Tested and verified scientific finding, my ass. Until someone devises a way to travel into the past, I don't think we'll be verifying anything. What pisses off people who believe in intelligent design is not people who don't believe in intelligent design, but people who are trying to completely erase their beliefs from the curriculum. I'll be the first to admit, intelligent design is more of a philisophical belief than a scientific theory, but I don't think that means it shouldn't be allowed to be spoken of in a science class. Most of our sciences involve a certain amount of philosphy. For example, if you know anything about psychology, then it's obvious that philosophy is a huge part of that field. What it comes down to is a that a lot of people don't even want to consider the possibility that their own beliefs are incorrect, whether that be their belief in a creator, or their belief in the non-existance of such a creator, and people trying to erase intelligent design from the curriculum are just as close-minded and just as guilty of forcing their beliefs on others as those who try to erase evolutionary theory from the curiculum
You know, you're probably right in some cases about aethiests who want to push their views on christians, and I'd bet that plenty of aethiests have seen the worst side of christian fundamentalism enough, that they have become a counterpart, even though they are reacting to the 1% who annoyed them, and not to the 99% who didn't.
With that being said, science is not anti-religion. It isn't pro-religion. It's science. Why should Intelligent Design be removed from a sceince curriculum? For the same reason it should be removed from a math curriculum, or an English curriculum, or any other curriculum...Because it isn't science.
If we begin giving "equal time" (for those of you who remember the old news concept) to those who's religious beliefs dispute science, then nothing will be taught because all out time will be taken up by the buddists, scientoligists, those damned amish (just kidding), muslims, and every other religion in that wants to dispute the mthod or timing, or consequences, or who simply feels the need to fish for sme converts
Many don't believe that humans first appeared 6000 years ago, or that the universe was created in exactly six days. These are most likely metaphores, as is much of the bible. While other parts of the bible are clearly intended to be taken as fact.
As a aethiest, I was with you until you got to this point.Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but it sounds like you're making the argument that part of the bible is symbolic, and part of it must be interpreted literally. I hear that quite a bit, especially, when people are asked if they believe that man came about within a week of the earth's creation. Most of them will say that they believe in dinosaurs, and they will say that the "seven days" figure referenced in both versions of the story of creation could be accurate because, in the bible, there is a quote that says that, to God, a day is like a million years and a year is like a second (forgive me for my bad paraphrasing), so, maybe when the Bible said "seven days" they meant "millions of years and there were lots of dinoasaurs". The problem is that everything that has not been disproven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is taken literally.
I don't see where the contradiction occurs. In the bible, it says that for each step of the creation process, God said "let x happen", and then, he/she/it watched the process unfold, as if the entity were following orders. If this is a god that gave us free will because he wanted to see what choices we would make, and who works in mysterious ways, that usually appear to be no intervention at all, then why wouldn't such a being, having infinite patience, just watch, to see what evolves?
Of course, I'm not a christian, but I still don't see why evolution is seen as a heretic idea
Firstly, It has yet to be shown that RandomDownloaderX would have paid for it
IANAL, but I did have a short summer class.:)
minor correction: In order for it to be classified as theft, a claim such as what you said above would be true, but not when it is being prosecuted as copyright infringement.
Just to clarify, in court, one doesn't have to show that a "pirate" would have bought the product, and, one doesn't even have to show that damage has been done. If one were to prove that filesharing helped the music industry, they would still have the right to sue and fine filesharers under the current laws.
"Intellectual property" is a term invented by the people you're shilling for. It's not a real thing that can be removed from someone's posession, thus is not a valid target for "theft." "Income" is only such AFTER it is in the hands of the one earning it. Until that point, GP is right, it is "*potential* income," so unless the downloaders are reaching into the RIAA's pockets and pulling out wads of cash, they aren't committing "theft" there either.
In the constitution, copyright laws were devised as a way "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries..." (notice, no reference to composers, musicians, or programmers...ACTIVIST JUDGES at work, my friends). In short, it was about the government trying to promote a social good, and not about property protection. In a way, you could say that "the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" is the definition of Intellectual Property.
The point is that theft is about taking something away. If I go to a public library and memorize a book that you wrote, that doesn't deprive you of the knowledge contained within the book (which is what I'm being accused of stealing). It may cause you to gain fewer profits, in much the same way a bad book review may do, but it isn't the same as stealing.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir, here, but I had two cents and decided to throw them in.
