My definition of a police state: When the lawmakers exempt themselves from the laws they make and enforce on everyone else.
There's a long tradition of special privileges for MPs in Britain, especially while Parliament is in session. The American concept of Free Speech essentially started out as a reapplication of the prohibition on restricting speech within debates in the British Parliament. America's constitution just applies that same rule to all Americans because in the United States the people are soveriegn, rather than Parliament.
I've got it. The biggest problem is DRM is illegal to hack. Get rid of those laws globally. Problem solved.
Problem solved in a limited sense, perhaps, for you. But as the article points out, the problem isn't solved for Apple. If the majority of the music publishers continue to demand DRM and continue to insist on their music being sold on terms that are not less attractive than those by which Apple sells indie music, then Apple continues to have to maintain that DRM against hackers. Even if the recording industry decides to tollerate DRM removal, most consumers will still not bother, and thus the music will have less value to them. That means fewer sales for Apple, and consequently probably means that consumers won't see any additional price break any time soon.
The Department of Justice is part of the executive branch. It's not their job to "interpret" law or the constitution.
It is the job of every branch of government to interpret the constitution. That is certainly the way the founders invisioned government officials would act, and for along time that is how they did (Congress refused to pass laws it thought were constitutionally suspect, Presidents refused to sign laws they thought were constitutionally suspect, Executive officials declined to enforce sections of laws that they knew were unconstitutional).
The only reason we think of the court as the interpreter of the Constitution is because in the majority of cases, it is the court that has final authority, and the other branches have largely ceased to try to interpret the Constitution. It should be noted that there are a few cases where interpretation of the constitution is not given into the hands of the court, and another branch (usually Congress) is responsible for interpreting and upholding the Constitution.
As for interpreting laws, the Executive Branch does that all the time. More often than the Judicial Branch does. And when the Executive Branch's interpretation of a law is challenged in court, there are a multitude of precidents that favor deferring to the Executive's interpretation.
I can't just delete a song from the player I want I have to delete it from itunes and then sync the player.
You can change that in preferences. In my experience most people do.
I have a collection of my music on an external sata drive and I don't want to copy my music from their to the itunes library
You can change that behavior in preferences so that music is not copied.
iTunes just sucks all over unless you want to purchase apple DRM based songs which you can't transfer to any other sort of player. You are committed to Apple when you buy their DRM based songs.
You can remove the iTunes Store from the interface in preferences. And you can set iTunes to rip your CDs automatically. It'll even identify the CD and add the album art. Most of my music is from CDs. Works just fine.
I can also edit tags while the song is on the player and I can rename and manipulate the files in other ways.
Once again, iTunes can do this. Just set your prefs to "manual", not "automatic".
I don't really understand this impulse to turn things that are great in one medium into things in another.
I really love BSG, but I think a lot of its power comes from being a serial television program. Listen to Ron Moore's podcasts and you'll hear him remark on that. What exactly would be so great about a movie that can't be done in a 2- or 3-parter (which they actually do)?
And similarly, I didn't think Serenity was all that great. I mean, I enjoyed it, but not like the episodes. I have watched the episodes of Firefly a dozen times now. There's no chance I'll watch Serenity that many times.
Alright, well clearly I need to spend more time before hitting the submitt button. I just read through Turnitin's legal document (here) and while it does state:
If a student submits a work for evaluation and archival, or clearly agrees to the archival of a work, there is no issue [with Archiving a Submitted Work for Later Reference].
the main body of the work seems to defend the idea that their use of papers even without consent of the copyright holder is legal as a form of fair use. They appear to assert that their archival of those papers and use of that archive does not count as publishing and doesn't impair the marketability of the work, and so is fair use. They assert that when they publish excerpts of papers in that archive that they are reporting uncopyrightable facts, and that the copyright of those excerpts has been "merged" into those facts.
Thus, it looks like you are right and I am wrong. Incidentally, if use of the students' papers is indeed fair use, as Turnitin asserts, then the high school students would seem to have little recourse.
There is a key difference between submitting a paper to Turnitin and posting to Slashdot. My posts to Slashdot are entirely voluntary.
With Turnitin, my choices are to submit the paper for them to compare to their database for plagiarism, or to not submit it and fail the class. I doubt that a court would find that my submission of papers under duress granted any kind of implied license.
Turnitin would certainly argue that your submission of papers is just as voluntary. If the way I read their terms of service is correct, you are engaged in a contractual relationship with them in which you recieve services and in return you are giving them a license to intellectual property (also your institution is giving them money).
You are certainly right that duress, even by a third party (your school), would invalidate the contract. Again IANAL, but it doesn't look like the school threatening to give you an F counts as duress unless you want to argue that doing so constitutes a threat to breach an existing contract between you and the school. I wouldn't bet that you could show that. See the definition of duress from Black's Law dictionary excerpted here.
