I think the way the Supreme Court got around this argument was that if you buy out of state and have to pay a tax to use it, and I buy in state, then things are still equal monetarily: You don't have to pay sales tax (if you paid sales tax on the out of state purchase, in some states your use tax will be waived, and in other states the sales tax will be deducted from your use tax, though alas you don't get anything back if the result is negative), while I don't have to pay use tax; you have to pay use tax, while I have to pay sales tax. The net payments are the same.
I worry that this reasoning may contradictorily treat the use tax and sales tax as the same and as not the same. It's treated as the same for the purposes of equal protection and all that. It's treated as not the same for the purpose of allowing the state to tax an out-of-state purchase. But I haven't read the Supreme Court decision itself, and anyway I'm not a lawyer, so what do I know?
If it's on the state income tax return (it isn't in my state, actually, because my state doesn't have an income tax), and you leave it blank, I think you are committing perjury when you sign the tax return. I don't see anything immoral in imposing such taxes. As for constitutionality, that may be as it is (though the Supreme Court has ruled it's constitutional), but it's no excuse for perjury. As for unenforceability, that you won't get caught is no excuse for lawbreaking.
In AZTEC code, with 25% redundancy for error correction, you can fit 3000 bytes per large bar code, and about 12 bar codes on a page, so that's 36000 bytes per acid-free page. If the jpeg is low enough resolution and quality, you can fit one per page. If not, you may need a bunch of pages per photo. Then just include a printout of the AZTEC spec and the source code for an AZTEC recognizer (say, one that goes from a tiff scan to the binary data on the page; for good measure, include printouts of the tiff and jpeg specs) in ANSI C or FORTRAN-77 or something like that (you can include the language spec, but that's going overboard; you can count on C being still available in 30 years, I think) and printed in a clear, serifed, easily-scannable font, also on acid free paper. For good measure, throw in ten copies of the CD, with a lot of error correcting data if you like, and two CD drives.:-)
Personally, I wish all online retailers would collect the sales or use tax, assuming it's constitutional for them to do so. It's a nuisance to have to keep a notebook of all internet purchases, and then to have to annually add it all up, fill out a use tax return, and send it with a check to the state. Moreover, it's annoying vis-a-vis the monthly budget to have to estimate use taxes.
The idea behind a use tax is that it is not the purchase that is taxed, but the use of the purchased item, but the tax is waived in cases where a sales tax has been purchased. Apparently, the Supreme Court in 1996 (http://evans-legal.com/dan/papptax.html) said that this is OK as long as the use tax compensates for a differential tax burden between in-state companies (which must collect sales tax) and out-of-state companies (which don't). I am not sure I buy this reasoning, but I am not a lawyer.
I think buildings and streets tend to be aligned with true north/south, not magnetic north/south. I am not sure how much stuff other than magnetic fields and their detectors is aligned with magnetic north/south.
Any hypothesis involving only sun position would only yield geographic north-south alignment, while apparently this research found magnetic north-south alignment.
IANAL, but DMCA is about copyright, not trademark. If that's right, then even if there were a real trademark violation, they can't file a DMCA notice on the basis of trademark on the rings.
I wonder about the wording. "'Chemical laboratory apparatus' means any item of equipment designed, made, or adapted to manufacture a controlled substance or a controlled substance analogue, including: (A) a condenser; (B) a distilling apparatus [etc.]". Does that mean that condensers, distilling apparatuses and the like are OK if they are not "designed, made, or adapted to manufacture a controlled substance or a controlled substance analogue"? Or does it maybe not matter whether your particular condenser is designed, made or adapted for this purpose, because some condensers are designed, made or adapted for this purpose?
The law still seems a bit problematic. Suppose that a historian has on her hard drive a manuscript she wrote about the causes of the Great Fire of Rome of AD 64. Unfortunately, she accidentally deleted some of the information in the manuscript, and then saved the modified version. She had, furthmore, originally obtained that information from a source that is no longer easily available to her (e.g., a manuscript in a library that is restrictive about access). So she hires a computer consultant to look through the vacant areas of the hard drive to try to find that information. IANAL, but it seems to me that the consultant has "accept[ed] employment to obtain or furnish information related to... the cause or responsibility for a fire...", which is sufficient to ensure that the consultant "acts as an investigations company for the purposes of" this law.
In fact, interestingly, it looks to me that by this law, many historians will themselves count as acting as investigations companies, since they seek to "obtain or furnish, information related to:... the cause or responsibility for a fire, libel, loss, accident, damage, or injury to a person or to property". Every war historian is obviously interested in causes of damages or injuries to persons or property, for instance. It seems, thus, that by Section 1702.101 (which requires licenses for those who act as investigations companyies), every war historian needs an investigations company license.
