Band parent Sherry Melby, who is a teacher in the district, stands behind Pollitt's decision. Melby said she associated the image on the T-shirt with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
"I was disappointed with the image on the shirt." Melby said. "I don't think evolution should be associated with our school."
Ok, kids. Settle down. Today in RIAA Math, we're going to learn how to calculate damages from online piracy. Let's say Billy here has shared a song online. Now, we don't know exactly how many people downloaded it so we'll just take a random guess: Fifty million. Now the intellectual property value of that song is $100,000 so...
Yes, Susie? No, just because the song sells on iTunes for $0.99 doesn't mean it's "intellectual property value" is $0.99. Remember, we're talking about "intellectual property value", not "commercial market value."
Anyway, the intellectual property value of that song is $100,000 so Billy now owes the RIAA Fifty million times $100,000, or... Anyone? Right, Thomas. $5 trillion.
Now, best estimates by the RIAA Association of Piracy Estimations are that there are twenty million people like Billy. Since each Billy damages the RIAA by $5 trillion, how much does all online piracy damage the RIAA? Very good, Melissa. $100 quintillion.
Everyone get's an A.... What, Susie? No, those figures aren't worthless. No, I didn't just pluck numbers from out of thin air. World GDP is $60 trillion? Susie, you've obviously been reading some non-RIAA approved materials. See me after class. Everyone else is dismissed.
I'm guessing this would be a pretty non-toxic bug deterrent as it wouldn't need to kill them, just fool them into thinking the sprayed area was deadly. So you could spray it into areas containing food items. As someone who recently had a pest infestation, I'd welcome this. (Double infestation, actually. Termites which were only found when we called an exterminator to examine the beetle larvae we found all over our house. Those wound up being pantry pests.)
Another thought occurs though, if the "death mix" becomes commonly applied in a pest control setting, how long until the bugs learn that the "death mix" in human households doesn't mean actual death? Would the death mix's effectiveness decrease? Bugs with a lesser "death mix" aversion might actually gain a survival advantage (more exclusive access to food sources) and thus multiply more. Would our commercializing the "death mix" result in evolution rendering it ineffective?
Imagine for a second if the verdict had gone the other way. I wonder how far it would have carried. If I linked to the P2Pnet article that linked to the (allegedly) libelous content, would I be guilty of libel? After all, if linking to libelous content is libel, then surely linking to an article with "libel links" is libel too, right? What if you link to an article that links to an article that links to P2Pnet's "libel links" article?
If that was libel too, then, say goodbye to the entire web. We're all guilty of libel. If secondary links aren't libel, do TinyURLs save you? After all, you're not actually linking to the libelous content. You're linking to TinyURL.com who is "guilty" of libel by linking to the content.
On one hand we would have had an overreaching verdict that could have made everyone guilty of libel and on the other we would have had a verdict easily bypassed by the simplest of externally hosted redirection scripts. All in all, it's great that the judges ruled the way they did. (Though it worries me that it was a "split decision.")
I would think that finding a rocky, Earth-like planet might be a near-guarantee for finding life, but not necessarily intelligent life. However, some of those life forms might have some level of intelligence. They might not be little green men building flying saucers, but they might be smart pack hunters on the order of wolves. Even if we just found alien bacteria, though, it would be huge.
It's one thing to say "Odds are that there's life on other planets because the Universe is so big." It's quite another to say "There is life on other planets for example the second planet of star X2949!" Even if we don't find any life, finding planets around other stars increases our solar system sample size from one and tells us a lot about how planets form.
Toss in the RIAA/MPAA (tell them that the mafia's been pirating songs and movies online also) and sell some pay per view tickets. I think we found Step 2!
And also don't forget that pretty much any faith is open as to what is in their holy works. Want to read the Christian bible? Stroll into any church, sit down and they'll be more than happy to give you a copy to read while there. Want to read the Torah (or an English translation if you can't read the original Hebrew)? Walk into a Temple, sit down and open up a copy. Heck, you can even stop by pretty much any hotel room and find a Bible.
Now try to do the same thing with the Scientology "religious" texts. You can't. Those are super-secret and aren't even revealed if you join the "faith." You need to pay your way up the scale enough before you find out about the space-DC-10's, souls trapped in volcanoes, and the rest of the tale.
