Except that they didn't broadcast that they used it, per se.. as I said, it most likely comes from a third party - if nothing else, I'm sure Microsoft would claim as much.
By far the majority of BSA 'raids' are based on information from insiders that are telling them "The company I work(ed) for *is using* [software] illegaly.", rather than "I found a file distributed by [company] that has all the markings of being made using an illegal copy of [software], but I have no proof whatsoever that they actually authored this file."
For kicks, snap up a royalty-free sound-effects CD-ROM from the 90's if you can find one. You'll find many of such files, and all you'll get from the distributor is "Thank you for your information. Our legal department will be in touch with the source of the file in question." or something to that effect. I should know, I tried (green disc titled "WAV sound effects", distributed by MEDIASOURCE in 1994, copyright Applied Optical Media Corporation. Out of business, near's I know, but likely unrelated:P)
That doesn't make it 'okay', but if you purchase royalty-free media from a reputable source *or* hire somebody to author sound files for you, then there is no due diligence required that you then check whether the files were authored with legit software (if even possible).
In the case of ASUS' disc - as far as I can tell - they're actually distributing cracked / cracking software... completely different area of legal code.
Sadly they did not launch together.. now that'd be quite the sight.
Anyway, I'm hoping to see lots and lots of awesome imagery of this setup, as it will indeed most likely be the last time we'll be able to see this again outside of Hollywood.
What I don't get is.. why aren't there simply categories to deal with the 'mess' that would 'otherwise' exist?
I put 'mess' in quotes because, thanks to search engines, there is no such thing as a real mess.
I put 'otherwise' in quotes because 'minor trivia' still co-exists with main articles as it is.
For example, try "Quark" at Wikipedia.
The main article is about the particle. Fair enough.
But then there's also "Quark (TV Series)", "Quark (Star Trek)". Why isn't the latter in e.g. "star_trek.en.wikipedia.org/Quark"? Or at "en.wikipedia.org/Star_Trek/Quark".
Similarly, why are there separate topics for "Top Quark", "Charm Quark", "Up Quark" and so forth - when these are really just different types of Quarks? Why aren't they simply sections in the main Quark article? Or, as per categories, why isn't there "en.wikipedia.org/Quark/Top_Quark".
That would be a lot more organized (although how to organize things may become a matter of debate) -and- would allow for everybody to put up their 'trivia' pages in whatever (sub)category would be appropriate. If somebody wants to devote pages to the various beverages of Star Trek, that can simply be tossed into the Star Trek/Drinks/ category, instead of making a 'mess' of the main Wikipedia space.
I am fully aware that, at least Star Trek, has its own dedicated Wikis - Memory Alpha being an excellent one - but these were borne out of necessities (such as the articles being prone to deletion, but admittedly also technical and political issues) that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
It shows that somebody - most likely a third party hired by Microsoft for the sole purpose of supplying audio files - has either made or acquired (from yet another party) an audio file that is likely to be authored in a cracked version of a piece of software.
Microsoft didn't distribute the cracked copy of the software themselves, so they have no recourse against Microsoft. At best, SONY could ask Microsoft kindly to find out where that file came from and deal with the matter appropriately; presuming it -did- come from an actual Microsoft employee and the software was on a Microsoft corporate computer, then you might have something of a point - although the likely recourse there is booting the employee out - but good luck in finding that out, first.
As for what you get for that $99+30% of every sale...
Unlimited distribution not really. It's limited to whoever can buy from the iPhone App Store. You can't -also- distribute it via a third party vendor, or on your own website. Now if you could, then it's unlimited.
Completely flexible pricing I would hope so.. it's your app. Or did I miss strong-arming by some mysterious industry when it comes to pricing of Windows Mobile / Symbian apps somewhere?
international markets it's on the web; how much less international can you get, unless you decide to sell the thing on floppies out of your garage?
hosting I'll give you that - although if you're serious about your app, then I'm sure the 30% you'd save would go a long way towards hosting your app; these aren't exactly apps that need to be distributed as ISOs.
updates 'll give you that as well - although it's not exactly difficult to send your registered users an e-mail, or include automatic update checking (if the platform allows it), or for somebody to write an app for the platform that automatically checks installed apps' versions online.
top 100 list + featured apps Ah, now we get to the crux of the matter. As there -is- only one store for iPhone apps, that store is hugely popular - it could suck ass and it would still be hugely popular, as it is the -only- place you can get (without jailbreaking and so forth and so on) your iPhone apps. So if you were to choose to post your iPhone app on your own site - besides risking getting booted from the iPhoone dev bits - you're not going to be included in the most popular (and only) iPhone app store's rankings.. and people (buyers and sellers alike) looooove them some rankings.
