Re:Wow! Who ever would have guessed that!?
on
You Are Not a Lawyer
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The question is, is it reasonable to believe that someone else put that file on your computer, or that a file named "Sympathy For The Devil.mp3" is not the Rolling Stone song. At first glance, I'd say that those assertions are not reasonable.
So it's not reasonable to believe that "Sympathy For The Devil.mp3" is an audiobook of Holly Lisle's novel by that name? The title enough, combined with the fame of the song, is sufficient to convict beyond reasonable doubt? That's harsh.
All this persecutor in the YANAL blog is saying is that there ain't no justice, and it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, innocent or guilty they can fuck up your life. That's true, but it doesn't really take a lawyer to know it -- or a non-lawyer not to.
Comparing a network layer protocol to a physical and data link layer one? That's good for a 6-month suspension of your geek card... turn it in, right now.
Every week now it seems there is a new target of our collective paranoia.
Yeah, we're all paranoid. There's no way we actually have enemies. The idea that large organizations would take it upon themselves to sue thousands of individuals based on the flimsiest of claims is ludicrous. The thought that a company might be selling our information to marketing firms -- or out-and-out criminals -- is insane. And certainly one large company would never co-operate with a large organization to avoid being sued over content from users who are not even paying them. Why, next we'll be claiming that the government and the phone company are conspiring to listen in on our phone calls... We should all just tear up our tinfoil hats and be happy, right?
You'll start hearing about "Newtonism" and "Einsteinism" the moment that some conservative (most likely religious) constituency realizes that modern physics challenges their worldview every bit as much as evolutionary biology. After all, Relativity is only a theory, and why should anyone listen to a guy who can't comb his hair properly?
The terms "Newtonian" and "Einsteinian" are used. Also "Galilean" and "Copernican", which had certain religious nuts in a frenzy as well.
Not only did they find and report to Congress that the "hockey stick" could not be reproduced, but also that the entire paleoclimate field had become isolated and often unwilling to share important data, or clarify their methodologies - in some cases claiming that a bad methodology was fine because the answer was correct anyway. MM's work was upheld, and the "hockey stick" was debunked.
The IPCC, though, and the "global warming consensus" people, still claim the hockey stick is valid and label anyone who says otherwise as a k00k and a denier.
To me, the most damning part of it is the feeding of "red noise" into the model and getting a hockey stick. If a model doesn't have the power to distinguish between the phenomenon you are looking for and noise, it's clearly worthless, and there should be no further argument about it.
Have a look at the calcs, but to run the whole of Australia using solar thermal for all energy including transport and electricity needs only 40 x 40 km in central Australia, and thats without any improvements to technology thats been proven since the early '80s.
But the environmentalists will oppose it because it messes up the habitat of some desert animal, or changes the albedo of the desert, or some other such thing. And they'll keep it tied up long enough that the investors will say "Fuck it, let's invest in some coal plants, at least they're the devil everyone knows".
While 75% of the time is by any standard WAY too often to be updating the program guide, 10 minutes a day is too little. To get 12 hours of ATSC program data takes an average of 1.5 minutes for each channel. And since programs change, you'll probably want to do this fairly frequently -- I'd say at least every three hours (which will get you a new guide table each time as well), and probably every hour would be desirable. Still, even assuming 10 channels, that's only 25% of the time, not 75% of the time.
Cable set-top boxes have it easier, since they get information on all the channels from a separate stream.
1) Gather ATM card information and duplicate cards 2) Pass them out to confederates (cashers) 3) Cashers withdraw money 4) ???? 5) Profit.
Or, in other words, why wouldn't the cashers just take the money and run, leaving the mastermind with nothing? Unless of course the mastermind was one (or more) of the cashers, and used the rest of the people to camouflage his own involvement.
Those geeks are going to get out of prison and wreak havoc.
Not bloody likely. If the RIAA has their way, those geeks are going to meet real (by their own definition) criminals in prison. Some of them (likely including myself) aren't going to be able to eat sufficient shit and will be killed by the other prisoners. Most of the others, when they get out, will be _broken_ by the experience, and will likely die young after slouching through a series of minimum wage jobs.
I'm going to bet that ESPN essentially isn't charging anything for this right now. Probably cable companies and Verizon get ESPN360 on the web as a sweetener along with ESPN on their cable/FIOS systems. They then hope to use this to force other ISPs to pay for it, and of course once they have it established they'll jack of the fees for the big players also.
