I'll acknowledge that the 'legend' in the summary made me automatically suspicious of the article.
While the allegations may or may not be true from a criminal or cival standpoint but based on the publicly acknowledged facts Zuckerberg (at best) was a deceitful douchebag. He failed to follow through on his contracted obligations while simultaneously developing a competing platform using many of the same ideas. Whether he actually took code from the project and used it in facebook is unproven either way (from a real standpoint not a legal one) and irrelevant. It would be like claiming that O.J. killing his wife was a 'legend', while he may not have a claim that it is a legend implies that there is no reasonable way an informed individual might conclude that.
Or you could have read TFA or infered from TFS. The study took substituted the 'defendants' photo out for mock jury judgments, however the case details remained identical despite the photo change.
It's almost like they were controlling variables in a scientific study...
Actually the other child was punished as well for violation of the schools policy. She served the same detentions that her friend got for receiving 'illicit' candy.
The whole story is a bit bizarre and the excuse 'the state made me do it' given by the school initially don't match up with those given to a local news station 'they make a big mess and we don't like cleaning them up'. The real reason of not wanting to clean up a frustratingly difficult to remove candy is a perfectly valid justification, though the punishment would still be out of line unless they were a repeat 'offender'. My elementary school at one point banned the roasted wheat snack 'Wheat Crunch' and dry instant ramen noodles following an incident where our janitor slipped on them and injured her back quite badly. While it was a tad rediculous, and led to 5th graders 'smuggling' in Wheat Crunch at inflated prices, it is well within reasonable school policy making.
1) It is being passed by standard procedures used by the house in order to avoid obstructionist behaviour by republicans. Simply because Fox and repulicans are endlessly complaining and making false claims about how 'unprecedented' these procedures are doesn't make it true, it just illustrates that Fox normally does very shallow one-sided reporting about the legislative process. Nothing about it is 'back door' and republicans have used every procedure being discussed themselves, often more frequently.
2) If any regulation amounts to a 'government takeover' then the government already took over 99%+ of the economy. Otherwise this is a completely meritless argument, particularly given that the government already runs the medicare program which a majority of americans are extremely fond of and would like expanded.
3) 70% of people don't want it when asked by Fox and subject to their fear mongering. Asked about all the individual components they are popular and in fact actually less desired than more extreme approaches.
4) I'm sure that the democrats would prefer to do this in a way less prone to being claimed as undemocratic and unprecedented, but the republican obstructionism prevents them from doing this on a straight forward majority vote. If it is such a big deal and should be done in the right way then look to the republicans to change the approach and tone, they are the ones forcing the 'extreme' measures by being unwilling to compromise in any real way or do anything but use any method or lie in their attempt to derail this.
If Fox were actually advocating your "it's unconstitutional, it violates peoples rights, and it's going to put costs off the chart when our country is already massively in debt" line that might be a valid complaint. However a massive quantity of their opinion programs and 'news' programs are focused on false and absurd claims like death panels, abortions, direct bank account access, Marxism, trial lawyer giveaways, imprisonment for not having insurance, refusal of care for the disabled, harm to small business, rationing, and on and on. Until Fox is willing to engage with reality then calling them a 'rabid chicken' is both fair and probably understates the issues since it implies that they can't help themselves rather than being deliberate, manipulative liars.
There are conservatives out there presenting reasoned arguments and having legitamate debate, however they are not within the republican party or fox news.
Certainly children who spend large amounts of time of their extracurricular activities may do slightly more poorly on academics than children who spend a lot of time studying but the correlation is not very strong. Unless you are looking at systems like some Japenese where the majority of time out of school is spent on school related learning, even the most heavy studying student is only spending a couple hours a day doing so. Natural talent, interest, and motivation play as significant a role in learning as quantity of time spent studying. In many ways being extremely intelligent allows someone more leeway in how they spend their time as the studying is not necessary for their success.
My high school was quite interesting because about 60% of our male rugby team and 80% of our female were students in advanced placement courses and other university level academic classes (making up about 5% of the total school population). While many of us might have been able to score marginally higher by spending more time studying, we were all still comfortably getting university acceptances and scholarships without doing so.
Very true, though reading in particular CAN be very well advanced by even moderate quantities of text within video games. When my daughter was 7, she desperately wanted to play World of Warcraft and soon discovered that doing quests was very difficult when you couldn't read the quest text (not that by chat spam you would know this). It provided her with the motivation to focus on her reading skills, because up to that point she had been frustrated by how childish and pointless all of her reading excercises and books were. Having the ability to read clearly linked with the ability to do something she wanted (play the game) was a major turning point in her reading which had been substantially behind.
While technically correct, it is largely misleading to make that claim. The justice department report (http://documents.propublica.org/justice-department-report-on-waterboarding-memos#p=1) clearly covers how the waterboarding used to torture prisoners and the waterboarding used to train special ops to resist torture vary. In case you don't feel like digging through the 289 pages though I will highlight the major differences.
