It sounds to me that they are pitching a device that will take what you say to it, translate it to text, and send that text to someone else. And then when that person replies to you in text, it will read the text to you so that you can then use the speech-to-text recognition to reply to them again. How is this advantageous over just using a phone?
You have now taken SMS technology and made it slower and more error-prone. Why not just... oh, I don't know... call the person on the phone?
Unless Apple is planning some truly revolutionary new input (in terms of computers) on this device, I don't see how it will be able to tell us anything about alien life/air/soil samples. We've seen other tricorder-like devices before; hell we've even discussed them on slashdot before. And this Apple tablet is a long ways from that.
it sure would be nice if mankind was a little bolder.
Don't tell slashdot - slashdot can't do anything about that problem. Tell your US representative. Tell your US Senator. Send a letter to the VP and POTUS. Contact every federal-level elected politician that represents you. The budget - and hence the missions - for NASA are dictated by congress. The NASA budget keeps getting cut because the politicians believe the American people are OK with that happening. If you are not OK with it then you owe it to yourself, your representation, and the rest of the country to say so.
I was at Kennedy over the summer, and I was fortunate enough to be able to see likely the last time we will ever have two shuttles on platform simultaneously. However my timing down there was incompatible with seeing a launch, and I learned something from our NASA tour guide about the launches that I did not know before.
Very, very, few people are allowed to get even somewhat close to the launch. Granted, you can get close enough to feel some of the shockwave, you won't be able to get nearly as close as the media. And unless you have a special pass (which are extremely hard to get) you'll be a long ways away and you'll have to deal with insane traffic at insane times.
As much as I would love to have seen a launch, I think in the end it works out better to watch it on TV.
It seems like for many criminal offenses, the US laws are more severe than the international counterparts anyways; as far as I know very few international fugitives would ever opt to hide out here. So why would interpol even bother to poke around here? I suspect there are more than a few people here in the US who would like to see interpol start enforcing US-style laws in other countries; especially when you see how rabid some Americans get when it comes to international spammers / phishers.
I thought earlier in a different article we were told that the iPhone was the Apple tablet/netbook. Now they are doing a tablet as well? At some point they'll just end up picking off their own product sales and they will become their own worst enemy, as even the most ardent MacFanBois(TM) only want so many Apple products...
You seem to believe that public health is the motivation behind today's drug laws. That is a mistake. If you're sincerely interested in reducing consumption, you would allow people to be productive in their own personal ways, instead of penalizing them for attempting to tune out their miseries after stealing their land and enslaving them(yes, this economic system IS slavery).. You need to focus on less authoritarian methods.. prison is not the answer.
It is a shame that you are not willing to put your name - or even a fake name - behind your reply; we'll never know if you ever bother to read this or reply to it.
That said, I urge you to take a more balanced look at the issue of drug enforcement. If you step back you'll find that the enforcement of drug related offenses in reality rather closely mirrors those of alcohol related offenses. Sure, the pro-pot lobby loves to conjure up horror stories about brutalized old ladies but when you actually get to the bottom of those stories you realize two important things - one that they are exceedingly rare (occuring at about the same rate as most other law enforcement human errors), and two that the actual number of people who face criminal punishment for consumption of drugs (as a fraction of the number who use) is similar to the number of people who face criminal punishment for consumption of alcohol (as a fraction of the number who drink).
The main difference here is that for some reason a significant portion of pot users have sold themselves so thoroughly on factually dubious (at best) "safety" claims that they believe themselves to be in some way better than the local drunkard.
People who want to drink know that if they don't want to get busted for drinking stay home (or take a cab / use a designated driver) and stay out of public. Pot smokers with half a wit to them do the same. I know people who use pot responsibly and have never been in any legal trouble for it.
We all know that.com,.org,.net domains not only are not restricted to sales to people/companies/organizations in the US, they aren't even restricted to being sold by companies in the US.
I know I might be nitpicky here, but why do you feel that.com,.org,.net (and.biz,.name,.info and a plethora others) should only be restricted to the US?
I didn't actually say that, and admittedly when typing my post I was concerned about the possibility someone might read it that way.
The point I was trying to make has more to do with registration of domains. It is trivial for overseas spammers to give the impression of being an American company, and registrar credentials are generally crappy at best.
Sure, we know a lot of the botnet activities that we care about - distributed spamming, distributed hacking, etc... But I suspect that isn't what they want the dedicated IP space for. People already pointed out that if the lion's share of your spam or hacking attempts came from a single IP block, it would be trivial to block it.
