and that's not semantics. i can call a mountain lion a type of dog, and when you say "that's not true", is it valid if i respond "well, you're just engaging in a silly pedantic exercise in semantics." what? no i'm not, i'm applying the DEFINITION of what science IS. likewise a mountain lion is not a dog BY DEFINITION. that's not quibbling about semantics!
The key word there is "quibbling", not "semantics". The definition of mountain lion, dog or science is clearly a matter of semantics. A discussion of the meaning of those terms is a discussion of semantics (as you'd presumably note, "by definition"). Semantics are extremely important. Quibbling over semantics is unhelpful because quibbling over anything is unhelpful. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with discussing semantics.
I have to say, I've never understood this argument. I would regard the loss of my freedom as being as bad as the loss of my life.
So if you were convicted (we'll assume wrongly convicted) of a serious crime and your lawyer wanted to push for imprisonment instead of death you'd say "don't bother, it's all much the same to me"? I think most people value their lives rather more highly than that.
Andf loss of freedom for what period of time? You think that 30 years lost freedom is as bad as death, how about 10 years? 5 years? 1 year? If all those are as good and bad as being killed then are they also the same as each other? Does this only apply once you get into a term of years or is half an hour being detained for questioning as bad as being killed too?
Do you think www.whitehouse.com (Extremely NSFW in case you've never heard) - would exist if the good folks at www.whitehouse.gov had any legal recourse? The folks at whitehouse.gov don't want to make the case that they're trading under that name. In court they'd tend to actively claim that they're not for sale. Hence no trademark issue.
Are you truly saying you think this person hasn't shared music illegally over p2p? I am truly saying that I don't know, and have no opinion, on whether they have or not. I'm guessing you're basing your opinion on him having been accused and on his not having appeared to defend himself? Fair enough, but it doesn't seem much to go on to me.
I do think it's a good thing that the judge isn't willing to grant a default judgment (yet) without anything more to go on than that. I think it's a good thing that the RIAA will have the opportunity to bring evidence to support their claim and I think it's a good thing that the defendant has, and has had, the chance to defend himself. I see plenty of good to celebrate, though hopefully the sort of good that is quietly happening all the time and isn't particularly remarkable to this case.
It'd be like having [insert person here who has done many criminal and despicable things] on trial being found not guilty because the state couldn't prove it. Infinitely better than having someone on trial who couldn't be shown to have done terrible things being nevertheless convicted on the basis that 'we just know you did it'.
Having the law say its illegal and people getting away with it on technicalities, that isn't good for anyone. Again, it's not a technicality. And having the law say things are illegal but that we'll only punish people who can be proved to have done them is a very good thing indeed. Sometimes it will lead to unsatisfactory results(again, infinitely better than the results of the alternative), but it hasn't here.
You seem to be proceeding a. on the assumption that the defendant actually did infringe on the copyrights, which we don't know, and b. as if the judge had actually ruled the defendant not liable, which hasn't happened.
When the chances of someone being a filesharer is greater then 50% if someone is chosen at random, it becomes difficult to celebrate this person's innocence. I can't even see how that's relevant. I've no idea whether they should be liable or not. Apparently the judge doesn't have enough information to make that decision either. So the case goes on. This is how it should be. The RIAA will have their chance to prove liability and the defendant has the chance to refute it (though so far the defendant doesn't seem to be taking that opportunity, which does not bode well for them).
Denying a default judgment does not mean that the case goes away. It just means that the judge isn't prepared to rule on it on the basis of the facts currently in the record. The defendant can still lose later.
Decided by question of fact, not question of law. Instead of "not liable in principle" it's "not liable because they couldn't prove it". You're turning the word "technicality" on its head. Not finding someone liable (yet) unless the case against them has been made is the very core of the system. It's the whole point of the proceedings. It's as far from being a technicality as anything could be.
So if I'm reading it right, the participants get a sort of "potential ownership" of a pool of patents. Then if they get sued by someone then that potential ownership crystalises into actual ownership with respect to particular relevant patents. Then they use those patents to counterclaim against the person suing them? Is that anywhere close?
