I wouldn't want to discount the disparity of post-collegiate professional opportunities in this discussion, since a pretty large number of college sports participants aren't doing it just for entertainment.
More to the point, you're arguing from the point that's being made. Why would you consider yourself a good measure for what female gamers would like to see in a game, rather than finding some female gamers to help you design it? Alternately, if the field did more to actively court female designers and programmers, elements that a broad swath of female gamers would like will be more likely to appear in games (or things that actively drive them away will be less likely to appear).
The thing that cranks me out of your corner on this is that you seem to think that I'm unable to choose something like this. Your posit is that the only reason I play WoW is because I'm either too dumb to see my way out of it or so hooked that I can't resist. I play WoW because I enjoy it. I pay the subscription fee because it's worth the money for what I get. I've quit before because I got tired of the game or because I had real life to deal with, and I went back because they released an expansion and it looked like it would be fun (and it has been). When I get tired of it again, I'll quit again. None of this happens because I'm too conditioned to understand the issue, so saying that Blizzard is fleecing me is inaccurate and insulting. I know what I signed up for and I consider it worth the cost.
I know many, many people who find creating third party content to be fun in itself. It also gives you the experience of building something and distributing it, even if you can't use or distribute it forever. Realistically, the concept of content obsolescence could be applied to every computer endeavor that isn't current. I don't consider the time I spent building templates for Lotus 1-2-3 for my gaming group to be wasted effort at all. It helped us enjoy what we were doing for quite a while before it got put aside. These days, even if I could open the files I don't own a drive capable of reading the floppies and the templates would be useless because the games in question are long gone, but that doesn't mean that the effort was all for nothing, just that it wasn't "forever art" and it was never intended to be.
I did it because I enjoyed it. If you won't derive the same enjoyment, then don't participate, but don't presume to think that there is nobody who will.
It never occurred to me to set up a web cam pic harvesting operation.
The big difference here is that it wasn't designed to get pictures, the pictures were just the best way to get the real information (finding out if the user was still using the machine). Moreover, I doubt you'd have hidden the fact if they asked, or left it there if they complained, or that they'd be upset about the images harvested. All of these things add up to making your operation a lot less invasive of privacy.
The loss of students would put political and financial pressure on Failing Public School A to get their act together -- no longer could they continue to fail knowing that the kids are stuck there with noplace else to go (one of the biggest single reasons for the poor quality schools in so many areas -- they get students and thus funding no matter how badly they perform). I mean think about it. If a company were guaranteed your business no matter what kind of job they did, what would be their incentive to provide quality? This is a truly self-evident principle.
This would work great if only a school could be like a business. The problem is that the main mechanism behind competition is that non-competitive perticipants fail and leave the market. It's an interesting concept but I think you can easily see why you can't let a public school in an area "go out of business". The problem you run into (that's happened often in real life districts) is that Failing School A will start losing funding as students leave. It's easy to say that this will prompt them to "get their act together" but as the money goes, teachers and students will start to bleed off to other places until you're left with a school that realistically can't operate on the budget that's left. At that point, either it'll implode (functionally the same as going out of business for a private company) or it'll stall, leaving whatever students can't find a seat in a different school with a nonfunctional school. Based on the voucher system, that means that you'd end up with one or two underfunded schools completely overloaded with students who can't move because the voucher won't cover them, and the vast majority of students who fit that measure are special needs students. Do you honestly think that a special ed student in a wheelchair will get a voucher for $100,000 to take to a different district? What'll happen is that they'll get the standard voucher and their parents will have to make up the difference, and that means that virtually none of them will move. So, in the end you'll have a bunch of bottom-tier schools with short funding and lots of special ed and super poor students, and I'd love to hear the argument that this will result in a good end. It's easy to say, "If it proves to be a bad idea, we can move on to something else" but in the ten years or so it takes to realize this, the kids in those schools will get a crap education and recovering from the mess will take decades.
School systems have some major problems, but vouchers create a lot of problems on the edge, and it's the edge cases that cost a lot and that most people choose to ignore.
As I said in the other post, I messed up the inflation calculation, so my figures are a bit off, but my old school now charges about $15000 per pupil per year. I suspect the costs are slightly lower than a comprehensive school, since intake is restricted to the top 20%, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could provide a good education for somewhere in the $10-12K ballpark. $17000 sounds excessive.
