Ref NPR Here & Now 1/19/99, the coating is activated by exposure to air, apparently not directly oxygenation but something to do with airpressure. Spokesperson was not a tech.
Besides, you could put a vaccum-sealed wrapper inside the cardboard sleeve. I'm thinking here of something like a packet of peanuts or potatochips.
Alternatively... Pringles come in a cardboard tube, and are vacuum sealed.
So what happens if the phone rings or you have to take a crap while watching a "this disc will self-destruct in ten minutes" DVD? And what kind of shelf life does the coating have? Will DVDs need a "freshness date" on them?
Please. No. The discs will be sold in vacuum-sealed containers, and only when opened does the degradation begin. The (patented) process can be formulated to give you a lifespan of anything from a few minutes to a couple of weeks. Two days is currently considered a likely time.
Besides, do people really want throwaway DVDs? Sure it can be a pain to return rentals, but you eventually have to go back to get more rentals anyhow. One big problem with DIVX was that you had to go all the way to Circus City, of which there might be one or two in any given city, rather than a local video rental place, of which there would likely be one within two miles of where you live.
The idea here would be to sell them in the drugstores and department stores and such. Since these will play on regular DVD players, they may not run into the resistance that the original DIVX did. In fact, I think they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.
One question that nobody's answered (in my hearing/reading/viewing) is whether the things are recyclable, 'cause that's a whole lot of nasty environmentally bad stuff to be adding to landfills if it succeeds and isn't recyclable.
You've sidestepped an important point in the question of hypocrisy: eating meat is, in essence, killing an animal purely for the pleasure of the taste of animal flesh. Never mind the environmental consequences of beef cattle (both inherent to raising the number we do, and flaws in the system that are not inherent but motivated by profit concerns.)
OTOH, using animals for medical testing often answers questions that simply cannot be answered without involving some animal (though one could experiment directly on homo sapiens, but current ethics seems to find that a lab rat's life is of less value than a human life, but let's not sidestep into that gray area).
So, in essence, to be non-vegetarian and to oppose medical testing with animals is to say that the death of animals for pleasure is okay, but the possible death and/or suffering of animals for the advancement of medical knowledge (which will benefit both veterinary science as well as human medical science) is not okay.
Something to think about, anyway.
(As it happens, I am a vegetarian who doesn't purchase leather or other animal-death products, except for cat food because cats do -not-, biologically, have the option of being vegetarian even if their owner is, and yet I support animal use in medical testing, not without some ambivalence, but it is, at present, the best option; in the future, other options may arise, ie, using cloning technology to develop individual organs to experiment on without needing a living animal, or even computer simulations once we know enough to simulate usefully, though I doubt such technologies will ever completely replace live testing, they may well result in far fewer deaths and less suffering by filtering out less promising technologies early...
I also somewhat agree with the claim that being against medical testing without being an ethical vegetarian is hypocritical, though I can see the potential for non-hypocritical philosophies that resolve the contradictions, even if I wouldn't, personally, agree with them; I think, though, that many people simply don't ask the questions and formulate their personal opinions on vague feelings and the effectiveness of propaganda directed at them... but then, that's true on every issue.)
Yes, you're right, but public defenders are overworked, underpaid, and hence often not very skilled. -Some- of them are very good, since it's more a matter of idealism that makes people become public defenders than anything else, but none of them have enough time per case. The state is in the business of providing enough legal counsel that you understand why you're about to lose your case, basically, to be utterly cynical about it. A public defender just doesn't have the time, money, or assistance to run a case the way that a private attorney does.
Also, I don't think the state pays for associated costs under any circumstances - costs involved for filing an appeal, requesting/subpoenaing documents from the plaintiffs, - even simple -photocopying- costs can get up there if you have to copy hundreds of pages.
IANAL, but that's the situation as I understand it. --Parity
Industrial hardware for copying entire dvds is 'commercially available' for large pirates, and the claim is made (though I have not verified it) that hardware-hacking a dvd player to write all sectors is relatively trivial.
So, while maybe not 'anyone' can copy DVDs, people who want to make money at piracy can get from here to there.
Errr. I'd be disinclined to imitate slashdot for a serious academic journal. What works for moderating discussion doesn't seem likely to map well to moderating articles. Maybe if you allowed comments on the articles the slashdot model would work, but you still have to consider the articles themselves.
Personally, I'd be inclined to have an article-pool with all the submitted articles. Authorized reviewers can look through them, and give a rating of 'substantive', 'speculative' or 'erroneous'.
Substantive and speculative both push an article up, and to one side or the other, and erroneous pushes it down. If you only care about 'solid, factual articles' or only care about 'real groundbreaking ideas' you can set your substantive/speculative limits to filter for that kind of article.
Erroneous just marks an article down as 'bad.' Anyone that marks an article erroneous and is later unable to support the assertion should lose moderator privileges.
Any article that gets more than, say, 3 good marks should go into 'publication' to be seen by non-reviewers.
I think, btw, the submission pool should be viewable by anyone curious. The purpose of the change from 'submitted' to 'published' would be just to save readers time in highlighting articles that have been filtered for gross errors.
