In fact passing these types of laws, which can be selectively enforced for political reasons, are dangerous because they lead inexorably to a greater disrespect for law and order in general (if law a is stupid then what other laws are suspect) among society and particularly the youth. Is it any wonder that an entire generation of young people have grown up with the knowledge that authorities in general and the police in particular are NOT their friends? The level of alienation and ignorance that exists between the "old people" who inhabit the halls of government and the young people on the cutting edge of our civilization is truly vast. In fact it is larger and growing faster now than at perhaps any other time in human history and people ask us geeks why we don't trust the government, use encryption, and are generally secretive with regard to our personal information and protecting our privacy. Every day it seems bring new revelations regarding warrantless wiretaps, government surveillance, and selective enforcement of new laws granting ever greater powers to our government to monitor, fine, imprison, and generally destroy the lives of people for increasingly petty infractions all in the name of "protecting the children" and "defeating the terrorists".
It is interesting that programmers are often among the first to spot these types of flaws in our legal codes, particularly when the law deals with a technology issue but also in more general cases. It probably has something to do with the nature of software and how seemingly minor changes can have major unintended consequences, particularly in a large and complex system, which makes us more acutely aware of changes or logic axioms and their consequences. Unfortunately the vast majority of the people living on this earth are emotional and not logical people, hence the current mess that is our legal system.
The drop dead obvious confirmation of this is that Windows 7 was meant to be modularised and cleaned up, and all of that has been cancelled already.
Can you please cite a source on that one? Microsoft has been extremely coy about releasing official statements of features or intent with regard to Windows 7 so where did this information come from or is it just a rumor?
I believe that the winning strategy for Microsoft going forward (at least with regard to Windows) is to minimize the number of superfluous services and rarely used options (i.e. trim the fat) while providing free updates for optional packages via their Windows Update site. They could choose to offer higher end packages for sale either through Windows Update OR as a packaged version, but it is important to separate those users who want those things and those who don't so that they can be charged as necessary.
On the backwards compatibility front the only way to cleanly contain the mess, at least IMHO, would be for Microsoft to virtualize (tranparently within Windows itself) all of the old techs and libraries so that they can be mapped onto a cleaner and more minimized subset of actually necessary functionality in the kernel. Microsoft would have an advantage here over WINE because they created the mess in the first place so they have first hand knowledge of what it would require to untangle it (i.e. minimal reverse engineering). Microsoft has been investing heavily in virtualization for years now so this seems to be the logical way forward for them.
Finally, and most importantly, Microsoft must match the price point of the commercially available physical box Linux distributions and offer the basic version of Windows 7 (minus live technical support) FREE OF CHARGE for download. Failing that I think that they have to come in under the $100 price point to avoid losing further ground to Linux, particularly in the developing world (where they have shown a willingness to do this already with $3 Windows XP Licenses). The price of Windows has to come down, Vista was too expensive both in terms of required hardware and the OS itself.
I am not an expert on French history, but it seems that the French Revolution did not occur until 1789, seven (7) years after the the Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolution and the United States became a sovereign country. Prior to that, France was essentially a hereditary absolute monarchy ala Louis XIV aka L'État, c'est moi (I am the state). There were no interruptions to French democracy before the French Revolution because it did not exist prior to the Estates General of 1789. It was always France in physical location, but the governments were completely different and even the culture, or at least substantial portions of it, can be said to have changed during and after the French Revolution so the France that exited prior to 1789 really was a very different sort of state and could not really be called a continuation with a simple change of government along the way.
but it just happens to be one of those things Americans continuously attempt to take credit for to the point of absurdity
That might be one for Jaywalking, but I think that most Americans, even if they couldn't name the City State of Athens (or even more improbably, the dates), would know and acknowledge the Greeks and Greece as the birthplace of democracy.
