I really hate the comparisons of Three Mile Island to Chernobyl. Three Mile Island was an example of a failure at a nuclear facility that was solved correctly. Chernobyl was an example of a failure that was caused by extraordinary stupidity and handled as badly as you could handle such an incident.
Interestingly enough, both were the result of operator error; but the safety systems at TMI prevented a catastrophe. While I agree TMI was solved correctly, had teh operators recognized the open pressurizer relief or simply let the safety systems do there thing TMI would have been a non-event.
At any rate, it's good to see the US is once again serous about dealing with its energy needs.
And of course combine that with one-way extradition treaties, and the lack of speedy justice in the USA (someone has been in jail 14 months for not disclosing the root passwords of a network to unqualified people).
Being held on contempt has no speedy requirement, as I recall, since it is designed to compel someone to reveal something; with sitting in jail considered to be the way to rapidly force compliance. No compliance, and you stay in jail. The US record seems to be 14 years on a contempt charge, BTW.
I know what a design patent is. How does that change what I said - why do we need patents to protect "decorative, non-functional elements of a design"?
Well, for one as I recall trademark law it only protects the mark's use in similar fields; while a design patent essentially looks up the ability to use a specific design for 14 years without regards to the type of use. In addition, some things can't be trademarked or copyrighted - such as typefaces - but can be protected by design patents. Since a novel design can be patented and trademarked, patenting adds an extra layer of protection beyond the trademark, which has the advantage of longer duration. While we may differ on teh rightness of such laws, I think we can agree they accomplish different things.
So next time I hear someone talk about intelligent design, I'm going to ask them to show me God's patents.
Even if they do, you can point out that He licensed us the rights to reproduce His designs; in fact He encouraged such reproductions. You might say it was the first use of the GPL, since any improvements were also able to be passed on to any subsequent copies of the same code base. As with today's GPL, many forks exist of the basic code base, with much arguement over who's the best fork.
At the same time, He has a pretty severe way of punishing license violators, so it was good that HE made reproduction so easy; although it's often not free in any sense of the word.
I suppose there could be arbitrage opportunities from buying at retail in one country and selling in another if prices or exchange rates are sufficiently out of whack, but I doubt that's a very common practice.
I don't know about the USA, but this used to be very common in the UK. Until Levi's (the jeans company) took Tesco (the biggest British supermarket) to the European court claiming that Tesco's advertising of genuine Levi's at much lower than normal price was damaging Levi's brand and was therefore some kind of trademark infringement. And the court, in just about the worst anti-consumer decision of all time, agreed.
Now that it's illegal such arbitrage is uncommon in Europe. But if it's legal in the USA I'd be surprised if it wasn't common. The price differences can be large.
As I understand the TESCO case, they were importing Levi's from the US and selling them in Britain; and the EU court ruled they can't import them from outside of the EU.
So TESCO was not blocked form selling the jeans, just importing them from outside the EU. Since Levi Strauss probably better controls pricing in the EU than in the US that essentially ended Tesco's ability to offer cut rate prices.
While I disagree with such laws, the US has them as well and companies have used them to limit gray market imports. IANAL, but as I understand it they block entry based on trademark and licensing grounds; with the idea that companies have a right to control how their trademark is used in commerce. As I recall, it tends to be high end luxury goods where relatively small currency differences give rise to decent profits based on arbitrage.
This, of course, is just another example of regulatory capture.
As I mentioned in another posting, unlicensed distributors would need to obtain legitimate stock from somewhere. I presume wholesalers in these items know who is a legitimate retailer and who is not. If someone is dealing in legitimate licensed goods, they'd have to buy them at retail somewhere which significantly reduces the available profit margins from undercutting the manufacturer's preferred retail price. I suppose there could be arbitrage opportunities from buying at retail in one country and selling in another if prices or exchange rates are sufficiently out of whack, but I doubt that's a very common practice. Counterfeiting seems a much more profitable venture.
While price arbitrage is used (generally for what are called gray market goods); resellers can also buy from legitimate sellers at below retail. The store may want to order more to get a bigger discount and offload the excess to someone else at a discount because they can't sell or carry the finance costs for the entire order.
First Sale Doctrine says even an "unlicensed distributor" is allowed to sell an item.
Well, until a law gets passed which repeals it. Which is fairly likely to happen in the not to distant future.
