and you'd better believe I had them preordered weeks in advance
Awwwww, if you were a true Koy obsessive compulsive like me, you would have spent the $180 to get the limited edition DVD signed by Godfrey Reggio a couple years ago! (Sadly Godfrey didn't sign the disc, just the plain white envelope it came in)
Of course I also bought Koy on LaserDisc for a mere $150 about 5 years ago.
And I have a shrinkwrapped VHS of it...
I highly reccomend that anyone who has not already seen them do so, but be sure you have time to devote to REALLY watching them, trust me, it is worth it.
I fully agree with this comment. If you are watching Koy for the first time, you must set aside an hour and a half that will be free from disruptions and watch the film. Otherwise you might miss the plot!
I have a brief story along these lines I experienced this quarter. I'm a Mechanical Engineer who went into industry developing software. When the downturn came nobody wanted to hire an ME to write software. We all know only people with CS degrees can code... So anyway, I'm back in college working on a CS degree and having my ME tattoo lasered off...
I'm sitting in my introductory data structures class and we're going over big O notation and having a math review on series summation (the big sigma notation). During most of this I'm playing MAME on my laptop drinking Dew trying to stay awake it's so god awful boring.
The next class lecture we're going over bubble sort and big O and the instructor is explaining how because bubble sort goes through n items n times it has a big O of n^2. I glance up from my game of frogger, look over his bubble sort code, note that he's got an optimization in there where he reduces the number of items by 1 each pass. Some quick head math and I speak up "The optimization you have in there reduces the number of items by 1 in each pass, is the exact time complexity equal to the sum of the series from 1 to n? Or about half n^2?". Every student in the class - and most sadly the instructor too - simultaneously turned around and looked at me with the "what the hell does that mean?" expression on their face... I stare back at them as reality hits me and my frog is run over by a slow moving tractor trailer.
At that moment I realized that of this class full of rising hopefuls for the future of software engineering (all of them in their sophomore year) not a single one of them had taken a beginning course in Calculus... or if they had, they didn't pay attention. After class several came up to and said "Hey, it sounds like you understand how this big E lookin' thing works, could you explain it to me?"... Now you know why the dot coms failed...
Re:There was an Ask Slashdot a while back. . .
on
Engineer in a Box?
·
· Score: 2
Engineering is about understanding structures, and the materials that make them, in every day use. There is no way you can learn this from a book. It requires that you " get your hands dirty" and build some actual structures, with actual materials.
Having been a Mechanical Engineering major, I'm not sure I wholly agree with you. While building your structure out of parts scavenged from here and there:
Where is the structure's weakpoint? How weak is it? What material have you built with? How strong is it? Have you overdesigned? Have you underdesigned? How much would it cost to manufacture? How much force will break it? How much impulse force will break it? How will it fracture when it does break? Will it give off shards of crap that might cut somebody or poke their eye out?
All that math we take sets us up to work equations in statics, strength of materials, fracture mechanics and finite element analysis. Fortunately computers do most of that gruntwork. There's a lot of crap we learn from the books (afterwards we generally go to the lab and break shit... that's why mechanical engineering was such fun... all the breakage!) It isn't practical to mock up and crash test every design (oh how we wish it were...)
Though like you said, if he's just looking to make a few doodads for around the house and bone up on his l33t band saw skillz... Just build something with the scavenged parts.
I invite you to point out any "dogma" in my previous arguments
From your previous post...
namely that the brand-new human's right to life does absolutely supersede their convenience
From the post most recent...
but those reasons pale in comparison to the matter of l-i-f-e
And there you have it. Your ethical stance requires a dogmatic definition of when life begins, and when it does the dogmatic position that the rights of the new life supercede those of its host.
but both should live up to the responsibility that goes with that right, namely that the brand-new human's right to life does absolutely supersede their convenience.
How did you arrive at that without religious conviction or luddite mentality? And we aren't talking "convenience" here. There's a strong possibility that carrying to term will permanently alter the woman's body for the worse, and temporarily or (very rarely) permanently alter her mind.
