I'm no naval engineer, but wouldn't it make sense for the onboard computer to surface the sub if communication to the ship above is lost? Then, once it surfaces, have it emit a distress signal that the master ship can hone in on. Given that the sub is sealed, blowing the ballast tanks should make it float indefinitely, barring it hitting something and rupturing the hull
"The law requires telemarketers to search the registry every three months and synchronize their call lists with the phone numbers that are on the registry."
If you want to be on the list for October 1st, you need to register by August 31. If you register on October 1st, you won't be on all the telemarketers DNC list until February 1st
the times are limited by the Constitution, not the method... and copyright, at it's current duration, doesn't promote progress. The Supreme Court ruled wrongly on it, IMO... of course, it's not like the Supreme Court is always right (see social security and abortion).
during the revolutionary war, about a third of the people wanted to stay a colony, a third wanted to be independent and a third didn't want to get involved.
As long as the "progressive" people are making a push for changes (see prescription drug coverage, universal health care, special rights for certain people, etc), more and more people are going to begin seeing the changes around them are making it so they can't live the way they're used to. Every change has a cost of some type associated with it... the question is, which costs are going to motivate people to join in the revolution.
The democrats tried to make big changes in 1993-4 and that resulted in their loss of Congress by motivating people to stop them. Republicans would lose the Congress and Presidency in the next election if tomorrow they were to start wiping out the federal entitlements.
Government has to change sooner or later according to some people, because they don't see the federal government as a fixed body. The more it changes, the closer to revolution it gets
I VERY firmly believe there will be another "civil war" within the next 50 years. There are a ton of people who see the government as a means to every end and a ton of people who simply want to be left alone. Both ideologies are mutually exclusive. At this point, we can't roll back to where the government belongs because a whole bunch of people will start whining about how the federal government owes them this and that... and very few people would want to "progress" to where the others would take us if they knew just what they were heading (welcome the the United States Socialist Republic, where the state owns you). Kind of like slavery, there's a big fight on the horizon that has to be fought sooner or later because you can't have both co-existing: freedom from the government or dependency upon it. Pick one.
it doesn't have support for remembering window placements (ie, remember that mozilla belongs in desktop (0,1) at position (0,0), xchat belongs in (1,1) at position (1100,0), etc. Also, it doesn't have complete support for the viewport functions that I use (though it is better than metacity with respect to that).
So... I'm using the CVS version of enlightment on a single GNOME desktop with multiple E viewports. However, as far as I'm concerned, despite some of the new underlying technology, GNOME 2 is a VERY large step back from GNOME 1.x. I'm eagerly waiting on enlightment 17, hoping that one of the current desktop environments will remember that there is no "one true way" that fits everyone.
I'd be willing to bet that if the people voted for decriminalization of music sharing it would pass. There's not a representative or senator today who will take the other side and say the people should be allowed to download music if they want to.
Which is precisely why we're a republic and not a democracy and why the US government has (well, is supposed to have) a very limited scope of power. Most people can't or won't keep up with all the legislation that passes through Congress, so can you imagine them not only keeping up but having a deep understanding of every bill that's introduced? For as often as slashdot posts about a new bill, hundreds more are introduced that you never hear about.
Now, as dumb as I think Hatch is being about this, he does have a duty under the Constitution to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". To that extent, he is talking about a way of securing the exclusive right, whereas the other side would completely eliminate that right. If you're one of the ones who insists that the RIAA shouldn't be able to demand the user information attached to an IP address without a warrant because of the fifth amendment, you have to take the rest of the Constitution with the parts you like.
The interpretation of Abe Lincoln was wrong - the federal government doesn't exist to serve the people, but to regulate interstate affairs (including coining of money) and international affairs. It's not there to hand out money to special interest groups or to hand out subsidies. In fact, the federal government's role was never meant to have much bearing on the life of an individual at all because it's too easy for a distant bureaucrat to use the might power of a centralized government against people without really having to answer for it.
