I'm 27. I played the Fallouts (less Tactics) religiously, and both System Shocks before Bioshock. I still think Bioshock deserved the vast majority of the hype it got. (Some of the nonsense about the story being the best thing since sliced bread, I felt, was a little misplaced or over-exaggerated, but other than that...)
Why can't it just be good in its own right? Virtually everything is a rehash. You can't possibly expect every game to be Portal, and I don't think you can reasonably expect people to only get excited once every ten years when a Portal-class game comes out. Bioshock wasn't terribly original. It was beautiful, fun and engrossing. Better yet, it gave me another game to play in a similar environment to its aforementioned predecessors.
I'd rather studios continue to make good games rehashing those ideas than just let those environments and feelings die. I don't want to have to play Fallout YET AGAIN in a dos emulator on Linux 3.432.2 in thirty years to get that same feeling. So when a derivative comes out, and it's good, I'll continue to get almost as excited as when those old games I'm reminded of did... I can know the roots of the games I like without being shackled by them.
How about this for a distinction: I can't imagine trying to talk into a device with a 7" screen.
Indeed, using a spreadsheet app is mostly a futility on WM6. I can speak from experience on that. Why? Because putting a spreadsheet on a 3" screen is ridiculous. Not because of anything else. My phone has multiple TIMES the processing power and memory of the first computer I used a spreadsheet app on. If I had a VGA output and a mouse input on my phone, there is no reason it couldn't run a port of Excel 97.
I had a good friend in college (2-3 years ago) who ran around with a 233 Mhz PII, just because he could. It worked fine. He kept some data from our projects on it, even. By comparison to this android device, what would you say it is now? An underpowered netbook? A sub-netbook? A glorified phone? It certainly wouldn't run any modern desktop software either. If it changed categories at some point during its what... 9 year life, when was it? When did it become a netbook? When did it drop to glorified phone?
Labels are a convenience, so people can talk about roughly the same thing. Sometimes they can be used in arguments for fun or flamebait. They are irrelevant. A device is what it is and is defined by what it is intended to do, nothing else. Arguing about it like it's super important with strict, yet still inherently arbitrary, definitions is an exercise in futility... much like running a spreadsheet app in WM6.
In these arguments about copyright terms, I am always stricken by two things: the general assumption that all copyrights should be identical and that copyright is binary.
We could have different copyright terms on different creations... entertainment software could be 5 years, serious commercial trade software like CAD/CAM or 3DS Max could be 15. Reference materials like your guide on N.A. bird species could be the life of the author or 25 years for the publisher. Textbooks similar. Movies 10 years. Etc.
Further, copyright doesn't have to be absolute. As in my above example, after 3 years, all entertainment software could go id-style where the engine is pretty much free and mod-able, but the art remains under control for the duration of the 5 years. Another case that comes to mind were the lawsuits over Harry Potter guides. Say Harry Potter's copyright is 12 years, but after 6, all of this control over derivative works goes away.
I'm not really asserting that this is the right way to go or anything, but it seems obvious to me that a lot of these problems are the result of lumping all copyrightable material into one set of rules. Should flash animation be legally the same as a mural in this context? I don't ever see anybody really asking these questions directly.
Both Amarok and Rhythmbox support standard metadata in files. Even the metadata that iTunes uses in all its supported formats are standards (mostly, all programs tend to throw in one or two extra fields that only they use).
Yes, of course. That doesn't really argue against my point, though. If I have to take a laptop home to work on it just for a weekend, why import a library into some monstrous media player I'll have to install or configure when I already have nice, neat file management? I have more than one hardware media player for different purposes. I could use all of their proprietary softwares independently to manage their playlists and such, but again... why, when I already have nice, neat file management? My point was simply this: if you use lots of computers (especially if it's not necessarily even a static set) and/or have multiple media players, file management (especially if you have even a basic grasp of regex) is a much easier solution than relying on metadata. I'm only talking about management here: playlists and relative uniformity across machines and devices.
Ordering by filenames are nice if you only want to store the song names and artist, but many people prefer to have more information than that.
First, my directory structures have as much or more data than an iPod displays. Artist -> Year - Album Title -> Track # - Title. Do the full sized ipods display album information? I honestly don't recall, but I want to say they even do album covers... My girlfriend's iPod nano certainly does not. Second, I'm not losing anything. I can still use metadata. I get all that extra information just like everybody else, in the software players I use that support it. I just don't rely on it to manage, because in my circumstances it absolutely cannot do it effectively. That's all I was saying.
PS. I know about this internet thing. I even used cddb-tool in a ripping script (yet again, I lose nothing and gain complete portability). Still, your last sentence genuinely had me laughing.
with today's portable media players being 1~160GB+ capacity it would be practically insane to manage files by hand. Let go of this useless obsession and learn to use metadata on your files.
I'm sorry, but that is a completely impractical solution. I don't listen to music on one computer on one operating system, or out of one media player. With varying versions of RHEL at work, I have to use either Rhythmbox (and different versions of it!) or Amarok depending on the individual machine. If I'm spending the day in the server room, I may only have a CLI player option when I forget my hardware media player. At home I dual boot XP and LFS. At my girlfriend's place, I'm in a mostly mac zone.
The only reasonable solution here, is to manage by filenames. Also, it is not "practically insane" it's very easy. I could just as easily tell you to get over your useless obsession and learn to use regular expressions on your files (I promise, it even takes a lot less time than manually going through ID3 tags or whichever metadata you use). If metadata works for you, and you want iTunes or something like it to handle your file management transparently, that's great. I just suggest that you consider that not everyone uses the same computers the same ways before calling people's "obsessions" useless, when there may actually be practical usability issues that necessitate different thinking.
Right. Sorry, I was probably thinking of the various weird state legislatures. (Though, for the record, I.3 still didn't dictate *how* the state legislatures decided. In fact, I'll have to look up how that normally happened per state prior to 1913.)
If I could elaborate on whistlingtony's post... The CXOs can be thought of as [often unofficial] cabinet members. Much like there are different commissions like the FCC, FTC or Department of Agriculture that operate under executive power, it's really just delegation of the president's responsibilities. They have power in that they generally operate under executive authority. They have no power in that the president can pretty much hire/fire them at will and reverse their decisions and such in the instance that he disagrees after the fact. They just handle banal things for the president that he: doesn't want to, doesn't have time for, or doesn't have the necessary expertise in.
Also, if I read your post correctly, you have a slight misunderstanding of US government. Both of our parliamentary bodies are elected by the people. The US Constitution doesn't exactly dictate how states choose senators, so it is theoretically possible that the first parliamentary body could elect the second. However, to my knowledge, all states choose senators based on some variation, at least, of a popular vote.