Anyway, someone who reads more academic journals than I do might come up with better filtering, but I think blindly copying slashdot's moderation into a completely different kind of online-publication would have poor results at best.
Most people here seem to assume that Live means Factual and that if it isn't they should be required to post a disclaimer.
I say, assumptions are dangerous. Unless they say it's factual, don't assume it is.
Well, I suppose that's a valid point in trying to resolve the dilemma in favor of CBS's actual actions, though I don't think it makes the dilemma non-existent. I might argue that coverage of a real event and coverage of a fictional event are not the same thing but I'm not really interested in carrying the debate to that point.
Another point: Is it ethical for the competitor to hi-jack real-estate on the competitors images?
Probably not. If NBC chose their ad positioning deliberately to gain air-time on CBS, that was pretty sleazy, but still, to be cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. CBS could have eliminated the 'hijacking' with a censoring-square or by using camera-angles that didn't show the NBC logo without being misrepresentative.
The media makes its funding from advertising revenue, based on the number of viewers. Thus, the media is making a profit by selling viewers time to advertisers. If you take something from somebody, you have a basic obligation to give them something in return. (Postulating the reverse would condone theft and slavery).
On another point, we have a generally responsibility to be truthful. It's also all right to be silent on topics we don't want to discuss, and we can tell untruths in the form of fiction - if we first admit it's fiction. It is not, however, right for someone to go around telling lies for profit. We call such people con-artists.
On that pair of basic principles of human ethics in modern 'western' culture, it follows that telling viewers you're showing them a picture of times square when you're really showing them an edited picture of times square is both wrong on its own merits (as a lie) and wrong because you're cheating the customer. (We'll give you images of an event just as it's happening in exchange for your advertising-reception time).
It seems to me, then, that by the standards of the society that includes all the affected parties (both tv companies, the owner of the edited sign, and the viewers) that the action was wrong.
Never mind the specific ethics of journalism, which any news program should reasonably be expected to abide by.
Besides, what you keep saying is 'Well, they're wrong and bad and evil but they have the -right- to be wrong and bad and evil.'
I'm doubtful that they have that right legally, though I expect we'll find out, and I think that by the standards of belief of the culture they a part of (modern America, modern western civilization) they certainly don't have that right, and given that journalistic ethics are largely concerned with truth and integrity...
So, under just what system do you think they have 'no obligation' to be truthful in what they report as factual, and a 'right' to use their airwaves for any purpose they chose?
It is an ethical dilemma; Ethics asks the question, what is philosophically right or wrong, not the question of 'what can we get away with.'
The dilemma comes in that there is a perception by the public that television broadcasts that are reported as 'news' or 'event coverage' are going to be -factual-. To deliberately make them non-factual is the same as telling a deliberate, plausible lie for your own purposes. You're resolving this dilemma with a flippant answer. They own the airspace, sure, so? Does that mean that because the New York Times owns the printing presses they can publish an issue about the (non-existent) presidential assassination?
I don't know all the legal issues, but, I've been told that the Weekly World News situation is that a) they interview lunatics and crackpots, so they really are reporting what 'witnesses' said so the news is 'true'. b) Their crazy photos and drawings are marked as 'artists depiction.' and c) They -do- get sued (sometimes) by people irritated with them and their representing nonsense as news, they just fight it in court so that even though they lose (eventually) and have to print a (tiny, on page 7) retraction, the plaintiffs have spent far more money than it was worth. This is expensive for WWN (or any other tabloid with the same practices) in the short run, but discourages vigorous enforcement of their responsibility to be truthful. Being -able- to evade responsibility, however, is not the same as not having responsibility.
For those that didn't read the article, this was a gigantic bulletin board in Times Square on New Year's Eve.
On the one hand, CBS does have the ability and the right to adjust its broadcasts. Censoring-squares or blurs are done all the time, for reasons from 'decency' rules to protection of innocents in crime footage.
OTOH, they made it look as if their logo was really there on New Years Eve, misrepresenting the broadcast as live and unedited coverage, at least implicitly.
I think the ethical way through this dilemma is actually pretty simple. CBS should have covered the NBC logo with something that was clearly artificial. Maybe a blur, or a black square, or even their own logo - but done 'flat', maybe in a brick-layout, so that it was obviously a computer mask over something being covered. Then CBS edits the offending content while at the same time not creating a misrepresentation problem.
(The question of why they didn't move Dan Rather -is- a good one though... )
And you're doing it again now, only even worse, doubling your error to make it into a troll. I don't agree with the post you're answering though I often fall in line with majority - or at least vocal - opinions here.
Your error is really very simple, and is identical to the error of the poster you're responding to: You're turning 'most vocal opinion' into 'slashdot's opinion.'
People are just less likely to respond to the error in a post that arrogantly assumes the right to speak for all than they are in a post that insultingly slams all.
