The constitution doesn't say people can't use government channels to worship, it says that government can't dictate what form of worship people undertake or prevent them from doing so.
The courts have decided the government cannot act as a channel for religious messages, as evidenced by constitutionally sound decisions prohibiting school prayer in public schools. You can argue that's not what the constitution "really says" 'till you're blue in the face, but the fact is that's the way the courts have interpreted the Constitution and it's therefore the law of the land. I just happen to think it's perfectly consistent with what the US Constitution "really says".
The Texas controversy is not about Texas trying to nullify the establishment clause, it's about them getting tired of the second part of that famous sentence in the first amendment getting short shrift.
What a stinking pile of bullshit. You're perfectly free to worship God on your own time and in your own manner, as the US Constitution does guarantee you that right, but you can't make use of government channels to do so. The idea that the words "free exercise [of religion]" are getting short shrift is absolutely ridiculous.
YouTube hosts content posted by third parties which it makes available to others without prior review. It is exactly the kind of situation the DMCA's safe harbor provisions are meant to address.
Fuck you Viacom for expecting to reap the benefits of copyright law while rejecting those aspects of it you dislike.
I do that sometimes, but if I followed your advice to the letter I wouldn't be able to do much at all. It's hard to find big corporations that are truly benign.
In addition to what you said, I hope TFA is merely giving examples of applications for which a "permanent tab" feature would be useful. If the feature where somehow tied specifically to Gmail and Twitter rather than the user's choice of applications, it would be a very unfortunate choice indeed by the Mozilla Foundation.
If you live in the Western U.S., then it is Congress that granted the original title to the land that you're residing on. If Congress can grant that title, then it's only fair that they be allowed shorten the term of that title by law, correct?
That's not exactly what I'm saying. Instead, what I'm saying is that Congress and the Supreme Court seem to have no problem with extending copyright terms despite the fact that the US Constitution says copyrights are "for limited times". If Congress can extend copyright terms retroactively, I say it's only fair that they be able to restrict them retroactively as well. Not necessarily legal, but "only fair" (meaning it's equally unfair).
Reducing the length of existing copyrights is just as much like stealing from the copyright holder as extending the term of existing copyrights is like stealing from the public domain. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly. If the government thinks changes to copyright terms should be applied retroactively, they should better do so in both directions than just in the direction that benefits the rich at the expense of the general public.
This is the same reason why copyright terms cannot be shortened, even if you got a bill to do so past the Disney lobby.
Nonsense. For one thing, you can shorten the term of new copyrights without affecting existing copyrights. For another thing, if congress can extend the term of existing copyrights as they did for Disney's latest copyright grab, I think it's only fair that they be allowed to shorten them as well.
1. It's not cybersquatting when the domain name is used for legitimate purposes. 2. I don't know about trademark law, but a non-legal, average person interpretation of the term "unfair competition" suggests that you'd have to be competing against the trademark holder rather than expressing support for their product.
Calling these devices "lie detectors" is misleading at best. Until they invent a machine that can travel back in time and compare the suspect's claims against the facts, there can be no lie detectors. All a lie detector can do is make visible certain physiological responses that are more or less associated with lying. While sometimes these responses are explained by the fact that the person is lying, humans are complex enough that it should never be considered a trustworthy mechanism as far as the law is concerned. Juries are easily influenced by apparently scientific evidence, but lie detection is a questionable science at best and could prejudice juries against the defendant.
There's an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit that does a good job of putting the lie to the lie detector.
As much as I love the more advanced technology of the modern Internet, there's a soft spot in my heart for Gopher and the Internet circa 1993. Gopher is the way I found the first MUDs I ever played, how I found and was granted access (via telnet) to a Free-net (freenet.calgary.ab.ca) which gave me my own email address and access to newsgroups. Then came the Web, and Yahoo still looked a bit like a Gopher site, and I continued to use Gopher through my provider's PPP connection until it became a niche thing.
