There's a huge difference between "Give the wookie [implying customers] what he wants," and "Let the wookie win."
The context of C-3PO offering that advice to R2 flatly contradicts Tim's point in the rest of the essay. Here R2-D2 has made a perfectly legitimate move that puts Chewie at a disadvantage... and he threatens a violent reprisal outside of the game.
Chewie roars after R2D2 captures one of Chewie's important pieces.
C-3PO (to Chewie): He made a fair move! Screaming about it won't help you. Han: Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a wookie. C-3PO: But sir, nobody ever worries about upsetting a droid. Han: That's because droids don't pull peoples' arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookies are known for doing that. C-3PO: I suggest a new strategy, R2: Let the wookie win.
To me, an allusion to that scene (correctly quoted or not) paints the picture that publishers (and their attorneys) are the wookies, looking to retalliate against us harmless (outside the market) customers for upsetting their cash flow. A totally different message than what O'Rilley was trying to get across.
Try Anarchy Online free for 7 days! (We dare you to). =]
And in our upcoming story about heroin addiction, we'll have an interactive special feature where you can enter your zip code and find the location for the dealer nearest you!
Yes, the MIT people are using a "modular house" for their laboratory of how people use homes, but I don't feel that they're proposing modular houses at all. The lab home they're using is modular so it'll be easier to manipulate conditions between (within?) a participant's stay...
Given a doors to the bathroom in the bedroom and living room, which gets used more?
How does the size of the living room effect how much time people spend there?
Do people prefer the range to be to the left of the sink, or the right?
...that sort of thing.
The ultimate goal being an open-sourced (yeah, right!) expert system that can generate a modular design: one of a few kitchen plans is shuffled around in relation to the other rooms based on how the "client" says he lives from day to day. That plan gets passed off to an uberhomebuilder, who can buy the components for the four different types of kitchens... and the three different master bedrooms, and the five different living rooms... all in bulk and use them on different houses.
This, instead of having eight high square-footage unalterable house designs that get spawned all over the same subdivision. I think it would be a great middle ground between picking a set-in-stone plan out of a limited catalog, and retaining an architect from start-to-finish. <cynical>I also think this'll be realized somewhere between useful voice recognition and true artificial intelligence.</cynical>
I go to a hospital and my doctor is wearing an ID badge, and that makes me feel good, because if I trust the badge, I'm reasonably assured that this main isn't some psycho pretending to be a doctor. The TSA is looking at a way to unify the many different systems under one, so that rather than having 50 different types of identification depending on where you go, everyone will have the same types of ID. They're not implementing a new system. They're making an existing one more standardized.
I don't know... I think having distinct ID formats would make forgery harder... "Hey! That's a badge design we dropped two years ago... STOP HIM!" sort of thing. But, now that they're nationalizing airport security, maybe this level of idiot-proofing is warranted.
The market has tightened significantly and whether people like it or not, you're going to have to work a lot harder in this environment than you have ever done in your life,[sic]
Work harder? Is that possible? All the time, we read articles about software development teams working round-the-clock for weeks to meet a deadline. If these IT departments are doing any sort of application development for in-house use (instead of the minions on contract), I can only imagine that stuff like that happening to them already... and they'll have to work harder? And in suits? (The same suit 24 / 7 for three weeks of never leaving?)
To ask which is more likely, that life forms are instigating these reactions, or undiscovered caches of inorganic catylists are... the answer fundamentally hinges on how high you think the lowest hurdle for life's emergence is, and how prevalent you think life is in the universe. (And I'm not talking "greys").
There are a good number of people looking for more basic life in the universe that are of the opinion that life can begin in places much more hostile than blue planet Earth. They're looking to test the idea that basic, basic life is going to crop up wherever possible and then evolutionarily "dare" planetary conditions to kill it off. Just think about it, when life first emerged here the rocks had just barely solidified and the only thing we really had going for us was liquid water. Most of this planet's geologic history has been the three billion years between the emergence of prokaryotes, and the evolution of cells with proper nucleii.
The only bearing this has on life is as more confirmation that there are indeed extrasolar planets. Which I think we already knew.
