2kg of meat into 6 patties is 0.333... of meat each. Hardly rocket science. You'll get used to what ever system you learn but Metric is the defacto measure of science and thus it's counter-productive to have to learn both.
True. And, by the same logic, all other scientists should forget their native language and learn English.
Or we can just do what we've done and what we do--note all SI measurements with metric afterwards, and include an English version in all non-English papers.
Would you continue to support segregation if the two sides were actually equal?
Replace "continue to support" with "consider supporting" or "acccept" and I'll agree.
Segregation is just another word for the freedom to assemble. There's nothing wrong with Catholics not letting non-catholics attend their private schools, or an ethnic community holding a function and not letting outsiders in.
If we were going to allow formal segregation, it would have to be the individual body choosing to segregate, and not a government mandate. If the populations were equal, simple capitalism would keep the segregted abodes to a minimum.
If there's nothing different, then why make up a new legal term? If it's exactly the same, why not call it what it is? Marriage is the word, even if that offends the sensibilities of those who would rather there were no gay people.
Because it IS different, no matter the fact that it should be seen as equal by the law.
Or, as a better argument: because it IS only a word, and if they really are the same, then in a few years(/decades/generations) we'll simply change the name.
If you really want to guarantee the same protections (which is what I believe your sincere opinion is), you have to use the same word. Anything else is demeaning, and trouble. And if I were homosexual, I wouldn't trust anything but the same word.
I wouldn't trust anything but a constitutional amendment specifying that "civil unions are to have the same protections, respect, and priviledges as marriage."
If I divorced my wife and went with a good friend to MA in two weeks and got "married", I'd get absolutely nothing if I tried to get that marriage recognized in another state or on a federal level.
Federal action is NECESSARY to get what is just and due for the homosexual population. If we have to use a different word to get the effect that we deserve to have for our fellow citizens, then so be it. There are plenty of other legal terms with gender distinctions that are otherwise identical, anyway.
Are you serious? I haven't heard or read everything you've uttered, but I'm going to guess that this is the dumbest thing you've every said.
Ad hominem attacks don't go very far. The dumbest thing I've ever said was probably "sure, I'll go to community college because you're too stressed to send me to a real one."
Establishing and upholding human rights above the influence of majority opinion is vital to a democracy. Without them our government would be nothing more than 2 wolves and a sheep voting for what to have for dinner.
Let's take Ben Franklin's analogy a step further. If the sheep tells the wolves that they aren't allowed to eat him, and the wolves don't agree, the wolves are going to just eat the sheep and be done with it.
If you want the wolves to stay at the table--heck, if you want the table to exist at all--then the mechanism by which the sheep keeps itself from being eaten must be by convincing one of the wolves that it should be spared. Anything else would be tyranny of the sheep, and rule by the minority is even more incompatable with democracy than a disregardation for human rights.
(Or do you think that the actions of the early USA mean that we're not Democratic?)
No nuclear waste, no potential for meltdowns, no potential for dirty bombs, etc ec
As opposed to:
* No destruction of wildlife habitat * No random slaugher of birds * No acid rain * No potential for cataclysmic flooding * No particulate pollution * No oil spills * No greenhouse gases
Hmm... Yeah. Much better to decide we can't possibly prevent meltdowns or dirty bombs (the former are quite preventable through reactor design, the latter not a serious threat and apparantly well in hand anyway.)
The "nuclear weapon" issue, btw, is why we have to bury nuclear waste. We CAN use fuel until it's quite simply an inert rock--we just don't because one of the intermediate stages between U and Pb is Pu, which is what makes massive uncontrolled fission possible. If we were just willing to actually build "breeder" reactors, we'd essentially never need to dispose of the waste.
When it comes to civil rights, the majority will is irrelevant. Do you think that people should be able to vote to take away a minority's right to vote?
A sufficiently large majority? (as in, 90% of the US population with strong enough beliefs to work an amendment through the system)
YES.
We're a democracy before we're a land of liberty. If we ever forget that, if our leaders ever forget that they can do nothing without the will of the people, we will be one step away from tyranny--and American tyranny will lead to a very bloody and very horrible American civil war.
Civil Rights are a good thing; they're just not more important than avoiding violent anarchy.
Nuclear energy is far from being able to be made safe in the immediate future.
Define "safe."
