It's not a mere suspicion. A reasonable suspicion is enough for a cop to stop you on the street and ask questions, or pull over your car. A search warrant must be supported by "probable cause", which means the FBI had to have gotten some information, maybe from an informant, or from a chatroom or something, that lead them to reasonable conclusion that there is evidence of a crime in the home, and that evidence would be found with a search.
At this point in time, we don't know what the search warrant was based on, because we haven't read the warrant.
I can answer that. If they find evidence of another crime, then that evidence is valid as along as the search warrant was valid. For example, if they were looking through all his belongings for a CD-ROM (limited to anything in which a CD-ROM can fit), and they find some drugs, then the drugs are admissible in court.
I'm not so sure that they'd bother prosecuting him for violating copyright, because it's generally not a criminal offense unless you're in it for the money (or violate parts of the DCMA, I suppose). But say they find child pornography? Then he's going up the river for a very long time, unless he can show that the search warrant was not supported by probable cause and was therefore invalid.
Actually, since you can put 128Mb or more on a keychain USB drive, they can probably toss his entire home looking for data.
Just so you know, they don't have to let you see your lawyer or speak to your lawyer during the search. The only rule about seeing a lawyer is during a custodial interrogation (ie, you're under arrest). If you then ask for a lawyer, then anything you tell the cops after that is inadmissible as direct evidence against you. Those statements, however, would be admissible in court as rebuttal evidence to contradict your own testimony in court later.
But sure, calling your lawyer at that point in time is a pretty good idea. But how many people have criminal defense lawyers on call, anyway? Besides former Enron executives?
If Gainax were to make more Eva, they'd have to commit to a definate interpretation of what the end actually meant. This would piss a lot of people off, as their pet interprestation would become wrong.
That's a fan-centric view. Gainax doesn't care that many people may be pissed off. They care about making money. My point is that if an Evangelion movie is going to be profitable (and I don't think it would be), then it would be profitable for Gainax to have made additional Evangelion anime. The fact that they haven't bothered to do this is, to me, indictive that Evangelion isn't as market-worthy as fans think. It's a great anime, one that I love, but I don't think that the anime fanbase is large enough to support a decent Evangelion live-action film and I don't think that the general public would be interested in it enough to see the movie. That's ultimately why I don't think the movie will be made.
I remember when Evangelion first came out. One of my friends from Compuserve (Thanks, CALCI), a physician in Osaka, mailed me videotapes of the program, as it came out. Even not knowning Japanese, I was able to tell that Evangelion was very special.
But, I was also able to tell that Evangelion is very Japanese. To an extent, it's a radical deconstruction of the giant robot genre in anime*. Giant Robot Genre, you ask? That's my point: We don't have a giant robot genre in the US, and for this reason, I'm not sure that an Evangelion movie is going to be that much of a draw in America.
*Giant Robot Genre: It goes back to "Gigantor" (I forget the name of the original), Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot, etc. The basic idea is that scientist builds a giant robot for an evil organization dedicated to world domination, but due to some twist of fate, the robot comes under control of the scientist's son, a young boy who quickly developes an emotional relationship with his robot pal (if you want an example, watch the more recent "Giant Robot"). Evangelion tosses away the happy fantasy. Sure, Dad creates the robot, but Dad is an evil bastard, as bad as his evil masters. Shinji doesn't make friends with Unit 01 - piloting the damn thing is a horrifying experience almost every single time. Once Shinji gets used to it, everything falls to shit in ways I can't describe without revealing major spoilers. To summarize: Every episode can be given the secondary title "Shinji has a Bad Day in the Entry Plug". The whole point here is that American viewers won't get the entire shock value of Evangelion without first understanding giant robot shows - and since movie-going audience hasn't watched enough giant robots on TV, they just won't get it and will tend to stay away from the theater just to avoid being confused. Call me a pessimist.
You are absolutely correct, sir. Also, if Evangelion is so hot, why hasn't Gainax made more of it? Follow on stories, retellings, alt-endings (more of them) etc.? They aren't there, and Evangelion is nearly 10 years old already.
My cut on this movie is that in the long run, it's going to fall through. Evangelion is pretty esoteric - it has a large fanbase amongst people who like anime, but there just ain't that many of us to support a blockbuster film.