Back to the topic. Yes, the RIAA's model is horribly outdated but that doesn't mean we have the right to terminate their copyright. If you want them to change, don't steal their music, thinking you're on some holy cause, you're just removing sympathy for your cause. Instead, don't support the RIAA in any form at all. Go to concerts, buy CDs from your local bands, etc. The best way to get the RIAA to change or disappear is for them to not have anyone but themselves to blame for their business model failing. Make them fail, don't give themselves someone to blame.
Now, as for an ID card. I don't mind a government mandating a certain look/details for the card. It's hard for someone from NY to know if they're looking at a valid WI license because they've probably never seen one. The feds can get away with that much based on the interstate commerce clause (if you're driving outside of your state, they can claim that, by crossing state lines, you fall under the federal purview). However, under the Fourth Amendment, the federal government doesn't have the right to warehouse personal information about you, barring action of due process.
The biggest things all boil down to desktop management. I rely VERY heavily on the functionality of viewports (not workspaces as one developer demands we all use, but viewports). Namely, the abilities to straddle a window across multiple viewports (has been stated several times that this absolutely will not and can not be added into the GNOME 2 window library) and proper 2D navigation around my viewports (both through edge flipping AND keyboard shortcuts. Neither sawfish nor metacity support both in sensible ways). I do not like working on 73 different desks stacked on top of each other and trying to figure out where in the middle of that stack the window I want to work on actually is. It's completely unintuitive compared to extending a desktop in two dimensions.
The other is window management. Said window library developer insists that the apps are the ones that have to determine where they should be placed if they want to save their state, not the window manager. Basically, he's saying that EVERY app, whether GTK, KDE, TCL, etc has to conform to his specs rather than write a generic function that will work with any app without rewriting to the app to his desires. I use 6 different viewports and each have a different purpose. When I fire up mozilla, I expect it to go to the top left corner of the top middle viewport. When I load anjuta, I expect it to be placed in the bottom right viewport. My terminal that I run pine in belongs in the top left viewport. I don't want to have to drag windows around all over the place all the time just because my window MANAGER is deliberately too stupid to manage my windows.
Also... is there any reason why we need to bloat every app in the newer versions? My Eterms under GNOME 1.x at up a total of about 8 megs when all of them were open. The same number of gnome terminals eat up about 40 megs. I've got 75 megs worth of nautilus loaded to draw the desktop even though I absolutely do not use GUI file system browsers nor do I want icons on my desktop. I've got a dual athlon 1800MP with 512 megs of memory (running 2.5 with preempt) and GNOME 2.2 actually bogs down my system unlike no other program can.
Another nit from when I was checking the memory... is the gnome system monitor from 2.2 more usable and understandable than gtop from GNOME 1.4? A friend of mine is learning linux and has edited several config files with gedit, which decided to insert unicode into your basic plain ascii text config file, causing things to break on him (and requiring me to ssh in to fix them). Is that more usable by default than gedit 1.4?
to be specific, I was referring to GNOME. Version 1.4 had pretty much everything I wanted. With version 2, they added some cool stuff I'd like to play with (GTK 2, antialiased fonts, etc) but they stripped out all of the things that I depend upon in my desktop environment. I'd have been happy if there were hidden gconf configs that I had to manually type in to activate, but they stripped out entire pre-existing functionality because "it's too complicated for new users" and told the rest of us, when we spoke up, where we could shove it.
Thanks to Kim Woelders, Enlightment now has code in CVS to make it work with GNOME 2, because sawfish and metacity are woefully inadequate (can't remember window states(position, desktop, etc), VIEWPORT functionality is largely gone (2D edge flipping, windows tiled across 2 viewports, etc). Yes, I know about the various configuration and code hacks, but even with them, neither one is as complete as Enlightenment for what I use). Of course, since Enlightenment wasn't designed with GNOME 2 in mind, certain things don't work as well as I'd like, but at least it's actually functional and doesn't try to restrain me like a parent wanting to put an active kid of ritalin. Further, after more than a year of being released, GNOME 2 doesn't even have a menu editor since they just decided to scrap the old one. To me, the GNOME 2 developers got so caught up with what "usability experts" said and their own egotistical desires (EVERYONE must use the desktop the way I want), that they forgot to actually make the thing functional.
