"Hey slashdirt, or whatever you is, we'd like you to, ah, share all the information you have on this Jeff guy. He says we want trouble, we'll show him trouble. We'll make him an offer he can't refuse."
Do they trust stupid laws like the DMCA to enforce their silly DRM systems?
Yes.
Remember the DeCCS and Dmitry Sklyarov debacles? Although "someone will hack it," good luck disseminating it and staying out of jail.
The industry does not view these laws as symbolic, and has the lobbying power to see them enforced. There will always be an underground, but it will be economically insignificant, far smaller anyway than the currently easy piracy any high schooler can pull off.
What about ripping from the audio stream, is that illegal too?
It would still be legal under "fair use." But a copyright violation, such as selling the music, would still be a copyright violation, as it damn well should be IMHO (not all artists are rich). Enforcement is not impossible -- for example, Napster; P2P is just farther underground -- but very difficult, like it is now. I doubt it will be long before P2P software is attacked, if it has not already (I don't know).
*
I don't think stealing will work. Stealing is not civil disobedience, anyway, it's just taking what you want because you want it. Piracy is no noble protest. Surely there are better ways, more open ways of protest.
The best that occurs to me, aside from lobbying Congress (ha!), is to boycott the companies, declaring we want fair use back. It's the oldest rule of capitalism: Vote with your feet. If imposing copy protection schemes results in making less money, the industry realize its error a heck of a lot faster than any amount of criticism or lawbreaking. (They'd rather be rich if unpopular.)
The funny thing the decision whether to acquiesce or refuse to get a spy card from the supermarket is that they win either way. If you consent to being watched by a marketing weasel, they make more money. If you pay the higher price, they make more money. Presumably the deep discount will be dropped once they've snapped the backbones of a sufficient % of customers, at which time they will make even more money. It's beautiful (sniff).
I'm sympathetic to the needs of marketers (no I'm not) and see the social benefits of more efficient marketing (no I don't) and gracefully accept the additional intrusion (like fuck I do). (We do have cards; my wife does most of the shopping and is less of a petty subversive than her husband.)
I feel a little sheepish having these articles not critically enough. As ihavenet.com points out:
Yet Another Spammer's Story I'm beginning to wonder about the recent popularity of these "profile of a spammer" stories. I recently heard the head of the Wall Street Journal's Silicon Valley bureau talk about what a great success their "profile of a spammer" story was. Now the Detroit Free Press is running their own such spammer profile story. They all sound the same. The spammers themselves come off as pompous idiots who don't see anything wrong in what they do. They always do something to exaggerate their successes and try to show off how wealthy they've become by spamming. I've (unfortunately) dealt with a few scam artists in my life, and one thing they always try to do is present some expensive item (or property) of theirs as evidence as to how successful they are. People who are really successful may buy expensive things, but they're much less likely to talk about them and say "see how rich my business made me?". I still doubt that the spammers are really making the type of money they claim they are. These people are natural scam artists and bottom feeders. They're not above spamming, and they're not above lying.
Rauum pretty much covered what I would have said, except to as "Nyahh!" He knows more about it than I do.
The two genome projects were complementary -- Celera did "decide to share the credit" whatever that means -- and the competition spurred them along. The press did not report on the competition in any depth; for them, the "race" was the story.
They said there wasn't private funding in 1990? They were right! Celera came along eight years later, and had the benefit of the tech boom when just about anything could get funding. Moreover, the Celera founder Venter was a genome project alumni; he left because he thought he could a better job, which is great, but if he hadn't started out in the project would he have taken the same course? Also, Celera's desire to patent and profit from its work is in the interest of its shareholders but not necessarily science. I know I benefitted from several public domain projects run by bright people where you could simply take what you needed and add your own. Like the internet, there is a tremendous value in seeded something private industry does not see the potential in or can't afford to jumpstart without assurance of profit.
As for medical research, I speak from experience. There have been no end of studies funded by gov't grants and institutions. Just read the credits on a few hundred journal articles! Also, few people know the HUGE role Medicare has in financing medical education and teaching hospitals.