The training method uses a small amount of water applied to a cloth over the prone soldiers face for around 20 seconds. The torture method uses extremely large quantities of saline (because when the used water the amount they swallowed started killing them by extreme electrolyte imbalances) poured over a inclined prisoners cloth covered face for 40 seconds. Now if you can't see how being oxygen deprived for 20 seconds and oxygen deprived and have the sensation of drowning for 40 seconds differ, lets move on.
The training method was NEVER applied more than twice and typically only once. The 'approved' torture method allowed for 6 'pours' of 40 seconds each during a 2-hour session where the prisoner remained strapped to a gurney with his head down. But the good news is that they were only allowed to do this twice per day, except for the extra 4 minutes of supplemental drowning they could add in if they needed. The guidelines allowed them to shackle the prisoner to the roof for up to seven days before waterboarding them, causing extreme discomfort and keeping them awake the entire time, but of course Club Gitmo's spoiled little jihadi's got hand-fed and diapered while they were chained up. Between waterboarding sessions they could look forward to enjoyable pasttimes like being placed in stress positions, being stuffed into a small box, being thrown against the wall, or having hypothermia induced by being doused with ice water.
There are also adorable guidelines on having medics standing by so that prisoners could be pushed close to death without quite going over, and to resuscitate them if those naughty terrorists have the audacity to die on them. Information on keeping them on a liquid diet so that it was less dangerous when they would breath in their own vomit. It reads remarkably similar to a guide on human experimentation that you would expect from the Nazi's.
Remember as well that this was just the 'approved' method. If all those recordings hadn't gotten 'accidentally' destroyed we might know what actually happened and whether it went beyond approved methods. Regardless I can't concieve of how anyone could consider what was done to be 'not torture'.
While technically correct, it is largely misleading to make that claim. The justice department report (http://documents.propublica.org/justice-department-report-on-waterboarding-memos#p=1) clearly covers how the waterboarding used to torture prisoners and the waterboarding used to train special ops to resist torture vary. In case you don't feel like digging through the 289 pages though I will highlight the major differences.
The training method uses a small amount of water applied to a cloth over the prone soldiers face for around 20 seconds. The torture method uses extremely large quantities of saline (because when the used water the amount they swallowed started killing them by extreme electrolyte imbalances) poured over a inclined prisoners cloth covered face for 40 seconds. Now if you can't see how being oxygen deprived for 20 seconds and oxygen deprived and have the sensation of drowning for 40 seconds differ, lets move on.
The training method was NEVER applied more than twice and typically only once. The 'approved' torture method allowed for 6 'pours' of 40 seconds each during a 2-hour session where the prisoner remained strapped to a gurney with his head down. But the good news is that they were only allowed to do this twice per day, except for the extra 4 minutes of supplemental drowning they could add in if they needed. The guidelines allowed them to shackle the prisoner to the roof for up to seven days before waterboarding them, causing extreme discomfort and keeping them awake the entire time, but of course Club Gitmo's spoiled little jihadi's got hand-fed and diapered while they were chained up. Between waterboarding sessions they could look forward to enjoyable pasttimes like being placed in stress positions, being stuffed into a small box, being thrown against the wall, or having hypothermia induced by being doused with ice water.
There are also adorable guidelines on having medics standing by so that prisoners could be pushed close to death without quite going over, and to resuscitate them if those naughty terrorists have the audacity to die on them. Information on keeping them on a liquid diet so that it was less dangerous when they would breath in their own vomit. It reads remarkably similar to a guide on human experimentation that you would expect from the Nazi's.
Remember as well that this was just the 'approved' method. If all those recordings hadn't gotten 'accidentally' destroyed we might know what actually happened and whether it went beyond approved methods. Regardless I can't concieve of how anyone could consider what was done to be 'not torture'.
Of course in the US this only applies to whites and asians, while the opposite the situation for blacks and latinos applies - presumably to balance out the impact.
In addition many games with online authentication systems use the 'Internet connection required to play' line, but most people (who actually bother to read the fine print) don't assume that this requires a single player game to be connected 100% of the time. Expecting to require constant net connection for a multiplayer game is reasonable, expecting the same for a single player is not. For that matter, many people buy single player games so when their internet connection is down.
Particularly because the amount of chatter on Slashdot and elsewhere regarding how a DDOS attack would help 'teach' them how stupid an authentication scheme this was and illustrate why DRM systems always punish the legitamate users and hardly bother the pirates. Even a moderately aware company should have been anticipating an attack and been prepared for it. I wonder if it is something like the fiasco with Demigod where pirated copies crashed the authentication servers attempting to connect.
I expect that regardless of the actual cause (my bet is bad design, poor testing, and a negligable attempted DDOS), that Ubisoft is going to blame 'the pirates' for the issue as an attempt to save face and illustrate what a bunch of dirty, horrible people pirates are and why NEXT time they will need to have an even more intrusive, absurd DRM system. My bet is a DNA testing fecal probe dongle, it is after all the only way they could screw their customers more.
