I support the theory of the universe as a DFA. If you knew the governing rules of the universe as well as every quantum state of every particle in the universe, you could calculate both the past and the future with perfect accuracy. But that's a little like saying if you had a pinch of fairy dust and a happy thought, you could fly to Neverland.
If you do it in perl, you could just use a hash and then loop over everything using a combo of foreach and keys. And then if you decide you want more giraffes, you can stick 'em in wherever you want without having to worry about any bounds checking.
You know, because it kind of permanently took mainstream scifi out of the dimension (pun intended) of the more serious speculative fiction and into adolescent fantasy. Then again, there are those of us that like all six of them.
Also, there are those of us that think this is one of the stupidest questions that people won't stop asking. The verbage might change every now and again, but the essence of the question "why don't I enjoy these movies as much when I'm 30 as I did when I was ten" got old three months after the release of Ep 1.
I'll happily take the flaimbait or troll mod I'm sure to get for posting this to take this moment to inform you that ya'll seriously need to get a hobby, or a girlfriend, or both, and put this ad nauseum, ad absurdem Star Wars "discussion" to rest.
You're naivety reminds me of a movie i am found of.. here is a quote from one part of that movie (which i think we can all agree has been shown to be true time and again):
a) please show me, citing specific examples, where this is SOP and there have been no negative repercussion for the auto industry.
b) When was the last time you wrote your duly elected representatives asking for tighter control of the auto industry
The system works when we make it work. I maintain that you're all lazy, and your cynicism is just a convenient cover to allow you to work under the assumption that there's nothing you can do anyway, and so you're absolved from having to step out from your own life for the five minutes it would take you write a simple letter. The most horrible crimes of the twentieth century were perpetrated by otherwise "good" people who sat by and did nothing.
There may well come a time when armed rebellion is the only means to protect our rights as human beings, but try using ballot boxes, soap boxes, and post boxes before you result to bullet boxes, eh?
Keeping the voting public happy is not the same thing as maximizing donation dollars, and those dollars are very very key to retaining power.
Sure it is. Keeping the voting public happy means staying in office, and that means maximizing donation dollars. The fact that we're having this discussion is proof the system works. When companies do something illegal or dangerous (lead paint in toys), and it gets out, the public backlash usually results in a recall. Companies then prioritize safety, and watchdog groups are ever more vigilant of them than before.
Same thing with politicians. If you make enough noise both to them and to your fellow voters, they'll take notice. When you and your fellow voters make a lot of noise, they'll start paying attention.
And while you're right that politicians adopt the retention of power as their number one job, it *shouldn't be* their number one job.
And why not? Staying in power means dutifully serving those who elected them to office. Two year election cycles for congresspersons are a beautiful thing, because it requires them to check in regularly with the people they're elected to serve. The beautiful thing about the way our system of government is designed is that it takes those baser instincts into account and makes them work for the people.
Wake the fuck up. It ALWAYS works. Every time. All the time. When someone gets elected to office, their number one job becomes keeping themselves in office, and that means keeping their constituents happy. If enough people insist on something, they'll get it from their representatives. The system does work, but self defeatist cynicism just gives you an excuse to be lazy.
Or maybe it is that not enough people share your point of view. Bottom line, if everyone who cared enough to whine on slashdot would instead write a letter to their congressperson, those elected officials would at least be AWARE that they have a constituency who cares.
I stand by what I said. The system works. You just need to learn to work with the system.
(This country disgusts me more and more. We should storm something in Guy Faulke's masks. )
Alternatively, you could, I don't know:
1) Write your representative.
2) Write your senators.
3) Organize an issues based campaign
4) Vote for someone who shares your point of view on an issue
5) Run for office yourself.
Look, all of it perfectly legal, and just as important, actually has a chance of succeeding. If you storm a federal building in any mask, you're just going to wind up dead or in prison.
Or does that sound like too much work? Would you rather piss and moan about it on Slashdot? Might feel good for a moment, but it's all sound and fury signifying nothing.
The granting of immunity to the telecos is in the wake of telco's refusing to testify just how broad the information they've handed over is. Now that they don't have the fifth amendment to hide behind, when congress subpoena's their CEOs to testify, they'll have to answer.
