The people changing the definition are the people who are affecting the bottom line of corporations
We aren't changing the definition, corporate stooges are. Is a crime only a crime when it's theft? Are rape and arson any less reprehensible because we call them rape and arson rather than theft? Get a clue.
Theft was theft long before there was a legal definition.
Okay, go back in a time machine with Mr. Poo. He looks at some goods from a street vendor, goes home and duplicates them using his own tools. Then you come over to the street vendor and explain that he's just been the victim of theft. The street vendor surveys his wares, sees nothing is missing, and realizes that you have no idea of what you're talking about. Because if there is no transfer of possession, there is no theft. Period.
And you know, I think part of the reason that it is so hard to find computers with alternate operating systems have more to do with the producers of those operating systems.
Nope. Thanks for trying, though.
I'm sure Dell would love to sell computers with the MacOS, problem is Apple doesn't let them.
Because Apple doesn't want to out of frikkin business, that's why. Dell had plenty of time to sell computers with BeOS and Red Hat, who would be quite happy to sell through Dell.
If there was a huge demand for *nix OS's, then the OEMs that make them (yes, they do exist) would see an increase in sales, and by the laws of supply and demand, more companies would work to incorporate those sales. However, the demand is not there, thus there is no increase in sales, thus most companies will not bother to sell those computers.
No consumer demands Windows. Consumers demand platforms for their applications. And where are the most applications? The Win32 api. So where do consumers go? Windows. And since most consumers run windows, what api do most software companies develop for? Windows. A real anti-trust settlement would have broken up Microsoft into separate companies and force them to open their api's.
I don't think this will happen, however, do to the fact that gaming is on the rise as far as standard uses of a computer, and macs are no good for games, thus the jokes regarding the lack of existence of 'mac gamers'.
"Not as good" does not mean "no good". Besides, this reinforces the monopoly argument: if DirectX and Win32 were forced open, Linux vendors and Apple could run games just fine on their systems without modification.
Promised to give, you mean. And what he promises to do with the money in no way mitigates the way he got the money in the first place - it would be like saying Pablo Escobar should be free from criticism if he gave his money to AIDS and caner research. It's also worth pointing out that they are big backers of the Discovery Institute, who are big backers of forcing Intelligent Design into science classrooms.
You want more money from a company that has wronged you, hire your own damn attorney. You are getting something (a settlement) for nothing (no effort or risk on your own) and you complain about not getting more money? Just who is really being greedy here?
Lawyers and legal organizations increase the cost of every single thing you ever bought in your life, from penny candy to auto insurance.
No, they reduce those costs by holding companies accountable for their criminal and negligent actions. You would be paying more money without lawyers, because companies would never be held accountable and would keep on doing what got them sued in the first place.
The greatest trick in the world wasn't the devil convincing people he did not exist. The greatest trick was big industry convincing workers and consumers that standing up for themselves through lawsuits, regulation and unions is bad and those things need to be gotten rid of, for the benefit of the common man than big industry.
Second, regardless what you think of it, it's pretty cheap for a substantial piece of software that comes with installation and support.
Not when you realize the fact that $50 goes to Microsoft and none of it gets spent on installation and support. Those costs are borne by the OEM you bought the computer from.
these cases really upset me. I get mail all the time showing the lawyers are going to make 4 to 16 million dollars and as a member of the class I'll get less than a hundred bucks. I do not join the class.
Then hire an attorney and have him litigate a separate claim for you. You assume absolutely no risk in a class action lawsuit, and yet you complain that you don't get more? Just who is really being greedy here?
I know ultimately, i'm going to be paying higher prices because of this crap.
Nonsense. If companies aren't held accountable for their criminal and negligent behavior, they'll keep right on with their criminal and negligent behavior - costing you FAR more money as a consumer.
If you want a larger chunk of the pie, then higher your own representation and assume some of the risk. In a class action lawsuit, the attorneys carry all the risk, and deserve to be well compensated. Besides, all this bitching about attorney fees comes from an attempt to convince people that paying attorneys a lot of money is somehow worse than holding companies accountable for criminal and negligent behavior.
They call it anti-trust, which is ridiculous because MS has no OS monopoly.
Of course they do. A monopoly is a company that dominates a market to the point that it has detrimental effects on the consumer, not that they have to have 100% marketshare.
Trial lawyers who run these class action suits, however, usually settle for a piece of the pie, or charge for inflated time at inflated amounts, or both.
And generally get nothing unless they win. Higher risk, higher reward.
Result: they take on many suits that should not be brought.
If the suits are without merit, they will be dismissed, same as any other.
Remedy: ban any lawyers from taking any portion of the amount at offer, and limit them to capped hourly rates.
Then many worthwhile cases will not get the best representation.
Look, these class action lawsuits don't cost consumers a thing. All of the risk is carried by the attorneys, and so they deserve to be well compensated. Don't like it - assume some of the risk yourself and hire your own representation - or else you are greedy yourself.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but by this definition you wouldn't consider copying of personal information theft until some other action more criminal happened with the content. So if I'm copying SSN data and giving it to someone else who then commits identity theft, I'd be innocent since I stole the data from a business and didn't deny them the right to it.
