A dogs are better bomb sniffers than any machine. And B you can put a bomb up your ass.
Worse than that, if you took great care in your methods you could pack C4 in a laptop battery without leaving a trace of residue outside the sealed case. Then you just send it through the scanner and it gets on through your carry-on luggage.
Really, you don't even need the C4. Laptop batteries by themselves can be rigged to explode, and pack quite a wallop. Probably not enough to bring down the plane, but definitely enough to kill a lot of people if set off in the right area.
What's a bomb-sniffing dog supposed to do about that?
Fuck that. It's not the airlines screwing you in this case, why punish them*?
Let's make the TSA employees feel like the assholes their bosses are instead. I find that much more agreeable.
TSA is a joke. A former co-worker of mine accidentally carried a large box cutter, very similar to those used to hijack the planes on 9/11, through TSA security about six times before he realized it was in there and removed it. If there was one thing they should have figured out how to spot, it was that. But hey, they'll get your nail clippers every time!
It's all theater to make you feel safe, and this is just more theater. Nobody sneaks anything particularly dangerous on their person these days, it's much easier to hide it in a bag and let security miss it. And miss it they shall. They've shown over and over again just how good their security is.
*I could certainly get behind punishing the bullshit Airlines do themselves, don't get me wrong, but punishing them for something the Feds are doing is stupid and isn't going to help. The Feds don't give a rat's ass what the airlines think, if they did they wouldn't be doing any of this.
God damn, read the friggin summary all the way at least.
The benefits persisted for the puzzles they tried to learn during the experiment. They otherwise saw no improvement at all, short term or long term. We can logically assume, since the summary made no mention of it, that the reverse current degraded their abilities the same way. If you don't understand that, I'll spell it out: they performed at the level of a six year old for the puzzles they tried to learn during the experiments. Their abilities were not otherwise impaired in any way, short term or long term.
Jesus, at least read the summary guys! I don't expect you to read the article, but you could at least keep yourself from looking like an idiot all the time.
What about the other sides, were the negative effects persistant? Did you just create a group of idiots? Is this legal?
If you had read the next couple sentences you would have known that it only persisted for the puzzles they attempted to learn.
In other words, they created a bunch of people who were very good at those particular puzzles, and a bunch of people who were very bad at them. It did not affect their overall abilities at all.
Copyright is an exception to people's natural right to copy objects in their possession. For example, if you buy a new chair there is no law that prohibits you from buying a bunch of wood, going out to the 'ole woodshop and making three more chairs exactly like it.
The obvious limiting factor there, though, is that not many people have the skill necessary to duplicate those chairs. Thus the carpenter can earn a living by selling chairs.
Ideas are a little different though. Ideas are trivial to copy - even without computers ideas have always been pretty trivial to copy and distribute. It's as simple as writing them down again. Because of this it is very hard for someone to earn a living on new ideas without something to limit other people's ability to copy.
Thus the Powers That Be came up with copyright. It is a special exemption to the public's natural right to copy. Since new ideas are always built upon older ideas, it's also very important that this exemption be limited. The standard for the last few hundred years up until 60-70 years ago was around 20 years on average. The original term in the US was 28 years.
Why the hell should it be life of the author + 70 years now? What incentive does the author gain to produce new works when most of the supposed payoff comes after he's dead? The fact is, anything past the first 5 years is a marginal payoff at best, so why the obscene extensions?
It's worth noting that all recent extensions have been pushed to protect the works of people who are already dead, and who will see not one bit of benefit from the extensions, nor create any new content because of it.
So how is a dead guy supposed to be making a living off his creations?
Soul Music was born when Ray Charles ripped off a gospel song by re-wording it. The gospel song he ripped off was a re-working of a prior gospel song. The original gospel songs were verbatim copies hymns set to new music.
At the time, none of this was copyright infringement. The song Ray Charles ripped off was never registered, and the copyright on the hymns upon which gospel was founded had expired.
With today's laws it would all be infringement. Hell the hymns would only just now be coming off copyright. There is no telling how much creativity in music we have lost because of this.
