In neither of those cases were the "edit authors" claiming that their creations were solely their own. For example, The Phantom Edit author wasn't claiming to have made this new movie call "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." Instead, he was claiming to have taken George Lucas' "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" and made some edits in an effort to make it a better movie. Whether the modifications and distribution were within Fair Use or not (they weren't) is irrelevant as the Creationist Discovery Institute did more than that. They took the video, stripped out the copyright, stripped out the narration, added their own narration (with a completely opposite set of conclusions), and tried to pass it off as their original work. That's plagiarism pure and simple. Even the most hard-core "information wants to be free" advocate that I know of hasn't advocated passing someone else's work off as your own as some kind of "freedom" that people should be able to have with anything.
I agree. With a rental DVD, a good quality TV (not even talking big screen high-defs here), and some microwave popcorn, you can often get a better movie watching experience than the local theater. And at a lower price point, also. $4.50 the rental, $1 (max) for the popcorn and you still even haven't reached the price of a single ticket. Not to mention deals you can get. We use our Discover Card Cashback bonuses for Hollywood Video coupons. $20 in Cashback bonus buys us 10 "free" rentals. The net cost per DVD becomes $2. I'd like the see the movie theater match that!
You're not thinking like a MPAA/RIAA executive. MPAA/RIAA executives don't think logically with a long-term outlook. They think in terms of control and monetization over the short term. Will Action A have repercussions 5 years from now? Who cares? I (hypothetical RIAA/MPAA executive) will have made enough money to retire by then anyway.
Illegal downloads take music/movies out of their control. They won't admit this, but this issue is more important to them than the money. They don't care if the film downloaded was one that was otherwise sitting in the vault, available only on a dozen VHS copies left over from a network broadcast ten years ago. It's their property and if they want it to sit in the vault gathering dust, we the public should kiss their feet thanking them for that decision.
As far as the money is concerned, they think that these actions will make pirating movies less attractive which will drive more people to buy/rent movies and/or watch movies in the theater. No, don't argue back that pirated copies versus legal copies that would have been bought isn't a 1:1 ratio. Stuff like "ratios" sounds ominously like math to these executives. The only math they care about is the rate at which money is flowing into their pockets.
And speaking of "rate at which money is flowing", they feel entitled to constantly increasing profits year after year. After all, they've given us such quality works as Boy Band #34 and Third Sequel Of Generic Action Movie - Now With More Explosions. Why aren't we, the public, rushing out to the stores and shoving money into their pockets for this stuff? After all, Boy Band #7 did really well and they were basically the same guys as #34. Also, Generic Action Movie did pretty well in the box office. Why shouldn't the third sequel pull in even more money? (After all, the studio executives made sure the director added more explosions since they [the execs] knew that is what the public wanted.) Any appeals to logic about how spending money is tighter, how people have more options (online entertainment, video games, etc), or how quality is declining fall on deaf ears. After all, they got profit in the past and that means they should get bigger profit now. The only explanation has to be those dirty, rotten Internet pirates.
Of course, all of this isn't meant to excuse downloading something without the copyright owner's permission. I still think that you shouldn't do that. At the same time, however, I don't think that the MPAA/RIAA are living in the real world with some of the actions they have taken (and some of the things they have tried to get done). At best, they've lost whatever moral high ground they would have had. At worst, they've become so criminal that people committing massive copyright infringement actually have a degree of moral high ground over them.
For the longest time, I've thought that something along these lines would be the best thing for copyright. However, I would give copyright owners an optional second 20 year term that they would need to apply for. (The original system was 14 years plus a one time 14 year extension.) After that, the work would become public domain.
And what about all of those currently copyrighted works which might suddenly face a quick entry into public domain? I would phase the new rules in for existing content. For every year that passed, I would move five years of material (starting with 1923) into the public domain until the public domain caught up with the new rules. My last one-time concession would be that any content 15 years to 39 years old would be considered automatically renewed. With these transition rules in place, the "back to basics" copyright rules would become fully in effect in a mere 11 years.
Of course, like other posters stated, international treaties and copyright group lobbying would make these rules all but an impossibility to get enacted.
I was going to suggest Amie Street, but it looks like you've already found it. What I do is subscribe to their RSS feeds for Recommended songs. Then I check it a couple times a day for new and interesting songs/groups. The preview functionality can usually tell you whether it's a song/group that you like. You could also find people who have recommended songs that you liked and see what other songs they've recommended.
