Hey, great idea! I tell you, what this whole storyline needs most is a big smelly dragon. And a big battle. Oh, I know! Have the battle between than 2 armies, like three or four. Five would be just crazy, though.
What it can do is apply criminal penalties to those who intentionally foment violent activity.
Before or after the violent action is actually commited? In other words, is this pre-emptive law enforcement? We arrest you now for nothing to keep you from maybe doing something actually bad tomorrow?
Oddly enough, this is amongst the many wonderful pieces of logic used to justify Prohibitions I and II here in the States.
Anyway, rereading the article, this is not about applying criminal penalties after the fact. This is simply censorship ("...will look at upgrading federal powers to block certain websites.") of anything the Aussie government deems 'used to organize protests'. It is no different than banning the use of printing presses to print things that are 'dangerous'.
What would happen to you in the US if you said that Al Quaida is doing the right thing.
There has been much debate here over the grievances, both legitimate and outlandish, Arab nations have against the US. And I assure you, not every American will begin such a discussion with, "Kill them ragheads!".
If you would give a talk on how to turn over the government using terrorist attacks....
Oddly enough, that was almost exactly one of the topics covered in an International Affairs class I took at Georgia Tech (public institution and we had guests who were former White House advisors) about 2 years ago. Tried to figure out what it would take to shut down a city like Atlanta; not quite revolution, but pretty close.
What happens to you, if you publish an article on how to build a "circumvention device".
Now there we are in agreement. The DMCA is a truly disgusting piece of work.
Or if you published how the security system of the Pentagon works?
Hmmm. Depends on how you got it and how public your presentation was. Quite frankly, it's even money that you'd get off scot free. The government would definitely want to get their hands on you, but if you're too much in the limelight they don't dare make you disappear.
In fact, I would be more afraid of saying what I think in the US than I am in the EU
Dunno. It almost seems like they made a bet as to who could Orwell-ize their country first and we're both racing to make it happen. Hard to tell who's ahead. The US (so far) only has anti-Hate-Crime legislation, but we've got lots of rabid anti-tech reps.
What about all this discussion on digital convergence, TV+Stereo+Phone+Computer+Internet+etc all-in-one. Wake up man!
That's where the DMCA, CBDTPA/SSSCA, and whatever nonsense they think up comes in. The goal here is convergence, yes, but not into a PC. We want modular components that can be plugged into any hardware and run by any software we dream up. They want a WebTV-Phone that plays discs; a machine that gives you all the normal media capabilities of a computer, but lets you do absolutely nothing that isn't government/RIAA/MPAA approved. Nice thought, isn't it?
DivX the video rental scheme, not the codec. You know, it was a nice little "Fuck You" to the MPAA to name the most popular pirate codec (not only is it used for piracy, but it's actually pirated from another proprietary codec, MPEG4!) after a failed copy-prevention widget, but it really does get confusing.
I think by "PROPER" the parent was referring to one of those laser-needle record players. They'll generally put you back 20 or 30 grand, though. I have yet to actually be in the same room as one.:)
Capitalism's biggest enemies are successful capitalists, after all. Fortunately, these guys think they have a total monopoly and can therefore screw everyone over forever with impunity. As there are alternatives to the big labels (P2P and indies), public opinion is definitely turning against them (lots more articles on CNN regarding this than there used to be) they're only digging their own graves. I hope.
make a law that says that if anything within the EULA is illegal (you must turn over your first born, etc.) then it voids the entire EULA
_Very_ nice. That would be "is illegal at the time it was 'signed'" though, right? Probably wouldn't want a future law nullifying vast multitudes of existing agreements.
It also ties nicely into the 'lawyers & politicians as coders' metaphor. They better do their best to get it right the first time or when it 'crashes', they lose a lot of dosh.
FBI damage trigger is $5000. Since the theft has been going on for a while, it adds up to that sum.
That depends. Are they determining the damages by using real math and logic, where 1 month of pirating 3Mbps induces damages twice as much as 1 month's normal billing for 1.5Mbps, or are they using the far more popular 'Kevin Mitnick' approach, where stealing $100 worth of product magically generates $80 million in damages? Somehow, I suspect the latter.
I'm hesitant to have put names on ballots. How about putting a unique ID number on the ballot (one that cannot be traced back to the actual person) and put the same number on a receipt that the voter gets. Make the ID/vote data available online (wouldn't take more than a few gigs to store it all) and the voters can go back and verify what the computer recorded for their vote at any time. If the voter is worried about someone else 'checking' their vote, all they have to do is destroy their receipt. Transparent and yet still anonymous.
You're right, "Preferential voting" sounds sound better than "instant runoff".
It then proceeds to cite a ridiculous example
Not at all. This scenario just describes an election in which three candidates have nearly equal support. I guarantee you it would happen eventually. The paradox was when a candidate loses the election because he gained support. The cases where a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the electoral is bad enough.
