What the hell does abstinence have to do with religion? No one ever died from lack of sex. People have died engaging in sex, giving birth, being born, and being born into poverty.
Abstinence is about ensuring one does not procreate.
The fact that religion teaches this is a good idea outside of marriage is irrelevant.
Before the Slashdot virgin jokes kick in, let's consider how many people here would forego sex if it was offered to them by a person they found attractive.
I have. It was not difficult. Among other reasons, I would not do that with a friend on a bad rebound.
As for "drives", I have a pretty damn good "kill thieving liberals" drive. I haven't killed anyone.
Birth control is not effective, for a definition of "effective" that means "perfect". For all intents and purposes, I chose abstinence after my second child was born as I only wanted two children. My record in this regard isn't perfect, and when I relented, less than perfect (1% method failure) protection was still employed. Fortunately, I still only have the two children I desired.
No, I didn't miss the point. I am replying to "the point is to stop babies..." not, reduce babies, but stop them being produced. Only abstinence achieves this, but, of course, abstinence is hard to achieve.
Had badboy_tw2002 written "reduce the production of babies", your argument would have merit.
That's fine, but I wouldn't say we need a 100% effective solution. When we're looking at a serious overpopulation/explosively-growing-population problem, then a 1% failure rate is better than.. oh... 50% pregnancy success (a number I'm totally pulling out of my ass) when no contraception is used.
Well, among fertile couples, the pregnancy rate is 90% after one year of regular copulation.
While 1% is better on the whole societally when dealing with overpopulation, it does little good for the man who fathers a third child and increases his brood 50%. It could be the difference between starting to save a little and a return to poverty.
And, with a return to poverty he will decry contraception "a failure anyway" so "why bother". This would be espescially true if the contraceptive method encouraged is condom use (one of the cheapest and least reliable).
So, to be effective, insurance must be available against contraceptive failure. But, short of sterilization, how would you guarantee it would be used all the time?
This tends to correlate with children being a net economic liability in non-agrarian societies, but an economic benefit in agrarian ones: more hands to work the fields, hence the ability to work a bigger field.
The trouble starts when there aren't enough fields to be worked.
It takes a while for a society in transition from agrarian to industrial to realize that children are a net liability, a luxury actually.
There is no sufficiently effective method of separating sex from babies.
Most temporary (barrier or hormonal) methods of contraception carry 1% failure rates when used correctly (that is, 1% of all women will become pregnant in each year of relying on them). Method failure rates are much higher (as much as 33% cited for condom method failure). Sterilization spontaneously reverses about 0.3% of the time in women and 0.6% of the time in men.
Of course, you will encounter resistance from what may seem like unlikely sources. Namely, an economic system based on debt and fiat currency cannot continue to expand and remain viable unless the population is increasing.
This is also true for "social security" Ponzi schemes when there is a population bubble that ages (think "baby boomers"): to be viable, they require two things: (a) the ratio of recipients to contributors remains relatively small, and (b) recipients collect for a known fraction of their expected life.
We do not know when an individual will die, but we do know what the average life expectancy is, so statistically, payouts can begin at "expected death minus some number of years".
The problem is that the system requires forcing new contributors to participate to provide for current recipients. Besides striking me as unethical (just because A coerced B, does not mean B can coerce C), if investing for one's own retirement were cheaper, people would balk at participating. Seeing a boomer bubble age reinforces this unease, and could lead to revolt. Advancing the payout age is only a partial solution. Only increasing the birth rate can cover current anticipated recipients, but this will only compound the problem for them and runs counter to limited resource allocation.
The idea is not to stop producing young workers. The idea is to limit how many you produce so they can be productive young workers. If you currently face a resource shortage, you need to either find a way to increase resources, or reduce the population, or a combination of both.
Active population reduction is generally politically unacceptable, and rationing the mechanism of saving lives to those who are most productive (for some definition of "productive" -- the old may not contribute labor, but they might contribute knowledge and wisdom), only a bit less so.
Still, providing the tools so that such a population can have more options in combating their misery is a good idea. P Nevertheless, it is not clear that providing tools that can exacerbate one aspect of their misery (keeping people alive so they can breed more), without also providing tools to counter this problem (abstinence education (like that ever worked), and contraceptive technology (which. surprisingly, encounters cultural resistance)), is all that great.
Ignore the fact that this garden is walled. The point is that unwalled equivalents are possible.
