The Polanski case is interesting in this respect. He could in theory be tried in France for what he did in California... except that a trial had already taken place there, so it's impossible.
Staple case: Deus Ex: Invisible Wars. Dumbed down to make it more fit to port to consoles: no more skills, unique ammo for all weapons, etc. Not a bad game, great storry and all, but compared to the first one its gameplay seems... bland.
Indeed. Access to Internet is becoming more and more instrumental to the practical use of several fundamental rights, even though it doesn't makes it one. French Constitutional Concil used this reason (among others) to reject the repressive part of the first version of French "Three Strikes" law: since fundamental rights are affected, judges have to be involved.
So-called "intellectual property" rights aren't, indeed, fundamental rights. They are instrumental rights that have been designed, and initially balanced, in order to encourage talented individuals to contribute to society as a whole by the productions of their minds. Unfortunately, the initial desired balance has been tinkered with into oblivion.
It's complicated. Member countries still have a large power of interpretation and adaptation of the EU directives, which has its good and bad sides.
And I can't speak for other countries, but many politicians in France have a bad habit, when in power, to pin on the EU some of their most unpopular measures, by pointing at a European Directive most voters won't actually read (lack of time, of interest, of legal knowledges), and as a result the latter will ignore the amount of interpretation and adaptation that has come into play. And of course, EU-hating politicians tend to follow up on the accusation, which results in much noise.
This, plus Kobe is a special case, the focus of the quake being only 16 km deep, and its epicenter only 20 km away from the city. Taking into account the approximations of the above figures, that makes an hypotenuse of mostly 26 km, which is pretty close.
Plus, I remember hearing that some lens effect came into play, due to the density configuration of the underground, but I'm presently unable to find any reference to it, so it may be a false memory.
That's why healthy and loyal debate is so vital to keep a democracy sane.
Once in a blue moon, I read some logs of the debates of my country's chambers. When the representatives are discussing matters that aren't very mediatic, the debates are actually quite courteous, the various parties' speakers are people who know the matter at hand, and overall they are willing to find reasonable compromises between their ideological views.
I find this beautiful. If only lawmaking could be always like that...
In some countries, the use of surprise is a sufficient condition for an act of sexual nature to qualify as sexual assault. I guess it's the case in some states of the Union (but it's only a wild guess: IANAL and IANAUSC).
Indeed, I think the only way to properly teach abstraction is through sneakily presenting several practical problems, then burst out "guess what? you could solve all these problems using the same method if you apply some abstraction on them".
OK, actually it doesn't teach how to do abstraction, only its importance. But when you tell a student there are ways (encouraged ways even) to save some work on problem solving, it goes a long way.
I'm no mathematician, I'm a programmer, and there are several areas of math (set theory, mostly) that I didn't understand until I had been taught them in algorithmic, problem-solving terms. And, uh, yeah, work-saving terms too (graph theory, I love you).
The current government of France has a tendency to overuse the urgence procedure. In my not even remotely humble opinon, the aim is most probably to prevent the media from catching up and starting examinating the proposed actions thoroughly before it's too late. It's characteristic of Nicolas Sarkozy's habit to go all news-surfing and claim action will be taken and new laws will be voted each time a tragic event happens gets to the news.
Judges, advocates, and even some prosecutors complain that this endless chaotic piling-up of more and more security laws is, to put it in kind words, totally destroying the coherence and serenity necessary to keep a decent law system to work (some of them use more crude words, but I can't find how to convey them in English).
The good news is, even some representatives of the majority tend to grow tired of this messy method. Both presidents of the high and low chambers of France (neither of them being known as wild horses) manifested their irritation on the matter, going as far as claiming together that repeatedly pushing new security laws, without ever evaluating the effects of the previous ones, was inefficient and nocive for the good working of Democracy.
Even more significant: recently, after the murder of a couple of elderly people broke to the news, the Minister of the Interior, Brice Hortefeux (a close friend of the President) claimed measure would be taken to aggravate the penalties for felonies targeting people weakened by old age. Leaving aside that such a declaration was a breach of French political tradition that states that it's the job of the Minister of Justice to announce changes in penal laws, and that the Minister of the Interior breaching this tradition makes it kind of a double breach (due to the complex relationship between the police forces and the judicial institution), what happened is that Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Minister of Justice herself stated (in careful terms) that such a suggestion of change in law was pointless because the existing laws already take into account this aggravating circumstance.
Fun times, fun times. (Holy Chao I'm tired of this president!)
I never suggested that 'reads' was plural. It's an obvious third person singular present conjugation of the verb 'to read'.
What I wonder is why the verb 'to need' isn't conjugated third person singular present too, since it ultimately shares the same subject as 'to read'.
In other words, personnally I would have written "Anyone who reads this needs not necessarily feel..."
It's not that I want to go all grammar nazi: while I'm attached to proper spelling, I don't go hunting for random typos in online posts (well, except mines). But the correctness of the sentence in English was kinda part of the post's statement, so I felt entitled to indulge in some friendly nitpicking.