If we ignore the nuclear-weapon and dirty-bomb issues, we can make incredibly safe nuclear power plants that don't have a lot of waste. (Here's a hint: the reason that nuclear waste is bad is the EXACT SAME REASON that it was used as nuclear fuel in the first place.)
Of course, there ARE other forms of energy. But, in all honesty, stronger nuclear power plants is inevitable. We just need to spend the money to make sure that they're SAFE.
One extreme says no war is worth it. Jesus takes this extreme
No, He doesn't.
Our lord and savior promised to wage holy vengance and be quite voilent when he comes back. And he secured the Roman Empire by endorsing one side for ruler.
That's at least two different logical fallacies in the same sentance. Don't do those--you're making the rest of us on the Left look bad, damnit.
The court's job is to interpret the law as it already stands. They've interpreted. If you don't like the way that works, I suggest you find another country to live in, because hopefully it's not changing here anytime soon.
The Massachusets Supreme Court didn't just interpret the law. They went above and beyond ANYTHING any court ever did, in deciding that a situation that had seen other state action, federal-level legislative action, and even international controversy meritied an entirely new and unprecedented response.
The RPOPER thing for the court do have done would be to do what the Vermont court did. Instruct the legislature to immediately agree upon a system to formalize homosexual relationships. The MA court overstepped its bounds, and as a result a year and a half of homosexuals are going to wind up being told that their "marriages" are something else.
In fact, that's exactly WHY Bush wants an amendment: he wants to CHANGE THE LAW.
You obviously haven't read even a summary of the Amendment Bush supports. All it does is codify the currently held interpretation of the various marriage statutes, through the rather small action of defining what "marriage" means. This is a GREAT chance to force federal recognition of state CU laws--which immediately solves EVERY problem that currently exists with CUs that the government can ever solve.
On top of that, "civil union" is an opportunity compared to [religion] the way eating raw beets is an opportunity compared to ice cream. They may both be the same very general category, but one sure is a lot nice than the other.
How? Legally? What part of "full weight of the law" don't you understand. If two men in a CU have all the same priviledges that I have with my wife, then there is NO legal distinction. Culturally? Caling it "marriage" instead of "civil union" won't do squat to change anyone's opinion of the matter who doesn't like it--in fact, all it will accomplish for gays is to irritate those Americans who consider Marriage a tradition between a man and a woman.
. If you can just arbitrarily take secular items and discriminate against gays, there's no reason we can't roll back women's right to vote, segregate blacks and whites again, and start denying people jobs, transportation, benefits, and rights based on their race, color, creed, and affiliation. If we can discriminate against gays, there's NO reason we can't discriminate against anyone else we want to.
1: We do discriminate based on creed/affiliation. Join the Communist Party, or a fundamental Islamic relgion, and try to get a government job. Or if that's not your cup of tea, join Scientology or go find a cult.
2: Gays can still get married--just not to people of the same gender. Dening homosexual "marriage" doesn't discriminate unless you consider the sexes identical, and they aren't.
And, in a nice bit of framing--you're arguing a classic slippery slope argument. It's wretched logic, tannamount to the tripe that some right-wing rags throw around. Your logic's acutally worse than the "gay marriage will lead to pedohillia" line, which at least starts with a premise and carrys it through to its logical conclusion.
I don't understand how the supporters of "recognized Civil Unions but banned gay marriage" fail to see that they separate but equal institutions. And we've been over separate but equal before.
And we're there now, actually. Women don't have to register for the draft. Men don't get the same health benefits women do.
Seperate but equal along racial lines was found to be unconstitutional not because of any inherent flaw in seperation, but because of the gross poverty and prejudice that it inflicted on the black (and white) population. Or, to put it another way, "Seperate but Equal" was disallowed because it was found not to be.
On a national level, legally recognized Gay marriages are simply a matter of "whose choice is this to make in each state" and "how much weight is given to alternative legal arrangements in the interstate and federal levels?" (The right answers, btw, are "the Legislature of each state" and "the full weight of marriage, even if only for citizens of states that grant said arrangement.")
I am outraged and disgusted, as a Christian and an American and a married man, that there are liberals and homosexuals who are so arrogant and narrow-minded that they will force all homosexuals (and polyamorists, and bisexuals) to live without the protections of a matrimonial state.
There is NO argument against "Gay Civil Unions" aside from "I don't want gays at all", which we have agreed as a nation is right out, and "I want it to be called marriage", which is really just a bunch of people who don't think they'll ever get ANYTHING so they just wine about it.
