What Brad needs, instead of writing sarcastic responses himself, is to get a lawyer to write a letter pointing out to these pinheads that satire is constitutionally protected...
This presumes that the aforementioned pinheads really don't know that his parody is constitutionally protected, which is somewhat unlikely. They know that the charges in their C&D are groundless, but figure that he will be cowed just because he got a letter from a lawyer. He's disabusing them of that notion.
Now, if they're dumb enough to actually bring suit on these charges, I'm sure he'll get himself a lawyer. Hell, there will probably be a pro-bono line outside his house -- who wouldn't want to get a slam-dunk against American Express on their resume?
The V-Chip is implanted directly into your childs brain and will emit a tiny negative reinforcement whenever your child attempts to utter an obscenity, disobey, or otherwise act like a child of his or her age.
No doubt when the mundane reason for this story becomes clear (e.g. hoax, sensational reporting or whatever), there will be another bunch of loons accusing the Italian government of a 'coverup'.
You're absolutely right, and it's ridiculous. Clearly, it will be the Vatican covering this up. I mean, the Catholic Church has been given a lot of influence, and it only has one job: keep these kinds of demonic manifestations from drawing the public eye. But perhaps I've said too much.
If Metallica's St. Anger is not selling like hotcakes it's because it's abject, utter crap, not because you can get it for free on the internet.
I wonder if what really upsets the RIAA is that, with the songs out on the Internet, everyone will know that it's crap without having to buy it. I paraphrase Bruce Dickinson from this summer's MSG concert: ``You know, I haven't noticed any problems with Iron Maiden album sales. Mainly because we're not putting out shit.''
And, of course, to augment meager stipends, PhD students can get into the business of helping freshmen figure out how to get the ghosts to leave them the Hell alone:
``Sir, what you had there is what we refer to as a Disembodied Location-specific Conversational Agent, or a Class 5 Full-roaming AI. Really nasty one, too.''
RFID tags will be embedded in things which you don't want to fry because you would destroy the useful function as well (_anything_ with electronics, your watch for example).
Not my watch, jefe. I'm partial to automatic movements, m'self. Oh, um, ``you insensitive clod.''
I'm still unsure whether the whole "take Frodo to Osgilith" scene was necessary or not. I understand Jackson's purpose (Faramir is human and corruptable by the ring, so that *needs* to be shown explicitly to drive the point home), I'm just not sure if I liked how it was handled.
I thought (and this may be overthinking, I grant), that most of the Denethor/Boromir/Faramir dynamic was an illustration of Sauron's ability to corrupt through the palantirs by working on innate weaknesses. (Saruman's weakness was his own arrogance, which led him to believe that he could fool Sauron and build and army that could eventually beat him, whereas instead he only aided Sauron by giving everyone else and extra front to wage war on.)
Denethor wanted his first-born son, Boromir, the next steward of Gondor, to be perfect -- strong, noble, and wise. However, it was Faramir who was the wiser of the two, and Faramir who should have been sent to Rivendell (Faramir, not Boromir, had the prophetic dream about it, as I recall). Faramir was wise enough to see that taking the Ring would lead to ruin, and strong enough to resist the urge. Without Denethor's irrational need to see Boromir as greater than he was, Faramir would have been with the fellowship (probably keeping it whole longer), while Boromir led raids on the armies of Mordor (where his skill and strength could have been put to better use).
Tolkien showed profound differences between the two brothers, while Jackson made Faramir a less-loved copy of Boromir. He may as well have left Faramir out entirely.
Why is it that only corporations are supposed to benefit from globalization?
I think it has to do with the ownership of work-for-hire products, and they did buy all those congressmen.
Globalization is entirely about having the least impediments to getting labor cheap and selling the results dear. I think Nike might have a handbook on it; you should ask.
MySQL Mistake #8: Failure to close connections properly will bite you in the ass during a Slashdotting.
Actually, the likely problem here is that the site is making use of PHP's ability to hold the connection to the database open, rather than doing an open/close on every query. This saves the overhead of establishing the connection on each page view, and is often a good thing.
However, each instance of Apache will open and hold the connection, so if you have a config that allows more Apache child processes than you've allowed concurrent connections under MySQL, you see this. The aggravating thing is that neither Apache nor MySQL are necessarily swamped when this happens -- you've just got more Apache processes than the configured number of concurrent MySQL connections.
Actually, wouldn't the worst problem be bone density loss.
