If you're a shoplifter, and you need a pair of scissors (or more likely, a bolt cutter) to open the package, they have succeeded.
After all, once the damn thing is paid for, the manufacturer certainly doesn't care how hard it is to open. They've got theirs. Whereas losses from pilferage take (prospective) money out of their pocket, so THAT is not gonna happen if they have any say in the matter.
I'm surprised nobody has filed a class action suit against them for the packaging. I'm sure more than enough people have gotten hurt or damaged the item itself.
An anecdote: I judged at a middle and high school science/engineering fair myself once, a few years ago now. It was an... interesting experience. Before the judging began, we held a meeting in which the lead judge reminded jurors to "pick winners based on creativity and hard work of the CHILD, not the parents". Whenever possible, we tried to interview the kids to see if they had any inkling of the project contents; this was usually the best way to determine if the parents did the project or not.
From what I saw that day, I would say half at best did the work themselves. One kid even admitted that his dad was an engineer and came up with the design, and he more or less just watched and took down notes (the parents had walked off when I came to his booth, so I guess they weren't around to stop him from being an honest little kid). I didn't even get the impression that he liked it much; more that the parents pushed him to doing it.
I did not want to discourage interest in science, especially if the parents are really trying hard to encourage their kids, but at the end of the day I awarded my votes to the less visually impressive projects that were very obviously done by the kids. One was a simple experiment with growing plants in certain soil conditions. I can't remember exactly what the additive was. But nothing fancy. But here we got to the booth and the kid was beaming and excited to show off the plants, and demonstrated a decent grasp of scientific method (trying to control conditions, etc.). I gave her more points than the equivalent of the "quantum qubits" project.
I haven't tried doing it again since then because honestly it made me feel discouraged. There were very few students truly interested in doing a science project, that were able to find a project interesting to them. Most of the projects struck me as either "completely cobbled together last minute in order to prevent a failing grade in science class", or "forced to do a particular project by overbearing parents that want the most spectacular project possible". I can see where it is very hard to judge in that environment because the helicopter parents will demand 1st prize when their kids don't deserve it. The fact that I was allowed to be a "secret" judge helped a bit that particular time. I imagine most people just thought I was a curious parent wandering around asking basic questions.
Parents living vicariously through their kids. What else is new? Sports, beauty pageants, science fairs. Its all the same. And it doesn't matter whether the parents are smart or dumb, PhDs or GEDs, we're all ruled by our emotions.
It only applies to foreign nationals who are arrested overseas (i.e. not on American soil). If you're a citizen or a legal immigrant, you're safe. If you're arrested in America, you're safe. It's not a good law, but my god, does anyone on this site have any idea what it even says?
Oh, ok. Other governments won't reciprocate AT ALL. Nope. And I don't give a flying fuck about other completely innocent people, because only US citizens are people (and corporations, my friend ®). Everyone else can rot in detention for eternity.
I don't see why we should ever approve visas to any naturalized citizen who renounces their citizenship.
I don't care about the tax reasons, that's a red herring as far as I'm concerned.
As far as I know, it was US policy in the past to refuse visas to ex-citizens, it's a good policy and we should continue to have it.
It is not a right for foreign nationals to visit the US, and visiting can be regulated with almost no restriction (I can't think of any limitations, maybe for diplomats)
I don't care one way another about the policy. What I CARE about is 1/3 of the government wasting their time on one fucking person. If its existing policy to deny visas, then fine, let existing Immigration employees handle it, not the damn Senate.
Would the damn Senate please GTFO of meddling in individual cases, please? Terry Schiavo, Eduardo Saverin? Dear useless fucking politicans, please address the problems of the HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of citizens first.
And if you must legislate over 1 "person", do so for the fucking "corporations are people too my friend".
It is indeed not illegal to sell used games (doctrine of first sale), BUT it is not legally required either, so hardware manufacturers are free to build their devices in such a way that they tie first usage to a particular user. And of course they can use DMCA to ensure that people are not legally allowed to modify the consoles in order to play used games.
