My vote is the tale of Berin and Luthien. It's probably very marketable. You've got a hero (Berin), Tolkien's principal kick-ass heroine (Luthien), a villain that's much scarier than a large disembodied eye, and a Simaril. And don't forget the hot man-on-elf sex. What more could any geek ask for?
Sorry, but this would definitely fall under the doctrine of fair use. You can even read portions of books into the court record.
Hell, you can even play music in court, if it's admissible evidence, without having to pay RIAA. Hey! Maybe that's an idea? Have the courts create digital records of audio "evidence", that can be purchased from court reporters. Of course, since court reporters charge a buck a page, that's probably not going to be such a good deal.
Think of it this way: Why shouldn't the various tables of chemical data found in the CRC be subject to copyright? The creative act in building a database, or a book of tables containing factual data, is the act of compiling the facts into a uniquely usable form.
Interestingly enough, judicial opinions are, of course, not subject to copyright. However, the indexing systems used by the publishers of judicial opinions are protected by copyright.
In most fields, the employee's skills are widely available, and almost every employment agreement is an adhesion contract dictated by the employer. Except for workers with highly marketable skills, it's not a matter of an employee negotiating an agreement with his employer - it's a matter of "take it or leave it" - and when people are looking for jobs, they take it and take it and take it, because they don't have a choice otherwise. Unions, as bad as they are, exist only because most workers cannot negotiate on an even footing with management without the force of numbers. But workers in companies that are not unionized are entirely under the thumb of management.
While it's one thing to say "those stupid workers shouldn't have been so dumb as to sign contracts without negotiation" you have to recognize that many workers don't have a choice it the matter. Their unemployment benefits have expired, and their families are hungry, and the landlord wants the rent. They'll take any damn job they can, leaving them at the whim of employees such as Walmart or local businesses that can't pay high wages because of competition from Walmart. Worker's comp is for these employees, not for people who by chance or hard work are able to pay for their own disability insurance.
Without worker's comp, as bad as it is, things would revert to the old system - employers never providing for worker care, no insurance for injuries because employees cannot afford it, and disabled workers becoming a burden on society or simply dying in the streets.
The free market had its chance. The problem with the free market is that everyone tends to act in their own best interests, and because workers have much less economic power than employers, the workers get screwed over unless they happen to have valuable skills and are treated as commodities. Unfortunately, workers with sufficient skills for most jobs are a dime a dozen. When an employee is instantly replacable, the employee has no bargaining power whatsoever, and is at the whim of employers.
God, I sound like a socialist here, but I'm actually a Republican.
You will be interested to know that your view is the traditional view of the legal system. The appellate court opinions that I read while in law school concerning this subject were chock full of grandiose statements about the freedom of labor, and that if an employee wanted his employer to pay for his injuries then the employee could negotiate this right for himself as part of the labor contract. This, while perfectly sound on a libertarian/ancapper level, will not work in practice, because no employer would provide this "benefit" when there were plenty of workers out there who would take the job despite the risks. Workplace injuries therefore resulted in disabled workers with no money and no means of receiving compensation for their injuries and lost income.
The result of the courts' failure (rightfully or wrongfully, you decide) to deal with this issue is the worker's compensation insurance system created by the state legislatures. Ordinarily, an injured worker has only one recourse - a worker's comp. claim.
The IBM workers' case, however, was for "fraudulent concealment". The theory of their claim is that IBM knew of the risks and either negligently or intentionally failed to inform their workers of these risks. If the claim is true, then IBM would rightfully be liable - and I don't think that this would violate the precepts of ancappers - it's one thing to agree to accept certain risks associated with employment, but when the employer conceals these risks, the worker's acceptance is uninformed and is, from a legal standpoint, more or less void.
Apparently some key evidence (the IBM "mortality file") was deemed inadmissible. As an attorney, I am curious as to why this evidence was not admitted, and whether or not the plaintiffs will appeal because of it.
This is an example of how to ruin a discussion
on
Singularity Sky
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It's quite fascinating. I saw the article on/., and decided to read it. But most of the comments that have been highly moderated (forgive me, but I cruise at filter +2) are comments either attacking or defending Piers Anthony instead of discussing Singularity Sky and the talents of Charlie Stross.
