If he simply said "the Internet is like a series of tubes and if too much stuff is going through it, it will slow down", then he might have been right, generally speaking.
However, his speaking style was garbled and it frequently looked like he was trying to make a point, didn't know what it was, and was confused about technical details that shouldn't confuse someone basically in charge of setting Internet policies for the USA. Here are a few gems (thanks to the previous poster who posted this text):
"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.
But this service isn't going to go through the internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
Ok, talking about Netflix here. So far, so good. You order movies online and they arrive at your door.
Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
Now he, all of a sudden, leaps from movies delivered to your door to movies streamed online. He seems to think that: 1) you would order ten movies at once, 2) you would stream those ten movies at the same time, and 3) you would be surprised when your connection speeds dropped into the basement.
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Obvious misuse of terminology. I might be nitpicking if the person in question was an 80 year old grandmother who just got online, but this guy was in charge of setting Internet policies in the US. Can't he call it an "e-mail" and not an "Internet." (Unless his staff really was sending him an interconnected network of computers. I'd like to see the shipping charges on that!)
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
Or because the mail server was slow. These things happen and they're almost never due to commercial internet traffic slowing things down.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
He seems to be of the mind that sites like YouTube just dump their content onto the Internet and it somehow clogs up the works for everyone. The reality is that YouTube, and sites like it, take up 0 content all by themselves. When you request a video from YouTube, the server responds by sending you the video and just that video, not YouTube's entire collection. If a lot of people on your network are viewing a large number of YouTube videos, then, yes, YouTube traffic will account for a fair amount of the total traffic going over the network. However, this traffic is initiated by the user, not the site.
Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.
Or, more likely, because the DOD isn't dumb and doesn't want to deliver sensitive and classified information over a public network.
Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develo
I'd be curious to know how much they spent in order to keep The Dark Knight from being pirated for all of 3 days. I'm guessing that it would be hard to calculate, but would likely be a few million at least. If they did this with all of the movies released how much would it cost? They obviously think that their efforts pay off by preventing "lost sales" to pirated copies, but since we all know that 1 pirated copy doesn't equal 1 lost sale, I'd be curious to find out how much they're paying for a tiny delay in piracy.
I'll call Pascal's Wager on that, and throw out a prayer to Satan to rape them both with flaming porcupines for eternity.
I always liked the old Greek myths of eternal torment. Having to push a rock up a hill only to have it roll down every time. Being up to your neck in water, thirsty, yet having the water recede when you bent over. Being hungry with a fruit tree within reach, then having the branches rise out of reach when you tried to grab them.
To make his eternal punishment fit his crime, I'm thinking put him in a room with a cannon and a big, red button. Tell him that all he needs to do to get out is push the button, but the cannon will continuously fire razor blades shaped like little envelopes at him. Let him get right up to the button and just as he's about to press it, shift the walls around so that he's on the wrong side of the room. Make him turn around and start again. For all eternity he will suffer millions of tiny cuts each which hurts the same as a similar injury would when he was alive, but he can never die of his injuries. For all eternity, his freedom will be just out of reach. Physical pain combined with mental anguish.
Ok, I'll admit that that point is arguable, though I would disagree that any jobs created offsets his repeatedly annoying people and concealing where the annoyances came from. Still, by killing his wife, 3 year old son, and seriously injuring that teenage girl, he was not improving the world, but selfishly taking as many people as he could out when he killed himself.
I went to public school in the 80's and 90's and never had a math class where my grade depended on my ability to draw. (If it did, I would have flunked math for sure.) All of my math classes required the students to know and understand math to pass. I was in the honors/AP classes, but I had friends in the normal classes and don't remember them ever having assignments that required drawing skills in math class.
But Barbie says Math is hard. Girls aren't supposed to believe her? What's next? Girls not believing that a woman's figure is supposed to look like Barbie's? That's just un-American!
I am religious. I do believe in a "benevolent supernatural omniscient omnipotent being." I think that all that being wants from us is to be good people. (My own personal religious beliefs include more than that, but all I expect out of others are for them to be good people.) I guess you can summarize my position as being: Try to leave this world a little better than it was when you entered it. I strive to do this. Sometimes I succeed in my efforts, sometimes I don't.
