succeed.
Personally, I'd like to see them do a good job at balancing an encounter to be equally difficult for X people (with X being an arbitrary number, up to maximum raid size), and hand out Y rewards/person (with fractional rewards being a chance at an additional reward), with no distinctions to reward based on group size because the encounter scales to group size.
For example, let's say we take Malygos (10/25 man raid with a single boss). He might hand out 0.2 items per person, giving one drop in a 5 man, 2 in a 10 man, and 5 in a 25 man (the 10/25 man numbers are about the number of actual drops he has, mind you). If you bring a full 40, he scales up to match it, and drops 8 items (but they are still the same drop list as in 10, 25, or even 5).
Of course, all this rant comes from Blizzard being terribly inconsistent in difficulty vs raid size vs reward. For example, there's a dragon named Sartharion who you can increase the fight difficulty in order to get better rewards. Doing this is much more difficult in 10 man than 25, as it requires every individual to be more capable, and means you also cannot spare room to include an extra tank. The 10 man version drops substantially weaker loot than the 25 man (both also drop a special dragon you can ride, which the 10 man version is less attractive but yet a bigger thing to show off with because it's harder to get), by virtue of being a larger group of players. Other encounters it's the other way around (usually those where one person failing can ruin the fight, and a smaller group means fewer people that need to be competent), and still others are similar difficulty in both versions.
Why not base healer XP on damage/DPS taken by the group, excluding any damage in the X seconds before a given member dies? IOW, the better the healer keeps the group going, the better. More importantly, this can be modified to work for something like a City of Heroes Defender, where several of them fill the "healer" role by preventing damage from happening in the first place, such as by reducing the chance to hit for enemy units.
The real answer is this -- watermark the media in a way that is difficult to remove without causing significant degredation. Then aggressively watch for pirate copies of the work, verify the watermark, and ban users from the service caught distributing. No further restrictions necessary.
Accordingly, since downloading isn't the illegal part, but rather distribution, sue the living hell out of anyone whose watermark you find on a work -- it should be a comparatively easy case.
Oh, god, horrible mental images. My brain just kind of fused the parent, GP, and GGP into one *thing* and got a dominatrix with a strap on making her sub beat off a dead horse. I need to go bleach my brain now.
The free market only operates when certain criteria are met. Among those criteria are low barriers to entry, etc, but most importantly that making a transaction is a choice, and that the consumer is able to choose. That's why things like medicine are not a free market, because "pay what we charge or die" is *not* a serious choice.
Let's say he hit the libertarian ideal, and exclude the government from everything, passing it all off to private industry because the free market solves all problems. I live in the Kanawha River valley in WV. There are three roads that run east west through Charleston coming in one side and going completely through and out the other. If one company were to buy the land US Rt 61, I64, and US Rt 60 were on to the east of Charleston, they would hold a complete lock on passage through the area, and rightly charge what the market will bear to be able to access the closest thing to a city nearby. For several communities the same could be done to the east of Montgomery and create a region where significant access to the entire area is constrained by what a single corporation feels the market will bear to be able to leave home. It's not a serious option to build additional roads through the area because they too would be subject to the same issue, as well as this being a river valley -- there is a serious limit to flat ground available, unless your special road is going to simply tunnel directly through the mountainside. The river (or rather the locks at Marmet and Kanawha Falls) of course will be bought up by *someone*, it being the only remaining means of transit in and out of the area aside from those three roads.
I'm sure this isn't the only case where something exists as a public resource for the public good, or rather so that private owners don't simply exploit the "no choice" scenarios created by similar limited resources with no alternatives physically available.
1. User is shown UI, chooses candidates.
2. Vote is assigned a unique identifier and stored in database table.
3. A paper ballot is then printed out, prefilled with black marks and only the names voted for printed, as a scantron-type sheet and provided to the voter.
4. A separate manufacturer provides the scantron machine, which on scan checks against the database from step 2.
5. If the results of the scan and initial entry match, all is well. If not, throw a red flag.
6. If the results matched, flag the ballot as having been scanned with a timestamp.
7. Have the scanner printout the ballot serial number and timestamp on a roll printer (think a receipt printer) in a continuous feed.
8. The printed ballot is stored in a ballot box, and later counted at leisrue to verify the total.
9. The list from #7 is verified against a list printed from the database after the election to watch for tampering.
10. If there are no signs of fraud or error, the counts from #8 and #9 may be done at leisure, as there's no good reason to assume tampering is present. If the results do not match up, recount and verify the new official count.
Did I miss anything?
I've swung a knife towards someone's throat (did not actually cut them in the process, thankfully) without intent to cause harm before, so watch it. There are always border cases and odd situations.
Cats have a higher rate of "cute" retention though, I think. Although mine's started back into the habit he had when a kitten of trying to smother me in my sleep by laying over my mouth and nose, but that's just him being affectionate. He's usually good with being moved to being an earmuff, because he just wants to snuggle.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, 9 to 5 would be awesome. I work 6 to 4:30, presuming all goes well and I don't have to be there late.