Why did this happen?
It happened because the submitter, timothy, decided to attack Piers Anthony in his post as a target of opportunity, and the/. staff decided to let it in (assuming timothy isn't on the/. staff himself - I wouldn't know).
Why was this attack posted? If timothy had submitted a post entitled "Piers Anthony Sucks" it wouldn't have been accepted by/. editors.
At this point it seems that nobody cares about Stross's novel, which is a shame.
For these reasons, I think that the/. staff should consider this story to be an example of a failure of editing, and should consider the idea that it's better to leave the personal attacks/. readers instead of posters and editors.
Instead we pulled the rug out from under them, kicked them while they were down, and oh by the way, set the stage for the rise of radical Islam which may very well prove to be the death of us all one day.
Thanks a lot Reagan.
Great point! I remember how Reagan destablized Iran in the 1970's after he left the Governor's office in California, causing the fall of the Shah of Iran and the whole Iranian hostage crisis. Boy did Reagan screw up - by the time he was through, they were calling the United States the "Great Satan".
Oh, yeah, that's right. Reagan became President only in 1981. He didn't do it. Sorry.
Please feel free to critize Reagan for exploiting islamic fundamentalism by supporting the people in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. I'll probably disagree with you, but it's certainly a legitimate argument. Just don't reflexively blame Reagan for setting the stage for the rise of radical Islam which had already happened before he came to office.
Oh, and why not pull out the rug from under the Soviet Union? They weren't exactly talking about rapproachment in 1980.
...by a journalist. It's the doctrine of "actual malice" enunciated by the court in the case "New York Times vs. Sullivan". Essentially, the journalist has to have actually lied or acted with a deliberate disregard for the truth in publishing the defamatory story. Unless Roberts can successfully argue that HardOCP isn't a media outlet protected under Sullivan, I doubt that he will prevail in a libel lawsuit.
I'm interested in the Curb Your Enthusiasm missions, such as....
Wondering what the "cut-off time" is for serenading someone outside their window with your bardish tunes.
Simple, sooner or later you'll have to stop singing because you'll get hit with one of the Curb Your Enthusiasm curses, such as a public hair caught in your throat...
The Hulk movie basically sucked because it tried to go WAY beyond typical suspension of disbelief. I mean come on people, that movie was just WRONG. There's no frelling WAY the Hulk can throw a tank, or any of the other stupid crap they had him doing. The TV series with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno was more believable, for Godsake.
Perhaps much less believable, but certainly much more authentic to the source material. The Hulk is HUGE, much bigger than Lou Ferrigno huge. And throwing tanks? The only problem with that is that the barrel and turret wouldn't withstand the stress of the Hulk picking it up and swinging it around.
And why the should comic books be believable anyway? You need to run a phase-three diagnostic on your disbelief suspensors.
Remember Joel & the Bots: "If you're wondering how they live and breath, and other science facts, just repeat to yourself it's just a show and I should really just relax."
Anime is about the only category where there is cool new stuff.
Yeah, like Tenchi Muyo, Shin Tenchi Muyo, Tenchi in Tokyo, etc. There's also Bubblegum Crisis 2040. Dirty Pair, and Dirty Pair Flash. El Hazard, and El Hazard The Alternative World. And that really great new program with that great, brand new original character, Captain Harlock. Sorry, pal, but anime, as much as I love it, has its share of derivative content. Nobody refuses to milk the cash cow. The only difference is that the Japanese feed their cash cow Kirin beer out of bottles and give it daily massages.
Sorry, but the headline on this article gave me a very weird idea of our representatives sitting at home "playing" the "United States House of Representatives" online role playing game - a sort of virtual congress where you can walk your level 20 lobbiest up to congressional committee members to hand over cash donations via paypal.
I guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
Ack, it's people like you who give WMP its monopoly. People like you on whom Microsoft depends to use all the bundled software, since you are unwilling to download any alternatives!
