Child pornography laws are just another example of poorly written laws, designed to protect children from predators but in the end outlaw all the stupid things children do to themselves.
Before technology, kids flashed each other in the bushes and played truth or dare and kissed each other. Now, the stupid things they do get immortalized online as multimedia text messages, myspace pics and chain emails. To really draw a point to the insanity of the laws, in most states two 16 year old children can have sex legally but if they take a picture of it then they can be tried as an adult, sent to federal prison for child pornography felonies and get to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
Do you think the laws protected anyone in this case?
Someone earlier analogized Bittorrent as pushing a work through a shredder and sending the pieces out 1 person at a time.
The mere fact that the shreds can be reassembled into a complete copyrighted work suggests then that at least the shredded works are a derivative work.
As someone who formerly worked in the US consumer product safety testing industry, I can say this is the least of his concerns.
Starting with hardware that's already been through electromagnetic compatibility testing would be a huge leg up in getting the project done. A USB based camera device wouldn't need any safety certifications to be sold in the US or Canada but FCC compliance testing does need to be done in the US. Sale in the EU may require a declaration of conformity that it complies with the low voltage and EM directives.
Also, many chinese manufacturers are quite familiar with the product testing and certification process since a lot of them export their products to the US, Canada and Europe where certifications are either de facto required or truly legally mandatory.
Many found out after it was too late when their rates reset or balloon payments were due. In fact, under the 1974 rules, it wasn't even required for mortgages to disclose prepayment penalties, meaning even people who otherwise CAN afford to refinance their ARMs are in the hot seat.
One factor I should have mentioned in my first list is that over 70% of subprime mortgages are closed without any down payment at all. This is quite counter to the past, where you might put down up to 20% or maybe 10% of the loan value. It was important for lenders in the past to be sure consumers had a vested stake in their homestead. Now, since they have nothing vested, as soon as their mortgage goes upside down or they discover how predatory their loan terms are, they have nothing keeping them from walking away.
I can tell you, the only people getting foreclosed on who "cashed in" are those who very recently took large equity mortgages and then defaulted on both the first and second loans.
The lenders are more to blame for our current situation then stupid consumers. They threw caution to the wind in the pursuit of profits and gave fantastically large amounts of money to consumers who they knew couldn't afford it. Consumers aren't faultless here
That's a lie. I'm taking technical math at a 2 year college and today, a student had an argument with a teacher about how to calculate the area of a rectangle. The student was probably 45-50 years old.
I guess my point is that there truly is such a thing as a stupid question. The stupidity of hte question lies entirely in the context of who it is that is asking.
I'll skip modding and reply instead. There are a lot of factors for the economic situation we're in. A lot of them are the feds and politicians faults. Just to name a few, I'll try to be brief...
Mortgage terms disclosure rules are antiquated and fantastically inadequate.
Due to the above, consumers do not understand the terms of their mortgages and are unknowingly pushed into ARM's with baloon payments or other arbitrarily high fee/prepayment penalty type loans.
Broker compensation encourages shady lending tactics such as documentation alterations to increase mortgage eligibility for unaffordable loans.
Debt load caps on mortgage lenders were removed a few years back to allow lenders to push more loans through, leading to shaky financial security.
Mortgage securitization(the bundling and resale of fractional loan packages) allowed a flood of non-traditional investor money into the realty market such as private and foreign investors. The easy money caused bidding wars, driving home values up far faster than inflation and median income.
Securitization was too new for the quants to have a good risk model for securities backed by sub-prime mortgages.
Comments in the Federal Reserve Bulletin as early as 1999 showed the feds were aware the realty market was significantly out of sync with inflation. No action was taken.
Current SEC rules allow lenders to remove loans from their ledgers after they've been securitized and sold off, even if they were sold off under contractual obligation to take some losses in the event the securities are defaulted on. The net effect is that mortgage lender's financial stability is IMPOSSIBLE to determine, even for investors who read every word of every shareholder disclosure.
While it certainly smells like shit(to me), I've seen how cat food is made and I've got to say it is probably a hell of a lot healthier than the shit I eat now.
Yeah I don't find their math credible either. According to my own math, a computer running 24x7 in an 8-5 business is wasting $112(average) per computer per year.
While insignificant compared to other costs such as employee healthcare contributions and infrastructure maintenance, it does add up quickly over time. All that extra money could go to buying new printers, fixing parking lot potholes, whatever.
My question is why the hell didn't the legislators look Jack in the eye and say "Are you high?".
This has been tried. It's pretty obvious that it could be struck down on constitutional grounds in every state as undue prior restraint of first amendment rights. This just goes to show the legislators are spineless lackeys for whatever the lobbyists are pushing in front of them.
Sounds kind of like another group of senators and representatives I know of......