Jesus Christ, it's up to the infringed party (aka the recipe owner) to sue for damages. She hasn't yet. Where's the fucking miscarriage of justice here?
But really if you're going to ask for statutory damages you should be required to demonstrate that there is no way of getting a more accurate estimate.
Copyright infringement, especially digital copyright infringement, falls squarely in this category.
However, $70,000 per song is outrageous, or "monstrous" as one judge put it. You shouldn't be able to get that much outside of criminal copyright infringement (which, by the way, the case in this story could fall under).
They should cap civil copyright cases at $1000 per instance. That should cover any not-for-profit infringement.
Exceeding the speed limit because everyone else is also speeding is right in the one objective sense that matters - reduction of harm.
There's a flip side to that argument, it isn't as clean as you'd like.
The excessive speed itself is dangerous, and matching that speed encourages those around you to do the same. Keeping your speed to the legal limit, while putting you personally at greater risk, encourages others to reduce their speed.
You may well be limiting total harm by maintaining the legal limit, even while taking a higher risk individually.
The moral of the story? Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right.
The analogy is appropriate, in spite of whatever justifications you like to make for your illegal speeding habits.
I personally would hold them responsible for a buck for each and every copy that was distributed. That could easily amount to thousands of dollars, but not likely hundreds of thousands except for cases of blatant and flagrant infringement (like running a well-known server that distributes all the music you can find). It would also be difficult to quantify, which is why they have the ridiculous dollar amount on the punishment.
I find it hard to believe that 80,000 people copied each of the 24 songs Jamie Thomas was convicted of distributing, yet that is what her punishment amounts to. I'd like to see a cap of $500-$1000 per item for non-criminal copyright infringement. The current limits ($90,000 per infringement, I believe) are only appropriate for criminal infringement, and should probably be higher in those cases anyway.
Anyway, you're not the only one who thinks piracy is wrong, and I doubt you're in the minority in that regard. You probably are in the minority regarding pirated works on your computer though.
Actually the person you downloaded the song from is the one infringing copyright, since the copying happens on their machine and it is sent to yours.
It's not until you re-distributes the file that the downloader is infringing copyright.
So, it's not downloading, but sharing music that is illegal (it's the right to copy, not the right receive a copy).
That's why all the RIAA cases are for people who shared files via a file sharing program, and the only files they are on the hook for are the ones that can be proven were distributed to others. It's why Jamie Thomas was only convicted on 24 songs and not the thousands she downloaded.
Bittorrent is especially dangerous in this regard. If you don't implicitly (the author is using bittorrent as a means to distribute his copyrighted work) or explicitly (the file is licensed under one of the open licenses) have the right to distribute something you download via bittorrent, you are automatically incredibly guilty of copyright infringement.
The use of the term "pirate" when referring to infringing on copyright goes back hundreds of years. If you think the meaning is still dubious, you're an idiot.
The term "public domain" also goes back hundreds of years, and is very specific. Anything that can legally be copied is said to be in the public domain. Public domain is the natural domain of all works (and in fact all objects), copyright is an exception that pulls works out of the public domain and into the private domain for a set period of time.
This definition is in fact no different than any other definition of "public domain". It is literally free for the public to use because nobody owns it any more. Same with any other object in the public domain.
It's whatever the ITU made up, because apparently they are gods and all must bow down to their loose definitions of cellphone technologies.
Never mind the fact that 4G actually means fourth generation, and these new technologies are in fact fourth generation mobile technologies. Nope, forget all that, it's whatever the ITU wants it to be.
Facts like it's the fourth generation of network technology and is significantly faster than previous technologies, right?
Oh wait, if you include those facts you must conclude that the ITU is being a bunch of arrogant assholes, and T-Mobile and Sprint are absolutely correct calling their technologies 4G.
I don't see how this is intentionally misleading - it definitely is Sprints fourth generation network, which is what 4G stands for. If anything it's the ITU who has hijacked something here, not Sprint.
Besides, 1G-4G are as much standards as the OSI model of networks is a standard. They aren't really standards, they are just categorizations of different mobile technologies. The actual standards, like CDMA, GSM, EDGE, EVDO, HSPA, etc. are inside the loose categorizations.
