Gitmo is the place where the worst of the worst are kept. And you know this how? Neither you nor the government, has presented one iota of credible evidence that anyone at Guantanamo has committed any crimes whatsoever. The Bush administration has fought tooth and nail to prevent any such evidence coming to light. You do know that lots of people have been released from Guantanamo, don't you? And that many of those people have been formally exonerated by their home nations of committing any crime?
One of the people held at Guantanamo has been there since he was 14. Was he one of the "worst of the worst"? The government won't say what he did but, perversely, has described him as a "good kid" that thrived under the tender mercies of the Guantanamo guards. Staff at Guantanamo have reported that, for the most part, they don't know why most people are being held there.
These are the guys that are found actively fighting American forces or the local population or those that are known to have information that they are not willing to divulge. First, I hate to break it to you, but "actively fighting American forces" isn't a war crime. Whether you're wearing a uniform or not. Imprisoning prisoners of war outside the theater is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. So is interrogating them. So even assuming you're correct, Guantanamo Bay is illegal.
And you're not. Most of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were sold to the US Army by Afghani warlords/drug lords. And they're about as reputable as they sound.
Besides, that would be an incredibly waste of resources to ship every one of these people to Gitmo and interrogate them for hours only to have them confess to something that never happened. More like, "interrogate them for years". But you're right, it is a huge waste of resources.
You all want to know one of the main reasons things like SOPs for military installations are marked FOUO? Or why anything is marked FOUO for that matter? It's because there are too many idiots who misinterpret things because they don't understand BASIC military terminology for one, or they can't even begin to understand what our military actually does. It's fucking CYA. I can tell you have military experience because of all the acronyms. It's For Official Use Only because virtually every non-trivial communication is classified by the military because they don't want to deal with oversight, which is usually tied to how they piss away money, not human rights.
Who the hell keeps getting these as PDFs anyway? I didn't think they were ever distributed electronically outside of formal messaging systems. The leaker could have scanned the documents in himself. The SOP is definitely real, as other whistle blowers have described parts of it.
It's not about iPods, it's about recording devices, particularly cell phone cameras. Remember: this is post Abu Graib. The military realized that they got in trouble not so much for abusing prisoners, but because photographs and video of the abuse got out because they were recorded by the guards themselves. So they don't what the guards taking phots while they're abusing prisoners.
On top of that, the military is keenly aware that the media would pay big bucks for pictures of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo. The press blackout has been very effective. So they're threatening the poorly paid guards to keep them from selling photos.
Second, DirectX isn't platform generic! That's one of the reasons the XBOX had to be built the way it was. On top of that, NVIDIA and ATI both had proprietary extensions to DirectX and the XBOX makes heavy use of NVIDIA's proprietary extensions, which have to be emulated on the 360.
Yes, there is a POWER4 version of DirectX 9 built for the 360/PS3, but that's just ANOTHER platform. And there's more to switching platforms than a recompile due to hardware-specific graphics and audio calls.
And the XBOX/XBOX360 are the first consoles to have anything even CLOSE to a standard API. It was all custom development kits on previous consoles.
he isn't significantly worse than some others we have had. He is certainly worse than any other President in living memory, easily worse than Nixon.
Are you for real? http://hnn.us/articles/5331.html Are you for real in posting such drivel? Nixon was well know for his racist views. And even if Nixon was the reincarnation of Martin Luther King, it wouldn't change the fact that conservatives and the Republican party have fully embraced the white power crowd, many of whom were formerly Democrats.
Sabia seems to fall into the "camp" (made up exclusively of white Republicans) that believes that blacks were harmed by the Civil Rights Movement and that more could have been accomplished through cooperation with the South. MY interpretation of what happened is that the South finally gave up after years of fighting and pressure from the civil rights movement, Nixon simply happened to be President at the time. One could argue that by failing to insist the South completely revamp their school system he failed black Americans.
They get smacked down by the supreme court. This President ignores the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has ruled that Guantanamo is gulag and the prisoners must be tried and released. Has that happened? The Supreme Court has ruled that kidnapping and waterboarding (and various other techniques) are illegal torture, but the President is still using them. The President's surveillance system is a pretty awesome violation of the 4th Amendment, but he keeps defending it, etc. Hooding (putting hoods on prisoner's heads) is also a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but we do that anyway.
If the chief law enforcement officer refuses to follow the law outright, remediation is relatively limited. Basically, we're left with impeachment.
What does he need subterfuge for? Political surveillance. Congress is never going to pass a law that explicitly allows the President to wiretap his political opponents.
To me, this doesn't really represent any kind of crisis of gaming journalism... Does anyone still go to Gamestop caring what one of their reviewers think of a game?
It does to me. Gamespot is clearly the biggest name in gaming journalism and they've been caught red-handed firing a reviewer for giving a bad review of a game heavily promoted on the site.
If you don't read the reviews, there really isn't much content on Gamestop or any of the other "game magazine" sites to speak of. If people stop going to these sites for reviews because of corruption, they'll basically stop going.
This is a fundamental issue of corruption on the part of Gamespot and similar sites. They simply should not accept advertising for products they review i.e. games. This does not mean they can't accept advertising for other products like PC hardware, or those products that might appeal to the same market (action movies, for example). Claims that this is not a viable business model don't apply to the web, which doesn't have the same pressures (like distribution) you have with print magazines.
No, I didn't read Woolf's book or listen to her speech. I've heard the arguments a dozen times before. You pick a few conditions leading up to Nazi Germany, then compare them to the current administration's policies. Godwin's Law is bullshit. If one picks comparable attributes it is perfectly reasonable to compare people and governments to Hitler and the Nazi movement. For example, Hitler and JFK were both similar in that they projected images for health and virility, but in reality they were both sickly and not really the "ladies' men" they made themselves out to be. Perfectly legitimate comparison right there.