I don't know, do you think it's possible for crimes to be called things other than "theft" and still be taken seriously? If you are getting SSN's, you are likely to be guilty of trespassing at the least. And if you use them for your own financial gain, that is fraud.
and how do you know that the person in question did not actually steal physical data carriers with data on them?
Then prosecute him for theft of the data carriers. He still didn't "steal" the episode.
Of-course this is irrelevant, because whatever you want to call this, what was done is quite illegal and can and should be punished to the fullest extent that the law allows.
Well, duh. Just because people don't call rape cannibalism doesn't mean people don't take rape seriously.
Um, no. Counter-Strike. WoW. Everquest. Halo. Hell, just playing poker online is big. You have no idea what you are talking about. Case in point...
6 mil (WOW total users) vs install base of 100 mil (PS2 install base). Even WOW is a "niche" product.
You are comparing games sales to installed base? What a delightfully stupid comparison. No PS2 game is going to come close to selling 100 million units either. Online play ads replay value when a player gets tired of single player. Online play and mods kept Half-Life on store shelves at selling well at $50 five years after a top selling PS2 game would be in the bargin bin.
The problem with the Christian Persecution Complex is that it's disciples are bad at math. By this I mean that whenever people who happen Christians kill people, it's not because they are Christians, it's for "other reasons". Like Bush invading Iraq, the IRA in Ireland, the KKK in the U.S., the Rwandan Genocide, the innumerable civil wars and coups in Latin America. However, when people who happen to be Muslims kill people, it's always because they are Muslims. The Palestinians aren't pissed at Israel for stealing their territory, it's because they are Muslims. The Shiites in Iraq aren't pissed at the Sunnis because they lived for decades under a Sunni dictatorship, it's because they are Muslims. The Chechnians aren't fighting Russian imperialism, they are fighting because they are Muslims. And so on.
The Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells in this country are bat shit insane, and they are rich old men in a stable, prosperous nation. They think that Christians are oppressed when they walk into a Target and see a sign that says "Happy Holidays." I wonder if what they would do if faced with the wars, the famine and the imperialism that Muslims put up with every day around the world.
I guess Judge Posner should ignore well-settled constitutional law and base his legal reasoning on the opinions of/. privacy zealots, or he's an idiot. Nice logic. Do you even understand or care about the US case law system or stare decisis ? One of the most brilliant, respected jurists in the country is an idiot because he disagrees with you, some anonymous Internet poster. Now that's nonsense.
I'm not sure I understand your point here. Could you restate it again, only be really snobby and pompous this time? A bad decision is a bad decision, no matter how long it has been on the books. Plessy v. Ferguson was on those books for almost 60 years. And making bad decisions on easy to rule case pretty much disqualifies you from being "brilliant": that bugging a car with a GPS device is crossing the line between freely observing movements in public and tampering with private property for the purposes of surveillance. If your local P.D. wants to do that, fine, but they should get. a. warrant.
And as Judge Posner pointed out (based on well-settled law), the police are not required to remain locked in the technology of the 18th Century.
But neither are they allowed to use technology without warrants just because the founders couldn't concieve of it and explicitly forbade its use. Does that link look a little familiar?
Riley is but one case, and it seems very reasonable to me. The police in helicopters should shield their eyes from pot growing outside a person's home? Where does it say anything about outdoor, uncovered greenhouses in the Constitution?
Case in point, if you had bothered to read the dissent in the link or possessed some common sense. The reasoning of the majority was that Mr. Riley did not have a reasonable expectation to privacy because air traffic was not restricted above his property, so he had no common expectation of privacy. However, how "common" is it for a helicopter to stop and hover 400 feet above your property, so somebody can peer through your window?
Your comments about SCOTUS are even more ludicrous. There have been numerous pro-defendant/suspect decisions made by this court, including the one I linked, Kyllo v US
Numerous? Try needle in a haystack. Kyollo was a rare moment of sanity and I'm surprised they didn't rule the other way. After the landmark Miranda case the SCOTUS has been on a long downward spiral as far as constitutional rights go. For example, there's Illinois v. Caballes, which allows cops to use an alert from a drug dog to do a search without a warrant, or Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, which allows cops to demand ID from people who are not in operation of a vehicle without probable cause.. And then there's United States v. Ross, in which the majority opinion gave a police officer's determination of probable cause to be equal to a judge's, and as Marshall notes in the dissent, ignores much of the "automobile exception" exception set out in Carroll v. United States. So much for your stare decisis, beyach.
I think people should have a basic understanding of the government and its laws in order to vote.
Questions like "In what year did Congress gain the right to prohibit the migration of persons to the states" go way beyond "basic understanding".
It's also convenient that you cherry-picked the hardest questions.
Using your source against you does not mean that I'm cherry-picking, it means you didn't bother to go through your own source before you linked to it.
Would you really trust someone to vote who couldn't identify what "responsibility" means, or who the US Attorney General was, or whether the President can be impeached? Or that the state you live in doesn't have debtor's prisons? Do you honestly want people voting who don't think the President can be removed from office, can't define the word "treaty", or don't know about search warrants? I also thought that many Slashdotters would appreciate the question about patents:)
I'd trust them a damn sight more than a racist who makes selective tests in order to deny law abiding citizens their inalienable rights.
