What's going through the monkey's head?
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Think And Click
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· Score: 1
So how exactly do you train a monkey to think about doing something without doing it? I'm quite surprised that they were able to do that with the current level of communication between primates and humans
Yeah, how do we know that the monkey wasn't actually thinking about that cute red-butted baboon when his mouse was busy installing Windows?
Well, why did they open up their email? I mean, look at how many people use AOL as their dialup solution. Why did they stop segregating everyone else? From the sound of it, AIM isn't all that great, and why do you want to IM AOLers anyway? I'd be happy without the noise.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know jack about IM. The last time I used anything like it was on ISCA. But really, Trillian seems to be building a following because it so much better than the alternatives, and since it's multi-IM platform compatable, it should be easy to drop AOL's protocol.
That's too bad, because it sure looks like he's doing whatever he can to make it look like he is your spokesperson. Look at his quotes,
"[A]nyone actively disagreeing with policies of the U.S is now automatically rendered a 'terrorist' in the eyes of national security."
"They had more artillery than they use with wanted gang felons or raids on drug operations."
"If I go to jail, then I will go to jail not based on my actions, but based on what I think."
He's positioning himself to be the poster child of federal government victims. He demostrated knowledge of homebrewed explosives and a willingness to use them ("Homemade explosives work very well in riots.") Yet, to his independent media friends, he's trying to pass himself off as just exercising his 1st Amendment rights. (BTW - Anyone else think the indy media is being as biased as they claim the regular media is?) It's doubly bad because the guy can't even spell: "continuesly", "successfull", "vioces", "litature", "monitering", "automaticly", "with they're eyes", "baracade", etc...)
But the biggest problem I have with this punk is this quote:
"People can rant and rave on the Internet all they want, but when they cross the line of calling people to action to violently overthrow the Constitution of the United States, they have a problem," said McLaughlin.
You know what Sherm? Yes, when you plot "to violently overthrow the Constitution of the United States they have a problem." In fact, I have a problem with that, and I'm pretty sure that most (well over 90%) US citizens have a problem with a little punk like you trying to stage a violent coup. There are enough ways to change the government through the democratic process that if you can't effect your changes, you either aren't trying hard enough, or most people don't agree with you. Don't want to live in a democracy? Fine, most of us do, get the fsck out.
BTW - Anyone with an address of food_should_be_free@yahoo.com ain't no anarchist. He's a little hacker punk, not Ghandi.
there is only one movie theater here in town. Is that a monopoly?
Actually, yes it is. "Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service." I'm in such an unfortuate town and it's $8.75/ticket to see a new movie. Showcase Cinemas has a monopoly in my town on first-run movie viewing where I live. They don't have a monopoly on first-run movie viewing in a 50-mile radius, but who wants to drive an hour to see a movie that'll probably suck? They don't have a monopoly on second-run movie viewing, but who wants to see Sweet November again? And no, they don't have a monopoly on entertainment choices in the area, but when Ebert's sweating his fat ass off begging you to go see Black Hawk Down wha'ca gonna do? So, yes, if there is only one movie theater in town, that's a monopoly.
The solution to a movie theatre monopoly isn't to get government action to stop it, but to get a businessman to wake up and realize that they could make money by buying the old theater Showcase Cinemas left behind when they built their new uber-theater, renovate it a bit, and undercut Showcase by two bucks a ticket and a buck a pop.
And the solution to AOL playing games with their protocol is to ignore them. Let MSN Messenger get huge, tell all your friends to use Jabber, log on to Y! Messenger. Leave AIM on the outside looking in, and evetually they'll realize that they want back in. Remember that old saw about the value of a network grows expontially with it's size? It applies to messenger services as well. Let AOL play in it's sandbox until it's just a worthless pit.
...Of course that does go against Trillian's "IM with anybody" philosophy, but hey, AOL's segregating themselves. It's like trying to stop a suicide.
...Disney World...apparently they have a new attraction in the complex...a giant arcade, focusing on the games of old.
It's called DisneyQuest, and the old-school arcade is just a small part of it (or at least it was when I went a couple of years ago.) They have about as many games as a mid-sized mall arcade from the '80's and they're mostly the well known titles (Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, etc...) Supposedly there's one in Chicago too. The rest of the building is taken up with a Cheesecake Factory Express (not as good as a real CF,) a bumper car where you can shoot other cars, some odd remote-control car adventure, a learn-to-draw classroom, and some other stuff.