I personally know gas station attendants and they say that this law makes them feel much safer and secure in their workplace. The only people that seem to be at a disadvantage (other than gas and go committers) are companies paying for upgrades and drivers changing their habits.
Hundreds of thousands of drivers are inconvenienced and hundreds of stations are made to pay for upgrades, so a few hundred gas station attendants can "feel" safer, all thanks to one incident which could have been resolved by the station in question following its own policy about the attendant staying in the booth.
What next, making restaurant patrons pre-pay for their meals so no employee is hurt if they get in the way of a dine-and-dash?
Bill Gates sometimes strikes me as the nerdy James-Bond-villan type that would invent some type of super-virus and release it on the world via mosquitoes.
I totally agree, except for your observation about all "named" laws being bad. Please look into "Grant's Law" if you want an example. The kid got dragged 7.5 km when trying to stop a gas and go. Now there is a law stating that all gas must be paid for ahead of time.
Step 2 is especially effective when the victim that could have been saved is a young, blonde haired, blue eyed white girl from an upper middle class family!
Please. We live in more enlightened times. Nobody would care any less if she was dark haired and dark skinned, provided she was still as hot as e.g. Halle Berry.
Publish the description of the protocol, in detail, along with any extensions or modifications you've thought up. Don't just chuck it up on some random website; publish it somewhere which is likely to stick around and be publicly noticable. If you put it up on Sun's Project Wonderland website that might be sufficient. The provisional application will protect you (in theory) from trolls who might read it and patent it themselves, and a year from first publication nobody (including you) will be able to patent it.
In fact the patent office is so broken that even if you actually get a patent, some troll might get a patent on it anyway. Nothing you can do about that, unfortunately.
While many here think China is a bit of a scoundrel for ripping off an aggressive price gouging monopolist, many would also remember that your Chinese Friends hold many many trillion dollars in US Treasuries, and should they yank them back home (or sell into Euros) in order to keep their country "afloat" then I'm afraid your skiting will look folly.
What do you mean "yank them back home"? There's no put option on those things. If they sell them for Euros, they drive down the dollar with respect to the Euro, screwing themselves (because they hold all those dollar-denominated securities) in the bargain.
Actually, they narrowed patent law back in the 70s, it's just the lower courts ignored their guidelines for years until the Supreme Court started overruling them.
I haven't seen one in patent law, but there's a few similar cases where the Supreme Court rhetorically rips the lower court judges new assholes for doing that. Always fun reading.
What if the children of the people you modified with night vision inherit the gene? Do they owe royalties?
We can do it like Plant Breeding Rights -- they don't get to reproduce without your permission.
Or, we can do it sensibly, and say that if you patent a part of a self-reproducing device (or organism), you lose patent protection in as much as that device or organisms normal reproductive methods are concerned.
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So it's not reasonable to believe that "Sympathy For The Devil.mp3" is an audiobook of Holly Lisle's novel by that name? The title enough, combined with the fame of the song, is sufficient to convict beyond reasonable doubt? That's harsh.
All this persecutor in the YANAL blog is saying is that there ain't no justice, and it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, innocent or guilty they can fuck up your life. That's true, but it doesn't really take a lawyer to know it -- or a non-lawyer not to.
Comparing a network layer protocol to a physical and data link layer one? That's good for a 6-month suspension of your geek card... turn it in, right now.
Yeah, we're all paranoid. There's no way we actually have enemies. The idea that large organizations would take it upon themselves to sue thousands of individuals based on the flimsiest of claims is ludicrous. The thought that a company might be selling our information to marketing firms -- or out-and-out criminals -- is insane. And certainly one large company would never co-operate with a large organization to avoid being sued over content from users who are not even paying them. Why, next we'll be claiming that the government and the phone company are conspiring to listen in on our phone calls... We should all just tear up our tinfoil hats and be happy, right?
The terms "Newtonian" and "Einsteinian" are used. Also "Galilean" and "Copernican", which had certain religious nuts in a frenzy as well.
Or they'll apply a patch which removes the limitation. Or install that pirated version of Windows 7 Ultimate instead.
Assuming there's any truth to this story, I'm guessing IE doesn't count as an app but Firefox does...