Except that you can set up your own store if you really want to. You know... www.myandroidapp.com , slap some paypal or whatever on it and call it a day.. have some mobile phone app people review your app, post about it on some forums (many mobile app forums allow posting about your own app; crazy, eh?).
Can you do that with an iPhone app? No. At best you can make your app available for free to a limited set of people.. I *guess* you can somehow make those people be "people who paypal'd me $x".. or not?
The thing is - at least to me - why is 'it' the same machine that has actual control over experiments, and not just a 'dumb' file server that is locked down to do only two things... 1. accept files -from- the machines that monitor the experiments and 2. distribute those files to other machines on the GRID
It shouldn't be accepting connections from outside.. unless you want to make step 2. be "give data to anybody asking for it", but that still shouldn't come anywhere near being able to control anything.
For those saying that 'all big machines like this have outside access for maintenance etc.' - that's great, but that machine doesn't need to be on that GRID, and only a few people need to know where it is and how to access it.
I probably missed some obvious reason that this doesn't appear to be the case, though. Or if it is the case - how they managed to fumble the security.
The 'problem', if one may state it as such, is in your presentation of the options... A. the universe always existed B. it was created by something/someone.
That's really three options... A. the universe always existed B. it popped into existence due to something, we don't know what - we may never find out C. it was created by someone, and we call that someone God.
B and C are distinctly different; just because I have no explanation of what caused the Big Bang, doesn't mean 'God did it'. Even if scientists told me right now that it's impossible to find out what caused the Big Bang (which is very likely), it doesn't mean 'God did it'. 'God did it' isn't an answer to a question - it is a belief. I have no problems with beliefs (Hello, I'm an agnostic), but too often the 'God did it'-approach is used as a substitute for actual answers.
Back on-topic... you don't ultimately need one or the other having to always have existed. Keep in mind that the prevailing idea is that 'before the universe existed' is a problematic sentence as there is no 'before the universe existed'.. time, if you will, did not exist until the universe began.
...do you complain about the news covering this every. single. time. it happens as well?
Others might say that reporting about some satellite that watches the oceans is absolutely yawn-worthy... satellites get launched all the time, many of them to observe our planet, what makes that one so special? And you might say because it may help give further information on rogue waves; thus it was news to you and I'm sure you're glad it was reported - even if it doesn't seem particularly noteworthy to most.
Ever notice how often they'll have video of some event and then have, on-screen "source: YouTube.com" and the like?
Do you really think that they went through the trouble of... 1. finding the original creator of the video (note the shittonne of duplicate vids on YouTube) 2. trying to contact that creator and getting permission to use the video?
Of course not. If they did, then it would've been "source: SatanicPuppy", not YouTube.com .
In fact, do you think they ask -YouTube- for permission? Heck no.
They are, largely, playing the flipside of the coin that YouTube itself is tossing. "Copyright? We'll worry about that when and IF a claim comes in."
And it's not just the news - it's pre-recorded programs as well.
So to get back to Facebook; can they sell photos you upload to their servers? I'm willing to bet they can - and if you find they've done so with your photo, good luck suing; which is the only recourse - and sometimes not even on grounds of copyright ( as evidenced by that Virgin Mobile thing down under; http://www.flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/72157600541608353/ , the grounds there were based on 'model release' thingamajiggers )
I was watching a Dr. Phil show by chance about a week back that dealt with some girls posting questionable pictures of themselves (not naked, just.. plastered) on their Facebook/whatever, and discussing how that might impact their (future) lives - with one employer type guy saying that he will check you out on the internet and if he were to find stuff like that, not consider you for a job.
So Dr. Phil and some 'expert' went on to say that posting pictures like that is not good, blablabla; the same stuff parents would tell their children, I guess.
But what Anonymous Brave Guy mentioned was not even touched upon in the program; yes, it's stupid if you publish those pictures yourself, but what are you gonna do if somebody -else- posts those pictures? Yes, you can ask them to take them down... maybe they will, maybe they won't.. in the latter case you might ask Facebook.. who may take them down, or not.. in the latter case you might have to sue, etc. But even if your friend does take them down... a friend of theirs may have already copied it to -their- facebook page. In no time, it can be in a hundred random places on the internet... and that employer-type guy is going to find it and not hire you. So what are you going to do against that? Check if anybody's taking pictures while you're plastered? Good luck doing that when every cellphone has a camera these days. Only get plastered while in a private setting? Most of these pictures -are- from private parties.
I guess the answer is "don't get plastered". Sadly, that means "Don't do anything whatsoever that, while innocuous, may be interpreted in such a way by other people as to form a negative opinion of you either personally or professionally". A boring life that'll be.