BTW, i do not believe in intelligent design, and my point was not to claim that the inability to prove "theory/hypothesis A" is proof of "theory/hypothesis B" (that would be unfairly biased against both "A" and all the other hypotheses). My point was that, if we found that man and dinosaurs existed at the same time, that would disprove one view of the pre-historic timeline, but the theory of evolution is not dependant on the idea that man came after the dinosaur (and, for the record, I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm not really speculating that man and dino co-existed).
You do have a good point that spontaneous evolution, or divine intervention could disprove evolution, but I still have trouble seeing any other way to disprove the theory. It is nearly impossible to prove an absolute negative.
Dumb, but serious question:
How would evidence that man existed at the same time as dinosaurs disprove evolution?
It seems that disproving evolution would be just as difficult as disproving the existence of a supreme being (or maybe disproving the Battlestar Galactica theory of the origins of human life on earth).
Re:You don't drill them, you test them.
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is what drove my crazy this year. It was my first year as a substitute k-6 teacher, and I hated going to a class and seeing some kids that could barely recognize letters in a grade 1 class vs others who could complete math designed for Grade 3 children. I wish the education system was more fluid, particularly in the younger grades, so that children with the same abilities could be in the same classes. Nothing is more difficult than trying to teach kids on a topic when everyone is not on the same page. I mean why the hell do they need to stay in the same class just because they are the same age? In almost any other activity you partake in you are assigned a group based purely on your achievement level, not based on your age. Groups created that way are more fair to those learning, and to those teaching.
(forgive me for stating the obvious) The problem is the level of granularity. You go for a year and either you pass for the entire year, or you fail the entire year. I can see how a teacher may not have the guts to do this to a small child.
Maybe if the classes weren't divided into grades, but were instead divided into semesters or smaller units, then, being held back wouldn't be as big an issue. There is a world of difference between failing the fourth grade, and failing the 1st semester of arithematic.
Heh, you obviously never played rolemaster! Nope, I almost finished creating a character, but when I got to the past background table, I rolled a 16353; "mugged by an eskimo fisherman, and in a strange stroke of irony, clubbed to death by a baby seal"
I will likely stick with the original manuals and my creativity and leave it at that. Besides by burning hatred for WotC, I feel AD&D has been mismanaged to the hilt ever since Gygax left and I'd rather play old-school with plain blue dice from the D&D boxed set than electronic doo-dads, manuals taking all the creativity out of everything down to the smallest thing, and AD&D being made more like M:tG than the trippy blaze your own trail thing it used to be.
Sorry to hear about the Gary Gygax thing, but there were two versions of dnd back in the Gary Gygax days:
1. Basic dnd, where every race was a class with no potential to be anything else. Personally, I think THAT limited creativity by forcing all other races to conform to a single stereotype.
2. Advanced dnd, in which it seemed like the goal was to cram as many rules into a system as possible. If he had stayed and kept making modifications, it may have eventually eveolved into RoleMaster. Scary thought.
IMHO, 2nd edition was crap, but WOTC made some nice improvements in third edition by wiping the slate clean and trying to reimagine the game.
And as for the manuals, they can't infuse creativity into a mediocre campaign, but a good GM draws inspiration from several sources. For example, my group is currently playing a homebrewed setting based primarily on a mix of influences ranging from sci-fi shows like babylon 5 and farscape to Lord of the Rings, anime, current events, and who knows what else. Anyway, the point is that creativity is only hindered when the GM sees a limited number of references as the "true canon" of what gaming should be.
One of the places where I think the two of us could agree is in the suggestion that, if a GM could only read one book (other than the player's handbook and DMG), he or she would be better off reading a good fantasy or sci-fi novel than the DMG2
Now, the part about money being a form of speech is ridiculous. If I bribe a judge, sure, that's my way of telling him that I really, really, really want him to vote my way, but it's still bribery.
The first amendment does not claim that every form of speech is legal no matter what the occasion. If that were the case, then it would be legal to shout fire in a theatre, or to tell a bank teller that you have a gun in your pocket and are willing to shoot her if she doesn't give you all of her "speech".
o When properly used, it created many ambigious meanings, which defeated the whole purpose of using it. Most of these ambiguities centered around various pointer constructs, which is supposedly one of the major areas which it attempts to address. Basically, HN is broken right out of the gate
1. As for point number one, hungarian notation may create ambiguous meanings with pointer to pointer constructs, but how would a well named variable get around that without violatng rule number two.
o It often required more typing, which slowed development and increased typo error rates. Which, in turn, required another round of typo fixing and compile attempts.