Actually a wake in a proto-planetary dust cloud is better evidence for extrasolar planets than so-called gravitational wobbles that comprise all the previous evidence for (not of) extra-solar planets. The problem with inferring multiple-Jupiter mass planets exist where we see gravitational "wobbles" is that we can't be sure of perturbations of movement in the direction of our line of sight with the star... it's all about component forces. We can't discern forward-backward motion as accurately as we can side-to-side motion, so an Extra Solar Planet Candidate might be much more massive than our calculations say, so the planet candidate may actually be a star of undetectable luminosity.
We run the risk of not being able to detect the luminosity of a star in this case, as well... but we can get a better aproximation of the body's motion around the star by looking at the wake, so we should be able to avoid underestimating the mass, and that means we won't incorrectly identify a low-luminosity star as a planet.
By linking them, the University is contending that you've provided a vehicle by which the terrorists can communicate.
Of course linking to a site is a vehicle for communication... Google rates pages by how many other pages link to it.
If a terrorist leader, let's call him "Dr. No", goes looking for groups to band together with his own, and these pinko kids have a link to the FARC on their website, he'll find their homepage and... there will be... communication. If they don't, ol' Dr. No will have to settle for some two-bit, FBI-infiltrated paramilitary outfit like the Fuerza Armada Revolucional de Toledo, OH.
Now that people know she's serious, it be more tha a little helpful if she had an organized website built around her blog. I can approximate a sketch of her political beliefs by her libertarian affiliation, and at the end of her "about me" page, she talks about laisez faire economics... but that's it. Even if she wants to be seen as a "one-issue" candidate, she still needs to look better organized and, well, less ranty.
I don't find it ironic; as stated before, the AD Council is a not-for-profit. The other commercial that really illustrates my views on a matter really well is one by AT&T, about their new flat-rate local telephone service...
I think it'll tank as business plan, but seeing the fictional family having to break a dollar bill for change to pay "The Man" for admission to their own bathroom, makes me want to jump up and say "That's what some people want your life to be like!"
How can the researchers tell the difference between *real* and *perceived* out-of-body?
One's brain mediates everything, every experience, every perception. That is a relatively obvious, but pretty important theory (as in supported by evidence) of cognitive science. You're right; there is no difference between a "real" out-of-body experience or a "percieved" one. The scientists claim not to want to "explain out-of-body experiences away" but they're persistant in pop culture precisely because in the first few cases counselors were either unwilling, or not well-enough versed in cognitive theory to tell the person having the experience that it was their brain going nuts (and sometimes, these patients would go to therapist after therapist until they found such an enabler).
I imagine this finding, if re-tested in a systematic way (which will be damn hard, because the number of people one could ethically stick electrodes into is miniscule) will go a long way towards debunking out-of-body experience as somehow paranormal.
It's just like UFO's. A pannel of scientists back in the late 80's or early 90's (after the Condon report came out) were left to sift through a huge stack of UFO reports... and everyone was waiting for them to come out with a conclusion that these people were all on drugs, or that they were reporting bona fide encounters with aliens. They're conclusion: there was a small kernel of cases where the Flying Objects were indeed Unexplainable... but that these incidents represented an opportunity for physicists and atmospheric scientists to learn new things about Life, the Universe and Everything.
I hope you were kidding. Paul "I also like bananas" Metzler as superman? Of course, when i first read that, i thought you meant Kevin Kline which would have been worse.
On the other hand, i can't think of someone else i could cast as Superman. I'd say Tim Robbins, if he wasn't 45, 6'4" and skinny. I can't think of anyone who really has the screen presence of the prior two actors. Maybe that's the point.
Eh, 50/50 that it's a gimmick. While, yes, being hollywood, it seems very likely, the co-sponsor of the script search is the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. They fund other things like public television and NPR, which makes it seem less likely.
Actually, most of the MBA-crowd literature, from the scholarly to the popular is chok full of remarks on disruptive innovations. The most specific on on this subject, however is (aptly enough) The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.
There are a few really good, more general books on the subject, but i'd have to be at home to find the titles.
