Has the falling of the towers made Islam stronger, or weaker, or was there no change?
The final outcome is not completely clear, but that's irrelevant. Intent is the defining characteristic. Trying and failing at a religious agenda does not remove the religious nature.
To say that 9/11 was a religious attack, rather than a political one, you'd need to demonstrate how that religion sought to further it's ends through the attack.
I believe that "know thy enemy" is extremely important. Understanding the enemy's motivation and reasoning is invaluable in predicting and defeating the enemy. Unfortunately the media has presented very on the subject.
The ultimate purpose of 9/11 was indeed religious.
Bin Laden's ultimate goal was to unite the Arab world under a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. There is a very political aspect to that, but that political aspect is strictly in service to religion.
You are probably wondering how the heck 9/11 is supposed to relate to that ultimate goal. Fundamentalists had been attempting to overthrow the various Arab governments and always failing. Like all good theocratic-wannabees they reason that God is on their side and therefore they cannot lose. When their attempts at revolution always fail they of course conclude that Satan or some embodiment of Evil Itself at war against God thwarted their Righteous Mission. The US had been giving aid to many of those governments, and they concluded that the US was the only reason their quest for revolution always failed. The US was the "Great Satan" thwarting God's holy Islamic Kingdom.
Now we come to strategy. Bin Laden wanted to rally up the Arabic population to overthrow all Arabic governments. Bin Laden had been looking at the Palestinian situation. The strategy he saw was attacks on Israel for the explicit purpose of PROVOKING a larger Israeli counter attack, specifically so that the counter attack will enrage moderate Palestinians into joining the radical movement.
The purpose of the 9/11 attack was specifically to provoke the US into an over reaction stomping around in the Arabic world like a bull in a china shop. The intent was to provoke the general Arab population into action, to provoke them to take up arms and join the fight. Bin Laden's experience was that the Afghani population *could* and *did* drive out the Russian Army and follow through to impose the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's expectation was that the Arab population would rise up, unite, drive out the US invaders, and then follow through by overthrowing all Arab nations and uniting the entire Arab world under a single Taliban-type theocracy.
9/11 was so appalling that moderate Muslims generally had a neutral or even positive opinion when the US went into Afghanistan. The US had the role of the "good guys" and the terrorists were cast as the villains. People weren't buying the line that the US was "waging a war on Islam" or "waging a war on Arabs". The US only went into Afghanistan, and people knew what our target was. Al-Queda was on the verge of being obliterated because moderate Muslims had turned against them. Local police across the globe were hunting Al-Queda, even the Muslim general public were turning them in, and they were not getting many new recruits. Al-Queda was TOAST. The War On Terror was all-but-over. Terrorism would have been globally discredited.
And then we went into Iraq. We did exactly what Bin Laden wanted us to do. Iraq revived Bin Laden's plan. The US was invading multiple Arab nations, and this time we weren't attacked. Claims that the US was "waging a war on Islam" or "waging a war on Arabs" gained widespread acceptance. Al-Queda was FLOODED with new recruits. The Muslim population became far more sympathetic to harboring them, and many police forces contained sympathizers largely neutralizing policing efforts.
Bin Laden didn't get his united Arab uprising, but Iraq did make Al-Queda far bigger and far more powerful than it had been before 9/11.
Oh, and back to the original point the ultimate intent was a Unified Holy Islamic Empire. To the extent that is political it is politics in service of religion.
science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".
You haven't stated your position on anything specific, however in my experience what you said is the standard line of fundamentalist science-denialists. Of course no one ever considers themselves to be anti-science. The way it always works is that any science which does not fit with the fundamentalism gets mentally redefined as "not real science" and "not proven" and a dogmatic presumption that valid evidence *can't* exist.
Accepted mainstream science doesn't become accepted mainstream science unless overwhelming evidence *does* exist to establish it beyond any reasonable doubt.
Threads of support and confirmation run back and forth tying each field of science to countless other fields. When they are faced with threads of supporting evidence that come in from chemistry and physics and pretty much every other field of science, the fundamentalist gets dragged into denialism of each field. Attempting to reject some unwanted part of science very quickly drags them into a war against all of science.
If you were talking about things like string theory you wouldn't have needed to bother commenting about "up to a point" and "what we've been able to prove thus far".
If you were talking about something like the age of the earth or evolution then at best you are simply unfamiliar with the evidence that *does* exist and you'll change your mind upon seeing it, or else you'll get dragged down the total anti-science road trying to reject all of that evidence.
Yes, all of the same physics apply to a boat and you can use it to go up wind as well. I don't have the link handy, but I was reading about someone who built a wind-powered boat that goes up wind no problem. I read he took his website down because he got sick of being attacked by people calling him a liar and fraud over it.
The wind is a power source. It's not much different than having a gas-engine on board. Direction and top speed are "mere" design issues. It's merely a question of efficiency and drag. The only fundamental difference for boats is that they obviously have bigger issues with drag:)
I was thinking that an efficient hydrofoil could probably reach at least double downwind speed. That would be double-awesome just for being a hydrofoil!:) A hydrofoil would also improve your upwind top speed potential, but I have a feeling that lifting into hydrofoil mode with an upwind design might present a nasty engineering challenge.
Nothing magical happens during evolution. There is no magic point where a thing suddenly becomes "a different thing".
I assume you accept that dogs came from wolves. Is a poodle still a wolf?
Nothing magical happened along the evolution of poodles. There was no magic line where a wolf suddenly turned into a different thing. There was merely some point where people decided to apply the label "poodle" to some of them.
Lions and tigers and panthers and pumas and lynx and jaguars and cougars and house cats are all still felines. There was one common ancestor "cat" population 25 million years ago. Felines simply split up into sub populations, and those populations adapted differently. And obviously over time those adapted differences piled up into bigger and bigger total difference. Lions and tigers.
They are all still felines, we just label some of them "lion" and some of them "tiger".
Cats and dogs and bears are all still carnivorous. About 42 million years ago there was one common ancestor carnivore population. They split up into three sub-populations. Those populations adapted differently. Some of them adapted in a feline way, some adapted in a canine way, and some adapted in a bearish way.
Mice, moose, mammoths, and monkeys are all still mammals. There was a single common ancestor mammal population somewhere around 200 million years ago. That population split and they adapted differently. Some of them then adapted into the carnivore form at 42 million years ago. Some of the carnivores then adapted into the feline form at about 25 million years ago. And those felines variously adapted into the lions and house cats of today.
It's exactly the same as growing a tree from a seed. The tip of a branch can't suddenly "change". You start with a seedling with a single tip, and over time the tip sometimes *smoothly* splits into two or more parts. Over time you *smoothly* grow into a tree. Each species is a tip on that tree. Lions and tigers are neighboring tips that recently grew from a single tip when the tree was younger. Panthers cougars pumas jaguars and house cats are a close cluster of tips that all smoothly grew from a single "feline" tip when the tree was younger. That feline tip, along with a single canine tip and a single bear tip all smoothly grew from a single younger carnivore tip.
