I'm sorry, but i don't feel like leading legal mumbo-jumbo...:)
Alas, that such mumbo-jumbo is what makes up the laws we live by (pardon my assumption that you're living in the U.S.
Here's the pertinant part:
Although the Postal Service, with exceptions, generally possesses a legal monopoly over the commercial carriage of ordinary "letters," see 18 U.S.C. 1693-99, 39 U.S.C. 601-06, 39 C.F.R. 310.2, a postal regulation authorized by 39 U.S.C. 601(b) has, since 1979, permitted private couriers such as FedEx,(1) subject to specified conditions, to carry "extremely urgent letters" for hire. 39 C.F.R. 320.6.
What you're saying though, can't be true IMO, because why would Fedex offer 2 or 3 day delivery, and UPS offer 5 or 7 day ground delivery? That'd be breaking the law according to the rules you laid out.
I think the key here is the word "guarantee" - FedEx et al guarantee delivery within the specified timeframe or your money back. The USPS cannot and will not make such a guarantee. Therefore they allow other carriers to compete, to some degree. This is, however, just my theory.
I do believe anyone could try to compete against the post office, it's just that they're so entrechened it makes no sense to attempt to under cut them, but rather offer a faster more efficient service than they do...
It's against the law to compete with the USPS. FedEx, UPS et al deliver things that the USPS either doesn't want to (packages) or generally can't (overnight). In fact, it's against the law to send something via an overnight service that doesn't actually have to be there overnight.
No, but they can give you the right to not have to pay more for the ticket just because the airline doesn't like you (ie you are black, female, muslim, short, old, democrat, etc... ).
By that logic the government can also give me the "right" to be free from Ku Klux Klan or Nazi propoganda by ordering publishers and ISPs not to carry their content.
Guaranteeing me freedom from discrimination can only be done by supressing everyone else's right to discriminate. And while that's a very politically correct concept, it's also one step away from ThoughCrime, where the 1st Amendment will only protect "correct" speech.
Rights come attached to responsibilities - including the realization that other people have the right to tell you to take a flying leap at rolling donut.
I don't think that anyone is saying that you should be entitled to a free ride. I may have the right to travel but this does no good if all of the travel companies refuse to sell me a ticket (at any reasonable price).
The government can't give you the "right" to a reasonably priced ticket without taking away the travel company's right to charge what they want.
If the constitution only applied to the government, then any U.S. citizen would not have the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. unless they were a part of the government.
Are you and I talking about the same document? The one I'm familiar with uses the following terminology:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So the Constitution doesn't grant the people any rights at all... what it does is forbid the federal government from infriging the people's inalienable rights.
So should the individual not have the same rights to publish on the web as (s)he had in days gone by to establishing a printing press?
You have the right to pursue happiness - that doesn't mean you'll get it though. Likewise you have the right to travel, but that doesn't entitle you to a free plane ticket. In the same way, while the Gov't isn't allowed to stifle your speech, there's absolutely no obligation for anyone (large or small) to actually print it - or to host the site on their servers.
You've pointed out a pet peeve of mine... whenver some company (say, Walmart) refuses to carry a particular album or book, the cries of "censorship!" go up. That's not censorship, it's a company deciding what they want to sell. Only the government can censor.
Phantom Menace did have cool effects at least, which my spoiled ass thinks the first three did not...
What?!? The first 3 didn't have cool effects? Why, when I was your age "special effects" mean somebody threw a pie-plate at the camera and the actors would point and yell "Flying saucer!"
You kids don't know just how good you've got it... buncha pansy actors "dodging" bullets & stuff... in the Old Days you just had to pretend the bullets bounced off!
2. We do not monitor traffic until you surpass the specified amount with your package at the time of purchase in one months period of time. This does not apply to provision III, A, 3.
Um, how do you know if someone has surpassed the "specified amount" unless you measure that amount?
This whole TOS is just whacky-screwball-zany. And I love the part about credits when people don't get 99.9% uptime... since the site is slashdotted, I guess some credits are gonna roll, huh? Lessee, 0.1% of a 31 day month would be, umm, less than 45 minutes. How long has it been down?
What hacker worth his (or her) salt would follow rules set by some corporate entity?
You may want to look up the origin of the term "worth his salt" before you use it again. It's the basis of the english word "salary", from the Latin salarium, a reference to the payment, in salt, to soldiers.
Essentially you're asking "What hacker worth his salary would follow rules set by some corporate entity?". The answer, of course, being "all of them", salary being dependent on following the rules.
If machine recounts are more accurate than hand recounts, why was there a difference of 1400 votes after the second machine recount? Sure as hell doesn't sound like "two votes in a million" to me.
a) Machines are impartial, people aren't.
b) The machine count was done state-wide, the hand count was done in selected counties.
