> Alright, so if you're a US citizen who believes the police may have reason to suspect you're in the country illegally, you have a few options to avoid any issues. First and foremost, a driver's license works wonders.
And you think that you're saying that US citizens are never affected? Or that dumping thousands more people onto a broken system is a good idea (rather than going after the violent ones or, God forbid, funding the system so that it can actually process things at a reasonable rate)?
I don't think that the police are Gestapo by any means. As a matter of fact, all the policemen I've met were fundamentally decent. But I hate to see so many people outraged over illegal immigrants so much that they support a bad law that will lead to so much trouble for US citizens and other people here legally.
There simply is nothing other than race and speech (AKA racial profiling) that can give you a "reasonable suspicion" that people are here illegally, but many citizens and legal immigrants look and sound the same as your stereotypical illegal immigrant. Combined with our long history of conducting immigration sweeps, in which large numbers of people are detained, it becomes both suspect and Constitutionally troubling (why aren't people defending our 4th Amendment rights as much as our 2nd Amendment rights?). We also have a long history of losing civil rights lawsuits (which costs our states millions... but they'd rather press on and force us to chose between tax increases and education cuts than admit that the policies we have are bad).
But yeah, never mind that your points are undermined by things that have actually happened. The politicians scapegoat all of our problems on immigration. It makes it so much easier than them actually having to fix things. I've watched people scapegoat immigrants for all sorts of problems, even troubles I've had at work. It didn't go over very well when I pointed out that I knew who was responsible for those problems and that they were both US citizens and white. We don't even employ any non-citizens and the only one we used to was an H1-B from the UK who left due to unreasonable delays in processing his application for permanent residency (and who we haven't been able to adequately replace).
> They CANNOT walk up to a random person on the street and check their immigration status.
Wrong. We have a stop & identify statute. They can use that to check on anyone they want. See also: the sweeps that are performed whenever our sheriff is up for reelection.
> From what I've heard, Wa in Japanese means opposite.
I think you've been misinformed. Depending on the exact form used, wa means "harmony", "sum", "total", can be combined with other words to indicate things of Japanese origin, is the reading of the "ha" hiragana when it's used as the subject particle, can be added to the end of a sentence to make the speaker sound more feminine and for emphasis, used to draw contrast or compare things, can indicate a limit, and can even be used as a counter for birds and rabbits, but I don't believe it means "opposite" (or if it does, it's not in any of my dictionaries).
The words I can find for "opposite" are "hantai no" (as in "go in the opposite direction"), "hantaigawa no" (as in "the other side" of something), "gyaku no koto" (as in "I thought the opposite thing"), and "no mukaigawa ni" (as in "the house opposite mine"), none of which really work in a context like this. If they went that route, they'd be more likely to use the word "ura" (which has meanings like "reverse", "back/rear", "wrong side" and "shady side").
Instead, of course, they used a pun on the word "warui" (bad), as a poster above explained.
Well, the thing is that they don't have a separate sound for R & L. They have a set of five sounds (usually transliterated as ra / re / ri / ro / ru) that are roughly half-way in between L and R in terms of sound. The tongue further back in the mouth (like the R and unlike the L sound), but the tongue also touches the roof of the mouth (which is just the opposite of before; being like the L sound and unlike the R sound). So you can think of it as half-and-half because it has one trait from both the R sound and the L sound.
But you're right that both those names sound like they contain the "warui" (bad) when pronounced the Japanese way.
> Hardly the first. While campaigning, Obama said he would invade Pakistan in order to get Usama bin Laden. Not even Bush is stupid enough to invade a sovereign nuclear nation to get one man.
As I remember it, he said that he would strike at terrorists in Pakistani territory without the approval of their government. I believe he has already done this (I'm not completely sure if the government of Pakistan approved or not).
I don't recall any invasion plans. Perhaps you could give a citation?
> When it comes to kids sharing songs, that's civil, not criminal.
In theory, if you infringe upon the copyright of works with a retail value larger than a certain amount (I think it's $1000) in a certain period of time and you have a financial incentive (such as getting infringing copies of other copyrighted works in return), you can be prosecuted under criminal law. I believe the law that created those offenses is the NET Act (but get a lawyer if it ever applies to you).
Thing is, in practice, they don't charge normal people with that. Instead, they go after the release groups and other people high on the food chain. In short, they could prosecute some file sharers under criminal law, but in practice, they have better things to do with their time, but they do bust people who run big warez sites and things of that nature.
> But minimum wage work probably isn't absolutely necessary.
Have you ever worked in a factory? They pretty much define the case where you have a ton of minimum wage earners and yet you need them if you want to get any production done. And no, you can't run a factory with no laborers, even if they are unskilled.
I think that if you look around at minimum wage jobs, you'll find many that can be replaced by machines and many more than cannot (and believe me, we're trying... everywhere from clerks at checkout lines to assorted factory workers).
> I don't think this message should be taken as some condemnation of internet transparency.