In my mind, if a religious organization (or an organization that claims to be religious) doesn't want to freely share their works (even an organization like Judaism that doesn't actively convert members, but especially one that - like Scientology - actively seeks converts), then there's a strong likelihood that the organization is a cult. Judaism and Christianity give free access to their texts (or nearly free if you buy a book). Membership in the religion isn't even a criteria for gaining access. Scientology keeps the supposed religious work hidden away even from members and actively seeks to suppress any publication of it. Thus, they are a cult.
Hah! I don't have a cubicle. I have an office... in the back of the server room... with no windows... and whose door has to remain shut lest the server room's air conditioning flood in... Wait, why was I bragging about not having a cubicle again?
Forgot to make one additional point: Although Disney will lock up their movies, they'll still sell merchandising items based off of the movies. So perhaps Lilo and Stitch is in the vault, but Stitch figures might still be on store shelves.
I did an analysis of how much I'd save if I canceled cable. I recently won a Roku box so I figured we could use that with Netflix and Amazon VOD and could add in some DVD purchases. Toss is Hulu/YouTube/etc and you could easily replace cable's content. The only problem was the savings: only $15 per month.
But then, as I explored Amazon VOD a bit more I realized I was giving it far too much credit. Why would I pay $3.99 to rent a movie for 24 hours on Amazon VOD when I could "take out" that same movie from Netflix in my $8.99 plan (either the actual DVD or via Roku)? Once I excluded paying for Amazon VOD, I wound up calculating a $41 a month savings. I could literally use the first year's savings to buy all the hardware I needed (including media streamers to play content from my desktop PC on my TVs) and have cash to spare.
To do this, the content would need to be digital (and uneditable) the whole way through. One analog hole (just the thing they're worried about) and their digital watermark/encoding/whatever could be destroyed keeping them from identifying who pirated it. This really worries them as they tend to be control freaks of the highest order and want to know what people are doing with their content, when, and with who. Sometimes I wonder why they don't just take the master tapes, lock them in a "TV & Film Fort Knox" and keep everyone away with armed guards. It would stop piracy and would cost them (and us) a whole lot less.
Why, pray tell, would a publisher pay good money to extend a copyright if they have no intention of releasing the works in some form of per-profit publication?
For a good example of a publisher wanting to keep copyrights when they have no intention of releasing the works, simply look to the one company often blamed for the insane copyright terms: Disney. They have their "vault" out of which they will release DVDs "for a limited time only." Once the time period is over, the movie goes back into the vault until Disney decides to release the Ultra-Cool-Incredibly-Wonderful-Extra-Special-Edition. Like you said, they keep an artificial scarcity so people will snatch up the DVDs when they are released instead of waiting. After all, if you wait, you might miss your chance to own the DVD before it gets locked back up. They're experts at gaming the system.
Wait, you don't want to use bleeding edge technology to solve a problem that could be solved by 70 year old technology? And you call yourself a geek! I guess this means you wouldn't endorse my voting system: A fully 3D, virtual reality MMPORG voting system where everyone signs in at once, moves their character to the camp of their chosen candidate and then the two sides do battle until a winner is declared. Sure it's massive overkill and would require billions just to get off the ground, but think of how cool it would be!;-)
Let's be honest here, imagine killing spree scenes would be like the average sex scenes, we'd get to see people running around with their index fingers pointing at their enemies and shouting "pew pew"
On another note, imagine what movies would be like if the average sex scenes looked like the average movie's killing sprees. The hero would be surrounded by the (female) villian's bodyguards - fifty drop dead beautiful women. He would "take them on" all at once in the most graphic way possible. Finally, just when you thought the hero couldn't go any further, he and the female villian would have their "show down." Meanwhile, they'd toss some violence (in the form of a wedgie or two) in for good measure.
This isn't a Disney-only phenomenon. My sons like watching Max and Ruby. Near as we can tell, Ruby is the "parent" in that household. They have a grandmother who lives nearby but in a different house. There's a painting in one scene depicting Max and Ruby with two older individuals. My wife and I think that there is a very dark back story to this kids show.