When you get scammed with a credit card, you call your card company, explain the situation, they say "Thank you Mr. X, we'll investigate it", and then a month or two later you'll get a refund. At no point during this situation did you actually lose any money. At worst your credit limit was artificially low for this period.
My experience was even better. I've had my credit card number stolen a few times in the past. The last time (a couple of months ago) was the only time a fraudulent charge got placed on my card. (All other times, my credit card company got notified of a merchant's security breach and issued me a new number just in case.) Discover Card called *me* up and asked me if I charged $3,600 from "Paypal/NewEgg." I said no. They asked if my wife could have. I said definitely not. So they canceled the charge, went over all charges posted since my last bill (we found a $1 charge obviously used to test the card), sent me a new card (closing my previous account), and promised to investigate the incident.
All in all, I was impressed. Discover Card could have waited for me to report the charge to them and then dragged their feet on the issue. Instead, they took the initiative to recognize an out of the ordinary charge and investigate it for possible fraud.
I wonder how the 200 meter limit works. Is it based off of the last edited marker location or based on the original location? If it's based off of the edited marker location, then multiple people, working in concert, could keep moving a marker off target bit by bit until it winds up in a completely different spot. Like, say, moving the White House marker until it is in Disney World. (Waits to see how long it takes until bored Slashdotters start to move GWB's residence next to Mickey Mouse's.;-) )
I could see potential for abuse here also from businesses. Company A hasn't registered their address with Google's Local Business Center. Their competitor, Company B, has a tech-savvy employee who looks up Company A's address and redirects it to point to Company B's location. Then, when people try to get directions to Company A, they wind up at Company B.
Interesting. Don't think I had heard of that one. The one I had heard of was movie-goers were given stale popcorn to eat. Some were given huge bins and some were given smaller ones. Despite all of the patrons not liking the popcorn, the ones given the big bins ate way more than the ones with the small bins.
Simplistic, but in general correct. My one modification would be that if Calories in are far less than Calories out, then the body tends to enter "Starvation Mode" and reduces how many calories it burns. A useful survival mechanism when food was scarce, not so useful if your diet plan involves eating only celery for a week and then binging on supersized McDonald's bacon double-cheeseburgers.
For my own weight loss, my wife and I went on "unofficial" Weight Watchers. We didn't pay Weight Watchers anything, but obtained the formula (stupidly, this very simple math formula is patented) and did our own calculations. (It helps to be a Math geek who actually likes figuring out the Points on everything.;-) )
We quickly found a few things:
- The typical American serving is at least 2 "real" servings. - The typical American Restaurant serving can easily be 3 real servings. - Small plates work nicely. Your brain (and stomach) get fooled into thinking that you ate a lot. After all, that pasta was running off the plate, right? So it had to be alot. - Writing down what you eat is a good way of stopping those mindless snackings and can really help keep you on track. - Weekly weigh-ins are a must. (Daily is fine too, but don't get hung up on pound fluctuations.) - Many people will hit plateaus during weight loss. Whatever you do when you plateau, don't give up. Give it a few weeks and you'll likely find the pounds coming off again. Even if the scale reading goes up a pound or two, it's not the end of the world. - Veggies are your friends. Load up every dish with them to the point that your meats, cheeses, and grains (e.g. pastas) are supporting characters and not the main attraction. - Water is your friend. You'd be surprised at how often you think you're hungry, but you're really thirsty. - Plan your meals for the week. Meals decided on at 5pm are likely to be of the "fast food" variety or, at best, of the questionably healthy variety.
I went from 255 in March 2004 to 188.5 one year later. I actually got so low at one point (173) that my wife told me I was too skinny. (I was starting to look "boney".)
Of course, this isn't a one time deal. For something like this to really work, you can't just diet for a bit and then go back to normal. You need to change how and what you eat. I'll admit that I tend to go off the plan, gain some weight back (but not even close to all of it) and then go back on it until I'm back down. (My latest lapse saw me rise above 200 for the first time in over 2 years. I'm now below 200 and working my way back down.) However, even when I'm off the plan and not counting Points, I'm still conscious of whether something is healthy or not. Whereas before I might eat two slices of cake because I just "had" to taste each one, I'll now pick one and have the smallest piece possible. (Or, more likely, skip the cake entirely.)
Now Weight Watchers might not be right for you, but the general rule holds. If you reduce your caloric intake and increase your caloric output (exercise), you will lose weight.