Here is a brief list of some things about broadband pricing and regulation that not everyone may know... i did a paper on regulatory access requirements (not price controls) for a course this past semester. If you want references e-mail me; if you want to argue, reply here.
Presently, DSL is (implicitly and in practice) subject to regulation by state / municipal public utility comissions under the terms of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
With the exception of Time-Warner, who stipulated to (only) open access requirements as a term of their merger with AOL, cable Internet service is not subject to regulation under any federal statute. A point hammered home by the FCC.
Tauzin-Dingle is dead until next year at the earliest, probably until after the Senate elections next year.
If there is, as some posters have suggested, price fixing or other collusion between DSL-providing TELCO's and local cable franchisees it's a matter for the FTC, and state and federal attorneys general -- not local utility boards or the FCC. That would not change if DSL were regulated.
Some consumer advocates speculate that the language of the FCC's ruling that a Portland, OR utility board could not regulate cable Internet service as telephony (it ruled that it was an information service) could end the implied authority of utility comissions to regulate DSL service.
I say: if it does, it does. Let's see how DSL ends up if/when it's unregulated. Considering the shape of the unregulated cable Internet business, it probably won't be any better or worse... and if it is, Congress can vote to bring the two substitutes under regulation under the same set of guidelines... something that wouldn't be politically feasible if Tauzin-Dingle had passed.
You really want Bill O'Riley to interview anybody on your side of any issue?!?!?! The guy can ask so many rapid-fire loaded questions he can make anyone look like the bad guy.
Even if it's "Hollywood" on the other side of the fence, people mainly watch the show to see guests get rhetorically burned alive, so if the MPAA (wisely) declines to send a representative, our guy would be the sacrificial offering.
WTF? This isn't the story i tried to post this comment to. I tried to post it to the one about the guy at Turner saying that all PVR-commercial stripping is theft, but apparently that story's temporarily disappeared.
It appears subliminally whenever the TV-rating appears on screen. If you run the broadcast signal through a polarity modulator, you can make it out if you interlace the frames, rotate it 270 degrees, and invert it black for white.
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
<SNIP instructions to read it carefully...>
1. GRANT OF LICENSE: Subject to the terms below, Turner Broadcasting, a division of AOL-Time Warner hereby grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to view this VHF broadcast or cable or sattelite transmission ('Program') without cost, in exchange for the requirement of viewing interstitial commercial messages ('Advertisments').
<SNIP what you are allowed to do...>
Whether you are licensing the Program as an individual or on behalf of an entity, you may not: (i) rewind, replay at slow-motion, or make unauthorized use of Closed Captioning to attempt to transcribe the script; (ii) re-edit, or create derivative works based upon the Program in whole or in part without the express written consent of Turner Broadcasting, a division of AOL-Time Warner; (iii) distribute copies of the Program; (iv) remove any Advertisments or labels on the Program; (v) resell, lease, rent, transfer, sublicense, or otherwise transfer rights to the Program; (vi) leave the presence of the television during advertisments, change the channel broadcast on the television, or in any other way ignore the Advertisements.
"Most recipients fail to pick up the honor in person."
I would not like to be the UPS guy who had to deliver these things to Oracle or the DOJ...
UPS Guy: I need you to sign for this Receptionist: What is it, first UPS Guy: It says "Award enclosed" and "Fragile". That's all i know. Receptionist: We have to be security conscious around here, y'know.
*opens box* *sees golden shrunken head*
Receptionist: AIEEEEEEEE! There's no way we're signing for this... Send this &*()#&*()#%@&@^#(%) back to those mother&(#*&%)!!!!!!!!!!
Re:Great article, bizarre conclusions . . .
on
When Elephants Dance
·
· Score: 1
Part of Lessig's plan (which i support in favor of Frasse's proposal) would include a DMCA rewrite / repeal, and no CBDTPA. He also would let corporations keep copyrights, which i also agree with. And all copyrights would be renewable for one more fourteen year term (not a hardship without the DMCA).
There's no one on the planet who would admit to being a "corporatist", in the sense that they favor the for-profit enterprise as the be-all, end-all solution for everything... but I'll grant that record companies should own the copyrights on recordings... if they paid for them. (Big "if", i know.)