How easy is it to stuff the ballot box when you're in a roomful of extremely partisan observers from the other side? Do you think the Dem's are ripping out chads right under the Republicans noses?
As the man said, "The hand is quicker than the eye". If someone has practiced they can do manipulations right under your very skeptical nose without your noticing a thing. I'm not saying somebody hired a bunch of magicians to count ballots - I'm just pointing out that manipulating the ballots without anyone noticing is hardly impossible.
We need someone to act as leader of the most powerful (we think) country on the planet.
Why? Things seem to be running along just dandy without any real "leadership" right now (Clinton being a very lame duck). As far as I can tell you could put a suit on a chimp, drop him in the Oval Office, and nobody'd notice. (Now that I think about it, that might just be what we've done)
No matter who "finally" wins this broughaha they're going to get a deadlocked Congress who (along with about half the voters in the U.S.) will consider him "the guy who stole the election". Prepare for four years of complete lockup at the federal level.
...I'd be much more interested in the surfing habits of the White House, or Congress, or the Supreme Court. Anyone want to do an FOI there?
For the record, I agree with the court's decision - any surfing done on a public (that is, government owned/subsidised) system is information that belongs to the people. It may raise the hackles of the privacy fighters, but it's one of those trade-offs that make freedom work... the people have the right to monitor what the government does with it's systems so we can make sure they don't get into shenanigans or simply piss our tax dollars away.
As to why the schools are keeping logs - that's simple: so the next time some Ritilin-soaked nutcase tosses a few clips at his classmates the school can check the logs to find out what web sites perverted his mind, and filter them out.
When you are as old as some of these people are, would you like someone to tell you that you can't vote because you might screw up?
Isn't there a provision for using an assistant to help you vote? Alternatively you could get an absentee ballot and have someone help you out in the comfort of your home.
If these people had problems reading the ballot and were too proud or stupid to ask for help, that's their problem.
If you take away the IP laws then people/companies that produce popular content will be forced to more powerful and obscure copy protection schemes and more closed technology in order to protect their works.
They're a bunch of bluffers, the magic word is "call".
No, the magic word is "Ch-Ching!"
If you call their bluff, they'll take you to court, and you'll wind up spending lots and lots of your money proving that you're not a dirty rotten stinking pinko software pirate. Simply by taking you to court they screw you, even if you've done nothing wrong. And look at the big deep pockets that fund them - they aren't going to run out of cash anytime soon.
I'll bet they only get away with this crap with smaller companies that would rather pay up for some more Windoze licenses than hire lawyers and fight. A large company would simply tell'em "talk to our lawyers", and said lawyers would tell them to take a flying leap at a rolling donut.
The SPA sent them a program on floppy that could be run on every PC: you entered an identifier for that PC, then it searched all local hard drives for EXE's and COM's and downloaded the info into a dBase III DBF.
Right, I remember that program - very brain damaged. It checked only the filename, not the filesize or date stamp. So if it found "FF.EXE" anywhere on your drive it assumed you had the Norton Utilities installed. Needless to say, lots of false positives.
They were nice enough to leave their database of filenames unencrypted... for a joke I wrote a quick program that would write a zero-byte file of every name on the disk, so if anyone tried to audit your computer you'd false positive for everything. Never got a chance to use it, though.
Daycare is a very responsible thing to do for your children.
Then by extension, an orphanage would be even better. I mean, if you want disinterested third parties to raise your kids for a buck, an orphanage is definitely the way to go.
I mean, the kid's not going to notice any difference, right? Real parent, proxy parent, whatever, as long as Jr. gets his milk & cookies on time.
We could afford for her to stay home, but that's a monstrous waste of her talents and training to sit around waiting for the baby to wake up and be fed or changed.
Just curious, how would you feel if your parents told you that your upbringing was largely a waste of their talent and training?
Oh, yeah, it came with the "distribution" version of Windows 1.0 (just the interface stuff). When Win 3.0 came out BoP was all you needed to score an "upgrade" copy, if memory serves.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but i don't feel like leading legal mumbo-jumbo... :)
Alas, that such mumbo-jumbo is what makes up the laws we live by (pardon my assumption that you're living in the U.S.
Here's the pertinant part:
Although the Postal Service, with exceptions, generally possesses a legal monopoly over the commercial carriage of ordinary "letters," see 18 U.S.C. 1693-99, 39 U.S.C. 601-06, 39 C.F.R. 310.2, a postal regulation authorized by 39 U.S.C. 601(b) has, since 1979, permitted private couriers such as FedEx,(1) subject to specified conditions, to carry "extremely urgent letters" for hire. 39 C.F.R. 320.6.