We agree there is adaption, I think we agree that individuals in different circumstances will adapt differently, and I assume you accept that "adapting differently" adds up to bigger differences over time. That pretty well defines the entirety of evolution. There's no extra magical steps to object to.
Some mammals adapted into carnivores. Some carnivores adapted wolves. Some wolves adapted into dogs. Some dogs adapted into poodles.
A poodle and a great dane are physically incapable of mating. If we simply killed off all other breeds dogs, poodles and great danes would instantly qualify as separate species. That physical incompatibility would mean the two populations could only become more and more different over time. In about 42 million years the differences between poodles and great danes would add up to be about as big as the difference between dogs and cats.
There is no difference between adaption and evolution. Walking from New York to Los Angeles is no different than walking to your living room. The exact same thing happens, it merely takes more steps to get from NY to LA. Whether it's walking or evolution, the distance smoothly grows bigger over time.
First lets imagine zero wind, the car traveling 100 mph, and lets assume that all components of the car operate with 100% efficiency.
We tie a perfect generator to the wheels to extract 100 watts of power. Conservation of energy says it will apply a force slowing the car down. We pipe the 100 watts running a perfect propeller. It applies a force speeding the car up. If all components are perfect, conservation of energy says the car will go at a constant 100 mph forever. Perfect balance.
Now lets break that perfect balance. Imagine there's a 50 mph wind. That wind is slower than the car, but now the car only sees a 50 mph headwind instead of a 100 mph headwind. Everything else the car sees is identical. In effect we just added 50 mph to the propeller's thrust. The car is going to accelerate. The wind is slower than the car, but by breaking the balance between wheel and propeller that wind is effectively adding energy to the car.
Now of course we go back to reality where the drive system is less than 100% efficient. If the energy being effectively added by the wind is greater than efficiency losses then the car will speed up.
The wheels travel a large distance over the ground, but because of the wind the propeller sees itself traveling a shorter distance through the air. The key point is that energy = force * distance.
The wheels experience a small force * large distance. The propeller experiences a large force * small distance.
small force * large distance = large force * small distance
Power at the wheels = power at the propeller. Large propeller thrust - small wheel drag = net acceleration.
It can go faster than the wind, but there does need to be sufficent wind in the first place. The wind moving relative to the ground is the energy source. The important point is that energy source exists, not matter what the cart might be doing. The neat trick here is that the cart can tap into that energy source even when the cart is moving at the same speed as the wind, and it can use that energy to continue accelerating above the wind speed. Since the energy source always exists it can be used to accelerate up to arbitrarily high speed, limited only by inefficiencies and friction losses.
Exactly what everyone wants to see, a mathematical proof. Of course if you look at his free body diagram and his second equation. You'll see that he has his force vector Fp going the wrong way.
Fp is pointing in the correct direction, you merely misinterpreted the meaning of it.
Ft is the drag force on the underwater turbine. It is a drag which tends to slow down the vehicle, but the important point is that we are actively drawing energy from it. And yes, it is preforming exactly the same function as the wheels on a bike. We put a load on the wheels to extract energy.
Pt is the power that comes out f the turbine (or equivalently, the power we receive from putting a load on the wheels).
Pp is the power we supply to the prop. This is the same as the power we obtained from Pt, less some negligible percentage of loss.
Fp is the force CREATED by the power-driven prop.
The Fp pointing forwards is greater than the Ft pointing backwards, which indicates a net acceleration.
does not hold up to more than casual scrutiny.
It fails under "casual scrutiny" because the overall operation is extremely counter intuitive. However the math does work out once I managed to wrap my brain around the strange arrangement of forces and energy flow.
Your gut reaction is probably screaming that there MUST be a net energy loss in trying to extract energy from the turbine to drive the prop and that the prop's forward force MUST be less than the turbine's backwards drag. But you must remember that the wind is a source of energy relative to the water (or relative to the ground). That wind-water difference is an energy source, and that energy exists no matter how the vehicle might be moving. The trick is how to access that energy source while you're moving faster than the wind.
Note that force and power are not equivalent. Power is energy over time, and energy is force through distance. The turbine is moving through the water while the prop moves through the air. There is a speed difference (and an energy difference) between the water and the air. The turbine moves a large distance through the water. A large distance times a small force generates one unit of power. The prop is moving in the air, and even though the vehicle is moving faster than the wind the wind greatly DECREASES the apparent speed of the prop relative to the air. Because of the wind, the prop only moves a relatively small distance through the air. The prop generates a large force over a relatively small distance, which costs one unit of power.
Turbine extracting energy: small force * large distance = 1 energy extracted Prop consuming energy: large force * small distance = 1 energy consumed
The equations balance. The large prop force accelerates the vehicle. The wind-water difference is the energy source. It's a very unintuitive arrangement, but it does successfully tap into the energy available in the wind-water difference, even when traveling faster than the wind. That energy source covers the inevitable inefficiencies in power transfer and it the pays the cost of accelerating the vehicle.
A claim like this requires some explanation of how it could be done, and such an explanation is obviously missing from the article.
You are right that this article does not get into any explanation. It does however talk about an earlier article that *did* cover the explanation. This subject was posted on Slashdot some time ago with a link that did explain it. The method is extremely non-obvious and it took me some hard thought to wrap my brain around it, but once I understood the energy flow it's clear that it does work.
The first important point is that there is an energy source. The wind is moving relative to the ground. That energy source is always present even when the bike is moving at the same speed as the wind. That energy source exists when the bike is moving faster than the wind. The trick is finding a way to tap into that energy source while you are moving at or above wind speed.
The wheels are linked to the ground. We can spend energy in the wheels to accelerate, *or* we can do the opposite by putting a load on the wheels to extract energy.
The propeller is linked to the wind. We can spend energy in the prop to accelerate, *or* we can do the opposite by putting a load on the prop to extract energy.
It seems very strange at first, but what we are going to do is put a load on the wheels. This will tend to slow the bike down, but it allows us to extract energy. We then use that energy to drive the propeller. The propeller pushes against the air - in fact it is pushing back against the wind. It supplies a force pushing the bike even faster downwind.
At first it seems obvious that you are going to lose energy if you try to push one way with the wheels and push the opposite way with the fan. In this case "obvious" is mistaken. Energy = force * distance. If the bike is running at wind speed the wheels cover a large distance of ground. You can put a fairly small load on the wheels and that force * distance will extract a fairly large amount of energy. Now look at the prop. We put that energy into the prop pushing backwards to drive the bike faster. The energy going into the prop is going to push air. That energy will equal force * distance of the air we push through the prop. Since the bike is moving at wind speed the prop is seeing MOTIONLESS air. We can apply a relatively larger force, and that force is through a much smaller distance relative to the air. The wheels travel a much larger distance relative to the ground than the prop travels relative to the wind. That difference means the force on the wheels is smaller than the force on the prop. The prop speeds up the bike more than the wheels slow it down.
