I'll get together with one of my friends. I will write a nice little program that prints out "Hello World" in 20 different languages. Very nifty, no? Now, I will sell it to my friend for $1 and have him click 'Yes' on the EULA I provide. Said EULA says that the person who agrees to it must hand over all their personal posessions to me. He, obviously, refuses. Then we go to court and after he wins, we set some small precedence that EULAs aren't worth the phosphors they're displayed on. After that, we do it all over again with a EULA that, while still over the top, is not quite as extreme. Rinse, lather, repeat. Eventually we'll start getting to EULAs that resemble the ones actually in use today but it'll be only slightly different from the previous case and there'll be this huge log of cases ruling in the user's favor.
It goes without saying that in this scenario, my friend and I can afford lots of lawyer time and have nothing better to do.
Of course, instead of growing, the whole unit would now have a tendency to migrate across the room...
Walking drives! Even in computers, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Re:Wrongful imprisonment too
on
Worst Buy
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· Score: 2
In that case you might want to sell the lot and then bulldoze it. But hey, thanks!
Re:Wrongful imprisonment too
on
Worst Buy
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· Score: 2
I'd own me a Best Buy store if this happened to me. Then I'd bulldoze it and sell the lot.
Um, can I have all the stuff inside it first?
Re:What's even more disturbing...
on
Worst Buy
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· Score: 2
Well, it's not quite the same situation here. He hadn't yet received the product. I dunno if that makes a legal difference, but it's one thing to cancel a deal and another to change the terms thereof and force the customer to accept the new ones.
Regardless, I hope Best Buy pays through the nose for this one.
He tried to cancel the auction, but it had already ended, and he had to honor the contract to sell the item to the winner at the price he bid.
That was dumb. He should have used another account or had one of his friends (i.e., you) get the winning bid. He'd have been out the cost of the auction, a couple of bucks.
But hell yeah, Best Buy is being stupid. Between the bad press and the upcoming lawsuits, it's gonna cost them way more than the measly half million simply honoring the sales would have.
Ugh. It really does hurt to admit it, but it is a very sad truth that no matter how much we may despise lawyers, we'd be worse off without them. Enforcing liability would be an order of magnitude more difficult if there were not people on hand who can do it full time.
But you have to admit, some of them seem to try very hard to get the general population to want to strangle everyone with a law degree. And if there are too many lawyers around, why are they so expensive? If there aren't enough, why do we have so many willing to take on frivolous cases?
The reason is that the topics covered on the AP test coincide with those that are taught in the java course, and not those taught in the first course.
Err, not even remotely true? When I took 1501/1301 it was like sitting through my high school class all over again. Binary trees, linked lists, passing variables by reference versus by value, atomic data types, recursive algorithms, all of this I had to do twice and it was boring as hell the second time around.
1502/1302, on the other hand, implemented those same things in Java as opposed to pseudocode, but you were expected to already know them. And I don't really recall Java music and graphics programming being on the AP test, since the last half of the quarter was spent on them.
Dunno. Those GaTech CS profs and TA's can be dicks sometimes. Citing sources is quite ok for pretty much every _other_ CS class, but the intro they just love to shaft people with.
It's not the whole Georgia Tech CS department that's screwing up here. Believe me, I know, I just graduated from it a year ago. Two core CS classes after the intro they are specifically telling you to use other people's code, so long as you document it as such.
The intro course is quite fucked up, though. For some strange reason they refused to accept AP credit for it but rather accepted the AB CS test for the Java class despite the two having nothing in common.
the single biggest and most important biological and geological change in Earth's history was probably when plants first began to spew oxygen which, at the time, must have been HIGHLY TOXIC to most life forms.
Quite correct. I have always found it amusing that the very air we breathe is the result of the 'rampant pollution' caused by ancient organisms. Shame on them!
Most organisms must have become extinct or relegated to marginal environments when this happened.
Yup. About the only ones left in the world are the thermophiles. Those guys just love the O2 poor environments around fissures in the earth, usually deep underwater. And their environments are already so nasty and remote they'd survive cataclysms that would wipe out even all the lawyers and cockroaches.