The fallacy YOU'RE engaging in is: "Any comparison of right-wing American political leaders to Hitler, Nazis, or the Nazi government is invalid."
You hold this opinion because you're a conservative and American conservatives are in complete denial about the history of their political affiliation. American conservatives solidly supported trusts, fascism, racism, sexism, and vicious right-wing dictators. American right-wingers have opposed every single civil rights measure in American history, from Miranda to birth control. If it was up to them we'd still have slavery, women wouldn't have the vote, and Muslims would be in concentration camps.
I've talked to a lot of veterans who fought the Nazis. To a man, they accused George W. Bush and his cronies of fascism (usually comparing him to Mussolini instead of Hitler). That's good enough for me.
Laws cannot dismantle the constitution, only constitutional amendments can. So what happens when the law enforcers simply ignore the laws, the way Bush does? Then it falls on Congress, right? What happens if the President subverts Congress? Here's a scenario for you: The President decides he wants to push his agenda but he can't convince Congress to go along. So he hires private operatives (not government staff!) to tap the phones and conduct other surveillance on Congress and staff members to gain leverage against them. If they're caught, he grants them immunity. This is EXACTLY what Nixon did in the past and what Bush is doing RIGHT NOW. He's just not as sloppy as Nixon was.
Youtube's terms of service prohibit graphic violence. The terms of service were violated, and the violator was punished. If this was any other person, posting random violence, there'd be no scandal over his removal. 1) Broadcast organizations usually make a distinction between graphic violence for entertainment (like bloodsports) and graphic violence for journalistic and humans rights reasons because the latter does not normally harm the reputation of the broadcast network, but actually enhances it.
2) You are assuming that this is the reason his content was removed. That is EXTREMELY unlikely. If his content was popular, and all evidence say it way, lots of people were watching it and generating ad revenue for Google. The ONLY reason they would give up that revenue if they feared a greater loss of revenue. Like the Egyptian government threatening to block Google traffic. There is not one iota of doubt in my mind that they sites weren't removed due to pressure by the Egyptian government, who they don't want to piss off, so they're not SAYING they were pressured.
3) In my opinion, YouTube does not have a choice in the matter. Broadcasters either must accept all liability for everything on their airwaves (for example, television stations) or they must be "common carriers" that simply provide "service" and have nothing to do with the content per se (for example, telephone companies). YouTube wants to have it both ways, censoring the stuff they don't like but arguing they're "common carriers" when people post copyrighted content. Of course, "common carrier" rules don't apply to Egypt, but if they want to operate in both nations they have to comply with both sets of laws. In the case where the laws in two nations conflict, the multinational company (like Google) has to choose which laws they're going to break and accept the consequences.
So Google has a choice of getting sued for civil rights violations in the United States, or getting thrown out of Egypt for not turning in human rights workers. They have chosen the former, just like they did in China. In other words: Making money off dictatorships and torturers is more important to Google that civil rights or the lives of innocent people.
Pretty "evil" of them if you ask me.
his content was removed from his blog... or if his blog was removed... that might be sensorship. Um, they DID shut down his blog. That's the point.
Bullshit. The manufacturers put the "Vista Capable" sticker on EVERY PC they sold after a certain date in October. Dell, for example, didn't bother to test at all. They knew full well that a 1Ghz CPU, 512 MB of memory, and embedded graphics would give users a lousy experience (even without Aero) and didn't care. They simply wanted to save money, period. About the only way you can blame Microsoft is that they should have made Aero support a requirement for the "Vista Capable" logo, and they DID initially, but they removed that requirement due to pushback from the manufacturers instead switching to two different logos. The we specifically NOT ALLOWED by the manufacturers to put the words "Vista Basic Ready" (the terminology they WANTED to use) on the systems that did not support Aero because the manufacturers whined that they were still technically capable of running Premium.
I don't know what size fits and Microsoft won't provide a dressing room to try the software on. Once purchased and opened so I can 'try it on' I can't return it if it is the wrong size. The complaint is about new "Vista Ready" PCs that can't run Aero. And you certainly CAN return a new PC. This was a Microsoft problem only in the sense that they didn't require manufacturers to include Areo support to get the "Vista Ready" logo. The manufacturers are really the ones scamming the customer here because they KNEW that they needed DirectX 9 cards to run Aero and chose not to include them because they were too expensive. I'm certain Microsoft would have preferred that all "Vista Ready" PCs supported Aero. One could argue that perhaps Microsoft should have waited, but people were complaining about how late Vista was already. Basically, early adopters who bought entry-level hardware got screwed. This is pretty typical in the industry, Apple does it all the time (for example).
It's not a problem NOW because entry-level PCs can now run Aero fairly smoothly, it's only a a problem for PCs sold between October 2006 and about March 2007. Perhaps the manufacturers should provide some sort of rebate.
The problem is that they were unable to include the NV25 (Geforce 4) in the XBOX360 so they had to emulate some of the functions in hardware.
And I suspect that while Microsoft has access to NVIDIA's internal design documents, their programmers doing the backwards compatibility specifically ARE NOT looking at them. I bet using NVIDIA's proprietary information is a violation of their contract and that the XBOX emulator in the 360 is entirely "white roomed" so Microsoft has deniablity. They have to do this because I'm sure NVIDIA is tearing about the binaries of the emulator to make sure there is nothing proprietary in there.