I have not been able to find anybody willing to press discs in quantities lower than about 150. Pressing discs in quantities of, say, 5 would be a nice service for archival purposes, but it would presumably be expensive, since I think the setup costs for pressing discs are high.
Did the players get to choose the color? If so, then it could be a selection effect (better players choosing red as expressive of their confidence; angrier players being both better and more likely to choose red; who knows).
I think this is a real worry, but it applies to other company's SDK licenses. For instance, the PalmOS SDK license has a similar non-disclosure provision, also with an exception for what is publicly known. This is mainly moot now that all of the official PalmOS API docs are found on the net without any click-through licenses, and I don't think this provision has ever bothered Open Source developers, but it does strike me that at one point this should have been a real issue.
A different kind of free-software related concern is the dependence of the availability of the SDK on Apple. This is unavoidable, and seems to be the case for almost all SDKs I know, but it does mean that if Apple ever stops distributing the SDK, new developers will be unable to modify Open Source software. (This is a real issue with other SDKs. For instance, Sony no longer distributes the Sony CLIE SDK, and this makes it hard for PalmOS developers to compile software that uses the SDK.) My ideal SDK for Open Source software would have a provision that would allow free unmodified redistribution of the SDK in case it is not available from the company that originally made it available.
For those who have already been paying use tax--it is required by law in many states--it will be really convenient to have it collected by the seller. It is a big nuisance to have to write down every untaxed online household purchase in a notebook, then add them all up annually, fill out a use tax form, and write check.
That is how some j2me implementations work. But some implementations restrict some APIs to signed applications. For instance, Sprint does this with A-GPS. (But a developer certificate is enough if one's phone is enabled for testing.)
PalmOS does not normally allow switching between multiple loaded apps (one can simulate it, because a PalmOS apps are supposed to be designed to save and restore state), or using multiple threads. One can to some extent get around this through doing undocumented things, and using documented APIs one can have inactive apps respond to notifications. But basically, it's one app at a time. So it's not really true that ALL the other smartphone APIs can handle backgrounding, at least not in any full sense.
Can't Blizzard argue that it would have been impossible in practice to get Glider working without testing it, and testing it would have involved a WoW ToS violation by the Glider developer? Thus, the fact that Glider works is evidence that the Glider developer violated the ToS?
Or more simply, bring an ipod with linux (or so one of the linked articles, or maybe something it links to, suggests), and plug it in. Presumably this is faster than booting a live CD. It also gets around any BIOS password.
Some commenters note that this is a feature of Firewire. But would there be any problem with MS just disabling the port whenever the system is password locked, unless there is something already plugged into the port when the system was locked (after all, there might be a Firewire HD plugged in, and a process writing to it). Probably the best way to handle the latter case would be to watch for an unplug event when the system is locked, and then disable the port as soon as the device is unplugged. This is very simple, and I don't see any downside to it.
I don't actually get this. C programming is conceptually very simple. The most difficult concepts for a beginner are, I think, data/function pointers and structs, and these concepts strike me as conceptually very simple compared to the levels of abstraction involved in OO programming (inheritance, etc.)
I find the concepts of OO programming intimidating. I am an experienced C programmer, particularly on the PalmOS platform where I am involved in a number of non-trivial open source projects, and I've done some pretty hard programming in Z80 and 8086 assembler, eking out every cycle, implementing low level Z80 libraries for an embedded device (Sharp Wizard 7xx), and writing email-safe 8086 code (at some point my printable-ASCII-only uudecode.com binary was included in the comp.sys.binaries.ibm.pc starter kit).
I learned to program C shortly before C++ became popular. I started learning C++, but didn't really need it for anything I cared much about.
So I think it is quite a mistake to think of C as harder than java. Granted, some tasks are easy in java and hard in C. But to program in java, or any other OO language, can involve rather harder conceptual thought, while in C it just takes grunt work (more than grunt work to do it efficiently and elegantly, of course). Likewise event-driven GUI programming seems to me conceptually significantly harder than writing console utilities.
So I don't think teaching java should be thought of as a dumbing down. From point of view, C is the easy stuff.
The TS 2068 had a backspace, but you needed to use a modifier key to access it. I have a vague muscle memory of a right-thumb plus middle finger combination...
I like the windows key under Windows.:-) Windows-D to show the desktop is handy (works on my KDE system, too). So is Windows-E to launch a file browser.