So the law is kinda on Sony's side in this case.
True, but they are circumventing the spirit of the law. This would be similar to if car manufacturers also tied first usage of a vehicle to the original owner. The ECU is locked to YOU. The moment you sell it...and you're "free" to sell it, the car goes into demo mode, rendering it essentially worthless. How long do you think such a strategy would last, despite it being legal to do so?
Wow, this nutjob is a bio ETHICS professor? If this guy is teaching ethics, what are the unethical professors teaching?
While were at it, why not bioengineer fertility limits too? That's solves your population problem. Or even better, Justin Timberlake style, put built it life limits at 20 years. So we'll be planet eating, midgets that have 20 years of life. Or better yet, we should engineer people so we move like a sloth, therefore consuming less energy.
At that point, why bother living? We could just all be put in a medically induced coma, plug into WoW permanently and enjoy our PZEV, carbonless, greenhouse gas free existence.
Screw this "bioethics" professor. This ideological shift of controlling and manipulating individuals for the good of the whole shit is getting ridiculous.
And where are we going to get the money do to this?
But then again, I gotta be honest with you. I am only really concerned about keeping my sports cars and style of life for my lifetime.
I won't be around in 50 years...so, really don't care what happens then.
Don't sell yourself short. You could live to be 100. Or at least preserve your head in a jar.
As for the solution. We don't need to dig up everything and rebuild. We can START by simply changing our current city planning to penalize suburban sprawl. Or encourage it, but giving increased bonus funding to schools that are part of the new planning strategy. Home prices are largely tied to schools. Simply put, make the schools in denser cities better and more people will go there.
And mandate more open spaces for parks and recreation. Reduce the incentives for living in suburbia. For those who want to live in the wild, open spaces, that's fine. They're a small % of the population and their footprint will be negligible.
You'll never get rid of cars completely and thats not the goal. The goal is to get as much of the population to live closer, share common resources and make mass transportation more viable.
What is your suggestion then? Rip up all the cities, force everyone to move to cities...rip up and redo all the infrastructure?
Especially given the current state of the economy, how do you propose we pay for all of this?
I'm just trying to figure out how we'd redo Houston, that alone would be a major endeavor.....huge spralling city, with nothing but highways around. How would we do that one?
The more you delay and procrastinate, the more drastic your solution needs to be. If I have a cavity in my tooth, the longer I delay, the more drastic the fix. If I have a leaky roof, the more I delay in fixing it, the greater the cost and effort. The more we delay and do business-as-usual regarding a limited resource like oil, the more drastic the solution will be. This is a law of nature. Its not politics. Its just how things fucking work.
So you choose. Deal with now. Or...piss and complain how it will cost too much now and do nothing and wait and get even more fucked 50 years from now.
Call the rest of us back when someone makes an electric car that can go as far as a gas car, as fast as a gas car, and has passenger room and a sticker price and operating costs comparable to gas cars. When that happens, people will buy them, and companies will be in one quick hurry to sell them.
Really? You want a new technology to match or beat EVERYTHING of the old tech right now, including the price? If everyone had your attitude, we'd still be using CRT TVs. The first plasma displays were ridiculously expensive and performed worse than CRTs (worse contrast ratios).
But over time as people began to adopt them, R&D and economies of scale improved so that their performance as well as price improved. Its an iterative process fueled by the gradual increasing support of the new technology. Electric cars cannot match ICE cars now at every metric. No new tech can, cars or otherwise.
But electric cars could easily have a place in society. Most daily driving IS short distance runs. Even most commutes are under 50 miles one way. And many households have more than 1 car. Its conceivable to own 1 electric car for the daily short runs and keep the gasoline car for the occasional long distance hauls. I think as a whole, gas consumption would be reduced significantly. I know for my situation, it would be reduced 95% at a huge cost savings.