Hence I suspect the operators want the IP space for other uses. Consider your average spam - we'll say it asks you to buy viagra through joescheapdrugs.com. Now joescheapdrugs.com needs to be purchased, which requires a registrar. It also needs to be resolved via a DNS server somewhere (which isn't always done by the registrar or ISP). If joescheapdrugs.com were an average spamvertised site, it would likely be hosted in one continent, registered through a registrar in another, and resolved by a DNS in yet another.
The IP space would be useful because the DNS could be done in that range, and once the spammers establish an accredited registrar they could sell themselves domains from there too. We all know that.com,.org,.net domains not only are not restricted to sales to people/companies/organizations in the US, they aren't even restricted to being sold by companies in the US. So by owning IP space, they can actually keep more of their own money for their operations, thus increasing their profit margins. They can offer hosting, DNS, and registration services for anyone who wants to sell anything, and then sell them spamming services as well.
It becomes one-stop-shopping for vendors trying to make a fast buck (or those who don't know better).
It's about removing the law that denies student loans for anyone with a marijuana conviction
If you're concerned about the supposed consequences of that law, then I suggest not smoking pot. Or at the very least, don't go out in public when using or under the influence.
taking someone's education away
That statement is factually incorrect. No law can take someone's education away - you can't force someone to un-learn what they have learned. Even if the law denies them access to certain financial aid channels, that is dramatically different from what you suggest.
punishment/getting caught is far more damaging than the drug itself
That statement is factually dubious at best. It is clearly a statement of your opinion, as opposed to your earlier statement where you seemed to be trying to state fact. Though you should try to be more clear when you are stating your opinion, in comparison to when you believe yourself to be stating something factual.
Looking at that flight plan makes me a bit nauseous. If all flights on the dreamliner go like that, I think I'll drive instead. That distance appears to be less than 40 miles, yet it took over 3 hours; I can do better on my bicycle. On the plus side the flight arrived over 2 hours early so I guess that wasn't too bad.
The reason why laptop batteries are more expensive per unit energy than a lawnmower battery is because you're only willing to tolerate a certain physical size for a laptop battery. On a lawnmower, by comparison, an arbitrarily large battery is generally acceptable provided it is not too extraordinarily heavy.
Once you start talking about TV, though, having the entirety of a one-time special that was poorly received is a bit of a surprise (if Lucas didn't put any effort in to having it saved). The odds of it surviving go down significantly as you go back towards the beginnings of broadcast TV, and if Star Wars had been made only a few years prior (and, again, if Lucas didn't care) then it would have been entirely dependent on the studio to save the footage.
Allow me to point back to the craptacular summary/headline here (thanks again Taco), which stated only that it "still exists". There was no mention of how good the quality was, or where it came from. It is well known that there are many copies floating around on VHS that people recorded themselves. There is no indication yet of where the theater planning to show this obtained their copy from.
Any moment now, someone will try to label this as "ZOMG TEH FASCISTISMS" or "big brother". Nevermind that the FTC is just releasing recommendations for parents in this one, and not actually regulating, restricting, or enforcing anything. How dare a government agency observe something and then make a tremendously obvious recommendation based on those observations.
Congrats, Taco, you have reached new heights in bad story accomplishments:
Meaningless headline - could George Lucas have somehow erased it from existence? I don't even think a Jedi master could accomplish that
No link or meaningful information in the headline - where in Minneapolis? and when?
Poorly written summary - do you have something against capitalization now?
Although I guess if the point is to emphasize just how bad the Star Wars Holiday Special really was, then that may have helped slightly. Though if it is so bad you aren't willing to give a summary that is worth squat, then why even put it on the front page?
I believe your best next move would be to not reply.
Well, you may not be a good lawyer
Funny, I don't recall ever claiming to be a lawyer. I was only stating my concerns over a 22-year-old man with no criminal record taking a felony conviction.
you did predict my next move with surprising accuracy
Being as you did not reply to anything related to the discussion, it seems you did take my advice. Unfortunate that your ego won't allow you to not have the last word.
It is truly a shame that you can't be bothered to actually read what I write, before you go about replying to it. I will point out again where you are making false assumptions, but you probably won't read this either.
When you confidently make a claim, and that claim is simply false
Its too bad you can't be bothered to actually show where these "claims" were made. Because if you went back and actually read where you feel I made such claims you would realize that the claims you are implying were indeed not made.
I have to assume that you are similarly careless when you pontificate about things that I don't know about
You seem to enjoy making assumptions. I won't stop you.
I've said repeatedly that I don't believe we have enough information to second-guess the accused's decision making
We don't have information on the decision making of the accused. When the story was posted the accused had not yet decided to plead guilty or not.
For all we knew at that point he could have decided to fire his appointed attorney and hire one of his own. We should, at the very least, be able to agree that to be within his rights.
