Legally, it may not be any distinction at all. Book publishers tried this dodge around the beginning of the 20th century to prevent the selling of used books. Courts threw it out so hard it bounced twice. There is not yet good precedent that software should be treated differently; software publishers have been reluctant to put it to the test. As long as it's uncertain, they can scare people with it.
I was watching it live on CNN while home sick from work. I remember looking at the multiple smoke trails from the fragments and thinking, "Boy, that doesn't look right. But if something happened, why aren't they saying anything?" It was just a camera trained on the smoke trails and the only audio was the range officer counting distances. Nothing else. It seemed like that went on forever.
> It's basically a tragedy of the commons situation. Even if it is metered,
> electricity is so widely available and so relatively cheap that the people
> there have very little incentive to make efficient use of it.
Congratulations, you have no idea what "tragedy of the commons" means. Everybody pays for the amount of electricity they use, so there is no "commons". There could only be a "tragedy of the commons" if people didn't pay for their electricity, or paid a flat fee regardless of how much electricity they used. If people's electrical rates aren't covering the cost of generating it, that is, as you point out, a matter that will eventually rectify itself (although state power commissions do complicate that point a bit--electric power isn't a commons, but it's not exactly a free market, either).
> The only locked things are chests and coffers, > and I've yet to hear of anybody opening those > things without a corresponding key.
Thieves can use thieves' tools, living keys, or skeleton keys to open them, but a lot of the time you get a mimic or cursed, and you don't even get the contents when that happens.
> I love monks and always play them in every > RPG when I got the opportunity (No spirtual reason, > I am just to cheap to buy armour and weapons).
I almost bust out laughing when I saw this. Never played FFXI, have you? Monks have some of the most expensive armor and weapons in the game in that one...
His angle is, "My fingerprints aren't on this bill. With Hillary Clinton sponsoring this, there's no way I can grab part of the glory, as she automatically draws in any PR in the vincinity. Therefore it is a bad bill. There will be a *good* bill when there's a bill I can take at least partial credit for."
Of course not. But all of those themes together, in a work by an author noted for writing extensively and almost exclusively about Christianity in both fiction and non-fiction (The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, Till We Have Faces and on and on), is pretty convincing.
No, it's very definitely Christian allegory. Lewis was quite devout and wrote an amazing lot of Christian literature (I highly recommend The Screwtape Letters even to someone who is not Christian--I myself am not, in fact), and he meant Narnia to be seen from a Christian viewpoint. If you have doubts, reread The Last Battle, in which we get the Narnian version of Judgment Day, complete with Antichrist figure.
> As an AnCap, freedom of expression is more important > than merely free speech.
OK, I give. What in the name of hell is an "AnCap"? Google mostly comes up with the "Australian New Car Assessment Programme", but I figure that ain't it...
No, you don't. If you truly did, you'd be dead, because the human body can't function without a minimum intake of salt. Unless you eat a very unusual diet, you'll find that a great deal of what you eat has salt in it. What you like is not adding *additional* salt to your food (as most people do, including myself (and I know I probably shouldn't)).
> The real question though is "Do we really want > to wait until the old system finally breaks and > nothing works anymore before making the change?".
And the real answer from 90% of managers when presented with the estimated cost of the switchover: "Yes, we'll wait."
> (Obligatory car analogy) When you put gas in > your car, there's still gas left in it, so it > can still work. Yet you don't wait till you > go dry to put some more gas in.
But the more appropriate analogy is: You don't take your car in for complete engine rebuild if the engine is running fine.
> 19 people acting alone should not be able to hijack airplanes and fly them anywhere without immediately having those planes shot down, let alone being able to > fly them into the headquarters of the most well-funded military in the world.
Let me guess: you think that somebody tracks all airplanes every minute they're in the air. Nope. Not even just airliners. They're tracked only as they take-off or land, and even just that strains the system. The simple fact is that it was *easy* to do this, because nobody was watching them. That's still true today, although radar screens are more closely watched in important areas these days. The sheer manpower it would require to perform that kind of monitoring is simply not there.
As additional note, the human eye--and all vertebrate eyes--have a design flaw that can only really be explained by evolution. There's a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina, because the neural net in the retina is *in front* of the retina, not behind it. So the place where all the neurons gather to run the cabling back to the brain can't have any retinal cells there, causing a blind spot. The neuronal net itself also causes minor degradation in vision. It's a not a big problem--and was less of one when the eye was less developed, which is why the fault was never evolved away. But squids do it right--the nerves are behind the retina, and a squid's eyes have no blind spot. Ultimately, this is because our eyes evolved from brain tissue, while a squid's evolved from skin tissue. Evolution explains it very nicely. So can anyone who believes in Intelligent Design explain to me why God screwed up our eyes, but got squid eyes right?
Slashdot Mirror
Legally, it may not be any distinction at all. Book publishers tried this dodge around the beginning of the 20th century to prevent the selling of used books. Courts threw it out so hard it bounced twice. There is not yet good precedent that software should be treated differently; software publishers have been reluctant to put it to the test. As long as it's uncertain, they can scare people with it.
Chris Mattern
> What happened to the day when it was more important to
> be right and honest than to sell tons of books/magazines/newspapers?
Er, when would that be? Read up some time about how Hearst ran *his* newspapers...
Chris Mattern
I was watching it live on CNN while home sick from work. I remember looking at the multiple smoke trails from the fragments and thinking, "Boy, that doesn't look right. But if something happened, why aren't they saying anything?" It was just a camera trained on the smoke trails and the only audio was the range officer counting distances. Nothing else. It seemed like that went on forever.
