And Fox News did a Daily Show-esque show called the "1/2 Hour News Hour" [wikipedia.org] that was just abysmal to watch and not even close to funny (it ran for 13 episodes before the Fox conservatives abandoned their opposition to euthenasia long enough to grant it a mercy killing).
That's the problem with conservatives, they can't approach things without an intensely partisan mindset. I'm sure plenty of them think the people behind the Daily Show and Colbert Report take the same approach as they do; have a goal to promote an ideology, then after that come up with humor to support it. Never even crosses their mind that the shows pick things that you can make fun of, and just because it's a lot easier to make fun of republicans than democrats, that's what the shows do more of.
I propose all olympic athletes be required to smoke massive amounts of marijuana throughout the hours before their event. I will seriously watch every Olympic event if they did that, it would be so much fun to watch.
"Protected" is a prohibition, not a positive right - no-one can stop you from saying certain things, but by the same token you can't force others to listen to you or carry your message.
Well the issue here is if the speech is "protected," which I believe it is, then YouTube gets the benefit of that protection; they are not liable for trademark infringement or whatever legal cause of action the IOC claims to have. Yes, it's their network and they can refuse to carry whatever they want, but it's pretty cowardly. The IOC's legal threats are baseless.
Yeah, it's just sickening how Georgia was sure they had an easy conquest in taking on a tiny country like Russia.
As much as I think Russia is a despotic bully that eventually will have to be checked, in this situation Georgia takes the blame, too, for their aggressive attempts to retake South Ossetia (most of the inhabitants of which would rather be separate from Georgia).
In this case, perhaps Google doesn't get a huge amount of ad revenue from protest videos, so they don't want to fight this case... or maybe no single video generates enough revenue to justify fighting a copyright infringement case.
You'd think Google would have the resources to fight high-profile cases though.
What needs to happen is that Judges need to start awarding punitive damages to defendants when the plaintiffs case is judged to be frivolous or an attempt to control legitimate legal behavior.
And I bet my bottom dollar that town planners *today* aren't concerned in the least by suburban sprawl.
A lot of planning that goes on in the suburbs is specifically designed to require cars; wouldn't want those dreadful poor people able to get to Generic Suburban Whiteyville No. 4323.
I've got ADD and although I'm very intelligent, I haven't been an 'A' student since freshman year of high school. I can learn things well, but I continue the same behaviors that prevent me from succeeding, such as reading Slashdot (among other things) instead of doing homework.
I had the same problem, I've been a 'B' student my whole life. From elementary through high school, where a B wasn't good, to college, where a B was about average, to law school where a B is pretty damn good. I think there's probably at least a few people somewhere who studied more for one class in one semester than I studied in 24 years of schooling. Though honestly I really regret not getting treated early on, I think I missed some good opportunities there.
If I've got it right, this is pretty far out. The transit authority cannot even establish a factual predicate sufficient to show that the presenters have knowledge that would or could damage the transit authority. This would seem to present a really big causal gap in their case.
"We're going to give a presentation on how to crack the MBTA passes" seems like a pretty good factual predicate.
Too bad they don't list their defeats; they've lost a lot of cases. And a lot of the cases on their victories page appear to be ones where they didn't actually represent the winning side, but merely filed amicus curiae briefs. Which sometimes help, but sometimes have no effect.
You're in luck, because after a steady 20-year smear campaign by lobbyists, business book writers, and various alarmists, managers in the US have now been convinced that foreign workers are naturally better educated and more intelligent than oafish domestics. You have an advantage, my friend.
It makes a lot of sense to me, since most users aren't going to know that "Malicious App 7" is not only using your location to find the nearest sweet shop, but is also sending it to your local assassin so they can track you down.
While a lot of people fantasize about killing apple fanboys, is anyone really going to go through that much trouble to do it?
Not even a malicious app that is violating someone's privacy without them noticing? I'd rather have Apple disable it and risk the possibility of a false deactivation which I can sort out later than have my iPhone pwned because someone decided that iPhones phoning home was something to get paranoid about.
If it's a malicious app then they could have put a system in where it will disable the app, explain to you that it's a malicious one, then let you decide whether it will run or not. I don't trust Apple to not just disable an app because it competes with some shiny new one they themselves developed.
I know several people who own Diablo II and want to play online with me, but can't because they don't know where their serial keys are. Yet another reason I like Steam.
Actually it's funny, I really want to replay Diablo II, and all I have is the case with the serial number.