Edward Davidson did *not* improve the world when he spammed people and he *CERTAINLY* did not when he took the reprehensible action of shooting his wife, shooting his 3 year old daughter, shooting a teenage girl and leaving a 7-8 month old in a car seat presumably to die from neglect. Ideally, I would have liked to see him serve out his sentence and then become a positively contributing member of society. Much less ideally, he could have chosen to just commit suicide. But to kill his wife, and innocent child, and leave two more children for dead is just reprehensible. I feel deeply sorry for his victims (dead and injured) and for the families left with the loss/hurt. I'm not usually a vengeful man, but I seriously hope that there's a fire pit somewhere that says "Reserved For Edward Davidson."
Didn't you know? You can patent a math equation. For example, Weight Watchers has patented Points = (Calories/50) + (Fat/12) - (Min(Fiber, 4)/5). This patent was filed on July 19, 1997 and so presumably will expire in 2 years. Until then, mentioning that particular mathematical formula or using it to calculate a figure could get you in legal hot water. I like Weight Watchers to lose weight (lost 75 pounds on a "modified" version of their plan), but I don't like that they can patent a mathematical formula.
Here's hoping that the US Patent Office has had a sudden outbreak of sanity.
I thought the Wii already had parental controls. I don't use them, though, so I don't know how extensive they are and whether they would fit the requirements of this law, though. (I have kids, but I control what they play on the Wii by actually being there with them when they play. Granted, it's easy for me. My kids are 4 and 1. The 4 year old plays only with me or my wife and the 1 year old doesn't play at all yet.)
I think the attribution area is normally covered under concepts like plagiarism. If I take your book (even if it was in the Public Domain), slap my name on the cover, and try to pass it off as my own work, then that's plagiarism. If I take your book (not in the Public Domain) and make copies to distribute at the nearest street corner (without your permission), that's copyright infringement.
I'm in favor of returning copyright to the terms originally set by the Founding Fathers. Copyright owners would get 14 years of copyright protection. After that, they could opt in for a single 14 year copyright extension. I'd be willing to compromise by phasing in the changes (like I posted here http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/?p=119 ), but beyond that I don't see why a creator's great-grandchildren should financially benefit from a work that was created when they (the great-grandchildren) weren't even around. How is giving royalties to an author past his death giving him the incentive to create more works? Are we to expect a string of zombie authors will rise up if only copyright is extended a little bit more?
Actually, there seems to be a law (if one of the linked to articles is correct) that would enable the courts to ban him from filing lawsuits (or at least require approval before filing) due to past frivolous lawsuits. The problem is that this guy is getting around the law by filing in different courts each time. He's exploiting a loophole to keep his ridiculous string of lawsuits going. This makes me think that he's a sane individual trying to act insane so that he'll get moved from federal prison to a cushy-by-comparison mental health ward.
According to http://p2pnet.net/story/11575 , there are about one billion songs shared per day on P2P networks. If the RIAA demanded $150,000 for each song shared, that would come to $150 trillion per day, or $54,750 trillion dollars. This is just under the world's GDP and is much less than this guy's demands. Plus, the RIAA isn't demanding that entire figure from a single person/entity. So while the RIAA is still quite far from reality, they are still closer to it than this guy. I'm officially impressed, actually, it's not easy to beat SCO, the Iraqi Information Minister, and the RIAA in nutty claims. But this guy does it easily. Now he needs to get to work suing Wikipedia and the entire Internet for stealing his soul, posting it on Wikipedia.com and allowing people to edit it.;-)
Actually, I think another poster hit the nail on the head. The guy's in a federal prison for 10 years. This whole campaign is to make him appear mentally ill so he can be transferred to a nice hospital where they will treat his "ailment" instead of him having to do hard time.
Riches's imagination in making accusations is matched by his audacity in asking for damages. In the July 16 suit he demanded "211,429,399,000,000.00 trillion dollars backed by gold and silver, delivered by United States Postal Service."
That's 211 septillion, 429 sextillion, 399 quintillion dollars. To compare, the world's GDP (as of 2006) was $65.95 trillion. So the guy wanted over 3.2 TRILLION percent of the world's GDP.
On July 16, for instance, he filed a complaint alleging that the Mossad, the CIA and "Larry King Live" conspired to "hijack my torso, three toes, and my constitutional rights and ship them to a secret headquarters in Concord, NH," as well as inserted microchips and "dashing my hopes." He accuses Larry King of being "a voodoo witch doctor who stole my identity on February 25th, 2003 and purchased lead paint, Chips Ahoy!, Planter's Peanuts, and Ziploc bags under my identity. Distributed them to the CIA to microwave test my DNA."