Profit motive is universal, it becomes problematic when a group with a monopoly on force, AKA the government, has a stake. Where communism is the popular ownership of the means of production, communism is in fact directly responsible. If these were wholly private companies there would less of a conflict of interest for separate government agencies to prosecute breaches of existing regulation. You and others commenting on this keep closing your eyes to the similarities and dissimilarities because it undermines your ideological belief. Both the US and China have regulations and regulatory bodies, but China has a far greater problem with government being both the offender and the prosecutor. This is a systemic problem that occurs here as well, not because of that evil, evil capitalism, but the simple and more direct matter that it remains a conflict of interest for government to police itself.
Whether through government conflict of interest (communist or otherwise), corrupt government or less government - corporations will pollute indiscriminately. The net effect is that factories don't get regulated and so China's polluted landscape is EXACTLY what could happen in the US if we continue to let corporations erode EPA regulation and enforcement.
Who the hell cares whether its through communist conflict of interest or a democracy infiltrated by corporate interest? Or for that matter, a group of nutjobs that think no government will somehow make these corporations suddenly stop fucking up the environment?
Indeed, what people are blind to in this matter is that China is demonstrating what happens when government is doing everything. People are so ignorant they think there are no environmental regulations in China, but China has regulations and equivalent of the EPA (even mentioned in the summary, the Environmental Ministry).
The problem is that because China's industries are still significantly state-owned there is an insurmountable conflict of interest. The state is effectively asked to prosecute itself, and in a one-party authoritarian system where all dissent is violently crushed, the motive to protect profitable state industries is higher than the motivation to protect citizens from harm. The Chinese regime is not sufficiently accountable to its people which it more profitably subjugates than protects.
All of China's pollution problems have nothing to do with communism and everything to do with capitalism - the factories pollute because its more profitable. Its not political ideology, its fucking money. And its that same money that would drive our own corporations to [i]try[/i] - they lobby Congress to relax regulations, they fund horseshit anti global warming "studies" and try to convince the dumbass public that its a good idea to shit where you eat.
The "auto insurance" canard. There is a big difference between compelling someone (with force) to purchase a product as a condition of exercising a privilege (driving) and compelling someone to purchase a product as a condition of being alive.
Yet that difference is irrelevant to the REASON why auto-insurance was mandated. The reasons why auto-insurance was mandated are similar to why health insurance is mandated - the number of uninsured individuals was causing economic inefficiencies and inequalities that began to be overwhelming. These can be mitigated and controlled by mandated insurance.
The fact that owning a vehicle is a personal choice hardly factored into the equation, although I'm sure the same wingnuts made vehement accusations of socialism and communism at the time. In hindsight, they all see the benefits now.
It is the point. Why? There is no need. Dindn't need that shit growing up, don't need it now. I mean, really? they don't see them enough in school all day? The teacher is not supposed to be the kids "friend", they are supposed to be teaching kids, period.
Oh. I get it. YOU don't see a need so it should be illegal? The world doesn't revolve around you. And really? "You didn't have it when you were growing up" is an argument? Holy shit.
Let me enlighten your mind. Kids use facebook as a primary means of communication. "Friending" on facebook doesn't mean you're actually friends you fucking moron. It just means you can now communicate with each other. And since kids use FB so often, its one of the most efficient ways to communicate with the students and get instant responses.
I pay for cableTV so I get all those channels. how the hell is it illegal for me to download a TV Show that aired on a TV channel I PAY FOR to watch it later?
Because the laws of the land, in combination with the terms you agreed to with your cable and internet service, say so.
Its like people think they arent responsible for the laws of their land or for the agreements they sign. If you dont like the terms, dont sign the agreement (regarding software licensing, DRM, etc). If you dont like the laws, change how you vote. But dont try to push some "I can do whatever I want and then act outraged when the courts disagree" nonsense, part of being an adult is that you put childish ideas behind you..