You've claimed that the attorney gave his client bad advice.
My statement was that I would have chosen otherwise. You tried to assert that I was in some way commanding the accused to do other than what his appointed attorney was advising him to do, which is patently false.
Well, you've also claimed that ex-cons have no credit, which is false
I claimed that some convicted felons have no credit after being released. Which is true.
You've claimed that felons have no job protection, which is true but irrelevant
No, it is extremely relevant. Just because you don't like the statement doesn't make it untrue. I mentioned it in the context of credit; and income - especially steady income - is one thing that helps build credit.
You've claimed that felons have an inability to purchase property, which is false.
I did not make that claim. We both know that I did not make that claim. Please do not resort to lying, you are not helping your case.
I stated it is difficult for convicted felons to purchase property.
If you went back and actually read my replies you would find a reply where I even agreed with you that there is no law forbidding convicted felons from purchasing property. However, it is not easy for them to do so.
Those are two very different statements, and if you cannot see the difference then there is no purpose in continuing this discussion.
What motivation have you given me to give even one tenth of one hoot what you have to say?
Strange question. However you have already shown - repeatedly - that you are unable, unwilling, or uninterested, in reading most of what I write. You have repeatedly lied about what I have written. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and suspect that your lies have been because you are careless and not malicious.
Making claims that are false, however confidently you state them
That is a puzzling statement from someone who repeatedly resorts to outright lying to try to further their agenda.
...
Now, I will tell you what I think your right move would be from here. It is free advice from me to you; you can do with it what you will.
I believe your best next move would be to not reply. Just walk away from this discussion because you are not doing yourself any favors by continuing. You have been lying repeatedly in regards to my statements, the only question that remains is why you have been doing this. If you just stop replying altogether we can leave that question unanswered. If you choose instead to come back with more lies than maliciousness would seem to be the more correct answer.
I wish I could say I was disappointed with your short, insulting, and overgeneralizing reply. I would, but that would be a lie since that summarizes pretty much every reply you have written so far. Once again you took only a small part of what I said, ignored the context as well as its own text and make an inaccurate statement in reply. Let's review this last one, shall we?
Felons generally have no credit. When you have no credit that becomes a very difficult hurdle to overcome.
How many ex-cons' credit reports have you read? How many do you think an experienced landlord has read?
Did I say that all felons have no credit? No, I did not. Yet you have somehow came to that conclusion anyways. No surprise, based on what you have written so far.
And in the same breath you ask why I'm not giving your opinions more credence.
Funny, the same breath should be the same sentence. You posted two of my sentences, neither of which asked you anything of that sort.
You decided some time ago that you don't like me or anything I say. I accept your opinion of me as your own and I do not seek to change it since I don't see any reason to expect that to be possible anyways.
Try again when you're willing to accept that other people know more than you
You have undoubtedly demonstrated yourself to be far more arrogant than I am in this conversation. You have not, however, conclusively demonstrated any relevant knowledge in excess of what I have provided already.
Now, before you write another short and arrogant reply, ask yourself this - are you actually proving any point? No, you are only proving my point that you are arrogant and pedantic. You don't seem willing to read what I write anyways, so you really should do us all a favor and quit this discussion now. You are not doing yourself any favors here.
spamvertising domains registered in Russia or China
Here's the brilliant thing about the internet, I don't need to be a Russian or Chinese person to register a.ru or.cn address.
I apologize for the lack of clarity, I was referring to where the WHOIS data says the spamvertised domain is located. I prefer to go after the people behind the spamvertised domain, because they are the ones paying the spammer. Other people may prefer to instead go after the owner of the IP address that relayed the spam (though from my point of view botnet spamming has made that a useless effort). Still others may instead prefer to find the IP for the spamvertised website, and go after the ISP responsible for that IP.
So yes, you are absolutely right. I can go buy a domain from.cn,.ru,.at,.uk,.ca or virtually any other TLD you can think of this evening if I want to. And likewise people from other countries are free to buy.com,.org,.net,... addresses as well.
However, as I have stated before, spam is an economic problem. Hence I prefer to follow the money trail behind the spam, and try to cut the spammer off from his money. If we can accomplish that effectively, then the spammer will no longer have incentive to spam and the problem will wither.
But then again where the email comes from is not the root of the problem either.
Sounds like we agree on that as well, though we stated in differently.
Straight from PNAS instead of the NYT summary: Chimpanzees modify recruitment screams as a function of audience composition
The full text should be available to anyone in the US for free, AFAIK (and possibly to those outside the US as well). One thing you will notice on that page is that the NYT is around 2 months late summarizing that article, it was published online in PNAS back in October.