Not every project pans out, but that's true of private industry. Government efficiency must be measured in terms of industry efficiency -- there's a reason "Dilbert" resonates with so many people. Sure, we should try to do better, and not every program I mentioned is necessarily a wise one, but no risk, no gain.
Hmm, I wonder if the right or the left has a better track record for names that mean something? On the left I can think of "People For the American Way." Sounds great, but what the heck does it mean? Pacific Research Institute, what does that mean? It is intended I'm sure to suggest an ideologically neutral think tank that is on the west coast, or is very calm.
Nothing generally requires such a disclosure, but there have been some instances such as anti-abortion groups in Boston and elsewhere who chose misleading names as "abortion counseling agencies." They eventually had to have their own subsection in the phone book. But a generic think tank that publishes press releases, there will be be no such requirement.
Not everyone has an agenda, not in the intended sense of activist goals that may be more important than the truth. Or so I meant to insinuate. (You know, people might say, "Careful, he has an agenda.") I suppose "hidden agenda" would be on the mark, but I was typing fast. I always want to know who I'm listening to; credibility is crucial, esp. when they know a lot more about something than I do.
Yeah, I'm sure these groups think they speak the voice of sweet reason, but they provide a disservice hiding their hidden agendas. Unfortunately it works, and the naming of the group is as much a part of the strategy as anything else it does.
Now, you didn't specify I had to have any enlightening goal.:)
I believe gov't spending is best focused on areas that while important do not perform well enough in the market to attract private funding. Many long-term projects and pure research fit this description. Concrete examples are space exploration (I favor astronomy and probes over manned flight, on a bang-for-the-buck rationale), basic biological research (genome project, medical research, niche or long-shot vaccines & medicines, etc.), big-capital-investment projects (supercolliders and such).
There, is that vague enough? Seriously, good gov't funding can provide benefits from boosting young researchers to providing the massive infrastructure for the big ticket labs.
Of course, the gov't's involvement in national research is already huge; the NSF is down the street from me, and NIH/NIMH not far away; look at their websites for an idea of what they are underwriting. Every researcher I can remember seemed to be preparing grant proposals for the gov't. I hope that the short-term shift in administration priorities to what it views as immediate goals does not cause too much long-term loss. I think the administration is mostly sincere in its belief about what is important, but that it is short-sighted. (My 2.)
Finally, I don't suggest research should be socialized. Government spending is complimentary to private spending, not its substitute.
Aeryn? So he's that kind of guy. Be honest (we won't tell): is he more a Crichton, a D'Argo, or a Rygel?
Scapers/ies -- yeah, especially undesirable considering it infects SHEEP. My wife just helpfully suggested "Frellers," which brings us to
72 virgins
I don't know about you, but I'm aware at least some Scapians have excellent sex lives. Spread the word.
P.S. Oh dren, I see I frelling misspelled Zhaan's name. What the yotz, I'm going to go send a bucketful of frelnik dead dentics to the greebol SciFi drannits who couldn't even find their mivonks in the dark.
Hmm, ranting about people who won't get out of the left lane -- a Californian? Just as educated guess.:)
Your focus on the cumulative harm of spam is good and is what the legislature should assess when balancing the economic good vs. harm of spam. Banning it probably goes too far, whereas failing to regulate it simply ignores the rights of the targets. (So, say opt-in might be enough, or perhaps opt-out, and so on with the debate.)
PS: Maybe I misinterpreted your post, but what do you have against squeegee men?
