Selective enforcement is part of the design as well, and speaks towards the parent topic. If the constituency wanted the laws to be different, they'd like vote people into power who passed those kinds of laws./blockquote.
Thank you Candide. All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Here's what I think would also slow people down in an educational way: A device reading the speed of vehicles (no camera needed), made very obvious, followed by a traffic light 50-80 meters further down the road which will turn red when someone passes the reading device at too high a speed. So that going at or below the speed limit is the fastest way to get through.
No, blowing the light is the fastest way to get through. Abusing traffic lights to enforce speed limits is a great way to get people to treat traffic lights with the same contempt they treat speed limits.
(Well, except in Philadelphia where they already DO)
Which, thanks to selective enforcement, let Mrs. Grundy complain about "that loud party" (a small gathering of about 5 people) next door at 9pm and get the cops over to intervene, but leave poor old deaf Mrs. Grundy free to blast her TV at midnight.
2) Indecency laws
Totally unnecessary. Seeing even the ugliest person uncovered isn't going to hurt you.
3) Intoxication laws
Ahh, the "no way home from the bar" laws. If you drive, you're DWI, if you walk or take transit you're publicly intoxicated.
Your first one in particular is a law that practically encourages jackassery.
You touched on it at the end of your comment, but my preferred solution is improved technology: is there a way to design roads and cars that can be safely navigated at the speeds people want to drive? Can we make a highway and a car both safe at 100 MPH?
Yes. We've already made them. Just about any car (not SUV or van) sold in America made by any company other than Hyundai, Kia, GM, or Chrysler (and some from those four). And most Interstate highways.
Some of the drivers are unsafe at any speed, but that's another story.
Of course, my idea of what an acceptable level of safety is differs from those of the NHTSA and of insurance companies. I'm willing to take on extra risk to drive faster, and I'm willing to take on extra risk to spend less time driving. And judging from their behavior, most of those around me are as well.
Though, complicating matters, risk versus speed is a roughly U-shaped curve... only the center of the U is NOT at the speed limit, nor even at the median speed; it's higher than the median speed. And furthermore, the sides of the U are sloped, and they are steeper on the DOWN side; it's riskier to drive 10mph below the safest speed than 10mph above.
It might be true that if you could move the entire curve to lower speeds, safety would improve. But essentially, you can't; people won't voluntarily slow down and draconian measures like speed cameras change the shape of the curve.
Those two terms aren't interchangeable. What you mention in the first sentence is not a defining aspect of Open Source, but is a defining aspect of Free Software.
Both Open Source (as defined by the Open Source Initiative) and Free Software (as defined by FSF) demand freedom to use and create derivative works.
Clearly it's good for a porn company when it's paying customers get fired for using their product when at work, and no longer have jobs to pay for their product.
Far fewer people get fired for viewing porn at work than actually view porn at work, so this is pretty thin.
Furthermore, make it easy and it won't be just corporate and k-12 networks blocking porn. College networks, hotels, and even ISPs will all block.xxx either completely, or by default and requiring payment to get it unblocked, under lawsuit or threat of lawsuit from the modern equivalents to the Moral Majority.
Gallons per day are better than barrels per day because nobody knows how big a barrel is.
My guess is that if you asked most people in the US to visualize a barrel of oil, they'd think about a 55 gallon drum. This is wrong, but it's not far from the actual 42 gallon barrel.
And just how fast do you imagine "real progress", with respect to the world use of oil, should proceed? I'm all for moving to next-gen fuels as the next guy---perhaps more than the next guy, as I'm part of the slashdot crowd---but seeing as how the world economically is virtually tethered to oil use, I'd prefer the approach that doesn't lead to chaos overnight.
And who says the "next-gen" fuels won't have equivalent dangers, once some are found which will scale to what oil use is today?
secondly degrading to society, who turn sex into the end-goal of life.
A zygote is a gamete's way of making more gametes; sex is a vital part of that process; while not the end goal (I don't think there is one), it's on the critical path.
Sure, lots of other sites will still make it available, but if you're a legitimate porn seller I would expect you to want to be supporting filtering as best you can. If people really don't want to (or shouldn't) be seeing your content right now, then you don't want them to.
Right. Sure. Porn sellers love it when their prospective customers can't see their content because some intermediary decided the customers "shouldn't" be seeing it.
Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the.xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?
Makes the censors jobs easier in the US. They get laws passed to force porn into the.xxx ghetto (which will pass review as a time/place/manner restriction), and then depend on ISPs, corporations, educational institutions, etc, to actually do the blocking, thus putting it beyond legal review.
