*My* point was that the laws in this country sometimes, and IMO oftentimes, need to be slapped down as either irrelevant, inconsistent or outright stupid. Yes, the courts have to work inside their legislative boundaries; but that is one of the things that has produced a lot of really stupid and consistently upheld laws in our country, no?
Perhaps we need to educate our legislators better...if we don't, we may end up with revolution. Did the people opposing the British tea tax think they were represented fairly? Did they try to get it changed? Read some history...
If courts stuck to the boundaries you present, then none of the laws that he presented would have been struck down, would they? It took a lot of work (with unfortunately a lot of protest and considerable amount of violence) to strike down the laws he presented.
I do try to elect different representatives. I try to vote for people who recommend common sense rather then more legislation - we already have enough; and what we don't have, civil courts should be able to cover, if the judges had some bloody sense. (spilled hot coffee in your lap recently? Whose fault was it? Has your wife blown you recently? What state do you live in?) Unfortunately people like that are getting very rare - especially in the pol parties who have the majority vote.
I'm not trolling here, but have you considered how much time some of these scientists have spent on these projects? In some cases it is a large part of their lives...and they don't want to give up working on this either because it's one of the few grants they have or because they think it might still produce startling results (look at some of the longrange results of the Pioneer projects such as indications of another force opposing gravity).
What it comes down to is that the deeper we look at the universe, the closer we get to the things we don't know, the harder and longer we are going to have to look. That means in many cases projects that won't finish for decades and the implications of the data found there may not be understood for decades or centuries, if ever.
1) Money to pay the people operating the equipment which monitors the sats 2) Maintenance on the above equipment. 3) Programmers and engineers to watch for breakdowns in the satellites. 4) Research on the actual data produced.
"If the starving people in the world put half as much effort into finding food"
This comment does not display genius at all. If the aforesaid starving people in this world *were not* putting effort into finding food, they wouldn't be starving, they'd be dead!
You are obviously a young, rich, inexperienced plebe. (Not name calling either). The rich execs and lawyers pushing these mandates on CP are protecting their pocketbooks at the expense of everyone else - and I would hardly call entertainment a mission critical industry.
For an example of a band that really did rise from it's hard work and dedication to it's fans, rather than huge marketing and advertising ploys, try the Grateful Dead. They even had sense enough to know that searching people for tape recorders before shows might turn off their fans. (one reason why they were so popular, erm?)
No offense, really, but you need to open your eyes. Your comment reminds me of the time in college years ago when a saleswoman knocked at my apartment door (a low rent but still pretty nice place) and in the course of the conversation waved around her and said "I can't believe people can live like this." I simply stared at her for several seconds and then pointed out that *most* people can't afford BMW's (what she was driving) nor $200 suits, but worked hard simply to eat and have heat. She walked away totally non-plussed.
Can you say "sheltered life"?
Let's see how you like it, "PhysicsGenius", when you can't play the radio in your equipment lab because the A-D converters you're using in your experiments shut down....
Great point...which would mean the US Customs Officers would get even busier than they are now, which would draw their attention away from stopping the real terrorists, gun and drug smugglers.
Which makes Hollywood's legislation an *assistance* to terrorists.
You would think that Customs dept would be fighting this tooth and nail.
Only way I can think of is to clone Weber and train his clone thoroughly.....*sigh* waiting for War Of Honor, but so far the sample chapters at Baen's Bar haven't been...well, great. Good, yes. Great, no.
I *shudder* when I think of Hollywood producing a Honor Harrington movie. It could be done very well, but I don't see a single director or company that I think could do it.
If the special effects were as good as AOTC's tho it could be a superb experience as action/adventure...but the subtleties of HH would be tough for our current crop of scriptwriters, IMHO.
SB Agree completely about Spidey vs. AOTC. So did the audiences in all the showings I've been to so far. Mostly after Spidey they were talking about the bad theater seats, after AOTC (four showings so far) they were talking about Yoda. Heh.