I have the right to my own body, but I can't wrap my hands around someone's neck and say after their death: "they should have asked to be in someone else's hands." That is, in my view, a logical extension of your line of reasoning, which is of course absurd.
No that is illogical unless a) Strangling the person was in your pursuit of happiness and b) being strangled by you was their pursuit of happiness. (note how I had a "both parties agree or go separate ways" in my sarcastic remark) Also your version implies someone losing their right to life while doing no damage to the other.
But back to my real argument... Your "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" just does not hold unless you accept that the rights of the unborn supercede the rights of the would-be mother. And that requires some sort of dogmatic position.
It's the body of a brand-new human that has its own inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So why does the brand-new human's rights supersede those of the woman's? I can't pursue happiness on your property without your permission... So why should this be different? If the new human is so determined at a shot at life, maybe it should leave the womb and gestate elsewhere - or optionally it should request permission to gestate in the woman's womb.
Because in "reality" people who regularly exercise report enjoying life more, and senior citizens who continue to exercise report enjoying life more than their sedentary counterparts. IOW, quality in quantity.
You seem bent on this hypothetical person who is 4 standard deviations from the mean who has plenty of energy, feels great all the time and is readily willing to give up a few hours now at the expense of years in the future (both raw numbers of years of life, and quality of those twilight years).
Does your hypothetical person forego showers so that they can enjoy more quality time now?
Everybody is different... But research suggests that exercise has the effect the previous post stated on a substantial majority of the population (rounded to the nearest percent, I think it was about 100%). Maybe the places that make these claims are just way out there... Places like Johns Hopkins University for one.
It really is just scared developers concerned that anything redmond can cough up is too mainstream and below them...
I'm pretty sure most of us developers are just a frightful bunch. Ada is an infamously derided language ("oh the government made it, so it's basically a beauracracy of a language") - yet it has more built in support for requirements validation and maintainability. If you look carefully at Ada, it is a pain to work with, but the result can be readily and meticulously examined by people other than the original developers.
If you were a sailor and an exocet was screaming towards your vessel 500 yards out and skimming the waves and the only thing between walking the deck and treading the waves is your Phalanx close-in weapon system, you're probably hoping the software which controls the Phalanx was developed with Ada. Now would not be the time to file a support request because your C++ caused a general protection fault.
So whether it's C# or anything else... I think way too many are afraid of having to re-stock their toolset from scratch. There's comfort in working with what you've always worked with. Insert cliche dinosaur analogy here.
Prescription - noun 4 a : a written direction for a therapeutic or corrective agent; specifically : one for the preparation and use of a medicine b : a prescribed medicine c : something like a doctor's prescription
When your doctor says to the nurse "give him tylenol", your doctor has prescribed tylenol. Coincidentally, I never used the word prescribe in my message, I used the language the Tylenol commercials use - I had hoped people would put it together. I think most did.
You think doctor's only refer to it as Acetaminophen or APAP? I can't think of a time my daughter's pediatrician has referred to over the counter analgesics / fever reducers as anything other than "Tylenol" or "Advil". He always refers to Guaifenesin as "Robitussin" too. I can't say my experience matches yours.
What? Medicine is an excellent example *because* cheaper generics that contain *exactly* the same active ingredient exist, *but* people still buy Tylenol in greater quantity because of *advertisements*.
In the end, all I was saying is, a lot of money is spent on advertising without any way to directly measure its effectiveness.
Well, there are. They just tend to give the same results as the accounting department that says "Hey, sales are up". One is a lot cheaper, so the detailed tracking is usually only done as an academic exercise.
("Eat GeneriFlakes -- they're cooool")
That is an excellent example of a marketting strategy which works extremely well with children. Keep repeating that statement with big pictures of the front of the cereal box - and kids will identify with the product and Mom will buy GeneriFlakes.