While the idea that 'orphan' books could be made available to the public is very pleasent and downright helpful to scholars, the Opt-Out position Google has taken is fundamentally at odds with the copyright system. US Copyright law does not distinguish the protections it offers to properties based on their commercialization or availabilty and the 1978 changes to the copyright act extending protections to unpublished works clearly indicates that inaction does not negate the protections offered. If the US Congress and Senate wanted to make changes that would allow works that are not being made available to enter public domain or be 'adopted' by non-owners they certainly could and it would even be in line with the original spirit of the copyright (unlike the majority of copyright laws passed since 1909).
Opt-In will certainly result in less books being available and more effort on Google's part but is the only approach that is fundamentally compatible with the law. As any Slashdotter knows once something is digitized and available on the internet, it is virtually impossible to remove it should the public have even the slightest interest in it. How then can the property owner 'reclaim' their rights and remove it from distribution? An author or publisher has a right to control the availability of their works and money collected can not act as sufficient remedy, nor can legal action be pursued against Google as they have been relieved of any ongoing liability for their acts in this regard.
If this is allowed to go forward it creates a precedent that if you make even the vaguest effort to contact the original owner of a work, you may go ahead and publish (and profit) from it provided that you set aside a portion of those profits for the owner should they ever claim it. This could be anything from music, to your child's artwork, to that naughty sextape you made in college.
Honestly I think you give Champions Online too much credit with saying that it isn't crap. You missed the fact that virtually all powers feel identical (except for slightly different animations), the lack of interesting/useful buffs, debuffs, defensive powers or crowd control. Really except for the costume creator and animations this game doesn't have anything going for it. This deeply flawed game compares very unfavorably to CoH most the rest of the MMO genre, which given that CoH is 5 years old and fairly deeply flawed on its own is pretty embarrasing.
This game barely deserves a 5/10, and only because it is remarkably bug free and smooth just completely lacking in the gameplay department.
You are absolutely right that people tend to make video game characters like themselves. Which is why these results shouldn't be surprising to anyone, given the disproportionate number of white men from middle or upper class backgrounds in the game making business. There is nothing inherently wrong with white male characters other than the fact they are viewed as the 'default' character and their prevalence seems to be a form of mild ethnocentrism. 'Writing what you know' turns into a problem of racism when the only people getting to write are from a single group, it isn't like there aren't extremely skilled writers and designers that aren't white that the business' that sell games could hire.
Besides which, games that are set in the U.S. or Western Europe ought to feature significant numbers of non-white characters if they are intended to be representative as they make up significant percentages of the population (Non-Hispanic Whites are only around 60% of the U.S. population). However while games with large amount of customization allow for non-white characters the NPCs remain predominantly white, except for in games that feature crime and violence.
Suspension or revocation of license is based on a test result indicating that you are over the legal limit or refusal to participate in one of said tests after having been informed that failure to do so would result in license suspension
If the issue goes to trial a not guilty verdict will result in these privledges being restored or a DMV admistrative proceding can restore them in the interim if you were not tested, or informed properly as the procedure required. There is no difference in this sort of suspension as holding individuals in custody prior to their trial.
The relevant information from the DMV on this:
The DMV hearing is an administrative proceeding regarding your driving privilege and the circumstances surrounding the arrest, not whether you are innocent or guilty of a criminal act. Only the following issues will be discussed:
If you took a blood or breath or (if applicable) a urine test:
* Did the peace officer have reasonable cause to believe you were driving a motor vehicle in violation of Vehicle Code Section 23140 , 23152 , or 23153 ?
* Were you placed under lawful arrest?
* Were you driving a motor vehicle when you had 0.08% or more by weight of alcohol in your blood?
If you refused or failed to complete a blood, breath test, or (if applicable) a urine test:
* Did the peace officer have reasonable cause to believe you were driving a motor vehicle in violation of Vehicle Code Section 23140 , 23152 , or, 23153 ?
* Were you placed under lawful arrest?
* Were you told that if you refused to submit to or failed to complete a test of your blood, breath, or (when applicable) urine, your driving privilege would be suspended for one year or revoked for two or three years?
* Did you refuse to submit to or failed to complete a blood or breath test, or (if applicable) a urine test after being requested to do so by a peace officer?
Oh there is no real doubt that the charges are baseless. However the definition of child pornography in the US is based on a subjective judgement which (since U.S. vs Dost in 1986) can include fully clothed subjects, judged on whether it is 'lewd and lascivious'.
Since the District Attorney refuses to allow even the defendants lawyers to see the photos that are said to be 'child porn' we are forced to rely on third party reports of their content but based on descriptions there are serious issues raised regarding whether two of these girl's photos should actually qualify.
