"I don't know who "we" are, but why wouldn't they be criminal prosecutions?"
Why don't you ask the "enemy combatants" in Gitmo, or all the people the US Govt has renditioned to other countries for "questioning"? None of them have any access to our normal due process. And, I don't think Executive Orders can be overruled by Congress.
I agree wholeheartedly. What really ticks me off is that the huge judgement against Ken Lay was essentially vacated after his death because he didn't have a chance to go through the whole appeal process. His estate keeps everything he gained illegally and the people he screwed get nothing. Meanwhile, other people convicted of crimes lose everything right away and, as you say, get the chance to bid on it.
Sorry, but his message is overtly racist and generally asinine. Yes, biological changes did occur, but to characterize them as somehow making white people superior is just plain wrong. Did you actually read the original AC message? If you did, and failed to understand it, then you're just proving the point I made about needing a doorman...
"1. Dark pigmentation is a protection against the sun. 2. When people migrate north were the sun is weaker, over time, the need for sun protection disappears and people lose the pigmentation, hence becoming lighter."
Close, but not quite right. Sun + skin = creation of vitamin D, very important to the human body. Dark-skinned people created less vitamin D in this manner than light-skinned people, but also have better protection from the sun. A good trade-off in equatorial plains regions. As people migrated north they had less exposure to sun and therefore had less natural vitamin D so the sun-blocking benefits of dark skin became a negative to their survival. Lighter-skinned people could create more vitamin D in the northern regions so that became a plus for their survival - so skin became lighter over time in those regions. (Lighter-skinned people lived longer to reproduce.)
At least according to most programs I've caught on the Discovery Channel.
And as far as treason goes, the US Constitution defines it as:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Since, at the time of Libby's actions, we were engaged in a war against terrorism - according to Bush the greatest threat the US has faced - I could successfully argue that taking/supporting/obfuscating an action (the outing of Plame) was an act of treason because it greatly diminished our ability to gather intelligence on terrorist groups and their acquisition of WMDs. Taking out your country's ability to monitor the enemy during war time seems like a treasonous act to me. YMMV.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled discussion - getting busted for videotaping movies in a theater....
A cam is just what it sounds like, camcorder video and camcorder sound. A Telesync is camcorder video with an alternate audio source - usually plugged in to a audio output for the hearing impaired. Which is great since you won't hear the people talking in the next row. A Telecine is recorded directly from a projection source.
So know your telling your god what his purpose is? And the only reason it's "20th century physics", instead of "really old knowledge", is because of YOUR stated purpose for your god? Knowledge of how things really work is irrelevant? Sweet Odin, you really have drunk the Kool Aid. Loki will be playing some sweet tricks on you in the afterlife...
I know, I know...mysterious ways, has a plan, things happen for a reason... And, BTW, your creation myth was around a long time before Moses...not sure why you're bringing him in to the discussion...
"exactly. Don't forget God was talking to farmers of about 2000-4000 years ago. He had to simplify things a lot, like "you're made out of dust", instead of atoms. Or "let there be light!" to describe the star formation..."
Makes sense that an omnipotent, all-knowing god, lacks the power to make simple farmers really understand what he did... yeah...
Microsoft is morally wrong here? Microsoft has a game they've released for use on Vista. Maybe they've put in some installation restrictions to help push Vista sales, or maybe they've done it to reduce their support overhead. (Multiple platforms with different graphics engines = more support costs.) In either case, what is unjust about their actions? Are they violating your constitutional right to play Halo 2 on any Windows platform you choose?
If gun ownership in the US played a role in the rest of the world's environment/safety then your context would make sense. But since we're only killing ourselves, they really don't care.
"However, the point of the "under god" (and references to "god" in many US documents) is there to define all people as being on an equal level. It isn't necessarily the Christian or Jewish God, although it can easily be interpreted that way.
The point is that it brings everyone together under one superior...no one is better than anyone else as we all came from the same place."
The point is that you don't need to put everyone together under a superior in order to make them equal. What has made people equal has been the application of man-made laws and reason. (Though we still have a way to go.) Your god makes people unequal, and the teachings in your religious dogma allow people to do horrendous things to others under a blanket of righteousness. Want an example? How about "Thou shall not kill." Except, in your dogma your god often orders his followers to go out and kill others who are deemed to be less worthy (read not equal). And his followers do. They still do today. How about the religious southerners how fought and died to keep their non-equal slaves in place?