The problem is that you're comparing a private school to a public school system, and that's never going to balance. Private schools aren't required to take in all students, so I can pretty much guarantee that your old school would refuse to take on the special ed kid in a wheelchair who takes $100,000 a year to educate. The public school system can't refuse to take that kid on, though, so the cost per student has to include that sort of thing. If you cut out the budget needed for the most expensive three or four percent of the student body in most public districts (including special educators, one-on-one aides, special accomodations and other support stuff), you can cut the total budget by a third on average. That's just a cost that needs to be paid for universal compulsory schooling, and it's a cost that way too many people forget or openly ignore when they argue about how much cheaper public schools should be.
Are you really having difficulty seeing what you did there? You said, "They think they are magically protected, which means they will ignore obvious signs of infection till the very end." Then, when called on it you described one guy who installed infected software and refused to admit it caused a problem. Do you truly believe that your leading statement can be extended reasonably from this one guy to every Mac user (or even a good portion of them)? Do you really think that this guy would be any better if he'd been a Windows or Linux user?
On top of that, you yourself say that the Mac users got the most junior tech because nobody higher up the chain wanted the job, and then assumed that because you had a difficult time supporting the machines, that another tech who was more familiar (and might actually have enjoyed working with Macs) would have had the same problems. It sounds a lot like your Mac users got crap support and bailed on the platform because of it. I'd have given up too if the only support I could get was a bottom-tier tech who didn't even like the machine.
Point of note: the only Apple computer I ever owned (A Powerbook that was given to me) ran Linux. I'm definitely not an Apple fanboi by any stretch.
Which isn't really their fault that they used time and effort to create the product. Not only that, but you literally cannot own a potential gain. You never had the gain in the first place, and just because you think you should have it, that doesn't make it a fact. They literally take nothing from the artist when they merely copy data.
What they're taking is something that you seem not to value at all but society at large disagrees. It's easy to say that you've taken nothing from a developer by copying the game, but what you're taking away is the ability to make a living developing software. To give a real world example of the effect of this, imagine that it was illegal to charge for plumbing work. If you want to charge your cost for the parts, you can, but you're not allowed to charge for labor or for profit. What would happen is that suddenly nobody would be able to find a plumber to fix anything. The same concept applies to creative works. If there's no mechanism to create a market for creative works, then the number of people who do it will fall off because they'll have to spend their time doing other jobs, and these day jobs will eat up a lot of time that they would otherwise expend creating. Therefore, society sees fit to create the concept of copyright to allow creators a chance to profit from exclusive distribution, driving more people to spend their valuable time creating.
By the way, your statement that noone can "own" potential gain is nonsensical. By that logic, nobody can own anything since it's only the force of law that drives ownership to begin with. Copyright laws do indeed allow someone to own potential gain on a creative work; that's what they're designed to do, in fact. You can argue whether that's how it should be, but as of right now that's how it is.
Format shifting is a fair use just about everywhere. Keep in mind that this allows you to "stay honest" and still rip the HD movies you want by whatever means. To address some of your cases:
I DVR "The Color of Money" (one of Scorsese's best, IMHO) in HD and I want to buy a copy that won't disappear the second my DVR dies. But, guess what? The studio says I can't (the only legally available version is a crappy non-anamorphic DVD that looks awful on a modern TV). So I'm left with the option of Pirate Bay or illegally ripping it off my DVR (both of which would make me a pirate in their eyes).
If you buy the DVD version and then rip the HD copy off your DVR, in most jurisdictions you've just format shifted so you're covered.
I DVR "Space Race: The Untold Story" (great docudrama, BTW) in HD from the National Geographic Channel. Same deal, want to buy it. But this time the studio won't even let me buy a DVD in the U.S. (much less an HD blu-ray). It's only available in Region 2. So, even if I import it, I would now be forced to illegally modify my DVD player to watch it. Want to buy it. Want to be honest. Nope, I would have to rip it from my DVR if I wanted to own it.
Again, buy the original and then rip the copy. If you really want to stick to the spirit of it, you could cover yourself by buying a multi-region DVD player (which is legal, you just end up paying more for it because of the licensing) and you're still legal.
Even with the blu-rays and DVD's I *can* buy, I'm stuck watching 5 or 6 forced trailers at the beginning of each (many studios not even letting me skip them). Don't want to spend several minutes fighting with your player just to watch the goddamn movie you paid for? Better go off to Pirate Bay, because that's the only way you're getting it, buddy.
There's nothing illegal about ripping your own DVD to remove the trailers. In fact, if it's a movie you really like you should rip a copy for watching just to protect the original from damage. Besides, getting a copy off Pirate Bay isn't piracy if you own it.