Quite right, considering that the author of TFA (which it appears that no one has actually read) says:
So where does this Vatican stand on being more transparent about how it has handled priest abuse cases in decades past? Will it respond to the call for greater openness that we have heard from so many Catholics here, in our two brief days so far? It was hard to glimpse the truth from our Vatican encounter Saturday. We can only hope to be able to shed greater light on the question by week's end.
Maybe a week from now we'll find out where this headline came from?
>>> I think that's what they call this, the Pope making an issue out of Internet transparency out of nowhere.
This is Slashdot, so I know that you didn't actually RTFA, but just so you know, the Pope never said anything attacking transparency. Here, I'll copy every direct quote of the Pope from the article for you:
Finally, a cry rose up as he was glimpsed walking in from stage right -- arms out in the familiar pose of benediction. "Papa! Papa!" the crowd cried. He made his way to the throne, sat for a fulsome introduction by the head bishop of the Italian church, then began to speak. What he said did not sound overly encouraging to devotees of the new digital age.
"The times in which we living knows a huge widening of the frontiers of communication," he said (according to our Italian fixer/producer) and the new media of this new age points to a more "egalitarian and pluralistic" forum. But, he went on to say, it also opens a new hole, the "digital divide" between haves and have-nots. Even more ominous, he said, it exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And it increases the "dangers of... intellectual and moral relativism," which can lead to "multiple forms of degradation and humiliation" of the essence of a person, and to the "pollution of the spirit." All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide open communication parameters being demanded by the Internet age.
So where does this Vatican stand on being more transparent about how it has handled priest abuse cases in decades past? Will it respond to the call for greater openness that we have heard from so many Catholics here, in our two brief days so far? It was hard to glimpse the truth from our Vatican encounter Saturday. We can only hope to be able to shed greater light on the question by week's end.
I think it's a little bit of a stretch to say that the Pope "rails against [...] transparency" when the writers of the article "hope to be able to shed greater light on the question by week's end," don't you? I'm no fan of pedophile priests, so complain about those all you want. But I think it's pretty bad when the headline here is contradicted by the article. Did the submitter (or anyone but me) even read this, or did they go for the most sensational headline?
> One says you can't make a contract with a minor, the other says the minor may rescind or void the contract.
IANAL, but I once sat in on a contract law class that covered this part of US law. I believe that this descends from common law, so the UK should be mostly the same, but I'm not sure. The legal thing is that there's a difference between "voidable" and "void" contracts. Contracts (except those for "essentials" like renting a house) are "voidable." This means that they're not yet void, but if the minor wants to, they can void them. So they're not yet void, but they could be if the minor wants out of it. The exception about "essentials" exists so that emancipated minors can still get people to do business with them. Otherwise, they could use their minor status to escape from paying rent and whatnot and then nobody would do business with them, making it impossible for them to live on their own.
That said, remember that even illegal contracts can be both made and performed, e.g. someone can contract another person for assassination. But, for obvious reasons, the courts won't enforce an illegal contract. So you can always draw up and sign a contract. You can always choose to perform according to your obligations under the contract. But you can't always get a court to enforce the contract.
Even if we set aside all the other legal considerations, this contract is clearly unenforceable. Exactly how would any court force someone to hand over their soul? And even if they were willing to attempt that, how would they know that ownership of the soul had been transferred?
I can't speak for how things are run in college nowadays, but if I have any insight into human nature, I would have to say that either they believe it's right, or their answer is "it's okay when I do it." People have a hard time seeing any behavior they engage in as bad. I'm not saying they never think that, just that it works that way most of the time. I've actually seen someone who thought that file sharing was Communism... but had no problem copying every tape or DVD he had ever rented.
One of the more relevant biases is called "moral credentialing" (look it up on Wikipedia).
For the record, I see a lot more wrong with copyright law than with copying. And anyone with any technical insight should have realized a long time ago that our current copyright laws are unenforceable. I see the **AA types investing all kinds of money into lobbyists, technology and laws to change this, but short of a police state, that's not working so well in China, despite the government pouring all kinds of resources into controlling what the people do (though they don't care much about piracy, only about anti-government sentiments, the fact that they're trying to keep certain information scarce is the same).
> file sharing has been restricted to non-copyrighted files
There's no such thing as a non-copyrighted file in countries that subscribe to the Berne copyright convention (i.e. most of the world), except perhaps those few files where the author has released them into the public domain (assuming they live in a country where that's even possible...). The things you've been sharing are therefore almost certainly copyrighted (as Linux is), the difference is that they're not infringing because you have permission.
The reason I correct you is that the **AA types try that, even in court, claiming that people just have to filter out the "copyrighted" files as if there are master records somewhere indicating who has permission to publish what, when no such things exist and there's no algorithm that can tell you who has permission to publish what.
Well, I don't begrudge them the trademark itself. The Red Cross does good work.