Back to the topic at hand; protecting your own privacy is all good and well, but in the end, if others are allowed to talk about you in the forum of a billion people that is the internet, you're bound to be screwed one way or another.
The very title of such a "Origins and Development of Life" class would imply that students would be taught on the origins and development of life - and not "Varying Views on the Origins and Development of Life"; thus creationism would still have no place in such a class.
There are already classes for creationism: theology classes. They may not be required material, but they do exist - and if you want that well-rounded education, you'll take it.
Unfortunately there are various problems with mandatory theology classes as generally proposed - not the least of which is that they mean Christian Theology classes; if other religions are mentioned at all, then they are generally mentioned in the bylines and quickly dismissed in favor of the Christian views. If you think that atheism is covered in such classes at all, you're horribly mistaken (well, other than the whole "non-believers go to hell, THEY GO TO HELL AND THEN THEY BURN AND THEY DIE!!!"-part, though they try to tone that down a little these days.)
Personally I don't think that religion has any place in public schools (what private schools do is entirely up to them), not even as an alternative view on things such as the origin of life, the universe, etc. No more than Time Cube would have a place as an alternative view on physics.
*grin* I was giving them the benefit of doubt that maybe, just maybe, the second time they ran this particular storyline, they'd keep it off the front page; but alas. Hence, it's since hidden (got here this time through my account overview).
...but it sure is being used by those with particular interests - mostly their wallets - from anything being done.
Let's just presume that 1. climate change does not exist 2. even if it did exist, we're not the cause.
What should the conclusion be, then?
Should we all keep driving around in gas-guzzlers? Should we keep sticking to the least efficient form of electrical lighting? Should we keep firing up coal plants to power them?
Or should we look at the third point? 3. regardless, us pumping CO2 into the environment at the rate we are isn't particularly good.
And then revise our conclusions once more?
There are far too many people willing to throw away every single thing that they can do to lessen their environmental footprint based on convenient conclusions (hmm.. A Convenient Conclusion; I like that for a title.) - convenient because it's what they're used to, and convenient because it doesn't cost them any invest - of will, time or (and most importantly) money.
This is not much different from biodegradable shopping bags. When plain plastic bags were an obvious issue, two initiatives were started... 1. consumers could purchase more durable bags that they could re-use 2. the industry had to find a way to make shopping bags biodegradable without going back to paper bags.
Point 1 was implemented, but a lot of people will simply not purchase the bag.. it costs them money, it takes them will to have to bring it each time they go shopping, etc. It's just inconvenient. The worst-ever argument I've heard against them was on Slashdot recently... somebody didn't want to be seen with a smudgy old shopping bag.
Point 2 was also implemented, and now any shopping bags that were still used over the purchasable kind, would degrade naturally over time... a long, long time.
But Point 2 also gave the people in Point 1 a convenient conclusion; "the shopping bags degrade anyway, why would I purchase the more durable type at all?". Unfortunately they thusly forget the entire reason for Point 1 in the first place - having *less* shopping bags out there. Yay the ones out there are biodegradable, good job, but that doesn't mean they're not still piling up on wasteheaps, very slowly (but faster than regular plastic) decomposing amidst other junk; because they're almost just like regular plastic, they can't easily be filtered out and treated specifically to become, for example, base soil.
I'd call this karmawhoring, but seeing as the editors didn't even bother linking to claimed list at 'waxy.org'... lists of Siggraph papers have been kept by Tim Rowley and Ke-Sen Huang for years. You can find this year's list at: http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/sig2008.html
This also includes lists of papers presented at other events such as Eurographics.
For even more fun, visit the papers' authors sites; they often also publish papers at seemingly unrelated events that contain some interesting computer graphics gems.
How on earth do you end up spending that much? Does that include making all your calls + roaming + etc?
When I was in the U.S. for 3 months I got a Cingular prepaid SIM card - traveled all throughout the U.S. and could make calls just fine.. cost me $10. I'd imagine it'd work just fine in Canada as well on any GSM provider there. So I can't imagine the $CAD150/month being some flat fee just so you can actually use the phone on GSM networks.
"The facts of the case do not in any way hinge on the defendant... - being disabled - a single mother - on Social Security."
Really? If you're on Social Security, you probably don't have a particularly big income. If you have a child, a chunk of it will go to that child. If you're disabled, you'll probably have additional expenses for that as well. Granted, she may be compensated for the child / disabilities to some extent in terms of money, but how's that going to compensate for all the hours lost that could be spent with her child instead? I haven't checked what disabilities are in play here - but it seems reasonably likely to me that she will be forced to deal with her disabilities more often than without the case. Now you may claim that "that's life, life sucks", but I'd argue that the RIAA made her life suck in that regard.