Disagree? Still think that there's something different between a "gay marriage" and a "gay civil union?" Then find me a federal court case indicating that "gay marriage" would get legal protections that "civil unions" would not.
Think that "gay marriage" would somehow be equal to "homosexual marriage?" Find me a gay couple that can concieve a child without artifical or outside assistance, or a historic culture that lasted more than a hundred years that had homosexual and heretrosexual relationships as interchangeable.
If he is reelected, the only thing he has to fear is retribution from the laws of the land. However, with the introduction of things like PATRIOT, and talk of amending the constitution on a whim...
Whim? WHIM?
Gay rights has been brewing for years, and with the recent MA court decision changing the law of that commonwealth AGAINST the majority will, the "no gay marriage" amendment Bush wants is entirely appropriate.
I want to smack every gay rights advocate who doesn't see this as an opportunity. If the Right wants to keep courts from deciding that "everyone can marry" means "gays get to 'marry'", then the Left should respond with "OK, but give federal weight to Civil Unions."
SCO apparantly paid for the docs. Which means that they're as free and clear as if they hired a tech writier to write new docs and license them to SCO.
Let's change to a differnet aspect. Let's say that, in response to your trolling, I violently end your life. This is would be homicide. If I can somehow convince a judge that it's a good enough reason to kill someone if they troll, and that you were in fact trolling, then I get off scott free because my homicide was justifiable homicide.
Fair Use isn't not-infringement. It's justifiable infringement.
Actually, this is not the case. "legal infringement" is contradictory, as infringement WRT copyright law means illegal. If a copy is decided to be "fair use", then it is by definition not infringement.
Wrong. I mean, basic freshman Business Law wrong.
Let's say that you write a book, "Playing a Lawyer on Slashdot." Later, I write/. review of your book, summarizing it and including a passage from your book. You don't like what I say, so you hire a lawyer to sue me to keep me from writing any more reviews.
Your lawyer says "You copied, and that's infringement, so I want XXX penalties."
My lawyer says "ok, we copied. But it's Fair Use, so even though it's infringement, it's OK. Move for dismissal."
Unless you're a lawyer (I'm not, but I wager you aren't either), trust me on this.
Copyright law says "owner gets to decide who makes copies."
Fair Use is a legislative or judicial allowance for copyright infringement. When I quote your book in a review of said book, I'm committing copyright infringement--it's just legal infringement.
For copyright, only those exceptions to the right to decide who can make copies which can be argued in court are the ones we have.
This is a fundamentally necessary aspect of our law. Liberty means nothing without accountability and freedom. Ergo, whenever a person's rights infringe upon those of another person, the proper balance isn't cut and dry--unlike when a person's rights infringe upon the government's wishes.
And here I thought that the authors were going out of their way to show that they're about fair use, not copyright infringement
Kindly quote a source (legal or otherwise) that says you have a right to digital perfection when you engage your Fair Use rights.
As for your examples--which, AFAIC, aren't so much "Fair use" as simple "use" (i.e, you're not making a new work, you're using the work you were given in a fair manner), the problem lies more with the OSS you're using than the files you paid for, partially by agreeing to DRM.
If you can't put up with the 10% reduction in sound quality, why not just buy the acutal physical CDs?
If they really wanted to be innovative, they would give the project their blessing.
How is that innovative?
Playfair is the equivalent of a Windows OS keygen. It might be an interesting academic exercise, but no more so than picking a lock or cracking encryption.
iTMS is actually more deserving of the title "innovative." And even that's not by very much. "Good business" is a better label.
This is exactly what's wrong with the Mozilla project. Whatever happened to "make each tool do one thing and do it well?"
It fell apart, because "each tool" has to work with every other tool in existance.
Mozilla (and OpenOffice, Gnome, and KDE) are necessary corrections to the "one tool one thing" paradigm. Each project has multiple tools in it, and can be used to do many differnet things--but each tool was designed to be used with a specific set of other tools, and the tool authors are upfront and honest about this.
And for those of us who AREN'T tool authors, getting a "thing" working is as simple as grabbing a toolbox from Sears.
Typically, artists get $1/CD, or about 1/16th of the selling price (after the labels recoup all sorts of insane costs). Assuming the same distribution of money, the artists *should* be getting somewhere between 99/16 and 70/16 or between 6 and 4 cents per song (depending on their contract).