There are Marvel kids board books which show heroes and villains as "just friends" who talk about things like sharing and friendship. That's ok for introducing "Spider-Man" and "Sandman" to an under-3 audience. I recently bought my son (6) some new books and included a Spider-Man "level 2" reader. It might be slightly kiddie-fied compared to the original comic, but it's pretty much as close to a comic book as you can get (while keeping the reading level low). The one he got had Spider-Man/Parker being bullied by Flash Thompson. Parker thought that perhaps he could get respect by bullying others. Then he fought Electro (who was trying to get respect by holding the entire city hostage). When Spider-Man won he realized that he wouldn't use his powers to bully people but to help them. Yes, it's heavy-handed compared to a normal comic, but then again it's targeting a young group of kids. It was pretty good all things considered and I'm going to try to steer him towards the rest in the series. (He already watching Spectacular Spider-Man and Batman: The Brave and the Bold on TV with me.)
Not to mention the fact that SCO might not survive long enough to persue the case against Novell. They're in Chapter 11 already and McBride & co have been kicked out in favor of a bankruptcy trustee who is likely to move SCO into Chapter 7. There it will be taken apart and the pieces sold off. Even if SCO avoided Chapter 7, the $3 million SCO payment to Novell was upheld. So SCO would have huge debts to pay off while fighting a legal battle against Novell. Even if they somehow survived that, IBM's Nazgul... I mean lawyers are waiting on the other side. The average Linux shop won't have anything to worry about from SCO for *years* even under SCO's best case scenario.
Wait, isn't the world supposed to end in 2012? I can see it now: SCO will win the trial and the resulting warping of reality will cause pigs to fly, hell to freeze over, Linus to switch to Windows, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
The good news is that this doesn't mean that SCO owns UNIX. It just means that the appeals court thought that SCO deserved a jury trial. SCO would need to present their evidence to a jury and convince them that SCO purchased the copyrights. Meanwhile, Novell would be shooting down SCO's arguments and presenting their own evidence. If the previous trial is any indication, SCO will stumble and delay it's way through always acting as though Novell was holding back on giving them that crucial piece of evidence that they had proving SCO's case.
The bad news is that this means more years of SCO saying "We own UNIX and, by extension, LINUX!"
The good news, however, is that Darl's lost control of SCO's rudder ( http://blogs.computerworld.com/14597/the_sco_zombie_wins_one ). The Chapter 11 court has seized control of the company and is appointing a trustee. The likely outcome is that SCO will enter Chapter 7. There, it will be ripped to shreds and sold off piece by piece.
Actually, the roots of the crisis started before the Internet took off with newspaper readers. Papers, looking to cut costs, started relying more and more on AP and other news wire services. When all papers began looking the same, loyalty to a particular paper disappeared. . In addition, one of the newspaper's cash cows is the classified ads section. The Internet can do classifieds much better with sorting, searching and filtering on a level printed classifieds could only dream of. Without a need for printed classifieds, people had one less reason to buy newspapers.
Personally, I get the newspaper 4 days a week. We only really use the Sunday paper (for the ads/coupons), but we get the others pretty much for free (over the weekend only price). Still, those papers normally go right from the doorstep to the recycling bin completely unread.
I don't know, some of those pads are OK at capturing my signature but others leave it a jumbled mess worse than any signature I've ever written with a pen. And that includes the "just signed my name 100 times, here's another paper to sign for my house" signature. I'm guessing that the differences are either expense (places that go with cheap pads get horrid looking signatures) or when the pad was purchased (earlier ones worse at capturing signatures than later ones).
As a side note, am I the only one who doesn't like it when my signature is printed on my receipt? It means that a receipt that I'd otherwise just throw out (since it doesn't have my full credit card number on it) becomes one I need to shred.
I've always wondered just how accurate signatures are. I've noticed that my own signature varies widely depending on various factors. For example, when we purchased our house I had to sign my name to a dozen or more papers. The first signature looked "normal" but the later signatures were glorified scribbles. If I needed to sign a check last and just scribbled my signature on the back, would the bank (not privy to my signature's declining quality in the previous paperwork) be able to tell that it wasn't a bad fake?
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Better science class? I don't think evolution should be associated with school.