Yes, anime sells, but it doesn't sell THAT much. Sure, last year an anime film won the academy award, but it still didn't make nearly as much money as "Elf", let alone "Finding Nemo". That means the film isn't going to get the $100 million in financing it needs to avoid looking like a bad episode of Doctor Who.
And I think that's a good thing, because Evangelion is way the hell too complicated to condense into a two hour film - and even if they narrow the scope of the film down to just the first few episodes, it's not going to be enough. Think about when you actually watched Evangelion (I'm assuming you wouldn't bother reading this thread if you didn't). How long did it take for you to figure out what the hell was going on, if you ever did? There were so many mysteries as yet unsolved after episode four that a four episode arc cannot stand on its own without radical changes to the storyline - the movie would be a giant robot rocket-sockem, but wouldn't really be Evangelion.
They don't need permission to keep the essays. For example, you retain copyright to your post here on slashdot.org. I can save a copy of this webpage, and retain it from now until the end of time, and I won't be violating your copyright. I can compare your post against other posts forever and I won't be violating your copyright. I can quote parts of your post (fair use) and not violate your copyright.
The cheat-detector company violates your copyright when they republish the copy of your work that was submitted to them. If they don't republish, they aren't violating anyone's rights.
If the student has shown issues in the past with this topic then perhaps it should be scrutinized more carefully (even by a commitee) but by a web-based program?
How can this committee screen a student's paper against the entire Internet without some sort of web-based program?
Let's get back to what's important in colleges... TEACHING and GRADING. Stop worrying so much about how much free time you have to work on your next book.
So using computer technology to make your life and workplace more efficient is wrong? And colleges aren't about TEACHING and GRADING, they are about learning. Checking students papers for plagarism is a means of determining whether or not students are actually learning. What's wrong with that? Oh, I know that it's a statement to the student that he's not trusted, but so what? Why should students assume that their papers won't be taken on face value? The IRS doesn't assume that my tax returns are correct - they check them every year, the bastards. Don't they need probable cause? The answer, of course, is no, and the same goes for universities. Checking papers for plagarism isn't any different from any other means of detecting fraudulent work, such as peer review of published research papers, for example.
I don't think you can successfully argue that it's a violation of copyright. There's no publication, unless the services distributes your work. Without publication, your copyright has not been violated. They are using a copy of your work to see if it was copied from other works. That means they are reading it and comparing it to other works in their records. That's not a violation of your copyright (especially if you don't own copyright because you didn't actually write your paper). If your paper passes muster and remains in their database, they still aren't violating your copyright. They have one copy of your paper, which was given to them. What's wrong with that? Furthermore, the company is actually helping you protect your copyright, because the company is checking papers submitted by future students against your own to see if these students copied your paper and violated your copyright.
And it's not against copyright law to require a student to submit a paper for checking - regardless of whether or not the checker is operating for profit. The "for profit" concept in copyright law is a myth created by people who think they can pirate works as long as they don't sell what they take.
If the intent is to protect against cheaters, then the teachers should submit the papers to the service for verification. The student should not have to be the one who is being required to turn in their papers to a service.
Maybe the school is giving the students a break. Let them submit their own essays for validation. If they fail validation, the student can rework his essay and do it again until the essay manages to pass validation. This way, you don't have a situation where the school subjects a student to discipline for plagarism - allowing a student to learn a lesson without being punished with reduced grades, etc.
Except that after a point they *don't* want the handlers attached to their dogs. The dogs are there to die so that soldiers and marines don't have to. They don't want handlers risking their lives or using first aid supplies to help dogs. If a robot could help break some of that connection, all the better.
This discussion makes me recall something a bit off-topic I had once read about the training given to Waffen SS officers during World War II. They were given puppies at the start of their basic training, and their puppies went with them everywhere. At the end of their training, one of the things each fledgling officer had to do was to kill his dog, with a knife. The result of this was to harden the hearts of SS infantry officers, making them more able to make difficult decisions in battle and make horrendous decisions in the death camps. It's an horrific example of dehumanization. The Nazis trained their officers to be able to commit atrocities.
Photocopying a book is a violation of the copyright of the copyright holder, unless your photocopying falls under "fair use". "Fair use" doesn't mean copying the whole book. Fair use is copying a few pages and even quoting parts of the work (with appropriate attribution) in a work of your own.
The act of making the photocopy (if it's beyond fair use) violates the copyright of the owner, because you walk out of the library with your very own self-made copy of their book. That's publication, and publication is what you have to do to violate copyright. Selling the photocopied book is not required (although it is an element for criminal prosecution under the federal statute).