I agree with you, but so what? Aside from the allegely evil DRM scheme that I haven't even noticed on anything I've ever used MediaPlayer for, I can't see anything wrong with it. Yes, it's bundled, but why should I have to pay for something that ought to come with the operating system? Sure, it may be a monolopy, but it's a reasonably priced monopoly, and it does what I want it to do. Mind you, I'm also using iTunes, because that's what works with my iPod. I'm using iTunes because iTunes/iPod gives me something I'm willing to pay for. If Real Networks made something I'm willing to pay for (and that damn blinking teardrop in my system tray ain't it), then I may be willing to buy it from them.
I'll give you an example: Adobe Reader. It's free, and I use it and like it because I can download tax forms from the IRS anytime I want them. Only now, my office is going to buy Adobe Acrobat because it gives us functionality that we are willing to pay for, including filing in forms and saving them - saving us work, time, and money.
Realplayer to me is a feeware/nagware alternative to a free product that isn't nearly as annoying. Sure, I'm paying the M$ tax, but I'd be doing that anyway because XP is a product that works well enough for whatever we want to use it for.
If you are itemizing your taxes, then contributing to an IRA and deducting the $3k from your taxable income results in maybe a 25% return that year, just because you didn't have to pay tax on that income. Also, if your credit is good, it's not difficult to revolve credit card debt through credit cards with sequential zero or low interest promotional credit while you pay them off.
However, you are correct in saying that paying off debt first is a very smart thing to do - and is certainly better than investing money in the stock market. It's just that putting money into an IRA isn't a bad idea.
Better put a lawyer on retainer with that plan, because guaranteed that you'll be the one left holding the bag should the cops come knocking about kiddie porn, warez, cracker attacks, etc.
Don't forget RIAA. I produce a call-in legal advice radio program in San Francisco. We had a caller who got sued/got threatening letters from RIAA for downloading music that was allegedly downloaded by the neighbor kid over his formerly open wireless LAN.
I support the XBox, because competition is always good. And M$ has enough money to bleed cash on the XBox for generations to come. It's actually a good thing in this case that M$ created the XBox as opposed to another company not capable of weathering the losses until the XBox either becomes profitable or at least provides enough competition to Sony and Nintendo to improve their systems.
Indeed the funniest thing to me is that Clancy except for a few years of ROTC never served in the military at all. (I believe he was an insurance salesman but I could eb wrong about that detail)
You are correct sir. I was a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy when "The Hunt for Red October" was published. He couldn't get a mainstream publisher, but the Naval Institute Press (which prints mostly textbooks used at USNA) picked it up.
While I don't recall any attempt at subjecting Clancy to a court-martial (remember, the Navy's pet publisher printed this book), I once read a Navy report discussing the accuracy of Clancy's depiction of the US Submarine (the USS Dallas, I recall). It was amazingly accurate, but the report concluded Clancy obtained his information from unclassified sources such as Janes Fighting Ships, etc.
You don't get it. The EULA disclaimed all liability, and the Soviets who installed the software accepted the EULA when they removed the plastic wrapping from the box. It's not our fault.
No. War won't become cheap, because our armies will be flooded by wave after wave of cheaper mass-produced asian killbots.
I'm serious. Half our software is already being programmed in Asia and India. They make chips too. Buy a Dell Notebook? It's made to order in Asia and shipped to Dell, and then to you. And your tech support phone number rings in Bengal.
The violation of privacy is that they collect and keep the personal information in the first place.
Sorry, but it's no invasion of privacy if the customer gives their contact information to the supermarket voluntarily. If you don't want them to have your contact info, then don't give it to them, and vote with your feet by taking your business elsewhere.
When did a weblog become fact? I understand they had scanned documents, but I just get very nervous about allowing blogs to become sources of fact.
Ever since http://www.drudgereport.com. Just ask Bill and Monica, and countless others. It may not be completely factual, but it shouldn't matter that a person doesn't have a media outlet when he says his own mind on his own webpage. So much information you get from the media these days isn't credible anyway. (Here's an example - why the hell is Iowa so important anyway? It's a very small state, the winner of the caucuses doesn't win the Presidency often, and it's a single issue (farming) state. But why, oh why, is Iowa deemed so important in national politics? It's so, because the media says it's so, and they say so because people will pay attention to them allowing them to earn more ad revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
My vote is the tale of Berin and Luthien. It's probably very marketable. You've got a hero (Berin), Tolkien's principal kick-ass heroine (Luthien), a villain that's much scarier than a large disembodied eye, and a Simaril. And don't forget the hot man-on-elf sex. What more could any geek ask for?