Let me guess: you own The Clinton Chronicles on both DVD and VHS, don't you? Unfortunately for you, there are two simple facts that you have to take into consideration. The first is that Republicans decided that something as minor as making misleading statements about a blowjob was sufficient grounds for prosecution. The second is that the worst thing they were able to pin on him was making misleading statements about a blowjob. Therefore, the worst thing that Clinton did during his presidency was make misleading statements about a blowjob.
It seems the prosecutor knew within very few weeks of starting, that there wasn't a crime as popularized by the press since the person at the center wasn't a covert agent
That's a myth.
Also, the prosecutor knew that the leaker was actually richard armitage
Leaker? Try multiple leakers. Yes, there was Armitage, but there was also Libby and Fleischer. Libby is in trouble because he lied left and right to a federal prosecutor about relevant issues. The Administration is in trouble because the trial is show just how willing they were to throw away national security to settle a political grudge.
I wasn't aware that those enemy combatants who had US citizenship captured in battle really needed a trial since they were caught in the act of waging war against US forces.
Your point being what? You seriously expect that if you invade another country that you wont expect resistance? But regardless, people captured by our troops are either POW's or suspected criminals. Either way they have rights as there is no third "enemy combatant" category that allows the government to deny them rights, except in the minds of the Administration.
I'm still trying to come to terms with exactly why this foreign operative surveillence effort has been called a domestic spying effort just because some of the suspects were located in the US and making/receiving foreign calls to known/suspected terrorists.
Because international calls with one end in the United States are also domestic calls and are also protected by the Constitution. Duh.
This enemy is quite a bit different from the nazis germans of wwii and even worse than the japanese soldiers, but not by much.
Nonsense, although at least you are consistent in that your ignorance of history is as appalling as your ignorance of current events.
However, much more recently, it seems that hillary cannot remember her comments on the war (even to the reds in codepink) or that they were taped back around 2003 when it comes to making her current comments about the iraq war and how bush lied and poor lil' hillary was duped.
Problem: Bush did lie and a lot of people were duped. However, Hillary should stand up and take responsibility for her failure to demand more substantial evidence, as Edwards has done.
Nor is it the equivalent of having over 500 FBI files of political appointees discovered in the posession of some ex bar bouncer political appointee in the whitehouse basement that hilliary can't even remember hiring.
You are quite right, it is not remotely equivalent. It is far, far worse.
bush junior is what he says he is
Bullshit. Compassionate conservative? Lie. A uniter, not a divider? Lie. Promising a tax cut to anyone who pays taxes? Lie.
doing what he thinks is the right thing to do for the country, despite massive opposition.
Does "doing the right thing" mean sitting on your ass and reading a children's book twenty minutes after being told the nation is under attack? Does "doing the right thing" mean apologizing to communists for a mid-air crash clearly caused by their pilot? Does "doing the right thing" mean being warned point blank that Katrina could breach the levees and in New Orleans and then staying on vacation when Katrina breached the levees? Does "doing the right thing" mean
The same thing the insurgents in Iraq are doing. The U.S. military is excellent at conquest and abysmal at occupation.
The problem with the Iraqi occupation is that our soldiers are trying to defend areas while at the same time trying to pacify the insurgency. Defending makes your location and movements much more predictable, and thus much more of a target. So the obvious fascist strategy would be: don't defend bother defending anything, you just go in and blow shit up when you suspect someone is resisting you.
No, they'd quite quickly form a difficult-to-detect underground, just like the insurgents have. It'd be guerilla warfare on a grand scale, and it's ludicrous to claim that it would somehow be impossible in the U.S. when it has worked just fine hundreds of times all over the world, up to and including today.
See above. Why don't you ask the French how well their "resistance" worked against German occupation?
I'm quite aware of their track record. And just as fascism grows gradually, so too does resistance to it. What happened in Germany before WW2 is much less likely to happen here
What happened in Germany already started happening here when the government forced Japanese-Americans into concentration camps. And again with the Administration torturing and imprisoning people without due process. As for resistance, the Senate is currently having a debate on whether to have a debate on passing a non-binding resolution that changes nothing.
All of them? Without error? I find that highly unlikely.
You don't have to get all of them or even most of them. Just get rid of the ones that might be troublemakers and isolate those that you don't trust, while putting your lackeys into positions of power. If it can happen to well known officials like Colin Powell and Richard Clarke, it can certainly happen to those lower on the food chain.
There's also the issue that purging your ranks of people with strong ethical objections to fascism also tends to reduce your ranks' skillset, weakening your ability to continue with fascism.
It wont reduce their ability to continue with fascism, but it will drastically decrease the number of competent officials. Katrina demonstrated the problems with packing agencies with political cronies.
And let's not get into the issues surrounding cult of personality, that the populace would likely never accept a suspension of the 22nd Amendment, fiendish nuke-detonating terrorists or not, etc.
You also wouldn't think the populace would accept torture, suspending of habeas corpus, etc etc, but it's still happening and Bush is still in office with no signs of being impeached or forced to resign.