But let's take the heart out of it, and focus only on the money aspect and your statement "the case [does] not in any way hinge on"; if that were true, don't you think that there would be a greater portion of cases that would go to arbitration / court, rather than being settled? A great number of cases are settled not because the target knows they're guilty anyway (in which case, settling might be the wise thing to do - but I'll leave that for future cases on whether awarded damages to the RIAA are fitting to the 'crime'), but because the target simply does not have the resources (specifically: money) to bring a solid defense - mounting one leading to debts far greater than a settlement does.
I assure you that in all but the most insane cases, doing that frame-by-frame is already not done anymore (high quality rotoscoping, on the other hand.. yipe). You model a quick mock-up in a 3D application, project your painted texture onto that, and composite that with the original footage.
What it does do is remove that whole 'You model a quick mock-up' part in many (not all) cases. Now to see who gets the patents, how much they are to license, and who get(s) to toss it into their editing suite.
Well seeing as there really isn't anything to discuss here ( unless they expected other website owners, sysadmins, etc. to write in with their user experiences)....
Maybe I would like Backslash... back.
Rehashing popular topics, picking some of the top comments, etc. is a vastly more interesting thing to do than reaching into the hatemail grab-bag.
"as a patent examiner, I'm not allowed to post my opinion of patentability, but I will say that most cases are heavily modified from their original application form as this one is in now."
and yet... one-click. I wonder, and fear, what the original application for that was if the resulting 'heavily modified application'-based patent is still what it is now.
I'm not seeing the orientation change when he tilts from from landscape to portrait and back. The only change I witness coincides with sliding out the keyboard; guess what, an actual switch - such as that on the HTC Wizard (I have one) - will do that much.
But even if it had a proper orientation sensor - so what. This is a blurry video of a seemingly rather ugly flimsy (saw that slide-out wiggle? yikes) device that has trouble registering taps (see beginning of video).
I know that Android is a platform, not a phone - but for the sake of the platform, I hope this device (whatever it is - I have a hard time believing it's an HTC product... even a model study) is not what is going to be associated with it.
"thus the only way to increase their income is to get more and more patients"
Not really.. they can go work in a private clinic, or they can work in another country (as you already pointed out). Thank goodness there's many doctors who don't particularly care about increasing their income - who got into the job because they can genuinely help fellow man and all that sort of altruistic stuff that we, as a society, are far too eager to write off and laugh at. These are doctors who will give treatment for free if needed (and sometimes if not*), instead of some doctors only giving free treatment while on a P.R. trip to a poor country (not dissing the gesture, just dissing the motives).
And, let's be honest, they don't really -need- the higher income because they don't have to worry about multi-million dollar malpractice suits looming around every single corner and the insurance that goes with it.
I'm not saying that 'socialized' healthcare is panacea.. far from it.. but that "happy medium where everyone wins" should not be led by the desire to make more money - focus instead on reducing or eliminating the negatives you mentioned.
* I had a nasty bruised-looking toe - walked (well, semi-hopped) straight into the hospital (hadn't registered for a GP yet after moving), got to see a doc in 10 minutes who had an x-ray made 5 minutes later 'just to be safe', determined that it was indeed broken as he suspected, got me a splint, had a nurse put it on while he moved on to another patient, came back to do a quick check to make sure it was on right, and sent me on my way. That's it. Didn't send me past administration for my insurance info on my way out, and certainly not on my way in.. I was a guy with a nasty bruised-looking toe who needed to have a look at it done by a doc and that's all they cared about. Thanks, MCH. I know this is anecdotal, and I'm all too familiar with waiting lists as well, but it's not nearly as bad as some make it out to be. Being on a waiting list for an organ, however, does suck - but that seems to be the case regardless of medical system; short of countries where there's a lively 'grey'/black market in organs. Yikes.
An SSL certificate automagically means that it is impossible for the site to be hacker, or some guy internally running away with sensitive data, etc. ?
At best, it will say "Why yes, this -is- the website you are looking for.".. beyond that, there's no more trust than I would give a warezyporn website hosted on a.tk domain.
SSL may not be just for encryption, but perhaps it should be.. or should have been. It should never have served this dual purpose - and the story explains quite nicely -why-.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that they didn't broadcast that they used it, per se.. as I said, it most likely comes from a third party - if nothing else, I'm sure Microsoft would claim as much.
By far the majority of BSA 'raids' are based on information from insiders that are telling them "The company I work(ed) for *is using* [software] illegaly.", rather than "I found a file distributed by [company] that has all the markings of being made using an illegal copy of [software], but I have no proof whatsoever that they actually authored this file."
