1) These conditions may change at any time, for any reason or none, with or without notice, at the sole discretion of Society as embodied by the Government
2) In case of violation of this contract by Society as embodied by the Government, the terms shall have been deemed to have changed to bring the Government into compliance.
IOW, the "Social Contract" is merely a flowery justification for absolute rule.
Part of what the police do is they stop anybody who they see riding around on bikes. They stop the people to figure out who they are and what they are doing in the neighborhood. On one hand, doing so is probably a violation of some "inherent rights." On the other hand, the police are doing what they need to do to reduce the number of convincted criminals running around the neighborhood.
Yeah. Fourth amendment, search and seizure. It's been badly watered down by the courts, but even under current standards, riding a bike isn't sufficient "reasonable suspicion" to stop someone. A policy where the cops stop you for no reason and demand you explain your presence is one of the hallmarks of a police state. Particularly if they stop and search you (Terry search).
Obviously, it isn't helping too much, because it's still a "bad neighborhood". All it's really done is add one more gang to those involved in "gang intimidation".
The trick is finding a way to make sure there's a high enough percentage of tyrant blood in the mix. Patriots dying (or rotting indefinitely at Guantanemo) for no return doesn't help at all.
Actually, _The Lord of the Rings_ was public domain in the United States for quite a while, due to some technical mistake. The copyright was RESTORED after Tolkien's death, and the courts ruled that taking works out of the public domain was perfectly legal.
also what nimrod parent allows unfettered and unmonitored internet access for a child?
Most middle class and higher parents in the US nowadays, I'd wager. Perhaps fewer if you don't count teenagers, but still quite a lot. BTW, if you have an unfettered Internet connection, you might want to google "nimrod"; in general it's not an insult, and Bugs use of it as such was sarcastic.
If you can find noise with a constant-frequency component on those vinyl platters of yours, you should be able to do it yourself. First filter out everything but that noise component. Then, figure out what the frequency of that noise component should be. If you know what the noise is (e.g. hum from the recording equipment, which would be some harmonic of 60Hz) you can figure it out from that, otherwise you can use other techniques like measuring the noise component at a period in the recording the music is undistorted, or taking an average in the case of a periodic distortion. Now resample the noise so that its frequency is correct (e.g. using a DPLL to determine the sampling frequency). Then resample the original signal using the same sampling.
Except they screwed up the forensics on the blood on the pillar, so they can't tell if it's Nina's or not. Further, when it was found, 9 days after Nina's disappearance, it was "nice shiny red blood". I don't know about your blood, but 9 days after leaving my body mine won't be a nice shiny red anymore. More like a dull mottled reddish-brown. Actually it gets that way within hours.
Knowing a blood stain "6 inches wide" doesn't say much either. Is it a 6 inch circle (which would be a lot of blood), or a mere streak 6 inches long and 0.5mm wide?
The stuff in the email about threats is Nina's words and Nina's interpretation. It may even be a deliberate lie; Nina could have known it could be subpoenaed and used later in court proceedings. Certainly it wouldn't be the first time there was a false accusation of abuse or threats in a divorce and custody case.
Your response to it that it indicates Hans Reiser's guilt demonstrates why the judge felt it was prejudicial.
With a car, if I lose my keys or someone gums up the locks, the key can be recovered or the locks fixed for a modest cost. If the keys to strongly encrypted data are lost, the data may as well be gone.
Which means that sometimes it makes a lot of sense not to encrypt. People lose and forget passwords all the time. Even if you have a system for managing the keys, it can still be screwed up accidentally or deliberately. Much of the time, keeping the data intact is more important than keeping it secure. Consider the Microsoft Windows source. If that were to get out, how much would that harm Microsoft? Not much, IMO. Now consider if it were to be kept encrypted at all times, including backups, and the key was somehow lost... THAT would harm them a lot more.
Actually, I'm curious why the only two coherent posts at the time of this writing are jumping to the defense of this patent; one of them noting that he hasn't read the link but that nonetheless "it sounds like this patent might actually be a reasonable one". Normally everyone would be jumping in with thoughts like "Isn't a washing machine prior art?"
Probably because the patent isn't for "A mechanism to remove soil from clothing by agitation in an aqueous surfactant solution".
Or, because unlike software patents, most slashdot users aren't and don't pretend to be familiar with the details of semiconductor design. So even if it is as obvious (to those skilled in the art of semiconductor design) and non-novel as the typical software patent, it isn't obvious to the typical slashdotter.
regular drinking alcohol (i.e. 40-45% by volume) will not ignite if you put a match to it. It requires pre-heating an strong flame source to get it to burn. (Try making a molotov cocktail with room temp vodka, a rag and a match and you won't get very far).
Anything 100 proof or higher will ignite. Bacardi dark rum is available in duty free and is well over 100 proof.
A term used mostly as a talisman against liberty. But one which cannot justify government paternalism. Contracts, after all, are among peers, not between parent and child.
The truth is, adults are just as stupid.
And so we have angels in the form of politicians to govern us?
"can there ever have been a more empty and worthless cause than fighting for the right for artists not to be paid?"