There's many times where you SHOULD say fuck the law. It was the LAW that made slavery legal. And it was "illegal", "lawbreaking" slaves that dared escape from their masters. And it took a damn war to make change, not stupid letters to their congressman. And It was the fucking LAW that made Rosa Parks a criminal. It wasn't the fucking voting booth that made change. It was people breaking stupid ass laws and going to jail that did it. And don't try to argue that slavery is different than corrupt copyright law. Of course it is dumbass. The point isn't the level of injustice, but rather that injustice is sometimes best overcome via civil disobedience.
How hard is it to take the bulbs to your local Lowes or Home Depot? Both offer CFL recycling. What? You didn't know that? Gee, it sure is hard to find answers to questions. Better just sit around blindly criticizing, it sure is doing wonders for our nation.
And to everyone who insists on the anecdotal "well this one CFL i bought burned out after only a few months" I will go ahead and throw in: "well I keep incandescents or halogens in the 'entertaining' spaces of my house, and the bulbs simply *never* last more than a year (and these are the nice sylvania or GE bulbs that go for $1-$5 each). They must all be trash. Any savings by using incandescents/halogens is pointless!"
Anecdotal check and mate.
Its hard to take individual kinds of trash to individual places to dispose of them when that process is multiplied. So far, I have to go to separate places to dispose of my alkaline batteries, my used motor oil, my electronics, my CFLs, etc, etc. I do these because I value the environment, but its a fucking hassle. One LESS thing to have to individually/specially dispose of helps save what little time I have.
If you take a human being of very low intelligence, and throw a stick and ask them to go get it for you, s/he'll trot off happily, pick it up, bring it back to you, and possibly drool in the process.
If you take a very intelligent human being, and throw a stick and ask them to go get it for you, s/he'll look at you like you're daft, and get on with doing something else.
Ergo: the difference between dogs and cats, and why I consider cats more intelligent:-)
Uh, intelligent people do that all the time. Do you have a boss? Yeah, guess what, you're fetching sticks for a reward. I fetch sticks for my children, for my wife, for my friends and neighbors. And they do it for me. And sometimes I do it for a complete stranger and my only reward is a pat on the head (ie "thank you").
But you know what doesn't fetch a stick? My kid's pet gecko. The inability to be trained doesn't make it intelligent.
Absolutely. I wonder how many investigations the government launches for lost property being sold on ebay or craigslist. This is a complete waste of tax payer money when the state of CA is freaking BANKRUPT. I know Apple is HURTING for money. Their stock prices will plummet, world economies will fail, dogs and cats living together...mass hysteria, if we don't punish those involved in this despicable crime against humani...err Apple Corp.
Yes millions of dollars are involved, but I don't think that much damage was done to Apple. What was primarily stolen was Apple's "thunder". Its not like the secret recipe to Coke was stolen and divulged to the public. And there are many crimes where millions of dollars are stolen or scammed from the public and government doesn't put anywhere near the same level of effort in prosecution. I dunno, maybe its the cynic in me, but I feel its another example of corporation > actual people.
I don't doubt what Gizmodo did was illegal. But was it worth the bankrupt state of California to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions to pursue this? There are thousands of stolen goods sold on craigslist. Why doesn't CA go after each of those? I've known friends who've had their cars stolen. Police took a report. Case closed.
This ruling is ridiculous. Just because data is in RAM doesn't mean I can just capture it at will. RAM is not a document damn it! If a physical analogy must be made for simple minds to comprehend, RAM is more like a freaking swirling, turbulent ocean. Logging data is intrusive and expensive and may require significant software engineering. This requires spending time and money that the **AA fools should be doing not torrentspy.
If the judge wants RAM, then guess what? TS should do a memory dump and the **AA retards can sift through the GB of data for their precious little IPs. That judge is retard.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure it is.
Who created the devine creator?
In fact the idea of a devine creator is 2x as silly, since it requires that the devine creator was created and from nothing.
What came before the Big Bang?
If you're a shoplifter, and you need a pair of scissors (or more likely, a bolt cutter) to open the package, they have succeeded.