Sony DOES have a similar problem. Their software PS2 emulator is buggy despite the fact they have access to the hardware, the design specs, all the IP, and all the of original engineers. Sony can't figure out how to emulate the Emotion Engine in software, that's why they removed backwards compatibility from the new PS3s.
it sounds like there was not a "substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquantances." If that's that standard, that I think I met it because only one of those 10 people was a friend, the others were "strangers" that specifically came for the screening. I don't know if 9 people is "substantial". I've run into this problem literally every time I've done any sort of film screening. If the MPAA finds out about it, they complain about it.
I've even got complaints from the MPAA when I organized a screening of Wizard of Speed and time WITH Mike Jittlov's (the film's creator) permission. He was the one who gave me the film! The MPAA found out about it and threatened the AV club at my high school!
So let us imagine what the difference between the UK and the US could be. Oh yes the fact that you let every loony and criminal arm themselves to the teeth with cheap firearms. How heavily armed the population is has little to do with the murder rate in industrialized nations. The reason Britian has low murder rates is tied to it's relatively homogeneous society (most of the ethnic violence was quelled centuries ago) and much more importantly, the dole. This gives poor disaffected youth an option other than crime.
It's important to carefully understand what it is we're talking about here.
1) This article is old. The study was published in 2006.
2) This is NOT a study but a META-study that compiles results from lots of previous studies. This is very important. Long experience has taught me that META-studies tend to heavily reflect selection bias in the experimenter because they only select the studies that reach the conclusions they want. Experimenters also often present a false sense of accuracy about the studies because they only report their conclusions, not the methodology or it's flaws. Of course they're referenced, but journalists rarely bother to check the references (or even read the study).
3) Huesmann and Bushman have based their entire careers on the study of aggression. They have shown very consistent results in their studies that clash (very consistently) with the results of other researchers.
4) Their methodology is based on a very subjective definition of "aggression". For example, they consider an argument (ANY argument) with a spouse as "aggression". Everything is self-reported, so the subjects can easily inject their own bias. There is selection bias by the experimenters as to what counts as "violent media". By their criteria, essentially ALL media is "violent media". If you define all media as "violent" and all behavior as "aggression", it's pretty easy to draw a correlation between "violent media" and "aggression.
5) Studies that are based on more objective criteria, like violent crime convictions, show that there is NO correlation between media exposure and violence. They ALWAYS show that violence is closely associated with the family environment, NOT media. This is why researchers like Huesman and Bushman shy away from more objective criteria.
Your ability to use your particular copy of a CD is defined by *statute,* not by contract. So the fees you are required to pay for a public performance are defined by the statute? I don't think so. The rights are assigned by the statue, but the manner in which those rights are applies is determined by the content owners (and the courts).
The copyright owner could complain if you were performing the DVD publicly, but that sure doesn't sound like a public performance to me. The MPAA considers anything that is "advertised" to be "public". I mentioned the screening on a mailing list, that was considered "advertising". And since I technically allowed people to come in off the street to see the film, it was also considered "public".
In what case has a CD burner been ruled to be a circumvention device? I don't know the case number, but it involves an individual who was doing mass duplication of video games. In his case the CD burner was ruled a "copyright infringement device", not a "circumvention device" and he was charged with POSSESSION of it (among numerous other charges).
Any news on whether or not they're going to start honoring the warranties on the eeePC?
A bit of background on this: Apparently it's not just breaking those "void warranty" stickers on the memory door that voids the warranty, but doing anything at all to the box. Several users have reported Asus refusing to honor the warranty on completely unopened and unchanged eeePCs.
Many posters don't seem to grasp what happened with the original XBOX.
When building the original XBOX, MS choose to make a very "PC like" design that was essentially a specialized Windows PC. To save time and money, rather than developing their own hardware they outsourced that task to Nvidia and Intel who adapted existing parts (the NV25 and the Celeron 733) to the XBOX. Crucially however, they did not sell the production rights of those parts to Microsoft.
Fast forward a few years. The XBOX is selling nicely and Microsoft, like most console manufacturers, wants to reduce the price of the console to sell more units. Unfortunately for MS, since they don't own the rights to the GPU and couldn't reverse-engineer it, Nvidia has them over a barrel on pricing and they refuse to reduce the cost of the GPU (I'm told they were ballsy enough to actually try to raise it). Intel was much more willing to negotiate for the CPU (because they had competitors, like AMD), but that was useless without the GPU.
Because of their inability to cost-reduce the XBOX, Microsoft kills it prematurely. That's why absolutely NO XBOX games were release after 2006. Microsoft actually paid developers to have them move their games in development to the 360.
Fast forward to the launch of the 360: Without being able to include compatible hardware in the 360, MS is forced to rely on software emulation for backwards compatibility. Emulating Intel and Nvidia hardware on a Power4 system with an ATI GPU it even more difficult than it sounds. Consequently, backwards compatibility on the 360 is less that stellar.
You could blame Microsoft for this situation because they failed to ensure they held the rights to the Nvidia GPU, but personally I blame NVIDIA for being greedy. It hurt them in the end. Ever wonder why all the next-generation console have ATI GPUs? It's because of the way NVIDIA burned MS on the XBOX.
Is the right to abort the "inconvenience" of pregnancy more important than that unborn person's right to live? Nobody has a "right to live". If they did, the United States couldn't execute people. People have a right to "due process", which means their life can't be taken away without some sort of hearing. THIS is the right anti-abortion folks want to extend to zygotes. Most of them have no idea what the legal implications of such a move are.