One girl is reported to be wearing a bra and panties in her photo, revealing nothing more than a two-piece bathing suit would. Even if she were considered to be performing a 'lewd exhibition', the multi-pronged Dost test specifically identified the fact that the children were exhibiting behaviour 'not natural for their age'. Given her being 16, having done this without being coerced, and the widespread nature of this behaviour it could easily be argued that it is infact natural for her age.
A second of the girls photo is said to depict her having stepped out of the shower and having a towel wrapped around herself, tucked under her breasts leaving them exposed. Since child pornography laws have long acknowledged that simple lack of clothing was insufficient qualification (thus your toddler in the bath being safe).
It wouldn't serve as a primary source of ethanol, at least if sanity has anything to do with the decision making. Instead it would serve as an alternative disposal method for organic waste that rather than costing money to dispose of, it would instead bring in some revenue. Pulp mills in particular generate a fairly large amount of cellulosic waste this would be ideal for.
The exact business dealings are not completely clear but the gist of it is that several years ago Cryptic started developing the Marvel MMO. Presumably because their publisher NCSoft was upset about the conflict of interests that could occur bought the City of Heroes franchise and brought most of the support team under their umbrella. Jack Emmert along with a number of senior developers and programmers took Cryptic studios and went their separate ways. For unknown reasons the Marvel MMO was cancelled, however since much of the engine and design work for a superhero MMO had already been completed, and the fact that the dev team were superhero fanatics they acquired another IP for the game. Champions was a big favourite from their old days and they were able to work out a deal to purchase it.
City of Heroes isn't dying per se. However it is quite dated graphically, gameplay has stagnated for a long time, and the new content doesn't provide any particular difference from the old. Their subscription numbers are around 100,000 players with significant spikes briefly after each new update. This income is enough to cover their expenses but not really do much more than that. As well many choices made early in the development have hamstringed their ability to improve the engine and gameplay.
Currently City of Heroes is trucking with a slow loss of players but maintaining historical averages. Once Champions Online and DC Universe Online release it is up in the air what will happen to City of Heroes. While the game has many loyal players, they could easily lose half their population which may make it unviable for NCSoft to continue supporting the game. Likely it would keep running, but all development would be mothballed.
I think that ultimately this is good for the case for Net Neutrality. It is a blatant move that blocks access rather than slowing it which will provoke an outcry even from the computer illiterate. This gives a real world example of what can happen without Net Neutrality to hit back against tiered internet supporters who claim that there will be no real downsides if we allow companies to boost their bottom lines at the expense of consumers.
When you are on the internet it is so very easy to educate yourself. If you had taken just 2 minutes you could have found the answer to this question and saved yourself from seeming ignorant discussing a topic you obviously know nothing about.
The most common GM alteration in North America are Monsanto's Roundup Ready strains. These are resistant to the Roundup weedkiller, which is the liberally sprayed over the fields because it won't affect the crop plant. During the first three years of production herbicide use decreases. After that point the changes in the weed population and growth of Roundup resistant weeds begin to require larger and more frequent sprayings (and often adding other herbicides in the mix).
Insect resistant GM crops are intended to reduce pesticide use but fail. These strains are also effective in the initial stages of use. Much like with herbicide resistant GM plants it is the unintended side effects of disrupting the balance of the ecosystem that causes the problems. These crops often begin to be attacked by insects that had not previously been a problem because the insects that were the primary target of the pesticide previously kept their population in check. As well the insects begin developing resistance to the plant's pesticide reducing its effectiveness.
Studies consistently show that GM crops have a reduced herbicide and pesticide use for their first 3-5 years of use. After that the quantities of chemicals used increases to between 10% to 30% higher than non GM farmers.
That only deals with the specific herbicide and pesticide use issues, ignoring other major negatives like monocultures, high costs, ecological disruption, inability to save seed, soil damage and more.
This isn't a free speech issue, regardless of how spammers and their lawyers like to spin it. It is an issue of public nuisance. If Mr. Jaynes sat there and typed in each email address and sent it off individually there would be no district attorney in the US would charge him.
He has the right to advertise his products, as annoying as you or I might find it. However he doesn't have the right to impair our ability to communicate freely and burden us with the cost of his advertisement anymore than he could blast his advertisements at 250 decibels down the streets in the middle of the night.
Society has plenty of laws 'restricting' free speech to prevent unreasonable harm and interference with others. Noise control laws, parade permitting, and anti-spam laws all have their place and are perfectly constitutional.
Freedom of Speech does not mean immunity from the consequences of that speech.
Imus generated a great deal of negative opinion and while his coverage may have increased, there were a number of advertisers who had threatened to pull their business from the network. The network, not the government pulled his show off the radio. Freedom of Speech only covers the government suppressing speech - private individuals are allowed to ignore or punish speech that they don't agree with in any (legal) way that they choose.