While his post was insightful and deserves some moderation to that effect, I am going to have to disagree. Lawyers and politicians absolutely should be legislating technology because legislation is their job. I couldn't do it. I think our problem has been that they are doing it wrong, for a variety of reasons.
I find a great deal of irony in your original post and this reply, because while you are obviously a lawyer, your original post demonstrates *exactly* the behaviors I believe are the full requirements I would expect from a great tech executive or politician.
First, you obviously read a tech article on your own, in your free time, displaying interest. Second, you formed an opinion. Third, you reformed your opinion based on a respected expert. Fourth, and most importantly, you went to a large community of experts (to varying degrees) in order to modify your opinion with the input of people with a greater professional interest in the subject than your own.
In all seriousness, Mr. Beckerman, despite being a lawyer and not a professional technologist, you would make a better CTO (or politician) than the vast majority of the rest of us. I would even venture to say that technologists shouldn't be forming large policies for as diverse and large an organization as the federal government. They are more likely to have biases and pay less attention to technologies they are less familiar with through professional experience.
As a side note, if you could chair the FCC or hop on in some tech position at the FTC, I would really appreciate it.
If I might throw out my opinion, I believe you are over-simplifying science. Science does have to follow the scientific method. The scientific method can only be used to show correlations and disprove hypotheses. Those are both true. However, boiling science down to only that would be inaccurate, and I believe this is where the other person was going with your 'definition' of science.
I would define science as a field devoted to explaining the natural world in human terms through models that reflect truth of how things really work. If you stop the definition at 'disproving things,' there would be no need for theories. Rather, the scientific method is the tool used to construct said models in the way that they most accurately reflect said truth.
To relate this to the current topic of religion and creationism. First, though I am an atheist, I have no problem with religious people in science. After all, science is only concerned with the natural world. If theistic scientists want to phrase their questions internally to determine "how" God did something, I have no concern. In that context, the context where religion stays supernatural and doesn't infringe on the turf of science with disprovable, antiquated and in some cases ridiculous dogmatic notions about the natural world, there is no mutual exclusivity. I believe the fundamental problem most scientists have with creationism (other than that it's pretty ridiculous at this point) is that it doesn't ask "how" God did something, it declares "what" God did.
Another corrollary about creationism: it is scientifically useless. It is easiest to declare it unscientific just because it fails the basic scientific method test, but more importantly (in my opinion), it fails to come to the table with a useful model about the natural universe. As someone else touched on, the possibility that things can be explained in terms of "because God wanted it that way" or "it's all part of God's plan-that-we-can't-understand-because-we're-mere-humans" is completely and utterly unscientific... by any definition.
If I have offended you or anyone else, I sincerely apologize.
>>...it is ludicrous to declare that it's not the president's job to uphold campaign promises.
I never said anything about Obama upholding his campaign promises. I said what he's doing goes against the first amendment freedom of speech.
Forgive my miscommunication. The post I was originally replying to made that implication. I was attempting to clarify that that's what I was saying to the original poster, not you.
For the record, I agree with you as it pertains to cable television. In that, Rupert Murdoch may not have been the best example. He's just an easy and divisive name to put on the face of the real discussion. For the purposes of broadcast media, I think we can agree to disagree, though I hate that phrase. I believe that a free market in broadcast media, as we have it now, is more prone to stifling the free market in all other venues.
To take your examples of poodles and crocodiles. In the news (and other) media, Dobermans get a very bum rap. They're junkyard dogs on TV, and in cases of the news, if you hear about a dog attack, you know it's only newsworthy because the dog was one of four, maybe five breeds. The truth is, Dobermans are among the sweeter dogs. (Whereas I'm yet to meet a miniature or toy poodle who wasn't the very epitome of the definition of "bitch" in its colloquial usage, but I digress.) Nevertheless, in many municipalities, you can't walk a Doberman without a muzzle. There are some where they're downright illegal. This means fewer Dobermans in the dog market, suppressed demand, and it means, directly, less freedom for their owners. (This could actually be extended to pygmy crocodiles, even, which can be fine pets.:) )
The real point of my argument is that the truth does not inherently come out in a free market. It should. I really wish it did. You have no idea how much... but the simple fact of the matter is that some lies, some misinformation and some unfounded beliefs are just plain popular, and it can be a problem.
Also, I know you only brought up the Fairness Doctrine, but I'm curious about how you feel about the defunct Equal Time rule. I know it still has problems like what do you do with third party candidates, or when there are a billion people running for nomination, but on its face... just equal time exclusively to political candidates people are expected to make educated choices between... do you believe this is still a market issue?
Regardless of what ANY presidential candidate campaigns on, he IS restricted to the Constitutionally delineated duties and privileges of the Presidency.
I just KNEW someone was going to call me out on that... If and when Obama, or any president, were to do something unconstitutional, I can guarantee to you that I will either be calling for their impeachment or arguing for an amendment to the Constitution. That's the beauty of the living document, after all.
Which means that making fundamental change in our society (such as altering the economy and political system from a Capitalistic Representative Republic to a Socialistic Single Party System.) is literally prohibited from even attempting. Not that "The One" won't try it. The "stimulus" package is one such totally unconstitutional example.
Also, reading the Constitution right here, I note that it has these mechanisms for change built right into it. On the other hand, I don't see anything referring to how many parties there should be, or one single reference to capitalism being the One True American Way. I also don't see any way to hold the President responsible for said fundamental changes, when any change he makes has to be at least approved, if not written, by the Congress. (And at least the way I read Article 1, Section 8, Congress can go as socialistic as the people want it to... good old "general Welfare") I can see disagreeing with the stimulus package. I am very curious to know which elements of it you see conflicting with what words in the Constitution?
For the sake of continuing the argument, I'll pick an obviously unconstitutional act: the suspension of Habeas Corpus. It's right there, Article 1 Section 9. Only in cases of rebellion or invasion. (You'll have to join me in the reasonable assumption that the Founders didn't mean "when we invade another country.") I do not blame Bush for this. I blame him for ratifying it. I blame every single person in Congress who voted to make it possible. I assume from your position, you would have to agree?
First, I was making a semantic argument. Whether or not you 'want any part of it,' Obama's job is change according to his platform, because he was elected to do it, just as it was Bush's job was to remain in Iraq for our national security as he was elected to do in 2004. I am merely arguing that regardless of your agreement with the majority of the population at the time, it is ludicrous to declare that it's not the president's job to uphold campaign promises.