So using that logic... *why* am I subjected to Tylenol commercials? There isn't a "new" Tylenol on the market. Yet I happen to know it's the brand used by more hospitals than any other. When I go to the store and think "damn my head hurts, I should get something for it", you don't think maybe regular dosings of Tylenol commercials is going to affect my decision? My only interest is pain relief, my options are broad.
I'm afraid your conspiracy theory just doesn't work. When it comes to new products, the hardest thing to do is to just get the message out "Hey, try our new Heroin(tm) gelcaps for migraine pain". Say you created a new pain reliever, but didn't market it, just paid stores to put it on the shelves but didn't do any ad campaign... Do you really think you'd have decent sales volume because people interested in pain relief would seek out your product?
I think you'd fail, even if you were better than everybody else.
Data comes in one way and gets read many times and that's the sort of use MySQL's raw speed will blow both postgres and oarcle away at.
I disagree, every test I've ever done or read in the last 3 years, postgres is as fast or faster than MySQL (using reasonable sized data not "100 test records"). Do you have a link to a benchmark on recent versions of each (without magic 3rd party patches)?
I think "Glazed over" is too polite a term. In fact, I call "bullshit" on most of the article. The author either purposefully "dressed up" the story, or some people pulled wool over his eyes and he didn't pay attention...
Why are all these "intelligent" individuals carrying around so much hard cash? Why would you carry $200,000 in hard cash through an airport security checkpoint? Did it not occur to these intelligent individuals that there are professional thieves in Vegas who look for fools who wander the streets carrying large winnings? Why are they shoving chips down their pants? If you win $100K at a table, you can be sure the eye in the sky is going to watch your every move. If you hand off the bag to someone who shoves it in his pants.... DON'T YOU THINK THAT'S GOING TO RAISES SUSPICION?!
It didn't bother them that they weren't doing anything technically illegal? Hello! Fake IDs? Isn't that a felony?
A crowded area so that the conversation could not possibly be recorded? Didn't this surveillance pro know that they make shotgun mics to pick out voices in a crowded stadium? And what about that TV camera transmission thing? There is a lot of metal in casinos and all sorts of EMF noise. Multipaths abound. This may have been true, but since I was incredulous over so much of the article I figured I'd hit this one as well. *HOW* was a high quality signal transmitted from a hidden camera going through the metal, concrete, and noise of the casino making it out? And what about the person wearing gloves? Can you handle cards while wearing gloves in a casino? I've never seen anybody do this. And marking the cards with a radioactive isotope and using a geiger counter? Huh? The average density of tagged cards in the shoe is going to be fairly constant, I can't believe that distances of maybe 20 cards are going to result in noticeable changes from the distance the geiger counter was from the shoe.
Security came to intimidate someone in the middle of the night, and forced entry into the room? If anything Casinos are VERY CONSCIOUS of the legal rules surrounding what they do. This just doesn't sound like them. They will usually wait for the morning, then tell the person they have to leave. They don't drag them down to the basement if this looks like the person's first offense. How do you think 7/12 jurors would vote in a civil action for wrongful imprisonment by a multi-billion dollar establishment? Casinos don't drag you to the basement unless they have compelling evidence.
Blackjack teams have been around since at least the 70's. In the 80's the casinos got good at spotting them and sharing information. Seeing this sort of thing happen in the 90's? Huh? The first time I read about this was in the early 90's... It's not like the casinos just figured this one out, it had been in print for years prior.
Maybe I'm all wrong... But this doesn't match my experience in the casinos and really sounds like mostly bullshit. Some of what they did is real... there was a time it was easy to do. But most of the article sounds like dressed up cloak and dagger social engineering bullshit.
*sigh* when will you people understand... Band Aid has already lost the "uniqueness" of their name through dilution.
You guys are stuck on "You either have it or you don't" when that is untrue. Nobody making self adhesive bandages can market them as "Band aids". But a plumber who repairs leaks can market "I bandaid your leaky faucet".
