Well they got 0.9% in Germany on the first attempt to run - that's a pretty cool result, too. Also Germany's FDP almost doubled their results reaching 11% - they came out against the recent attempts to establish internet censorship and prohibit paintball. Of course it's not so easy to establish how many people supported the FDP because of that (vs due to other reasons), but it will give their position more weight in any case.
That said:
Thank you Sweden!
You guys did something great for Europe yesterday. At the very least it's warning shot for the established parties.
Rape fantasies are the most common sexual fantasies for women. (See: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is_1_45/ai_n24383385/ for a study on that.) Given that, it doesn't disgust me that people want to play games involving their fantasies. I actually think there is *nothing* wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with watching Mafia thrillers which are directed from the POV of the bad guy, either. I don't see anything wrong with reading books about incest, murder, war and genocide - most of our literature is about that anyway. It is however pathological not to see the difference between fantasy and reality.
I think pretending we don't have these fantasies is unhealthy, and someone repressing their sexual feelings probably contributes to an inability to channel their more violent desires into harmless channels. If the thought of raping a schoolgirl turns you on - buy your wife a uniform and play together. More likely than not (55% chance) she's into the same thing.
IMHO: Fantasizing about rape is no more likely to make you a rapist, than reading SF novels will make you an astronaut.
So hang on: self-censorship is bad, so we'll instead force censorship on the people? Apart from that not making any sense, even if you had a set of things which we'd agree on are bad to talk about, the standard problems of censorship are: Who controls what's going on if censorship is in place? Who can censor this "bad speech" if allegedly this "bad speech" is so corrupting?
Isn't there a constitution in the US which just summarily forbids censorship? Doesn't it occur to your professor that undermining the foundations of democracy could have a certain risk associated with it?
Lastly: women are not all into vanilla sex, and women do not all have vanilla sexual fantasies. The idea that you could establish censorship in order to shield women from all these evil men, and at the same time not trample on *their* right to pursue happiness - is misguided to say the least. Fantasizing about rape is one of the top female fantasies, and age play or student/teacher fantasies are pretty common, too. Here is one article I found, but there are plenty all over the place, stating the same thing: http://www.healthyplace.com/sex/psychology-of-sex/womens-top-ten-sexual-fantasies/menu-id-66/page-2/
Well of course - playing these games "trains" people to kill others, according to some German politicians. Never mind the fact that Germany has a draft and provides actual training to kill people to every able male in the country. So the reasoning must be: playing with pretend weapons = dangerous and causes violence, training with actual military equipment = completely harmless.
Godwin's law was made for usenet - a network which has never found a viable way to reduce the influence of trolls and spam. Like any of the other "measures" on usenet this law has also achieved nothing. It's almost exclusively applied to situations where the comparison would be useful, and has no effect otherwise. I think it's time to give this "law" a rest.
Hopefully, the politicians behind this get some sort of backlash from their constituents, and back down.
There is a way to make this happen tomorrow. The elections for the European parliament are on. There are several parties in Germany who are opposed to this attack on freedom e.g. the FDP and Germany is one of the countries where the Pirate Party is running, too. If you are a German citizen please vote and take this issue in consideration.
The dog probably won't sniff DVD-Rs - for larger scale copying you would injection mold the foil and encase it with polycarbonate plastic. According to this: http://www.replication.com/cd-dvd-copying.php it would become more economical to do that once you reach 500 or more copies. The glue probably smells differently, and that's likely what the dog reacts to.
They could let the dog check various shipments, and when it finds one which smells like DVDs - but doesn't declare that on the shipping papers, they would have a closer look.
What are cybersquatters doing for the economy which wouldn't work better if they didn't even exist? Society values people who make meaningful contributions. People who instead merely get in the way of others who want to contribute - are valued accordingly.
Cybersquatting is legal, and not everything you do in your life needs to be for the benefit of the society you live in. However you can't expect to get respect for these activities. The name "cybersquatters" is apt, the valuation of their activities is correct.
Well not everybody enjoys the same things, granted. However military vessels usually attract a lot of interest when they are opened to the public while visiting a harbour. It stands to reason that people are still interested when the ship is below water, but accessible with suba gear. Personally I think it's cool.
Makes you wonder though: the differences in phenotype for dogs are vast. If we have only skeletons of dinosaurs, how can we be sure which were separate species, and which are just vastly different representatives of the same species - is a protoceratops really a different species from a tricertops? I'm not an expert obviously - does anyone know if biologists have ways to determine that?