Second, if I might respond to your opinion. The Fairness Doctrine (and the Equal Time rule, which I believe is at least as important) does not tell citizens what they can and can't say. They tell the few citizens who have been granted the privilege of using public airwaves that they cannot use that privilege to push an agenda. Freedom of speech, does not grant the right to be heard by multitudes using public resources, nor does freedom of the press. An honest question, though it will surely sound loaded: do you believe that Rupert Murdoch has the right to MORE freedom of speech than I do, simply because he can afford the antennas? (It really is an honest question. I am interested in and respect your opinion regardless of my agreement.)
I'm afraid you're actually quite wrong, there. The president's job is to do what he was elected to do. Given that the president's entire campaign was based around the word 'change,' you might want to consider that the majority of voters apparently agreed. Therefore it could easily be argued that Obama's job, literally, IS to change that which America has become.
Please forgive me, if any insult was taken, it was purely unintentional. Certainly I feel it would be horribly unfair to hold you accountable, as it is obviously a real word in general media usage. I was merely attempting to defend the digressions of others as standard slashdot behavior, not asserting a position of my own.
That said, if I might offer my opinion for what it's worth, I am not fond of the word. By way of explanation, I will paraphrase and distill the comments of some of the others as I have perceived them. From a purely linguistic perspective, we do not (at least in American English) reassign professional titles based on country of origin. The Chinese scientists and engineers who build and plan these ventures, for example, don't become taikontists and taikoneers. Thus, the word offends my internal pedant.:)
From an emotional perspective, I simply worry that separating astronauts/cosmonauts/taikonauts adds fuel to the fire of space-travel-as-competition, though I also worry that space-travel-as-competition is the only way my own country will take it at all seriously.
To be fair, 1) I think part of the point of the discussion about the 'taikonaut' word is that it's not in the article and yet it's used in the summary and 2) this is hardly the first Slashdot discussion to venture into tangentially related (or not even related) off-shoots, re: Tibet, Iraq, etc.
Your fundamental point, however, is sadly accurate. I like to believe it is because we are a young country in an identity crisis. In recent historical memory, we somehow "won" the cold war, displaying the triumphant values of capitalism over the evil soviet states. Plus, the Judeo-Christian god was on our side, remember? Yet now, having rested on our laurels as the obvious best-country-in-the-world, our economy is now faltering and a communist country, of all things, is eating us for lunch by almost any meaningful metric. I think it's natural, if a little sad, to display some of the behavior you're seeing.
I assume from your spelling of the word 'programme' that you are either British, Irish or Australian. The UK (particularly regarding India) and the Irish (particularly regarding each other) hardly behaved in an exemplary fashion in their historical beginnings. I don't really have anything on Australia apart from the poor treatment of aboriginals that we are also horribly guilty of, but... Australia is really far away.:)
Here's hoping we manage to grow up as gracefully as our European forebears, and without truly global-scale world wars. As always, remember that some of us at least try to be a little more forward thinking, not that I think you actually need the reminder. And please forgive any blatant sanctimoniousness.
While the upgrade-ability issue is a major one, I think there is a much more fundamental problem with the PCs-are-a-much-more-expensive-gaming-platform-meme. Specifically, that you're getting a computer anyway.
I built my mother a desktop last year with two gigs of RAM and an E6600 Conroe for about $500, case, shipping, et. al. included. The motherboard has a PCI-E 16x port. It would cost what, about USD$150 for a gaming-class graphics card to make that a machine capable of playing any of the XBox360 ports at a resolution of 1024x768 easily. She wouldn't, because she's not exactly a gamer:), but the point is she could. Total cost of the gaming platform portion: half an XBox... oh, and it has a 250G hard drive.
My machine is a little beefier. I made it more recently, and I do image processing in Matlab and compile all my Linux software, so it was easy to justify the bigger processor without games. My GeForce 8800GTS was $175 with a mail-in rebate. Even if you say I didn't need a whole 4G of ram, could have gotten a slower processor... I spent maybe $250 at the most to go from modern standard-use to gaming quality, and I played Assassin's Creed at 1600x1200 with every bell and whistle at the max... for a price equal to, or less, than the cheapest 360 package.
Possibly, it is being "spoon-fed to them" exactly because they didn't go live in the boondocks as a matter of exercising their rights to in a free country. I mean, they are in the boondocks, of course, so it would be insane to declare that they should have complete infrastructure built up. But seriously, how dare you accuse them of "whining"?
I also take exception to your making this some kind of political feel-goodery. I would fully support my tax dollars going to providing some form of internet access to the Navajo nation not because it would make me feel good, like some kind of reparations. The hard fact of reality, as you put it, is that native American populations are dropping like a rock, and a lot of that is because they DO leave the reservations because of things like this.
I am more uncomfortable being a part of ongoing ethnocide-by-apathy than I would be with a few fewer dollars per year. Because this is a free country, I fully respect your, or anyone else's, right to have a different opinion or outlook. However, I can't even come up with a word good enough for someone who thinks a relocated and invaded culture is "whining about" their plight like they had a choice in whether or not they're "cut off". Jesus, look at a map. The Navajo nation is huge and in the middle-of-nowhere. Do you really think they're the ones that drew the borders?
Verizon was in on the $200 billion given by the government to do what they're doing.
Verizon is getting billions in tax breaks on top of that from states across the country.
Verizon is using public lands for free.
Verizon gets to completely lock off this government subsidized network to all competition.
I haven't been able to find a direct figure on how much Verizon has gotten of that $200 billion, and I don't feel like adding up the tax breaks Verizon has got from the many states, especially since some of them are $10 million a year, some of them are one time shots up to $600 million. Thus, I can't make the claim that the government has effectively completely paid for their FiOS network, but it has to be close, if not a couple times over.
I arrive at this conclusion because I would reeeally like to see a citation on the "hundreds of billions" Verizon is investing (from your other post which you linked to). The best I can find is that you are off by a complete order of magnitude, in that they are investing a total of $23 billion by 2010.
Even if you were right about Verizon investing oodles and oodles of their own money, you're not really right. At best, with a completely monopolized FiOS, Verizon is setting itself up to do nothing but BE THE NEXT AT&T that you seem to hate so much.
Who knows? Could have just been hungry. It was feeding time, and it looked like she was one of the last getting fed. (I just spent some time looking for news articles related to that event, and some of the accounts are terribly contradictory. A few articles almost made it sound like an accident(!), if you can believe that.) Indeed, it could be that she was just cranky.
I don't think it changes a whole lot. There's a big difference between attacking a zookeeper a couple feet away and clawing her way up a 12.5 foot cement wall. Maybe she really just did lose it and needed to attack somebody. While a random prior attack lends some additional credence to that, random attack still is just waaaaay less likely, IMO, than provoked.