For example: A pregnant woman is standing outside and a man walks up to her, lights a cigarette, and starts smoking. Assuming the fetus has due process rights, that now means the smoker is guilty of attempted murder. Second-hand cigarette smoke is potentially lethal to a fetus, a reasonable people should know that, and since the fetus is defined as a person you are TRYING TO KILL the fetus by smoking nearby. Of course, there is also applicable civil law so the mother could sue for harm to the fetus. The mother herself coud be charged with attempted murder if she smoked cigarettes, but she can't be imprisoned anyway (see below).
Here's another one: You can't deport or imprison pregnant women under ANY circumstances. Since the fetus is person, it is now an American citizen with full due process rights. While you could convict the mother of a crime you COULD NOT imprison her while pregnant because you would be imprisoning the fetus without due process. Ditto for deporting her. If a woman who is imprisoned becomes pregnant, she'll have to be released. I don't think the anti-abortion people really want pregnancy to be a "get out of jail free" card.
Secondly, pregnancy is not an "inconvenience". It is a potentially life-threatening medical condition. And even in the case of a perfectly healthy mother and fetus, social pressures may make it life-threatening. If you're 15, and your father is going to kill you for getting pregnant (happens ALL THE TIME) pregnancy is pretty life-threatening. You're also ignoring the very real financial hardships. You're 15, you get pregnant, and your parents throw you out of the house (again, happens ALL THE TIME) and you're living on your friend's couch. Are you really in a position to raise a child? Here's another: You're 45, married, have 6 children, and after having sex with your husband your birth control fails. Should you be forced to carry that child to term? It's dangerous to have a child at that age, you might not live to see them reach adulthood, and yet another child will bring additional financial hardships.
I've always considered that consensual unprotected sex to be a sort of physical contract agreeing to pregnancy with abortion a violation of that contract at the expense of someone else's life. So what if your birth control fails? Most anti-abortion activists make no exception for failed birth control. And the abortion debate is not about how we "feel" about abortion. The debate is about whether or not we should put doctors in prison for performing abortions. Period.
I don't personally have a stance on abortion. Yes, you do. You're pro-choice. The positions are very clearly defined:
Pro-life: "I want to put doctors in jail for providing abortions."
Pro-choice: "I don't want to put doctors in jail for providing abortions."
Remember, these are LAWS we're talking about here, not abstract moral principles.
Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate I'm aware of that has publicly declared that they consider privacy to be Constitutional right and has fiercely opposed Bush's internet surveillance program.
Ron Paul voted for the FISA extension that allows warrantless wiretaps (unlike Kucinich). He has also voted for numerous "save the children" Internet bills to ban online pornography. He has also voted against consumer protection regulations that would limit private business' ability to collect personal information. He's also opposed regulation which tightly controls how private business can use and handle such information (like HIPAA).
Philosophically, Ron Paul is a free-market, small-government, libertarian. This philosophical position is contrary to the notion of privacy rights because any protected right is, by definition, an expansion of legal authority. IOW, Ron Paul ostensibly supports privacy but he does not support any law that would protect privacy rights because that's "an expansion of the Federal government". This philosophical position also means that Ron Paul supports "state's rights" at the expense of HUMAN rights. For example, Ron Paul believes that states should be allowed to decide the question of gay marriage on a state-by-state basis.
Basically, Ron Paul talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.
just because he is no longer a lawyer doesn't mean he can't speak up. It's a big deal, because it means he can't legally threaten the games industry anymore.
The only reason these threats go through at all is because Jack Thompson is willing to risk is reputation and career as a lawyer to pursue them. I seriously doubt that he'll be able to convince another lawyer to do the same.
Also, being disbarred is an ENORMOUS hit on someone's reputation. A lawyer who is disbarred no longer can speak as a legal authority, and there is a general assumption that he's a "bad person" because he must have done something bad to be disbarred. Every singe interview he has from now on will mention it.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Sure, Solaris 10 has been released recently, but if you look at the rate of releases and new features over time for Solaris it's pretty slow.
On Office you're just wrong. What web protocols does Office 98 have that aren't available in Office 2007? And you're just crazy if you think StarOffice has more features than Office. Even Office 98. All the Office detractors seems to conveniently ignore all the collaboration features that have been added to Office over the years. If you ignore Project, SharePoint and Groove when you're talking about Office you're just in denial.
Visual Studio is an IDE that handles lots of languages. I'm talking about the features of the IDE itself, not Microsoft's language history. There are plenty of people that do Python development in Visual Studio. F# isn't bundled because it's too new, it will be bundled in the next version.
Also, I'd point out that users of software from BSA-affiliated companies generally agree as part of the license to submit to audits on demand as a condition of the license. Incorrect. EULAs or "pack-in" licenses, in reality, have no legal weight as enforceable contracts because:
a) For the most part, they are *LITERALLY* gibberish. It's a very strong defense against a software audit to simply argue that the EULA isn't valid because it makes no sense or that the BSA is interpreting it incorrectly. It becomes a "he said, she said" where the BSA's expert says it means one thing and your expert says it means the exact opposite. This is easy to drag out for years. I remember a contract dispute between a company I worked for and their ISP that went on for THREE YEARS arguing over the definition of one word ("uptime").
b) Many EULAs contain terms that are flatly illegal under US law (typically they violate contract or consumer protection laws). Contracts with illegal provisions are generally invalid IN TOTAL, not just the specific provisions, so your lawyer can argue that contract is invalid because it contains illegal terms. Picking your venue helps because contract and consumer protection laws vary from state to state and companies rarely bother to make sure their EULA comply with all applicable state laws when creating their EULA (often deliberately in an attempt to cram through illegal terms).
and
c) Contracts require positive affirmation by both parties. You can't say a contract applies to someone just because you're looking at them. It is only proper software licensing agreements and contracts between the vendor and client that count. An example is the site licenses you purchase for Microsoft products. Getting this argument to work depends on your judge.