I am sure if you donate a few billion to American health services, someone will make sure that can get your visa within a minimal amount of time. It sounds like he got one within a minimal amount of time:
"The Nigerian government required proof that the billionaire chairman of Microsoft would not stay in the country and become a drain on Nigeria's social services. The company helping him with his application, travel document expediter CIBT, obtained a letter from Gates' bank that reassured the Nigerian authorities, and the visa was approved." Doesn't sound like there was any fuss or any problem at all. Instead of calling the bank and asking them to send a letter I guess they could have called someone inside the Nigerian government and tried pulling a few strings but why bother? It doesn't seem like it would be any quicker.
Yeah, other than the whole part where "he donates billions of dollars for health care and education" in that miserable country and its continent. So he should be able to easily satisfy them that he won't be a drain on their economy. Which he did.
From the article "Sure, things were OK once Bill managed to prove his economic status".
What would you expect to be different?
Bill: I'd like a visa to visit your country. Immigration service: You can't have one unless you show us you won't be a drain on our economy. Bill Gates: Okay, here's details of my wealth and stuff. Immigration service: That's fine, here's your visa.
What's the story? Bill Gates is asked the same questions as mere mortal, and he manages to answer satisfactorily?
Gambling is legal in SOME states in the US, not every state. Each state has its right to decide what is and is not legal with regard to this. It is a bit different in the US from other countries in that (although erroding) we are a union of independent states...and each state is mostly free to make its own rules. That's nice but the rest of the world doesn't care about the US's internal divisions.
If the US federal government doesn't have authority to enter into trade treaties then it needs to stop pretending that it can. If every state needs to negotiate separately then do it that way. If the US needs to set up a new body that can negotiate on behalf of every state then do that.
Every other country in the world is just as capable of saying "Oh yeah, that Berne convention, well you see different rules apply in that province over there, because they just do, yeah we didn't mention that when we signed the treaty." But if we want international agreements to be possible then we have to not do that.
He was sentenced at Liverpool crown court to two years and eight months' in jail for the race hate crime and six months consecutively for the child pornography offences.
I think it's fair to say that makes the Slashdor summary "sentenced to three years in prison for posting inflammatory messages to a website" inaccurate.
last week I saw a single quote from Dunn which stated that Perkins played a key role in starting this investigation. Curiously, I don't see this statement repeated in other press coverage.
I can't help wondering if the reason that you "curiously" don't see the statement is because you aren't reading the articles.
From the one we're discussing here:
Dunn insists Perkins was just as eager to learn the identity of the leaker as she was. "Tom was the most hawkish member of the board for plugging the leaks, which he thought were coming from management. He advocated the use of lie-detector tests." Perkins disagrees.
There's lots of other stuff in there from Dunn too. It really goes out of its way to be fair to both sides. Unfortunately, Dunn's version of events is that she hired someone to obtain confidential phone records, she received and made use of the phone records but is now amazed after the event to find that they'd been unethical in getting them. Never suspected for a moment that they might have lied to get them. She really can't be that stupid. Telling her side of the story pretty much condemns her.
Update: A source close to Hewlett-Packard tells Newsweek that HP's emergency board meeting was adjourned late in the afternoon on Sunday (ET) without any decision being reached on the possible resignation of Patricia Dunn as chairman. The source, who requested anonymity because of the confidentiality of internal board proceedings, said the HP board would reconvene late Monday afternoon.
The September 11 attacks were the first time that Slashdot really seemed to be very much at all about politics
Nope, remember "US and UK unilaterally atack Iraq" back in 1998? That sticks in my memory because there was such a storm of comments at the time thanks to the REALLY partisan summary text, plus the disabling and reenabling of comments, but it wasn't the first political story by any means - just a very controversial one three years before the September 11 attacks.
What I was saying is, if you ban patents altogether that would make it impossible for someone to profit from his/her ingenuity. The RIMM case is a different story, and I don't know all the facts about it.
It is one case in which a company, Research in Motion, has profited from their ingenuity without relying on patents. That is by no means unusual, but it is one very visible case. The claim that it would be impossible to profit from ingenuity in the absence of patents is flat out untrue.
Whether patents give a net benefit is something that can reasonably debated. The answer probably varies by field, but you can plausibly think otherwise. The claim that nobody could profit from ingenuity in the absence of patents, however, is as ludicrous as claiming that nobody can profit with them. We can all look around the world and see that it isn't true.
If you do, then you agree with the concept of patents. If you don't, then just ban them all. Of course, this would not be a very logical system since no one would be allowed to profit from his/her ingenuity.