In the future, you might try saying 'Many respondants to this story' or 'A number of posts I have seen' instead of flaming 'slashdot.' Flaming slashdot as some sort of composite, borg-like entity that is all of one piece is nothing more nor less than trolling, no matter the remainder of the content of the post. Someone who posts such posts is saying to each reader '-You- have commited this error', and people are inclined to get huffy when slammed for something they didn't even do.
Think about it. And think about the fact that if you've been posting here long enough to know the 'trends' you are a slashdotter, therefore anything that 'slashdot' believes, you must also believe.
Being a non-Valley geek, the sexual climate in the valley is actually important information to me as it's one of the factors to be considered when considering job changes. (Along with all the other social-climate factors.)
Except, that that -isn't- the law, that's just the current interpretation of the law, which granted, involves mounds of 'legal precedent.' AFAIK, (IANAL), there's no actual written law that says 'only a patent attorney may decide obviousness, and then only when they have prior art showing each element of the invention and prior art suggesting combining them.'
There is, however, I believe a clause that says that a patent is not valid if it is 'obvious' to 'one skilled in the art.'
Granted that the weight of legal precedent is such that it might as -well- be a law that says, 'The only person who may make a determination of obviousness is a patent attorney who is also an expert in the field, and then only in conjunction with supporting piecemeal prior art.'
And we all know how many patent attorneys have time to go and get a second degree in a science or engineering field.
My point, btw, was that the above post is correct in practice, but the post above that was correct in the written law disregarding court precedent. IMHO, IANAL.
I got it from the radio news, there was no mention of storms. Kindly refraining from assuming that I am too stupid to read an article in the future.
The point remains that there were -real- problems from y2k, and some of them were fairly significant - at least what I'd call significant. The point is, only media pundits and hypemeisters predicted planes falling out of the sky and nuclear holocaust, and only media pundits and hypemeisters are crying now that 'nothing at all happened! it was all hype!'
Well, the uneducated public presumably will repeat what the pundits say; but I still think the only story here is the irony that the hype industry is now trying to hype how we were all fooled by the hype...
I think y2k went off more or less as the majority of computer-savvy people expected, minor glitches and a few worrisome issues.
There are telephone systems out in France and Italy, there were nuclear reactor alarm systems that failed in Japan, plus the things Jon mentions above.
Most of all there's lots and lots of computers that are only revealing their y2k bug as they get rebooted, since by far the most prevelant y2k bug is in the BIOS. Usually (not always) you can reboot again and hand set the date, just hope you didn't dump bad data into your database meanwhile. Anyway.
As far as I can see, the media created a huge hype that y2k was going to utterly destroy civilization. Now the media is saying that nothing happened. Neither is true, and Jon - despite his opening reverse-hype lines, admits it. There were problems. The world did not end. Anybody who is both technically savvy and remotely close to sane understood this. The only news here is an interest story in the peculiarly warped outlook of the media.
Firstly, this had nothing to do with the question why do we say 'IANAL.' And, though IANAL, I think it's because giving advice on the law without disclaimer can be construed as giving 'legal advice' and you can then be sued if it was bad advice.
Secondly, not all those cases are equal. The McDonalds-lady suffered -third degree- burns from her coffee spill. That -is- ridiculous. First degree burns and a lotta pain are expected if you're clumsy with a hot drink, hospitilization is not. She was right to sue. McD's coffee is -still- too hot to drink straight off so it's not like the customers are getting tepid coffee or anything.
The first cigarette-cases were based on the fact that cigarette companies advertised cigarettes as harmless, or even healthy and invigorating, and denied all health-risk allegations until they were made to put warnings on the packs. I'm iffy about those, but I can see it. If there are lawsuits about people who started using cigarettes -after- the warnings started being printed, that would be stupid.
That aside, a lot of these 'stupid' cases are a way to use the courts as a political system when representation fails people. Especially the tobacco and gun cases.
If you want to look for a real problem, look at how insurance companies sue anyone in sight to reclaim any damages they ever have to pay out. If someone cuts across my (non-right-of-wayed) property and trips, or falls down on my (city maintained) sidewalk, I get sued for it. (Actually, I settle it out of court because I'd lose, and I just have my insurance company pay their insurance company, and then my insurance company might sue the city or maybe the tree that grew those disruptive roots... ) Anyway, insurance companies pass these liabilities around that way, setting all kinds of strange precedents, and every now and then a private individual takes advantage of that and press their own lawsuit. And this insurance-lawsuit is also, I think, where many of the disclaimers come from. (Patient John Doe was siphoning antifreeze using his mouth to start it, well, maybe he knew better but took the risk and ended up in the hospital. The insurance company doesn't care, they just see that they can pass the buck (and the bill) to the antifreeze company on the technicality that they didn't warn John not to do this.)
Anyway, my point here is, some things that sound absurd are sensible and some things that sound sensible are absurd, and it doesn't help anything to say 'look at all the stupid people abusing the system' whether it's true or not. If you really care, try to find where in the system liability can be adjusted so people can't, on the one side, sue for stupid-things, but without, on the other side, allowing corporations or unethical individuals to screw people over with impunity. It's a pretty difficult problem, and somehow I don't thing our congresscritters are focused on it.
eToys shut down etoy to increase their margin through the holiday shopping season. The holiday shopping season is now over, and the boycott is more dangerous to them than the tiny percentage of customers they lose to mistyped urls.
