You'd think conservatives would want to protect our Constitution. But you'd be completely wrong.
The True Conservatives still do want to protect our Constitution. Unfortunately, their major party (Republicans) has been hijacked by a group called "Neo-Conservatives" who think that any action is justified if you tell people you're doing it to fight terrorism. These hijackers have steered the Republican party away from being the "Party Of Small Government" and into being the "Party of Theocracy, Police State, and Rovian Lies." I held out a thin hope that McCain's nomination meant that the Republican party would be steering away from the Neo-Cons, but it looks like they're back for more.
It would have been a slightly different situtation if she was attempting to incite violence, or using the link in some other non protected way, but there seems to be absolutely no indication that this is the case(I'm not entirely sure how you could incite violence against a web address in the first place).
Even if she was putting up the link and saying "bomb these people," her crime wouldn't be the act of linking to their web site, but inciting violence. In fact, I can't think of anything she could do where the link itself would be the crime (though it may be used in a larger crime). The closest I could think of would be writing something libelous and making that text link to the city's website. Even that, though, would involve the text and not the link itself.
Other than that point, though, I agree with you completely. The mayor completely overstepped his bounds and will hopefully be put in his place by the courts.
I have to agree, software patents seem to always be bad. (Perhaps 1% of them are valid, but that doesn't excuse the 99% that are junk.) If we were forced to keep software patents, though, maybe companies should be forced to choose between copyright and patent. You can choose a patent on how your software works, but that patent expires in a relatively short period of time (say, 5 years for a software patent) and can be overturned in court. After the patent expires/is overturned, your software is effectively Public Domain. Or you can choose copyright on your software and get the longer protection span, but not the "width" of protection (as your protection is only on your implementation of the software concept, not the software concept itself). To grant both copyright *and* patent protections on the same piece of software is just idiotic.
is your friends suspicion that the US would like to lay its grubby fingers on #4 really as absurd as you were trying to make it out to be?
Oh, I have no question that Bush would love to invade Iran and "bring Democracy to them" if he could. What I found absurd was the constant retconning of the reasons for Iraq. To say that the reason we invaded Iraq was always so we could keep an eye on Iran is completely false and is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. As one reason is shown to be false, the Bush administration always shifts to another reason and then claims that that was always the case. Unfortunately, the news media needs to grow a pair and call politicians (from both sides of the aisle) when they do sudden reversals like this. Changing opinion based on new information is one thing. Claiming that you were always for/against something when you clearly weren't or that your reasons were Y when you stated over and over that they were X is not something that the media should let slide.
Exactly how? Perhaps I didn't word my sarcasm correctly. Looking at my "Troll" moderation and your response, perhaps I gave the view that I myself am a Creationist. I thought my "Jebus" ending would be a dead giveaway, but I've been less than clear at times when attempting humor. Let me be clear, then. I am not a Creationist. I take the scientific view of things and demand proof and falsification for my theories about how the Universe came into being. I see science finding things that it can't explain as a good thing overall. It forces us to update our theories to account for those anomalies, perhaps even ditching flawed theories entirely. Creationists, on the other hand, never change their theory (why should they when "God did it" can't be falsified?) and seem to think that any reworking of a theory just proves that the theory is bad.
Come on, something that science can't explain (yet)? This is a perfect moment for all of the creationists to jump up and down shouting: "See? We *KNEW* it! Science has no answer for this! That means science doesn't know anything and thus the Big Bang, Evolution, and all of those things never happened. Clearly this unidentified object shows that the Universe was created 6,000 years ago by Jebus, the hovering rigatoni creature!"
In the interests of giving McCain props where I think he should get them (even though I don't agree with him on most subjects):
Question: Senator, embryonic stem cell federal funding.
McCain: I want to thank Mrs. Reagan for the many kindnesses extended to me many -- and my fellow prisoners of war many years ago when we came home to this wonderful state. I believe that we need to fund this. This is a tough issue for those of us in the pro-life community. I would remind you that these stem cells are either going to be discarded or perpetually frozen. We need to do what we can to relieve human suffering. It's a tough issue. I support federal funding.
