"Do you believe that humans evolved from much simpler life forms over millions of years?"
There are many aspects of the theory of evolution from the principle of natural selection to genetic drift to speciation to common descent. What parts of the theory, if any, do you feel are invalid and why?
Will you let your religious beliefs interfere with the way you govern?
Compare that to your questions, especially the bits "Do you believe retreating from Al Qaeda is a good idea" and the bit "and do you care?".
I happen to agree that as horrible and stupid an idea it was to invade Iraq singlehandedly, in particular for trumped up reasons, despite that, pulling out now could be disastrous. If you wanted to ask that question, why not just ask:
Do you believe that there is Al Qaeda in Iraq today? What do you believe will happen in Iraq if we pull out immediately?
and
You claim to want to raise taxes on the rich to fund government programs, but government receipts are at an all time high. How much money do I need to make to be considered "rich"?
There's no need to be offensive just because you don't agree with their policy, and there's no need to whine that this tech site you read, on average, has a different political bias than you.
(By the way, I don't think you qualify as "rich", and even though the government may be making a lot of money at the moment, it's also spending vast sums, mostly on the war in Iraq. Eventually that money will have to be paid to the people the government is borrowing from. It's pretty rare to be able to raise money for the government by cutting taxes.)
The good leaders are right a good percentage of the time, whether by luck or instinct.
And the bad ones are right a small percentage of the time.
If a candidate said, "I believe we can stop global warming", gets elected, we do all the work to stop global warming, and then find out that it's impossible to stop... well, that's better than nothing, right?
Hell no! If there's as much scientific consensus that it's impossible to stop climate change as there is that climate change is occurring, then it would be irresponsible to blindly continue the efforts to stop it. Instead it would be responsible to start trying to deal with it.
Being able to see all options and having trouble making a decision is bad. Blindly making the wrong one when everybody besides you knows it's wrong is worse, no matter how great your intentions are.
If he hadn't gone over the top and claimed that people who blocked ads were *thieves*, I'd say "it's your site, if you want to block me, fine". I use privoxy and try to block every ad in every case. Some slip through, but if I'm motivated enough I'll tweak privoxy's settings so nothing sneaks through. If my browser not loading ads bothers you, feel free to try to block me. Chances are I'll avoid your site and find another one that's as good or better.
But instead of being reasonable and just saying "firefox users tend to block more ads than internet explorer users, so to maximize my revenue-per-visitor I'm going to accept only traffic from browsers claiming to be IE", he went off on a rant and called me a thief.
Because of that, I say look at this laughably bad, currently slashdotted site. This same a$$hat who calls me a thief is trying to run a web hosting company for which he claims: "Our robust network infrastructure ensures maximum uptime and superior performance." If the website for a hosting company can't survive a slashdotting, go elsewhere.
Oh, and interestingly, this web hosting company advertises it provides Spamassassin. Doesn't Spamassassin block ads?
I find it easy to excuse the Star Trek "Whoosh" sounds, the planet-orbiting rumble, and the Star Wars tie-fighter sounds because none of these really implies that it's sound waves traveling through space.
If you were flying against a tie-fighter, wouldn't you want some kind of audio cue that would help you track the tie fighters, and know when they zoomed past you? Maybe it's an artificial sound that helps X-Wing pilots with their situational awareness. It could even be true literal, physical sounds, both in the case of the tie fighters and the enterprise zooming past you. These things have pretty mighty engines powering them, undoubtedly sending a great deal of matter and energy away from them. If one of them were to pass you at a close distance, there would undoubtedly be a lot of particles and energy coming at you. Who knows what kinds of sounds would result as this stuff hit your spaceship / spacesuit, or whatever it is that 3rd person views in TV/movies are meant to represent.
And this "who knows what 3rd person views represent" is how I also excuse the rumble of the orbiting ship. Sure, the shot you're showing is the enterprise from the outside, but then you cut to scenes from within the ship and the rumble doesn't change. To me that says that it's a sound that's just permeating the ship, and that the view of the ship orbiting isn't meant to be "the ship as seen by someone watching it from the outside" but rather "and now we join the crew of the enterprise as they continue with where we last left them". In fact, there are film conventions for "you're looking through the eyes of something/somebody" vs. "you're looking through the storyteller's mind's eye". Steadicam clean shots = mind's eye. Jerky shots, especially where the angle isn't ideal and there are things in the way = looking through the eyes of somebody / something.