Kind of insane really since being an MCSE doesn't mean shit if Microsoft crashes and burns and isn't around to write patches for you anymore.
At least if you went with IBM(depending on the product) there's a smidgin of hope that the community or your own developers can patch your business critical piece of software.
I just used Symphony today for the first time and I must say the polish on it is really impressive. It was extremely easy to use and I didn't have any compatibility issues with my old MS Office created documents.
I did notice however that in Symphony Documents, my options for creating fields were all missing! A minor nuisance to be sure, but fields are nice...
In any case, the lack of an OpenOffice database equivalent made me switch back to OpenOffice. I kind of get the feeling Lotus Symphony was designed for corporate desktops, where OOo Base wouldn't be all that useful.
Indeed. I think it's important to realize here that the government isn't mandating OpenOffice usage, just ODF file formats. Nothing prevents Microsoft from integrating ODF support into Office in meaningful ways and remaining competitive with the other players.
They don't want that though. Without lock-in on the MS file formats, they can't keep their customers hog tied to MS Office. It's simple business. I wish politicians would just realize that until they put Microsoft in a position of equal footing, they will always be paying too much for software.
Not hidden very well. Just where do you think that $5M would go?
EPIC sounds like a public research entity. Gee, I wonder if they would be asking the FTC to fine Google and give the money back to EPIC.
I try not to be skeptical all the time, but news like this consistently reinforces my view that freeloaders will always be out there trying to take what they can't earn from people who are more successful than they are.
The numbers you just pulled out of thin air are pretty much bullshit.
For a lot of companies, Office is mandatory for them to function. Instead of hiring programmers to create good solutions, they have managers and analysts sitting around creating the next business-vital piece of shit package of Excel, Word and Access VB scripts to fill a role. Oh and don't even get me started on huge companies who put business critical data on shared drives as MS Access applications. Like it or not, these are the people who can't switch to Linux because they need Office.
As Shados mentioned, OO.org is missing certain MS Office features entirely.
Actually they weren't even told not to do it again. The rule could be recreated provided the BATFE can comply with administrative procedures for classifying APCP as an explosive. As others have noted, that would be very difficult since APCP isn't really explosive.
I guess my point is when citizens break BATFE rules, they go to prison, get fined or get probation(or all 3). When the BATFE violates it's own rules, they're simply told "No." and given another shot to do it the way they were supposed to.
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I agree. Use it, live it, love it.
Child pornography laws are just another example of poorly written laws, designed to protect children from predators but in the end outlaw all the stupid things children do to themselves.
Before technology, kids flashed each other in the bushes and played truth or dare and kissed each other. Now, the stupid things they do get immortalized online as multimedia text messages, myspace pics and chain emails. To really draw a point to the insanity of the laws, in most states two 16 year old children can have sex legally but if they take a picture of it then they can be tried as an adult, sent to federal prison for child pornography felonies and get to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
Do you think the laws protected anyone in this case?
Someone earlier analogized Bittorrent as pushing a work through a shredder and sending the pieces out 1 person at a time.
The mere fact that the shreds can be reassembled into a complete copyrighted work suggests then that at least the shredded works are a derivative work.
As someone who formerly worked in the US consumer product safety testing industry, I can say this is the least of his concerns.
Starting with hardware that's already been through electromagnetic compatibility testing would be a huge leg up in getting the project done. A USB based camera device wouldn't need any safety certifications to be sold in the US or Canada but FCC compliance testing does need to be done in the US. Sale in the EU may require a declaration of conformity that it complies with the low voltage and EM directives.
Also, many chinese manufacturers are quite familiar with the product testing and certification process since a lot of them export their products to the US, Canada and Europe where certifications are either de facto required or truly legally mandatory.
AC speaks the truth. Do not seek any manufacturing in China unless you're planning on high volume production.
If you're still in prototyping phase, you have no reason to try. You will just end up frustrated.
I still plan to use the points, just not in this thread. And it's hard to stay on topic when people are often such idiots about science topics.
Many found out after it was too late when their rates reset or balloon payments were due. In fact, under the 1974 rules, it wasn't even required for mortgages to disclose prepayment penalties, meaning even people who otherwise CAN afford to refinance their ARMs are in the hot seat.
One factor I should have mentioned in my first list is that over 70% of subprime mortgages are closed without any down payment at all. This is quite counter to the past, where you might put down up to 20% or maybe 10% of the loan value. It was important for lenders in the past to be sure consumers had a vested stake in their homestead. Now, since they have nothing vested, as soon as their mortgage goes upside down or they discover how predatory their loan terms are, they have nothing keeping them from walking away.
I can tell you, the only people getting foreclosed on who "cashed in" are those who very recently took large equity mortgages and then defaulted on both the first and second loans.