Actually, IIRC, it should be higher. Artists contract for a royalty on the price _as sold by the company_.
So, if a CD has a 50% markup and the artist gets a dollar from a $16 CD, they're getting a 12.5% royalty. Which, when applied to the $.70 label cut, means that they get 8 3/4 cents per song sold.
All in all, 12.5% royalty doesn't seem that bad--unless the record companies do what some claim they do, and attempt to recoup their initial expenditures from the royalty, rather than the gross profit from each individual sale.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they start charging you to "upgrade" the privileges you have for the music you've already bought
It'd surprise me. I've got a contract between me and, IIRC, Apple's iTunes store that says I get to use the songs as I see fit. I'll look later to see if there's a "we can change the price and you'll pay more" clause in there--though even if there is, it'd potentially be child's play to get it tossed out in court.
I tell them time and again that their Windows XP computers synchronize their time with our servers, but they still install Gator's time manager
Do you SHOW them where it does it, and tell them that Gator's ad can't differentiate between Windows 2000 and Windows XP?
. Whoever wrote Sasser owes me a lunch break, because I had to skip it to deal with infected machines on the line
!
Why the HELL were production-line computers on the internet? If a box "absolutely has to be online", then it should, at most, be plugged into a LAN that has no outside connection. If your workers really need internet access, spend $20,000 and setup a seperate network for them. (For 20 Gs, I'd go with wireless and 802.11 handhelds.)
Slashdot Mirror
2kg of meat into 6 patties is 0.333... of meat each. Hardly rocket science. You'll get used to what ever system you learn but Metric is the defacto measure of science and thus it's counter-productive to have to learn both.
True. And, by the same logic, all other scientists should forget their native language and learn English.
Or we can just do what we've done and what we do--note all SI measurements with metric afterwards, and include an English version in all non-English papers.
It's easy to pick the numbers you like. There are always numbers a given multiplier won't divide nicely to.
I didn't say that there weren't. But there are reasons for the SI numbers, and they work well enough for the US to resist changing.
(oh, and 8 is easy. 2 oz.)
Would you continue to support segregation if the two sides were actually equal?
Replace "continue to support" with "consider supporting" or "acccept" and I'll agree.
Segregation is just another word for the freedom to assemble. There's nothing wrong with Catholics not letting non-catholics attend their private schools, or an ethnic community holding a function and not letting outsiders in.
If we were going to allow formal segregation, it would have to be the individual body choosing to segregate, and not a government mandate. If the populations were equal, simple capitalism would keep the segregted abodes to a minimum.
If there's nothing different, then why make up a new legal term? If it's exactly the same, why not call it what it is? Marriage is the word, even if that offends the sensibilities of those who would rather there were no gay people.
Because it IS different, no matter the fact that it should be seen as equal by the law.
Or, as a better argument: because it IS only a word, and if they really are the same, then in a few years(/decades/generations) we'll simply change the name.
If you really want to guarantee the same protections (which is what I believe your sincere opinion is), you have to use the same word. Anything else is demeaning, and trouble. And if I were homosexual, I wouldn't trust anything but the same word.
I wouldn't trust anything but a constitutional amendment specifying that "civil unions are to have the same protections, respect, and priviledges as marriage."
If I divorced my wife and went with a good friend to MA in two weeks and got "married", I'd get absolutely nothing if I tried to get that marriage recognized in another state or on a federal level.
Federal action is NECESSARY to get what is just and due for the homosexual population. If we have to use a different word to get the effect that we deserve to have for our fellow citizens, then so be it. There are plenty of other legal terms with gender distinctions that are otherwise identical, anyway.
Are you serious? I haven't heard or read everything you've uttered, but I'm going to guess that this is the dumbest thing you've every said.
Ad hominem attacks don't go very far. The dumbest thing I've ever said was probably "sure, I'll go to community college because you're too stressed to send me to a real one."
Establishing and upholding human rights above the influence of majority opinion is vital to a democracy. Without them our government would be nothing more than 2 wolves and a sheep voting for what to have for dinner.
Let's take Ben Franklin's analogy a step further. If the sheep tells the wolves that they aren't allowed to eat him, and the wolves don't agree, the wolves are going to just eat the sheep and be done with it.
If you want the wolves to stay at the table--heck, if you want the table to exist at all--then the mechanism by which the sheep keeps itself from being eaten must be by convincing one of the wolves that it should be spared. Anything else would be tyranny of the sheep, and rule by the minority is even more incompatable with democracy than a disregardation for human rights.
