Interstingly enough, the per capita number of people in Canada is a mere fraction of that in hte U.S.. Coincidentally, so are the number of homes and people living in them that have accidents.
No, the per capita number of people anywhere in the world is by definition 1, unless there are NO people there, in which case it is undefined.
Go take a college course in symbolic logic, or something.
Perhaps you should learn what per capita means before advising others on their academic needs.
We have a fireplace, but here in Alabama it's only unhot (it never gets cold, just unhot) enough to use it for about two weeks out of the year.
On the other hand, I'm not too worried about anyone reconstructing my shreddings. Anyone who has $8,000 to spend getting information from my shred bin, just come ask me, and I'll probably give it to you for half that.
Dude, NO story needs an Aerosmith song. I'm still pissed at Run-DMC for resurrecting their career. They were cool in the '70s but they haven't done anything but insipid trash since then. Instead of fading away into obscurity leaving us bittersweet memories of great songs like "Dream On" and "Kings and Queens", they have to "Pump" out crap like "Rag Doll", "Love in an Elevator", and "Just Push Play". No thanks, I'd much rather push Eject.
But when you think about it, aside from nuclear power that you mentioned, all of our energy comes from the Sun.
If you think about it, even nuclear power comes from uranium which was created by previous stars that went supernova. So it's also solar in a roundabout way.
I suppose for non-customers, there's probably some other legal justification for the lawsuit. The point was, they aren't pressing criminal satellite TV piracy charges against people - because if they did that, they'd have to have evidence to get arrest warrants and all that kind of stuff.
Apparently I was mistaken. What a pleasant surprise.
Hmm, I wonder if DirecTV has any 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what it is and how it is to be used as evidence against us?
Either that, or Sosa HAS been using it to steal services, and that's why he doesn't want to fight.
Oh, crap. That's exactly what DirecTV wants us to think, isn't it? They'll assume (and convince us to assume) that everyone who settled is a thief. Armed with 'proof' that all these people stole their services, DirecTV now lobbies Congress for DMCA2 or SSSCA or FTCA (Fuck the Consumer Act, why beat around the bush now?) and gets it passed.
Ten people representing themselves in court would be disasterous to a judge's schedule. A thousand people doing the same will clog the system so badly...
And ten thousand people, that would be a movement. And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-DTV-extortion movement....
Oh, never mind. Average/. reader is far too young to get that.
Crack, on the other hand, has no known medical use, much like LSD and marijuana.
Marijuana is a relatively effective analgesic, although we all know that promoters of medicinal marijuana really just wanna get high. That said, alcohol and tobacco are both legal for recreational use, and marijuana isn't so much worse that it should be treated like crack.
Incidentally, I believe at one time, LSD was thought to have a promising future in treatment of some mental illnesses.
As many lawyers as there are now, surely you have an attorney friend of acquaintance that would take the time to type you up a nice letter telling DirecTV that unless they have some evidence that you have stolen their service, they'd be better advised to harass someone else. I mean, not all lawyers are so greedy they wouldn't take five minutes of time to help a friend. Just most of them.
If not, you might consider sending a letter in reply, perhaps including your history of payments to them, and asking them why they are accusing such a loyal customer of stealing their services without any evidence. Basically, DTV is just running this up the flagpole to see who salutes them with $3500 checks, I'd be surprised if they actually went into court against anyone without any evidence of infringement.
Of those companies, I think only Sony has both the legal staff and the lack of decency to pull a stunt like this. Haven't they already gone after mod chips in similar fashion? I didn't pay much attention back then, my highest-tech game console is a Dreamcast that I got for free and from which I have almost, but not quite, gotten my money's worth of enjoyment.
Well, that's why DirecTV is SUING in civil court, rather than pressing criminal charges against all these people. DirecTV is claiming that a breach of contract occurred, not accusing them of a crime. While the burden of proof in theory should still be on them, if you go into that court without at least the ability to prove you've paid for all the services you've received, you're going to be forking over some bucks.
Luckily, it seems that shouldn't be very difficult, if you have all your cancelled checks and/or credit card statements.
Anyway, what I think we're all missing here is that disproving one side does not prove the other. We're all too closed-minded.
Good point, although I don't think I've ever attempted to 'prove' evolution by disproving creation. Of course, disproving Creation is basically impossible, because the theory of Creation includes an omnipotent power whose actions don't have to obey any physical laws or even logical constraints. To be fair, the same might be said of Evolution, since scientific theories are always modified when new evidence is found that shows flaws in the old theory.