Same problem; still public. I've seen people using the keypads for their welfare cards and trucking company cards (in the US) and most of these people are not,uh, the fastest keypad operators in the world. Easy to follow their number if I cared to.
But all the posts on here about fingerprints + PIN/password misses one thing:
How are you going to pass the PIN/psw to the cashier?
As I see it, there are two choices: Either you say it (out loud) or pass it to the cashier on a piece of paper. (Let's ignore cracking the store's database for the moment)
Either way exposes your PIN/psw to the public. If someone else is listening/watching...then they follow you to a restaurant or wherever, get your fingerprint from the glass you drank from, duplicate it (from the article) and you're done.
Ok, so let's close the cashier booths in soundproof, opaque walls and close out the public at large.
So what guarantees the cashier is honest? Employee theft is one of the biggest problems in chain stores.
I knew there's a good reason I will always pay cash for merchandise...be it groceries, or whatever.
Another point I might make to those who pointed out that we have more than one finger: take a magnifying glass sometime and compare fingerprints/toeprints. In most people, they are identical, or nearly so. Even assuming they aren't, if you're rich enough, there's a lot of incentive for some criminal punk to keep nailing you (ten times...) until he has your identity stolen - for life.
(Sir, please take off a shoe and sock, so we can verify it's you...seems someone has been using your fingerprint info) Oh, that'd go over Really, Really Good. *sigh*
Ignoring All Of The Above, if the database run by the local store's sysadmin (min wage or nearly so) is cracked, you're screwed. Totally.
Let's just hope that this sort of tech doesn't become commonplace.
One word. Cash. Cash is a good thing. Barter is better. (92 cents to produce a dollar bill - need I say more?)
The absolute irony of this is how little attention was paid to the actual practices of the Kuwaiti government during the Gulf War. Oh, the prime media said, we're over there to protect "freedom".
I remember thinking to myself "Bullshit".
It was about oil, and our access to it, pure and simple. The US government was afraid that Iraq would continue to gobble up other countries in the Middle East and cause oil prices to soar, thereby limiting the ability of Americans to waste it. Hypocrites.
"The Founding Fathers thought that it would be acceptible to have a free press exactly because "not just anyone" could publish!
In today's world of computers and Britney Spears, anyone can publish. Therefore, the rules need to change"
I disagree. Everyone should be free to publish. I am free to publish - ie, post on Slashdot, which is the same thing. You are also free not to read it.
If laws were enacted that limited who could publish and who could not, they would quickly to be turned to limiting the freedom of those who have important things to say, simply because somebody else disagrees with it.
Reminds me of quite a few very controversial laws that have been enacted recently. (not karma whoring, so I won't say which laws, but I think you all know what I mean;-)
The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing. Freedom of the Press means just that. It's closely related to Freedom of Speech in the Constitution for good reasons.
Limiting "non-paid" journalists from publishing would result in the destruction of the millions of volunteers out there who deliver valuable and useful information. No, not everything they say is worth reading; yes, some of it is slander, or libel, or just plain wrong. This should not limit their freedom to say it. Otherwise we are putting another cap on what little freedom we have left.
My 0.02.
If you don't like what's being said, DON'T READ IT. If it's slander of you or yours, then go after them in civil court - that's what it was created for.
Sorry if I perhaps misunderstood your intent; but this is something I feel very strongly about.
"Now if only PC vendors would stop including them so we could be rid of the things."
Except that I really don't want to boot to a CD to format, fdisk, or check my HD for errors using HD manufacturers disk diagnostic software (nearly all of which comes in an executable file that *creates floppy disks*). Plus, have you ever tried to boot WinXP FS from floppy? It's 7 disks! (yes, there are times when you want to do so - running the OS repair tool from CD can hose up other things in your installation, as I found out when the new sbLIVE drivers hosed my XP install a few months ago...)
I don't like floppies much either, but there are a lot of things they are necessary for if you do any tech work at all, which you obviously do not.
For users of the iMac and others which don't have an eject hole, the problem is more serious, even.