And yes, I am a lawyer - and I don't work for RIAA, MPAA, Disney, MS, or any other corporation, large or small. I do estate planning work, which is as far from copyright as you can get.
Finally, if there were to be a lawsuit, the copyright owner would sue the person violating copyright directly, in the manner that RIAA is suing people sharing music over the internet. It's not necessary to sue the library, the photocopy company, etc.
If you put the same bill out in a public place (say, on a public sidewalk) and then go away, and someone takes, it's probably NOT theft.
Technically, it's either larceny or embezzlement. The money is not yours. If you pick it up intending to keep it for yourself, it's theft. If you pick it up intending to follow the law and report the missing property to the police, you have acquired possession lawfully. If you change your mind once the money is in your pocket, it's not larceny, but it is embezzlement.
Of course, that's under old common law. These days, it's simply theft. The law requires that lost or abandoned property be delivered to the authorities. If it's not claimed by its rightful owners, then you'll get the property back from the cops.
Realistically, however, no one is going to report a $20 bill to the cops, and no one is going to care. But a sack of money? Keep it and you're committing a felony.
When does a resource stop being the "property" of someone? The simplest answer is when they have no control on that resource. Another/may/ be when the police do not need a warrant.
"Finders Keepers" is not the law. Also, the law related to the fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures (the root of the requirement to obtain search warrants in some cases) has absolutely nothing to do with the definition of property rights, and when those rights end.
Going back to the Internet and theft: Theft usually requires the taking and carrying away of the tangible personal property of another - so you can't really "steal" a web page. But you do need to drop the illusion that it's OK to play around with other people's stuff (homes, web pages, etc.) just because their security can be easily circumvented. I could break into most homes simply by throwing a brick through the window. This "exploit" doesn't give me the right to root around in my neighbor's homes, just because they're too stupid to have their vulnerable windows bricked over. I can photocopy a book I borrow from the library. The fact that the publisher failed to provide adequate security by printing books that can be photocopied does not make my actions legal.
Funny, but not true. Outlook does not automatically send receipts by default - it asks you each time, and gives you the option to send receipts automatically.
Japan and Germany were never colonies in the last century. India was given back its country.
While not technically colonies, Japan and Germany were occupied by the Allies for essentially half a century, ensuring the stability of their governments (even the government of East Germany, albeit a communist government). The point is that this kind of sheparding prevented Japan and Germany from going back to do that voodoo that they did so well.
As for India, it was a colony - a possession of the crown. It's certainly subject to debate, but I think that in the long run, India was better off from having been occupied by the UK.
Of course, this doesn't mean that colonialism works in every case and is in fact beneficial in every case. The horrible mess that is Central Africa these days is in part the product of Belgian colonialism, which wasn't an exercise in nation-building in the manner of British colonialism - the Congo was more or less raped by Belgium.
1. That for the most part, the Germans who participated in the Nazi atrocities were fairly normal people who felt they had little choice about what they did, that they could not really influence what happened, that they were not sure what was going on, and that maybe the victims deserved their fate to some extent.
Kind of like the relationship people in the west have to world hunger.
2. That world hunger is a soluble problem that we choose not to solve because other things are more important to us.
The problems with world hunger and a general lack of fundamental freedoms in the third world can be solved with a dose of colonialism. Colonies were established in order to exploit economic resources. They had an incident effect of bringing stability, the rule of law, and a measure of economic and political freedom to the "oppressed" peoples. After World War II, international corporations figured out that it's actually cheaper to let colonies rule themselves, allowing corporations to exploit economic resources without having to provide any of the structural, economic, and political benefits of colonies. So instead of crushing rebellions, colonies were restored their soverignty, placing governments in the hands of really nice people such as Idi Amin.
Want three examples of highly successful colonies: India, Japan, and Germany.
I can't think of any idea in international politics more controversial than that Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" was a good idea and that we should restore colonialism to the world.
Jews (and ethnic Chinese for that matter) become influential in diaspora because they have cultures which value hard work and study, so over the course of a couple generations, they eat the lunch of any "natives" who don't value that (like every antisemitic racist bubba still digging ditches in my hometown). Duh. It never ceases to amaze me that people think there's more to it than that.
