Re:Not all stupid, not all true
on
Dumb Laws
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· Score: 4
I often thought that a lot of the really "off-the wall, is that really a widespread problem?" laws were probably enacted long ago to combat a specific individual.
such as:
Old Joe likes to walk past the front of St. Jude's Methodist Assembly in Peoria at precisely 11:45 each Sunday with an Ice Cream Cone shoved in his pocket for the benefit of the Mayor and his wife as they leave services to go to a late brunch with their friends. No one knows why, and this really irks Mrs. Mayor no end as she thinks that this is some kind of perverted kick for Old Joe who just strolls by there silently grinning with rocky road slowly melting away in his coveralls.
Mayor calls the Sheriff who can't come up with anything to arrest Joe for, he's not a vagrant, he's not loitering, he's not making any obscene gestures or doing anything else illegal, he's just walking along on the public sidewalk with Ice Cream in his drawers.
So the Mayor gets the city council to pass an ordinance that you can't walk on the sidewalk on Sunday with ice cream in your pocket. The Sheriff runs Joe in the next time he does this and the Judge fines him $20 or holds him in the tank overnight to make his point. Joe sees that the joke is over and either backs off or starts chaining wheelbarrows to his front yard tree with a for-sale sign on it.
If you look at the laws in Illinois, you will see one in Park Ridge that you have to park a truck in an enclosed garage. Actually, the oridinance in Mt. Prospect is that a commercial vehicle cannot be parked in a resident's driveway, it has to be in a garage. This ordinance was not the result of hundreds of complaints by enraged citizens that their neighbor who drove a repair truck was parking their truck in the drive next door, this was the result of one village board member's personal fued with his neighbor who happened to work for Sears and drove his service van home every night and parked it in his driveway behind his other two cars blocking the sidewalk.
The oridinance was never enforced. It was put on the books by this wacko trustee who managed to force it trough so he could call the cops on his neighbor when he wanted to.
>The plastic pieces are not under warranty because they are supposed to last the life of the computer?
So, by that logic, the parts that _are_ under 1 year warranty are thus because they are not supposed to last the life of the computer? Sounded like doubletalk to me when I first read it.
Well, that's kind of extreme, I'm dissapointed but I'm not pissed like they explicitly promised something and then renigged. I want the game, I will download the linux client, and I will make sure they know that I am dissapointed.
Refusing the package and making a big stink would probably not accomplish much except to maybe reinforce the stereotype that linux users are zealout asses. No, I'm at leas encouraged that they are doing a Linux port at all, let alone at the same time. The demo's were good and the bug-trackers were very knowledgeable. It is just a poor decision to decide to not ship it at this late point, but maybe next time it will be a different story. If not, _then_ I'll flame 'em.
specifically because I wanted to show support for Epic and GT for cross-developing a game on Linux (and its good, too). Just got the note today that it already shipped. Cripes.
I'll still d/l the Linux port but it does concern me just a little that this news comes out the _day_ that this supposedly hits shelves and pre-orders are shipped. Least they could do is throw in a hat, t-shirt or mug?
Bugger, didn't want to hassle with competing for download with everyone else again, either!
I dunno, we thought it was funny. He listed his favorite things and included 'sex'. Not 'sex with beautiful, exotic women in romantic surroundings' but simply 'sex'. I guess that conjures up images of the various interpretations available. Plus the stuff about being a globe-trotting playboy in cheap Turkish suits seemed kinda funny. I guess I wasn't laughing so much at his ethnicity, as I was the improbability that some woman would see that page and contact him to go stay with him in Turkey.
hmm, sounds like your profile has some whacked settings? try upping the comment size limit to like 4096 or something. Also set it to not reparent posts for threads below your threshold?
Actually, xmen.com appears to be a sports/gambling site with some rather racy nude/swimsuit pictures. The most annoying thing (besides that fact that it contains no pictures of wolverine) is that it does whisk you off to porn-jack land, which can be rather bothersome when you are at work. I agree that Rob sould be a little more careful and check out links before posting them.