And yes, I really have thought about all this before.;)
Before movies people might not have understood physics, but they didn't have all the misconceptions about it that you get from movies. In other words, people who had never seen someone get shot wouldn't have any ideas of what the effect might be, but people who've only ever seen people get shot in the movies might think that you get knocked back a few steps (at least) if you're shot.
If you watch Mythbusters you'll see all kinds of crazy things people believe that just don't make sense from a physics perspective, and many of these myths are the result of hollywood conventions.
The average real-life explosion is a big, sudden event, but the average hollywood explosion is a slow, fiery showy thing. Most cars don't explode when they crash. Most cars won't explode if they go off a cliff. Most cars won't explode if they're shot.
I find it really annoying that so often they do something that violates the laws of physics to such an extent that it takes me out of the movie and kills my suspension of disbelief. This is especially annoying when the realistic version of the event would have been just as exciting. Too often I'm enjoying a movie when they do something ridiculous, and instead of being lost in the movie I just sit there thinking "now why did they do that? they should have just done X, it's much more realistic and doesn't take away any of the fun".
Does anybody know any movie reviewers who include realism of the physics, realism of the computer scenes, or realism in general in their reviews? If I knew in advance which movies would annoy me, I'd avoid them.
Not to mention this can easily be misinterpreted. If you race a Phord Moustache in a game, you might want to go to Phord's site to find out more about the car, not because you're at all interested in actually buying one, but because you want to know more about the car to know how to play the game better. That might easily be seen as "automotive purchase consideration"
In any case, I do like the concept of dynamic ads. If ads are part of the basic game graphics they're there whether you like them or not. If they're dynamically fetched, there's a decent chance of being able to either block that network communication, or even redirect it to insert your own fun ads.
You're right about it being hugely dangerous, just a little point about what you're burning out. You have one optic nerve that attaches to the eyeball at a certain point (where you naturally have a small blind spot). What you're burning out is part of your retina, killing the rod and cone cells that translate light into nerve impulses which are then sent to the optic nerve.
If you happen to be dumb enough to actually look at the laser light, you'll probably burn out your fovea (center of vision) where you have a lot of cones, the cells that allow you to see in high-resolution, necessary for things like reading.
As far as I can recall, you can't regrow these cells either, so once you burn out your eye with a laser, you're permanently blinded in that region.
A lock will keep a drunk person who gets the wrong apartment from entering, an armed resident may shoot that drunk, thinking it's a burglar
A lock doesn't sleep soundly, unlike many people
It's pretty rare that kids die when playing with a lock
If you miss when unlocking a door, your key is unlikely to go through a window and hit someone innocent
If you're talking about a business:
A lock at every door where I work costs maybe $500/door/year (electronic locks). A security guard at every door would cost $20,000/door/year
Locks work night and day for one low cost, security guards don't (unless you pay for multiple shifts)
A lock won't let someone in because they "look innocent"
A lock can't be bribed or become an "inside man" in a heist
A lock won't give up if the intruder is better armed or more threatening.
In short, a weapon (as wielded by a human) has all kinds of flaws, just like a lock. Given how bad people are at keeping things secure (i.e. keeping computers secure) and using dangerous things in a safe way (i.e. cars) I wouldn't trust the average citizen with a firearm unless they had to undergo extensive safety training. At least to be allowed to drive a car you have to do a driving test, I don't see why the same isn't true for firearms. Until it is, I don't think untrained people should have them.
What if you were one of the "crackheads" here? i.e. change the story to:
A few friends and I were coming back from a camping trip and decided to relax on a clearing we came across. We were pretty scruffy looking from the days in the wilderness and were happy to have a place to relax for a bit. Suddenly this hillbilly woman came out of nowhere, screaming about us being crackheads, and telling us to get the **** out of there. My buddy said something like "We're not going anywhere, lady". Next thing I know she's shooting at us. Her aim was way off, but we saw the bullets hitting the ground. Luckily, I was armed so I took her down before she could hurt one of us. Turns out we were actually on this crazy woman's property, but how were we to know? It sure wasn't well marked. Killing's awful, but it was self-defense.