1 The wind is the energy source. (no free lunches here) 2 The wind effectively pushes forwards on the air coming out of our prop. 3 The air coming out of our prop pushes forwards against the prop. 4 The prop pushes forwards against the bike frame and wheels. 5 The wheels push forwards against the ground, and energy is extracted to drive the prop.
The arrangement of prop and wheels creates a very strange but successful linkage to pass the wind force down to the ground for energy extraction. The freaky part is step 2 while the bike is moving faster than the wind.
If, for example, the now-extinct North American camels developed random mutations (or had a latent genetic ability) that allowed one of them to, say, start climbing giant redwoods and breeding before being eaten by their human predators, then you'd possibly have American Tree Camels today.
Well thank God that didn't happen. Can you imagine getting hit in the head with 100 mph camel shit?
Exactly. Species adapt. If a population splits for any reason then the two subpopulations adapt differently. Over time the different adaptions obviously pile in the two populations, and obviously the populations become increasingly different over time. Humans like to label things, and when differences pile up they like to make up a new species-label for one or both populations. "Let's call these lions and let's call those tigers".
Evolution Q.E.D.
Oh, I'm sorry. Were you one of those denialists who's understanding and definition of "evolution" pretty much amounts to "I dunno - stuff that doesn't happen"? When faced with undeniable facts and undeniable evidence just sweeps it away as "not evolution"? Seriously, read my first paragraph again. It's really not that hard to understand, and evolution really is quite obvious once you do.
Polls shows that most americans are "liberal" when it comes to social ideas (like allowing gays to marry)
Agreed.
but "conservative" when it comes to political ideas (government is best when it is small).
Not really. It merely polls well when it's offered as hollow sound bite. Lets poll the public, shall we?
Do you want to cut the military? No! Do you want bridge and road repair cut? No! Do you want your Medicare cut? No! Do you want your Social Security cut? No! Do you want education cut? No! Do you want law enforcement cut? No! Do you want medical and services for veterans cut? No! Do you want border security cut? No! Do you want children's services cut? No! Do you want the US to default on debt interest payments? No!
Do you want smaller government? Yes, paying my taxes sucks.
Do you want a pony? Yes. Do you want to feed it? No. Do you have anywhere to keep it? No. Do you want to shovel the horse shit? No. Do you want a pony? YES!!!!
People don't want smaller government. They want a pony. They want a magic flying pony that shits rainbows.
Do you actually think anybody with a liberal ideology actually is smarter, better, and less likely to repeat their mistakes?
I didn't even look at what he wrote, but what *I* would say is that I have been seeing an extremely dangerous and extremely destructive anti-education theme flowing among conservatives. At the far right the Fundie Bible Thumpers are afraid their children will come back from college believing the Earth is more than 6000 years old. But it hardly stops there. I have seen broader unrest among conservative parents not wanting their children getting college educated out of fear that their kids will be infected with dirty liberal ideas. "Educated" has LITERALLY been turned into a slur by many conservatives. Educated, elite, professional, expertise, knowledge, somehow conservatives consider these to be BAD words. I have seen a very disturbing trend of conservatives using uneducated uninformed "folksy" ignorance as some sort of badge of honer. Hearing people brag that they "didn't go to some fancy college" (as if that's a good thing) hearing them brag that they they didn't study no "Ivory tower science" like chemistry (as if that's a good thing), and saying that they are just good old plain spoken regular folks and that if eating lead paint chips as a child was good enough for them then it's good enough for our kids.
I find it HORRIFYING that so many conservatives have been using "educated" as a slur and claiming ignorance as a virtue.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone "knows" things which are false. Everyone has biases. Education and respect for expertise tends to correct mistakes, it helps them correct false "knowledge" that they think they have, and it assists in seeing past one's own biases. Rejecting education and expertise encourages mistakes, it creates or reinforces false "knowledge", and it leaves people with no means to overcome their own biases.
Do liberals have higher IQ's? I really doubt it. But what good is a brain if it has an ideology that values ignorance and condemns education?
And yet here we are with arguably the most liberal president and congress ever.
Obama is arguably a Muslim communist homosexual born in the Kremlin. The center, and soft-left-center, are not radical liberal just because the angry right have been screaming that they are far left. The angry right sees anything remotely centrist as being far left of themselves.
A quick look around the nation also reveals that the most 'conservative' states also typically have the best economies
Where did you possibly hear that?!? Chuckle. According to Federal figures 'conservative' states are heavily subsidized on the back of 'liberal' state taxes. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in New Jersey, about 39% is siphoned off to subsidize red states. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in New York, about 21% is siphoned off to subsidize red states. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in California, about 22% is siphoned off to subsidize red states. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in Connecticut, about 31% is siphoned off to subsidize red states.
Red state receive billions of dollars more in Federal money than they pay in taxes.
Infrastructure? Red states are welfare leeches using blue state dollars to pay for it.
Farm subsidies? Either blue state workers could KEEP their tax money in their pocket and use it to pay the higher (unsubsidized) true price of food, or those dollars could still be collected in blue states and handed out in blue states as some sort of food stamps and people in blue states would see equal or lower effective food costs. Either way, people in red states would have to pay for their own food without blue state taxpayers paying part of their food bills for them. And that completely ignores the fact that people would just start buying the cheaper agricultural products from Mexico, South America, and anywhere else.
Military bases are disproportionately in red states. The military keeps saying they ca
At this point I would generally pull out the flamethrower and beat you over the head with your... well lets just call them your "persistent misunderstandings of the law". For some reason I decided to rewrite my post in one more attempt at polite, reasonable, and productive communication.
You can argue that copyright law is bad in various different ways, and I would generally agree with you. You can argue that copyright law is stupid, absurd, insane, or even evil in various different ways, and I would generally agree with you. However we are not talking about what the law should say. We are not talking about how the law should work. To be honest I remember several years ago making an argument myself that kinda-sorta resembled your argument about downloading. That was back before I read copyright law. Before I and read countless court rulings on copyright law. To be blunt, I didn't know what the hell I was talking about at that time. What the law logically should say has little resemblance to what the law does say and how the law does work.
Surely downloading crappy_commercial_music.mp3 from the owners of the copyright, who offered it on a P2P network, is not a crime.. right? right?
That exact situation is legally messy, and you are probably right that a judge will toss out that exact situation on the basis that the copyright holder implicitly authorized your actions, or that your actions were Fair Use of an authorized distribution. But you are being dense if you insist that means that downloading isn't prohibited by law in other cases. You are being dense if you insist it means you can't can't get assraped in court for downloading in other situations.
You said: Thats why the judge says "case dismissed" unless you distributed it. (Bold emphasis, exactly as you wrote it)
I listed a multitude of situations where you did not distribute it. If you ever wind up in court over downloading, where the copyright holder isn't the one who sent it to you, you are wrong and you are legally fucked if you think the judge is going to dismiss the case against you.