If a consumer buys a CD, they are actually buying the CD -- the whole "licensed, not sold" thing that happens with computer software does not generally happen with music CDs. Incorrect. You are buying very specific rights to the recording, not the actual recording itself. Can you buy a music CD and then use one of the songs on that CD for a television commercial without paying the artist additional fees? No. You will get sued because you are buying a LICENSE to play the music privately, not the actual music itself.
While I never encountered this with music, I HAVE personally encountered this with film. MPAA people have threated to sue me for doing a DVD screening in my own home for 10 people.
A CD burner is not a circumvention device. See 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2). That section does not mention the words "CD" or "recorder". It talks about the "primary purpose" of the device. While you and I would probably agree that the "primary purpose" of CD recorders is NOT to make illegal copies, federal judges disagree and they HAVE ruled in cases that a CD recorder was/is a circumvention device.
I don't know where you get the "copying one CD gets you sent to federal prison" idea. Under 17 U.S.C. 506, at minimum you need to have some financial gain or commercial interest. Again, this was changed in the Copyright Act of 1992. Commercial interest is no longer required nor is their a minimum number. While the scenario I outlined has never happened (someone being arrested for making one copy of one CD), it certainly is possible under current law. Virtually everyone arrested for copyright violation is involved in commercial distribution, except mod chip people.
And, distributing that cell phone photo is NOT a crime, because the photo itself (as set up in the original article) is NOT an infringement -- it's a fair use. Sure, you could be charged, but the threshold for being charged for any thing is pretty low. Fair use is an affirmative defense. As you pointed out, you COULD be charged and then YOU would have to prove the photo is fair use. If you were not trying to do any commercial distribution, it is very likely you would win the case.
Lest you think this isn't an issue, news organizations have been sued for using short news, television, and film clips in their broadcasts even though that fair use exemption is SPECIFICALLY OUTLINED in the law. So have libraries, even though they, again, have a specific exemption.
if you let them audit thinking you're following the rules perfectly they fine you triple damages out of spite. Exactly. If you don't let them do the audit they can't PROVE anything. So don't let them. Even if they get a court order you can find ways to keep them from doing the audit. For example, we would insist that the auditors have escorts, and then the escorts wouldn't show so they would sit in the lobby all day. After enough of this crap they'll give up.
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You do know that lots of people have been released from Guantanamo, don't you? And that many of those people have been formally exonerated by their home nations of committing any crime?
One of the people held at Guantanamo has been there since he was 14. Was he one of the "worst of the worst"? The government won't say what he did but, perversely, has described him as a "good kid" that thrived under the tender mercies of the Guantanamo guards. Staff at Guantanamo have reported that, for the most part, they don't know why most people are being held there. These are the guys that are found actively fighting American forces or the local population or those that are known to have information that they are not willing to divulge. First, I hate to break it to you, but "actively fighting American forces" isn't a war crime. Whether you're wearing a uniform or not. Imprisoning prisoners of war outside the theater is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. So is interrogating them. So even assuming you're correct, Guantanamo Bay is illegal.
And you're not. Most of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were sold to the US Army by Afghani warlords/drug lords. And they're about as reputable as they sound. Besides, that would be an incredibly waste of resources to ship every one of these people to Gitmo and interrogate them for hours only to have them confess to something that never happened. More like, "interrogate them for years". But you're right, it is a huge waste of resources.
It's not about iPods, it's about recording devices, particularly cell phone cameras. Remember: this is post Abu Graib. The military realized that they got in trouble not so much for abusing prisoners, but because photographs and video of the abuse got out because they were recorded by the guards themselves. So they don't what the guards taking phots while they're abusing prisoners.
On top of that, the military is keenly aware that the media would pay big bucks for pictures of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo. The press blackout has been very effective. So they're threatening the poorly paid guards to keep them from selling photos.
First off, the XBOX is DirectX 8.1-based.
Second, DirectX isn't platform generic! That's one of the reasons the XBOX had to be built the way it was. On top of that, NVIDIA and ATI both had proprietary extensions to DirectX and the XBOX makes heavy use of NVIDIA's proprietary extensions, which have to be emulated on the 360.
Yes, there is a POWER4 version of DirectX 9 built for the 360/PS3, but that's just ANOTHER platform. And there's more to switching platforms than a recompile due to hardware-specific graphics and audio calls.
And the XBOX/XBOX360 are the first consoles to have anything even CLOSE to a standard API. It was all custom development kits on previous consoles.
http://hnn.us/articles/5331.html Are you for real in posting such drivel? Nixon was well know for his racist views. And even if Nixon was the reincarnation of Martin Luther King, it wouldn't change the fact that conservatives and the Republican party have fully embraced the white power crowd, many of whom were formerly Democrats.
Sabia seems to fall into the "camp" (made up exclusively of white Republicans) that believes that blacks were harmed by the Civil Rights Movement and that more could have been accomplished through cooperation with the South. MY interpretation of what happened is that the South finally gave up after years of fighting and pressure from the civil rights movement, Nixon simply happened to be President at the time. One could argue that by failing to insist the South completely revamp their school system he failed black Americans. They get smacked down by the supreme court. This President ignores the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has ruled that Guantanamo is gulag and the prisoners must be tried and released. Has that happened? The Supreme Court has ruled that kidnapping and waterboarding (and various other techniques) are illegal torture, but the President is still using them. The President's surveillance system is a pretty awesome violation of the 4th Amendment, but he keeps defending it, etc. Hooding (putting hoods on prisoner's heads) is also a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but we do that anyway.
