Ironically, the fact that she owes more money than she can ever possibly pay means that she's now free to download as many songs as she wants. After all, they can't put her in jail (yet), and any further financial penalties are redundant.
"Linux can't run games" is pretty clearly not strictly true.
At the same time, I (and at least a handful of other people I know) are still on Windows because Linux can't support WoW, Starcraft, or any of a number of other popular games. Telling me that other games are also fun and I should just play them instead really doesn't cut it.
A lot of people still use their desktop/laptop as a gaming platform. As long as Linux continues to have basically no support in that arena from game developers, it's going to have a tough time gaining a toehold against Windows.
There's a reason for the pedantry about the definition of stealing. The rhetoric used is extremely important, and the term 'stealing' is both pejorative and inaccurate. Stealing has a clearly defined legal meaning, and file sharing doesn't fit it.
In the case you described, it'd be theft of service of the movie theater -- there's a limited number of seats in a given venue, and you're using their screen and stereo. Yes, it's likely that the theater wouldn't be full, just like the barber in the above example wouldn't necessarily have other clients waiting. So sneaking in is essentially 'stealing service' from the theater. However, I have a hard time seeing it as cheating the movie's creator, which is what it sounds like you're trying to argue here.
Actually, if I remember right, the druid is great as the party healer starting around 5th or 7th level. You don't ever cast "Cure X Wounds", you use summoning spells to bring out unicorns that can each cast Cure Moderate Wounds multiple times per day with a touch of their horn. And you can still take your normal actions while they're healing your party.
There's a lot of brokenness that can come out of the summoning and wild shaping, but it takes a lot of research and dedicated powergaming that I just don't care for. If you play a druid more flavorfully -- I had one that used the 2nd level spell Flame Blade and dual wielded them, for example -- you don't dominate the game mechanically like you can if you exploit the class to its full potential.
You're thinking of parody. I'm pretty sure that's protected under the US Constitution (though IANAL, as well.) However, I'm also pretty sure it's *NOT* protected under UK government. I didn't RTFA, but I'm assuming you mean the Chelsea in England, which means they may have a legal leg to stand on.
Be that as it may, the Indiana state legislature did actually vote on it, though the bill didn't pass. At least, so claims The Joy of Pi. (I don't have an exact date for you, but I seem to recall it being in the late 1800's.)
To the best of my knowledge, no state has actually passed a law regulating the value of pi.
"percentage of people able to locate the countries they're currently invading on a world map."
I think most Americans can do that. It's pretty easy to locate the US on a map or globe, then color in everything outside the continental US as "area we're invading".
(Alaska and Hawaii get classified as 'collateral damage'.)
That sounds like the lineup at The Forge's booth at GenCon.:)
I picked up a copy of Sorcerer and The Mountain Witch (I think) last year, and still haven't had a chance to play them because the people I game with in my hometown are dyed-in-the-wool D&D players. They seem like really good games, though. Novel, rules-light systems that focus more on the human aspect of RPGs than the rules interactions.
If you think it's hard to make an imbalancing character, go check out the Character Optimization forum on the Wizard's forums. (I used to be a regular there; I can't dig up a link for you here because I'm at work, but it's easy to find.)
It's less the case with the material from the core books, but there are some pretty ridiculous things you can do to make absurdly overpowered characters with stuff from the expansion books.
That's not the way it works. Two wrongs don't make a right.
In order to serve a DMCA notice, you have to be the copyright holder (or an agent thereof). If only a single work was wrongly taken down from scribd by the issuance of a DMCA notification, the SFWA still falsely represented their rights to that copyright. That means their action still constitutes perjury, even if all of the other takedowns were legitimately their copyrights.
I believe the OP claimed a per person figure -- still not necessarily accurate, but one that will definitely be smaller than the per student number you claimed.
The clauses in contracts requiring arbitration are bad news.
There are two basic kinds of arbitration -- mandatory and voluntary. Mandatory arbitration, ironically, is less legally binding. Precendent in the US is that contractual arbitration clauses constitute voluntary arbitration, and as such, *are* legally binding. What that means is that if you have a problem with the company, you have to go to whatever arbitration agency the company uses, and try to argue your case to an arbiter who has a vested interest in retaining business ties with that company. And if you lose in that voluntary arbitration, you effectively have no appeal.
By the sound of it, this ruling -- against an unfair arbitration clause -- is a step in the right direction.
(IANAL, but the above information comes from a business law class.)
I agree wholeheartedly with the court's findings -- people have an expectation of privacy when sending (hardcopy) written correspondence, and it makes sense to extend that privelege to the digital realm as well.
It's just a shame that the right decision comes down on the side of the spammer.
If you really believe you can document everything and that they've violated confidentiality, you should probably get a lawyer, and almost definitely not post details on public forums like Slashdot. I think even posting as much as you have would give your hypothetical lawyer heartburn.
I've had no trouble with anything I've gotten from PNY. Though in this case, the reason I paid double for the PNY drive was that the U3 drive was on sale for ~50% off.
Am I the only person out there who finds "U3 technology" to be complete crap? I actually paid double the price to get a PNY 1G flash drive instead of SanDisk, because it was just a hard drive and didn't have unremovable bundled software like SanDisk's drives do.
I don't want an undeletable application layer between me and my data, thankyouverymuch. I'm paying for the storage space, not their software.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought we were done with Imperial units after the rebels blew up the Death Star.
Ironically, the fact that she owes more money than she can ever possibly pay means that she's now free to download as many songs as she wants. After all, they can't put her in jail (yet), and any further financial penalties are redundant.
"Linux can't run games" is pretty clearly not strictly true.