I don't know why people who argue as you do always assume that the government has godlike knowledge and power
In war intelligence and speed are godlike powers.
I also don't know why you think it's logical that because the government is too powerful to defeat, the citizens should therefore have more power taken away from them.
The point is that the power to do something to prevent a tyrannical government does not come from guns, unless you are hoping an assassination or coup d'état goes for the best.
How the hell would I know? I'm not an NRA member and don't pay attention to it.
Just pointing out that the people who talk the talk about standing up to government tyranny seldom walk the walk.
Too bad it didn't come out in time for Halo 2. I spent the better part of two matches listening to some ass yelling "eat a dick" every time he scored a kill. And "Fuck you, fag" everytime he got killed. Although, the upside of that scenario was that his own teammates actually turned on him, he was so annoying.
That's why every online game needs something like AdminMod for Half-Life. Aside from kicking/banning, it will also let you slap (pushes you and hits your for 5 damage points), slay (kill player for rest of round), mute or llama someone so they just say "bleet" or "bleah".
A lot of these people are lucky they're doing it online and not at a lan party. I remember when voice support was added to Counter-Strike. I was frequenting a server located in Kansas, and it was interesting to hear people's voices for the first time when you had known them in-game for a while. One gentleman turned out to have a voice three shades of redneck to the right of Larry the Cable Guy. I said "whoa, you sounded like a total hick just now," to which he said "you're god damned right I'm a hick," being proud of his Oklahoma upbringing. I then found the little bastard in me saying, "maybe when you get done playing Counter-Strike you can marry your sister and raise a family."
Some fun facts I later found out about this gentleman: he could bench press 300 lbs after being in an auto accident that gave him a compression fracture in his spine, his method of troubleshooting his PC was to take it out back and beat it with a bat until either his computer started working or he felt better about the situation, and that both his father and uncle were in the Hells Angels.
So, I was somewhat thankful I was three states away instead of being at a lan party with him.:)
This DVI -> HDMI stuff is bullshit, so one can hope with their support of Blu Ray that will be indeed change the support HDMI on at least the high end laptops.
So don't do it. Get a TV with DVI inputs and use the optical audio out on the Mac.
. If the government gets enough out of control, then it's not going to be "you and a few hundred of your buddies," it's going to be "several hundred thousand, possibly several million angry and armed civilians."
You've seen Red Dawn too many times. Even if you and your buddies are all Burt Gummers, what are your personal arsenals going to do against Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, and A-10 Warthogs?
But even if you get some Guard and Army units to join in, wars are won on intelligence, and your local VFW is going to have quite a time topping the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and satellite imagery. You get your hands on some Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, and A-10 Warthogs, and the fascist feds will simply come in at night and napalm the place, or drop a cruise missile or two into your festivities. Any local force capable of challenging the U.S. Military will simply be neutralized before they can challenge the U.S. Military.
You assume that "the government" is a monolithic hive-mind, rather than being an organization consisting of a few million individuals, many of whom would turn against the government if they thought it had become irretrievably corrupt.
You assume that would make any difference. Fascism doesn't happen overnight, it happens gradually. Look at what the Bush administration has gotten away with based on the deaths of 3,000 some Americans: torture, warrantless spying, detentions with no trial, firing U.S. Attorneys and packing agencies with political cronies. Now imagine their response if Al Qaeda were as successful as the terrorists on 24 and detonated a nuclear weapon inside a major American city.
You also assume that the armed forces would act as a single unit, that no one in it (not even high officers, who ARE trained to think independently, unlike the rank and file) would either openly rebel or secretly aid and abet civilian rebels.
They certainly wouldn't. However, they would have long been removed from any positions of real power or access to real resources.
The whole government simultaneously turning to the Dark Side is not the only circumstance in which civilians might rebel. Imagine a small town with a corrupt sheriff who likes to arrest people for things they didn't do. How much less likely is that to happen if the civilians are armed?
It wont be any less likely at all. If cops want to bust you and they know you have a gun, they'll simply bring more cops with more guns. And if you try and use your gun, they will simply bring even more cops with even more guns - and go from trying to arrest you to trying to kill you. Just ask Randy Weaver. Or the Branch Davidians. Or Leonard Peltier. Or Gordon Kahl. Or the Black Panthers. Or Donald Scott. Or Cory Maye.
Speaking of Scott and Maye, why didn't the NRA freak the fuck out over their death/sentencing to death row? Federal authorities conducted a no-knock raid on Scott's estate on a bogus warrant searching for marijuana, and killed him when he brought out his legally owned gun to defend his family from the people breaking into his home. Cops raided Maye's place when they were searching the duplex next to his. He got his gun to defend his daughter, and shot one of the intruders who later died. It should have been an open and shut case of self defense, but Maye is black and the cop that died was white. And the son of the town's police chief. So he landed on death row. But the NRA that wailed of "jack booted government thugs" was nowhere to be found.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not give everybody a chance to love it? Why not let developers get a taste for the development tools without buying a new system?
For the cost of a VMWare license, you could buy a decent used Mac to get a taste of the OS and the dev tools.
I'm not the one redefining words.
Yes, you are.