For kicks, snap up a royalty-free sound-effects CD-ROM from the 90's if you can find one. You'll find many of such files, and all you'll get from the distributor is "Thank you for your information. Our legal department will be in touch with the source of the file in question." or something to that effect. I should know, I tried (green disc titled "WAV sound effects", distributed by MEDIASOURCE in 1994, copyright Applied Optical Media Corporation. Out of business, near's I know, but likely unrelated :P)
That doesn't make it 'okay', but if you purchase royalty-free media from a reputable source *or* hire somebody to author sound files for you, then there is no due diligence required that you then check whether the files were authored with legit software (if even possible).
In the case of ASUS' disc - as far as I can tell - they're actually distributing cracked / cracking software... completely different area of legal code.
STS-35 and STS-41 (yes, that long ago) were two shuttle missions that had its shuttles out on pads at the same time as well. Pictars:
http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/images/images/pao/STS41/10064404.jpg
http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/images/images/pao/STS41/10064405.jpg
Sadly they did not launch together.. now that'd be quite the sight.
Anyway, I'm hoping to see lots and lots of awesome imagery of this setup, as it will indeed most likely be the last time we'll be able to see this again outside of Hollywood.
What I don't get is.. why aren't there simply categories to deal with the 'mess' that would 'otherwise' exist?
I put 'mess' in quotes because, thanks to search engines, there is no such thing as a real mess.
I put 'otherwise' in quotes because 'minor trivia' still co-exists with main articles as it is.
For example, try "Quark" at Wikipedia.
The main article is about the particle. Fair enough.
But then there's also "Quark (TV Series)", "Quark (Star Trek)". Why isn't the latter in e.g. "star_trek.en.wikipedia.org/Quark"? Or at "en.wikipedia.org/Star_Trek/Quark".
Similarly, why are there separate topics for "Top Quark", "Charm Quark", "Up Quark" and so forth - when these are really just different types of Quarks? Why aren't they simply sections in the main Quark article? Or, as per categories, why isn't there "en.wikipedia.org/Quark/Top_Quark".
That would be a lot more organized (although how to organize things may become a matter of debate) -and- would allow for everybody to put up their 'trivia' pages in whatever (sub)category would be appropriate. If somebody wants to devote pages to the various beverages of Star Trek, that can simply be tossed into the Star Trek/Drinks/ category, instead of making a 'mess' of the main Wikipedia space.
I am fully aware that, at least Star Trek, has its own dedicated Wikis - Memory Alpha being an excellent one - but these were borne out of necessities (such as the articles being prone to deletion, but admittedly also technical and political issues) that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
It shows that somebody - most likely a third party hired by Microsoft for the sole purpose of supplying audio files - has either made or acquired (from yet another party) an audio file that is likely to be authored in a cracked version of a piece of software.
Microsoft didn't distribute the cracked copy of the software themselves, so they have no recourse against Microsoft. At best, SONY could ask Microsoft kindly to find out where that file came from and deal with the matter appropriately; presuming it -did- come from an actual Microsoft employee and the software was on a Microsoft corporate computer, then you might have something of a point - although the likely recourse there is booting the employee out - but good luck in finding that out, first.
Yeah? Tell that to those 4 out of 3,000 :)
As for what you get for that $99+30% of every sale...
Unlimited distribution
not really. It's limited to whoever can buy from the iPhone App Store. You can't -also- distribute it via a third party vendor, or on your own website. Now if you could, then it's unlimited.
Completely flexible pricing
I would hope so.. it's your app. Or did I miss strong-arming by some mysterious industry when it comes to pricing of Windows Mobile / Symbian apps somewhere?
international markets
it's on the web; how much less international can you get, unless you decide to sell the thing on floppies out of your garage?
hosting
I'll give you that - although if you're serious about your app, then I'm sure the 30% you'd save would go a long way towards hosting your app; these aren't exactly apps that need to be distributed as ISOs.
updates
'll give you that as well - although it's not exactly difficult to send your registered users an e-mail, or include automatic update checking (if the platform allows it), or for somebody to write an app for the platform that automatically checks installed apps' versions online.
top 100 list + featured apps
Ah, now we get to the crux of the matter. As there -is- only one store for iPhone apps, that store is hugely popular - it could suck ass and it would still be hugely popular, as it is the -only- place you can get (without jailbreaking and so forth and so on) your iPhone apps. So if you were to choose to post your iPhone app on your own site - besides risking getting booted from the iPhoone dev bits - you're not going to be included in the most popular (and only) iPhone app store's rankings.. and people (buyers and sellers alike) looooove them some rankings.
Except that you can set up your own store if you really want to. You know... www.myandroidapp.com , slap some paypal or whatever on it and call it a day.. have some mobile phone app people review your app, post about it on some forums (many mobile app forums allow posting about your own app; crazy, eh?).
