"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday told students at Georgetown University that a wartime president has the lawful authority to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone calls and e-mail messages without court approval."
Even if that Gonzales' statement was true (which it isn't), the United States is not in a state of war, so the reasoning is completely specious.
For the United States to enter a war, Congress must exercise their constitutional authority to declare war. They have chosen not to do so.
and [...] is only available to commercial entities
It takes very little to become a commercial entity. You don't have to incorporate to have a sole proprietorship or partnership. If you actually sell anything taxable, you have to get tax licenses from your city, county, or state, which is generally either free or very inexpensive. Depending on your locality, you might need a business license, which usually costs under $100 per year. If you do business under your own name (e.g. "Joe Thompson Company", "Thompson Furniture", etc.), you don't need to even file a ficticious name statement, though doing so isn't very expensive and usually lasts for five years.
Obviously, going (for example) down to IE 1 is crazy, but is IE 3 crazy?
Yes, it is. Q: How many people still running IE3 are likely to buy your product or service online? A: None.
Anyhow, design your web site to meet the HTML and CSS standards (no IE proprietary extensions), and it will work for nearly 100% of web browsers, though the older ones (including IE3) may not provide as pretty a presentation.
The fair use clause does not cover commercial use,
Citation?
AFAIK, there's no difference in the US beteween a business buying a CD and making a copy of it (perhaps storing the original in a file cabinet for safekeeping), and a consumer doing the same. But I am not a lawyer.
And in the US, if a DJ plays music, he or she pays ASCAP and BMI the license fees for that music. Those fees are the same regardless of whether the music is played from a CD, or from an MP3 file. We don't have any additional 200 pound penalty for playing it from a different media type.
So a DJ can play a CD, but if she plays the same track ripped to an MP3, she has to pay an extra 200 pounds for a license? Where's the sense in that?
The US compulsory license scheme actually seems sane by comparison.
After Area 51 became so well-known, the UFOs and aliens were all moved to Area 52. Now the only purpose of Area 51 is to draw attention away from what's really going on.
Similarly, once everyone learned about the UN's black helicopters, they repainted them in other colors.
Technically, yes. In practice, no. There is a huge glut of used paper. It's currently
more cost effective to make new paper than to recycle old paper. Recycling paper also produces more pollution than making new paper.
Given how many people think we should sequester carbon in an attempt to thwart global
warming, envrionmentalists should actually be in favor of burying used paper in a landfill rather than recycling it.
2) Chemicals used to make the plastic, electronic components, and batteries are far worse
Different, but not necessarily worse. But one good eBook reader would keep me from buying literally thousands of newspapers and books over a ten year period.
And if you compare the "chemicals" involved in making one eBook with those involved in making thousands of newspapers and books, the eBook wins handily.
1) Plastic (from oil) is not a renewable resource
Plastic can be made from things other than fossil fuel. It's currently more cost
effective to make it from oil. If we can convert to other energy sources, there
will be plenty of oil left to make cheap plastics, or plenty of energy to make
plastics from other materials.
Most plastics used in consumer products are recyclable.
3) In 10 years, every one of these eBooks will be in the dump or a museum. I don't see Sony advertising how biodegradble they are.:-)
If I don't get an eBook, in 10 years I'll pput thousands of newspapers into landfills, due to the aforementioned lack of recycling paper in practice. (Yes, the city picks up newspapers for alleged recycling. But that's not what actually happens to all of it.)
On what basis do you assert that? I've spent a few minutes trying to come up with a single way in which it might be environmentally unfriendly compared to paper books, and I'm stumped.
Assuming that you don't intend to just read a few books on it then throw the device away, it should be much MORE environmentally friendly than paper books. It uses very little electricity (only when you turn a page), so it takes much less energy to download and read a book on this device than to manufacture paper, print a book, and truck it to your local bookstore or your house. The batteries are rechargeable, and should be good for many charges, so it doesn't result in much toxic waste going into a landfill. Amortized over perhaps as few as two dozen books, manufacturing this device should also result in less particulate and greenhouse gas emissions than paper manufacture and printing. Paper manufacture actually produces quite a bit of pollution, including dioxin.
Other than having an English user interface, is this any different than the Librie they've been selling in Japan? The BBC story mentions the Librie but only says that it didn't sell well.
It's claimed to offer a display "almost as sharp as paper", and perhaps it does, but in all the photos I've seen the contrast ratio doesn't look nearly as good as paper (even comparing to cheap paperbacks or newsprint).
Maybe the photos are just bad. Sony's own photos look much better, though they're probably retouched.
maybe we should replace the steering wheels and pedals of cars with trackballs.
