USian isn't politically correct. Isn't it? It's primarily used as an alternative to "American" to reflect that many people outside of the US live in the Americas and feel that they have just as much right to be called "Americans" as people from the US. (i.e. That it would be just as ridiculous to only reserve the use of the word "European" for people who live in E.U. states.)
Thus, it's politically correct speech, with all the connotations of oversensitivity and the resulting pushback that comes from any other similar term.
That means, among other things, that ALL guns are prohibited. Squirt-guns, nerf-guns, rubber-band-guns, salad-shooters, anything that can be said to be a "gun" or to "reasonably" resemble a gun of any sort. So, a giant sugar cookie that is visually indistinguishable from a harmless nerf gun is prohibited. I don't think you understand the reasonable person standard. "Reasonable" is not a word placed in quotes to render it meaningless. It's essentially a common sense standard, as determined by a jury.
I *highly* doubt that any jury in the US would consider a big, brightly-colored, plastic toy gun that almost every member of the jury would've seen or used as a kid to be a reasonable facsimile of a gun.
You are not making money off of your PS2 or you couch. Most people aren't making money off their real estate either, until it comes time to sell, and that's covered by capital gains taxes just like for collectibles.
The income from copyrights is already taxed, by the way.
Well, that was what I was pointing out. It hasn't been in a law dictionary for over a century. The quote is about plagiarism. Yes and no. The quote is actually about the author's view that changing a few bits here and there does not make an act not piracy anymore so long as "the substance of the production" is unlawfully appropriated.
For the author's views on the relationship between the concepts of plagiarism and piracy, you'll have to read the following, more extensive quote from pp. 383:
Piracy Defined and Distinguished from Plagiarism -- In the law of copyright, piracy is the use of literary property in violation of the legal rights of the owner. The meaning of infringement is the same. Neither word is properly used where no legal rights are invaded. Hence, strictly speaking, it is not piracy to take without authority either a part or the whole of what another has written, if neither a statute nor the common law is thereby violated. Such act may be plagiarism, which is a moral but not necessarily a legal wrong; but to constitute piracy, there must be an act against the law. Plagiarism further differs from piracy in that the plagiarist falsely offers as his own what he has taken from the writings of another. The pirate may or may not do this. Hence, there may be an unauthorized appropriation of literary property which is neither piracy nor plagiarism, as the republication in the United States of the work of a foreign author. This is not piracy, because no law is violated; and without misrepresentation as to authorship, it is not plagiarism. So, also, the same act may be at once plagiarism and piracy. The word piracy is applied to the unlawful taking of any kind of intellectual property, whether literary, dramatic, or art. Nor is its use restricted to productions published and protected by statute. The violation of common law rights by publicly reading a literary composition, representing a manuscript drama, making or exhibiting copies of a work of art, may properly be called piracy. A Treatise on the Law of Property in Intellectual Productions in Great Britain and the United States Embracing Copyright in Works of Literature and Art, and Playright in Dramatic and Musical Compositions By Eaton Sylvester Drone
The fact that some people have succeeded in calling copyright infringement "piracy" does not make it any more legitimate. Yes it does. That's how language works. I mean, when a word has been used to mean something for nearly two centuries, you might as well give it up and accept that that's what the word means now. I mean -- it's in a law dictionary and apparently has been for over a century. It's now officially a term of the art.
Oh, and guess what? "Access" is now a verb, "bugs" exist as programming errors, "artificial" is no longer a word of praise for high skill, and people associate "gay" with homosexuality more than with light-hearted happiness. Welcome to the English language. It cares not about your high-minded sense of indignant purity.
piracy, n. 3. The unauthorized and illegal reproduction or distribution of materials protected by copyright, patent, or trademark law. See INFRINGEMENT.
"[T]he test of piracy [is] not whether the identical language, the same words, are used, but whether the substance of the production is unlawfully appropriated." Eaton S. Drone, A Treatise on the Law of Property in Intellectual Productions 97 (1879).
Actually, piracy has actually been in use as a term to describe infringing on another's intellectual property rights for at least 180 years in American courts.
For an example, see Blunt v. Patten, 2 Paine 397, 3 F.Cas. 763 (1828):
In answer to a question from the court, whether the defendant had pirated from the drawings and papers, or from the engravings, he answered, from the engravings. . . . The act that secures copyright to authors, guards against the piracy of the words and sentiments; but it does not prohibit writing on the same subject. As in the case of histories and dictionaries.
Nuclear reactor and the corrosive power of salt: a match made in heaven! You mean as opposed to liquid sodium cooled reactors? (Which, incidentally, we have used before in submarines... UNDERWATER.)
Without deliberate effort to reduce consumption, all that will happen is that energy demand will rise to meet new energy supply, making it impractical to decommission older, dirtier plants or to test unproven technologies when consumers demand energy *now.*
We already see this with the way coal plants continue to be built today instead of other technologies. We could power everything with renewables using today's technology if demand wasn't far outstripping supply.