Well, yes and no. I did some research a while back on the doctrine of first sale for an article I wrote and the general legal consensus was it is not cut and dry. State laws vary, as does what qualifies as a sale and what you actually bought.
That may have changed (I wrote that over 10 years ago), but I was surprised that it was not as simple as I initially thought.
Can we please stop making reference to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in this discussion? The case in point concerns trademark infringement. The DMCA does not apply to this.
And for all those who say, "oh, but what if I get a phony notice," how hard is it to verify that someone is a licensed Louis Vuitton distributor? I'd agree that simply looking at the site may not be sufficient to determine whether the hosting client is engaged in trademark infringement, but the site's owner should at least be able to demonstrate that he or she is a licensed distributor.
I'm on Vuitton's side in this one.
I think we are in pretty close agreement here.
While I realize that there is a difference between copyright, which the DMCA addresses, and trademark law, I can see the DCMA being used to fight the sale of knock-offs. If the site used photo's, descriptions, and logos taken from a LV site, then that could conceivably be a copyright violation covered by the DCMA.
I don't see it as an either or; invoking the DCMA allows the trademark owner to rapidly take down a site and stop sales of counterfeit goods and still go after the sellers for trademark violations. The DCMA is simply one more weapon in their armory they can chose to use if it is appropriate.
Of course, that doesn't mean that every application of the DCMA will be legitimate or proper. In the end, lawyers can take actions they know won't really stand up in court in the hopes of getting the other side to fold. It's about winning and losing, not right and wrong.
They further said that Chen and his companies had been informed of the activity by Louis Vuitton but still refused to implement a policy for removing the offending sites, which was their responsibility.
So, I'm an ISP, and I host someone who runs a second-hand store. They sell legitimate "Louis Vuitton" crap, but at prices well below retail.
Louis Vuitton "informs" me that the material is counterfeit. I'm supposed to verify this how?
Since when did ISPs become the gatekeeper of what is and isn't legal?
As I understand the DCMA, you'd comply with the take down order and the seller would have to provide information that they were not selling fakes. If they do, they could conceivably pursue LV for interference with trade, and LV possibly committed perjury as well. However, IANAL so YMMV.
Either way, an ISP cannot simply ignore illegal activity once they are made aware of it, and need to have policies and take actions to remove such sites. A others pointed out, that's been the law for a long time before the internet came to be.
As for someone selling fakes versus real used (err - preowned) it'd be pretty easy to separate the two simply because a second hand store would probably not have the amount of merchandise and clearly state that the items were used. I would suspect a second hand store that deals in high end merchandise would also be pretty good at spotting fakes or else they'd be out of business quickly.
So, ya'll'll have to get a kick out of reading this, and just shake yer heads and mumble something about "that poor southern boy" and if you'd be so kind, drop a dollar in me alms cup as you pass by.
Grammar Yankee Alert
The proper plural, when referring to a group, is all'ya'll'll
Sure, it may be "external forces" like accidently dropped phones, high- or low humidities or temperatures, or what-not, but if the iPhone explosion rate is higher than competitive phones, you have to ask yourself why iPhones are so fragile.
Come on Apple, find the cause and unless it's customers deliberately abusing their phones, fix it.
Let's see - single digit reports, all in one country; hardly enough data to determine anything, other than a few screens broke in France. No evidences of "explosions" Apple should certainly look into it, but at this point it's hard to tell what is wrong or who's fault it is. Until Apple gets the phones, pulls them apart and see's what happened everyone, including Apple, is guessing.
If it is an iPhone problem, I wonder why the issue is so localized; I'd expect a design flaw to show up more often and more evenly spread over a production run.
Personally, my experience with Apple addressing issues that point to design flaws is good - I've had 2 MB's keyboards replaced, free of charge with 1 day turnaround, due to cracking issues. One was way out of warranty, yet they fixed it for free.
The original showed an Asian guy, a black guy and a white woman. How tediously politically correct. Also completely unrealistic for Poland. (Is it even realistic for the US?)
I'm reminded of the original Mission Impossible series in the 60s. One agent, Barney, was black. He often was sent "undercover" to various (fictional) "Eastern Bloc" countries, and no one noticed, despite him being the only black guy in the whole city (well, we never saw any others).
So what you're saying is that there should be some sort of larger moderation system in order to moderate the editors. Maybe we could call these editor-moderators "metamoderators." Then these so-called "metamoderators" could help to keep the editors biases in check. But how could they implement such a system?