Sure, you can argue that your situation was totally different, but there have been a number of police reports of someone shooting an innocent person who happened to be on their property. How would it not be self-defense in that case for the (unwitting) trespasser to shoot back? Putting weapons in the hands of the general population may result in fewer burglaries, but it may also result in more innocent people being shot. How many people have crazy friends, relatives or acquaintances who could easily legally get a firearm, but really shouldn't have one?
Home makers are fine. Without them, where would we live? Well, I guess there's always apartments. Or do you mean housewives / househusbands? They don't make homes, they just work there.
Look at all the famous chefs, nobody thinks they are inferior for cooking!
It's not the cooking that makes people look down on them, it's that they're only cooking for their family. The level of sophistication expected over a househusband / housewife cook is not on par with what's expected out of world-famous chefs, it's more what's expected out of a line-cook at a diner... a profession that isn't widely respected. If a housewife / househusband has the skills and interests to be a famous chef, then they would be looked down upon for staying at home rather than putting their skills to use in the marketplace.
[A]s we move to a society where it is possible for both parents to work [w]e will find that it may become impossible for most single income families to live at an income level they are comfortable with. Women may have no choice but to join the work force and establish long term careers in addition to having a family. That's the dark side of all this progress and equality.
As we move to that kind of society? It has been possible (and acceptable) for both parents to work for more than 30 years. It has also been possible for only one parent to work for 30 years. Some families choose to have both parents work, some choose to have one parent work. Sure, sometimes there are hard choices, live a more frugal lifestyle and have one parent stay at home, or live a more rich lifestyle but see your family less. I don't see having a choice as a "dark side", however.
Are you serious? Are you aware that 2.2 million people are in prison right now in the US? That's roughly 1% of the population. If the punishment for theft were life in prison the costs would be astronomical. Not to mention that if the punishment for theft were the same as the punishment for murder, any thief who thought he might get caught would have no reason to avoid killing people, since it wouldn't affect his sentence. As for comparing the costs to insurance, the estimate is that the US spends $60 billion on corrections, which is roughly $25k/prisoner/year, or $500/taxpayer/year. This is comparable already to insurance rates. If you significantly increased the prison population by never letting thieves leave, you'd pay a whole lot more to keep people in custody than you ever would for insurance.
Nah, his dad was probably just one of the many people who misquote Churchill:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the 'worst' form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.
If videotaping in a movie theater is illegal, and if that is what occurred in this instance - and indeed, the person in question admits just that - then why is this acceptable? Why should the theater decide between "good and bad stealing"?
First of all, no theft occurred, so you shouldn't muddy the waters by pretending it did. Second of all, there's something called discretion. Do you dial 911 whenever you see someone jaywalking? It is illegal, you know. Is it your responsibility to call the police, ensure that the jaywalkers get arrested, and let a judge and jury decide their guilt? You probably would call 911 if someone broke into your house while you were there, and started stealing things. Catching someone aiming a camera at a screen in your movie theatre is somewhere between those extremes. You could choose to ignore it, to give them a verbal warning, to kick them out of the theatre, or you could call the police.
As for why the theatre should be able to use this kind of discretion, because they're human beings, and they're running a business. A business shouldn't alienate its customers, so before taking extreme measures they should really decide they're justified. And, as humans, they should have some empathy for someone who may be breaking the law, but not in a malicious, calculated, willful way, and not cause them undue hardship.
(Believe it or not, there actually could be an answer here..."fair use" does have specific provisions for how long clips can be, what they can be used for, and so on.)
Does it really? What is the acceptable length of a clip?
The only way to allow the behavior in this particular instance is to make recording movies in theaters legal, or have ridiculous provisions like time limits on number of seconds or minutes that can "legally" be recorded, that theaters would then have to enforce.
Didn't you just say that "fair use" does specify how long a clip is allowed to be?
You once lit up inside a petrol station without realising what you were doing. You know that it's a dumb move because there's a risk of fire or explosion if flammable things come in contact with petrol/gas, and therefore a risk of injury, death or at least property damage because of your smoking.