Didn't Slashdot just report about the RIAA doing just that?
People used to campaign to make everyone better off, to raise everyone higher. Now they campaign to make talented people worse off. The anti-copyright nuts will disappear up their own backsides eventually, I just wonder how much damage they'll do before they feck off.
Copyright's terms have been increased (Bono), its subject matter expanded (DMCA and other laws), penalties for infringement increased (NET act), secondary protections added (DMCA), and vicarious liability widened (Grokster). Just what sort of damage do you think "anti-copyright nuts" are doing? If there's any damage going on, it's the unlimited-copyright nuts doing it.
Has the speaker become a fascist/authoritarian/neo con? Or have they grown up and realized that they have a responsibility to the child to be a parent rather than a friend?
The government is not mother. The government is not father. When the government starts acting as if it is a parent to its citizens, it IS authoritarianism.
If you go through the numbers for charge time and power on the Tesla site and press reports (70A @ 220V for 3.5 hours to go from flat to full), and the DOE number on CO2 produced per kWh for coal plants, you can figure CO2 emissions from a Tesla roadster powered entirely by coal-derived electricity. It ends up being considerably better ordinary gasoline automobiles.
However, there's a bunch of caveats there. 1) It depends on the range being what Tesla says it is, in the production model. 2) It depends on new batteries. Loss of charging efficiency or increase in self-discharge with age is possible. (Loss of capacity is inevitable, but doesn't affect efficiency directly) 3) It ignores transmission and distribution losses. I think these are fairly small nowadays, though. 4) The Tesla is a tiny car built on a Lotus Elise chassis. It may not scale well.
No, the other stuff has NOT been around for 30 years. Government ID requirements for domestic flights are post 9/11. Legally authorized police roadblocks without specific cause are 1980s era,-- the Supreme Court didn't bless them until 1990. Driver's licenses have been around for a while, but even they haven't been around "always" -- new technology (the automobile) was used as an excuse to impose new restrictions.
I doubt that there are very many people here who don't already have to "card in" to do most of that stuff already. I already have to show my employee ID to get into work, many students and teachers at schools also have school ID's, you already have to show an ID to fly, etc. And God help you if you get pulled over by a cop or stopped at a roadblock and don't have at least three or four forms of "papers" (in my state we have to show license, registration, plates, proof of insurance, and blow into a breathalyzer if they want to really fuck with you).
Ironically, you're actually providing a reason that the slippery slope argument, despite its lack of logical rigor, is often quite accurate.
You see, we haven't ALWAYS had those things. Showing an ID to fly -- recent. Roadblocks to check for papers -- recent. Student and teacher IDs -- recent. Now you're implicitly using those steps down the road to justify this next step. THAT is one of the mechanisms by which the slippery slope works.
The federal ID debate is simply a matter of how much we want to centralize it.
Or, as the old joke goes "We've established that, now we're just haggling over the price".
Communism according to Marx is the small town writ large. That's it. No magic, no huge government aparatus, no secret police, it's just the idea that as we evolve as a society we will find a way to interact economically with each other in a billion person city the way we did when we had a town of 20 and we knew everyone. It's basically ethics without observation.
If Marx actually said that, he never saw politics in a small town. There's plenty of observation -- typified by Heinlein's "Mrs. Grundy", the old biddy with nothing better to do than check on her neighbor's doings, and go to council meetings to complain about them. And government business gets done based on personal relationships and (yes) kickbacks.
Sorry to interrupt your diatribe against THE MAN, but as I recall Al Capone was a gangster, the man behind the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. And yet you would compare this with a trade body that tries to protect its revenue model and earn money from selling music?
Hmm
Al Capone: Provided a quality product against the government's objections.
RIAA: Provides crap with the government's assistance.
Al Capone: Kills competitors (either himself or through his direct subordinates)
RIAA: Kills competition (collusion, price-fixing), bankrupts people through the legal system, gets laws passed to put geeks in pound-me-in-the-ass Federal Prison for writing software.
Get some fucking perspective. Yes the RIAA act like idiots and have questionable morals, but this adolescent whining that compares them to real violent criminals who kill, torture and maim people just totally discredits the entire argument, and makes people opposed to the RIAA look like dorks.
Their eagerness to get criminal laws passed to accomplish their objectives means that the difference between them and Capone is that they use more intermediaries.
Slashdot Mirror
The key clauses of the "social contract" are
1) These conditions may change at any time, for any reason or none, with or without notice, at the sole discretion of Society as embodied by the Government
2) In case of violation of this contract by Society as embodied by the Government, the terms shall have been deemed to have changed to bring the Government into compliance.
IOW, the "Social Contract" is merely a flowery justification for absolute rule.
Yeah. Fourth amendment, search and seizure. It's been badly watered down by the courts, but even under current standards, riding a bike isn't sufficient "reasonable suspicion" to stop someone. A policy where the cops stop you for no reason and demand you explain your presence is one of the hallmarks of a police state. Particularly if they stop and search you (Terry search).
Obviously, it isn't helping too much, because it's still a "bad neighborhood". All it's really done is add one more gang to those involved in "gang intimidation".