But this is a dumb comparison. Saturn V wasn't built to deliver to low Earth orbit, it was designed for escape velocity. It's easy to say that you could lift more per launch, but shuttle missions addressed things that couldn't be parallelized, like components of the ISS that weren't ready concurrently, or a launch for Hubble and a repair mission for same several years later. I'm certainly not saying that the shuttle is the best option for what it does, but there are much better ways to do the job than a Saturn V rocket. It's using a shotgun to kill flies.
He's as entitled to due process as anyone else, and that's what he's getting right now.
What part of taking his collection, suing the comic books themselves for being bought with drug money, and then selling them and keeping the money, all before actually trying him for the crime, constitutes due process? What part of not giving back the money if he's acquitted fits with due process? The problem is that the justice system is allowed to jump the gun with his stuff and they're not required to give it back if it turns out that he's innocent. That's what's so wrong with this whole thing.
He was using the proceeds of his criminal enterprise to buy comic books, some of the larger sales apparently attracted some attention and upon investigation it was determined where the money was coming from.
The problem is that he hasn't been convicted of this crime, so saying any of this is premature.
It has to be settled in court whether or not he's guilty, but assuming he is, this is standard procedure.
The problem here is that they've filed to take his collection before the "settled in court" part, and they filed suit against the comic book collection itself to prove that it's garnered from illegal funds. This whole procedure will play out before the defendant goes to trial, he won't be permitted to take any part in his collection's defense and unless something extraordinary happens, the court will find for the DA and the collection will be sold. That means that it's gone, even if he's acquitted of all charges.
Criminals aren't typically allowed to profit from their crimes by buying things.
The problem here is that he's not a criminal. No conviction, remember? They're taking his property without proving he's a criminal, and they won't give it back if it's proven he isn't. That doesn't bother you at all?
Firstly, you don't need to build roads to build it, since the ground structures are just towers and power line towers get built all the time without building roads (other than just bulling down the underbrush) along the courseways.
Second, there are many places where roads/rails are problematic, that are near major urban centers, that aren't grades. We usually call them "rivers" but other marshy areas, bays or other impediments fit the bill too.
For the "perpetual motion" comment, the article describes mines that send supplies downhill and generate electricity with the trip, and so unless your line runs the same weight both ways, you have a potential difference you can use. If it does run comparable loads both ways, then gravity powering obviously wouldn't apply.
For your flood comment, see my comment above about building it over a river or other waterway, which would indeed be a problem in flood conditions.
So I am "stubborn" when I believe people should have the ability to defend themselves against an unprovoked violent aggressor? Please elaborate.
Your stubbornness is in assuming that lethal force is the only way to defend a ship against pirates. In the comments section of an article describing a nonlethal deterrent, arguing that guns are the only way is indeed stubborn. Why is arming a ship with guns better than arming them with stuff like this laser or putting in a panic room that the crew can retreat to and maintain control of the ship (or whatever else you can come up with that doesn't involve a firefight on deck)?
Of course, the only issue is using lethal force against priates. There are no insurance issues with the crew because none of the security detail or operating crew will ever get killed during a firefight. No pirate group will ever overwhelm the security force, killing them in the process. No pirates will ever hit the ship with rockets because it's a better way to take a garrisoned ship.
You're right. It's just the little aspect of using lethal force against boarders.
Only if you don't do it properly; dead people don't get violent at all.
Dimwit. Do you think that pirates all act alone? Could it be that killing one skiff full of pirates might just maybe make the next ten skiffs full of pirates act more violently, perhaps like the friends of the ones that the Navy killed (who were no longer violent at all themselves)? Real life says that you can't "do it properly" in your way.
It's a nice thought, but most officers will drop the phone into a "safe bag" when they take it, which is like a static shielding bag, and will prevent remote contact with the phone. Therefore, after it's been confiscated it's unlikely (possible, but I wouldn't want to gamble my freedom on the odds) that a remote wipe will work, since the phone will be in the bag until they take it out to search it, and they'll do that in an evidence room that's also a Faraday cage, to prevent exactly this sort of thing. Remote wipe is great for clearing data in case of theft, but the police are generally wise to the evidence-destroying implications.
You could say that's technically true but if you back up your data and keep the backups somewhere safe they likely won't know to take them as well. More importantly, it's very rare that a violation of ToS in your house results in a raid, whereas turning off your access to "the cloud" is simple.