Kudos to McCain for correctly identifying the glaring hole in the pro-life argument against embryonic stem cell research. The pro-life crowd will often argue that the embryos that stem cells are harvested from are humans and thus deserve a better fate than being used for research. They ignore the reality of the situation, however. Those frozen embryos are most likely going to be discarded/incinerated if they aren't used for stem cell research.
Which is a more dignified fate for the embryo? To be incinerated/tossed out like trashed? Or to be used in an attempt to save lives?
According to All Things Digital, Sen. McCain believes that there should be minimal government regulation in broadband, and that the market should solve the net-neutrality issue. He was quoted as saying "When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment."
This sounds like McCain would support AT&T if they decided that all Google packets passing through their system would be slowed down to dial-up speeds unless Google paid them for the privilege of running at broadband speeds. So when you make a business, McCain feels you are entitled to make a profit on it? That sharply differs from my view that businesses have to earn their profits. Simply owning the pipe doesn't mean they've earned their profit, though it does give them a good opportunity to do so. (By giving users speedy Internet access for a monthly fee.)
When Obama said that deciding the moment when a collection of 46 chromosomes becomes legally a "human life" is "above his pay grade", he was referring to god. I thought you faithy Republicans went nuts for that kind of thing, not against it.
It's kind of like Palin's daughter's situation. If it had been Obama or Biden had a teenage daughter who had gotten knocked up and chose to keep the baby, the religious right would have lambasted them for letting their daughter have sex, blasted her for being a slut, and then railed on all of them for referring to keeping the baby as a "choice."
With Palin's daughter, they praised Palin for being so principled and praised her daughter for doing the right thing, all the while tripping over themselves in an attempt to ignore the "sex outside of marriage" issue. It's actually quite entertaining in a way.
Of course, no matter whose daughter should be pregnant by whom, I don't think that it deserves to be an issue to decide the Presidential race on unless one of the candidates is the father.
Don't you know that condoms are full of tiny holes that are too small to see, but that the AIDS virus can go through?
Seriously, my wife was teaching middle school health in an all-girl's Catholic school and the person they brought in to teach the Sex-Ed lesson used this little chestnut. My wife walked out and went to the principal to complain. It's one thing to teach kids that abstinence is the best policy. (It is, though safe sex practices should be taught also.) It is quite another to give kids deliberate misinformation in an attempt to scare them off of sex. The kids will just wind up having sex and not using condoms. ("I'm not going to get AIDS. After all, I'm an invincible teenager. And if a condom won't protect me, why should I use it?")
I don't remember the "For the people who died 15 years ago!" rational for war.
You didn't get the press release a few moments ago that retroactively changed the reason for the war yet again?
Seriously, though, for some reason I find the constant retconning of the reasoning for the war even worse than the original lie. You might be able to claim that the original reason was due to faulty intelligence and admit to having a "we goofed" moment. (Sure, that goof resulted in tons of deaths on both sides, but stay with me here.) However, to constantly change the reasoning behind the war after the fact ("Sadaam has WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was trying to get WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was starting up programs which might have eventually, one day, resulted in a WMD/nuke.", etc.) shows that not only does the administration not care whether they lie or not, but they also don't care how good their reasoning is and they think that the American people are stupid.
I guess they're right, though. I had a friend actually try to tell me that the reason we're in Iraq now is so we can keep a better eye on Iran. Yes, folks, the true reason that we invaded a sovereign country that posed no real threat to us, destabilized it to the brink of civil war, wasted the international good will we had after 9-11, fought a war that resulted in thousands of US dead (and even more Iraqi dead), and tied up our military resources so much that other tin-pot dictators feel they can thumb their noses at us is so we could get a bit closer to Iran to keep an eye on them. I guess it makes sense that we'd want to keep an eye on them, though. With our hands tied up in Iraq, and eye is about all we can spare.
How about this: God made the creatures and the way he did it was via evolution.
Now go stick that in your pipe and smoke it... hippy.