Yeah, you're right on the money there. I had a semi-revelation last week when I went with my new brother-in-law to help him purchase a new PC (he turned down offers to let me build one).
He is your average brand-conscious american, I guess. AMD doesn't have any disco-dancing mascots so the only thing that stuck in his mind was the "Intel-Inside" and bunny people marketing ads. Guess which PC he bought? (hint: he was gouged for roughly $400 )
"well, this one is 500 Mhz and has an Intel processor sir, this other one is not an Intel and is only rated at 400 Mhz" (god I almost killed that fat jerk salesman)
But isn't the distinction between domain disputes and buying up domains with the intent to never use it, only to sell it?
>.Because the courts have generally held that parody is a protected form of free speech, some or all of this law may in fact be unconstitutional.
If the domain in question is a 'parody' that is in use, and the owner doesn't try to sell it, I can't see how this law could make any difference. (I haven't seen it either, but it would have to be pretty far out of whack to be about squating but have this kind of reach). If the registrant buys 'linuxblows.com' and then calls Linus and offers to sell it to keep it from becoming a live parody site, that would be different. I know that's a pretty black/white example, but my assumption is that's what this is about.
>Leaving it to the courts doesn't necessarily work either, because often, the side with the most legal $ wins.
Again, this really isn't about disputed domain rights, is it? If I happen to register a domain that some big company thinks is too close to their own, but I'm really using it (clue.com) for something else, this law doesn't seem to apply. If I register clue.com and sit on it and hasbro happens to find out about it and tried to make me give it up under the squatting law, then is the burden on me to show that I don't intend to sell it but use it for my own purposes somehow?
Hmmm... It is hard to tell from the pictures. I think a brushed ebony would look really cool. If it is a glossy/reflective black, then I would probably agree. When I first saw these I though a brushed stainless steel or aluminum would look best.
I guess I agree, partly. At one point, I would think a conceptually pure TLD scheme would be in everybody's best interest. But, since its all meaningless at this point, I've given in to the dark side and gone along with the madness...
...CAIS.COM, the nameservice provider for GOP.GOV, has a banner image of a major city skyline being destroyed in massive, flaming explosion.
Really! What the hell is that about? It's part of their "Join the risk-free Revolution" logo? WTF kind of company slogan/logo is that supposed to be? Someone please explain because I _really_ would like to know.
Ha, I love those! I wish I could find the list I had somewhere of the mistakes companies made trying to push their products into markets where they had no clue about the local culture!
My favorite is when Gerber tried to move into some north-african markets. Anyone who has seen their baby-food products will recognize the cute little fat baby on the label. What they didn't realize was the prevailing practice of placing pictures of a product's contents on the labels because of the high illiteracy rates. People couldn't read so a can of pork and beans would have a picture of a pig and beans on the label. A picture of a baby with the words 'strained peas' on the label did not generate sales for some strange reason...
You know, I've seen several posts now that assume that this was some kind of attack through the internet. I read the article and didn't get that impression. Hell, I read it and it was vague enough that you could substitute almost any type of attack for cyber and it still makes sense (well... doesn't make any _less_ sense, anyway)
I wouldn't assume that this was a DoS attack against Slobodan's Military C&C NT server at www.babykillers.com or some such nonsense. As was pointed out, what real damage could you do? What critical assets are going to be accessible over the public network?
When I read it I got more the impression that it was some sort of attack against closed networks that might have involved a more direct form of sabotage (HERF, jammers, seal teams, etc). Ah dunno, it was pretty sketchy on details so its anybody's guess.
Sure, there are lots of 'grey' areas that can be argued one way or another. Exactly my point that this should be left in the hands of parents and not opening a whole ugly can of worm about wast 'most' people should agree are black and white, right and wrong issues.
err... I was responding to the exact words in the post I was replying to. He said ethics, right and wrong so those were the statements I was referring to. If you label it MORALITY or ETHICS doesn't really change my stance.