1) One can take apart the machine and fix it yourself - but this will void your warranty. (I can just see explaining to the Apple Service Dealer why the case has been opened - "Oh, I bought this Celine Dion disk, see..."
2) If you take it into the dealer, they are invariably going to charge you - I doubt this is covered under warranty! (Anyone?) So this CD ($25 or whatever) just ran up even *more* charges for you. IMHO I think that is excellent grounds for a lawsuit!
I note that the first article said that the new SW:AOTC disk is protected this way. Funny - mine has neither a sticker nor copy protection - bought it, took it home, ripped it. Hmm. Out-of-US copies only?
"Sorry, saying "at your own risk" on something doesn't mean shit legally, especially if the risk is actually known"
Exactly - as the tobacco industry has been finding out for the last decade or so.
Even worse about this instance is that they don't *even warn you* that it may lock the CD drawer on the Mac - which I believe puts them in violation of the product labeling laws in the US (IANAL)
SB
Re:I sense a disturbance in the force...
on
Mashed-Up Music
·
· Score: 0
ROFLOL! That has to be the Funniest Post This Week(TM).
SB
Re:Artistic and Theft are not mutually exclusive
on
Mashed-Up Music
·
· Score: 0
Slashdot Mirror
Bluffing with a deadly weapon is always better than using it.
Then again, you do have to make sure that the person you're bluffing
is not going to rip it out of your hands and kill you with it...
To state it baldly: get some training, if you're really going to
wave it around.
Personally: Kudos, man. Fighting off a bully who will beat a defenseless
person means you use any means available.
SB
Pardon my syntax.
*My* point was that the laws in this country sometimes, and IMO oftentimes, need to be slapped down as either irrelevant, inconsistent or outright stupid. Yes, the courts have to work inside their legislative boundaries; but that is one of the things that has produced a lot of really stupid and consistently upheld laws in our country, no?
Perhaps we need to educate our legislators better...if we don't, we may
end up with revolution. Did the people opposing the British tea tax think they were represented fairly? Did they try to get it changed? Read some history...
If courts stuck to the boundaries you present, then none of the laws
that he presented would have been struck down, would they? It took a lot of work (with unfortunately a lot of protest and considerable amount of violence) to strike down the laws he presented.
I do try to elect different representatives. I try to vote for people
who recommend common sense rather then more legislation - we already have enough; and what we don't have, civil courts should be able to cover, if the judges had some bloody sense. (spilled hot coffee in your lap recently? Whose fault was it? Has your wife blown you recently? What state do you live in?) Unfortunately people like that are getting very rare - especially in the pol parties who have the majority vote.
I've been trying for twenty friccing years...
SB
I'm not trolling here, but have you considered how much time some of
these scientists have spent on these projects? In some cases it is a
large part of their lives...and they don't want to give up working on
this either because it's one of the few grants they have or because
they think it might still produce startling results (look at some of
the longrange results of the Pioneer projects such as indications of
another force opposing gravity).
What it comes down to is that the deeper we look at the universe,
the closer we get to the things we don't know, the harder and longer
we are going to have to look. That means in many cases projects that
won't finish for decades and the implications of the data found there
may not be understood for decades or centuries, if ever.
SB
Some other considerations:
1) Money to pay the people operating the equipment which monitors the sats
2) Maintenance on the above equipment.
3) Programmers and engineers to watch for breakdowns in the satellites.
4) Research on the actual data produced.
Just a few....
SB
That's true, but look at the cost and time paid to overturn those
particular instances.
I'll note that in many states it's still illegal to have oral sex, and
you don't see those laws being overturned...
SB
Legality != morality != intelligent decisions != common sense.
SB
I hereby dub thee the "Base Math Troll"
SB
"Best the courts can do is strike a law down, they can't change it (even to fix it) or make new laws"
New laws, they can make.
If our system can't legally strike down laws that were passed and are contested with good reason, it's time to make changes to our system.