Those are two different (though tangentially related) topics. Life outside of our solar system could mean anything from simple microbes, to primitive animals, to advanced intellects superior to humans. The SETI project was only looking for advanced intellects using a narrow detection scheme. One would think that a sufficiently advanced culture would advance past the use of radio waves. Especially if intra-stellar or inter-stellar communication was needed.
I think the probability of detecting intelligent life is rather low using SETI (though worth a shot). However, the possibility that life in some form exists out there is, I think, very high.
I could see a Kindle-like device being useful. While it doen't mention RSS specifically, Kindle's product page mentions being able to read blogs. I could see a portable hardware RSS reader being handy. Catch up with some sites/blogs during the commute into work. (So long as you don't drive into work like I do. Please don't Kindle and Drive!) That said, $400 is an insane price point. Give me a similar device for under $100 and I might just bite. At $400 though, I'll nod my head and comment about how interesting it looks and then I'll fire up Google Reader within a Prism instance on my laptop.
I wonder how A Fair(y) Use Tale would be flagged by the "Video DNA" system. For those who don't know, this is a video consisting entirely of tiny clips from Disney movies. Most clips provide only a single word. When strung together, they explain what Fair Use is and why it's important. The use of the Disney copyrighted material clearly falls under Fair Use, yet Video DNA might flag it (and thus AT&T might block it) simply because the material is copyrighted.
I bought a portable mini-cycle from Sharper Image awhile back ( http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/product/sku__LI112 in case anyone's interested). I put it under my desk and began pedaling. The first problem was hitting my knees. So I moved back a bit and raised my desk up on two wood boards. This worked, but the force of pushing on the pedals kept pushing my wheeled chair back. I wasn't willing to give up the comfortable chair, so I just figured out how to push without pushing myself back. Now I don't use it every day, but when I'm deep in work and feel the need to move my legs around, I can pedal in place while coding. And considering that I didn't pay much for it (it was on sale and I also used a Discover Card cashback bonus to lower the price), it was worth it.
Not to mention that today's "strongly encrypted message" is tomorrow's "barely encrypted message."
Suppose I send a message today via encryption method X which is nearly impossible to break. Now 5 years down the line, progression in computer technology means that X is pretty easy to break. Would that make my message, sent 5 years prior, fair game for a warrantless wiretap? What if I used method Y today, believing it was strong encryption, when in fact it was barely more protection than ROT13? Should users be required to know all of the current forms of encryption, which are strong, and which aren't in order to have their Constitutional Rights? I don't think that should be the case.
Yes, you should never send sensitive information via an e-mail. Yes, it's like sending it via snail-mail on a postcard. But, no, that doesn't mean that that e-mail should be fair game to the government without a warrant.
I completely agree. Even if we changed this country to a police state, you would still have the occasional terrorist plot/attack.
I remember one of my Junior High School teachers mentioning how New York City's water supply relied on one set of pipelines and a determined terrorist could cripple the city by blowing that up. I don't know if this is no longer true or if it was ever true, but it does indicate to me two things:
1 - Terrorist threats to the US were real enough back then (about 19 years ago) that a junior high school teacher discussed it. 2 - If he discussed it today, he would be fired from his post and carted off by DHS officials to be "questioned" about his involvement in a terror plot to destroy NYC's water supply. Praise would be handed out to everyone from the student who reported him (who got an F on her last paper though that was completely unrelated she'll claim) all the way up to the President. Meanwhile, the teacher at best would win his freedom after 5 years of legal battles and at worst wouldn't be heard from again.
It's a sad state we're in. If we jump in panic at every shadow, isn't that the very definition of the terrorists winning?
I agree that the drug protections have gotten out of hand. When my wife and I want to buy some Sudafed for our four-year-old, we are required to sign our names in a book to "prove" that we're not going to turn it into crystal meth. Now I'm no expert in Sudafed-Meth conversions, but I would guess you would need a *TON* of children's Sudafed to make any significant crystal meth. Buying one package wouldn't do it. And what protection does a signed name in a paper book prove? Do all of those names get typed into some computer system by someone? If not, and we were running a crytal meth lab, couldn't we just pharmacy hop to get all of the Sudafed that we needed? Perhaps if someone was buying four or more bottles at once, I could see putting their name in a computerized database, but not writing down their name in a paper book for the purchase of one bottle of Sudafed. That law was obviously just passed to show voters how their incumbant is "doing something" about a problem regardless of whether that something is useful or not.