Not to mention that the lawsuit hasn't yet been dropped, their just making compromising noises, aka 'spin doctoring.' I feel no compunction to reward someone for trying to pull a snow job, thanks anyway.
eToys will probably actually go into my list with Wal*mart and Starbucks of places I will never shop. Every market force -except- consumer awareness encourages corporations to be ruthless and to care about nothing but profit. Unless the senior management of eToys resigns en masse, I have to assume that that company has no ethical compunctions about being anything but a purely market driven force, and I'd be just as happy to see them go out of business. Maybe if more unethical pure-greed business went under, more people with integrity would feel that business wasn't something too dirty to be involved in, and then everyone (except scumsucking getrichquick at the expense of the suckers types) would win.
The web is certainly becoming significantly more difficult to search, especially for informational content. Just -try- searching for information on a musician or an author... you'll get links to the like of music.com, amazon.com, whatever-your-topic-is.com, with a little one-or-two paragraph blurb about the person, if you're lucky. Hundreds of links like this to every little virtually-hosted e-tailer out there. Somewhere, buried in all this, will be the informational content hosted on a personal webpage or at some non-profit organization. Anyway, so, that's the problem, or an aspect of it, we already know this.
Good news! The solution is coming. Maybe the solution is here. google.com has their unique approach to web-indexing. Another method that's probably going to be tried sometime soon is to look all the natural-language-processing technology that has been researched in the past twenty years, take the most efficient heuristics, and index pages by apparent-topic instead of by keyword.
Then there are places like anipike.com - if it's a web page about Anime, it's on anipike, or it may as well not exist. I would -never- search the web for anything anime-related; I go through anipike.
I'm really, really hoping that linux.com will become that useful to the linux community, but I don't think they're quite there yet. They may never be. Anipike is generally very fast to load, especially compared to linux.com... probably 'cause it's mostly static pages and there are not so many anime fans as there are linux users. But that isn't really relevant; if linux.com is going to become the search-engine alternative for linux-resources, they need to respond quickly at all times of the day and night, otherwise 'Joe's Linux Links' is a better option. (Apologies to any Joe out there who is proud of his links page.:))
Anyway, currently I still use search engines for Linux-stuff, but as I keep getting more and more hits on rpm files cluttering up the informational content, that may change soon. (Especially since I'm a debian user! I'm looking for information when I search the web, I know where my package is.:))
I heard a long discussion on NPR about the reasons for why violent crime is on the decline currently and had been on the rise for a long time before that. Arguments largely centered around law enforcement and punishments, whether three-strikes is effective, the increase and decrease of drug usage, increases and decreases in earning power and employment... video games and movies were never mentioned.
Now, this doesn't exactly 'prove' anything, but it does show that people filling the DA's position and vocal critics of unfairness in the legal system alike believe that the causes lie in underlying facets of society, not in our entertainment-of-the-moment. They might just be onto something.
What I meant, was, when I hook up to the net, I'm assigned a dynamic IP by my provider. As far as the internet is concerned, I have no hostname, only an IP address. We'd need a proxy-daemon on talk.provider.com so people could talk to parity@talk.provider.com instead of parity@012.345.678.901
Talk is very nice, but doesn't do quite what instant messaging does. Talkd runs on a machine and allows logged in users to receive 'instant' messages in text. By contrast, an instant messaging service is a server 'out there' that you contact, by means of which you 'advertise' your presence. The difference is important, because in this day and age, most people connect their machine to the 'net directly, they don't log into a mainframe. Not to mention that anonymity is possible in a proper implementation of an instant-message server but not so much in a traditional talkd. This is not to say that a talk-compatible server would be a bad thing.;) Just modify the talk-daemon so that instead of using 'logged in users' it uses 'connected users' and instead of writing to terminals it writes to sockets... Of course, this doesn't allow for file-exchange possibilities. It might be better to run an 'instant communication' service that essentially ip-forwards talk, ftp, and speak-freely protocols along with its own management-information connection.
Or, the short version: instant messaging does more than talk, but it sure would be nice if they'd build on what we already have.;)
You'll want to look at Blinux if you actually care about the state of voice-interfacing in linux.
This page, in particular, shows the various voice-recognition projects, so that you may research what can be done that way.
And, as a side-note, linux is infinitely more suited to voice if you know how to use the command line, because all you need is an engine that converts speech-to-text, not one that converts speech-to-text-to-equivalent-mouse-action.
Slashdot Mirror
I meant, of course, 1/19/2000, ie, yesterday.
--Parity
Ref NPR Here & Now 1/19/99, the coating is activated by exposure to air, apparently not directly oxygenation but something to do with airpressure. Spokesperson was not a tech.
Besides, you could put a vaccum-sealed wrapper inside the cardboard sleeve. I'm thinking here of something like a packet of peanuts or potatochips.
Alternatively... Pringles come in a cardboard tube, and are vacuum sealed.
