"It's funny that you say that it comes out of nowhere,... It actually fills a vacuum in the market," of an X86-based handheld, [said Andrew "Bunnie" Hwang)
The reason there's a vaccuum in that segment of the market is that, at this point, anything that fits that vaccuum is going to SUCK!
Honestly, what games are there for the PC platform that A) require only 640x480, B) run adequately at 500-odd mHz/128MB RAM, and C) require only a D-pad and four buttons to control? I sounds like this overpriced toy is going to require games written specially for it, so what's the point of making it x86 PC compatible?
The act is homicide, the crime is "justifiable homicide".
If only "justifiable homicide" were actually a crime my argument would be perfect. Please substitute "negligent homicide", or any other actualy crime that suits your fancy.
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.
Sorry, but that's not correct either. The act is homicide, the crime is "justifiable homicide". In the case of copyright law, the act is copying, the crime is "copyright infringement".
Please, read the Title 17, Ch 1, Sec 107 of the US Code where it defines fair use. The very definition of the term in US law states that "fair use of a copyrighted work... is not an infringement of copyright."
It might help you to see the definition of infringement. There is no such thing as "legal infringement", as the phrase essentially means "legal lawbreaking".
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.
Allow me to quote the relevant section of the US Code: (emphasis mine)
Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
Just because the judge understands a lawyer's point when he uses the terminology incorrectly does not mean his use is correct. Fair use, by its very definition is non-infringing. It doesn't matter how your freshman law textbook says it; it doesn't matter how any of your law school professors say it; it only matters what it says in the US Code.
That's a double edged sword, there. Violating the DMCA in order to excercise what would otherwise be fair use rights is one edge. The DMCA de-facto limitation of fair use is the other edge. It's all well and good to propose taking the high road in the face of a bad law, but remember that civil disobedience is a valid response to bad law. Our legal system even recognizes and allows for this (e.g. jury nullification). Besides, "the ends don't justify the means" is more about morality than law. Law and morality have a great deal of overlap, but there are numerous things that are illegal while not being immoral (e.g. speeding).
When I quote your book in a review of said book, I'm committing copyright infringement--it's just legal 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.
If the atmosphere contains more polution, we get less light but the atmosphere actually warms up more. As someone else said, light != heat.
Except that in this case, "light" is measured with a radiometer-- basically a black-painted metal plate with a thermometer-- so radiant heat is very much a part of this equation.
He would eat the hikers and press their "Help!" buttons to get more food delivered.
Heh. Is not the horror of the above possibility enough to show that such a plan is madness? Sure, why don't we put call buttons out for ALL the ancient ones!
Schedule I drugs are those highly addictive drugs that have no accepted medical use.
Nonsense. Many Schedule I drugs are non-addictive, and a fairly good number of them were used theraputically with good results before they were unilaterally banned. "addictive and medically useless" may be the excuse they offer for classifying things Sched I, but it's not necessarily true.
Today's keyboard, telephone keypads, ATM machines and even door locks have a rubber membrane underneath the keys.
"This membrane acts like a drum, and each key hits the drum in a different location and produces a unique frequency or sound that the neural networking software can decipher," said Asonov.
One minor problem with this scheme is that most of "today's" computer keyboards don't use rubber membranes. They use two sheets of plastic with conductive tracing printed on them, separated by a third sheet of plastic with holes. The keypress pushes the contact on the top sheet through the hole to touch the contact on the bottom sheet. Hardly any keyboards use the collapsing rubber domes because they're much more expensive that a few sheets of plastic.
So what's next? A scheme to read telegraph signals off Western Union's lines? A device that can tell what I'm watching on a zoetrope by reading analyzing flickering light?
You can buy as much proprietary software as you want, you are not going to exhaust the supply.
The artificial scarcity is that something as potentially infinitely replicable as software must be bought instead of replicated from someone who already has it for free. The scarcity is enforced by copyright law.
well show me the first real communist society, and i'll buy your argument that communism doesn't work. it was never applied anywhere in this world, so how do you know it doesn't work?
Trying to counter that argument is like trying to counter the statement "I know everything that's worth knowing". I can ask you questions and, if you don't know the answer, you can declare the subject "not worth knowing". "Real" communism is as practical as the old Theory of Relativity example of turning on a flashlight in an elevator moving at light speed. No attempted implementation of communism will ever match the idealist model, so the counter-argument will always be "that wasn't real communism". Personally, I believe that communism goes against human nature so badly that no society can even begin to implement it before it falls to pieces.
Spreading the kids to three cars only guarantees that you won't lose 6 at once.
