So if a drug company does patent the human genome, do I have to pay them a license to live? After all, I'm making use of their patented product in order to live...
Something is seriously wrong with the patent office if we even have to consider a ban on patents on human genes.
Except that he *did* go out and meet his "victim." This, along with the chat room stuff, the pointers to web sites containing pictures of his genitals, and the suggestion that they were meeting to "make out", go a long way towards demonstrating his intention to have sex with a minor.
The law is rather explicit about this: it is illegal to act with the intention of having sex with a minor. Whether he actually intended to have sex, or if he was just being a non-sexual creep is something for a jury to sort out.
The problem here is that he had the *intent* to have sex with a minor. That's all the law requires: to show beyond a reasonable doubt that he *intended* to have sex with a person he believed to be a minor. (Did you read the article? Did you notice the fact that he received pictures of a 13 year old who he was told was the person he was talking to? Or the fact that he flew down from Seattle to have sex with this 13 year old? He wasn't caught in his office masturbating to a chat room--he had taken the extra step to actually go out and screw a 13 year old. Big difference.)
The law requires only a demonstration of *intent* because the law recongises that having the police pimp out 13 year old minors in order to have sex with others is an unreasonable thing to do.
Don't worry; you can continue to chat about anything you want. Just don't drive out there and have sex with a minor, okay?
Sometimes, though, what you get doesn't necessarly jive with the [verb][noun] combination you use. For example, instead of getting gory pictures of a dead little girl, I got a nerd site instead.
Please distinguish between ISA and chip design. The x86 instruction set may be antedeluvian but the microarchitecture of the K7 is state of the art (could we expect less from Dirk Meyer and Co.?).
And if I could only shed the 235 pounds of weight associated with my mass, I could float to the ceiling.
The microarchitecture of the K7 may be state of the art, but for all practical purposes it's useless when hobbled down by the i86 instruction set.
I'm just trying to figure out how folks like Zenith will deal with export laws when they put an embedded version of a G4 into a TV set. (No, it's not a supercomputer, damn it! Yes, I know the remote control can theoretically do 1 gigaflop, but it's primarly used to change channels!)
What's fascinating about this proposal is that if it follows the model used for Television, then the producer of the material will be asked to rate the material they produce. That's how it works on TV: it's South Park's producers who decided the material was TV-M, not Comedy Central or any centralized rating board.
So when this thing lands on the Internet, who's going to rate my material? Me.
Unlike movie ratings, television ratings don't work. Why? Because when you go see a movie, the guy who sells you a ticket screens if you are allowed to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie. The folks in front of me at a recent movie were carded by the ticket seller who then declined to sell them a ticket. Yet...no-one guards your television. And the V-chip is a laughable solution: if it's as easy to program as the clock on your VCR, millions of parents are going to be totally unable to flip the switch and prevent their kids from watching South Park.
What's especially funny about the Internet is that the rules which define polite civilization (such as shame of being outed by neighbors or being caught in an XXX theater) don't seem to apply. In fact, the rules seem inverted: people who are "hyperconcerned" with appearing normal in public seem to go out of their way to find XXX rated material on the 'net.
So the upshot of a rating system like this is that unless a higher authority (such as the Australian government) imposes restrictions on the packets that get transmitted across the wire, the rating system is only going to give people a new mechanism to find the smut they want.
When the producers of material are the ones rating their material, and when the consumers of that material seem to be looking for the most extreme forms of perversion, the whole thing will just collapse on itself into another orgy of ineffective government self-congradulations.
Me, I'm going to rate all of my material XXX: Ultra violent pornography. Because it appears to me that ideas are the most destructive things to the governments who are trying to impose this mess on us.
Don't forget if you hire a contractor for an extended period of time, provide that contractor a computer, demand that he/she work from 8 to 5 and to perform work in a particular way, the IRS may decide he's an employee and not a contractor.
And if they do that, the IRS will hit you up with a tax bill that is rougly 1/3rd of what you've paid that contractor in salary.
Contractors are used for short term projects that take a well-defined period of time. Preferably contractors also have some degree of control over their work environment. Simply giving some guy a 1099 instead of a W-2 doesn't count.
OTOH, if you've got good employees who want some freedom, why not consider allowing them to telecommute?
There were rumors on Ain't It Cool News (www.aint-it-cool-news.com) about a Roddenberry inspired new series. One rumor has it that an x-DS9er put together a proposal for a new series, set in the distant future when the Federation, Romulans, Klingons and all the rest had collapsed, leaving the Galaxy in total ruin.
The idea was to have someone uncover a Federation Star Ship from that past, perhaps an Enterprise from farther down the line, with most of it's crew in suspended animation. The idea would be that the Enterprise, it's crew fresh with the memories of the former glory of the Federation, going around and trying to restore order to a galaxy with roaming bands of Klingons and Vulcans who have renounced their philosophy of logic.