I mean you don't turn on your car and get on the freeway with nary a clue how it works do you? Why on earth should you get on the information superhighway when you don't even what a processor or memory is? Can the knowledge really get any more fundamental than that, for at some degree shouldn't we be held accountable for our own actions or lack thereof?
This isn't a good car analogy. The problem is that knowing the basics of how a computer works doesn't translate to an understanding of online threats, social engineering works on very smart people, and there's no reason why someone needs to understand the "basics" of internal cumbustion to operate a car safely so I see no reason why and understanding of processors and memory is needed to grasp online safety.
For the consequences can be just as real when you find you just sent your life savings to a scammer in Nigera, or got your dumb ass key logged while going into your PayPal.
Nigerian scams and the like worked before there was an Internet (point being that social engineering works offline), and you can get "keylogged" by someone with a cell phone camera grabbing a picture of your credit card while you hold it in your hand in line at Wal-Mart (point being that idenity theft happens offline too). Understanding online safety is certainly an issue but working to neutralize online threats at the source is a part of the puzzle.
Granted a stretch but my point is for far to long we've gone after the symptoms and never treated the cause.
To go back to your car analogy, we put a lot of effort into driver training but that doesn't mean we should stop installing guardrails. By the same token, efforts put into minimizing online threats is a necessary part of making online threats less threatening, even if more education is also needed.
Funny that most cruisers in larger jursidictions are equipt with cameras, seeings how it makes the prosocuters job harder.
There's a special case in that. A camera that the officer knows about makes the DA's job easier (a combination of officer confidence and proof of procedure). A camera he doesn't know about makes it harder (if a cop is going to step out of line he'll avoid doing it in view/hearing of the cruiser camera/mike).
Ha! Shows what you know! He'd have to be singing the words for it to be a problem, since the tune matches "Good Morning To You" and therefore is public domain.
Take that!
In all seriousness, though, the prosecutor wasn't high, he was trying to make his job easier. With restrictions on recordings of traffic stops, it's harder to prove mistakes in procedure. Based on the ruling, more cases will show up with recordings, which makes it tougher to prosecute the violations. It's self-serving but at least there's method in his madness.
Oops. Terrorism committed by radical Muslims does not make the action "Muslim terrorism" any more than radical Christian actions define Christianity. My point is that Christians getting bent out of shape over the opening of a mosque near Ground Zero is exactly an example of "hair trigger sensitivity to the slightest insult" and therefore demonstrates that your point holds for this case at the same time that it demonstrates that the Christians complaining about the mosque are violating the tenets of their own religion.
The reason is that these groups make a bigger fuss about it. If Christians had the same "hair trigger sensitivity to slightest perceived insult" (quoting Pat Condell) then Christians would be given the same consideration.
It's not that simple. There's a difference in doctrine that changes the interaction. Christianity contains a basic doctrine of tolerance/forgiveness (embodied in Jusus' "turn the other cheek" comment) that doesn't match up in Islam (or Scientology, to take your other example). A Christian that rioted over an insult to Christianity would be violating Christian doctrine, where a Muslim is expected to stand up and shout when his faith is insulted. But, if you think that means that Christians get short shrift because of this, then I ask you why there's no furor over the idea of opening a Christian church near Ground Zero.
All the minister in question is doing is having the courage to follow what his faith requires.
That's simply crap. He's not doing anything that's likely to lead anyone to his faith at all. He's doing something specifically designed to insult and anger other people with no good purpose. Nobody's going to see this episode and convert to his faith because of it, so telling anyone that he's doing anything other than being hateful is a load of crap, and you know it.
It is an outrage that Christians who do nothing but declare a doctrine that the church has embraced for 2000 years can be accused of hate speech.
What he's doing isn't a declaration of doctrine, it's an effort to hurt others. He's being hateful, so accusing him of hate speech is entirely appropriate.
The problem with your argument is that it doesn't address the issue in the article. If the speed limit is artificially low, then it doesn't bear on this law. The law doesn't contain any method for filtering out bad drivers, so it simply allows anyone who can pay the fee to go faster without any concern for the issue of safety. If a bad driver has the cash, they can buy the right to risk a much higher speed crash. Also, since not everyone can afford the cost, you'll have legally allowed large speed differentials on the roads, which has been shown time and again to increase the likelihood of accidents. Coupled with higher speeds, that's a recipe for disaster that your comment doesn't address.