Obviously the situation for a public high schooler is different. There is no contract there, but rather a governmental requirement that may amount to duress.
Er.... Actually, as I look at that again, I think the exception you put in bold only applies to the sentance it appears in. Thus your papers remain confidential and proprietary, but like all communications on the site, you are granting limited liscenses to them.
Evolution is both theory and fact. Please learn the definition of the word 'theory'.
To be fair to the little troll, the original post clearly is referring to the theory of evolution.
The fact of evolution does not make predictions about the degree to which the design of any biological organism is optimized. All scientific theories of evolution derived from the Darwinian one seem implicitly to do so.
"You grant iParadigms a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, world-wide, irrevocable license to reproduce, transmit, display, disclose, and otherwise use your Communications on the Site or elsewhere for our business purposes."
IANAL, but I would expect most courts to honor the site's terms of usage over the copyright notice you post in your file, just as no court would force this site to remove my comment if I wrote "User does not grant permission to display this information on slashdot" in the comments I submitted here.
If, on the other hand, it is your school submitting the work, not you, you would have cause for legal action. Turnitin would be in the clear, though, because they would simply remove the content and force the school to indemnify them. Again the terms of use:
"Indemnification: You agree to indemnify and defend iParadigms from any claim (including attorneys fees and costs) arising from your (a) use of the Site, (b) violation of any third party right, or (c) breach of any of these Terms and Conditions.
Do you apple fans have plans to skip eve/odd releases or something?
Yes, back when releases were more frequent. 10.0 came with my computer and I bought 10.2 and 10.4 because those were the releases with features I wanted.
You'll notice, however, that releases have gotten less frequent. When Steve says "5 releases in 5 years" he means "4 releases in just over 3 years, plus this last one." Now that releases are more like 18-24 months apart, I think more Mac fans will be willing to hash out the money for each one.
Oh no, now hobbyist Java programmers like me will be able to more easily learn Objective-C and write native Mac apps for our own amusement that you will never have to use or even acknowledge. I feel your pain.
I fail to see even the slightest logical connection in the switch to Intel chips being due to the low quality of Apple hardware.
Simple connection: Apple's hardware started to suck due to problems with PPC not entirely under their control. They switched to Intel to remedy this. Now their products are comparable to everyone else's.
You think they decided to switch architectures and make more work for everyone just for the hell of it? I assure you, it was because they couldn't make the products they wanted to on PPC.
Copyright infringement is a crime; and the very concept of copyright dictates liability for anyone who distributes the work without the legally granted right to do so. You might want to worry about the laws making copyright infringement a crime before you worry about words that imply it is one.
Piracy is also a well established term for illegal reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material. According to Wikipedia the first use of the term is in 1879, and the term accurately conveys the intended meaning of infringement. The term "copyright theft" is much more problematic because its plain meaning is not synonymous with infringement, even though the RIAA attempts to use it that way.
Grandparent's statement that recycling paper takes more rescources than making new paper from trees is too broad to be accurate in all cases.
Recycling certain types of paper discarded in certain settings makes a lot of sense. For instance, it makes financial sense for office paper to be recycled because it is inexpensive to collect and sort, and usually contains fewer dyes. Other forms of paper may be less likely to be productively recycled.
If you have Times Select, I suggest reading some of New York Times columnist John Tierney's journalistic pieces, including "Recycling is Garbage." He shows that it is a myth to regard all recycling as beneficial, but also explains when and why certain recycling makes sense even without regard to the environment or governmental regulations.
[McCain] says he opposes torture, but when the time came to act he did nothing. It was not until the torturers were safely reelected that he decided to criticize them. If he were president, could we trust him to do the right thing even if his Republican masters disagreed?
I don't think it is acurate to term them his masters. McCain opposes the administration's stance on torture specifically, but has said he thought that a second Bush term would make the country safer than a Kerry presidency.
We have every right to critize McCain's judgement in placing more importance on Bush's reelection than on airing his disagreements with the administration, and we have every right to criticize his judgement in thinking that Bush was the better choice. Nevertheless, I think it would be wrong to think of him as beholden to "Republican masters."
The real question is if McCain thinks two conflicting goals are both the right thing, will he make the same judgement between them that we would desire?
If you had to trust one other country or organization in this matter, which one would it be? The UN, where every crackpot dictator and totalitarian asshole is given a voice alongside the democratically elected crackpots and assholes? The EU, which doesn't even have a constitution yet? Russia? China? Iran? Yeah, right!
I agree with you that I would prefer the US to any international body so long as the First Amendment holds any weight in America. But if, politically, there needs to be a compromise, it seems like there are more options than just the corrupt, undemocratic wannabe-world-government organization that is the UN.