2. Good point, but if you plan to put any identifying information in the variable name, then you're going to run into the same problems mentioned under your first and fourth bullets. Also, is it that time consuming to have to fix a few typos and then recompile? Your compiler will probably direct you to the line where the typo occurred (unless you're using one of the languages that does not require you to declare variables)
o While HN provides "instant" type information, it's often harder to read, especially for complex types, requiring much longer than an "instant" duration to comprehend or extract the information that it's attempting to provide.
3. I agree with you 100 percent on this point.
I remember reading DD mag years ago. They had a series of articles on why HN sucked. For me, the ones that really stuck in my head were:
o Maintaining code is very problematic. Changing the type of a variable may result in changes in countless files. This increases development time. It also causes a lot of garbage to be created in RC logs, which may of otherwise required changes in as little as one file.
4. I agree with you, but if your variables are to have any "type identification information" in their names, then this problem will occur regardless of the standard (or lack thereof). Also, a decent IDE, or even a decent word processor will provide you with a replace function. You're talking about a fifteen minute job at most.
Put a write-protected tape (like the movies rented from a video store) any in semi-modern VCR and viola! Autoplay! This is obviously an example of prior art. I am not a lawyer, btw, but, in order for TVI to win this case, they would have to prove that the idea is more than just an adaption of what VCRs have been doing for years.
PS, this same concept is also found in DVD players, and CD players
the real irony of the 4 minute 27 second "offense" was that the judge was at home asleep at the time, and the only way he knew it was late was when he checked the e-mail the next morning.
Re:Spill coffee, get rich.
on
RIAA Bits
·
· Score: 1
Oops, I should have changed the wording on that a little bit. In my example, i reference a hypothetical tort reform and may have made it sound like the law has actually passed in some area. The tort reform law mentioned there was just a hypothetical law that has been endorsed as a means of "fixing" our legal system, but has not necessarily been passed.
Re:Spill coffee, get rich.
on
RIAA Bits
·
· Score: 1
There is more to the coffee argument than just a matter of whether it was served to a person in a car or spilled. The coffee was kept at a ridiculously high temperature because it would cause the coffee to keep it's "freshness" (or whatever coffee has) longer.
Other resteraunts serve their coffee at a temperature about fifty degree lower (at least they did at the time, McDonalds may have lowered the temprerature of their coffee since then). Also, the money McDonalds was fined was equal to two days worth of profit for their coffee alone.
My concern about tort reform is that we will have an artificial limit placed by people who have little or no understanding of the system. For example, a billion dollar corporation fails to recall an item known to be dangerous and a customer gets killed or mamed for life. Well, since we have tort reform, that life is worth a maximum of $250,000, which is a slap on the wrist to the company that caused the damage. In short, most of the obscenely high dollar amounts you hear about in court cases are as high as they are because the company makes an obscene amount of money, and the court wants them to lose enough money so that they might consider changing their practices.
> now, if he is serious about pulling this through > (for smaller updates) people sould make > complaints to the local organizations or > officials depending on the country that look > after consumer rights, it is not legal to sell a > product that is defective (has major flaws) and > then charge for fixing it. if your car's engine > has a manufacturing flaw, it is the > manufacturers(importers) responsibility to take > care of it.
The only problem is that if you look at micorosoft's EULA [1], it says that there is no guarantee that the product will work, and you give up any warantees or rights on day one. It's unfortunate, but I'd bet they could legally get around any consumer protection law.
1. (and courts seem to be treating EULAs as legally binding)
And does anyone actually believe that the fossil fuels industry will lie down and let this happen without a fight?
Sure they will. Oil Companies love hydrogen fuel cells. It's at least twenty years away and it distracts our attention away from hybrid electric cars that are on the market right now.
Have you noticed that GWB has increased funding toward hydrogen development (because he's an environmentalist!). Meanwhile, nothing is being done to help promote hybrid vehicles. And SUVs, because of their classification as a small truck, are immune to many of the emissions standards currently in place, and can be written off as a tax deduction for small business owners
      I'm sure all of you have tried to install one product and had another placed on your system without your permission. Examples are Real-Player, Winamp, and AOL instant messenger (all of which included with Netscape) MSIE (included with windows), and Gator (included with several internet programs)
      And more companies are doing more annoying things every day just to push their product on you. Since the protection requires you to have a "key" before a protected file can be moved copied or deleted, does that mean it would be possible for companies to install programs on your system and make it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) to remove them from your hard drive?