Now if I made my own brand of adhesive bandages called "Mag a gag", a plumber who repairs leaks cannot say "I mag a gag your leaky faucet" because *MY* brand name has not been diluted. I could sue him for dilution of *MY* trademark even though on its face it doesn't seem like this plumber is going to sell you my self adhesive bandages.
Johnson & Johnson has lost that bit of their trademark... Okay let me say this again because you guys don't seem to be reading it... They haven't lost the right to exclusively market their product in their market... They've lost the right to sue someone trying to dilute their trademark.
So coming BACK TO THE TOPIC... Toho has lost "Zilla" to dilution. If "DaveZilla" is some sort of fiction about a city smashing lizard from the sea, they ABSOLUTELY can sue for misappropriation of their "GODZILLA" mark. However because "Zilla" has been DILUTED, they can't go after anyone using the notion of "Zilla" created by their GODZILLA movies (well they can, but they'll lose).
Take a trip with your prospective wife-to-be who really wants a diamond:
1) Go to new york. Find a widowed mother raising an infant girl and say to the woman "Gee, I'm sorry your husband was crushed under 40 floors of steel and concrete trying to rescue people from the world trade center, I think it's just terrible... But I *really* want a diamond enough that I'm willing to give Osama $80."
2) Go to a nice south african country embroiled in a bitter and savage civil war. Find a young amputee and have your wife-to-be say "Gee I'm sorry that marauding rebels came through here, held you down while you cried and pleaded for them not to hurt you then severed your right leg above the knee - so that your parents would not fear them enough to mine diamonds for them. But I *really* want a diamond, and hey at least you didn't die from infection!"
3) Go find a young girl who was ordered raped by an organized crime syndicate because her father, a jewelry store owner, wasn't buying russian diamonds. Have your wife say "Golly, I bet that really was embarrassing to be immodestly exposed in front of those guys, but I *really* want a diamond, and therapy can make you better!"
I could go on... Believe me when you tell your girl this she's going to give the denial thing "You don't know that somebody paid a terrible inhuman price for *that* particular diamond". The truth is, the demand for diamonds did. And while she has the need to go to her girlfriends and say "See how much he loves me? Look at how big this diamond is!" she's going to turn a blind eye to her culpability in an industry whose savage and brutality is second perhaps only to the drug cartels.
If she still wants a diamond... Is this really the woman you want?
So are kids stuck on band-aid 'cuz band-aid's stuck on them?
Oh wait, no they aren't anymore... Now kids are stuck on band-aid BRAND...
I wonder why they changed the jingle... hmmm...
No, you can't market bandages with that name, but as far as dilution is concerned, it's gone. So coming back to the TOPIC as to can DaveZilla argue that Toho doesn't have claim to "Zilla"... No they don't unless DaveZilla is a movie or toy of a large mothra-fighting lizard.
Isn't Band-Aid a stateside generic term for sticking plasters?
Isn't that what I said?
For the example to hold, "Band Aid" would have had to have been diluted such that it has entered the language:
1) Band Aid is a synonym for a self adhesive strip bandage. 2) Band Aid is an adjective meaning "A haphazard repair done quickly and temporary in nature" 3) Band Aid was a fund raising concert for starving people in africa.
That's pretty diluted. Just as 'Zilla has entered the language: BugZilla DiffZilla MoZilla Go!Zilla TrafficZilla and what was the phrase the judge in the Mattel v. Aqua/MCA/et.al. call Mattel?
Slashdot Mirror
It has no plot
Egad! Please tell me you didn't mean to say that!
and you'd better believe I had them preordered weeks in advance
Awwwww, if you were a true Koy obsessive compulsive like me, you would have spent the $180 to get the limited edition DVD signed by Godfrey Reggio a couple years ago! (Sadly Godfrey didn't sign the disc, just the plain white envelope it came in)
Of course I also bought Koy on LaserDisc for a mere $150 about 5 years ago.
And I have a shrinkwrapped VHS of it...
