...why did he tell them he will put the info on the black market? Virginia paying him off doesn't deprive him of the data, so he can sell the info anyways- alerting people to the risk will devalue the information, and in the event he gets caught they have another charge to follow up on. Sure, the average person might react to the threat, but he knows the FBI will be called up, and they have plenty of experience with threats like this I would assume.
Agreed. Basic econ should be a required course in high school, and courses later in the curriculum can apply economic theory and logic to help people learn how to reason. Not everyone is comfortable with mathematical proofs or rigorous scientific theory, but logic involving money is easy to relate to. If the average American had some basic reasoning tools, we would all be much better off (except the politicians taking advantage of cluelessness).
Bob: But..but officer, what did I do wrong? What law did I break?
Cop: "While in the United States of America, it is unlawful to be in possession of any items capable of the mass production and / or spread of fir"
Bob: What? I think that should mean "fire".
Cop: Well, they ran out of characters and it says fir, so that pinecone in your hand there is an illegal item. I will need to take that as evidence.
On the Rezko case: it becaome national news with Obama's campaign, but it was not national when it was just a Chicago story back in October 2006. I should have picked a better example, since it is one of the rare exceptions when a corruption case has reason to be widely known.
The Tribune regularly reports about what Chicago politicians are doing, and their editorial board loves to rail against them and ask how the crooks are still in office. Not to mention Mike Royko who wrote for the Tribune, being one of the most well-known muckracker jounalists of recent history. They even have a page just on corruption: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/corruption/.
Sure, the convictions are what make Chicago seem dishonest, but I doubt many people outside Chicago know about the recent Tony Rezko case, so it is not the convictions themselves that give Chicago its name. The only reason everyone knows of the city as the most corrupt is because the Tribune does a good job making everyone aware of what is going on. Funny you should use the man that tried to get Tribune staff fired as an example why the paper dishonestly favors the government.
If the question is taken to be asking about a cyber attack on a military base, then of course not, but I take the question as: if we have another Pearl Harbor, is it legitimate? In that case, yes it may be a legitimate response when faced with the threat of full-scale war. I just hope that if they do so they have a good plan that necessitates a lack of power, and that works quickly so civilians don't come to much harm. Unfortunately, as far as I know every major war since the American Civil War has pulled the civilians into the conflict (starting famously with Sherman's march to the sea), so trying to spare their civilians would at best draw out the conflict, and at worst put us at a serious disadvantage. Of course, if we have reason to believe our civilians are to be spared harm, we should take care to reciprocate as far as we can reasonably justify.
My youngest brother with spinabifida has had over a dozen surgeries, so my parents are veterans at dealing with hospital "organization". They often talk about how they have to vigilantly keep record of everything doctors say or do, and keep an entire history on-hand, and frequently had to refer to all this information to make sure the nurses and doctors were on top of everything. Talking with other parents of children with spinabifida, they found almost everyone sees the same problems. So yes, of the complaints about what went wrong for this guy are things that happen far too often. I don't know what can be attributed to the database and what is just bad organization on the hospital's part, but I would be surprised if that many doctors and nurses would let such problems continue if they could directly solve them, so I expect this guy's arguments about the design of the system are accurate. At the very least, there is no question that the system needs a major overhaul for the sake of the safety of the patients.
Example of an intercepted IM conversation:
AC1: I'm thinking to get a new car next week
AC2: Sweet, what colour are you getting?
AC1: Dude? "colour"?
AC2: I didn't put that 'u' there...
The computer only needs to alternate between two questions: "Ham and cheese on rye?" and "Do they make them for men?". Throw in the occasional "A trick question!" for completeness.
As mentioned in other stories this past week, the judge was a member of some groups that have agendas, and is in a leadership position for two of them I believe. I think at least one group is, like you say, simply a means of staying on top of current issues and being aware of the law, but that is not the case for all the groups he belongs to. I'm not pro-piracy, but I'd rather the pirates win than have these big companies keep extending control over our governments.
Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star -- located only 20.5 light-years away [...] in just 3.15 days.
The planet orbits a star 20.5ly away from it in just over 3 days? I figured if superluminal travel existed it would involve quarks or virtual particles, not entire planets! Not to mention I'm surprised that 20.5ly is apparently a small distance to orbit from ("only 20.5 light years away").
So then the question is whether it would be a problem if active submission were an option. Frequent submissions found to be copies could get you ignored in the future, but considering spam websites exist because they are cheap to set up, it might not do much good.
If the complaining companies submit the pages with new material to search engines as it gets published, the engine could use timestamps to quickly know if it was the first submitted. If you don't actively submit your material and get it timestamped, and it matches something else, you lose to anyone that did. It could go one step further and check the repeat sites for links back to the original. If a site repeatedly has no link it gets buried deeper in search results.