Besides, all you need is a phone with a browser and wifi and an unlocked app on the tablet (ad hoc mode would be nice on the 802.11) -- you don't need ALL the hardware to be unlocked.
Alternately, run the open game app on a server on a linux box somewhere in the room (or anywhere, for that matter) that talks to various displays via rendering inside a browser on each. It's not like imagemapping wouldn't be enough for the average board game.
Crap. That's an idea I should've patented: "board game web applications delivered via non-uniform display browsers for the public board and private player data". Oh well.
Yeah, but you can't take the XBox/PS3 with you so the kids can play in the back of the car on a long ride, or (realizing that some people have cars with TVs in them), over to grandma's, what with all the cables, controllers, disks, to hook up to her tv just when she wants to watch "The Andy Griffith Show", on a 13 inch screen, in black and white, complaining about the "DTV adapter" she had to buy.
The utility isn't what you can do with it... it's that you can do it portably.
Oh sure, the closed source nature of it kills the utility, though I'm sure the DRM folks salivate at the thought of a ubiquitously accepted storage device that can be locked down.
I was looking at the potential capabilities that the hardware offers.
As for "broke mofos", I did note (sarcastically) that "everyone" will have a phone, for all practical values of "everyone". Crap, I know poor kids who have phones to keep in touch with their parents between home and school -- not iPhones, of course, but phones capable of display. In any case, I'm sure that private display devices for such "board game" applications could be produced relatively cheaply if that's all they did: LCD tethered to a USB port, maybe?
I'm more intrigued by the possibilities offered by the technology and form factor, than present-day artificial encumbered.
If you want to criticize the "walled garden", do so. I'd agree (which is why I have an HTC2 and not an iPhone). But do not criticize the notion of a garden just because some might be walled.
Yup. That's why I spent the $$$ to get an Android-based HTC2: Free Google Maps navigation with GPS (or a $10/month GPS data package from other providers). Beats having to buy a GPS device (and pay the per month map fees) as well.
The bottom line, is that we are very quickly approaching the "sweet spots" in computationally expandable portable display and storage devices: pads, phones, watches. One should not have physical "stuff" to represent data, only to effectively store and display it, regardless of the nature of the data itself.
We've been able to store digital representations of data for a long time, but display always required a clunky display device. As the amount of data stored increases, the marginal and amortized expense of including a display device with the storage unit drops, to the point that an e-book starts to look enough like a book that the shortcomings are overcome by the fact that it can look like all of your books.
Granted, you can only view one at a time, and the display might not be ideal for all viewings (movies you want on a big screen), but it is not unreasonable to have a few such devices (say two or three eventually), if you want to compare multiple books side by side. The point is that you don't need as many as you have books, and the paper and transportation costs are eliminated.
For $499 + $299/phone you can play every $75 board game electronically, and watch video in your lap, and surf the web, and take calls (though not conveniently), and control your other home devices.
Ignore the cost of the phone. Everyone has a phone (well, everyone who counts, anyway, and soon that will be everyone for all practical values of "everyone"). Lets say $50 can be cut of the cost of the game by removing packaging and printing. Ten games at $25 each and you're ahead of the game. And it does not hog space on your shelf/closet.
Crap, the idea of digital storage of licensed content was appealing to me in the 1980s when I had a custom-built oak cabinet built to hold my CDs and cassettes. The hassle is identification: needing to connect the repository to some kind of device to identify content stored. Permanent NFS-mounting kind of fixes this, but you can't take the repository with you for casual viewing. Tablets make that possible within the realm of your wireless network.
Now, what if the tablet was the content repository? With local display? And portability? So, you could take all your movies, music, board games, class notes, etc. with you?
Playback on the device, or UWB or 802.11n 'beam' it to the big honking TV hooked up to the surround sound system?
I think there is a market for a device which is the place where I keep all my 'stuff' so I can take it with me and see what it all is: the PPCP: portable personal computing pad. Make syncing with phones, cameras, GPS devices easy. Have a bunch of flash ports for external data (USB and HDMI too).
Yeah, I'd love to take a one year sabbatical from my current job and do this: as long as I get my living expenses covered, enough so I can continue to support my kids here, keep my stuff in storage, and enough to put a nice downpayment on a house when I return, I'd so go. I war away from them would be rough, but being able to own a home again for them would make up for it (ex got half of everything in the divorce, and what I had left was spent on legal fees preventing her from getting the other half -- I have the financial position of someone half my age: income, but little savings).