--Parity
So what happens if the phone rings or you have to take a crap while watching a "this disc will self-destruct in ten minutes" DVD? And what kind of shelf life does the coating have? Will DVDs need a "freshness date" on them?
Please. No. The discs will be sold in vacuum-sealed containers, and only when opened does the degradation begin. The (patented) process can be formulated to give you a lifespan of anything from a few minutes to a couple of weeks. Two days is currently considered a likely time.
Besides, do people really want throwaway DVDs? Sure it can be a pain to return rentals, but you
eventually have to go back to get more rentals anyhow. One big problem with DIVX was that you had to go all the way to Circus City, of which there might be one or two in any given city, rather than a local video rental place, of which there would likely be one within two miles of where you live.
The idea here would be to sell them in the drugstores and department stores and such. Since these will play on regular DVD players, they may not run into the resistance that the original DIVX did. In fact, I think they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.
One question that nobody's answered (in my hearing/reading/viewing) is whether the things are recyclable, 'cause that's a whole lot of nasty environmentally bad stuff to be adding to landfills if it succeeds and isn't recyclable.
--Parity
You've sidestepped an important point in the question of hypocrisy: eating meat is, in essence, killing an animal purely for the pleasure of the taste of animal flesh. Never mind the environmental consequences of beef cattle (both inherent to raising the number we do, and flaws in the system that are not inherent but motivated by profit concerns.)
OTOH, using animals for medical testing often answers questions that simply cannot be answered without involving some animal (though one could experiment directly on homo sapiens, but current ethics seems to find that a lab rat's life is of less value than a human life, but let's not sidestep into that gray area).
So, in essence, to be non-vegetarian and to oppose medical testing with animals is to say that the death of animals for pleasure is okay, but the possible death and/or suffering of animals for the advancement of medical knowledge (which will benefit both veterinary science as well as human medical science) is not okay.
Something to think about, anyway.
(As it happens, I am a vegetarian who doesn't purchase leather or other animal-death products, except for cat food because cats do -not-, biologically, have the option of being vegetarian even if their owner is, and yet I support animal use in medical testing, not without some ambivalence, but it is, at present, the best option; in the future, other options may arise, ie, using cloning technology to develop individual organs to experiment on without needing a living animal, or even computer simulations once we know enough to simulate usefully, though I doubt such technologies will ever completely replace live testing, they may well result in far fewer deaths and less suffering by filtering out less promising technologies early...
I also somewhat agree with the claim that being against medical testing without being an ethical vegetarian is hypocritical, though I can see the potential for non-hypocritical philosophies that resolve the contradictions, even if I wouldn't, personally, agree with them; I think, though, that many people simply don't ask the questions and formulate their personal opinions on vague feelings and the effectiveness of propaganda directed at them... but then, that's true on every issue.)
Parity Even
--Parity
Yes, you're right, but public defenders are overworked, underpaid, and hence often not very skilled. -Some- of them are very good, since it's more a matter of idealism that makes people become public defenders than anything else, but none of them have enough time per case. The state is in the business of providing enough legal counsel that you understand why you're about to lose your case, basically, to be utterly cynical about it. A public defender just doesn't have the time, money, or assistance to run a case the way that a private attorney does.
Also, I don't think the state pays for associated costs under any circumstances - costs involved for filing an appeal, requesting/subpoenaing documents from the plaintiffs, - even simple -photocopying- costs can get up there if you have to copy hundreds of pages.
IANAL, but that's the situation as I understand it.
--Parity
Industrial hardware for copying entire dvds is 'commercially available' for large pirates, and the claim is made (though I have not verified it) that hardware-hacking a dvd player to write all sectors is relatively trivial.
So, while maybe not 'anyone' can copy DVDs, people who want to make money at piracy can get from here to there.
--Parity
Errr. I'd be disinclined to imitate slashdot for a serious academic journal. What works for moderating discussion doesn't seem likely to map well to moderating articles. Maybe if you allowed comments on the articles the slashdot model would work, but you still have to consider the articles themselves.
Personally, I'd be inclined to have an article-pool with all the submitted articles. Authorized reviewers can look through them, and give a rating of 'substantive', 'speculative' or 'erroneous'.
Substantive and speculative both push an article up, and to one side or the other, and erroneous pushes it down. If you only care about 'solid, factual articles' or only care about 'real groundbreaking ideas' you can set your substantive/speculative limits to filter for that kind of article.
Erroneous just marks an article down as 'bad.' Anyone that marks an article erroneous and is later unable to support the assertion should lose moderator privileges.
Any article that gets more than, say, 3 good marks should go into 'publication' to be seen by non-reviewers.
I think, btw, the submission pool should be viewable by anyone curious. The purpose of the change from 'submitted' to 'published' would be just to save readers time in highlighting articles that have been filtered for gross errors.
Anyway, someone who reads more academic journals than I do might come up with better filtering, but I think blindly copying slashdot's moderation into a completely different kind of online-publication would have poor results at best.
--Parity
Most people here seem to assume that Live means Factual and that if it isn't they should be required to
post a disclaimer.