Fine, the United States is the oldest presently continuing democracy thus far and even if you count that brief period of Democracy in the ancient City State of Athens it is important to keep a couple of things in mind. It was democracy only for the citizens of Athens, which is great you might say until you realize that citizens were limited to adult males (this excluded women, slaves, children, and resident foreigners) who had completed their military training, were not under suspension for failure to pay debts to the state, and were not branded with a permenant injuction because their father was also baned. In theory, ownership of property was not required, but it was likely that in practice only a family which owned property and derived revenue from it would be able to afford to devote male members to military service (paying for the expensive arms and equipment as ancient greek soldiers payed to outfit themselves), remain in good standing with regard to debts, and not eventually find themselves excluded for one reason or another.
The more mainstream the web becomes, the more bullshit we have to sort through... the more useless it becomes. There used to be a banner ad. Now there's a banner, links on the left, links on the right, popups, flash over the actual text, sound, video, and 10x as many pages all with the same shit to click through just to get the same content. And, we're already hearing about ISPs adding their own shit to our shitty internet experience.
What bugged me most about NWN2 were the relatively poor 3D graphics, although I suppose that it does make for a somewhat more interesting combat experience if you can manage the loading times and overlook the World of Warcraft style zones and areas. You are right about the story not holding a candle to the Baldur's Gate series (BG, BG2, and Throne of Bhaal) but really where could they have gone with a new story to top Baldur's Gate? One can only alter the entire Forgotten Realms with climactic wars culminating in the creation of a new deity so many times after all. The problem with the 3D graphics these days is that they still don't look better or even as good as hand painted backgrounds with well rendered 3D to 2D sprites can AND CRPGs (not MMORPGs mind you) are among the games that benefit the least from current 3D graphics since the game is usually more about character development and interesting choices within the context of a complex and engaging story. It is my opinion that there is a lot of pent up demand for a really good sequel to the classic Infinity Engine games, updated and enhanced to take advantage of better average graphics cards and larger screens with higher resolutions, with some of the best parts of NWN (scripting, custom modules, network play, and campaign manager) thrown in. TOEE is the most recent game that sort of approximates the direction I would like to see a sequel go. I am sure that 3D CRPGs will get there someday, but until they can render in real time such that I cannot tell the difference between the game and a good fantasy movie series like LOTR, I would prefer high quality 2D isometric. I am looking forward to Fallout 3, so maybe that will change my mind (the series really is in good hands with Bethesda).
even after I told them it was fraud and the charges were disputed.
So phone your card company, explain the situation and have them hit the airline with a chargeback. The majors all have anti-fraud divisions that will investigate the situation and reverse charges when the evidence is in favor of the customer, particularly if you were prompt in reporting the fraudulent activity.
You can practically get rid of the virus over many successive generations.
but never entirely right? This sounds similar to HAART, it can reduce the virus to very low levels, but it would take more than a normal human lifetime to clear the virus completely using these types of methods. At best it would probably allow a reasonably normal, if somewhat shortened, lifespan with the virus never completely cleared but (hopefully) well controlled.
One other thing -- how come I've never seen, anywhere, the idea of putting a hydroelectric turbine in a sewer line?
I once worked in a office full of civil engineers so perhaps I can answer that question, here goes...
There is one point that should be understand right off the bat and that is that any time a generator is introduced into a system where current, water, sewage, or energy flows freely a load is induced upon the system and the total energy outflow is reduced (i.e. the velocity of the outflow is slowed by the generator as the generator converts that energy into electricity or perhaps a water wheel is turned in which case some of the energy of the outflow is being converted directly into mechanical work). I realize that this is a very rough description of the physics, but would the thermodynamics geeks please cut me some slack? Thanks.
Now, the typical sewer lateral (the pipe from your home or building to the main in the street) has an average fall of 1/2 percent over the distance that it travels to the main or just enough to ensure that the raw sewage makes it all the way to the main without backing up in your lateral. It might be possible to introduce some sort of turbine in there but there several problems:
1) Raw sewage tends to be sludgy with lots of trash, hair, and other assorted junk that is just perfect for chocking or clogging your turbine (this might be less of a problem if you are only talking about the outflow from your home, but it is still an issue).
2) As previously mentioned there is barely enough fall to ensure that the sewage makes it all the way to the main without obstructions (and the turbine is an obstruction) so any back pressure will back up your sewage.