That's nothing. The man was a freaking genius if rumors are true. Supposedly, he could write in Latin with one hand and in Ancient Greek in the other at the same time. Of course, that could just be legendary.
Michio Kaku's predictions on technology frequently make me wonder just how good of a grasp he actually has on physics. My favorite is the old article where he predicts the way to escape the heat death of the universe by sending "atom-sized" nanomachines through a wormhole into a parallel universe where these machines would spread in a sphere at nearly light speeds.
Oh sure... we'll just ignore how something the size of an atom is supposed to contain any sort of parts capable of manipulating the environment as well as how they're supposed to encode information and make decisions. Might as well also ignore where such a machine is getting the energy to spread at light speed. Heck, why don't we just ignore reality entirely and get into exercises of sheer mental wankery, and...
Never mind, I keep forgetting he's a string theorist. Exercises in mental wankery that have no real attachment to physical reality is his bread and butter.
I propose a study of Slashdot memes to figure out which ones actually DO get you modded into oblivion, because from what I've seen Stale Meme + "I know I'm going to be modded down" == Instant +5, Funny.
Graphene transistors -- Damn cool. But we have transistors. These are just smaller transistors. Evolutionary. Okay, so this technology is lame because it's just a smaller version of something we have....
Atomic magnetometers -- Really small sensors are neat. Lose the "war on terror" retoric in the summary. These might actually allow some neat things, but it's a bit early to say. [...] Nanoradio -- Nifty. Especially if used for communication between multiple tiny machines... too early to tell how it'll sort itself out. But these are "neat" and "nifty?" I'm not following the logic here.
2. Stars, planets, and other astronomical bodies exert a magnetic field on the earth, and all animals, plants, and humans on it.
The magnetic field strength of far away objects drops off at inverse cube of distance. Sitting anywhere near an AC power socket exerts far more magnetic influence on your body than any planet in the solar system, much less any stars light years away, and the magnetic influence of our own planet dwarfs that.
It is not out of the question that both science and astrology can exist in a reasonable mind. Perhaps not, but it would have to be a mind very poorly educated about e-mag.
As a Marxist, I have no time for pseudoscientific concepts that claim to explain the workings of human nature in their entirety while offering no evidence or falsifiability. If I sigged people, I would sig you for this.
I don't see how four years drinking in a frat-house and listening to left-wing professors makes ones votes more informed than someone who actually had to live in the real world. One who think that's what college is about shouldn't be casting aspersions on who does and does not live in the real world -- especially given how much your statement indicates that you buy into political propaganda about ways of life you haven't experienced.
With the Republican nomination cynched by McCain, the only thing that will be in the news will be Obama/Clinton. Come November, people will be saying, "McCain? Who is that?" I actually volunteered to assist a candidate in an election in 2006 that followed an acrimonious primary, and I guarantee you that this is in fact *good* for McCain. With the two candidates beginning to bring out the knives against each other (especially in the form of Clinton's reprehensible scare ads), they are both turning off their base and giving ammunition to the other side. Clinton's tactics are straight out of Republican campaign history, and she's already framing her arguments in terms of "Obama can't win against McCain on issues of national security." (i.e. She's running the Republican's campaign for them in case Obama wins, ensuring a Pyrrhic victory if she wins.)
I saw the effects of this in 2006 when the two candidates did their absolute best to turn voters away from the other candidate. The end result after the primary was a lot of people who were so burned by the attack ads, that they refused to aid the winning candidate against the opposition with campaign donations. (Many also refused to vote in the upcoming election, but most said that they'd hold their nose and vote for our candidate but that they intended to donate money to other members of the party in other elections.)
The net result: A landslide victory for the opposition as the candidate who won the primary was never able to reenergize the party base and unable to match the opposition's funding afterwards. Our candidate tried to run on issues and on the corruption of our opponent, and the opposition ran on personality and won hands down after the sour note left by the primary.
If voters are left saying, "Who's McCain?" then that's not necessarily a good thing if all they can remember about Clinton or Obama is months of attack ads. Brand recognition isn't a good thing when the product's tainted.
Maggie Thatcher was notorious for existing on three to four hours a night and she wasn't exactly an underachiever. Much as I loath and detest her I'd be proud to have her level of achievement. Some people, with very little physical activity, can eat 4000 calories a day and never gain a single pound. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people can eat nothing but cheese and meat and sugar and have low cholesterol and low triglycerides. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people can go for years without seeing a dentist and end up with no cavities when they do finally visit. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people smoke 3 packs a day and live to be 90 years old. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Just because Margaret Thatcher could go for long periods with little sleep without falling apart doesn't mean that the rule of 7-9 hours for most people is wrong. People who try to refute rules that DO well apply almost everyone you'll ever meet by pointing out lone examples where they may not apply are doing nothing but trying to shout down useful guides for us mortal humans who aren't winners of the genetic lottery. Exceptions-driven rules are pointless when the simpler rule applies to 99.9% of the population.