Only if the transport is "coasting" for some significant part of the trip. You can accelerate (at something around 1G) to the midway point, then flip the ship around and decelerate (at around 1G) the rest of the trip. You've got near-Earth gravity for almost the whole trip that way.
Understand that I Am Not A Rocket Scientist, and am talking completely out of my ass here. Or maybe typing with my feet. Whatever.
whether he believes it or not isn't important... the people who "need" to believe this (from sco's point of view) are - in no order:... * his mom - so she's not so embarassed that she goes back to her maiden name
It's a known fact that Bill Gates never actually said this, or at best, that it is rephrased severely and taken out of context.
Actually, the usual "proof" that he never said this is an interview he gave in 1996 in which he claimed never to have said it. I'm not sure we should be willing to take Bill Gates' word on this. Or, really, much of anything.
How can they enforce this, if memory cards/sticks for cameras have been doing this for years now? If they haven't be pursuing the patents enfringement before this, can they now?
The sneaky bit is that they didn't *apply* for the patent until 1995, I believe, and I'm not sure when it was granted. I don't know if it matters, legally, when they *invented* the format, only when the patent was actually filed. It's surely dirty pool to invent something, watch it move into common use, and *then* patent it (sort of a step beyond the more common submarine patent), but I don't know if there are any laws preventing it.
Sorry, but that's just the way it feels to me at the moment. Hopefully something will change in the near future and we'll be able to feel that the USA is a great and friendly power again.
Well, there *is* an election coming up, so keep your fingers crossed.
As it happens, I was reading over someone's shoulder on the train and saw a story in today's Wall Street Journal that ABC has contracted with an advertising firm called Mindshare to develop embedded advertising in their TV shows. Like I needed a new reason not to watch ABC.
What we've gotten out of this ruling is that a garage door opening signal code isn't art, and therefore can't enjoy a copyright. Therefore, it doesn't look good for a chip that emits a signal that communicates a message that equates to nothing more than "I'm made by Lexmark."
Unless that message is in the form of a short tune, which can be copyrighted by Lexmark. And, as Goddess is my witness, I can't for my life tell if I'm kidding or not.
And I'm sure the RIAA will be all over this new music format, positively love it: how are you going to share what's in your head?
Dateline: Washington DC, 2023/10/15
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court today ruled that telepathy is covered as a copyright circumvention device. The RIAA quickly announced plans to license this kind of content distribution with ``moderate restrictions,'' and created a subdivision called ``PsiCorps'' to administer the licensing scheme.
``I think there's a wonderful and exciting future ahead,'' said RIAA spokesperson Al Bester. ``Be seeing you.''
And, after they figure out who (if anybody) has the remains of Billy the Kid, I think they should gather together a bunch of relics from cathedrals, do some DNA comparison between them, and figure out once and for all if John the Baptist really did have four skulls, six hands, and three tongues.
But what if every one in 100 times, UPS thinks I might like a corporate logo bumper sticker instead of my book, they throw my book into the eternal void, and give me a UPS bumper sticker instead. I'm supposed to like this?
And then they tell you that it was okay for them to do because, after the first time it happened, you could just ask the UPS driver not to do that any more. ``Nothing to it.''
For me, that's the one unforgivable sin that Jackson has committed with the Lord of the Rings thus far. And keeping Faramir's dialogue the same as in the book while completely changing the meaning -- just unconscionable. (Sorry; I'm not usually a rabid Tolkien geek, but the dynamics around Faramir/Boromir/Denethor were, for me, some of the most powerful parts of the whole trilogy.)
And then at the bottom of this rant, the author says:While not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
What gives? Is this guy totally out to lunch?
I don't think so; the author can think that Apple made the best possible choices on all the various trade-offs (eg: more battery life requires larger/heavier system) while still understanding that there are trade-offs.
I think my favorite part of the article is right at the end:
Will Cisco and Broadcom be the first? Probably they'll decide, like everyone else, that it's cheaper to settle than to fight.
Such a pity, comrade.
Is this guy actually calling Open Source proponents a bunch of commies? Someone should get the man a wall calendar that shows the year. Before you know it, he'll be telling us we've got cooties or, Heaven forfend, that we're corroded.
Slashdot Mirror
What Brad needs, instead of writing sarcastic responses himself, is to get a lawyer to write a letter pointing out to these pinheads that satire is constitutionally protected...
This presumes that the aforementioned pinheads really don't know that his parody is constitutionally protected, which is somewhat unlikely. They know that the charges in their C&D are groundless, but figure that he will be cowed just because he got a letter from a lawyer. He's disabusing them of that notion.