3) Digging a ditch for your lateral with greater average fall is possible but the main sewer line is only so much deeper than the street surface so practically speaking how much extra slope could you fit into the distance between your home and the street? Probably not enough to increase velocity substantially and thus not enough extra energy to convert to electricity with a turbine.
4) Greater slopes mean higher velocities and ultimately higher pressures and higher pressure pipes and turbines are always more expensive (just ask the guys who run oil and natural gas pipelines). In fact, they used to hydraulically mine gold in California using pressurized jets of water at lethal force from slopping troughs over long distances into ever narrower pipes fed from upstream rivers and streams.
To sum up: There is not enough useful energy to extract from your out flowing sewage over the distance from your home or building to the sewer line in the street to make the generator worth a crap (pun intended), it would probably just back up your sewage lateral and even if you had a very large property there probably isn't enough difference in slope between your toilet and the street to build up enough energy to make it worthwhile unless you have a very large property and your house is built on top of a hill our mountain. There is also the problem that toilet flushes are very sporadic in most residential situations so even more energy will be lost to spinning up the turbine on each flush as opposed to keeping a spinning turbine going. Basically, in most cases it just wouldn't be worth it.
Perhaps I am simply ignorant, but is it impossible that mutations in the AIDS virus could adapt to this? Also, how can one change the genetic code in all of the existing cells in the body to produce only the new and improved T-Cells and even if we could do that what other side effects might that have? I seem to remember from a couple of articles that attempts to alter genetic code of living humans (through viruses for example) has had limited success and resulted in death of the patient in some cases. I suppose that it is analogous to altering the byte code of a program while it is executing in memory, something which is dangerous at best and generally results in a crash (or in the case of living things death). Unfortunately there is no reboot for living organisms as far as we know.
There have been similar cases involving tax shelters were people have tried to argue, for example, that a certain combination of options to buy and sell are not the same thing as a sale (which would incur capital gains tax) whereas the IRS argues that effectively it is the equivalent of a sale. How is this relevant you ask? Well, in such situations the courts have generally ruled that if the end result is the same (i.e. you end up with the same computer that you "sold" to the repair shop and it has been fixed) then essentially you had "your" computer fixed and the shop is subject the the law. The general legal theory is that if a particular transaction or series of transactions is entered into primarily to avoid a law (i.e. there is no other good reason for a particular transaction or series of transactions) then the law still applies because the end results are the same (i.e. there was a sale of an asset OR you did in fact have your computer repaired). Of course IANAL and nobody can be sure until a relevant case comes up, but it seems likely that the scheme you described above would not successfully avoid the requirements of the law as interpreted by the court, particularly in light of similar circumstances in other decided cases.
You are right of course, but here in the United States "Liberal" has been effectively hijacked by the left as part of a cynical and long term campaign to connect their platform, which is basically socialism, with the high intellectual achievements of the Enlightenment thinkers and the natural law philosophers of the Age of Reason. There was also a desire during the Cold War to get away from socialism because the average American equated socialism with communism even though they are distinct systems (it was easier for them to hijack Classical Liberalism than to defend a technical distinction between socialism and communism). The Libertarians are the closest thing left to Classical Liberalism (as it is called in Europe) here in the United States today and only the better educated Americans continue to draw distinction between American Liberalism and the Classical Liberalism of European origin. Like the aforementioned hacker example, it is basically a lost cause to attempt to restore the proper meaning of these words in the public discourse.
Although many people may not be aware of it, most private health insurance companies here in the United States have a 24 hour telephone line(s) staffed by licensed or registered nurses to provide the same type of service. Their goal is to help you with simple things over the phone, including basic treatment advice and possibly even setting up an appointment with your doctor or a doctor in their network, instead of you visiting the ER at 2:00 am and running up a $1,000 bill to find out that you have the stomach flu. A bit less altruistic of them perhaps, but the same type of service.
Actually, with new desktops costing only a few hundred dollars now most people will probably just junk the broken machine and get a new one. Let's be realistic here, with computers fast becoming a commodity cheaper than a decent television many people will just chuck it when it breaks instead of having it repaired or else they will pay their neighbor's teenager under the table to fix it on the sly. This law is completely silly in that way. Would it be illegal to help out a friend by recovering his crashed hard disk with Knoppix if you don't have a PI license? What a bunch of crap, I expected better of Texas.
