I remember the babelfish puzzle. The FIENDISH bit was that you could solve it logically without any trial or error . Each time the babelfish "twanged off" you could fix it (Oh, I'll put the towel there. Oh, I'll put the backpack there). But if you went through it step-by-step, the vending machine ran out of babelfish JUST EXACTLY when you'd solved the puzzle. So you had to restart. Devilishly frustrating, I though at the time. But your insight regarding Arthur Dent vs the Universe is spot on, mate.
"If history proves anything..."...it's that the peasants eventually have to disperse and go home to sow or harvest their crops. The folks who riled up the peasants may be in power, but the peasants sure ain't.
Aww, these are just old physics jokes, passed down from undergrad to undergrad for generations. Go to a good university and you'll hear these and more...
The need for sarcasm is implied by your apparent need to feel humble about living in a country so powerful that merely speaking its language gives you a huge advantage on the world stage.
How can it POSSIBLY be advantageous to speak the language of the inhabitants of a small island off the coast of Europe? Oh, right! It's because it is ALSO spoken by the inhabitants of the USA!
The programmers aren't disrespectful, but Microsoft is. Microsoft, the corporation, owns Encarta and can be considered to have all knowledge contained therein. Microsoft, the corporation, ignored the information it had and offended people.
Permit me to respectfully disagree. As you say, you don't need to know the whole history of the area, but the "basic important issues" for the area are determined by the area's history. What you are saying is tha you do need to know some history of the area. If you know the history of the region, you certainly know more than if you know the physical and political geography.
Yes, this is quibbling over words and definitions, but you started it.
As long as we're mocking the US educational system, let's mock the European ones as well.
What percentage of European primary school graduates can speak the native language of 300 million other people on their continent? What percentage of European secondary school graduates can travel 1000 miles in almost any direction and read the language of the local population?
Note that the US scores over 99% on both measures. Though I have no hard numbers, I suspect that Europeans scores well under 5% on the first and under 10% on the second (and I'm being generous).
(edited slightly for format, but retaining ALL the sense of the original article"
Q: "How does Unisys plan to make amends for its use of GIF patents against open source projects?" A: "No comment" [If they had plans to make amends, they'd share them.]
Q: "Why should open source developers trust Unisys after the GIF nastiness?" A: "I can't comment on past activities. I can only talk about where we're going." [They refuse to apologize.]
If a human being dealt with you like this, you'd be right to shun them. Why is a corporation any different?
Take anything you want from Unisys, but don't expect anything good from them. They clearly understand the harm they did, and THEY DON'T CARE. They realize that they behaved badly, but THEY EXPRESS NO PLANS FOR CHANGING.
OK, now that the first paragraphs lost my respect for them, on to the rest of the article!
But surely there were information terminals for people to access computers? And surely that is all we really have today - or do you think you could fit THE ENTIRE INTERNET into your home? Don't get hung up on implementation details.
Now, technically, legally, Seagate can't lose trade secrets, because it would be illegal for those (former) employees to disclose them. However, in practice, those employees have knowledge that WD and Seagate both want. The employee can charge what the market will bear.
I agree with you completely, strangely enough. But if you called a hit man and said "Here's $1000 to make Dillon Rinker quit posting on slashdot," then you'd be guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. When you retain an attorney to threaten people for you, you are morally liable for that.
OK, so Katie T isn't as culpable as a 55-year-old white multimillionaire - the latter CLEARLY understands what siccing a lawyer on someone means. What we have here is, I think, a case of "I didn't know the gun was loaded." In that case, you may not go up the river for Murder 1, but you're at least going to get manslaughter. Granted, no one died here (at worst Katie J was inconvenienced), but I think the analogy hold.
My thought is not that Ms Tarbox is a scumbag; my thought is simply that she IS responsible for her attorney's actions (and I've seen nothing yet that would convince me that the shyster isn't her attorney).
Do you really think Aftab was working for Penguin? Take a look at her web site. It doesn't look to me like she does domain work for publishers. I find it quite reasonable that Katie T would have retained her.
Here's what I see: 1. Aftab offers services that would interest Katie T. 2. Aftab engages in behavior that (apart from publicity) is favorable to Katie T. 3. No one denies the attorney-client relationship is the person with the most to lose if that relationship is proven to exist.
I'm perfectly open to evidence that contradicts my points, but I haven't seen it yet. The only conclusion I can draw is the obvious one.
1. The lawyer is representing Katie T 2. The lawyer is representing Penguin 3. The lawyer is representing herself, doing all this out of the goodness of her heart in her free time on her own dime.