What I really question is their choice to enforce it in some ways. I mean, is it REALLY necessary for them to force games to make their health power ups into little green crosses in a box, rather than red ones? I just don't see how that harms them, nor why they should use it that way. I will give them credit, though, in that they didn't require much of a fix (changing health power up colors might be annoying, but it's not hard).
So I don't have a problem with trademarks per se, just with some of the ridiculous ways they've gotten used (at least some of the worst ideas have failed, like the attempt to use trademarks to protect devices from circumvention [Sony v. Accolade])
You're absolutely right that they have a statute creating some kind of super trademark (theirs isn't the only one, either: I think there's one for the Red Cross, too, and possibly others). But I would like to point out that there is a small exception for the use of "Olympic" with respect to a small area near Olympia, Washington, provided that you're west of the mountains.
But yeah, it's pretty bad. There's a lot of absolutely crazy stuff in IP law. It's all pretty dry reading, but you find all these crazy rules about just how big a TV is too big in a commercial establishment, statutory trademarks created by international treaties, etc.
Indeed, I realize that the Chinese probably consider the human rights activists to be something like "terrorists" (whatever their equivalent is) and for all I know, they consider Al Qaeda to be freedom fighters (they sure have no problem supporting Iran).
That's why I think it better to get down to the details about what behaviors I feel are bad (e.g. spying on people indiscriminately, little or no oversight, and governments conspiring with each other to flout the constitutional protections guaranteed to their own citizens), rather than merely trying to decide who is "worse."
I guess some people see it as though the world is divided into bad guys and good guys. So long as we're not a bad guy, we're one of the good guys, right? Problem being, almost nobody sees themselves as the bad guys. Not the Mafia, not the lobbyists, not the RIAA, not anyone.
I see it more like a race. Frankly, I don't give a damn who is in last place. I want my country to aim for #1.
Hard to tell, Ray. But if he's Thaetetus, does that make you Socrates?:]
Seriously, though, there are about a zillion Dan Roses out there. Mostly he appears to spend his time making random legal comments on Slashdot among a handful of others. Seems like he *might* be at UNC School of Law. The email has an extra dot, but I think Gmail ignores those. If that's true, he's part of the Lambda Law Students Association (a legal association for homosexuals), which doesn't really explain his interest in the RIAA & copyrights. That said, Google is giving some very strange results, so who knows?
That said, this exchange was pretty ugly for Tenenbaum. I assume it's what he's talking about. Of course, I see nothing in there admitting specifically to violating the distribution right. And I don't have a court transcript, either, which I trust more than random internet reports about the case.
I say that because there are other things out there like this story which claims that "Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson has conceded in a letter to the US Department of Justice that his client, accused peer-to-peer infringer Joel Tenenbaum, "downloaded music for [his] own enjoyment."" which points to this letter on your website. The problem is that I've read the letter three times and I can't find that "quote" in it anywhere, unless they got it by cutting out the phrase "is alleged to have," which would make their quote the same kind of dishonesty that led to $312,000 in sanctions recently.
> I'm honestly curious about this part: "Also, even if they do make a product this time, does that really excuse killing the products of other companies via patents on things they haven't actually built or sold?" Like?
You should have followed a couple links from Grond's post:
Anyhow, the correct term isn't "patent troll", it's NPE (Non-practicing Entity). And you will note that I didn't call them that. Nor did the article linked (it called them a "patent bully").
I don't care what we call them, frankly. I just don't like seeing people lock up ideas with patents and never let anyone use them. I don't like people patenting old ideas, doing fancy lawyering (but our idea is novel because it uses *four* knowledge bases... even though that's the only novel part and these things can easily be split or combined). I don't like reading Patently-O and seeing them give advice for how to prevent people from asking a court to make a patent bully go away by proving that they did not infringe, or how to get a patent even if the inventor doesn't want one.
Basically, I don't like most of what I see going on with the patent system. I don't like obvious or gibberish patents or the self-important people who think that they're geniuses for having them (even if other people thought of those ideas first and implemented them better). I don't like how software patents never give any source code, even though they're supposedly obligated to disclose the best known way to implement the invention.
There are so many problems with the system, I honestly wonder at times why we don't simply scrap it. Maybe there's a better way, but I haven't heard of one yet.
> I've re-read your post and it still seems to me that you are equating FBI wire tapping with Chinese wire tapping.
Well, for one, I thought it was the NSA that put in the splitters, not the FBI. And, to my knowledge, the differences between the American wiretapping and the Chinese wiretapping are thus:
* Americans ostensibly are looking for terrorists. They apparently compile reports that talk about terrorist "chatter" indicating some kind of crazy keyword-mining system. This may include an analysis of phone calls, as well. As far as anyone knows, they sniff ALL internet traffic. We know it exists, but the details are all classified and most of the conclusions about its capabilities are based on what little public data there is (e.g. it's guesswork to say that there's keyword mining, but it's hard to understand all those reports about changes in the amount of "terrorist chatter" unless they have something like that). Whatever oversight exists is lax, because even members of Congress didn't know the details when it came to light.