BS. I *must* publish my data and methods in all my papers. Why don't they? Why do they get special treatment?
Because your methods applied to your data produce your results. Since theirs don't, it would be highly unfair to make them provide the data and the methods; it would give away the whole game.
Easily guessable passwords are real, as tons of other slashdot stories remind us. Of course, they often can't be quite that simple, because of password security rules. But that could lead to a new Hollywood password cracking scheme:
Geek Hero: Try "password" Hot Girl at Keyboard: That'll never work, they've got strict password rules at EvilTech GH: What are they? HG: Has to be at least 8 characters including upper and lower case, at least one but not more than two numbers, and exactly one special character. Can't contain a dictionary word or abbreviation in any of 87 languages, including !Kung and Klingon, nor can the numbers be a day of the month or of special significance nor... GH: Stop right there, there's only one password which matches those rules... try this... HG: We're In!
That's not true. You can have multiple concurrent patents on the same thing that all expire on the same day. You can also have improvement patents or patents on different ways of doing things. But then it's not "the same thing".
You can have multiple patents which cover the same thing, expiring on different dates, some even applied for after the expiration of the previous one. This is not supposed to happen, but it does.
This also is not true. Any small difference between the prior art and the patent means that the prior art does not anticipate the patent. Any small difference between the accused infringing device and the patent claims means that the accused device does not literally infringe the claims. However, the prior art may still teach or suggest the patent and render it obvious, and the accused device may infringe through the doctrine of equivalents if the differences are minor.
The doctrine of equivalents is applied so broadly and obviousness so narrowly that what I said is the case in practice. Particularly not once the patent is granted and has a presumption of validity in its favor.
The question that occurs to me is "How does it scan for sensitive information without revealing it?". That is, these regular expressions must contain strings which are uniquely (or nearly) found in sensitive information. Thus they, themselves, are very likely sensitive. And the agents containing them are running on computers which aren't supposed to contain sensitive information.
If all the sensitive information is marked by caveats which are not, themselves, sensitive (e.g. "IBM Confidential"), and you're only worried about whole documents, you can get around that. But that's not the most common case, I don't think.
Hitachi/Fujitsu sued LG back in 2007. LG have always been ruthless in not caring about patents.
ROTFL. The linked article notes that LG sued Hitachi, not the other way around. And of course LG (and AUO and Hitachi and Samsung and all the rest) don't care about the other guy's patents; they don't even know about them. They're all working on similar products from the technological base, with engineers and researchers with similar education and experience; it would be a great surprise if there wasn't a lot of overlap. Particularly since their patent lawyers write the patents as broadly as possible (and often in obfuscating language) while still getting past the various patent offices (not a high bar!). No one is going around reading anyone else's patent filings for ideas.
You know, I keep hearing 'abolition patents' said over and over, but considering the current system, for all its problems, does actually function... I've yet to hear any really compelling reason to abolish it.
Everytime a patent troll gets someone the company takes a hit, redesigns the product to not get hit by the patent and moves on. Patent trolls really do actually inspire invention just from trying to get away from the bastards.
Broken window fallacy. And you're ignoring all the companies where the company or product took a hit and burned to the waterline. And all the companies and products which were never brought past the concept stage for fear of infringement.
It's not just the superfreakonomics guys who make the albedo argument. But it's stupid even not accounting for CO2. Because a 1MW solar thermal plant which is 30% efficient adds to the environment the same amount of heat (3.3 MW) as a 1MW coal plant which is 30% efficient -- and that's assuming you build the plant on a previously perfectly reflective surface. Any solar energy which would have been absorbed anyway is gravy.
1. All patents cease to have proprietary ownership 20 years after their filing date. Thus some will easily go out of date in the next 5-10 years.
Would work if the patent office was competent. They're not; they're happy to accept multiple patents on the same thing (there were at least two LZW patents, and run length encoding has been patented many times).
3. ANY patent may be challenged by showing prior art that is demonstrable from a date prior to the patent filing and paying a small nominal fee for reexamination. This is the "silent patent killer" that every patent holder fears. This can come from a published piece of information from ANYWHERE in the world. It can come from privately developed and non-public sources, too, if it can be substantiated, if I remember right (such as in an invenstion documentation book).
When a prior art claim is evaluated, the standards are ridiculously stringent. Any small difference between the prior art and the patent means the patent stands. On the other hand, when a device is evaluated for infringement, the standards are quite broad; little differences don't count.