The truth of the matter is that anyone can justify any action they want to take based on some law/statement in your bible. Want to kill your neighbors? Hey, they planted the wrong crops together - go ahead. Want to beat your wife? God said it was the right thing to do.
Believe what you want to believe, but this country was founded on and has flourished under the law of man.
Thanks for the link to the PDF, and for the great response. Though, I have to find some irony in the fact the PDF's license excludes commercial use for the duration currently afforded under copyright law. So I guess I'll have to wait 75 years after he dies to write the play to dramatize the paper...or pay him some money...;)
The video rightly points out that it is important for ideas to become part of the public domain, as new ideas are built upon the older ones, and as a whole, exposure to those ideas are beneficial to a culture. However, I'm not fully convinced modern copyright laws have a negative impact on those beneficial aspects. Not too long ago access to the works (containers of the ideas) was difficult to attain - works were expensive to reproduce and difficult to obtain. With the advent of the modern media, public library systems, the Internet, etc., the works are fairly easy to obtain - even difficult to avoid at times - and the ideas they contain flow pretty freely throughout our culture.
So, even if a company like Disney were to obtain a copyright for 1,000 years how are the benefits to our culture reduced? Are we less off because we can't write "The Lion King 4" using the same characters/storylines from the movie? The ideas and themes in those movies are already reproduced in hundreds and thousands of works (both older and newer than the movies) - so what's the downside?
Asking for a well-reasoned reply...and, yes, I know this is Slashdot... But I'd like to add to my thinking on this - which I realize may be lacking.
I agree. Add on top of that CEOs, CFOs, etc. from corporations. They're people who have control over the financial lives of many, many people. Think Ken Lay was fingerprinted to confirm his identity? Think it would have helped? Think all of the programmers working on Windows, Linux, UNIX, OSX have been fingerprinted? All these financial programs these people are writing need to run on something. What if there's a hidden keylogger just waiting to be exploited?
Come on people, it's time to stop just sitting in the water while they turn up the heat. Take your "if you have nothing to hide, so why worry about another degree" and put it in your goatse.
You're missing the point. If you tell anyone you are working at Google you're breaking the NDA that said you could never tell anyone you interviewed at Google. (Being hired implies being interviewed, and using the word "Google" seems to be verboten as well.) Unless you can convince people you were hired on the spot with no interview...
Depends...for a lot of people they are about the same. What is it, 50% of marriages end up getting downsized with one of the participants getting RIF'd. Sounds like corporate life to me...
...is because they've seen their business shrink quite a bit over the past few years (relative to their competition) and they're trying to recapture whatever they pay Amazon for selling their books. Of course the cost of creating and maintaining a B2C Web site isn't trivial, so it will be interesting to see if, in the end, this move will raise their revenue - or kill them entirely. Also, in terms of the sales tax - they could reduce the price of their books a little online, still make more revenue per sale, and in the end the customer may be paying the same amount.
That...and Amazon is a competitor of theirs so it doesn't make a lot of sense to support Amazon at their own expense.
I find your argument interesting in that you probably wouldn't want it extended to other types of businesses. For example, we hold bars accountable if they serve alcohol to patrons who appear to already be intoxicated - they can't turn the other way and keep serving to people because if they do they are liable for what that patron might do. Another example: Imagine there's a business next door to your house that is set up to allow people to exchange (or share) drugs - not likely, but this is an example. A legal use for this could be people exchanging/sharing aspirin for cold medicine. If it was known that a good number of that businesses patrons were exchanging heroin for cocaine I doubt you would accept their position of "We set up this environment, but if laws are broken it isn't our responsibility...it's up to you." You would probably expect them to set up some process to ensure illegal activities aren't taking place. You wouldn't expect the process to be 100% effective, but you would expect some sort of efficacy.
Again, I know my example is a little bit of a stretch, but where do we draw the line on culpability?
Personally, I don't see how the country benefits from DST. The use of air conditioning has grown quite a bit since the DOT study (which showed an energy savings of 1%). Now, when you're not at home you can turn off, or limit the use of, your air conditioner. When you're home, you're more likely to have it on to stay comfortable. Now, the hottest part of the day usually happens sometime late in the afternoon, and it starts to get more comfortable in the evening. All DST does is move the hottest part of the day so it overlaps more with the time when people normally get home from work and pushes the cooling stage of the day later in to the night. So, DST may be helping me out by keeping me from running my energy-efficient 15w bulbs, but my air conditioner (not so energy efficient) will be working a lot more in the evening.