Mayor Giuliani was notorious for targeting the "squeegee men" as part of his effort to improve the NYC quality of life. It was kind of a running joke how much attention these guys who were low-grade nuisances were getting, versus violent crime. There was also a campaign against jaywalking, with barricades and everything along sidewalks. I'm not a New Yorker, but can tell you many of them consider jaywalking a god-given right. Soooo... I picked them out of the air as something ungood but not ++ungood.
three farscape fans took to the streets in costume and with a big poster of the bad guy from the show
"The bad guy from the show"? Scorpius? Are you sure you're a fan?:)
I agree that there is a large viewer base, one that could be even more mainstream. As for "rabid geeks" I was thinking of fans who create and air their commercials! Better than geeks would be a term equivalent to Trekkers. Farscapers doesn't work for me, and Scapies sounds like a disease. No matter. (You seem to think "geek" is exclusive of "female," which may be mostly true but could hurt some feelings around here.)
Interesting background, thank you. BTW, Star Trek (not TOS so much) also had/has a large female following -- as much as 50% at times IIRC. Both have decent stories, not just space battles and explosion. Shows that are character-driven I think are much more interesting and long-lived, and appeal to a broader spectrum of viewers. Farscape has female characters as a strong or more than ST, and is also unusual for its willingness to rotate characters in and out over the course of show -- Xan, Jool, etc.
Since the show was filmed in Australia but not aired there... Gee, they don't carry SciFi in Australia? After all, the show doesn't technically air anywhere, it is cable-only so far as I know. (Post-TOS, the Star Trek shows share this, they've all been syndicated; no networks.)
IMHO the SciFi programmers have made a deplorable error, going with the likes of John Edward over Farscape. Not an error on the level of some country plunging into an ill-advised war in some other country, all of which shall remain nameless, but still a dumb ill-advised error. Mark my words (!) Farscape has a ton of revenue potential, though that's not why I watch it. Anyhow, would you rather dress up as a Klingon or Deanna (and if the latter, please post pictures) (kidding:).
The TOS fanmail campaign helped get it a third season, but then the network turned around and moved the show to a ridiculous time slot like Friday 10pm. Their hearts were not in seeing the show succeed: there may have been enough internal lobbying to extend one more year, but not to package and promote it. For success you need not the fans but people who had not previously watched at all.
Their error in the long run is obvious -- an extra year or two of episodes would have been worth a fortune. Perhaps the show might have even done better first-run, if handled well. But I don't really blame the execs for not perceiving the coming snowball effect. Star Trek was a unique property. And so is Farscape.
Um, editors are welcome/encouraged to edit my questions for extraneous ad hominem material.:)
I spent some time reading "dirt" on Shatner -- and, though I don't think he has the flexibility to react well to such a Q, he's "the man people love to hate," the Howard Cosell of the stars. Like, if he straightened out everyone would feel a void in their lives. At 70-something he will likely go to his grave the same, and admittedly his social slights are pretty minor compared to what some people do to each other. Take Martha Stewart... please.
Shatner's ego is solid, but maybe not his sense of humor about himself. James Doohan recently said some nasty things to Shatner, to which he replied, in essense, that Doohan was getting senile.
Well, anyway, editors, dress this Q up in the most flattering terms if you like, I am interested in what he has to say. But if you do edit it -- could you run it by me so I can check you've included things like spellchecking, punctuation, verbs... oops, there I go again. You're doing a wonderful job, really.:)
I think you raise a fair Q, one I've been thinking about.
OK, spammers should burn in hell (or will, surely, if you don't like it imagine how God feels about spam clogging His inbox). But how do they rate in the great pantheon of scum ranging from, say, serial snipers to NYC "squeegee men"? Or, with a tech theme, relative to the officers of Enron or Worldcom who, it appears, lied and manipulated to deprive thousands of millions, or certain malicious hackers/phreaks who mess with the lives of honest folk for kicks?
Don't get me wrong, I want to see spammers brought under control, but I wonder if the highly emotional denunciations here are over the top or reflect an unusual assessment of naughtiness.
I was clear that the question is not my perfection (which is umatched), but the distinction between something being illegal and trivial, and being legal. Driving over the speed limit by 1 MPH is illegal no matter how trivial it is, and your negligence or a miscalibrated speedometer or a broken cruise control are not defenses. Stealing bandwidth is considerably less innocent behavior, though no capital crime.
I believe that rationalizing crimes is a risky business. If you break the law be honest about it, with yourself at least, even if this is damaging to your self-perception.