What you're saying though, can't be true IMO, because why would Fedex offer 2 or 3 day delivery, and UPS offer 5 or 7 day ground delivery? That'd be breaking the law according to the rules you laid out.
I think the key here is the word "guarantee" - FedEx et al guarantee delivery within the specified timeframe or your money back. The USPS cannot and will not make such a guarantee. Therefore they allow other carriers to compete, to some degree. This is, however, just my theory.
I do believe anyone could try to compete against the post office, it's just that they're so entrechened it makes no sense to attempt to under cut them, but rather offer a faster more efficient service than they do...
It's against the law to compete with the USPS. FedEx, UPS et al deliver things that the USPS either doesn't want to (packages) or generally can't (overnight). In fact, it's against the law to send something via an overnight service that doesn't actually have to be there overnight.
The USPS is a federally guaranteed monopoly.
Check this out.
No, but they can give you the right to not have to pay more for the ticket just because the airline doesn't like you (ie you are black, female, muslim, short, old, democrat, etc... ).
By that logic the government can also give me the "right" to be free from Ku Klux Klan or Nazi propoganda by ordering publishers and ISPs not to carry their content.
Guaranteeing me freedom from discrimination can only be done by supressing everyone else's right to discriminate. And while that's a very politically correct concept, it's also one step away from ThoughCrime, where the 1st Amendment will only protect "correct" speech.
Rights come attached to responsibilities - including the realization that other people have the right to tell you to take a flying leap at rolling donut.
I don't think that anyone is saying that you should be entitled to a free ride. I may have the right to travel but this does no good if all of the travel companies refuse to sell me a ticket (at any reasonable price).
The government can't give you the "right" to a reasonably priced ticket without taking away the travel company's right to charge what they want.
If the constitution only applied to the government, then any U.S. citizen would not have the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. unless they were a part of the government.
Are you and I talking about the same document? The one I'm familiar with uses the following terminology:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So the Constitution doesn't grant the people any rights at all... what it does is forbid the federal government from infriging the people's inalienable rights.
You might want to check out the actual text.
So should the individual not have the same rights to publish on the web as (s)he had in days gone by to establishing a printing press?
You have the right to pursue happiness - that doesn't mean you'll get it though. Likewise you have the right to travel, but that doesn't entitle you to a free plane ticket. In the same way, while the Gov't isn't allowed to stifle your speech, there's absolutely no obligation for anyone (large or small) to actually print it - or to host the site on their servers.
You've pointed out a pet peeve of mine... whenver some company (say, Walmart) refuses to carry a particular album or book, the cries of "censorship!" go up. That's not censorship, it's a company deciding what they want to sell. Only the government can censor.
Phantom Menace did have cool effects at least, which my spoiled ass thinks the first three did not...
What?!? The first 3 didn't have cool effects? Why, when I was your age "special effects" mean somebody threw a pie-plate at the camera and the actors would point and yell "Flying saucer!"
You kids don't know just how good you've got it... buncha pansy actors "dodging" bullets & stuff... in the Old Days you just had to pretend the bullets bounced off!
(mumble mumble 'Whippersnappers!' mumble mumble)
Can someone please make some new games for my Atari 2600, too? ;)
Yes, they can. Development software is here.
Alternatively, type "Atari 2600 VCS Development" into Google. Ah, bless that Web!
2. We do not monitor traffic until you surpass the specified amount with your package at the time of purchase in one months period of time. This does not apply to provision III, A, 3.
Um, how do you know if someone has surpassed the "specified amount" unless you measure that amount?
This whole TOS is just whacky-screwball-zany. And I love the part about credits when people don't get 99.9% uptime... since the site is slashdotted, I guess some credits are gonna roll, huh? Lessee, 0.1% of a 31 day month would be, umm, less than 45 minutes. How long has it been down?
Bring Bob Back!
Bob never left. Where do you think that annoying little paperclip came from?
What hacker worth his (or her) salt would follow rules set by some corporate entity?
You may want to look up the origin of the term "worth his salt" before you use it again. It's the basis of the english word "salary", from the Latin salarium, a reference to the payment, in salt, to soldiers.
Essentially you're asking "What hacker worth his salary would follow rules set by some corporate entity?". The answer, of course, being "all of them", salary being dependent on following the rules.
Hope this helps.
As long as we're talking about "facts"...
If machine recounts are more accurate than hand recounts, why was there a difference of 1400 votes after the second machine recount? Sure as hell doesn't sound like "two votes in a million" to me.
a) Machines are impartial, people aren't.
b) The machine count was done state-wide, the hand count was done in selected counties.