It was cool, but I don't think I'd pay $40 to get in though, too many tikes who don't know how to play hogging the machines. I kinda wished that it did cost to play, so that I could put my quarter up and wait my turn instead of of watching "Jimmy" try to "catch" the ghosts (without eating the power pill first.) I'd rather go to Dave & Buster's.
"Amazon didn't even have to resort to controversial pro forma accounting methods. It posted a net profit of $5 million, or 1 cent a share, for the quarter, using standard accounting methods."
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea what this means. I don't even know if profits shown from "standard accounting methods" would translate exactly into profits as I understand them, so maybe you're correct to say that "[Amazon] hardly [posted] a true profit," but you're wrong about them using pro forma earnings to post that profit. Whatever that means, I'll leave the accounting to the professionals, like Anderson^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H KPMG.
Blocking me because I'm sending email from a Microsoft client is immature and ill-conceived.
Of course it's immature, he even admits to it, "It's immature of me, I know..." But as he goes on to say, "...but to some degree turnabout is fair play." Whether right or wrong, he's just fed up with Windows users who don't have a clue that sending.docs is pretty ill-conceived.
While I'm at it, why do most Windows users get in such a huff when asked to send a file in a more readily readable format? For expample, where I work, we get graphic files in all kinds of formats and people will get snippy with us that we don't use MS Publisher (um...sorry, we use a real desktop publishing program). How is a wrong assumption on their part the reciepient's fault?
There isn't really a reason to take someone to court just because they sent you an unsolicited resume.
Actually, it's Bernie "Moron Spammer" Shifman that's threatening to take everyone to court, not the recipients of the spam. All the recipents did was complain to his ISP about his violation of the ISP's AUP.
-sk
Re:Who cares about A Beautiful Mind?
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A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 1
Thought-provoking, most unlike fight-club.
If Fight Club wasn't thought-provoking for you, you didn't watch the second half of it.
So basically you're saying that violent crime is down, but reporting of violent crime is up. And you evidence for this is that you think that WWII vets wouldn't report anything that didn't involve re-attachment of a limb or that women kept silent about abuse.
Not that I disagree with you, I can't imagine Cap'n Blood 'n Guts calling the cops over a bar brawl or the sock hopper calling them because Danny went to far on Lover's Lane, but alcmena wanted some hard cites that he could use to back up cgleba's claim that there is less violent crime today than in the 1950's. Do you know of a good cite for your theories? Admittedly, my stats are less than ideal because they don't go back far enough and are from offical reports which are probably inaccurate, but at least they're something.
Well, looking at the numbers, violent crime has decreased (on a per capita basis) every year since 1991 (758.1 cases/100,000 in 1991 vs. 524.7 cases/100,000 in 1999). So in that narrow window, yes, violent crime has declined. But in a wider window, you start to see a cycle to crime rates.
H. Aaron Cohl's "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?" claims that "In the last twenty years, incidents of crime have declined by 25 percent." But 1976 had 467.8 violent crimes per 100,000 while 1996 had 636.5, not much of a decline there. I'm not saying that Wilson and Cohl are wrong, but the U.S. Department of Justice figures don't back them up. Note that all this might be moot because I'm using violent crime rates whereas Cohl, Wilson, and defeated might all be using overall crime rates or some other stat. However, cgleba (whose assertion that crime had declined since the 1950's started this off) specified that it was violent crime that had declined. Now perhaps the 1950's had a huge amount of violent crime that the USDOJ don't show (the earliest figures they show are from 1960), but in the absence of other statistics, I'm inclined to believe that violent crime, in fact, has risen from the middle of the 20th century to now.
Airplane accident fatalities in 2000: 97 (NTSB source
Violent Crime 1960 vs 2000 (source confirmed by DOJ site.)
1960 - 160.9 per 100,000 (288,460 cases)
2000 - 506.1 per 100,000 (1,424,289 cases)
Hrm...that would seem to disprove cgleba's argument on violent crime, but the data only goes back to 1960, not 1950 as in his argument. I'll let him find a source for that.
"...it's about a city legislating a business. It happens all the time with Bars, Porn Shops, Video Stores and whatnot, why should an arcade be treated differently?"
We (in the we're-all-citizens sense) were told that the city was just regulating a rowdy, crime-inducing, immoral, fire-water saloon. We said, "OK, that sounds reasonable, but no more regulatin', ya hear."