Er, I'm not sure of the relevance to the post, but oftentimes citizens coerce other citizens. There are no shortage of individuals whom I do not trust, including the criminal defendants whose appeals I worked on for a federal appeals court (the ones who were guilty, that is, and we did vacate convictions). That's one of the main reasons we have a government, and yes it's a calculated risk to entrust a cop or a court with extra power, but the alternative is anarchy.
It is equally prohibited (even criminal in some cases) to pass on what you know to be a trade secret if among other circumstances you "acquire a trade secret through improper means such as theft, industrial espionage or bribery [or] knowingly obtain trade secrets from people who have no right to disclose them... [or] learn about a trade secret by accident or mistake, but had reason to know that the information was a protected trade secret." This includes journalists, if they know or ought to know that they're getting an illegal leak. (I was surprised by this, too, given the First A. and all.)
...is Woz still so, um, strange? I owned (own, actually) an Apple ][+ and have been aware of him for many years, including the "US Festival" diversion. He has seemed like the member of the Beatles who never grew up.:)
But with a name like the Woz, what can you do? He also symbolized the counterculture aspect of Apple Computer the startup, as opposed to Apple Computer the multibillion-dollar Jobs corporation.
A-ha, they do in fact have a link to the commercial itself -- hosted at mac.com, I note with pride. (Yeah, I dropped my account like most people when they started to charge, but still.)
Gee, I'm glad these people are all Farscape, but what does this prove? Also, I suspect they didn't write their own lines other than the [insert name here].
I repeat my earlier "insightful +5" assertion that Farscape rocks. It is a professional, cool, well-written alternative to the ST rut and the Star Wars commercial nightmare. And is has real characters people care about. Don't we all want to see the Scarrans whupped?
I'd like to see this -- what, no link? -- and have to wonder how Star Trek TOS would have done if it had had *this* kind of rabid support.
But then, how much does Sci Fi care what its hardcore geeks think? There was an interesting article in the Times on how terribly inaccurate the advertising world's obsession with the 25 to 34 demographic is. And it is what the advertisers want, or think they want, that drives commercial programming. (Maybe Farscape should move to HBO -- might even get me to subscribe.)
No, I didn't doubt your sincerity, or that you're mostly right.
Cancer is a kind of wastebasket term for genetic damage resulting from a variety of cause, some better understood than others. It might be that you need a specific combination of factors to set it off, or more likely that a sufficient number of insults causes the disorder. A variety of things inflict the insults.
Risk factor -- it is evident that viral infection is not enough, but is it essential? There must be other factors that act in concert to cause cancer, or reasons that some individuals might be more vulnerable. Maybe this works the other way around -- that radiation or carcinogens alone can't cause cancer until a certain virus is present, but I doubt it. For an over-the-top example, I don't think all the vaccines imagined would keep your genes together working unprotected in a nuclear reactor core.
Viruses as a factor -- I'm just skeptical, and that's based on semi-educated layman's knowledge, that viruses are an essential factor in all or even most cancers. They may be responsible for millions of cancers, which is a big deal, but even figuring out this linkage won't help us to address the millions more of cancers -- thus the note of caution.
There was for a while the idea that cancerous cells arose all the time and were dealt with efficiently by the immune system, so fixing the immune system might fix the cancer. This was disproved in part by the lack of additional cancers in immunocomprised individuals such as AIDS suffers, outside of some odd viral cancers like Karposi's sarcoma that rarely get traction in a healthy body.
But I will do some more reading, my information is dated. As with brain research, immunology has been developing at a meteoric pace. (In college I was interested in neurology and behavior; immunology was a side interest. I thought it was intrigued that the nervous system is highly centralized, while the immune system is distributed, with no governing authority; yet both act with a certain intelligence. Pretty cool example of parallel evolution -- different strategies for solving similar problems.)
Slashdot Mirror
"Hey slashdirt, or whatever you is, we'd like you to, ah, share all the information you have on this Jeff guy. He says we want trouble, we'll show him trouble. We'll make him an offer he can't refuse."