(Or do you think that the actions of the early USA mean that we're not Democratic?)
I agree, metric makes a lot more sense in -all- manner of implementation.
Divide a pound of meat into six patties. How heavy is each patty?
Divide two kg. of meat into six patties. How much meat is in each patty?
There IS a reason for the SI's odd numbering.
Those are all problems of fossil fuels.
Nope. Here, I'll classify.
Hydroelectric "safe"
* No destruction of wildlife habitat
* No potential for cataclysmic flooding
Windmill "safe"
* No random slaugher of birds
Fossil Fuel "safe"
* No acid rain
* No particulate pollution
* No oil spills
* No greenhouse gases
There are NO energy sources that don't have drawbacks. And, conversely, there are NO drawbacks that cannot be accoutned for and effectively managed.
No nuclear waste, no potential for meltdowns, no potential for dirty bombs, etc ec
As opposed to:
* No destruction of wildlife habitat
* No random slaugher of birds
* No acid rain
* No potential for cataclysmic flooding
* No particulate pollution
* No oil spills
* No greenhouse gases
Hmm... Yeah. Much better to decide we can't possibly prevent meltdowns or dirty bombs (the former are quite preventable through reactor design, the latter not a serious threat and apparantly well in hand anyway.)
The "nuclear weapon" issue, btw, is why we have to bury nuclear waste. We CAN use fuel until it's quite simply an inert rock--we just don't because one of the intermediate stages between U and Pb is Pu, which is what makes massive uncontrolled fission possible. If we were just willing to actually build "breeder" reactors, we'd essentially never need to dispose of the waste.
When it comes to civil rights, the majority will is irrelevant. Do you think that people should be able to vote to take away a minority's right to vote?
A sufficiently large majority? (as in, 90% of the US population with strong enough beliefs to work an amendment through the system)
YES.
We're a democracy before we're a land of liberty. If we ever forget that, if our leaders ever forget that they can do nothing without the will of the people, we will be one step away from tyranny--and American tyranny will lead to a very bloody and very horrible American civil war.
Civil Rights are a good thing; they're just not more important than avoiding violent anarchy.
Nuclear energy is far from being able to be made safe in the immediate future.
Define "safe."
If we ignore the nuclear-weapon and dirty-bomb issues, we can make incredibly safe nuclear power plants that don't have a lot of waste. (Here's a hint: the reason that nuclear waste is bad is the EXACT SAME REASON that it was used as nuclear fuel in the first place.)
Of course, there ARE other forms of energy. But, in all honesty, stronger nuclear power plants is inevitable. We just need to spend the money to make sure that they're SAFE.
One extreme says no war is worth it. Jesus takes this extreme
No, He doesn't.
Our lord and savior promised to wage holy vengance and be quite voilent when he comes back. And he secured the Roman Empire by endorsing one side for ruler.
That's absolutely ridiculous and you know it.
That's at least two different logical fallacies in the same sentance. Don't do those--you're making the rest of us on the Left look bad, damnit.
The court's job is to interpret the law as it already stands. They've interpreted. If you don't like the way that works, I suggest you find another country to live in, because hopefully it's not changing here anytime soon.
The Massachusets Supreme Court didn't just interpret the law. They went above and beyond ANYTHING any court ever did, in deciding that a situation that had seen other state action, federal-level legislative action, and even international controversy meritied an entirely new and unprecedented response.
The RPOPER thing for the court do have done would be to do what the Vermont court did. Instruct the legislature to immediately agree upon a system to formalize homosexual relationships. The MA court overstepped its bounds, and as a result a year and a half of homosexuals are going to wind up being told that their "marriages" are something else.
In fact, that's exactly WHY Bush wants an amendment: he wants to CHANGE THE LAW.
You obviously haven't read even a summary of the Amendment Bush supports. All it does is codify the currently held interpretation of the various marriage statutes, through the rather small action of defining what "marriage" means. This is a GREAT chance to force federal recognition of state CU laws--which immediately solves EVERY problem that currently exists with CUs that the government can ever solve.
On top of that, "civil union" is an opportunity compared to [religion] the way eating raw beets is an opportunity compared to ice cream. They may both be the same very general category, but one sure is a lot nice than the other.