The people changing the definition are the people who are affecting the bottom line of corporations
We aren't changing the definition, corporate stooges are. Is a crime only a crime when it's theft? Are rape and arson any less reprehensible because we call them rape and arson rather than theft? Get a clue.
Theft was theft long before there was a legal definition.
Okay, go back in a time machine with Mr. Poo. He looks at some goods from a street vendor, goes home and duplicates them using his own tools. Then you come over to the street vendor and explain that he's just been the victim of theft. The street vendor surveys his wares, sees nothing is missing, and realizes that you have no idea of what you're talking about. Because if there is no transfer of possession, there is no theft. Period.
And you know, I think part of the reason that it is so hard to find computers with alternate operating systems have more to do with the producers of those operating systems.
Nope. Thanks for trying, though.
I'm sure Dell would love to sell computers with the MacOS, problem is Apple doesn't let them.
Because Apple doesn't want to out of frikkin business, that's why. Dell had plenty of time to sell computers with BeOS and Red Hat, who would be quite happy to sell through Dell.
If there was a huge demand for *nix OS's, then the OEMs that make them (yes, they do exist) would see an increase in sales, and by the laws of supply and demand, more companies would work to incorporate those sales. However, the demand is not there, thus there is no increase in sales, thus most companies will not bother to sell those computers.
No consumer demands Windows. Consumers demand platforms for their applications. And where are the most applications? The Win32 api. So where do consumers go? Windows. And since most consumers run windows, what api do most software companies develop for? Windows. A real anti-trust settlement would have broken up Microsoft into separate companies and force them to open their api's.
I don't think this will happen, however, do to the fact that gaming is on the rise as far as standard uses of a computer, and macs are no good for games, thus the jokes regarding the lack of existence of 'mac gamers'.
"Not as good" does not mean "no good". Besides, this reinforces the monopoly argument: if DirectX and Win32 were forced open, Linux vendors and Apple could run games just fine on their systems without modification.
Promised to give, you mean. And what he promises to do with the money in no way mitigates the way he got the money in the first place - it would be like saying Pablo Escobar should be free from criticism if he gave his money to AIDS and caner research. It's also worth pointing out that they are big backers of the Discovery Institute, who are big backers of forcing Intelligent Design into science classrooms.
You want more money from a company that has wronged you, hire your own damn attorney. You are getting something (a settlement) for nothing (no effort or risk on your own) and you complain about not getting more money? Just who is really being greedy here?
Lawyers and legal organizations increase the cost of every single thing you ever bought in your life, from penny candy to auto insurance.
No, they reduce those costs by holding companies accountable for their criminal and negligent actions. You would be paying more money without lawyers, because companies would never be held accountable and would keep on doing what got them sued in the first place.
The greatest trick in the world wasn't the devil convincing people he did not exist. The greatest trick was big industry convincing workers and consumers that standing up for themselves through lawsuits, regulation and unions is bad and those things need to be gotten rid of, for the benefit of the common man than big industry.
Second, regardless what you think of it, it's pretty cheap for a substantial piece of software that comes with installation and support.
Not when you realize the fact that $50 goes to Microsoft and none of it gets spent on installation and support. Those costs are borne by the OEM you bought the computer from.
these cases really upset me. I get mail all the time showing the lawyers are going to make 4 to 16 million dollars and as a member of the class I'll get less than a hundred bucks. I do not join the class.
Then hire an attorney and have him litigate a separate claim for you. You assume absolutely no risk in a class action lawsuit, and yet you complain that you don't get more? Just who is really being greedy here?
I know ultimately, i'm going to be paying higher prices because of this crap.
Nonsense. If companies aren't held accountable for their criminal and negligent behavior, they'll keep right on with their criminal and negligent behavior - costing you FAR more money as a consumer.
If you want a larger chunk of the pie, then higher your own representation and assume some of the risk. In a class action lawsuit, the attorneys carry all the risk, and deserve to be well compensated. Besides, all this bitching about attorney fees comes from an attempt to convince people that paying attorneys a lot of money is somehow worse than holding companies accountable for criminal and negligent behavior.
They call it anti-trust, which is ridiculous because MS has no OS monopoly.
Of course they do. A monopoly is a company that dominates a market to the point that it has detrimental effects on the consumer, not that they have to have 100% marketshare.
Trial lawyers who run these class action suits, however, usually settle for a piece of the pie, or charge for inflated time at inflated amounts, or both.
And generally get nothing unless they win. Higher risk, higher reward.
Result: they take on many suits that should not be brought.
If the suits are without merit, they will be dismissed, same as any other.
Remedy: ban any lawyers from taking any portion of the amount at offer, and limit them to capped hourly rates.
Then many worthwhile cases will not get the best representation.
Look, these class action lawsuits don't cost consumers a thing. All of the risk is carried by the attorneys, and so they deserve to be well compensated. Don't like it - assume some of the risk yourself and hire your own representation - or else you are greedy yourself.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but by this definition you wouldn't consider copying of personal information theft until some other action more criminal happened with the content. So if I'm copying SSN data and giving it to someone else who then commits identity theft, I'd be innocent since I stole the data from a business and didn't deny them the right to it.