-- da recording industry*
*translate into legalese
Do they trust stupid laws like the DMCA to enforce their silly DRM systems?
Yes.
Remember the DeCCS and Dmitry Sklyarov debacles? Although "someone will hack it," good luck disseminating it and staying out of jail.
The industry does not view these laws as symbolic, and has the lobbying power to see them enforced. There will always be an underground, but it will be economically insignificant, far smaller anyway than the currently easy piracy any high schooler can pull off.
What about ripping from the audio stream, is that illegal too?
It would still be legal under "fair use." But a copyright violation, such as selling the music, would still be a copyright violation, as it damn well should be IMHO (not all artists are rich). Enforcement is not impossible -- for example, Napster; P2P is just farther underground -- but very difficult, like it is now. I doubt it will be long before P2P software is attacked, if it has not already (I don't know).
*
I don't think stealing will work. Stealing is not civil disobedience, anyway, it's just taking what you want because you want it. Piracy is no noble protest. Surely there are better ways, more open ways of protest.
The best that occurs to me, aside from lobbying Congress (ha!), is to boycott the companies, declaring we want fair use back. It's the oldest rule of capitalism: Vote with your feet. If imposing copy protection schemes results in making less money, the industry realize its error a heck of a lot faster than any amount of criticism or lawbreaking. (They'd rather be rich if unpopular.)
Should we ask whether spellchecking is still relevAnt?
C'mon guys -- get the headlines right!
The funny thing the decision whether to acquiesce or refuse to get a spy card from the supermarket is that they win either way. If you consent to being watched by a marketing weasel, they make more money. If you pay the higher price, they make more money. Presumably the deep discount will be dropped once they've snapped the backbones of a sufficient % of customers, at which time they will make even more money. It's beautiful (sniff).
I'm sympathetic to the needs of marketers (no I'm not) and see the social benefits of more efficient marketing (no I don't) and gracefully accept the additional intrusion (like fuck I do). (We do have cards; my wife does most of the shopping and is less of a petty subversive than her husband.)
You can't win. They can.
he's a Crichton -- blond-haired blue-eyed scientist extroardinaire
... again.
:)
... what was this thread about again?
Uh-huh. He's reading over your shoulder, huh? Or you broke your glasses. Or messed up your meds
Kidding! Forgive my skepticism, in my experience most scientists look more like Gollum, at least the ones who don't get out much.
my nose isn't right for the total Claudia Black experience
I'll leave "the total Claudia Black experience" to the imagination.
those wellnitzes at SciFi need to get their dren together
I think the problem is with their wormholes.
Crossing fingers for Farscape future
Rauum pretty much covered what I would have said, except to as "Nyahh!" He knows more about it than I do.
The two genome projects were complementary -- Celera did "decide to share the credit" whatever that means -- and the competition spurred them along. The press did not report on the competition in any depth; for them, the "race" was the story.
They said there wasn't private funding in 1990? They were right! Celera came along eight years later, and had the benefit of the tech boom when just about anything could get funding. Moreover, the Celera founder Venter was a genome project alumni; he left because he thought he could a better job, which is great, but if he hadn't started out in the project would he have taken the same course? Also, Celera's desire to patent and profit from its work is in the interest of its shareholders but not necessarily science. I know I benefitted from several public domain projects run by bright people where you could simply take what you needed and add your own. Like the internet, there is a tremendous value in seeded something private industry does not see the potential in or can't afford to jumpstart without assurance of profit.
As for medical research, I speak from experience. There have been no end of studies funded by gov't grants and institutions. Just read the credits on a few hundred journal articles! Also, few people know the HUGE role Medicare has in financing medical education and teaching hospitals.
Not every project pans out, but that's true of private industry. Government efficiency must be measured in terms of industry efficiency -- there's a reason "Dilbert" resonates with so many people. Sure, we should try to do better, and not every program I mentioned is necessarily a wise one, but no risk, no gain.