Hopefully, the usability study doesn't compromise usability for experienced users like a certain major (unnamed to avoid sounding like a troll) OSS project did. It went from exactly what I wanted to something newbies may or may not like but I definitely can't use, simply because they took a one size fits all approach. Simplicity doesn't necessarily mean it's better.
I'm entirely for making things more usable for the purpose of expanding OSS' user base, but we can't forsake the power users to do it, otherwise, the people most likely to contribute (either via code or helping others) won't.
1) correlation != causation
2) the person is [gasp] responsible for themself, the taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for his heart attack (remember, the price of freedom is responsibility. The US wasn't meant to be a nanny state)
3) is this going to go to obesity the way lottery funds "go" to education and the tobacco settlement "goes" to public health? ie, the general fund?
4) When your budget is $92 billion and you only can bring in $80 billion, is it wise to start new programs when you should be cutting back to make ends meet? Would you rather fund some unproven BS program that has no merit or keep more teachers in schools?
I hear there's a rumor that (television|computers|books|board games|low fat foods|model railroads|phones|whatever) contribute to making people obese. Let's tax all of them so we can promote our righteous values on everyone. I also hear that (rock climbing|football|martial arts|working|etc) can contribute to medical expenses, so we should tax them too.
Where do the taxes end? Where does everyone else's right to interfere in my lifestyle end? Would you support a proposal on a tax to fund the "re-education of homosexuals into heterosexuals" because of the AIDS epidemic? I'd think AIDS is more costly and life threatening than obesity. Don't you see how silly it is to have some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away dictating what's right for me? No matter what you do or don't do, you're going to incur health costs and you're going to die. Why, then, should I have the right to legislate your life to protect you from yourself?
In a state facing a $12 billion deficit, don't the lawmakers have a responsibility to balance the budget rather than create new ways to spend money? The legislature is already adding new taxes left and right to try to cover the deficit, but I have a much more novel approach taken from my own life. When you don't make enough money to pay the bills, quit wasting money. That's right... cut spending on frivilous stuff, even if it means pissing someone off. Pay your critical expenses and cut the fluff.
Of course, that wouldn't ever fly. Once a program is created, it can never be terminated lest someone get mad that their pet project or special entitlement evaporate. Let's just waste more money since we can always rob the people^W^W^Wraise taxes^Wour income by force^W^Wlater.
This week, I received a solicitation which was deceptively in the form of a bill from Internet Corporation Listing Service (ICLS). For $37.50, they offered to list my domain in a whopping 14 search engines.
The solicitation most definitely looked like a bill (front page and back page). The bottom half of the page is a tear away bill stub and the solicitation notice on the top right hand corner is in a lighter font than the rest of the text (though it's harder to notice on the scan).
Fortunately, I'm in the habit of reading all of my bills when they come in, but some people aren't. They obviously got the information from the internet WHOIS database even though that database is explicitly protected by a clause saying you can't datamine from it.
The next morning, I filed a complaint with the United States Postal Inspectors because of the deceptiveness and the likelihood that others will be fooled by it. Here is the complaint I sent:
I received a solicitation from ICLS which deceptively looks like a bill. Located on it, is a tear-away payment stub with a customer number, due date and amount with no reference to the fact that it's actually a solicitation on the stub. On the upper right hand corner, it does state "THIS NOTICE IS A SOLICITATION AND RECEIPT OF PAYMENT WILL CONFIRM YOUR ANNUAL LISTING", however, it is a lighter font than the rest of the solicitation.
While I, fortunately, did not fall for the solicitation, I'm concerned that other people whom aren't as careful could easily be deceived as without close examination, it will appear as a bill.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the postal inspectors to see what they have to say.
I created them for my own use... What I did was the equivalent of buying a sound blaster, studying the chips and cloning it to use in my other computers.