How is it similarly stupid to go into a theatre with a camcorder? "Unbelievably stupid" is the term you use.
Were lives at risk? Was property at risk? Or is the only risk that the girl might have violated copyright law? Personally, I don't think a violation of copyright law is as serious as risking serious injury, death, or property damage.
The biggest problem with the US justice system really isn't the length of sentences, it's the recidivism. Nearly 80% of people convicted of stealing a car are re-arrested later for the same thing.
Punishing people feels fair. You want someone who did something bad to suffer, in particular if you were hurt by what they did. On the other hand, prison shouldn't be a place where criminals to go to be better, harder criminals. It should be somewhere where people who are a danger to society are helped to become useful to society. Sure, activities that reduce recidivism might seem like they're lessening the punishment the criminals undergo, but what's more important to society, making the life of a criminal miserable, or making sure that when they're released they don't make anybody else's life miserable?
Humans are the only species that have sex for recreation, and we of course have tons of contraceptive tools now to increase the amount of sex we have while decreasing pregnancy. The way humans have sex is a very uniquely human thing on this planet. Actually, that's not true. Look up Bonobo Chimps (one of our two closest relatives in the animal kingdom).
If people have to step on a somewhat soft floor to produce this energy, they will expend a certain amount more energy walking than normal. Now, sure, if this is done in your average American city, that isn't a bad thing, the average American could afford to do a bit more exercise.
It's also not likely to be a very energy-efficient energy collection system, for every ten joules of energy expended walking on the squishy platform I'd be surprise to hear of one joule of energy collected.
I'm sure it's glorious, interesting, insightful and apropos but many people have sigs turned off. Sure, they could turn them on to see if your comment had any worth to it, but it probably doesn't so they probably won't. I know I won't.
Intelligent Design is fundamentally incompatible with science.
At first the claim is "Adam and Eve were created magically, ate fruit, etc." the version that's straight out of the bible, that involves no species change at all, all creatures simply being created, and puts the age of the earth at a few thousand years. This theory quickly gets knocked down because it's easy to prove that the earth is more than a few thousand years old.
More convoluted theories -- sorry, "stories", because theories are things that are testable and disprovable and the Intelligent Design people really want to avoid that -- so these more convoluted stories are introduced next. In these ones, the earth is at least millions of years old, so the dates in the bible are wrong, but everything else happened (i.e. humans were dropped on the planet by god, fully formed). This version of the story gets debunked too because it's easy to prove that evolution exists.
Some people keep clinging to the previous story because they're afraid to challenge the stories they've been told, but other people think they can be scientific by saying they believe in evolution, but that the processes controlling it aren't random, they're controlled by god. This story starts breaking down too, because it becomes obvious that most mutations are failures, and only a select few are useful, they truly are random events.
In the end, it comes down to either evolution is a truly random process with no god overseeing it at all, or that the god is generating mutations that are so similar to random mutations that they're completely indistinguishable from random noise... and at that point, Occam's razor comes into play. If there's indeed a god, but the only influence he/she has on the world is so small it's indistinguishable from random noise, what point is there in believing in a deity at all, let alone praying, following an obviously false bible, etc.
"Even the latest Office software got lukewarm reviews". Office (like Windows) is pretty much beyond reviews at this stage. It's a monopoly treadmill and as much as people may complain about it, they're going to keep buying it. Typical IT departments don't read reviews and say "Hmm, maybe we should consider other alternatives to Office", they just keep on buying the latest upgrades because doing anything else risks breaking compatibility and will result in never-ending headaches.
As for the rest of the comment, an X-Box 360 for $3.60? What was the point of this obviously untrue and meaningless comment? You also state that Sony will be bankrupt by the time the next-gen consoles come around. Do you have even a shred of evidence to back this up, or is just fanboi speak? At most Sony might decide to get out of the game console business, but I have yet to see any evidence of even that. Their company as a whole is a big, solid, stable company with tentacles in consumer electronics, the music industry, and many other things.