Hmm, I wonder if the right or the left has a better track record for names that mean something? On the left I can think of "People For the American Way." Sounds great, but what the heck does it mean? Pacific Research Institute, what does that mean? It is intended I'm sure to suggest an ideologically neutral think tank that is on the west coast, or is very calm.
Nothing generally requires such a disclosure, but there have been some instances such as anti-abortion groups in Boston and elsewhere who chose misleading names as "abortion counseling agencies." They eventually had to have their own subsection in the phone book. But a generic think tank that publishes press releases, there will be be no such requirement.
Not everyone has an agenda, not in the intended sense of activist goals that may be more important than the truth. Or so I meant to insinuate. (You know, people might say, "Careful, he has an agenda.") I suppose "hidden agenda" would be on the mark, but I was typing fast. I always want to know who I'm listening to; credibility is crucial, esp. when they know a lot more about something than I do.
Yeah, I'm sure these groups think they speak the voice of sweet reason, but they provide a disservice hiding their hidden agendas. Unfortunately it works, and the naming of the group is as much a part of the strategy as anything else it does.
...in my bank account.
:)
Now, you didn't specify I had to have any enlightening goal.
I believe gov't spending is best focused on areas that while important do not perform well enough in the market to attract private funding. Many long-term projects and pure research fit this description. Concrete examples are space exploration (I favor astronomy and probes over manned flight, on a bang-for-the-buck rationale), basic biological research (genome project, medical research, niche or long-shot vaccines & medicines, etc.), big-capital-investment projects (supercolliders and such).
There, is that vague enough? Seriously, good gov't funding can provide benefits from boosting young researchers to providing the massive infrastructure for the big ticket labs.
Of course, the gov't's involvement in national research is already huge; the NSF is down the street from me, and NIH/NIMH not far away; look at their websites for an idea of what they are underwriting. Every researcher I can remember seemed to be preparing grant proposals for the gov't. I hope that the short-term shift in administration priorities to what it views as immediate goals does not cause too much long-term loss. I think the administration is mostly sincere in its belief about what is important, but that it is short-sighted. (My 2.)
Finally, I don't suggest research should be socialized. Government spending is complimentary to private spending, not its substitute.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have touched a nerve...
Aeryn? So he's that kind of guy. Be honest (we won't tell): is he more a Crichton, a D'Argo, or a Rygel?
Scapers/ies -- yeah, especially undesirable considering it infects SHEEP. My wife just helpfully suggested "Frellers," which brings us to
72 virgins
I don't know about you, but I'm aware at least some Scapians have excellent sex lives. Spread the word.
P.S. Oh dren, I see I frelling misspelled Zhaan's name. What the yotz, I'm going to go send a bucketful of frelnik dead dentics to the greebol SciFi drannits who couldn't even find their mivonks in the dark.
(Novitiates can find translations etc. here.)
Hmm, ranting about people who won't get out of the left lane -- a Californian? Just as educated guess. :)
... I picked them out of the air as something ungood but not ++ungood.
Your focus on the cumulative harm of spam is good and is what the legislature should assess when balancing the economic good vs. harm of spam. Banning it probably goes too far, whereas failing to regulate it simply ignores the rights of the targets. (So, say opt-in might be enough, or perhaps opt-out, and so on with the debate.)
PS: Maybe I misinterpreted your post, but what do you have against squeegee men?
Mayor Giuliani was notorious for targeting the "squeegee men" as part of his effort to improve the NYC quality of life. It was kind of a running joke how much attention these guys who were low-grade nuisances were getting, versus violent crime. There was also a campaign against jaywalking, with barricades and everything along sidewalks. I'm not a New Yorker, but can tell you many of them consider jaywalking a god-given right. Soooo
three farscape fans took to the streets in costume and with a big poster of the bad guy from the show
:)
:).
"The bad guy from the show"? Scorpius? Are you sure you're a fan?