* The Chinese are looking for dissidents and attempting to make society more "harmonious" by squelching those who complain. Their system is publicly acknowledged and widely known. The capabilities of the "Great Firewall of China" are well-known (e.g. how it inserts RST packets to disrupt communication with blocked sites). We also know that they monitor and censor communication on an ad hoc basis. They have the "fifty cent party" to post things advocating the government's view online.
Basically, I'd say that wiretapping is wiretapping, but the US has more noble goals and far less oversight. So if you want to decide which one is better or worse, you'd have to know whether the abuse we don't know about (if it exists--and it almost certainly does) is worse than the abuse we don't know about.
Anyhow, it's definitely true that I trust the American government far more than the Chinese government. But all those things (e.g. tank man) have nothing to do with internet censorship, which is the only thing I'm even attempting to compare here. Tank man, as we should all know, was not caught due to internet wiretapping. You don't have to say that you're excusing the retroactively authorized American wiretapping, incidentally. If you come along and derail things by dragging up evil things done by the Chinese government that have nothing to do with internet censorship, you do that whether you intend to or not.
Of course, you still can't simply equate the two, true. And the Chinese government has more openly abused their powers. But I'm not especially comfortable with either case. Some part of me fears where this is heading. I think that we'll eventually have internet "borders" (national firewalls) in the name of protecting ourselves and those will open up all kinds of new issues. You could see things like no longer being able to communicate with Cuba, Iran & co., and yes, there would still be "data smugglers" who let you VPN your way past barriers. The fact that something like that is expensive and ineffective usually means that it's only a matter of time until governments implement it. National firewalls could then block all the sites they hate (e.g. The Pirate Bay). And the minor fact that that would be unconstitutional? Well, we'll just write this amendment allowing them in the name of protecting people from "internet terrorists"...
So what I'm saying is that we should condemn all such abuses of power. Certainly, China should come under harsh condemnation for what they've done to hurt and defame those who threaten the corrupt. But we can't simply ignore what happens in America, even if it's supposed to protect us from actual bad guys. Mission creep shows us that it will, eventually, expand beyond that, and I already hate the fancy dances they do to get around the Constitutional problems (e.g. we'll use national security to keep you from knowing if we violate your privacy in practice, border search exemptions to give us a plausible cover [even if we appear to search more than just international traffic], and data sharing so that we'll let other countries spy on you on our behalf while we do the same for them).
Wake me when they actually start selling this product? This seems like something too cool to go to market.
Also, even if they do make a product this time, does that really excuse killing the products of other companies via patents on things they haven't actually built or sold? Then again, if someone robbed hundreds of people, then donated 10% of the proceeds or whatever to a charity named after them, people would defend them, so I suppose that they're only being consistent here if we excuse someone who practices patent trolling to kill their competitors, but who eventually makes a real product.
Sure, it's good to do good things. But putting it forth as some kind of excuse is just lame. Call me when they actually repent of their patent trolling and promise to discontinue it, then we'll see if their reform is real or not. Otherwise, you might as well be selling indulgences.
> No problem, I'll just put the movie up on the class website." It's not exactly shocking that someone objected to that.
Actually, it's still pretty unreasonable, because the videos on the class website are only available on campus and not (easily) saved (unless you have a stream ripper for media furnace or something). That link is in the submission, but it seems like people are busy pointing out that the videos in question are commercial videos that are class assignments (rather than videos of lectures) while ignoring the fact that they're not just distributing these videos to all and sundry. They're only letting students watch them.
> Why? She illegally shared a huge number of songs. When caught, she tried to frame her kids for it. She tried to destroy evidence. She lied repeatedly under oath.
Do you have reliable sources for that, or are you merely engaging in defamation? Because I'm pretty sure she wasn't found guilty of destruction of evidence (and I do know about the hard drive--it broke down and she forgot the date she took it in to get it repaired according to what I read). The other stuff is less clear. The main evidence it was her is a username, but in my family, many of us have shared the same usernames in the past, so I'm not willing to say that she lied because I don't know.
And if she just wanted to settle, she could have gotten out of it for maybe ~$5k before fighting it out legally, based on what I've heard about other settlement offers. $25k still doesn't fit my idea of "reasonable" though. If she sole 2 CDs from a record store (with the 24 songs she was actually convicted of copying), she'd be looking at something like a $500 fine and probation. Even if you make that 4 or 8 or 10 CDs, it wouldn't change much, and Bittorrent shows that multiplying that by anything more than 10 (to give us 20 CDs) is ridiculous. No one has share ratios that high and they have no business collecting for the same losses over and over (which they are, giving that they've filed 30,000 lawsuits or so).
I think Pat Robertson ought to reread the book of Job sometime (paying special attention to Job's so-called "friends") and I agree with the other person who pointed out that most Christians are trying to get all those Hatian orphans adopted and working with the relief efforts, not worrying about legends and whatnot.