I grew up in Montreal, Canada. It can get to -30C and rarely -40C in the winter (not quite -90C, but you get the idea). Granted, we didn't have six months of darkness. More importantly, I started in radio, radio networking, and data networking in general: Dad was an RF engineer working on aerospace telecom stuff. I've learned to move with all my essentials in the back of a car (a cubic meter is HUGE).
I could so do this and it would kick ass on a resume: I like people, but have no extended family, and don't accumulate "fair weather" friends, so it's not like I'd miss anyone (other than my kids), or things like holidays: I don't 'do' Christmas, Thanksgiving, or my own birthday, for that matter. Not a complete 'loner' but work-related acquaintances would satisfy what little desire for socialization I have.
Just because attorney's fees are sought, and awarded, does not mean they will be awarded in the amount sought. They have to reasonably reflect the legal expenses incurred and the defendant's ability to pay.
IANAL, but I write from experience: I went to court to enforce a provision in my divorce decree against my ex-wife. Long story short: she got the house, could not refi in her name, I was liable for the mortgage, and she was to pay. If she didn't I had power of sale over the property, to eliminate my obligation. Further, she agreed to a "hold harmless" provision to my benefit. That meant that she was to pay any costs I incurred to enforce the decree. Well, she never paid on the mortgage, I sued to enforce the power of sale (realtors wanted a judgment), was awarded expenses and legal fees. (I liened the house, and had to sue again when she refused to sign agreements of purchase and sale.) Had to return to court three times, with mounting legal fees, and, facing contempt charges, she agreed to award a power of attorney so I could sign in her place. Despite her intransigence, I was only awarded a fraction of my additional legal fees, on the basis that that's all she could afford.
$400,000 legal fees for a defendant that (a) should have known better, (b) had the means to know better, and (c) has the means to pay them, are not unreasonable. In the Devil's Advocate example presented, I'm certain no judge would impose them: the standard of due diligence for an individual fighting a large number of possible infringers lacking the means for individual investigation are different for a well-funded organization that has the means to engage in detailed individual investigation. Further, if the take down notice included language to permit establishing a fair use defense, a suit in response would have been overkill: the judge would ask, "Why did you not claim a fair use affirmative defense and see if the problem was resolved before hiring an attorney."
Here, I expect the take-down notice was heavy-handed, and the matter not researched within the reasonable ability of the rights-holder.
I guess it's nerdish, but not as nerdish as you make it. It is impractical to put a phone as thick as an HTC2 in a front jeans pocket, and in a back pocket, it's just asking for trouble. I do tend to keep it (in it's belt case as well) in a jacket pocket if I'm wearing one.
Lots of people use earbuds here, as well, particularly since laws were passed most places making non-handsfree cell phone calls while driving illegal. That used to be considered nerdish.
But, really, I don't give a rat's ass what other's think.
I guess it's bad form to followup one's own post (when will/. allow editing if there have been no followups?), but here goes:
There are only a few basic components to a modern computing platform:
1. processing and local storage;
2. network: 3G or WiFi or Bluetooth;
3. display and audio output;
4. user input: keyboard and audio;
5. peripherals: compass, orientation, GPS, light and sound sensors.
Now, note the following:
A. After NRE, silicon is cheap, dirt cheap: you can have all the networking, radios, and some storage in each device.
B. There is no reason that you have to have all the components you're using in the same device.
The obvious example of (B) is the bluetooth earbud. We've been doing remote network display since the X-server was invented on wired devices -- no reason to not do it on wirelessly connected ones. Heck, I even saw a really cool "instant mobile hotspot" device about the size of a slim cell phone: 3G in, 802.11g out. And, of course, there's the laptop docking station to use a more comfortable screen and keyboard.
There's no need for a general purpose applications device on one's wrist, except for very specialized applications: phone, text messaging, compass, navigation, perhaps. Maybe calculator. The same sort of "apps" we had on relatively small screened cell phones of a few years ago, like my Moto E815 (damn that thing had a great radio).
The trouble with this is that it's extremely battery limited. Still, if you want uberportable basics that run for one day, it's O.K.