How? Legally? What part of "full weight of the law" don't you understand. If two men in a CU have all the same priviledges that I have with my wife, then there is NO legal distinction. Culturally? Caling it "marriage" instead of "civil union" won't do squat to change anyone's opinion of the matter who doesn't like it--in fact, all it will accomplish for gays is to irritate those Americans who consider Marriage a tradition between a man and a woman.
. If you can just arbitrarily take secular items and discriminate against gays, there's no reason we can't roll back women's right to vote, segregate blacks and whites again, and start denying people jobs, transportation, benefits, and rights based on their race, color, creed, and affiliation. If we can discriminate against gays, there's NO reason we can't discriminate against anyone else we want to.
1: We do discriminate based on creed/affiliation. Join the Communist Party, or a fundamental Islamic relgion, and try to get a government job. Or if that's not your cup of tea, join Scientology or go find a cult.
2: Gays can still get married--just not to people of the same gender. Dening homosexual "marriage" doesn't discriminate unless you consider the sexes identical, and they aren't.
And, in a nice bit of framing--you're arguing a classic slippery slope argument. It's wretched logic, tannamount to the tripe that some right-wing rags throw around. Your logic's acutally worse than the "gay marriage will lead to pedohillia" line, which at least starts with a premise and carrys it through to its logical conclusion.
I don't understand how the supporters of "recognized Civil Unions but banned gay marriage" fail to see that they separate but equal institutions. And we've been over separate but equal before.
And we're there now, actually. Women don't have to register for the draft. Men don't get the same health benefits women do.
Seperate but equal along racial lines was found to be unconstitutional not because of any inherent flaw in seperation, but because of the gross poverty and prejudice that it inflicted on the black (and white) population. Or, to put it another way, "Seperate but Equal" was disallowed because it was found not to be.
On a national level, legally recognized Gay marriages are simply a matter of "whose choice is this to make in each state" and "how much weight is given to alternative legal arrangements in the interstate and federal levels?" (The right answers, btw, are "the Legislature of each state" and "the full weight of marriage, even if only for citizens of states that grant said arrangement.")
I am outraged and disgusted, as a Christian and an American and a married man, that there are liberals and homosexuals who are so arrogant and narrow-minded that they will force all homosexuals (and polyamorists, and bisexuals) to live without the protections of a matrimonial state.
There is NO argument against "Gay Civil Unions" aside from "I don't want gays at all", which we have agreed as a nation is right out, and "I want it to be called marriage", which is really just a bunch of people who don't think they'll ever get ANYTHING so they just wine about it.
Disagree? Still think that there's something different between a "gay marriage" and a "gay civil union?" Then find me a federal court case indicating that "gay marriage" would get legal protections that "civil unions" would not.
Think that "gay marriage" would somehow be equal to "homosexual marriage?" Find me a gay couple that can concieve a child without artifical or outside assistance, or a historic culture that lasted more than a hundred years that had homosexual and heretrosexual relationships as interchangeable.
If he is reelected, the only thing he has to fear is retribution from the laws of the land. However, with the introduction of things like PATRIOT, and talk of amending the constitution on a whim...
Whim? WHIM?
Gay rights has been brewing for years, and with the recent MA court decision changing the law of that commonwealth AGAINST the majority will, the "no gay marriage" amendment Bush wants is entirely appropriate.
I want to smack every gay rights advocate who doesn't see this as an opportunity. If the Right wants to keep courts from deciding that "everyone can marry" means "gays get to 'marry'", then the Left should respond with "OK, but give federal weight to Civil Unions."
No. Did you even read the summary?
SCO apparantly paid for the docs. Which means that they're as free and clear as if they hired a tech writier to write new docs and license them to SCO.
Sheesh.
Let's change to a differnet aspect. Let's say that, in response to your trolling, I violently end your life. This is would be homicide. If I can somehow convince a judge that it's a good enough reason to kill someone if they troll, and that you were in fact trolling, then I get off scott free because my homicide was justifiable homicide.
Fair Use isn't not-infringement. It's justifiable infringement.
Actually, this is not the case. "legal infringement" is contradictory, as infringement WRT copyright law means illegal. If a copy is decided to be "fair use", then it is by definition not infringement.
/. review of your book, summarizing it and including a passage from your book. You don't like what I say, so you hire a lawyer to sue me to keep me from writing any more reviews.
Wrong. I mean, basic freshman Business Law wrong.
Let's say that you write a book, "Playing a Lawyer on Slashdot." Later, I write
Your lawyer says "You copied, and that's infringement, so I want XXX penalties."