SB
not to mention the person(s) using the "blackout pen" are either really
clutzy in in a great hurry.....
SB
Ah...the younger generation of tokers....
"If the starving people in the world put half as much effort into finding food"
This comment does not display genius at all. If the aforesaid starving people in this world *were not* putting effort into finding food, they wouldn't be starving, they'd be dead!
You are obviously a young, rich, inexperienced plebe. (Not name calling either). The rich execs and lawyers pushing these mandates on CP are protecting their pocketbooks at the expense of everyone else - and I would hardly call entertainment a mission critical industry.
For an example of a band that really did rise from it's hard work and dedication to it's fans, rather than huge marketing and advertising ploys, try the Grateful Dead. They even had sense enough to know that searching people for tape recorders before shows might turn off their fans. (one reason why they were so popular, erm?)
No offense, really, but you need to open your eyes. Your comment reminds me of the time in college years ago when a saleswoman knocked at my apartment door (a low rent but still pretty nice place) and in the course of the conversation waved around her and said "I can't believe people can live like this." I simply stared at her for several seconds and then pointed out that *most* people can't afford BMW's (what she was driving) nor $200 suits, but worked hard simply to eat and have heat. She walked away totally non-plussed.
Can you say "sheltered life"?
Let's see how you like it, "PhysicsGenius", when you can't play the radio in your equipment lab because the A-D converters you're using in your experiments shut down....
SB
Great point...which would mean the US Customs Officers would get
even busier than they are now, which would draw their attention away
from stopping the real terrorists, gun and drug smugglers.
Which makes Hollywood's legislation an *assistance* to terrorists.
You would think that Customs dept would be fighting this tooth and nail.
1-800-WeNeedYou Customs Service hiring, anyone?
SB
Only way I can think of is to clone Weber and train his clone thoroughly.....*sigh* waiting for War Of Honor, but so far the sample chapters at Baen's Bar haven't been...well, great. Good, yes. Great, no.
I *shudder* when I think of Hollywood producing a Honor Harrington movie. It could be done very well, but I don't see a single director or company that I think could do it.
If the special effects were as good as AOTC's tho it could be a superb experience as action/adventure...but the subtleties of HH would be tough for our current crop of scriptwriters, IMHO.
SB
Agree completely about Spidey vs. AOTC. So did the audiences in all the showings I've been to so far. Mostly after Spidey they were talking about the bad theater seats, after AOTC (four showings so far) they were talking about Yoda. Heh.
Same problem; still public. I've seen people using the keypads for their welfare cards and trucking company cards (in the US) and most of these people are not,uh, the fastest keypad operators in the world. Easy to follow their number if I cared to.
SB
*applause*
Beautiful, beautiful! LOL
SB
But all the posts on here about fingerprints + PIN/password misses one thing:
How are you going to pass the PIN/psw to the cashier?
As I see it, there are two choices: Either you say it (out loud) or pass it to the cashier on a piece of paper. (Let's ignore cracking the store's database for the moment)
Either way exposes your PIN/psw to the public. If someone else is listening/watching...then they follow you to a restaurant or wherever, get your fingerprint from the glass you drank from, duplicate it (from the article) and you're done.
Ok, so let's close the cashier booths in soundproof, opaque walls and close out the public at large.
So what guarantees the cashier is honest? Employee theft is one of the biggest problems in chain stores.
I knew there's a good reason I will always pay cash for merchandise...be it groceries, or whatever.
Another point I might make to those who pointed out that we have more than one finger: take a magnifying glass sometime and compare fingerprints/toeprints. In most people, they are identical, or nearly so. Even assuming they aren't, if you're rich enough, there's a lot of incentive for some criminal punk to keep nailing you (ten times...) until he has your identity stolen - for life.
(Sir, please take off a shoe and sock, so we can verify it's you...seems someone has been using your fingerprint info) Oh, that'd go over Really, Really Good. *sigh*
Ignoring All Of The Above, if the database run by the local store's sysadmin (min wage or nearly so) is cracked, you're screwed. Totally.