I don't know much about how search engines work so please correct me if I'm saying something unintelligent.
You seem to use broad criticisms like this against the RIAA frequently, which is a common sign that someone is overly generalizing and their argument relies on ignoring the details. I have become a little wary of your criticisms due to the lack of concessions and obvious bias. It almost seems possible that the RIAA knows what it is doing in being so incompetent, since it makes me doubt your arguments despite being unable to find any real reason to do so other than the fact that arguments are not supposed to be so strong yet one-sided.
Sorry to bore non-fans of entomology:
The term "Snake oil" comes from the name of the Seneca River. Oil naturally bubbles up to the surface, which shady salesmen used to jar up and sell as a cure-all. Seneca oil has since been corrupted into snake oil.
There is money in programming because FOSS doesn't provide for the demands of the market. If there is no copyright, I think FOSS will more or less be the same, and the closed source market will just go away, leaving a crippled market and reduced society welfare. The biggest "if" is whether FOSS fills the void. A lack of commercial products would increase demand for FOSS, but as far as I know, FOSS just covers widely used programs (OS, word processing...), IT utilities and small programs- it doesn't get into corporate programs. Until you find people so dedicated that they'll develop software for corporate use for free, FOSS is not the solution.
By the way, secrecy won't work too well. Every company would have to develop their own software and tightly control it, there would be no sharing. A company may want to sell their software to another, but then a competitor could copy it and sell it at a lower price, not having paid any development costs. Corporate costs would go up and go to the consumer, and productivity would go down due to excessive redundancy and scarcity of resources (good programmers). This sounds a lot like regions for DVD's, iTunes, etc. which many on this site seem adamantly opposed to.
I'm no expert, so maybe you have a better argued theory on what a world without copyright would be like, but I don't see how society welfare could be the same or higher. Based on the way I see it, copyright is a needed "subsidy" to reach the efficient market solution, given a reasonable copyright length.
Slashdot Mirror
To filter out most of the bad ideas, just ask people whether they want to pay $0.07 or 0.07 cents.
I hope they pick my idea: hold a competition to provide $9 million to someone with the best idea on how to help the world.
...why did he tell them he will put the info on the black market? Virginia paying him off doesn't deprive him of the data, so he can sell the info anyways- alerting people to the risk will devalue the information, and in the event he gets caught they have another charge to follow up on. Sure, the average person might react to the threat, but he knows the FBI will be called up, and they have plenty of experience with threats like this I would assume.
Agreed. Basic econ should be a required course in high school, and courses later in the curriculum can apply economic theory and logic to help people learn how to reason. Not everyone is comfortable with mathematical proofs or rigorous scientific theory, but logic involving money is easy to relate to. If the average American had some basic reasoning tools, we would all be much better off (except the politicians taking advantage of cluelessness).
Bob: But..but officer, what did I do wrong? What law did I break? Cop: "While in the United States of America, it is unlawful to be in possession of any items capable of the mass production and / or spread of fir" Bob: What? I think that should mean "fire". Cop: Well, they ran out of characters and it says fir, so that pinecone in your hand there is an illegal item. I will need to take that as evidence.
On the Rezko case: it becaome national news with Obama's campaign, but it was not national when it was just a Chicago story back in October 2006. I should have picked a better example, since it is one of the rare exceptions when a corruption case has reason to be widely known.
The Tribune regularly reports about what Chicago politicians are doing, and their editorial board loves to rail against them and ask how the crooks are still in office. Not to mention Mike Royko who wrote for the Tribune, being one of the most well-known muckracker jounalists of recent history. They even have a page just on corruption: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/corruption/.
Sure, the convictions are what make Chicago seem dishonest, but I doubt many people outside Chicago know about the recent Tony Rezko case, so it is not the convictions themselves that give Chicago its name. The only reason everyone knows of the city as the most corrupt is because the Tribune does a good job making everyone aware of what is going on. Funny you should use the man that tried to get Tribune staff fired as an example why the paper dishonestly favors the government.
And it was all based on The Ring of Niblung by Wagner.
even then the Total war was stopped before reaching its logical conclusion: 100% annihilation of the enemy.
Yeah, I'm reminded of this every time I see France on the map.
If the question is taken to be asking about a cyber attack on a military base, then of course not, but I take the question as: if we have another Pearl Harbor, is it legitimate? In that case, yes it may be a legitimate response when faced with the threat of full-scale war. I just hope that if they do so they have a good plan that necessitates a lack of power, and that works quickly so civilians don't come to much harm. Unfortunately, as far as I know every major war since the American Civil War has pulled the civilians into the conflict (starting famously with Sherman's march to the sea), so trying to spare their civilians would at best draw out the conflict, and at worst put us at a serious disadvantage. Of course, if we have reason to believe our civilians are to be spared harm, we should take care to reciprocate as far as we can reasonably justify.