But that aside, he did not invent this story. There is an actual legend concerning this pact that existed long before this disaster.
Contrary to most people’s reactions to Pat Robertson’s remarks on Wednesday, his reference to Haiti’s “pact with the devil” did not appear out of thin air. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out this was a reference to the Bois Caiman ceremony at the beginning of the Haitian Revolution in 1791. This is not strictly a mangling of history on Robertson’s part. His comments come straight out of a blend of theology and history that, at the grassroots, pervades Haiti’s political discourse. Labeling the event at Bois Caiman a satanic pact touches on the most potent part of a vibrant oral tradition, a national myth that attempts to explain Haiti’s relationship with God and the world.
The French Revolution had been going on for two years when slave leaders gathered in the Caiman woods outside of what’s today Cap Haitien. The fighting between and within the white elite and the free mulatto population presented an excellent opportunity for general revolt. Most of the slaves present worked as overseers or coachmen for their respective masters, giving them freedom of movement and the right to carry swords. Dutty Boukman, a slave originally from Jamaica, and a priestess of disputed identity led a Voudou ceremony where they allegedly charged the gathered slaves “to throw away the image of the god of the whites who thirsts for our tears and listen to the voice of liberty that speaks in the hearts of all of us.” They then made an oath of secrecy and revenge, sealing it by drinking the blood of a sacrificed pig, a ceremony possibly West African in origin. This event bears a similar relationship to the Haitian Revolution as the Boston Tea Party does to the American Revolution—a critical event that helped galvanize the founding generation and forms a centerpoint for revolutionary legend today.
One of the first things that comes to mind in any discussion of Haiti, Voudou is a complex blending of West African and popular Catholic traditions. Paul Farmer gave the best description of Voudou’s place in Haitian culture and society when he thus described a firmly Christian peasant: “Of course he believes in Voudou. He just believes it’s wrong.” The Voudou question strikes at the heart of Haitian religious life. For its practitioners, Voudou offers a pantheon of friendly spirits, or lwas, that offer avenues to healing and hope. For its opponents, including many conservative Protestants and Catholics, it is spirit possession and satanic worship. The two sides disagree on what percentage of Voudou involves curses and malevolence, but both agree that such things are part of the religion. And, for those who oppose Voudou, Boukman’s ceremony in Bois Caiman sold the country to the devil.
For religious conservatives in Haiti and abroad, the idea that the leaders of the slave revolt led and participated in a Voudou ceremony provides a troubling contrast to presentations of the United States’ founding fathers as devout Christians, one that explains their vastly different fortunes. Many view the U.S. invasions and the rule of the Duvaliers as indications of the devil’s two hundred year lease on the country.
I only wish that were true. They've managed to exempt themselves and their families (and a few foreign dignitaries) from this indignity. I'm pretty sure you can find most of that in that screening manual that was leaked or improperly redacted or whatever. It was on Slashdot a while back, among other places.
You didn't actually think they'd put up with being treated like that, did you?
Slashdot Mirror
> Alright, so if you're a US citizen who believes the police may have reason to suspect you're in the country illegally, you have a few options to avoid any issues. First and foremost, a driver's license works wonders.
Yeah, a driver's license sure did this guy a lot of good.
And you think that you're saying that US citizens are never affected? Or that dumping thousands more people onto a broken system is a good idea (rather than going after the violent ones or, God forbid, funding the system so that it can actually process things at a reasonable rate)?
I don't think that the police are Gestapo by any means. As a matter of fact, all the policemen I've met were fundamentally decent. But I hate to see so many people outraged over illegal immigrants so much that they support a bad law that will lead to so much trouble for US citizens and other people here legally.
There simply is nothing other than race and speech (AKA racial profiling) that can give you a "reasonable suspicion" that people are here illegally, but many citizens and legal immigrants look and sound the same as your stereotypical illegal immigrant. Combined with our long history of conducting immigration sweeps, in which large numbers of people are detained, it becomes both suspect and Constitutionally troubling (why aren't people defending our 4th Amendment rights as much as our 2nd Amendment rights?). We also have a long history of losing civil rights lawsuits (which costs our states millions... but they'd rather press on and force us to chose between tax increases and education cuts than admit that the policies we have are bad).
But yeah, never mind that your points are undermined by things that have actually happened. The politicians scapegoat all of our problems on immigration. It makes it so much easier than them actually having to fix things. I've watched people scapegoat immigrants for all sorts of problems, even troubles I've had at work. It didn't go over very well when I pointed out that I knew who was responsible for those problems and that they were both US citizens and white. We don't even employ any non-citizens and the only one we used to was an H1-B from the UK who left due to unreasonable delays in processing his application for permanent residency (and who we haven't been able to adequately replace).
> They CANNOT walk up to a random person on the street and check their immigration status.
Wrong. We have a stop & identify statute. They can use that to check on anyone they want.