After all, once the damn thing is paid for, the manufacturer certainly doesn't care how hard it is to open. They've got theirs. Whereas losses from pilferage take (prospective) money out of their pocket, so THAT is not gonna happen if they have any say in the matter.
I'm surprised nobody has filed a class action suit against them for the packaging. I'm sure more than enough people have gotten hurt or damaged the item itself.
Sentencing should be done by jury too, not the judges. Never trust ONE person to make the right decision.
An anecdote: I judged at a middle and high school science/engineering fair myself once, a few years ago now. It was an ... interesting experience. Before the judging began, we held a meeting in which the lead judge reminded jurors to "pick winners based on creativity and hard work of the CHILD, not the parents". Whenever possible, we tried to interview the kids to see if they had any inkling of the project contents; this was usually the best way to determine if the parents did the project or not.
From what I saw that day, I would say half at best did the work themselves. One kid even admitted that his dad was an engineer and came up with the design, and he more or less just watched and took down notes (the parents had walked off when I came to his booth, so I guess they weren't around to stop him from being an honest little kid). I didn't even get the impression that he liked it much; more that the parents pushed him to doing it.
I did not want to discourage interest in science, especially if the parents are really trying hard to encourage their kids, but at the end of the day I awarded my votes to the less visually impressive projects that were very obviously done by the kids. One was a simple experiment with growing plants in certain soil conditions. I can't remember exactly what the additive was. But nothing fancy. But here we got to the booth and the kid was beaming and excited to show off the plants, and demonstrated a decent grasp of scientific method (trying to control conditions, etc.). I gave her more points than the equivalent of the "quantum qubits" project.
I haven't tried doing it again since then because honestly it made me feel discouraged. There were very few students truly interested in doing a science project, that were able to find a project interesting to them. Most of the projects struck me as either "completely cobbled together last minute in order to prevent a failing grade in science class", or "forced to do a particular project by overbearing parents that want the most spectacular project possible". I can see where it is very hard to judge in that environment because the helicopter parents will demand 1st prize when their kids don't deserve it. The fact that I was allowed to be a "secret" judge helped a bit that particular time. I imagine most people just thought I was a curious parent wandering around asking basic questions.
Parents living vicariously through their kids. What else is new? Sports, beauty pageants, science fairs. Its all the same. And it doesn't matter whether the parents are smart or dumb, PhDs or GEDs, we're all ruled by our emotions.
It only applies to foreign nationals who are arrested overseas (i.e. not on American soil). If you're a citizen or a legal immigrant, you're safe. If you're arrested in America, you're safe. It's not a good law, but my god, does anyone on this site have any idea what it even says?
Oh, ok. Other governments won't reciprocate AT ALL. Nope. And I don't give a flying fuck about other completely innocent people, because only US citizens are people (and corporations, my friend ®). Everyone else can rot in detention for eternity.
I don't see why we should ever approve visas to any naturalized citizen who renounces their citizenship. I don't care about the tax reasons, that's a red herring as far as I'm concerned. As far as I know, it was US policy in the past to refuse visas to ex-citizens, it's a good policy and we should continue to have it.
It is not a right for foreign nationals to visit the US, and visiting can be regulated with almost no restriction (I can't think of any limitations, maybe for diplomats)
I don't care one way another about the policy. What I CARE about is 1/3 of the government wasting their time on one fucking person. If its existing policy to deny visas, then fine, let existing Immigration employees handle it, not the damn Senate.
Would the damn Senate please GTFO of meddling in individual cases, please? Terry Schiavo, Eduardo Saverin? Dear useless fucking politicans, please address the problems of the HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of citizens first. And if you must legislate over 1 "person", do so for the fucking "corporations are people too my friend".
It is indeed not illegal to sell used games (doctrine of first sale), BUT it is not legally required either, so hardware manufacturers are free to build their devices in such a way that they tie first usage to a particular user. And of course they can use DMCA to ensure that people are not legally allowed to modify the consoles in order to play used games. So the law is kinda on Sony's side in this case.