. ..
While I get your reference, what I am saying is that if Wiki does not ensure the editors are neutral then they will lose credibility with anyone who does not share the editor's biases; how they ensure neutrality is up to them. The broader audience will decide if it is successful.
I want to see Wikipedia grow and flourish. Rules like this will only help, as long as there are enough "trusted" editors to handle putting the edits into place.
"Trusted" needs to be accompanied by "neutral." As long as teh editors do not have a particular viewpoint they wish to impose then I agree this is a good step forward for Wikepedia. One of the keys will be if they allow edits that are backed up by documentation; much as real editors do in real life; or if they simply avoid controversy, push agendas, or protect their "friends." If it's the latter they'll simply be another Fox news.
Of course, someone could simply fork the current version and keep the previous policies; a head to head match to see who wins.
There's quite a few more requirements than just having the code be available.
Yes, and those requirements go beyond open source; it's more a definition of free software than open source. While many peopel view open source and free as one and the same I think it's worthwhile to differentiate between the two.
BSD, for example, is an open source project with a license that differs from the above in allowing for proprietary use as well.
They are afraid terrorists will get a hold of the schedule and to keep that from happening they are going to stealth the whole process. Buses and trains will now be randomized. Numbers and routes will change spontaneously. Sometimes trains will run on bus routes and buses on train routes. Every once in a while one (either a train or bus) will cross over to NJ, drive off in the pine barrens on its own and self destruct on the off chance it is carrying a terrorist. That will solve everything.
Quick - patent that idea. Oh wait, our local TA already does that. Prior art, never mind.
Actually, the problem with Tivo is that the "experience" is not worth
$14 a month. That is why they decided to start suing people with their
bogus patents. They managed to saturate the market for people that were
willing to spend $14 per month per device for a "better experience".
Much of that experience is that it simply works, out of the box. No need to find a guide service. If you have a problem, you get telephone tech support.
Contrast that to a roll your own solution, which is often frustrating and sort of provides what you need. Tech support? Yea, OSS is known for the high quality of support, especially to non-technical newbs.
I am a demanding user. I would rather build and maintain MythTV. Many
others like me would rather run MCE or SageTV. On the other side of
things you have the sheeple consumers that don't care about the finer
points or network transparency or 5 terrabytes of recording space who
will be content with whatever their cable company gives them.
You're right, most people don't care about those things. They want to record what's on TV, and TIVO does that quite well. If they did, there's be viable alternatives to TIVO.
The number of demanding users to TIVO users is so small that it's not worth building a business around.
TIVO simply works, and that's what people want.
I looked at Myth TV, but the hassle of getting and keeping it up and running simply wasn't worth it to me compared to simply plugging in a TIVO and forgetting about it.
If "the Tivo experience" were really worth $14 per device per month
then they wouldn't be running amok with patent litgation.
Patent litigation is a whole separate issue from product quality or desirability.
If you can't tell the difference, especially between what the press does and she did, then it's not worth trying to explain it to you.
Jesus Christ, you aren't going to explain it because there is no fucking difference. And no, we are not talking about the press, we are talking about individuals like the one who attempted to sue Obama for not being a US citizen.
RTFA, and you'll see how what she did could be considered stalking. The Secret Serice would probably take action against someone who tried the same to the president.
I read the article and see no difference. Tell me where it is or admit there is a double standard.
As I pointed out, the Secret Service would probably investigate someone who did what she did and decide if furtehr action was warranted; jsut as the he rlocal PD did.
That aside, there is a different expectation of privacy between an elected public official and someone who works for the government, even a cop.
Straw man aside? I asked what the differences were, if it was a straw man that should be easy to point out. However, there is no real difference here. Lets take Obama for instance, people have tracked down his family and gave their addresses, people not in the press core follow his moves and report on them, they attempt to get his birth certificate, expose all the dirt on all his friends and so on in an attempt to harm him politically. Now why is that not harassment when this woman's actions are?
If you can't tell the difference, especially between what the press does and she did, then it's not worth trying to explain it to you.
RTFA, and you'll see how what she did could be considered stalking. The Secret Serice would probably take action against someone who tried the same to the president.
WRONG. It is free of one particular consequence: The government can't arrest you for speaking out. Which is what the government just did, and thus violated 1st Amendment rights. They will, hopefully, get their heads handed to her on a platter by just Court. I look forward to the multi-million dollar judgement against the cops with a stern reprimand to never do it again.