Then we were told that the city was just regulating a sleezy, crime-inducing, immoral, women-degrading filthy porn shop. We said, "OK, that sounds reasonable, after all we regulate bars, why should a porn shop be treated differently? But no more regulatin', ya hear?"
Now, in my neck of the woods, video stores aren't regulated. But since they seem to be in yours, you (in the you're-all-citizens sense) were told that the city was just regulating [insert inflamatory adjectives to get people to give up more freedom here] video stores. And you said, "OK, those sure are scary words you used, so yeah it sounds reasonable. After all we regulate bars and porn shops, why should a video store be treated differently?"
And now...we're being told that internet cafes are crime-inducing, violent, immoral, gang-fostering, unsupervised, and appeal to certain ethnic groups therefore they need to be regulated. This, dispite the fact that the gangs developed elesewhere, that the conflict was carried over from the school yard, and that there no reason to single internet cafes out. Well...no reason except that we already regulate bars, porn shops, video stores, and whatnot, why should an internet cafe be treated differently?
I'm sure I'm far to late to get any kind of notice with these points, but...
Most computer users use Microsoft Word. That is unfortunate for them, because Word is proprietary software, denying its users the freedom to study, change, copy, and redistribute it.
No, it's neutral for them, because Word come pre-installed by their company or computer manufacturer and they'll never give two rat's asses about whether or not they study or change Word, and they'll go ahead and copy it whether or not MS likes it.
And because Microsoft changes the Word file format with each release, its users are locked into a system that compels them to buy each upgrade whether they want a change or not. They may even find, several years from now, that the Word documents they are writing this year can no longer be read with the version of Word they use then.
Actually, I just transfered some ancient files off of a 800k Mac disk that were written in some equally ancient MS Word for Mac format (I think 4.x) that transfered over just fine to MS Word 2000 for WinME except for the Mac fonts that weren't installed. Not that there's any guarantee that future versions will be so backwards compatible, but I was sure impressed.
Your points are certainly valid, but the problem with your analysis is that it ignores the incentive for people to change from freeloaders to contributing members of the community. In other words, the mere existance of a "punishment" mechanism gives freeloaders a good enough reason to not freeload. Like the article says, "The fear of being fined keeps potential defectors in line."
On a clearly off-topic point, I found this quote particularly interesting:
"The research may hold lessons for policymakers attempting to build social cohesion, he believes. Decisions may be more acceptable if they come from within the community and not from a remote central government. "There could be more community-based policing, and more emphasis on shaming [criminals] and rehabilitation within the community," Gintis says."
Which seems to be in line with general conservative thought: more localized government and a criminal justice system designed to punish, leaving rehabilitation to the community. (Not that I take any position on whether conservatives are right or wrong.)
Most people are trained for 10+ years to do a specific job, and that is typically their sole source of income.
Yeah, but in this case, Ella Williams was an unskilled auto line worker. Seeing as her CTS only prevented her from "...repetitive work with hands and arms extended at or above shoulder levels for extended periods of time." methinks she'll be able to find another job.
If my reading of the summary (linked above) is correct, the Supreme Court misinterpreted the ADA in a rather severe way. This law was meant to protect and help people who have difficulty performing their job.
Well, your readings of both the decision and the ADA aren't correct. The ADA requires that the disability "...substantially limits one or more of the major life activities..." of a person. It's meant to help disabled people, not to get Ella Williams a cushy desk job. While I might quibble that perhaps a person's job should be considered a "major life activity", the Court found that Williams' CST only prevented one particular set of jobs ("repetitive work with hands and arms extended at or above shoulder levels for extended periods of time"), not all jobs.
You also happen to be wrong about the term "activist judges". That term applies to judges who extend their power by a over-broad, generalized reading of the law. This decision shows that the SCOUS is making a conservative ruling, keeping the ruling strictly within the bounds of the law. Also, keep in mind that this was a 9-0 decision, maybe you're reading more controversy into it than you should.
Now, since I am too lazy to read the history, what exactly was Toyota suing for?
Here's where your laziness makes you look like an idiot. Toyota wasn't suing anyone, they got sued by Ella Williams. They're just appealing the circuit court's ruling (just as Williams appealed the district court's ruling.) As for the OSHA investigation, there were no keyboards in Ms. Williams' job, she worked on a assembly line. Toyota tried to make accomodations for her until she decided to stop showing up for work.
Yeah, who would've thunk it that so many people would jump to the assumption that this woman couldn't type? Read the decision, she worked on an auto assembly line. She couldn't do a specific job on an assembly line. There were other jobs she could do, so it's not like her CTS was completely crippling. Details like that make the difference in court decisions.
