"Freedom of the press" did NOT mean "Freedom of news corporations and their employees." When the U.S. Constitution was written, a press was a device someone might own or otherwise have access to. "Freedom of the press" meant that the U.S. federal government was not allowed to tell citizens what they could or could not say in writing. It was supposed to make clear that "freedom of speech" was not just restricted to what you could say with your mouth, but also via other methods of communication.
In other words, every U.S. citizen has the right to "freedom of the press," at least in theory.
In reality, almost every supposed right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution can (or often has been) taken away almost at will by those in power. In other words, the Bill of Rights basically has become the "List of Things We Might Let You Have Unless You Really Annoy/Embarass Us."
What could possibly go wrong? It's not like fossil fuel corporations have a history of cutting corners to make even more obscene profits, cause disasters that they don't even come close to paying for, poisoning people and the environment, and then bribe politicians into letting them do it over and over again?
Right?
And they weren't a big bank like HSBC, which was given a slap on the wrist (relative to the illicit profits) for massive money-laundering that benefited terrorist organizations and drug cartels.
If Bitfloor had made contributions to enough politicians, they probably would have been allowed to continue.
Apparently one problem is that the Xio's expert made a terrible mistake:
Xio’s own expert admitted there are “almost unlimited number” of ways to design the pieces and the board and the game would still “function perfectly well.” Pl. Motion, at 35.
Basically, the judge was given wrong information about the realistic possibility of using blocks of other shapes or configurations. While there may be some other piece designs that would work, there are not that many that would avoid introducing a fairly complex and thus hard-to-play geometry.
The judge also seemed to believe that a falling block game was a completely novel idea, without any real-world counterpart. I'm puzzled by this, and think she didn't comprehend the gravity of the situation (puns intended).
If you meant all of the Star Trek franchise, you're forgetting all those Holodeck episodes. Now, making a story for TV was often a stretch, but it makes a lot of sense that crew would spend a lot of time in the Holodeck between locations.
"start operating the courts in English" as opposed to legalese that only superficially looks like English but has completely different non-obvious meanings for words that ordinary people use all the time. . . . It is the legal system that perverts those meanings.
It's really sad to see someone say that technical legal terms are somehow bad. You want the law to be simple? Fine. If you do something some people think is bad, the state kills you. Simple. No need for extenuating circumstances like self-defense, accident, etc. Death penalty for everything.
Just like any other complex field (think computer technology or some other typical Slashdotter field), legal terms often have a lot of nuance. They need to - they describe non-simple concepts.
If you want the jury to get it right, come up with a list of commonly misunderstood (for the courtroom meaning) words and make sure to spend some time educating the jurors.
Despite what you may think from TV, they actually DO that - they are called "jury instructions," which define terms and explain how they fit together. If something has a meaning other than what a layperson thinks, it is the JOB of the attorneys and/or judge to explain that to the jury. That's the whole point of having a trial: to give the jury the information needed on which to base a decision. It's not perfect, but it's the best system we've come up with so far. Like the myriad proposed solutions for spam tend to ignore reality, most alternatives to the jury system fail to understand basic human nature.
I would be much more likely to try to look it up myself instead of asking the judge to explain it. For one thing, even the friendliest of judges is very intimidating, just because he is a judge and you are in his courtroom, whether you're the one on trial or not.
Looking up words on your own is a very bad idea. Would you want your technophobe relative setting up your own systems by reading articles on USAToday? Don't try to become the attorney or judge by looking up a term on "teh intrawebs."
IAAL, but not yours. Hopefully if you ever need one, you'll get a good one that does his/her job and makes sure the jury knows what it needs to give you justice (although if justice would be bad for you, I suppose my "hopes" wouldn't be yours *grin* ).
What I wonder about is whether the ease of reading attributed (correctly, I assume) to proportional fonts apply to prose, but not necessarily to the kinds of reading needed in programming. When I read code, I'm sometimes looking for single-character mistakes. In a case like that, a proportional font that helps form "word-pictures" might mask an error.
In other words, the speed attributed to proportional fonts is for reading comprehension — translating text into thought — but might actually detract from the speed and accuracy of reading for the purpose of editing/finding mistakes.
It almost sounds like the Chinese government is somehow implicated in the attack, which would sound incredible if it didn't include the personal information of dissidents.
Incredible? Where have you been? Governments around the world have strongly suspected the Chinese government has been silently providing support and encouragement, if not directly paying, hackers to probe and outright attack government and national infrastructure computer systems.
Do you get all your news via China-censored sources?
So, is it a $300 video gets a $30 million deal, like the title, or a $30 video gets a $300 million movie deal?
Based on the comments from people who appear to have RTFA, it seems the title is correct: $300 / $30 million. I sure hope whoever wrote that summary is working in entertainment and not engineering. Hollywood gets things wrong by a factor of ten all the time and no one dies, right?