My theory is a bit different. Jews and Asians have on fundamental difference from caucasians: difficult languages. Jews study Hebrew to prepare for the bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah. Chinese and Japanese are saddled with difficult written languages and have to learn thousands of ideograms in order to attain literacy. What this means is that Jewish and Asian children have to face difficult academic challenges to become functioning adults. Even Asian-American children who are not educated in their ancestral languages benefit from this, because their parents and grandparents who were thusly educated influence their families towards greater academic achievement.
It's not that they are smarter, or that their cultures respect academic achievement, or that other cultures (like mine) are lazy in comparison - it's just that their children are forced to exercise their intellects in ways that other children are not.
Guess what? If you spend much of your childhood playing basketball, you become pretty athletic. Why shouldn't you become smarter if you spend an equivalent amount of time studying?
Think of it as Orwell's "New Speak" in reverse. Instead of having a dumbed-down language that produces dumbed-down people, they have difficult languages that produce people with better-exercised intellects.
What other cultures may need to foster the technically-minded workforce of tomorrow is something equivalent to the bar mitzvah - an intellectual challenge for their children that must be met to avoid embarassment for the family.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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But it's certainly more compelling than what has been amassed against Afghanistan/Iraq...
Just a comment about evidence amassed against Afghanistan. There was none, other than the rather obvious fact that Al Qaeda was operating in Afghanistan with the consent of the Taliban government and that the Taliban refused to cooperate with the US in rooting out Al Qaeda. That's reason enough to invade.
The dynamic between Superman and Lois Lane vs. Spider Man and Mary Jane is different. The thing to understand about Superman is that Clark Kent isn't an act - that's the real guy, just a bit more clumsy on purpose. Lois Lane loves Superman, but won't give Clark Kent the time of day.
But Mary Jane falls for Peter Parker before she knows he's Spider Man.
Of course, when dealing with comic books, it really depends on which of several hundred continuities you are dealing with. Marvel and DC keep Spider Man and Superman alive by redoing them every several years.
As a military veteran, I'd have to say that your contingency plan of stopping for gas at the nearest accessible U.S. Miltary base or other government facility with a gas tank won't work. If your car sputtered out of gas in front of a military base, they wouldn't let you buy gas at the base exchange. They wouldn't put you up for the night and they wouldn't give you or even sell you transportation. All you would get, at best, is the use of a telephone to call a garage to get your car towed.
But the point isn't this guy's contingency plan - it's his assumption that he's owed more than a rescue - that it's the responsbility of others to facilitate his adventure by letting him buy more gas, and that these others will also be more than willing to drop everything and search for his aircraft when it crashes another thousand miles into Antarctica.
Also, the government's position is sound - and it's the same position taken by the New Zealand base next door, which isn't making any effort to fill up the guy's gas tank. The whole idea here is that Antarctica isn't a safe place. Mother Nature's completely in charge, and she can be a real bitch. If this guy wants to take risks, then it's fine by me. I'm happy for him and his ability to step out of our cradle to grave cocoon. However, when he trips, I don't expect him to bitch about it. He knew what he was getting into so the responsiblity for the consequences of his actions belong solely to him.
The bottom line is that the government didn't try to stop him, and it gave him help to save his life, but our government doesn't owe him any favors.
If he wants International Rescue he should watch the Thunderbirds on TechTV.
Too bad he wasn't driving a BMW with an iDrive system, but an earlier BMW.
Which is what it said in the article. So what? Does that suddenly mean that Microsft's 20+ year record of buggy, unreliable, insecure software just vanishes? The lession was not about what system the car was using but what can happen if systems fail on a modern, particularly a modern bullet proof, car. Why would anyone want to risk using the world's most famous failed OS in such circumstances?
Your point is silly - you are still using the non-example of a non-MS car OS trapping passengers within a car to attack MS, and you characterize Windows as "the worlds most failed OS", when it clearly isn't when you take into consideration the millions of computers out there running Windows in its various implementations - most of which are running quite well, thank you very much.
I've heard, first hand, the story of a man who was trapped in a Lexus - and his car wasn't using an MS OS either. Give it a rest already. Feel free to attack automobiles using Windows CE as being more difficult to use - but don't attack them as being buggy and crash-prone when you have no evidence whatsoever to back up your claim, other than your anti-MS bias.