Also, if there was an energy savings - why would we ever get off DST? We turn back the clocks in the winter when there's quite a bit less daylight in the evening...but move the clocks forward in the summer when there's already an abundance of light? Seems we have this backwards - why aren't we also trying to save energy in the winter?
Here are some facts for this discussion. (I'm a former book publisher, so the margins may be a little off.)
- Of that $19.95 the record companies are receiving, probably, around 50% of that. ($9.97) - Now, take out the cost of manufacturing/shipping/warehousing which probably amounts to $2.00 per sale. (In the book market you have to send out 100 copies of a book to sell 75 so you have about a 25% return rate. It cost us about $1.50 per book every time it left the warehouse or was returned.) - Take out the cost of all of the people/facilities the companies need to employ/rent/maintain to produce/sell/distribute/market the CD. - For every winner the record companies produce, they probably produce 3-4 break-evens or losers. So, to make money they need to produce a lot of different CDs.
In the business I worked in, the authors made as much money per book sale as the company did when we paid them as little as a 10% royalty - which was based on the amount of money the book stores/channels paid us.
If you look at Sony's financials you'll see that their net profit margin is 1.15%. Assuming (maybe incorrectly) their music division is even doing 4 times better than that, they're making about $0.60 per sale. (4.60% x $9.97) They make money on CDs because they make a lot of them. Artists make 1 a year.
In the end, the fact that Courtney Love isn't getting rich off of CD sales probably has more to do with the popularity of her music than it does from her record company being a thief.
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't know who "we" are, but why wouldn't they be criminal prosecutions?"
Why don't you ask the "enemy combatants" in Gitmo, or all the people the US Govt has renditioned to other countries for "questioning"? None of them have any access to our normal due process. And, I don't think Executive Orders can be overruled by Congress.
I agree wholeheartedly. What really ticks me off is that the huge judgement against Ken Lay was essentially vacated after his death because he didn't have a chance to go through the whole appeal process. His estate keeps everything he gained illegally and the people he screwed get nothing. Meanwhile, other people convicted of crimes lose everything right away and, as you say, get the chance to bid on it.
Sorry, but his message is overtly racist and generally asinine. Yes, biological changes did occur, but to characterize them as somehow making white people superior is just plain wrong. Did you actually read the original AC message? If you did, and failed to understand it, then you're just proving the point I made about needing a doorman...
Just more proof that Slashdot needs a doorman to make sure the people coming in meet a minimum IQ level...
"1. Dark pigmentation is a protection against the sun.
2. When people migrate north were the sun is weaker, over time, the need for sun protection disappears and people lose the pigmentation, hence becoming lighter."
Close, but not quite right. Sun + skin = creation of vitamin D, very important to the human body. Dark-skinned people created less vitamin D in this manner than light-skinned people, but also have better protection from the sun. A good trade-off in equatorial plains regions. As people migrated north they had less exposure to sun and therefore had less natural vitamin D so the sun-blocking benefits of dark skin became a negative to their survival. Lighter-skinned people could create more vitamin D in the northern regions so that became a plus for their survival - so skin became lighter over time in those regions. (Lighter-skinned people lived longer to reproduce.)
At least according to most programs I've caught on the Discovery Channel.
And as far as treason goes, the US Constitution defines it as:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Since, at the time of Libby's actions, we were engaged in a war against terrorism - according to Bush the greatest threat the US has faced - I could successfully argue that taking/supporting/obfuscating an action (the outing of Plame) was an act of treason because it greatly diminished our ability to gather intelligence on terrorist groups and their acquisition of WMDs. Taking out your country's ability to monitor the enemy during war time seems like a treasonous act to me. YMMV.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled discussion - getting busted for videotaping movies in a theater....
Actually, he WAS convicted of the following:
Guilty: Obstruction of justice for intentionally deceiving a grand jury investigating the exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.
Guilty: Making a false statement for lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert.
Guilty: Perjury for lying in court about his conversation with Russert.
Guilty: Perjury for lying in court about conversations with other reporters.
Not guilty: Making a false statement regarding a conversation he had with former Time magazine writer Matt Cooper.
Stop listening to Fox Not-News and Rush/O'Reilly/etc.
A cam is just what it sounds like, camcorder video and camcorder sound. A Telesync is camcorder video with an alternate audio source - usually plugged in to a audio output for the hearing impaired. Which is great since you won't hear the people talking in the next row. A Telecine is recorded directly from a projection source.