It should be easy to come up with a common set of ethical rules, as most people can agree on things are right
You hit the nail on the head and diluted your own argument with the word most (I added the emphasis). What if I'm not _most_ people and I happen to disagree with the public school's moral education? (Such as: killing is wrong unless there is a war or self defense, then its ok. Maybe I don't want my kid taught that.)
And no, I disagree with you. *I* will decide how to teach my children about MORALITY _AND_ ETHICS, thank you. YOU may think that "Golden Rule" and "Killing other people" are black/white issues, but maybe I don't.
Ultimately, as a parent it is *my* choice to influence my child's sense of values, morality and ethics. Thank you, but the public school needs to concentrate (and do a much better job, IMO) on fundamentals like math, english, science, phys ed, etc and I'll worry about the finer points that are _far_ more subjective than you seem to imply.
Hmm, and whose ethics and definition of right and wrong are to be taught? Yours? The government's? Decided by consensus of a blue-panel committee of leading politicians, buisness leaders and private citizent appointed by the president of the United States? No thank you.
I, as a parent of school-age children want to retain the choice to do this myself, or send my kids to a church where the ethics and sense of right and wrong are close enought to my standards.
Yeah, ESR has really grown on me recently. I never truly disliked any of his positions, but I did kind of see some of the flamage going on around him and kind of kept a wary eye.
I may not personally agree with everything that comes out of his mouth or word processor, but in general I have to agree that this in particular is very inspiring and in general I think ESR makes some very persuasive arguments.
Yeah, wasn't there a story a long while ago where someone decided to study coffee rings because they thought it odd the way that stains from the bottom of coffee cups dried. Seem to recall that they actually discovered some interesting phenomena that was not previously described.
Hmm, I hope you are just kidding and do realise that these are not the official Nobel prize thingies, but the ng Nobel. In case you missed it:
WHAT: The annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony honors individuals whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." Ten prizes are given to people who have done remarkably goofy things -- some of them admirable, some perhaps otherwise. At the ceremony, 1200 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the winners step forward to accept their Prizes. The Prizes are physically handed to the winners by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel Laureates.
"People sometimes make errors," said Dr. Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science. "The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."
Ok, this is a reasonable tone for a public statement. I just have to imagine the tone at the moment of discovery when their internal review uncovered this:
"WHAT!!! Do you have any idea how this is going to make us look!!?? We are going to be the laughing-stock of the scientific community over this! MY GOD! Get me the head of the dumbass who's idea it was to use inches feet and yards to compute the %^&@$# trajectory of an interplanetary vehicle!"
Man, I wouldn't want what's left of _that_ guy's career!
Last report I heard was that there were possible still ongoing "criticality incidents" but that workers could not re-enter the plant becauske of 4000x the 'normal' radiation, but that when they could go in, they would drain the water from the tank where the stuff was being processed (35 lbs instead of the normal 5lbs) in order to stop further reactions. Scary shit.
Hmm, seems more like they are complaining that all these guys going around to their store and others are blocking the aisles so their customers can't get through as fast and that some of their customers are getting information that is out of date (sorry, the special on string-beans ended yesterday) and ruining the confidence they have built up with their customers (to further the analogy).
I like the idea posted above. Collect the info and sell it at a fair price on a different server. I don't think eBay should mind people finding info from other sites (assuming they eventually come to eBay and purchase there). If you have some degree of quality control and can throttle the effects of this searching your real-time database at the expense of performance for live users, I don't think there would be a problem.
But what about ad impressions? Does eBay benefot from visitors clicking through multiple pages to search for what they want, seeing an ad each time (I don't know, never been to eBay - just asking).