If the chief law enforcement officer refuses to follow the law outright, remediation is relatively limited. Basically, we're left with impeachment. What does he need subterfuge for? Political surveillance. Congress is never going to pass a law that explicitly allows the President to wiretap his political opponents.
To me, this doesn't really represent any kind of crisis of gaming journalism ... Does anyone still go to Gamestop caring what one of their reviewers think of a game?
It does to me. Gamespot is clearly the biggest name in gaming journalism and they've been caught red-handed firing a reviewer for giving a bad review of a game heavily promoted on the site.
If you don't read the reviews, there really isn't much content on Gamestop or any of the other "game magazine" sites to speak of. If people stop going to these sites for reviews because of corruption, they'll basically stop going.
This is a fundamental issue of corruption on the part of Gamespot and similar sites. They simply should not accept advertising for products they review i.e. games. This does not mean they can't accept advertising for other products like PC hardware, or those products that might appeal to the same market (action movies, for example). Claims that this is not a viable business model don't apply to the web, which doesn't have the same pressures (like distribution) you have with print magazines.
The fallacy YOU'RE engaging in is: "Any comparison of right-wing American political leaders to Hitler, Nazis, or the Nazi government is invalid."
You hold this opinion because you're a conservative and American conservatives are in complete denial about the history of their political affiliation. American conservatives solidly supported trusts, fascism, racism, sexism, and vicious right-wing dictators. American right-wingers have opposed every single civil rights measure in American history, from Miranda to birth control. If it was up to them we'd still have slavery, women wouldn't have the vote, and Muslims would be in concentration camps.
I've talked to a lot of veterans who fought the Nazis. To a man, they accused George W. Bush and his cronies of fascism (usually comparing him to Mussolini instead of Hitler). That's good enough for me. Laws cannot dismantle the constitution, only constitutional amendments can. So what happens when the law enforcers simply ignore the laws, the way Bush does? Then it falls on Congress, right? What happens if the President subverts Congress? Here's a scenario for you: The President decides he wants to push his agenda but he can't convince Congress to go along. So he hires private operatives (not government staff!) to tap the phones and conduct other surveillance on Congress and staff members to gain leverage against them. If they're caught, he grants them immunity. This is EXACTLY what Nixon did in the past and what Bush is doing RIGHT NOW. He's just not as sloppy as Nixon was.
2) You are assuming that this is the reason his content was removed. That is EXTREMELY unlikely. If his content was popular, and all evidence say it way, lots of people were watching it and generating ad revenue for Google. The ONLY reason they would give up that revenue if they feared a greater loss of revenue. Like the Egyptian government threatening to block Google traffic. There is not one iota of doubt in my mind that they sites weren't removed due to pressure by the Egyptian government, who they don't want to piss off, so they're not SAYING they were pressured.
3) In my opinion, YouTube does not have a choice in the matter. Broadcasters either must accept all liability for everything on their airwaves (for example, television stations) or they must be "common carriers" that simply provide "service" and have nothing to do with the content per se (for example, telephone companies). YouTube wants to have it both ways, censoring the stuff they don't like but arguing they're "common carriers" when people post copyrighted content. Of course, "common carrier" rules don't apply to Egypt, but if they want to operate in both nations they have to comply with both sets of laws. In the case where the laws in two nations conflict, the multinational company (like Google) has to choose which laws they're going to break and accept the consequences.
So Google has a choice of getting sued for civil rights violations in the United States, or getting thrown out of Egypt for not turning in human rights workers. They have chosen the former, just like they did in China. In other words: Making money off dictatorships and torturers is more important to Google that civil rights or the lives of innocent people.
Pretty "evil" of them if you ask me. his content was removed from his blog... or if his blog was removed... that might be sensorship. Um, they DID shut down his blog. That's the point.
Bullshit. The manufacturers put the "Vista Capable" sticker on EVERY PC they sold after a certain date in October. Dell, for example, didn't bother to test at all. They knew full well that a 1Ghz CPU, 512 MB of memory, and embedded graphics would give users a lousy experience (even without Aero) and didn't care. They simply wanted to save money, period. About the only way you can blame Microsoft is that they should have made Aero support a requirement for the "Vista Capable" logo, and they DID initially, but they removed that requirement due to pushback from the manufacturers instead switching to two different logos. The we specifically NOT ALLOWED by the manufacturers to put the words "Vista Basic Ready" (the terminology they WANTED to use) on the systems that did not support Aero because the manufacturers whined that they were still technically capable of running Premium.
Once purchased and opened so I can 'try it on' I can't return it if it is the wrong size. The complaint is about new "Vista Ready" PCs that can't run Aero. And you certainly CAN return a new PC. This was a Microsoft problem only in the sense that they didn't require manufacturers to include Areo support to get the "Vista Ready" logo. The manufacturers are really the ones scamming the customer here because they KNEW that they needed DirectX 9 cards to run Aero and chose not to include them because they were too expensive. I'm certain Microsoft would have preferred that all "Vista Ready" PCs supported Aero. One could argue that perhaps Microsoft should have waited, but people were complaining about how late Vista was already. Basically, early adopters who bought entry-level hardware got screwed. This is pretty typical in the industry, Apple does it all the time (for example).
It's not a problem NOW because entry-level PCs can now run Aero fairly smoothly, it's only a a problem for PCs sold between October 2006 and about March 2007. Perhaps the manufacturers should provide some sort of rebate.
The problem is that they were unable to include the NV25 (Geforce 4) in the XBOX360 so they had to emulate some of the functions in hardware.