My first reading was worse. I read it as something along the lines of "SQL Injection Gets Google's Code." I thought it might have to deal with some weird Google bug that let some hacker view all of their code via a SQL Injection attack.
"Grand Theft Auto" is a term that, when applied to video games, brings to mind Rockstar's line of games. For another company to release a "Grand Theft" video game would be confusing and might lead some to think that the game was released by Rockstar as well. This is a perfect example of how trademark should be applied. Now if "Grand Theft Scratchy" was the name of a TV Series and it referred to what happened to the title character (Scratchy) after he committed Grand Theft Auto (the crime, not the game), then Rockstar wouldn't have cause to complain.
Not to mention, what happens when Microsoft EOL's Vista? You might put a new stick of RAM in your computer, need to reactivate, and suddenly find out that Vista reactivations are no longer supported. (The same could be said about XP, but apparently it's harder to trigger a reactivation for XP.)
I believe they have all of the John Stewart shows online now and plan on getting the Kilborn ones up by early 2008. Plus, The Colbert Report will get a similar treatment in 2008.
Dave Kellett, the artist who draws Sheldon predicted this in his "Microsoft Healthcare" series of comics last week. Here they are (the prediction's in the last one):
Unfortunately, the article doesn't say anything about a Wii version. Just XBox 360, PS3, and PC. I think this game would fit well with the WiiMote controller. Use the button to fire your arm. Hold it down as your arm grabs something. Then swing the WiiMote and your character swings the object around. Let go of the button and it goes flying. Of course, there would be other ways to activate "swinging", "rappelling", and "climbing."
Slashdot Mirror
In neither of those cases were the "edit authors" claiming that their creations were solely their own. For example, The Phantom Edit author wasn't claiming to have made this new movie call "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." Instead, he was claiming to have taken George Lucas' "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" and made some edits in an effort to make it a better movie. Whether the modifications and distribution were within Fair Use or not (they weren't) is irrelevant as the Creationist Discovery Institute did more than that. They took the video, stripped out the copyright, stripped out the narration, added their own narration (with a completely opposite set of conclusions), and tried to pass it off as their original work. That's plagiarism pure and simple. Even the most hard-core "information wants to be free" advocate that I know of hasn't advocated passing someone else's work off as your own as some kind of "freedom" that people should be able to have with anything.
I agree. With a rental DVD, a good quality TV (not even talking big screen high-defs here), and some microwave popcorn, you can often get a better movie watching experience than the local theater. And at a lower price point, also. $4.50 the rental, $1 (max) for the popcorn and you still even haven't reached the price of a single ticket. Not to mention deals you can get. We use our Discover Card Cashback bonuses for Hollywood Video coupons. $20 in Cashback bonus buys us 10 "free" rentals. The net cost per DVD becomes $2. I'd like the see the movie theater match that!
You're not thinking like a MPAA/RIAA executive. MPAA/RIAA executives don't think logically with a long-term outlook. They think in terms of control and monetization over the short term. Will Action A have repercussions 5 years from now? Who cares? I (hypothetical RIAA/MPAA executive) will have made enough money to retire by then anyway.
Illegal downloads take music/movies out of their control. They won't admit this, but this issue is more important to them than the money. They don't care if the film downloaded was one that was otherwise sitting in the vault, available only on a dozen VHS copies left over from a network broadcast ten years ago. It's their property and if they want it to sit in the vault gathering dust, we the public should kiss their feet thanking them for that decision.
As far as the money is concerned, they think that these actions will make pirating movies less attractive which will drive more people to buy/rent movies and/or watch movies in the theater. No, don't argue back that pirated copies versus legal copies that would have been bought isn't a 1:1 ratio. Stuff like "ratios" sounds ominously like math to these executives. The only math they care about is the rate at which money is flowing into their pockets.
And speaking of "rate at which money is flowing", they feel entitled to constantly increasing profits year after year. After all, they've given us such quality works as Boy Band #34 and Third Sequel Of Generic Action Movie - Now With More Explosions. Why aren't we, the public, rushing out to the stores and shoving money into their pockets for this stuff? After all, Boy Band #7 did really well and they were basically the same guys as #34. Also, Generic Action Movie did pretty well in the box office. Why shouldn't the third sequel pull in even more money? (After all, the studio executives made sure the director added more explosions since they [the execs] knew that is what the public wanted.) Any appeals to logic about how spending money is tighter, how people have more options (online entertainment, video games, etc), or how quality is declining fall on deaf ears. After all, they got profit in the past and that means they should get bigger profit now. The only explanation has to be those dirty, rotten Internet pirates.