Writers of very popular course books will get some return, but for most of us writing specialist texts this isn't the case.
So wouldn't it be better if specialists in the same field, perhaps from different universities, set up a public read limited write wiki site where articles on various topics of interest, sample problems, and other course and research related materials could be created and maintained by the community to the benefit of everyone including the students? The materials would be complete and up to date, or at least they could be, and the distribution costs would be minimal.
I agree with most of what you said and I also refuse to purchase music and movies directly from the MAFIAA copyright cartel. Like you I listen to Internet radio, which has an astonishing variety of music available, and for the occasional movie that I wish to see I have a Netflix subscription which allows me to see almost everything that I want to while absolutely minimizing revenues to the MAFIAA (my tastes are actually quite eclectic in this regard and include many independent and documentary films and almost nothing done by Hollywood in recent years). I haven't been to a movie theater since 2003, screaming kids, rude people, 1/2 hour of previews and getting longer each year, constant bombardment with advertisements, who needs it? I haven't purchased a CD since I graduated from university in 2002. The television is 95% crap these days (I have never paid for cable or satellite in my adult life) and the few shows that are decent have suffered in recent years from the writers strike and now the SAG dispute. In fact I derive greater enjoyment these days from supporting the EFF with my periodic donations (any lobby group which gives the MAFIAA a hard time in Washington is alright in my book), writing letters to my senators on selected issues, and generally getting off my butt when I am not programming. It is really too bad that there aren't more people with our mindset, the DMCA and most of the recent copyright expansion nonsense might not have occurred if enough citizens cared to educate themselves about what was really going on and take action to do something about it.
I find that while natural keyboards can be useful for extended periods of typing natural languages (i.e. writing papers at university) they are not optimal for the type of work that is more typical in engineering fields, such as programming or CAD, where there are sporadic bursts of typing combined with mousing, stopping to think some bit of code through, or switching windows to run a few google queries on the problem(s). There are some engineers who go out of their way to learn a really different input device (ala the data hand for example), but most of my programing friends and I prefer the straight up standard keyboard.
I'm sure that is exactly what Adam Smith had in mind for free market competition.
Do not be so quick to pin this one on Adam Smith and the free market. The secret organization exists solely to mitigate the effects (at additional cost so it is still inefficient) of a patent system enforced by the power of government. In a purely free market neither the patent system nor this organization would exist. That is the problem with government incursions into the free market, they tend to create more problems than they solve which then require additional incursions and so on until the market itself is so hobbled by regulations that very little if any useful economic activity is actually occurring.
Since this is Slashdot I will indulge myself with reference to a Star Trek episode to illustrate my point. In the two-part Voyager episode Year of Hell the protagonist, Annorax of the Krenim Imperium, constructs a temporal weapons ship which allows him to erase anything from individual molecules to entire civilizations from history in a "temporal incursion". He subsequently spends two centuries with incursion after incursion and ever more complex calculations attempting to make good the effects of his previous incursions in a never ending quest to restore everything that he had lost when he began meddling with the timeline.
Government interference in the marketplace is analogous in that if we could only calculate exactly how much to tax and which policy to enact then everything would work out perfectly except that it never seems to work out that way here in reality. Each incursion into the marketplace requires additional incursions in a never ending game of whack-a-mole. It has always been tempting, for both the government and investors, to believe that they can calculate and predict every event and variable in an extremely complicated market system full of millions and even billions of individuals all acting differently and simultaneously in both rational and irrational ways. IMHO, it is best to let the chips fall where the may and limit government responses to reactive rather than proactive remedies.
Slashdot Mirror
But I'm also sick of the ridiculous overreaction everyone here has everytime anyone anywhere is charged with a crime.
Obviously, you have never seen Freedom Downtime.