What I'd like to see is statistics on where the spam-producing criminals are, and where are their "customers", rather than counting where the botnet is
That may be a more difficult question than you might expect. Finding the person who is writing the spam and sending instructions to the botnet to send the spam is one thing, but it isn't the only thing. As we have seen before, there are plenty more spammers available to take the place of any who might fall from the top.
The customers, however are another thing entirely. While many of our favorite spammers may be in a few select locations, their customers are generally distributed all over the world - or so we would believe from the WHOIS data. Unfortunately, there isn't generally much better records for the customers than the WHOIS data for the domains that are being spamvertised. And we know that the WHOIS data is itself generally questionable on a good day and utter crap any other day. Of course you could also trace the IP address of the webserver for the spamvertised domain, but that will only lead to to where the site is hosted, which doesn't tell you where the "company" actually is.
I bet Brazilians, Russians or Chinese aren't doing that much good business in selling Viagra (may contain plaster) or Genuine Quartz Rolexes, or more importantly, buying them
As I said earlier, those classifiers depend on who you are trying to describe. I can tell you from my experience that a significant portion of the spam I receive is spamvertising domains registered in Russia or China. And there are often other servers along the way to keep the operation going that are distributed in various places in Pacific Ocean countries, Africa, or South America. Although of course since the registrars are generally in on the deal, they are intentionally posting garbage WHOIS records for the domains in question.
IMHO: if you eliminated the spam that either comes from American criminals
Again that comes down to how you classify the criminals. Spamming is generally an international endeavor now, though.
or which is targeted at Americans, there'd be no spam
I think an argument could be made that not much spam anymore really targets any particular country. I would say that a primary reason why so much spam is written in English is just because it is one of the most read languages on the internet; hence a spam in English has a very good chance of getting to someone who can read English. When Mandarin or Hindi take over we'll see more spam in those languages (I have seen Chinese and Japanese spam for years in some of my inboxes).
Apparently you didn't read what you posted. If it can be shown that the law was applied incorrectly, that would be a legal error. A guilty verdict that did not reasonably consider the facts presented, or was rendered based on questionable fact, can be considered for appeal.
I don't think you understood what I posted as well as you think you did.
I don't think you've read anything that I have posted as well as you think you did. But you are entitled to your opinion, even if you can't back it up with fact.
An example of a legal error would be the judge allowing evidence that should have been suppressed, or a defense that should have been permitted that wasn't allowed to be raised, or something of that nature.
Which is basically what I said.
A jury reaching a verdict that you don't agree with is not a legal error.
Which is not at all what I said.
Just because you keep repeating it will not make it so. No matter how many times you may try to claim it to be so, I never suggested what you are trying to imply.
Which is supported by your complete and utter failure to show my ever suggesting what you believe me to have suggested. But you are welcomed to your opinion, even if it is not supported in any way by facts.
I did not tell anyone what to do. I said what I would do. I did not force my opinion on anyone, though I did say that I very strongly disagree with what his lawyer is telling him to do.
Fine
Well I am glad that we have come to agree that you were factually wrong in your assertion that I was in any way telling someone what to do. At least we can agree on something.
you're entitled to your own uninformed opinion
You haven't offered up any information relevant to the case that goes beyond the summary and article provided here at slashdot. We should then be able to agree that you are equally uninformed about this case.
There could be some very good reason for the accused to take the plea, but you believe there is not, which is your right.
There may also not be a good reason. As we've already seen this is a court-appointed attorney that is suggesting he take the plea bargain. State-appointed defense attorneys are seldom the best at their profession and are often pressured to get as many cases through as possible rather than investing time and effort to aid the defendant towards their best possible outcome.
Have you considered why they are living in rental properties? They likely have multiple reasons, but I suspect one of those reasons is because felons have almost no chance to own real estate.
Each situation is different. Most of my residents, irrespective of criminal background, rent instead of own for one of the following reasons:
No savings
Bad credit
Felons generally have no credit. And they generally have a very difficult time building good credit.
Transience
I believe I already pointed out that convicted felons have no job protection. They can be fired at any time, from any job, for any (or no) reason. It is hard to establish roots when you don't know if you'll have a job tomorrow.
Inability to care for property
How about inability to purchase property? When you have no credit that becomes a very difficult hurdle to overcome.
FYI, there is no law that prevents people with a criminal record from owning real estate.
Can you show where I said that there was?
Of course you cannot. I never said that there was. I just laid out (again) the reasons why it is difficult for convicted felons to purchase property. The law is stacked against them from many ang
Clearly, this shows that the oft-suggested tactic of countering spam with fines, kidnapping, prison, and murder, is working extremely well. Just look at how we are no longer the top country for spam to originate from!