See also: the sweeps that are performed whenever our sheriff is up for reelection.
> From what I've heard, Wa in Japanese means opposite.
I think you've been misinformed. Depending on the exact form used, wa means "harmony", "sum", "total", can be combined with other words to indicate things of Japanese origin, is the reading of the "ha" hiragana when it's used as the subject particle, can be added to the end of a sentence to make the speaker sound more feminine and for emphasis, used to draw contrast or compare things, can indicate a limit, and can even be used as a counter for birds and rabbits, but I don't believe it means "opposite" (or if it does, it's not in any of my dictionaries).
The words I can find for "opposite" are "hantai no" (as in "go in the opposite direction"), "hantaigawa no" (as in "the other side" of something), "gyaku no koto" (as in "I thought the opposite thing"), and "no mukaigawa ni" (as in "the house opposite mine"), none of which really work in a context like this. If they went that route, they'd be more likely to use the word "ura" (which has meanings like "reverse", "back/rear", "wrong side" and "shady side").
Instead, of course, they used a pun on the word "warui" (bad), as a poster above explained.
Well, the thing is that they don't have a separate sound for R & L. They have a set of five sounds (usually transliterated as ra / re / ri / ro / ru) that are roughly half-way in between L and R in terms of sound. The tongue further back in the mouth (like the R and unlike the L sound), but the tongue also touches the roof of the mouth (which is just the opposite of before; being like the L sound and unlike the R sound). So you can think of it as half-and-half because it has one trait from both the R sound and the L sound.
But you're right that both those names sound like they contain the "warui" (bad) when pronounced the Japanese way.
> Hardly the first. While campaigning, Obama said he would invade Pakistan in order to get Usama bin Laden. Not even Bush is stupid enough to invade a sovereign nuclear nation to get one man.
As I remember it, he said that he would strike at terrorists in Pakistani territory without the approval of their government. I believe he has already done this (I'm not completely sure if the government of Pakistan approved or not).
I don't recall any invasion plans. Perhaps you could give a citation?
> Lying to preserve peace is neither evil nor wrong.
Does that mean that you'll pretend to submit to Islam to avoid upsetting terrorists?
> When it comes to kids sharing songs, that's civil, not criminal.
In theory, if you infringe upon the copyright of works with a retail value larger than a certain amount (I think it's $1000) in a certain period of time and you have a financial incentive (such as getting infringing copies of other copyrighted works in return), you can be prosecuted under criminal law. I believe the law that created those offenses is the NET Act (but get a lawyer if it ever applies to you).
Thing is, in practice, they don't charge normal people with that. Instead, they go after the release groups and other people high on the food chain. In short, they could prosecute some file sharers under criminal law, but in practice, they have better things to do with their time, but they do bust people who run big warez sites and things of that nature.
> But minimum wage work probably isn't absolutely necessary.
Have you ever worked in a factory? They pretty much define the case where you have a ton of minimum wage earners and yet you need them if you want to get any production done. And no, you can't run a factory with no laborers, even if they are unskilled.
I think that if you look around at minimum wage jobs, you'll find many that can be replaced by machines and many more than cannot (and believe me, we're trying... everywhere from clerks at checkout lines to assorted factory workers).
> I don't think this message should be taken as some condemnation of internet transparency.
Quite right, considering that the author of TFA (which it appears that no one has actually read) says:
Maybe a week from now we'll find out where this headline came from?
>>> I think that's what they call this, the Pope making an issue out of Internet transparency out of nowhere.
This is Slashdot, so I know that you didn't actually RTFA, but just so you know, the Pope never said anything attacking transparency. Here, I'll copy every direct quote of the Pope from the article for you:
I think it's a little bit of a stretch to say that the Pope "rails against [...] transparency" when the writers of the article "hope to be able to shed greater light on the question by week's end," don't you? I'm no fan of pedophile priests, so complain about those all you want. But I think it's pretty bad when the headline here is contradicted by the article. Did the submitter (or anyone but me) even read this, or did they go for the most sensational headline?
> One says you can't make a contract with a minor, the other says the minor may rescind or void the contract.
IANAL, but I once sat in on a contract law class that covered this part of US law. I believe that this descends from common law, so the UK should be mostly the same, but I'm not sure. The legal thing is that there's a difference between "voidable" and "void" contracts. Contracts (except those for "essentials" like renting a house) are "voidable." This means that they're not yet void, but if the minor wants to, they can void them. So they're not yet void, but they could be if the minor wants out of it. The exception about "essentials" exists so that emancipated minors can still get people to do business with them. Otherwise, they could use their minor status to escape from paying rent and whatnot and then nobody would do business with them, making it impossible for them to live on their own.
That said, remember that even illegal contracts can be both made and performed, e.g. someone can contract another person for assassination. But, for obvious reasons, the courts won't enforce an illegal contract. So you can always draw up and sign a contract. You can always choose to perform according to your obligations under the contract. But you can't always get a court to enforce the contract.