Actually, I'm kind of glad they did this. It seems to me more likely that we'll find out just how communist Bush has been.
Let me explain it then, the nebulous entity known as "the press" is traditionally regarded as necessary to the function of a free society. Without someone to report on the actions of elected officials, said officials would be free to act with utter impunity. An active press keeps the public informed about the actions of their elected officials, and thus (so the theory goes) those officials can be held accountable by the people whom they are elected to represent. However the press needs special protections in order to do this job.
For example, civil servants who are compelled by their consciences to reveal the criminal activities of an elected official could also be understandably hesitant to reveal these action publicly for fear of losing future opportunities for employment. A journalist's assurance of anonymity does nothing if a subpoena can compel said journalist to reveal their source, and thus our hypothetical civil servant may not come forward. The elected official's crimes continue undiscovered, and democracy is not served.
The press is commonly referred to as a "fourth estate" in that it serves a vital function for democracy but is not a part of the government. Because of the special function of reporters, they need special protection under the law to allow them to continue to do their jobs successfully. We need them to be able to continue to do their jobs in order to have an informed electorate. Journalist shield laws serve democracy.
So the real question comes down to the definition of a journalist, and this is an important distinction to make. In this case it's not who you are that matters, but what you do. As a self described casual blogger, your blogging activities serve a personal function (keeping in touch with friends, family, and the like). The information you provide to the public is of private interest, as opposed to the professional journalist (even if they are a blogger) who provides information of public interest. As with all laws, basic guidelines need to be established for the courts to rule as to whether or not someone is providing information of private interest or of public interest. If you feel you have been pigeonholed into the wrong category, this would be something for you to argue in court.
Really though the law would be doing you a favor by establishing these criteria. Say you are contacted by a civil servant, you're brother in law maybe, in the above scenario. Because of this law, you would have very clear guidelines as to whether or not you could make a genuine offer of anonymity. If you can't, you need to introduce your source to a recognized professional journalist.
I'm certainly not a Texan, so far be it from to tell you how your politics worked, but my understanding was that this was a scandal because the redistricting took place outside of the usual interval, which tends to coincide with the census. Am I mistaken in that assumption? Had the previous legislature done the same?
Because "the people" can't be trusted to elect incumbents. It's a basic fact that district lines need to be drawn every now and again, also that elected officials are primarily concern with keeping their jobs, and so no party in power is going to consciously draw their lines in such a way that hurts them. We all got a taste for just how nasty elected officials can be in the 2003 Texas Redistricting scandal, and I can't believe that similarly minded politicians would let something like this happen. As you point out, it could, to a certain degree, negate voter district boundaries. I do think that degree would be extremely limited, however. Just as Americans in general can't seem to have an intelligent discussion about politics without things turning nasty, I don't see a ground swell of support for independently minded candidates, and the subsequent subversion of the electoral process to get them elected.
First of all, I call bullshit. You're an Anonymous Coward, and that means you're nothing. If you want to be an expert in copyright law, please provide your full name, as well as the law school from which you graduated, your graduation year, the law firm for which you currently work, and a phone number where we can verify all this with your employer or a senior partner in your firm. You department chair will do if you're a professor in a law school.
Second if all. I cite: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107, point 4 "(the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." Since the claimed effect was to present said clip to her younger brother, it would in all likely hood have a positive economic impact on the film by encouraging him to see it. Therefore, fair use.
But lets take them all...
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; Fair use, see above.
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;, fair use. The theoretical random 20 second clip could be intended for discussion/illustration purposes. Since it is a film if a specific portion of the film is necessary for such discussion, it would be classified as fair use.
(3) the amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; Since she took a 20 second clip of a movie that is roughly 7200 second long, that equates to roughly.03% of the film. That is an insignificant portion of the overall work, and therefore I or any sane person would call it fair use.
If you're going to bother responding, please cite specific legislation and/or case law that contradicts the above.
1) If it was only a 20 second clip, they're covered by fair use provisions. 2) No judge is going to give her a year in prison, even if it was just the first 20 seconds before she got caught 3) Teenagers do dumb things, none of us are any different, and learning to deal with the consequences is part of growing up. Next time, I'm sure she'll be much more sneaky and effective in her attempts at piracy, and I'm sure other teenagers will learn from this example and so will be too. 4) That's ONE teenager with a video camera down, and several hundred thousand, plus the legions of others in less corporately controlled countries to go. Good job, MPAA, you'll have this thing nipped in the bud in no time.