Except that of course it is well known that most spam is pumped out of botnets. And the botnets are usually spread out all over the world. Really, this just tells us that less spamming botnet activity is coming from the US than Brazil in that particular observed time frame. This could be attributed to any of a number of factors.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds to me that they are pitching a device that will take what you say to it, translate it to text, and send that text to someone else. And then when that person replies to you in text, it will read the text to you so that you can then use the speech-to-text recognition to reply to them again. How is this advantageous over just using a phone?
... oh, I don't know ... call the person on the phone?
You have now taken SMS technology and made it slower and more error-prone. Why not just
Unless Apple is planning some truly revolutionary new input (in terms of computers) on this device, I don't see how it will be able to tell us anything about alien life/air/soil samples. We've seen other tricorder-like devices before; hell we've even discussed them on slashdot before. And this Apple tablet is a long ways from that.
it sure would be nice if mankind was a little bolder.
Don't tell slashdot - slashdot can't do anything about that problem. Tell your US representative. Tell your US Senator. Send a letter to the VP and POTUS. Contact every federal-level elected politician that represents you. The budget - and hence the missions - for NASA are dictated by congress. The NASA budget keeps getting cut because the politicians believe the American people are OK with that happening. If you are not OK with it then you owe it to yourself, your representation, and the rest of the country to say so.
see a shuttle launch in person?
I was at Kennedy over the summer, and I was fortunate enough to be able to see likely the last time we will ever have two shuttles on platform simultaneously. However my timing down there was incompatible with seeing a launch, and I learned something from our NASA tour guide about the launches that I did not know before.
Very, very, few people are allowed to get even somewhat close to the launch. Granted, you can get close enough to feel some of the shockwave, you won't be able to get nearly as close as the media. And unless you have a special pass (which are extremely hard to get) you'll be a long ways away and you'll have to deal with insane traffic at insane times.
As much as I would love to have seen a launch, I think in the end it works out better to watch it on TV.
It seems like for many criminal offenses, the US laws are more severe than the international counterparts anyways; as far as I know very few international fugitives would ever opt to hide out here. So why would interpol even bother to poke around here? I suspect there are more than a few people here in the US who would like to see interpol start enforcing US-style laws in other countries; especially when you see how rabid some Americans get when it comes to international spammers / phishers.
I thought earlier in a different article we were told that the iPhone was the Apple tablet/netbook. Now they are doing a tablet as well? At some point they'll just end up picking off their own product sales and they will become their own worst enemy, as even the most ardent MacFanBois(TM) only want so many Apple products...
... just see this as the 40th anniversary of the Unix Epoch.
Perhaps my memory is incorrect, but I thought the difference between the 80386sx and 80386dx was that the dx had a built-in math coprocessor.
You seem to believe that public health is the motivation behind today's drug laws. That is a mistake. If you're sincerely interested in reducing consumption, you would allow people to be productive in their own personal ways, instead of penalizing them for attempting to tune out their miseries after stealing their land and enslaving them(yes, this economic system IS slavery).. You need to focus on less authoritarian methods.. prison is not the answer.
It is a shame that you are not willing to put your name - or even a fake name - behind your reply; we'll never know if you ever bother to read this or reply to it.
That said, I urge you to take a more balanced look at the issue of drug enforcement. If you step back you'll find that the enforcement of drug related offenses in reality rather closely mirrors those of alcohol related offenses. Sure, the pro-pot lobby loves to conjure up horror stories about brutalized old ladies but when you actually get to the bottom of those stories you realize two important things - one that they are exceedingly rare (occuring at about the same rate as most other law enforcement human errors), and two that the actual number of people who face criminal punishment for consumption of drugs (as a fraction of the number who use) is similar to the number of people who face criminal punishment for consumption of alcohol (as a fraction of the number who drink).
The main difference here is that for some reason a significant portion of pot users have sold themselves so thoroughly on factually dubious (at best) "safety" claims that they believe themselves to be in some way better than the local drunkard.
People who want to drink know that if they don't want to get busted for drinking stay home (or take a cab / use a designated driver) and stay out of public. Pot smokers with half a wit to them do the same. I know people who use pot responsibly and have never been in any legal trouble for it.
We all know that .com, .org, .net domains not only are not restricted to sales to people/companies/organizations in the US, they aren't even restricted to being sold by companies in the US.
I know I might be nitpicky here, but why do you feel that .com, .org, .net (and .biz, .name, .info and a plethora others) should only be restricted to the US?
I didn't actually say that, and admittedly when typing my post I was concerned about the possibility someone might read it that way.
The point I was trying to make has more to do with registration of domains. It is trivial for overseas spammers to give the impression of being an American company, and registrar credentials are generally crappy at best.