Ah, but why is conception the line? After all, much like a feritlized egg will grow into a human being if required conditions are met, an unfertilized egg will do exactly the same if it's required conditions are met (which are exactly the same as the fertilized egg + being united with a sperm). A similar argument can be made for sperm being equally a person, each individually. Presuming we're nice enough to assume that heterosexual vaginal intercourse without contraception is due diligence to prevent murder (despite not causing every sperm emitted (or even necessarily any of them) to unite with an egg), then every un-impregnated female who isn't mating at every opportunity with every male possible is committing murder every month she isn't pregnant. Every male is committing genocide level murder any time they use contraception, as well as any time they masturbate. I DEMAND WE ARREST EVERYONE FOR KILLING BABIES!
Personally, I'd think the limit should be at the earliest point of recognizable structured synaptic activity, more or less the earliest point at which it is able to think or feel anything. The GGP claims that at 18 days, which is somewhat sooner than I thought it was known to occur (I'd always heard 9-15 weeks was typical for that).
At the same time, I think it's an ethical and moral grey area, and I don't think it's right to push my answers on everyone else.
Also, how does 25 weeks = 5 weeks, especially in something that grows several orders of magnitude in size at a nonlinear rate over the course of about 40 weeks?
I actually watched that video you linked. At what point does something similar to your link text occur? I must have missed it.
I have little by way of large motor skills either, though the first time I played billiards my friend's friend though I was trying to trick him, because 90 percent of the game is applied trig, and whenever the ball would decide to go remotely where I intended it to I would look like some kind of pro. The rest of the time it just kind of went where it wanted and I failed...
Mine is basically a large cursive first initial, a squiggly with two peaks near the end, a large print last initial (I can never get a cursive T to look right) and a squiggly with a dip and a peak. All the peaks and dips are to match the peaks and dips in the letters of my name. If it's important to differentiate from my father, then there's a small superscript III at the end as well.
My great grandmother wrote everything in cursive without exception (died just a few years ago at the age of 100). It took me about 3 minutes per word to understand what was written, but unless she was writing in a tight space (say a card) it was very pretty writing.
Frankly, the real answer regarding code is that it needs to be either copyrightable or patentable, but not both. Both patents and copyrights need adjustments, beyond that. Patents probably need a variable term dependent on the industry to which it applies, and to be more thoroughly checked before being granted. Copyrights need a duration reduction as well, to something longer than patents but still life of author or shorter. Perhaps an XX years or life of author, whichever is longer (to keep "passing something to my children" as a means of encouraging output), with a requirement that a copy of the work be provided to the government as an "original" to be maintained for when the work reaches public domain, provided at some point during the copyrighted timespan. For software, the working published source alongside the tools/environment to make it compile and function is the necessary implementation or "original" required.
Sometimes someone needs to stick their nose in, usually when one side effectively holds all the cards. Look at the old "coal towns" in Appalachia: You worked for the mine, you were paid in mine store credit (can't change that, requiring business to pay people in actual money would be sticking your nose in) and live in mine owned housing that you were renting (they won't sell, and you don't have real money anyways so you'll rent from them and like it or be homeless). So, unless you wanted to be homeless and starving you would continue to work for the mine, whatever hours the mine asked, under whatever conditions the mine required, with no way out of it that didn't involve "homeless and starving" as a major transition phase. That is the kind of thing that happens when business/industry aren't kept on some kind of leash.
Ah, the Witches' Hammer. great work, everyone should read a translation of it. No, I'm being serious. It's an interesting read, and gives insight into the view of the time, from persons who were educated on the topic at the time.
Just another victim of the manocentric maleocracy?
Depending on the situation, this might be indicative of another cat behavior I've seen a lot: When a cat is in a room with a bunch of people it isn't very familiar with, it tends to go to the one who doesn't like cats. What it's really doing is going to the person who scares it the least, because all these strange people keep making noises at it and trying to paw at it, whereas only one person doesn't seem as threatening
The litter box thing is more a matter of giving them something that makes following instinct more convenient for them. Cats generally prefer to bury their waste. You give a cat a box of something sandy and easy to dig through where nothing else is, and it doesn't take much to get them to use it. My current kitty it literally amounted to setting him in the litter box once when we first brought him home. He only failed to use it twice after that, once was the first time someone carried him upstairs (personally I think he just didn't know how to find his box since he was half asleep in someone's arms when he went up) and the other time he locked himself in a bathroom, went on the rug beside the tub, and tried to bury it with the rug (he got it folded over -- close enough, I guess).
or if not the source code, some manner of pseudo code or other explicit, mathematical description of the precise algorithm used -- which only makes the "software = math = not patentable" argument more obvious.
Effectively, the argument amounts to "Math is a descriptive language. Software is a way of stating mathematical concepts. Software should accordingly be not patentable for precisely the same reason literature is."
The problem with your "what about the day before" argument is that you can keep applying it. At a certain point, we have to try almost every woman between menarche and menopause who isn't currently pregnant with a murder every month for her body expelling an egg during her period. Of course, most males are also committing $BIGNUM murders every time they masturbate or use contraception. We'll be nice and assume that males not using contraception are doing due diligence to not murder endless potential children.