While your point is certainly correct Artagel, most SCOUS opinions that reverse judgement are remanded back to the preceeding court. (No hard figures, but I have read more SCOUS opinions than your average non-lawyer/law student. IANAL) Even Bush v. Gore was sent back, "The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion." That's right, technically the SCOUS opinion that everyone slathered over wasn't the last word in the Bush v. Gore debacle.
No offense, markmoss, but the quoted section is in English, and is pretty non-legalise for a court decision, especially that last sentence. Read it more slowly, and put a little though into it. Ignore the citations to other cases, skip over the adjectives, it's not so hard that you'd have to diagramit out, but if that helps, do it. But since you asked:
In its brief on the merits, petitioner asks us to reinstate the District Court's grant of summary judgment to petitioner on the manual task issue. In its petition for certiorari, however, petitioner did not seek summary judgment; it argued only that the Court of Appeals' reasons for granting partial summary judgment to respondent were unsound. This Court's Rule 14(1)(a) provides: "Only the questions set out in the petition, or fairly included therein, will be considered by the Court." The question whether petitioner was entitled to summary judgment on the manual task issue is therefore not properly before us. See Irvine v. California, 347 U.S. 128, 129--130 (1954).
Accordingly, we reverse the Court of Appeals' judgment granting partial summary judgment to respondent and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Toyota asks the Supreme Court to reinstate the original court's decision. When they initially came to us, however, they only asked us to reverse the Circuit Court's decision. Rules are rules, so we reverse the Circuit Court's decision.
Toyota screwed up their writ of certiori, and asked for less than they could have gotten. While a lawyer can certainly nitpick this, a writ of certiori is what you file to get your case heard by the SCOUS.
I don't know why Frank T. Lofaro Jr. think summary judgement are so evil, the right to a jury trial is one given to the defendant, which they are free to waive if they like.
Boy, normally I'd agree with you. Except that this case is about an assebly line worker, not a computer jock, so Ars-Fartsica's comments don't really apply here.
While in my heart, I tend to agree with the SC's decision, I have to question it correctness. The ADA says that you qualify for protection if you're disabled (ADA's def: "...a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual..." my emph.) Work IS a major life activity. The Circuit Court concluded that Williams wasn't able to work, and since work is a major life activity, found she qualified for ADA protection. Everything after that was irrelevant. But now the Supreme Court comes back and says "This particular job isn't a common major life activity, so she doesn't qualify." Excuse me, but this job was one of her major life activities. Because Ella Williams wants to keep her job, "repetitive work with hands and arms extended at or above shoulder levels for extended periods of time" is a major life activity for her, even if it's not one for Justice O'Connor.
Just a couple of clarifications, based on the reading of the Supreme Court's decsion:
She wasn't moved to a desk job, but moved to an assembly floor position that didn't require as much manual labor. Specifically she was assigned to a quality control team which did four QC-related tasks, she initially was assigned to rotate between two of the four, two which didn't aggrevate her CTS. Management then got the bright idea to make everyone on the team to rotate through all four tasks, the other two which did aggrevate Williams' CTS.
The district court (Eastern District of Kentucky) found for Toyota ("granted summary judgement for petitioner" in SCOUS terms means the person in front of the "v."). The Sixth Circut court overturned the district court, ignoring the fact that Williams didn't seem to have any problems keeping up with her hygine and household chores (which appears to be a requirement to qualify for ADA protection.)
"What possible harm could come from code being out there? Sure, it's harmful to competitors, but so also is newly written GPL (or BSD, or...) code that's out there, free as in beer/speech..."
The difference is that there's already a userbase of exisiting code. Imagine if Quark went out of business and QuarkXPress became free overnight. Who would continue to pay $600 for Adobe Pagemaker. Or if NewTek went under, who's going to pay for Maya when LightWave is free? But someone writing a new, free-beer desktop publishing program or 3D renderer isn't going to make a huge impact immediately. Blender is making it's way very slowly, and Gimp is hardly replacing Photoshop (although I did give up PS for Gimp on Win32 several years ago).
While protecting competitors shouldn't be our business, neither should destroying other businesses.
Do you have some supporting citations for that claim? I ranted that companies weren't very good stewards of the history that their IP represented, but if you've got evidence, that would be reprensible (at least in terms of history.)