I don't know, do you think it's possible for crimes to be called things other than "theft" and still be taken seriously? If you are getting SSN's, you are likely to be guilty of trespassing at the least. And if you use them for your own financial gain, that is fraud.
and how do you know that the person in question did not actually steal physical data carriers with data on them?
Then prosecute him for theft of the data carriers. He still didn't "steal" the episode.
Of-course this is irrelevant, because whatever you want to call this, what was done is quite illegal and can and should be punished to the fullest extent that the law allows.
Well, duh. Just because people don't call rape cannibalism doesn't mean people don't take rape seriously.
This is an obvious case of copyright infringment.
Online play is a niche market.
Um, no. Counter-Strike. WoW. Everquest. Halo. Hell, just playing poker online is big. You have no idea what you are talking about. Case in point...
6 mil (WOW total users) vs install base of 100 mil (PS2 install base). Even WOW is a "niche" product.
You are comparing games sales to installed base? What a delightfully stupid comparison. No PS2 game is going to come close to selling 100 million units either. Online play ads replay value when a player gets tired of single player. Online play and mods kept Half-Life on store shelves at selling well at $50 five years after a top selling PS2 game would be in the bargin bin.
Be my guest, Tony. :)
The problem with the Christian Persecution Complex is that it's disciples are bad at math. By this I mean that whenever people who happen Christians kill people, it's not because they are Christians, it's for "other reasons". Like Bush invading Iraq, the IRA in Ireland, the KKK in the U.S., the Rwandan Genocide, the innumerable civil wars and coups in Latin America. However, when people who happen to be Muslims kill people, it's always because they are Muslims. The Palestinians aren't pissed at Israel for stealing their territory, it's because they are Muslims. The Shiites in Iraq aren't pissed at the Sunnis because they lived for decades under a Sunni dictatorship, it's because they are Muslims. The Chechnians aren't fighting Russian imperialism, they are fighting because they are Muslims. And so on.
The Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells in this country are bat shit insane, and they are rich old men in a stable, prosperous nation. They think that Christians are oppressed when they walk into a Target and see a sign that says "Happy Holidays." I wonder if what they would do if faced with the wars, the famine and the imperialism that Muslims put up with every day around the world.
I guess Judge Posner should ignore well-settled constitutional law and base his legal reasoning on the opinions of /. privacy zealots, or he's an idiot. Nice logic. Do you even understand or care about the US case law system or stare decisis ? One of the most brilliant, respected jurists in the country is an idiot because he disagrees with you, some anonymous Internet poster. Now that's nonsense.
I'm not sure I understand your point here. Could you restate it again, only be really snobby and pompous this time? A bad decision is a bad decision, no matter how long it has been on the books. Plessy v. Ferguson was on those books for almost 60 years. And making bad decisions on easy to rule case pretty much disqualifies you from being "brilliant": that bugging a car with a GPS device is crossing the line between freely observing movements in public and tampering with private property for the purposes of surveillance. If your local P.D. wants to do that, fine, but they should get. a. warrant.
And as Judge Posner pointed out (based on well-settled law), the police are not required to remain locked in the technology of the 18th Century.
But neither are they allowed to use technology without warrants just because the founders couldn't concieve of it and explicitly forbade its use. Does that link look a little familiar?
Riley is but one case, and it seems very reasonable to me. The police in helicopters should shield their eyes from pot growing outside a person's home? Where does it say anything about outdoor, uncovered greenhouses in the Constitution?
Case in point, if you had bothered to read the dissent in the link or possessed some common sense. The reasoning of the majority was that Mr. Riley did not have a reasonable expectation to privacy because air traffic was not restricted above his property, so he had no common expectation of privacy. However, how "common" is it for a helicopter to stop and hover 400 feet above your property, so somebody can peer through your window?
Your comments about SCOTUS are even more ludicrous. There have been numerous pro-defendant/suspect decisions made by this court, including the one I linked, Kyllo v US
Numerous? Try needle in a haystack. Kyollo was a rare moment of sanity and I'm surprised they didn't rule the other way. After the landmark Miranda case the SCOTUS has been on a long downward spiral as far as constitutional rights go. For example, there's Illinois v. Caballes, which allows cops to use an alert from a drug dog to do a search without a warrant, or Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, which allows cops to demand ID from people who are not in operation of a vehicle without probable cause.. And then there's United States v. Ross, in which the majority opinion gave a police officer's determination of probable cause to be equal to a judge's, and as Marshall notes in the dissent, ignores much of the "automobile exception" exception set out in Carroll v. United States. So much for your stare decisis, beyach.
I think people should have a basic understanding of the government and its laws in order to vote.
:)
Questions like "In what year did Congress gain the right to prohibit the migration of persons to the states" go way beyond "basic understanding".
It's also convenient that you cherry-picked the hardest questions.
Using your source against you does not mean that I'm cherry-picking, it means you didn't bother to go through your own source before you linked to it.
Would you really trust someone to vote who couldn't identify what "responsibility" means, or who the US Attorney General was, or whether the President can be impeached? Or that the state you live in doesn't have debtor's prisons? Do you honestly want people voting who don't think the President can be removed from office, can't define the word "treaty", or don't know about search warrants? I also thought that many Slashdotters would appreciate the question about patents
I'd trust them a damn sight more than a racist who makes selective tests in order to deny law abiding citizens their inalienable rights.