I say, assumptions are dangerous. Unless they say it's factual, don't assume it is.
Well, I suppose that's a valid point in trying to resolve the dilemma in favor of CBS's actual actions, though I don't think it makes the dilemma non-existent. I might argue that coverage of a real event and coverage of a fictional event are not the same thing but I'm not really interested in carrying the debate to that point.
Another point: Is it ethical for the competitor to hi-jack real-estate on the competitors images?
Probably not. If NBC chose their ad positioning deliberately to gain air-time on CBS, that was pretty sleazy, but still, to be cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. CBS could have eliminated the 'hijacking' with a censoring-square or by using camera-angles that didn't show the NBC logo without being misrepresentative.
--Parity
The media makes its funding from advertising revenue, based on the number of viewers. Thus, the media is making a profit by selling viewers time to advertisers.
If you take something from somebody, you have a basic obligation to give them something in return. (Postulating the reverse would condone theft and slavery).
On another point, we have a generally responsibility to be truthful. It's also all right to be silent on topics we don't want to discuss, and we can tell untruths in the form of fiction - if we first admit it's fiction. It is not, however, right for someone to go around telling lies for profit. We call such people con-artists.
On that pair of basic principles of human ethics in modern 'western' culture, it follows that telling viewers you're showing them a picture of times square when you're really showing them an edited picture of times square is both wrong on its own merits (as a lie) and wrong because you're cheating the customer. (We'll give you images of an event just as it's happening in exchange for your advertising-reception time).
It seems to me, then, that by the standards of the society that includes all the affected parties (both tv companies, the owner of the edited sign, and the viewers) that the action was wrong.
Never mind the specific ethics of journalism, which any news program should reasonably be expected to abide by.
Besides, what you keep saying is 'Well, they're wrong and bad and evil but they have the -right- to be wrong and bad and evil.'
I'm doubtful that they have that right legally, though I expect we'll find out, and I think that by the standards of belief of the culture they a part of (modern America, modern western civilization) they certainly don't have that right, and given that journalistic ethics are largely concerned with truth and integrity...
So, under just what system do you think they have 'no obligation' to be truthful in what they report as factual, and a 'right' to use their airwaves for any purpose they chose?
--Parity
Decisions about UDP are made on newsgroups, not slashdot.
Traditionally, a declared UDP has been unaffected by rhetoric and is lifted only by dramatic evidence of real change.
--Parity
It is an ethical dilemma; Ethics asks the question, what is philosophically right or wrong, not the question of 'what can we get away with.'
The dilemma comes in that there is a perception by the public that television broadcasts that are reported as 'news' or 'event coverage' are going to be -factual-. To deliberately make them non-factual is the same as telling a deliberate, plausible lie for your own purposes.
You're resolving this dilemma with a flippant answer. They own the airspace, sure, so? Does that mean that because the New York Times owns the printing presses they can publish an issue about the (non-existent) presidential assassination?
I don't know all the legal issues, but, I've been told that the Weekly World News situation is that a) they interview lunatics and crackpots, so they really are reporting what 'witnesses' said so the news is 'true'. b) Their crazy photos and drawings are marked as 'artists depiction.' and c) They -do- get sued (sometimes) by people irritated with them and their representing nonsense as news, they just fight it in court so that even though they lose (eventually) and have to print a (tiny, on page 7) retraction, the plaintiffs have spent far more money than it was worth. This is expensive for WWN (or any other tabloid with the same practices) in the short run, but discourages vigorous enforcement of their responsibility to be truthful.
Being -able- to evade responsibility, however, is not the same as not having responsibility.
--Parity
For those that didn't read the article, this was a gigantic bulletin board in Times Square on New Year's Eve.
On the one hand, CBS does have the ability and the right to adjust its broadcasts. Censoring-squares or blurs are done all the time, for reasons from 'decency' rules to protection of innocents in crime footage.
OTOH, they made it look as if their logo was really there on New Years Eve, misrepresenting the broadcast as live and unedited coverage, at least implicitly.
I think the ethical way through this dilemma is actually pretty simple. CBS should have covered the NBC logo with something that was clearly artificial. Maybe a blur, or a black square, or even their own logo - but done 'flat', maybe in a brick-layout, so that it was obviously a computer mask over something being covered. Then CBS edits the offending content while at the same time not creating a misrepresentation problem.
(The question of why they didn't move Dan Rather -is- a good one though... )
--Parity
And you're doing it again now, only even worse, doubling your error to make it into a troll. I don't agree with the post you're answering though I often fall in line with majority - or at least vocal - opinions here.
Your error is really very simple, and is identical to the error of the poster you're responding to: You're turning 'most vocal opinion' into 'slashdot's opinion.'
People are just less likely to respond to the error in a post that arrogantly assumes the right to speak for all than they are in a post that insultingly slams all.
In the future, you might try saying 'Many respondants to this story' or 'A number of posts I have seen' instead of flaming 'slashdot.' Flaming slashdot as some sort of composite, borg-like entity that is all of one piece is nothing more nor less than trolling, no matter the remainder of the content of the post. Someone who posts such posts is saying to each reader '-You- have commited this error', and people are inclined to get huffy when slammed for something they didn't even do.