"That's the purpose of science, not moral laws. God knows we are well equipped to get there by ourselves."
Right, which means creationism has no place in science.
"Good. Proves many people were infused by this primitive and instinctive knowledge of the beginning without even needing science."
Calling it "knowledge" is pretty idiotic. All it means is that primitive cultures tend to make up stories to explain what they don't understand.
So know your telling your god what his purpose is? And the only reason it's "20th century physics", instead of "really old knowledge", is because of YOUR stated purpose for your god? Knowledge of how things really work is irrelevant? Sweet Odin, you really have drunk the Kool Aid. Loki will be playing some sweet tricks on you in the afterlife...
I know, I know...mysterious ways, has a plan, things happen for a reason... And, BTW, your creation myth was around a long time before Moses...not sure why you're bringing him in to the discussion...
"exactly. Don't forget God was talking to farmers of about 2000-4000 years ago. He had to simplify things a lot, like "you're made out of dust", instead of atoms. Or "let there be light!" to describe the star formation..."
Makes sense that an omnipotent, all-knowing god, lacks the power to make simple farmers really understand what he did... yeah...
Microsoft is morally wrong here? Microsoft has a game they've released for use on Vista. Maybe they've put in some installation restrictions to help push Vista sales, or maybe they've done it to reduce their support overhead. (Multiple platforms with different graphics engines = more support costs.) In either case, what is unjust about their actions? Are they violating your constitutional right to play Halo 2 on any Windows platform you choose?
Come on Rush, admit that you're the AC posting this garbage!
Just kidding, the AC has posted what is probably the best use of sarcasm I've seen. Bravo, way to show just how myopic the conservatives are!
If gun ownership in the US played a role in the rest of the world's environment/safety then your context would make sense. But since we're only killing ourselves, they really don't care.
"However, the point of the "under god" (and references to "god" in many US documents) is there to define all people as being on an equal level. It isn't necessarily the Christian or Jewish God, although it can easily be interpreted that way.
The point is that it brings everyone together under one superior...no one is better than anyone else as we all came from the same place."
The point is that you don't need to put everyone together under a superior in order to make them equal. What has made people equal has been the application of man-made laws and reason. (Though we still have a way to go.) Your god makes people unequal, and the teachings in your religious dogma allow people to do horrendous things to others under a blanket of righteousness. Want an example? How about "Thou shall not kill." Except, in your dogma your god often orders his followers to go out and kill others who are deemed to be less worthy (read not equal). And his followers do. They still do today. How about the religious southerners how fought and died to keep their non-equal slaves in place?
The truth of the matter is that anyone can justify any action they want to take based on some law/statement in your bible. Want to kill your neighbors? Hey, they planted the wrong crops together - go ahead. Want to beat your wife? God said it was the right thing to do.
Believe what you want to believe, but this country was founded on and has flourished under the law of man.
Thanks for the link to the PDF, and for the great response. Though, I have to find some irony in the fact the PDF's license excludes commercial use for the duration currently afforded under copyright law. So I guess I'll have to wait 75 years after he dies to write the play to dramatize the paper...or pay him some money... ;)
The video rightly points out that it is important for ideas to become part of the public domain, as new ideas are built upon the older ones, and as a whole, exposure to those ideas are beneficial to a culture. However, I'm not fully convinced modern copyright laws have a negative impact on those beneficial aspects. Not too long ago access to the works (containers of the ideas) was difficult to attain - works were expensive to reproduce and difficult to obtain. With the advent of the modern media, public library systems, the Internet, etc., the works are fairly easy to obtain - even difficult to avoid at times - and the ideas they contain flow pretty freely throughout our culture.
So, even if a company like Disney were to obtain a copyright for 1,000 years how are the benefits to our culture reduced? Are we less off because we can't write "The Lion King 4" using the same characters/storylines from the movie? The ideas and themes in those movies are already reproduced in hundreds and thousands of works (both older and newer than the movies) - so what's the downside?
Asking for a well-reasoned reply...and, yes, I know this is Slashdot... But I'd like to add to my thinking on this - which I realize may be lacking.
I agree. Add on top of that CEOs, CFOs, etc. from corporations. They're people who have control over the financial lives of many, many people. Think Ken Lay was fingerprinted to confirm his identity? Think it would have helped? Think all of the programmers working on Windows, Linux, UNIX, OSX have been fingerprinted? All these financial programs these people are writing need to run on something. What if there's a hidden keylogger just waiting to be exploited?