Of course, all of this isn't meant to excuse downloading something without the copyright owner's permission. I still think that you shouldn't do that. At the same time, however, I don't think that the MPAA/RIAA are living in the real world with some of the actions they have taken (and some of the things they have tried to get done). At best, they've lost whatever moral high ground they would have had. At worst, they've become so criminal that people committing massive copyright infringement actually have a degree of moral high ground over them.
In addition,
For the longest time, I've thought that something along these lines would be the best thing for copyright. However, I would give copyright owners an optional second 20 year term that they would need to apply for. (The original system was 14 years plus a one time 14 year extension.) After that, the work would become public domain.
And what about all of those currently copyrighted works which might suddenly face a quick entry into public domain? I would phase the new rules in for existing content. For every year that passed, I would move five years of material (starting with 1923) into the public domain until the public domain caught up with the new rules. My last one-time concession would be that any content 15 years to 39 years old would be considered automatically renewed. With these transition rules in place, the "back to basics" copyright rules would become fully in effect in a mere 11 years.
Of course, like other posters stated, international treaties and copyright group lobbying would make these rules all but an impossibility to get enacted.
I was going to suggest Amie Street, but it looks like you've already found it. What I do is subscribe to their RSS feeds for Recommended songs. Then I check it a couple times a day for new and interesting songs/groups. The preview functionality can usually tell you whether it's a song/group that you like. You could also find people who have recommended songs that you liked and see what other songs they've recommended.
On the off-chance that you like the same kind of music that I like, here's my playlist: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/what-im-listening-to.php
When you get scammed with a credit card, you call your card company, explain the situation, they say "Thank you Mr. X, we'll investigate it", and then a month or two later you'll get a refund. At no point during this situation did you actually lose any money. At worst your credit limit was artificially low for this period.
My experience was even better. I've had my credit card number stolen a few times in the past. The last time (a couple of months ago) was the only time a fraudulent charge got placed on my card. (All other times, my credit card company got notified of a merchant's security breach and issued me a new number just in case.) Discover Card called *me* up and asked me if I charged $3,600 from "Paypal/NewEgg." I said no. They asked if my wife could have. I said definitely not. So they canceled the charge, went over all charges posted since my last bill (we found a $1 charge obviously used to test the card), sent me a new card (closing my previous account), and promised to investigate the incident.
All in all, I was impressed. Discover Card could have waited for me to report the charge to them and then dragged their feet on the issue. Instead, they took the initiative to recognize an out of the ordinary charge and investigate it for possible fraud.
I wonder how the 200 meter limit works. Is it based off of the last edited marker location or based on the original location? If it's based off of the edited marker location, then multiple people, working in concert, could keep moving a marker off target bit by bit until it winds up in a completely different spot. Like, say, moving the White House marker until it is in Disney World. (Waits to see how long it takes until bored Slashdotters start to move GWB's residence next to Mickey Mouse's. ;-) )
I could see potential for abuse here also from businesses. Company A hasn't registered their address with Google's Local Business Center. Their competitor, Company B, has a tech-savvy employee who looks up Company A's address and redirects it to point to Company B's location. Then, when people try to get directions to Company A, they wind up at Company B.
Interesting. Don't think I had heard of that one. The one I had heard of was movie-goers were given stale popcorn to eat. Some were given huge bins and some were given smaller ones. Despite all of the patrons not liking the popcorn, the ones given the big bins ate way more than the ones with the small bins.
Simplistic, but in general correct. My one modification would be that if Calories in are far less than Calories out, then the body tends to enter "Starvation Mode" and reduces how many calories it burns. A useful survival mechanism when food was scarce, not so useful if your diet plan involves eating only celery for a week and then binging on supersized McDonald's bacon double-cheeseburgers.
;-) )
For my own weight loss, my wife and I went on "unofficial" Weight Watchers. We didn't pay Weight Watchers anything, but obtained the formula (stupidly, this very simple math formula is patented) and did our own calculations. (It helps to be a Math geek who actually likes figuring out the Points on everything.