Sure, we know a lot of the botnet activities that we care about - distributed spamming, distributed hacking, etc... But I suspect that isn't what they want the dedicated IP space for. People already pointed out that if the lion's share of your spam or hacking attempts came from a single IP block, it would be trivial to block it.
.com, .org, .net domains not only are not restricted to sales to people/companies/organizations in the US, they aren't even restricted to being sold by companies in the US. So by owning IP space, they can actually keep more of their own money for their operations, thus increasing their profit margins. They can offer hosting, DNS, and registration services for anyone who wants to sell anything, and then sell them spamming services as well.
Hence I suspect the operators want the IP space for other uses. Consider your average spam - we'll say it asks you to buy viagra through joescheapdrugs.com. Now joescheapdrugs.com needs to be purchased, which requires a registrar. It also needs to be resolved via a DNS server somewhere (which isn't always done by the registrar or ISP). If joescheapdrugs.com were an average spamvertised site, it would likely be hosted in one continent, registered through a registrar in another, and resolved by a DNS in yet another.
The IP space would be useful because the DNS could be done in that range, and once the spammers establish an accredited registrar they could sell themselves domains from there too. We all know that
It becomes one-stop-shopping for vendors trying to make a fast buck (or those who don't know better).
It's about removing the law that denies student loans for anyone with a marijuana conviction
If you're concerned about the supposed consequences of that law, then I suggest not smoking pot. Or at the very least, don't go out in public when using or under the influence.
taking someone's education away
That statement is factually incorrect. No law can take someone's education away - you can't force someone to un-learn what they have learned. Even if the law denies them access to certain financial aid channels, that is dramatically different from what you suggest.
punishment/getting caught is far more damaging than the drug itself
That statement is factually dubious at best. It is clearly a statement of your opinion, as opposed to your earlier statement where you seemed to be trying to state fact. Though you should try to be more clear when you are stating your opinion, in comparison to when you believe yourself to be stating something factual.
Looking at that flight plan makes me a bit nauseous. If all flights on the dreamliner go like that, I think I'll drive instead. That distance appears to be less than 40 miles, yet it took over 3 hours; I can do better on my bicycle. On the plus side the flight arrived over 2 hours early so I guess that wasn't too bad.
The reason why laptop batteries are more expensive per unit energy than a lawnmower battery is because you're only willing to tolerate a certain physical size for a laptop battery. On a lawnmower, by comparison, an arbitrarily large battery is generally acceptable provided it is not too extraordinarily heavy.
Once you start talking about TV, though, having the entirety of a one-time special that was poorly received is a bit of a surprise (if Lucas didn't put any effort in to having it saved). The odds of it surviving go down significantly as you go back towards the beginnings of broadcast TV, and if Star Wars had been made only a few years prior (and, again, if Lucas didn't care) then it would have been entirely dependent on the studio to save the footage.
Allow me to point back to the craptacular summary/headline here (thanks again Taco), which stated only that it "still exists". There was no mention of how good the quality was, or where it came from. It is well known that there are many copies floating around on VHS that people recorded themselves. There is no indication yet of where the theater planning to show this obtained their copy from.
Any moment now, someone will try to label this as "ZOMG TEH FASCISTISMS" or "big brother". Nevermind that the FTC is just releasing recommendations for parents in this one, and not actually regulating, restricting, or enforcing anything. How dare a government agency observe something and then make a tremendously obvious recommendation based on those observations.
Although I guess if the point is to emphasize just how bad the Star Wars Holiday Special really was, then that may have helped slightly. Though if it is so bad you aren't willing to give a summary that is worth squat, then why even put it on the front page?
I believe your best next move would be to not reply.
Well, you may not be a good lawyer
Funny, I don't recall ever claiming to be a lawyer. I was only stating my concerns over a 22-year-old man with no criminal record taking a felony conviction.
you did predict my next move with surprising accuracy
Being as you did not reply to anything related to the discussion, it seems you did take my advice. Unfortunate that your ego won't allow you to not have the last word.
When you confidently make a claim, and that claim is simply false
Its too bad you can't be bothered to actually show where these "claims" were made. Because if you went back and actually read where you feel I made such claims you would realize that the claims you are implying were indeed not made.
I have to assume that you are similarly careless when you pontificate about things that I don't know about
You seem to enjoy making assumptions. I won't stop you.
I've said repeatedly that I don't believe we have enough information to second-guess the accused's decision making
We don't have information on the decision making of the accused. When the story was posted the accused had not yet decided to plead guilty or not.
For all we knew at that point he could have decided to fire his appointed attorney and hire one of his own. We should, at the very least, be able to agree that to be within his rights.