I read _many_ more news articles that discussed the footprint. Again I'll just have to site google news because I don't care enough to come up with link upon link. I believe an overly aggressive cat will behave in a logical, rational fashion because these things don't happen all the time, and I would be somewhat amazed if the San Francisco zoo has the lowest tiger enclosure in the country. (Though I suppose it's possible. Somewhere has to have that distinction.:) ) Also, attacking IS a logical response to being taunted, from an overly-aggressive tiger's point of view. That's my whole point, it's the simplest and most reasonable explanation in total. I like logical and rational.
More, it's that it seems incredibly more likely to me that three stoned kids, one of whom is pretty drunk, were pissing off said cat than that she just went completely ape-shit insane right-at-that-moment, in the middle of winter, when she apparently has managed to not attack anyone for however long she was there. She was too old for this to be reasonably explained by some kind of mental defect, and too young to have been suffering from any kind of old-age dementia that I understand is somewhat common in tigers. I'm not totally sure of any of that myself. If you'd like the word of some scientist on that one, I could ask my father. The animals he studied for his dissertation were all mammalian herbivores, but I know he knows some big cat specialists. (I seriously would look into it and ask, I'm not trying to tout my father's Ph.D like I know something. I don't.)
Also, I have to point out that the police shelving the investigation means absolutely nothing. They could have plenty of evidence of taunting, but to my knowledge there is no criminal law against irritating wildlife. Again, the one kid SAID they yelled and waved at it, and I've already made my case that that's taunting plenty if the tiger thought it was. I should also point out that I've never meant to imply that the two survivors should be charged with anything. Even if they committed any crimes, or did anything "wrong" ethically, they've certainly paid enough.
Anyway, probably the tiger was overly sensitive. For the sake of the discussion, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was mild yelling at worst. It's still probably just plain smart to treat any animal capable of killing you easily with a modicum of respect. Insert the same analogy about the 350 pound drunk guy in the bar here.
First, the quotes about a pissed off tiger climbing the wall were given by a police inspector quoting (in an affidavit) the zoo veterinarian. Nothing there about a demoralizing zoo director, and I see no more reason to doubt the truth value there than anything anyone else is saying.
Second, shoe prints, blood alcohol levels, and blood inside the fence are not conjecture. To say nothing of Paul Dhaliwal's saying that they "yelled" and "waved" at the tiger. I could bother linking that one, but really, it's in like 90% of the google news results. Surely one of them would be acceptable to you.
I can't help but think this is in some way a semantic argument about the definition of taunting. I would argue first, that it is the tigers definition of taunting that matters here. Further, I don't think it's totally insane to suggest that standing on a gate in the tigers territorial enclosure and making loud noises and waving movements would fit her definition. (I'm going to ignore the blood inside the fence intentionally, because it wasn't confirmed by the police in the article I linked.)
Look, I'm not saying this isn't a tragedy. I'm not saying any of them "deserved" what happened to them. I'm not condoning the people in this thread that have suggested Darwin awards. I'm saying that it just isn't a good idea to piss off a 350 pound cat, and it doesn't matter to the cat if you think you're being obnoxious or not. Given that I believe the zoo veterinarian about the claws, it seems to me that Occam's razor says that the tiger was really pissed off at them for something they were doing. It's a lot simpler and easier to believe than that the tiger just happened to go completely off her rocker right then.
If you go out and make fun of a 350 pound belligerent drunk guy in his bar, it's still wrong when he kicks your ass, and he can still go to jail for assault. That doesn't mean that you come out of it smelling like roses.
I can only assume that OP won't give you a response because there are no citations that will come close to agreeing that Sousa wasn't taunting the animals... given that there's an enormous body of evidence including statements by the survivors to the contrary. (Unless you actually believe the eloquent "we didn't do nothing" they told his mom.)
When you keep plastering people with terror here and terror there, they will first be afraid, then notice that you're crying wolf Well, here we go. You seem to agree, that somebody somewhere has "cried wolf" a few too many times. If such is, indeed, your opinion, would you, please, substantiate it with a few examples of somebody being publicly suspected of terrorism without a good reason?
Restricting myself only to stories that have appeared on slashdot, and which I remember immediately off the top of my head:
1) Boston freaking out over homemade lite-brites of cartoon characters. (2 guys arrested)
2) The TSA freaking out over a girl with a small LED art project attached to her sweatshirt. (1 MIT student detained)
3) Someone getting a home-repaired or modified device confiscated at an airport over a resistor sticking out of its casing.
Of course this is entirely irrelevant, because you requested examples without a "good" reason, and anyone with a reactionary bent, opposed to even the slightest non-conformity, would find any of those examples perfectly within reason.
If I might say something slightly more on-topic to this story, I am sympathetic to your position. I imagine being a well intentioned believer in IP would be extremely frustrating right now, and I'll give your intentions the benefit of the doubt. While I am completely and utterly opposed to the *AAs current methodology of protecting their IP, I remain sympathetic to their plight. I understand that they are trying to exercise their rights any way that they can, in the face of a technology that makes it virtually impossible (any discussion of legality aside).
I sincerely (truly and honestly) suggest that you try to Get Over It (tm). You may very well be right. Most of slashdot, admittedly myself included, could be morally and ethically backing the wrong pony. It doesn't matter. Unless by some miracle something like trusted computing happens (and even then I have serious doubts), there is absolutely nothing that you, the government, lobbying groups, legal groups, or any deity can do about it. Even people like my technologically disinclined little brother's even more technologically disinclined friends know how to get whatever music they want from the comfort of their dorm rooms. And they do. And they will continue to. It is a fact of life at this point.
I have to agree with my previous repliers. I don't know how far along you are in your program, but I can tell you that I would have gotten more-than-dinged for citing Wikipedia in any classes 300 level or above. I didn't even go to a school that's exactly ivy league. (It is my understanding that encyclopedias aren't really "college-worthy" citation sources in general.)
That said, I still used Wikipedia for virtually every non-programming assignment I ever had. Even if citations to it directly are frowned upon, Wikipedia can still be used as a great aggregation of citations that are sufficient by most standards. Whenever you can, I recommend taking quotes and references from the same places Wikipedia does. This has the added benefit of doing a run-around on any papers with a number-of-sources requirement.
I am aware of the importance of the perception in safety, particularly as a market factor. I realize that I am living in a fantasy land with this argument, much like I'm living in a fantasy land where I wish people didn't all run around buying SUVs to feel safe when every reasonable statistic shows they are only more dangerous for others. That doesn't make it any less rational. Thus, I'm not sure I'm worried about ratcheting up paranoia any farther because, let's face it, we're pretty off the charts as it is.
Let me ask you one question, that I would say on television, to rebut your argument. (I know it wouldn't be effective to the paranoid populace, but try to provide a logical answer not based in statistically unsupportable fear.) Do you think people perceive more safety now than they did 100, 60, or even 30 years ago, before we had these ubiquitous electric comfort blankets?