In the Imus case we have a excellent example of social pressure limiting him from a soapbox that gives his attitudes legitimacy. He can call anyone he wants a 'nappy-headed hoe' now, but he will have to do it without his radio show. NBC is under no obligation (other than contractual) to provide him a soapbox, and when it threatened their bottom line they dumped him. Until the latest outrage NBC had tolerated his intolerant speech because none of their sponsors had received any pressure over their presence on his show. I think that this is a great thing - it shows that the free market can enforce a certain amount of decency on the air.
I'll admit that I like it a lot less when the social pressure is coming down on me for an unpopular opinion, but if you can't take the heat then stay out of the kitchen.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll acknowledge that the 'legend' in the summary made me automatically suspicious of the article.
While the allegations may or may not be true from a criminal or cival standpoint but based on the publicly acknowledged facts Zuckerberg (at best) was a deceitful douchebag. He failed to follow through on his contracted obligations while simultaneously developing a competing platform using many of the same ideas. Whether he actually took code from the project and used it in facebook is unproven either way (from a real standpoint not a legal one) and irrelevant. It would be like claiming that O.J. killing his wife was a 'legend', while he may not have a claim that it is a legend implies that there is no reasonable way an informed individual might conclude that.
Or you could have read TFA or infered from TFS. The study took substituted the 'defendants' photo out for mock jury judgments, however the case details remained identical despite the photo change.
It's almost like they were controlling variables in a scientific study...
Actually the other child was punished as well for violation of the schools policy. She served the same detentions that her friend got for receiving 'illicit' candy.
The whole story is a bit bizarre and the excuse 'the state made me do it' given by the school initially don't match up with those given to a local news station 'they make a big mess and we don't like cleaning them up'. The real reason of not wanting to clean up a frustratingly difficult to remove candy is a perfectly valid justification, though the punishment would still be out of line unless they were a repeat 'offender'. My elementary school at one point banned the roasted wheat snack 'Wheat Crunch' and dry instant ramen noodles following an incident where our janitor slipped on them and injured her back quite badly. While it was a tad rediculous, and led to 5th graders 'smuggling' in Wheat Crunch at inflated prices, it is well within reasonable school policy making.
1) It is being passed by standard procedures used by the house in order to avoid obstructionist behaviour by republicans. Simply because Fox and repulicans are endlessly complaining and making false claims about how 'unprecedented' these procedures are doesn't make it true, it just illustrates that Fox normally does very shallow one-sided reporting about the legislative process. Nothing about it is 'back door' and republicans have used every procedure being discussed themselves, often more frequently.
2) If any regulation amounts to a 'government takeover' then the government already took over 99%+ of the economy. Otherwise this is a completely meritless argument, particularly given that the government already runs the medicare program which a majority of americans are extremely fond of and would like expanded.
3) 70% of people don't want it when asked by Fox and subject to their fear mongering. Asked about all the individual components they are popular and in fact actually less desired than more extreme approaches.
4) I'm sure that the democrats would prefer to do this in a way less prone to being claimed as undemocratic and unprecedented, but the republican obstructionism prevents them from doing this on a straight forward majority vote. If it is such a big deal and should be done in the right way then look to the republicans to change the approach and tone, they are the ones forcing the 'extreme' measures by being unwilling to compromise in any real way or do anything but use any method or lie in their attempt to derail this.
If Fox were actually advocating your "it's unconstitutional, it violates peoples rights, and it's going to put costs off the chart when our country is already massively in debt" line that might be a valid complaint. However a massive quantity of their opinion programs and 'news' programs are focused on false and absurd claims like death panels, abortions, direct bank account access, Marxism, trial lawyer giveaways, imprisonment for not having insurance, refusal of care for the disabled, harm to small business, rationing, and on and on. Until Fox is willing to engage with reality then calling them a 'rabid chicken' is both fair and probably understates the issues since it implies that they can't help themselves rather than being deliberate, manipulative liars.
There are conservatives out there presenting reasoned arguments and having legitamate debate, however they are not within the republican party or fox news.
Not really true at all.
Certainly children who spend large amounts of time of their extracurricular activities may do slightly more poorly on academics than children who spend a lot of time studying but the correlation is not very strong. Unless you are looking at systems like some Japenese where the majority of time out of school is spent on school related learning, even the most heavy studying student is only spending a couple hours a day doing so. Natural talent, interest, and motivation play as significant a role in learning as quantity of time spent studying. In many ways being extremely intelligent allows someone more leeway in how they spend their time as the studying is not necessary for their success.
My high school was quite interesting because about 60% of our male rugby team and 80% of our female were students in advanced placement courses and other university level academic classes (making up about 5% of the total school population). While many of us might have been able to score marginally higher by spending more time studying, we were all still comfortably getting university acceptances and scholarships without doing so.