Countries negotiate away our rights with impunity, the reason they get away with it being that citizens -- myself included -- have neither the guts nor the means to stage an armed uprising against today's leading governments and often have no clue what's going on anyway. Is there any hope for freedom in a world where the powerful conspire to restrict it against the best interests of the people?
Stop waiting for big-daddy government to do something.
Indeed. Customers have plenty of alternatives. They could invest billions of dollars to setup their own infrastructure or switch to IP by carrier pigeon. If you can't succeed at it without help from the government you are clearly a spoiled little baby with no more right to communicate than a spineless worm.
They are willing to accept lower sales of the game and offer a less desirable product because they consider it preferable to having their games pirated. [...] Even a small boost in sales makes this a worthwhile effort for them.
Wait... So they're willing to accept lower sales of the game in order to get a small boost in sales? Don't you see the contradiction?
They also don't want pirated PC copies of their game competing against their console sales. Consoles are where the money is, largely because of piracy on the PC.
Pirated PC copies compete against console sales, yet console sales are most profitable due to piracy on the PC? Um... same question as above.
I did read the summary. It's just that I rarely look at the submitter's name and I was so eager to share Phil Plait's post that I didn't follow the link first.
Censorship is performed by the government or an agent thereof, not by individual corporations.
I take it you've never heard of network censors?
Hint: Network censors don't work for the government, they aren't government agents, and the rules they impose are often more restrictive than those required by the FCC.
I used to play a lot of Rad Racer as a kid. While taking my first driving lesson the driving instructor chided me for turning the wheel left and back to center then right and back to center in order to keep the car going the way I wanted it to. She immediately grabbed the wheel and strongly suggested the car would go the way I pointed it, at which point I realized a wheel doesn't behave the way an NES d-pad does.
You mean where the symbols are defined that decide which platform-specific lines of the slushball will be executed at run time.
No, I mean the part of the project that says "compile this for X platform" for a project where there's no platform-specific code at all as far as the programmer is concerned.
Anybody who wants to make games for closed platforms will have to meet whatever requirements the platform owner chooses to impose. That means you won't be able to take advantage of a multi-platform tool's ability to target those particular platforms unless and until you become a licensed developer, but the point of such a tool is not to solve your licensing problems but rather to make development easier by allowing you to produce binaries for multiple platforms without changing the code.
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The courts have decided the government cannot act as a channel for religious messages, as evidenced by constitutionally sound decisions prohibiting school prayer in public schools. You can argue that's not what the constitution "really says" 'till you're blue in the face, but the fact is that's the way the courts have interpreted the Constitution and it's therefore the law of the land. I just happen to think it's perfectly consistent with what the US Constitution "really says".
What a stinking pile of bullshit. You're perfectly free to worship God on your own time and in your own manner, as the US Constitution does guarantee you that right, but you can't make use of government channels to do so. The idea that the words "free exercise [of religion]" are getting short shrift is absolutely ridiculous.
YouTube hosts content posted by third parties which it makes available to others without prior review. It is exactly the kind of situation the DMCA's safe harbor provisions are meant to address.
Fuck you Viacom for expecting to reap the benefits of copyright law while rejecting those aspects of it you dislike.
Detonating nukes Idle. Why do I sound worried?
I do that sometimes, but if I followed your advice to the letter I wouldn't be able to do much at all. It's hard to find big corporations that are truly benign.
In addition to what you said, I hope TFA is merely giving examples of applications for which a "permanent tab" feature would be useful. If the feature where somehow tied specifically to Gmail and Twitter rather than the user's choice of applications, it would be a very unfortunate choice indeed by the Mozilla Foundation.
That's not exactly what I'm saying. Instead, what I'm saying is that Congress and the Supreme Court seem to have no problem with extending copyright terms despite the fact that the US Constitution says copyrights are "for limited times". If Congress can extend copyright terms retroactively, I say it's only fair that they be able to restrict them retroactively as well. Not necessarily legal, but "only fair" (meaning it's equally unfair).