Well, for what it's worth... any court can overturn any law over which it has jurisdiction. Trial (state circuit, federal district) courts don't have the right to rule on the merits of a law: they try fact, they assume the law is good.
Once they decide on fact, an appellate court (state appellate, federal circuit) has the right to rule on the merits of a law / interpretation of law. For an ever popular example: Microsoft will always be a monopolist who has abused its power, no matter what an appellate court will ever say, unless it says that the legal reasoning in coming to that conclusion was somehow flawed.
But the appellate court can say that the something in the law is wrong... that ol' Jackson was not impartial in his remedy, even that the law means for Microsoft to be explicitly exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act. They can quite literally say the law means anything they want it to. In truth it is here where laws get "overturned" (they can make any judge quake in his boots at the prospect of having a decision overturned by the precedent set)
The Supreme Court reviews the judiciousness of the appellate court, or can short-circuit the appellate level entirely (and can also hear a trial in original jurisdiction). For example, if an appellate panel had said that the Sherman Act was meant to exempt Microsoft the Supreme Court would likely laugh the whole way through their opinion sustaining the original trial court findings.
So, to cut a long story middling, what happens in the trial court doesn't matter, but it doesn't really have to make it all the way to the Supreme Court if the appellate decision is thoughtful, and comes out from some respected judges.
By the way, only a small proprtion of cases, maybe 5% are heard on appeal, and of those only another small fraction of those appealed are successful. Very few appeals decisions are heard by the Supreme Court (maybe five percent of the five percent where the appellants file for a further appeal).
Well, the Onion (on the editorial/column pages) is using a type of ad which has the same effect as the functional (i.e. not flash) demo from boston.com did. Not sure how to read the source code, or even if it shows the source for that ad... but it seems to be a javascript controlling a bunch of gif's and wav's, the gif files (transparent placeholders) are still around after the ad has run its course.
These production versions run in mozilla under win ME, so it's likely there was just a browser spy if statement to keep us mozilla users from having our browsers crashed at boston.com because they weren't done.
There's nothing that says there can't be a law against making a monopolist. Heck, even if there was, the newer law would overwrite it. The laws only say monopolists can't abuse their power, and may be subject to federal regulation... The more likely alternative is that Microsoft literally does become the next AT&T, complete with a bunch of Federal hangers-on to ensure that everybody "plays by the rules".
SSSCA also said it would enforce a standard agreed-to or imposed upon by the commerce department... ol' senator hollings's staff didn't exactly do a patent search to check if a standard could get imposed upon the commerce department.
Apple would likely prefer to pay license fees to its minority owner, Microsoft anyway than leave the industry anyway.
He was canadian, but he was extradited... I think tried in VA Federal Court and given probation. *searches slashdot...* Eight months in a youth detention facility, and a year of probation. Not sure if it was the U.S. or Canada... but i think that's what Taco was talking about either way.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a huge difference between "Give the wookie [implying customers] what he wants," and "Let the wookie win."
The context of C-3PO offering that advice to R2 flatly contradicts Tim's point in the rest of the essay. Here R2-D2 has made a perfectly legitimate move that puts Chewie at a disadvantage... and he threatens a violent reprisal outside of the game.
To me, an allusion to that scene (correctly quoted or not) paints the picture that publishers (and their attorneys) are the wookies, looking to retalliate against us harmless (outside the market) customers for upsetting their cash flow. A totally different message than what O'Rilley was trying to get across.
And in our upcoming story about heroin addiction, we'll have an interactive special feature where you can enter your zip code and find the location for the dealer nearest you!
Yes, the MIT people are using a "modular house" for their laboratory of how people use homes, but I don't feel that they're proposing modular houses at all. The lab home they're using is modular so it'll be easier to manipulate conditions between (within?) a participant's stay...
...that sort of thing.
The ultimate goal being an open-sourced (yeah, right!) expert system that can generate a modular design: one of a few kitchen plans is shuffled around in relation to the other rooms based on how the "client" says he lives from day to day. That plan gets passed off to an uberhomebuilder, who can buy the components for the four different types of kitchens... and the three different master bedrooms, and the five different living rooms... all in bulk and use them on different houses.