You've claimed that the attorney gave his client bad advice.
My statement was that I would have chosen otherwise. You tried to assert that I was in some way commanding the accused to do other than what his appointed attorney was advising him to do, which is patently false.
Well, you've also claimed that ex-cons have no credit, which is false
I claimed that some convicted felons have no credit after being released. Which is true.
You've claimed that felons have no job protection, which is true but irrelevant
No, it is extremely relevant. Just because you don't like the statement doesn't make it untrue. I mentioned it in the context of credit; and income - especially steady income - is one thing that helps build credit.
You've claimed that felons have an inability to purchase property, which is false.
I did not make that claim. We both know that I did not make that claim. Please do not resort to lying, you are not helping your case.
I stated it is difficult for convicted felons to purchase property.
If you went back and actually read my replies you would find a reply where I even agreed with you that there is no law forbidding convicted felons from purchasing property. However, it is not easy for them to do so.
Those are two very different statements, and if you cannot see the difference then there is no purpose in continuing this discussion.
What motivation have you given me to give even one tenth of one hoot what you have to say?
Strange question. However you have already shown - repeatedly - that you are unable, unwilling, or uninterested, in reading most of what I write. You have repeatedly lied about what I have written. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and suspect that your lies have been because you are careless and not malicious.
Making claims that are false, however confidently you state them
That is a puzzling statement from someone who repeatedly resorts to outright lying to try to further their agenda.
...
Now, I will tell you what I think your right move would be from here. It is free advice from me to you; you can do with it what you will.
I believe your best next move would be to not reply. Just walk away from this discussion because you are not doing yourself any favors by continuing. You have been lying repeatedly in regards to my statements, the only question that remains is why you have been doing this. If you just stop replying altogether we can leave that question unanswered. If you choose instead to come back with more lies than maliciousness would seem to be the more correct answer.
Felons generally have no credit. When you have no credit that becomes a very difficult hurdle to overcome.
How many ex-cons' credit reports have you read? How many do you think an experienced landlord has read?
Did I say that all felons have no credit? No, I did not. Yet you have somehow came to that conclusion anyways. No surprise, based on what you have written so far.
And in the same breath you ask why I'm not giving your opinions more credence.
Funny, the same breath should be the same sentence. You posted two of my sentences, neither of which asked you anything of that sort.
You decided some time ago that you don't like me or anything I say. I accept your opinion of me as your own and I do not seek to change it since I don't see any reason to expect that to be possible anyways.
Try again when you're willing to accept that other people know more than you
You have undoubtedly demonstrated yourself to be far more arrogant than I am in this conversation. You have not, however, conclusively demonstrated any relevant knowledge in excess of what I have provided already.
Now, before you write another short and arrogant reply, ask yourself this - are you actually proving any point? No, you are only proving my point that you are arrogant and pedantic. You don't seem willing to read what I write anyways, so you really should do us all a favor and quit this discussion now. You are not doing yourself any favors here.
spamvertising domains registered in Russia or China
Here's the brilliant thing about the internet, I don't need to be a Russian or Chinese person to register a .ru or .cn address.
I apologize for the lack of clarity, I was referring to where the WHOIS data says the spamvertised domain is located. I prefer to go after the people behind the spamvertised domain, because they are the ones paying the spammer. Other people may prefer to instead go after the owner of the IP address that relayed the spam (though from my point of view botnet spamming has made that a useless effort). Still others may instead prefer to find the IP for the spamvertised website, and go after the ISP responsible for that IP.
.cn, .ru, .at, .uk, .ca or virtually any other TLD you can think of this evening if I want to. And likewise people from other countries are free to buy .com, .org, .net, ... addresses as well.
So yes, you are absolutely right. I can go buy a domain from
However, as I have stated before, spam is an economic problem. Hence I prefer to follow the money trail behind the spam, and try to cut the spammer off from his money. If we can accomplish that effectively, then the spammer will no longer have incentive to spam and the problem will wither.
But then again where the email comes from is not the root of the problem either.
Sounds like we agree on that as well, though we stated in differently.
Straight from PNAS instead of the NYT summary:
Chimpanzees modify recruitment screams as a function of audience composition
The full text should be available to anyone in the US for free, AFAIK (and possibly to those outside the US as well). One thing you will notice on that page is that the NYT is around 2 months late summarizing that article, it was published online in PNAS back in October.
What I'd like to see is statistics on where the spam-producing criminals are, and where are their "customers", rather than counting where the botnet is
That may be a more difficult question than you might expect. Finding the person who is writing the spam and sending instructions to the botnet to send the spam is one thing, but it isn't the only thing. As we have seen before, there are plenty more spammers available to take the place of any who might fall from the top.