True, but they are circumventing the spirit of the law. This would be similar to if car manufacturers also tied first usage of a vehicle to the original owner. The ECU is locked to YOU. The moment you sell it...and you're "free" to sell it, the car goes into demo mode, rendering it essentially worthless. How long do you think such a strategy would last, despite it being legal to do so?
So THAT explains why aliens are skinny, little grey midg...er little people.
I for one, can't wait to look like them.
Wow, this nutjob is a bio ETHICS professor? If this guy is teaching ethics, what are the unethical professors teaching? While were at it, why not bioengineer fertility limits too? That's solves your population problem. Or even better, Justin Timberlake style, put built it life limits at 20 years. So we'll be planet eating, midgets that have 20 years of life. Or better yet, we should engineer people so we move like a sloth, therefore consuming less energy.
At that point, why bother living? We could just all be put in a medically induced coma, plug into WoW permanently and enjoy our PZEV, carbonless, greenhouse gas free existence.
Screw this "bioethics" professor. This ideological shift of controlling and manipulating individuals for the good of the whole shit is getting ridiculous.
And where are we going to get the money do to this?
But then again, I gotta be honest with you. I am only really concerned about keeping my sports cars and style of life for my lifetime.
I won't be around in 50 years...so, really don't care what happens then.
Don't sell yourself short. You could live to be 100. Or at least preserve your head in a jar.
As for the solution. We don't need to dig up everything and rebuild. We can START by simply changing our current city planning to penalize suburban sprawl. Or encourage it, but giving increased bonus funding to schools that are part of the new planning strategy. Home prices are largely tied to schools. Simply put, make the schools in denser cities better and more people will go there.
And mandate more open spaces for parks and recreation. Reduce the incentives for living in suburbia. For those who want to live in the wild, open spaces, that's fine. They're a small % of the population and their footprint will be negligible.
You'll never get rid of cars completely and thats not the goal. The goal is to get as much of the population to live closer, share common resources and make mass transportation more viable.
What is your suggestion then? Rip up all the cities, force everyone to move to cities...rip up and redo all the infrastructure?
Especially given the current state of the economy, how do you propose we pay for all of this?
I'm just trying to figure out how we'd redo Houston, that alone would be a major endeavor.....huge spralling city, with nothing but highways around. How would we do that one?
The more you delay and procrastinate, the more drastic your solution needs to be. If I have a cavity in my tooth, the longer I delay, the more drastic the fix. If I have a leaky roof, the more I delay in fixing it, the greater the cost and effort. The more we delay and do business-as-usual regarding a limited resource like oil, the more drastic the solution will be. This is a law of nature. Its not politics. Its just how things fucking work.
So you choose. Deal with now. Or...piss and complain how it will cost too much now and do nothing and wait and get even more fucked 50 years from now.
Call the rest of us back when someone makes an electric car that can go as far as a gas car, as fast as a gas car, and has passenger room and a sticker price and operating costs comparable to gas cars. When that happens, people will buy them, and companies will be in one quick hurry to sell them.
Really? You want a new technology to match or beat EVERYTHING of the old tech right now, including the price? If everyone had your attitude, we'd still be using CRT TVs. The first plasma displays were ridiculously expensive and performed worse than CRTs (worse contrast ratios).
But over time as people began to adopt them, R&D and economies of scale improved so that their performance as well as price improved. Its an iterative process fueled by the gradual increasing support of the new technology. Electric cars cannot match ICE cars now at every metric. No new tech can, cars or otherwise.
But electric cars could easily have a place in society. Most daily driving IS short distance runs. Even most commutes are under 50 miles one way. And many households have more than 1 car. Its conceivable to own 1 electric car for the daily short runs and keep the gasoline car for the occasional long distance hauls. I think as a whole, gas consumption would be reduced significantly. I know for my situation, it would be reduced 95% at a huge cost savings.