Even if we set aside all the other legal considerations, this contract is clearly unenforceable. Exactly how would any court force someone to hand over their soul? And even if they were willing to attempt that, how would they know that ownership of the soul had been transferred?
I can't speak for how things are run in college nowadays, but if I have any insight into human nature, I would have to say that either they believe it's right, or their answer is "it's okay when I do it." People have a hard time seeing any behavior they engage in as bad. I'm not saying they never think that, just that it works that way most of the time. I've actually seen someone who thought that file sharing was Communism... but had no problem copying every tape or DVD he had ever rented.
One of the more relevant biases is called "moral credentialing" (look it up on Wikipedia).
For the record, I see a lot more wrong with copyright law than with copying. And anyone with any technical insight should have realized a long time ago that our current copyright laws are unenforceable. I see the **AA types investing all kinds of money into lobbyists, technology and laws to change this, but short of a police state, that's not working so well in China, despite the government pouring all kinds of resources into controlling what the people do (though they don't care much about piracy, only about anti-government sentiments, the fact that they're trying to keep certain information scarce is the same).
> file sharing has been restricted to non-copyrighted files
There's no such thing as a non-copyrighted file in countries that subscribe to the Berne copyright convention (i.e. most of the world), except perhaps those few files where the author has released them into the public domain (assuming they live in a country where that's even possible...). The things you've been sharing are therefore almost certainly copyrighted (as Linux is), the difference is that they're not infringing because you have permission.
The reason I correct you is that the **AA types try that, even in court, claiming that people just have to filter out the "copyrighted" files as if there are master records somewhere indicating who has permission to publish what, when no such things exist and there's no algorithm that can tell you who has permission to publish what.
I can't remember what movie it's from, but whenever I hear things like "You'll have to pry IE6 from our cold, dead hands," all I can think of is:
"I find your conditions... acceptable."
Well, I don't begrudge them the trademark itself. The Red Cross does good work.
What I really question is their choice to enforce it in some ways. I mean, is it REALLY necessary for them to force games to make their health power ups into little green crosses in a box, rather than red ones? I just don't see how that harms them, nor why they should use it that way. I will give them credit, though, in that they didn't require much of a fix (changing health power up colors might be annoying, but it's not hard).
So I don't have a problem with trademarks per se, just with some of the ridiculous ways they've gotten used (at least some of the worst ideas have failed, like the attempt to use trademarks to protect devices from circumvention [Sony v. Accolade])
You're absolutely right that they have a statute creating some kind of super trademark (theirs isn't the only one, either: I think there's one for the Red Cross, too, and possibly others). But I would like to point out that there is a small exception for the use of "Olympic" with respect to a small area near Olympia, Washington, provided that you're west of the mountains.
But yeah, it's pretty bad. There's a lot of absolutely crazy stuff in IP law. It's all pretty dry reading, but you find all these crazy rules about just how big a TV is too big in a commercial establishment, statutory trademarks created by international treaties, etc.
Indeed, I realize that the Chinese probably consider the human rights activists to be something like "terrorists" (whatever their equivalent is) and for all I know, they consider Al Qaeda to be freedom fighters (they sure have no problem supporting Iran).
That's why I think it better to get down to the details about what behaviors I feel are bad (e.g. spying on people indiscriminately, little or no oversight, and governments conspiring with each other to flout the constitutional protections guaranteed to their own citizens), rather than merely trying to decide who is "worse."
I guess some people see it as though the world is divided into bad guys and good guys. So long as we're not a bad guy, we're one of the good guys, right? Problem being, almost nobody sees themselves as the bad guys. Not the Mafia, not the lobbyists, not the RIAA, not anyone.
I see it more like a race. Frankly, I don't give a damn who is in last place. I want my country to aim for #1.
> What is your angle?
Hard to tell, Ray. But if he's Thaetetus, does that make you Socrates? :]
Seriously, though, there are about a zillion Dan Roses out there. Mostly he appears to spend his time making random legal comments on Slashdot among a handful of others. Seems like he *might* be at UNC School of Law. The email has an extra dot, but I think Gmail ignores those. If that's true, he's part of the Lambda Law Students Association (a legal association for homosexuals), which doesn't really explain his interest in the RIAA & copyrights. That said, Google is giving some very strange results, so who knows?
That said, this exchange was pretty ugly for Tenenbaum. I assume it's what he's talking about. Of course, I see nothing in there admitting specifically to violating the distribution right. And I don't have a court transcript, either, which I trust more than random internet reports about the case.
I say that because there are other things out there like this story which claims that "Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson has conceded in a letter to the US Department of Justice that his client, accused peer-to-peer infringer Joel Tenenbaum, "downloaded music for [his] own enjoyment."" which points to this letter on your website. The problem is that I've read the letter three times and I can't find that "quote" in it anywhere, unless they got it by cutting out the phrase "is alleged to have," which would make their quote the same kind of dishonesty that led to $312,000 in sanctions recently.