      I hope nobody in the music industry reads that article. Having chips, hardware and operating systems embedded with copyright technology? That's ridiculous. The only way the music industry could accomplish that feat is with a new law. And it would be political suicide to pass it.
      As for the proposal about ISPs charging per bandwidth, OMG, that could happen. The worst part is that the crappy ISPs in my town would use that law as an excuse to make extra profit. Imagine having to pay for each visit to slashdot.com. Or having to pay for the amount of data transferred when you check your E-Mail, or when your instant messenger pings it's server.
      I'm sure that an ISP could easily come up with a fair system to charge only for the copyrighted material downloaded, but why would they? Most of them do not have decent competition and all they have to do is make up a number and list it as "Bandwidth usuage fee."
      The real question is what improvements are necesary. I see people coming up with arbitrary figures such as "there should be a new release every 18 months," when the real issue is "what changes will be made and how long will they take"
      The only people who need to follow any given time-frame are companies who want to keep profits rolling in in steady proprtions
But, neither should we want all those startup messages everytime we boot. What we should be striving for is a boot process that just does what it's supposed to - boot the computer and get the user to a state of working usefulness. If there are problems, you can flip a switch that provides diagnostics to send to someone
First off, let me say i'm not a programmer, butif I understand the gist of the startup routine, things are checked, and one of two responses is returned. Pass (which = good) and fail (which = bad). You could easily modify the code so it only alerts you if something fails right?
How about modifying it so that it appends the start-up information to a log file? Well, it's just a couple of suggestions.
Can i get a patent on a pair of lips, my a$$, and a combination of the two?
      I just don't get this whole thing. It sounds as though ANY HTML enabled web browser is now an infringement on a copyright agreement...what a load of crap!
      As for genetic patents, companies have already found genetic defects responsible for some diseases, and they have patented these things. Just a good way to make money off of human suffering. Business as usual
Slashdot Mirror
You know, you're probably right in some cases about aethiests who want to push their views on christians, and I'd bet that plenty of aethiests have seen the worst side of christian fundamentalism enough, that they have become a counterpart, even though they are reacting to the 1% who annoyed them, and not to the 99% who didn't.
With that being said, science is not anti-religion. It isn't pro-religion. It's science. Why should Intelligent Design be removed from a sceince curriculum? For the same reason it should be removed from a math curriculum, or an English curriculum, or any other curriculum...Because it isn't science.
If we begin giving "equal time" (for those of you who remember the old news concept) to those who's religious beliefs dispute science, then nothing will be taught because all out time will be taken up by the buddists, scientoligists, those damned amish (just kidding), muslims, and every other religion in that wants to dispute the mthod or timing, or consequences, or who simply feels the need to fish for sme converts
As a aethiest, I was with you until you got to this point.Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but it sounds like you're making the argument that part of the bible is symbolic, and part of it must be interpreted literally. I hear that quite a bit, especially, when people are asked if they believe that man came about within a week of the earth's creation. Most of them will say that they believe in dinosaurs, and they will say that the "seven days" figure referenced in both versions of the story of creation could be accurate because, in the bible, there is a quote that says that, to God, a day is like a million years and a year is like a second (forgive me for my bad paraphrasing), so, maybe when the Bible said "seven days" they meant "millions of years and there were lots of dinoasaurs". The problem is that everything that has not been disproven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is taken literally.
I don't see where the contradiction occurs. In the bible, it says that for each step of the creation process, God said "let x happen", and then, he/she/it watched the process unfold, as if the entity were following orders. If this is a god that gave us free will because he wanted to see what choices we would make, and who works in mysterious ways, that usually appear to be no intervention at all, then why wouldn't such a being, having infinite patience, just watch, to see what evolves?
Of course, I'm not a christian, but I still don't see why evolution is seen as a heretic idea
IANAL, but I did have a short summer class. :)
minor correction: In order for it to be classified as theft, a claim such as what you said above would be true, but not when it is being prosecuted as copyright infringement.
Just to clarify, in court, one doesn't have to show that a "pirate" would have bought the product, and, one doesn't even have to show that damage has been done. If one were to prove that filesharing helped the music industry, they would still have the right to sue and fine filesharers under the current laws.