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I wouldn't want to discount the disparity of post-collegiate professional opportunities in this discussion, since a pretty large number of college sports participants aren't doing it just for entertainment.
More to the point, you're arguing from the point that's being made. Why would you consider yourself a good measure for what female gamers would like to see in a game, rather than finding some female gamers to help you design it? Alternately, if the field did more to actively court female designers and programmers, elements that a broad swath of female gamers would like will be more likely to appear in games (or things that actively drive them away will be less likely to appear).
Virg
The thing that cranks me out of your corner on this is that you seem to think that I'm unable to choose something like this. Your posit is that the only reason I play WoW is because I'm either too dumb to see my way out of it or so hooked that I can't resist. I play WoW because I enjoy it. I pay the subscription fee because it's worth the money for what I get. I've quit before because I got tired of the game or because I had real life to deal with, and I went back because they released an expansion and it looked like it would be fun (and it has been). When I get tired of it again, I'll quit again. None of this happens because I'm too conditioned to understand the issue, so saying that Blizzard is fleecing me is inaccurate and insulting. I know what I signed up for and I consider it worth the cost.
Virg
I know many, many people who find creating third party content to be fun in itself. It also gives you the experience of building something and distributing it, even if you can't use or distribute it forever. Realistically, the concept of content obsolescence could be applied to every computer endeavor that isn't current. I don't consider the time I spent building templates for Lotus 1-2-3 for my gaming group to be wasted effort at all. It helped us enjoy what we were doing for quite a while before it got put aside. These days, even if I could open the files I don't own a drive capable of reading the floppies and the templates would be useless because the games in question are long gone, but that doesn't mean that the effort was all for nothing, just that it wasn't "forever art" and it was never intended to be.
I did it because I enjoyed it. If you won't derive the same enjoyment, then don't participate, but don't presume to think that there is nobody who will.
Virg
It never occurred to me to set up a web cam pic harvesting operation.
The big difference here is that it wasn't designed to get pictures, the pictures were just the best way to get the real information (finding out if the user was still using the machine). Moreover, I doubt you'd have hidden the fact if they asked, or left it there if they complained, or that they'd be upset about the images harvested. All of these things add up to making your operation a lot less invasive of privacy.
Virg
The loss of students would put political and financial pressure on Failing Public School A to get their act together -- no longer could they continue to fail knowing that the kids are stuck there with noplace else to go (one of the biggest single reasons for the poor quality schools in so many areas -- they get students and thus funding no matter how badly they perform). I mean think about it. If a company were guaranteed your business no matter what kind of job they did, what would be their incentive to provide quality? This is a truly self-evident principle.
This would work great if only a school could be like a business. The problem is that the main mechanism behind competition is that non-competitive perticipants fail and leave the market. It's an interesting concept but I think you can easily see why you can't let a public school in an area "go out of business". The problem you run into (that's happened often in real life districts) is that Failing School A will start losing funding as students leave. It's easy to say that this will prompt them to "get their act together" but as the money goes, teachers and students will start to bleed off to other places until you're left with a school that realistically can't operate on the budget that's left. At that point, either it'll implode (functionally the same as going out of business for a private company) or it'll stall, leaving whatever students can't find a seat in a different school with a nonfunctional school. Based on the voucher system, that means that you'd end up with one or two underfunded schools completely overloaded with students who can't move because the voucher won't cover them, and the vast majority of students who fit that measure are special needs students. Do you honestly think that a special ed student in a wheelchair will get a voucher for $100,000 to take to a different district? What'll happen is that they'll get the standard voucher and their parents will have to make up the difference, and that means that virtually none of them will move. So, in the end you'll have a bunch of bottom-tier schools with short funding and lots of special ed and super poor students, and I'd love to hear the argument that this will result in a good end. It's easy to say, "If it proves to be a bad idea, we can move on to something else" but in the ten years or so it takes to realize this, the kids in those schools will get a crap education and recovering from the mess will take decades.
School systems have some major problems, but vouchers create a lot of problems on the edge, and it's the edge cases that cost a lot and that most people choose to ignore.
Virg
As I said in the other post, I messed up the inflation calculation, so my figures are a bit off, but my old school now charges about $15000 per pupil per year. I suspect the costs are slightly lower than a comprehensive school, since intake is restricted to the top 20%, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could provide a good education for somewhere in the $10-12K ballpark. $17000 sounds excessive.