Very true, though reading in particular CAN be very well advanced by even moderate quantities of text within video games. When my daughter was 7, she desperately wanted to play World of Warcraft and soon discovered that doing quests was very difficult when you couldn't read the quest text (not that by chat spam you would know this). It provided her with the motivation to focus on her reading skills, because up to that point she had been frustrated by how childish and pointless all of her reading excercises and books were. Having the ability to read clearly linked with the ability to do something she wanted (play the game) was a major turning point in her reading which had been substantially behind.
Reposted from elsewhere in the thread.
While technically correct, it is largely misleading to make that claim. The justice department report (http://documents.propublica.org/justice-department-report-on-waterboarding-memos#p=1) clearly covers how the waterboarding used to torture prisoners and the waterboarding used to train special ops to resist torture vary. In case you don't feel like digging through the 289 pages though I will highlight the major differences.
The training method uses a small amount of water applied to a cloth over the prone soldiers face for around 20 seconds. The torture method uses extremely large quantities of saline (because when the used water the amount they swallowed started killing them by extreme electrolyte imbalances) poured over a inclined prisoners cloth covered face for 40 seconds. Now if you can't see how being oxygen deprived for 20 seconds and oxygen deprived and have the sensation of drowning for 40 seconds differ, lets move on.
The training method was NEVER applied more than twice and typically only once. The 'approved' torture method allowed for 6 'pours' of 40 seconds each during a 2-hour session where the prisoner remained strapped to a gurney with his head down. But the good news is that they were only allowed to do this twice per day, except for the extra 4 minutes of supplemental drowning they could add in if they needed. The guidelines allowed them to shackle the prisoner to the roof for up to seven days before waterboarding them, causing extreme discomfort and keeping them awake the entire time, but of course Club Gitmo's spoiled little jihadi's got hand-fed and diapered while they were chained up. Between waterboarding sessions they could look forward to enjoyable pasttimes like being placed in stress positions, being stuffed into a small box, being thrown against the wall, or having hypothermia induced by being doused with ice water.
There are also adorable guidelines on having medics standing by so that prisoners could be pushed close to death without quite going over, and to resuscitate them if those naughty terrorists have the audacity to die on them. Information on keeping them on a liquid diet so that it was less dangerous when they would breath in their own vomit. It reads remarkably similar to a guide on human experimentation that you would expect from the Nazi's.
Remember as well that this was just the 'approved' method. If all those recordings hadn't gotten 'accidentally' destroyed we might know what actually happened and whether it went beyond approved methods. Regardless I can't concieve of how anyone could consider what was done to be 'not torture'.
While technically correct, it is largely misleading to make that claim. The justice department report (http://documents.propublica.org/justice-department-report-on-waterboarding-memos#p=1) clearly covers how the waterboarding used to torture prisoners and the waterboarding used to train special ops to resist torture vary. In case you don't feel like digging through the 289 pages though I will highlight the major differences.
The training method uses a small amount of water applied to a cloth over the prone soldiers face for around 20 seconds. The torture method uses extremely large quantities of saline (because when the used water the amount they swallowed started killing them by extreme electrolyte imbalances) poured over a inclined prisoners cloth covered face for 40 seconds. Now if you can't see how being oxygen deprived for 20 seconds and oxygen deprived and have the sensation of drowning for 40 seconds differ, lets move on.
The training method was NEVER applied more than twice and typically only once. The 'approved' torture method allowed for 6 'pours' of 40 seconds each during a 2-hour session where the prisoner remained strapped to a gurney with his head down. But the good news is that they were only allowed to do this twice per day, except for the extra 4 minutes of supplemental drowning they could add in if they needed. The guidelines allowed them to shackle the prisoner to the roof for up to seven days before waterboarding them, causing extreme discomfort and keeping them awake the entire time, but of course Club Gitmo's spoiled little jihadi's got hand-fed and diapered while they were chained up. Between waterboarding sessions they could look forward to enjoyable pasttimes like being placed in stress positions, being stuffed into a small box, being thrown against the wall, or having hypothermia induced by being doused with ice water.
There are also adorable guidelines on having medics standing by so that prisoners could be pushed close to death without quite going over, and to resuscitate them if those naughty terrorists have the audacity to die on them. Information on keeping them on a liquid diet so that it was less dangerous when they would breath in their own vomit. It reads remarkably similar to a guide on human experimentation that you would expect from the Nazi's.
Remember as well that this was just the 'approved' method. If all those recordings hadn't gotten 'accidentally' destroyed we might know what actually happened and whether it went beyond approved methods. Regardless I can't concieve of how anyone could consider what was done to be 'not torture'.
Of course in the US this only applies to whites and asians, while the opposite the situation for blacks and latinos applies - presumably to balance out the impact.
In addition many games with online authentication systems use the 'Internet connection required to play' line, but most people (who actually bother to read the fine print) don't assume that this requires a single player game to be connected 100% of the time. Expecting to require constant net connection for a multiplayer game is reasonable, expecting the same for a single player is not. For that matter, many people buy single player games so when their internet connection is down.