Now, if they're dumb enough to actually bring suit on these charges, I'm sure he'll get himself a lawyer. Hell, there will probably be a pro-bono line outside his house -- who wouldn't want to get a slam-dunk against American Express on their resume?
The V-Chip is implanted directly into your childs brain and will emit a tiny negative reinforcement whenever your child attempts to utter an obscenity, disobey, or otherwise act like a child of his or her age.
ObSouthPark: ``Yeah -- do it, Cartman.''
No doubt when the mundane reason for this story becomes clear (e.g. hoax, sensational reporting or whatever), there will be another bunch of loons accusing the Italian government of a 'coverup'.
You're absolutely right, and it's ridiculous. Clearly, it will be the Vatican covering this up. I mean, the Catholic Church has been given a lot of influence, and it only has one job: keep these kinds of demonic manifestations from drawing the public eye. But perhaps I've said too much.
I'm less interested in seeing a Puppeteer than I am in seeing a kzin. Maybe they should rent the team who did Sully in "Monsters, Inc."
If Metallica's St. Anger is not selling like hotcakes it's because it's abject, utter crap, not because you can get it for free on the internet.
I wonder if what really upsets the RIAA is that, with the songs out on the Internet, everyone will know that it's crap without having to buy it. I paraphrase Bruce Dickinson from this summer's MSG concert: ``You know, I haven't noticed any problems with Iron Maiden album sales. Mainly because we're not putting out shit.''
And, of course, to augment meager stipends, PhD students can get into the business of helping freshmen figure out how to get the ghosts to leave them the Hell alone:
``Sir, what you had there is what we refer to as a Disembodied Location-specific Conversational Agent, or a Class 5 Full-roaming AI. Really nasty one, too.''
RFID tags will be embedded in things which you don't want to fry because you would destroy the useful function as well (_anything_ with electronics, your watch for example).
Not my watch, jefe. I'm partial to automatic movements, m'self. Oh, um, ``you insensitive clod.''
I'm still unsure whether the whole "take Frodo to Osgilith" scene was necessary or not. I understand Jackson's purpose (Faramir is human and corruptable by the ring, so that *needs* to be shown explicitly to drive the point home), I'm just not sure if I liked how it was handled.
I thought (and this may be overthinking, I grant), that most of the Denethor/Boromir/Faramir dynamic was an illustration of Sauron's ability to corrupt through the palantirs by working on innate weaknesses. (Saruman's weakness was his own arrogance, which led him to believe that he could fool Sauron and build and army that could eventually beat him, whereas instead he only aided Sauron by giving everyone else and extra front to wage war on.)
Denethor wanted his first-born son, Boromir, the next steward of Gondor, to be perfect -- strong, noble, and wise. However, it was Faramir who was the wiser of the two, and Faramir who should have been sent to Rivendell (Faramir, not Boromir, had the prophetic dream about it, as I recall). Faramir was wise enough to see that taking the Ring would lead to ruin, and strong enough to resist the urge. Without Denethor's irrational need to see Boromir as greater than he was, Faramir would have been with the fellowship (probably keeping it whole longer), while Boromir led raids on the armies of Mordor (where his skill and strength could have been put to better use).
Tolkien showed profound differences between the two brothers, while Jackson made Faramir a less-loved copy of Boromir. He may as well have left Faramir out entirely.
Why is it that only corporations are supposed to benefit from globalization?
I think it has to do with the ownership of work-for-hire products, and they did buy all those congressmen.
Globalization is entirely about having the least impediments to getting labor cheap and selling the results dear. I think Nike might have a handbook on it; you should ask.
MySQL Mistake #8: Failure to close connections properly will bite you in the ass during a Slashdotting.
Actually, the likely problem here is that the site is making use of PHP's ability to hold the connection to the database open, rather than doing an open/close on every query. This saves the overhead of establishing the connection on each page view, and is often a good thing.
However, each instance of Apache will open and hold the connection, so if you have a config that allows more Apache child processes than you've allowed concurrent connections under MySQL, you see this. The aggravating thing is that neither Apache nor MySQL are necessarily swamped when this happens -- you've just got more Apache processes than the configured number of concurrent MySQL connections.
Actually, wouldn't the worst problem be bone density loss.
Only if the transport is "coasting" for some significant part of the trip. You can accelerate (at something around 1G) to the midway point, then flip the ship around and decelerate (at around 1G) the rest of the trip. You've got near-Earth gravity for almost the whole trip that way.