Sorry, but this would definitely fall under the doctrine of fair use. You can even read portions of books into the court record.
Hell, you can even play music in court, if it's admissible evidence, without having to pay RIAA. Hey! Maybe that's an idea? Have the courts create digital records of audio "evidence", that can be purchased from court reporters. Of course, since court reporters charge a buck a page, that's probably not going to be such a good deal.
Think of it this way: Why shouldn't the various tables of chemical data found in the CRC be subject to copyright? The creative act in building a database, or a book of tables containing factual data, is the act of compiling the facts into a uniquely usable form.
Interestingly enough, judicial opinions are, of course, not subject to copyright. However, the indexing systems used by the publishers of judicial opinions are protected by copyright.
In most fields, the employee's skills are widely available, and almost every employment agreement is an adhesion contract dictated by the employer. Except for workers with highly marketable skills, it's not a matter of an employee negotiating an agreement with his employer - it's a matter of "take it or leave it" - and when people are looking for jobs, they take it and take it and take it, because they don't have a choice otherwise. Unions, as bad as they are, exist only because most workers cannot negotiate on an even footing with management without the force of numbers. But workers in companies that are not unionized are entirely under the thumb of management.
While it's one thing to say "those stupid workers shouldn't have been so dumb as to sign contracts without negotiation" you have to recognize that many workers don't have a choice it the matter. Their unemployment benefits have expired, and their families are hungry, and the landlord wants the rent. They'll take any damn job they can, leaving them at the whim of employees such as Walmart or local businesses that can't pay high wages because of competition from Walmart. Worker's comp is for these employees, not for people who by chance or hard work are able to pay for their own disability insurance.
Without worker's comp, as bad as it is, things would revert to the old system - employers never providing for worker care, no insurance for injuries because employees cannot afford it, and disabled workers becoming a burden on society or simply dying in the streets.
The free market had its chance. The problem with the free market is that everyone tends to act in their own best interests, and because workers have much less economic power than employers, the workers get screwed over unless they happen to have valuable skills and are treated as commodities. Unfortunately, workers with sufficient skills for most jobs are a dime a dozen. When an employee is instantly replacable, the employee has no bargaining power whatsoever, and is at the whim of employers.
God, I sound like a socialist here, but I'm actually a Republican.
You will be interested to know that your view is the traditional view of the legal system. The appellate court opinions that I read while in law school concerning this subject were chock full of grandiose statements about the freedom of labor, and that if an employee wanted his employer to pay for his injuries then the employee could negotiate this right for himself as part of the labor contract. This, while perfectly sound on a libertarian/ancapper level, will not work in practice, because no employer would provide this "benefit" when there were plenty of workers out there who would take the job despite the risks. Workplace injuries therefore resulted in disabled workers with no money and no means of receiving compensation for their injuries and lost income.
The result of the courts' failure (rightfully or wrongfully, you decide) to deal with this issue is the worker's compensation insurance system created by the state legislatures. Ordinarily, an injured worker has only one recourse - a worker's comp. claim.
The IBM workers' case, however, was for "fraudulent concealment". The theory of their claim is that IBM knew of the risks and either negligently or intentionally failed to inform their workers of these risks. If the claim is true, then IBM would rightfully be liable - and I don't think that this would violate the precepts of ancappers - it's one thing to agree to accept certain risks associated with employment, but when the employer conceals these risks, the worker's acceptance is uninformed and is, from a legal standpoint, more or less void.
Apparently some key evidence (the IBM "mortality file") was deemed inadmissible. As an attorney, I am curious as to why this evidence was not admitted, and whether or not the plaintiffs will appeal because of it.
It's quite fascinating. I saw the article on /., and decided to read it. But most of the comments that have been highly moderated (forgive me, but I cruise at filter +2) are comments either attacking or defending Piers Anthony instead of discussing Singularity Sky and the talents of Charlie Stross.
/. staff decided to let it in (assuming timothy isn't on the /. staff himself - I wouldn't know).