Particularly because the amount of chatter on Slashdot and elsewhere regarding how a DDOS attack would help 'teach' them how stupid an authentication scheme this was and illustrate why DRM systems always punish the legitamate users and hardly bother the pirates. Even a moderately aware company should have been anticipating an attack and been prepared for it. I wonder if it is something like the fiasco with Demigod where pirated copies crashed the authentication servers attempting to connect.
I expect that regardless of the actual cause (my bet is bad design, poor testing, and a negligable attempted DDOS), that Ubisoft is going to blame 'the pirates' for the issue as an attempt to save face and illustrate what a bunch of dirty, horrible people pirates are and why NEXT time they will need to have an even more intrusive, absurd DRM system. My bet is a DNA testing fecal probe dongle, it is after all the only way they could screw their customers more.
While the idea that 'orphan' books could be made available to the public is very pleasent and downright helpful to scholars, the Opt-Out position Google has taken is fundamentally at odds with the copyright system. US Copyright law does not distinguish the protections it offers to properties based on their commercialization or availabilty and the 1978 changes to the copyright act extending protections to unpublished works clearly indicates that inaction does not negate the protections offered. If the US Congress and Senate wanted to make changes that would allow works that are not being made available to enter public domain or be 'adopted' by non-owners they certainly could and it would even be in line with the original spirit of the copyright (unlike the majority of copyright laws passed since 1909).
Opt-In will certainly result in less books being available and more effort on Google's part but is the only approach that is fundamentally compatible with the law. As any Slashdotter knows once something is digitized and available on the internet, it is virtually impossible to remove it should the public have even the slightest interest in it. How then can the property owner 'reclaim' their rights and remove it from distribution? An author or publisher has a right to control the availability of their works and money collected can not act as sufficient remedy, nor can legal action be pursued against Google as they have been relieved of any ongoing liability for their acts in this regard.
If this is allowed to go forward it creates a precedent that if you make even the vaguest effort to contact the original owner of a work, you may go ahead and publish (and profit) from it provided that you set aside a portion of those profits for the owner should they ever claim it. This could be anything from music, to your child's artwork, to that naughty sextape you made in college.
Apprently that old sailors myth that "If you see a Flying Dutch Man, never shall your feet touch land again" had it backwards.
Honestly I think you give Champions Online too much credit with saying that it isn't crap. You missed the fact that virtually all powers feel identical (except for slightly different animations), the lack of interesting/useful buffs, debuffs, defensive powers or crowd control. Really except for the costume creator and animations this game doesn't have anything going for it. This deeply flawed game compares very unfavorably to CoH most the rest of the MMO genre, which given that CoH is 5 years old and fairly deeply flawed on its own is pretty embarrasing.
This game barely deserves a 5/10, and only because it is remarkably bug free and smooth just completely lacking in the gameplay department.
You are absolutely right that people tend to make video game characters like themselves. Which is why these results shouldn't be surprising to anyone, given the disproportionate number of white men from middle or upper class backgrounds in the game making business. There is nothing inherently wrong with white male characters other than the fact they are viewed as the 'default' character and their prevalence seems to be a form of mild ethnocentrism. 'Writing what you know' turns into a problem of racism when the only people getting to write are from a single group, it isn't like there aren't extremely skilled writers and designers that aren't white that the business' that sell games could hire.
Besides which, games that are set in the U.S. or Western Europe ought to feature significant numbers of non-white characters if they are intended to be representative as they make up significant percentages of the population (Non-Hispanic Whites are only around 60% of the U.S. population). However while games with large amount of customization allow for non-white characters the NPCs remain predominantly white, except for in games that feature crime and violence.
If the issue goes to trial a not guilty verdict will result in these privledges being restored or a DMV admistrative proceding can restore them in the interim if you were not tested, or informed properly as the procedure required. There is no difference in this sort of suspension as holding individuals in custody prior to their trial.
The relevant information from the DMV on this:
Oh there is no real doubt that the charges are baseless. However the definition of child pornography in the US is based on a subjective judgement which (since U.S. vs Dost in 1986) can include fully clothed subjects, judged on whether it is 'lewd and lascivious'.
Since the District Attorney refuses to allow even the defendants lawyers to see the photos that are said to be 'child porn' we are forced to rely on third party reports of their content but based on descriptions there are serious issues raised regarding whether two of these girl's photos should actually qualify.
One girl is reported to be wearing a bra and panties in her photo, revealing nothing more than a two-piece bathing suit would. Even if she were considered to be performing a 'lewd exhibition', the multi-pronged Dost test specifically identified the fact that the children were exhibiting behaviour 'not natural for their age'. Given her being 16, having done this without being coerced, and the widespread nature of this behaviour it could easily be argued that it is infact natural for her age.
A second of the girls photo is said to depict her having stepped out of the shower and having a towel wrapped around herself, tucked under her breasts leaving them exposed. Since child pornography laws have long acknowledged that simple lack of clothing was insufficient qualification (thus your toddler in the bath being safe).