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I'm 27. I played the Fallouts (less Tactics) religiously, and both System Shocks before Bioshock. I still think Bioshock deserved the vast majority of the hype it got. (Some of the nonsense about the story being the best thing since sliced bread, I felt, was a little misplaced or over-exaggerated, but other than that...)
Why can't it just be good in its own right? Virtually everything is a rehash. You can't possibly expect every game to be Portal, and I don't think you can reasonably expect people to only get excited once every ten years when a Portal-class game comes out. Bioshock wasn't terribly original. It was beautiful, fun and engrossing. Better yet, it gave me another game to play in a similar environment to its aforementioned predecessors.
I'd rather studios continue to make good games rehashing those ideas than just let those environments and feelings die. I don't want to have to play Fallout YET AGAIN in a dos emulator on Linux 3.432.2 in thirty years to get that same feeling. So when a derivative comes out, and it's good, I'll continue to get almost as excited as when those old games I'm reminded of did... I can know the roots of the games I like without being shackled by them.
How about this for a distinction: I can't imagine trying to talk into a device with a 7" screen.
Indeed, using a spreadsheet app is mostly a futility on WM6. I can speak from experience on that. Why? Because putting a spreadsheet on a 3" screen is ridiculous. Not because of anything else. My phone has multiple TIMES the processing power and memory of the first computer I used a spreadsheet app on. If I had a VGA output and a mouse input on my phone, there is no reason it couldn't run a port of Excel 97.
I had a good friend in college (2-3 years ago) who ran around with a 233 Mhz PII, just because he could. It worked fine. He kept some data from our projects on it, even. By comparison to this android device, what would you say it is now? An underpowered netbook? A sub-netbook? A glorified phone? It certainly wouldn't run any modern desktop software either. If it changed categories at some point during its what... 9 year life, when was it? When did it become a netbook? When did it drop to glorified phone?
Labels are a convenience, so people can talk about roughly the same thing. Sometimes they can be used in arguments for fun or flamebait. They are irrelevant. A device is what it is and is defined by what it is intended to do, nothing else. Arguing about it like it's super important with strict, yet still inherently arbitrary, definitions is an exercise in futility... much like running a spreadsheet app in WM6.
In these arguments about copyright terms, I am always stricken by two things: the general assumption that all copyrights should be identical and that copyright is binary.
We could have different copyright terms on different creations... entertainment software could be 5 years, serious commercial trade software like CAD/CAM or 3DS Max could be 15. Reference materials like your guide on N.A. bird species could be the life of the author or 25 years for the publisher. Textbooks similar. Movies 10 years. Etc.
Further, copyright doesn't have to be absolute. As in my above example, after 3 years, all entertainment software could go id-style where the engine is pretty much free and mod-able, but the art remains under control for the duration of the 5 years. Another case that comes to mind were the lawsuits over Harry Potter guides. Say Harry Potter's copyright is 12 years, but after 6, all of this control over derivative works goes away.
I'm not really asserting that this is the right way to go or anything, but it seems obvious to me that a lot of these problems are the result of lumping all copyrightable material into one set of rules. Should flash animation be legally the same as a mural in this context? I don't ever see anybody really asking these questions directly.
Both Amarok and Rhythmbox support standard metadata in files. Even the metadata that iTunes uses in all its supported formats are standards (mostly, all programs tend to throw in one or two extra fields that only they use).
Yes, of course. That doesn't really argue against my point, though. If I have to take a laptop home to work on it just for a weekend, why import a library into some monstrous media player I'll have to install or configure when I already have nice, neat file management? I have more than one hardware media player for different purposes. I could use all of their proprietary softwares independently to manage their playlists and such, but again... why, when I already have nice, neat file management? My point was simply this: if you use lots of computers (especially if it's not necessarily even a static set) and/or have multiple media players, file management (especially if you have even a basic grasp of regex) is a much easier solution than relying on metadata. I'm only talking about management here: playlists and relative uniformity across machines and devices.
Ordering by filenames are nice if you only want to store the song names and artist, but many people prefer to have more information than that.
First, my directory structures have as much or more data than an iPod displays. Artist -> Year - Album Title -> Track # - Title. Do the full sized ipods display album information? I honestly don't recall, but I want to say they even do album covers... My girlfriend's iPod nano certainly does not. Second, I'm not losing anything. I can still use metadata. I get all that extra information just like everybody else, in the software players I use that support it. I just don't rely on it to manage, because in my circumstances it absolutely cannot do it effectively. That's all I was saying.
PS. I know about this internet thing. I even used cddb-tool in a ripping script (yet again, I lose nothing and gain complete portability). Still, your last sentence genuinely had me laughing.
with today's portable media players being 1~160GB+ capacity it would be practically insane to manage files by hand. Let go of this useless obsession and learn to use metadata on your files.
I'm sorry, but that is a completely impractical solution. I don't listen to music on one computer on one operating system, or out of one media player. With varying versions of RHEL at work, I have to use either Rhythmbox (and different versions of it!) or Amarok depending on the individual machine. If I'm spending the day in the server room, I may only have a CLI player option when I forget my hardware media player. At home I dual boot XP and LFS. At my girlfriend's place, I'm in a mostly mac zone.
The only reasonable solution here, is to manage by filenames. Also, it is not "practically insane" it's very easy. I could just as easily tell you to get over your useless obsession and learn to use regular expressions on your files (I promise, it even takes a lot less time than manually going through ID3 tags or whichever metadata you use). If metadata works for you, and you want iTunes or something like it to handle your file management transparently, that's great. I just suggest that you consider that not everyone uses the same computers the same ways before calling people's "obsessions" useless, when there may actually be practical usability issues that necessitate different thinking.
Right. Sorry, I was probably thinking of the various weird state legislatures. (Though, for the record, I.3 still didn't dictate *how* the state legislatures decided. In fact, I'll have to look up how that normally happened per state prior to 1913.)
If I could elaborate on whistlingtony's post... The CXOs can be thought of as [often unofficial] cabinet members. Much like there are different commissions like the FCC, FTC or Department of Agriculture that operate under executive power, it's really just delegation of the president's responsibilities. They have power in that they generally operate under executive authority. They have no power in that the president can pretty much hire/fire them at will and reverse their decisions and such in the instance that he disagrees after the fact. They just handle banal things for the president that he: doesn't want to, doesn't have time for, or doesn't have the necessary expertise in.
Also, if I read your post correctly, you have a slight misunderstanding of US government. Both of our parliamentary bodies are elected by the people. The US Constitution doesn't exactly dictate how states choose senators, so it is theoretically possible that the first parliamentary body could elect the second. However, to my knowledge, all states choose senators based on some variation, at least, of a popular vote.