I actually believe in this view to some extent. I believe in God and am semi-religious. However, I'm a firm believer in scientific theories of how the world works. (I take the religious writings as stories more meant for moral lessons than for physical explanations of how the world works.) That said, even if God made everything and simply used the "laws of physics", "evolution", etc as his methods, it still wouldn't be appropriate to bring God into the science class. We might thank him in a religiously based setting for using consistent methodology instead of just making things up as he goes along ("You know what? I think I made a mistake. From now on, protons are negative and electrons are positive."), but the basic theory of how the world progressed from the Big Bang to the present day wouldn't change.
The big problem with introducing God into a scientific setting is that He isn't falsifiable. We can falsify Evolution. Find a mammoth bone that dates from before the time of the Dinosaurs and there'll be some serious theory rewriting. But how can you prove that God doesn't exist? You can't. You can have a personal belief that he doesn't exist (and thus be an atheist), but you can't design a test that would actually measure his existence. Thus God is fine in a religious setting, but needs to be left outside when students step into science class.
I don't believe that mix tapes are technically legal. It's not something that you'll ever be prosecuted for (unless you are distributing those mix tapes/CDs to tons of people or selling them), but it still falls within the realm of copyright infringement.
Actually, he once fell down and required stitches on his chin. That's the worst that he's been hurt and he definitely still remembers that. He even corrected me recently on how old he was when that happened. He also knows about death as my wife's grandfather passed away a year and a half ago, but death happening to him is, of course, too abstract a concept. So we can warn of danger up to the "need stitches" level, but anything else goes over his head.
One day while driving, my five year old managed to unlock and open his car door. The door stayed mostly shut long enough for me to pull over and close it. I sternly warned him that if he did that again, he could fall out of the car and be seriously hurt. When he didn't seem phased by that, I told him that his toy could fall out of the open door and be lost. He got very frightened and promised not to do that again. (He hasn't.) Why the different reaction? I think that falling out of a car and being seriously hurt is an abstract concept to him. He just can't really imagine what it would feel like. But losing a toy that he likes, that he can easily imagine. Sometimes with kids the bigger threat isn't the one that they can wrap their minds around and thus isn't the scarier option.
I thought I had read this before so I did a search and came up with this: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/2/103735/275 This post was made in 2003 (and references a previous post on Slashdot, so it could easily be older than that.) You are simply reposting a 5 year old story word for word. I somehow doubt that you are the original author (which would, ironically, make that post copyright infringement;-) ).
That said, there are a couple of big holes in this story.
Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame.
The author admits to not knowing why people aren't buying CDs, but then immediately jumps to the "inescapable truth" that Internet piracy is to blame. It isn't because the selection isn't to the buying public's taste, or because a Walmart opened down the block with better prices, or because people were buying more DVDs/video games/etc. Nope, it *had* to be Internet Piracy! And why?
The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate.
Ok, the article is 3 years old, but let's let that slide for a bit. The piracy that the article speaks of is commercial CD pressing. You know, the folks who obtain one CD, burn a hundred copies, and sell them on the street corner for $1.50 each. That is a completely different form of piracy than the guy who clicks "share this folder" in LimeWire/Kazaa/etc.
On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own.
Yes, the Internet does make piracy (of the P2P sharing kind) easier than it used to be. It does also have the potential to destroy the music industry as we know it now. However, many new technologies are disruptive events. The industry either has to adapt or die. When cars first came out, it was disruptive to the people in the Horse and Buggy Industry. We don't hold technology back simply because one industry doesn't want to change how they operate. For an example of how the music industry might adapt, look to eMusic and Amiee Street. As far as local record stores go, they either find a way to adapt (perhaps kiosks selling personal mix CDs) or they die out. It's just a fact of business life.
Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
As for the National Register of Pirates idea, it is quite obviously a bad idea. The original poster of this seemed to be of the opinion that the courts were taking too long so pirates should just be added to a list without a trial. Let's put aside the question of how the RIAA would get the pirates' identities and how it would be enforced for a moment. (Big questions, mind you, but let's assume some process gets put into place.) How will the list be kept focused on pirates and kept clean of the falsely accused? We have only to look at the No Fly List for an example of how a blacklist with no oversight or clear removal process can wind up triggering many false positives. If some other Jason Levine pir
Actually, it wasn't that she believed it because she saw it on TV (actually, Comedy Central's South Park website ). She's too intelligent for that. Her first response upon seeing the clip was: "This isn't real, is it?"
The real reason that South Park succeeded where I failed was that South Park laid out the Scientology beliefs in an easily understandable fashion. I couldn't seem to do that. So while it sounded like some stupid sci-fi story coming from me, she was able to easily understand the point that the South Park episode was making and use the information they presented to understand Scientology's creation story.
Sadly, I had spoken with my wife in passing about Scientology a few times and she zoned out whenever I got into the whole Xenu/Thetan thing. I guess she thought it was some bad sci-fi story I had read. Then I showed her the South Park episode and told her that (animation aside) what was presented during that segment is actually what Scientologists believe. Now she's right along with me in ridiculing the "religion." It is really telling when South Park doesn't need to alter anything at all to make fun of a religion's story.
The first words spoken by the next President after being sworn in this January and looking at the real numbers: "What the fuck is this shit?"
This is one reason why I think that our next President will be a one term President. He's either going to have to make hard choices that wind up being unpopular (thus causing him to lose his reelection bid), or he won't make the hard choices and will conduct business as usual as things get worse (thus causing unpopularity and a losing reelection bid). I honestly feel sorry for whomever has to try to clean up this mess. It's not going to be easy and there will be political minefields all over the place.
"When asked during a televised debate in 2006 about evolution and creationism, Palin said, according to the Anchorage Daily News: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.""
This is called "Teach the Controversy" and is a favorite tactic of Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates (also known as "Creationists Who Keep Their God Mentioning Quiet"). The idea is you first teach both "theories" as if they were equal. Then you slowly push "proof" about how evolution is a false theory and how Creationism/Intelligent Design accounts for all evidence with a simple "God (or the Great and Powerful ID) did it." Eventually, you push hard enough to force evolution out of the schools and rejoice as your kids get educated in glorious Middle Ages fashion.
I'd be willing to accept a Creationist/Intelligent Design theory in science class the minute on of its proponents can answer this question: How would you design an experiment to disprove the existence of a creator/intelligent designer? If the theory isn't falsifiable then it isn't science. At best, those theories should be taught in Philosophy class and not science class.
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The True Conservatives still do want to protect our Constitution. Unfortunately, their major party (Republicans) has been hijacked by a group called "Neo-Conservatives" who think that any action is justified if you tell people you're doing it to fight terrorism. These hijackers have steered the Republican party away from being the "Party Of Small Government" and into being the "Party of Theocracy, Police State, and Rovian Lies." I held out a thin hope that McCain's nomination meant that the Republican party would be steering away from the Neo-Cons, but it looks like they're back for more.
I would agree on everything except for this part:
Even if she was putting up the link and saying "bomb these people," her crime wouldn't be the act of linking to their web site, but inciting violence. In fact, I can't think of anything she could do where the link itself would be the crime (though it may be used in a larger crime). The closest I could think of would be writing something libelous and making that text link to the city's website. Even that, though, would involve the text and not the link itself.
Other than that point, though, I agree with you completely. The mayor completely overstepped his bounds and will hopefully be put in his place by the courts.
No sooner do I post this than "McCain makes a sharp right turn on stem cells." http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/mccain-on-stem.htm
So much for one of the last remaining good points of his platform.
Ok, let's truth rate (True or False answers only) the following sentence in this post:
"This sentence is false."
I have to agree, software patents seem to always be bad. (Perhaps 1% of them are valid, but that doesn't excuse the 99% that are junk.) If we were forced to keep software patents, though, maybe companies should be forced to choose between copyright and patent. You can choose a patent on how your software works, but that patent expires in a relatively short period of time (say, 5 years for a software patent) and can be overturned in court. After the patent expires/is overturned, your software is effectively Public Domain. Or you can choose copyright on your software and get the longer protection span, but not the "width" of protection (as your protection is only on your implementation of the software concept, not the software concept itself). To grant both copyright *and* patent protections on the same piece of software is just idiotic.