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It's not a mere suspicion. A reasonable suspicion is enough for a cop to stop you on the street and ask questions, or pull over your car. A search warrant must be supported by "probable cause", which means the FBI had to have gotten some information, maybe from an informant, or from a chatroom or something, that lead them to reasonable conclusion that there is evidence of a crime in the home, and that evidence would be found with a search.
At this point in time, we don't know what the search warrant was based on, because we haven't read the warrant.
I can answer that. If they find evidence of another crime, then that evidence is valid as along as the search warrant was valid. For example, if they were looking through all his belongings for a CD-ROM (limited to anything in which a CD-ROM can fit), and they find some drugs, then the drugs are admissible in court.
I'm not so sure that they'd bother prosecuting him for violating copyright, because it's generally not a criminal offense unless you're in it for the money (or violate parts of the DCMA, I suppose). But say they find child pornography? Then he's going up the river for a very long time, unless he can show that the search warrant was not supported by probable cause and was therefore invalid.
Actually, since you can put 128Mb or more on a keychain USB drive, they can probably toss his entire home looking for data.
Just so you know, they don't have to let you see your lawyer or speak to your lawyer during the search. The only rule about seeing a lawyer is during a custodial interrogation (ie, you're under arrest). If you then ask for a lawyer, then anything you tell the cops after that is inadmissible as direct evidence against you. Those statements, however, would be admissible in court as rebuttal evidence to contradict your own testimony in court later.
But sure, calling your lawyer at that point in time is a pretty good idea. But how many people have criminal defense lawyers on call, anyway? Besides former Enron executives?
If Gainax were to make more Eva, they'd have to commit to a definate interpretation of what the end actually meant. This would piss a lot of people off, as their pet interprestation would become wrong.
That's a fan-centric view. Gainax doesn't care that many people may be pissed off. They care about making money. My point is that if an Evangelion movie is going to be profitable (and I don't think it would be), then it would be profitable for Gainax to have made additional Evangelion anime. The fact that they haven't bothered to do this is, to me, indictive that Evangelion isn't as market-worthy as fans think. It's a great anime, one that I love, but I don't think that the anime fanbase is large enough to support a decent Evangelion live-action film and I don't think that the general public would be interested in it enough to see the movie. That's ultimately why I don't think the movie will be made.
I remember when Evangelion first came out. One of my friends from Compuserve (Thanks, CALCI), a physician in Osaka, mailed me videotapes of the program, as it came out. Even not knowning Japanese, I was able to tell that Evangelion was very special.
But, I was also able to tell that Evangelion is very Japanese. To an extent, it's a radical deconstruction of the giant robot genre in anime*. Giant Robot Genre, you ask? That's my point: We don't have a giant robot genre in the US, and for this reason, I'm not sure that an Evangelion movie is going to be that much of a draw in America.
*Giant Robot Genre: It goes back to "Gigantor" (I forget the name of the original), Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot, etc. The basic idea is that scientist builds a giant robot for an evil organization dedicated to world domination, but due to some twist of fate, the robot comes under control of the scientist's son, a young boy who quickly developes an emotional relationship with his robot pal (if you want an example, watch the more recent "Giant Robot"). Evangelion tosses away the happy fantasy. Sure, Dad creates the robot, but Dad is an evil bastard, as bad as his evil masters. Shinji doesn't make friends with Unit 01 - piloting the damn thing is a horrifying experience almost every single time. Once Shinji gets used to it, everything falls to shit in ways I can't describe without revealing major spoilers. To summarize: Every episode can be given the secondary title "Shinji has a Bad Day in the Entry Plug". The whole point here is that American viewers won't get the entire shock value of Evangelion without first understanding giant robot shows - and since movie-going audience hasn't watched enough giant robots on TV, they just won't get it and will tend to stay away from the theater just to avoid being confused. Call me a pessimist.
You are absolutely correct, sir. Also, if Evangelion is so hot, why hasn't Gainax made more of it? Follow on stories, retellings, alt-endings (more of them) etc.? They aren't there, and Evangelion is nearly 10 years old already.
My cut on this movie is that in the long run, it's going to fall through. Evangelion is pretty esoteric - it has a large fanbase amongst people who like anime, but there just ain't that many of us to support a blockbuster film.
Yes, anime sells, but it doesn't sell THAT much. Sure, last year an anime film won the academy award, but it still didn't make nearly as much money as "Elf", let alone "Finding Nemo". That means the film isn't going to get the $100 million in financing it needs to avoid looking like a bad episode of Doctor Who.