I agree that there is a large viewer base, one that could be even more mainstream. As for "rabid geeks" I was thinking of fans who create and air their commercials! Better than geeks would be a term equivalent to Trekkers. Farscapers doesn't work for me, and Scapies sounds like a disease. No matter. (You seem to think "geek" is exclusive of "female," which may be mostly true but could hurt some feelings around here.)
Interesting background, thank you. BTW, Star Trek (not TOS so much) also had/has a large female following -- as much as 50% at times IIRC. Both have decent stories, not just space battles and explosion. Shows that are character-driven I think are much more interesting and long-lived, and appeal to a broader spectrum of viewers. Farscape has female characters as a strong or more than ST, and is also unusual for its willingness to rotate characters in and out over the course of show -- Xan, Jool, etc.
Since the show was filmed in Australia but not aired there... Gee, they don't carry SciFi in Australia? After all, the show doesn't technically air anywhere, it is cable-only so far as I know. (Post-TOS, the Star Trek shows share this, they've all been syndicated; no networks.)
IMHO the SciFi programmers have made a deplorable error, going with the likes of John Edward over Farscape. Not an error on the level of some country plunging into an ill-advised war in some other country, all of which shall remain nameless, but still a dumb ill-advised error. Mark my words (!) Farscape has a ton of revenue potential, though that's not why I watch it. Anyhow, would you rather dress up as a Klingon or Deanna (and if the latter, please post pictures) (kidding
"Cheers," for one, had horrible ratings
Yeah, and look at Moesha.
No, better not.
True but...
The TOS fanmail campaign helped get it a third season, but then the network turned around and moved the show to a ridiculous time slot like Friday 10pm. Their hearts were not in seeing the show succeed: there may have been enough internal lobbying to extend one more year, but not to package and promote it. For success you need not the fans but people who had not previously watched at all.
Their error in the long run is obvious -- an extra year or two of episodes would have been worth a fortune. Perhaps the show might have even done better first-run, if handled well. But I don't really blame the execs for not perceiving the coming snowball effect. Star Trek was a unique property. And so is Farscape.
Um, editors are welcome/encouraged to edit my questions for extraneous ad hominem material. :)
... please.
... oops, there I go again. You're doing a wonderful job, really. :)
I spent some time reading "dirt" on Shatner -- and, though I don't think he has the flexibility to react well to such a Q, he's "the man people love to hate," the Howard Cosell of the stars. Like, if he straightened out everyone would feel a void in their lives. At 70-something he will likely go to his grave the same, and admittedly his social slights are pretty minor compared to what some people do to each other. Take Martha Stewart
Shatner's ego is solid, but maybe not his sense of humor about himself. James Doohan recently said some nasty things to Shatner, to which he replied, in essense, that Doohan was getting senile.
Well, anyway, editors, dress this Q up in the most flattering terms if you like, I am interested in what he has to say. But if you do edit it -- could you run it by me so I can check you've included things like spellchecking, punctuation, verbs
I think you raise a fair Q, one I've been thinking about.
OK, spammers should burn in hell (or will, surely, if you don't like it imagine how God feels about spam clogging His inbox). But how do they rate in the great pantheon of scum ranging from, say, serial snipers to NYC "squeegee men"? Or, with a tech theme, relative to the officers of Enron or Worldcom who, it appears, lied and manipulated to deprive thousands of millions, or certain malicious hackers/phreaks who mess with the lives of honest folk for kicks?
Don't get me wrong, I want to see spammers brought under control, but I wonder if the highly emotional denunciations here are over the top or reflect an unusual assessment of naughtiness.
So -- on a scale of 1 to 100, spammers rank (?).
You're an inspiration to the rest of us.
Thank you!
I was clear that the question is not my perfection (which is umatched), but the distinction between something being illegal and trivial, and being legal. Driving over the speed limit by 1 MPH is illegal no matter how trivial it is, and your negligence or a miscalibrated speedometer or a broken cruise control are not defenses. Stealing bandwidth is considerably less innocent behavior, though no capital crime.