Can you do that with an iPhone app? No. At best you can make your app available for free to a limited set of people.. I *guess* you can somehow make those people be "people who paypal'd me $x".. or not?
The thing is - at least to me - why is 'it' the same machine that has actual control over experiments, and not just a 'dumb' file server that is locked down to do only two things...
1. accept files -from- the machines that monitor the experiments and
2. distribute those files to other machines on the GRID
It shouldn't be accepting connections from outside.. unless you want to make step 2. be "give data to anybody asking for it", but that still shouldn't come anywhere near being able to control anything.
For those saying that 'all big machines like this have outside access for maintenance etc.' - that's great, but that machine doesn't need to be on that GRID, and only a few people need to know where it is and how to access it.
I probably missed some obvious reason that this doesn't appear to be the case, though. Or if it is the case - how they managed to fumble the security.
The 'problem', if one may state it as such, is in your presentation of the options...
A. the universe always existed
B. it was created by something/someone.
That's really three options...
A. the universe always existed
B. it popped into existence due to something, we don't know what - we may never find out
C. it was created by someone, and we call that someone God.
B and C are distinctly different; just because I have no explanation of what caused the Big Bang, doesn't mean 'God did it'. Even if scientists told me right now that it's impossible to find out what caused the Big Bang (which is very likely), it doesn't mean 'God did it'. 'God did it' isn't an answer to a question - it is a belief. I have no problems with beliefs (Hello, I'm an agnostic), but too often the 'God did it'-approach is used as a substitute for actual answers.
Back on-topic... you don't ultimately need one or the other having to always have existed. Keep in mind that the prevailing idea is that 'before the universe existed' is a problematic sentence as there is no 'before the universe existed'.. time, if you will, did not exist until the universe began.
I had to think of that quip when you mentioned "Powerful people starting wars because they think their supreme being would like that".
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080903/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_iraq_war
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any sources that don't cite the AP release, but no particular rebuttal either.
Yum.
...do you complain about the news covering this every. single. time. it happens as well?
Others might say that reporting about some satellite that watches the oceans is absolutely yawn-worthy... satellites get launched all the time, many of them to observe our planet, what makes that one so special? And you might say because it may help give further information on rogue waves; thus it was news to you and I'm sure you're glad it was reported - even if it doesn't seem particularly noteworthy to most.
Ever notice how often they'll have video of some event and then have, on-screen "source: YouTube.com" and the like?
Do you really think that they went through the trouble of...
1. finding the original creator of the video (note the shittonne of duplicate vids on YouTube)
2. trying to contact that creator and getting permission to use the video?
Of course not. If they did, then it would've been "source: SatanicPuppy", not YouTube.com .
In fact, do you think they ask -YouTube- for permission? Heck no.
They are, largely, playing the flipside of the coin that YouTube itself is tossing. "Copyright? We'll worry about that when and IF a claim comes in."
And it's not just the news - it's pre-recorded programs as well.
So to get back to Facebook; can they sell photos you upload to their servers? I'm willing to bet they can - and if you find they've done so with your photo, good luck suing; which is the only recourse - and sometimes not even on grounds of copyright ( as evidenced by that Virgin Mobile thing down under; http://www.flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/72157600541608353/ , the grounds there were based on 'model release' thingamajiggers )
I was watching a Dr. Phil show by chance about a week back that dealt with some girls posting questionable pictures of themselves (not naked, just.. plastered) on their Facebook/whatever, and discussing how that might impact their (future) lives - with one employer type guy saying that he will check you out on the internet and if he were to find stuff like that, not consider you for a job.
So Dr. Phil and some 'expert' went on to say that posting pictures like that is not good, blablabla; the same stuff parents would tell their children, I guess.
But what Anonymous Brave Guy mentioned was not even touched upon in the program; yes, it's stupid if you publish those pictures yourself, but what are you gonna do if somebody -else- posts those pictures?
Yes, you can ask them to take them down... maybe they will, maybe they won't.. in the latter case you might ask Facebook.. who may take them down, or not.. in the latter case you might have to sue, etc. But even if your friend does take them down... a friend of theirs may have already copied it to -their- facebook page. In no time, it can be in a hundred random places on the internet... and that employer-type guy is going to find it and not hire you. So what are you going to do against that? Check if anybody's taking pictures while you're plastered? Good luck doing that when every cellphone has a camera these days. Only get plastered while in a private setting? Most of these pictures -are- from private parties.
I guess the answer is "don't get plastered". Sadly, that means "Don't do anything whatsoever that, while innocuous, may be interpreted in such a way by other people as to form a negative opinion of you either personally or professionally". A boring life that'll be.