Come on people, it's time to stop just sitting in the water while they turn up the heat. Take your "if you have nothing to hide, so why worry about another degree" and put it in your goatse.
You're missing the point. If you tell anyone you are working at Google you're breaking the NDA that said you could never tell anyone you interviewed at Google. (Being hired implies being interviewed, and using the word "Google" seems to be verboten as well.) Unless you can convince people you were hired on the spot with no interview...
Depends...for a lot of people they are about the same. What is it, 50% of marriages end up getting downsized with one of the participants getting RIF'd. Sounds like corporate life to me...
...is because they've seen their business shrink quite a bit over the past few years (relative to their competition) and they're trying to recapture whatever they pay Amazon for selling their books. Of course the cost of creating and maintaining a B2C Web site isn't trivial, so it will be interesting to see if, in the end, this move will raise their revenue - or kill them entirely. Also, in terms of the sales tax - they could reduce the price of their books a little online, still make more revenue per sale, and in the end the customer may be paying the same amount.
That...and Amazon is a competitor of theirs so it doesn't make a lot of sense to support Amazon at their own expense.
I find your argument interesting in that you probably wouldn't want it extended to other types of businesses. For example, we hold bars accountable if they serve alcohol to patrons who appear to already be intoxicated - they can't turn the other way and keep serving to people because if they do they are liable for what that patron might do. Another example: Imagine there's a business next door to your house that is set up to allow people to exchange (or share) drugs - not likely, but this is an example. A legal use for this could be people exchanging/sharing aspirin for cold medicine. If it was known that a good number of that businesses patrons were exchanging heroin for cocaine I doubt you would accept their position of "We set up this environment, but if laws are broken it isn't our responsibility...it's up to you." You would probably expect them to set up some process to ensure illegal activities aren't taking place. You wouldn't expect the process to be 100% effective, but you would expect some sort of efficacy.
Again, I know my example is a little bit of a stretch, but where do we draw the line on culpability?
"I don't remember if it was a Stratocaster or a Telecaster...but I do remember it had a heart of chrome and a voice like a horny angel." - Meatloaf
Personally, I don't see how the country benefits from DST. The use of air conditioning has grown quite a bit since the DOT study (which showed an energy savings of 1%). Now, when you're not at home you can turn off, or limit the use of, your air conditioner. When you're home, you're more likely to have it on to stay comfortable. Now, the hottest part of the day usually happens sometime late in the afternoon, and it starts to get more comfortable in the evening. All DST does is move the hottest part of the day so it overlaps more with the time when people normally get home from work and pushes the cooling stage of the day later in to the night. So, DST may be helping me out by keeping me from running my energy-efficient 15w bulbs, but my air conditioner (not so energy efficient) will be working a lot more in the evening.
Also, if there was an energy savings - why would we ever get off DST? We turn back the clocks in the winter when there's quite a bit less daylight in the evening...but move the clocks forward in the summer when there's already an abundance of light? Seems we have this backwards - why aren't we also trying to save energy in the winter?
Here are some facts for this discussion. (I'm a former book publisher, so the margins may be a little off.)
- Of that $19.95 the record companies are receiving, probably, around 50% of that. ($9.97)
- Now, take out the cost of manufacturing/shipping/warehousing which probably amounts to $2.00 per sale. (In the book market you have to send out 100 copies of a book to sell 75 so you have about a 25% return rate. It cost us about $1.50 per book every time it left the warehouse or was returned.)
- Take out the cost of all of the people/facilities the companies need to employ/rent/maintain to produce/sell/distribute/market the CD.
- For every winner the record companies produce, they probably produce 3-4 break-evens or losers. So, to make money they need to produce a lot of different CDs.
In the business I worked in, the authors made as much money per book sale as the company did when we paid them as little as a 10% royalty - which was based on the amount of money the book stores/channels paid us.
If you look at Sony's financials you'll see that their net profit margin is 1.15%. Assuming (maybe incorrectly) their music division is even doing 4 times better than that, they're making about $0.60 per sale. (4.60% x $9.97) They make money on CDs because they make a lot of them. Artists make 1 a year.
In the end, the fact that Courtney Love isn't getting rich off of CD sales probably has more to do with the popularity of her music than it does from her record company being a thief.