No it won't. If the 6 people are all going from point A to point B at the same time (why else would they had been traveling in the same car without this law ?), then they are likely to be traveling in a line of some sort. Furthermore, they are likely to be driving close to each other (almost everyone does, nowadays). So if something happens to the front car, say, it has to brake suddenly, the middle car will crash into it and the last car will crash to the metal heap. Six dead bodies.
Don't be silly. The middle car clearly slams on the brakes and avoids the accident, while the last car had to stop for a red light two blocks back and wasn't even there. See? I can concoct a fictitious scenario with different outcome. I happen to agree with you that 3 cars is not better than 1, but you should argue the point instead of making up stories.
Well first let's accept that if a group of teens could take separate cars, they would.
What? I don't accept that. Even where my brother grew up, where every single kid in his peer group had a car, they still consolidated in one car if they were going to the same place.
In some places, it's a crime merely to connect to a network without permission, and that could reasonably apply to a phone that just happens to seek out any open wifi connections as you walk down the street.
I disagree. I think the law could be unreasonably applied in that case. If the phone is designed to automatically connect, which is not an unreasonable function, the scenario could play out like this: say you're linked to a free WiFI AP at a local diner, and you walk outside after eating breakfast and it connects to the AP of some slob who lives next to the diner. No rational judge would consider it a reasonable application of the law to arrest you for connecting to the slob's network without permission. Particularly not when the dumb slob can simply turn on his damn WEP encryption to keep this from happening. Having an open access point with DHCP enabled is like leaving a bowl of dog food on the sidewalk in front of your house and calling the cops because someone's dog ate it as they were walking by. The dog owner is technically responsible for the dog, but the resonsibility lies with the idiot who left the food out.
Language changes:
Here is a nice article.
It used to be strictly improper, but now that use of the phrase has become more and more accepted.
True, but at this point we still have a sizable number of people using it in the old way, which leads to confusion. Even if the phrase does comes to mean "prompts the question" rather than "assumes the argument", I think it's important to remind people of the original meaning because they may run across it and become confused.
Besides, I'm an old curmudgeon. This is what we do.:)
...the greatly elevated risk alone justifies limiting the number of passengers, but we know socially that increasing the passenger count increases the risk even more.
I would only agree that the limit is justified if you can show that a teen is significantly more likely to show off in front of two passengers than he is in front of one. I see plenty of teenagers exhibiting poor driving skills while driving alone, showing off in front of peers in other cars. Really, the limit defies common sense.
Isn't one car on the road, even if it is filled with *gasp* teenagers, better than 3 cars on the road, for any reason?
Or even more to the point, do you want 6 teenagers on the road with 3 cars rather than 1? 3 drivers will, statistically, have three times as many accidents as one. Spreading the kids to three cars only guarantees that you won't lose 6 at once. It's just stupid law, passed by people who were "thinking of the children" rather than applying common sense.
Going 'into the wilderness' is not a high risk activity for one who is prepared to do so.
I think that may have been his point. Part of "relish[ing] the element of risk" is the skill and planning necessary to mitigate that risk. He's not talking about getting a woody from being a daredevil, but rather feeling a sense of accomplishment from doing what would be a dangerous thing for your average Joe off the street. When it gets to the point where you have a "call box" every quarter mile along the trail that will instantly summon a helicopter full of paramedics bearing bandages and hot chocolate, there's no sense of accomplishment. It's the difference between walking along an 8-inch wide steel beam 20 stories up, and walking along an 8-inch wide cinder block wall 5 feet up. I've done both and the former feels like a major victory even though it's not actually any harder than the latter. Occasional tracking devices are a long way from call boxes, but they are a step in that direction. Really what we need to do is stop diminishing the value of outdoor spaces in order to cater to idiots who can't sign a log book. Nature is not Disneyland! Wilderness hiking isn't a stroll through Central Park! People need to learn that the government can't make evrything safe, and (as harsh as it sounds) one of the best ways to learn is by example.
You could even have a green button for entering the trail and a red button for leaving. I would think more people would use the buttons than spend more time with a logbook.
A pair of buttons would last maybe a week, and during that week they'd do nothing b ut collect misleading data. Are you going to put a sign above the buttons that says "PRESS GREEN WHEN ENTERING, RED WHEN LEAVING. PRESS BUTTON ONLY ONCE FOR EACH PERSON ENTERING OR LEAVING. DO NOT VANDALIZE!"
A logbook would work much better.
Re:How about making the sensors voluntary?
on
Privacy in the Woods?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think it is voluntary as you don't have to go hiking.
Sunlight is also voluntary, as you can sit under a UV lamp. Suggesting that not using a public area is a reasonable alternative for those who don't wish to be tracked is absurd because it fails to address the primary objection that it is madatory.