All 3 of the big boys in the business have very deep pockets and can survive a rough patch pretty easily. 2 of the 3 are also small divisions of huge multinationals and can afford to take a loss on their entire gaming business if they think it's worth it in their long-term goals. For Sony, it may be worth it because they want to dominate high-end consumer electronics and game consoles fit neatly in that niche. For Microsoft, it may be worth it because they want to hedge against the traditional PC losing ground to set-top devices.
I don't think the grandparent poster is right either. I bet MS considers the 360 a decent success, despite the hardware issues, on the other hand, if you're going to dispute someone's facts at least don't make up "facts" for your own post.
And, assuming there's a genetic component to the cause of that fear, it would be good if natural selection removed this defect from the gene pool. Treating the fear without treating the underlying cause isn't always a good idea.
For any calculation of economic damage, there must be a distinction made between files made available, and files actually transmitted. A particular user may offer thousands of MP3 files, but may never once have transmitted any. If the only person the RIAA can prove downloaded these files is MediaSentry, there are actually no economic damages done to the plaintiffs because no unauthorized end-users downloaded any copyrighted files.
Point 21.
Once again, to claim economic damage, the burden is on the plaintiffs to prove that the net economic impact of files being shared is harmful rather than beneficial. Not every file shared is a lost sale. Sometimes the end-user would never have bought the file if they had no option to download it, in addition, sometimes file sharing promotes awareness of the song and artist and ends up increasing purchases.
Point 22.
If sound recordings haven't been released publicly, how does the file-sharing general public get them?
Slashdot Mirror
Look at people's suggestions for questions:
Compare that to your questions, especially the bits "Do you believe retreating from Al Qaeda is a good idea" and the bit "and do you care?".
I happen to agree that as horrible and stupid an idea it was to invade Iraq singlehandedly, in particular for trumped up reasons, despite that, pulling out now could be disastrous. If you wanted to ask that question, why not just ask:
and
There's no need to be offensive just because you don't agree with their policy, and there's no need to whine that this tech site you read, on average, has a different political bias than you.
(By the way, I don't think you qualify as "rich", and even though the government may be making a lot of money at the moment, it's also spending vast sums, mostly on the war in Iraq. Eventually that money will have to be paid to the people the government is borrowing from. It's pretty rare to be able to raise money for the government by cutting taxes.)
And the bad ones are right a small percentage of the time.
Hell no! If there's as much scientific consensus that it's impossible to stop climate change as there is that climate change is occurring, then it would be irresponsible to blindly continue the efforts to stop it. Instead it would be responsible to start trying to deal with it.
Being able to see all options and having trouble making a decision is bad. Blindly making the wrong one when everybody besides you knows it's wrong is worse, no matter how great your intentions are.
If he hadn't gone over the top and claimed that people who blocked ads were *thieves*, I'd say "it's your site, if you want to block me, fine". I use privoxy and try to block every ad in every case. Some slip through, but if I'm motivated enough I'll tweak privoxy's settings so nothing sneaks through. If my browser not loading ads bothers you, feel free to try to block me. Chances are I'll avoid your site and find another one that's as good or better.
But instead of being reasonable and just saying "firefox users tend to block more ads than internet explorer users, so to maximize my revenue-per-visitor I'm going to accept only traffic from browsers claiming to be IE", he went off on a rant and called me a thief.
Because of that, I say look at this laughably bad, currently slashdotted site. This same a$$hat who calls me a thief is trying to run a web hosting company for which he claims: "Our robust network infrastructure ensures maximum uptime and superior performance." If the website for a hosting company can't survive a slashdotting, go elsewhere.
Oh, and interestingly, this web hosting company advertises it provides Spamassassin. Doesn't Spamassassin block ads?
I find it easy to excuse the Star Trek "Whoosh" sounds, the planet-orbiting rumble, and the Star Wars tie-fighter sounds because none of these really implies that it's sound waves traveling through space.
If you were flying against a tie-fighter, wouldn't you want some kind of audio cue that would help you track the tie fighters, and know when they zoomed past you? Maybe it's an artificial sound that helps X-Wing pilots with their situational awareness. It could even be true literal, physical sounds, both in the case of the tie fighters and the enterprise zooming past you. These things have pretty mighty engines powering them, undoubtedly sending a great deal of matter and energy away from them. If one of them were to pass you at a close distance, there would undoubtedly be a lot of particles and energy coming at you. Who knows what kinds of sounds would result as this stuff hit your spaceship / spacesuit, or whatever it is that 3rd person views in TV/movies are meant to represent.