While his post was insightful and deserves some moderation to that effect, I am going to have to disagree. Lawyers and politicians absolutely should be legislating technology because legislation is their job. I couldn't do it. I think our problem has been that they are doing it wrong, for a variety of reasons.
I find a great deal of irony in your original post and this reply, because while you are obviously a lawyer, your original post demonstrates *exactly* the behaviors I believe are the full requirements I would expect from a great tech executive or politician.
First, you obviously read a tech article on your own, in your free time, displaying interest. Second, you formed an opinion. Third, you reformed your opinion based on a respected expert. Fourth, and most importantly, you went to a large community of experts (to varying degrees) in order to modify your opinion with the input of people with a greater professional interest in the subject than your own.
In all seriousness, Mr. Beckerman, despite being a lawyer and not a professional technologist, you would make a better CTO (or politician) than the vast majority of the rest of us. I would even venture to say that technologists shouldn't be forming large policies for as diverse and large an organization as the federal government. They are more likely to have biases and pay less attention to technologies they are less familiar with through professional experience.
As a side note, if you could chair the FCC or hop on in some tech position at the FTC, I would really appreciate it.
If I might throw out my opinion, I believe you are over-simplifying science. Science does have to follow the scientific method. The scientific method can only be used to show correlations and disprove hypotheses. Those are both true. However, boiling science down to only that would be inaccurate, and I believe this is where the other person was going with your 'definition' of science.
I would define science as a field devoted to explaining the natural world in human terms through models that reflect truth of how things really work. If you stop the definition at 'disproving things,' there would be no need for theories. Rather, the scientific method is the tool used to construct said models in the way that they most accurately reflect said truth.
To relate this to the current topic of religion and creationism. First, though I am an atheist, I have no problem with religious people in science. After all, science is only concerned with the natural world. If theistic scientists want to phrase their questions internally to determine "how" God did something, I have no concern. In that context, the context where religion stays supernatural and doesn't infringe on the turf of science with disprovable, antiquated and in some cases ridiculous dogmatic notions about the natural world, there is no mutual exclusivity. I believe the fundamental problem most scientists have with creationism (other than that it's pretty ridiculous at this point) is that it doesn't ask "how" God did something, it declares "what" God did.
Another corrollary about creationism: it is scientifically useless. It is easiest to declare it unscientific just because it fails the basic scientific method test, but more importantly (in my opinion), it fails to come to the table with a useful model about the natural universe. As someone else touched on, the possibility that things can be explained in terms of "because God wanted it that way" or "it's all part of God's plan-that-we-can't-understand-because-we're-mere-humans" is completely and utterly unscientific... by any definition.
If I have offended you or anyone else, I sincerely apologize.
>> ...it is ludicrous to declare that it's not the president's job to uphold campaign promises.
I never said anything about Obama upholding his campaign promises. I said what he's doing goes against the first amendment freedom of speech.
Forgive my miscommunication. The post I was originally replying to made that implication. I was attempting to clarify that that's what I was saying to the original poster, not you.
:) )
For the record, I agree with you as it pertains to cable television. In that, Rupert Murdoch may not have been the best example. He's just an easy and divisive name to put on the face of the real discussion. For the purposes of broadcast media, I think we can agree to disagree, though I hate that phrase. I believe that a free market in broadcast media, as we have it now, is more prone to stifling the free market in all other venues.
To take your examples of poodles and crocodiles. In the news (and other) media, Dobermans get a very bum rap. They're junkyard dogs on TV, and in cases of the news, if you hear about a dog attack, you know it's only newsworthy because the dog was one of four, maybe five breeds. The truth is, Dobermans are among the sweeter dogs. (Whereas I'm yet to meet a miniature or toy poodle who wasn't the very epitome of the definition of "bitch" in its colloquial usage, but I digress.) Nevertheless, in many municipalities, you can't walk a Doberman without a muzzle. There are some where they're downright illegal. This means fewer Dobermans in the dog market, suppressed demand, and it means, directly, less freedom for their owners. (This could actually be extended to pygmy crocodiles, even, which can be fine pets.
The real point of my argument is that the truth does not inherently come out in a free market. It should. I really wish it did. You have no idea how much... but the simple fact of the matter is that some lies, some misinformation and some unfounded beliefs are just plain popular, and it can be a problem.
Also, I know you only brought up the Fairness Doctrine, but I'm curious about how you feel about the defunct Equal Time rule. I know it still has problems like what do you do with third party candidates, or when there are a billion people running for nomination, but on its face... just equal time exclusively to political candidates people are expected to make educated choices between... do you believe this is still a market issue?
Regardless of what ANY presidential candidate campaigns on, he IS restricted to the Constitutionally delineated duties and privileges of the Presidency.
I just KNEW someone was going to call me out on that... If and when Obama, or any president, were to do something unconstitutional, I can guarantee to you that I will either be calling for their impeachment or arguing for an amendment to the Constitution. That's the beauty of the living document, after all.
Which means that making fundamental change in our society (such as altering the economy and political system from a Capitalistic Representative Republic to a Socialistic Single Party System.) is literally prohibited from even attempting. Not that "The One" won't try it. The "stimulus" package is one such totally unconstitutional example.
Also, reading the Constitution right here, I note that it has these mechanisms for change built right into it. On the other hand, I don't see anything referring to how many parties there should be, or one single reference to capitalism being the One True American Way. I also don't see any way to hold the President responsible for said fundamental changes, when any change he makes has to be at least approved, if not written, by the Congress. (And at least the way I read Article 1, Section 8, Congress can go as socialistic as the people want it to... good old "general Welfare") I can see disagreeing with the stimulus package. I am very curious to know which elements of it you see conflicting with what words in the Constitution?
For the sake of continuing the argument, I'll pick an obviously unconstitutional act: the suspension of Habeas Corpus. It's right there, Article 1 Section 9. Only in cases of rebellion or invasion. (You'll have to join me in the reasonable assumption that the Founders didn't mean "when we invade another country.") I do not blame Bush for this. I blame him for ratifying it. I blame every single person in Congress who voted to make it possible. I assume from your position, you would have to agree?
First, I was making a semantic argument. Whether or not you 'want any part of it,' Obama's job is change according to his platform, because he was elected to do it, just as it was Bush's job was to remain in Iraq for our national security as he was elected to do in 2004. I am merely arguing that regardless of your agreement with the majority of the population at the time, it is ludicrous to declare that it's not the president's job to uphold campaign promises.