The customers, however are another thing entirely. While many of our favorite spammers may be in a few select locations, their customers are generally distributed all over the world - or so we would believe from the WHOIS data. Unfortunately, there isn't generally much better records for the customers than the WHOIS data for the domains that are being spamvertised. And we know that the WHOIS data is itself generally questionable on a good day and utter crap any other day. Of course you could also trace the IP address of the webserver for the spamvertised domain, but that will only lead to to where the site is hosted, which doesn't tell you where the "company" actually is.
I bet Brazilians, Russians or Chinese aren't doing that much good business in selling Viagra (may contain plaster) or Genuine Quartz Rolexes, or more importantly, buying them
As I said earlier, those classifiers depend on who you are trying to describe. I can tell you from my experience that a significant portion of the spam I receive is spamvertising domains registered in Russia or China. And there are often other servers along the way to keep the operation going that are distributed in various places in Pacific Ocean countries, Africa, or South America. Although of course since the registrars are generally in on the deal, they are intentionally posting garbage WHOIS records for the domains in question.
IMHO: if you eliminated the spam that either comes from American criminals
Again that comes down to how you classify the criminals. Spamming is generally an international endeavor now, though.
or which is targeted at Americans, there'd be no spam
I think an argument could be made that not much spam anymore really targets any particular country. I would say that a primary reason why so much spam is written in English is just because it is one of the most read languages on the internet; hence a spam in English has a very good chance of getting to someone who can read English. When Mandarin or Hindi take over we'll see more spam in those languages (I have seen Chinese and Japanese spam for years in some of my inboxes).
Apparently you didn't read what you posted. If it can be shown that the law was applied incorrectly, that would be a legal error. A guilty verdict that did not reasonably consider the facts presented, or was rendered based on questionable fact, can be considered for appeal.
I don't think you understood what I posted as well as you think you did.
I don't think you've read anything that I have posted as well as you think you did. But you are entitled to your opinion, even if you can't back it up with fact.
An example of a legal error would be the judge allowing evidence that should have been suppressed, or a defense that should have been permitted that wasn't allowed to be raised, or something of that nature.
Which is basically what I said.
A jury reaching a verdict that you don't agree with is not a legal error.
Which is not at all what I said.
Just because you keep repeating it will not make it so. No matter how many times you may try to claim it to be so, I never suggested what you are trying to imply.
Which is supported by your complete and utter failure to show my ever suggesting what you believe me to have suggested. But you are welcomed to your opinion, even if it is not supported in any way by facts.
I did not tell anyone what to do. I said what I would do. I did not force my opinion on anyone, though I did say that I very strongly disagree with what his lawyer is telling him to do.
Fine
Well I am glad that we have come to agree that you were factually wrong in your assertion that I was in any way telling someone what to do. At least we can agree on something.
you're entitled to your own uninformed opinion
You haven't offered up any information relevant to the case that goes beyond the summary and article provided here at slashdot. We should then be able to agree that you are equally uninformed about this case.
There could be some very good reason for the accused to take the plea, but you believe there is not, which is your right.
There may also not be a good reason. As we've already seen this is a court-appointed attorney that is suggesting he take the plea bargain. State-appointed defense attorneys are seldom the best at their profession and are often pressured to get as many cases through as possible rather than investing time and effort to aid the defendant towards their best possible outcome.
Have you considered why they are living in rental properties? They likely have multiple reasons, but I suspect one of those reasons is because felons have almost no chance to own real estate.
Each situation is different. Most of my residents, irrespective of criminal background, rent instead of own for one of the following reasons:
No savings
Bad credit
Felons generally have no credit. And they generally have a very difficult time building good credit.
Transience
I believe I already pointed out that convicted felons have no job protection. They can be fired at any time, from any job, for any (or no) reason. It is hard to establish roots when you don't know if you'll have a job tomorrow.
Inability to care for property
How about inability to purchase property? When you have no credit that becomes a very difficult hurdle to overcome.
FYI, there is no law that prevents people with a criminal record from owning real estate.
Can you show where I said that there was?
Of course you cannot. I never said that there was. I just laid out (again) the reasons why it is difficult for convicted felons to purchase property. The law is stacked against them from many ang
Clearly, this shows that the oft-suggested tactic of countering spam with fines, kidnapping, prison, and murder, is working extremely well. Just look at how we are no longer the top country for spam to originate from!
Except that of course it is well known that most spam is pumped out of botnets. And the botnets are usually spread out all over the world. Really, this just tells us that less spamming botnet activity is coming from the US than Brazil in that particular observed time frame. This could be attributed to any of a number of factors.