How easy is it to stuff the ballot box when you're in a roomful of extremely partisan observers from the other side? Do you think the Dem's are ripping out chads right under the Republicans noses?
As the man said, "The hand is quicker than the eye". If someone has practiced they can do manipulations right under your very skeptical nose without your noticing a thing. I'm not saying somebody hired a bunch of magicians to count ballots - I'm just pointing out that manipulating the ballots without anyone noticing is hardly impossible.
We need someone to act as leader of the most powerful (we think) country on the planet.
Why? Things seem to be running along just dandy without any real "leadership" right now (Clinton being a very lame duck). As far as I can tell you could put a suit on a chimp, drop him in the Oval Office, and nobody'd notice. (Now that I think about it, that might just be what we've done)
No matter who "finally" wins this broughaha they're going to get a deadlocked Congress who (along with about half the voters in the U.S.) will consider him "the guy who stole the election". Prepare for four years of complete lockup at the federal level.
Which is just fine by me, frankly.
The Grail is made of wood, not Plastic. They didn't have plastic in Ancient times.
"You chose... poorly."
...I'd be much more interested in the surfing habits of the White House, or Congress, or the Supreme Court. Anyone want to do an FOI there?
For the record, I agree with the court's decision - any surfing done on a public (that is, government owned/subsidised) system is information that belongs to the people. It may raise the hackles of the privacy fighters, but it's one of those trade-offs that make freedom work... the people have the right to monitor what the government does with it's systems so we can make sure they don't get into shenanigans or simply piss our tax dollars away.
As to why the schools are keeping logs - that's simple: so the next time some Ritilin-soaked nutcase tosses a few clips at his classmates the school can check the logs to find out what web sites perverted his mind, and filter them out.
It's for the children!
When you are as old as some of these people are, would you like someone to tell you that you can't vote because you might screw up?
Isn't there a provision for using an assistant to help you vote? Alternatively you could get an absentee ballot and have someone help you out in the comfort of your home.
If these people had problems reading the ballot and were too proud or stupid to ask for help, that's their problem.
If you take away the IP laws then people/companies that produce popular content will be forced to more powerful and obscure copy protection schemes and more closed technology in order to protect their works.
So be careful what you wish for.
They're a bunch of bluffers, the magic word is "call".
No, the magic word is "Ch-Ching!"
If you call their bluff, they'll take you to court, and you'll wind up spending lots and lots of your money proving that you're not a dirty rotten stinking pinko software pirate. Simply by taking you to court they screw you, even if you've done nothing wrong. And look at the big deep pockets that fund them - they aren't going to run out of cash anytime soon.
I'll bet they only get away with this crap with smaller companies that would rather pay up for some more Windoze licenses than hire lawyers and fight. A large company would simply tell'em "talk to our lawyers", and said lawyers would tell them to take a flying leap at a rolling donut.
But with lots more big words.
The SPA sent them a program on floppy that could be run on every PC: you entered an identifier for that PC, then it searched all local hard drives for EXE's and COM's and downloaded the info into a dBase III DBF.
Right, I remember that program - very brain damaged. It checked only the filename, not the filesize or date stamp. So if it found "FF.EXE" anywhere on your drive it assumed you had the Norton Utilities installed. Needless to say, lots of false positives.
They were nice enough to leave their database of filenames unencrypted... for a joke I wrote a quick program that would write a zero-byte file of every name on the disk, so if anyone tried to audit your computer you'd false positive for everything. Never got a chance to use it, though.
Daycare is a very responsible thing to do for your children.
Then by extension, an orphanage would be even better. I mean, if you want disinterested third parties to raise your kids for a buck, an orphanage is definitely the way to go.
I mean, the kid's not going to notice any difference, right? Real parent, proxy parent, whatever, as long as Jr. gets his milk & cookies on time.
We could afford for her to stay home, but that's a monstrous waste of her talents and training to sit around waiting for the baby to wake up and be fed or changed.
Just curious, how would you feel if your parents told you that your upbringing was largely a waste of their talent and training?
I really hope your kid never reads Slashdot.
Does anyone else remember it?
Oh, yeah, it came with the "distribution" version of Windows 1.0 (just the interface stuff). When Win 3.0 came out BoP was all you needed to score an "upgrade" copy, if memory serves.
My first reading of the article lead me to believe someone had glued a thousand Palm Pilots to a canvas.
Imagine my disapointment.
If you ever had one of those cheap "air-pump + water" rockets as a kid you know what I'm thinking
That a lot of these cars will get stuck on the roof?
If you put 100 square km full of solarpanels in the sahara you can produce enough energy to replace all other forms of energy production.
I don't envy the poor SOB who has to sweep the sand off the panels every day.