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I think the way the Supreme Court got around this argument was that if you buy out of state and have to pay a tax to use it, and I buy in state, then things are still equal monetarily: You don't have to pay sales tax (if you paid sales tax on the out of state purchase, in some states your use tax will be waived, and in other states the sales tax will be deducted from your use tax, though alas you don't get anything back if the result is negative), while I don't have to pay use tax; you have to pay use tax, while I have to pay sales tax. The net payments are the same.
I worry that this reasoning may contradictorily treat the use tax and sales tax as the same and as not the same. It's treated as the same for the purposes of equal protection and all that. It's treated as not the same for the purpose of allowing the state to tax an out-of-state purchase. But I haven't read the Supreme Court decision itself, and anyway I'm not a lawyer, so what do I know?
If it's on the state income tax return (it isn't in my state, actually, because my state doesn't have an income tax), and you leave it blank, I think you are committing perjury when you sign the tax return. I don't see anything immoral in imposing such taxes. As for constitutionality, that may be as it is (though the Supreme Court has ruled it's constitutional), but it's no excuse for perjury. As for unenforceability, that you won't get caught is no excuse for lawbreaking.
In AZTEC code, with 25% redundancy for error correction, you can fit 3000 bytes per large bar code, and about 12 bar codes on a page, so that's 36000 bytes per acid-free page. If the jpeg is low enough resolution and quality, you can fit one per page. If not, you may need a bunch of pages per photo. Then just include a printout of the AZTEC spec and the source code for an AZTEC recognizer (say, one that goes from a tiff scan to the binary data on the page; for good measure, include printouts of the tiff and jpeg specs) in ANSI C or FORTRAN-77 or something like that (you can include the language spec, but that's going overboard; you can count on C being still available in 30 years, I think) and printed in a clear, serifed, easily-scannable font, also on acid free paper. For good measure, throw in ten copies of the CD, with a lot of error correcting data if you like, and two CD drives. :-)
Personally, I wish all online retailers would collect the sales or use tax, assuming it's constitutional for them to do so. It's a nuisance to have to keep a notebook of all internet purchases, and then to have to annually add it all up, fill out a use tax return, and send it with a check to the state. Moreover, it's annoying vis-a-vis the monthly budget to have to estimate use taxes.
The idea behind a use tax is that it is not the purchase that is taxed, but the use of the purchased item, but the tax is waived in cases where a sales tax has been purchased. Apparently, the Supreme Court in 1996 (http://evans-legal.com/dan/papptax.html) said that this is OK as long as the use tax compensates for a differential tax burden between in-state companies (which must collect sales tax) and out-of-state companies (which don't). I am not sure I buy this reasoning, but I am not a lawyer.
I think buildings and streets tend to be aligned with true north/south, not magnetic north/south. I am not sure how much stuff other than magnetic fields and their detectors is aligned with magnetic north/south.
Any hypothesis involving only sun position would only yield geographic north-south alignment, while apparently this research found magnetic north-south alignment.
IANAL, but DMCA is about copyright, not trademark. If that's right, then even if there were a real trademark violation, they can't file a DMCA notice on the basis of trademark on the rings.
I wonder about the wording. "'Chemical laboratory apparatus' means any item of equipment designed, made, or adapted to manufacture a controlled substance or a controlled substance analogue, including: (A) a condenser; (B) a distilling apparatus [etc.]". Does that mean that condensers, distilling apparatuses and the like are OK if they are not "designed, made, or adapted to manufacture a controlled substance or a controlled substance analogue"? Or does it maybe not matter whether your particular condenser is designed, made or adapted for this purpose, because some condensers are designed, made or adapted for this purpose?
The law still seems a bit problematic. Suppose that a historian has on her hard drive a manuscript she wrote about the causes of the Great Fire of Rome of AD 64. Unfortunately, she accidentally deleted some of the information in the manuscript, and then saved the modified version. She had, furthmore, originally obtained that information from a source that is no longer easily available to her (e.g., a manuscript in a library that is restrictive about access). So she hires a computer consultant to look through the vacant areas of the hard drive to try to find that information. IANAL, but it seems to me that the consultant has "accept[ed] employment to obtain or furnish information related to ... the cause or responsibility for a fire ...", which is sufficient to ensure that the consultant "acts as an investigations company for the purposes of" this law.
In fact, interestingly, it looks to me that by this law, many historians will themselves count as acting as investigations companies, since they seek to "obtain or furnish, information related to: ... the cause or responsibility for a fire, libel, loss, accident, damage, or injury to a person or to property". Every war historian is obviously interested in causes of damages or injuries to persons or property, for instance. It seems, thus, that by Section 1702.101 (which requires licenses for those who act as investigations companyies), every war historian needs an investigations company license.
What am I missing?