And I think that's a good thing, because Evangelion is way the hell too complicated to condense into a two hour film - and even if they narrow the scope of the film down to just the first few episodes, it's not going to be enough. Think about when you actually watched Evangelion (I'm assuming you wouldn't bother reading this thread if you didn't). How long did it take for you to figure out what the hell was going on, if you ever did? There were so many mysteries as yet unsolved after episode four that a four episode arc cannot stand on its own without radical changes to the storyline - the movie would be a giant robot rocket-sockem, but wouldn't really be Evangelion.
They don't need permission to keep the essays. For example, you retain copyright to your post here on slashdot.org. I can save a copy of this webpage, and retain it from now until the end of time, and I won't be violating your copyright. I can compare your post against other posts forever and I won't be violating your copyright. I can quote parts of your post (fair use) and not violate your copyright.
The cheat-detector company violates your copyright when they republish the copy of your work that was submitted to them. If they don't republish, they aren't violating anyone's rights.
If the student has shown issues in the past with this topic then perhaps it should be scrutinized more carefully (even by a commitee) but by a web-based program?
How can this committee screen a student's paper against the entire Internet without some sort of web-based program?
Let's get back to what's important in colleges... TEACHING and GRADING. Stop worrying so much about how much free time you have to work on your next book.
So using computer technology to make your life and workplace more efficient is wrong? And colleges aren't about TEACHING and GRADING, they are about learning. Checking students papers for plagarism is a means of determining whether or not students are actually learning. What's wrong with that? Oh, I know that it's a statement to the student that he's not trusted, but so what? Why should students assume that their papers won't be taken on face value? The IRS doesn't assume that my tax returns are correct - they check them every year, the bastards. Don't they need probable cause? The answer, of course, is no, and the same goes for universities. Checking papers for plagarism isn't any different from any other means of detecting fraudulent work, such as peer review of published research papers, for example.
I don't think you can successfully argue that it's a violation of copyright. There's no publication, unless the services distributes your work. Without publication, your copyright has not been violated. They are using a copy of your work to see if it was copied from other works. That means they are reading it and comparing it to other works in their records. That's not a violation of your copyright (especially if you don't own copyright because you didn't actually write your paper). If your paper passes muster and remains in their database, they still aren't violating your copyright. They have one copy of your paper, which was given to them. What's wrong with that? Furthermore, the company is actually helping you protect your copyright, because the company is checking papers submitted by future students against your own to see if these students copied your paper and violated your copyright.
And it's not against copyright law to require a student to submit a paper for checking - regardless of whether or not the checker is operating for profit. The "for profit" concept in copyright law is a myth created by people who think they can pirate works as long as they don't sell what they take.
If the intent is to protect against cheaters, then the teachers should submit the papers to the service for verification. The student should not have to be the one who is being required to turn in their papers to a service.
Maybe the school is giving the students a break. Let them submit their own essays for validation. If they fail validation, the student can rework his essay and do it again until the essay manages to pass validation. This way, you don't have a situation where the school subjects a student to discipline for plagarism - allowing a student to learn a lesson without being punished with reduced grades, etc.
Except that after a point they *don't* want the handlers attached to their dogs. The dogs are there to die so that soldiers and marines don't have to. They don't want handlers risking their lives or using first aid supplies to help dogs. If a robot could help break some of that connection, all the better.
This discussion makes me recall something a bit off-topic I had once read about the training given to Waffen SS officers during World War II. They were given puppies at the start of their basic training, and their puppies went with them everywhere. At the end of their training, one of the things each fledgling officer had to do was to kill his dog, with a knife. The result of this was to harden the hearts of SS infantry officers, making them more able to make difficult decisions in battle and make horrendous decisions in the death camps. It's an horrific example of dehumanization. The Nazis trained their officers to be able to commit atrocities.
I hear the Japanese have some interesting designs for giant robots. Something about a facination with them.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a giant robot gap.
Photocopying a book is a violation of the copyright of the copyright holder, unless your photocopying falls under "fair use". "Fair use" doesn't mean copying the whole book. Fair use is copying a few pages and even quoting parts of the work (with appropriate attribution) in a work of your own.
The act of making the photocopy (if it's beyond fair use) violates the copyright of the owner, because you walk out of the library with your very own self-made copy of their book. That's publication, and publication is what you have to do to violate copyright. Selling the photocopied book is not required (although it is an element for criminal prosecution under the federal statute).