/. editors.
/. staff should consider this story to be an example of a failure of editing, and should consider the idea that it's better to leave the personal attacks /. readers instead of posters and editors.
Why did this happen?
It happened because the submitter, timothy, decided to attack Piers Anthony in his post as a target of opportunity, and the
Why was this attack posted? If timothy had submitted a post entitled "Piers Anthony Sucks" it wouldn't have been accepted by
At this point it seems that nobody cares about Stross's novel, which is a shame.
For these reasons, I think that the
Instead we pulled the rug out from under them, kicked them while they were down, and oh by the way, set the stage for the rise of radical Islam which may very well prove to be the death of us all one day.
Thanks a lot Reagan.
Great point! I remember how Reagan destablized Iran in the 1970's after he left the Governor's office in California, causing the fall of the Shah of Iran and the whole Iranian hostage crisis. Boy did Reagan screw up - by the time he was through, they were calling the United States the "Great Satan".
Oh, yeah, that's right. Reagan became President only in 1981. He didn't do it. Sorry.
Please feel free to critize Reagan for exploiting islamic fundamentalism by supporting the people in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. I'll probably disagree with you, but it's certainly a legitimate argument. Just don't reflexively blame Reagan for setting the stage for the rise of radical Islam which had already happened before he came to office.
Oh, and why not pull out the rug from under the Soviet Union? They weren't exactly talking about rapproachment in 1980.
...by a journalist. It's the doctrine of "actual malice" enunciated by the court in the case "New York Times vs. Sullivan". Essentially, the journalist has to have actually lied or acted with a deliberate disregard for the truth in publishing the defamatory story. Unless Roberts can successfully argue that HardOCP isn't a media outlet protected under Sullivan, I doubt that he will prevail in a libel lawsuit.
Spaceman Spiff wears these...
I'm interested in the Curb Your Enthusiasm missions, such as....
Wondering what the "cut-off time" is for serenading someone outside their window with your bardish tunes.
Simple, sooner or later you'll have to stop singing because you'll get hit with one of the Curb Your Enthusiasm curses, such as a public hair caught in your throat...
The Hulk movie basically sucked because it tried to go WAY beyond typical suspension of disbelief. I mean come on people, that movie was just WRONG. There's no frelling WAY the Hulk can throw a tank, or any of the other stupid crap they had him doing. The TV series with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno was more believable, for Godsake.
Perhaps much less believable, but certainly much more authentic to the source material. The Hulk is HUGE, much bigger than Lou Ferrigno huge. And throwing tanks? The only problem with that is that the barrel and turret wouldn't withstand the stress of the Hulk picking it up and swinging it around.
And why the should comic books be believable anyway? You need to run a phase-three diagnostic on your disbelief suspensors.
Remember Joel & the Bots: "If you're wondering how they live and breath, and other science facts, just repeat to yourself it's just a show and I should really just relax."
*Subwoofer integrated into battery*
Great for playing acid rock.
Anime is about the only category where there is cool new stuff.
Yeah, like Tenchi Muyo, Shin Tenchi Muyo, Tenchi in Tokyo, etc. There's also Bubblegum Crisis 2040. Dirty Pair, and Dirty Pair Flash. El Hazard, and El Hazard The Alternative World. And that really great new program with that great, brand new original character, Captain Harlock. Sorry, pal, but anime, as much as I love it, has its share of derivative content. Nobody refuses to milk the cash cow. The only difference is that the Japanese feed their cash cow Kirin beer out of bottles and give it daily massages.
Sorry, but the headline on this article gave me a very weird idea of our representatives sitting at home "playing" the "United States House of Representatives" online role playing game - a sort of virtual congress where you can walk your level 20 lobbiest up to congressional committee members to hand over cash donations via paypal.
I guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
Ack, it's people like you who give WMP its monopoly. People like you on whom Microsoft depends to use all the bundled software, since you are unwilling to download any alternatives!
