This is interesting background, but I'd say the statistical calculation is either not fully stated, or incorrect.
He says that, of the scenarios where there could be loss-of-life on the shuttle, about 1/7 of the time a rescue mission could be used to prevent that loss of life. Interesting, but two things: First, a 1/7 reduction in the death rate for an activity sounds significant to me. Second, this really says nothing about the statistical sense of having a shuttle on standby.
The real question is, what is the cost of having a shuttle on standby 472 times when it isn't needed and useful, vs. the cost of not having it on-hand the one time it is? Anyone trying to evaluate this formula may well get demonized for putting a "price" on loss of human life, but if you want to know what makes "statistical sense", that's the approach to use.
Now I don't know which way these numbers work out for a stand-by shuttle; but if a standby shuttle were free, you'd always have one, so why try to talk about the statistical sense of having one without accounting for the cost?
Well, not through an appeal they don't. In fact, the prosecution in a criminal case doesn't get to appeal at all - that would be called "double jeopardy".
Um.... if they can figure out what you watch (which, as you note, they can), then they can store a list of what you've watched.
If they can store a list of what you've watched, they can - at any time without your knowledge - go reconstruct the library of what you've watched, just as if they'd been storing it.
How is on-demand storage of the program any worse? It's not like they're storing any personal data of yours that they didn't have anyway...
I don't think you can say "I'm not going to use this argument" and then appeal a ruling you don't like to introduce that argument. As I understand it, appeals are to correct errors in the judicial process; you don't get to bring new arguments about the original case to the table.
Maybe I don't understand the service in question, but this is an on-demand service right?
Doesn't such a service actually decrease the need for the end-user to make a copy? i.e., with traditional scheduled programming I set my DVR to make a copy, but with on-demand scheduling I don't have to because I can just have it streamed to me when I actually want to watch it?
I guess I'm having trouble seeing the secondary infringement angle.
The fair use angle, on the other hand... I can see where providing a commercial service whereby I time-shift material on my customers' behalf might not get the same treatment as a costumer time-shifting for personal use; maybe the cable company just didn't want to go there?
Although it is popular to believe that something is not "yours" until you have discharged all of the liabilities you accepted when you bought it, that is simply not the case.
The terms of the contract include: We'll sell you a phone for $X. You'll pay us $Y if you leave before Z months is up.
Note that the company is not obligated to accept return of the phone in lieu of an early termination penalty. (I've only had one company - DirectTV - state that they would accept their equipment back and let you off the hook if you left early.) Note who is responsible for dealing with the situation if the phone is lost, stolen, or damaged.
You own the phone (as an AT&T employee would quickly be reminded if he tried to take it from you). The software, as always, is held in a legal grey area by various lobbying interests.
If only there were a way for the community to identify comments that don't contribute to the conversation and mark them as such. Then we could give users a mechanism by which to filter out comments marked in this way...
"There's a difference between your end purpose and the end purpose of the tool"
Actually, there isn't. The only "purpose" involved is the purpose of the person using the tool.
"You can't say that the monkey wrenchs end purpose is to fix a plane"
Really? Because I'm pretty sure if I'm an airplane mechanic deciding what tool to use - or more to the point, if I'm writing an article for airplane mechanics deciding what tool to use - that's exactly the basis for comparing one tool to the next. "If I use an approach involving this tool, how hard will it be to repair the plane and how good will the results be in terms of the plane's final condition."
"its end purpose is to screw bolts"
No, that's its immediate function.
"It never gives you answers (except for the maths thing),"
Completely incorrect. Often times the query result page is all you need.
Also irrelevant. Google's value is the contribution it makes to my finding the answer, regardless of whether I take additional steps after issuing the query.
"a very, very, very poor comparison not even worth spending another post on."
Oh, is it a contest to see who says "very" more times? Ok: it's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very good comparison.
"Your part about comparing to people doesn't make sense either"
I'm sorry to hear you didn't understand it.
"what makes you say you have to find the ultimate man for this?"
Nothing makes me say that; which is why I didn't.
"What makes it ok to compare them?"
Uh... what makes you think soemone has to clear their comparisons as "ok"? What I said is, comparing Google to WA is more relevant than comparing Google (or WA) to "a person".
As I noted previously, the reason for this is obvious: it is a comparison that might drive a decision a large portion of the aritcle's audience will actually make: "I need to find a piece of information; should I start with Google or with WA?" This contrasts with the fraction of the audience that will likely say "should I start with Google or with A Person?" - which is roughly 0.