Of course people would be "allowed to profit" from ingenuity. RIM have employed every bit as much ingenuity in creating an actual product as any patent holder over the concept of a wireless email device has done. They're not even accused of having taken the idea from the patent archives. They have profited from their ingenuity. The question is whether the patent system will now take those profits away from them.
Admittedly, this is partially based on the assumption that a stand-alone player will be more functional than the HD-DVD abilities of the 360. Given the history of consoles and movie playback, I think it's a pretty safe assumption, but maybe MS will nail it this time.
Even with identical functionality, there's no point in tying the upgrade cycle of your next generation DVD system to your games console. On the face of it that's a silly idea. There has to be either an increase in functionality or a significant cost saving in order for it to make sense. It's unlikely that either will exist.
As soon as the Brits stop using Yank, I'll stop using Brit.
I don't call anyone a "yank" but if you feel some deep seated need to retaliate over others doing so then I'm sure I can cope with that. It doesn't seem to be exactly the best reason for a choice of words but I guess that's your problem.
I think the problem with the 'Brit' term is that the only people who don't mind it tend to be the English.
I'm English and while I don't have a problem with being called British, I would say that "Brit" has an unpleasant slangy quality to it. Not that it's worth making a big deal of *shrug*
For instance, is there an eye that operates under human conditions that would certainly be an improvement over thehuman eye?
It depends on the human. My eye can be improved upon by the addition of an extra lens (or modification of the existing lens), allowing me to actually see things clearly. I have tested this extensively by the addition of little glass lenses in front of the 'human eye' and it definitely seems like an improvement to me.
Slashdot Mirror
is any of that unclear to you?
No. What would make you think it is, or might be?
Your statements concerned the meanings of the terms in use - i.e. semantics. There's nothing wrong with that. Semantics are important.
Is any of that unclear to you?
and that's not semantics. i can call a mountain lion a type of dog, and when you say "that's not true", is it valid if i respond "well, you're just engaging in a silly pedantic exercise in semantics." what? no i'm not, i'm applying the DEFINITION of what science IS. likewise a mountain lion is not a dog BY DEFINITION. that's not quibbling about semantics!
The key word there is "quibbling", not "semantics". The definition of mountain lion, dog or science is clearly a matter of semantics. A discussion of the meaning of those terms is a discussion of semantics (as you'd presumably note, "by definition"). Semantics are extremely important. Quibbling over semantics is unhelpful because quibbling over anything is unhelpful. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with discussing semantics.
I have to say, I've never understood this argument. I would regard the loss of my freedom as being as bad as the loss of my life.
So if you were convicted (we'll assume wrongly convicted) of a serious crime and your lawyer wanted to push for imprisonment instead of death you'd say "don't bother, it's all much the same to me"? I think most people value their lives rather more highly than that.
Andf loss of freedom for what period of time? You think that 30 years lost freedom is as bad as death, how about 10 years? 5 years? 1 year? If all those are as good and bad as being killed then are they also the same as each other? Does this only apply once you get into a term of years or is half an hour being detained for questioning as bad as being killed too?
I do think it's a good thing that the judge isn't willing to grant a default judgment (yet) without anything more to go on than that. I think it's a good thing that the RIAA will have the opportunity to bring evidence to support their claim and I think it's a good thing that the defendant has, and has had, the chance to defend himself. I see plenty of good to celebrate, though hopefully the sort of good that is quietly happening all the time and isn't particularly remarkable to this case.
You seem to be proceeding a. on the assumption that the defendant actually did infringe on the copyrights, which we don't know, and b. as if the judge had actually ruled the defendant not liable, which hasn't happened.
Denying a default judgment does not mean that the case goes away. It just means that the judge isn't prepared to rule on it on the basis of the facts currently in the record. The defendant can still lose later.
So if I'm reading it right, the participants get a sort of "potential ownership" of a pool of patents. Then if they get sued by someone then that potential ownership crystalises into actual ownership with respect to particular relevant patents. Then they use those patents to counterclaim against the person suing them? Is that anywhere close?
From the article "Sure, things were OK once Bill managed to prove his economic status".
What would you expect to be different?
Bill: I'd like a visa to visit your country.
Immigration service: You can't have one unless you show us you won't be a drain on our economy.