For instance, how about a different treaty organization? One that comprises countries that have good enough track records with free speech. I wouldn't mind letting Britain or Japan into the club, and it seems like Germany has probably learned its lesson about government over-reach by now. Or how about Ireland or Iceland? They seem to have caught on to the government noninterference thing well enough. Maybe Australia. It is a Common Law country that usually doesn't mind letting us do what we want.
My point is that we might be able to satisfy people by putting the root servers into the hands of an international treaty organization of the good guys. We could ensure that free speech and commerce were protected in the treaty itself and could pick the members of this organization so that we know they'd honor that protection.
I've heard the term frequently, but can't recall if I have seen it defined in an economics text. Anyhow, you indicate that you do understand te meaning I am attempting to convey, and the point is that plenty of theorists would consider certain degrees of regulation as duties of the night-watchman state and therefore necessary pre-conditions for "true" capitalism, not as contrary to capitalism; but you have a point when you define capitalism more broadly: technically a corporatist state is capitalist as well.
Slashdot Mirror
hmmm. judging by replies and moderation, i forgot to use my sarcasm voice when typing that joke....
Problem solved in a limited sense, perhaps, for you. But as the article points out, the problem isn't solved for Apple. If the majority of the music publishers continue to demand DRM and continue to insist on their music being sold on terms that are not less attractive than those by which Apple sells indie music, then Apple continues to have to maintain that DRM against hackers. Even if the recording industry decides to tollerate DRM removal, most consumers will still not bother, and thus the music will have less value to them. That means fewer sales for Apple, and consequently probably means that consumers won't see any additional price break any time soon.
For a phone? Yes, I'd say so.
It is the job of every branch of government to interpret the constitution. That is certainly the way the founders invisioned government officials would act, and for along time that is how they did (Congress refused to pass laws it thought were constitutionally suspect, Presidents refused to sign laws they thought were constitutionally suspect, Executive officials declined to enforce sections of laws that they knew were unconstitutional).
The only reason we think of the court as the interpreter of the Constitution is because in the majority of cases, it is the court that has final authority, and the other branches have largely ceased to try to interpret the Constitution. It should be noted that there are a few cases where interpretation of the constitution is not given into the hands of the court, and another branch (usually Congress) is responsible for interpreting and upholding the Constitution.
As for interpreting laws, the Executive Branch does that all the time. More often than the Judicial Branch does. And when the Executive Branch's interpretation of a law is challenged in court, there are a multitude of precidents that favor deferring to the Executive's interpretation.
I can't just delete a song from the player I want I have to delete it from itunes and then sync the player.
You can change that in preferences. In my experience most people do.
I have a collection of my music on an external sata drive and I don't want to copy my music from their to the itunes library
You can change that behavior in preferences so that music is not copied.
iTunes just sucks all over unless you want to purchase apple DRM based songs which you can't transfer to any other sort of player. You are committed to Apple when you buy their DRM based songs.
You can remove the iTunes Store from the interface in preferences. And you can set iTunes to rip your CDs automatically. It'll even identify the CD and add the album art. Most of my music is from CDs. Works just fine.
I can also edit tags while the song is on the player and I can rename and manipulate the files in other ways.
Once again, iTunes can do this. Just set your prefs to "manual", not "automatic".
I don't really understand this impulse to turn things that are great in one medium into things in another.
I really love BSG, but I think a lot of its power comes from being a serial television program. Listen to Ron Moore's podcasts and you'll hear him remark on that. What exactly would be so great about a movie that can't be done in a 2- or 3-parter (which they actually do)?
And similarly, I didn't think Serenity was all that great. I mean, I enjoyed it, but not like the episodes. I have watched the episodes of Firefly a dozen times now. There's no chance I'll watch Serenity that many times.
Thus, it looks like you are right and I am wrong. Incidentally, if use of the students' papers is indeed fair use, as Turnitin asserts, then the high school students would seem to have little recourse.
With Turnitin, my choices are to submit the paper for them to compare to their database for plagiarism, or to not submit it and fail the class. I doubt that a court would find that my submission of papers under duress granted any kind of implied license.
Turnitin would certainly argue that your submission of papers is just as voluntary. If the way I read their terms of service is correct, you are engaged in a contractual relationship with them in which you recieve services and in return you are giving them a license to intellectual property (also your institution is giving them money).
You are certainly right that duress, even by a third party (your school), would invalidate the contract. Again IANAL, but it doesn't look like the school threatening to give you an F counts as duress unless you want to argue that doing so constitutes a threat to breach an existing contract between you and the school. I wouldn't bet that you could show that. See the definition of duress from Black's Law dictionary excerpted here.
Obviously the situation for a public high schooler is different. There is no contract there, but rather a governmental requirement that may amount to duress.