Second, if I might respond to your opinion. The Fairness Doctrine (and the Equal Time rule, which I believe is at least as important) does not tell citizens what they can and can't say. They tell the few citizens who have been granted the privilege of using public airwaves that they cannot use that privilege to push an agenda. Freedom of speech, does not grant the right to be heard by multitudes using public resources, nor does freedom of the press. An honest question, though it will surely sound loaded: do you believe that Rupert Murdoch has the right to MORE freedom of speech than I do, simply because he can afford the antennas? (It really is an honest question. I am interested in and respect your opinion regardless of my agreement.)
I'm afraid you're actually quite wrong, there. The president's job is to do what he was elected to do. Given that the president's entire campaign was based around the word 'change,' you might want to consider that the majority of voters apparently agreed. Therefore it could easily be argued that Obama's job, literally, IS to change that which America has become.
Sorry, I guess I'm just blind.
Please forgive me, if any insult was taken, it was purely unintentional. Certainly I feel it would be horribly unfair to hold you accountable, as it is obviously a real word in general media usage. I was merely attempting to defend the digressions of others as standard slashdot behavior, not asserting a position of my own.
:)
That said, if I might offer my opinion for what it's worth, I am not fond of the word. By way of explanation, I will paraphrase and distill the comments of some of the others as I have perceived them. From a purely linguistic perspective, we do not (at least in American English) reassign professional titles based on country of origin. The Chinese scientists and engineers who build and plan these ventures, for example, don't become taikontists and taikoneers. Thus, the word offends my internal pedant.
From an emotional perspective, I simply worry that separating astronauts/cosmonauts/taikonauts adds fuel to the fire of space-travel-as-competition, though I also worry that space-travel-as-competition is the only way my own country will take it at all seriously.
To be fair, 1) I think part of the point of the discussion about the 'taikonaut' word is that it's not in the article and yet it's used in the summary and 2) this is hardly the first Slashdot discussion to venture into tangentially related (or not even related) off-shoots, re: Tibet, Iraq, etc.
:)
Your fundamental point, however, is sadly accurate. I like to believe it is because we are a young country in an identity crisis. In recent historical memory, we somehow "won" the cold war, displaying the triumphant values of capitalism over the evil soviet states. Plus, the Judeo-Christian god was on our side, remember? Yet now, having rested on our laurels as the obvious best-country-in-the-world, our economy is now faltering and a communist country, of all things, is eating us for lunch by almost any meaningful metric. I think it's natural, if a little sad, to display some of the behavior you're seeing.
I assume from your spelling of the word 'programme' that you are either British, Irish or Australian. The UK (particularly regarding India) and the Irish (particularly regarding each other) hardly behaved in an exemplary fashion in their historical beginnings. I don't really have anything on Australia apart from the poor treatment of aboriginals that we are also horribly guilty of, but... Australia is really far away.
Here's hoping we manage to grow up as gracefully as our European forebears, and without truly global-scale world wars. As always, remember that some of us at least try to be a little more forward thinking, not that I think you actually need the reminder. And please forgive any blatant sanctimoniousness.
While the upgrade-ability issue is a major one, I think there is a much more fundamental problem with the PCs-are-a-much-more-expensive-gaming-platform-meme. Specifically, that you're getting a computer anyway.
:), but the point is she could. Total cost of the gaming platform portion: half an XBox... oh, and it has a 250G hard drive.
I built my mother a desktop last year with two gigs of RAM and an E6600 Conroe for about $500, case, shipping, et. al. included. The motherboard has a PCI-E 16x port. It would cost what, about USD$150 for a gaming-class graphics card to make that a machine capable of playing any of the XBox360 ports at a resolution of 1024x768 easily. She wouldn't, because she's not exactly a gamer
My machine is a little beefier. I made it more recently, and I do image processing in Matlab and compile all my Linux software, so it was easy to justify the bigger processor without games. My GeForce 8800GTS was $175 with a mail-in rebate. Even if you say I didn't need a whole 4G of ram, could have gotten a slower processor... I spent maybe $250 at the most to go from modern standard-use to gaming quality, and I played Assassin's Creed at 1600x1200 with every bell and whistle at the max... for a price equal to, or less, than the cheapest 360 package.
Possibly, it is being "spoon-fed to them" exactly because they didn't go live in the boondocks as a matter of exercising their rights to in a free country. I mean, they are in the boondocks, of course, so it would be insane to declare that they should have complete infrastructure built up. But seriously, how dare you accuse them of "whining"?
I also take exception to your making this some kind of political feel-goodery. I would fully support my tax dollars going to providing some form of internet access to the Navajo nation not because it would make me feel good, like some kind of reparations. The hard fact of reality, as you put it, is that native American populations are dropping like a rock, and a lot of that is because they DO leave the reservations because of things like this.
I am more uncomfortable being a part of ongoing ethnocide-by-apathy than I would be with a few fewer dollars per year. Because this is a free country, I fully respect your, or anyone else's, right to have a different opinion or outlook. However, I can't even come up with a word good enough for someone who thinks a relocated and invaded culture is "whining about" their plight like they had a choice in whether or not they're "cut off". Jesus, look at a map. The Navajo nation is huge and in the middle-of-nowhere. Do you really think they're the ones that drew the borders?
- Verizon was in on the $200 billion given by the government to do what they're doing.
- Verizon is getting billions in tax breaks on top of that from states across the country.
- Verizon is using public lands for free.
- Verizon gets to completely lock off this government subsidized network to all competition.
I haven't been able to find a direct figure on how much Verizon has gotten of that $200 billion, and I don't feel like adding up the tax breaks Verizon has got from the many states, especially since some of them are $10 million a year, some of them are one time shots up to $600 million. Thus, I can't make the claim that the government has effectively completely paid for their FiOS network, but it has to be close, if not a couple times over.I arrive at this conclusion because I would reeeally like to see a citation on the "hundreds of billions" Verizon is investing (from your other post which you linked to). The best I can find is that you are off by a complete order of magnitude, in that they are investing a total of $23 billion by 2010.
Even if you were right about Verizon investing oodles and oodles of their own money, you're not really right. At best, with a completely monopolized FiOS, Verizon is setting itself up to do nothing but BE THE NEXT AT&T that you seem to hate so much.
Who knows? Could have just been hungry. It was feeding time, and it looked like she was one of the last getting fed. (I just spent some time looking for news articles related to that event, and some of the accounts are terribly contradictory. A few articles almost made it sound like an accident(!), if you can believe that.) Indeed, it could be that she was just cranky.
I don't think it changes a whole lot. There's a big difference between attacking a zookeeper a couple feet away and clawing her way up a 12.5 foot cement wall. Maybe she really just did lose it and needed to attack somebody. While a random prior attack lends some additional credence to that, random attack still is just waaaaay less likely, IMO, than provoked.