Oh, I have no question that Bush would love to invade Iran and "bring Democracy to them" if he could. What I found absurd was the constant retconning of the reasons for Iraq. To say that the reason we invaded Iraq was always so we could keep an eye on Iran is completely false and is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. As one reason is shown to be false, the Bush administration always shifts to another reason and then claims that that was always the case. Unfortunately, the news media needs to grow a pair and call politicians (from both sides of the aisle) when they do sudden reversals like this. Changing opinion based on new information is one thing. Claiming that you were always for/against something when you clearly weren't or that your reasons were Y when you stated over and over that they were X is not something that the media should let slide.
Exactly how? Perhaps I didn't word my sarcasm correctly. Looking at my "Troll" moderation and your response, perhaps I gave the view that I myself am a Creationist. I thought my "Jebus" ending would be a dead giveaway, but I've been less than clear at times when attempting humor. Let me be clear, then. I am not a Creationist. I take the scientific view of things and demand proof and falsification for my theories about how the Universe came into being. I see science finding things that it can't explain as a good thing overall. It forces us to update our theories to account for those anomalies, perhaps even ditching flawed theories entirely. Creationists, on the other hand, never change their theory (why should they when "God did it" can't be falsified?) and seem to think that any reworking of a theory just proves that the theory is bad.
Come on, something that science can't explain (yet)? This is a perfect moment for all of the creationists to jump up and down shouting: "See? We *KNEW* it! Science has no answer for this! That means science doesn't know anything and thus the Big Bang, Evolution, and all of those things never happened. Clearly this unidentified object shows that the Universe was created 6,000 years ago by Jebus, the hovering rigatoni creature!"
In the interests of giving McCain props where I think he should get them (even though I don't agree with him on most subjects):
Kudos to McCain for correctly identifying the glaring hole in the pro-life argument against embryonic stem cell research. The pro-life crowd will often argue that the embryos that stem cells are harvested from are humans and thus deserve a better fate than being used for research. They ignore the reality of the situation, however. Those frozen embryos are most likely going to be discarded/incinerated if they aren't used for stem cell research.
Which is a more dignified fate for the embryo? To be incinerated/tossed out like trashed? Or to be used in an attempt to save lives?
This sounds like McCain would support AT&T if they decided that all Google packets passing through their system would be slowed down to dial-up speeds unless Google paid them for the privilege of running at broadband speeds. So when you make a business, McCain feels you are entitled to make a profit on it? That sharply differs from my view that businesses have to earn their profits. Simply owning the pipe doesn't mean they've earned their profit, though it does give them a good opportunity to do so. (By giving users speedy Internet access for a monthly fee.)
It's kind of like Palin's daughter's situation. If it had been Obama or Biden had a teenage daughter who had gotten knocked up and chose to keep the baby, the religious right would have lambasted them for letting their daughter have sex, blasted her for being a slut, and then railed on all of them for referring to keeping the baby as a "choice."
With Palin's daughter, they praised Palin for being so principled and praised her daughter for doing the right thing, all the while tripping over themselves in an attempt to ignore the "sex outside of marriage" issue. It's actually quite entertaining in a way.
Of course, no matter whose daughter should be pregnant by whom, I don't think that it deserves to be an issue to decide the Presidential race on unless one of the candidates is the father.
Don't you know that condoms are full of tiny holes that are too small to see, but that the AIDS virus can go through?
Seriously, my wife was teaching middle school health in an all-girl's Catholic school and the person they brought in to teach the Sex-Ed lesson used this little chestnut. My wife walked out and went to the principal to complain. It's one thing to teach kids that abstinence is the best policy. (It is, though safe sex practices should be taught also.) It is quite another to give kids deliberate misinformation in an attempt to scare them off of sex. The kids will just wind up having sex and not using condoms. ("I'm not going to get AIDS. After all, I'm an invincible teenager. And if a condom won't protect me, why should I use it?")