Sometimes people just don't care about creating an account. Can you really imagine a situation where him creating a user account and posting with that would have gotten him in trouble, but posting as AC wouldn't?
And above all, I find it worrying that people only behave ethically out of fear of having to answer to some "higher power".
It's interesting though that they don't. Atheists and theists often come to the same conclusions on moral questions, even if the latter have to adjust their reading of their holy texts to what they actually feel is right. Dawkins describes this very well here: http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/09/dawkins_on_mora.html
*If* implemented as described, the throttling of the engine is not immediate, so you should still be able to go above the speed limit briefly. I could imagine a similar scenario, where you are overtaking a car and have not seen an approaching car in the other lane. It could be safer to accelarate and complete the maneuver rather than aborting it. So I'd be concerned whether the period you can go beyond the speed limit would be long enough.
If implemented as described in the article: not much. With "cut power" they actually mean "limit power to reach only the maximum allowed speed" and you can override it if you wish. (Emergency transport to the hospital, speed limit out of date etc.)
Well the point of a patent was supposed to grant a monopoly on an invention, not on information in general. E.g. if I make a map of a city, I can not patent that map (though I can copyright it instead). I can patent the design of a machine which collects that data. This way nobody is prevented from collecting their own data (using their own methods) and publishing their own map. Gene patents - on already existing genes - prevent just that, though.
My boss likes to pressure me to patent "something". I always get out of it. If I patent something which is actually good, then I can not use my idea anywhere else. My job experience is part of my capital, I have no intention of signing that away.
Regarding #3, I would think that article 4 of the US constitution applies: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..." It might not apply to all aspects of item #3, but I think it would apply at least to some, no?
Well - the elections for the European parliament are coming up. If the pirate party does indeed do well (and there are at least some indications that they might) then this could rattle the other parties. Fact is: the EU has just introduced a considerable extension to the length of copyright. If you think TPB is depriving copyright holders of income - then you also have to accept that extending copyright duration for already existing works, means to deprive the public of value for the benefit of copyright holders. Nobody in Europe campaigned for that or got elected to do that.
There might be some consensus in the population regarding the principle of copyright. There is definately no consensus that big companies lobby politicians in order to extend copyright to any duration they like. That is a political question, and there is a political discussion required to deal with that. I do hope the Swedes will make this happen for us.
Regardless whether TBS's approach is legal or not: if I were in the law firms position, I'd talk to the bank manager and get a better deal. Assuming enough people participate in this, the firm would receive about $3.9 million in that account. If they hold that for a year at 5% interest, they'd get $195k - the bank would probably be fine with a $10k fee for the account (let's face it: the actual transaction costs the bank nothing). The administrative overhead can't be so bad either - if the account hasn't been setup specifically for receiving that fine, they can just download the transactions as a csv file and import it into a spreadsheet. Then they can filter for the purpose of the payment, and you have your records for the payment of the fine. (If that filtering is a problem, just filter out anything which isn't 1 SEK, or switch your other banking to a different account.)
In the end (assuming TPB wins the case) you are either left with $185k, or if you have to return the interest, I presume you can deduct the bank fees to calculate the effective interest rate. Handling is billed to the client, in any case.
I sympathize with TPB, but I doubt the other side's lawyers are morons.
Slashdot Mirror
That said:
Thank you Sweden!
You guys did something great for Europe yesterday. At the very least it's warning shot for the established parties.
I think pretending we don't have these fantasies is unhealthy, and someone repressing their sexual feelings probably contributes to an inability to channel their more violent desires into harmless channels. If the thought of raping a schoolgirl turns you on - buy your wife a uniform and play together. More likely than not (55% chance) she's into the same thing.
IMHO: Fantasizing about rape is no more likely to make you a rapist, than reading SF novels will make you an astronaut.
Isn't there a constitution in the US which just summarily forbids censorship? Doesn't it occur to your professor that undermining the foundations of democracy could have a certain risk associated with it?
Lastly: women are not all into vanilla sex, and women do not all have vanilla sexual fantasies. The idea that you could establish censorship in order to shield women from all these evil men, and at the same time not trample on *their* right to pursue happiness - is misguided to say the least. Fantasizing about rape is one of the top female fantasies, and age play or student/teacher fantasies are pretty common, too. Here is one article I found, but there are plenty all over the place, stating the same thing: http://www.healthyplace.com/sex/psychology-of-sex/womens-top-ten-sexual-fantasies/menu-id-66/page-2/
Well of course - playing these games "trains" people to kill others, according to some German politicians. Never mind the fact that Germany has a draft and provides actual training to kill people to every able male in the country. So the reasoning must be: playing with pretend weapons = dangerous and causes violence, training with actual military equipment = completely harmless.