A step up is the modern IPhone or Android-powered phone. Belt clip size, with decent battery life (because it can hold a bigger battery). Now, combining the two allows for interesting possibilities: the wristputer now becomes an auxilliary display device: glance at your wrist to see your appointments, or incoming calls, etc. Just swap the SIM card from the wristputer to the cell phone to use the latter's mobile data connection.
One step up is the single screen ebook. I see this as a handheld, which can function as a phone, or use the bluetooth or wifi connection to the belt-clipped phone, for dialing and call management (in parallel with the cell phone and wrist computer: if I'm reading a book and a call comes in, or I want to make a call, I'd like to do that from the UI on the book I'm reading instread of having to reach for another device (earbud, wristputer, or belt-clipped phone). Of course, it too can take a SIM card, if that's all you want to carry.
Finally, for more serious reading, in the format of a traditional book, at the expense of size, is the dual-screen ebook, that folds. This one has color screens (instead of just, perhaps, e-ink). It has all the capabilities of the single-screen e-book.
Each device is optimized for a particular purpose, but can be pressed into service for alternate uses: which devices a user caries depends on their physical activity and the types of computing they expect to be doing. I can very much see the single-screen e-book as a universal remote control, for example.
"As one of the pro-democracy movement's leaders said, the heroes of the tank picture are two: the unknown figure who risked his life by standing in front of the juggernaut and the driver who rose to the moral challenge by refusing to mow down his compatriot."
The point isn't to intentionally commit suicide and hope one "takes out enough of the enemy".
The point is to fight back in a manner that would ensure your survival if you were left alone. No, this might not be as effective as other suicidal options, but it places your death (as inevitable as it might me) in the hands of the state instead of your own.
Seriously, do you think you gun can protect you from the government? Don't be stupid.
No, of course not. At least not mine alone. It would be certain suicide to shoot at an agent of the state.
But, living isn't the point. Liberty is, and a large number of people believe that life without liberty is not worth living. This is the whole point behind Patrick Henry's cry:
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
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Abortions are risky, expensive (if done safely) procedures. Insurance would be cheaper,
What the hell does abstinence have to do with religion? No one ever died from lack of sex. People have died engaging in sex, giving birth, being born, and being born into poverty.
Abstinence is about ensuring one does not procreate.
The fact that religion teaches this is a good idea outside of marriage is irrelevant.
Before the Slashdot virgin jokes kick in, let's consider how many people here would forego sex if it was offered to them by a person they found attractive.
I have. It was not difficult. Among other reasons, I would not do that with a friend on a bad rebound.
As for "drives", I have a pretty damn good "kill thieving liberals" drive. I haven't killed anyone.
Birth control is not effective, for a definition of "effective" that means "perfect". For all intents and purposes, I chose abstinence after my second child was born as I only wanted two children. My record in this regard isn't perfect, and when I relented, less than perfect (1% method failure) protection was still employed. Fortunately, I still only have the two children I desired.
No, I didn't miss the point. I am replying to "the point is to stop babies..." not, reduce babies, but stop them being produced. Only abstinence achieves this, but, of course, abstinence is hard to achieve.
Had badboy_tw2002 written "reduce the production of babies", your argument would have merit.
... my son's fourth grade teacher routinely says, "Me and Dick and Jane," or "Dick, Jane, and Me," instead of "Jane, Dick, and I."
I'm getting resistance from my kids and their friends when I correct this. "Me and him" so grates on my ears!
That's fine, but I wouldn't say we need a 100% effective solution. When we're looking at a serious overpopulation/explosively-growing-population problem, then a 1% failure rate is better than.. oh... 50% pregnancy success (a number I'm totally pulling out of my ass) when no contraception is used.
Well, among fertile couples, the pregnancy rate is 90% after one year of regular copulation.
While 1% is better on the whole societally when dealing with overpopulation, it does little good for the man who fathers a third child and increases his brood 50%. It could be the difference between starting to save a little and a return to poverty.
And, with a return to poverty he will decry contraception "a failure anyway" so "why bother". This would be espescially true if the contraceptive method encouraged is condom use (one of the cheapest and least reliable).
So, to be effective, insurance must be available against contraceptive failure. But, short of sterilization, how would you guarantee it would be used all the time?
This tends to correlate with children being a net economic liability in non-agrarian societies, but an economic benefit in agrarian ones: more hands to work the fields, hence the ability to work a bigger field.