I read _many_ more news articles that discussed the footprint. Again I'll just have to site google news because I don't care enough to come up with link upon link. I believe an overly aggressive cat will behave in a logical, rational fashion because these things don't happen all the time, and I would be somewhat amazed if the San Francisco zoo has the lowest tiger enclosure in the country. (Though I suppose it's possible. Somewhere has to have that distinction. :) ) Also, attacking IS a logical response to being taunted, from an overly-aggressive tiger's point of view. That's my whole point, it's the simplest and most reasonable explanation in total. I like logical and rational.
More, it's that it seems incredibly more likely to me that three stoned kids, one of whom is pretty drunk, were pissing off said cat than that she just went completely ape-shit insane right-at-that-moment, in the middle of winter, when she apparently has managed to not attack anyone for however long she was there. She was too old for this to be reasonably explained by some kind of mental defect, and too young to have been suffering from any kind of old-age dementia that I understand is somewhat common in tigers. I'm not totally sure of any of that myself. If you'd like the word of some scientist on that one, I could ask my father. The animals he studied for his dissertation were all mammalian herbivores, but I know he knows some big cat specialists. (I seriously would look into it and ask, I'm not trying to tout my father's Ph.D like I know something. I don't.)
Also, I have to point out that the police shelving the investigation means absolutely nothing. They could have plenty of evidence of taunting, but to my knowledge there is no criminal law against irritating wildlife. Again, the one kid SAID they yelled and waved at it, and I've already made my case that that's taunting plenty if the tiger thought it was. I should also point out that I've never meant to imply that the two survivors should be charged with anything. Even if they committed any crimes, or did anything "wrong" ethically, they've certainly paid enough.
Anyway, probably the tiger was overly sensitive. For the sake of the discussion, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was mild yelling at worst. It's still probably just plain smart to treat any animal capable of killing you easily with a modicum of respect. Insert the same analogy about the 350 pound drunk guy in the bar here.
First, the quotes about a pissed off tiger climbing the wall were given by a police inspector quoting (in an affidavit) the zoo veterinarian. Nothing there about a demoralizing zoo director, and I see no more reason to doubt the truth value there than anything anyone else is saying.
Second, shoe prints, blood alcohol levels, and blood inside the fence are not conjecture. To say nothing of Paul Dhaliwal's saying that they "yelled" and "waved" at the tiger. I could bother linking that one, but really, it's in like 90% of the google news results. Surely one of them would be acceptable to you.
I can't help but think this is in some way a semantic argument about the definition of taunting. I would argue first, that it is the tigers definition of taunting that matters here. Further, I don't think it's totally insane to suggest that standing on a gate in the tigers territorial enclosure and making loud noises and waving movements would fit her definition. (I'm going to ignore the blood inside the fence intentionally, because it wasn't confirmed by the police in the article I linked.)
Look, I'm not saying this isn't a tragedy. I'm not saying any of them "deserved" what happened to them. I'm not condoning the people in this thread that have suggested Darwin awards. I'm saying that it just isn't a good idea to piss off a 350 pound cat, and it doesn't matter to the cat if you think you're being obnoxious or not. Given that I believe the zoo veterinarian about the claws, it seems to me that Occam's razor says that the tiger was really pissed off at them for something they were doing. It's a lot simpler and easier to believe than that the tiger just happened to go completely off her rocker right then.
If you go out and make fun of a 350 pound belligerent drunk guy in his bar, it's still wrong when he kicks your ass, and he can still go to jail for assault. That doesn't mean that you come out of it smelling like roses.
Here's a citation for the climbing. The bit about the cement climbing is near the end.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/18/MNEIUH4B9.DTL
I can only assume that OP won't give you a response because there are no citations that will come close to agreeing that Sousa wasn't taunting the animals... given that there's an enormous body of evidence including statements by the survivors to the contrary. (Unless you actually believe the eloquent "we didn't do nothing" they told his mom.)
Restricting myself only to stories that have appeared on slashdot, and which I remember immediately off the top of my head:
1) Boston freaking out over homemade lite-brites of cartoon characters. (2 guys arrested)
2) The TSA freaking out over a girl with a small LED art project attached to her sweatshirt. (1 MIT student detained)
3) Someone getting a home-repaired or modified device confiscated at an airport over a resistor sticking out of its casing.
Of course this is entirely irrelevant, because you requested examples without a "good" reason, and anyone with a reactionary bent, opposed to even the slightest non-conformity, would find any of those examples perfectly within reason.
If I might say something slightly more on-topic to this story, I am sympathetic to your position. I imagine being a well intentioned believer in IP would be extremely frustrating right now, and I'll give your intentions the benefit of the doubt. While I am completely and utterly opposed to the *AAs current methodology of protecting their IP, I remain sympathetic to their plight. I understand that they are trying to exercise their rights any way that they can, in the face of a technology that makes it virtually impossible (any discussion of legality aside).
I sincerely (truly and honestly) suggest that you try to Get Over It (tm). You may very well be right. Most of slashdot, admittedly myself included, could be morally and ethically backing the wrong pony. It doesn't matter. Unless by some miracle something like trusted computing happens (and even then I have serious doubts), there is absolutely nothing that you, the government, lobbying groups, legal groups, or any deity can do about it. Even people like my technologically disinclined little brother's even more technologically disinclined friends know how to get whatever music they want from the comfort of their dorm rooms. And they do. And they will continue to. It is a fact of life at this point.
I have to agree with my previous repliers. I don't know how far along you are in your program, but I can tell you that I would have gotten more-than-dinged for citing Wikipedia in any classes 300 level or above. I didn't even go to a school that's exactly ivy league. (It is my understanding that encyclopedias aren't really "college-worthy" citation sources in general.)
That said, I still used Wikipedia for virtually every non-programming assignment I ever had. Even if citations to it directly are frowned upon, Wikipedia can still be used as a great aggregation of citations that are sufficient by most standards. Whenever you can, I recommend taking quotes and references from the same places Wikipedia does. This has the added benefit of doing a run-around on any papers with a number-of-sources requirement.
I am aware of the importance of the perception in safety, particularly as a market factor. I realize that I am living in a fantasy land with this argument, much like I'm living in a fantasy land where I wish people didn't all run around buying SUVs to feel safe when every reasonable statistic shows they are only more dangerous for others. That doesn't make it any less rational. Thus, I'm not sure I'm worried about ratcheting up paranoia any farther because, let's face it, we're pretty off the charts as it is. Let me ask you one question, that I would say on television, to rebut your argument. (I know it wouldn't be effective to the paranoid populace, but try to provide a logical answer not based in statistically unsupportable fear.) Do you think people perceive more safety now than they did 100, 60, or even 30 years ago, before we had these ubiquitous electric comfort blankets?