We quickly found a few things:
- The typical American serving is at least 2 "real" servings.
- The typical American Restaurant serving can easily be 3 real servings.
- Small plates work nicely. Your brain (and stomach) get fooled into thinking that you ate a lot. After all, that pasta was running off the plate, right? So it had to be alot.
- Writing down what you eat is a good way of stopping those mindless snackings and can really help keep you on track.
- Weekly weigh-ins are a must. (Daily is fine too, but don't get hung up on pound fluctuations.)
- Many people will hit plateaus during weight loss. Whatever you do when you plateau, don't give up. Give it a few weeks and you'll likely find the pounds coming off again. Even if the scale reading goes up a pound or two, it's not the end of the world.
- Veggies are your friends. Load up every dish with them to the point that your meats, cheeses, and grains (e.g. pastas) are supporting characters and not the main attraction.
- Water is your friend. You'd be surprised at how often you think you're hungry, but you're really thirsty.
- Plan your meals for the week. Meals decided on at 5pm are likely to be of the "fast food" variety or, at best, of the questionably healthy variety.
I went from 255 in March 2004 to 188.5 one year later. I actually got so low at one point (173) that my wife told me I was too skinny. (I was starting to look "boney".)
Of course, this isn't a one time deal. For something like this to really work, you can't just diet for a bit and then go back to normal. You need to change how and what you eat. I'll admit that I tend to go off the plan, gain some weight back (but not even close to all of it) and then go back on it until I'm back down. (My latest lapse saw me rise above 200 for the first time in over 2 years. I'm now below 200 and working my way back down.) However, even when I'm off the plan and not counting Points, I'm still conscious of whether something is healthy or not. Whereas before I might eat two slices of cake because I just "had" to taste each one, I'll now pick one and have the smallest piece possible. (Or, more likely, skip the cake entirely.)
Now Weight Watchers might not be right for you, but the general rule holds. If you reduce your caloric intake and increase your caloric output (exercise), you will lose weight.
Those are two different (though tangentially related) topics. Life outside of our solar system could mean anything from simple microbes, to primitive animals, to advanced intellects superior to humans. The SETI project was only looking for advanced intellects using a narrow detection scheme. One would think that a sufficiently advanced culture would advance past the use of radio waves. Especially if intra-stellar or inter-stellar communication was needed.
I think the probability of detecting intelligent life is rather low using SETI (though worth a shot). However, the possibility that life in some form exists out there is, I think, very high.
I could see a Kindle-like device being useful. While it doen't mention RSS specifically, Kindle's product page mentions being able to read blogs. I could see a portable hardware RSS reader being handy. Catch up with some sites/blogs during the commute into work. (So long as you don't drive into work like I do. Please don't Kindle and Drive!) That said, $400 is an insane price point. Give me a similar device for under $100 and I might just bite. At $400 though, I'll nod my head and comment about how interesting it looks and then I'll fire up Google Reader within a Prism instance on my laptop.
http://www.tinyurl.com/1 - Works
;-)
http://www.tinyurl.com/2 - Works
http://www.tinyurl.com/3 - Works
http://www.tinyurl.com/4 - Works
http://www.tinyurl.com/5 - Connects to site, but site gives an error.
Conclusion: 4 out of 5 TinyURLs say it will still work.
I wonder how A Fair(y) Use Tale would be flagged by the "Video DNA" system. For those who don't know, this is a video consisting entirely of tiny clips from Disney movies. Most clips provide only a single word. When strung together, they explain what Fair Use is and why it's important. The use of the Disney copyrighted material clearly falls under Fair Use, yet Video DNA might flag it (and thus AT&T might block it) simply because the material is copyrighted.
I bought a portable mini-cycle from Sharper Image awhile back ( http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/product/sku__LI112 in case anyone's interested). I put it under my desk and began pedaling. The first problem was hitting my knees. So I moved back a bit and raised my desk up on two wood boards. This worked, but the force of pushing on the pedals kept pushing my wheeled chair back. I wasn't willing to give up the comfortable chair, so I just figured out how to push without pushing myself back. Now I don't use it every day, but when I'm deep in work and feel the need to move my legs around, I can pedal in place while coding. And considering that I didn't pay much for it (it was on sale and I also used a Discover Card cashback bonus to lower the price), it was worth it.
One *BILLION* dollars (pinky to mouth).
That should be enough for me to hire some good lobbyists to get my ideas passed as laws. Why vote when you can lobby your ideas through?