I've seen far too many of these articles about how much better 3D interfaces are going to be, and no actual explanation of how it will make my work easier. Which is not surprising, because it won't. It's a solution in search of a problem.
If you actually read the standard, or at least the Wikipedia article, you would know that the ISO standard uses 0000 for the year 1 B.C.E. This has been common practice with astronomers for many years, but has NOTHING to do with when a historical century begins or ends.
Thus the year 1 BCE is still immediately followed by 1 CE, even though the former is represented in ISO 8601 as 0000.
The first century BCE was the years 100 BCE through 1 BCE, inclusive. The ISO standard represents them as -0099 through 0000.
The first century CE was the years 1 CE through 100 CE, inclusive, which the ISE standard represents as 0001 through 0100.
Actually, they are 1-1000, 1001-2000, and 2001-3000.
The year 1 C.E. was the first year of the common era, so the year 1000 was the last year of the first millenium.
It's like counting pennies. Your 100th penny is part of your first dollar, not your second dollar.
They didn't build anything to raise its orbit because the Space Shuttle was going to be able to do it. That's what NASA was telling Congress and the administration. If the Shuttle hadn't been delayed so much, maybe it would have worked.
If we could just turn over the ISS boondogle to another country that would be an excellent solution, but I don't think anyone else would be willing to take it over. Russia might, but we'd have to pay them to operate it. They can't afford to operate it on their own.
If we're going to have a space station, it should in orbit around L4 or L5. The Shuttle can't get there, but a Delta-4H or Atlas-VH could be used to launch the station modules, and the SDLV can get manned craft such as the CEV there. (Though technically it seems like it would make more sense to develop a man-rated version of the Delta 4.)
Putting up the rest of the station (as planned) still doesn't turn it into anything useful. Just a giant space rathole to throw more money into.
That's why we're better off abandoning it and starting over. And the only reasonable way to abandon it is to deorbit it; if we don't do a controlled deorbit, it will do an uncontrolled reentry anyhow.
We did it once with skylab and found that it was a mistake then.
There was no other choice but to let Skylab reenter. We didn't have anything capable of saving it at the time, because the STS was not yet operational.
It may have originally been designed for that, but what we actually built and have on orbit isn't useful for anything more than keeping two astronauts/cosmonauts alive. Maintaining the station takes up most of their time.
It was originally planned to be something useful, but they went through so many iterations of paring it down due to budget cuts that there's nothing worthwhile left.
ISS is a colossal waste of money. We should negotiate to buy out the other countries' interests in it, and deorbit it. Using the money we save, we can try to build a useful space program. And in the mean time, use the shuttle one last time time service the Hubble.
How do they know that it was caffeine that was the key factor in preventing liver disease? There are other things in common between tea and coffee, such as flavonoids. Flavonoids are already known to have various health benefits.
I suppose that could be as simple as putting them behind a firewall that allows all incoming connections, but disallows all outgoing connections.
That's just about the opposite of what I normally think of as a "secure network".
That also makes their infection detection simpler; if the computer attempts to make any outbound connections, it's infected. But malware that has a long incubation period wouldn't be detected promptly, so other methods must be used as well.
The article failed to explain why it couldn't be someone that died very recently (within minutes). In a hospital, there are people dying all the time, so finding a donor that isn't on life support doesn't seem completely impossible.
Just somewhat difficult.
What if a person commits a crime and uses this surgery to escape identification
There's all sorts of cosmetic surgery they can already use to do that, without resorting to a face transplant. A face transplant is very risky, and there aren't that many surgeons in the world qualified to do it, so it's unlikely that someone can get this done without a lot of publicity.
and/or conviction.
If they are identified, I don't see how a face transplant will help them avoid conviction.
Slashdot Mirror
The first Gulf War may never have ended, but it was also an undeclared war, so the fact remains that the US is not in a state of war.
For the United States to enter a war, Congress must exercise their constitutional authority to declare war. They have chosen not to do so.
AFAIK, there's no difference in the US beteween a business buying a CD and making a copy of it (perhaps storing the original in a file cabinet for safekeeping), and a consumer doing the same. But I am not a lawyer.
And in the US, if a DJ plays music, he or she pays ASCAP and BMI the license fees for that music. Those fees are the same regardless of whether the music is played from a CD, or from an MP3 file. We don't have any additional 200 pound penalty for playing it from a different media type.
So a DJ can play a CD, but if she plays the same track ripped to an MP3, she has to pay an extra 200 pounds for a license? Where's the sense in that? The US compulsory license scheme actually seems sane by comparison.
Similarly, once everyone learned about the UN's black helicopters, they repainted them in other colors.