Susan Aker wrote an excellent piece for OSOpinion about a year ago that compliments Tim's. She talks more about a change in the legal status of abandoned IP than Tim's focus to create an additional mandate on the abandoning companies. And since abandonment, in a legal sense, is a pretty specific concept, BrettGlass's concerns are addressed as well (abandonment would take enough time for a commercial package to make significant enhancements to keep their market share.)
I really disagree with Tim's proposal to force abandoned code to be made available at the source code level. That's not free speech, it's forced speech. Sure Lotus Improv is out there already, it's been abandoned, let people copy the binaries as they wish. But to force Lotus to cough up the source is an unreasonable burden. Hell, the source code could be near impossible to find even for the original programmers. Finally, the source code can represent an asset for the company that will be valuable when they sell off.
Ok, this might not be exactly on topic, but while reading the article, I couldn't help but start writing down my thoughts about the whole copyright/piracy issue.
Non-commercial pirates are ordinary people, who otherwise would be like you and me (well, ok maybe they're exactly like me.) They are the people who like certain content and are just looking to access it at their leisure. Non-commercial pirates are fans of content. They are students (formal and informal) who want to learn from the content. They are critics who further critical discussion of content. They are consumers who will likely purchase content when they are able. They are archivists saving the content that the distributors have abandoned. They are nurturers who want to see more content and help make content better.
But, in order to have a large enough inventory to attract people to their wares, some pirates may turn their activities into businesses. Turning commercial causes provable financial damage to the content holder (at least whatever the pirate charges, theoretical maximum of up to what the content holder charges, although certainly the discount rates of the pirate may boost his sales over what the legitimate holder would have) With such damages, there is an unquestionable standing for a lawsuit. On-line commercial pirates are especially susceptible. The 24/7 availability that offers such an advantage to on-line business, dramatically increases the pirates' chances of getting caught. Unlike the street-corner pirate, the on-line pirate can't turn off his web site if the cops come strolling by. Suffice it to say, commercial pirates are thieves, they are scum, whatever ugly adjective you want to use probably applies to them. They take the creative labor of others and use it to make a profit for themselves. Laws, regulations, mandates, and technical barriers will not stop them from their piracy. They have access to devices to circumvent whatever barriers put before them. They smell money, and don't care who is hurt in their pursuit of it.
Eric Flint from Baen Publishing isn't worried about online piracy because is a minor problem, any losses are offset by increased exposure of the content, and any attempt to restrict piracy is worse than the problem of priacy in the first place (see this Salon cartoon for an example carried none too far to the extreme ). His own experience has shown that content released freely, and without barriers to priracy (technological, legal, or moral) are the ones that drive exposure to the artist and sell better than similar books not available freely.
Content distributors (especially in the music industry, the RIAA and record companies) tend to justify their existance because of the amount of their marketing of the artists (in addition to the actual production/distributing efforts.) Online piracy is, then, a dilemma for artists. Piracy increases their exposure by definition, but at an inferior quality and no royalties. Piracy should show to consumers the complete uselessness of the content distributors as guardians of good taste. How many awful CD's do you have that you bought because of a catchy tune on the radio.
Current copyright laws almost ensure that there will be a historical hole where content simply disappears. Which company will be the one to ensure that Arthur Byron Cover's 1988 novel Planetfall for future generations? Neither quality nor the commerial success of content should be the judge of whether or not it is to be preserved. Many of Shakespeare's plays where bawdy low-rent entertainment in its era, but is now considered high-art. American Pie 2 deserves no less preservation than American Beauty. Plantfall deserves no less preservation than Snow Falling on Cedars. Married With Children no less than The Honeymooners. With corporate takeovers and massive inventories, content distributors can be the worst preservers of content. While this report notes some possible solutions, it generally suggests working with the content distributors to authorize preservation efforts. This is unworkable when a distribtor is unaware of their content property, has dissolved, or is hostile to the preservation effort. The societal need for preservation outweighs the property rights of the distributor.
It is high time that legislators and regulators stop acquiescing to every demand of the content distributors. The policy pendulum has swung too far in their favor. The problem is that the pendulum has swung quietly, without the public's knowledge. Efforts that the public does know about don't sound as harmful as they actually are, so your constituents (or those who are affected by your regulations) aren't alarmed. But as representatives of the people, you are the guardians of their rights. Fair use rights that the content distributors are attempting to restrict and even to abolish. The most perilous danger with legislative acts recently, such as the DCMA, is that they ingore that all copyrighted materials will eventually reach the public domain, as required by law (via the "limited time" clause). While content entering into the public domain is not advantageous to content distributors, it is vitally important to the general public.