It wouldn't serve as a primary source of ethanol, at least if sanity has anything to do with the decision making. Instead it would serve as an alternative disposal method for organic waste that rather than costing money to dispose of, it would instead bring in some revenue. Pulp mills in particular generate a fairly large amount of cellulosic waste this would be ideal for.
The exact business dealings are not completely clear but the gist of it is that several years ago Cryptic started developing the Marvel MMO. Presumably because their publisher NCSoft was upset about the conflict of interests that could occur bought the City of Heroes franchise and brought most of the support team under their umbrella. Jack Emmert along with a number of senior developers and programmers took Cryptic studios and went their separate ways. For unknown reasons the Marvel MMO was cancelled, however since much of the engine and design work for a superhero MMO had already been completed, and the fact that the dev team were superhero fanatics they acquired another IP for the game. Champions was a big favourite from their old days and they were able to work out a deal to purchase it.
City of Heroes isn't dying per se. However it is quite dated graphically, gameplay has stagnated for a long time, and the new content doesn't provide any particular difference from the old. Their subscription numbers are around 100,000 players with significant spikes briefly after each new update. This income is enough to cover their expenses but not really do much more than that. As well many choices made early in the development have hamstringed their ability to improve the engine and gameplay.
Currently City of Heroes is trucking with a slow loss of players but maintaining historical averages. Once Champions Online and DC Universe Online release it is up in the air what will happen to City of Heroes. While the game has many loyal players, they could easily lose half their population which may make it unviable for NCSoft to continue supporting the game. Likely it would keep running, but all development would be mothballed.
I think that ultimately this is good for the case for Net Neutrality. It is a blatant move that blocks access rather than slowing it which will provoke an outcry even from the computer illiterate. This gives a real world example of what can happen without Net Neutrality to hit back against tiered internet supporters who claim that there will be no real downsides if we allow companies to boost their bottom lines at the expense of consumers.
When you are on the internet it is so very easy to educate yourself. If you had taken just 2 minutes you could have found the answer to this question and saved yourself from seeming ignorant discussing a topic you obviously know nothing about.
The most common GM alteration in North America are Monsanto's Roundup Ready strains. These are resistant to the Roundup weedkiller, which is the liberally sprayed over the fields because it won't affect the crop plant. During the first three years of production herbicide use decreases. After that point the changes in the weed population and growth of Roundup resistant weeds begin to require larger and more frequent sprayings (and often adding other herbicides in the mix).
Insect resistant GM crops are intended to reduce pesticide use but fail. These strains are also effective in the initial stages of use. Much like with herbicide resistant GM plants it is the unintended side effects of disrupting the balance of the ecosystem that causes the problems. These crops often begin to be attacked by insects that had not previously been a problem because the insects that were the primary target of the pesticide previously kept their population in check. As well the insects begin developing resistance to the plant's pesticide reducing its effectiveness.
Studies consistently show that GM crops have a reduced herbicide and pesticide use for their first 3-5 years of use. After that the quantities of chemicals used increases to between 10% to 30% higher than non GM farmers.
That only deals with the specific herbicide and pesticide use issues, ignoring other major negatives like monocultures, high costs, ecological disruption, inability to save seed, soil damage and more.
This isn't a free speech issue, regardless of how spammers and their lawyers like to spin it. It is an issue of public nuisance. If Mr. Jaynes sat there and typed in each email address and sent it off individually there would be no district attorney in the US would charge him.
He has the right to advertise his products, as annoying as you or I might find it. However he doesn't have the right to impair our ability to communicate freely and burden us with the cost of his advertisement anymore than he could blast his advertisements at 250 decibels down the streets in the middle of the night.
Society has plenty of laws 'restricting' free speech to prevent unreasonable harm and interference with others. Noise control laws, parade permitting, and anti-spam laws all have their place and are perfectly constitutional.
Freedom of Speech does not mean immunity from the consequences of that speech. Imus generated a great deal of negative opinion and while his coverage may have increased, there were a number of advertisers who had threatened to pull their business from the network. The network, not the government pulled his show off the radio. Freedom of Speech only covers the government suppressing speech - private individuals are allowed to ignore or punish speech that they don't agree with in any (legal) way that they choose. In the Imus case we have a excellent example of social pressure limiting him from a soapbox that gives his attitudes legitimacy. He can call anyone he wants a 'nappy-headed hoe' now, but he will have to do it without his radio show. NBC is under no obligation (other than contractual) to provide him a soapbox, and when it threatened their bottom line they dumped him. Until the latest outrage NBC had tolerated his intolerant speech because none of their sponsors had received any pressure over their presence on his show. I think that this is a great thing - it shows that the free market can enforce a certain amount of decency on the air. I'll admit that I like it a lot less when the social pressure is coming down on me for an unpopular opinion, but if you can't take the heat then stay out of the kitchen.