I think #3 is right out. #2 may be the case, but I suspect that Penguin has their own attorneys and doesn't need to hire shysters (you have seen her web site, right?). That leaves #1.
If you can point me to a source (other than Katie T) that indicates the attorney doesn't belong to Katie T, I'll agree with you.
As far as the legal system is concerned, an attorney IS you. EVERY ACTION taken by an attorney on your behalf is legally YOUR action. Since this is the reality that lawyers have created and understand, I don't think it's too farfetched to suggest that when Katie T retained a shyster as her attorney, she became legally, ethically, and morally liable for the actions of her attorney.
Regarding the publisher's guilt - I don't think inexperience and ignorance could be an excuse even in 2000. The internet was not a new thing in 2000. The antitrust case for Internet Explorer + Windows was three years old. The ".com thing" was big news and big business - it was the height of the internet bubble. Furthermore, ignorance ceased to be an excuse the instant they found out about Katie J, and they COULD have found out about Katie J by typing the address in any browser.
Look at the graph in the article. The biggest fear of the voting public is "Declines in voter turnout because of fear or distrust of e-voting systems."
In other words, their greatest fear is that people will realize that e-voting is a recipe for fraud and will stay home. Their greatest fear is that people respond rationally to what I think most of us believe is the truth. That just astounds me.
Katie T's lawyer CAN'T do ANYTHING without the ok of Ms Tarbox. Attorneys DO NOT act independently; they act ONLY in the interests of their clients. Failure to do so can get them disbarred.
Slashdot Mirror
Acceptable use policies are essentially contracts.
POLICE DO NOT ENFORCE CONTRACTS.
End of story.
DOH! Shoulda previewed. Slashdot didn't like my angle brackets; let's try parentheses.
Yes, but if the Tolkien estate got $.01 for every (insert random fantasy cliche here), it could buy Hasbro for breakfast.
Yes, but if the Tolkien estate got $.01 for every , it could buy Hasbro for breakfast.
Heh.
I remember the babelfish puzzle.
The FIENDISH bit was that you could solve it logically without any trial or error . Each time the babelfish "twanged off" you could fix it (Oh, I'll put the towel there. Oh, I'll put the backpack there). But if you went through it step-by-step, the vending machine ran out of babelfish JUST EXACTLY when you'd solved the puzzle. So you had to restart. Devilishly frustrating, I though at the time. But your insight regarding Arthur Dent vs the Universe is spot on, mate.
Probably not more than a few hundredths of one percent.
The Library of Alexandria wasn't idle entertainment; it was the scientific and social knowledge of its day.
You're trying to be funny, but really, that's all that's left to digitize. Lucas has done everything else.
There is nothing, NOTHING, shameful about jailing members of the military who refuse to perform a dangerous duty.
Like charging a machine gun nest.
Or piloting a bomber in straight, level flight over an area infested with anti-aircraft guns.
Or manning an aircraft carrier in the middle of an aerial attack.
All of these are hopeless tasks without ammunition. The loaders were fortunate to avoid a firing squad.
"If history proves anything..." ...it's that the peasants eventually have to disperse and go home to sow or harvest their crops. The folks who riled up the peasants may be in power, but the peasants sure ain't.
Aww, these are just old physics jokes, passed down from undergrad to undergrad for generations. Go to a good university and you'll hear these and more...
The need for sarcasm is implied by your apparent need to feel humble about living in a country so powerful that merely speaking its language gives you a huge advantage on the world stage.
False humility is tantamount to lying.
How can it POSSIBLY be advantageous to speak the language of the inhabitants of a small island off the coast of Europe? Oh, right! It's because it is ALSO spoken by the inhabitants of the USA!
The programmers aren't disrespectful, but Microsoft is. Microsoft, the corporation, owns Encarta and can be considered to have all knowledge contained therein. Microsoft, the corporation, ignored the information it had and offended people.
Permit me to respectfully disagree. As you say, you don't need to know the whole history of the area, but the "basic important issues" for the area are determined by the area's history. What you are saying is tha you do need to know some history of the area. If you know the history of the region, you certainly know more than if you know the physical and political geography.
Yes, this is quibbling over words and definitions, but you started it.
As long as we're mocking the US educational system, let's mock the European ones as well.
What percentage of European primary school graduates can speak the native language of 300 million other people on their continent? What percentage of European secondary school graduates can travel 1000 miles in almost any direction and read the language of the local population?