Chris Mattern
"Fifteen years after its demise"? Where have you been? The US school system has been the East German communist state for *years* now.
Chris Mattern
Ick.
> It's basically a tragedy of the commons situation. Even if it is metered,
> electricity is so widely available and so relatively cheap that the people
> there have very little incentive to make efficient use of it.
Congratulations, you have no idea what "tragedy of the commons" means. Everybody pays for the amount of electricity they use, so there is no "commons". There could only be a "tragedy of the commons" if people didn't pay for their electricity, or paid a flat fee regardless of how much electricity they used. If people's electrical rates aren't covering the cost of generating it, that is, as you point out, a matter that will eventually rectify itself (although state power commissions do complicate that point a bit--electric power isn't a commons, but it's not exactly a free market, either).
Chris Mattern
As additional bonus, you get to play both sides, since you switch over to the Allies halfway though...
Chris Mattern
> And guess who strangled the animals those death in order to do this research?
The lab assistants, most likely. Full professors don't do their own rat-strangling.
Chris Mattern
Final Fantasy XI has this too--it's called Mordian Gaol. The GMs teleport you there when they decide to take action against you.
Chris Mattern
> The only locked things are chests and coffers,
> and I've yet to hear of anybody opening those
> things without a corresponding key.
Thieves can use thieves' tools, living keys, or skeleton keys to open them, but a lot of the time you get a mimic or cursed, and you don't even get the contents when that happens.
Chris Mattern
> I love monks and always play them in every
> RPG when I got the opportunity (No spirtual reason,
> I am just to cheap to buy armour and weapons).
I almost bust out laughing when I saw this. Never played FFXI, have you? Monks have some of the most expensive armor and weapons in the game in that one...
Chris Mattern
Unfortunately, it looks like it's gone back to alpha...again...
Chris Mattern
His angle is, "My fingerprints aren't on this bill. With Hillary Clinton sponsoring this, there's no way I can grab part of the glory, as she automatically draws in any PR in the vincinity. Therefore it is a bad bill. There will be a *good* bill when there's a bill I can take at least partial credit for."
Chris Mattern
> Every single MMO game MUST have PvP. It is a rule.
Gee, me and the hundreds of thousands of other people who play Final Fantasy XI must not have gotten the memo...
Chris Mattern
...namely, the board told him that he personally would be fired if he didn't...
Of course not. But all of those themes together, in a work by an author noted for writing extensively and almost exclusively about Christianity in both fiction and non-fiction (The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, Till We Have Faces and on and on), is pretty convincing.
No, it's very definitely Christian allegory. Lewis was quite devout and wrote an amazing lot of Christian literature (I highly recommend The Screwtape Letters even to someone who is not Christian--I myself am not, in fact), and he meant Narnia to be seen from a Christian viewpoint. If you have doubts, reread The Last Battle, in which we get the Narnian version of Judgment Day, complete with Antichrist figure.
Chris Mattern
You know, this is a question that could be asked in a *lot* of Slashdot stories...
Chris Mattern
> As an AnCap, freedom of expression is more important
> than merely free speech.
OK, I give. What in the name of hell is an "AnCap"? Google mostly comes up with the "Australian New Car Assessment Programme", but I figure that ain't it...
> In English "Pajamas" is "Pyjamas". Its not a mispelling, its just
> the crazy American way of spelling the work.
And they think "jail" is spelled "gaol". These are people I should take spelling advice from?
> Bad analogy. I like saltless food.
No, you don't. If you truly did, you'd be dead, because the human body can't function without a minimum intake of salt. Unless you eat a very unusual diet, you'll find that a great deal of what you eat has salt in it. What you like is not adding *additional* salt to your food (as most people do, including myself (and I know I probably shouldn't)).
Chris Mattern
Why do I get this vision of someone behind the keyboard going, "Ha ha! They're finally talking about FLUORIDE! Now I can show them all!"
Chris Mattern
> The real question though is "Do we really want
> to wait until the old system finally breaks and
> nothing works anymore before making the change?".
And the real answer from 90% of managers when presented
with the estimated cost of the switchover: "Yes, we'll
wait."
> (Obligatory car analogy) When you put gas in
> your car, there's still gas left in it, so it
> can still work. Yet you don't wait till you
> go dry to put some more gas in.
But the more appropriate analogy is: You don't take
your car in for complete engine rebuild if the engine
is running fine.
> 19 people acting alone should not be able to hijack airplanes and fly them anywhere without immediately having those planes shot down, let alone being able to
> fly them into the headquarters of the most well-funded military in the world.
Let me guess: you think that somebody tracks all airplanes every minute they're in the air. Nope. Not even just airliners. They're tracked only as they take-off or land, and even just that strains the system. The simple fact is that it was *easy* to do this, because nobody was watching them. That's still true today, although radar screens are more closely watched in important areas these days. The sheer manpower it would require to perform that kind of monitoring is simply not there.
As additional note, the human eye--and all vertebrate eyes--have a design flaw that can only really be explained by evolution. There's a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina, because the neural net in the retina is *in front* of the retina, not behind it. So the place where all the neurons gather to run the cabling back to the brain can't have any retinal cells there, causing a blind spot. The neuronal net itself also causes minor degradation in vision. It's a not a big problem--and was less of one when the eye was less developed, which is why the fault was never evolved away. But squids do it right--the nerves are behind the retina, and a squid's eyes have no blind spot. Ultimately, this is because our eyes evolved from brain tissue, while a squid's evolved from skin tissue. Evolution explains it very nicely. So can anyone who believes in Intelligent Design explain to me why God screwed up our eyes, but got squid eyes right?
Chris Mattern