I have not been able to find anybody willing to press discs in quantities lower than about 150. Pressing discs in quantities of, say, 5 would be a nice service for archival purposes, but it would presumably be expensive, since I think the setup costs for pressing discs are high.
Did the players get to choose the color? If so, then it could be a selection effect (better players choosing red as expressive of their confidence; angrier players being both better and more likely to choose red; who knows).
Is there an advantage over just plugging one's laptop's TV-out into the TV, and plugging speakers into the laptop?
How about a Sharp Zaurus handheld? Roughly the same specs as the Netbook, though perhaps physically smaller, but it's Linux based.
I think this is a real worry, but it applies to other company's SDK licenses. For instance, the PalmOS SDK license has a similar non-disclosure provision, also with an exception for what is publicly known. This is mainly moot now that all of the official PalmOS API docs are found on the net without any click-through licenses, and I don't think this provision has ever bothered Open Source developers, but it does strike me that at one point this should have been a real issue.
A different kind of free-software related concern is the dependence of the availability of the SDK on Apple. This is unavoidable, and seems to be the case for almost all SDKs I know, but it does mean that if Apple ever stops distributing the SDK, new developers will be unable to modify Open Source software. (This is a real issue with other SDKs. For instance, Sony no longer distributes the Sony CLIE SDK, and this makes it hard for PalmOS developers to compile software that uses the SDK.) My ideal SDK for Open Source software would have a provision that would allow free unmodified redistribution of the SDK in case it is not available from the company that originally made it available.
For those who have already been paying use tax--it is required by law in many states--it will be really convenient to have it collected by the seller. It is a big nuisance to have to write down every untaxed online household purchase in a notebook, then add them all up annually, fill out a use tax form, and write check.
That is how some j2me implementations work. But some implementations restrict some APIs to signed applications. For instance, Sprint does this with A-GPS. (But a developer certificate is enough if one's phone is enabled for testing.)
PalmOS does not normally allow switching between multiple loaded apps (one can simulate it, because a PalmOS apps are supposed to be designed to save and restore state), or using multiple threads. One can to some extent get around this through doing undocumented things, and using documented APIs one can have inactive apps respond to notifications. But basically, it's one app at a time. So it's not really true that ALL the other smartphone APIs can handle backgrounding, at least not in any full sense.
Can't Blizzard argue that it would have been impossible in practice to get Glider working without testing it, and testing it would have involved a WoW ToS violation by the Glider developer? Thus, the fact that Glider works is evidence that the Glider developer violated the ToS?
Can't the OS immediately disable the second connection as soon as notices a plug-in event?
Or more simply, bring an ipod with linux (or so one of the linked articles, or maybe something it links to, suggests), and plug it in. Presumably this is faster than booting a live CD. It also gets around any BIOS password.
Some commenters note that this is a feature of Firewire. But would there be any problem with MS just disabling the port whenever the system is password locked, unless there is something already plugged into the port when the system was locked (after all, there might be a Firewire HD plugged in, and a process writing to it). Probably the best way to handle the latter case would be to watch for an unplug event when the system is locked, and then disable the port as soon as the device is unplugged. This is very simple, and I don't see any downside to it.
I don't actually get this. C programming is conceptually very simple. The most difficult concepts for a beginner are, I think, data/function pointers and structs, and these concepts strike me as conceptually very simple compared to the levels of abstraction involved in OO programming (inheritance, etc.)
I find the concepts of OO programming intimidating. I am an experienced C programmer, particularly on the PalmOS platform where I am involved in a number of non-trivial open source projects, and I've done some pretty hard programming in Z80 and 8086 assembler, eking out every cycle, implementing low level Z80 libraries for an embedded device (Sharp Wizard 7xx), and writing email-safe 8086 code (at some point my printable-ASCII-only uudecode.com binary was included in the comp.sys.binaries.ibm.pc starter kit).
I learned to program C shortly before C++ became popular. I started learning C++, but didn't really need it for anything I cared much about.
So I think it is quite a mistake to think of C as harder than java. Granted, some tasks are easy in java and hard in C. But to program in java, or any other OO language, can involve rather harder conceptual thought, while in C it just takes grunt work (more than grunt work to do it efficiently and elegantly, of course). Likewise event-driven GUI programming seems to me conceptually significantly harder than writing console utilities.
So I don't think teaching java should be thought of as a dumbing down. From point of view, C is the easy stuff.
The TS 2068 had a backspace, but you needed to use a modifier key to access it. I have a vague muscle memory of a right-thumb plus middle finger combination...
I like the windows key under Windows. :-) Windows-D to show the desktop is handy (works on my KDE system, too). So is Windows-E to launch a file browser.