How about RFID reader stations at intervals along the trail, and RFID tags are available at the ranger station? True, not making it mandatory doesn't help when "stupids" get lost without a tag, but treating the rest of us like prisoners under house arrest is too high a price to pay to save the lives of people who SHOULD die in the backcountry. If you're too dumb to pick up a tag or (like they do it now) file a trip plan and you run into trouble in the backcountry, you DESERVE death. Nature isn't an amusement park. It's not a game. It's dangerous.
Basically, if the data you want to collect is data that would be considered an invasion of privacy if it was published to the public, then it's also an invasion of privacy to collect it and keep it to yourself.
Damn straight. This is perhaps the best test I've seen.
MOD PARENT UP
Which begs the question, why isn't it a desktop processor already?
It doesn't beg the question, it raises the question. "Beg the question" is an archaic idiom that means "to assume as given the point being argued", e.g. "This painting is trash because it is obviously worthless." The word "beg" in this case means "to improperly take for granted", a usage of the word which we don't see anymore except in this one expression.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason there's a vaccuum in that segment of the market is that, at this point, anything that fits that vaccuum is going to SUCK!
Honestly, what games are there for the PC platform that A) require only 640x480, B) run adequately at 500-odd mHz/128MB RAM, and C) require only a D-pad and four buttons to control? I sounds like this overpriced toy is going to require games written specially for it, so what's the point of making it x86 PC compatible?
Wasn't the vehicle itself called the Vulture?
If only "justifiable homicide" were actually a crime my argument would be perfect. Please substitute "negligent homicide", or any other actualy crime that suits your fancy.
Fair Use isn't not-infringement. It's justifiable infringement.
Sorry, but that's not correct either. The act is homicide, the crime is "justifiable homicide". In the case of copyright law, the act is copying, the crime is "copyright infringement".
Please, read the Title 17, Ch 1, Sec 107 of the US Code where it defines fair use. The very definition of the term in US law states that "fair use of a copyrighted work... is not an infringement of copyright."
It might help you to see the definition of infringement. There is no such thing as "legal infringement", as the phrase essentially means "legal lawbreaking".
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.
Allow me to quote the relevant section of the US Code: (emphasis mine)
Just because the judge understands a lawyer's point when he uses the terminology incorrectly does not mean his use is correct. Fair use, by its very definition is non-infringing. It doesn't matter how your freshman law textbook says it; it doesn't matter how any of your law school professors say it; it only matters what it says in the US Code.
That's a double edged sword, there. Violating the DMCA in order to excercise what would otherwise be fair use rights is one edge. The DMCA de-facto limitation of fair use is the other edge. It's all well and good to propose taking the high road in the face of a bad law, but remember that civil disobedience is a valid response to bad law. Our legal system even recognizes and allows for this (e.g. jury nullification). Besides, "the ends don't justify the means" is more about morality than law. Law and morality have a great deal of overlap, but there are numerous things that are illegal while not being immoral (e.g. speeding).
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.
Except that in this case, "light" is measured with a radiometer-- basically a black-painted metal plate with a thermometer-- so radiant heat is very much a part of this equation.
He would eat the hikers and press their "Help!" buttons to get more food delivered.
Heh. Is not the horror of the above possibility enough to show that such a plan is madness? Sure, why don't we put call buttons out for ALL the ancient ones!
Nonsense. Many Schedule I drugs are non-addictive, and a fairly good number of them were used theraputically with good results before they were unilaterally banned. "addictive and medically useless" may be the excuse they offer for classifying things Sched I, but it's not necessarily true.
One minor problem with this scheme is that most of "today's" computer keyboards don't use rubber membranes. They use two sheets of plastic with conductive tracing printed on them, separated by a third sheet of plastic with holes. The keypress pushes the contact on the top sheet through the hole to touch the contact on the bottom sheet. Hardly any keyboards use the collapsing rubber domes because they're much more expensive that a few sheets of plastic.
So what's next? A scheme to read telegraph signals off Western Union's lines? A device that can tell what I'm watching on a zoetrope by reading analyzing flickering light?
On Limewire?
It could happen!
(heh)
The artificial scarcity is that something as potentially infinitely replicable as software must be bought instead of replicated from someone who already has it for free. The scarcity is enforced by copyright law.
Trying to counter that argument is like trying to counter the statement "I know everything that's worth knowing". I can ask you questions and, if you don't know the answer, you can declare the subject "not worth knowing". "Real" communism is as practical as the old Theory of Relativity example of turning on a flashlight in an elevator moving at light speed. No attempted implementation of communism will ever match the idealist model, so the counter-argument will always be "that wasn't real communism". Personally, I believe that communism goes against human nature so badly that no society can even begin to implement it before it falls to pieces.