How fair is it that after T-Mobile and Sprint roll out their 4G network technologies the ITU arbitrarily decides these fourth generation networks aren't fourth generation networks? Who's really being heavy-handed here?
Seriously though, it's called empathy. An artist in particular could easily imagine what it would feel like to have something happen to their "art hand". Thus, the "ouch".
Getting off topic now, but speaking of "intentional sloppiness", a friend of mine is a digital artist and was disappointed to discover that her meticulous, painstakingly detailed Photoshop pieces were not as popular as her sloppy, "thrown together" Corel Draw charcoal pieces. The Photoshop pieces took more skill and were infinitely more detailed (and she liked them a lot better), but people thought the stuff she did in a couple hours with Corel Draw looked cooler.
To give you an idea of how much detail her art contained, she once lost an image because it had gone over the 2gb file limit, and she hadn't saved it in the large file format. She was pretty devastated over that one.
It would be very tough (read: impossible) to argue that data logs automatically generated by an ECU constitute creative content, and it is creative content that is copyrightable. Furthermore, the data logs would more than likely be owned by the owner of the car, not the company that built the car. Ergo, the owner of the car would own the copyright on the logs (if such a silly thing could exist).
Now, if you got a hold of the ECU's source code, that is a different story, but reverse engineering the ECU software is perfectly legal.
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A dogs are better bomb sniffers than any machine. And B you can put a bomb up your ass.
Worse than that, if you took great care in your methods you could pack C4 in a laptop battery without leaving a trace of residue outside the sealed case. Then you just send it through the scanner and it gets on through your carry-on luggage.
Really, you don't even need the C4. Laptop batteries by themselves can be rigged to explode, and pack quite a wallop. Probably not enough to bring down the plane, but definitely enough to kill a lot of people if set off in the right area.
What's a bomb-sniffing dog supposed to do about that?
there is one simple alternative: DO NOT FLY.
Fuck that. It's not the airlines screwing you in this case, why punish them*?
Let's make the TSA employees feel like the assholes their bosses are instead. I find that much more agreeable.
TSA is a joke. A former co-worker of mine accidentally carried a large box cutter, very similar to those used to hijack the planes on 9/11, through TSA security about six times before he realized it was in there and removed it. If there was one thing they should have figured out how to spot, it was that. But hey, they'll get your nail clippers every time!
It's all theater to make you feel safe, and this is just more theater. Nobody sneaks anything particularly dangerous on their person these days, it's much easier to hide it in a bag and let security miss it. And miss it they shall. They've shown over and over again just how good their security is.
*I could certainly get behind punishing the bullshit Airlines do themselves, don't get me wrong, but punishing them for something the Feds are doing is stupid and isn't going to help. The Feds don't give a rat's ass what the airlines think, if they did they wouldn't be doing any of this.
God damn, read the friggin summary all the way at least.
The benefits persisted for the puzzles they tried to learn during the experiment. They otherwise saw no improvement at all, short term or long term. We can logically assume, since the summary made no mention of it, that the reverse current degraded their abilities the same way. If you don't understand that, I'll spell it out: they performed at the level of a six year old for the puzzles they tried to learn during the experiments. Their abilities were not otherwise impaired in any way, short term or long term.
Jesus, at least read the summary guys! I don't expect you to read the article, but you could at least keep yourself from looking like an idiot all the time.
And I hate people who can't bother to capitalize their sentences.
What about the other sides, were the negative effects persistant? Did you just create a group of idiots? Is this legal?
If you had read the next couple sentences you would have known that it only persisted for the puzzles they attempted to learn.
In other words, they created a bunch of people who were very good at those particular puzzles, and a bunch of people who were very bad at them. It did not affect their overall abilities at all.
No don't stop!
How are we supposed to make you look like a dumbass if you stop going off half-cocked?
Amen brother.
We don't need to stoop to the RIAA's level when the act in question already has a legal term, which is very different from theft.
Calling it theft pisses me off.
Calling it piracy, however, is actually very accurate (it's got a 300+ year history on that score). We should be calling it piracy, not theft.