The instant runoff does seem to be the easiest to fix, though. It's just a matter of figuring out how to combine all the preferences into a single winner. I was thinking something along the lines of having the voters 'spend' 10 (or however many) points on the candidates of their choice. Can put all 10 on one guy, or split it amongst them as they like.
I'm rather fond of the instant runoff myself. It seems rather easy to fix the problems with it the article described. Give every voter 10 points that they may deal out as they see fit. Then tally up the number of points given to each candidate, and the one with the most wins. I'd be curious to see how the analysis of this would turn out.
The biggest problem I can see with this method is all the people out there who can't do single-digit arithmetic. I suppose an electronic voting machine would help out there.
Because in a CG environment, you can make anything your little heart desires. Why would you go to extremes to make it look exactly like reality, thus turning your renderfarm into an expensive video camera?
Well, maybe not quite, but since the tech isn't quite up to rendering realistic people (Exhibit A: Final Fantasy), you might as well exaggerate the shortcomings and call it 'artistic license'.
Silver-coated mirrors are able to to reflect 99.92% of the light
Outside of space telescopes and cleanroom labs, have you ever seen a 99.92% reflective mirror _stay_ that way? A smudge of oil on the surface would vaporize instantly, heating the mirror up and deforming it slightly. This causes the mirror to not be quite so reflective, so it absorbs even more heat, etc, etc.
Fortunately for the US military, the only practical defense to a laser would be something that could instantly conduct the heat the laser generates around the rest of the vehicle; the parts not being fired at become a giant heatsink. I don't know if electrical superconductors are also heat superconductors, but either way, such a material is much further away on the horizon than high-power solid state lasers.
Just because visible light can get out doesn't mean it can get in. The shields could operate like one-way mirrors: any radiation generated by the ship inside can pass right through but anything incoming gets stopped.
Of course, this would leave the ship totally blind, but hey...
And how, exactly, will you break into his house? Gonna pick the lock on his front door, thereby fooling the deadbolt into thinking that you have a key which has the correct (and secret) shape?
Incidentally, I didn't see where you pointed out why he was wrong. You merely called him a troll and expected everyone to agree with you. How about next time you keep your mouth shut until you have something to say.
It's certainly down to more than the "10,000 suckers" you suggest.
Oh I agree. Like I said, Wishful Thinking. I actually do follow a couple of the more realistic ads. But for the love of Pete, I had to set my Hotmail account to automatically discard spam since it was filling up the entire account faster than the spam bucket was being emptied! We're talking three or four hundred spams in less than a week! And 99% of them fall into one of three categories: sex organ enlargement and various performance improvement widgets, though I'm quite satisfied with mine already; a fake college degree, though I already have a real one; debt consolidation, though I'm 5 years ahead on my college loans. I simply don't need this kind of harrassment.
I really do wish spammers would actually target their audience. I might get just as much junk, but it'd at least bear some resemblance to stuff that relates to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, great idea! I tell you, what this whole storyline needs most is a big smelly dragon. And a big battle. Oh, I know! Have the battle between than 2 armies, like three or four. Five would be just crazy, though.
Wierd. I'm also running 2000 but under Opera it just can't figure out what my OS is.
Before or after the violent action is actually commited? In other words, is this pre-emptive law enforcement? We arrest you now for nothing to keep you from maybe doing something actually bad tomorrow?
Oddly enough, this is amongst the many wonderful pieces of logic used to justify Prohibitions I and II here in the States.
Anyway, rereading the article, this is not about applying criminal penalties after the fact. This is simply censorship ("...will look at upgrading federal powers to block certain websites.") of anything the Aussie government deems 'used to organize protests'. It is no different than banning the use of printing presses to print things that are 'dangerous'.
There has been much debate here over the grievances, both legitimate and outlandish, Arab nations have against the US. And I assure you, not every American will begin such a discussion with, "Kill them ragheads!".
If you would give a talk on how to turn over the government using terrorist attacks....
Oddly enough, that was almost exactly one of the topics covered in an International Affairs class I took at Georgia Tech (public institution and we had guests who were former White House advisors) about 2 years ago. Tried to figure out what it would take to shut down a city like Atlanta; not quite revolution, but pretty close.
What happens to you, if you publish an article on how to build a "circumvention device".
Now there we are in agreement. The DMCA is a truly disgusting piece of work.
Or if you published how the security system of the Pentagon works?
Hmmm. Depends on how you got it and how public your presentation was. Quite frankly, it's even money that you'd get off scot free. The government would definitely want to get their hands on you, but if you're too much in the limelight they don't dare make you disappear.
In fact, I would be more afraid of saying what I think in the US than I am in the EU
Dunno. It almost seems like they made a bet as to who could Orwell-ize their country first and we're both racing to make it happen. Hard to tell who's ahead. The US (so far) only has anti-Hate-Crime legislation, but we've got lots of rabid anti-tech reps.