[ Come on, that's a softball - someone post a good response. ]
So, are you saying that Apple has "market power" in the market for Mac OS X? If the standard was whether a manufacturer has market power in their exact product (not its category), then there would NEVER be a question.
So, obviously not. Instead, the question is whether Apple has market power with Mac OS X in the operating systems market. Anyone care to argue that they do?
Didn't think so.
I haven't even taken antitrust law (yet), and I could reason through that one.
Furthermore, the link you gave (US DOJ) uses the example of Windows as having market power in the operating systems market, and thus contradicts your premise.
Of course, stress the word CAN. Some posters below suggest filing an application (relatively cheap). In the U.S., even a provisional application should do the trick (easier to fill out). Just be sure that you NEVER are going to change your mind. If you file a provisional and wait more than a year without doing anything else, you're barred from patenting the invention.
IANAL (yet), so I hope I got that right.
Oh, NeXT was not a complete failure. It was good enough to make it easy for Tim Berners-Lee to invent the web using its developer tools (precursor to XCode).
Also, as someone else mentioned, it bought Apple for negative $400 million. That's a pretty good deal.:-)
Ah, yes, that "arcane" document called the Constitution of the United States of America. Article III courts have jurisdiction to hear "cases" and "controversies" - they do not have power to legislate. The original question was whether the SCOTUS could review laws before they become law. It cannot. Our Constitution says that laws are created through passage by both houses of Congress and presentation to the President (becomes law if signed, ignored, or if a veto is overridden by 2/3 of each house). Notice that the Constitution doesn't say that the judiciary has any part in this. If the courts advised Congress during this process, there would be a conflict if someone later brought a case alleging the law was unconstitutional.
Do you think that laws NEVER have unanticipated consequences? Bad idea to have a court pre-approve something, then have every member of SCOTUS have to recuse themselves from hearing a case about a law they had been part of creating. Chief Justice Roberts had to recuse himself from a case early in his tenure because he had heard it in a lower court.
If you're unwilling to do the research on this yourself to see why this is not allowed by our Constitution, for good reason, then you'll have to trust me. I don't have time to write a long article on this - I've got plenty of other work to do.
IANAL - yet.:-) I have learned something over the past year and a half, though.
Simple explanation (there's more to it): SCOTUS doesn't give advisory opinions because we have an adversarial judicial system.
In other words, we like to think that interested parties argue before the court. For that to work, they must be _interested_ parties that have are adversely affected directly. There is a belief that if we didn't require that, someone might say "I'll challenge that!" and then do a poor job and lose. Then, because of stare decisis, there would be a strong presumption that the loss was valid, and those who REALLY are hurt later on would have a harder time winning.
There's a lot more to it, but that's a simple explanation. George Washington asked for advice on something early in his administration and SCOTUS had to basically say "Sorry. We think you're great and we'd like to help, but we can't. We assume you'll do a good job, but would have to wait and see if what you do is constitutional after it is actually done."
Oh, separation of powers is a big part of this, too.
I'm a long-time Commerce Bank customer (bank employees always confused by less-than-10-digit account number). It used to be that Commerce Bank would not charge you to use other bank machines, but you'd still sometimes be charged by the ATM owner. However, for at least the past year, Commerce Bank (in New york City, at least) has been refunding our account with what the OTHER banks charge when we use their ATMs. Very nice - all ATM use is essentially free.
NO "levees" broke - "canal walls" broke
on
Controlling Hurricanes?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
By the way, I suppose I can't blame people on/. for getting this wrong, since almost every major media outlet did: Not a single levee broke. All 4 breaks were in canal walls.
Levees are massive earthworks - they aren't easily "breached" but would have to be worn away (long time) or overrun.
The breaks were in the canal flood walls.
Maybe we should build more sturdy canal flood walls, but maybe it should be done by people who know what they hell they are talking about, not people who don't even know what actually broke. A lot of journalists seem to think they are experts on everything under the sun. Every time I read an article or watch a report on something in which I'm even a rank amateur I notice MAJOR inaccuracies/simplifications/lies.
Don't count on news-people to even get right reporting what the problem is, let alone the solution.
[PS. Yes - this isn't a solution either - perhaps we should talk to people in Florida, who say that after they got hit by Andrew finally learned how to evacuate properly. Get that fixed, then talk about trying to defeat hurricanes by building bigger walls...]
I've started to put together a customized Google Map of interdictor's area: interdictor map.
I've only got a little on there now, but will add more (like other flood lines, etc) if people send me email with coordinates to gmap AT danREMOVEshockley.com
I've got a simple click-to-find-coordinates map at: Test Map Coords
Slashdot Mirror
What?!