6. Any open source creator for something like a video codec better have one heck of a good patent attorney firm that can give real world advice on patents from day one.
The only advice the attorney would give is "don't". There's no point in consulting a lawyer unless you _want_ to kill the deal.
That is a square in the Arizona desert 173421 meters wide (just over a hundred miles).
Oh, but solar thermal might harm the fragile desert ecosystem, and furthermore reduce the albedo of the desert leading to global waming.
(I used to joke about environmentalists complaining about reducing the albedo of the desert, but now some actually have, though simple math shows those environmentalists are idiots. Of course the real problem with solar thermal from an environmentalist point of view is it might actually work.)
By suing hyperviser vendors who release software that does not explicitly check for Apple hardware? Such a thing would not exactly be out of character for Apple...
No, but the DMCA specifically does not require such checks -- 17 USC 1201(c)(3). So a well-funded vendor would have a chance to win, perhaps even in summary judgement, should they find the profit potential great enough.
*sigh* First you bitch and moan about how everyone should encrypt everything on their computers and brag about how easy it is to do full-partition encryption and how it's oh so fucking great that there's encryption around to protect you from the sp00ks and boogeymen that dadgum gummint apparently sends after you every day (oooo, scaaaaaaary!).
Who is this "we", kemosabe? I don't claim you should encrypt everything on your computer (though I'd like ubiquitous end-to-end encryption for email). I know darned well it slows things down and increases the risk of data loss.
Now a hospital network is another story; the information there really _is_ sensitive enough to demand encryption on any portable or luggable device. Unless there's parts of the hospital network where users don't need access to patient data (e.g. a marketing department as suggested above), in which case that network should be partitioned off from the one with the patient data.
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No, blowing the light is the fastest way to get through. Abusing traffic lights to enforce speed limits is a great way to get people to treat traffic lights with the same contempt they treat speed limits.
(Well, except in Philadelphia where they already DO)
Which, thanks to selective enforcement, let Mrs. Grundy complain about "that loud party" (a small gathering of about 5 people) next door at 9pm and get the cops over to intervene, but leave poor old deaf Mrs. Grundy free to blast her TV at midnight.
Totally unnecessary. Seeing even the ugliest person uncovered isn't going to hurt you.
Ahh, the "no way home from the bar" laws. If you drive, you're DWI, if you walk or take transit you're publicly intoxicated.
Your first one in particular is a law that practically encourages jackassery.
Yes. We've already made them. Just about any car (not SUV or van) sold in America made by any company other than Hyundai, Kia, GM, or Chrysler (and some from those four). And most Interstate highways.
Some of the drivers are unsafe at any speed, but that's another story.
Of course, my idea of what an acceptable level of safety is differs from those of the NHTSA and of insurance companies. I'm willing to take on extra risk to drive faster, and I'm willing to take on extra risk to spend less time driving. And judging from their behavior, most of those around me are as well.
Though, complicating matters, risk versus speed is a roughly U-shaped curve... only the center of the U is NOT at the speed limit, nor even at the median speed; it's higher than the median speed. And furthermore, the sides of the U are sloped, and they are steeper on the DOWN side; it's riskier to drive 10mph below the safest speed than 10mph above.
It might be true that if you could move the entire curve to lower speeds, safety would improve. But essentially, you can't; people won't voluntarily slow down and draconian measures like speed cameras change the shape of the curve.
Both Open Source (as defined by the Open Source Initiative) and Free Software (as defined by FSF) demand freedom to use and create derivative works.
Far fewer people get fired for viewing porn at work than actually view porn at work, so this is pretty thin.
Furthermore, make it easy and it won't be just corporate and k-12 networks blocking porn. College networks, hotels, and even ISPs will all block .xxx either completely, or by default and requiring payment to get it unblocked, under lawsuit or threat of lawsuit from the modern equivalents to the Moral Majority.
My guess is that if you asked most people in the US to visualize a barrel of oil, they'd think about a 55 gallon drum. This is wrong, but it's not far from the actual 42 gallon barrel.
And who says the "next-gen" fuels won't have equivalent dangers, once some are found which will scale to what oil use is today?
A zygote is a gamete's way of making more gametes; sex is a vital part of that process; while not the end goal (I don't think there is one), it's on the critical path.
Right. Sure. Porn sellers love it when their prospective customers can't see their content because some intermediary decided the customers "shouldn't" be seeing it.
The porn industry should be used to strange bedfellows.