The trouble starts when there aren't enough fields to be worked.
It takes a while for a society in transition from agrarian to industrial to realize that children are a net liability, a luxury actually.
I reversed the meaning of "use" and "method" failure above... my bad.
There is no sufficiently effective method of separating sex from babies.
Most temporary (barrier or hormonal) methods of contraception carry 1% failure rates when used correctly (that is, 1% of all women will become pregnant in each year of relying on them). Method failure rates are much higher (as much as 33% cited for condom method failure). Sterilization spontaneously reverses about 0.3% of the time in women and 0.6% of the time in men.
... single player games.
Of course, you will encounter resistance from what may seem like unlikely sources. Namely, an economic system based on debt and fiat currency cannot continue to expand and remain viable unless the population is increasing.
This is also true for "social security" Ponzi schemes when there is a population bubble that ages (think "baby boomers"): to be viable, they require two things: (a) the ratio of recipients to contributors remains relatively small, and (b) recipients collect for a known fraction of their expected life.
We do not know when an individual will die, but we do know what the average life expectancy is, so statistically, payouts can begin at "expected death minus some number of years".
The problem is that the system requires forcing new contributors to participate to provide for current recipients. Besides striking me as unethical (just because A coerced B, does not mean B can coerce C), if investing for one's own retirement were cheaper, people would balk at participating. Seeing a boomer bubble age reinforces this unease, and could lead to revolt. Advancing the payout age is only a partial solution. Only increasing the birth rate can cover current anticipated recipients, but this will only compound the problem for them and runs counter to limited resource allocation.
The idea is not to stop producing young workers. The idea is to limit how many you produce so they can be productive young workers. If you currently face a resource shortage, you need to either find a way to increase resources, or reduce the population, or a combination of both.
Active population reduction is generally politically unacceptable, and rationing the mechanism of saving lives to those who are most productive (for some definition of "productive" -- the old may not contribute labor, but they might contribute knowledge and wisdom), only a bit less so.
Still, providing the tools so that such a population can have more options in combating their misery is a good idea.
P
Nevertheless, it is not clear that providing tools that can exacerbate one aspect of their misery (keeping people alive so they can breed more), without also providing tools to counter this problem (abstinence education (like that ever worked), and contraceptive technology (which. surprisingly, encounters cultural resistance)), is all that great.
Ignore the fact that this garden is walled. The point is that unwalled equivalents are possible.
Besides, all you need is a phone with a browser and wifi and an unlocked app on the tablet (ad hoc mode would be nice on the 802.11) -- you don't need ALL the hardware to be unlocked.
Alternately, run the open game app on a server on a linux box somewhere in the room (or anywhere, for that matter) that talks to various displays via rendering inside a browser on each. It's not like imagemapping wouldn't be enough for the average board game.
Crap. That's an idea I should've patented: "board game web applications delivered via non-uniform display browsers for the public board and private player data". Oh well.
Yeah, but you can't take the XBox/PS3 with you so the kids can play in the back of the car on a long ride, or (realizing that some people have cars with TVs in them), over to grandma's, what with all the cables, controllers, disks, to hook up to her tv just when she wants to watch "The Andy Griffith Show", on a 13 inch screen, in black and white, complaining about the "DTV adapter" she had to buy.
The utility isn't what you can do with it... it's that you can do it portably.
Oh sure, the closed source nature of it kills the utility, though I'm sure the DRM folks salivate at the thought of a ubiquitously accepted storage device that can be locked down.
I was looking at the potential capabilities that the hardware offers.
As for "broke mofos", I did note (sarcastically) that "everyone" will have a phone, for all practical values of "everyone". Crap, I know poor kids who have phones to keep in touch with their parents between home and school -- not iPhones, of course, but phones capable of display. In any case, I'm sure that private display devices for such "board game" applications could be produced relatively cheaply if that's all they did: LCD tethered to a USB port, maybe?
I'm more intrigued by the possibilities offered by the technology and form factor, than present-day artificial encumbered.
If you want to criticize the "walled garden", do so. I'd agree (which is why I have an HTC2 and not an iPhone). But do not criticize the notion of a garden just because some might be walled.
Yup. That's why I spent the $$$ to get an Android-based HTC2: Free Google Maps navigation with GPS (or a $10/month GPS data package from other providers). Beats having to buy a GPS device (and pay the per month map fees) as well.