They didn't just copy her recipe, dumbass, they copied her whole article.
Word. For. Word.
It is the very definition of copyright infringement, even down to profiting from it.
You're looking at copyright the wrong way.
Copyright is an exception to people's natural right to copy objects in their possession. For example, if you buy a new chair there is no law that prohibits you from buying a bunch of wood, going out to the 'ole woodshop and making three more chairs exactly like it.
The obvious limiting factor there, though, is that not many people have the skill necessary to duplicate those chairs. Thus the carpenter can earn a living by selling chairs.
Ideas are a little different though. Ideas are trivial to copy - even without computers ideas have always been pretty trivial to copy and distribute. It's as simple as writing them down again. Because of this it is very hard for someone to earn a living on new ideas without something to limit other people's ability to copy.
Thus the Powers That Be came up with copyright. It is a special exemption to the public's natural right to copy. Since new ideas are always built upon older ideas, it's also very important that this exemption be limited. The standard for the last few hundred years up until 60-70 years ago was around 20 years on average. The original term in the US was 28 years.
Why the hell should it be life of the author + 70 years now? What incentive does the author gain to produce new works when most of the supposed payoff comes after he's dead? The fact is, anything past the first 5 years is a marginal payoff at best, so why the obscene extensions?
It's worth noting that all recent extensions have been pushed to protect the works of people who are already dead, and who will see not one bit of benefit from the extensions, nor create any new content because of it.
So how is a dead guy supposed to be making a living off his creations?
Case in point: Music.
Soul Music was born when Ray Charles ripped off a gospel song by re-wording it. The gospel song he ripped off was a re-working of a prior gospel song. The original gospel songs were verbatim copies hymns set to new music.
At the time, none of this was copyright infringement. The song Ray Charles ripped off was never registered, and the copyright on the hymns upon which gospel was founded had expired.
With today's laws it would all be infringement. Hell the hymns would only just now be coming off copyright. There is no telling how much creativity in music we have lost because of this.
Advancement of the arts indeed!
Jesus Christ, it's up to the infringed party (aka the recipe owner) to sue for damages. She hasn't yet. Where's the fucking miscarriage of justice here?
But really if you're going to ask for statutory damages you should be required to demonstrate that there is no way of getting a more accurate estimate.
Copyright infringement, especially digital copyright infringement, falls squarely in this category.
However, $70,000 per song is outrageous, or "monstrous" as one judge put it. You shouldn't be able to get that much outside of criminal copyright infringement (which, by the way, the case in this story could fall under).
They should cap civil copyright cases at $1000 per instance. That should cover any not-for-profit infringement.
Exceeding the speed limit because everyone else is also speeding is right in the one objective sense that matters - reduction of harm.
There's a flip side to that argument, it isn't as clean as you'd like.
The excessive speed itself is dangerous, and matching that speed encourages those around you to do the same. Keeping your speed to the legal limit, while putting you personally at greater risk, encourages others to reduce their speed.
You may well be limiting total harm by maintaining the legal limit, even while taking a higher risk individually.
The moral of the story? Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right.
The analogy is appropriate, in spite of whatever justifications you like to make for your illegal speeding habits.
They sell them for a buck. You owe them a buck.
I personally would hold them responsible for a buck for each and every copy that was distributed. That could easily amount to thousands of dollars, but not likely hundreds of thousands except for cases of blatant and flagrant infringement (like running a well-known server that distributes all the music you can find). It would also be difficult to quantify, which is why they have the ridiculous dollar amount on the punishment.
I find it hard to believe that 80,000 people copied each of the 24 songs Jamie Thomas was convicted of distributing, yet that is what her punishment amounts to. I'd like to see a cap of $500-$1000 per item for non-criminal copyright infringement. The current limits ($90,000 per infringement, I believe) are only appropriate for criminal infringement, and should probably be higher in those cases anyway.
Anyway, you're not the only one who thinks piracy is wrong, and I doubt you're in the minority in that regard. You probably are in the minority regarding pirated works on your computer though.