The guy's either a certified loon or someone trying to pass himself off as one. And these two small quotes are just two drops in the loony bucket. I hate to say it, but even Darl McBride's most fantastic quotes were closer to reality that this guy's quotes. Even though Darl didn't have anywhere near the evidence to back his claims, they were within the general realm of possibility. Larry King stealing this guy's identity to buy ziploc bags and passing them on to the CIA to "microwave test" his DNA? That makes Iraq's old Information Minister look like he was telling the complete truth.
Actually, if the article is right, the law is worded very carefully to keep it from being struck down easily. It basically tells the teachers that they can being in non-state approved textbooks to "teach the controversy" about Evolution. The law states that it is not meant to promote religion, but we all know that this means that ID textbooks will be used instead of Creationism ones. (Even though ID = Creationism.) Opponents of the law would need to challenge each instance of a teacher bringing in ID materials. After fighting a series of brush fires, they might be able to strike at the law itself. This would take years and lots of money, however. If anything, this makes the law more dangerous than one that said "ID should be taught as an alternative to Evolution."
Actually, the scientific world doesn't debate whether evolution is a fact or not. They debate the finer points. How fast did these mutations occur? What are the main trigger mechanisms? That sort of thing. But the basic "species change over time giving rise to new species" is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Some creationists get hung up on the word "theory." In science, virtually everything is a theory, not matter how well proven it is. There is a mountain of evidence that evolution happened (and is still happening). Creationism is a nice story, and if you want to believe that God is the one behind the curtains making it all work, go right ahead. But God has no place in a science class, just like science has no place dictating what (if any) prayers you say.
Imagine for a second that humans could live for 1,000 years. Putting aside the inevitable overpopulation effects, I could see this having two very different effects on humanity, depending on how the aging slowdown works.
If you effectively stay 20-40 for a few centuries, I could see this as a boon to mankind. People would be able to try different careers out and save up a lot of money for their retirement at the ripe old age of 900. Advancements might be made quicker as people bring new perspectives from their old careers into their new ones.
Alternatively, if you effectively age to 60-80 and then stay there, I could see progress being stifled. People naturally tend to get set in their ways as they age. (I can see it happening with me and I'm not even 35 yet!) The older generation tends to view new technology with a suspicious eye while the younger generation embraces it. Right now, an aging "baby boom" generation might make laws to hold back progress because it offends their moral/religious views or because they just fear it. However, that generation will naturally be replaced by a younger generation more willing to accept the change.
Imagine if the stifling baby boomer generation's reign lasted for 600 years, though! They could hold progress back long enough that, by the time they were ready to give up power, the "younger" generation would be old already, set in their ways, and used to things the way they were under the stifling reign. Society's and technology's advances would slow to a crawl.
My question would be: Which of these scenarios do you think is more likely given a radical increase in human lifespan?
My e-mail address is just a clear name. No numbers in it at all. Like I said in another post, this account was obtained when Yahoo first offered free Webmail. I was lucky enough to get my name @ yahoo.com. And this wasn't all a put-on. This really happened. So either the person mistyped their own name, or they were trying to use my e-mail address to sign up for the service. A quick check of WeeWorld.com shows that their registration page requires you to type your e-mail address in twice. So it is less likely that he simply mistyped his e-mail address when he signed up.
Megan hung herself because of the abuse that Lori Drew caused. Lori Drew (in the guise of "Josh") even told Megan "the world would be a better place without you" just before she hung herself. Lori reportedly laughed about her hoax and said she intended to "mess with Megan." So there was a clear intent to harass which directly lead to Megan's suicide. This wouldn't be murder, of course, but I would think that an involuntary manslaughter charge might be appropriate.
Wikipedia defines involuntary manslaughter as occurring "where there is no intention to kill or cause serious injury but death is due to recklessness or criminal negligence." IMO, Lori Drew's harassing messages were reckless (at best). She is an adult and should have known better. If this was one teen harassing another teen, it could be chalked up to the cruelty of teenagers. It wouldn't be a perfect excuse, but at least you could point to the teenager's immaturity as the cause. For an adult to engage in this behavior, though, shows a real lack of morals, a lack of maturity, and a (perhaps criminal) disregard for a person.
There is obviously only one conclusion to draw from this: Private planes are a threat to our National Security and should be banned! After all, any terrorist could buy one and fly it into a building. Plus, every time you fly your private plane, you're taking revenue from the big airline companies. That's the same as stealing! Of course, to keep things fair, we'll have exceptions to the ban. Billionaires and executives of large companies can't be expected to fly in coach, after all.