I'm not wrong - in fact the reference you cited agrees with what I said. The reason you think I'm wrong is, you misinterpreted my words. I didn't say "you can state a fact as an opinion", I said "you can frame every statement as an opinion". There's a difference.
To be clear, I've not formed an opinion one way or the other as to the merits of this bill. I'm inclined to think it's more bad than good; an emotionally-driven response to a specific case that probably casts to wide a net to make prosecuting specific actions "easier". BUT, your question was why defamation laws wouldn't arleady apply. Well...
It would be libel rather than slander. But judging from the reference to the Maier case, it seems this law is meant to address cases where libel can't be applied. (Prosecutors in that case struggled to find an applicable law, and eventually decided to abuse an old anti-hacking law. They got mixed results and IMO did considerable harm while failing to address the core issue. But that's another discussion...)
An example of the difference: I can pretty much make a libel suit impossible by clearly framing every statement I make as my opinion, rather than as fact. As far as I can tell, this bill doesn't appear to care whether the speech was presented as fact or opinion.
Libel is about the harm done to the reputation of the speech's subject (indirect harm due to the effect of the speech on third parties). This bill is about the harm done to the emotional state of the speech's subject (direct harm; the effect of the speech on the subject).
Not exactly. In the case this law is nick-named after, prosecutors could not find any appilcable law. If they had brought a harassment suit, legal opinions differed on whether that law applied, and in the end there was an acquittal resulting from that uncertainty, then we could say that this law were a clarifiaction. But the prosecutors couldn't find any law that even they thought applied. When they did decide to stretch a law's definition to apply to the case, they picked an anti-hacking law rather than a harassment one.
So I'd say this law is intended to change, not clarify, the bounds of harassment-related law.
What exactly do you think the end purpose of either tool is?
The end purpose of Google is to find a web page? No, that's not the end purpose; you want the page for a reason. Usually the reason is to get information. The end purpose of WA is to find information as well. Their purpose is the same, so the comparison is perfectly good. Just like comparing a train to a plane.
Comparing Google to WA is considerably more relevant to most people than comparing Google to "a person". First of all, to compare google to "a person", you're going to have to pick a person (as results would vary wildly from person to person). Can you pick one person who a wide range of readers is likely to turn to as an alternative to Google? I'll bet you can't, and that's why that comparison would be irrelevant. (At best you might get a "human interest" angle out of picking someone well known for knowing things; i.e. "google vs. Ken Jennings" might've worked a few years back.)
But the same is not true of WA. WA will be a tool that a wide audience could consider as an alternative to Google when picking their first attempt to find some piece of information. So, the comparison is in fact perfectly relevant.
Ok, they take different approaches, work in different ways, and each perform well in areas where the other does not. That doesn't mean they don't compete with one another.
An airplane and a train have very little in common WRT how they work. A train can't get you frmo St. Louis to London. Taking a plane from Munich to Vienna is lunacy. Yet, planes and trains do compete with one another.
Ooookay, there are plenty of good reasons (posted elsewhere) not to panic about the mercury in a CFL, but let's not pretend the things are indestructable.
If you knock over a lamp, the bulb (regular or CFL) could break. If you have children or pets in the house, you should be aware of this.
How does the government get its hands on the books to burn? Does it use the force of government (which a group of private companies cannot)? The answer, of course, is yes -- it uses the force of law to get what it wants, otherwise it would be unable to enact this book-burning plan. So your question is moot.
The actions of government are inherantly different from the actions of a private entity. That's why the Ammendments in the bill of rights start with phrases like "Congress shall make no law to..." instead of "Nobody shall do anything to..."
As a rule, "choose not to publish" and "suppress publication of" do not mean the same thing. If a publication house rejects an author's manuscript, that is not censorship.
Slashdot Mirror
This is interesting background, but I'd say the statistical calculation is either not fully stated, or incorrect.
He says that, of the scenarios where there could be loss-of-life on the shuttle, about 1/7 of the time a rescue mission could be used to prevent that loss of life. Interesting, but two things: First, a 1/7 reduction in the death rate for an activity sounds significant to me. Second, this really says nothing about the statistical sense of having a shuttle on standby.