Think about it. And think about the fact that if you've been posting here long enough to know the 'trends' you are a slashdotter, therefore anything that 'slashdot' believes, you must also believe.
--Parity
Being a non-Valley geek, the sexual climate in the valley is actually important information to me as it's one of the factors to be considered when considering job changes. (Along with all the other social-climate factors.)
--Parity
Except, that that -isn't- the law, that's just the current interpretation of the law, which granted, involves mounds of 'legal precedent.' AFAIK, (IANAL), there's no actual written law that says 'only a patent attorney may decide obviousness, and then only when they have prior art showing each element of the invention and prior art suggesting combining them.'
There is, however, I believe a clause that says that a patent is not valid if it is 'obvious' to 'one skilled in the art.'
Granted that the weight of legal precedent is such that it might as -well- be a law that says, 'The only person who may make a determination of obviousness is a patent attorney who is also an expert in the field, and then only in conjunction with supporting piecemeal prior art.'
And we all know how many patent attorneys have time to go and get a second degree in a science or engineering field.
My point, btw, was that the above post is correct in practice, but the post above that was correct in the written law disregarding court precedent. IMHO, IANAL.
--Parity
I got it from the radio news, there was no mention of storms. Kindly refraining from assuming that I am too stupid to read an article in the future.
The point remains that there were -real- problems from y2k, and some of them were fairly significant - at least what I'd call significant.
The point is, only media pundits and hypemeisters predicted planes falling out of the sky and nuclear holocaust, and only media pundits and hypemeisters are crying now that 'nothing at all happened! it was all hype!'
Well, the uneducated public presumably will repeat what the pundits say; but I still think the only story here is the irony that the hype industry is now trying to hype how we were all fooled by the hype...
--Parity
I think y2k went off more or less as the majority of computer-savvy people expected, minor glitches and a few worrisome issues.
There are telephone systems out in France and Italy, there were nuclear reactor alarm systems that failed in Japan, plus the things Jon mentions above.
Most of all there's lots and lots of computers that are only revealing their y2k bug as they get rebooted, since by far the most prevelant y2k bug is in the BIOS. Usually (not always) you can reboot again and hand set the date, just hope you didn't dump bad data into your database meanwhile. Anyway.
As far as I can see, the media created a huge hype that y2k was going to utterly destroy civilization. Now the media is saying that nothing happened. Neither is true, and Jon - despite his opening reverse-hype lines, admits it. There were problems. The world did not end. Anybody who is both technically savvy and remotely close to sane understood this. The only news here is an interest story in the peculiarly warped outlook of the media.
--Parity
They'd always planned to have their site accessible to all browsers & platforms, they just hadn't finished the entrance page yet.
I don't know why people think that Fox gave in to the 'pressure' from the community, unless, maybe, people haven't been reading the articles.
The other bit about realplayer/windows media might be another case, but having not read those articles I know I'm not in a position to comment.
--Parity
Firstly, this had nothing to do with the question why do we say 'IANAL.' And, though IANAL, I think it's because giving advice on the law without disclaimer can be construed as giving 'legal advice' and you can then be sued if it was bad advice.
Secondly, not all those cases are equal. The McDonalds-lady suffered -third degree- burns from her coffee spill. That -is- ridiculous. First degree burns and a lotta pain are expected if you're clumsy with a hot drink, hospitilization is not. She was right to sue. McD's coffee is -still- too hot to drink straight off so it's not like the customers are getting tepid coffee or anything.
The first cigarette-cases were based on the fact that cigarette companies advertised cigarettes as harmless, or even healthy and invigorating, and denied all health-risk allegations until they were made to put warnings on the packs. I'm iffy about those, but I can see it. If there are lawsuits about people who started using cigarettes -after- the warnings started being printed, that would be stupid.
That aside, a lot of these 'stupid' cases are a way to use the courts as a political system when representation fails people. Especially the tobacco and gun cases.
If you want to look for a real problem, look at how insurance companies sue anyone in sight to reclaim any damages they ever have to pay out. If someone cuts across my (non-right-of-wayed) property and trips, or falls down on my (city maintained) sidewalk, I get sued for it. (Actually, I settle it out of court because I'd lose, and I just have my insurance company pay their insurance company, and then my insurance company might sue the city or maybe the tree that grew those disruptive roots... ) Anyway, insurance companies pass these liabilities around that way, setting all kinds of strange precedents, and every now and then a private individual takes advantage of that and press their own lawsuit. And this insurance-lawsuit is also, I think, where many of the disclaimers come from. (Patient John Doe was siphoning antifreeze using his mouth to start it, well, maybe he knew better but took the risk and ended up in the hospital. The insurance company doesn't care, they just see that they can pass the buck (and the bill) to the antifreeze company on the technicality that they didn't warn John not to
do this.)