Of course, that'd be funnier if a parent (and teacher!) hadn't already said that about a band shirt featuring an "evolution" theme.
http://www.sedaliademocrat.com/news/0px-18740-span-font.html
Ok, kids. Settle down. Today in RIAA Math, we're going to learn how to calculate damages from online piracy. Let's say Billy here has shared a song online. Now, we don't know exactly how many people downloaded it so we'll just take a random guess: Fifty million. Now the intellectual property value of that song is $100,000 so...
Yes, Susie? No, just because the song sells on iTunes for $0.99 doesn't mean it's "intellectual property value" is $0.99. Remember, we're talking about "intellectual property value", not "commercial market value."
Anyway, the intellectual property value of that song is $100,000 so Billy now owes the RIAA Fifty million times $100,000, or... Anyone? Right, Thomas. $5 trillion.
Now, best estimates by the RIAA Association of Piracy Estimations are that there are twenty million people like Billy. Since each Billy damages the RIAA by $5 trillion, how much does all online piracy damage the RIAA? Very good, Melissa. $100 quintillion.
Everyone get's an A.... What, Susie? No, those figures aren't worthless. No, I didn't just pluck numbers from out of thin air. World GDP is $60 trillion? Susie, you've obviously been reading some non-RIAA approved materials. See me after class. Everyone else is dismissed.
I'm guessing this would be a pretty non-toxic bug deterrent as it wouldn't need to kill them, just fool them into thinking the sprayed area was deadly. So you could spray it into areas containing food items. As someone who recently had a pest infestation, I'd welcome this. (Double infestation, actually. Termites which were only found when we called an exterminator to examine the beetle larvae we found all over our house. Those wound up being pantry pests.)
Another thought occurs though, if the "death mix" becomes commonly applied in a pest control setting, how long until the bugs learn that the "death mix" in human households doesn't mean actual death? Would the death mix's effectiveness decrease? Bugs with a lesser "death mix" aversion might actually gain a survival advantage (more exclusive access to food sources) and thus multiply more. Would our commercializing the "death mix" result in evolution rendering it ineffective?
Imagine for a second if the verdict had gone the other way. I wonder how far it would have carried. If I linked to the P2Pnet article that linked to the (allegedly) libelous content, would I be guilty of libel? After all, if linking to libelous content is libel, then surely linking to an article with "libel links" is libel too, right? What if you link to an article that links to an article that links to P2Pnet's "libel links" article?
If that was libel too, then, say goodbye to the entire web. We're all guilty of libel. If secondary links aren't libel, do TinyURLs save you? After all, you're not actually linking to the libelous content. You're linking to TinyURL.com who is "guilty" of libel by linking to the content.
On one hand we would have had an overreaching verdict that could have made everyone guilty of libel and on the other we would have had a verdict easily bypassed by the simplest of externally hosted redirection scripts. All in all, it's great that the judges ruled the way they did. (Though it worries me that it was a "split decision.")
I would think that finding a rocky, Earth-like planet might be a near-guarantee for finding life, but not necessarily intelligent life. However, some of those life forms might have some level of intelligence. They might not be little green men building flying saucers, but they might be smart pack hunters on the order of wolves. Even if we just found alien bacteria, though, it would be huge.
It's one thing to say "Odds are that there's life on other planets because the Universe is so big." It's quite another to say "There is life on other planets for example the second planet of star X2949!" Even if we don't find any life, finding planets around other stars increases our solar system sample size from one and tells us a lot about how planets form.
Toss in the RIAA/MPAA (tell them that the mafia's been pirating songs and movies online also) and sell some pay per view tickets. I think we found Step 2!
And also don't forget that pretty much any faith is open as to what is in their holy works. Want to read the Christian bible? Stroll into any church, sit down and they'll be more than happy to give you a copy to read while there. Want to read the Torah (or an English translation if you can't read the original Hebrew)? Walk into a Temple, sit down and open up a copy. Heck, you can even stop by pretty much any hotel room and find a Bible.
Now try to do the same thing with the Scientology "religious" texts. You can't. Those are super-secret and aren't even revealed if you join the "faith." You need to pay your way up the scale enough before you find out about the space-DC-10's, souls trapped in volcanoes, and the rest of the tale.