For all we know, there are innumerable other possibilities for the creation of life in the universe.
You're right. For all we know, the universe and its origins might be exactly as described in Hindu scripture. There are even Hindu creationists who fiercely debate the scientifically-accepted age of the Earth, because they believe it is much OLDER.
I believe in Creation because I have faith in God. You have faith in science.
Actually, I have faith in God too, for what that's worth. What I don't have, though, is faith that the first two chapters of Genesis are historically and scientifically accurate accounts. They're incredibly old, passed down for generations by word-of-mouth, then have been translated multiple times since first being written, by people far removed from the actual events. That's not a recipe for accuracy.
Besides, if the purpose of the Bible is to lead us to Jesus and save our souls, what does it matter if it has a little bit of myth or metaphor in it (after all, parables were Jesus's favorite teaching method, and He IS God, so who's to say the whole Creation story isn't a parable)? Whether God just said "Let there be such and such" or whether He used basically the same processes scientists believe occurred, the point is that He created us, and we are the ones who cause sin.
Regarding "faith in science", yes, I have faith in science. Or I should say, the scientific method. I feel fairly confident that by making observations about the world, logically putting together hypotheses, and testing them, we can learn a great deal about how the world works.
That's not the same, however, as having faith in Biblical Creation - because the Bible is set in stone, whereas scientific theories 'evolve' over time to better fit newly discovered evidence and new experiments. Modern evolutionary theory is pretty different from Darwin's, and probably more accurate.
While I can see how this might be considered a cop-out (oh, we found the holes in their theory, so they changed it), it really isn't. That's the way science works. When Einstein found situations where Newtonian mechanics didn't properly explain the Universe, he formulated the theory of relativity to explain the discrepancies. Now we have a better theory of how certain things work. That doesn't mean Newton was wrong, he did the best he could with what he had to work with, but we have better now. In the same way, if evolutionary theory changes, it doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means we understand it a bit more thoroughly now.
Gee, it looks like this post went full circle back to the beginning - disproving a theory doesn't mean proving its competitor. I guess that means it's time to quit.
It seems though that the media cartels want the last option, "the right to be a sucker". From their words it appears that when you buy a CD you have neither full ownership of the media nor the normal license to the content. Maybe I'm some sort of half-crazed fanatic, but it doesn't seem right to me.
No, perhaps it's not right. Unfortunately, it is their piece of shiny plastic and their content, so you either play by their rules, or listen to someone else's content on their shiny plastic disc. That said, I think the RIAA wouldn't be complaining about slow sales if they weren't being such assholes about copyright infringement. Well, that and if they had something to listen to besides pre-teen screech queens and boy bands.
Good point about the source - but, the source only has to be available, not necessarily distributed with the binaries. Most Linux ISOs will have all the LICENSE and README files for all the software pointing out where the source is available, so I think that's OK.
The main gist of my question was, is the DOJ going to just start nailing people, or will the copyright holders have to file complaints first?
If the Feds are going to nail everyone who uploads a file, and you have to show that distribution of the file was authorized by the copyright holder, then this law is going against the old "innocent until proven guilty" mantra. If it requires a complaint from the copyright holder to start the wheels of justice, then really all it is doing is turning a misdemeanor copyright infringement into a felony. Draconian, sure, but it's not criminalizing anything that's not already illegal.
Well, and frankly there are more important issues to me than P2p sharing. It's a simple fact of life: In the 2000 presidential elections, I could not vote both pro-life and anti-microsoft. I think Microsoft really deserves to burn, and Gore probably would've finished the job Clinton started; but if I have a choice between letting microsoft off the hook and letting innocent children die at the whim of their mothers, the choice is pretty clear to me.
First off, the President can't do jack squat to stop abortions from being performed anyway. You'll need a two-thirds majority in Congress to amend the Constitution to do it, and even then women who want the baby gone bad enough will find ways around it.
So, how many fetuses' lives have been saved by Bush being in office? Zero. And how many innocent women and children has Bush's "war on terrorism" killed in Afghanistan and Iraq? Everyone's numbers vary, but they're all more than zero. Remember, you can't say "Gore would have done the same thing" if you've already at some point said "I'm glad Bush is President because Gore's such a pussy he wouldn't have done anything."
It's even possible (though admittedly unlikely) that 9/11 would not have even happened if Gore had won. Two of bin Laden's beefs against the U.S. are our troops using the holy land of Saudi Arabia as a staging ground for Gulf War I, and the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq that have resulted in hundreds of thousands dead. Since both these things are directly related to Bush I, it's not a huge logical leap to think that 9/11 may have been to some extent a revenge.