I have every right to make photocopies of books I own for my own use (perhaps I don't like marking them up in red pen), to copy code out of my programming books and do all sorts of things with it for my own use, etc. It's not like I'm sharing any of it with anyone other than myself. Further, if you check out the quality of the metal vs plastic GW produced minis, you'd note the quality is pretty diminished using their original molds, much less a mold made from an already casted figure.
according to the local gaming store at the time, non-current minis were banned by GW rules... Maybe they were just trying to force us to buy their stock
I was first introduced to Warhammer Fantasy about 10 years ago. I had started playing by using someone else's minis (I used Bretonnian figures though I play Chaos) but eventually started buying my own. Going to the local gaming store, a single (small) mini was in the $6-10 range while big minis (like the Chaos gods) were in the $45 range.
I started participating in auctions online and collecting an army for roughly half the price of what I was paying at the store. My army grew to more than 120 pieces before GW decided "welp, it's time to change the Chaos rule book and all the minis so we can make more money selling people new versions of what they already have." Fortunately, I only played with friends and not in tournaments since they banned all older minis from the tournaments. I couldn't see any reason to go out and by another Blood Thirster of Khorne when the one I already had was adequate enough.
Even back in those days, GW was trying to strong arm online retailers and auctioners into not giving discount prices. If anything, those prices made it easier for GW to clear out their old stock to bring in the new line. I certainly never would have as many minis as I do now if I had to pay full retail on all of them. Seems like they only want to shoot themselves in the foot. I wonder what they would think about how I created molds and copied some of the minis I had bought for my own use ($6 a pop for infantry level guys gets rather rough).
It also seems to include gcc 3.2.1 which is ABI incompatible between gcc 3.[01] and most definitely between the unofficial 2.96 used in RH8. Shouldn't affect any C programs but it would affect all C++ programs
I don't really have the connections to setup a defense fund, though I think it would be a great idea to have one setup. I enjoy sharing my work with people and wouldn't mind if individuals tooks my ideas, characters, etc for their own use. It just sickens me that WOTC was running around claiming they could pretty much take whatever they wanted since everything is derivative in their eyes (yes, it's derivative in the sense that I got some of my ideas from them, but not in the legal sense).
Let's say I wrote a story about a couple of guys. 95% of the book is them going around doing their thing and in 5% they encounter Superman. As long as my characters are original, I would own the copyright on that part of the work. Marvel could make a claim on the part with the Superman interaction. Why? Superman isn't integral to the story - it exists as a seperate work without him. This would allow them to stop distribution of the work if Marvel and I couldn't come to terms.
Now... If I decide to rip out the Marvel material and they encounter a woman that can cook with her breath and freeze with her eyes, I'm entirely in the clear. Copyright only covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Taking the fact that the D&D rules are simply ideas, I should be able to create new material based on those rules as long as I don't lift the expression of the rules. Further, reference is always legal, so if I include references to generic D&D monsters (sans stats, which are arguably copyrightable), I should still be in the clear.
I haven't used any setting material from them (only setting book I actually own is the manual of the planes) nor any specific, developed characters. Save reference to concepts like THAC0, my work is generic enough that it can be used for any other game system. However, until WOTC specifically disclaims any ownership over works like mine (I don't need to have them disclaim mine specifically), my work will remain private because I can't afford a lawsuit.
A couple people, including Peter Seebach did extensive case research on this durin our discussions in rec.games.frp.dnd but Dancy still refused to budge
They have been a lot better company than TSR ever was with IP stuff.
Actually, going back to 2000, the WOTC VP in charge of D&D was threatening that WOTC could claim ownership to any fan created material, stating that all work based on the D&D rules was a derivative work. Several of us argued that rules aren't copyrightable and that if we created our own settings and material using the rules, only using D&D terms as reference, we are in the clear. Dancy refused to budge, going on and on how they could sue and claim copyright over your entire work (more FUD, unless it was a wholesale ripoff, copyright would end up being shared with the new work being owned by the author and the derivative work being owned by WOTC). Basically, it would be like K&R claiming that any C program is derivative and owned by them since they made the rules.
In response, I pulled my entire campaign (2nd Ed, PO with some 1st Ed sprinkled in) setting that I created off the net. I know Dancy is full of crap but should they steal my material or sue me for it, I would have the funds of Hasbro (a company which has shown it will sue regardless of whether the claim is legit) vs my own ability to defend myself since I can't afford a lawyer. Dancy has since left WOTC but WOTC has refused to recant anything that he's said... until such time, my material (several hundred pages) will remain offline. I get a bad taste in my mouth these days any time I even pick up one of my D&D books.