In my mind, if a religious organization (or an organization that claims to be religious) doesn't want to freely share their works (even an organization like Judaism that doesn't actively convert members, but especially one that - like Scientology - actively seeks converts), then there's a strong likelihood that the organization is a cult. Judaism and Christianity give free access to their texts (or nearly free if you buy a book). Membership in the religion isn't even a criteria for gaining access. Scientology keeps the supposed religious work hidden away even from members and actively seeks to suppress any publication of it. Thus, they are a cult.
Hah! I don't have a cubicle. I have an office... in the back of the server room... with no windows... and whose door has to remain shut lest the server room's air conditioning flood in... Wait, why was I bragging about not having a cubicle again?
Forgot to make one additional point: Although Disney will lock up their movies, they'll still sell merchandising items based off of the movies. So perhaps Lilo and Stitch is in the vault, but Stitch figures might still be on store shelves.
I did an analysis of how much I'd save if I canceled cable. I recently won a Roku box so I figured we could use that with Netflix and Amazon VOD and could add in some DVD purchases. Toss is Hulu/YouTube/etc and you could easily replace cable's content. The only problem was the savings: only $15 per month.
But then, as I explored Amazon VOD a bit more I realized I was giving it far too much credit. Why would I pay $3.99 to rent a movie for 24 hours on Amazon VOD when I could "take out" that same movie from Netflix in my $8.99 plan (either the actual DVD or via Roku)? Once I excluded paying for Amazon VOD, I wound up calculating a $41 a month savings. I could literally use the first year's savings to buy all the hardware I needed (including media streamers to play content from my desktop PC on my TVs) and have cash to spare.
To do this, the content would need to be digital (and uneditable) the whole way through. One analog hole (just the thing they're worried about) and their digital watermark/encoding/whatever could be destroyed keeping them from identifying who pirated it. This really worries them as they tend to be control freaks of the highest order and want to know what people are doing with their content, when, and with who. Sometimes I wonder why they don't just take the master tapes, lock them in a "TV & Film Fort Knox" and keep everyone away with armed guards. It would stop piracy and would cost them (and us) a whole lot less.
For a good example of a publisher wanting to keep copyrights when they have no intention of releasing the works, simply look to the one company often blamed for the insane copyright terms: Disney. They have their "vault" out of which they will release DVDs "for a limited time only." Once the time period is over, the movie goes back into the vault until Disney decides to release the Ultra-Cool-Incredibly-Wonderful-Extra-Special-Edition. Like you said, they keep an artificial scarcity so people will snatch up the DVDs when they are released instead of waiting. After all, if you wait, you might miss your chance to own the DVD before it gets locked back up. They're experts at gaming the system.
Wait, you don't want to use bleeding edge technology to solve a problem that could be solved by 70 year old technology? And you call yourself a geek! I guess this means you wouldn't endorse my voting system: A fully 3D, virtual reality MMPORG voting system where everyone signs in at once, moves their character to the camp of their chosen candidate and then the two sides do battle until a winner is declared. Sure it's massive overkill and would require billions just to get off the ground, but think of how cool it would be! ;-)
Why am I reminded of LOLBat from PVP? http://www.pvponline.com/2008/08/28/epix-battle/
On another note, imagine what movies would be like if the average sex scenes looked like the average movie's killing sprees. The hero would be surrounded by the (female) villian's bodyguards - fifty drop dead beautiful women. He would "take them on" all at once in the most graphic way possible. Finally, just when you thought the hero couldn't go any further, he and the female villian would have their "show down." Meanwhile, they'd toss some violence (in the form of a wedgie or two) in for good measure.
This isn't a Disney-only phenomenon. My sons like watching Max and Ruby. Near as we can tell, Ruby is the "parent" in that household. They have a grandmother who lives nearby but in a different house. There's a painting in one scene depicting Max and Ruby with two older individuals. My wife and I think that there is a very dark back story to this kids show.