General purpose proprietary software will ultimately be a dead end for this reason. Customized software is the only tenable business model.
I've heard that argument for the past 10 years and it's not getting any more convincing.
I suppose Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus because they had some common inspiration? Parallel, independent innovation happens all the time.
Mathematics is not science. Mathematics is certainly not biomedical science. And yes, Newton and Leibniz arrived at calculus precisely because they had identical inspiration. They didn't invent calculus out of whole cloth, they had the benefit of work already done by Gregory and Barrow. Or do you honestly contend that it was a complete coincidence that they started working on calculus at roughly the same time?
Personally, I'd prefer it government kept its heavy handed, corrupt influence from as much as possible.
Corrupt? I'd take the word of a government scientist over a pharmaceutical company PR flack any day.
Doubtful. Generics would still be around, so at best, you'd see brands collapse, or morph into generics themselves. After a short period of little to no innovation, some enterprising individuals will establish a way to push drugs forward, I guarantee you.
Well you don't know, so you can't guarantee it. And the argument that "I don't know how, but somehow they'll do it" doesn't fill one with confidence.
As this article argues, it only costs $500 million due to regulations, marketing, sales overheads. Do you honestly think lab equipment and trials cost $500 million? It's a fraction of that.
R&D costs are a lot more than you think. Factor in all the work done on drugs that actually don't work, and you're looking at significant amounts of money before sales and marketing even enters the picture. Let's even say for any drug the drug companies spend 1/3 of the total cost on actual R&D costs. The R&D costs will still often be in excess of 100 million dollars. It's not just clinical trials that cost the money, you know.
You get the market for that book for a year before someone else can write a copy
What do you mean? We're talking about simply copying someone's book, which certainly doesn't take a year to do. I can do it myself in 20 minutes with a photocopier.
But there is. First to market is often sufficient to recoup costs and then some.
Not where you have something that you can get out the door the same day the creator releases it. Look at commercial software overseas; Microsoft loses out to sellers of pirated copies because it's so easy to copy, and the pirate sellers have almost no expenses.
Says who? That's an awful presumption.
Don't be ridiculous. That's how biomedical research is done. The fact that another company had already patented her discovery as a "variation" of an already existing medication simply supports my point.
Further, mathematicians and programmers build on decades of work too, yet algorithms are not patentable, nor should they be. The idea that patents are required for the advancement of a field should not be accepted a priori, but only when rigourously supported by evidence. The evidence is thin my friends.
Math is fundamentally different from the applied sciences. Most of the research done in biomedical research requires vast amounts of money to be done correctly. Does this need to be private industry? No, personally I'd prefer the government handled the funding itself, then sell the medicine to us at low prices just to recoup costs. But the idea that this will get done without government funding OR IP protection just doesn't float.
I personally know how much money pharma spends selling and marketing drugs, and not all in ethical ways, that could be better spent increasing production and cutting costs. In a more competitive market, the measures they are currently taking just wouldn't pay off. The luxury of monopoly results in unethical kickback schemes to push expensive brands over equally good generics.
Granted, and while I think there is a strong argument to make for weakening pharmaceutical IP, especially in regards to modifications made simply to prolong patent life, if you removed ALL IP protection the industry would collapse. Nobody's going to spend 500 million dollars developing a drug that someone else will be able to create and sell for almost nothing.
I won't buy most commercial games because the hoops the DRM makes you jump through take away a lot of the fun.
I hear everyone on slashdot complain about this, but I never really understood why. I mean, I don't buy too many games but the ones I do buy tend to have the same copy protection scheme: a CD key, and when you want to play it, one of the original CDs has to be in the drive. Somewhat annoying but nothing too different than what they've been doing for the past two decades. Are those two steps (one of which is done only once) really that bad?
Slashdot Mirror
And Fox News did a Daily Show-esque show called the "1/2 Hour News Hour" [wikipedia.org] that was just abysmal to watch and not even close to funny (it ran for 13 episodes before the Fox conservatives abandoned their opposition to euthenasia long enough to grant it a mercy killing).
That's the problem with conservatives, they can't approach things without an intensely partisan mindset. I'm sure plenty of them think the people behind the Daily Show and Colbert Report take the same approach as they do; have a goal to promote an ideology, then after that come up with humor to support it. Never even crosses their mind that the shows pick things that you can make fun of, and just because it's a lot easier to make fun of republicans than democrats, that's what the shows do more of.