Reducing the length of existing copyrights is just as much like stealing from the copyright holder as extending the term of existing copyrights is like stealing from the public domain. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly. If the government thinks changes to copyright terms should be applied retroactively, they should better do so in both directions than just in the direction that benefits the rich at the expense of the general public.
Nonsense. For one thing, you can shorten the term of new copyrights without affecting existing copyrights. For another thing, if congress can extend the term of existing copyrights as they did for Disney's latest copyright grab, I think it's only fair that they be allowed to shorten them as well.
Two points:
1. It's not cybersquatting when the domain name is used for legitimate purposes.
2. I don't know about trademark law, but a non-legal, average person interpretation of the term "unfair competition" suggests that you'd have to be competing against the trademark holder rather than expressing support for their product.
Calling these devices "lie detectors" is misleading at best. Until they invent a machine that can travel back in time and compare the suspect's claims against the facts, there can be no lie detectors. All a lie detector can do is make visible certain physiological responses that are more or less associated with lying. While sometimes these responses are explained by the fact that the person is lying, humans are complex enough that it should never be considered a trustworthy mechanism as far as the law is concerned. Juries are easily influenced by apparently scientific evidence, but lie detection is a questionable science at best and could prejudice juries against the defendant.
There's an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit that does a good job of putting the lie to the lie detector.
As much as I love the more advanced technology of the modern Internet, there's a soft spot in my heart for Gopher and the Internet circa 1993. Gopher is the way I found the first MUDs I ever played, how I found and was granted access (via telnet) to a Free-net (freenet.calgary.ab.ca) which gave me my own email address and access to newsgroups. Then came the Web, and Yahoo still looked a bit like a Gopher site, and I continued to use Gopher through my provider's PPP connection until it became a niche thing.
I'd rather buy a bare-bones console than pay for a feature that's then taken away from me.
If your car's design requires a pair of "big external emergency buttons at the rear", there's definitely something wrong with your design.
Why bother with manuals when no one can play your game due to drm servers being down?
As long as you can't play the game, you may as well entertain yourself by leafing through the manual.
Countries negotiate away our rights with impunity, the reason they get away with it being that citizens -- myself included -- have neither the guts nor the means to stage an armed uprising against today's leading governments and often have no clue what's going on anyway. Is there any hope for freedom in a world where the powerful conspire to restrict it against the best interests of the people?
Indeed. Customers have plenty of alternatives. They could invest billions of dollars to setup their own infrastructure or switch to IP by carrier pigeon. If you can't succeed at it without help from the government you are clearly a spoiled little baby with no more right to communicate than a spineless worm.
Wait... So they're willing to accept lower sales of the game in order to get a small boost in sales? Don't you see the contradiction?
Pirated PC copies compete against console sales, yet console sales are most profitable due to piracy on the PC? Um... same question as above.
I did read the summary. It's just that I rarely look at the submitter's name and I was so eager to share Phil Plait's post that I didn't follow the link first.
I should have checked the link before posting the above.
Phil Plait offers his comments on Obama's new space policy: Obama lays out bold and visionary revised space policy.
Of course it's censorship. It's just not illegal censorship, since Apple is a private corporation.
I take it you've never heard of network censors?
Hint: Network censors don't work for the government, they aren't government agents, and the rules they impose are often more restrictive than those required by the FCC.
I used to play a lot of Rad Racer as a kid. While taking my first driving lesson the driving instructor chided me for turning the wheel left and back to center then right and back to center in order to keep the car going the way I wanted it to. She immediately grabbed the wheel and strongly suggested the car would go the way I pointed it, at which point I realized a wheel doesn't behave the way an NES d-pad does.
True story.
No, I mean the part of the project that says "compile this for X platform" for a project where there's no platform-specific code at all as far as the programmer is concerned.
Anybody who wants to make games for closed platforms will have to meet whatever requirements the platform owner chooses to impose. That means you won't be able to take advantage of a multi-platform tool's ability to target those particular platforms unless and until you become a licensed developer, but the point of such a tool is not to solve your licensing problems but rather to make development easier by allowing you to produce binaries for multiple platforms without changing the code.