I agree with you, but so what? Aside from the allegely evil DRM scheme that I haven't even noticed on anything I've ever used MediaPlayer for, I can't see anything wrong with it. Yes, it's bundled, but why should I have to pay for something that ought to come with the operating system? Sure, it may be a monolopy, but it's a reasonably priced monopoly, and it does what I want it to do. Mind you, I'm also using iTunes, because that's what works with my iPod. I'm using iTunes because iTunes/iPod gives me something I'm willing to pay for. If Real Networks made something I'm willing to pay for (and that damn blinking teardrop in my system tray ain't it), then I may be willing to buy it from them.
I'll give you an example: Adobe Reader. It's free, and I use it and like it because I can download tax forms from the IRS anytime I want them. Only now, my office is going to buy Adobe Acrobat because it gives us functionality that we are willing to pay for, including filing in forms and saving them - saving us work, time, and money.
Realplayer to me is a feeware/nagware alternative to a free product that isn't nearly as annoying. Sure, I'm paying the M$ tax, but I'd be doing that anyway because XP is a product that works well enough for whatever we want to use it for.
If you are itemizing your taxes, then contributing to an IRA and deducting the $3k from your taxable income results in maybe a 25% return that year, just because you didn't have to pay tax on that income. Also, if your credit is good, it's not difficult to revolve credit card debt through credit cards with sequential zero or low interest promotional credit while you pay them off.
However, you are correct in saying that paying off debt first is a very smart thing to do - and is certainly better than investing money in the stock market. It's just that putting money into an IRA isn't a bad idea.
Better put a lawyer on retainer with that plan, because guaranteed that you'll be the one left holding the bag should the cops come knocking about kiddie porn, warez, cracker attacks, etc.
Don't forget RIAA. I produce a call-in legal advice radio program in San Francisco. We had a caller who got sued/got threatening letters from RIAA for downloading music that was allegedly downloaded by the neighbor kid over his formerly open wireless LAN.
I support the XBox, because competition is always good. And M$ has enough money to bleed cash on the XBox for generations to come. It's actually a good thing in this case that M$ created the XBox as opposed to another company not capable of weathering the losses until the XBox either becomes profitable or at least provides enough competition to Sony and Nintendo to improve their systems.
Indeed the funniest thing to me is that Clancy except for a few years of ROTC never served in the military at all. (I believe he was an insurance salesman but I could eb wrong about that detail)
You are correct sir. I was a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy when "The Hunt for Red October" was published. He couldn't get a mainstream publisher, but the Naval Institute Press (which prints mostly textbooks used at USNA) picked it up.
While I don't recall any attempt at subjecting Clancy to a court-martial (remember, the Navy's pet publisher printed this book), I once read a Navy report discussing the accuracy of Clancy's depiction of the US Submarine (the USS Dallas, I recall). It was amazingly accurate, but the report concluded Clancy obtained his information from unclassified sources such as Janes Fighting Ships, etc.
You don't get it. The EULA disclaimed all liability, and the Soviets who installed the software accepted the EULA when they removed the plastic wrapping from the box. It's not our fault.
Making friends with the natives can NEVER be done by robots.
But our robots CAN make friends with the occupied nation's robots...
No. War won't become cheap, because our armies will be flooded by wave after wave of cheaper mass-produced asian killbots.
I'm serious. Half our software is already being programmed in Asia and India. They make chips too. Buy a Dell Notebook? It's made to order in Asia and shipped to Dell, and then to you. And your tech support phone number rings in Bengal.
The violation of privacy is that they collect and keep the personal information in the first place.
Sorry, but it's no invasion of privacy if the customer gives their contact information to the supermarket voluntarily. If you don't want them to have your contact info, then don't give it to them, and vote with your feet by taking your business elsewhere.
When did a weblog become fact? I understand they had scanned documents, but I just get very nervous about allowing blogs to become sources of fact.
Ever since http://www.drudgereport.com. Just ask Bill and Monica, and countless others. It may not be completely factual, but it shouldn't matter that a person doesn't have a media outlet when he says his own mind on his own webpage. So much information you get from the media these days isn't credible anyway. (Here's an example - why the hell is Iowa so important anyway? It's a very small state, the winner of the caucuses doesn't win the Presidency often, and it's a single issue (farming) state. But why, oh why, is Iowa deemed so important in national politics? It's so, because the media says it's so, and they say so because people will pay attention to them allowing them to earn more ad revenue.