Obviously you could not have predicted these events back in November of 2000, but surely you will at least admit that basing your voting decision on one issue, even one as important as abortion, is short-sighted.
I've seen figures that show that corporate giving to the Democratic party has dropped considerably. That does make sense from the corporate point of view since the hard-core Democrat constituency is virulently anti-corporation.
Actually, corporate contributions to Democrats have dropped because you don't need to bribe the people who aren't in power. Also, I think quite a few of the virulent ant-corporate Dems are beginning to get disillusioned and shifting to the Green side - if not actually voting Green (for fear of Bush or whatever), then perhaps cheerleading.
One of the side effects of this is that the Democratic party has lurched sharply to the left in the last few years....
Could have fooled me. In the last presidential debates, Gore spent more time agreeing with Bush than debating him. The current round of Democratic candidates seems afraid to say anything of importance for fear of either alienating the left-leaning Democrats or losing even more right-leaning Dems to the Republican fold. The 2004 election, like 2000, will be more about popularity than the issues. The only way the Dems will win is if something goes horribly wrong for the Bush admin in the Middle East, or perhaps if the economy completely flushes down the toilet instead of floating in the bowl.
I think his point was, with the CD sitting at his friend's house, people he doesn't know can make copies of it. That's not much different than running a P2P program and making it available for download - so why make it a felony on the Internet when it's not even a crime in the physical world?
Shit, everytime I hear about a law like this I get to urge to move to another country, and even then you're not always safe from this sort of stupidity.
Thanks to our pals the WTO and treaties like FTAA and GATT, pretty soon the RIAA will be able to sue foreign governments for 'interfering with their right to profit' by failing to pass draconian measures like this. So you may not be safe anywhere.
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Interstingly enough, the per capita number of people in Canada is a mere fraction of that in hte U.S.. Coincidentally, so are the number of homes and people living in them that have accidents.
No, the per capita number of people anywhere in the world is by definition 1, unless there are NO people there, in which case it is undefined.
Go take a college course in symbolic logic, or something.
Perhaps you should learn what per capita means before advising others on their academic needs.
Well, of course I can! Ba-da-bing! Thanks, you've been a great audience.
Only the military community could come up with an acronym like that.
We have a fireplace, but here in Alabama it's only unhot (it never gets cold, just unhot) enough to use it for about two weeks out of the year.
On the other hand, I'm not too worried about anyone reconstructing my shreddings. Anyone who has $8,000 to spend getting information from my shred bin, just come ask me, and I'll probably give it to you for half that.
Dude, NO story needs an Aerosmith song. I'm still pissed at Run-DMC for resurrecting their career. They were cool in the '70s but they haven't done anything but insipid trash since then. Instead of fading away into obscurity leaving us bittersweet memories of great songs like "Dream On" and "Kings and Queens", they have to "Pump" out crap like "Rag Doll", "Love in an Elevator", and "Just Push Play". No thanks, I'd much rather push Eject.
That sort of pedantry is something up with which I will not put. ;)
But when you think about it, aside from nuclear power that you mentioned, all of our energy comes from the Sun.
If you think about it, even nuclear power comes from uranium which was created by previous stars that went supernova. So it's also solar in a roundabout way.
Actually, they're probably labeled "With Us" or "With The Terrorists". Remember that brilliant statement by the alleged President?
N0, 1 k@n r33d j00r 1337$p33k 1n $m@11 d0$3$. 17 61v3z m3 @ #e@d@c#3 $0m371m3$, 7#0u6#.
I'm not buying one, because if the MPAA gets any ideas from DirecTV, they'll be sending out letters demanding $3500 and the burner!
I suppose for non-customers, there's probably some other legal justification for the lawsuit. The point was, they aren't pressing criminal satellite TV piracy charges against people - because if they did that, they'd have to have evidence to get arrest warrants and all that kind of stuff.
Apparently I was mistaken. What a pleasant surprise.
Hmm, I wonder if DirecTV has any 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what it is and how it is to be used as evidence against us?
Either that, or Sosa HAS been using it to steal services, and that's why he doesn't want to fight.
Oh, crap. That's exactly what DirecTV wants us to think, isn't it? They'll assume (and convince us to assume) that everyone who settled is a thief. Armed with 'proof' that all these people stole their services, DirecTV now lobbies Congress for DMCA2 or SSSCA or FTCA (Fuck the Consumer Act, why beat around the bush now?) and gets it passed.