"Anyone who reads this need not necessarily feel neither unoffended nor unharassed notwithstanding their lack of failure to misconstrue its import."
English is not my primary language, but I got the meaning of the sentence. Being a programmer gives an edge in handling double or triple negatives, I guess. That, or having been fond of games of logic since childhood.
However, I'm perplexed by the verb 'need', here. Does English have some obscure grammatical rule that makes "Anyone who reads this" a plural pronominal phrase, even though "Anyone" is a singular pronoun?
UI apart, of course. The usability area is something that definitively the community should focus more.
UI is one thing, but I think the main usability issue of the overwhelming majority of open source projects is the user documentation. Even though nowadays software engineers are often taught about documentation, and even though the community has broadened enough to have some skilled redactors that could contribute that way (if the devs did give a shit), many projects have no documentation worth mentioning.
And I think it's a more important concern than the UI, in most case. New users can be a bit confused by an UI that isn't like what they are used to, it won't be a big concern (at least not for long) if the application, and its UI, is properly documented
I'm happy they lost, but a lawyer commenting on a judicial process they're involved in as counsel has both special leniencies and special limitations to what he's allowed to say, compared to an ordinary citizen. I'm not shocked the courts found it worth examination.
Since you mention Louis of France, and assuming you mean Louis XVI, it's a bit excessive to call him a tyrant. He held far less power than his predecessors, and genuinely attempted to reform France but failed mostly because of his lack of authority over French aristocracy. He wasn't either the idiot some depict, he just hadn't much political skill, and was more interested in sciences and technology than in politics. If anything, Louis XV was far worse, despite all the flamboyance of his reign. Louis XVI certainly lacked the ability to adapt to the changes of his time, but he wasn't insensitive to the ideal of liberty. If his support to the American independance had been only motivated by a geostrategic agenda, he wouldn't have needed La Fayette to convince him to go for it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Polanski case is interesting in this respect. He could in theory be tried in France for what he did in California... except that a trial had already taken place there, so it's impossible.
Staple case: Deus Ex: Invisible Wars. Dumbed down to make it more fit to port to consoles: no more skills, unique ammo for all weapons, etc. Not a bad game, great storry and all, but compared to the first one its gameplay seems... bland.
Except some times ago, they branded it "G#", not "#G". Willfully confusing customers? I don't see any reason to rule it out.
Indeed. Access to Internet is becoming more and more instrumental to the practical use of several fundamental rights, even though it doesn't makes it one. French Constitutional Concil used this reason (among others) to reject the repressive part of the first version of French "Three Strikes" law: since fundamental rights are affected, judges have to be involved.
So-called "intellectual property" rights aren't, indeed, fundamental rights. They are instrumental rights that have been designed, and initially balanced, in order to encourage talented individuals to contribute to society as a whole by the productions of their minds. Unfortunately, the initial desired balance has been tinkered with into oblivion.
"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either". (- Franklin, AFAIK)
I think it's Jefferson, but I'm too lazy right now to look it up.
You want irony? I, as a French, am thankful of the efforts of the EP to protect my civil liberties against my country's current government.
It's complicated. Member countries still have a large power of interpretation and adaptation of the EU directives, which has its good and bad sides.
And I can't speak for other countries, but many politicians in France have a bad habit, when in power, to pin on the EU some of their most unpopular measures, by pointing at a European Directive most voters won't actually read (lack of time, of interest, of legal knowledges), and as a result the latter will ignore the amount of interpretation and adaptation that has come into play. And of course, EU-hating politicians tend to follow up on the accusation, which results in much noise.
Every five years, and the current parliament has been elected in june of 2009.
You don't know shit. Germany was the first country to give itself a significant set of laws about protection of personal data, nearly fourty years ago. Other European countries followed and this led, for the EU, to Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.
This, plus Kobe is a special case, the focus of the quake being only 16 km deep, and its epicenter only 20 km away from the city. Taking into account the approximations of the above figures, that makes an hypotenuse of mostly 26 km, which is pretty close.
Plus, I remember hearing that some lens effect came into play, due to the density configuration of the underground, but I'm presently unable to find any reference to it, so it may be a false memory.
That's why healthy and loyal debate is so vital to keep a democracy sane.
Once in a blue moon, I read some logs of the debates of my country's chambers. When the representatives are discussing matters that aren't very mediatic, the debates are actually quite courteous, the various parties' speakers are people who know the matter at hand, and overall they are willing to find reasonable compromises between their ideological views.
I find this beautiful. If only lawmaking could be always like that...
In some countries, the use of surprise is a sufficient condition for an act of sexual nature to qualify as sexual assault. I guess it's the case in some states of the Union (but it's only a wild guess: IANAL and IANAUSC).
vunerable to yesterday's attacks.
This sooo should be maid a common acronym. "Come on, your system is so VYA".
Indeed, I think the only way to properly teach abstraction is through sneakily presenting several practical problems, then burst out "guess what? you could solve all these problems using the same method if you apply some abstraction on them".