I highly reccomend that anyone who has not already seen them do so, but be sure you have time to devote to REALLY watching them, trust me, it is worth it.
I fully agree with this comment. If you are watching Koy for the first time, you must set aside an hour and a half that will be free from disruptions and watch the film. Otherwise you might miss the plot!
I have a brief story along these lines I experienced this quarter. I'm a Mechanical Engineer who went into industry developing software. When the downturn came nobody wanted to hire an ME to write software. We all know only people with CS degrees can code... So anyway, I'm back in college working on a CS degree and having my ME tattoo lasered off...
I'm sitting in my introductory data structures class and we're going over big O notation and having a math review on series summation (the big sigma notation). During most of this I'm playing MAME on my laptop drinking Dew trying to stay awake it's so god awful boring.
The next class lecture we're going over bubble sort and big O and the instructor is explaining how because bubble sort goes through n items n times it has a big O of n^2. I glance up from my game of frogger, look over his bubble sort code, note that he's got an optimization in there where he reduces the number of items by 1 each pass. Some quick head math and I speak up "The optimization you have in there reduces the number of items by 1 in each pass, is the exact time complexity equal to the sum of the series from 1 to n? Or about half n^2?". Every student in the class - and most sadly the instructor too - simultaneously turned around and looked at me with the "what the hell does that mean?" expression on their face... I stare back at them as reality hits me and my frog is run over by a slow moving tractor trailer.
At that moment I realized that of this class full of rising hopefuls for the future of software engineering (all of them in their sophomore year) not a single one of them had taken a beginning course in Calculus... or if they had, they didn't pay attention. After class several came up to and said "Hey, it sounds like you understand how this big E lookin' thing works, could you explain it to me?"... Now you know why the dot coms failed...
Engineering is about understanding structures, and the materials that make them, in every day use. There is no way you can learn this from a book. It requires that you " get your hands dirty" and build some actual structures, with actual materials.
Having been a Mechanical Engineering major, I'm not sure I wholly agree with you. While building your structure out of parts scavenged from here and there:
Where is the structure's weakpoint? How weak is it? What material have you built with? How strong is it? Have you overdesigned? Have you underdesigned? How much would it cost to manufacture? How much force will break it? How much impulse force will break it? How will it fracture when it does break? Will it give off shards of crap that might cut somebody or poke their eye out?
All that math we take sets us up to work equations in statics, strength of materials, fracture mechanics and finite element analysis. Fortunately computers do most of that gruntwork. There's a lot of crap we learn from the books (afterwards we generally go to the lab and break shit... that's why mechanical engineering was such fun... all the breakage!) It isn't practical to mock up and crash test every design (oh how we wish it were...)
Though like you said, if he's just looking to make a few doodads for around the house and bone up on his l33t band saw skillz... Just build something with the scavenged parts.
I invite you to point out any "dogma" in my previous arguments
From your previous post...
namely that the brand-new human's right to life does absolutely supersede their convenience
From the post most recent...
but those reasons pale in comparison to the matter of l-i-f-e
And there you have it. Your ethical stance requires a dogmatic definition of when life begins, and when it does the dogmatic position that the rights of the new life supercede those of its host.
but both should live up to the responsibility that goes with that right, namely that the brand-new human's right to life does absolutely supersede their convenience.
How did you arrive at that without religious conviction or luddite mentality? And we aren't talking "convenience" here. There's a strong possibility that carrying to term will permanently alter the woman's body for the worse, and temporarily or (very rarely) permanently alter her mind.
I have the right to my own body, but I can't wrap my hands around someone's neck and say after their death: "they should have asked to be in someone else's hands." That is, in my view, a logical extension of your line of reasoning, which is of course absurd.
No that is illogical unless a) Strangling the person was in your pursuit of happiness and b) being strangled by you was their pursuit of happiness. (note how I had a "both parties agree or go separate ways" in my sarcastic remark) Also your version implies someone losing their right to life while doing no damage to the other.