"Freedom of the press" did NOT mean "Freedom of news corporations and their employees." When the U.S. Constitution was written, a press was a device someone might own or otherwise have access to. "Freedom of the press" meant that the U.S. federal government was not allowed to tell citizens what they could or could not say in writing. It was supposed to make clear that "freedom of speech" was not just restricted to what you could say with your mouth, but also via other methods of communication.
In other words, every U.S. citizen has the right to "freedom of the press," at least in theory. In reality, almost every supposed right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution can (or often has been) taken away almost at will by those in power. In other words, the Bill of Rights basically has become the "List of Things We Might Let You Have Unless You Really Annoy/Embarass Us."
What could possibly go wrong? It's not like fossil fuel corporations have a history of cutting corners to make even more obscene profits, cause disasters that they don't even come close to paying for, poisoning people and the environment, and then bribe politicians into letting them do it over and over again? Right?
Disappointing.... Guess I'll start getting my A/V from Peter Norton instead.
Not Peter North, then?
And they weren't a big bank like HSBC, which was given a slap on the wrist (relative to the illicit profits) for massive money-laundering that benefited terrorist organizations and drug cartels. If Bitfloor had made contributions to enough politicians, they probably would have been allowed to continue.
Basically, the judge was given wrong information about the realistic possibility of using blocks of other shapes or configurations. While there may be some other piece designs that would work, there are not that many that would avoid introducing a fairly complex and thus hard-to-play geometry.
The judge also seemed to believe that a falling block game was a completely novel idea, without any real-world counterpart. I'm puzzled by this, and think she didn't comprehend the gravity of the situation (puns intended).
If you meant all of the Star Trek franchise, you're forgetting all those Holodeck episodes. Now, making a story for TV was often a stretch, but it makes a lot of sense that crew would spend a lot of time in the Holodeck between locations.
"start operating the courts in English" as opposed to legalese that only superficially looks like English but has completely different non-obvious meanings for words that ordinary people use all the time. . . . It is the legal system that perverts those meanings.
It's really sad to see someone say that technical legal terms are somehow bad. You want the law to be simple? Fine. If you do something some people think is bad, the state kills you. Simple. No need for extenuating circumstances like self-defense, accident, etc. Death penalty for everything.
Just like any other complex field (think computer technology or some other typical Slashdotter field), legal terms often have a lot of nuance. They need to - they describe non-simple concepts.
If you want the jury to get it right, come up with a list of commonly misunderstood (for the courtroom meaning) words and make sure to spend some time educating the jurors.
Despite what you may think from TV, they actually DO that - they are called "jury instructions," which define terms and explain how they fit together. If something has a meaning other than what a layperson thinks, it is the JOB of the attorneys and/or judge to explain that to the jury. That's the whole point of having a trial: to give the jury the information needed on which to base a decision. It's not perfect, but it's the best system we've come up with so far. Like the myriad proposed solutions for spam tend to ignore reality, most alternatives to the jury system fail to understand basic human nature.
I would be much more likely to try to look it up myself instead of asking the judge to explain it. For one thing, even the friendliest of judges is very intimidating, just because he is a judge and you are in his courtroom, whether you're the one on trial or not.
Looking up words on your own is a very bad idea. Would you want your technophobe relative setting up your own systems by reading articles on USAToday? Don't try to become the attorney or judge by looking up a term on "teh intrawebs."
IAAL, but not yours. Hopefully if you ever need one, you'll get a good one that does his/her job and makes sure the jury knows what it needs to give you justice (although if justice would be bad for you, I suppose my "hopes" wouldn't be yours *grin* ).
What I wonder about is whether the ease of reading attributed (correctly, I assume) to proportional fonts apply to prose, but not necessarily to the kinds of reading needed in programming. When I read code, I'm sometimes looking for single-character mistakes. In a case like that, a proportional font that helps form "word-pictures" might mask an error. In other words, the speed attributed to proportional fonts is for reading comprehension — translating text into thought — but might actually detract from the speed and accuracy of reading for the purpose of editing/finding mistakes.
It almost sounds like the Chinese government is somehow implicated in the attack, which would sound incredible if it didn't include the personal information of dissidents.
Incredible? Where have you been? Governments around the world have strongly suspected the Chinese government has been silently providing support and encouragement, if not directly paying, hackers to probe and outright attack government and national infrastructure computer systems. Do you get all your news via China-censored sources?
cause outrage amongst all of our members.
Shouldn't that be something like "within each individual unique member" - or is even that too much like a multiple item set?
So, is it a $300 video gets a $30 million deal, like the title, or a $30 video gets a $300 million movie deal?
Based on the comments from people who appear to have RTFA, it seems the title is correct: $300 / $30 million. I sure hope whoever wrote that summary is working in entertainment and not engineering. Hollywood gets things wrong by a factor of ten all the time and no one dies, right?
[ Come on, that's a softball - someone post a good response. ]
first herd of the big band theory.
Is the first herd the trumpets? Would the second herd be the trombones? Sousa, is that you?