They might be able to argue that one party is getting the work, modifying it, and redistributing it, which is certaintly not covered under the Fair Use Doctrine.
If I buy a newspaper, give it to my friend without reading it and he gives it back to me with all of the ads scribbled out with a sharpie, there's nothing the publisher of the paper can do. I can sue my friend for destroying my property but there's nothing anyone else can do about it.
When I request a webpage and hand it to my ISP's proxy before I see it, it's the same situation.
I don't use a source distribution, but I do build all my systems from source myself via a LFS type approach. I've easily spent hundreds of hours compiling, watching for new releases, etc... I do gain the benefit of optimizations specific to my hardware/environment/etc... but more importantly, I get to learn how everything works together. I might not be writing all the source myself, but there are compilation erros in some cases and I need to figure out how to fix it, I get to learn how to get things to work exactly how I want, I get to write all the configuration files myself as I install them so I can ensure there aren't any idiotic defaults that are going to bite me later, etc. It also means I don't have to rely on a single specific source for updates. I can run all the latest stuff without any failed dependencies and I get them as soon as they're released rather than having to wait for someone to package them.
Time isn't simply money. Time is an investment. I'm more than willing to spend time, even lots of it, to further educate myself. Time invested in education is exponentially greater than simply investing it in money because increased education means more money when you invest the time to make it.
I can remember visual memories as early as about 4-5 months old. I remember staring at the ceiling inside the house we lived in then and can describe it perfelctly to my parents - the shape of the room, the patterns on the trim, etc. We moved out of there when I was about 6 months old.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no naval engineer, but wouldn't it make sense for the onboard computer to surface the sub if communication to the ship above is lost? Then, once it surfaces, have it emit a distress signal that the master ship can hone in on. Given that the sub is sealed, blowing the ballast tanks should make it float indefinitely, barring it hitting something and rupturing the hull
"The law requires telemarketers to search the registry every three months and synchronize their call lists with the phone numbers that are on the registry."
If you want to be on the list for October 1st, you need to register by August 31. If you register on October 1st, you won't be on all the telemarketers DNC list until February 1st
the times are limited by the Constitution, not the method... and copyright, at it's current duration, doesn't promote progress. The Supreme Court ruled wrongly on it, IMO... of course, it's not like the Supreme Court is always right (see social security and abortion).
As long as the "progressive" people are making a push for changes (see prescription drug coverage, universal health care, special rights for certain people, etc), more and more people are going to begin seeing the changes around them are making it so they can't live the way they're used to. Every change has a cost of some type associated with it... the question is, which costs are going to motivate people to join in the revolution.
The democrats tried to make big changes in 1993-4 and that resulted in their loss of Congress by motivating people to stop them. Republicans would lose the Congress and Presidency in the next election if tomorrow they were to start wiping out the federal entitlements.
Government has to change sooner or later according to some people, because they don't see the federal government as a fixed body. The more it changes, the closer to revolution it gets
I VERY firmly believe there will be another "civil war" within the next 50 years. There are a ton of people who see the government as a means to every end and a ton of people who simply want to be left alone. Both ideologies are mutually exclusive. At this point, we can't roll back to where the government belongs because a whole bunch of people will start whining about how the federal government owes them this and that... and very few people would want to "progress" to where the others would take us if they knew just what they were heading (welcome the the United States Socialist Republic, where the state owns you). Kind of like slavery, there's a big fight on the horizon that has to be fought sooner or later because you can't have both co-existing: freedom from the government or dependency upon it. Pick one.
it doesn't have support for remembering window placements (ie, remember that mozilla belongs in desktop (0,1) at position (0,0), xchat belongs in (1,1) at position (1100,0), etc. Also, it doesn't have complete support for the viewport functions that I use (though it is better than metacity with respect to that).