My lawyer says "ok, we copied. But it's Fair Use, so even though it's infringement, it's OK. Move for dismissal."
Unless you're a lawyer (I'm not, but I wager you aren't either), trust me on this.
*sigh*
Copyright law says "owner gets to decide who makes copies."
Fair Use is a legislative or judicial allowance for copyright infringement. When I quote your book in a review of said book, I'm committing copyright infringement--it's just legal infringement.
For copyright, only those exceptions to the right to decide who can make copies which can be argued in court are the ones we have.
This is a fundamentally necessary aspect of our law. Liberty means nothing without accountability and freedom. Ergo, whenever a person's rights infringe upon those of another person, the proper balance isn't cut and dry--unlike when a person's rights infringe upon the government's wishes.
. And frankly, I don't see why they should follow the Windows trend in this case.
The trend of "making it easy for the user to switch the behavior of the window manager"?
Yeah, bad trend. Next thing they'll want to be able to recompile their kernal, or rearrange their menus...
And here I thought that the authors were going out of their way to show that they're about fair use, not copyright infringement
Kindly quote a source (legal or otherwise) that says you have a right to digital perfection when you engage your Fair Use rights.
As for your examples--which, AFAIC, aren't so much "Fair use" as simple "use" (i.e, you're not making a new work, you're using the work you were given in a fair manner), the problem lies more with the OSS you're using than the files you paid for, partially by agreeing to DRM.
If you can't put up with the 10% reduction in sound quality, why not just buy the acutal physical CDs?
If they really wanted to be innovative, they would give the project their blessing.
How is that innovative?
Playfair is the equivalent of a Windows OS keygen. It might be an interesting academic exercise, but no more so than picking a lock or cracking encryption.
iTMS is actually more deserving of the title "innovative." And even that's not by very much. "Good business" is a better label.
This is exactly what's wrong with the Mozilla project. Whatever happened to "make each tool do one thing and do it well?"
It fell apart, because "each tool" has to work with every other tool in existance.
Mozilla (and OpenOffice, Gnome, and KDE) are necessary corrections to the "one tool one thing" paradigm. Each project has multiple tools in it, and can be used to do many differnet things--but each tool was designed to be used with a specific set of other tools, and the tool authors are upfront and honest about this.
And for those of us who AREN'T tool authors, getting a "thing" working is as simple as grabbing a toolbox from Sears.
All we care about is getting the username we want; the notion of *not* getting an account -- regardless of faults -- isn't even fathomable...
You seem to think that we're ALL mindless fanboys.
I for one won't be getting a GMAIL account. Unless the featureset somehow is worth the upset, which is probably won't be, I'm not going to bother.
Typically, artists get $1/CD, or about 1/16th of the selling price (after the labels recoup all sorts of insane costs). Assuming the same distribution of money, the artists *should* be getting somewhere between 99/16 and 70/16 or between 6 and 4 cents per song (depending on their contract).
Actually, IIRC, it should be higher. Artists contract for a royalty on the price _as sold by the company_.
So, if a CD has a 50% markup and the artist gets a dollar from a $16 CD, they're getting a 12.5% royalty. Which, when applied to the $.70 label cut, means that they get 8 3/4 cents per song sold.
All in all, 12.5% royalty doesn't seem that bad--unless the record companies do what some claim they do, and attempt to recoup their initial expenditures from the royalty, rather than the gross profit from each individual sale.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they start charging you to "upgrade" the privileges you have for the music you've already bought
It'd surprise me. I've got a contract between me and, IIRC, Apple's iTunes store that says I get to use the songs as I see fit. I'll look later to see if there's a "we can change the price and you'll pay more" clause in there--though even if there is, it'd potentially be child's play to get it tossed out in court.
I tell them time and again that their Windows XP computers synchronize their time with our servers, but they still install Gator's time manager
Do you SHOW them where it does it, and tell them that Gator's ad can't differentiate between Windows 2000 and Windows XP?
. Whoever wrote Sasser owes me a lunch break, because I had to skip it to deal with infected machines on the line
!
Why the HELL were production-line computers on the internet? If a box "absolutely has to be online", then it should, at most, be plugged into a LAN that has no outside connection. If your workers really need internet access, spend $20,000 and setup a seperate network for them. (For 20 Gs, I'd go with wireless and 802.11 handhelds.)