Playing copyrighted music out in the open like that?! Better hope the RIAA doesn't get wind of this.
Did you even read the summary? Their music wards off pests.
Any system can only be as good as the people that use it
Lies! The metric system is good, but that would imply the French are good. Therefore, your statement must be false.
My youngest brother with spinabifida has had over a dozen surgeries, so my parents are veterans at dealing with hospital "organization". They often talk about how they have to vigilantly keep record of everything doctors say or do, and keep an entire history on-hand, and frequently had to refer to all this information to make sure the nurses and doctors were on top of everything. Talking with other parents of children with spinabifida, they found almost everyone sees the same problems. So yes, of the complaints about what went wrong for this guy are things that happen far too often. I don't know what can be attributed to the database and what is just bad organization on the hospital's part, but I would be surprised if that many doctors and nurses would let such problems continue if they could directly solve them, so I expect this guy's arguments about the design of the system are accurate. At the very least, there is no question that the system needs a major overhaul for the sake of the safety of the patients.
Example of an intercepted IM conversation:
AC1: I'm thinking to get a new car next week
AC2: Sweet, what colour are you getting?
AC1: Dude? "colour"?
AC2: I didn't put that 'u' there...
The computer only needs to alternate between two questions: "Ham and cheese on rye?" and "Do they make them for men?". Throw in the occasional "A trick question!" for completeness.
Mayans = the new Godwin?
The UN should pass a resolution
If I didn't know better, I'd say you were joking. Everyone knows the UN can't do anything.
Preventative health care is cheaper than treatment. No health care is cheaper than treatment too, but that is not what the GP is saying.
As mentioned in other stories this past week, the judge was a member of some groups that have agendas, and is in a leadership position for two of them I believe. I think at least one group is, like you say, simply a means of staying on top of current issues and being aware of the law, but that is not the case for all the groups he belongs to. I'm not pro-piracy, but I'd rather the pirates win than have these big companies keep extending control over our governments.
Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star -- located only 20.5 light-years away [...] in just 3.15 days.
The planet orbits a star 20.5ly away from it in just over 3 days? I figured if superluminal travel existed it would involve quarks or virtual particles, not entire planets! Not to mention I'm surprised that 20.5ly is apparently a small distance to orbit from ("only 20.5 light years away").
So then the question is whether it would be a problem if active submission were an option. Frequent submissions found to be copies could get you ignored in the future, but considering spam websites exist because they are cheap to set up, it might not do much good.
If the complaining companies submit the pages with new material to search engines as it gets published, the engine could use timestamps to quickly know if it was the first submitted. If you don't actively submit your material and get it timestamped, and it matches something else, you lose to anyone that did. It could go one step further and check the repeat sites for links back to the original. If a site repeatedly has no link it gets buried deeper in search results.
I don't know much about how search engines work so please correct me if I'm saying something unintelligent.
The motion was based on nothing but lies
You seem to use broad criticisms like this against the RIAA frequently, which is a common sign that someone is overly generalizing and their argument relies on ignoring the details. I have become a little wary of your criticisms due to the lack of concessions and obvious bias. It almost seems possible that the RIAA knows what it is doing in being so incompetent, since it makes me doubt your arguments despite being unable to find any real reason to do so other than the fact that arguments are not supposed to be so strong yet one-sided.
Sorry to bore non-fans of entomology:
The term "Snake oil" comes from the name of the Seneca River. Oil naturally bubbles up to the surface, which shady salesmen used to jar up and sell as a cure-all. Seneca oil has since been corrupted into snake oil.
There is money in programming because FOSS doesn't provide for the demands of the market. If there is no copyright, I think FOSS will more or less be the same, and the closed source market will just go away, leaving a crippled market and reduced society welfare. The biggest "if" is whether FOSS fills the void. A lack of commercial products would increase demand for FOSS, but as far as I know, FOSS just covers widely used programs (OS, word processing...), IT utilities and small programs- it doesn't get into corporate programs. Until you find people so dedicated that they'll develop software for corporate use for free, FOSS is not the solution.
By the way, secrecy won't work too well. Every company would have to develop their own software and tightly control it, there would be no sharing. A company may want to sell their software to another, but then a competitor could copy it and sell it at a lower price, not having paid any development costs. Corporate costs would go up and go to the consumer, and productivity would go down due to excessive redundancy and scarcity of resources (good programmers). This sounds a lot like regions for DVD's, iTunes, etc. which many on this site seem adamantly opposed to.
I'm no expert, so maybe you have a better argued theory on what a world without copyright would be like, but I don't see how society welfare could be the same or higher. Based on the way I see it, copyright is a needed "subsidy" to reach the efficient market solution, given a reasonable copyright length.