Actually the person you downloaded the song from is the one infringing copyright, since the copying happens on their machine and it is sent to yours.
It's not until you re-distributes the file that the downloader is infringing copyright.
So, it's not downloading, but sharing music that is illegal (it's the right to copy, not the right receive a copy).
That's why all the RIAA cases are for people who shared files via a file sharing program, and the only files they are on the hook for are the ones that can be proven were distributed to others. It's why Jamie Thomas was only convicted on 24 songs and not the thousands she downloaded.
Bittorrent is especially dangerous in this regard. If you don't implicitly (the author is using bittorrent as a means to distribute his copyrighted work) or explicitly (the file is licensed under one of the open licenses) have the right to distribute something you download via bittorrent, you are automatically incredibly guilty of copyright infringement.
The use of the term "pirate" when referring to infringing on copyright goes back hundreds of years. If you think the meaning is still dubious, you're an idiot.
The term "public domain" also goes back hundreds of years, and is very specific. Anything that can legally be copied is said to be in the public domain. Public domain is the natural domain of all works (and in fact all objects), copyright is an exception that pulls works out of the public domain and into the private domain for a set period of time.
This definition is in fact no different than any other definition of "public domain". It is literally free for the public to use because nobody owns it any more. Same with any other object in the public domain.
What did they misrepresent? It is in fact the fourth generation of cell phone communications technology.
If anything it's the ITU's definition that is misleading, as it will take at least three more generations of cell tech to reach "4G".
It's whatever the ITU made up, because apparently they are gods and all must bow down to their loose definitions of cellphone technologies.
Never mind the fact that 4G actually means fourth generation, and these new technologies are in fact fourth generation mobile technologies. Nope, forget all that, it's whatever the ITU wants it to be.
Facts like it's the fourth generation of network technology and is significantly faster than previous technologies, right?
Oh wait, if you include those facts you must conclude that the ITU is being a bunch of arrogant assholes, and T-Mobile and Sprint are absolutely correct calling their technologies 4G.
Then it also hasn't been trademarked by the ITU.
I don't see how this is intentionally misleading - it definitely is Sprints fourth generation network, which is what 4G stands for. If anything it's the ITU who has hijacked something here, not Sprint.
Besides, 1G-4G are as much standards as the OSI model of networks is a standard. They aren't really standards, they are just categorizations of different mobile technologies. The actual standards, like CDMA, GSM, EDGE, EVDO, HSPA, etc. are inside the loose categorizations.
How fair is it that after T-Mobile and Sprint roll out their 4G network technologies the ITU arbitrarily decides these fourth generation networks aren't fourth generation networks? Who's really being heavy-handed here?
Obviously.
Seriously though, it's called empathy. An artist in particular could easily imagine what it would feel like to have something happen to their "art hand". Thus, the "ouch".
Getting off topic now, but speaking of "intentional sloppiness", a friend of mine is a digital artist and was disappointed to discover that her meticulous, painstakingly detailed Photoshop pieces were not as popular as her sloppy, "thrown together" Corel Draw charcoal pieces. The Photoshop pieces took more skill and were infinitely more detailed (and she liked them a lot better), but people thought the stuff she did in a couple hours with Corel Draw looked cooler.
To give you an idea of how much detail her art contained, she once lost an image because it had gone over the 2gb file limit, and she hadn't saved it in the large file format. She was pretty devastated over that one.
a python script that he himself admits to be simplistic and ugly.
Isn't that statement redundant? All python code is simplistic and ugly.
.
I kid! I kid!
It would be very tough (read: impossible) to argue that data logs automatically generated by an ECU constitute creative content, and it is creative content that is copyrightable. Furthermore, the data logs would more than likely be owned by the owner of the car, not the company that built the car. Ergo, the owner of the car would own the copyright on the logs (if such a silly thing could exist).
Now, if you got a hold of the ECU's source code, that is a different story, but reverse engineering the ECU software is perfectly legal.
I wouldn't expect any lawsuits, reverse engineering is well established as a legal activity.
Now, there may be some DRM on the logs in the future, at which point reverse engineering suddenly becomes illegal.
God I hate the DMCA.