And this "who knows what 3rd person views represent" is how I also excuse the rumble of the orbiting ship. Sure, the shot you're showing is the enterprise from the outside, but then you cut to scenes from within the ship and the rumble doesn't change. To me that says that it's a sound that's just permeating the ship, and that the view of the ship orbiting isn't meant to be "the ship as seen by someone watching it from the outside" but rather "and now we join the crew of the enterprise as they continue with where we last left them". In fact, there are film conventions for "you're looking through the eyes of something/somebody" vs. "you're looking through the storyteller's mind's eye". Steadicam clean shots = mind's eye. Jerky shots, especially where the angle isn't ideal and there are things in the way = looking through the eyes of somebody / something.
And yes, I really have thought about all this before. ;)
Before movies people might not have understood physics, but they didn't have all the misconceptions about it that you get from movies. In other words, people who had never seen someone get shot wouldn't have any ideas of what the effect might be, but people who've only ever seen people get shot in the movies might think that you get knocked back a few steps (at least) if you're shot.
If you watch Mythbusters you'll see all kinds of crazy things people believe that just don't make sense from a physics perspective, and many of these myths are the result of hollywood conventions.
The average real-life explosion is a big, sudden event, but the average hollywood explosion is a slow, fiery showy thing. Most cars don't explode when they crash. Most cars won't explode if they go off a cliff. Most cars won't explode if they're shot.
I find it really annoying that so often they do something that violates the laws of physics to such an extent that it takes me out of the movie and kills my suspension of disbelief. This is especially annoying when the realistic version of the event would have been just as exciting. Too often I'm enjoying a movie when they do something ridiculous, and instead of being lost in the movie I just sit there thinking "now why did they do that? they should have just done X, it's much more realistic and doesn't take away any of the fun".
Does anybody know any movie reviewers who include realism of the physics, realism of the computer scenes, or realism in general in their reviews? If I knew in advance which movies would annoy me, I'd avoid them.
Not to mention this can easily be misinterpreted. If you race a Phord Moustache in a game, you might want to go to Phord's site to find out more about the car, not because you're at all interested in actually buying one, but because you want to know more about the car to know how to play the game better. That might easily be seen as "automotive purchase consideration"
In any case, I do like the concept of dynamic ads. If ads are part of the basic game graphics they're there whether you like them or not. If they're dynamically fetched, there's a decent chance of being able to either block that network communication, or even redirect it to insert your own fun ads.
You're right about it being hugely dangerous, just a little point about what you're burning out. You have one optic nerve that attaches to the eyeball at a certain point (where you naturally have a small blind spot). What you're burning out is part of your retina, killing the rod and cone cells that translate light into nerve impulses which are then sent to the optic nerve.
If you happen to be dumb enough to actually look at the laser light, you'll probably burn out your fovea (center of vision) where you have a lot of cones, the cells that allow you to see in high-resolution, necessary for things like reading.
As far as I can recall, you can't regrow these cells either, so once you burn out your eye with a laser, you're permanently blinded in that region.
If you're talking about a home
If you're talking about a business:
In short, a weapon (as wielded by a human) has all kinds of flaws, just like a lock. Given how bad people are at keeping things secure (i.e. keeping computers secure) and using dangerous things in a safe way (i.e. cars) I wouldn't trust the average citizen with a firearm unless they had to undergo extensive safety training. At least to be allowed to drive a car you have to do a driving test, I don't see why the same isn't true for firearms. Until it is, I don't think untrained people should have them.
What if you were one of the "crackheads" here? i.e. change the story to:
Sure, you can argue that your situation was totally different, but there have been a number of police reports of someone shooting an innocent person who happened to be on their property. How would it not be self-defense in that case for the (unwitting) trespasser to shoot back? Putting weapons in the hands of the general population may result in fewer burglaries, but it may also result in more innocent people being shot. How many people have crazy friends, relatives or acquaintances who could easily legally get a firearm, but really shouldn't have one?