Ten people representing themselves in court would be disasterous to a judge's schedule. A thousand people doing the same will clog the system so badly ...
/. reader is far too young to get that.
And ten thousand people, that would be a movement. And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-DTV-extortion movement....
Oh, never mind. Average
Crack, on the other hand, has no known medical use, much like LSD and marijuana.
Marijuana is a relatively effective analgesic, although we all know that promoters of medicinal marijuana really just wanna get high. That said, alcohol and tobacco are both legal for recreational use, and marijuana isn't so much worse that it should be treated like crack.
Incidentally, I believe at one time, LSD was thought to have a promising future in treatment of some mental illnesses.
As many lawyers as there are now, surely you have an attorney friend of acquaintance that would take the time to type you up a nice letter telling DirecTV that unless they have some evidence that you have stolen their service, they'd be better advised to harass someone else. I mean, not all lawyers are so greedy they wouldn't take five minutes of time to help a friend. Just most of them.
If not, you might consider sending a letter in reply, perhaps including your history of payments to them, and asking them why they are accusing such a loyal customer of stealing their services without any evidence. Basically, DTV is just running this up the flagpole to see who salutes them with $3500 checks, I'd be surprised if they actually went into court against anyone without any evidence of infringement.
Of those companies, I think only Sony has both the legal staff and the lack of decency to pull a stunt like this. Haven't they already gone after mod chips in similar fashion? I didn't pay much attention back then, my highest-tech game console is a Dreamcast that I got for free and from which I have almost, but not quite, gotten my money's worth of enjoyment.
Well, that's why DirecTV is SUING in civil court, rather than pressing criminal charges against all these people. DirecTV is claiming that a breach of contract occurred, not accusing them of a crime. While the burden of proof in theory should still be on them, if you go into that court without at least the ability to prove you've paid for all the services you've received, you're going to be forking over some bucks.
Luckily, it seems that shouldn't be very difficult, if you have all your cancelled checks and/or credit card statements.
Anyway, what I think we're all missing here is that disproving one side does not prove the other. We're all too closed-minded.
Good point, although I don't think I've ever attempted to 'prove' evolution by disproving creation. Of course, disproving Creation is basically impossible, because the theory of Creation includes an omnipotent power whose actions don't have to obey any physical laws or even logical constraints. To be fair, the same might be said of Evolution, since scientific theories are always modified when new evidence is found that shows flaws in the old theory.
For all we know, there are innumerable other possibilities for the creation of life in the universe.
You're right. For all we know, the universe and its origins might be exactly as described in Hindu scripture. There are even Hindu creationists who fiercely debate the scientifically-accepted age of the Earth, because they believe it is much OLDER.
I believe in Creation because I have faith in God. You have faith in science.
Actually, I have faith in God too, for what that's worth. What I don't have, though, is faith that the first two chapters of Genesis are historically and scientifically accurate accounts. They're incredibly old, passed down for generations by word-of-mouth, then have been translated multiple times since first being written, by people far removed from the actual events. That's not a recipe for accuracy.
Besides, if the purpose of the Bible is to lead us to Jesus and save our souls, what does it matter if it has a little bit of myth or metaphor in it (after all, parables were Jesus's favorite teaching method, and He IS God, so who's to say the whole Creation story isn't a parable)? Whether God just said "Let there be such and such" or whether He used basically the same processes scientists believe occurred, the point is that He created us, and we are the ones who cause sin.
Regarding "faith in science", yes, I have faith in science. Or I should say, the scientific method. I feel fairly confident that by making observations about the world, logically putting together hypotheses, and testing them, we can learn a great deal about how the world works.
That's not the same, however, as having faith in Biblical Creation - because the Bible is set in stone, whereas scientific theories 'evolve' over time to better fit newly discovered evidence and new experiments. Modern evolutionary theory is pretty different from Darwin's, and probably more accurate.
While I can see how this might be considered a cop-out (oh, we found the holes in their theory, so they changed it), it really isn't. That's the way science works. When Einstein found situations where Newtonian mechanics didn't properly explain the Universe, he formulated the theory of relativity to explain the discrepancies. Now we have a better theory of how certain things work. That doesn't mean Newton was wrong, he did the best he could with what he had to work with, but we have better now. In the same way, if evolutionary theory changes, it doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means we understand it a bit more thoroughly now.