Back to the topic at hand; protecting your own privacy is all good and well, but in the end, if others are allowed to talk about you in the forum of a billion people that is the internet, you're bound to be screwed one way or another.
The very title of such a "Origins and Development of Life" class would imply that students would be taught on the origins and development of life - and not "Varying Views on the Origins and Development of Life"; thus creationism would still have no place in such a class.
There are already classes for creationism: theology classes. They may not be required material, but they do exist - and if you want that well-rounded education, you'll take it.
Unfortunately there are various problems with mandatory theology classes as generally proposed - not the least of which is that they mean Christian Theology classes; if other religions are mentioned at all, then they are generally mentioned in the bylines and quickly dismissed in favor of the Christian views. If you think that atheism is covered in such classes at all, you're horribly mistaken (well, other than the whole "non-believers go to hell, THEY GO TO HELL AND THEN THEY BURN AND THEY DIE!!!"-part, though they try to tone that down a little these days.)
Personally I don't think that religion has any place in public schools (what private schools do is entirely up to them), not even as an alternative view on things such as the origin of life, the universe, etc. No more than Time Cube would have a place as an alternative view on physics.
*grin* I was giving them the benefit of doubt that maybe, just maybe, the second time they ran this particular storyline, they'd keep it off the front page; but alas. Hence, it's since hidden (got here this time through my account overview).
...but it sure is being used by those with particular interests - mostly their wallets - from anything being done.
Let's just presume that
1. climate change does not exist
2. even if it did exist, we're not the cause.
What should the conclusion be, then?
Should we all keep driving around in gas-guzzlers?
Should we keep sticking to the least efficient form of electrical lighting?
Should we keep firing up coal plants to power them?
Or should we look at the third point?
3. regardless, us pumping CO2 into the environment at the rate we are isn't particularly good.
And then revise our conclusions once more?
There are far too many people willing to throw away every single thing that they can do to lessen their environmental footprint based on convenient conclusions (hmm.. A Convenient Conclusion; I like that for a title.) - convenient because it's what they're used to, and convenient because it doesn't cost them any invest - of will, time or (and most importantly) money.
This is not much different from biodegradable shopping bags. When plain plastic bags were an obvious issue, two initiatives were started...
1. consumers could purchase more durable bags that they could re-use
2. the industry had to find a way to make shopping bags biodegradable without going back to paper bags.
Point 1 was implemented, but a lot of people will simply not purchase the bag.. it costs them money, it takes them will to have to bring it each time they go shopping, etc. It's just inconvenient. The worst-ever argument I've heard against them was on Slashdot recently... somebody didn't want to be seen with a smudgy old shopping bag.
Point 2 was also implemented, and now any shopping bags that were still used over the purchasable kind, would degrade naturally over time... a long, long time.
But Point 2 also gave the people in Point 1 a convenient conclusion; "the shopping bags degrade anyway, why would I purchase the more durable type at all?".
Unfortunately they thusly forget the entire reason for Point 1 in the first place - having *less* shopping bags out there. Yay the ones out there are biodegradable, good job, but that doesn't mean they're not still piling up on wasteheaps, very slowly (but faster than regular plastic) decomposing amidst other junk; because they're almost just like regular plastic, they can't easily be filtered out and treated specifically to become, for example, base soil.
you want to see hate mail? Well, technically, not mail - but try the last time this stuff got posted to front page:
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/13/2336232
Plenty of hate.
Thankfully, you can hide Idle. Customize > Sections, set Idle to the left-most radiobutton option, click the button in the bottom and.. ahhh, bliss.
I'd call this karmawhoring, but seeing as the editors didn't even bother linking to claimed list at 'waxy.org'... lists of Siggraph papers have been kept by Tim Rowley and Ke-Sen Huang for years. You can find this year's list at:
http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/sig2008.html
And an overview of all years at:
http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/
This also includes lists of papers presented at other events such as Eurographics.
For even more fun, visit the papers' authors sites; they often also publish papers at seemingly unrelated events that contain some interesting computer graphics gems.
How on earth do you end up spending that much? Does that include making all your calls + roaming + etc?
When I was in the U.S. for 3 months I got a Cingular prepaid SIM card - traveled all throughout the U.S. and could make calls just fine.. cost me $10. I'd imagine it'd work just fine in Canada as well on any GSM provider there. So I can't imagine the $CAD150/month being some flat fee just so you can actually use the phone on GSM networks.
"The facts of the case do not in any way hinge on the defendant...
- being disabled
- a single mother
- on Social Security."