So... I'm using the CVS version of enlightment on a single GNOME desktop with multiple E viewports. However, as far as I'm concerned, despite some of the new underlying technology, GNOME 2 is a VERY large step back from GNOME 1.x. I'm eagerly waiting on enlightment 17, hoping that one of the current desktop environments will remember that there is no "one true way" that fits everyone.
Which is precisely why we're a republic and not a democracy and why the US government has (well, is supposed to have) a very limited scope of power. Most people can't or won't keep up with all the legislation that passes through Congress, so can you imagine them not only keeping up but having a deep understanding of every bill that's introduced? For as often as slashdot posts about a new bill, hundreds more are introduced that you never hear about.
Now, as dumb as I think Hatch is being about this, he does have a duty under the Constitution to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". To that extent, he is talking about a way of securing the exclusive right, whereas the other side would completely eliminate that right. If you're one of the ones who insists that the RIAA shouldn't be able to demand the user information attached to an IP address without a warrant because of the fifth amendment, you have to take the rest of the Constitution with the parts you like.
The interpretation of Abe Lincoln was wrong - the federal government doesn't exist to serve the people, but to regulate interstate affairs (including coining of money) and international affairs. It's not there to hand out money to special interest groups or to hand out subsidies. In fact, the federal government's role was never meant to have much bearing on the life of an individual at all because it's too easy for a distant bureaucrat to use the might power of a centralized government against people without really having to answer for it.
Back to the topic. Yes, the RIAA's model is horribly outdated but that doesn't mean we have the right to terminate their copyright. If you want them to change, don't steal their music, thinking you're on some holy cause, you're just removing sympathy for your cause. Instead, don't support the RIAA in any form at all. Go to concerts, buy CDs from your local bands, etc. The best way to get the RIAA to change or disappear is for them to not have anyone but themselves to blame for their business model failing. Make them fail, don't give themselves someone to blame.
Now, as for an ID card. I don't mind a government mandating a certain look/details for the card. It's hard for someone from NY to know if they're looking at a valid WI license because they've probably never seen one. The feds can get away with that much based on the interstate commerce clause (if you're driving outside of your state, they can claim that, by crossing state lines, you fall under the federal purview). However, under the Fourth Amendment, the federal government doesn't have the right to warehouse personal information about you, barring action of due process.
The other is window management. Said window library developer insists that the apps are the ones that have to determine where they should be placed if they want to save their state, not the window manager. Basically, he's saying that EVERY app, whether GTK, KDE, TCL, etc has to conform to his specs rather than write a generic function that will work with any app without rewriting to the app to his desires. I use 6 different viewports and each have a different purpose. When I fire up mozilla, I expect it to go to the top left corner of the top middle viewport. When I load anjuta, I expect it to be placed in the bottom right viewport. My terminal that I run pine in belongs in the top left viewport. I don't want to have to drag windows around all over the place all the time just because my window MANAGER is deliberately too stupid to manage my windows.
Also... is there any reason why we need to bloat every app in the newer versions? My Eterms under GNOME 1.x at up a total of about 8 megs when all of them were open. The same number of gnome terminals eat up about 40 megs. I've got 75 megs worth of nautilus loaded to draw the desktop even though I absolutely do not use GUI file system browsers nor do I want icons on my desktop. I've got a dual athlon 1800MP with 512 megs of memory (running 2.5 with preempt) and GNOME 2.2 actually bogs down my system unlike no other program can.
Another nit from when I was checking the memory... is the gnome system monitor from 2.2 more usable and understandable than gtop from GNOME 1.4? A friend of mine is learning linux and has edited several config files with gedit, which decided to insert unicode into your basic plain ascii text config file, causing things to break on him (and requiring me to ssh in to fix them). Is that more usable by default than gedit 1.4?