In fact passing these types of laws, which can be selectively enforced for political reasons, are dangerous because they lead inexorably to a greater disrespect for law and order in general (if law a is stupid then what other laws are suspect) among society and particularly the youth. Is it any wonder that an entire generation of young people have grown up with the knowledge that authorities in general and the police in particular are NOT their friends? The level of alienation and ignorance that exists between the "old people" who inhabit the halls of government and the young people on the cutting edge of our civilization is truly vast. In fact it is larger and growing faster now than at perhaps any other time in human history and people ask us geeks why we don't trust the government, use encryption, and are generally secretive with regard to our personal information and protecting our privacy. Every day it seems bring new revelations regarding warrantless wiretaps, government surveillance, and selective enforcement of new laws granting ever greater powers to our government to monitor, fine, imprison, and generally destroy the lives of people for increasingly petty infractions all in the name of "protecting the children" and "defeating the terrorists".
It is interesting that programmers are often among the first to spot these types of flaws in our legal codes, particularly when the law deals with a technology issue but also in more general cases. It probably has something to do with the nature of software and how seemingly minor changes can have major unintended consequences, particularly in a large and complex system, which makes us more acutely aware of changes or logic axioms and their consequences. Unfortunately the vast majority of the people living on this earth are emotional and not logical people, hence the current mess that is our legal system.
The drop dead obvious confirmation of this is that Windows 7 was meant to be modularised and cleaned up, and all of that has been cancelled already.
Can you please cite a source on that one? Microsoft has been extremely coy about releasing official statements of features or intent with regard to Windows 7 so where did this information come from or is it just a rumor?
I believe that the winning strategy for Microsoft going forward (at least with regard to Windows) is to minimize the number of superfluous services and rarely used options (i.e. trim the fat) while providing free updates for optional packages via their Windows Update site. They could choose to offer higher end packages for sale either through Windows Update OR as a packaged version, but it is important to separate those users who want those things and those who don't so that they can be charged as necessary.
On the backwards compatibility front the only way to cleanly contain the mess, at least IMHO, would be for Microsoft to virtualize (tranparently within Windows itself) all of the old techs and libraries so that they can be mapped onto a cleaner and more minimized subset of actually necessary functionality in the kernel. Microsoft would have an advantage here over WINE because they created the mess in the first place so they have first hand knowledge of what it would require to untangle it (i.e. minimal reverse engineering). Microsoft has been investing heavily in virtualization for years now so this seems to be the logical way forward for them.
Finally, and most importantly, Microsoft must match the price point of the commercially available physical box Linux distributions and offer the basic version of Windows 7 (minus live technical support) FREE OF CHARGE for download. Failing that I think that they have to come in under the $100 price point to avoid losing further ground to Linux, particularly in the developing world (where they have shown a willingness to do this already with $3 Windows XP Licenses). The price of Windows has to come down, Vista was too expensive both in terms of required hardware and the OS itself.
That would be France.
I am not an expert on French history, but it seems that the French Revolution did not occur until 1789, seven (7) years after the the Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolution and the United States became a sovereign country. Prior to that, France was essentially a hereditary absolute monarchy ala Louis XIV aka L'État, c'est moi (I am the state). There were no interruptions to French democracy before the French Revolution because it did not exist prior to the Estates General of 1789. It was always France in physical location, but the governments were completely different and even the culture, or at least substantial portions of it, can be said to have changed during and after the French Revolution so the France that exited prior to 1789 really was a very different sort of state and could not really be called a continuation with a simple change of government along the way.
but it just happens to be one of those things Americans continuously attempt to take credit for to the point of absurdity
That might be one for Jaywalking, but I think that most Americans, even if they couldn't name the City State of Athens (or even more improbably, the dates), would know and acknowledge the Greeks and Greece as the birthplace of democracy.
Citizens of Greece might disagree somewhat.
Fine, the United States is the oldest presently continuing democracy thus far and even if you count that brief period of Democracy in the ancient City State of Athens it is important to keep a couple of things in mind. It was democracy only for the citizens of Athens, which is great you might say until you realize that citizens were limited to adult males (this excluded women, slaves, children, and resident foreigners) who had completed their military training, were not under suspension for failure to pay debts to the state, and were not branded with a permenant injuction because their father was also baned. In theory, ownership of property was not required, but it was likely that in practice only a family which owned property and derived revenue from it would be able to afford to devote male members to military service (paying for the expensive arms and equipment as ancient greek soldiers payed to outfit themselves), remain in good standing with regard to debts, and not eventually find themselves excluded for one reason or another.