This topic reminds me of the final scene from: Buggy Saints Row: the Musical, by Cabel Sasser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l_YN-yRCVY
If you don't get the joke in parent's sig, google the phrase. There's more goodness in that sig, too.
So, are you saying that Apple has "market power" in the market for Mac OS X? If the standard was whether a manufacturer has market power in their exact product (not its category), then there would NEVER be a question. So, obviously not. Instead, the question is whether Apple has market power with Mac OS X in the operating systems market. Anyone care to argue that they do? Didn't think so. I haven't even taken antitrust law (yet), and I could reason through that one. Furthermore, the link you gave (US DOJ) uses the example of Windows as having market power in the operating systems market, and thus contradicts your premise.
Of course, stress the word CAN. Some posters below suggest filing an application (relatively cheap). In the U.S., even a provisional application should do the trick (easier to fill out). Just be sure that you NEVER are going to change your mind. If you file a provisional and wait more than a year without doing anything else, you're barred from patenting the invention. IANAL (yet), so I hope I got that right.
See the post by asdjlfhgas (603713) above. The parent is wrong - too bad the mods didn't know that.
Oh, NeXT was not a complete failure. It was good enough to make it easy for Tim Berners-Lee to invent the web using its developer tools (precursor to XCode). Also, as someone else mentioned, it bought Apple for negative $400 million. That's a pretty good deal. :-)
Ah, yes, that "arcane" document called the Constitution of the United States of America. Article III courts have jurisdiction to hear "cases" and "controversies" - they do not have power to legislate. The original question was whether the SCOTUS could review laws before they become law. It cannot. Our Constitution says that laws are created through passage by both houses of Congress and presentation to the President (becomes law if signed, ignored, or if a veto is overridden by 2/3 of each house). Notice that the Constitution doesn't say that the judiciary has any part in this. If the courts advised Congress during this process, there would be a conflict if someone later brought a case alleging the law was unconstitutional. Do you think that laws NEVER have unanticipated consequences? Bad idea to have a court pre-approve something, then have every member of SCOTUS have to recuse themselves from hearing a case about a law they had been part of creating. Chief Justice Roberts had to recuse himself from a case early in his tenure because he had heard it in a lower court. If you're unwilling to do the research on this yourself to see why this is not allowed by our Constitution, for good reason, then you'll have to trust me. I don't have time to write a long article on this - I've got plenty of other work to do. IANAL - yet. :-) I have learned something over the past year and a half, though.
Simple explanation (there's more to it): SCOTUS doesn't give advisory opinions because we have an adversarial judicial system. In other words, we like to think that interested parties argue before the court. For that to work, they must be _interested_ parties that have are adversely affected directly. There is a belief that if we didn't require that, someone might say "I'll challenge that!" and then do a poor job and lose. Then, because of stare decisis, there would be a strong presumption that the loss was valid, and those who REALLY are hurt later on would have a harder time winning. There's a lot more to it, but that's a simple explanation. George Washington asked for advice on something early in his administration and SCOTUS had to basically say "Sorry. We think you're great and we'd like to help, but we can't. We assume you'll do a good job, but would have to wait and see if what you do is constitutional after it is actually done." Oh, separation of powers is a big part of this, too.
"to much Family Guy" ... go much accolades.
I'm a long-time Commerce Bank customer (bank employees always confused by less-than-10-digit account number). It used to be that Commerce Bank would not charge you to use other bank machines, but you'd still sometimes be charged by the ATM owner. However, for at least the past year, Commerce Bank (in New york City, at least) has been refunding our account with what the OTHER banks charge when we use their ATMs. Very nice - all ATM use is essentially free.
By the way, I suppose I can't blame people on /. for getting this wrong, since almost every major media outlet did: Not a single levee broke. All 4 breaks were in canal walls.
Levees are massive earthworks - they aren't easily "breached" but would have to be worn away (long time) or overrun.
The breaks were in the canal flood walls.
Maybe we should build more sturdy canal flood walls, but maybe it should be done by people who know what they hell they are talking about, not people who don't even know what actually broke. A lot of journalists seem to think they are experts on everything under the sun. Every time I read an article or watch a report on something in which I'm even a rank amateur I notice MAJOR inaccuracies/simplifications/lies.
Don't count on news-people to even get right reporting what the problem is, let alone the solution.
[PS. Yes - this isn't a solution either - perhaps we should talk to people in Florida, who say that after they got hit by Andrew finally learned how to evacuate properly. Get that fixed, then talk about trying to defeat hurricanes by building bigger walls...]
interdictor map.
I've only got a little on there now, but will add more (like other flood lines, etc) if people send me email with coordinates to gmap AT danREMOVEshockley.com
I've got a simple click-to-find-coordinates map at:
Test Map Coords
Security Update for 10.2.8
Idiot.