You said: This is so because the owner of the copyright cannot know that you downloaded the file unless THEY were distributing it (Bold emphasis and capital emphasis, exactly as you wrote it)
I listed a multitude of situations where they can know that you downloaded the file without the copyright holder being the one to distribute it to you, without the copyright holder authorizing any distribution to you. You are wrong and you are legally fucked if you ever wind up in court over downloading.
In fact it's even worse than that. In 1998 the copyright lobby slipped some sneaky provisions into the N.E.T. Act. These provisions took ordinary P2P infringement and generally shoved under the category of CRIMINAL copyright infringement laws which was intended to deal with commercial piracy enterprises. This law is very rarely enforced, but virtually everyone who has ever used P2P is technically guilty of a felony crime under this law. Almost all P2P users are face up to one, three, or even five years in prison under this law. PLUS double the prison term for a second offense.
This law is explicit is stating that distribution-infringement AND creating-a-copy-infringement are BOTH criminalized. Yes, this law really does say you can go to prison for several years strictly for downloading. The law uses the word "reproduction", and legally that means "creating a copy", and legally that is what you are doing when you save a download on your harddrive. The law is evil and insane, but that doesn't make me incorrect in stating it. Congress can and did pass an evil insane law.
Copyright law says creating a copy is infringement. Copyright law says that downloading is equally and independently illegal. Copyright law says downloading can be equally and independently prosecuted. The fac
I said if they go after someone for distribution and find any sort of logs on that computer, they can sue you.
You missed the distinction between "someone" and "you". My example was that someone uploads it to you. That someone also uploads it to one of the RIAA's internet enforcement squads. The RIAA sues that someone for distribution-infringement. During the civil suit they subpoena and examine that someone's harddrive, or they possibly even subpoena that someone's internet provider's records. If that someone's computer contains some record of uploading that file to you, or if their internet provider has some record indicating the file was sent to you, then the RIAA can use that evidence as a valid legal basis to initiate a lawsuit against you. They can then subpoena your harddrive, and they can win in court on the basis of your infringing act creating the copy of the song you downloaded to your harddrive.
As another example, lets say you use bittorrent and disable uploads. You join a swarm and strictly download from seeds. The RIAA's internet enforcers join the swarm and snag your IP address. Again, they can initiate a lawsuit against you and subpoena your harddrive. Again, it doesn't matter that you had uploading disabled.
Or lets say you bring your computer in for repairs somewhere. The repair guy grabs a copy of unreleased music track you downloaded onto your harddrive. The repair guy uploads it, gets caught, gets sued, and tells the RIAA where he got it. The RIAA then has sufficient legal basis to initiate a lawsuit against you, obtaining a subpoena to examine your drive.
Same thing happens if your computer gets stolen, and along the way the police recover your computer and see the obviously infringing unreleased music track, and the RIAA hears about it somehow.
Or you post that you've been downloading songs X Y and Z from P2P. The RIAA can subpoena Slashdot's logs for your IP and again subpoena your harddrive.
Legally, uploading and downloading are not materially different. Distributing is infringement, and creating a copy is infringement. The RIAA does need some basis to initiate a lawsuit, but civil suits have an unbelievably low standard to initiate a case and obtain a subpoena. Civil suits bypass pretty much all of the usual requirements and protections that you expect of criminal search warrants.
I know you were going for the laughs, but it is important to note that is legally false. Just to make up a scenario, if they go after someone for distribution and find any sort of logs on that computer, they can sue you. Under the law there is no significant difference here between uploading (distributing) the file or downloading (creating a copy). Both are legally treated as infringement, end of story.
In fact the law is so fucked up that you're still guilty even if you were trying to download something perfectly legal, like Linux. If someone takes Britney Spears song and renames it to "parser.c" and sticks it in the middle of a Linux source package and you download it, under the law you are guilty of infringing the copyright on that Britney song. The law says you have to PAY DAMAGES for your illegal act of infringing the copyright on that song. But the law isn't COMPLETELY insane (laugh laugh laugh). The law recognized that your are innocent. The law even specifically declares you to be an "innocent infringer". Instead of hitting you with standard copyright infringement damages, the law says the judge is PERMITTED to waive the standard minimum damage amounts, and instead lower the minimum to $200 per infringement. Oh, and note that the law places the burden upon YOU to prove your innocent infringer status if you want to try to lower the minimum to $200. None of that innocent-until-proven-guilty crap.
Note that I currently see 10 different story icons on the Slashdot front page. Lets imagine for a moment that Slashdot did not get permission to use those images. Merely by surfing to Slashdot.org each of us created copies of those ten images on our harddrives in the browser cache. That is ten infringements across ten different copyrights. That is $2000 in damages, simply for innocently browsing to one typical webpage. Some websites could easily have a hundred or more infringing icons on a page, and innocent people browsing that page would be liable for a minimum of $20,000 each. An typical web user can quickly rack up over a million dollars a year in technical legal liability a year merely by browsing typical websites that contain occasional minor infringements like icons. People are almost never prosecuted on that sort of thing, but that's what the law says and you can get sued for it.
The RIAA&friends go after uploaders because they are easier to catch, because suing uploaders is easier to sell in a public-relations sense, and because of the ideology that the "big" problem of downloads would vanish if they could just manage to solve the "smaller" problem of uploads.
The article was lousy. There was no "default" candidate being set. It correctly starts out as a blank ballot. The issue is that if your finger is still lying on the touch screen when the ballot comes up it will instantly trigger whatever candidate your finger happens to be touching. It happens so fast that the voter never saw the blank ballot. It looks as if the candidate came up pre-selected. You can change that mistaken selection before casting the ballot.
There is no fraud, nothing remotely resembling fraud. They definitely do need to clean up that touchscreen user interface. Confusing or unexpected behavior on a voting machine is a Very Bad Thing. Voting machine programmers must make extra special efforts to deal with potentially sloppy input from inexperienced users.
OFFICIAL BALLOT - GENERAL ELECTION November 4, 2012
Complete the oval ( ) at the left of the name you want to choose. You may vote for a person whose name is not on the ballot by writing in the person's name and municipality of residence in the write in space and completing the oval at the left. If you make a mistake you may ask for a new ballot. DO NOT ERASE.
NATIONAL _________ UNITED STATES PRESIDENT Your vote for the candidate for United States President shall be a vote for the elector supporting that candidate. VOTE FOR ONE:
( ) Rick Santorum ( ) Bill Bukakke ( ) ____________
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be interested to know how conservative these mistakes tend to be.
They must be very conservative.
I've been seeing a lot of mistakes among the Tea Partiers.
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Has the falling of the towers made Islam stronger, or weaker, or was there no change?
The final outcome is not completely clear, but that's irrelevant. Intent is the defining characteristic. Trying and failing at a religious agenda does not remove the religious nature.
To say that 9/11 was a religious attack, rather than a political one, you'd need to demonstrate how that religion sought to further it's ends through the attack.
I believe that "know thy enemy" is extremely important. Understanding the enemy's motivation and reasoning is invaluable in predicting and defeating the enemy. Unfortunately the media has presented very on the subject.