Sounds like a cool idea, especially given that there isn't a person over 16 who wouldn't immediately grasp the magnitude of the loss suffered by the inhabitants of that future Enterprise.
Of course AICN suggests that while they may go ahead with this idea (using Hercules's Kevin Sorbo as the captain), they may nix putting this in the far future of the Star Trek universe.
Too bad--something about merading bands of pissed off Vulcans fighting to the death with bands of empire-less Klingons that sounds sort of fun.
We would (fix the patent office, that is), except that it ain't just in the United States where Patents are screwed up. Or did anyone forget the patent which survived a court case in England effectively patenting the alpha channel, dispite expert testimony from a dozen experts who said that the alpha channel had been around for *years*?
It's a silly idea, and something that the US Government will never seriously contemplate, for a couple of reasons.
First, the USPS is a self-sustaining government organization which doesn't take a dime from the government coffers. (The USPS pays for itself entirely from user fees--that is, through selling stamps and other products.)
Second, e-mail is not seriously impacting the number of letters that the US mail sends. Remember, the majority of mail that gets sent via the USPS is junk mail, bills, magazines and packages. I would say that in fact, with the number of people sending each other little trinkets they bought via eBay through the USPS, their business is doing quite well.
Third, there are other organizations which are making a larger dent in USPS business than e-mail. Like UPS and FedEx. And I'll bet people would scream bloody murder if the US Government started taxing those organizations because the USPS couldn't compete.
I don't know about the others here, but for me, what makes me itchy are software patents which are then broadly applied. In general I don't have problems with patents. I do have problems when someone tries to patent 'xor' cursors or the alpha channel or even their business methods.
The problem is that the patent office appears to have taken the attitude "if we don't understand it, we'll grant the patent and let the lawyers sort it out." The cost to have the lawyers sort it out is more than I'll make in a lifetime of freelance programming...
That's the thing that stumps me as well--it's not like Lucas isn't bludgeoning us over the blasted head by naming the movie "The Phantom Menace" in the first place!
Whether Naboo signed the treaty or the Trade Federation fell is completely unimportant. (The "Phantom Menace" refered to by the title is the Trade Federation.) The only thing that happened in the entire movie that was important in any way to the Star Wars universe was Palpatine's ascention in the Senate.
Slashdot Mirror
So if a drug company does patent the human genome, do I have to pay them a license to live? After all, I'm making use of their patented product in order to live...
Something is seriously wrong with the patent office if we even have to consider a ban on patents on human genes.
Except...
Except that he *did* go out and meet his "victim." This, along with the chat room stuff, the pointers to web sites containing pictures of his genitals, and the suggestion that they were meeting to "make out", go a long way towards demonstrating his intention to have sex with a minor.
The law is rather explicit about this: it is illegal to act with the intention of having sex with a minor. Whether he actually intended to have sex, or if he was just being a non-sexual creep is something for a jury to sort out.
I wouldn't bet on him being found "not guilty."
The problem here is that he had the *intent* to have sex with a minor. That's all the law requires: to show beyond a reasonable doubt that he *intended* to have sex with a person he believed to be a minor. (Did you read the article? Did you notice the fact that he received pictures of a 13 year old who he was told was the person he was talking to? Or the fact that he flew down from Seattle to have sex with this 13 year old? He wasn't caught in his office masturbating to a chat room--he had taken the extra step to actually go out and screw a 13 year old. Big difference.)
The law requires only a demonstration of *intent* because the law recongises that having the police pimp out 13 year old minors in order to have sex with others is an unreasonable thing to do.
Don't worry; you can continue to chat about anything you want. Just don't drive out there and have sex with a minor, okay?
Sometimes, though, what you get doesn't necessarly jive with the [verb][noun] combination you use. For example, instead of getting gory pictures of a dead little girl, I got a nerd site instead.
[slash dot, get it? Slash Dot... badbumpum!]
Okay, okay, I'll shut up now...
Please distinguish between ISA and chip design. The x86 instruction set may be antedeluvian but the microarchitecture of the K7 is state of the art (could we expect less from Dirk Meyer and Co.?).
And if I could only shed the 235 pounds of weight associated with my mass, I could float to the ceiling.
The microarchitecture of the K7 may be state of the art, but for all practical purposes it's useless when hobbled down by the i86 instruction set.
I'm just trying to figure out how folks like Zenith will deal with export laws when they put an embedded version of a G4 into a TV set. (No, it's not a supercomputer, damn it! Yes, I know the remote control can theoretically do 1 gigaflop, but it's primarly used to change channels!)
What's fascinating about this proposal is that if it follows the model used for Television, then the producer of the material will be asked to rate the material they produce. That's how it works on TV: it's South Park's producers who decided the material was TV-M, not Comedy Central or any centralized rating board.
So when this thing lands on the Internet, who's going to rate my material? Me.