That's where the DMCA, CBDTPA/SSSCA, and whatever nonsense they think up comes in. The goal here is convergence, yes, but not into a PC. We want modular components that can be plugged into any hardware and run by any software we dream up. They want a WebTV-Phone that plays discs; a machine that gives you all the normal media capabilities of a computer, but lets you do absolutely nothing that isn't government/RIAA/MPAA approved. Nice thought, isn't it?
A lot of European slashdotters will tell you that MiniDisc is alive and well on their side of the pond. Never having been there, I couldn't say.
DivX the video rental scheme, not the codec. You know, it was a nice little "Fuck You" to the MPAA to name the most popular pirate codec (not only is it used for piracy, but it's actually pirated from another proprietary codec, MPEG4!) after a failed copy-prevention widget, but it really does get confusing.
I think by "PROPER" the parent was referring to one of those laser-needle record players. They'll generally put you back 20 or 30 grand, though. I have yet to actually be in the same room as one. :)
Capitalism's biggest enemies are successful capitalists, after all. Fortunately, these guys think they have a total monopoly and can therefore screw everyone over forever with impunity. As there are alternatives to the big labels (P2P and indies), public opinion is definitely turning against them (lots more articles on CNN regarding this than there used to be) they're only digging their own graves. I hope.
Better yet, if they didn't start off WW2 calling it WW2, what did they call it?
You must not be going to the right libraries.
_Very_ nice. That would be "is illegal at the time it was 'signed'" though, right? Probably wouldn't want a future law nullifying vast multitudes of existing agreements.
It also ties nicely into the 'lawyers & politicians as coders' metaphor. They better do their best to get it right the first time or when it 'crashes', they lose a lot of dosh.
Hmmm. Very good point, I hadn't thought of that. And it had seemed like such a nifty solution! Ah, the hardships of peer review...
That depends. Are they determining the damages by using real math and logic, where 1 month of pirating 3Mbps induces damages twice as much as 1 month's normal billing for 1.5Mbps, or are they using the far more popular 'Kevin Mitnick' approach, where stealing $100 worth of product magically generates $80 million in damages? Somehow, I suspect the latter.
I'm sorry, but a joke that bad simply must be punished by a lethal beatdown.
I'm hesitant to have put names on ballots. How about putting a unique ID number on the ballot (one that cannot be traced back to the actual person) and put the same number on a receipt that the voter gets. Make the ID/vote data available online (wouldn't take more than a few gigs to store it all) and the voters can go back and verify what the computer recorded for their vote at any time. If the voter is worried about someone else 'checking' their vote, all they have to do is destroy their receipt. Transparent and yet still anonymous.
It then proceeds to cite a ridiculous example
Not at all. This scenario just describes an election in which three candidates have nearly equal support. I guarantee you it would happen eventually. The paradox was when a candidate loses the election because he gained support. The cases where a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the electoral is bad enough.
The instant runoff does seem to be the easiest to fix, though. It's just a matter of figuring out how to combine all the preferences into a single winner. I was thinking something along the lines of having the voters 'spend' 10 (or however many) points on the candidates of their choice. Can put all 10 on one guy, or split it amongst them as they like.
The biggest problem I can see with this method is all the people out there who can't do single-digit arithmetic. I suppose an electronic voting machine would help out there.
Well, maybe not quite, but since the tech isn't quite up to rendering realistic people (Exhibit A: Final Fantasy), you might as well exaggerate the shortcomings and call it 'artistic license'.
Heh. I figured they were "Line of Sight".
Outside of space telescopes and cleanroom labs, have you ever seen a 99.92% reflective mirror _stay_ that way? A smudge of oil on the surface would vaporize instantly, heating the mirror up and deforming it slightly. This causes the mirror to not be quite so reflective, so it absorbs even more heat, etc, etc.
Fortunately for the US military, the only practical defense to a laser would be something that could instantly conduct the heat the laser generates around the rest of the vehicle; the parts not being fired at become a giant heatsink. I don't know if electrical superconductors are also heat superconductors, but either way, such a material is much further away on the horizon than high-power solid state lasers.
Minor nitpick. It was Bush Sr. who said that. But given his government-religion track record, it's a safe bet that Dubya's of a similar opinion.
Of course, this would leave the ship totally blind, but hey...
Incidentally, I didn't see where you pointed out why he was wrong. You merely called him a troll and expected everyone to agree with you. How about next time you keep your mouth shut until you have something to say.
Oh I agree. Like I said, Wishful Thinking. I actually do follow a couple of the more realistic ads. But for the love of Pete, I had to set my Hotmail account to automatically discard spam since it was filling up the entire account faster than the spam bucket was being emptied! We're talking three or four hundred spams in less than a week! And 99% of them fall into one of three categories: sex organ enlargement and various performance improvement widgets, though I'm quite satisfied with mine already; a fake college degree, though I already have a real one; debt consolidation, though I'm 5 years ahead on my college loans. I simply don't need this kind of harrassment.
I really do wish spammers would actually target their audience. I might get just as much junk, but it'd at least bear some resemblance to stuff that relates to me.