"Intellectual property" is a term invented by the people you're shilling for. It's not a real thing that can be removed from someone's posession, thus is not a valid target for "theft." "Income" is only such AFTER it is in the hands of the one earning it. Until that point, GP is right, it is "*potential* income," so unless the downloaders are reaching into the RIAA's pockets and pulling out wads of cash, they aren't committing "theft" there either.In the constitution, copyright laws were devised as a way "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries..." (notice, no reference to composers, musicians, or programmers...ACTIVIST JUDGES at work, my friends). In short, it was about the government trying to promote a social good, and not about property protection. In a way, you could say that "the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" is the definition of Intellectual Property.
The point is that theft is about taking something away. If I go to a public library and memorize a book that you wrote, that doesn't deprive you of the knowledge contained within the book (which is what I'm being accused of stealing). It may cause you to gain fewer profits, in much the same way a bad book review may do, but it isn't the same as stealing.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir, here, but I had two cents and decided to throw them in.
You do have a good point that spontaneous evolution, or divine intervention could disprove evolution, but I still have trouble seeing any other way to disprove the theory. It is nearly impossible to prove an absolute negative.
Dumb, but serious question: How would evidence that man existed at the same time as dinosaurs disprove evolution? It seems that disproving evolution would be just as difficult as disproving the existence of a supreme being (or maybe disproving the Battlestar Galactica theory of the origins of human life on earth).
(forgive me for stating the obvious) The problem is the level of granularity. You go for a year and either you pass for the entire year, or you fail the entire year. I can see how a teacher may not have the guts to do this to a small child.
Maybe if the classes weren't divided into grades, but were instead divided into semesters or smaller units, then, being held back wouldn't be as big an issue. There is a world of difference between failing the fourth grade, and failing the 1st semester of arithematic.
Heh, you obviously never played rolemaster!
Nope, I almost finished creating a character, but when I got to the past background table, I rolled a 16353; "mugged by an eskimo fisherman, and in a strange stroke of irony, clubbed to death by a baby seal"
Sorry to hear about the Gary Gygax thing, but there were two versions of dnd back in the Gary Gygax days:
1. Basic dnd, where every race was a class with no potential to be anything else. Personally, I think THAT limited creativity by forcing all other races to conform to a single stereotype.
2. Advanced dnd, in which it seemed like the goal was to cram as many rules into a system as possible. If he had stayed and kept making modifications, it may have eventually eveolved into RoleMaster. Scary thought.
IMHO, 2nd edition was crap, but WOTC made some nice improvements in third edition by wiping the slate clean and trying to reimagine the game.
And as for the manuals, they can't infuse creativity into a mediocre campaign, but a good GM draws inspiration from several sources. For example, my group is currently playing a homebrewed setting based primarily on a mix of influences ranging from sci-fi shows like babylon 5 and farscape to Lord of the Rings, anime, current events, and who knows what else. Anyway, the point is that creativity is only hindered when the GM sees a limited number of references as the "true canon" of what gaming should be.
One of the places where I think the two of us could agree is in the suggestion that, if a GM could only read one book (other than the player's handbook and DMG), he or she would be better off reading a good fantasy or sci-fi novel than the DMG2
The first amendment does not claim that every form of speech is legal no matter what the occasion. If that were the case, then it would be legal to shout fire in a theatre, or to tell a bank teller that you have a gun in your pocket and are willing to shoot her if she doesn't give you all of her "speech".
...when compared to Microsoft's prices.
2. Good point, but if you plan to put any identifying information in the variable name, then you're going to run into the same problems mentioned under your first and fourth bullets.
Also, is it that time consuming to have to fix a few typos and then recompile? Your compiler will probably direct you to the line where the typo occurred (unless you're using one of the languages that does not require you to declare variables)
3. I agree with you 100 percent on this point.
4. I agree with you, but if your variables are to have any "type identification information" in their names, then this problem will occur regardless of the standard (or lack thereof).
Also, a decent IDE, or even a decent word processor will provide you with a replace function. You're talking about a fifteen minute job at most.
Put a write-protected tape (like the movies rented from a video store) any in semi-modern VCR and viola! Autoplay! This is obviously an example of prior art. I am not a lawyer, btw, but, in order for TVI to win this case, they would have to prove that the idea is more than just an adaption of what VCRs have been doing for years.
PS, this same concept is also found in DVD players, and CD players
the real irony of the 4 minute 27 second "offense" was that the judge was at home asleep at the time, and the only way he knew it was late was when he checked the e-mail the next morning.