And I suspect that while Microsoft has access to NVIDIA's internal design documents, their programmers doing the backwards compatibility specifically ARE NOT looking at them. I bet using NVIDIA's proprietary information is a violation of their contract and that the XBOX emulator in the 360 is entirely "white roomed" so Microsoft has deniablity. They have to do this because I'm sure NVIDIA is tearing about the binaries of the emulator to make sure there is nothing proprietary in there.
Sony DOES have a similar problem. Their software PS2 emulator is buggy despite the fact they have access to the hardware, the design specs, all the IP, and all the of original engineers. Sony can't figure out how to emulate the Emotion Engine in software, that's why they removed backwards compatibility from the new PS3s.
Whoops! I stand corrected. Perhaps the partnership with Sony is part of the reason they burned Microsoft?
I've even got complaints from the MPAA when I organized a screening of Wizard of Speed and time WITH Mike Jittlov's (the film's creator) permission. He was the one who gave me the film! The MPAA found out about it and threatened the AV club at my high school!
It's important to carefully understand what it is we're talking about here.
1) This article is old. The study was published in 2006.
2) This is NOT a study but a META-study that compiles results from lots of previous studies. This is very important. Long experience has taught me that META-studies tend to heavily reflect selection bias in the experimenter because they only select the studies that reach the conclusions they want. Experimenters also often present a false sense of accuracy about the studies because they only report their conclusions, not the methodology or it's flaws. Of course they're referenced, but journalists rarely bother to check the references (or even read the study).
3) Huesmann and Bushman have based their entire careers on the study of aggression. They have shown very consistent results in their studies that clash (very consistently) with the results of other researchers.
4) Their methodology is based on a very subjective definition of "aggression". For example, they consider an argument (ANY argument) with a spouse as "aggression". Everything is self-reported, so the subjects can easily inject their own bias. There is selection bias by the experimenters as to what counts as "violent media". By their criteria, essentially ALL media is "violent media". If you define all media as "violent" and all behavior as "aggression", it's pretty easy to draw a correlation between "violent media" and "aggression.
5) Studies that are based on more objective criteria, like violent crime convictions, show that there is NO correlation between media exposure and violence. They ALWAYS show that violence is closely associated with the family environment, NOT media. This is why researchers like Huesman and Bushman shy away from more objective criteria.
Any news on whether or not they're going to start honoring the warranties on the eeePC?
A bit of background on this: Apparently it's not just breaking those "void warranty" stickers on the memory door that voids the warranty, but doing anything at all to the box. Several users have reported Asus refusing to honor the warranty on completely unopened and unchanged eeePCs.
Many posters don't seem to grasp what happened with the original XBOX.
When building the original XBOX, MS choose to make a very "PC like" design that was essentially a specialized Windows PC. To save time and money, rather than developing their own hardware they outsourced that task to Nvidia and Intel who adapted existing parts (the NV25 and the Celeron 733) to the XBOX. Crucially however, they did not sell the production rights of those parts to Microsoft.
Fast forward a few years. The XBOX is selling nicely and Microsoft, like most console manufacturers, wants to reduce the price of the console to sell more units. Unfortunately for MS, since they don't own the rights to the GPU and couldn't reverse-engineer it, Nvidia has them over a barrel on pricing and they refuse to reduce the cost of the GPU (I'm told they were ballsy enough to actually try to raise it). Intel was much more willing to negotiate for the CPU (because they had competitors, like AMD), but that was useless without the GPU.
Because of their inability to cost-reduce the XBOX, Microsoft kills it prematurely. That's why absolutely NO XBOX games were release after 2006. Microsoft actually paid developers to have them move their games in development to the 360.
Fast forward to the launch of the 360: Without being able to include compatible hardware in the 360, MS is forced to rely on software emulation for backwards compatibility. Emulating Intel and Nvidia hardware on a Power4 system with an ATI GPU it even more difficult than it sounds. Consequently, backwards compatibility on the 360 is less that stellar.
You could blame Microsoft for this situation because they failed to ensure they held the rights to the Nvidia GPU, but personally I blame NVIDIA for being greedy. It hurt them in the end. Ever wonder why all the next-generation console have ATI GPUs? It's because of the way NVIDIA burned MS on the XBOX.
For example: A pregnant woman is standing outside and a man walks up to her, lights a cigarette, and starts smoking. Assuming the fetus has due process rights, that now means the smoker is guilty of attempted murder. Second-hand cigarette smoke is potentially lethal to a fetus, a reasonable people should know that, and since the fetus is defined as a person you are TRYING TO KILL the fetus by smoking nearby. Of course, there is also applicable civil law so the mother could sue for harm to the fetus. The mother herself coud be charged with attempted murder if she smoked cigarettes, but she can't be imprisoned anyway (see below).
Here's another one: You can't deport or imprison pregnant women under ANY circumstances. Since the fetus is person, it is now an American citizen with full due process rights. While you could convict the mother of a crime you COULD NOT imprison her while pregnant because you would be imprisoning the fetus without due process. Ditto for deporting her. If a woman who is imprisoned becomes pregnant, she'll have to be released. I don't think the anti-abortion people really want pregnancy to be a "get out of jail free" card.