Unlike movie ratings, television ratings don't work. Why? Because when you go see a movie, the guy who sells you a ticket screens if you are allowed to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie. The folks in front of me at a recent movie were carded by the ticket seller who then declined to sell them a ticket. Yet...no-one guards your television. And the V-chip is a laughable solution: if it's as easy to program as the clock on your VCR, millions of parents are going to be totally unable to flip the switch and prevent their kids from watching South Park.
What's especially funny about the Internet is that the rules which define polite civilization (such as shame of being outed by neighbors or being caught in an XXX theater) don't seem to apply. In fact, the rules seem inverted: people who are "hyperconcerned" with appearing normal in public seem to go out of their way to find XXX rated material on the 'net.
So the upshot of a rating system like this is that unless a higher authority (such as the Australian government) imposes restrictions on the packets that get transmitted across the wire, the rating system is only going to give people a new mechanism to find the smut they want.
When the producers of material are the ones rating their material, and when the consumers of that material seem to be looking for the most extreme forms of perversion, the whole thing will just collapse on itself into another orgy of ineffective government self-congradulations.
Me, I'm going to rate all of my material XXX: Ultra violent pornography. Because it appears to me that ideas are the most destructive things to the governments who are trying to impose this mess on us.
Don't forget if you hire a contractor for an extended period of time, provide that contractor a computer, demand that he/she work from 8 to 5 and to perform work in a particular way, the IRS may decide he's an employee and not a contractor.
And if they do that, the IRS will hit you up with a tax bill that is rougly 1/3rd of what you've paid that contractor in salary.
Contractors are used for short term projects that take a well-defined period of time. Preferably contractors also have some degree of control over their work environment. Simply giving some guy a 1099 instead of a W-2 doesn't count.
OTOH, if you've got good employees who want some freedom, why not consider allowing them to telecommute?
There were rumors on Ain't It Cool News (www.aint-it-cool-news.com) about a Roddenberry inspired new series. One rumor has it that an x-DS9er put together a proposal for a new series, set in the distant future when the Federation, Romulans, Klingons and all the rest had collapsed, leaving the Galaxy in total ruin.
The idea was to have someone uncover a Federation Star Ship from that past, perhaps an Enterprise from farther down the line, with most of it's crew in suspended animation. The idea would be that the Enterprise, it's crew fresh with the memories of the former glory of the Federation, going around and trying to restore order to a galaxy with roaming bands of Klingons and Vulcans who have renounced their philosophy of logic.
Sounds like a cool idea, especially given that there isn't a person over 16 who wouldn't immediately grasp the magnitude of the loss suffered by the inhabitants of that future Enterprise.
Of course AICN suggests that while they may go ahead with this idea (using Hercules's Kevin Sorbo as the captain), they may nix putting this in the far future of the Star Trek universe.
Too bad--something about merading bands of pissed off Vulcans fighting to the death with bands of empire-less Klingons that sounds sort of fun.
int main()
{
cout "Talk in C++? Are you bloody nuts?";
}
// who notes that only folks who don't get laid probably do this...
We would (fix the patent office, that is), except that it ain't just in the United States where Patents are screwed up. Or did anyone forget the patent which survived a court case in England effectively patenting the alpha channel, dispite expert testimony from a dozen experts who said that the alpha channel had been around for *years*?
It's a silly idea, and something that the US Government will never seriously contemplate, for a couple of reasons.
First, the USPS is a self-sustaining government organization which doesn't take a dime from the government coffers. (The USPS pays for itself entirely from user fees--that is, through selling stamps and other products.)
Second, e-mail is not seriously impacting the number of letters that the US mail sends. Remember, the majority of mail that gets sent via the USPS is junk mail, bills, magazines and packages. I would say that in fact, with the number of people sending each other little trinkets they bought via eBay through the USPS, their business is doing quite well.
Third, there are other organizations which are making a larger dent in USPS business than e-mail. Like UPS and FedEx. And I'll bet people would scream bloody murder if the US Government started taxing those organizations because the USPS couldn't compete.
I don't know about the others here, but for me, what makes me itchy are software patents which are then broadly applied. In general I don't have problems with patents. I do have problems when someone tries to patent 'xor' cursors or the alpha channel or even their business methods.
The problem is that the patent office appears to have taken the attitude "if we don't understand it, we'll grant the patent and let the lawyers sort it out." The cost to have the lawyers sort it out is more than I'll make in a lifetime of freelance programming...
That's the thing that stumps me as well--it's not like Lucas isn't bludgeoning us over the blasted head by naming the movie "The Phantom Menace" in the first place!
Whether Naboo signed the treaty or the Trade Federation fell is completely unimportant. (The "Phantom Menace" refered to by the title is the Trade Federation.) The only thing that happened in the entire movie that was important in any way to the Star Wars universe was Palpatine's ascention in the Senate.