Oops, I should have changed the wording on that a little bit. In my example, i reference a hypothetical tort reform and may have made it sound like the law has actually passed in some area. The tort reform law mentioned there was just a hypothetical law that has been endorsed as a means of "fixing" our legal system, but has not necessarily been passed.
There is more to the coffee argument than just a matter of whether it was served to a person in a car or spilled. The coffee was kept at a ridiculously high temperature because it would cause the coffee to keep it's "freshness" (or whatever coffee has) longer.
Other resteraunts serve their coffee at a temperature about fifty degree lower (at least they did at the time, McDonalds may have lowered the temprerature of their coffee since then). Also, the money McDonalds was fined was equal to two days worth of profit for their coffee alone.
My concern about tort reform is that we will have an artificial limit placed by people who have little or no understanding of the system. For example, a billion dollar corporation fails to recall an item known to be dangerous and a customer gets killed or mamed for life. Well, since we have tort reform, that life is worth a maximum of $250,000, which is a slap on the wrist to the company that caused the damage. In short, most of the obscenely high dollar amounts you hear about in court cases are as high as they are because the company makes an obscene amount of money, and the court wants them to lose enough money so that they might consider changing their practices.
> now, if he is serious about pulling this through
> (for smaller updates) people sould make
> complaints to the local organizations or
> officials depending on the country that look
> after consumer rights, it is not legal to sell a
> product that is defective (has major flaws) and
> then charge for fixing it. if your car's engine
> has a manufacturing flaw, it is the
> manufacturers(importers) responsibility to take
> care of it.
The only problem is that if you look at micorosoft's EULA [1], it says that there is no guarantee that the product will work, and you give up any warantees or rights on day one. It's unfortunate, but I'd bet they could legally get around any consumer protection law.
1. (and courts seem to be treating EULAs as legally binding)
And does anyone actually believe that the fossil fuels industry will lie down and let this happen without a fight?
Sure they will. Oil Companies love hydrogen fuel cells. It's at least twenty years away and it distracts our attention away from hybrid electric cars that are on the market right now.
Have you noticed that GWB has increased funding toward hydrogen development (because he's an environmentalist!). Meanwhile, nothing is being done to help promote hybrid vehicles. And SUVs, because of their classification as a small truck, are immune to many of the emissions standards currently in place, and can be written off as a tax deduction for small business owners
About Microsoft now having access to information about the underlying operating system, Isn't the underlying operating system open source now?
Well, how about making a hybrid linux-gnome-windows OS that actually supports winmodems!
At least nobody owns the rights to the C programming language...It would suck if every domain that contained the word "C" was now off limits
      I'm sure all of you have tried to install one product and had another placed on your system without your permission. Examples are Real-Player, Winamp, and AOL instant messenger (all of which included with Netscape) MSIE (included with windows), and Gator (included with several internet programs)
      And more companies are doing more annoying things every day just to push their product on you. Since the protection requires you to have a "key" before a protected file can be moved copied or deleted, does that mean it would be possible for companies to install programs on your system and make it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) to remove them from your hard drive?
      I hope nobody in the music industry reads that article. Having chips, hardware and operating systems embedded with copyright technology? That's ridiculous. The only way the music industry could accomplish that feat is with a new law. And it would be political suicide to pass it.
      As for the proposal about ISPs charging per bandwidth, OMG, that could happen. The worst part is that the crappy ISPs in my town would use that law as an excuse to make extra profit. Imagine having to pay for each visit to slashdot.com. Or having to pay for the amount of data transferred when you check your E-Mail, or when your instant messenger pings it's server.
      I'm sure that an ISP could easily come up with a fair system to charge only for the copyrighted material downloaded, but why would they? Most of them do not have decent competition and all they have to do is make up a number and list it as "Bandwidth usuage fee."
      The real question is what improvements are necesary. I see people coming up with arbitrary figures such as "there should be a new release every 18 months," when the real issue is "what changes will be made and how long will they take"
      The only people who need to follow any given time-frame are companies who want to keep profits rolling in in steady proprtions
How about modifying it so that it appends the start-up information to a log file? Well, it's just a couple of suggestions.
Can i get a patent on a pair of lips, my a$$, and a combination of the two?
      I just don't get this whole thing. It sounds as though ANY HTML enabled web browser is now an infringement on a copyright agreement...what a load of crap!
      As for genetic patents, companies have already found genetic defects responsible for some diseases, and they have patented these things. Just a good way to make money off of human suffering. Business as usual