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I often thought that a lot of the really "off-the wall, is that really a widespread problem?" laws were probably enacted long ago to combat a specific individual.
such as:
Old Joe likes to walk past the front of St. Jude's Methodist Assembly in Peoria at precisely 11:45 each Sunday with an Ice Cream Cone shoved in his pocket for the benefit of the Mayor and his wife as they leave services to go to a late brunch with their friends. No one knows why, and this really irks Mrs. Mayor no end as she thinks that this is some kind of perverted kick for Old Joe who just strolls by there silently grinning with rocky road slowly melting away in his coveralls.
Mayor calls the Sheriff who can't come up with anything to arrest Joe for, he's not a vagrant, he's not loitering, he's not making any obscene gestures or doing anything else illegal, he's just walking along on the public sidewalk with Ice Cream in his drawers.
So the Mayor gets the city council to pass an ordinance that you can't walk on the sidewalk on Sunday with ice cream in your pocket. The Sheriff runs Joe in the next time he does this and the Judge fines him $20 or holds him in the tank overnight to make his point. Joe sees that the joke is over and either backs off or starts chaining wheelbarrows to his front yard tree with a for-sale sign on it.
If you look at the laws in Illinois, you will see one in Park Ridge that you have to park a truck in an enclosed garage. Actually, the oridinance in Mt. Prospect is that a commercial vehicle cannot be parked in a resident's driveway, it has to be in a garage. This ordinance was not the result of hundreds of complaints by enraged citizens that their neighbor who drove a repair truck was parking their truck in the drive next door, this was the result of one village board member's personal fued with his neighbor who happened to work for Sears and drove his service van home every night and parked it in his driveway behind his other two cars blocking the sidewalk.
The oridinance was never enforced. It was put on the books by this wacko trustee who managed to force it trough so he could call the cops on his neighbor when he wanted to.
>The plastic pieces are not under warranty because they are supposed to last the life of the computer?
So, by that logic, the parts that _are_ under 1 year warranty are thus because they are not supposed to last the life of the computer? Sounded like doubletalk to me when I first read it.
Well, that's kind of extreme, I'm dissapointed but I'm not pissed like they explicitly promised something and then renigged. I want the game, I will download the linux client, and I will make sure they know that I am dissapointed.
Refusing the package and making a big stink would probably not accomplish much except to maybe reinforce the stereotype that linux users are zealout asses. No, I'm at leas encouraged that they are doing a Linux port at all, let alone at the same time. The demo's were good and the bug-trackers were very knowledgeable. It is just a poor decision to decide to not ship it at this late point, but maybe next time it will be a different story. If not, _then_ I'll flame 'em.
specifically because I wanted to show support for Epic and GT for cross-developing a game on Linux (and its good, too). Just got the note today that it already shipped. Cripes.
I'll still d/l the Linux port but it does concern me just a little that this news comes out the _day_ that this supposedly hits shelves and pre-orders are shipped. Least they could do is throw in a hat, t-shirt or mug?
Bugger, didn't want to hassle with competing for download with everyone else again, either!
(whining mode/off)
I dunno, we thought it was funny. He listed his favorite things and included 'sex'. Not 'sex with beautiful, exotic women in romantic surroundings' but simply 'sex'. I guess that conjures up images of the various interpretations available. Plus the stuff about being a globe-trotting playboy in cheap Turkish suits seemed kinda funny. I guess I wasn't laughing so much at his ethnicity, as I was the improbability that some woman would see that page and contact him to go stay with him in Turkey.
hmm, sounds like your profile has some whacked settings? try upping the comment size limit to like 4096 or something. Also set it to not reparent posts for threads below your threshold?
Actually, xmen.com appears to be a sports/gambling site with some rather racy nude/swimsuit pictures. The most annoying thing (besides that fact that it contains no pictures of wolverine) is that it does whisk you off to porn-jack land, which can be rather bothersome when you are at work. I agree that Rob sould be a little more careful and check out links before posting them.
BTW, the real marvel comics x-men site is here.
Yeah, you're right on the money there. I had a semi-revelation last week when I went with my new brother-in-law to help him purchase a new PC (he turned down offers to let me build one).