But back to my real argument... Your "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" just does not hold unless you accept that the rights of the unborn supercede the rights of the would-be mother. And that requires some sort of dogmatic position.
Whether or not the beliefs are religious in nature or not, this country has always been a matter of majority-rule.
Who told you this? Please have them explain:
1) The Electoral College
2) The Senate
3) Prohibition (note that a popular majority is not required for constitutional ammendment)
There are checks and balances in the system designed to prevent The Tyranny of the Majority.
It's the body of a brand-new human that has its own inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So why does the brand-new human's rights supersede those of the woman's? I can't pursue happiness on your property without your permission... So why should this be different? If the new human is so determined at a shot at life, maybe it should leave the womb and gestate elsewhere - or optionally it should request permission to gestate in the woman's womb.
You don't seem to be factoring in "reality".
Because in "reality" people who regularly exercise report enjoying life more, and senior citizens who continue to exercise report enjoying life more than their sedentary counterparts. IOW, quality in quantity.
You seem bent on this hypothetical person who is 4 standard deviations from the mean who has plenty of energy, feels great all the time and is readily willing to give up a few hours now at the expense of years in the future (both raw numbers of years of life, and quality of those twilight years).
Does your hypothetical person forego showers so that they can enjoy more quality time now?
Everybody is different... But research suggests that exercise has the effect the previous post stated on a substantial majority of the population (rounded to the nearest percent, I think it was about 100%). Maybe the places that make these claims are just way out there... Places like Johns Hopkins University for one.
It really is just scared developers concerned that anything redmond can cough up is too mainstream and below them...
I'm pretty sure most of us developers are just a frightful bunch. Ada is an infamously derided language ("oh the government made it, so it's basically a beauracracy of a language") - yet it has more built in support for requirements validation and maintainability. If you look carefully at Ada, it is a pain to work with, but the result can be readily and meticulously examined by people other than the original developers.
If you were a sailor and an exocet was screaming towards your vessel 500 yards out and skimming the waves and the only thing between walking the deck and treading the waves is your Phalanx close-in weapon system, you're probably hoping the software which controls the Phalanx was developed with Ada. Now would not be the time to file a support request because your C++ caused a general protection fault.
So whether it's C# or anything else... I think way too many are afraid of having to re-stock their toolset from scratch. There's comfort in working with what you've always worked with. Insert cliche dinosaur analogy here.
Prescription - noun
4 a : a written direction for a therapeutic or corrective agent; specifically : one for the preparation and use of a medicine b : a prescribed medicine c : something like a doctor's prescription
When your doctor says to the nurse "give him tylenol", your doctor has prescribed tylenol. Coincidentally, I never used the word prescribe in my message, I used the language the Tylenol commercials use - I had hoped people would put it together. I think most did.
You think doctor's only refer to it as Acetaminophen or APAP? I can't think of a time my daughter's pediatrician has referred to over the counter analgesics / fever reducers as anything other than "Tylenol" or "Advil". He always refers to Guaifenesin as "Robitussin" too. I can't say my experience matches yours.
What? Medicine is an excellent example *because* cheaper generics that contain *exactly* the same active ingredient exist, *but* people still buy Tylenol in greater quantity because of *advertisements*.
How did you see it as a bad example?
In the end, all I was saying is, a lot of money is spent on advertising without any way to directly measure its effectiveness.
Well, there are. They just tend to give the same results as the accounting department that says "Hey, sales are up". One is a lot cheaper, so the detailed tracking is usually only done as an academic exercise.
("Eat GeneriFlakes -- they're cooool")
That is an excellent example of a marketting strategy which works extremely well with children. Keep repeating that statement with big pictures of the front of the cereal box - and kids will identify with the product and Mom will buy GeneriFlakes.