Not to mention that today's "strongly encrypted message" is tomorrow's "barely encrypted message."
Suppose I send a message today via encryption method X which is nearly impossible to break. Now 5 years down the line, progression in computer technology means that X is pretty easy to break. Would that make my message, sent 5 years prior, fair game for a warrantless wiretap? What if I used method Y today, believing it was strong encryption, when in fact it was barely more protection than ROT13? Should users be required to know all of the current forms of encryption, which are strong, and which aren't in order to have their Constitutional Rights? I don't think that should be the case.
Yes, you should never send sensitive information via an e-mail. Yes, it's like sending it via snail-mail on a postcard. But, no, that doesn't mean that that e-mail should be fair game to the government without a warrant.
I completely agree. Even if we changed this country to a police state, you would still have the occasional terrorist plot/attack.
I remember one of my Junior High School teachers mentioning how New York City's water supply relied on one set of pipelines and a determined terrorist could cripple the city by blowing that up. I don't know if this is no longer true or if it was ever true, but it does indicate to me two things:
1 - Terrorist threats to the US were real enough back then (about 19 years ago) that a junior high school teacher discussed it.
2 - If he discussed it today, he would be fired from his post and carted off by DHS officials to be "questioned" about his involvement in a terror plot to destroy NYC's water supply. Praise would be handed out to everyone from the student who reported him (who got an F on her last paper though that was completely unrelated she'll claim) all the way up to the President. Meanwhile, the teacher at best would win his freedom after 5 years of legal battles and at worst wouldn't be heard from again.
It's a sad state we're in. If we jump in panic at every shadow, isn't that the very definition of the terrorists winning?
I agree that the drug protections have gotten out of hand. When my wife and I want to buy some Sudafed for our four-year-old, we are required to sign our names in a book to "prove" that we're not going to turn it into crystal meth. Now I'm no expert in Sudafed-Meth conversions, but I would guess you would need a *TON* of children's Sudafed to make any significant crystal meth. Buying one package wouldn't do it. And what protection does a signed name in a paper book prove? Do all of those names get typed into some computer system by someone? If not, and we were running a crytal meth lab, couldn't we just pharmacy hop to get all of the Sudafed that we needed? Perhaps if someone was buying four or more bottles at once, I could see putting their name in a computerized database, but not writing down their name in a paper book for the purchase of one bottle of Sudafed. That law was obviously just passed to show voters how their incumbant is "doing something" about a problem regardless of whether that something is useful or not.
My first reading was worse. I read it as something along the lines of "SQL Injection Gets Google's Code." I thought it might have to deal with some weird Google bug that let some hacker view all of their code via a SQL Injection attack.
"Grand Theft Auto" is a term that, when applied to video games, brings to mind Rockstar's line of games. For another company to release a "Grand Theft" video game would be confusing and might lead some to think that the game was released by Rockstar as well. This is a perfect example of how trademark should be applied. Now if "Grand Theft Scratchy" was the name of a TV Series and it referred to what happened to the title character (Scratchy) after he committed Grand Theft Auto (the crime, not the game), then Rockstar wouldn't have cause to complain.
Not to mention, what happens when Microsoft EOL's Vista? You might put a new stick of RAM in your computer, need to reactivate, and suddenly find out that Vista reactivations are no longer supported. (The same could be said about XP, but apparently it's harder to trigger a reactivation for XP.)
I believe they have all of the John Stewart shows online now and plan on getting the Kilborn ones up by early 2008. Plus, The Colbert Report will get a similar treatment in 2008.
They're the folks who claimed that their Cease and Desist letter regarding bad online reviews of one of their clients was copyrighted and thus couldn't be posted online: http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2007/10/dont-publish-th.html
They also proudly represent spammers: http://www.cybertriallawyer.com/commercial-email-spam
Dave Kellett, the artist who draws Sheldon predicted this in his "Microsoft Healthcare" series of comics last week. Here they are (the prediction's in the last one):
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/071010.html
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/071011.html
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/071012.html
Unfortunately, the article doesn't say anything about a Wii version. Just XBox 360, PS3, and PC. I think this game would fit well with the WiiMote controller. Use the button to fire your arm. Hold it down as your arm grabs something. Then swing the WiiMote and your character swings the object around. Let go of the button and it goes flying. Of course, there would be other ways to activate "swinging", "rappelling", and "climbing."