This, instead of having eight high square-footage unalterable house designs that get spawned all over the same subdivision. I think it would be a great middle ground between picking a set-in-stone plan out of a limited catalog, and retaining an architect from start-to-finish. <cynical>I also think this'll be realized somewhere between useful voice recognition and true artificial intelligence.</cynical>
I don't know... I think having distinct ID formats would make forgery harder... "Hey! That's a badge design we dropped two years ago... STOP HIM!" sort of thing. But, now that they're nationalizing airport security, maybe this level of idiot-proofing is warranted.
From the article:
Work harder? Is that possible? All the time, we read articles about software development teams working round-the-clock for weeks to meet a deadline. If these IT departments are doing any sort of application development for in-house use (instead of the minions on contract), I can only imagine that stuff like that happening to them already... and they'll have to work harder? And in suits? (The same suit 24 / 7 for three weeks of never leaving?)
And my family asks why I didn't go into C.S.
To ask which is more likely, that life forms are instigating these reactions, or undiscovered caches of inorganic catylists are... the answer fundamentally hinges on how high you think the lowest hurdle for life's emergence is, and how prevalent you think life is in the universe. (And I'm not talking "greys").
There are a good number of people looking for more basic life in the universe that are of the opinion that life can begin in places much more hostile than blue planet Earth. They're looking to test the idea that basic, basic life is going to crop up wherever possible and then evolutionarily "dare" planetary conditions to kill it off. Just think about it, when life first emerged here the rocks had just barely solidified and the only thing we really had going for us was liquid water. Most of this planet's geologic history has been the three billion years between the emergence of prokaryotes, and the evolution of cells with proper nucleii.
Actually a wake in a proto-planetary dust cloud is better evidence for extrasolar planets than so-called gravitational wobbles that comprise all the previous evidence for (not of) extra-solar planets. The problem with inferring multiple-Jupiter mass planets exist where we see gravitational "wobbles" is that we can't be sure of perturbations of movement in the direction of our line of sight with the star... it's all about component forces. We can't discern forward-backward motion as accurately as we can side-to-side motion, so an Extra Solar Planet Candidate might be much more massive than our calculations say, so the planet candidate may actually be a star of undetectable luminosity.
We run the risk of not being able to detect the luminosity of a star in this case, as well... but we can get a better aproximation of the body's motion around the star by looking at the wake, so we should be able to avoid underestimating the mass, and that means we won't incorrectly identify a low-luminosity star as a planet.
Of course linking to a site is a vehicle for communication... Google rates pages by how many other pages link to it.
If a terrorist leader, let's call him "Dr. No", goes looking for groups to band together with his own, and these pinko kids have a link to the FARC on their website, he'll find their homepage and... there will be... communication. If they don't, ol' Dr. No will have to settle for some two-bit, FBI-infiltrated paramilitary outfit like the Fuerza Armada Revolucional de Toledo, OH.
Now that people know she's serious, it be more tha a little helpful if she had an organized website built around her blog. I can approximate a sketch of her political beliefs by her libertarian affiliation, and at the end of her "about me" page, she talks about laisez faire economics... but that's it. Even if she wants to be seen as a "one-issue" candidate, she still needs to look better organized and, well, less ranty.
I don't find it ironic; as stated before, the AD Council is a not-for-profit. The other commercial that really illustrates my views on a matter really well is one by AT&T, about their new flat-rate local telephone service...
I think it'll tank as business plan, but seeing the fictional family having to break a dollar bill for change to pay "The Man" for admission to their own bathroom, makes me want to jump up and say "That's what some people want your life to be like!"
One's brain mediates everything, every experience, every perception. That is a relatively obvious, but pretty important theory (as in supported by evidence) of cognitive science. You're right; there is no difference between a "real" out-of-body experience or a "percieved" one. The scientists claim not to want to "explain out-of-body experiences away" but they're persistant in pop culture precisely because in the first few cases counselors were either unwilling, or not well-enough versed in cognitive theory to tell the person having the experience that it was their brain going nuts (and sometimes, these patients would go to therapist after therapist until they found such an enabler).
