Programmers who write bad code that crash computers and help spread viruses inconvenience me. Therefore, we should pass a bill to put all programmers out of a job.
What a dumb analogy. Telemarketer intrudes into your day, while you can choose whether or not to use certain software. I want the choice not to talk to telemarketers. There's nothing unreasonable about that.
Now I have no clue how many of those jobs may or may not be lost by this bill, but the fact is, he is voting to protect those jobs. I personally fail to see how it is some great inconvenience to have telemarketers calling you every so often. Its putting food on someone's table, and is better than them being on welfare. My brother in law worked for the firm for a time. In that impovershed area of the country good paying jobs are hard to come by.
Leading the charge for the telemarketing industry is the American Teleservices Association (suggested motto: 'Some Day, We Will Get a Dictionary and Look Up 'Services''). This group argues that, if its members are prohibited from calling people who do not want to be called, then two million telemarketers will lose their jobs. Of course, you could use pretty much the same reasoning to argue that laws against mugging cause unemployment among muggers. But that would be unfair. Muggers rarely intrude into your home.
If you're implying that the Do Not Call list is somehow unconstitutional because it restricts the telemarketers right to free speech, you're mistaken. The 1st Amendment is not an issue here.
Congress has the Constitutional ability to create laws regulating commerce. It can (and already did) ban "abusive" telemarketing. This is not controversial. It is the opinion of Congress and at least 50 million Americans that it is abusive to be cold-called for commercial reasons after you have expressly indicating your desire not to be called (by putting your number on the DNC list). The judge quibbles with this logic. He says that because Congress didn't create a law explicitly instructing FTC to make a list, the FTC overstepped its mandate. The judgement does not depend on any 1st Amendment issues.
The right to free speech does not give people carte blanche to do anything they want. I cannot, for instance, stand outside your house at 3am with a bullhorn, loudly attempting to have a conversation with you and your neighbors. It is clear that such behavior is neither constitutionally protected, nor in the public interest. Telemarketing is no different. Telemarketing is widely viewed as disruptive, intrusive, abusive, anti-social behavior. There is no Constitutional reason why it should not be regulated.
The symbols that come up on the reels aren't random
Wrong. In the US, the slots are indeed random, although of course the odds are balanced in such a way that the house wins in the long run.
The difference between a game of chance and a scam is that a game of chance has fixed odds while a scam has fixed outcomes. If the British fruit machines are in fact behaving as described, their outcomes are fixed and they are a scam.
Clear Channel (owner of every radio station in America)
Actually, Clear Channel is the largest operator of radio stations in the US. They don't own every one. They run about 1,200 of America's 11,000 stations.
Wrong. Resident aliens in the US are welcome to join the US military, despite not being citizens. Take a look at this page (scroll down to "Citizenship").
Good point. In fact, you can get hit from strangelets from *any* angle, even from strangelets coming through the Earth and striking you at your feet. Ouch. The odds are still quite small, though.
I think it might be kind of cool to be given a hat that stimulates a pleasure center in the brain. It's like drugs, without the drugs. What's so bad about that?
My favorite quote: "We asked could we at least talk about when something could become available as a used book? Could we maybe wait three months after the book was published?" said Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers. "The biggest problem is that it is legal, I think. I wring my hands, pound my desk and say, `Aargh.'"
Easy solution: outlaw used book sales. As the RIAA/MPAA have shown, convenient new laws can be bought on Capitol Hill. It's time for the Association of American Publishers to pay up....
Computer makers stand to sell more hardware if there's no copy protection. Why? Because people will want to build their own collection of online video and audio, in the same way that people build CD and DVD collections. If there were no copy-protection, I think you'd see a significant market for machines with terabytes of storage. Your average home user might require that much, after downloading a few hundred movies. Lots of computers to be sold, not to mention all the networking equipment to transfer this data back and forth. In fact, now that I think of it, why don't Dell and Cisco join forces and buy out the MPAA?
Is this just speculation or what? There seems to be no verifiable evidence presented that Comcast is in fact logging its customers' activities. I'm a (not entirely satisfied) Comcast customer, so in a way, I'd like to believe the worst about them, but this guy doesn't describe what he's "discovered" that makes him think they are playing big brother. It's just a bunch of accusations with no proof.
Of course, ISPs have access to pretty much all network traffic (you think your packets magically transport themselve to and back from slashdot?). And it would not be difficult at all to log everything that passes through the network. (You certainly don't need an Inktomi system, although maybe it helps, I dunno.) Probability is that there's at least some ISPs out there monitoring their customers invasively. Maybe Comcast is in fact doing it. But this article is simply not convincing.
I just went and had a read at a whole bunch of posts from 10-15 years ago in which I was often a real prick... Then, as soon as the sun comes up, I'm heading downtown to change my name.
Good news for reformed pricks, you don't have to change your name! Google lets you remove your articles from its archive.