The real question is, what is the cost of having a shuttle on standby 472 times when it isn't needed and useful, vs. the cost of not having it on-hand the one time it is? Anyone trying to evaluate this formula may well get demonized for putting a "price" on loss of human life, but if you want to know what makes "statistical sense", that's the approach to use.
Now I don't know which way these numbers work out for a stand-by shuttle; but if a standby shuttle were free, you'd always have one, so why try to talk about the statistical sense of having one without accounting for the cost?
What makes you think the two are mutually exclusive?
I guess MP3.com needed a distribution licensing agreement.
Well, not through an appeal they don't. In fact, the prosecution in a criminal case doesn't get to appeal at all - that would be called "double jeopardy".
Um.... if they can figure out what you watch (which, as you note, they can), then they can store a list of what you've watched.
If they can store a list of what you've watched, they can - at any time without your knowledge - go reconstruct the library of what you've watched, just as if they'd been storing it.
How is on-demand storage of the program any worse? It's not like they're storing any personal data of yours that they didn't have anyway...
I don't think you can say "I'm not going to use this argument" and then appeal a ruling you don't like to introduce that argument. As I understand it, appeals are to correct errors in the judicial process; you don't get to bring new arguments about the original case to the table.
Besides, you can't appeal past the Supreme Court.
Maybe I don't understand the service in question, but this is an on-demand service right?
Doesn't such a service actually decrease the need for the end-user to make a copy? i.e., with traditional scheduled programming I set my DVR to make a copy, but with on-demand scheduling I don't have to because I can just have it streamed to me when I actually want to watch it?
I guess I'm having trouble seeing the secondary infringement angle.
The fair use angle, on the other hand... I can see where providing a commercial service whereby I time-shift material on my customers' behalf might not get the same treatment as a costumer time-shifting for personal use; maybe the cable company just didn't want to go there?
Although it is popular to believe that something is not "yours" until you have discharged all of the liabilities you accepted when you bought it, that is simply not the case.
The terms of the contract include: We'll sell you a phone for $X. You'll pay us $Y if you leave before Z months is up.
Note that the company is not obligated to accept return of the phone in lieu of an early termination penalty. (I've only had one company - DirectTV - state that they would accept their equipment back and let you off the hook if you left early.) Note who is responsible for dealing with the situation if the phone is lost, stolen, or damaged.
You own the phone (as an AT&T employee would quickly be reminded if he tried to take it from you). The software, as always, is held in a legal grey area by various lobbying interests.
Deliberately making a payment and then claiming it was made in error isn't misrepresentation? Then what is it?
Causing harm/expense to an organization in retribution for its actions you dislike isn't a benefit? Then why would you make and retract the payment?
If only there were a way for the community to identify comments that don't contribute to the conversation and mark them as such. Then we could give users a mechanism by which to filter out comments marked in this way...
Must be nice living in academia.
"There's a difference between your end purpose and the end purpose of the tool"
Actually, there isn't. The only "purpose" involved is the purpose of the person using the tool.
"You can't say that the monkey wrenchs end purpose is to fix a plane"
Really? Because I'm pretty sure if I'm an airplane mechanic deciding what tool to use - or more to the point, if I'm writing an article for airplane mechanics deciding what tool to use - that's exactly the basis for comparing one tool to the next. "If I use an approach involving this tool, how hard will it be to repair the plane and how good will the results be in terms of the plane's final condition."
"its end purpose is to screw bolts"
No, that's its immediate function.
"It never gives you answers (except for the maths thing),"
Completely incorrect. Often times the query result page is all you need.
Also irrelevant. Google's value is the contribution it makes to my finding the answer, regardless of whether I take additional steps after issuing the query.
"a very, very, very poor comparison not even worth spending another post on."
Oh, is it a contest to see who says "very" more times? Ok: it's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very good comparison.
"Your part about comparing to people doesn't make sense either"
I'm sorry to hear you didn't understand it.
"what makes you say you have to find the ultimate man for this?"
Nothing makes me say that; which is why I didn't.
"What makes it ok to compare them?"
Uh... what makes you think soemone has to clear their comparisons as "ok"? What I said is, comparing Google to WA is more relevant than comparing Google (or WA) to "a person".
As I noted previously, the reason for this is obvious: it is a comparison that might drive a decision a large portion of the aritcle's audience will actually make: "I need to find a piece of information; should I start with Google or with WA?" This contrasts with the fraction of the audience that will likely say "should I start with Google or with A Person?" - which is roughly 0.