I propose all olympic athletes be required to smoke massive amounts of marijuana throughout the hours before their event. I will seriously watch every Olympic event if they did that, it would be so much fun to watch.
Yes, many readers will call me crazy for that.
Including me.
Choose your roommates carefully guys.
That's the reasoning I'd use for actually calling her.
"Protected" is a prohibition, not a positive right - no-one can stop you from saying certain things, but by the same token you can't force others to listen to you or carry your message.
Well the issue here is if the speech is "protected," which I believe it is, then YouTube gets the benefit of that protection; they are not liable for trademark infringement or whatever legal cause of action the IOC claims to have. Yes, it's their network and they can refuse to carry whatever they want, but it's pretty cowardly. The IOC's legal threats are baseless.
Yeah, it's just sickening how Georgia was sure they had an easy conquest in taking on a tiny country like Russia.
As much as I think Russia is a despotic bully that eventually will have to be checked, in this situation Georgia takes the blame, too, for their aggressive attempts to retake South Ossetia (most of the inhabitants of which would rather be separate from Georgia).
Here's a good article on the situation.
In this case, perhaps Google doesn't get a huge amount of ad revenue from protest videos, so they don't want to fight this case ... or maybe no single video generates enough revenue to justify fighting a copyright infringement case.
You'd think Google would have the resources to fight high-profile cases though.
What needs to happen is that Judges need to start awarding punitive damages to defendants when the plaintiffs case is judged to be frivolous or an attempt to control legitimate legal behavior.
Actually a lot of states already do this.
IANAL, of course... but if what these guys did isn't protected, it damn well should be. The IOC can go fuck themselves if they don't like it.
Well IAAL and it clearly is protected speech, and YouTube should grow a backbone.
And I bet my bottom dollar that town planners *today* aren't concerned in the least by suburban sprawl.
A lot of planning that goes on in the suburbs is specifically designed to require cars; wouldn't want those dreadful poor people able to get to Generic Suburban Whiteyville No. 4323.
Sage Franics, Aesop Rock, Alias, Dose One, Scroobius Pip, El-P and dozens of others also happen to be white, and you cite freaking Eminem?
You honestly consider those people to be "influential"?
I've got ADD and although I'm very intelligent, I haven't been an 'A' student since freshman year of high school. I can learn things well, but I continue the same behaviors that prevent me from succeeding, such as reading Slashdot (among other things) instead of doing homework.
I had the same problem, I've been a 'B' student my whole life. From elementary through high school, where a B wasn't good, to college, where a B was about average, to law school where a B is pretty damn good. I think there's probably at least a few people somewhere who studied more for one class in one semester than I studied in 24 years of schooling. Though honestly I really regret not getting treated early on, I think I missed some good opportunities there.
Ask the Africans starving to death due to desertification.
Well, he probably meant is it a problem for suburbs-dwelling anarcho-capitalist-libertarian types. You know, painfully white people.
If I've got it right, this is pretty far out. The transit authority cannot even establish a factual predicate sufficient to show that the presenters have knowledge that would or could damage the transit authority. This would seem to present a really big causal gap in their case.
"We're going to give a presentation on how to crack the MBTA passes" seems like a pretty good factual predicate.
http://www.eff.org/victories
Too bad they don't list their defeats; they've lost a lot of cases. And a lot of the cases on their victories page appear to be ones where they didn't actually represent the winning side, but merely filed amicus curiae briefs. Which sometimes help, but sometimes have no effect.
Thanks for the info! (yes, I was serious)
You're in luck, because after a steady 20-year smear campaign by lobbyists, business book writers, and various alarmists, managers in the US have now been convinced that foreign workers are naturally better educated and more intelligent than oafish domestics. You have an advantage, my friend.
Amen to that. Wasteland on my Apple IIe was by far my favorite game. I must have won it a dozen times and never got tired of it.
I'm on a Wasteland mailing list that still gets traffic, some of it even about gameplay/strategy.
It makes a lot of sense to me, since most users aren't going to know that "Malicious App 7" is not only using your location to find the nearest sweet shop, but is also sending it to your local assassin so they can track you down.
While a lot of people fantasize about killing apple fanboys, is anyone really going to go through that much trouble to do it?
Not even a malicious app that is violating someone's privacy without them noticing? I'd rather have Apple disable it and risk the possibility of a false deactivation which I can sort out later than have my iPhone pwned because someone decided that iPhones phoning home was something to get paranoid about.