The problem is that you're comparing a private school to a public school system, and that's never going to balance. Private schools aren't required to take in all students, so I can pretty much guarantee that your old school would refuse to take on the special ed kid in a wheelchair who takes $100,000 a year to educate. The public school system can't refuse to take that kid on, though, so the cost per student has to include that sort of thing. If you cut out the budget needed for the most expensive three or four percent of the student body in most public districts (including special educators, one-on-one aides, special accomodations and other support stuff), you can cut the total budget by a third on average. That's just a cost that needs to be paid for universal compulsory schooling, and it's a cost that way too many people forget or openly ignore when they argue about how much cheaper public schools should be.
Virg
Are you really having difficulty seeing what you did there? You said, "They think they are magically protected, which means they will ignore obvious signs of infection till the very end." Then, when called on it you described one guy who installed infected software and refused to admit it caused a problem. Do you truly believe that your leading statement can be extended reasonably from this one guy to every Mac user (or even a good portion of them)? Do you really think that this guy would be any better if he'd been a Windows or Linux user?
On top of that, you yourself say that the Mac users got the most junior tech because nobody higher up the chain wanted the job, and then assumed that because you had a difficult time supporting the machines, that another tech who was more familiar (and might actually have enjoyed working with Macs) would have had the same problems. It sounds a lot like your Mac users got crap support and bailed on the platform because of it. I'd have given up too if the only support I could get was a bottom-tier tech who didn't even like the machine.
Point of note: the only Apple computer I ever owned (A Powerbook that was given to me) ran Linux. I'm definitely not an Apple fanboi by any stretch.
Virg
Which isn't really their fault that they used time and effort to create the product. Not only that, but you literally cannot own a potential gain. You never had the gain in the first place, and just because you think you should have it, that doesn't make it a fact. They literally take nothing from the artist when they merely copy data.
What they're taking is something that you seem not to value at all but society at large disagrees. It's easy to say that you've taken nothing from a developer by copying the game, but what you're taking away is the ability to make a living developing software. To give a real world example of the effect of this, imagine that it was illegal to charge for plumbing work. If you want to charge your cost for the parts, you can, but you're not allowed to charge for labor or for profit. What would happen is that suddenly nobody would be able to find a plumber to fix anything. The same concept applies to creative works. If there's no mechanism to create a market for creative works, then the number of people who do it will fall off because they'll have to spend their time doing other jobs, and these day jobs will eat up a lot of time that they would otherwise expend creating. Therefore, society sees fit to create the concept of copyright to allow creators a chance to profit from exclusive distribution, driving more people to spend their valuable time creating.
By the way, your statement that noone can "own" potential gain is nonsensical. By that logic, nobody can own anything since it's only the force of law that drives ownership to begin with. Copyright laws do indeed allow someone to own potential gain on a creative work; that's what they're designed to do, in fact. You can argue whether that's how it should be, but as of right now that's how it is.
Virg
I DVR "The Color of Money" (one of Scorsese's best, IMHO) in HD and I want to buy a copy that won't disappear the second my DVR dies. But, guess what? The studio says I can't (the only legally available version is a crappy non-anamorphic DVD that looks awful on a modern TV). So I'm left with the option of Pirate Bay or illegally ripping it off my DVR (both of which would make me a pirate in their eyes).
If you buy the DVD version and then rip the HD copy off your DVR, in most jurisdictions you've just format shifted so you're covered.
I DVR "Space Race: The Untold Story" (great docudrama, BTW) in HD from the National Geographic Channel. Same deal, want to buy it. But this time the studio won't even let me buy a DVD in the U.S. (much less an HD blu-ray). It's only available in Region 2. So, even if I import it, I would now be forced to illegally modify my DVD player to watch it. Want to buy it. Want to be honest. Nope, I would have to rip it from my DVR if I wanted to own it.
Again, buy the original and then rip the copy. If you really want to stick to the spirit of it, you could cover yourself by buying a multi-region DVD player (which is legal, you just end up paying more for it because of the licensing) and you're still legal.
Even with the blu-rays and DVD's I *can* buy, I'm stuck watching 5 or 6 forced trailers at the beginning of each (many studios not even letting me skip them). Don't want to spend several minutes fighting with your player just to watch the goddamn movie you paid for? Better go off to Pirate Bay, because that's the only way you're getting it, buddy.
There's nothing illegal about ripping your own DVD to remove the trailers. In fact, if it's a movie you really like you should rip a copy for watching just to protect the original from damage. Besides, getting a copy off Pirate Bay isn't piracy if you own it.