I should point out that 560m of Hydrogen is not much. 560m = 560,000 liters at STP = 50 kg which has the same combustion density as 150 kg = 206 liters = 54 gallons of gasoline. Not much at all.
You mean to say that it wasn't the lack of legally downloadable movies and songs that was holding up broadband access and was instead some bizarre and esoteric reason like "It cost too much"? Now who would ever have imagined that?
if the model accurately predicts how real-world societies work, without using the factors you seem to need to be taken into account, ipso facto those factors are irrelevant
They're quite relevant, it's just that the logical results from those factors were already included in. Poor income distribution, job access, and government actions are all among the factors that can lead to racism. The simulation started with the assumption that racism existed, so assuming the factors that lead to it is unneccesary.
What would be interesting is to run a detailed sim where racism is not assumed, but the factors we think lead to it are.
The question is: is this inspired by Asimovs' excellent work or is it a completely new approach???
The impression I got from all the Foundation novels (Asimov's, at least) was that Psychohistory was 'Calculus for People'. It was a mathematical system for prediction of events. The processes described in the article are more simulative in nature. With Psychohistory, you have the initial conditions, apply your equations, and viola, instant future histories! With the 'Psyhco-simulator', the only way to see what will happen is to repeatedly apply the very simple rules of the game to your scenario and only then will you have any idea how things might turn out.
It's not a perfect analogy, but... Psychohistory is to simulations as Newton is to Quantum Mechanics.
If I'm not mistaken the federal "Do Not Call" list is still a proposal. Plenty of state-level ones, though; I'm looking at the one for Florida right now.
Still, a 10-grand fine for the telemarketer and I _only_ get to keep 10% of it? Fine by me!
All your points are true only assuming that we are always free to write our own software. If we are not, then we are totally at the mercy of the big corporate developers and their lawyers. And simply being able to write it isn't enough, we have to be able to make it public without fear of being hunted down.
Just remember what the goal of the CBDTPA is: trusted hardware and software. The only way to accomplish that is to hermetically seal the hardware and disallow programming in any environment TPTB don't like (home, small business, etc). Hollings and co. have shown they don't care about the consequences of such an act and would try to run it through at full throttle.
The problem in the article is not that companies are charging for content, which they are free to do, but rather that they are forcing out of business others who try to give anything out for free via ridiculous copyright legislation.
That, my friend, is what is so insane about the DMCA. And they aren't even using it in their lawsuit, so their argument holds less water than a rock.
Re:Completely Explainable...
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 2
Depends on whether or not a closed paradox is allowed. That is, the use of the time machine is not only an effect but also the cause of its own invention. A leads to B leads to A.
[Shrug] I really couldn't say whether or not it's possible. The problems of conservation and the usual types of paradoxes seem insoluble, but...
Re:My PC will just be boards randomly hung
on
Tool Box PC
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· Score: 2
Hmmm, interesting....
Bear in mind, you won't be able to use IDE drives. Maximum useful length for those cables is 2 or 3 feet. SCSI could probably handle it. Go firewire and you could keep it on the other end of town.
Other than that, I don't see too many problems with it. You'd probably want to power the drives with a local PSU slaved to the one by the mobo. Wireless keyboard and mouse, obviously. I dunno if you'd need any amplification on the monitor signal, though.
Last thing: why would you hang the drives from the chandelier? If you use enough of them,you can use them to make a chandelier! I for one have always wondered how a free floating hard drive would move.
Slashdot Mirror
It goes without saying that in this scenario, my friend and I can afford lots of lawyer time and have nothing better to do.
Walking drives! Even in computers, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In that case you might want to sell the lot and then bulldoze it. But hey, thanks!
Um, can I have all the stuff inside it first?
Regardless, I hope Best Buy pays through the nose for this one.
That was dumb. He should have used another account or had one of his friends (i.e., you) get the winning bid. He'd have been out the cost of the auction, a couple of bucks.
But hell yeah, Best Buy is being stupid. Between the bad press and the upcoming lawsuits, it's gonna cost them way more than the measly half million simply honoring the sales would have.
Did anyone else read the headline and first think of Y.T.'s most excellent plank?