And yes, I am a lawyer - and I don't work for RIAA, MPAA, Disney, MS, or any other corporation, large or small. I do estate planning work, which is as far from copyright as you can get.
Finally, if there were to be a lawsuit, the copyright owner would sue the person violating copyright directly, in the manner that RIAA is suing people sharing music over the internet. It's not necessary to sue the library, the photocopy company, etc.
If you put the same bill out in a public place (say, on a public sidewalk) and then go away, and someone takes, it's probably NOT theft.
/may/ be when the police do not need a warrant.
Technically, it's either larceny or embezzlement. The money is not yours. If you pick it up intending to keep it for yourself, it's theft. If you pick it up intending to follow the law and report the missing property to the police, you have acquired possession lawfully. If you change your mind once the money is in your pocket, it's not larceny, but it is embezzlement.
Of course, that's under old common law. These days, it's simply theft. The law requires that lost or abandoned property be delivered to the authorities. If it's not claimed by its rightful owners, then you'll get the property back from the cops.
Realistically, however, no one is going to report a $20 bill to the cops, and no one is going to care. But a sack of money? Keep it and you're committing a felony.
When does a resource stop being the "property" of someone? The simplest answer is when they have no control on that resource. Another
"Finders Keepers" is not the law. Also, the law related to the fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures (the root of the requirement to obtain search warrants in some cases) has absolutely nothing to do with the definition of property rights, and when those rights end.
Going back to the Internet and theft: Theft usually requires the taking and carrying away of the tangible personal property of another - so you can't really "steal" a web page. But you do need to drop the illusion that it's OK to play around with other people's stuff (homes, web pages, etc.) just because their security can be easily circumvented. I could break into most homes simply by throwing a brick through the window. This "exploit" doesn't give me the right to root around in my neighbor's homes, just because they're too stupid to have their vulnerable windows bricked over. I can photocopy a book I borrow from the library. The fact that the publisher failed to provide adequate security by printing books that can be photocopied does not make my actions legal.
Funny, but not true. Outlook does not automatically send receipts by default - it asks you each time, and gives you the option to send receipts automatically.
Japan and Germany were never colonies in the last century. India was given back its country.
While not technically colonies, Japan and Germany were occupied by the Allies for essentially half a century, ensuring the stability of their governments (even the government of East Germany, albeit a communist government). The point is that this kind of sheparding prevented Japan and Germany from going back to do that voodoo that they did so well.
As for India, it was a colony - a possession of the crown. It's certainly subject to debate, but I think that in the long run, India was better off from having been occupied by the UK.
Of course, this doesn't mean that colonialism works in every case and is in fact beneficial in every case. The horrible mess that is Central Africa these days is in part the product of Belgian colonialism, which wasn't an exercise in nation-building in the manner of British colonialism - the Congo was more or less raped by Belgium.
1. That for the most part, the Germans who participated in the Nazi atrocities were fairly normal people who felt they had little choice about what they did, that they could not really influence what happened, that they were not sure what was going on, and that maybe the victims deserved their fate to some extent.
Kind of like the relationship people in the west have to world hunger.
2. That world hunger is a soluble problem that we choose not to solve because other things are more important to us.
The problems with world hunger and a general lack of fundamental freedoms in the third world can be solved with a dose of colonialism. Colonies were established in order to exploit economic resources. They had an incident effect of bringing stability, the rule of law, and a measure of economic and political freedom to the "oppressed" peoples. After World War II, international corporations figured out that it's actually cheaper to let colonies rule themselves, allowing corporations to exploit economic resources without having to provide any of the structural, economic, and political benefits of colonies. So instead of crushing rebellions, colonies were restored their soverignty, placing governments in the hands of really nice people such as Idi Amin.
Want three examples of highly successful colonies: India, Japan, and Germany.
I can't think of any idea in international politics more controversial than that Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" was a good idea and that we should restore colonialism to the world.
Jews (and ethnic Chinese for that matter) become influential in diaspora because they have cultures which value hard work and study, so over the course of a couple generations, they eat the lunch of any "natives" who don't value that (like every antisemitic racist bubba still digging ditches in my hometown). Duh. It never ceases to amaze me that people think there's more to it than that.