Let me guess: you own The Clinton Chronicles on both DVD and VHS, don't you? Unfortunately for you, there are two simple facts that you have to take into consideration. The first is that Republicans decided that something as minor as making misleading statements about a blowjob was sufficient grounds for prosecution. The second is that the worst thing they were able to pin on him was making misleading statements about a blowjob. Therefore, the worst thing that Clinton did during his presidency was make misleading statements about a blowjob.
It seems the prosecutor knew within very few weeks of starting, that there wasn't a crime as popularized by the press since the person at the center wasn't a covert agent
That's a myth.
Also, the prosecutor knew that the leaker was actually richard armitage
Leaker? Try multiple leakers. Yes, there was Armitage, but there was also Libby and Fleischer. Libby is in trouble because he lied left and right to a federal prosecutor about relevant issues. The Administration is in trouble because the trial is show just how willing they were to throw away national security to settle a political grudge.
I wasn't aware that those enemy combatants who had US citizenship captured in battle really needed a trial since they were caught in the act of waging war against US forces.
Your point being what? You seriously expect that if you invade another country that you wont expect resistance? But regardless, people captured by our troops are either POW's or suspected criminals. Either way they have rights as there is no third "enemy combatant" category that allows the government to deny them rights, except in the minds of the Administration.
I'm still trying to come to terms with exactly why this foreign operative surveillence effort has been called a domestic spying effort just because some of the suspects were located in the US and making/receiving foreign calls to known/suspected terrorists.
Because international calls with one end in the United States are also domestic calls and are also protected by the Constitution. Duh.
This enemy is quite a bit different from the nazis germans of wwii and even worse than the japanese soldiers, but not by much.
Nonsense, although at least you are consistent in that your ignorance of history is as appalling as your ignorance of current events.
However, much more recently, it seems that hillary cannot remember her comments on the war (even to the reds in codepink) or that they were taped back around 2003 when it comes to making her current comments about the iraq war and how bush lied and poor lil' hillary was duped.
Problem: Bush did lie and a lot of people were duped. However, Hillary should stand up and take responsibility for her failure to demand more substantial evidence, as Edwards has done.
Nor is it the equivalent of having over 500 FBI files of political appointees discovered in the posession of some ex bar bouncer political appointee in the whitehouse basement that hilliary can't even remember hiring.
You are quite right, it is not remotely equivalent. It is far, far worse.
bush junior is what he says he is
Bullshit. Compassionate conservative? Lie. A uniter, not a divider? Lie. Promising a tax cut to anyone who pays taxes? Lie.
doing what he thinks is the right thing to do for the country, despite massive opposition.
Does "doing the right thing" mean sitting on your ass and reading a children's book twenty minutes after being told the nation is under attack? Does "doing the right thing" mean apologizing to communists for a mid-air crash clearly caused by their pilot? Does "doing the right thing" mean being warned point blank that Katrina could breach the levees and in New Orleans and then staying on vacation when Katrina breached the levees? Does "doing the right thing" mean
The same thing the insurgents in Iraq are doing. The U.S. military is excellent at conquest and abysmal at occupation.
The problem with the Iraqi occupation is that our soldiers are trying to defend areas while at the same time trying to pacify the insurgency. Defending makes your location and movements much more predictable, and thus much more of a target. So the obvious fascist strategy would be: don't defend bother defending anything, you just go in and blow shit up when you suspect someone is resisting you.
No, they'd quite quickly form a difficult-to-detect underground, just like the insurgents have. It'd be guerilla warfare on a grand scale, and it's ludicrous to claim that it would somehow be impossible in the U.S. when it has worked just fine hundreds of times all over the world, up to and including today.
See above. Why don't you ask the French how well their "resistance" worked against German occupation?
I'm quite aware of their track record. And just as fascism grows gradually, so too does resistance to it. What happened in Germany before WW2 is much less likely to happen here
What happened in Germany already started happening here when the government forced Japanese-Americans into concentration camps. And again with the Administration torturing and imprisoning people without due process. As for resistance, the Senate is currently having a debate on whether to have a debate on passing a non-binding resolution that changes nothing.
All of them? Without error? I find that highly unlikely.
You don't have to get all of them or even most of them. Just get rid of the ones that might be troublemakers and isolate those that you don't trust, while putting your lackeys into positions of power. If it can happen to well known officials like Colin Powell and Richard Clarke, it can certainly happen to those lower on the food chain.
There's also the issue that purging your ranks of people with strong ethical objections to fascism also tends to reduce your ranks' skillset, weakening your ability to continue with fascism.
It wont reduce their ability to continue with fascism, but it will drastically decrease the number of competent officials. Katrina demonstrated the problems with packing agencies with political cronies.
And let's not get into the issues surrounding cult of personality, that the populace would likely never accept a suspension of the 22nd Amendment, fiendish nuke-detonating terrorists or not, etc.