The IPCC, though, and the "global warming consensus" people, still claim the hockey stick is valid and label anyone who says otherwise as a k00k and a denier.
To me, the most damning part of it is the feeding of "red noise" into the model and getting a hockey stick. If a model doesn't have the power to distinguish between the phenomenon you are looking for and noise, it's clearly worthless, and there should be no further argument about it.
There were some rather dire predictions about the 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons.
But the environmentalists will oppose it because it messes up the habitat of some desert animal, or changes the albedo of the desert, or some other such thing. And they'll keep it tied up long enough that the investors will say "Fuck it, let's invest in some coal plants, at least they're the devil everyone knows".
While 75% of the time is by any standard WAY too often to be updating the program guide, 10 minutes a day is too little. To get 12 hours of ATSC program data takes an average of 1.5 minutes for each channel. And since programs change, you'll probably want to do this fairly frequently -- I'd say at least every three hours (which will get you a new guide table each time as well), and probably every hour would be desirable. Still, even assuming 10 channels, that's only 25% of the time, not 75% of the time.
Cable set-top boxes have it easier, since they get information on all the channels from a separate stream.
I think I see a problem here
1) Gather ATM card information and duplicate cards
2) Pass them out to confederates (cashers)
3) Cashers withdraw money
4) ????
5) Profit.
Or, in other words, why wouldn't the cashers just take the money and run, leaving the mastermind with nothing? Unless of course the mastermind was one (or more) of the cashers, and used the rest of the people to camouflage his own involvement.
Not bloody likely. If the RIAA has their way, those geeks are going to meet real (by their own definition) criminals in prison. Some of them (likely including myself) aren't going to be able to eat sufficient shit and will be killed by the other prisoners. Most of the others, when they get out, will be _broken_ by the experience, and will likely die young after slouching through a series of minimum wage jobs.
Utah's governor called the idea "almost Orwellian". He's almost right.
I'm going to bet that ESPN essentially isn't charging anything for this right now. Probably cable companies and Verizon get ESPN360 on the web as a sweetener along with ESPN on their cable/FIOS systems. They then hope to use this to force other ISPs to pay for it, and of course once they have it established they'll jack of the fees for the big players also.
Hundreds of thousands of drivers are inconvenienced and hundreds of stations are made to pay for upgrades, so a few hundred gas station attendants can "feel" safer, all thanks to one incident which could have been resolved by the station in question following its own policy about the attendant staying in the booth.
What next, making restaurant patrons pre-pay for their meals so no employee is hurt if they get in the way of a dine-and-dash?
People follow traffic regulations at all in Italy? I thought the only rule of Italian driving was "What's behind me, it does not matter".
Christopher Walken plays him in the movie.
Perfect example of a bad "named" law.
Please. We live in more enlightened times. Nobody would care any less if she was dark haired and dark skinned, provided she was still as hot as e.g. Halle Berry.
Just what creative element is AP claiming copyright of? The camera angle? Nothing else had anything to do with AP.
Publish the description of the protocol, in detail, along with any extensions or modifications you've thought up. Don't just chuck it up on some random website; publish it somewhere which is likely to stick around and be publicly noticable. If you put it up on Sun's Project Wonderland website that might be sufficient. The provisional application will protect you (in theory) from trolls who might read it and patent it themselves, and a year from first publication nobody (including you) will be able to patent it.
In fact the patent office is so broken that even if you actually get a patent, some troll might get a patent on it anyway. Nothing you can do about that, unfortunately.
What do you mean "yank them back home"? There's no put option on those things. If they sell them for Euros, they drive down the dollar with respect to the Euro, screwing themselves (because they hold all those dollar-denominated securities) in the bargain.
That's a rather large "if".
It's quite possible that if there is a moral issue behind copyright, it is one poorly modeled by copyright laws which make reproduction the issue.
Um, how would a lack of copyright protection stopped Stallman, the Berkeley Software Distribution, or Torvalds?
I haven't seen one in patent law, but there's a few similar cases where the Supreme Court rhetorically rips the lower court judges new assholes for doing that. Always fun reading.
We can do it like Plant Breeding Rights -- they don't get to reproduce without your permission.
Or, we can do it sensibly, and say that if you patent a part of a self-reproducing device (or organism), you lose patent protection in as much as that device or organisms normal reproductive methods are concerned.