I appreciate your sympathies, but a better answer is that people who are infected with this, or any other disease are still people. I suspect that many lives could have been saved if the moral pundits had been more sympathetic than sanctimonious. There is no such thing as a "good" or a "bad" victim, and everyone who is afflicted with any life threatening illness deserves our compassion and the best care we can muster to heal them.
I've referred to my ds as a Gameboy ever since I got the thing, and I haven't yet met anyone that didn't know what I was talking about. Maybe in ten years' time I'll be talking to my kids about the DSx3 and call it a Gameboy and they'll give me a blank stare like I don't know what I'm talking about and so should be quiet.
In the Bible, Eve wouldn't be wearing any clothes before the fall. I would shoot them an email, but what can you do with religious zealots who don't even know their own religion, really.
My favorite part is where he says: "if your C code requires you to know the difference between i++ and ++i, it is too complicated," because it makes me remember that being covered in my very first programming course, and that all code should perforce be understandable to someone who has finished maybe 1/3 semester of intro programming.
Poor me! I have too much email that I have to read! Boo hoo hoo, I can't figure out how to subscribe to a service that provides respectable spam filtering! I'm incapable of not responding to every single email that comes in within 10 minutes! Waaaaa! It's not my fault I have no time management skills, it's because of EMAIL! Won't someone please protect me?!?!
Perfect! I love it. Your ironic response to a post that was obviously meant to be taken 100% completely seriously. You must be a super genius. Look out there, JPL, there's a new rocket scientist in town.
Slashdot Mirror
New Science Disagreed
I support the theory of the universe as a DFA. If you knew the governing rules of the universe as well as every quantum state of every particle in the universe, you could calculate both the past and the future with perfect accuracy. But that's a little like saying if you had a pinch of fairy dust and a happy thought, you could fly to Neverland.
If you do it in perl, you could just use a hash and then loop over everything using a combo of foreach and keys. And then if you decide you want more giraffes, you can stick 'em in wherever you want without having to worry about any bounds checking.
You know, because it kind of permanently took mainstream scifi out of the dimension (pun intended) of the more serious speculative fiction and into adolescent fantasy. Then again, there are those of us that like all six of them.
Also, there are those of us that think this is one of the stupidest questions that people won't stop asking. The verbage might change every now and again, but the essence of the question "why don't I enjoy these movies as much when I'm 30 as I did when I was ten" got old three months after the release of Ep 1.
I'll happily take the flaimbait or troll mod I'm sure to get for posting this to take this moment to inform you that ya'll seriously need to get a hobby, or a girlfriend, or both, and put this ad nauseum, ad absurdem Star Wars "discussion" to rest.
You're naivety reminds me of a movie i am found of.. here is a quote from one part of that movie (which i think we can all agree has been shown to be true time and again):
a) please show me, citing specific examples, where this is SOP and there have been no negative repercussion for the auto industry.
b) When was the last time you wrote your duly elected representatives asking for tighter control of the auto industry
The system works when we make it work. I maintain that you're all lazy, and your cynicism is just a convenient cover to allow you to work under the assumption that there's nothing you can do anyway, and so you're absolved from having to step out from your own life for the five minutes it would take you write a simple letter. The most horrible crimes of the twentieth century were perpetrated by otherwise "good" people who sat by and did nothing.
There may well come a time when armed rebellion is the only means to protect our rights as human beings, but try using ballot boxes, soap boxes, and post boxes before you result to bullet boxes, eh?
Keeping the voting public happy is not the same thing as maximizing donation dollars, and those dollars are very very key to retaining power.
Sure it is. Keeping the voting public happy means staying in office, and that means maximizing donation dollars. The fact that we're having this discussion is proof the system works. When companies do something illegal or dangerous (lead paint in toys), and it gets out, the public backlash usually results in a recall. Companies then prioritize safety, and watchdog groups are ever more vigilant of them than before.