CSIS and RCMP in Canada.
Home makers are fine. Without them, where would we live? Well, I guess there's always apartments. Or do you mean housewives / househusbands? They don't make homes, they just work there.
It's not the cooking that makes people look down on them, it's that they're only cooking for their family. The level of sophistication expected over a househusband / housewife cook is not on par with what's expected out of world-famous chefs, it's more what's expected out of a line-cook at a diner... a profession that isn't widely respected. If a housewife / househusband has the skills and interests to be a famous chef, then they would be looked down upon for staying at home rather than putting their skills to use in the marketplace.
As we move to that kind of society? It has been possible (and acceptable) for both parents to work for more than 30 years. It has also been possible for only one parent to work for 30 years. Some families choose to have both parents work, some choose to have one parent work. Sure, sometimes there are hard choices, live a more frugal lifestyle and have one parent stay at home, or live a more rich lifestyle but see your family less. I don't see having a choice as a "dark side", however.
Are you serious? Are you aware that 2.2 million people are in prison right now in the US? That's roughly 1% of the population. If the punishment for theft were life in prison the costs would be astronomical. Not to mention that if the punishment for theft were the same as the punishment for murder, any thief who thought he might get caught would have no reason to avoid killing people, since it wouldn't affect his sentence. As for comparing the costs to insurance, the estimate is that the US spends $60 billion on corrections, which is roughly $25k/prisoner/year, or $500/taxpayer/year. This is comparable already to insurance rates. If you significantly increased the prison population by never letting thieves leave, you'd pay a whole lot more to keep people in custody than you ever would for insurance.
She stole something too? I thought she just recorded part of the movie.
Nah, his dad was probably just one of the many people who misquote Churchill:
First of all, no theft occurred, so you shouldn't muddy the waters by pretending it did. Second of all, there's something called discretion. Do you dial 911 whenever you see someone jaywalking? It is illegal, you know. Is it your responsibility to call the police, ensure that the jaywalkers get arrested, and let a judge and jury decide their guilt? You probably would call 911 if someone broke into your house while you were there, and started stealing things. Catching someone aiming a camera at a screen in your movie theatre is somewhere between those extremes. You could choose to ignore it, to give them a verbal warning, to kick them out of the theatre, or you could call the police.
As for why the theatre should be able to use this kind of discretion, because they're human beings, and they're running a business. A business shouldn't alienate its customers, so before taking extreme measures they should really decide they're justified. And, as humans, they should have some empathy for someone who may be breaking the law, but not in a malicious, calculated, willful way, and not cause them undue hardship.
Does it really? What is the acceptable length of a clip?
Didn't you just say that "fair use" does specify how long a clip is allowed to be?
You once lit up inside a petrol station without realising what you were doing. You know that it's a dumb move because there's a risk of fire or explosion if flammable things come in contact with petrol/gas, and therefore a risk of injury, death or at least property damage because of your smoking.
How is it similarly stupid to go into a theatre with a camcorder? "Unbelievably stupid" is the term you use.
Were lives at risk? Was property at risk? Or is the only risk that the girl might have violated copyright law? Personally, I don't think a violation of copyright law is as serious as risking serious injury, death, or property damage.
The biggest problem with the US justice system really isn't the length of sentences, it's the recidivism. Nearly 80% of people convicted of stealing a car are re-arrested later for the same thing.
Punishing people feels fair. You want someone who did something bad to suffer, in particular if you were hurt by what they did. On the other hand, prison shouldn't be a place where criminals to go to be better, harder criminals. It should be somewhere where people who are a danger to society are helped to become useful to society. Sure, activities that reduce recidivism might seem like they're lessening the punishment the criminals undergo, but what's more important to society, making the life of a criminal miserable, or making sure that when they're released they don't make anybody else's life miserable?
If people have to step on a somewhat soft floor to produce this energy, they will expend a certain amount more energy walking than normal. Now, sure, if this is done in your average American city, that isn't a bad thing, the average American could afford to do a bit more exercise.