Virg
But this is a dumb comparison. Saturn V wasn't built to deliver to low Earth orbit, it was designed for escape velocity. It's easy to say that you could lift more per launch, but shuttle missions addressed things that couldn't be parallelized, like components of the ISS that weren't ready concurrently, or a launch for Hubble and a repair mission for same several years later. I'm certainly not saying that the shuttle is the best option for what it does, but there are much better ways to do the job than a Saturn V rocket. It's using a shotgun to kill flies.
Virg
He's as entitled to due process as anyone else, and that's what he's getting right now.
What part of taking his collection, suing the comic books themselves for being bought with drug money, and then selling them and keeping the money, all before actually trying him for the crime, constitutes due process? What part of not giving back the money if he's acquitted fits with due process? The problem is that the justice system is allowed to jump the gun with his stuff and they're not required to give it back if it turns out that he's innocent. That's what's so wrong with this whole thing.
Virg
He was using the proceeds of his criminal enterprise to buy comic books, some of the larger sales apparently attracted some attention and upon investigation it was determined where the money was coming from.
The problem is that he hasn't been convicted of this crime, so saying any of this is premature.
It has to be settled in court whether or not he's guilty, but assuming he is, this is standard procedure.
The problem here is that they've filed to take his collection before the "settled in court" part, and they filed suit against the comic book collection itself to prove that it's garnered from illegal funds. This whole procedure will play out before the defendant goes to trial, he won't be permitted to take any part in his collection's defense and unless something extraordinary happens, the court will find for the DA and the collection will be sold. That means that it's gone, even if he's acquitted of all charges.
Criminals aren't typically allowed to profit from their crimes by buying things.
The problem here is that he's not a criminal. No conviction, remember? They're taking his property without proving he's a criminal, and they won't give it back if it's proven he isn't. That doesn't bother you at all?
Virg
Firstly, you don't need to build roads to build it, since the ground structures are just towers and power line towers get built all the time without building roads (other than just bulling down the underbrush) along the courseways.
Second, there are many places where roads/rails are problematic, that are near major urban centers, that aren't grades. We usually call them "rivers" but other marshy areas, bays or other impediments fit the bill too.
For the "perpetual motion" comment, the article describes mines that send supplies downhill and generate electricity with the trip, and so unless your line runs the same weight both ways, you have a potential difference you can use. If it does run comparable loads both ways, then gravity powering obviously wouldn't apply.
For your flood comment, see my comment above about building it over a river or other waterway, which would indeed be a problem in flood conditions.
Virg
So I am "stubborn" when I believe people should have the ability to defend themselves against an unprovoked violent aggressor? Please elaborate.
Your stubbornness is in assuming that lethal force is the only way to defend a ship against pirates. In the comments section of an article describing a nonlethal deterrent, arguing that guns are the only way is indeed stubborn. Why is arming a ship with guns better than arming them with stuff like this laser or putting in a panic room that the crew can retreat to and maintain control of the ship (or whatever else you can come up with that doesn't involve a firefight on deck)?
Virg
Of course, the only issue is using lethal force against priates. There are no insurance issues with the crew because none of the security detail or operating crew will ever get killed during a firefight. No pirate group will ever overwhelm the security force, killing them in the process. No pirates will ever hit the ship with rockets because it's a better way to take a garrisoned ship.
You're right. It's just the little aspect of using lethal force against boarders.
Virg
Only if you don't do it properly; dead people don't get violent at all.
Dimwit. Do you think that pirates all act alone? Could it be that killing one skiff full of pirates might just maybe make the next ten skiffs full of pirates act more violently, perhaps like the friends of the ones that the Navy killed (who were no longer violent at all themselves)? Real life says that you can't "do it properly" in your way.
Virg
It's a nice thought, but most officers will drop the phone into a "safe bag" when they take it, which is like a static shielding bag, and will prevent remote contact with the phone. Therefore, after it's been confiscated it's unlikely (possible, but I wouldn't want to gamble my freedom on the odds) that a remote wipe will work, since the phone will be in the bag until they take it out to search it, and they'll do that in an evidence room that's also a Faraday cage, to prevent exactly this sort of thing. Remote wipe is great for clearing data in case of theft, but the police are generally wise to the evidence-destroying implications.
Virg
You could say that's technically true but if you back up your data and keep the backups somewhere safe they likely won't know to take them as well. More importantly, it's very rare that a violation of ToS in your house results in a raid, whereas turning off your access to "the cloud" is simple.