Secondly, pregnancy is not an "inconvenience". It is a potentially life-threatening medical condition. And even in the case of a perfectly healthy mother and fetus, social pressures may make it life-threatening. If you're 15, and your father is going to kill you for getting pregnant (happens ALL THE TIME) pregnancy is pretty life-threatening. You're also ignoring the very real financial hardships. You're 15, you get pregnant, and your parents throw you out of the house (again, happens ALL THE TIME) and you're living on your friend's couch. Are you really in a position to raise a child? Here's another: You're 45, married, have 6 children, and after having sex with your husband your birth control fails. Should you be forced to carry that child to term? It's dangerous to have a child at that age, you might not live to see them reach adulthood, and yet another child will bring additional financial hardships. I've always considered that consensual unprotected sex to be a sort of physical contract agreeing to pregnancy with abortion a violation of that contract at the expense of someone else's life. So what if your birth control fails? Most anti-abortion activists make no exception for failed birth control. And the abortion debate is not about how we "feel" about abortion. The debate is about whether or not we should put doctors in prison for performing abortions. Period. I don't personally have a stance on abortion. Yes, you do. You're pro-choice. The positions are very clearly defined:
Pro-life: "I want to put doctors in jail for providing abortions."
Pro-choice: "I don't want to put doctors in jail for providing abortions."
Remember, these are LAWS we're talking about here, not abstract moral principles.
Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate I'm aware of that has publicly declared that they consider privacy to be Constitutional right and has fiercely opposed Bush's internet surveillance program.
Ron Paul voted for the FISA extension that allows warrantless wiretaps (unlike Kucinich). He has also voted for numerous "save the children" Internet bills to ban online pornography. He has also voted against consumer protection regulations that would limit private business' ability to collect personal information. He's also opposed regulation which tightly controls how private business can use and handle such information (like HIPAA).
Philosophically, Ron Paul is a free-market, small-government, libertarian. This philosophical position is contrary to the notion of privacy rights because any protected right is, by definition, an expansion of legal authority. IOW, Ron Paul ostensibly supports privacy but he does not support any law that would protect privacy rights because that's "an expansion of the Federal government". This philosophical position also means that Ron Paul supports "state's rights" at the expense of HUMAN rights. For example, Ron Paul believes that states should be allowed to decide the question of gay marriage on a state-by-state basis.
Basically, Ron Paul talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.
The only reason these threats go through at all is because Jack Thompson is willing to risk is reputation and career as a lawyer to pursue them. I seriously doubt that he'll be able to convince another lawyer to do the same.
Also, being disbarred is an ENORMOUS hit on someone's reputation. A lawyer who is disbarred no longer can speak as a legal authority, and there is a general assumption that he's a "bad person" because he must have done something bad to be disbarred. Every singe interview he has from now on will mention it.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Sure, Solaris 10 has been released recently, but if you look at the rate of releases and new features over time for Solaris it's pretty slow.
On Office you're just wrong. What web protocols does Office 98 have that aren't available in Office 2007? And you're just crazy if you think StarOffice has more features than Office. Even Office 98. All the Office detractors seems to conveniently ignore all the collaboration features that have been added to Office over the years. If you ignore Project, SharePoint and Groove when you're talking about Office you're just in denial.
Visual Studio is an IDE that handles lots of languages. I'm talking about the features of the IDE itself, not Microsoft's language history. There are plenty of people that do Python development in Visual Studio. F# isn't bundled because it's too new, it will be bundled in the next version.
a) For the most part, they are *LITERALLY* gibberish. It's a very strong defense against a software audit to simply argue that the EULA isn't valid because it makes no sense or that the BSA is interpreting it incorrectly. It becomes a "he said, she said" where the BSA's expert says it means one thing and your expert says it means the exact opposite. This is easy to drag out for years. I remember a contract dispute between a company I worked for and their ISP that went on for THREE YEARS arguing over the definition of one word ("uptime").
b) Many EULAs contain terms that are flatly illegal under US law (typically they violate contract or consumer protection laws). Contracts with illegal provisions are generally invalid IN TOTAL, not just the specific provisions, so your lawyer can argue that contract is invalid because it contains illegal terms. Picking your venue helps because contract and consumer protection laws vary from state to state and companies rarely bother to make sure their EULA comply with all applicable state laws when creating their EULA (often deliberately in an attempt to cram through illegal terms).
and
c) Contracts require positive affirmation by both parties. You can't say a contract applies to someone just because you're looking at them. It is only proper software licensing agreements and contracts between the vendor and client that count. An example is the site licenses you purchase for Microsoft products. Getting this argument to work depends on your judge.
While I never encountered this with music, I HAVE personally encountered this with film. MPAA people have threated to sue me for doing a DVD screening in my own home for 10 people. A CD burner is not a circumvention device. See 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2). That section does not mention the words "CD" or "recorder". It talks about the "primary purpose" of the device. While you and I would probably agree that the "primary purpose" of CD recorders is NOT to make illegal copies, federal judges disagree and they HAVE ruled in cases that a CD recorder was/is a circumvention device. I don't know where you get the "copying one CD gets you sent to federal prison" idea. Under 17 U.S.C. 506, at minimum you need to have some financial gain or commercial interest. Again, this was changed in the Copyright Act of 1992. Commercial interest is no longer required nor is their a minimum number. While the scenario I outlined has never happened (someone being arrested for making one copy of one CD), it certainly is possible under current law. Virtually everyone arrested for copyright violation is involved in commercial distribution, except mod chip people. And, distributing that cell phone photo is NOT a crime, because the photo itself (as set up in the original article) is NOT an infringement -- it's a fair use. Sure, you could be charged, but the threshold for being charged for any thing is pretty low. Fair use is an affirmative defense. As you pointed out, you COULD be charged and then YOU would have to prove the photo is fair use. If you were not trying to do any commercial distribution, it is very likely you would win the case.
Lest you think this isn't an issue, news organizations have been sued for using short news, television, and film clips in their broadcasts even though that fair use exemption is SPECIFICALLY OUTLINED in the law. So have libraries, even though they, again, have a specific exemption.