You left PvP out of that picture, and the continuous arguments about changes to one effecting the others as well as the PvE (small group), PvE (raid), and PvP segmetns all claiming each other require no skill to succeed.
Personally, I'd like to see them do a good job at balancing an encounter to be equally difficult for X people (with X being an arbitrary number, up to maximum raid size), and hand out Y rewards/person (with fractional rewards being a chance at an additional reward), with no distinctions to reward based on group size because the encounter scales to group size.
For example, let's say we take Malygos (10/25 man raid with a single boss). He might hand out 0.2 items per person, giving one drop in a 5 man, 2 in a 10 man, and 5 in a 25 man (the 10/25 man numbers are about the number of actual drops he has, mind you). If you bring a full 40, he scales up to match it, and drops 8 items (but they are still the same drop list as in 10, 25, or even 5).
Of course, all this rant comes from Blizzard being terribly inconsistent in difficulty vs raid size vs reward. For example, there's a dragon named Sartharion who you can increase the fight difficulty in order to get better rewards. Doing this is much more difficult in 10 man than 25, as it requires every individual to be more capable, and means you also cannot spare room to include an extra tank. The 10 man version drops substantially weaker loot than the 25 man (both also drop a special dragon you can ride, which the 10 man version is less attractive but yet a bigger thing to show off with because it's harder to get), by virtue of being a larger group of players. Other encounters it's the other way around (usually those where one person failing can ruin the fight, and a smaller group means fewer people that need to be competent), and still others are similar difficulty in both versions.
Why not base healer XP on damage/DPS taken by the group, excluding any damage in the X seconds before a given member dies? IOW, the better the healer keeps the group going, the better. More importantly, this can be modified to work for something like a City of Heroes Defender, where several of them fill the "healer" role by preventing damage from happening in the first place, such as by reducing the chance to hit for enemy units.
The real answer is this -- watermark the media in a way that is difficult to remove without causing significant degredation. Then aggressively watch for pirate copies of the work, verify the watermark, and ban users from the service caught distributing. No further restrictions necessary.
Accordingly, since downloading isn't the illegal part, but rather distribution, sue the living hell out of anyone whose watermark you find on a work -- it should be a comparatively easy case.
Oh, god, horrible mental images. My brain just kind of fused the parent, GP, and GGP into one *thing* and got a dominatrix with a strap on making her sub beat off a dead horse. I need to go bleach my brain now.
Addendum, and in more general terms:
The free market only operates when certain criteria are met. Among those criteria are low barriers to entry, etc, but most importantly that making a transaction is a choice, and that the consumer is able to choose. That's why things like medicine are not a free market, because "pay what we charge or die" is *not* a serious choice.
Incoming rant against libertarians.
Let's say he hit the libertarian ideal, and exclude the government from everything, passing it all off to private industry because the free market solves all problems. I live in the Kanawha River valley in WV. There are three roads that run east west through Charleston coming in one side and going completely through and out the other. If one company were to buy the land US Rt 61, I64, and US Rt 60 were on to the east of Charleston, they would hold a complete lock on passage through the area, and rightly charge what the market will bear to be able to access the closest thing to a city nearby. For several communities the same could be done to the east of Montgomery and create a region where significant access to the entire area is constrained by what a single corporation feels the market will bear to be able to leave home. It's not a serious option to build additional roads through the area because they too would be subject to the same issue, as well as this being a river valley -- there is a serious limit to flat ground available, unless your special road is going to simply tunnel directly through the mountainside. The river (or rather the locks at Marmet and Kanawha Falls) of course will be bought up by *someone*, it being the only remaining means of transit in and out of the area aside from those three roads. I'm sure this isn't the only case where something exists as a public resource for the public good, or rather so that private owners don't simply exploit the "no choice" scenarios created by similar limited resources with no alternatives physically available.
Multistep process.
1. User is shown UI, chooses candidates.
2. Vote is assigned a unique identifier and stored in database table.
3. A paper ballot is then printed out, prefilled with black marks and only the names voted for printed, as a scantron-type sheet and provided to the voter.
4. A separate manufacturer provides the scantron machine, which on scan checks against the database from step 2.
5. If the results of the scan and initial entry match, all is well. If not, throw a red flag.
6. If the results matched, flag the ballot as having been scanned with a timestamp.
7. Have the scanner printout the ballot serial number and timestamp on a roll printer (think a receipt printer) in a continuous feed.
8. The printed ballot is stored in a ballot box, and later counted at leisrue to verify the total.
9. The list from #7 is verified against a list printed from the database after the election to watch for tampering.
10. If there are no signs of fraud or error, the counts from #8 and #9 may be done at leisure, as there's no good reason to assume tampering is present. If the results do not match up, recount and verify the new official count.
Did I miss anything?
I've swung a knife towards someone's throat (did not actually cut them in the process, thankfully) without intent to cause harm before, so watch it. There are always border cases and odd situations.
Cats have a higher rate of "cute" retention though, I think. Although mine's started back into the habit he had when a kitten of trying to smother me in my sleep by laying over my mouth and nose, but that's just him being affectionate. He's usually good with being moved to being an earmuff, because he just wants to snuggle.