So, Margaret Thatcher may be able to work on 3-4 hours per night, but I think you can guess what I'd say to that.
That's not mutually incompatible with true happiness. A person can be energetic and cheerful and yet a complete mess on the inside. Worse, many people who seem happy may not even really realize themselves just how burned out they really are. Global happiness indexes are usually based on questions about how one feels in private and not rated on the impression that one gives in person.
Also, none of the above has anything to do with national pride, which is its own animal. Even the worst of countries have people who are stubbornly proud of it and unwilling to consider leaving home, and America is in many ways one of the better places to live in the world -- all work-related stress aside.
I don't think he's talking about Kimchi
on
Kimchi in Space
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Err... Read the title of his post. He's not talking about Kimchi. I'm guessing that he's talking about Thorramtur since the word he used shared a lot of the same letters, only the first character didn't show up because it's a thorn and not a "th".
And if you'll read the Wikipedia article about it, you'll see what he's talking about. I think I just about lost my appetite for lunch after reading that. Good Lord, what people used to eat when they were poor and had to make use of the whole animal! I mean, it's like reading something out of a Jack Vance book -- and not the gourmet scenes, but the ones where Cudgel has to "make do" with what he can get.
1) Does this process bleach the fabric? (i.e. Does this work for colors other than white?) 2) What does this do to the longevity of the fibers in the fabric? Does constant exposure to hydroxyl ions damage the cellulose in them?
Slashdot Mirror
Thus, it's politically correct speech, with all the connotations of oversensitivity and the resulting pushback that comes from any other similar term.
I *highly* doubt that any jury in the US would consider a big, brightly-colored, plastic toy gun that almost every member of the jury would've seen or used as a kid to be a reasonable facsimile of a gun.
Indeed. And the first 874 posts in his posting history were all leading up to this one crowning moment of glory.
Says a man who has never had to do yardwork.
The income from copyrights is already taxed, by the way.
Wouldn't you if it was a matter of life and death?
For the author's views on the relationship between the concepts of plagiarism and piracy, you'll have to read the following, more extensive quote from pp. 383: Piracy Defined and Distinguished from Plagiarism -- In the law of copyright, piracy is the use of literary property in violation of the legal rights of the owner. The meaning of infringement is the same. Neither word is properly used where no legal rights are invaded. Hence, strictly speaking, it is not piracy to take without authority either a part or the whole of what another has written, if neither a statute nor the common law is thereby violated. Such act may be plagiarism, which is a moral but not necessarily a legal wrong; but to constitute piracy, there must be an act against the law. Plagiarism further differs from piracy in that the plagiarist falsely offers as his own what he has taken from the writings of another. The pirate may or may not do this. Hence, there may be an unauthorized appropriation of literary property which is neither piracy nor plagiarism, as the republication in the United States of the work of a foreign author. This is not piracy, because no law is violated; and without misrepresentation as to authorship, it is not plagiarism. So, also, the same act may be at once plagiarism and piracy.
The word piracy is applied to the unlawful taking of any kind of intellectual property, whether literary, dramatic, or art. Nor is its use restricted to productions published and protected by statute. The violation of common law rights by publicly reading a literary composition, representing a manuscript drama, making or exhibiting copies of a work of art, may properly be called piracy. A Treatise on the Law of Property in Intellectual Productions in Great Britain and the United States Embracing Copyright in Works of Literature and Art, and Playright in Dramatic and Musical Compositions By Eaton Sylvester Drone
So... You were saying something?
Oh, and guess what? "Access" is now a verb, "bugs" exist as programming errors, "artificial" is no longer a word of praise for high skill, and people associate "gay" with homosexuality more than with light-hearted happiness. Welcome to the English language. It cares not about your high-minded sense of indignant purity.
3. The unauthorized and illegal reproduction or distribution of materials protected by copyright, patent, or trademark law. See INFRINGEMENT.
"[T]he test of piracy [is] not whether the identical language, the same words, are used, but whether the substance of the production is unlawfully appropriated." Eaton S. Drone, A Treatise on the Law of Property in Intellectual Productions 97 (1879).
Black's Law Dictionary (2004)(citation abridged)
For an example, see Blunt v. Patten, 2 Paine 397, 3 F.Cas. 763 (1828): In answer to a question from the court, whether the defendant had pirated from the drawings and papers, or from the engravings, he answered, from the engravings.
. . .
The act that secures copyright to authors, guards against the piracy of the words and sentiments; but it does not prohibit writing on the same subject. As in the case of histories and dictionaries.
(Which, incidentally, we have used before in submarines... UNDERWATER.)