I think you need to revisit constitutional law. The 1st amendment does not guarantee you can't be arrested for speaking; rather it limits the government's ability to prevent you from speaking. Courts have held that their is a difference between 1st amendment rights and what results from exercising them.
I wonder why Bush didn't have all his critics arrested and charged with harassment? Clinton probably had the same reasoning if he wanted to and it seems like Obama might be almost doing it with the "turn in people who don't push my agenda" website.
But wait, they are of public interest and the speech associated with them isn't subject to simple harassment charges. SO are the cops so why are the consequences there? Certainly telling people where the president is and inciting anger in the populous with charges and critiques of their policies places them in more danger then they would have been. I'm not really seeing the disconnect, can you explain it?
Your strawman aside, if you RTFA you'd see her actions could very well be harassment; hence the arrest. It's up to the courts to decide if she is guilty.
Actually, it does. The frequency of use is a determining factor. It's clear that he used drugs for 3 or 4 years so I'm sure he far surpassed the official limit.
Two points:
1. The OP stated:
This post isn't trolling. Obama admitted in his book "Dreams From My Father" that he had used both cocaine and pot. That would disqualify him from any security clearance.
Which is not true, as I pointed out since use is not an automatic disqualifier; a point on which we seem to agree.
2. Reference your comment: True, but duration (3 - 4 years) is not frequency - how often within that duration is also a factor; as is how long since the last use.
The bottom line is that it is the totality of use that is the determining factor; not simply use as the OP suggested.
In a nearly year-long barrage of blog posts, she published snapshots she took in public of many or most of the task force's officers; detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them; and, in one instance, reported that she had tipped off a local newspaper about their movements.
may not be an unreasonable charge.
Specifically, you can state what you want but are responsible for the results of your actions, free speech is not a defense for the results of your actions but rather a bar on prior restraint.
even a quick perusal of the site leads me to believe that she is acting out of pure vindictiveness
It's still protected speech. The constitution doesn't say "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech... unless you're being a vindictive bitch."
While the speech is protected- they can't force her to stop blogging - she is responsible for the results of her speech. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
I really hate the comparisons of Three Mile Island to Chernobyl. Three Mile Island was an example of a failure at a nuclear facility that was solved correctly. Chernobyl was an example of a failure that was caused by extraordinary stupidity and handled as badly as you could handle such an incident.
Interestingly enough, both were the result of operator error; but the safety systems at TMI prevented a catastrophe. While I agree TMI was solved correctly, had teh operators recognized the open pressurizer relief or simply let the safety systems do there thing TMI would have been a non-event.
At any rate, it's good to see the US is once again serous about dealing with its energy needs.
And of course combine that with one-way extradition treaties, and the lack of speedy justice in the USA (someone has been in jail 14 months for not disclosing the root passwords of a network to unqualified people).
Being held on contempt has no speedy requirement, as I recall, since it is designed to compel someone to reveal something; with sitting in jail considered to be the way to rapidly force compliance. No compliance, and you stay in jail. The US record seems to be 14 years on a contempt charge, BTW.
I know what a design patent is. How does that change what I said - why do we need patents to protect "decorative, non-functional elements of a design"?
Please read up on trademarks.
Well, for one as I recall trademark law it only protects the mark's use in similar fields; while a design patent essentially looks up the ability to use a specific design for 14 years without regards to the type of use. In addition, some things can't be trademarked or copyrighted - such as typefaces - but can be protected by design patents. Since a novel design can be patented and trademarked, patenting adds an extra layer of protection beyond the trademark, which has the advantage of longer duration. While we may differ on teh rightness of such laws, I think we can agree they accomplish different things.
So next time I hear someone talk about intelligent design, I'm going to ask them to show me God's patents.
Even if they do, you can point out that He licensed us the rights to reproduce His designs; in fact He encouraged such reproductions. You might say it was the first use of the GPL, since any improvements were also able to be passed on to any subsequent copies of the same code base. As with today's GPL, many forks exist of the basic code base, with much arguement over who's the best fork.
At the same time, He has a pretty severe way of punishing license violators, so it was good that HE made reproduction so easy; although it's often not free in any sense of the word.
I suppose there could be arbitrage opportunities from buying at retail in one country and selling in another if prices or exchange rates are sufficiently out of whack, but I doubt that's a very common practice.