OK, actually it doesn't teach how to do abstraction, only its importance. But when you tell a student there are ways (encouraged ways even) to save some work on problem solving, it goes a long way.
I'm no mathematician, I'm a programmer, and there are several areas of math (set theory, mostly) that I didn't understand until I had been taught them in algorithmic, problem-solving terms. And, uh, yeah, work-saving terms too (graph theory, I love you).
That's because you are methodically lazy. Would you happen to be a programmer or something like that?
The current government of France has a tendency to overuse the urgence procedure. In my not even remotely humble opinon, the aim is most probably to prevent the media from catching up and starting examinating the proposed actions thoroughly before it's too late. It's characteristic of Nicolas Sarkozy's habit to go all news-surfing and claim action will be taken and new laws will be voted each time a tragic event happens gets to the news.
Judges, advocates, and even some prosecutors complain that this endless chaotic piling-up of more and more security laws is, to put it in kind words, totally destroying the coherence and serenity necessary to keep a decent law system to work (some of them use more crude words, but I can't find how to convey them in English).
The good news is, even some representatives of the majority tend to grow tired of this messy method. Both presidents of the high and low chambers of France (neither of them being known as wild horses) manifested their irritation on the matter, going as far as claiming together that repeatedly pushing new security laws, without ever evaluating the effects of the previous ones, was inefficient and nocive for the good working of Democracy.
Even more significant: recently, after the murder of a couple of elderly people broke to the news, the Minister of the Interior, Brice Hortefeux (a close friend of the President) claimed measure would be taken to aggravate the penalties for felonies targeting people weakened by old age. Leaving aside that such a declaration was a breach of French political tradition that states that it's the job of the Minister of Justice to announce changes in penal laws, and that the Minister of the Interior breaching this tradition makes it kind of a double breach (due to the complex relationship between the police forces and the judicial institution), what happened is that Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Minister of Justice herself stated (in careful terms) that such a suggestion of change in law was pointless because the existing laws already take into account this aggravating circumstance.
Fun times, fun times. (Holy Chao I'm tired of this president!)
I'm not a native English speaker but I think your sentence would be better phrased with "about" instead of "for".
IANAL, but I think my grasp on civil-law legal systems is sufficient for me to add that such a use of the word "fact" would not hold there either.
Well shit! When I first put my new PCMCIA WiFi card into my laptop under Ubuntu, it worked seamlessly.
Why, oh why did it work so well? I like using the command line!
Ah, thanks, I get it. I should have known that.
I never suggested that 'reads' was plural. It's an obvious third person singular present conjugation of the verb 'to read'.
What I wonder is why the verb 'to need' isn't conjugated third person singular present too, since it ultimately shares the same subject as 'to read'.
In other words, personnally I would have written "Anyone who reads this needs not necessarily feel..."
It's not that I want to go all grammar nazi: while I'm attached to proper spelling, I don't go hunting for random typos in online posts (well, except mines). But the correctness of the sentence in English was kinda part of the post's statement, so I felt entitled to indulge in some friendly nitpicking.
"Anyone who reads this need not necessarily feel neither unoffended nor unharassed notwithstanding their lack of failure to misconstrue its import."
English is not my primary language, but I got the meaning of the sentence. Being a programmer gives an edge in handling double or triple negatives, I guess. That, or having been fond of games of logic since childhood.
However, I'm perplexed by the verb 'need', here. Does English have some obscure grammatical rule that makes "Anyone who reads this" a plural pronominal phrase, even though "Anyone" is a singular pronoun?
UI apart, of course. The usability area is something that definitively the community should focus more.
UI is one thing, but I think the main usability issue of the overwhelming majority of open source projects is the user documentation. Even though nowadays software engineers are often taught about documentation, and even though the community has broadened enough to have some skilled redactors that could contribute that way (if the devs did give a shit), many projects have no documentation worth mentioning.
And I think it's a more important concern than the UI, in most case. New users can be a bit confused by an UI that isn't like what they are used to, it won't be a big concern (at least not for long) if the application, and its UI, is properly documented
I'm happy they lost, but a lawyer commenting on a judicial process they're involved in as counsel has both special leniencies and special limitations to what he's allowed to say, compared to an ordinary citizen. I'm not shocked the courts found it worth examination.
Since you mention Louis of France, and assuming you mean Louis XVI, it's a bit excessive to call him a tyrant. He held far less power than his predecessors, and genuinely attempted to reform France but failed mostly because of his lack of authority over French aristocracy. He wasn't either the idiot some depict, he just hadn't much political skill, and was more interested in sciences and technology than in politics. If anything, Louis XV was far worse, despite all the flamboyance of his reign. Louis XVI certainly lacked the ability to adapt to the changes of his time, but he wasn't insensitive to the ideal of liberty. If his support to the American independance had been only motivated by a geostrategic agenda, he wouldn't have needed La Fayette to convince him to go for it.