The bottom line, is that we are very quickly approaching the "sweet spots" in computationally expandable portable display and storage devices: pads, phones, watches. One should not have physical "stuff" to represent data, only to effectively store and display it, regardless of the nature of the data itself.
We've been able to store digital representations of data for a long time, but display always required a clunky display device. As the amount of data stored increases, the marginal and amortized expense of including a display device with the storage unit drops, to the point that an e-book starts to look enough like a book that the shortcomings are overcome by the fact that it can look like all of your books.
Granted, you can only view one at a time, and the display might not be ideal for all viewings (movies you want on a big screen), but it is not unreasonable to have a few such devices (say two or three eventually), if you want to compare multiple books side by side. The point is that you don't need as many as you have books, and the paper and transportation costs are eliminated.
You're missing the point.
For $499 + $299/phone you can play every $75 board game electronically, and watch video in your lap, and surf the web, and take calls (though not conveniently), and control your other home devices.
Ignore the cost of the phone. Everyone has a phone (well, everyone who counts, anyway, and soon that will be everyone for all practical values of "everyone"). Lets say $50 can be cut of the cost of the game by removing packaging and printing. Ten games at $25 each and you're ahead of the game. And it does not hog space on your shelf/closet.
Crap, the idea of digital storage of licensed content was appealing to me in the 1980s when I had a custom-built oak cabinet built to hold my CDs and cassettes. The hassle is identification: needing to connect the repository to some kind of device to identify content stored. Permanent NFS-mounting kind of fixes this, but you can't take the repository with you for casual viewing. Tablets make that possible within the realm of your wireless network.
Now, what if the tablet was the content repository? With local display? And portability? So, you could take all your movies, music, board games, class notes, etc. with you?
Playback on the device, or UWB or 802.11n 'beam' it to the big honking TV hooked up to the surround sound system?
I think there is a market for a device which is the place where I keep all my 'stuff' so I can take it with me and see what it all is: the PPCP: portable personal computing pad. Make syncing with phones, cameras, GPS devices easy. Have a bunch of flash ports for external data (USB and HDMI too).
Yeah, I'd love to take a one year sabbatical from my current job and do this: as long as I get my living expenses covered, enough so I can continue to support my kids here, keep my stuff in storage, and enough to put a nice downpayment on a house when I return, I'd so go. I war away from them would be rough, but being able to own a home again for them would make up for it (ex got half of everything in the divorce, and what I had left was spent on legal fees preventing her from getting the other half -- I have the financial position of someone half my age: income, but little savings).
I grew up in Montreal, Canada. It can get to -30C and rarely -40C in the winter (not quite -90C, but you get the idea). Granted, we didn't have six months of darkness. More importantly, I started in radio, radio networking, and data networking in general: Dad was an RF engineer working on aerospace telecom stuff. I've learned to move with all my essentials in the back of a car (a cubic meter is HUGE).
I could so do this and it would kick ass on a resume: I like people, but have no extended family, and don't accumulate "fair weather" friends, so it's not like I'd miss anyone (other than my kids), or things like holidays: I don't 'do' Christmas, Thanksgiving, or my own birthday, for that matter. Not a complete 'loner' but work-related acquaintances would satisfy what little desire for socialization I have.
Ahem.
Just because attorney's fees are sought, and awarded, does not mean they will be awarded in the amount sought. They have to reasonably reflect the legal expenses incurred and the defendant's ability to pay.
IANAL, but I write from experience: I went to court to enforce a provision in my divorce decree against my ex-wife. Long story short: she got the house, could not refi in her name, I was liable for the mortgage, and she was to pay. If she didn't I had power of sale over the property, to eliminate my obligation. Further, she agreed to a "hold harmless" provision to my benefit. That meant that she was to pay any costs I incurred to enforce the decree. Well, she never paid on the mortgage, I sued to enforce the power of sale (realtors wanted a judgment), was awarded expenses and legal fees. (I liened the house, and had to sue again when she refused to sign agreements of purchase and sale.) Had to return to court three times, with mounting legal fees, and, facing contempt charges, she agreed to award a power of attorney so I could sign in her place. Despite her intransigence, I was only awarded a fraction of my additional legal fees, on the basis that that's all she could afford.