So using that logic... *why* am I subjected to Tylenol commercials? There isn't a "new" Tylenol on the market. Yet I happen to know it's the brand used by more hospitals than any other. When I go to the store and think "damn my head hurts, I should get something for it", you don't think maybe regular dosings of Tylenol commercials is going to affect my decision? My only interest is pain relief, my options are broad.
I'm afraid your conspiracy theory just doesn't work. When it comes to new products, the hardest thing to do is to just get the message out "Hey, try our new Heroin(tm) gelcaps for migraine pain". Say you created a new pain reliever, but didn't market it, just paid stores to put it on the shelves but didn't do any ad campaign... Do you really think you'd have decent sales volume because people interested in pain relief would seek out your product?
I think you'd fail, even if you were better than everybody else.
Data comes in one way and gets read many times and that's the sort of use MySQL's raw speed will blow both postgres and oarcle away at.
I disagree, every test I've ever done or read in the last 3 years, postgres is as fast or faster than MySQL (using reasonable sized data not "100 test records"). Do you have a link to a benchmark on recent versions of each (without magic 3rd party patches)?
Apparently you aren't using google or reading the 9th circuit court's opinions either. Doesn't much matter.
Really?
Okay my post didn't get posted before yours, but it does bear a striking resemblance to what they actually did.
/. more often :)
Maybe Dell should read
Exasperation does not always equal ad hominem. I like how you depend on removing one line from the whole argument. Look the phrase up some day.
I think "Glazed over" is too polite a term. In fact, I call "bullshit" on most of the article. The author either purposefully "dressed up" the story, or some people pulled wool over his eyes and he didn't pay attention...
Why are all these "intelligent" individuals carrying around so much hard cash? Why would you carry $200,000 in hard cash through an airport security checkpoint? Did it not occur to these intelligent individuals that there are professional thieves in Vegas who look for fools who wander the streets carrying large winnings? Why are they shoving chips down their pants? If you win $100K at a table, you can be sure the eye in the sky is going to watch your every move. If you hand off the bag to someone who shoves it in his pants.... DON'T YOU THINK THAT'S GOING TO RAISES SUSPICION?!
It didn't bother them that they weren't doing anything technically illegal? Hello! Fake IDs? Isn't that a felony?
A crowded area so that the conversation could not possibly be recorded? Didn't this surveillance pro know that they make shotgun mics to pick out voices in a crowded stadium? And what about that TV camera transmission thing? There is a lot of metal in casinos and all sorts of EMF noise. Multipaths abound. This may have been true, but since I was incredulous over so much of the article I figured I'd hit this one as well. *HOW* was a high quality signal transmitted from a hidden camera going through the metal, concrete, and noise of the casino making it out? And what about the person wearing gloves? Can you handle cards while wearing gloves in a casino? I've never seen anybody do this. And marking the cards with a radioactive isotope and using a geiger counter? Huh? The average density of tagged cards in the shoe is going to be fairly constant, I can't believe that distances of maybe 20 cards are going to result in noticeable changes from the distance the geiger counter was from the shoe.
Security came to intimidate someone in the middle of the night, and forced entry into the room? If anything Casinos are VERY CONSCIOUS of the legal rules surrounding what they do. This just doesn't sound like them. They will usually wait for the morning, then tell the person they have to leave. They don't drag them down to the basement if this looks like the person's first offense. How do you think 7/12 jurors would vote in a civil action for wrongful imprisonment by a multi-billion dollar establishment? Casinos don't drag you to the basement unless they have compelling evidence.
Blackjack teams have been around since at least the 70's. In the 80's the casinos got good at spotting them and sharing information. Seeing this sort of thing happen in the 90's? Huh? The first time I read about this was in the early 90's... It's not like the casinos just figured this one out, it had been in print for years prior.
Maybe I'm all wrong... But this doesn't match my experience in the casinos and really sounds like mostly bullshit. Some of what they did is real... there was a time it was easy to do. But most of the article sounds like dressed up cloak and dagger social engineering bullshit.
*sigh* when will you people understand... Band Aid has already lost the "uniqueness" of their name through dilution.