You also wouldn't think the populace would accept torture, suspending of habeas corpus, etc etc, but it's still happening and Bush is still in office with no signs of being impeached or forced to resign.
I don't know why people who argue as you do always assume that the government has godlike knowledge and power
In war intelligence and speed are godlike powers.
I also don't know why you think it's logical that because the government is too powerful to defeat, the citizens should therefore have more power taken away from them.
The point is that the power to do something to prevent a tyrannical government does not come from guns, unless you are hoping an assassination or coup d'état goes for the best.
How the hell would I know? I'm not an NRA member and don't pay attention to it.
Just pointing out that the people who talk the talk about standing up to government tyranny seldom walk the walk.
They certainly will look better in HD. Even if they were 50 years old, they still would show improvement in HD.
Yup. I was reading a review of high quality releases on high definition formats, and Casablanca was one of the top picks.
Too bad it didn't come out in time for Halo 2. I spent the better part of two matches listening to some ass yelling "eat a dick" every time he scored a kill. And "Fuck you, fag" everytime he got killed. Although, the upside of that scenario was that his own teammates actually turned on him, he was so annoying.
That's why every online game needs something like AdminMod for Half-Life. Aside from kicking/banning, it will also let you slap (pushes you and hits your for 5 damage points), slay (kill player for rest of round), mute or llama someone so they just say "bleet" or "bleah".
A lot of these people are lucky they're doing it online and not at a lan party. I remember when voice support was added to Counter-Strike. I was frequenting a server located in Kansas, and it was interesting to hear people's voices for the first time when you had known them in-game for a while. One gentleman turned out to have a voice three shades of redneck to the right of Larry the Cable Guy. I said "whoa, you sounded like a total hick just now," to which he said "you're god damned right I'm a hick," being proud of his Oklahoma upbringing. I then found the little bastard in me saying, "maybe when you get done playing Counter-Strike you can marry your sister and raise a family."
:)
Some fun facts I later found out about this gentleman: he could bench press 300 lbs after being in an auto accident that gave him a compression fracture in his spine, his method of troubleshooting his PC was to take it out back and beat it with a bat until either his computer started working or he felt better about the situation, and that both his father and uncle were in the Hells Angels.
So, I was somewhat thankful I was three states away instead of being at a lan party with him.
This DVI -> HDMI stuff is bullshit, so one can hope with their support of Blu Ray that will be indeed change the support HDMI on at least the high end laptops.
So don't do it. Get a TV with DVI inputs and use the optical audio out on the Mac.
. If the government gets enough out of control, then it's not going to be "you and a few hundred of your buddies," it's going to be "several hundred thousand, possibly several million angry and armed civilians."
You've seen Red Dawn too many times. Even if you and your buddies are all Burt Gummers, what are your personal arsenals going to do against Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, and A-10 Warthogs?
But even if you get some Guard and Army units to join in, wars are won on intelligence, and your local VFW is going to have quite a time topping the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and satellite imagery. You get your hands on some Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, and A-10 Warthogs, and the fascist feds will simply come in at night and napalm the place, or drop a cruise missile or two into your festivities. Any local force capable of challenging the U.S. Military will simply be neutralized before they can challenge the U.S. Military.
You assume that "the government" is a monolithic hive-mind, rather than being an organization consisting of a few million individuals, many of whom would turn against the government if they thought it had become irretrievably corrupt.
You assume that would make any difference. Fascism doesn't happen overnight, it happens gradually. Look at what the Bush administration has gotten away with based on the deaths of 3,000 some Americans: torture, warrantless spying, detentions with no trial, firing U.S. Attorneys and packing agencies with political cronies. Now imagine their response if Al Qaeda were as successful as the terrorists on 24 and detonated a nuclear weapon inside a major American city.
You also assume that the armed forces would act as a single unit, that no one in it (not even high officers, who ARE trained to think independently, unlike the rank and file) would either openly rebel or secretly aid and abet civilian rebels.
They certainly wouldn't. However, they would have long been removed from any positions of real power or access to real resources.
The whole government simultaneously turning to the Dark Side is not the only circumstance in which civilians might rebel. Imagine a small town with a corrupt sheriff who likes to arrest people for things they didn't do. How much less likely is that to happen if the civilians are armed?
It wont be any less likely at all. If cops want to bust you and they know you have a gun, they'll simply bring more cops with more guns. And if you try and use your gun, they will simply bring even more cops with even more guns - and go from trying to arrest you to trying to kill you. Just ask Randy Weaver. Or the Branch Davidians. Or Leonard Peltier. Or Gordon Kahl. Or the Black Panthers. Or Donald Scott. Or Cory Maye.
Speaking of Scott and Maye, why didn't the NRA freak the fuck out over their death/sentencing to death row? Federal authorities conducted a no-knock raid on Scott's estate on a bogus warrant searching for marijuana, and killed him when he brought out his legally owned gun to defend his family from the people breaking into his home. Cops raided Maye's place when they were searching the duplex next to his. He got his gun to defend his daughter, and shot one of the intruders who later died. It should have been an open and shut case of self defense, but Maye is black and the cop that died was white. And the son of the town's police chief. So he landed on death row. But the NRA that wailed of "jack booted government thugs" was nowhere to be found.