Understand that I Am Not A Rocket Scientist, and am talking completely out of my ass here. Or maybe typing with my feet. Whatever.
How far would we be if lived in a society where Mathematicians had to pay roalities for using other peoples theroms in their proofs?
Dude! Not so loud!
whether he believes it or not isn't important... the people who "need" to believe this (from sco's point of view) are - in no order: ...
* his mom - so she's not so embarassed that she goes back to her maiden name
Which, I can only hope, is "McMaiden."
It's a known fact that Bill Gates never actually said this, or at best, that it is rephrased severely and taken out of context.
Actually, the usual "proof" that he never said this is an
interview he gave in 1996 in which he claimed never to have said it. I'm not sure we should be willing to take Bill Gates' word on this. Or, really, much of anything.
How can they enforce this, if memory cards/sticks for cameras have been doing this for years now? If they haven't be pursuing the patents enfringement before this, can they now?
The sneaky bit is that they didn't *apply* for the patent until 1995, I believe, and I'm not sure when it was granted. I don't know if it matters, legally, when they *invented* the format, only when the patent was actually filed. It's surely dirty pool to invent something, watch it move into common use, and *then* patent it (sort of a step beyond the more common submarine patent), but I don't know if there are any laws preventing it.
Sorry, but that's just the way it feels to me at the moment. Hopefully something will change in the near future and we'll be able to feel that the USA is a great and friendly power again.
Well, there *is* an election coming up, so keep your fingers crossed.
Too right. I use a TiVo and I haven't taking in any advertising for over a year. I assume that we will move more towards one of
* pay-to-view programmes
* pay-to-view channels
* blip-verts
* embedded advertising.
As it happens, I was reading over someone's shoulder on the train and saw a story in today's Wall Street Journal that ABC has contracted with an advertising firm called Mindshare to develop embedded advertising in their TV shows. Like I needed a new reason not to watch ABC.
I used to joke that we can't use master/slave anymore due to a NAACP lawsuit against the computer industry. Guess it ain't a joke anymore.
My personal theory is that when God hears a joke he likes, he repeats it.
What we've gotten out of this ruling is that a garage door opening signal code isn't art, and therefore can't enjoy a copyright. Therefore, it doesn't look good for a chip that emits a signal that communicates a message that equates to nothing more than "I'm made by Lexmark."
Unless that message is in the form of a short tune, which can be copyrighted by Lexmark. And, as Goddess is my witness, I can't for my life tell if I'm kidding or not.
And I'm sure the RIAA will be all over this new music format, positively love it: how are you going to share what's in your head?
Dateline: Washington DC, 2023/10/15
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court today ruled that telepathy is covered as a copyright circumvention device. The RIAA quickly announced plans to license this kind of content distribution with ``moderate restrictions,'' and created a subdivision called ``PsiCorps'' to administer the licensing scheme.
``I think there's a wonderful and exciting future ahead,'' said RIAA spokesperson Al Bester. ``Be seeing you.''
And, after they figure out who (if anybody) has the remains of Billy the Kid, I think they should gather together a bunch of relics from cathedrals, do some DNA comparison between them, and figure out once and for all if John the Baptist really did have four skulls, six hands, and three tongues.
But what if every one in 100 times, UPS thinks I might like a corporate logo bumper sticker instead of my book, they throw my book into the eternal void, and give me a UPS bumper sticker instead. I'm supposed to like this?
And then they tell you that it was okay for them to do because, after the first time it happened, you could just ask the UPS driver not to do that any more. ``Nothing to it.''
If only they hadn't changed Faramir...
For me, that's the one unforgivable sin that Jackson has committed with the Lord of the Rings thus far. And keeping Faramir's dialogue the same as in the book while completely changing the meaning -- just unconscionable. (Sorry; I'm not usually a rabid Tolkien geek, but the dynamics around Faramir/Boromir/Denethor were, for me, some of the most powerful parts of the whole trilogy.)
And then at the bottom of this rant, the author says:While not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
What gives? Is this guy totally out to lunch?
I don't think so; the author can think that Apple made the best possible choices on all the various trade-offs (eg: more battery life requires larger/heavier system) while still understanding that there are trade-offs.
I think my favorite part of the article is right at the end:
Will Cisco and Broadcom be the first? Probably they'll decide, like everyone else, that it's cheaper to settle than to fight.
Such a pity, comrade.
Is this guy actually calling Open Source proponents a bunch of commies? Someone should get the man a wall calendar that shows the year. Before you know it, he'll be telling us we've got cooties or, Heaven forfend, that we're corroded.