Slashdot Mirror
If he simply said "the Internet is like a series of tubes and if too much stuff is going through it, it will slow down", then he might have been right, generally speaking.
However, his speaking style was garbled and it frequently looked like he was trying to make a point, didn't know what it was, and was confused about technical details that shouldn't confuse someone basically in charge of setting Internet policies for the USA. Here are a few gems (thanks to the previous poster who posted this text):
Ok, talking about Netflix here. So far, so good. You order movies online and they arrive at your door.
Now he, all of a sudden, leaps from movies delivered to your door to movies streamed online. He seems to think that: 1) you would order ten movies at once, 2) you would stream those ten movies at the same time, and 3) you would be surprised when your connection speeds dropped into the basement.
Obvious misuse of terminology. I might be nitpicking if the person in question was an 80 year old grandmother who just got online, but this guy was in charge of setting Internet policies in the US. Can't he call it an "e-mail" and not an "Internet." (Unless his staff really was sending him an interconnected network of computers. I'd like to see the shipping charges on that!)
Or because the mail server was slow. These things happen and they're almost never due to commercial internet traffic slowing things down.
He seems to be of the mind that sites like YouTube just dump their content onto the Internet and it somehow clogs up the works for everyone. The reality is that YouTube, and sites like it, take up 0 content all by themselves. When you request a video from YouTube, the server responds by sending you the video and just that video, not YouTube's entire collection. If a lot of people on your network are viewing a large number of YouTube videos, then, yes, YouTube traffic will account for a fair amount of the total traffic going over the network. However, this traffic is initiated by the user, not the site.
Or, more likely, because the DOD isn't dumb and doesn't want to deliver sensitive and classified information over a public network.
Add more arms to a bear? Like some kind of Bear-Octopus hybrid? Now that's just wrong.
Depending on what the person looks like, I think they should have the right to bare a lot more than their arms. ;-)
I'd be curious to know how much they spent in order to keep The Dark Knight from being pirated for all of 3 days. I'm guessing that it would be hard to calculate, but would likely be a few million at least. If they did this with all of the movies released how much would it cost? They obviously think that their efforts pay off by preventing "lost sales" to pirated copies, but since we all know that 1 pirated copy doesn't equal 1 lost sale, I'd be curious to find out how much they're paying for a tiny delay in piracy.
I always liked the old Greek myths of eternal torment. Having to push a rock up a hill only to have it roll down every time. Being up to your neck in water, thirsty, yet having the water recede when you bent over. Being hungry with a fruit tree within reach, then having the branches rise out of reach when you tried to grab them.
To make his eternal punishment fit his crime, I'm thinking put him in a room with a cannon and a big, red button. Tell him that all he needs to do to get out is push the button, but the cannon will continuously fire razor blades shaped like little envelopes at him. Let him get right up to the button and just as he's about to press it, shift the walls around so that he's on the wrong side of the room. Make him turn around and start again. For all eternity he will suffer millions of tiny cuts each which hurts the same as a similar injury would when he was alive, but he can never die of his injuries. For all eternity, his freedom will be just out of reach. Physical pain combined with mental anguish.
Ok, I'll admit that that point is arguable, though I would disagree that any jobs created offsets his repeatedly annoying people and concealing where the annoyances came from. Still, by killing his wife, 3 year old son, and seriously injuring that teenage girl, he was not improving the world, but selfishly taking as many people as he could out when he killed himself.
I went to public school in the 80's and 90's and never had a math class where my grade depended on my ability to draw. (If it did, I would have flunked math for sure.) All of my math classes required the students to know and understand math to pass. I was in the honors/AP classes, but I had friends in the normal classes and don't remember them ever having assignments that required drawing skills in math class.
But Barbie says Math is hard. Girls aren't supposed to believe her? What's next? Girls not believing that a woman's figure is supposed to look like Barbie's? That's just un-American!
I am religious. I do believe in a "benevolent supernatural omniscient omnipotent being." I think that all that being wants from us is to be good people. (My own personal religious beliefs include more than that, but all I expect out of others are for them to be good people.) I guess you can summarize my position as being: Try to leave this world a little better than it was when you entered it. I strive to do this. Sometimes I succeed in my efforts, sometimes I don't.