The ultimate purpose of 9/11 was indeed religious.
Bin Laden's ultimate goal was to unite the Arab world under a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. There is a very political aspect to that, but that political aspect is strictly in service to religion.
You are probably wondering how the heck 9/11 is supposed to relate to that ultimate goal. Fundamentalists had been attempting to overthrow the various Arab governments and always failing. Like all good theocratic-wannabees they reason that God is on their side and therefore they cannot lose. When their attempts at revolution always fail they of course conclude that Satan or some embodiment of Evil Itself at war against God thwarted their Righteous Mission. The US had been giving aid to many of those governments, and they concluded that the US was the only reason their quest for revolution always failed. The US was the "Great Satan" thwarting God's holy Islamic Kingdom.
Now we come to strategy. Bin Laden wanted to rally up the Arabic population to overthrow all Arabic governments. Bin Laden had been looking at the Palestinian situation. The strategy he saw was attacks on Israel for the explicit purpose of PROVOKING a larger Israeli counter attack, specifically so that the counter attack will enrage moderate Palestinians into joining the radical movement.
The purpose of the 9/11 attack was specifically to provoke the US into an over reaction stomping around in the Arabic world like a bull in a china shop. The intent was to provoke the general Arab population into action, to provoke them to take up arms and join the fight. Bin Laden's experience was that the Afghani population *could* and *did* drive out the Russian Army and follow through to impose the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's expectation was that the Arab population would rise up, unite, drive out the US invaders, and then follow through by overthrowing all Arab nations and uniting the entire Arab world under a single Taliban-type theocracy.
9/11 was so appalling that moderate Muslims generally had a neutral or even positive opinion when the US went into Afghanistan. The US had the role of the "good guys" and the terrorists were cast as the villains. People weren't buying the line that the US was "waging a war on Islam" or "waging a war on Arabs". The US only went into Afghanistan, and people knew what our target was. Al-Queda was on the verge of being obliterated because moderate Muslims had turned against them. Local police across the globe were hunting Al-Queda, even the Muslim general public were turning them in, and they were not getting many new recruits. Al-Queda was TOAST. The War On Terror was all-but-over. Terrorism would have been globally discredited.
And then we went into Iraq. We did exactly what Bin Laden wanted us to do. Iraq revived Bin Laden's plan. The US was invading multiple Arab nations, and this time we weren't attacked. Claims that the US was "waging a war on Islam" or "waging a war on Arabs" gained widespread acceptance. Al-Queda was FLOODED with new recruits. The Muslim population became far more sympathetic to harboring them, and many police forces contained sympathizers largely neutralizing policing efforts.
Bin Laden didn't get his united Arab uprising, but Iraq did make Al-Queda far bigger and far more powerful than it had been before 9/11.
Oh, and back to the original point the ultimate intent was a Unified Holy Islamic Empire. To the extent that is political it is politics in service of religion.
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science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".
You haven't stated your position on anything specific, however in my experience what you said is the standard line of fundamentalist science-denialists. Of course no one ever considers themselves to be anti-science. The way it always works is that any science which does not fit with the fundamentalism gets mentally redefined as "not real science" and "not proven" and a dogmatic presumption that valid evidence *can't* exist.
Accepted mainstream science doesn't become accepted mainstream science unless overwhelming evidence *does* exist to establish it beyond any reasonable doubt.
Threads of support and confirmation run back and forth tying each field of science to countless other fields. When they are faced with threads of supporting evidence that come in from chemistry and physics and pretty much every other field of science, the fundamentalist gets dragged into denialism of each field. Attempting to reject some unwanted part of science very quickly drags them into a war against all of science.
If you were talking about things like string theory you wouldn't have needed to bother commenting about "up to a point" and "what we've been able to prove thus far".
If you were talking about something like the age of the earth or evolution then at best you are simply unfamiliar with the evidence that *does* exist and you'll change your mind upon seeing it, or else you'll get dragged down the total anti-science road trying to reject all of that evidence.
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Yes, all of the same physics apply to a boat and you can use it to go up wind as well. I don't have the link handy, but I was reading about someone who built a wind-powered boat that goes up wind no problem. I read he took his website down because he got sick of being attacked by people calling him a liar and fraud over it.
The wind is a power source. It's not much different than having a gas-engine on board. Direction and top speed are "mere" design issues. It's merely a question of efficiency and drag. The only fundamental difference for boats is that they obviously have bigger issues with drag :)
I was thinking that an efficient hydrofoil could probably reach at least double downwind speed. That would be double-awesome just for being a hydrofoil! :) A hydrofoil would also improve your upwind top speed potential, but I have a feeling that lifting into hydrofoil mode with an upwind design might present a nasty engineering challenge.
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"except that it's still a fish"
Nothing magical happens during evolution. There is no magic point where a thing suddenly becomes "a different thing".
I assume you accept that dogs came from wolves.
Is a poodle still a wolf?
Nothing magical happened along the evolution of poodles. There was no magic line where a wolf suddenly turned into a different thing. There was merely some point where people decided to apply the label "poodle" to some of them.
Lions and tigers and panthers and pumas and lynx and jaguars and cougars and house cats are all still felines. There was one common ancestor "cat" population 25 million years ago. Felines simply split up into sub populations, and those populations adapted differently. And obviously over time those adapted differences piled up into bigger and bigger total difference. Lions and tigers.
They are all still felines, we just label some of them "lion" and some of them "tiger".
Cats and dogs and bears are all still carnivorous. About 42 million years ago there was one common ancestor carnivore population. They split up into three sub-populations. Those populations adapted differently. Some of them adapted in a feline way, some adapted in a canine way, and some adapted in a bearish way.
Mice, moose, mammoths, and monkeys are all still mammals. There was a single common ancestor mammal population somewhere around 200 million years ago. That population split and they adapted differently. Some of them then adapted into the carnivore form at 42 million years ago. Some of the carnivores then adapted into the feline form at about 25 million years ago. And those felines variously adapted into the lions and house cats of today.
It's exactly the same as growing a tree from a seed. The tip of a branch can't suddenly "change". You start with a seedling with a single tip, and over time the tip sometimes *smoothly* splits into two or more parts. Over time you *smoothly* grow into a tree. Each species is a tip on that tree. Lions and tigers are neighboring tips that recently grew from a single tip when the tree was younger. Panthers cougars pumas jaguars and house cats are a close cluster of tips that all smoothly grew from a single "feline" tip when the tree was younger. That feline tip, along with a single canine tip and a single bear tip all smoothly grew from a single younger carnivore tip.
We agree there is adaption, I think we agree that individuals in different circumstances will adapt differently, and I assume you accept that "adapting differently" adds up to bigger differences over time. That pretty well defines the entirety of evolution. There's no extra magical steps to object to.
Some mammals adapted into carnivores.
Some carnivores adapted wolves.
Some wolves adapted into dogs.
Some dogs adapted into poodles.