No, no, no. The Christian Right are the ones controlling McCain. We Jews control Barack... Oops. I don't think I was supposed to tell anyone that.
You didn't get the press release a few moments ago that retroactively changed the reason for the war yet again?
Seriously, though, for some reason I find the constant retconning of the reasoning for the war even worse than the original lie. You might be able to claim that the original reason was due to faulty intelligence and admit to having a "we goofed" moment. (Sure, that goof resulted in tons of deaths on both sides, but stay with me here.) However, to constantly change the reasoning behind the war after the fact ("Sadaam has WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was trying to get WMDs and nukes!", "Sadaam was starting up programs which might have eventually, one day, resulted in a WMD/nuke.", etc.) shows that not only does the administration not care whether they lie or not, but they also don't care how good their reasoning is and they think that the American people are stupid.
I guess they're right, though. I had a friend actually try to tell me that the reason we're in Iraq now is so we can keep a better eye on Iran. Yes, folks, the true reason that we invaded a sovereign country that posed no real threat to us, destabilized it to the brink of civil war, wasted the international good will we had after 9-11, fought a war that resulted in thousands of US dead (and even more Iraqi dead), and tied up our military resources so much that other tin-pot dictators feel they can thumb their noses at us is so we could get a bit closer to Iran to keep an eye on them. I guess it makes sense that we'd want to keep an eye on them, though. With our hands tied up in Iraq, and eye is about all we can spare.
I actually believe in this view to some extent. I believe in God and am semi-religious. However, I'm a firm believer in scientific theories of how the world works. (I take the religious writings as stories more meant for moral lessons than for physical explanations of how the world works.) That said, even if God made everything and simply used the "laws of physics", "evolution", etc as his methods, it still wouldn't be appropriate to bring God into the science class. We might thank him in a religiously based setting for using consistent methodology instead of just making things up as he goes along ("You know what? I think I made a mistake. From now on, protons are negative and electrons are positive."), but the basic theory of how the world progressed from the Big Bang to the present day wouldn't change.
The big problem with introducing God into a scientific setting is that He isn't falsifiable. We can falsify Evolution. Find a mammoth bone that dates from before the time of the Dinosaurs and there'll be some serious theory rewriting. But how can you prove that God doesn't exist? You can't. You can have a personal belief that he doesn't exist (and thus be an atheist), but you can't design a test that would actually measure his existence. Thus God is fine in a religious setting, but needs to be left outside when students step into science class.
That's why I would never post anywhere using my real.... uh oh.
I don't believe that mix tapes are technically legal. It's not something that you'll ever be prosecuted for (unless you are distributing those mix tapes/CDs to tons of people or selling them), but it still falls within the realm of copyright infringement.
Actually, he once fell down and required stitches on his chin. That's the worst that he's been hurt and he definitely still remembers that. He even corrected me recently on how old he was when that happened. He also knows about death as my wife's grandfather passed away a year and a half ago, but death happening to him is, of course, too abstract a concept. So we can warn of danger up to the "need stitches" level, but anything else goes over his head.
One day while driving, my five year old managed to unlock and open his car door. The door stayed mostly shut long enough for me to pull over and close it. I sternly warned him that if he did that again, he could fall out of the car and be seriously hurt. When he didn't seem phased by that, I told him that his toy could fall out of the open door and be lost. He got very frightened and promised not to do that again. (He hasn't.) Why the different reaction? I think that falling out of a car and being seriously hurt is an abstract concept to him. He just can't really imagine what it would feel like. But losing a toy that he likes, that he can easily imagine. Sometimes with kids the bigger threat isn't the one that they can wrap their minds around and thus isn't the scarier option.
I thought I had read this before so I did a search and came up with this: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/2/103735/275 This post was made in 2003 (and references a previous post on Slashdot, so it could easily be older than that.) You are simply reposting a 5 year old story word for word. I somehow doubt that you are the original author (which would, ironically, make that post copyright infringement ;-) ).