Edward Davidson did *not* improve the world when he spammed people and he *CERTAINLY* did not when he took the reprehensible action of shooting his wife, shooting his 3 year old daughter, shooting a teenage girl and leaving a 7-8 month old in a car seat presumably to die from neglect. Ideally, I would have liked to see him serve out his sentence and then become a positively contributing member of society. Much less ideally, he could have chosen to just commit suicide. But to kill his wife, and innocent child, and leave two more children for dead is just reprehensible. I feel deeply sorry for his victims (dead and injured) and for the families left with the loss/hurt. I'm not usually a vengeful man, but I seriously hope that there's a fire pit somewhere that says "Reserved For Edward Davidson."
See my post regarding the Weight Watchers Points formula. Apparently, you can patent math if you phrase the patent request just right.
Didn't you know? You can patent a math equation. For example, Weight Watchers has patented Points = (Calories/50) + (Fat/12) - (Min(Fiber, 4)/5). This patent was filed on July 19, 1997 and so presumably will expire in 2 years. Until then, mentioning that particular mathematical formula or using it to calculate a figure could get you in legal hot water. I like Weight Watchers to lose weight (lost 75 pounds on a "modified" version of their plan), but I don't like that they can patent a mathematical formula.
Here's hoping that the US Patent Office has had a sudden outbreak of sanity.
I thought the Wii already had parental controls. I don't use them, though, so I don't know how extensive they are and whether they would fit the requirements of this law, though. (I have kids, but I control what they play on the Wii by actually being there with them when they play. Granted, it's easy for me. My kids are 4 and 1. The 4 year old plays only with me or my wife and the 1 year old doesn't play at all yet.)
I think the attribution area is normally covered under concepts like plagiarism. If I take your book (even if it was in the Public Domain), slap my name on the cover, and try to pass it off as my own work, then that's plagiarism. If I take your book (not in the Public Domain) and make copies to distribute at the nearest street corner (without your permission), that's copyright infringement.
I'm in favor of returning copyright to the terms originally set by the Founding Fathers. Copyright owners would get 14 years of copyright protection. After that, they could opt in for a single 14 year copyright extension. I'd be willing to compromise by phasing in the changes (like I posted here http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/?p=119 ), but beyond that I don't see why a creator's great-grandchildren should financially benefit from a work that was created when they (the great-grandchildren) weren't even around. How is giving royalties to an author past his death giving him the incentive to create more works? Are we to expect a string of zombie authors will rise up if only copyright is extended a little bit more?
Actually, there seems to be a law (if one of the linked to articles is correct) that would enable the courts to ban him from filing lawsuits (or at least require approval before filing) due to past frivolous lawsuits. The problem is that this guy is getting around the law by filing in different courts each time. He's exploiting a loophole to keep his ridiculous string of lawsuits going. This makes me think that he's a sane individual trying to act insane so that he'll get moved from federal prison to a cushy-by-comparison mental health ward.
I was actually wondering if he was holding his pinky to his mouth, Dr. Evil style, while writing out his demands.
"I want two hundred SEPT-ILLION dollars!"
According to http://p2pnet.net/story/11575 , there are about one billion songs shared per day on P2P networks. If the RIAA demanded $150,000 for each song shared, that would come to $150 trillion per day, or $54,750 trillion dollars. This is just under the world's GDP and is much less than this guy's demands. Plus, the RIAA isn't demanding that entire figure from a single person/entity. So while the RIAA is still quite far from reality, they are still closer to it than this guy. I'm officially impressed, actually, it's not easy to beat SCO, the Iraqi Information Minister, and the RIAA in nutty claims. But this guy does it easily. Now he needs to get to work suing Wikipedia and the entire Internet for stealing his soul, posting it on Wikipedia.com and allowing people to edit it. ;-)
Actually, I think another poster hit the nail on the head. The guy's in a federal prison for 10 years. This whole campaign is to make him appear mentally ill so he can be transferred to a nice hospital where they will treat his "ailment" instead of him having to do hard time.
That's 211 septillion, 429 sextillion, 399 quintillion dollars. To compare, the world's GDP (as of 2006) was $65.95 trillion. So the guy wanted over 3.2 TRILLION percent of the world's GDP.
The guy's either a certified loon or someone trying to pass himself off as one. And these two small quotes are just two drops in the loony bucket. I hate to say it, but even Darl McBride's most fantastic quotes were closer to reality that this guy's quotes. Even though Darl didn't have anywhere near the evidence to back his claims, they were within the general realm of possibility. Larry King stealing this guy's identity to buy ziploc bags and passing them on to the CIA to "microwave test" his DNA? That makes Iraq's old Information Minister look like he was telling the complete truth.