I don't know about the USA, but this used to be very common in the UK. Until Levi's (the jeans company) took Tesco (the biggest British supermarket) to the European court claiming that Tesco's advertising of genuine Levi's at much lower than normal price was damaging Levi's brand and was therefore some kind of trademark infringement. And the court, in just about the worst anti-consumer decision of all time, agreed.
Now that it's illegal such arbitrage is uncommon in Europe. But if it's legal in the USA I'd be surprised if it wasn't common. The price differences can be large.
As I understand the TESCO case, they were importing Levi's from the US and selling them in Britain; and the EU court ruled they can't import them from outside of the EU.
So TESCO was not blocked form selling the jeans, just importing them from outside the EU. Since Levi Strauss probably better controls pricing in the EU than in the US that essentially ended Tesco's ability to offer cut rate prices.
While I disagree with such laws, the US has them as well and companies have used them to limit gray market imports. IANAL, but as I understand it they block entry based on trademark and licensing grounds; with the idea that companies have a right to control how their trademark is used in commerce. As I recall, it tends to be high end luxury goods where relatively small currency differences give rise to decent profits based on arbitrage.
This, of course, is just another example of regulatory capture.
As I mentioned in another posting, unlicensed distributors would need to obtain legitimate stock from somewhere. I presume wholesalers in these items know who is a legitimate retailer and who is not. If someone is dealing in legitimate licensed goods, they'd have to buy them at retail somewhere which significantly reduces the available profit margins from undercutting the manufacturer's preferred retail price. I suppose there could be arbitrage opportunities from buying at retail in one country and selling in another if prices or exchange rates are sufficiently out of whack, but I doubt that's a very common practice. Counterfeiting seems a much more profitable venture.
While price arbitrage is used (generally for what are called gray market goods); resellers can also buy from legitimate sellers at below retail. The store may want to order more to get a bigger discount and offload the excess to someone else at a discount because they can't sell or carry the finance costs for the entire order.
First Sale Doctrine says even an "unlicensed distributor" is allowed to sell an item.
Well, until a law gets passed which repeals it. Which is fairly likely to happen in the not to distant future.
Well, yes and no. I did some research a while back on the doctrine of first sale for an article I wrote and the general legal consensus was it is not cut and dry. State laws vary, as does what qualifies as a sale and what you actually bought.
That may have changed (I wrote that over 10 years ago), but I was surprised that it was not as simple as I initially thought.
Can we please stop making reference to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in this discussion? The case in point concerns trademark infringement. The DMCA does not apply to this.
And for all those who say, "oh, but what if I get a phony notice," how hard is it to verify that someone is a licensed Louis Vuitton distributor? I'd agree that simply looking at the site may not be sufficient to determine whether the hosting client is engaged in trademark infringement, but the site's owner should at least be able to demonstrate that he or she is a licensed distributor.
I'm on Vuitton's side in this one.
I think we are in pretty close agreement here.
While I realize that there is a difference between copyright, which the DMCA addresses, and trademark law, I can see the DCMA being used to fight the sale of knock-offs. If the site used photo's, descriptions, and logos taken from a LV site, then that could conceivably be a copyright violation covered by the DCMA.
I don't see it as an either or; invoking the DCMA allows the trademark owner to rapidly take down a site and stop sales of counterfeit goods and still go after the sellers for trademark violations. The DCMA is simply one more weapon in their armory they can chose to use if it is appropriate.
Of course, that doesn't mean that every application of the DCMA will be legitimate or proper. In the end, lawyers can take actions they know won't really stand up in court in the hopes of getting the other side to fold. It's about winning and losing, not right and wrong.
As a side note, I also am on LV's side.
They further said that Chen and his companies had been informed of the activity by Louis Vuitton but still refused to implement a policy for removing the offending sites, which was their responsibility.
So, I'm an ISP, and I host someone who runs a second-hand store. They sell legitimate "Louis Vuitton" crap, but at prices well below retail.
Louis Vuitton "informs" me that the material is counterfeit. I'm supposed to verify this how?
Since when did ISPs become the gatekeeper of what is and isn't legal?
As I understand the DCMA, you'd comply with the take down order and the seller would have to provide information that they were not selling fakes. If they do, they could conceivably pursue LV for interference with trade, and LV possibly committed perjury as well. However, IANAL so YMMV.