There are Marvel kids board books which show heroes and villains as "just friends" who talk about things like sharing and friendship. That's ok for introducing "Spider-Man" and "Sandman" to an under-3 audience. I recently bought my son (6) some new books and included a Spider-Man "level 2" reader. It might be slightly kiddie-fied compared to the original comic, but it's pretty much as close to a comic book as you can get (while keeping the reading level low). The one he got had Spider-Man/Parker being bullied by Flash Thompson. Parker thought that perhaps he could get respect by bullying others. Then he fought Electro (who was trying to get respect by holding the entire city hostage). When Spider-Man won he realized that he wouldn't use his powers to bully people but to help them. Yes, it's heavy-handed compared to a normal comic, but then again it's targeting a young group of kids. It was pretty good all things considered and I'm going to try to steer him towards the rest in the series. (He already watching Spectacular Spider-Man and Batman: The Brave and the Bold on TV with me.)
No, no, no. Pinocchio versus Wolverine. Pinocchio keeps lying, but Wolverine slices off his growing nose.
And considering that Disney owns the Muppets also. Hulk versus Mrs. Piggy. Hulk calls Mrs. Piggy fat then look out Hulk!!!! *hiii-yah!*
As he web slings around town he shouts "AHH-HOO-HOO-WEEE".
Not to mention the fact that SCO might not survive long enough to persue the case against Novell. They're in Chapter 11 already and McBride & co have been kicked out in favor of a bankruptcy trustee who is likely to move SCO into Chapter 7. There it will be taken apart and the pieces sold off. Even if SCO avoided Chapter 7, the $3 million SCO payment to Novell was upheld. So SCO would have huge debts to pay off while fighting a legal battle against Novell. Even if they somehow survived that, IBM's Nazgul... I mean lawyers are waiting on the other side. The average Linux shop won't have anything to worry about from SCO for *years* even under SCO's best case scenario.
Wait, isn't the world supposed to end in 2012? I can see it now: SCO will win the trial and the resulting warping of reality will cause pigs to fly, hell to freeze over, Linus to switch to Windows, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
The good news is that this doesn't mean that SCO owns UNIX. It just means that the appeals court thought that SCO deserved a jury trial. SCO would need to present their evidence to a jury and convince them that SCO purchased the copyrights. Meanwhile, Novell would be shooting down SCO's arguments and presenting their own evidence. If the previous trial is any indication, SCO will stumble and delay it's way through always acting as though Novell was holding back on giving them that crucial piece of evidence that they had proving SCO's case.
The bad news is that this means more years of SCO saying "We own UNIX and, by extension, LINUX!"
The good news, however, is that Darl's lost control of SCO's rudder ( http://blogs.computerworld.com/14597/the_sco_zombie_wins_one ). The Chapter 11 court has seized control of the company and is appointing a trustee. The likely outcome is that SCO will enter Chapter 7. There, it will be ripped to shreds and sold off piece by piece.
Actually, the roots of the crisis started before the Internet took off with newspaper readers. Papers, looking to cut costs, started relying more and more on AP and other news wire services. When all papers began looking the same, loyalty to a particular paper disappeared.
.
In addition, one of the newspaper's cash cows is the classified ads section. The Internet can do classifieds much better with sorting, searching and filtering on a level printed classifieds could only dream of. Without a need for printed classifieds, people had one less reason to buy newspapers.
Personally, I get the newspaper 4 days a week. We only really use the Sunday paper (for the ads/coupons), but we get the others pretty much for free (over the weekend only price). Still, those papers normally go right from the doorstep to the recycling bin completely unread.
I don't know, some of those pads are OK at capturing my signature but others leave it a jumbled mess worse than any signature I've ever written with a pen. And that includes the "just signed my name 100 times, here's another paper to sign for my house" signature. I'm guessing that the differences are either expense (places that go with cheap pads get horrid looking signatures) or when the pad was purchased (earlier ones worse at capturing signatures than later ones).
As a side note, am I the only one who doesn't like it when my signature is printed on my receipt? It means that a receipt that I'd otherwise just throw out (since it doesn't have my full credit card number on it) becomes one I need to shred.
I've always wondered just how accurate signatures are. I've noticed that my own signature varies widely depending on various factors. For example, when we purchased our house I had to sign my name to a dozen or more papers. The first signature looked "normal" but the later signatures were glorified scribbles. If I needed to sign a check last and just scribbled my signature on the back, would the bank (not privy to my signature's declining quality in the previous paperwork) be able to tell that it wasn't a bad fake?