If it's a malicious app then they could have put a system in where it will disable the app, explain to you that it's a malicious one, then let you decide whether it will run or not. I don't trust Apple to not just disable an app because it competes with some shiny new one they themselves developed.
may be you should go back to NOT buying over priced, over hyped, vendor locked devices.
But what would the other pretentious hipsters think of me if I did that???
I'd rather see Wasteland 2. It's been 20 years, don't we get a sequel yet??
I know several people who own Diablo II and want to play online with me, but can't because they don't know where their serial keys are. Yet another reason I like Steam.
Actually it's funny, I really want to replay Diablo II, and all I have is the case with the serial number.
General purpose proprietary software will ultimately be a dead end for this reason. Customized software is the only tenable business model.
I've heard that argument for the past 10 years and it's not getting any more convincing.
I suppose Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus because they had some common inspiration? Parallel, independent innovation happens all the time.
Mathematics is not science. Mathematics is certainly not biomedical science. And yes, Newton and Leibniz arrived at calculus precisely because they had identical inspiration. They didn't invent calculus out of whole cloth, they had the benefit of work already done by Gregory and Barrow. Or do you honestly contend that it was a complete coincidence that they started working on calculus at roughly the same time?
Personally, I'd prefer it government kept its heavy handed, corrupt influence from as much as possible.
Corrupt? I'd take the word of a government scientist over a pharmaceutical company PR flack any day.
Doubtful. Generics would still be around, so at best, you'd see brands collapse, or morph into generics themselves. After a short period of little to no innovation, some enterprising individuals will establish a way to push drugs forward, I guarantee you.
Well you don't know, so you can't guarantee it. And the argument that "I don't know how, but somehow they'll do it" doesn't fill one with confidence.
As this article argues, it only costs $500 million due to regulations, marketing, sales overheads. Do you honestly think lab equipment and trials cost $500 million? It's a fraction of that.
R&D costs are a lot more than you think. Factor in all the work done on drugs that actually don't work, and you're looking at significant amounts of money before sales and marketing even enters the picture. Let's even say for any drug the drug companies spend 1/3 of the total cost on actual R&D costs. The R&D costs will still often be in excess of 100 million dollars. It's not just clinical trials that cost the money, you know.
You get the market for that book for a year before someone else can write a copy
What do you mean? We're talking about simply copying someone's book, which certainly doesn't take a year to do. I can do it myself in 20 minutes with a photocopier.
But there is. First to market is often sufficient to recoup costs and then some.
Not where you have something that you can get out the door the same day the creator releases it. Look at commercial software overseas; Microsoft loses out to sellers of pirated copies because it's so easy to copy, and the pirate sellers have almost no expenses.
Says who? That's an awful presumption.
Don't be ridiculous. That's how biomedical research is done. The fact that another company had already patented her discovery as a "variation" of an already existing medication simply supports my point.
Further, mathematicians and programmers build on decades of work too, yet algorithms are not patentable, nor should they be. The idea that patents are required for the advancement of a field should not be accepted a priori, but only when rigourously supported by evidence. The evidence is thin my friends.
Math is fundamentally different from the applied sciences. Most of the research done in biomedical research requires vast amounts of money to be done correctly. Does this need to be private industry? No, personally I'd prefer the government handled the funding itself, then sell the medicine to us at low prices just to recoup costs. But the idea that this will get done without government funding OR IP protection just doesn't float.
I personally know how much money pharma spends selling and marketing drugs, and not all in ethical ways, that could be better spent increasing production and cutting costs. In a more competitive market, the measures they are currently taking just wouldn't pay off. The luxury of monopoly results in unethical kickback schemes to push expensive brands over equally good generics.
Granted, and while I think there is a strong argument to make for weakening pharmaceutical IP, especially in regards to modifications made simply to prolong patent life, if you removed ALL IP protection the industry would collapse. Nobody's going to spend 500 million dollars developing a drug that someone else will be able to create and sell for almost nothing.
I won't buy most commercial games because the hoops the DRM makes you jump through take away a lot of the fun.
I hear everyone on slashdot complain about this, but I never really understood why. I mean, I don't buy too many games but the ones I do buy tend to have the same copy protection scheme: a CD key, and when you want to play it, one of the original CDs has to be in the drive. Somewhat annoying but nothing too different than what they've been doing for the past two decades. Are those two steps (one of which is done only once) really that bad?