But you have to admit, some of them seem to try very hard to get the general population to want to strangle everyone with a law degree. And if there are too many lawyers around, why are they so expensive? If there aren't enough, why do we have so many willing to take on frivolous cases?
Right up there with "Capitalism's worst enemies are successful capitalists."
Err, not even remotely true? When I took 1501/1301 it was like sitting through my high school class all over again. Binary trees, linked lists, passing variables by reference versus by value, atomic data types, recursive algorithms, all of this I had to do twice and it was boring as hell the second time around.
1502/1302, on the other hand, implemented those same things in Java as opposed to pseudocode, but you were expected to already know them. And I don't really recall Java music and graphics programming being on the AP test, since the last half of the quarter was spent on them.
Dunno. Those GaTech CS profs and TA's can be dicks sometimes. Citing sources is quite ok for pretty much every _other_ CS class, but the intro they just love to shaft people with.
The intro course is quite fucked up, though. For some strange reason they refused to accept AP credit for it but rather accepted the AB CS test for the Java class despite the two having nothing in common.
Why hasn't anyone modded this up yet? I know it's not original, but it's still hilarious!
Quite correct. I have always found it amusing that the very air we breathe is the result of the 'rampant pollution' caused by ancient organisms. Shame on them!
Most organisms must have become extinct or relegated to marginal environments when this happened.
Yup. About the only ones left in the world are the thermophiles. Those guys just love the O2 poor environments around fissures in the earth, usually deep underwater. And their environments are already so nasty and remote they'd survive cataclysms that would wipe out even all the lawyers and cockroaches.
I should point out that 560m of Hydrogen is not much. 560m = 560,000 liters at STP = 50 kg which has the same combustion density as 150 kg = 206 liters = 54 gallons of gasoline. Not much at all.
You mean to say that it wasn't the lack of legally downloadable movies and songs that was holding up broadband access and was instead some bizarre and esoteric reason like "It cost too much"? Now who would ever have imagined that?
They're quite relevant, it's just that the logical results from those factors were already included in. Poor income distribution, job access, and government actions are all among the factors that can lead to racism. The simulation started with the assumption that racism existed, so assuming the factors that lead to it is unneccesary.
What would be interesting is to run a detailed sim where racism is not assumed, but the factors we think lead to it are.
Black and White was a high-resolution multiplayer version of a Tamagotchi.
The impression I got from all the Foundation novels (Asimov's, at least) was that Psychohistory was 'Calculus for People'. It was a mathematical system for prediction of events. The processes described in the article are more simulative in nature. With Psychohistory, you have the initial conditions, apply your equations, and viola, instant future histories! With the 'Psyhco-simulator', the only way to see what will happen is to repeatedly apply the very simple rules of the game to your scenario and only then will you have any idea how things might turn out.
It's not a perfect analogy, but... Psychohistory is to simulations as Newton is to Quantum Mechanics.
Still, a 10-grand fine for the telemarketer and I _only_ get to keep 10% of it? Fine by me!
Just remember what the goal of the CBDTPA is: trusted hardware and software. The only way to accomplish that is to hermetically seal the hardware and disallow programming in any environment TPTB don't like (home, small business, etc). Hollings and co. have shown they don't care about the consequences of such an act and would try to run it through at full throttle.
The problem in the article is not that companies are charging for content, which they are free to do, but rather that they are forcing out of business others who try to give anything out for free via ridiculous copyright legislation.
That, my friend, is what is so insane about the DMCA. And they aren't even using it in their lawsuit, so their argument holds less water than a rock.
[Shrug] I really couldn't say whether or not it's possible. The problems of conservation and the usual types of paradoxes seem insoluble, but...
Bear in mind, you won't be able to use IDE drives. Maximum useful length for those cables is 2 or 3 feet. SCSI could probably handle it. Go firewire and you could keep it on the other end of town.
Other than that, I don't see too many problems with it. You'd probably want to power the drives with a local PSU slaved to the one by the mobo. Wireless keyboard and mouse, obviously. I dunno if you'd need any amplification on the monitor signal, though.
Last thing: why would you hang the drives from the chandelier? If you use enough of them,you can use them to make a chandelier! I for one have always wondered how a free floating hard drive would move.