(Of course, the articles may still be in some other archive...)
Slashdot Mirror
Great, so why not buy in the morning and sell in the afternoon, becoming rich in the process.
Bid and ask prices for stocks are pretty much meaningless outside of market hours.
Whacko DRM? What's so whacko about it? Actually, I think it sounds like a pretty cool feature.
What a dumb analogy. Telemarketer intrudes into your day, while you can choose whether or not to use certain software. I want the choice not to talk to telemarketers. There's nothing unreasonable about that.
Perhaps Dave Barry said it best:
Leading the charge for the telemarketing industry is the American Teleservices Association (suggested motto: 'Some Day, We Will Get a Dictionary and Look Up 'Services''). This group argues that, if its members are prohibited from calling people who do not want to be called, then two million telemarketers will lose their jobs. Of course, you could use pretty much the same reasoning to argue that laws against mugging cause unemployment among muggers. But that would be unfair. Muggers rarely intrude into your home.
Congress has the Constitutional ability to create laws regulating commerce. It can (and already did) ban "abusive" telemarketing. This is not controversial. It is the opinion of Congress and at least 50 million Americans that it is abusive to be cold-called for commercial reasons after you have expressly indicating your desire not to be called (by putting your number on the DNC list). The judge quibbles with this logic. He says that because Congress didn't create a law explicitly instructing FTC to make a list, the FTC overstepped its mandate. The judgement does not depend on any 1st Amendment issues.
The right to free speech does not give people carte blanche to do anything they want. I cannot, for instance, stand outside your house at 3am with a bullhorn, loudly attempting to have a conversation with you and your neighbors. It is clear that such behavior is neither constitutionally protected, nor in the public interest. Telemarketing is no different. Telemarketing is widely viewed as disruptive, intrusive, abusive, anti-social behavior. There is no Constitutional reason why it should not be regulated.
FTC has regulated telemarketers for years. There's no reason why it shouldn't continue to do so.
Keep in mind that these prosecutors don't write the laws. They just enforce them. Your question would be better directed to a member of Congress.
Wrong. In the US, the slots are indeed random, although of course the odds are balanced in such a way that the house wins in the long run.
The difference between a game of chance and a scam is that a game of chance has fixed odds while a scam has fixed outcomes. If the British fruit machines are in fact behaving as described, their outcomes are fixed and they are a scam.
Easy. You ask users for their date of birth, and then restrict features appropriately.
What's the mortality rate for measles, anyway?
Clear Channel (owner of every radio station in America)
Actually, Clear Channel is the largest operator of radio stations in the US. They don't own every one. They run about 1,200 of America's 11,000 stations.
National Public Radio had a story about this a couple days ago.
Immoral or illegal? It's not always the same.
Wrong. Resident aliens in the US are welcome to join the US military, despite not being citizens. Take a look at this page (scroll down to "Citizenship").
Good point. In fact, you can get hit from strangelets from *any* angle, even from strangelets coming through the Earth and striking you at your feet. Ouch. The odds are still quite small, though.
I think it might be kind of cool to be given a hat that stimulates a pleasure center in the brain. It's like drugs, without the drugs. What's so bad about that?
By using a robots.txt file, you can force (well-behaved) search engines to skip pages you don't want them to index, thus preventing deep-links.
My favorite quote:
"We asked could we at least talk about when something could become available as a used book? Could we maybe wait three months after the book was published?" said Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers. "The biggest problem is that it is legal, I think. I wring my hands, pound my desk and say, `Aargh.'"
Easy solution: outlaw used book sales. As the RIAA/MPAA have shown, convenient new laws can be bought on Capitol Hill. It's time for the Association of American Publishers to pay up....
That's funny because I had *exactly* the same conversation with Dell. Idiots.
As a matter of fact, it is a lot cheaper. The same company offers Zero Gravity trips for $5400.
Actually, Titanic had a worldwide gross of nearly $2 billion. Sen to Chihiro still has some catching up to do.
Computer makers stand to sell more hardware if there's no copy protection. Why? Because people will want to build their own collection of online video and audio, in the same way that people build CD and DVD collections. If there were no copy-protection, I think you'd see a significant market for machines with terabytes of storage. Your average home user might require that much, after downloading a few hundred movies. Lots of computers to be sold, not to mention all the networking equipment to transfer this data back and forth. In fact, now that I think of it, why don't Dell and Cisco join forces and buy out the MPAA?
Of course, ISPs have access to pretty much all network traffic (you think your packets magically transport themselve to and back from slashdot?). And it would not be difficult at all to log everything that passes through the network. (You certainly don't need an Inktomi system, although maybe it helps, I dunno.) Probability is that there's at least some ISPs out there monitoring their customers invasively. Maybe Comcast is in fact doing it. But this article is simply not convincing.
Good news for reformed pricks, you don't have to change your name! Google lets you remove your articles from its archive.
(Of course, the articles may still be in some other archive...)