I imagine this finding, if re-tested in a systematic way (which will be damn hard, because the number of people one could ethically stick electrodes into is miniscule) will go a long way towards debunking out-of-body experience as somehow paranormal.
It's just like UFO's. A pannel of scientists back in the late 80's or early 90's (after the Condon report came out) were left to sift through a huge stack of UFO reports... and everyone was waiting for them to come out with a conclusion that these people were all on drugs, or that they were reporting bona fide encounters with aliens. They're conclusion: there was a small kernel of cases where the Flying Objects were indeed Unexplainable... but that these incidents represented an opportunity for physicists and atmospheric scientists to learn new things about Life, the Universe and Everything.
I hope you were kidding. Paul "I also like bananas" Metzler as superman? Of course, when i first read that, i thought you meant Kevin Kline which would have been worse.
On the other hand, i can't think of someone else i could cast as Superman. I'd say Tim Robbins, if he wasn't 45, 6'4" and skinny. I can't think of anyone who really has the screen presence of the prior two actors. Maybe that's the point.
Eh, 50/50 that it's a gimmick. While, yes, being hollywood, it seems very likely, the co-sponsor of the script search is the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. They fund other things like public television and NPR, which makes it seem less likely.
Actually, most of the MBA-crowd literature, from the scholarly to the popular is chok full of remarks on disruptive innovations. The most specific on on this subject, however is (aptly enough) The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.
There are a few really good, more general books on the subject, but i'd have to be at home to find the titles.
Here is a brief list of some things about broadband pricing and regulation that not everyone may know... i did a paper on regulatory access requirements (not price controls) for a course this past semester. If you want references e-mail me; if you want to argue, reply here.
Some consumer advocates speculate that the language of the FCC's ruling that a Portland, OR utility board could not regulate cable Internet service as telephony (it ruled that it was an information service) could end the implied authority of utility comissions to regulate DSL service.
I say: if it does, it does. Let's see how DSL ends up if/when it's unregulated. Considering the shape of the unregulated cable Internet business, it probably won't be any better or worse... and if it is, Congress can vote to bring the two substitutes under regulation under the same set of guidelines... something that wouldn't be politically feasible if Tauzin-Dingle had passed.
You really want Bill O'Riley to interview anybody on your side of any issue?!?!?! The guy can ask so many rapid-fire loaded questions he can make anyone look like the bad guy.
Even if it's "Hollywood" on the other side of the fence, people mainly watch the show to see guests get rhetorically burned alive, so if the MPAA (wisely) declines to send a representative, our guy would be the sacrificial offering.
WTF? This isn't the story i tried to post this comment to. I tried to post it to the one about the guy at Turner saying that all PVR-commercial stripping is theft, but apparently that story's temporarily disappeared.
It appears subliminally whenever the TV-rating appears on screen. If you run the broadcast signal through a polarity modulator, you can make it out if you interlace the frames, rotate it 270 degrees, and invert it black for white.
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
<SNIP instructions to read it carefully...>
1. GRANT OF LICENSE: Subject to the terms below, Turner Broadcasting, a division of AOL-Time Warner hereby grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to view this VHF broadcast or cable or sattelite transmission ('Program') without cost, in exchange for the requirement of viewing interstitial commercial messages ('Advertisments').
<SNIP what you are allowed to do...>
Whether you are licensing the Program as an individual or on behalf of an entity, you may not: (i) rewind, replay at slow-motion, or make unauthorized use of Closed Captioning to attempt to transcribe the script; (ii) re-edit, or create derivative works based upon the Program in whole or in part without the express written consent of Turner Broadcasting, a division of AOL-Time Warner; (iii) distribute copies of the Program; (iv) remove any Advertisments or labels on the Program; (v) resell, lease, rent, transfer, sublicense, or otherwise transfer rights to the Program; (vi) leave the presence of the television during advertisments, change the channel broadcast on the television, or in any other way ignore the Advertisements.
And it goes on from there...
I would not like to be the UPS guy who had to deliver these things to Oracle or the DOJ...