A poodle and a great dane are physically incapable of mating. If we simply killed off all other breeds dogs, poodles and great danes would instantly qualify as separate species. That physical incompatibility would mean the two populations could only become more and more different over time. In about 42 million years the differences between poodles and great danes would add up to be about as big as the difference between dogs and cats.
There is no difference between adaption and evolution. Walking from New York to Los Angeles is no different than walking to your living room. The exact same thing happens, it merely takes more steps to get from NY to LA. Whether it's walking or evolution, the distance smoothly grows bigger over time.
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First lets imagine zero wind, the car traveling 100 mph, and lets assume that all components of the car operate with 100% efficiency.
We tie a perfect generator to the wheels to extract 100 watts of power. Conservation of energy says it will apply a force slowing the car down. We pipe the 100 watts running a perfect propeller. It applies a force speeding the car up. If all components are perfect, conservation of energy says the car will go at a constant 100 mph forever. Perfect balance.
Now lets break that perfect balance. Imagine there's a 50 mph wind. That wind is slower than the car, but now the car only sees a 50 mph headwind instead of a 100 mph headwind. Everything else the car sees is identical. In effect we just added 50 mph to the propeller's thrust. The car is going to accelerate. The wind is slower than the car, but by breaking the balance between wheel and propeller that wind is effectively adding energy to the car.
Now of course we go back to reality where the drive system is less than 100% efficient. If the energy being effectively added by the wind is greater than efficiency losses then the car will speed up.
The wheels travel a large distance over the ground, but because of the wind the propeller sees itself traveling a shorter distance through the air. The key point is that energy = force * distance.
The wheels experience a small force * large distance.
The propeller experiences a large force * small distance.
small force * large distance = large force * small distance
Power at the wheels = power at the propeller.
Large propeller thrust - small wheel drag = net acceleration.
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It can go faster than the wind, but there does need to be sufficent wind in the first place. The wind moving relative to the ground is the energy source. The important point is that energy source exists, not matter what the cart might be doing. The neat trick here is that the cart can tap into that energy source even when the cart is moving at the same speed as the wind, and it can use that energy to continue accelerating above the wind speed. Since the energy source always exists it can be used to accelerate up to arbitrarily high speed, limited only by inefficiencies and friction losses.
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Exactly what everyone wants to see, a mathematical proof. Of course if you look at his free body diagram and his second equation. You'll see that he has his force vector Fp going the wrong way.
Fp is pointing in the correct direction, you merely misinterpreted the meaning of it.
Ft is the drag force on the underwater turbine. It is a drag which tends to slow down the vehicle, but the important point is that we are actively drawing energy from it. And yes, it is preforming exactly the same function as the wheels on a bike. We put a load on the wheels to extract energy.
Pt is the power that comes out f the turbine (or equivalently, the power we receive from putting a load on the wheels).
Pp is the power we supply to the prop. This is the same as the power we obtained from Pt, less some negligible percentage of loss.
Fp is the force CREATED by the power-driven prop.
The Fp pointing forwards is greater than the Ft pointing backwards, which indicates a net acceleration.
does not hold up to more than casual scrutiny.
It fails under "casual scrutiny" because the overall operation is extremely counter intuitive. However the math does work out once I managed to wrap my brain around the strange arrangement of forces and energy flow.
Your gut reaction is probably screaming that there MUST be a net energy loss in trying to extract energy from the turbine to drive the prop and that the prop's forward force MUST be less than the turbine's backwards drag. But you must remember that the wind is a source of energy relative to the water (or relative to the ground). That wind-water difference is an energy source, and that energy exists no matter how the vehicle might be moving. The trick is how to access that energy source while you're moving faster than the wind.
Note that force and power are not equivalent. Power is energy over time, and energy is force through distance. The turbine is moving through the water while the prop moves through the air. There is a speed difference (and an energy difference) between the water and the air. The turbine moves a large distance through the water. A large distance times a small force generates one unit of power. The prop is moving in the air, and even though the vehicle is moving faster than the wind the wind greatly DECREASES the apparent speed of the prop relative to the air. Because of the wind, the prop only moves a relatively small distance through the air. The prop generates a large force over a relatively small distance, which costs one unit of power.
Turbine extracting energy: small force * large distance = 1 energy extracted
Prop consuming energy: large force * small distance = 1 energy consumed
The equations balance. The large prop force accelerates the vehicle. The wind-water difference is the energy source. It's a very unintuitive arrangement, but it does successfully tap into the energy available in the wind-water difference, even when traveling faster than the wind. That energy source covers the inevitable inefficiencies in power transfer and it the pays the cost of accelerating the vehicle.
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A claim like this requires some explanation of how it could be done, and such an explanation is obviously missing from the article.
You are right that this article does not get into any explanation. It does however talk about an earlier article that *did* cover the explanation. This subject was posted on Slashdot some time ago with a link that did explain it. The method is extremely non-obvious and it took me some hard thought to wrap my brain around it, but once I understood the energy flow it's clear that it does work.
The first important point is that there is an energy source. The wind is moving relative to the ground. That energy source is always present even when the bike is moving at the same speed as the wind. That energy source exists when the bike is moving faster than the wind. The trick is finding a way to tap into that energy source while you are moving at or above wind speed.
The wheels are linked to the ground. We can spend energy in the wheels to accelerate, *or* we can do the opposite by putting a load on the wheels to extract energy.
The propeller is linked to the wind. We can spend energy in the prop to accelerate, *or* we can do the opposite by putting a load on the prop to extract energy.
It seems very strange at first, but what we are going to do is put a load on the wheels. This will tend to slow the bike down, but it allows us to extract energy. We then use that energy to drive the propeller. The propeller pushes against the air - in fact it is pushing back against the wind. It supplies a force pushing the bike even faster downwind.
At first it seems obvious that you are going to lose energy if you try to push one way with the wheels and push the opposite way with the fan. In this case "obvious" is mistaken. Energy = force * distance. If the bike is running at wind speed the wheels cover a large distance of ground. You can put a fairly small load on the wheels and that force * distance will extract a fairly large amount of energy. Now look at the prop. We put that energy into the prop pushing backwards to drive the bike faster. The energy going into the prop is going to push air. That energy will equal force * distance of the air we push through the prop. Since the bike is moving at wind speed the prop is seeing MOTIONLESS air. We can apply a relatively larger force, and that force is through a much smaller distance relative to the air. The wheels travel a much larger distance relative to the ground than the prop travels relative to the wind. That difference means the force on the wheels is smaller than the force on the prop. The prop speeds up the bike more than the wheels slow it down.
1 The wind is the energy source. (no free lunches here)
2 The wind effectively pushes forwards on the air coming out of our prop.
3 The air coming out of our prop pushes forwards against the prop.
4 The prop pushes forwards against the bike frame and wheels.
5 The wheels push forwards against the ground, and energy is extracted to drive the prop.
The arrangement of prop and wheels creates a very strange but successful linkage to pass the wind force down to the ground for energy extraction. The freaky part is step 2 while the bike is moving faster than the wind.