Either way, an ISP cannot simply ignore illegal activity once they are made aware of it, and need to have policies and take actions to remove such sites. A others pointed out, that's been the law for a long time before the internet came to be.
As for someone selling fakes versus real used (err - preowned) it'd be pretty easy to separate the two simply because a second hand store would probably not have the amount of merchandise and clearly state that the items were used. I would suspect a second hand store that deals in high end merchandise would also be pretty good at spotting fakes or else they'd be out of business quickly.
Foolish Yankees tend to think of "y'all" as some kind of Southern shibboleth, but like any good incantation it must be used in proper context
The proper term is Damnyankees
Next up, the proper use of the term "hey"
So, ya'll'll have to get a kick out of reading this, and just shake yer heads and mumble something about "that poor southern boy" and if you'd be so kind, drop a dollar in me alms cup as you pass by.
Grammar Yankee Alert
The proper plural, when referring to a group, is all'ya'll'll
Sure, it may be "external forces" like accidently dropped phones, high- or low humidities or temperatures, or what-not, but if the iPhone explosion rate is higher than competitive phones, you have to ask yourself why iPhones are so fragile.
Come on Apple, find the cause and unless it's customers deliberately abusing their phones, fix it.
Let's see - single digit reports, all in one country; hardly enough data to determine anything, other than a few screens broke in France. No evidences of "explosions" Apple should certainly look into it, but at this point it's hard to tell what is wrong or who's fault it is. Until Apple gets the phones, pulls them apart and see's what happened everyone, including Apple, is guessing.
If it is an iPhone problem, I wonder why the issue is so localized; I'd expect a design flaw to show up more often and more evenly spread over a production run.
Personally, my experience with Apple addressing issues that point to design flaws is good - I've had 2 MB's keyboards replaced, free of charge with 1 day turnaround, due to cracking issues. One was way out of warranty, yet they fixed it for free.
The original showed an Asian guy, a black guy and a white woman. How tediously politically correct. Also completely unrealistic for Poland. (Is it even realistic for the US?)
I'm reminded of the original Mission Impossible series in the 60s. One agent, Barney, was black. He often was sent "undercover" to various (fictional) "Eastern Bloc" countries, and no one noticed, despite him being the only black guy in the whole city (well, we never saw any others).
Which is why it was called Mission Impossible.
So what you're saying is that there should be some sort of larger moderation system in order to moderate the editors. Maybe we could call these editor-moderators "metamoderators." Then these so-called "metamoderators" could help to keep the editors biases in check. But how could they implement such a system?
. . .
While I get your reference, what I am saying is that if Wiki does not ensure the editors are neutral then they will lose credibility with anyone who does not share the editor's biases; how they ensure neutrality is up to them. The broader audience will decide if it is successful.
I want to see Wikipedia grow and flourish. Rules like this will only help, as long as there are enough "trusted" editors to handle putting the edits into place.
"Trusted" needs to be accompanied by "neutral." As long as teh editors do not have a particular viewpoint they wish to impose then I agree this is a good step forward for Wikepedia. One of the keys will be if they allow edits that are backed up by documentation; much as real editors do in real life; or if they simply avoid controversy, push agendas, or protect their "friends." If it's the latter they'll simply be another Fox news.
Of course, someone could simply fork the current version and keep the previous policies; a head to head match to see who wins.
http://opensource.org/docs/osd
There's quite a few more requirements than just having the code be available.
Yes, and those requirements go beyond open source; it's more a definition of free software than open source. While many peopel view open source and free as one and the same I think it's worthwhile to differentiate between the two.
BSD, for example, is an open source project with a license that differs from the above in allowing for proprietary use as well.
They are afraid terrorists will get a hold of the schedule and to keep that from happening they are going to stealth the whole process. Buses and trains will now be randomized. Numbers and routes will change spontaneously. Sometimes trains will run on bus routes and buses on train routes. Every once in a while one (either a train or bus) will cross over to NJ, drive off in the pine barrens on its own and self destruct on the off chance it is carrying a terrorist. That will solve everything.
Quick - patent that idea. Oh wait, our local TA already does that. Prior art, never mind.
Actually, the problem with Tivo is that the "experience" is not worth $14 a month. That is why they decided to start suing people with their bogus patents. They managed to saturate the market for people that were willing to spend $14 per month per device for a "better experience".
Much of that experience is that it simply works, out of the box. No need to find a guide service. If you have a problem, you get telephone tech support.