Of course, that's just my opinion... (don't sue me Dennis!)
-sk
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know jack about IM. The last time I used anything like it was on ISCA. But really, Trillian seems to be building a following because it so much better than the alternatives, and since it's multi-IM platform compatable, it should be easy to drop AOL's protocol.
-sk
- "[A]nyone actively disagreeing with policies of the U.S is now automatically rendered a 'terrorist' in the eyes of national security."
- "They had more artillery than they use with wanted gang felons or raids on drug operations."
- "If I go to jail, then I will go to jail not based on my actions, but based on what I think."
He's positioning himself to be the poster child of federal government victims. He demostrated knowledge of homebrewed explosives and a willingness to use them ("Homemade explosives work very well in riots.") Yet, to his independent media friends, he's trying to pass himself off as just exercising his 1st Amendment rights. (BTW - Anyone else think the indy media is being as biased as they claim the regular media is?) It's doubly bad because the guy can't even spell: "continuesly", "successfull", "vioces", "litature", "monitering", "automaticly", "with they're eyes", "baracade", etc...)But the biggest problem I have with this punk is this quote:
You know what Sherm? Yes, when you plot "to violently overthrow the Constitution of the United States they have a problem." In fact, I have a problem with that, and I'm pretty sure that most (well over 90%) US citizens have a problem with a little punk like you trying to stage a violent coup. There are enough ways to change the government through the democratic process that if you can't effect your changes, you either aren't trying hard enough, or most people don't agree with you. Don't want to live in a democracy? Fine, most of us do, get the fsck out.BTW - Anyone with an address of food_should_be_free@yahoo.com ain't no anarchist. He's a little hacker punk, not Ghandi.
-sk
The solution to a movie theatre monopoly isn't to get government action to stop it, but to get a businessman to wake up and realize that they could make money by buying the old theater Showcase Cinemas left behind when they built their new uber-theater, renovate it a bit, and undercut Showcase by two bucks a ticket and a buck a pop.
And the solution to AOL playing games with their protocol is to ignore them. Let MSN Messenger get huge, tell all your friends to use Jabber, log on to Y! Messenger. Leave AIM on the outside looking in, and evetually they'll realize that they want back in. Remember that old saw about the value of a network grows expontially with it's size? It applies to messenger services as well. Let AOL play in it's sandbox until it's just a worthless pit.
...Of course that does go against Trillian's "IM with anybody" philosophy, but hey, AOL's segregating themselves. It's like trying to stop a suicide.
-sk
It was cool, but I don't think I'd pay $40 to get in though, too many tikes who don't know how to play hogging the machines. I kinda wished that it did cost to play, so that I could put my quarter up and wait my turn instead of of watching "Jimmy" try to "catch" the ghosts (without eating the power pill first.) I'd rather go to Dave & Buster's.
-sk
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While I'm at it, why do most Windows users get in such a huff when asked to send a file in a more readily readable format? For expample, where I work, we get graphic files in all kinds of formats and people will get snippy with us that we don't use MS Publisher (um...sorry, we use a real desktop publishing program). How is a wrong assumption on their part the reciepient's fault?
-sk
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Not that I disagree with you, I can't imagine Cap'n Blood 'n Guts calling the cops over a bar brawl or the sock hopper calling them because Danny went to far on Lover's Lane, but alcmena wanted some hard cites that he could use to back up cgleba's claim that there is less violent crime today than in the 1950's. Do you know of a good cite for your theories? Admittedly, my stats are less than ideal because they don't go back far enough and are from offical reports which are probably inaccurate, but at least they're something.
-sk
H. Aaron Cohl's "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?" claims that "In the last twenty years, incidents of crime have declined by 25 percent." But 1976 had 467.8 violent crimes per 100,000 while 1996 had 636.5, not much of a decline there. I'm not saying that Wilson and Cohl are wrong, but the U.S. Department of Justice figures don't back them up. Note that all this might be moot because I'm using violent crime rates whereas Cohl, Wilson, and defeated might all be using overall crime rates or some other stat. However, cgleba (whose assertion that crime had declined since the 1950's started this off) specified that it was violent crime that had declined. Now perhaps the 1950's had a huge amount of violent crime that the USDOJ don't show (the earliest figures they show are from 1960), but in the absence of other statistics, I'm inclined to believe that violent crime, in fact, has risen from the middle of the 20th century to now.