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If, for example, the now-extinct North American camels developed random mutations (or had a latent genetic ability) that allowed one of them to, say, start climbing giant redwoods and breeding before being eaten by their human predators, then you'd possibly have American Tree Camels today.
Well thank God that didn't happen. Can you imagine getting hit in the head with 100 mph camel shit?
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Todd just told me R taxes paid 4 "scientists" 2 poison/torture fishes!
Yeah. I heard Bush even authorized waterboarding them.
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hoping to breed fish by throwing fish toxin in the water, trust me... you're doing it wrong.
I hear he's also been trying to get a girlfriend. I'm afraid to ask what technique he's been using.
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Exactly. Species adapt. If a population splits for any reason then the two subpopulations adapt differently. Over time the different adaptions obviously pile in the two populations, and obviously the populations become increasingly different over time. Humans like to label things, and when differences pile up they like to make up a new species-label for one or both populations. "Let's call these lions and let's call those tigers".
Evolution Q.E.D.
Oh, I'm sorry. Were you one of those denialists who's understanding and definition of "evolution" pretty much amounts to "I dunno - stuff that doesn't happen"? When faced with undeniable facts and undeniable evidence just sweeps it away as "not evolution"? Seriously, read my first paragraph again. It's really not that hard to understand, and evolution really is quite obvious once you do.
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Polls shows that most americans are "liberal" when it comes to social ideas (like allowing gays to marry)
Agreed.
but "conservative" when it comes to political ideas (government is best when it is small).
Not really. It merely polls well when it's offered as hollow sound bite.
Lets poll the public, shall we?
Do you want to cut the military? No!
Do you want bridge and road repair cut? No!
Do you want your Medicare cut? No!
Do you want your Social Security cut? No!
Do you want education cut? No!
Do you want law enforcement cut? No!
Do you want medical and services for veterans cut? No!
Do you want border security cut? No!
Do you want children's services cut? No!
Do you want the US to default on debt interest payments? No!
Do you want smaller government? Yes, paying my taxes sucks.
Do you want a pony? Yes.
Do you want to feed it? No.
Do you have anywhere to keep it? No.
Do you want to shovel the horse shit? No.
Do you want a pony? YES!!!!
People don't want smaller government. They want a pony.
They want a magic flying pony that shits rainbows.
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Do you actually think anybody with a liberal ideology actually is smarter, better, and less likely to repeat their mistakes?
I didn't even look at what he wrote, but what *I* would say is that I have been seeing an extremely dangerous and extremely destructive anti-education theme flowing among conservatives. At the far right the Fundie Bible Thumpers are afraid their children will come back from college believing the Earth is more than 6000 years old. But it hardly stops there. I have seen broader unrest among conservative parents not wanting their children getting college educated out of fear that their kids will be infected with dirty liberal ideas. "Educated" has LITERALLY been turned into a slur by many conservatives. Educated, elite, professional, expertise, knowledge, somehow conservatives consider these to be BAD words. I have seen a very disturbing trend of conservatives using uneducated uninformed "folksy" ignorance as some sort of badge of honer. Hearing people brag that they "didn't go to some fancy college" (as if that's a good thing) hearing them brag that they they didn't study no "Ivory tower science" like chemistry (as if that's a good thing), and saying that they are just good old plain spoken regular folks and that if eating lead paint chips as a child was good enough for them then it's good enough for our kids.
I find it HORRIFYING that so many conservatives have been using "educated" as a slur and claiming ignorance as a virtue.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone "knows" things which are false. Everyone has biases. Education and respect for expertise tends to correct mistakes, it helps them correct false "knowledge" that they think they have, and it assists in seeing past one's own biases. Rejecting education and expertise encourages mistakes, it creates or reinforces false "knowledge", and it leaves people with no means to overcome their own biases.
Do liberals have higher IQ's? I really doubt it. But what good is a brain if it has an ideology that values ignorance and condemns education?
And yet here we are with arguably the most liberal president and congress ever.
Obama is arguably a Muslim communist homosexual born in the Kremlin. The center, and soft-left-center, are not radical liberal just because the angry right have been screaming that they are far left. The angry right sees anything remotely centrist as being far left of themselves.
A quick look around the nation also reveals that the most 'conservative' states also typically have the best economies
Where did you possibly hear that?!? Chuckle.
According to Federal figures 'conservative' states are heavily subsidized on the back of 'liberal' state taxes. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in New Jersey, about 39% is siphoned off to subsidize red states. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in New York, about 21% is siphoned off to subsidize red states. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in California, about 22% is siphoned off to subsidize red states. For every dollar in Federal taxes paid in Connecticut, about 31% is siphoned off to subsidize red states.
Red state receive billions of dollars more in Federal money than they pay in taxes.
Infrastructure? Red states are welfare leeches using blue state dollars to pay for it.
Farm subsidies? Either blue state workers could KEEP their tax money in their pocket and use it to pay the higher (unsubsidized) true price of food, or those dollars could still be collected in blue states and handed out in blue states as some sort of food stamps and people in blue states would see equal or lower effective food costs. Either way, people in red states would have to pay for their own food without blue state taxpayers paying part of their food bills for them. And that completely ignores the fact that people would just start buying the cheaper agricultural products from Mexico, South America, and anywhere else.
Military bases are disproportionately in red states. The military keeps saying they ca
Make up your fucking mind, troll boy.
At this point I would generally pull out the flamethrower and beat you over the head with your... well lets just call them your "persistent misunderstandings of the law". For some reason I decided to rewrite my post in one more attempt at polite, reasonable, and productive communication.
You can argue that copyright law is bad in various different ways, and I would generally agree with you. You can argue that copyright law is stupid, absurd, insane, or even evil in various different ways, and I would generally agree with you. However we are not talking about what the law should say. We are not talking about how the law should work. To be honest I remember several years ago making an argument myself that kinda-sorta resembled your argument about downloading. That was back before I read copyright law. Before I and read countless court rulings on copyright law. To be blunt, I didn't know what the hell I was talking about at that time. What the law logically should say has little resemblance to what the law does say and how the law does work.
Surely downloading crappy_commercial_music.mp3 from the owners of the copyright, who offered it on a P2P network, is not a crime.. right? right?
That exact situation is legally messy, and you are probably right that a judge will toss out that exact situation on the basis that the copyright holder implicitly authorized your actions, or that your actions were Fair Use of an authorized distribution. But you are being dense if you insist that means that downloading isn't prohibited by law in other cases. You are being dense if you insist it means you can't can't get assraped in court for downloading in other situations.
You said:
Thats why the judge says "case dismissed" unless you distributed it.
(Bold emphasis, exactly as you wrote it)
I listed a multitude of situations where you did not distribute it. If you ever wind up in court over downloading, where the copyright holder isn't the one who sent it to you, you are wrong and you are legally fucked if you think the judge is going to dismiss the case against you.