The lenders are more to blame for our current situation then stupid consumers. They threw caution to the wind in the pursuit of profits and gave fantastically large amounts of money to consumers who they knew couldn't afford it. Consumers aren't faultless here
That's a lie. I'm taking technical math at a 2 year college and today, a student had an argument with a teacher about how to calculate the area of a rectangle. The student was probably 45-50 years old.
I guess my point is that there truly is such a thing as a stupid question. The stupidity of hte question lies entirely in the context of who it is that is asking.
I'll skip modding and reply instead. There are a lot of factors for the economic situation we're in. A lot of them are the feds and politicians faults. Just to name a few, I'll try to be brief...
I hope this clears up a few things.
While it certainly smells like shit(to me), I've seen how cat food is made and I've got to say it is probably a hell of a lot healthier than the shit I eat now.
Yeah I don't find their math credible either. According to my own math, a computer running 24x7 in an 8-5 business is wasting $112(average) per computer per year.
While insignificant compared to other costs such as employee healthcare contributions and infrastructure maintenance, it does add up quickly over time. All that extra money could go to buying new printers, fixing parking lot potholes, whatever.
My question is why the hell didn't the legislators look Jack in the eye and say "Are you high?".
This has been tried. It's pretty obvious that it could be struck down on constitutional grounds in every state as undue prior restraint of first amendment rights. This just goes to show the legislators are spineless lackeys for whatever the lobbyists are pushing in front of them.
Sounds kind of like another group of senators and representatives I know of......
My old mail server was setup to queue mail from 9 PM to 8 AM. This was to prevent me from emailing after drinking at the bar.
Kind of insane really since being an MCSE doesn't mean shit if Microsoft crashes and burns and isn't around to write patches for you anymore.
At least if you went with IBM(depending on the product) there's a smidgin of hope that the community or your own developers can patch your business critical piece of software.
I just used Symphony today for the first time and I must say the polish on it is really impressive. It was extremely easy to use and I didn't have any compatibility issues with my old MS Office created documents.
I did notice however that in Symphony Documents, my options for creating fields were all missing! A minor nuisance to be sure, but fields are nice...
In any case, the lack of an OpenOffice database equivalent made me switch back to OpenOffice. I kind of get the feeling Lotus Symphony was designed for corporate desktops, where OOo Base wouldn't be all that useful.
This would be one of those posts where a score over 5 is appropriate.
Would have been funnier though if it was Linus saying it in lkml.
I'd pay even for just the comments, assuming the developer had the sense to make his code maintainable.
Indeed. I think it's important to realize here that the government isn't mandating OpenOffice usage, just ODF file formats. Nothing prevents Microsoft from integrating ODF support into Office in meaningful ways and remaining competitive with the other players.
They don't want that though. Without lock-in on the MS file formats, they can't keep their customers hog tied to MS Office. It's simple business. I wish politicians would just realize that until they put Microsoft in a position of equal footing, they will always be paying too much for software.
It wont work. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't trust the music publishers as far as I can throw their Bentleys.
I won't ever buy music again except from iTunes. And then, only because I know the music publishers hate Apple.
I've toyed with a lot of vector graphics programs and hands down, Inkscape is by far the easiest and most polished.
A native Mac version would be awesome.
I just did the ball thing in FF3 and it worked great. As another noted, the page elements at the bottom were largely unusable though.
Not hidden very well. Just where do you think that $5M would go?
EPIC sounds like a public research entity. Gee, I wonder if they would be asking the FTC to fine Google and give the money back to EPIC.
I try not to be skeptical all the time, but news like this consistently reinforces my view that freeloaders will always be out there trying to take what they can't earn from people who are more successful than they are.
The numbers you just pulled out of thin air are pretty much bullshit.
For a lot of companies, Office is mandatory for them to function. Instead of hiring programmers to create good solutions, they have managers and analysts sitting around creating the next business-vital piece of shit package of Excel, Word and Access VB scripts to fill a role. Oh and don't even get me started on huge companies who put business critical data on shared drives as MS Access applications. Like it or not, these are the people who can't switch to Linux because they need Office.
As Shados mentioned, OO.org is missing certain MS Office features entirely.
I suppose Marijuana does pose a serious risk of starting fires. It is also a leading cause of obesity among stoners.
Very dangerous indeed.
Actually they weren't even told not to do it again. The rule could be recreated provided the BATFE can comply with administrative procedures for classifying APCP as an explosive. As others have noted, that would be very difficult since APCP isn't really explosive.
I guess my point is when citizens break BATFE rules, they go to prison, get fined or get probation(or all 3). When the BATFE violates it's own rules, they're simply told "No." and given another shot to do it the way they were supposed to.