He is your average brand-conscious american, I guess. AMD doesn't have any disco-dancing mascots so the only thing that stuck in his mind was the "Intel-Inside" and bunny people marketing ads. Guess which PC he bought? (hint: he was gouged for roughly $400 )
"well, this one is 500 Mhz and has an Intel processor sir, this other one is not an Intel and is only rated at 400 Mhz" (god I almost killed that fat jerk salesman)
But isn't the distinction between domain disputes and buying up domains with the intent to never use it, only to sell it?
>.Because the courts have generally held that parody is a protected form of free speech, some or all of this law may in fact be unconstitutional.
If the domain in question is a 'parody' that is in use, and the owner doesn't try to sell it, I can't see how this law could make any difference. (I haven't seen it either, but it would have to be pretty far out of whack to be about squating but have this kind of reach). If the registrant buys 'linuxblows.com' and then calls Linus and offers to sell it to keep it from becoming a live parody site, that would be different. I know that's a pretty black/white example, but my assumption is that's what this is about.
>Leaving it to the courts doesn't necessarily work either, because often, the side with the most legal $ wins.
Again, this really isn't about disputed domain rights, is it? If I happen to register a domain that some big company thinks is too close to their own, but I'm really using it (clue.com) for something else, this law doesn't seem to apply. If I register clue.com and sit on it and hasbro happens to find out about it and tried to make me give it up under the squatting law, then is the burden on me to show that I don't intend to sell it but use it for my own purposes somehow?
Hmmm... It is hard to tell from the pictures. I think a brushed ebony would look really cool. If it is a glossy/reflective black, then I would probably agree. When I first saw these I though a brushed stainless steel or aluminum would look best.
I guess I agree, partly. At one point, I would think a conceptually pure TLD scheme would be in everybody's best interest. But, since its all meaningless at this point, I've given in to the dark side and gone along with the madness...
Tonga, or rather the hey.to domain, has been bastardized fully to my own purposes.
...CAIS.COM, the nameservice provider for GOP.GOV, has a banner image of a major city skyline being destroyed in massive, flaming explosion.
Really! What the hell is that about? It's part of their "Join the risk-free Revolution" logo? WTF kind of company slogan/logo is that supposed to be? Someone please explain because I _really_ would like to know.
Ha, I love those! I wish I could find the list I had somewhere of the mistakes companies made trying to push their products into markets where they had no clue about the local culture!
My favorite is when Gerber tried to move into some north-african markets. Anyone who has seen their baby-food products will recognize the cute little fat baby on the label. What they didn't realize was the prevailing practice of placing pictures of a product's contents on the labels because of the high illiteracy rates. People couldn't read so a can of pork and beans would have a picture of a pig and beans on the label. A picture of a baby with the words 'strained peas' on the label did not generate sales for some strange reason...
>I think the Brits prefer STROKE to SLASH.
:-)
Ah, if only OJ had the same preference....
(okay, waaay off-topic - had to be said, tho
You know, I've seen several posts now that assume that this was some kind of attack through the internet. I read the article and didn't get that impression. Hell, I read it and it was vague enough that you could substitute almost any type of attack for cyber and it still makes sense (well ... doesn't make any _less_ sense, anyway)
I wouldn't assume that this was a DoS attack against Slobodan's Military C&C NT server at www.babykillers.com or some such nonsense. As was pointed out, what real damage could you do? What critical assets are going to be accessible over the public network?
When I read it I got more the impression that it was some sort of attack against closed networks that might have involved a more direct form of sabotage (HERF, jammers, seal teams, etc). Ah dunno, it was pretty sketchy on details so its anybody's guess.
Sure, there are lots of 'grey' areas that can be argued one way or another. Exactly my point that this should be left in the hands of parents and not opening a whole ugly can of worm about wast 'most' people should agree are black and white, right and wrong issues.
err... I was responding to the exact words in the post I was replying to. He said ethics, right and wrong so those were the statements I was referring to. If you label it MORALITY or ETHICS doesn't really change my stance.