The more mainstream the web becomes, the more bullshit we have to sort through... the more useless it becomes. There used to be a banner ad. Now there's a banner, links on the left, links on the right, popups, flash over the actual text, sound, video, and 10x as many pages all with the same shit to click through just to get the same content. And, we're already hearing about ISPs adding their own shit to our shitty internet experience.
Firefox + AdBlock Plus + NoScript + Flashblock = Freedom from ads, fluff, and marketing bull.
What bugged me most about NWN2 were the relatively poor 3D graphics, although I suppose that it does make for a somewhat more interesting combat experience if you can manage the loading times and overlook the World of Warcraft style zones and areas. You are right about the story not holding a candle to the Baldur's Gate series (BG, BG2, and Throne of Bhaal) but really where could they have gone with a new story to top Baldur's Gate? One can only alter the entire Forgotten Realms with climactic wars culminating in the creation of a new deity so many times after all. The problem with the 3D graphics these days is that they still don't look better or even as good as hand painted backgrounds with well rendered 3D to 2D sprites can AND CRPGs (not MMORPGs mind you) are among the games that benefit the least from current 3D graphics since the game is usually more about character development and interesting choices within the context of a complex and engaging story. It is my opinion that there is a lot of pent up demand for a really good sequel to the classic Infinity Engine games, updated and enhanced to take advantage of better average graphics cards and larger screens with higher resolutions, with some of the best parts of NWN (scripting, custom modules, network play, and campaign manager) thrown in. TOEE is the most recent game that sort of approximates the direction I would like to see a sequel go. I am sure that 3D CRPGs will get there someday, but until they can render in real time such that I cannot tell the difference between the game and a good fantasy movie series like LOTR, I would prefer high quality 2D isometric. I am looking forward to Fallout 3, so maybe that will change my mind (the series really is in good hands with Bethesda).
The grue jumps out.
I roll to attack...
even after I told them it was fraud and the charges were disputed.
So phone your card company, explain the situation and have them hit the airline with a chargeback. The majors all have anti-fraud divisions that will investigate the situation and reverse charges when the evidence is in favor of the customer, particularly if you were prompt in reporting the fraudulent activity.
You can practically get rid of the virus over many successive generations.
but never entirely right? This sounds similar to HAART, it can reduce the virus to very low levels, but it would take more than a normal human lifetime to clear the virus completely using these types of methods. At best it would probably allow a reasonably normal, if somewhat shortened, lifespan with the virus never completely cleared but (hopefully) well controlled.
One other thing -- how come I've never seen, anywhere, the idea of putting a hydroelectric turbine in a sewer line?
I once worked in a office full of civil engineers so perhaps I can answer that question, here goes...
There is one point that should be understand right off the bat and that is that any time a generator is introduced into a system where current, water, sewage, or energy flows freely a load is induced upon the system and the total energy outflow is reduced (i.e. the velocity of the outflow is slowed by the generator as the generator converts that energy into electricity or perhaps a water wheel is turned in which case some of the energy of the outflow is being converted directly into mechanical work). I realize that this is a very rough description of the physics, but would the thermodynamics geeks please cut me some slack? Thanks.
Now, the typical sewer lateral (the pipe from your home or building to the main in the street) has an average fall of 1/2 percent over the distance that it travels to the main or just enough to ensure that the raw sewage makes it all the way to the main without backing up in your lateral. It might be possible to introduce some sort of turbine in there but there several problems:
1) Raw sewage tends to be sludgy with lots of trash, hair, and other assorted junk that is just perfect for chocking or clogging your turbine (this might be less of a problem if you are only talking about the outflow from your home, but it is still an issue).
2) As previously mentioned there is barely enough fall to ensure that the sewage makes it all the way to the main without obstructions (and the turbine is an obstruction) so any back pressure will back up your sewage.
3) Digging a ditch for your lateral with greater average fall is possible but the main sewer line is only so much deeper than the street surface so practically speaking how much extra slope could you fit into the distance between your home and the street? Probably not enough to increase velocity substantially and thus not enough extra energy to convert to electricity with a turbine.