Really? If you're on Social Security, you probably don't have a particularly big income. If you have a child, a chunk of it will go to that child. If you're disabled, you'll probably have additional expenses for that as well. Granted, she may be compensated for the child / disabilities to some extent in terms of money, but how's that going to compensate for all the hours lost that could be spent with her child instead? I haven't checked what disabilities are in play here - but it seems reasonably likely to me that she will be forced to deal with her disabilities more often than without the case. Now you may claim that "that's life, life sucks", but I'd argue that the RIAA made her life suck in that regard.
But let's take the heart out of it, and focus only on the money aspect and your statement "the case [does] not in any way hinge on"; if that were true, don't you think that there would be a greater portion of cases that would go to arbitration / court, rather than being settled? A great number of cases are settled not because the target knows they're guilty anyway (in which case, settling might be the wise thing to do - but I'll leave that for future cases on whether awarded damages to the RIAA are fitting to the 'crime'), but because the target simply does not have the resources (specifically: money) to bring a solid defense - mounting one leading to debts far greater than a settlement does.
I assure you that in all but the most insane cases, doing that frame-by-frame is already not done anymore (high quality rotoscoping, on the other hand.. yipe). You model a quick mock-up in a 3D application, project your painted texture onto that, and composite that with the original footage.
What it does do is remove that whole 'You model a quick mock-up' part in many (not all) cases. Now to see who gets the patents, how much they are to license, and who get(s) to toss it into their editing suite.
Well seeing as there really isn't anything to discuss here ( unless they expected other website owners, sysadmins, etc. to write in with their user experiences)....
Maybe I would like Backslash... back.
Rehashing popular topics, picking some of the top comments, etc. is a vastly more interesting thing to do than reaching into the hatemail grab-bag.
For the curious:
http://backslash.slashdot.org/
For the curious as to why it's seemingly-dead:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=588277&cid=23846333
( summary: Tim got too busy )
"as a patent examiner, I'm not allowed to post my opinion of patentability, but I will say that most cases are heavily modified from their original application form as this one is in now."
and yet... one-click. I wonder, and fear, what the original application for that was if the resulting 'heavily modified application'-based patent is still what it is now.
I'm not seeing the orientation change when he tilts from from landscape to portrait and back. The only change I witness coincides with sliding out the keyboard; guess what, an actual switch - such as that on the HTC Wizard (I have one) - will do that much.
But even if it had a proper orientation sensor - so what. This is a blurry video of a seemingly rather ugly flimsy (saw that slide-out wiggle? yikes) device that has trouble registering taps (see beginning of video).
I know that Android is a platform, not a phone - but for the sake of the platform, I hope this device (whatever it is - I have a hard time believing it's an HTC product... even a model study) is not what is going to be associated with it.
"thus the only way to increase their income is to get more and more patients"
Not really.. they can go work in a private clinic, or they can work in another country (as you already pointed out). Thank goodness there's many doctors who don't particularly care about increasing their income - who got into the job because they can genuinely help fellow man and all that sort of altruistic stuff that we, as a society, are far too eager to write off and laugh at. These are doctors who will give treatment for free if needed (and sometimes if not*), instead of some doctors only giving free treatment while on a P.R. trip to a poor country (not dissing the gesture, just dissing the motives).
And, let's be honest, they don't really -need- the higher income because they don't have to worry about multi-million dollar malpractice suits looming around every single corner and the insurance that goes with it.
I'm not saying that 'socialized' healthcare is panacea.. far from it.. but that "happy medium where everyone wins" should not be led by the desire to make more money - focus instead on reducing or eliminating the negatives you mentioned.
* I had a nasty bruised-looking toe - walked (well, semi-hopped) straight into the hospital (hadn't registered for a GP yet after moving), got to see a doc in 10 minutes who had an x-ray made 5 minutes later 'just to be safe', determined that it was indeed broken as he suspected, got me a splint, had a nurse put it on while he moved on to another patient, came back to do a quick check to make sure it was on right, and sent me on my way. That's it. Didn't send me past administration for my insurance info on my way out, and certainly not on my way in.. I was a guy with a nasty bruised-looking toe who needed to have a look at it done by a doc and that's all they cared about. Thanks, MCH. I know this is anecdotal, and I'm all too familiar with waiting lists as well, but it's not nearly as bad as some make it out to be. Being on a waiting list for an organ, however, does suck - but that seems to be the case regardless of medical system; short of countries where there's a lively 'grey'/black market in organs. Yikes.
what do you mean, trust?
An SSL certificate automagically means that it is impossible for the site to be hacker, or some guy internally running away with sensitive data, etc. ?
At best, it will say "Why yes, this -is- the website you are looking for.".. beyond that, there's no more trust than I would give a warezyporn website hosted on a .tk domain.
SSL may not be just for encryption, but perhaps it should be.. or should have been. It should never have served this dual purpose - and the story explains quite nicely -why-.