Thanks to Kim Woelders, Enlightment now has code in CVS to make it work with GNOME 2, because sawfish and metacity are woefully inadequate (can't remember window states(position, desktop, etc), VIEWPORT functionality is largely gone (2D edge flipping, windows tiled across 2 viewports, etc). Yes, I know about the various configuration and code hacks, but even with them, neither one is as complete as Enlightenment for what I use). Of course, since Enlightenment wasn't designed with GNOME 2 in mind, certain things don't work as well as I'd like, but at least it's actually functional and doesn't try to restrain me like a parent wanting to put an active kid of ritalin. Further, after more than a year of being released, GNOME 2 doesn't even have a menu editor since they just decided to scrap the old one. To me, the GNOME 2 developers got so caught up with what "usability experts" said and their own egotistical desires (EVERYONE must use the desktop the way I want), that they forgot to actually make the thing functional.
I'm entirely for making things more usable for the purpose of expanding OSS' user base, but we can't forsake the power users to do it, otherwise, the people most likely to contribute (either via code or helping others) won't.
2) the person is [gasp] responsible for themself, the taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for his heart attack (remember, the price of freedom is responsibility. The US wasn't meant to be a nanny state)
3) is this going to go to obesity the way lottery funds "go" to education and the tobacco settlement "goes" to public health? ie, the general fund?
4) When your budget is $92 billion and you only can bring in $80 billion, is it wise to start new programs when you should be cutting back to make ends meet? Would you rather fund some unproven BS program that has no merit or keep more teachers in schools?
I hear there's a rumor that (television|computers|books|board games|low fat foods|model railroads|phones|whatever) contribute to making people obese. Let's tax all of them so we can promote our righteous values on everyone. I also hear that (rock climbing|football|martial arts|working|etc) can contribute to medical expenses, so we should tax them too.
Where do the taxes end? Where does everyone else's right to interfere in my lifestyle end? Would you support a proposal on a tax to fund the "re-education of homosexuals into heterosexuals" because of the AIDS epidemic? I'd think AIDS is more costly and life threatening than obesity. Don't you see how silly it is to have some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away dictating what's right for me? No matter what you do or don't do, you're going to incur health costs and you're going to die. Why, then, should I have the right to legislate your life to protect you from yourself?
Of course, that wouldn't ever fly. Once a program is created, it can never be terminated lest someone get mad that their pet project or special entitlement evaporate. Let's just waste more money since we can always rob the people^W^W^Wraise taxes^Wour income by force^W^Wlater.
I recommend mailing a copy of that 'bill' to AT&T's legal dept actually, I was thinking the same thing
The solicitation most definitely looked like a bill (front page and back page). The bottom half of the page is a tear away bill stub and the solicitation notice on the top right hand corner is in a lighter font than the rest of the text (though it's harder to notice on the scan).
Fortunately, I'm in the habit of reading all of my bills when they come in, but some people aren't. They obviously got the information from the internet WHOIS database even though that database is explicitly protected by a clause saying you can't datamine from it.
The next morning, I filed a complaint with the United States Postal Inspectors because of the deceptiveness and the likelihood that others will be fooled by it. Here is the complaint I sent:
I received a solicitation from ICLS which deceptively looks like a bill. Located on it, is a tear-away payment stub with a customer number, due date and amount with no reference to the fact that it's actually a solicitation on the stub. On the upper right hand corner, it does state "THIS NOTICE IS A SOLICITATION AND RECEIPT OF PAYMENT WILL CONFIRM YOUR ANNUAL LISTING", however, it is a lighter font than the rest of the solicitation.
While I, fortunately, did not fall for the solicitation, I'm concerned that other people whom aren't as careful could easily be deceived as without close examination, it will appear as a bill.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the postal inspectors to see what they have to say.
I have every right to make photocopies of books I own for my own use (perhaps I don't like marking them up in red pen), to copy code out of my programming books and do all sorts of things with it for my own use, etc. It's not like I'm sharing any of it with anyone other than myself. Further, if you check out the quality of the metal vs plastic GW produced minis, you'd note the quality is pretty diminished using their original molds, much less a mold made from an already casted figure.
according to the local gaming store at the time, non-current minis were banned by GW rules... Maybe they were just trying to force us to buy their stock
I started participating in auctions online and collecting an army for roughly half the price of what I was paying at the store. My army grew to more than 120 pieces before GW decided "welp, it's time to change the Chaos rule book and all the minis so we can make more money selling people new versions of what they already have." Fortunately, I only played with friends and not in tournaments since they banned all older minis from the tournaments. I couldn't see any reason to go out and by another Blood Thirster of Khorne when the one I already had was adequate enough.