At the same time, I (and at least a handful of other people I know) are still on Windows because Linux can't support WoW, Starcraft, or any of a number of other popular games. Telling me that other games are also fun and I should just play them instead really doesn't cut it.
A lot of people still use their desktop/laptop as a gaming platform. As long as Linux continues to have basically no support in that arena from game developers, it's going to have a tough time gaining a toehold against Windows.
There's a reason for the pedantry about the definition of stealing. The rhetoric used is extremely important, and the term 'stealing' is both pejorative and inaccurate. Stealing has a clearly defined legal meaning, and file sharing doesn't fit it.
In the case you described, it'd be theft of service of the movie theater -- there's a limited number of seats in a given venue, and you're using their screen and stereo. Yes, it's likely that the theater wouldn't be full, just like the barber in the above example wouldn't necessarily have other clients waiting. So sneaking in is essentially 'stealing service' from the theater. However, I have a hard time seeing it as cheating the movie's creator, which is what it sounds like you're trying to argue here.
Actually, if I remember right, the druid is great as the party healer starting around 5th or 7th level. You don't ever cast "Cure X Wounds", you use summoning spells to bring out unicorns that can each cast Cure Moderate Wounds multiple times per day with a touch of their horn. And you can still take your normal actions while they're healing your party.
There's a lot of brokenness that can come out of the summoning and wild shaping, but it takes a lot of research and dedicated powergaming that I just don't care for. If you play a druid more flavorfully -- I had one that used the 2nd level spell Flame Blade and dual wielded them, for example -- you don't dominate the game mechanically like you can if you exploit the class to its full potential.
You're thinking of parody. I'm pretty sure that's protected under the US Constitution (though IANAL, as well.) However, I'm also pretty sure it's *NOT* protected under UK government. I didn't RTFA, but I'm assuming you mean the Chelsea in England, which means they may have a legal leg to stand on.
Bother. Link didn't work:
http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Pi-David-Blatner/dp/0802775624/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4306547-9692143?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193681689&sr=8-1
Be that as it may, the Indiana state legislature did actually vote on it, though the bill didn't pass. At least, so claims The Joy of Pi. (I don't have an exact date for you, but I seem to recall it being in the late 1800's.)
To the best of my knowledge, no state has actually passed a law regulating the value of pi.
"percentage of people able to locate the countries they're currently invading on a world map."
I think most Americans can do that. It's pretty easy to locate the US on a map or globe, then color in everything outside the continental US as "area we're invading".
(Alaska and Hawaii get classified as 'collateral damage'.)
That sounds like the lineup at The Forge's booth at GenCon. :)
I picked up a copy of Sorcerer and The Mountain Witch (I think) last year, and still haven't had a chance to play them because the people I game with in my hometown are dyed-in-the-wool D&D players. They seem like really good games, though. Novel, rules-light systems that focus more on the human aspect of RPGs than the rules interactions.
If you think it's hard to make an imbalancing character, go check out the Character Optimization forum on the Wizard's forums. (I used to be a regular there; I can't dig up a link for you here because I'm at work, but it's easy to find.)
It's less the case with the material from the core books, but there are some pretty ridiculous things you can do to make absurdly overpowered characters with stuff from the expansion books.
It's pronounced "Ryu".
Some people have peanut allergies so severe that even talking about peanuts is potentially fatal.
CAD are currently worth slightly more than USD.
I don't think so. He opposed copyright infringement until he did research that showed him it wasn't bad, as he had previously thought.
Someone mod this person "+1 Terrifyingly accurate".
That's not the way it works. Two wrongs don't make a right.
In order to serve a DMCA notice, you have to be the copyright holder (or an agent thereof). If only a single work was wrongly taken down from scribd by the issuance of a DMCA notification, the SFWA still falsely represented their rights to that copyright. That means their action still constitutes perjury, even if all of the other takedowns were legitimately their copyrights.
(IANAL, please supply your own grain of salt.)
Ah, but is that per student or per person?
I believe the OP claimed a per person figure -- still not necessarily accurate, but one that will definitely be smaller than the per student number you claimed.
The clauses in contracts requiring arbitration are bad news.
There are two basic kinds of arbitration -- mandatory and voluntary. Mandatory arbitration, ironically, is less legally binding. Precendent in the US is that contractual arbitration clauses constitute voluntary arbitration, and as such, *are* legally binding. What that means is that if you have a problem with the company, you have to go to whatever arbitration agency the company uses, and try to argue your case to an arbiter who has a vested interest in retaining business ties with that company. And if you lose in that voluntary arbitration, you effectively have no appeal.
By the sound of it, this ruling -- against an unfair arbitration clause -- is a step in the right direction.
(IANAL, but the above information comes from a business law class.)
I agree wholeheartedly with the court's findings -- people have an expectation of privacy when sending (hardcopy) written correspondence, and it makes sense to extend that privelege to the digital realm as well.
It's just a shame that the right decision comes down on the side of the spammer.
If you really believe you can document everything and that they've violated confidentiality, you should probably get a lawyer, and almost definitely not post details on public forums like Slashdot. I think even posting as much as you have would give your hypothetical lawyer heartburn.
That said, IANAL, nor do I play one on TV.
I've had no trouble with anything I've gotten from PNY. Though in this case, the reason I paid double for the PNY drive was that the U3 drive was on sale for ~50% off.
Am I the only person out there who finds "U3 technology" to be complete crap? I actually paid double the price to get a PNY 1G flash drive instead of SanDisk, because it was just a hard drive and didn't have unremovable bundled software like SanDisk's drives do.
I don't want an undeletable application layer between me and my data, thankyouverymuch. I'm paying for the storage space, not their software.
I don't suppose you have a reference for that research? Id be interested to read it.
I can just picture the NASA folks controlling the robots with an interface based off of Lemmings.