Same thing with politicians. If you make enough noise both to them and to your fellow voters, they'll take notice. When you and your fellow voters make a lot of noise, they'll start paying attention.
And while you're right that politicians adopt the retention of power as their number one job, it *shouldn't be* their number one job.
And why not? Staying in power means dutifully serving those who elected them to office. Two year election cycles for congresspersons are a beautiful thing, because it requires them to check in regularly with the people they're elected to serve. The beautiful thing about the way our system of government is designed is that it takes those baser instincts into account and makes them work for the people.
They'll never care if you don't write.
Wake the fuck up. It ALWAYS works. Every time. All the time. When someone gets elected to office, their number one job becomes keeping themselves in office, and that means keeping their constituents happy. If enough people insist on something, they'll get it from their representatives. The system does work, but self defeatist cynicism just gives you an excuse to be lazy.
Or maybe it is that not enough people share your point of view. Bottom line, if everyone who cared enough to whine on slashdot would instead write a letter to their congressperson, those elected officials would at least be AWARE that they have a constituency who cares.
I stand by what I said. The system works. You just need to learn to work with the system.
(This country disgusts me more and more. We should storm something in Guy Faulke's masks. )
Alternatively, you could, I don't know:
1) Write your representative.
2) Write your senators.
3) Organize an issues based campaign
4) Vote for someone who shares your point of view on an issue
5) Run for office yourself.
Look, all of it perfectly legal, and just as important, actually has a chance of succeeding. If you storm a federal building in any mask, you're just going to wind up dead or in prison.
Or does that sound like too much work? Would you rather piss and moan about it on Slashdot? Might feel good for a moment, but it's all sound and fury signifying nothing.
First of all, care to reference any specific legal decisions supporting that argument?
Second of all, so many attorneys general, so little time.
The granting of immunity to the telecos is in the wake of telco's refusing to testify just how broad the information they've handed over is. Now that they don't have the fifth amendment to hide behind, when congress subpoena's their CEOs to testify, they'll have to answer.
Actually, I'm kind of glad they did this. It seems to me more likely that we'll find out just how communist Bush has been.
Should kids be brought up knowing that their life on the web is being documented and controlled by people other than their parents?"
Yes, obviously, because it is.
So, what is going to happen when M$ screws up and starts blocking products that are 'genuine'?
I suspect that honest people and pirates alike will simply start using whatever work around they find via google search on their friends' computers.
The government terrorizes YOU.
Let me explain it then, the nebulous entity known as "the press" is traditionally regarded as necessary to the function of a free society. Without someone to report on the actions of elected officials, said officials would be free to act with utter impunity. An active press keeps the public informed about the actions of their elected officials, and thus (so the theory goes) those officials can be held accountable by the people whom they are elected to represent. However the press needs special protections in order to do this job.
For example, civil servants who are compelled by their consciences to reveal the criminal activities of an elected official could also be understandably hesitant to reveal these action publicly for fear of losing future opportunities for employment. A journalist's assurance of anonymity does nothing if a subpoena can compel said journalist to reveal their source, and thus our hypothetical civil servant may not come forward. The elected official's crimes continue undiscovered, and democracy is not served.
The press is commonly referred to as a "fourth estate" in that it serves a vital function for democracy but is not a part of the government. Because of the special function of reporters, they need special protection under the law to allow them to continue to do their jobs successfully. We need them to be able to continue to do their jobs in order to have an informed electorate. Journalist shield laws serve democracy.
So the real question comes down to the definition of a journalist, and this is an important distinction to make. In this case it's not who you are that matters, but what you do. As a self described casual blogger, your blogging activities serve a personal function (keeping in touch with friends, family, and the like). The information you provide to the public is of private interest, as opposed to the professional journalist (even if they are a blogger) who provides information of public interest. As with all laws, basic guidelines need to be established for the courts to rule as to whether or not someone is providing information of private interest or of public interest. If you feel you have been pigeonholed into the wrong category, this would be something for you to argue in court.
Really though the law would be doing you a favor by establishing these criteria. Say you are contacted by a civil servant, you're brother in law maybe, in the above scenario. Because of this law, you would have very clear guidelines as to whether or not you could make a genuine offer of anonymity. If you can't, you need to introduce your source to a recognized professional journalist.