You guys are stuck on "You either have it or you don't" when that is untrue. Nobody making self adhesive bandages can market them as "Band aids". But a plumber who repairs leaks can market "I bandaid your leaky faucet".
Now if I made my own brand of adhesive bandages called "Mag a gag", a plumber who repairs leaks cannot say "I mag a gag your leaky faucet" because *MY* brand name has not been diluted. I could sue him for dilution of *MY* trademark even though on its face it doesn't seem like this plumber is going to sell you my self adhesive bandages.
Johnson & Johnson has lost that bit of their trademark... Okay let me say this again because you guys don't seem to be reading it... They haven't lost the right to exclusively market their product in their market... They've lost the right to sue someone trying to dilute their trademark.
So coming BACK TO THE TOPIC... Toho has lost "Zilla" to dilution. If "DaveZilla" is some sort of fiction about a city smashing lizard from the sea, they ABSOLUTELY can sue for misappropriation of their "GODZILLA" mark. However because "Zilla" has been DILUTED, they can't go after anyone using the notion of "Zilla" created by their GODZILLA movies (well they can, but they'll lose).
If you opt for an expensive honeymoon, a house, or something other than a diamond ring, Osama will somehow get his $80 from that.
Really? I'm fairly knowledgeable about U.S. Real Estate, how is Osama going to get his $80 from my buying an expensive house?
I have an idea...
Take a trip with your prospective wife-to-be who really wants a diamond:
1) Go to new york. Find a widowed mother raising an infant girl and say to the woman "Gee, I'm sorry your husband was crushed under 40 floors of steel and concrete trying to rescue people from the world trade center, I think it's just terrible... But I *really* want a diamond enough that I'm willing to give Osama $80."
2) Go to a nice south african country embroiled in a bitter and savage civil war. Find a young amputee and have your wife-to-be say "Gee I'm sorry that marauding rebels came through here, held you down while you cried and pleaded for them not to hurt you then severed your right leg above the knee - so that your parents would not fear them enough to mine diamonds for them. But I *really* want a diamond, and hey at least you didn't die from infection!"
3) Go find a young girl who was ordered raped by an organized crime syndicate because her father, a jewelry store owner, wasn't buying russian diamonds. Have your wife say "Golly, I bet that really was embarrassing to be immodestly exposed in front of those guys, but I *really* want a diamond, and therapy can make you better!"
I could go on... Believe me when you tell your girl this she's going to give the denial thing "You don't know that somebody paid a terrible inhuman price for *that* particular diamond". The truth is, the demand for diamonds did. And while she has the need to go to her girlfriends and say "See how much he loves me? Look at how big this diamond is!" she's going to turn a blind eye to her culpability in an industry whose savage and brutality is second perhaps only to the drug cartels.
If she still wants a diamond... Is this really the woman you want?
So are kids stuck on band-aid 'cuz band-aid's stuck on them?
Oh wait, no they aren't anymore... Now kids are stuck on band-aid BRAND...
I wonder why they changed the jingle... hmmm...
No, you can't market bandages with that name, but as far as dilution is concerned, it's gone. So coming back to the TOPIC as to can DaveZilla argue that Toho doesn't have claim to "Zilla"... No they don't unless DaveZilla is a movie or toy of a large mothra-fighting lizard.
Isn't Band-Aid a stateside generic term for sticking plasters?
Isn't that what I said?
For the example to hold, "Band Aid" would have had to have been diluted such that it has entered the language:
1) Band Aid is a synonym for a self adhesive strip bandage.
2) Band Aid is an adjective meaning "A haphazard repair done quickly and temporary in nature"
3) Band Aid was a fund raising concert for starving people in africa.
That's pretty diluted. Just as 'Zilla has entered the language:
BugZilla
DiffZilla
MoZilla
Go!Zilla
TrafficZilla
and what was the phrase the judge in the Mattel v. Aqua/MCA/et.al. call Mattel?