Even back in those days, GW was trying to strong arm online retailers and auctioners into not giving discount prices. If anything, those prices made it easier for GW to clear out their old stock to bring in the new line. I certainly never would have as many minis as I do now if I had to pay full retail on all of them. Seems like they only want to shoot themselves in the foot. I wonder what they would think about how I created molds and copied some of the minis I had bought for my own use ($6 a pop for infantry level guys gets rather rough).
The Stoned Age came our around the same time as Dazed and Confused but is the much better movie IMHO. Best soundtrack of all time as well
It also seems to include gcc 3.2.1 which is ABI incompatible between gcc 3.[01] and most definitely between the unofficial 2.96 used in RH8. Shouldn't affect any C programs but it would affect all C++ programs
I don't really have the connections to setup a defense fund, though I think it would be a great idea to have one setup. I enjoy sharing my work with people and wouldn't mind if individuals tooks my ideas, characters, etc for their own use. It just sickens me that WOTC was running around claiming they could pretty much take whatever they wanted since everything is derivative in their eyes (yes, it's derivative in the sense that I got some of my ideas from them, but not in the legal sense).
Now... If I decide to rip out the Marvel material and they encounter a woman that can cook with her breath and freeze with her eyes, I'm entirely in the clear. Copyright only covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Taking the fact that the D&D rules are simply ideas, I should be able to create new material based on those rules as long as I don't lift the expression of the rules. Further, reference is always legal, so if I include references to generic D&D monsters (sans stats, which are arguably copyrightable), I should still be in the clear.
I haven't used any setting material from them (only setting book I actually own is the manual of the planes) nor any specific, developed characters. Save reference to concepts like THAC0, my work is generic enough that it can be used for any other game system. However, until WOTC specifically disclaims any ownership over works like mine (I don't need to have them disclaim mine specifically), my work will remain private because I can't afford a lawsuit.
A couple people, including Peter Seebach did extensive case research on this durin our discussions in rec.games.frp.dnd but Dancy still refused to budge
Of course, IANAL and neither are they...
Actually, going back to 2000, the WOTC VP in charge of D&D was threatening that WOTC could claim ownership to any fan created material, stating that all work based on the D&D rules was a derivative work. Several of us argued that rules aren't copyrightable and that if we created our own settings and material using the rules, only using D&D terms as reference, we are in the clear. Dancy refused to budge, going on and on how they could sue and claim copyright over your entire work (more FUD, unless it was a wholesale ripoff, copyright would end up being shared with the new work being owned by the author and the derivative work being owned by WOTC). Basically, it would be like K&R claiming that any C program is derivative and owned by them since they made the rules.
In response, I pulled my entire campaign (2nd Ed, PO with some 1st Ed sprinkled in) setting that I created off the net. I know Dancy is full of crap but should they steal my material or sue me for it, I would have the funds of Hasbro (a company which has shown it will sue regardless of whether the claim is legit) vs my own ability to defend myself since I can't afford a lawyer. Dancy has since left WOTC but WOTC has refused to recant anything that he's said... until such time, my material (several hundred pages) will remain offline. I get a bad taste in my mouth these days any time I even pick up one of my D&D books.
If I buy a newspaper, give it to my friend without reading it and he gives it back to me with all of the ads scribbled out with a sharpie, there's nothing the publisher of the paper can do. I can sue my friend for destroying my property but there's nothing anyone else can do about it.
When I request a webpage and hand it to my ISP's proxy before I see it, it's the same situation.
Time isn't simply money. Time is an investment. I'm more than willing to spend time, even lots of it, to further educate myself. Time invested in education is exponentially greater than simply investing it in money because increased education means more money when you invest the time to make it.
I can remember visual memories as early as about 4-5 months old. I remember staring at the ceiling inside the house we lived in then and can describe it perfelctly to my parents - the shape of the room, the patterns on the trim, etc. We moved out of there when I was about 6 months old.