4) Greater slopes mean higher velocities and ultimately higher pressures and higher pressure pipes and turbines are always more expensive (just ask the guys who run oil and natural gas pipelines). In fact, they used to hydraulically mine gold in California using pressurized jets of water at lethal force from slopping troughs over long distances into ever narrower pipes fed from upstream rivers and streams.
To sum up: There is not enough useful energy to extract from your out flowing sewage over the distance from your home or building to the sewer line in the street to make the generator worth a crap (pun intended), it would probably just back up your sewage lateral and even if you had a very large property there probably isn't enough difference in slope between your toilet and the street to build up enough energy to make it worthwhile unless you have a very large property and your house is built on top of a hill our mountain. There is also the problem that toilet flushes are very sporadic in most residential situations so even more energy will be lost to spinning up the turbine on each flush as opposed to keeping a spinning turbine going. Basically, in most cases it just wouldn't be worth it.
Perhaps I am simply ignorant, but is it impossible that mutations in the AIDS virus could adapt to this? Also, how can one change the genetic code in all of the existing cells in the body to produce only the new and improved T-Cells and even if we could do that what other side effects might that have? I seem to remember from a couple of articles that attempts to alter genetic code of living humans (through viruses for example) has had limited success and resulted in death of the patient in some cases. I suppose that it is analogous to altering the byte code of a program while it is executing in memory, something which is dangerous at best and generally results in a crash (or in the case of living things death). Unfortunately there is no reboot for living organisms as far as we know.
There have been similar cases involving tax shelters were people have tried to argue, for example, that a certain combination of options to buy and sell are not the same thing as a sale (which would incur capital gains tax) whereas the IRS argues that effectively it is the equivalent of a sale. How is this relevant you ask? Well, in such situations the courts have generally ruled that if the end result is the same (i.e. you end up with the same computer that you "sold" to the repair shop and it has been fixed) then essentially you had "your" computer fixed and the shop is subject the the law. The general legal theory is that if a particular transaction or series of transactions is entered into primarily to avoid a law (i.e. there is no other good reason for a particular transaction or series of transactions) then the law still applies because the end results are the same (i.e. there was a sale of an asset OR you did in fact have your computer repaired). Of course IANAL and nobody can be sure until a relevant case comes up, but it seems likely that the scheme you described above would not successfully avoid the requirements of the law as interpreted by the court, particularly in light of similar circumstances in other decided cases.
You are right of course, but here in the United States "Liberal" has been effectively hijacked by the left as part of a cynical and long term campaign to connect their platform, which is basically socialism, with the high intellectual achievements of the Enlightenment thinkers and the natural law philosophers of the Age of Reason. There was also a desire during the Cold War to get away from socialism because the average American equated socialism with communism even though they are distinct systems (it was easier for them to hijack Classical Liberalism than to defend a technical distinction between socialism and communism). The Libertarians are the closest thing left to Classical Liberalism (as it is called in Europe) here in the United States today and only the better educated Americans continue to draw distinction between American Liberalism and the Classical Liberalism of European origin. Like the aforementioned hacker example, it is basically a lost cause to attempt to restore the proper meaning of these words in the public discourse.
and you KNOW who comes from Texas
Um, no not at all...who might that be?
Although many people may not be aware of it, most private health insurance companies here in the United States have a 24 hour telephone line(s) staffed by licensed or registered nurses to provide the same type of service. Their goal is to help you with simple things over the phone, including basic treatment advice and possibly even setting up an appointment with your doctor or a doctor in their network, instead of you visiting the ER at 2:00 am and running up a $1,000 bill to find out that you have the stomach flu. A bit less altruistic of them perhaps, but the same type of service.
Actually, with new desktops costing only a few hundred dollars now most people will probably just junk the broken machine and get a new one. Let's be realistic here, with computers fast becoming a commodity cheaper than a decent television many people will just chuck it when it breaks instead of having it repaired or else they will pay their neighbor's teenager under the table to fix it on the sly. This law is completely silly in that way. Would it be illegal to help out a friend by recovering his crashed hard disk with Knoppix if you don't have a PI license? What a bunch of crap, I expected better of Texas.