Anyway, my point here is, some things that sound absurd are sensible and some things that sound sensible are absurd, and it doesn't help anything to say 'look at all the stupid people abusing the system' whether it's true or not. If you really care, try to find where in the system liability can be adjusted so people can't, on the one side, sue for stupid-things, but without, on the other side, allowing corporations or unethical individuals to screw people over with impunity. It's a pretty difficult problem, and somehow I don't thing our congresscritters are focused on it.
--Parity
eToys shut down etoy to increase their margin through the holiday shopping season. The holiday shopping season is now over, and the boycott is more dangerous to them than the tiny percentage of customers they lose to mistyped urls.
Not to mention that the lawsuit hasn't yet been dropped, their just making compromising noises, aka 'spin doctoring.' I feel no compunction to reward someone for trying to pull a snow job, thanks anyway.
eToys will probably actually go into my list with Wal*mart and Starbucks of places I will never shop. Every market force -except- consumer awareness encourages corporations to be ruthless and to care about nothing but profit. Unless the senior management of eToys resigns en masse, I have to assume that that company has no ethical compunctions about being anything but a purely market driven force, and I'd be just as happy to see them go out of business. Maybe if more unethical pure-greed business went under, more people with integrity would feel that business wasn't something too dirty to be involved in, and then everyone (except scumsucking getrichquick at the expense of the suckers types) would win.
--Parity
The web is certainly becoming significantly more difficult to search, especially for informational content. Just -try- searching for information on a musician or an author... you'll get links to the like of music.com, amazon.com, whatever-your-topic-is.com, with a little one-or-two paragraph blurb about the person, if you're lucky. Hundreds of links like this to every little virtually-hosted e-tailer out there. Somewhere, buried in all this, will be the informational content hosted on a personal webpage or at some non-profit organization. Anyway, so, that's the problem, or an aspect of it, we already know this.
... probably 'cause it's mostly static pages and there are not so many anime fans as there are linux users. But that isn't really relevant; if linux.com is going to become the search-engine alternative for linux-resources, they need to respond quickly at all times of the day and night, otherwise 'Joe's Linux Links' is a better option. :))
:))
Good news! The solution is coming. Maybe the solution is here. google.com has their unique approach to web-indexing. Another method that's probably going to be tried sometime soon is to look all the natural-language-processing technology that has been researched in the past twenty years, take the most efficient heuristics, and index pages by apparent-topic instead of by keyword.
Then there are places like anipike.com - if it's a web page about Anime, it's on anipike, or it may as well not exist. I would -never- search the web for anything anime-related; I go through anipike.
I'm really, really hoping that linux.com will become that useful to the linux community, but I don't think they're quite there yet. They may never be. Anipike is generally very fast to load, especially compared to linux.com
(Apologies to any Joe out there who is proud of his links page.
Anyway, currently I still use search engines for Linux-stuff, but as I keep getting more and more hits on rpm files cluttering up the informational content, that may change soon. (Especially since I'm a debian user! I'm looking for information when I search the web, I know where my package is.
--Parity
I heard a long discussion on NPR about the reasons for why violent crime is on the decline currently and had been on the rise for a long time before that. Arguments largely centered around law enforcement and punishments, whether three-strikes is effective, the increase and decrease of drug usage, increases and decreases in earning power and employment... video games and movies were never mentioned.
Now, this doesn't exactly 'prove' anything, but it does show that people filling the DA's position and vocal critics of unfairness in the legal system alike believe that the causes lie in underlying facets of society, not in our entertainment-of-the-moment. They might just be onto something.
--Parity
What I meant, was, when I hook up to the net,
I'm assigned a dynamic IP by my provider.
As far as the internet is concerned, I have
no hostname, only an IP address.
We'd need a proxy-daemon on talk.provider.com
so people could talk to parity@talk.provider.com
instead of parity@012.345.678.901
--Parity
Talk is very nice, but doesn't do quite what instant messaging does. Talkd runs on a machine and allows logged in users to receive 'instant' messages in text. By contrast, an instant messaging service is a server 'out there' that you contact, by means of which you 'advertise' your presence. The difference is important, because in this day and age, most people connect their machine to the 'net directly, they don't log into a mainframe. Not to mention that anonymity is possible in a proper implementation of an instant-message server but not so much in a traditional talkd. This is not to say that a talk-compatible server would be a bad thing. ;) Just modify the talk-daemon so that instead of using 'logged in users' it uses 'connected users' and instead of writing to terminals it writes to sockets...
;)
Of course, this doesn't allow for file-exchange possibilities. It might be better to run an 'instant communication' service that essentially ip-forwards talk, ftp, and speak-freely protocols along with its own management-information connection.
Or, the short version: instant messaging does more than talk, but it sure would be nice if they'd build on what we already have.
--Parity
You'll want to look at Blinux if you actually care about the state of voice-interfacing in linux.
This page, in particular, shows the various voice-recognition projects, so that you may research what can be done that way.
And, as a side-note, linux is infinitely more suited to voice if you know how to use the command line, because all you need is an engine that converts speech-to-text, not one that converts speech-to-text-to-equivalent-mouse-action.
--Parity