Given how many people think we should sequester carbon in an attempt to thwart global warming, envrionmentalists should actually be in favor of burying used paper in a landfill rather than recycling it.
Different, but not necessarily worse. But one good eBook reader would keep me from buying literally thousands of newspapers and books over a ten year period.And if you compare the "chemicals" involved in making one eBook with those involved in making thousands of newspapers and books, the eBook wins handily.
Plastic can be made from things other than fossil fuel. It's currently more cost effective to make it from oil. If we can convert to other energy sources, there will be plenty of oil left to make cheap plastics, or plenty of energy to make plastics from other materials.Most plastics used in consumer products are recyclable.
If I don't get an eBook, in 10 years I'll pput thousands of newspapers into landfills, due to the aforementioned lack of recycling paper in practice. (Yes, the city picks up newspapers for alleged recycling. But that's not what actually happens to all of it.)Assuming that you don't intend to just read a few books on it then throw the device away, it should be much MORE environmentally friendly than paper books. It uses very little electricity (only when you turn a page), so it takes much less energy to download and read a book on this device than to manufacture paper, print a book, and truck it to your local bookstore or your house. The batteries are rechargeable, and should be good for many charges, so it doesn't result in much toxic waste going into a landfill. Amortized over perhaps as few as two dozen books, manufacturing this device should also result in less particulate and greenhouse gas emissions than paper manufacture and printing. Paper manufacture actually produces quite a bit of pollution, including dioxin.
It's claimed to offer a display "almost as sharp as paper", and perhaps it does, but in all the photos I've seen the contrast ratio doesn't look nearly as good as paper (even comparing to cheap paperbacks or newsprint).
Maybe the photos are just bad. Sony's own photos look much better, though they're probably retouched.
maybe we should replace the steering wheels and pedals of cars with trackballs.
I've seen far too many of these articles about how much better 3D interfaces are going to be, and no actual explanation of how it will make my work easier. Which is not surprising, because it won't. It's a solution in search of a problem.
But inside, there's a new batch of tasty exploits every week.
Everyone complaining about it being ugly is clearly not a nerd, since a nerd doesn't care whether a watch is ugly.
Thus the year 1 BCE is still immediately followed by 1 CE, even though the former is represented in ISO 8601 as 0000.
The first century BCE was the years 100 BCE through 1 BCE, inclusive. The ISO standard represents them as -0099 through 0000.
The first century CE was the years 1 CE through 100 CE, inclusive, which the ISE standard represents as 0001 through 0100.
Actually, they are 1-1000, 1001-2000, and 2001-3000. The year 1 C.E. was the first year of the common era, so the year 1000 was the last year of the first millenium. It's like counting pennies. Your 100th penny is part of your first dollar, not your second dollar.
If we could just turn over the ISS boondogle to another country that would be an excellent solution, but I don't think anyone else would be willing to take it over. Russia might, but we'd have to pay them to operate it. They can't afford to operate it on their own.
If we're going to have a space station, it should in orbit around L4 or L5. The Shuttle can't get there, but a Delta-4H or Atlas-VH could be used to launch the station modules, and the SDLV can get manned craft such as the CEV there. (Though technically it seems like it would make more sense to develop a man-rated version of the Delta 4.)
That's why we're better off abandoning it and starting over. And the only reasonable way to abandon it is to deorbit it; if we don't do a controlled deorbit, it will do an uncontrolled reentry anyhow.
There was no other choice but to let Skylab reenter. We didn't have anything capable of saving it at the time, because the STS was not yet operational.It was originally planned to be something useful, but they went through so many iterations of paring it down due to budget cuts that there's nothing worthwhile left.
ISS is a colossal waste of money. We should negotiate to buy out the other countries' interests in it, and deorbit it. Using the money we save, we can try to build a useful space program. And in the mean time, use the shuttle one last time time service the Hubble.
Are they going to update their "Up in the Air, Junior Birdman" song as well, to reflect the new mission?
How do they know that it was caffeine that was the key factor in preventing liver disease? There are other things in common between tea and coffee, such as flavonoids. Flavonoids are already known to have various health benefits.
That's just about the opposite of what I normally think of as a "secure network".
That also makes their infection detection simpler; if the computer attempts to make any outbound connections, it's infected. But malware that has a long incubation period wouldn't be detected promptly, so other methods must be used as well.
The article failed to explain why it couldn't be someone that died very recently (within minutes). In a hospital, there are people dying all the time, so finding a donor that isn't on life support doesn't seem completely impossible. Just somewhat difficult.
But when will they be able to tranplant a working brain into a Slashdot Troll?