That is, assuming you carry things with the mass of a piano in your glove box, and wear a space suit while driving.
I'm not wrong - in fact the reference you cited agrees with what I said. The reason you think I'm wrong is, you misinterpreted my words. I didn't say "you can state a fact as an opinion", I said "you can frame every statement as an opinion". There's a difference.
I've never shot anyone, so the law can't consider my gun a weapon?
The headline may be a stretch, but not for the reason you suggest.
To be clear, I've not formed an opinion one way or the other as to the merits of this bill. I'm inclined to think it's more bad than good; an emotionally-driven response to a specific case that probably casts to wide a net to make prosecuting specific actions "easier". BUT, your question was why defamation laws wouldn't arleady apply. Well...
It would be libel rather than slander. But judging from the reference to the Maier case, it seems this law is meant to address cases where libel can't be applied. (Prosecutors in that case struggled to find an applicable law, and eventually decided to abuse an old anti-hacking law. They got mixed results and IMO did considerable harm while failing to address the core issue. But that's another discussion...)
An example of the difference: I can pretty much make a libel suit impossible by clearly framing every statement I make as my opinion, rather than as fact. As far as I can tell, this bill doesn't appear to care whether the speech was presented as fact or opinion.
Libel is about the harm done to the reputation of the speech's subject (indirect harm due to the effect of the speech on third parties). This bill is about the harm done to the emotional state of the speech's subject (direct harm; the effect of the speech on the subject).
Not exactly. In the case this law is nick-named after, prosecutors could not find any appilcable law. If they had brought a harassment suit, legal opinions differed on whether that law applied, and in the end there was an acquittal resulting from that uncertainty, then we could say that this law were a clarifiaction. But the prosecutors couldn't find any law that even they thought applied. When they did decide to stretch a law's definition to apply to the case, they picked an anti-hacking law rather than a harassment one.
So I'd say this law is intended to change, not clarify, the bounds of harassment-related law.
What exactly do you think the end purpose of either tool is?
The end purpose of Google is to find a web page? No, that's not the end purpose; you want the page for a reason. Usually the reason is to get information. The end purpose of WA is to find information as well. Their purpose is the same, so the comparison is perfectly good. Just like comparing a train to a plane.
Comparing Google to WA is considerably more relevant to most people than comparing Google to "a person". First of all, to compare google to "a person", you're going to have to pick a person (as results would vary wildly from person to person). Can you pick one person who a wide range of readers is likely to turn to as an alternative to Google? I'll bet you can't, and that's why that comparison would be irrelevant. (At best you might get a "human interest" angle out of picking someone well known for knowing things; i.e. "google vs. Ken Jennings" might've worked a few years back.)
But the same is not true of WA. WA will be a tool that a wide audience could consider as an alternative to Google when picking their first attempt to find some piece of information. So, the comparison is in fact perfectly relevant.
Ok, they take different approaches, work in different ways, and each perform well in areas where the other does not. That doesn't mean they don't compete with one another.
An airplane and a train have very little in common WRT how they work. A train can't get you frmo St. Louis to London. Taking a plane from Munich to Vienna is lunacy. Yet, planes and trains do compete with one another.
Ooookay, there are plenty of good reasons (posted elsewhere) not to panic about the mercury in a CFL, but let's not pretend the things are indestructable.
If you knock over a lamp, the bulb (regular or CFL) could break. If you have children or pets in the house, you should be aware of this.
Typing is a frequently used mechanism in writing computer code.
I am currently typing.
Therefore.... ?
Hmm, yes, if only there were a way to take a huge pile of data and sift through it for only the interesting bits...
You must be new here.
It's not a question of "what's unprintable on slashdot".
It's a question of "from whence was the summary text plagiarized, and what is considered unprintable there".
How does the government get its hands on the books to burn? Does it use the force of government (which a group of private companies cannot)? The answer, of course, is yes -- it uses the force of law to get what it wants, otherwise it would be unable to enact this book-burning plan. So your question is moot.
The actions of government are inherantly different from the actions of a private entity. That's why the Ammendments in the bill of rights start with phrases like "Congress shall make no law to..." instead of "Nobody shall do anything to..."
Well, for one thing a cadre of ISP's can't jail a "rogue" ISP that doesn't choose to enforce their embargo...
As a rule, "choose not to publish" and "suppress publication of" do not mean the same thing. If a publication house rejects an author's manuscript, that is not censorship.