Makes the censors jobs easier in the US. They get laws passed to force porn into the .xxx ghetto (which will pass review as a time/place/manner restriction), and then depend on ISPs, corporations, educational institutions, etc, to actually do the blocking, thus putting it beyond legal review.
Because your methods applied to your data produce your results. Since theirs don't, it would be highly unfair to make them provide the data and the methods; it would give away the whole game.
Easily guessable passwords are real, as tons of other slashdot stories remind us. Of course, they often can't be quite that simple, because of password security rules. But that could lead to a new Hollywood password cracking scheme:
Geek Hero: Try "password"
Hot Girl at Keyboard: That'll never work, they've got strict password rules at EvilTech
GH: What are they?
HG: Has to be at least 8 characters including upper and lower case, at least one but not more than two numbers, and exactly one special character. Can't contain a dictionary word or abbreviation in any of 87 languages, including !Kung and Klingon, nor can the numbers be a day of the month or of special significance nor...
GH: Stop right there, there's only one password which matches those rules... try this...
HG: We're In!
You can have multiple patents which cover the same thing, expiring on different dates, some even applied for after the expiration of the previous one. This is not supposed to happen, but it does.
The doctrine of equivalents is applied so broadly and obviousness so narrowly that what I said is the case in practice. Particularly not once the patent is granted and has a presumption of validity in its favor.
The question that occurs to me is "How does it scan for sensitive information without revealing it?". That is, these regular expressions must contain strings which are uniquely (or nearly) found in sensitive information. Thus they, themselves, are very likely sensitive. And the agents containing them are running on computers which aren't supposed to contain sensitive information.
If all the sensitive information is marked by caveats which are not, themselves, sensitive (e.g. "IBM Confidential"), and you're only worried about whole documents, you can get around that. But that's not the most common case, I don't think.
So work base 250, or base 62500. Oh, wait, IBM has a patent on that.
ROTFL. The linked article notes that LG sued Hitachi, not the other way around. And of course LG (and AUO and Hitachi and Samsung and all the rest) don't care about the other guy's patents; they don't even know about them. They're all working on similar products from the technological base, with engineers and researchers with similar education and experience; it would be a great surprise if there wasn't a lot of overlap. Particularly since their patent lawyers write the patents as broadly as possible (and often in obfuscating language) while still getting past the various patent offices (not a high bar!). No one is going around reading anyone else's patent filings for ideas.
Broken window fallacy. And you're ignoring all the companies where the company or product took a hit and burned to the waterline. And all the companies and products which were never brought past the concept stage for fear of infringement.
It's not just the superfreakonomics guys who make the albedo argument. But it's stupid even not accounting for CO2. Because a 1MW solar thermal plant which is 30% efficient adds to the environment the same amount of heat (3.3 MW) as a 1MW coal plant which is 30% efficient -- and that's assuming you build the plant on a previously perfectly reflective surface. Any solar energy which would have been absorbed anyway is gravy.
Would work if the patent office was competent. They're not; they're happy to accept multiple patents on the same thing (there were at least two LZW patents, and run length encoding has been patented many times).
When a prior art claim is evaluated, the standards are ridiculously stringent. Any small difference between the prior art and the patent means the patent stands. On the other hand, when a device is evaluated for infringement, the standards are quite broad; little differences don't count.
The only advice the attorney would give is "don't". There's no point in consulting a lawyer unless you _want_ to kill the deal.
Oh, but solar thermal might harm the fragile desert ecosystem, and furthermore reduce the albedo of the desert leading to global waming.
(I used to joke about environmentalists complaining about reducing the albedo of the desert, but now some actually have, though simple math shows those environmentalists are idiots. Of course the real problem with solar thermal from an environmentalist point of view is it might actually work.)
No, but the DMCA specifically does not require such checks -- 17 USC 1201(c)(3). So a well-funded vendor would have a chance to win, perhaps even in summary judgement, should they find the profit potential great enough.
Who is this "we", kemosabe? I don't claim you should encrypt everything on your computer (though I'd like ubiquitous end-to-end encryption for email). I know darned well it slows things down and increases the risk of data loss.
Now a hospital network is another story; the information there really _is_ sensitive enough to demand encryption on any portable or luggable device. Unless there's parts of the hospital network where users don't need access to patient data (e.g. a marketing department as suggested above), in which case that network should be partitioned off from the one with the patient data.
Except September did end. Newbies on Usenet aren't a problem anymore. The problem now is it's late December for Usenet and there ain't no next year.