The trick is finding a way to make sure there's a high enough percentage of tyrant blood in the mix. Patriots dying (or rotting indefinitely at Guantanemo) for no return doesn't help at all.
Most genre fiction is crap (Sturgeon's law), and pretty much all literary fiction written since there was a distinction is crap.
Actually, _The Lord of the Rings_ was public domain in the United States for quite a while, due to some technical mistake. The copyright was RESTORED after Tolkien's death, and the courts ruled that taking works out of the public domain was perfectly legal.
If you can find noise with a constant-frequency component on those vinyl platters of yours, you should be able to do it yourself. First filter out everything but that noise component. Then, figure out what the frequency of that noise component should be. If you know what the noise is (e.g. hum from the recording equipment, which would be some harmonic of 60Hz) you can figure it out from that, otherwise you can use other techniques like measuring the noise component at a period in the recording the music is undistorted, or taking an average in the case of a periodic distortion. Now resample the noise so that its frequency is correct (e.g. using a DPLL to determine the sampling frequency). Then resample the original signal using the same sampling.
Well, if he murdered her, he's good at computers AND at hiding bodies.
Except they screwed up the forensics on the blood on the pillar, so they can't tell if it's Nina's or not. Further, when it was found, 9 days after Nina's disappearance, it was "nice shiny red blood". I don't know about your blood, but 9 days after leaving my body mine won't be a nice shiny red anymore. More like a dull mottled reddish-brown. Actually it gets that way within hours.
Knowing a blood stain "6 inches wide" doesn't say much either. Is it a 6 inch circle (which would be a lot of blood), or a mere streak 6 inches long and 0.5mm wide?
The stuff in the email about threats is Nina's words and Nina's interpretation. It may even be a deliberate lie; Nina could have known it could be subpoenaed and used later in court proceedings. Certainly it wouldn't be the first time there was a false accusation of abuse or threats in a divorce and custody case. Your response to it that it indicates Hans Reiser's guilt demonstrates why the judge felt it was prejudicial.
With a car, if I lose my keys or someone gums up the locks, the key can be recovered or the locks fixed for a modest cost. If the keys to strongly encrypted data are lost, the data may as well be gone.
Which means that sometimes it makes a lot of sense not to encrypt. People lose and forget passwords all the time. Even if you have a system for managing the keys, it can still be screwed up accidentally or deliberately. Much of the time, keeping the data intact is more important than keeping it secure. Consider the Microsoft Windows source. If that were to get out, how much would that harm Microsoft? Not much, IMO. Now consider if it were to be kept encrypted at all times, including backups, and the key was somehow lost... THAT would harm them a lot more.
Probably because the patent isn't for "A mechanism to remove soil from clothing by agitation in an aqueous surfactant solution".
Or, because unlike software patents, most slashdot users aren't and don't pretend to be familiar with the details of semiconductor design. So even if it is as obvious (to those skilled in the art of semiconductor design) and non-novel as the typical software patent, it isn't obvious to the typical slashdotter.
If you go through the numbers for charge time and power on the Tesla site and press reports (70A @ 220V for 3.5 hours to go from flat to full), and the DOE number on CO2 produced per kWh for coal plants, you can figure CO2 emissions from a Tesla roadster powered entirely by coal-derived electricity. It ends up being considerably better ordinary gasoline automobiles.
However, there's a bunch of caveats there.
1) It depends on the range being what Tesla says it is, in the production model.
2) It depends on new batteries. Loss of charging efficiency or increase in self-discharge with age is possible. (Loss of capacity is inevitable, but doesn't affect efficiency directly)
3) It ignores transmission and distribution losses. I think these are fairly small nowadays, though.
4) The Tesla is a tiny car built on a Lotus Elise chassis. It may not scale well.
The charging efficiency of NiMh is absolutely abominable compared to LiIon. Using NiMh is throwing power in the toilet.
No, the other stuff has NOT been around for 30 years. Government ID requirements for domestic flights are post 9/11. Legally authorized police roadblocks without specific cause are 1980s era,-- the Supreme Court didn't bless them until 1990. Driver's licenses have been around for a while, but even they haven't been around "always" -- new technology (the automobile) was used as an excuse to impose new restrictions.
If Marx actually said that, he never saw politics in a small town. There's plenty of observation -- typified by Heinlein's "Mrs. Grundy", the old biddy with nothing better to do than check on her neighbor's doings, and go to council meetings to complain about them. And government business gets done based on personal relationships and (yes) kickbacks.
Hmm
Al Capone: Provided a quality product against the government's objections.
RIAA: Provides crap with the government's assistance.
Al Capone: Kills competitors (either himself or through his direct subordinates)
RIAA: Kills competition (collusion, price-fixing), bankrupts people through the legal system, gets laws passed to put geeks in pound-me-in-the-ass Federal Prison for writing software.
Their eagerness to get criminal laws passed to accomplish their objectives means that the difference between them and Capone is that they use more intermediaries.
Whether you care or not, whether a presidental candidate is divisive or likable has an impact on whether they can be elected.