Er.... Actually, as I look at that again, I think the exception you put in bold only applies to the sentance it appears in. Thus your papers remain confidential and proprietary, but like all communications on the site, you are granting limited liscenses to them.
oops. that's what i get for scanning the text of it too quickly. thanks.
To be fair to the little troll, the original post clearly is referring to the theory of evolution.
The fact of evolution does not make predictions about the degree to which the design of any biological organism is optimized. All scientific theories of evolution derived from the Darwinian one seem implicitly to do so.
IANAL, but I would expect most courts to honor the site's terms of usage over the copyright notice you post in your file, just as no court would force this site to remove my comment if I wrote "User does not grant permission to display this information on slashdot" in the comments I submitted here.
If, on the other hand, it is your school submitting the work, not you, you would have cause for legal action. Turnitin would be in the clear, though, because they would simply remove the content and force the school to indemnify them. Again the terms of use:
In other news, today the entire internet circa 1995 has been sued for inaccessible design.
Yes, back when releases were more frequent. 10.0 came with my computer and I bought 10.2 and 10.4 because those were the releases with features I wanted.
You'll notice, however, that releases have gotten less frequent. When Steve says "5 releases in 5 years" he means "4 releases in just over 3 years, plus this last one." Now that releases are more like 18-24 months apart, I think more Mac fans will be willing to hash out the money for each one.
I run Tiger with 384 Mb of RAM (128+256). I'm not saying all the eye-candy works like it does in a SteveNote, but it runs without problems.
Oh no, now hobbyist Java programmers like me will be able to more easily learn Objective-C and write native Mac apps for our own amusement that you will never have to use or even acknowledge. I feel your pain.
Simple connection: Apple's hardware started to suck due to problems with PPC not entirely under their control. They switched to Intel to remedy this. Now their products are comparable to everyone else's.
You think they decided to switch architectures and make more work for everyone just for the hell of it? I assure you, it was because they couldn't make the products they wanted to on PPC.
Piracy is also a well established term for illegal reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material. According to Wikipedia the first use of the term is in 1879, and the term accurately conveys the intended meaning of infringement. The term "copyright theft" is much more problematic because its plain meaning is not synonymous with infringement, even though the RIAA attempts to use it that way.
>healthcare is too important to be trusted to human greed
it's too important not to be.
Grandparent's statement that recycling paper takes more rescources than making new paper from trees is too broad to be accurate in all cases.
Recycling certain types of paper discarded in certain settings makes a lot of sense. For instance, it makes financial sense for office paper to be recycled because it is inexpensive to collect and sort, and usually contains fewer dyes. Other forms of paper may be less likely to be productively recycled.
If you have Times Select, I suggest reading some of New York Times columnist John Tierney's journalistic pieces, including "Recycling is Garbage." He shows that it is a myth to regard all recycling as beneficial, but also explains when and why certain recycling makes sense even without regard to the environment or governmental regulations.
I don't think it is acurate to term them his masters. McCain opposes the administration's stance on torture specifically, but has said he thought that a second Bush term would make the country safer than a Kerry presidency.
We have every right to critize McCain's judgement in placing more importance on Bush's reelection than on airing his disagreements with the administration, and we have every right to criticize his judgement in thinking that Bush was the better choice. Nevertheless, I think it would be wrong to think of him as beholden to "Republican masters."
The real question is if McCain thinks two conflicting goals are both the right thing, will he make the same judgement between them that we would desire?
I agree with you that I would prefer the US to any international body so long as the First Amendment holds any weight in America. But if, politically, there needs to be a compromise, it seems like there are more options than just the corrupt, undemocratic wannabe-world-government organization that is the UN.
For instance, how about a different treaty organization? One that comprises countries that have good enough track records with free speech. I wouldn't mind letting Britain or Japan into the club, and it seems like Germany has probably learned its lesson about government over-reach by now. Or how about Ireland or Iceland? They seem to have caught on to the government noninterference thing well enough. Maybe Australia. It is a Common Law country that usually doesn't mind letting us do what we want.
My point is that we might be able to satisfy people by putting the root servers into the hands of an international treaty organization of the good guys. We could ensure that free speech and commerce were protected in the treaty itself and could pick the members of this organization so that we know they'd honor that protection.
I've heard the term frequently, but can't recall if I have seen it defined in an economics text. Anyhow, you indicate that you do understand te meaning I am attempting to convey, and the point is that plenty of theorists would consider certain degrees of regulation as duties of the night-watchman state and therefore necessary pre-conditions for "true" capitalism, not as contrary to capitalism; but you have a point when you define capitalism more broadly: technically a corporatist state is capitalist as well.
Whatever we have, it is not working properly.
True enough.