UPS Guy: I need you to sign for thisReceptionist: What is it, first
UPS Guy: It says "Award enclosed" and "Fragile". That's all i know.
Receptionist: We have to be security conscious around here, y'know.
*opens box*
*sees golden shrunken head*
Receptionist: AIEEEEEEEE! There's no way we're signing for this... Send this &*()#&*()#%@&@^#(%) back to those mother&(#*&%)!!!!!!!!!!
Part of Lessig's plan (which i support in favor of Frasse's proposal) would include a DMCA rewrite / repeal, and no CBDTPA. He also would let corporations keep copyrights, which i also agree with. And all copyrights would be renewable for one more fourteen year term (not a hardship without the DMCA).
There's no one on the planet who would admit to being a "corporatist", in the sense that they favor the for-profit enterprise as the be-all, end-all solution for everything... but I'll grant that record companies should own the copyrights on recordings... if they paid for them. (Big "if", i know.)
Well, for what it's worth... any court can overturn any law over which it has jurisdiction. Trial (state circuit, federal district) courts don't have the right to rule on the merits of a law: they try fact, they assume the law is good.
Once they decide on fact, an appellate court (state appellate, federal circuit) has the right to rule on the merits of a law / interpretation of law. For an ever popular example: Microsoft will always be a monopolist who has abused its power, no matter what an appellate court will ever say, unless it says that the legal reasoning in coming to that conclusion was somehow flawed.
But the appellate court can say that the something in the law is wrong... that ol' Jackson was not impartial in his remedy, even that the law means for Microsoft to be explicitly exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act. They can quite literally say the law means anything they want it to. In truth it is here where laws get "overturned" (they can make any judge quake in his boots at the prospect of having a decision overturned by the precedent set)
The Supreme Court reviews the judiciousness of the appellate court, or can short-circuit the appellate level entirely (and can also hear a trial in original jurisdiction). For example, if an appellate panel had said that the Sherman Act was meant to exempt Microsoft the Supreme Court would likely laugh the whole way through their opinion sustaining the original trial court findings.
So, to cut a long story middling, what happens in the trial court doesn't matter, but it doesn't really have to make it all the way to the Supreme Court if the appellate decision is thoughtful, and comes out from some respected judges.
By the way, only a small proprtion of cases, maybe 5% are heard on appeal, and of those only another small fraction of those appealed are successful. Very few appeals decisions are heard by the Supreme Court (maybe five percent of the five percent where the appellants file for a further appeal).
Well, the Onion (on the editorial/column pages) is using a type of ad which has the same effect as the functional (i.e. not flash) demo from boston.com did. Not sure how to read the source code, or even if it shows the source for that ad... but it seems to be a javascript controlling a bunch of gif's and wav's, the gif files (transparent placeholders) are still around after the ad has run its course.
These production versions run in mozilla under win ME, so it's likely there was just a browser spy if statement to keep us mozilla users from having our browsers crashed at boston.com because they weren't done.
There's nothing that says there can't be a law against making a monopolist. Heck, even if there was, the newer law would overwrite it. The laws only say monopolists can't abuse their power, and may be subject to federal regulation... The more likely alternative is that Microsoft literally does become the next AT&T, complete with a bunch of Federal hangers-on to ensure that everybody "plays by the rules".
Yes, there was. The senator from south carolina who is not stom thurmund got put up to it. He backed down after it became aparent he didn't know what he was talking about. However, that's not to say that there won't be a similar, less broad legislation coming down the pipe (SSSCA could have applied to everything with a data input and a microprocessor).
SSSCA also said it would enforce a standard agreed-to or imposed upon by the commerce department... ol' senator hollings's staff didn't exactly do a patent search to check if a standard could get imposed upon the commerce department.
Apple would likely prefer to pay license fees to its minority owner, Microsoft anyway than leave the industry anyway.
... Must... Resist... Urge to flamebait...
He was canadian, but he was extradited... I think tried in VA Federal Court and given probation. *searches slashdot...* Eight months in a youth detention facility, and a year of probation. Not sure if it was the U.S. or Canada... but i think that's what Taco was talking about either way.