Without deliberate effort to reduce consumption, all that will happen is that energy demand will rise to meet new energy supply, making it impractical to decommission older, dirtier plants or to test unproven technologies when consumers demand energy *now.*
We already see this with the way coal plants continue to be built today instead of other technologies. We could power everything with renewables using today's technology if demand wasn't far outstripping supply.
That's nothing. The man was a freaking genius if rumors are true. Supposedly, he could write in Latin with one hand and in Ancient Greek in the other at the same time. Of course, that could just be legendary.
Michio Kaku's predictions on technology frequently make me wonder just how good of a grasp he actually has on physics. My favorite is the old article where he predicts the way to escape the heat death of the universe by sending "atom-sized" nanomachines through a wormhole into a parallel universe where these machines would spread in a sphere at nearly light speeds.
Oh sure... we'll just ignore how something the size of an atom is supposed to contain any sort of parts capable of manipulating the environment as well as how they're supposed to encode information and make decisions. Might as well also ignore where such a machine is getting the energy to spread at light speed. Heck, why don't we just ignore reality entirely and get into exercises of sheer mental wankery, and...
Never mind, I keep forgetting he's a string theorist. Exercises in mental wankery that have no real attachment to physical reality is his bread and butter.
I propose a study of Slashdot memes to figure out which ones actually DO get you modded into oblivion, because from what I've seen Stale Meme + "I know I'm going to be modded down" == Instant +5, Funny.
[...]
Nanoradio -- Nifty. Especially if used for communication between multiple tiny machines
The magnetic field strength of far away objects drops off at inverse cube of distance. Sitting anywhere near an AC power socket exerts far more magnetic influence on your body than any planet in the solar system, much less any stars light years away, and the magnetic influence of our own planet dwarfs that. It is not out of the question that both science and astrology can exist in a reasonable mind. Perhaps not, but it would have to be a mind very poorly educated about e-mag.
I saw the effects of this in 2006 when the two candidates did their absolute best to turn voters away from the other candidate. The end result after the primary was a lot of people who were so burned by the attack ads, that they refused to aid the winning candidate against the opposition with campaign donations. (Many also refused to vote in the upcoming election, but most said that they'd hold their nose and vote for our candidate but that they intended to donate money to other members of the party in other elections.)
The net result: A landslide victory for the opposition as the candidate who won the primary was never able to reenergize the party base and unable to match the opposition's funding afterwards. Our candidate tried to run on issues and on the corruption of our opponent, and the opposition ran on personality and won hands down after the sour note left by the primary.
If voters are left saying, "Who's McCain?" then that's not necessarily a good thing if all they can remember about Clinton or Obama is months of attack ads. Brand recognition isn't a good thing when the product's tainted.
Everyone knows God is a killer DM. No one makes it out of *his* modules alive at the end.
Puts Gygax himself to shame.
Some people can eat nothing but cheese and meat and sugar and have low cholesterol and low triglycerides. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people can go for years without seeing a dentist and end up with no cavities when they do finally visit. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people smoke 3 packs a day and live to be 90 years old. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Just because Margaret Thatcher could go for long periods with little sleep without falling apart doesn't mean that the rule of 7-9 hours for most people is wrong. People who try to refute rules that DO well apply almost everyone you'll ever meet by pointing out lone examples where they may not apply are doing nothing but trying to shout down useful guides for us mortal humans who aren't winners of the genetic lottery. Exceptions-driven rules are pointless when the simpler rule applies to 99.9% of the population.
So, Margaret Thatcher may be able to work on 3-4 hours per night, but I think you can guess what I'd say to that.
That's not mutually incompatible with true happiness. A person can be energetic and cheerful and yet a complete mess on the inside. Worse, many people who seem happy may not even really realize themselves just how burned out they really are. Global happiness indexes are usually based on questions about how one feels in private and not rated on the impression that one gives in person.
Also, none of the above has anything to do with national pride, which is its own animal. Even the worst of countries have people who are stubbornly proud of it and unwilling to consider leaving home, and America is in many ways one of the better places to live in the world -- all work-related stress aside.
Err... Read the title of his post. He's not talking about Kimchi. I'm guessing that he's talking about Thorramtur since the word he used shared a lot of the same letters, only the first character didn't show up because it's a thorn and not a "th".
And if you'll read the Wikipedia article about it, you'll see what he's talking about. I think I just about lost my appetite for lunch after reading that. Good Lord, what people used to eat when they were poor and had to make use of the whole animal! I mean, it's like reading something out of a Jack Vance book -- and not the gourmet scenes, but the ones where Cudgel has to "make do" with what he can get.
1) Does this process bleach the fabric? (i.e. Does this work for colors other than white?)
2) What does this do to the longevity of the fibers in the fabric? Does constant exposure to hydroxyl ions damage the cellulose in them?