My theory is a bit different. Jews and Asians have on fundamental difference from caucasians: difficult languages. Jews study Hebrew to prepare for the bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah. Chinese and Japanese are saddled with difficult written languages and have to learn thousands of ideograms in order to attain literacy. What this means is that Jewish and Asian children have to face difficult academic challenges to become functioning adults. Even Asian-American children who are not educated in their ancestral languages benefit from this, because their parents and grandparents who were thusly educated influence their families towards greater academic achievement.
It's not that they are smarter, or that their cultures respect academic achievement, or that other cultures (like mine) are lazy in comparison - it's just that their children are forced to exercise their intellects in ways that other children are not.
Guess what? If you spend much of your childhood playing basketball, you become pretty athletic. Why shouldn't you become smarter if you spend an equivalent amount of time studying?
Think of it as Orwell's "New Speak" in reverse. Instead of having a dumbed-down language that produces dumbed-down people, they have difficult languages that produce people with better-exercised intellects.
What other cultures may need to foster the technically-minded workforce of tomorrow is something equivalent to the bar mitzvah - an intellectual challenge for their children that must be met to avoid embarassment for the family.
But it's certainly more compelling than what has been amassed against Afghanistan/Iraq...
Just a comment about evidence amassed against Afghanistan. There was none, other than the rather obvious fact that Al Qaeda was operating in Afghanistan with the consent of the Taliban government and that the Taliban refused to cooperate with the US in rooting out Al Qaeda. That's reason enough to invade.
...the OS's take up so much space on his hard drive that he hasn't got room for any applications more complicated than "Hello, world".
The dynamic between Superman and Lois Lane vs. Spider Man and Mary Jane is different. The thing to understand about Superman is that Clark Kent isn't an act - that's the real guy, just a bit more clumsy on purpose. Lois Lane loves Superman, but won't give Clark Kent the time of day.
But Mary Jane falls for Peter Parker before she knows he's Spider Man.
Of course, when dealing with comic books, it really depends on which of several hundred continuities you are dealing with. Marvel and DC keep Spider Man and Superman alive by redoing them every several years.
As a military veteran, I'd have to say that your contingency plan of stopping for gas at the nearest accessible U.S. Miltary base or other government facility with a gas tank won't work. If your car sputtered out of gas in front of a military base, they wouldn't let you buy gas at the base exchange. They wouldn't put you up for the night and they wouldn't give you or even sell you transportation. All you would get, at best, is the use of a telephone to call a garage to get your car towed.
But the point isn't this guy's contingency plan - it's his assumption that he's owed more than a rescue - that it's the responsbility of others to facilitate his adventure by letting him buy more gas, and that these others will also be more than willing to drop everything and search for his aircraft when it crashes another thousand miles into Antarctica.
Also, the government's position is sound - and it's the same position taken by the New Zealand base next door, which isn't making any effort to fill up the guy's gas tank. The whole idea here is that Antarctica isn't a safe place. Mother Nature's completely in charge, and she can be a real bitch. If this guy wants to take risks, then it's fine by me. I'm happy for him and his ability to step out of our cradle to grave cocoon. However, when he trips, I don't expect him to bitch about it. He knew what he was getting into so the responsiblity for the consequences of his actions belong solely to him.
The bottom line is that the government didn't try to stop him, and it gave him help to save his life, but our government doesn't owe him any favors.
If he wants International Rescue he should watch the Thunderbirds on TechTV.
Too bad he wasn't driving a BMW with an iDrive system, but an earlier BMW.
Which is what it said in the article. So what? Does that suddenly mean that Microsft's 20+ year record of buggy, unreliable, insecure software just vanishes? The lession was not about what system the car was using but what can happen if systems fail on a modern, particularly a modern bullet proof, car. Why would anyone want to risk using the world's most famous failed OS in such circumstances?
Your point is silly - you are still using the non-example of a non-MS car OS trapping passengers within a car to attack MS, and you characterize Windows as "the worlds most failed OS", when it clearly isn't when you take into consideration the millions of computers out there running Windows in its various implementations - most of which are running quite well, thank you very much.
I've heard, first hand, the story of a man who was trapped in a Lexus - and his car wasn't using an MS OS either. Give it a rest already. Feel free to attack automobiles using Windows CE as being more difficult to use - but don't attack them as being buggy and crash-prone when you have no evidence whatsoever to back up your claim, other than your anti-MS bias.
Does it have "The Moon" written all the way through?
No, but it's a real find if the piece of moon rock has part of "Chairface Chippendale" etched into it.