No it won't. If the 6 people are all going from point A to point B at the same time (why else would they had been traveling in the same car without this law ?), then they are likely to be traveling in a line of some sort. Furthermore, they are likely to be driving close to each other (almost everyone does, nowadays). So if something happens to the front car, say, it has to brake suddenly, the middle car will crash into it and the last car will crash to the metal heap. Six dead bodies.
Don't be silly. The middle car clearly slams on the brakes and avoids the accident, while the last car had to stop for a red light two blocks back and wasn't even there. See? I can concoct a fictitious scenario with different outcome. I happen to agree with you that 3 cars is not better than 1, but you should argue the point instead of making up stories.
What? I don't accept that. Even where my brother grew up, where every single kid in his peer group had a car, they still consolidated in one car if they were going to the same place.
I disagree. I think the law could be unreasonably applied in that case. If the phone is designed to automatically connect, which is not an unreasonable function, the scenario could play out like this: say you're linked to a free WiFI AP at a local diner, and you walk outside after eating breakfast and it connects to the AP of some slob who lives next to the diner. No rational judge would consider it a reasonable application of the law to arrest you for connecting to the slob's network without permission. Particularly not when the dumb slob can simply turn on his damn WEP encryption to keep this from happening. Having an open access point with DHCP enabled is like leaving a bowl of dog food on the sidewalk in front of your house and calling the cops because someone's dog ate it as they were walking by. The dog owner is technically responsible for the dog, but the resonsibility lies with the idiot who left the food out.
True, but at this point we still have a sizable number of people using it in the old way, which leads to confusion. Even if the phrase does comes to mean "prompts the question" rather than "assumes the argument", I think it's important to remind people of the original meaning because they may run across it and become confused. :)
Besides, I'm an old curmudgeon. This is what we do.
I would only agree that the limit is justified if you can show that a teen is significantly more likely to show off in front of two passengers than he is in front of one. I see plenty of teenagers exhibiting poor driving skills while driving alone, showing off in front of peers in other cars. Really, the limit defies common sense.
Or even more to the point, do you want 6 teenagers on the road with 3 cars rather than 1? 3 drivers will, statistically, have three times as many accidents as one. Spreading the kids to three cars only guarantees that you won't lose 6 at once. It's just stupid law, passed by people who were "thinking of the children" rather than applying common sense.
I think that may have been his point. Part of "relish[ing] the element of risk" is the skill and planning necessary to mitigate that risk. He's not talking about getting a woody from being a daredevil, but rather feeling a sense of accomplishment from doing what would be a dangerous thing for your average Joe off the street. When it gets to the point where you have a "call box" every quarter mile along the trail that will instantly summon a helicopter full of paramedics bearing bandages and hot chocolate, there's no sense of accomplishment. It's the difference between walking along an 8-inch wide steel beam 20 stories up, and walking along an 8-inch wide cinder block wall 5 feet up. I've done both and the former feels like a major victory even though it's not actually any harder than the latter. Occasional tracking devices are a long way from call boxes, but they are a step in that direction. Really what we need to do is stop diminishing the value of outdoor spaces in order to cater to idiots who can't sign a log book. Nature is not Disneyland! Wilderness hiking isn't a stroll through Central Park! People need to learn that the government can't make evrything safe, and (as harsh as it sounds) one of the best ways to learn is by example.
A pair of buttons would last maybe a week, and during that week they'd do nothing b ut collect misleading data. Are you going to put a sign above the buttons that says "PRESS GREEN WHEN ENTERING, RED WHEN LEAVING. PRESS BUTTON ONLY ONCE FOR EACH PERSON ENTERING OR LEAVING. DO NOT VANDALIZE!"
A logbook would work much better.
Sunlight is also voluntary, as you can sit under a UV lamp. Suggesting that not using a public area is a reasonable alternative for those who don't wish to be tracked is absurd because it fails to address the primary objection that it is madatory.
How about RFID reader stations at intervals along the trail, and RFID tags are available at the ranger station? True, not making it mandatory doesn't help when "stupids" get lost without a tag, but treating the rest of us like prisoners under house arrest is too high a price to pay to save the lives of people who SHOULD die in the backcountry. If you're too dumb to pick up a tag or (like they do it now) file a trip plan and you run into trouble in the backcountry, you DESERVE death. Nature isn't an amusement park. It's not a game. It's dangerous.
Damn straight. This is perhaps the best test I've seen.
MOD PARENT UP
It doesn't beg the question, it raises the question. "Beg the question" is an archaic idiom that means "to assume as given the point being argued", e.g. "This painting is trash because it is obviously worthless." The word "beg" in this case means "to improperly take for granted", a usage of the word which we don't see anymore except in this one expression.