I believe that rationalizing crimes is a risky business. If you break the law be honest about it, with yourself at least, even if this is damaging to your self-perception.
Er, I'm not sure of the relevance to the post, but oftentimes citizens coerce other citizens. There are no shortage of individuals whom I do not trust, including the criminal defendants whose appeals I worked on for a federal appeals court (the ones who were guilty, that is, and we did vacate convictions). That's one of the main reasons we have a government, and yes it's a calculated risk to entrust a cop or a court with extra power, but the alternative is anarchy.
Not so.
... [or] learn about a trade secret by accident or mistake, but had reason to know that the information was a protected trade secret." This includes journalists, if they know or ought to know that they're getting an illegal leak. (I was surprised by this, too, given the First A. and all.)
It is equally prohibited (even criminal in some cases) to pass on what you know to be a trade secret if among other circumstances you "acquire a trade secret through improper means such as theft, industrial espionage or bribery [or] knowingly obtain trade secrets from people who have no right to disclose them
Nolo.com FAQ
...is Woz still so, um, strange? I owned (own, actually) an Apple ][+ and have been aware of him for many years, including the "US Festival" diversion. He has seemed like the member of the Beatles who never grew up. :)
But with a name like the Woz, what can you do? He also symbolized the counterculture aspect of Apple Computer the startup, as opposed to Apple Computer the multibillion-dollar Jobs corporation.
A-ha, they do in fact have a link to the commercial itself -- hosted at mac.com, I note with pride. (Yeah, I dropped my account like most people when they started to charge, but still.)
Gee, I'm glad these people are all Farscape, but what does this prove? Also, I suspect they didn't write their own lines other than the [insert name here].
I repeat my earlier "insightful +5" assertion that Farscape rocks. It is a professional, cool, well-written alternative to the ST rut and the Star Wars commercial nightmare. And is has real characters people care about. Don't we all want to see the Scarrans whupped?
I'd like to see this -- what, no link? -- and have to wonder how Star Trek TOS would have done if it had had *this* kind of rabid support.
But then, how much does Sci Fi care what its hardcore geeks think? There was an interesting article in the Times on how terribly inaccurate the advertising world's obsession with the 25 to 34 demographic is. And it is what the advertisers want, or think they want, that drives commercial programming. (Maybe Farscape should move to HBO -- might even get me to subscribe.)
...do backups? Even the pros?
At least I am not alone.
No, I didn't doubt your sincerity, or that you're mostly right.
Cancer is a kind of wastebasket term for genetic damage resulting from a variety of cause, some better understood than others. It might be that you need a specific combination of factors to set it off, or more likely that a sufficient number of insults causes the disorder. A variety of things inflict the insults.
Risk factor -- it is evident that viral infection is not enough, but is it essential? There must be other factors that act in concert to cause cancer, or reasons that some individuals might be more vulnerable. Maybe this works the other way around -- that radiation or carcinogens alone can't cause cancer until a certain virus is present, but I doubt it. For an over-the-top example, I don't think all the vaccines imagined would keep your genes together working unprotected in a nuclear reactor core.
Viruses as a factor -- I'm just skeptical, and that's based on semi-educated layman's knowledge, that viruses are an essential factor in all or even most cancers. They may be responsible for millions of cancers, which is a big deal, but even figuring out this linkage won't help us to address the millions more of cancers -- thus the note of caution.
There was for a while the idea that cancerous cells arose all the time and were dealt with efficiently by the immune system, so fixing the immune system might fix the cancer. This was disproved in part by the lack of additional cancers in immunocomprised individuals such as AIDS suffers, outside of some odd viral cancers like Karposi's sarcoma that rarely get traction in a healthy body.
But I will do some more reading, my information is dated. As with brain research, immunology has been developing at a meteoric pace. (In college I was interested in neurology and behavior; immunology was a side interest. I thought it was intrigued that the nervous system is highly centralized, while the immune system is distributed, with no governing authority; yet both act with a certain intelligence. Pretty cool example of parallel evolution -- different strategies for solving similar problems.)