I'm certainly not a Texan, so far be it from to tell you how your politics worked, but my understanding was that this was a scandal because the redistricting took place outside of the usual interval, which tends to coincide with the census. Am I mistaken in that assumption? Had the previous legislature done the same?
Because "the people" can't be trusted to elect incumbents. It's a basic fact that district lines need to be drawn every now and again, also that elected officials are primarily concern with keeping their jobs, and so no party in power is going to consciously draw their lines in such a way that hurts them. We all got a taste for just how nasty elected officials can be in the 2003 Texas Redistricting scandal, and I can't believe that similarly minded politicians would let something like this happen. As you point out, it could, to a certain degree, negate voter district boundaries. I do think that degree would be extremely limited, however. Just as Americans in general can't seem to have an intelligent discussion about politics without things turning nasty, I don't see a ground swell of support for independently minded candidates, and the subsequent subversion of the electoral process to get them elected.
First of all, I call bullshit. You're an Anonymous Coward, and that means you're nothing. If you want to be an expert in copyright law, please provide your full name, as well as the law school from which you graduated, your graduation year, the law firm for which you currently work, and a phone number where we can verify all this with your employer or a senior partner in your firm. You department chair will do if you're a professor in a law school.
, point 4 "(the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." Since the claimed effect was to present said clip to her younger brother, it would in all likely hood have a positive economic impact on the film by encouraging him to see it. Therefore, fair use.
.03% of the film. That is an insignificant portion of the overall work, and therefore I or any sane person would call it fair use.
Second if all. I cite: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
But lets take them all...
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; Fair use, see above.
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;, fair use. The theoretical random 20 second clip could be intended for discussion/illustration purposes. Since it is a film if a specific portion of the film is necessary for such discussion, it would be classified as fair use.
(3) the amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; Since she took a 20 second clip of a movie that is roughly 7200 second long, that equates to roughly
If you're going to bother responding, please cite specific legislation and/or case law that contradicts the above.
1) If it was only a 20 second clip, they're covered by fair use provisions.
2) No judge is going to give her a year in prison, even if it was just the first 20 seconds before she got caught
3) Teenagers do dumb things, none of us are any different, and learning to deal with the consequences is part of growing up. Next time, I'm sure she'll be much more sneaky and effective in her attempts at piracy, and I'm sure other teenagers will learn from this example and so will be too.
4) That's ONE teenager with a video camera down, and several hundred thousand, plus the legions of others in less corporately controlled countries to go. Good job, MPAA, you'll have this thing nipped in the bud in no time.
I appreciate your sympathies, but a better answer is that people who are infected with this, or any other disease are still people. I suspect that many lives could have been saved if the moral pundits had been more sympathetic than sanctimonious. There is no such thing as a "good" or a "bad" victim, and everyone who is afflicted with any life threatening illness deserves our compassion and the best care we can muster to heal them.
See also "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
I've referred to my ds as a Gameboy ever since I got the thing, and I haven't yet met anyone that didn't know what I was talking about. Maybe in ten years' time I'll be talking to my kids about the DSx3 and call it a Gameboy and they'll give me a blank stare like I don't know what I'm talking about and so should be quiet.
In the Bible, Eve wouldn't be wearing any clothes before the fall. I would shoot them an email, but what can you do with religious zealots who don't even know their own religion, really.
My favorite part is where he says: "if your C code requires you to know the difference between i++ and ++i, it is too complicated," because it makes me remember that being covered in my very first programming course, and that all code should perforce be understandable to someone who has finished maybe 1/3 semester of intro programming.
Poor me! I have too much email that I have to read! Boo hoo hoo, I can't figure out how to subscribe to a service that provides respectable spam filtering! I'm incapable of not responding to every single email that comes in within 10 minutes! Waaaaa! It's not my fault I have no time management skills, it's because of EMAIL! Won't someone please protect me?!?!
An excellent question. I would be willing to bet the answer has something to do with anti-trust legislation, but I don't know for sure.
Perfect! I love it. Your ironic response to a post that was obviously meant to be taken 100% completely seriously. You must be a super genius. Look out there, JPL, there's a new rocket scientist in town.