$400,000 legal fees for a defendant that (a) should have known better, (b) had the means to know better, and (c) has the means to pay them, are not unreasonable. In the Devil's Advocate example presented, I'm certain no judge would impose them: the standard of due diligence for an individual fighting a large number of possible infringers lacking the means for individual investigation are different for a well-funded organization that has the means to engage in detailed individual investigation. Further, if the take down notice included language to permit establishing a fair use defense, a suit in response would have been overkill: the judge would ask, "Why did you not claim a fair use affirmative defense and see if the problem was resolved before hiring an attorney."
Here, I expect the take-down notice was heavy-handed, and the matter not researched within the reasonable ability of the rights-holder.
I guess it's nerdish, but not as nerdish as you make it. It is impractical to put a phone as thick as an HTC2 in a front jeans pocket, and in a back pocket, it's just asking for trouble. I do tend to keep it (in it's belt case as well) in a jacket pocket if I'm wearing one.
Lots of people use earbuds here, as well, particularly since laws were passed most places making non-handsfree cell phone calls while driving illegal. That used to be considered nerdish.
But, really, I don't give a rat's ass what other's think.
I guess it's bad form to followup one's own post (when will /. allow editing if there have been no followups?), but here goes:
There are only a few basic components to a modern computing platform:
1. processing and local storage;
2. network: 3G or WiFi or Bluetooth;
3. display and audio output;
4. user input: keyboard and audio;
5. peripherals: compass, orientation, GPS, light and sound sensors.
Now, note the following:
A. After NRE, silicon is cheap, dirt cheap: you can have all the networking, radios, and some storage in each device.
B. There is no reason that you have to have all the components you're using in the same device.
The obvious example of (B) is the bluetooth earbud. We've been doing remote network display since the X-server was invented on wired devices -- no reason to not do it on wirelessly connected ones. Heck, I even saw a really cool "instant mobile hotspot" device about the size of a slim cell phone: 3G in, 802.11g out. And, of course, there's the laptop docking station to use a more comfortable screen and keyboard.
There's no need for a general purpose applications device on one's wrist, except for very specialized applications: phone, text messaging, compass, navigation, perhaps. Maybe calculator. The same sort of "apps" we had on relatively small screened cell phones of a few years ago, like my Moto E815 (damn that thing had a great radio).
The trouble with this is that it's extremely battery limited. Still, if you want uberportable basics that run for one day, it's O.K.
A step up is the modern IPhone or Android-powered phone. Belt clip size, with decent battery life (because it can hold a bigger battery). Now, combining the two allows for interesting possibilities: the wristputer now becomes an auxilliary display device: glance at your wrist to see your appointments, or incoming calls, etc. Just swap the SIM card from the wristputer to the cell phone to use the latter's mobile data connection.
One step up is the single screen ebook. I see this as a handheld, which can function as a phone, or use the bluetooth or wifi connection to the belt-clipped phone, for dialing and call management (in parallel with the cell phone and wrist computer: if I'm reading a book and a call comes in, or I want to make a call, I'd like to do that from the UI on the book I'm reading instread of having to reach for another device (earbud, wristputer, or belt-clipped phone). Of course, it too can take a SIM card, if that's all you want to carry.
Finally, for more serious reading, in the format of a traditional book, at the expense of size, is the dual-screen ebook, that folds. This one has color screens (instead of just, perhaps, e-ink). It has all the capabilities of the single-screen e-book.
Each device is optimized for a particular purpose, but can be pressed into service for alternate uses: which devices a user caries depends on their physical activity and the types of computing they expect to be doing. I can very much see the single-screen e-book as a universal remote control, for example.
From Time Magazine:
"As one of the pro-democracy movement's leaders said, the heroes of the tank picture are two: the unknown figure who risked his life by standing in front of the juggernaut and the driver who rose to the moral challenge by refusing to mow down his compatriot."
The point isn't to intentionally commit suicide and hope one "takes out enough of the enemy".
The point is to fight back in a manner that would ensure your survival if you were left alone. No, this might not be as effective as other suicidal options, but it places your death (as inevitable as it might me) in the hands of the state instead of your own.
Perhaps you are too young to remember this.
Seriously, do you think you gun can protect you from the government? Don't be stupid.
No, of course not. At least not mine alone. It would be certain suicide to shoot at an agent of the state.
But, living isn't the point. Liberty is, and a large number of people believe that life without liberty is not worth living. This is the whole point behind Patrick Henry's cry:
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!