Note that the US scores over 99% on both measures. Though I have no hard numbers, I suspect that Europeans scores well under 5% on the first and under 10% on the second (and I'm being generous).
"Representative government is just too inefficient to aggressively repress a population"
THAT is going into my quote file.
(edited slightly for format, but retaining ALL the sense of the original article"
Q: "How does Unisys plan to make amends for its use of GIF patents against open source projects?"
A: "No comment" [If they had plans to make amends, they'd share them.]
Q: "Why should open source developers trust Unisys after the GIF nastiness?"
A: "I can't comment on past activities. I can only talk about where we're going." [They refuse to apologize.]
If a human being dealt with you like this, you'd be right to shun them. Why is a corporation any different?
Take anything you want from Unisys, but don't expect anything good from them. They clearly understand the harm they did, and THEY DON'T CARE. They realize that they behaved badly, but THEY EXPRESS NO PLANS FOR CHANGING.
OK, now that the first paragraphs lost my respect for them, on to the rest of the article!
But surely there were information terminals for people to access computers? And surely that is all we really have today - or do you think you could fit THE ENTIRE INTERNET into your home? Don't get hung up on implementation details.
Yes. It's called CAPITALISM.
Now, technically, legally, Seagate can't lose trade secrets, because it would be illegal for those (former) employees to disclose them. However, in practice, those employees have knowledge that WD and Seagate both want. The employee can charge what the market will bear.
So, um...what does evolution predict? That the world will look pretty much like it looks now?
I agree with you completely, strangely enough. But if you called a hit man and said "Here's $1000 to make Dillon Rinker quit posting on slashdot," then you'd be guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. When you retain an attorney to threaten people for you, you are morally liable for that.
OK, so Katie T isn't as culpable as a 55-year-old white multimillionaire - the latter CLEARLY understands what siccing a lawyer on someone means. What we have here is, I think, a case of "I didn't know the gun was loaded." In that case, you may not go up the river for Murder 1, but you're at least going to get manslaughter. Granted, no one died here (at worst Katie J was inconvenienced), but I think the analogy hold.
My thought is not that Ms Tarbox is a scumbag; my thought is simply that she IS responsible for her attorney's actions (and I've seen nothing yet that would convince me that the shyster isn't her attorney).
Do you really think Aftab was working for Penguin? Take a look at her web site. It doesn't look to me like she does domain work for publishers. I find it quite reasonable that Katie T would have retained her.
Here's what I see:
1. Aftab offers services that would interest Katie T.
2. Aftab engages in behavior that (apart from publicity) is favorable to Katie T.
3. No one denies the attorney-client relationship is the person with the most to lose if that relationship is proven to exist.
I'm perfectly open to evidence that contradicts my points, but I haven't seen it yet. The only conclusion I can draw is the obvious one.
There are three possible cases:
1. The lawyer is representing Katie T
2. The lawyer is representing Penguin
3. The lawyer is representing herself, doing all this out of the goodness of her heart in her free time on her own dime.
I think #3 is right out. #2 may be the case, but I suspect that Penguin has their own attorneys and doesn't need to hire shysters (you have seen her web site, right?). That leaves #1.
If you can point me to a source (other than Katie T) that indicates the attorney doesn't belong to Katie T, I'll agree with you.
#3 is right out.
As far as the legal system is concerned, an attorney IS you. EVERY ACTION taken by an attorney on your behalf is legally YOUR action. Since this is the reality that lawyers have created and understand, I don't think it's too farfetched to suggest that when Katie T retained a shyster as her attorney, she became legally, ethically, and morally liable for the actions of her attorney.
Regarding the publisher's guilt - I don't think inexperience and ignorance could be an excuse even in 2000. The internet was not a new thing in 2000. The antitrust case for Internet Explorer + Windows was three years old. The ".com thing" was big news and big business - it was the height of the internet bubble. Furthermore, ignorance ceased to be an excuse the instant they found out about Katie J, and they COULD have found out about Katie J by typing the address in any browser.
A pox on all of them, I say.
Look at the graph in the article. The biggest fear of the voting public is "Declines in voter turnout because of fear or distrust of e-voting systems."
In other words, their greatest fear is that people will realize that e-voting is a recipe for fraud and will stay home. Their greatest fear is that people respond rationally to what I think most of us believe is the truth. That just astounds me.
Katie T's lawyer CAN'T do ANYTHING without the ok of Ms Tarbox. Attorneys DO NOT act independently; they act ONLY in the interests of their clients. Failure to do so can get them disbarred.