Profit motive is universal, it becomes problematic when a group with a monopoly on force, AKA the government, has a stake. Where communism is the popular ownership of the means of production, communism is in fact directly responsible. If these were wholly private companies there would less of a conflict of interest for separate government agencies to prosecute breaches of existing regulation. You and others commenting on this keep closing your eyes to the similarities and dissimilarities because it undermines your ideological belief. Both the US and China have regulations and regulatory bodies, but China has a far greater problem with government being both the offender and the prosecutor. This is a systemic problem that occurs here as well, not because of that evil, evil capitalism, but the simple and more direct matter that it remains a conflict of interest for government to police itself.
Whether through government conflict of interest (communist or otherwise), corrupt government or less government - corporations will pollute indiscriminately. The net effect is that factories don't get regulated and so China's polluted landscape is EXACTLY what could happen in the US if we continue to let corporations erode EPA regulation and enforcement.
Who the hell cares whether its through communist conflict of interest or a democracy infiltrated by corporate interest? Or for that matter, a group of nutjobs that think no government will somehow make these corporations suddenly stop fucking up the environment?
Indeed, what people are blind to in this matter is that China is demonstrating what happens when government is doing everything. People are so ignorant they think there are no environmental regulations in China, but China has regulations and equivalent of the EPA (even mentioned in the summary, the Environmental Ministry). The problem is that because China's industries are still significantly state-owned there is an insurmountable conflict of interest. The state is effectively asked to prosecute itself, and in a one-party authoritarian system where all dissent is violently crushed, the motive to protect profitable state industries is higher than the motivation to protect citizens from harm. The Chinese regime is not sufficiently accountable to its people which it more profitably subjugates than protects.
All of China's pollution problems have nothing to do with communism and everything to do with capitalism - the factories pollute because its more profitable. Its not political ideology, its fucking money. And its that same money that would drive our own corporations to [i]try[/i] - they lobby Congress to relax regulations, they fund horseshit anti global warming "studies" and try to convince the dumbass public that its a good idea to shit where you eat.
The "auto insurance" canard. There is a big difference between compelling someone (with force) to purchase a product as a condition of exercising a privilege (driving) and compelling someone to purchase a product as a condition of being alive.
Yet that difference is irrelevant to the REASON why auto-insurance was mandated. The reasons why auto-insurance was mandated are similar to why health insurance is mandated - the number of uninsured individuals was causing economic inefficiencies and inequalities that began to be overwhelming. These can be mitigated and controlled by mandated insurance. The fact that owning a vehicle is a personal choice hardly factored into the equation, although I'm sure the same wingnuts made vehement accusations of socialism and communism at the time. In hindsight, they all see the benefits now.
It is the point. Why? There is no need. Dindn't need that shit growing up, don't need it now. I mean, really? they don't see them enough in school all day? The teacher is not supposed to be the kids "friend", they are supposed to be teaching kids, period.
Oh. I get it. YOU don't see a need so it should be illegal? The world doesn't revolve around you. And really? "You didn't have it when you were growing up" is an argument? Holy shit. Let me enlighten your mind. Kids use facebook as a primary means of communication. "Friending" on facebook doesn't mean you're actually friends you fucking moron. It just means you can now communicate with each other. And since kids use FB so often, its one of the most efficient ways to communicate with the students and get instant responses.
I pay for cableTV so I get all those channels. how the hell is it illegal for me to download a TV Show that aired on a TV channel I PAY FOR to watch it later?
Because the laws of the land, in combination with the terms you agreed to with your cable and internet service, say so.
Its like people think they arent responsible for the laws of their land or for the agreements they sign. If you dont like the terms, dont sign the agreement (regarding software licensing, DRM, etc). If you dont like the laws, change how you vote. But dont try to push some "I can do whatever I want and then act outraged when the courts disagree" nonsense, part of being an adult is that you put childish ideas behind you..