It's also not likely to be a very energy-efficient energy collection system, for every ten joules of energy expended walking on the squishy platform I'd be surprise to hear of one joule of energy collected.
I'm sure it's glorious, interesting, insightful and apropos but many people have sigs turned off. Sure, they could turn them on to see if your comment had any worth to it, but it probably doesn't so they probably won't. I know I won't.
Since always?
Check out the wikipedia page or the patent licensing page for more info.
Why would you assume it's an ANSI standard and freely available?
Intelligent Design is fundamentally incompatible with science.
At first the claim is "Adam and Eve were created magically, ate fruit, etc." the version that's straight out of the bible, that involves no species change at all, all creatures simply being created, and puts the age of the earth at a few thousand years. This theory quickly gets knocked down because it's easy to prove that the earth is more than a few thousand years old.
More convoluted theories -- sorry, "stories", because theories are things that are testable and disprovable and the Intelligent Design people really want to avoid that -- so these more convoluted stories are introduced next. In these ones, the earth is at least millions of years old, so the dates in the bible are wrong, but everything else happened (i.e. humans were dropped on the planet by god, fully formed). This version of the story gets debunked too because it's easy to prove that evolution exists.
Some people keep clinging to the previous story because they're afraid to challenge the stories they've been told, but other people think they can be scientific by saying they believe in evolution, but that the processes controlling it aren't random, they're controlled by god. This story starts breaking down too, because it becomes obvious that most mutations are failures, and only a select few are useful, they truly are random events.
In the end, it comes down to either evolution is a truly random process with no god overseeing it at all, or that the god is generating mutations that are so similar to random mutations that they're completely indistinguishable from random noise... and at that point, Occam's razor comes into play. If there's indeed a god, but the only influence he/she has on the world is so small it's indistinguishable from random noise, what point is there in believing in a deity at all, let alone praying, following an obviously false bible, etc.
"Even the latest Office software got lukewarm reviews". Office (like Windows) is pretty much beyond reviews at this stage. It's a monopoly treadmill and as much as people may complain about it, they're going to keep buying it. Typical IT departments don't read reviews and say "Hmm, maybe we should consider other alternatives to Office", they just keep on buying the latest upgrades because doing anything else risks breaking compatibility and will result in never-ending headaches.
As for the rest of the comment, an X-Box 360 for $3.60? What was the point of this obviously untrue and meaningless comment? You also state that Sony will be bankrupt by the time the next-gen consoles come around. Do you have even a shred of evidence to back this up, or is just fanboi speak? At most Sony might decide to get out of the game console business, but I have yet to see any evidence of even that. Their company as a whole is a big, solid, stable company with tentacles in consumer electronics, the music industry, and many other things.
All 3 of the big boys in the business have very deep pockets and can survive a rough patch pretty easily. 2 of the 3 are also small divisions of huge multinationals and can afford to take a loss on their entire gaming business if they think it's worth it in their long-term goals. For Sony, it may be worth it because they want to dominate high-end consumer electronics and game consoles fit neatly in that niche. For Microsoft, it may be worth it because they want to hedge against the traditional PC losing ground to set-top devices.
I don't think the grandparent poster is right either. I bet MS considers the 360 a decent success, despite the hardware issues, on the other hand, if you're going to dispute someone's facts at least don't make up "facts" for your own post.
And, assuming there's a genetic component to the cause of that fear, it would be good if natural selection removed this defect from the gene pool. Treating the fear without treating the underlying cause isn't always a good idea.
Point 19.
For any calculation of economic damage, there must be a distinction made between files made available, and files actually transmitted. A particular user may offer thousands of MP3 files, but may never once have transmitted any. If the only person the RIAA can prove downloaded these files is MediaSentry, there are actually no economic damages done to the plaintiffs because no unauthorized end-users downloaded any copyrighted files.
Point 21.
Once again, to claim economic damage, the burden is on the plaintiffs to prove that the net economic impact of files being shared is harmful rather than beneficial. Not every file shared is a lost sale. Sometimes the end-user would never have bought the file if they had no option to download it, in addition, sometimes file sharing promotes awareness of the song and artist and ends up increasing purchases.
Point 22.
If sound recordings haven't been released publicly, how does the file-sharing general public get them?