That said, there are a couple of big holes in this story.
The author admits to not knowing why people aren't buying CDs, but then immediately jumps to the "inescapable truth" that Internet piracy is to blame. It isn't because the selection isn't to the buying public's taste, or because a Walmart opened down the block with better prices, or because people were buying more DVDs/video games/etc. Nope, it *had* to be Internet Piracy! And why?
Not to overuse a XKCD meme, but: Citation Needed. So I did a Google search and came up with this article: http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20050623.html
Ok, the article is 3 years old, but let's let that slide for a bit. The piracy that the article speaks of is commercial CD pressing. You know, the folks who obtain one CD, burn a hundred copies, and sell them on the street corner for $1.50 each. That is a completely different form of piracy than the guy who clicks "share this folder" in LimeWire/Kazaa/etc.
Yes, the Internet does make piracy (of the P2P sharing kind) easier than it used to be. It does also have the potential to destroy the music industry as we know it now. However, many new technologies are disruptive events. The industry either has to adapt or die. When cars first came out, it was disruptive to the people in the Horse and Buggy Industry. We don't hold technology back simply because one industry doesn't want to change how they operate. For an example of how the music industry might adapt, look to eMusic and Amiee Street. As far as local record stores go, they either find a way to adapt (perhaps kiosks selling personal mix CDs) or they die out. It's just a fact of business life.
In the years since this post was originally written, advances in book piracy have been made.
As for the National Register of Pirates idea, it is quite obviously a bad idea. The original poster of this seemed to be of the opinion that the courts were taking too long so pirates should just be added to a list without a trial. Let's put aside the question of how the RIAA would get the pirates' identities and how it would be enforced for a moment. (Big questions, mind you, but let's assume some process gets put into place.) How will the list be kept focused on pirates and kept clean of the falsely accused? We have only to look at the No Fly List for an example of how a blacklist with no oversight or clear removal process can wind up triggering many false positives. If some other Jason Levine pir
Hey, I try to win races against my 5 year old child all the time. I almost won the other day.
Actually, it wasn't that she believed it because she saw it on TV (actually, Comedy Central's South Park website ). She's too intelligent for that. Her first response upon seeing the clip was: "This isn't real, is it?"
The real reason that South Park succeeded where I failed was that South Park laid out the Scientology beliefs in an easily understandable fashion. I couldn't seem to do that. So while it sounded like some stupid sci-fi story coming from me, she was able to easily understand the point that the South Park episode was making and use the information they presented to understand Scientology's creation story.
Sadly, I had spoken with my wife in passing about Scientology a few times and she zoned out whenever I got into the whole Xenu/Thetan thing. I guess she thought it was some bad sci-fi story I had read. Then I showed her the South Park episode and told her that (animation aside) what was presented during that segment is actually what Scientologists believe. Now she's right along with me in ridiculing the "religion." It is really telling when South Park doesn't need to alter anything at all to make fun of a religion's story.
This is one reason why I think that our next President will be a one term President. He's either going to have to make hard choices that wind up being unpopular (thus causing him to lose his reelection bid), or he won't make the hard choices and will conduct business as usual as things get worse (thus causing unpopularity and a losing reelection bid). I honestly feel sorry for whomever has to try to clean up this mess. It's not going to be easy and there will be political minefields all over the place.
This is called "Teach the Controversy" and is a favorite tactic of Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates (also known as "Creationists Who Keep Their God Mentioning Quiet"). The idea is you first teach both "theories" as if they were equal. Then you slowly push "proof" about how evolution is a false theory and how Creationism/Intelligent Design accounts for all evidence with a simple "God (or the Great and Powerful ID) did it." Eventually, you push hard enough to force evolution out of the schools and rejoice as your kids get educated in glorious Middle Ages fashion.
I'd be willing to accept a Creationist/Intelligent Design theory in science class the minute on of its proponents can answer this question: How would you design an experiment to disprove the existence of a creator/intelligent designer? If the theory isn't falsifiable then it isn't science. At best, those theories should be taught in Philosophy class and not science class.