There's many times where you SHOULD say fuck the law. It was the LAW that made slavery legal. And it was "illegal", "lawbreaking" slaves that dared escape from their masters. And it took a damn war to make change, not stupid letters to their congressman. And It was the fucking LAW that made Rosa Parks a criminal. It wasn't the fucking voting booth that made change. It was people breaking stupid ass laws and going to jail that did it. And don't try to argue that slavery is different than corrupt copyright law. Of course it is dumbass. The point isn't the level of injustice, but rather that injustice is sometimes best overcome via civil disobedience.
How hard is it to take the bulbs to your local Lowes or Home Depot? Both offer CFL recycling. What? You didn't know that? Gee, it sure is hard to find answers to questions. Better just sit around blindly criticizing, it sure is doing wonders for our nation.
And to everyone who insists on the anecdotal "well this one CFL i bought burned out after only a few months" I will go ahead and throw in: "well I keep incandescents or halogens in the 'entertaining' spaces of my house, and the bulbs simply *never* last more than a year (and these are the nice sylvania or GE bulbs that go for $1-$5 each). They must all be trash. Any savings by using incandescents/halogens is pointless!"
Anecdotal check and mate.
Its hard to take individual kinds of trash to individual places to dispose of them when that process is multiplied. So far, I have to go to separate places to dispose of my alkaline batteries, my used motor oil, my electronics, my CFLs, etc, etc. I do these because I value the environment, but its a fucking hassle. One LESS thing to have to individually/specially dispose of helps save what little time I have.
An efficiency standard that incands can't meet. Yeah, that's a ban, unless you're unable to mentally connect the dots.
I've always considered it thusly:
If you take a human being of very low intelligence, and throw a stick and ask them to go get it for you, s/he'll trot off happily, pick it up, bring it back to you, and possibly drool in the process.
If you take a very intelligent human being, and throw a stick and ask them to go get it for you, s/he'll look at you like you're daft, and get on with doing something else.
Ergo: the difference between dogs and cats, and why I consider cats more intelligent :-)
Uh, intelligent people do that all the time. Do you have a boss? Yeah, guess what, you're fetching sticks for a reward. I fetch sticks for my children, for my wife, for my friends and neighbors. And they do it for me. And sometimes I do it for a complete stranger and my only reward is a pat on the head (ie "thank you"). But you know what doesn't fetch a stick? My kid's pet gecko. The inability to be trained doesn't make it intelligent.
Absolutely. I wonder how many investigations the government launches for lost property being sold on ebay or craigslist. This is a complete waste of tax payer money when the state of CA is freaking BANKRUPT. I know Apple is HURTING for money. Their stock prices will plummet, world economies will fail, dogs and cats living together...mass hysteria, if we don't punish those involved in this despicable crime against humani...err Apple Corp.
Yes millions of dollars are involved, but I don't think that much damage was done to Apple. What was primarily stolen was Apple's "thunder". Its not like the secret recipe to Coke was stolen and divulged to the public. And there are many crimes where millions of dollars are stolen or scammed from the public and government doesn't put anywhere near the same level of effort in prosecution. I dunno, maybe its the cynic in me, but I feel its another example of corporation > actual people.
I don't doubt what Gizmodo did was illegal. But was it worth the bankrupt state of California to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions to pursue this? There are thousands of stolen goods sold on craigslist. Why doesn't CA go after each of those? I've known friends who've had their cars stolen. Police took a report. Case closed.
This ruling is ridiculous. Just because data is in RAM doesn't mean I can just capture it at will. RAM is not a document damn it! If a physical analogy must be made for simple minds to comprehend, RAM is more like a freaking swirling, turbulent ocean. Logging data is intrusive and expensive and may require significant software engineering. This requires spending time and money that the **AA fools should be doing not torrentspy. If the judge wants RAM, then guess what? TS should do a memory dump and the **AA retards can sift through the GB of data for their precious little IPs. That judge is retard.