Gee, it looks like this post went full circle back to the beginning - disproving a theory doesn't mean proving its competitor. I guess that means it's time to quit.
It seems though that the media cartels want the last option, "the right to be a sucker". From their words it appears that when you buy a CD you have neither full ownership of the media nor the normal license to the content. Maybe I'm some sort of half-crazed fanatic, but it doesn't seem right to me.
No, perhaps it's not right. Unfortunately, it is their piece of shiny plastic and their content, so you either play by their rules, or listen to someone else's content on their shiny plastic disc. That said, I think the RIAA wouldn't be complaining about slow sales if they weren't being such assholes about copyright infringement. Well, that and if they had something to listen to besides pre-teen screech queens and boy bands.
Good point about the source - but, the source only has to be available, not necessarily distributed with the binaries. Most Linux ISOs will have all the LICENSE and README files for all the software pointing out where the source is available, so I think that's OK.
The main gist of my question was, is the DOJ going to just start nailing people, or will the copyright holders have to file complaints first?
If the Feds are going to nail everyone who uploads a file, and you have to show that distribution of the file was authorized by the copyright holder, then this law is going against the old "innocent until proven guilty" mantra. If it requires a complaint from the copyright holder to start the wheels of justice, then really all it is doing is turning a misdemeanor copyright infringement into a felony. Draconian, sure, but it's not criminalizing anything that's not already illegal.
Well, and frankly there are more important issues to me than P2p sharing. It's a simple fact of life: In the 2000 presidential elections, I could not vote both pro-life and anti-microsoft. I think Microsoft really deserves to burn, and Gore probably would've finished the job Clinton started; but if I have a choice between letting microsoft off the hook and letting innocent children die at the whim of their mothers, the choice is pretty clear to me.
First off, the President can't do jack squat to stop abortions from being performed anyway. You'll need a two-thirds majority in Congress to amend the Constitution to do it, and even then women who want the baby gone bad enough will find ways around it.
So, how many fetuses' lives have been saved by Bush being in office? Zero. And how many innocent women and children has Bush's "war on terrorism" killed in Afghanistan and Iraq? Everyone's numbers vary, but they're all more than zero. Remember, you can't say "Gore would have done the same thing" if you've already at some point said "I'm glad Bush is President because Gore's such a pussy he wouldn't have done anything."
It's even possible (though admittedly unlikely) that 9/11 would not have even happened if Gore had won. Two of bin Laden's beefs against the U.S. are our troops using the holy land of Saudi Arabia as a staging ground for Gulf War I, and the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq that have resulted in hundreds of thousands dead. Since both these things are directly related to Bush I, it's not a huge logical leap to think that 9/11 may have been to some extent a revenge.
Obviously you could not have predicted these events back in November of 2000, but surely you will at least admit that basing your voting decision on one issue, even one as important as abortion, is short-sighted.
I've seen figures that show that corporate giving to the Democratic party has dropped considerably. That does make sense from the corporate point of view since the hard-core Democrat constituency is virulently anti-corporation.
Actually, corporate contributions to Democrats have dropped because you don't need to bribe the people who aren't in power. Also, I think quite a few of the virulent ant-corporate Dems are beginning to get disillusioned and shifting to the Green side - if not actually voting Green (for fear of Bush or whatever), then perhaps cheerleading.
One of the side effects of this is that the Democratic party has lurched sharply to the left in the last few years....
Could have fooled me. In the last presidential debates, Gore spent more time agreeing with Bush than debating him. The current round of Democratic candidates seems afraid to say anything of importance for fear of either alienating the left-leaning Democrats or losing even more right-leaning Dems to the Republican fold. The 2004 election, like 2000, will be more about popularity than the issues. The only way the Dems will win is if something goes horribly wrong for the Bush admin in the Middle East, or perhaps if the economy completely flushes down the toilet instead of floating in the bowl.
It should also enclose Florida, at least from about Talahassee on down. At least then we wouldn't have a repeat of the 2000 election.
I think his point was, with the CD sitting at his friend's house, people he doesn't know can make copies of it. That's not much different than running a P2P program and making it available for download - so why make it a felony on the Internet when it's not even a crime in the physical world?
Shit, everytime I hear about a law like this I get to urge to move to another country, and even then you're not always safe from this sort of stupidity.
Thanks to our pals the WTO and treaties like FTAA and GATT, pretty soon the RIAA will be able to sue foreign governments for 'interfering with their right to profit' by failing to pass draconian measures like this. So you may not be safe anywhere.