Virg
I mean you don't turn on your car and get on the freeway with nary a clue how it works do you? Why on earth should you get on the information superhighway when you don't even what a processor or memory is? Can the knowledge really get any more fundamental than that, for at some degree shouldn't we be held accountable for our own actions or lack thereof?
This isn't a good car analogy. The problem is that knowing the basics of how a computer works doesn't translate to an understanding of online threats, social engineering works on very smart people, and there's no reason why someone needs to understand the "basics" of internal cumbustion to operate a car safely so I see no reason why and understanding of processors and memory is needed to grasp online safety.
For the consequences can be just as real when you find you just sent your life savings to a scammer in Nigera, or got your dumb ass key logged while going into your PayPal.
Nigerian scams and the like worked before there was an Internet (point being that social engineering works offline), and you can get "keylogged" by someone with a cell phone camera grabbing a picture of your credit card while you hold it in your hand in line at Wal-Mart (point being that idenity theft happens offline too). Understanding online safety is certainly an issue but working to neutralize online threats at the source is a part of the puzzle.
Granted a stretch but my point is for far to long we've gone after the symptoms and never treated the cause.
To go back to your car analogy, we put a lot of effort into driver training but that doesn't mean we should stop installing guardrails. By the same token, efforts put into minimizing online threats is a necessary part of making online threats less threatening, even if more education is also needed.
Virg
Funny that most cruisers in larger jursidictions are equipt with cameras, seeings how it makes the prosocuters job harder.
There's a special case in that. A camera that the officer knows about makes the DA's job easier (a combination of officer confidence and proof of procedure). A camera he doesn't know about makes it harder (if a cop is going to step out of line he'll avoid doing it in view/hearing of the cruiser camera/mike).
Virg
Ha! Shows what you know! He'd have to be singing the words for it to be a problem, since the tune matches "Good Morning To You" and therefore is public domain.
Take that!
In all seriousness, though, the prosecutor wasn't high, he was trying to make his job easier. With restrictions on recordings of traffic stops, it's harder to prove mistakes in procedure. Based on the ruling, more cases will show up with recordings, which makes it tougher to prosecute the violations. It's self-serving but at least there's method in his madness.
Virg
Oops. Terrorism committed by radical Muslims does not make the action "Muslim terrorism" any more than radical Christian actions define Christianity. My point is that Christians getting bent out of shape over the opening of a mosque near Ground Zero is exactly an example of "hair trigger sensitivity to the slightest insult" and therefore demonstrates that your point holds for this case at the same time that it demonstrates that the Christians complaining about the mosque are violating the tenets of their own religion.
Virg
The reason is that these groups make a bigger fuss about it. If Christians had the same "hair trigger sensitivity to slightest perceived insult" (quoting Pat Condell) then Christians would be given the same consideration.
It's not that simple. There's a difference in doctrine that changes the interaction. Christianity contains a basic doctrine of tolerance/forgiveness (embodied in Jusus' "turn the other cheek" comment) that doesn't match up in Islam (or Scientology, to take your other example). A Christian that rioted over an insult to Christianity would be violating Christian doctrine, where a Muslim is expected to stand up and shout when his faith is insulted. But, if you think that means that Christians get short shrift because of this, then I ask you why there's no furor over the idea of opening a Christian church near Ground Zero.
Virg
All the minister in question is doing is having the courage to follow what his faith requires.
That's simply crap. He's not doing anything that's likely to lead anyone to his faith at all. He's doing something specifically designed to insult and anger other people with no good purpose. Nobody's going to see this episode and convert to his faith because of it, so telling anyone that he's doing anything other than being hateful is a load of crap, and you know it.
It is an outrage that Christians who do nothing but declare a doctrine that the church has embraced for 2000 years can be accused of hate speech.
What he's doing isn't a declaration of doctrine, it's an effort to hurt others. He's being hateful, so accusing him of hate speech is entirely appropriate.
Virg
The problem with your argument is that it doesn't address the issue in the article. If the speed limit is artificially low, then it doesn't bear on this law. The law doesn't contain any method for filtering out bad drivers, so it simply allows anyone who can pay the fee to go faster without any concern for the issue of safety. If a bad driver has the cash, they can buy the right to risk a much higher speed crash. Also, since not everyone can afford the cost, you'll have legally allowed large speed differentials on the roads, which has been shown time and again to increase the likelihood of accidents. Coupled with higher speeds, that's a recipe for disaster that your comment doesn't address.
Virg