You said:
This is so because the owner of the copyright cannot know that you downloaded the file unless THEY were distributing it
(Bold emphasis and capital emphasis, exactly as you wrote it)
I listed a multitude of situations where they can know that you downloaded the file without the copyright holder being the one to distribute it to you, without the copyright holder authorizing any distribution to you. You are wrong and you are legally fucked if you ever wind up in court over downloading.
In fact it's even worse than that. In 1998 the copyright lobby slipped some sneaky provisions into the N.E.T. Act. These provisions took ordinary P2P infringement and generally shoved under the category of CRIMINAL copyright infringement laws which was intended to deal with commercial piracy enterprises. This law is very rarely enforced, but virtually everyone who has ever used P2P is technically guilty of a felony crime under this law. Almost all P2P users are face up to one, three, or even five years in prison under this law. PLUS double the prison term for a second offense.
This law is explicit is stating that distribution-infringement AND creating-a-copy-infringement are BOTH criminalized. Yes, this law really does say you can go to prison for several years strictly for downloading. The law uses the word "reproduction", and legally that means "creating a copy", and legally that is what you are doing when you save a download on your harddrive. The law is evil and insane, but that doesn't make me incorrect in stating it. Congress can and did pass an evil insane law.
Copyright law says creating a copy is infringement. Copyright law says that downloading is equally and independently illegal. Copyright law says downloading can be equally and independently prosecuted. The fac
I'm Sarah Palin, I'd be looking for my ammo and a helicopter.
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I said if they go after someone for distribution and find any sort of logs on that computer, they can sue you.
You missed the distinction between "someone" and "you". My example was that someone uploads it to you. That someone also uploads it to one of the RIAA's internet enforcement squads. The RIAA sues that someone for distribution-infringement. During the civil suit they subpoena and examine that someone's harddrive, or they possibly even subpoena that someone's internet provider's records. If that someone's computer contains some record of uploading that file to you, or if their internet provider has some record indicating the file was sent to you, then the RIAA can use that evidence as a valid legal basis to initiate a lawsuit against you. They can then subpoena your harddrive, and they can win in court on the basis of your infringing act creating the copy of the song you downloaded to your harddrive.
As another example, lets say you use bittorrent and disable uploads. You join a swarm and strictly download from seeds. The RIAA's internet enforcers join the swarm and snag your IP address. Again, they can initiate a lawsuit against you and subpoena your harddrive. Again, it doesn't matter that you had uploading disabled.
Or lets say you bring your computer in for repairs somewhere. The repair guy grabs a copy of unreleased music track you downloaded onto your harddrive. The repair guy uploads it, gets caught, gets sued, and tells the RIAA where he got it. The RIAA then has sufficient legal basis to initiate a lawsuit against you, obtaining a subpoena to examine your drive.
Same thing happens if your computer gets stolen, and along the way the police recover your computer and see the obviously infringing unreleased music track, and the RIAA hears about it somehow.
Or you post that you've been downloading songs X Y and Z from P2P. The RIAA can subpoena Slashdot's logs for your IP and again subpoena your harddrive.
Legally, uploading and downloading are not materially different. Distributing is infringement, and creating a copy is infringement. The RIAA does need some basis to initiate a lawsuit, but civil suits have an unbelievably low standard to initiate a case and obtain a subpoena. Civil suits bypass pretty much all of the usual requirements and protections that you expect of criminal search warrants.
It in fact HAS to be about distribution.
I know you were going for the laughs, but it is important to note that is legally false. Just to make up a scenario, if they go after someone for distribution and find any sort of logs on that computer, they can sue you. Under the law there is no significant difference here between uploading (distributing) the file or downloading (creating a copy). Both are legally treated as infringement, end of story.
In fact the law is so fucked up that you're still guilty even if you were trying to download something perfectly legal, like Linux. If someone takes Britney Spears song and renames it to "parser.c" and sticks it in the middle of a Linux source package and you download it, under the law you are guilty of infringing the copyright on that Britney song. The law says you have to PAY DAMAGES for your illegal act of infringing the copyright on that song. But the law isn't COMPLETELY insane (laugh laugh laugh). The law recognized that your are innocent. The law even specifically declares you to be an "innocent infringer". Instead of hitting you with standard copyright infringement damages, the law says the judge is PERMITTED to waive the standard minimum damage amounts, and instead lower the minimum to $200 per infringement. Oh, and note that the law places the burden upon YOU to prove your innocent infringer status if you want to try to lower the minimum to $200. None of that innocent-until-proven-guilty crap.
Note that I currently see 10 different story icons on the Slashdot front page. Lets imagine for a moment that Slashdot did not get permission to use those images. Merely by surfing to Slashdot.org each of us created copies of those ten images on our harddrives in the browser cache. That is ten infringements across ten different copyrights. That is $2000 in damages, simply for innocently browsing to one typical webpage. Some websites could easily have a hundred or more infringing icons on a page, and innocent people browsing that page would be liable for a minimum of $20,000 each. An typical web user can quickly rack up over a million dollars a year in technical legal liability a year merely by browsing typical websites that contain occasional minor infringements like icons. People are almost never prosecuted on that sort of thing, but that's what the law says and you can get sued for it.
The RIAA&friends go after uploaders because they are easier to catch, because suing uploaders is easier to sell in a public-relations sense, and because of the ideology that the "big" problem of downloads would vanish if they could just manage to solve the "smaller" problem of uploads.
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The program will be canceled about 12 seconds after the first officer on the witness stand describes a rape victim as "Rubenesque".
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Can't we get competent people to design these things?
Getting competent programmers on voting machines would be Good.
Getting competent voters on voting machines would be Better.
Getting competent candidates on voting machines would be Best.
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The article was lousy. There was no "default" candidate being set. It correctly starts out as a blank ballot. The issue is that if your finger is still lying on the touch screen when the ballot comes up it will instantly trigger whatever candidate your finger happens to be touching. It happens so fast that the voter never saw the blank ballot. It looks as if the candidate came up pre-selected. You can change that mistaken selection before casting the ballot.
There is no fraud, nothing remotely resembling fraud. They definitely do need to clean up that touchscreen user interface. Confusing or unexpected behavior on a voting machine is a Very Bad Thing. Voting machine programmers must make extra special efforts to deal with potentially sloppy input from inexperienced users.
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Slashdot please allow me to post in Wingdings font and Symbol font. Posting in Italics TT does not make it not hard enough to read.
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Make it photos of customs inspectors examining luggage and other articles.
And proceed to take photos of him while he inspects your porn collection.
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OFFICIAL BALLOT - GENERAL ELECTION
November 4, 2012
Complete the oval ( ) at the left of the name you want to choose. You may vote for a person whose name is not on the ballot by writing in the person's name and municipality of residence in the write in space and completing the oval at the left. If you make a mistake you may ask for a new ballot. DO NOT ERASE.
NATIONAL
_________
UNITED STATES PRESIDENT
Your vote for the candidate for United States President shall be a vote for the elector supporting that candidate.
VOTE FOR ONE:
( ) Rick Santorum
( ) Bill Bukakke
( ) ____________
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