Godwin's law was made for usenet - a network which has never found a viable way to reduce the influence of trolls and spam. Like any of the other "measures" on usenet this law has also achieved nothing. It's almost exclusively applied to situations where the comparison would be useful, and has no effect otherwise. I think it's time to give this "law" a rest.
Especially after this news: http://www.ka-news.de/nachrichten/karlsruhe/Karlsruhe-Killerspiele-Gruene;art6066,199419 Here the Green party is asking for "a clear signal against killer games". Sorry I'd like a clear signal for individual freedom instead.
You should be able to vote PIRATEN for the European elections - go for it!
There is a way to make this happen tomorrow. The elections for the European parliament are on. There are several parties in Germany who are opposed to this attack on freedom e.g. the FDP and Germany is one of the countries where the Pirate Party is running, too. If you are a German citizen please vote and take this issue in consideration.
They could let the dog check various shipments, and when it finds one which smells like DVDs - but doesn't declare that on the shipping papers, they would have a closer look.
Cybersquatting is legal, and not everything you do in your life needs to be for the benefit of the society you live in. However you can't expect to get respect for these activities. The name "cybersquatters" is apt, the valuation of their activities is correct.
The majority of users are also affected when they have to sit through the "FBI warning" nonsense which are afflicted solely on legitimate buyers.
Well not everybody enjoys the same things, granted. However military vessels usually attract a lot of interest when they are opened to the public while visiting a harbour. It stands to reason that people are still interested when the ship is below water, but accessible with suba gear. Personally I think it's cool.
Makes you wonder though: the differences in phenotype for dogs are vast. If we have only skeletons of dinosaurs, how can we be sure which were separate species, and which are just vastly different representatives of the same species - is a protoceratops really a different species from a tricertops? I'm not an expert obviously - does anyone know if biologists have ways to determine that?
He's looking for a date, apparently.
Sometimes people just don't care about creating an account. Can you really imagine a situation where him creating a user account and posting with that would have gotten him in trouble, but posting as AC wouldn't?
It's interesting though that they don't. Atheists and theists often come to the same conclusions on moral questions, even if the latter have to adjust their reading of their holy texts to what they actually feel is right. Dawkins describes this very well here: http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/09/dawkins_on_mora.html
*If* implemented as described, the throttling of the engine is not immediate, so you should still be able to go above the speed limit briefly. I could imagine a similar scenario, where you are overtaking a car and have not seen an approaching car in the other lane. It could be safer to accelarate and complete the maneuver rather than aborting it. So I'd be concerned whether the period you can go beyond the speed limit would be long enough.
They'd probably say: "Hey why do you do this, there is already an override switch installed. Wouldn't it have been easier to use that?"
If implemented as described in the article: not much. With "cut power" they actually mean "limit power to reach only the maximum allowed speed" and you can override it if you wish. (Emergency transport to the hospital, speed limit out of date etc.)
Well the point of a patent was supposed to grant a monopoly on an invention, not on information in general. E.g. if I make a map of a city, I can not patent that map (though I can copyright it instead). I can patent the design of a machine which collects that data. This way nobody is prevented from collecting their own data (using their own methods) and publishing their own map. Gene patents - on already existing genes - prevent just that, though.
My boss likes to pressure me to patent "something". I always get out of it. If I patent something which is actually good, then I can not use my idea anywhere else. My job experience is part of my capital, I have no intention of signing that away.
Regarding #3, I would think that article 4 of the US constitution applies: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..." It might not apply to all aspects of item #3, but I think it would apply at least to some, no?
There might be some consensus in the population regarding the principle of copyright. There is definately no consensus that big companies lobby politicians in order to extend copyright to any duration they like. That is a political question, and there is a political discussion required to deal with that. I do hope the Swedes will make this happen for us.
In the end (assuming TPB wins the case) you are either left with $185k, or if you have to return the interest, I presume you can deduct the bank fees to calculate the effective interest rate. Handling is billed to the client, in any case.
I sympathize with TPB, but I doubt the other side's lawyers are morons.
1/100th would be $78 ? I don't think you got your numbers right, there.