Contrast that to a roll your own solution, which is often frustrating and sort of provides what you need. Tech support? Yea, OSS is known for the high quality of support, especially to non-technical newbs.
I am a demanding user. I would rather build and maintain MythTV. Many others like me would rather run MCE or SageTV. On the other side of things you have the sheeple consumers that don't care about the finer points or network transparency or 5 terrabytes of recording space who will be content with whatever their cable company gives them.
You're right, most people don't care about those things. They want to record what's on TV, and TIVO does that quite well. If they did, there's be viable alternatives to TIVO.
The number of demanding users to TIVO users is so small that it's not worth building a business around.
TIVO simply works, and that's what people want.
I looked at Myth TV, but the hassle of getting and keeping it up and running simply wasn't worth it to me compared to simply plugging in a TIVO and forgetting about it.
If "the Tivo experience" were really worth $14 per device per month then they wouldn't be running amok with patent litgation.
Patent litigation is a whole separate issue from product quality or desirability.
Jesus Christ, you aren't going to explain it because there is no fucking difference. And no, we are not talking about the press, we are talking about individuals like the one who attempted to sue Obama for not being a US citizen.
I read the article and see no difference. Tell me where it is or admit there is a double standard.
As I pointed out, the Secret Service would probably investigate someone who did what she did and decide if furtehr action was warranted; jsut as the he rlocal PD did.
That aside, there is a different expectation of privacy between an elected public official and someone who works for the government, even a cop.
Straw man aside? I asked what the differences were, if it was a straw man that should be easy to point out. However, there is no real difference here. Lets take Obama for instance, people have tracked down his family and gave their addresses, people not in the press core follow his moves and report on them, they attempt to get his birth certificate, expose all the dirt on all his friends and so on in an attempt to harm him politically. Now why is that not harassment when this woman's actions are?
If you can't tell the difference, especially between what the press does and she did, then it's not worth trying to explain it to you.
RTFA, and you'll see how what she did could be considered stalking. The Secret Serice would probably take action against someone who tried the same to the president.
WRONG. It is free of one particular consequence: The government can't arrest you for speaking out. Which is what the government just did, and thus violated 1st Amendment rights. They will, hopefully, get their heads handed to her on a platter by just Court. I look forward to the multi-million dollar judgement against the cops with a stern reprimand to never do it again.
I think you need to revisit constitutional law. The 1st amendment does not guarantee you can't be arrested for speaking; rather it limits the government's ability to prevent you from speaking. Courts have held that their is a difference between 1st amendment rights and what results from exercising them.
I wonder why Bush didn't have all his critics arrested and charged with harassment? Clinton probably had the same reasoning if he wanted to and it seems like Obama might be almost doing it with the "turn in people who don't push my agenda" website.
But wait, they are of public interest and the speech associated with them isn't subject to simple harassment charges. SO are the cops so why are the consequences there? Certainly telling people where the president is and inciting anger in the populous with charges and critiques of their policies places them in more danger then they would have been. I'm not really seeing the disconnect, can you explain it?
Your strawman aside, if you RTFA you'd see her actions could very well be harassment; hence the arrest. It's up to the courts to decide if she is guilty.
Actually, it does. The frequency of use is a determining factor. It's clear that he used drugs for 3 or 4 years so I'm sure he far surpassed the official limit.
Two points:
1. The OP stated:
This post isn't trolling. Obama admitted in his book "Dreams From My Father" that he had used both cocaine and pot. That would disqualify him from any security clearance.
Which is not true, as I pointed out since use is not an automatic disqualifier; a point on which we seem to agree.
2. Reference your comment: True, but duration (3 - 4 years) is not frequency - how often within that duration is also a factor; as is how long since the last use.
The bottom line is that it is the totality of use that is the determining factor; not simply use as the OP suggested.
What results and consequences specifically?
She's charged with harrassment, which FTFA:
In a nearly year-long barrage of blog posts, she published snapshots she took in public of many or most of the task force's officers; detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them; and, in one instance, reported that she had tipped off a local newspaper about their movements.
may not be an unreasonable charge.
Specifically, you can state what you want but are responsible for the results of your actions, free speech is not a defense for the results of your actions but rather a bar on prior restraint.
It's still protected speech. The constitution doesn't say "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech... unless you're being a vindictive bitch."
While the speech is protected- they can't force her to stop blogging - she is responsible for the results of her speech. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.