-sk
- Suicide - 11th leading cause of death (28,332 cases)
- Murder - 15th leading cause of death (16,137 cases)
Car/Airline accidents (2000 stats)- Car accident fatalities in 2000: 41,821 (source quotes FHA stats.)
- Airplane accident fatalities in 2000: 97 (NTSB source
Violent Crime 1960 vs 2000 (source confirmed by DOJ site.)- 1960 - 160.9 per 100,000 (288,460 cases)
- 2000 - 506.1 per 100,000 (1,424,289 cases)
Hrm...that would seem to disprove cgleba's argument on violent crime, but the data only goes back to 1960, not 1950 as in his argument. I'll let him find a source for that.-sk
Then we were told that the city was just regulating a sleezy, crime-inducing, immoral, women-degrading filthy porn shop. We said, "OK, that sounds reasonable, after all we regulate bars, why should a porn shop be treated differently? But no more regulatin', ya hear?"
Now, in my neck of the woods, video stores aren't regulated. But since they seem to be in yours, you (in the you're-all-citizens sense) were told that the city was just regulating [insert inflamatory adjectives to get people to give up more freedom here] video stores. And you said, "OK, those sure are scary words you used, so yeah it sounds reasonable. After all we regulate bars and porn shops, why should a video store be treated differently?"
And now...we're being told that internet cafes are crime-inducing, violent, immoral, gang-fostering, unsupervised, and appeal to certain ethnic groups therefore they need to be regulated. This, dispite the fact that the gangs developed elesewhere, that the conflict was carried over from the school yard, and that there no reason to single internet cafes out. Well...no reason except that we already regulate bars, porn shops, video stores, and whatnot, why should an internet cafe be treated differently?
-sk
On a clearly off-topic point, I found this quote particularly interesting:
Which seems to be in line with general conservative thought: more localized government and a criminal justice system designed to punish, leaving rehabilitation to the community. (Not that I take any position on whether conservatives are right or wrong.)-sk
You also happen to be wrong about the term "activist judges". That term applies to judges who extend their power by a over-broad, generalized reading of the law. This decision shows that the SCOUS is making a conservative ruling, keeping the ruling strictly within the bounds of the law. Also, keep in mind that this was a 9-0 decision, maybe you're reading more controversy into it than you should.
Here's where your laziness makes you look like an idiot. Toyota wasn't suing anyone, they got sued by Ella Williams. They're just appealing the circuit court's ruling (just as Williams appealed the district court's ruling.) As for the OSHA investigation, there were no keyboards in Ms. Williams' job, she worked on a assembly line. Toyota tried to make accomodations for her until she decided to stop showing up for work.-sk
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No offense, markmoss, but the quoted section is in English, and is pretty non-legalise for a court decision, especially that last sentence. Read it more slowly, and put a little though into it. Ignore the citations to other cases, skip over the adjectives, it's not so hard that you'd have to diagramit out, but if that helps, do it. But since you asked:
Toyota screwed up their writ of certiori, and asked for less than they could have gotten. While a lawyer can certainly nitpick this, a writ of certiori is what you file to get your case heard by the SCOUS.I don't know why Frank T. Lofaro Jr. think summary judgement are so evil, the right to a jury trial is one given to the defendant, which they are free to waive if they like.
While in my heart, I tend to agree with the SC's decision, I have to question it correctness. The ADA says that you qualify for protection if you're disabled (ADA's def: "...a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual..." my emph.) Work IS a major life activity. The Circuit Court concluded that Williams wasn't able to work, and since work is a major life activity, found she qualified for ADA protection. Everything after that was irrelevant. But now the Supreme Court comes back and says "This particular job isn't a common major life activity, so she doesn't qualify." Excuse me, but this job was one of her major life activities. Because Ella Williams wants to keep her job, "repetitive work with hands and arms extended at or above shoulder levels for extended periods of time" is a major life activity for her, even if it's not one for Justice O'Connor.
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- She wasn't moved to a desk job, but moved to an assembly floor position that didn't require as much manual labor. Specifically she was assigned to a quality control team which did four QC-related tasks, she initially was assigned to rotate between two of the four, two which didn't aggrevate her CTS. Management then got the bright idea to make everyone on the team to rotate through all four tasks, the other two which did aggrevate Williams' CTS.