Bill Gates: Okay, here's details of my wealth and stuff.
Immigration service: That's fine, here's your visa.
What's the story? Bill Gates is asked the same questions as mere mortal, and he manages to answer satisfactorily?
If the US federal government doesn't have authority to enter into trade treaties then it needs to stop pretending that it can. If every state needs to negotiate separately then do it that way. If the US needs to set up a new body that can negotiate on behalf of every state then do that.
Every other country in the world is just as capable of saying "Oh yeah, that Berne convention, well you see different rules apply in that province over there, because they just do, yeah we didn't mention that when we signed the treaty." But if we want international agreements to be possible then we have to not do that.
From the article:
I think it's fair to say that makes the Slashdor summary "sentenced to three years in prison for posting inflammatory messages to a website" inaccurate.
I can't help wondering if the reason that you "curiously" don't see the statement is because you aren't reading the articles.
From the one we're discussing here:
There's lots of other stuff in there from Dunn too. It really goes out of its way to be fair to both sides.
Unfortunately, Dunn's version of events is that she hired someone to obtain confidential phone records, she received and made use of the phone records but is now amazed after the event to find that they'd been unethical in getting them. Never suspected for a moment that they might have lied to get them. She really can't be that stupid. Telling her side of the story pretty much condemns her.
So I guess they're still leaking
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling a new morphine substitute.
The September 11 attacks were the first time that Slashdot really seemed to be very much at all about politics
Nope, remember "US and UK unilaterally atack Iraq" back in 1998? That sticks in my memory because there was such a storm of comments at the time thanks to the REALLY partisan summary text, plus the disabling and reenabling of comments, but it wasn't the first political story by any means - just a very controversial one three years before the September 11 attacks.
What I was saying is, if you ban patents altogether that would make it impossible for someone to profit from his/her ingenuity. The RIMM case is a different story, and I don't know all the facts about it.
It is one case in which a company, Research in Motion, has profited from their ingenuity without relying on patents. That is by no means unusual, but it is one very visible case. The claim that it would be impossible to profit from ingenuity in the absence of patents is flat out untrue.
Whether patents give a net benefit is something that can reasonably debated. The answer probably varies by field, but you can plausibly think otherwise. The claim that nobody could profit from ingenuity in the absence of patents, however, is as ludicrous as claiming that nobody can profit with them. We can all look around the world and see that it isn't true.
If you do, then you agree with the concept of patents. If you don't, then just ban them all. Of course, this would not be a very logical system since no one would be allowed to profit from his/her ingenuity.
Of course people would be "allowed to profit" from ingenuity. RIM have employed every bit as much ingenuity in creating an actual product as any patent holder over the concept of a wireless email device has done. They're not even accused of having taken the idea from the patent archives. They have profited from their ingenuity. The question is whether the patent system will now take those profits away from them.
Admittedly, this is partially based on the assumption that a stand-alone player will be more functional than the HD-DVD abilities of the 360. Given the history of consoles and movie playback, I think it's a pretty safe assumption, but maybe MS will nail it this time.
Even with identical functionality, there's no point in tying the upgrade cycle of your next generation DVD system to your games console. On the face of it that's a silly idea. There has to be either an increase in functionality or a significant cost saving in order for it to make sense. It's unlikely that either will exist.
As soon as the Brits stop using Yank, I'll stop using Brit.
I don't call anyone a "yank" but if you feel some deep seated need to retaliate over others doing so then I'm sure I can cope with that. It doesn't seem to be exactly the best reason for a choice of words but I guess that's your problem.
I think the problem with the 'Brit' term is that the only people who don't mind it tend to be the English.
I'm English and while I don't have a problem with being called British, I would say that "Brit" has an unpleasant slangy quality to it. Not that it's worth making a big deal of *shrug*
Calling someone from the United Kingdom's main island, Great Britain, a Brit is like calling someone from the United States of America an American.
No, it isn't. It's like calling them an Ameri. The term for someone from Great Britain is "British", not "Brit".
For instance, is there an eye that operates under human conditions that would certainly be an improvement over thehuman eye?
It depends on the human. My eye can be improved upon by the addition of an extra lens (or modification of the existing lens), allowing me to actually see things clearly. I have tested this extensively by the addition of little glass lenses in front of the 'human eye' and it definitely seems like an improvement to me.