You mean like this?
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.3333
Yes, I bought it and yes it works perfectly. I haven't had to worry about my Wiimote batteries at all since buying it.
Actually, if the article is right, the law is worded very carefully to keep it from being struck down easily. It basically tells the teachers that they can being in non-state approved textbooks to "teach the controversy" about Evolution. The law states that it is not meant to promote religion, but we all know that this means that ID textbooks will be used instead of Creationism ones. (Even though ID = Creationism.) Opponents of the law would need to challenge each instance of a teacher bringing in ID materials. After fighting a series of brush fires, they might be able to strike at the law itself. This would take years and lots of money, however. If anything, this makes the law more dangerous than one that said "ID should be taught as an alternative to Evolution."
Actually, the scientific world doesn't debate whether evolution is a fact or not. They debate the finer points. How fast did these mutations occur? What are the main trigger mechanisms? That sort of thing. But the basic "species change over time giving rise to new species" is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Some creationists get hung up on the word "theory." In science, virtually everything is a theory, not matter how well proven it is. There is a mountain of evidence that evolution happened (and is still happening). Creationism is a nice story, and if you want to believe that God is the one behind the curtains making it all work, go right ahead. But God has no place in a science class, just like science has no place dictating what (if any) prayers you say.
Imagine for a second that humans could live for 1,000 years. Putting aside the inevitable overpopulation effects, I could see this having two very different effects on humanity, depending on how the aging slowdown works.
If you effectively stay 20-40 for a few centuries, I could see this as a boon to mankind. People would be able to try different careers out and save up a lot of money for their retirement at the ripe old age of 900. Advancements might be made quicker as people bring new perspectives from their old careers into their new ones.
Alternatively, if you effectively age to 60-80 and then stay there, I could see progress being stifled. People naturally tend to get set in their ways as they age. (I can see it happening with me and I'm not even 35 yet!) The older generation tends to view new technology with a suspicious eye while the younger generation embraces it. Right now, an aging "baby boom" generation might make laws to hold back progress because it offends their moral/religious views or because they just fear it. However, that generation will naturally be replaced by a younger generation more willing to accept the change.
Imagine if the stifling baby boomer generation's reign lasted for 600 years, though! They could hold progress back long enough that, by the time they were ready to give up power, the "younger" generation would be old already, set in their ways, and used to things the way they were under the stifling reign. Society's and technology's advances would slow to a crawl.
My question would be: Which of these scenarios do you think is more likely given a radical increase in human lifespan?
My e-mail address is just a clear name. No numbers in it at all. Like I said in another post, this account was obtained when Yahoo first offered free Webmail. I was lucky enough to get my name @ yahoo.com. And this wasn't all a put-on. This really happened. So either the person mistyped their own name, or they were trying to use my e-mail address to sign up for the service. A quick check of WeeWorld.com shows that their registration page requires you to type your e-mail address in twice. So it is less likely that he simply mistyped his e-mail address when he signed up.
Megan hung herself because of the abuse that Lori Drew caused. Lori Drew (in the guise of "Josh") even told Megan "the world would be a better place without you" just before she hung herself. Lori reportedly laughed about her hoax and said she intended to "mess with Megan." So there was a clear intent to harass which directly lead to Megan's suicide. This wouldn't be murder, of course, but I would think that an involuntary manslaughter charge might be appropriate.
Wikipedia defines involuntary manslaughter as occurring "where there is no intention to kill or cause serious injury but death is due to recklessness or criminal negligence." IMO, Lori Drew's harassing messages were reckless (at best). She is an adult and should have known better. If this was one teen harassing another teen, it could be chalked up to the cruelty of teenagers. It wouldn't be a perfect excuse, but at least you could point to the teenager's immaturity as the cause. For an adult to engage in this behavior, though, shows a real lack of morals, a lack of maturity, and a (perhaps criminal) disregard for a person.
There is obviously only one conclusion to draw from this: Private planes are a threat to our National Security and should be banned! After all, any terrorist could buy one and fly it into a building. Plus, every time you fly your private plane, you're taking revenue from the big airline companies. That's the same as stealing! Of course, to keep things fair, we'll have exceptions to the ban. Billionaires and executives of large companies can't be expected to fly in coach, after all.