It should be easy to come up with a common set of ethical rules, as most people can agree on things are right
You hit the nail on the head and diluted your own argument with the word most (I added the emphasis). What if I'm not _most_ people and I happen to disagree with the public school's moral education? (Such as: killing is wrong unless there is a war or self defense, then its ok. Maybe I don't want my kid taught that.)
And no, I disagree with you. *I* will decide how to teach my children about MORALITY _AND_ ETHICS, thank you. YOU may think that "Golden Rule" and "Killing other people" are black/white issues, but maybe I don't.
Ultimately, as a parent it is *my* choice to influence my child's sense of values, morality and ethics. Thank you, but the public school needs to concentrate (and do a much better job, IMO) on fundamentals like math, english, science, phys ed, etc and I'll worry about the finer points that are _far_ more subjective than you seem to imply.
Hmm, and whose ethics and definition of right and wrong are to be taught? Yours? The government's? Decided by consensus of a blue-panel committee of leading politicians, buisness leaders and private citizent appointed by the president of the United States? No thank you.
I, as a parent of school-age children want to retain the choice to do this myself, or send my kids to a church where the ethics and sense of right and wrong are close enought to my standards.
Yeah, ESR has really grown on me recently. I never truly disliked any of his positions, but I did kind of see some of the flamage going on around him and kind of kept a wary eye.
I may not personally agree with everything that comes out of his mouth or word processor, but in general I have to agree that this in particular is very inspiring and in general I think ESR makes some very persuasive arguments.
"I'm trying really hard to see this issue from your point of view, but I just can't seem to get my head shoved quite that far up my ass!"
Yeah, wasn't there a story a long while ago where someone decided to study coffee rings because they thought it odd the way that stains from the bottom of coffee cups dried. Seem to recall that they actually discovered some interesting phenomena that was not previously described.
Hmm, I hope you are just kidding and do realise that these are not the official Nobel prize thingies, but the ng Nobel. In case you missed it:
WHAT: The annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony honors individuals whose achievements
"cannot or should not be reproduced." Ten prizes are given to people who have done
remarkably goofy things -- some of them admirable, some perhaps otherwise. At the
ceremony, 1200 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the winners step forward to accept their Prizes. The Prizes are physically handed to the winners by genuinely bemused
genuine Nobel Laureates.
This is sad and funny at the same time, I guess.
Here's a particularly interesting quote:
"People sometimes make errors," said Dr. Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science. "The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."
Ok, this is a reasonable tone for a public statement. I just have to imagine the tone at the moment of discovery when their internal review uncovered this:
"WHAT!!! Do you have any idea how this is going to make us look!!?? We are going to be the laughing-stock of the scientific community over this! MY GOD! Get me the head of the dumbass who's idea it was to use inches feet and yards to compute the %^&@$# trajectory of an interplanetary vehicle!"
Man, I wouldn't want what's left of _that_ guy's career!
Last report I heard was that there were possible still ongoing "criticality incidents" but that workers could not re-enter the plant becauske of 4000x the 'normal' radiation, but that when they could go in, they would drain the water from the tank where the stuff was being processed (35 lbs instead of the normal 5lbs) in order to stop further reactions.
Scary shit.
Hmm, seems more like they are complaining that all these guys going around to their store and others are blocking the aisles so their customers can't get through as fast and that some of their customers are getting information that is out of date (sorry, the special on string-beans ended yesterday) and ruining the confidence they have built up with their customers (to further the analogy).
I like the idea posted above. Collect the info and sell it at a fair price on a different server. I don't think eBay should mind people finding info from other sites (assuming they eventually come to eBay and purchase there). If you have some degree of quality control and can throttle the effects of this searching your real-time database at the expense of performance for live users, I don't think there would be a problem.
But what about ad impressions? Does eBay benefot from visitors clicking through multiple pages to search for what they want, seeing an ad each time (I don't know, never been to eBay - just asking).