Let's just hope that this sort of tech doesn't become commonplace.
One word. Cash. Cash is a good thing. Barter is better. (92 cents to produce a dollar bill - need I say more?)
SB
The absolute irony of this is how little attention was paid to the actual practices of the Kuwaiti government during the Gulf War. Oh, the prime media said, we're over there to protect "freedom".
I remember thinking to myself "Bullshit".
It was about oil, and our access to it, pure and simple. The US government was afraid that Iraq would continue to gobble up other countries in the Middle East and cause oil prices to soar, thereby limiting the ability of Americans to waste it. Hypocrites.
SB
"The Founding Fathers thought that it would be acceptible to have a free press exactly because "not just anyone" could publish!
;-)
In today's world of computers and Britney Spears, anyone can publish. Therefore, the rules need to change"
I disagree. Everyone should be free to publish. I am free to publish - ie, post on Slashdot, which is the same thing. You are also free not to read it.
If laws were enacted that limited who could publish and who could not, they would quickly to be turned to limiting the freedom of those who have important things to say, simply because somebody else disagrees with it.
Reminds me of quite a few very controversial laws that have been enacted recently. (not karma whoring, so I won't say which laws, but I think you all know what I mean
The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing. Freedom of the Press means just that. It's closely related to Freedom of Speech in the Constitution for good reasons.
Limiting "non-paid" journalists from publishing would result in the destruction of the millions of volunteers out there who deliver valuable and useful information. No, not everything they say is worth reading; yes, some of it is slander, or libel, or just plain wrong. This should not limit their freedom to say it. Otherwise we are putting another cap on what little freedom we have left.
My 0.02.
If you don't like what's being said, DON'T READ IT. If it's slander of you or yours, then go after them in civil court - that's what it was created for.
Sorry if I perhaps misunderstood your intent; but this is something I feel very strongly about.
SB
Mine doesn't seem to be, no sticker, rips fine. Got it at WallyWorld.
SB
"Now if only PC vendors would stop including them so we could be rid of the things."
Except that I really don't want to boot to a CD to format, fdisk, or check my HD for errors using HD manufacturers disk diagnostic software (nearly all of which comes in an executable file that *creates floppy disks*). Plus, have you ever tried to boot WinXP FS from floppy? It's 7 disks! (yes, there are times when you want to do so - running the OS repair tool from CD can hose up other things in your installation, as I found out when the new sbLIVE drivers hosed my XP install a few months ago...)
I don't like floppies much either, but there are a lot of things they are necessary for if you do any tech work at all, which you obviously do not.
SB
For users of the iMac and others which don't have an eject hole, the problem is more serious, even.
1) One can take apart the machine and fix it yourself - but this will void your warranty. (I can just see explaining to the Apple Service Dealer why the case has been opened - "Oh, I bought this Celine Dion disk, see..."
2) If you take it into the dealer, they are invariably going to charge you - I doubt this is covered under warranty! (Anyone?) So this CD ($25 or whatever) just ran up even *more* charges for you. IMHO I think that is excellent grounds for a lawsuit!
I note that the first article said that the new SW:AOTC disk is protected this way. Funny - mine has neither a sticker nor copy protection - bought it, took it home, ripped it. Hmm. Out-of-US copies only?
SB
"Sorry, saying "at your own risk" on something doesn't mean shit legally, especially if the risk is actually known"
Exactly - as the tobacco industry has been finding out for the last decade or so.
Even worse about this instance is that they don't *even warn you* that it may lock the CD drawer on the Mac - which I believe puts them in violation of the product labeling laws in the US (IANAL)
SB
ROFLOL! That has to be the Funniest Post This Week(TM).
SB
Which is bloody ridiculous when it is used to do things like force the Boy/Girl Scouts to pay to sing campfire songs.
IMHO, that is a horrid abuse of the PPL. The PPL is a good idea, but is open to too much interpretation lacking common sense.
SB
Better yet, how about judges who understand what FUD means?
SB