- The district court (Eastern District of Kentucky) found for Toyota ("granted summary judgement for petitioner" in SCOUS terms means the person in front of the "v."). The Sixth Circut court overturned the district court, ignoring the fact that Williams didn't seem to have any problems keeping up with her hygine and household chores (which appears to be a requirement to qualify for ADA protection.)
-skWhile protecting competitors shouldn't be our business, neither should destroying other businesses.
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I really disagree with Tim's proposal to force abandoned code to be made available at the source code level. That's not free speech, it's forced speech. Sure Lotus Improv is out there already, it's been abandoned, let people copy the binaries as they wish. But to force Lotus to cough up the source is an unreasonable burden. Hell, the source code could be near impossible to find even for the original programmers. Finally, the source code can represent an asset for the company that will be valuable when they sell off.
-sk
Non-commercial pirates are ordinary people, who otherwise would be like you and me (well, ok maybe they're exactly like me.) They are the people who like certain content and are just looking to access it at their leisure. Non-commercial pirates are fans of content. They are students (formal and informal) who want to learn from the content. They are critics who further critical discussion of content. They are consumers who will likely purchase content when they are able. They are archivists saving the content that the distributors have abandoned. They are nurturers who want to see more content and help make content better.
But, in order to have a large enough inventory to attract people to their wares, some pirates may turn their activities into businesses. Turning commercial causes provable financial damage to the content holder (at least whatever the pirate charges, theoretical maximum of up to what the content holder charges, although certainly the discount rates of the pirate may boost his sales over what the legitimate holder would have) With such damages, there is an unquestionable standing for a lawsuit. On-line commercial pirates are especially susceptible. The 24/7 availability that offers such an advantage to on-line business, dramatically increases the pirates' chances of getting caught. Unlike the street-corner pirate, the on-line pirate can't turn off his web site if the cops come strolling by. Suffice it to say, commercial pirates are thieves, they are scum, whatever ugly adjective you want to use probably applies to them. They take the creative labor of others and use it to make a profit for themselves. Laws, regulations, mandates, and technical barriers will not stop them from their piracy. They have access to devices to circumvent whatever barriers put before them. They smell money, and don't care who is hurt in their pursuit of it.
Eric Flint from Baen Publishing isn't worried about online piracy because is a minor problem, any losses are offset by increased exposure of the content, and any attempt to restrict piracy is worse than the problem of priacy in the first place (see this Salon cartoon for an example carried none too far to the extreme ). His own experience has shown that content released freely, and without barriers to priracy (technological, legal, or moral) are the ones that drive exposure to the artist and sell better than similar books not available freely.
Content distributors (especially in the music industry, the RIAA and record companies) tend to justify their existance because of the amount of their marketing of the artists (in addition to the actual production/distributing efforts.) Online piracy is, then, a dilemma for artists. Piracy increases their exposure by definition, but at an inferior quality and no royalties. Piracy should show to consumers the complete uselessness of the content distributors as guardians of good taste. How many awful CD's do you have that you bought because of a catchy tune on the radio.
Current copyright laws almost ensure that there will be a historical hole where content simply disappears. Which company will be the one to ensure that Arthur Byron Cover's 1988 novel Planetfall for future generations? Neither quality nor the commerial success of content should be the judge of whether or not it is to be preserved. Many of Shakespeare's plays where bawdy low-rent entertainment in its era, but is now considered high-art. American Pie 2 deserves no less preservation than American Beauty. Plantfall deserves no less preservation than Snow Falling on Cedars. Married With Children no less than The Honeymooners. With corporate takeovers and massive inventories, content distributors can be the worst preservers of content. While this report notes some possible solutions, it generally suggests working with the content distributors to authorize preservation efforts. This is unworkable when a distribtor is unaware of their content property, has dissolved, or is hostile to the preservation effort. The societal need for preservation outweighs the property rights of the distributor.
It is high time that legislators and regulators stop acquiescing to every demand of the content distributors. The policy pendulum has swung too far in their favor. The problem is that the pendulum has swung quietly, without the public's knowledge. Efforts that the public does know about don't sound as harmful as they actually are, so your constituents (or those who are affected by your regulations) aren't alarmed. But as representatives of the people, you are the guardians of their rights. Fair use rights that the content distributors are attempting to restrict and even to abolish. The most perilous danger with legislative acts recently, such as the DCMA, is that they ingore that all copyrighted materials will eventually reach the public domain, as required by law (via the "limited time" clause). While content entering into the public domain is not advantageous to content distributors, it is vitally important to the general public.
Of course, that's just my opinion... (don't sue me Dennis!)
-sk