Thanks for a link to an ad. I'll skip this story and find one posted on a site that doesn't hate users.
OR you could download the Firefox browser and customize it with the AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and Flashblock add-ons. Just say no to ads...
Where would we be if our students didn't understand the latest developments in trigonometry or first-semester calculus?
answer: where we are right now.
Writers of very popular course books will get some return, but for most of us writing specialist texts this isn't the case.
So wouldn't it be better if specialists in the same field, perhaps from different universities, set up a public read limited write wiki site where articles on various topics of interest, sample problems, and other course and research related materials could be created and maintained by the community to the benefit of everyone including the students? The materials would be complete and up to date, or at least they could be, and the distribution costs would be minimal.
I agree with most of what you said and I also refuse to purchase music and movies directly from the MAFIAA copyright cartel. Like you I listen to Internet radio, which has an astonishing variety of music available, and for the occasional movie that I wish to see I have a Netflix subscription which allows me to see almost everything that I want to while absolutely minimizing revenues to the MAFIAA (my tastes are actually quite eclectic in this regard and include many independent and documentary films and almost nothing done by Hollywood in recent years). I haven't been to a movie theater since 2003, screaming kids, rude people, 1/2 hour of previews and getting longer each year, constant bombardment with advertisements, who needs it? I haven't purchased a CD since I graduated from university in 2002. The television is 95% crap these days (I have never paid for cable or satellite in my adult life) and the few shows that are decent have suffered in recent years from the writers strike and now the SAG dispute. In fact I derive greater enjoyment these days from supporting the EFF with my periodic donations (any lobby group which gives the MAFIAA a hard time in Washington is alright in my book), writing letters to my senators on selected issues, and generally getting off my butt when I am not programming. It is really too bad that there aren't more people with our mindset, the DMCA and most of the recent copyright expansion nonsense might not have occurred if enough citizens cared to educate themselves about what was really going on and take action to do something about it.
I find that while natural keyboards can be useful for extended periods of typing natural languages (i.e. writing papers at university) they are not optimal for the type of work that is more typical in engineering fields, such as programming or CAD, where there are sporadic bursts of typing combined with mousing, stopping to think some bit of code through, or switching windows to run a few google queries on the problem(s). There are some engineers who go out of their way to learn a really different input device (ala the data hand for example), but most of my programing friends and I prefer the straight up standard keyboard.
I'm sure that is exactly what Adam Smith had in mind for free market competition.
Do not be so quick to pin this one on Adam Smith and the free market. The secret organization exists solely to mitigate the effects (at additional cost so it is still inefficient) of a patent system enforced by the power of government. In a purely free market neither the patent system nor this organization would exist. That is the problem with government incursions into the free market, they tend to create more problems than they solve which then require additional incursions and so on until the market itself is so hobbled by regulations that very little if any useful economic activity is actually occurring.
Since this is Slashdot I will indulge myself with reference to a Star Trek episode to illustrate my point. In the two-part Voyager episode Year of Hell the protagonist, Annorax of the Krenim Imperium, constructs a temporal weapons ship which allows him to erase anything from individual molecules to entire civilizations from history in a "temporal incursion". He subsequently spends two centuries with incursion after incursion and ever more complex calculations attempting to make good the effects of his previous incursions in a never ending quest to restore everything that he had lost when he began meddling with the timeline.
Government interference in the marketplace is analogous in that if we could only calculate exactly how much to tax and which policy to enact then everything would work out perfectly except that it never seems to work out that way here in reality. Each incursion into the marketplace requires additional incursions in a never ending game of whack-a-mole. It has always been tempting, for both the government and investors, to believe that they can calculate and predict every event and variable in an extremely complicated market system full of millions and even billions of individuals all acting differently and simultaneously in both rational and irrational ways. IMHO, it is best to let the chips fall where the may and limit government responses to reactive rather than proactive remedies.
There is only one problem: Colin Powell has publicly stated on numerous prior occasions that he will not stand as a candidate for executive office.