> I'm honestly curious about this part: "Also, even if they do make a product this time, does that really excuse killing the products of other companies via patents on things they haven't actually built or sold?" Like?
You should have followed a couple links from Grond's post:
http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/nathan-myhrvolds-patent-extortion-fund-is-reaping-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars/
Anyhow, the correct term isn't "patent troll", it's NPE (Non-practicing Entity). And you will note that I didn't call them that. Nor did the article linked (it called them a "patent bully").
I don't care what we call them, frankly. I just don't like seeing people lock up ideas with patents and never let anyone use them. I don't like people patenting old ideas, doing fancy lawyering (but our idea is novel because it uses *four* knowledge bases... even though that's the only novel part and these things can easily be split or combined). I don't like reading Patently-O and seeing them give advice for how to prevent people from asking a court to make a patent bully go away by proving that they did not infringe, or how to get a patent even if the inventor doesn't want one.
Basically, I don't like most of what I see going on with the patent system. I don't like obvious or gibberish patents or the self-important people who think that they're geniuses for having them (even if other people thought of those ideas first and implemented them better). I don't like how software patents never give any source code, even though they're supposedly obligated to disclose the best known way to implement the invention.
There are so many problems with the system, I honestly wonder at times why we don't simply scrap it. Maybe there's a better way, but I haven't heard of one yet.
> I've re-read your post and it still seems to me that you are equating FBI wire tapping with Chinese wire tapping.
Well, for one, I thought it was the NSA that put in the splitters, not the FBI. And, to my knowledge, the differences between the American wiretapping and the Chinese wiretapping are thus:
* Americans ostensibly are looking for terrorists. They apparently compile reports that talk about terrorist "chatter" indicating some kind of crazy keyword-mining system. This may include an analysis of phone calls, as well. As far as anyone knows, they sniff ALL internet traffic. We know it exists, but the details are all classified and most of the conclusions about its capabilities are based on what little public data there is (e.g. it's guesswork to say that there's keyword mining, but it's hard to understand all those reports about changes in the amount of "terrorist chatter" unless they have something like that). Whatever oversight exists is lax, because even members of Congress didn't know the details when it came to light.
* The Chinese are looking for dissidents and attempting to make society more "harmonious" by squelching those who complain. Their system is publicly acknowledged and widely known. The capabilities of the "Great Firewall of China" are well-known (e.g. how it inserts RST packets to disrupt communication with blocked sites). We also know that they monitor and censor communication on an ad hoc basis. They have the "fifty cent party" to post things advocating the government's view online.
Basically, I'd say that wiretapping is wiretapping, but the US has more noble goals and far less oversight. So if you want to decide which one is better or worse, you'd have to know whether the abuse we don't know about (if it exists--and it almost certainly does) is worse than the abuse we don't know about.
Anyhow, it's definitely true that I trust the American government far more than the Chinese government. But all those things (e.g. tank man) have nothing to do with internet censorship, which is the only thing I'm even attempting to compare here. Tank man, as we should all know, was not caught due to internet wiretapping. You don't have to say that you're excusing the retroactively authorized American wiretapping, incidentally. If you come along and derail things by dragging up evil things done by the Chinese government that have nothing to do with internet censorship, you do that whether you intend to or not.
Of course, you still can't simply equate the two, true. And the Chinese government has more openly abused their powers. But I'm not especially comfortable with either case. Some part of me fears where this is heading. I think that we'll eventually have internet "borders" (national firewalls) in the name of protecting ourselves and those will open up all kinds of new issues. You could see things like no longer being able to communicate with Cuba, Iran & co., and yes, there would still be "data smugglers" who let you VPN your way past barriers. The fact that something like that is expensive and ineffective usually means that it's only a matter of time until governments implement it. National firewalls could then block all the sites they hate (e.g. The Pirate Bay). And the minor fact that that would be unconstitutional? Well, we'll just write this amendment allowing them in the name of protecting people from "internet terrorists" ...
So what I'm saying is that we should condemn all such abuses of power. Certainly, China should come under harsh condemnation for what they've done to hurt and defame those who threaten the corrupt. But we can't simply ignore what happens in America, even if it's supposed to protect us from actual bad guys. Mission creep shows us that it will, eventually, expand beyond that, and I already hate the fancy dances they do to get around the Constitutional problems (e.g. we'll use national security to keep you from knowing if we violate your privacy in practice, border search exemptions to give us a plausible cover [even if we appear to search more than just international traffic], and data sharing so that we'll let other countries spy on you on our behalf while we do the same for them).
Wake me when they actually start selling this product? This seems like something too cool to go to market.
Also, even if they do make a product this time, does that really excuse killing the products of other companies via patents on things they haven't actually built or sold? Then again, if someone robbed hundreds of people, then donated 10% of the proceeds or whatever to a charity named after them, people would defend them, so I suppose that they're only being consistent here if we excuse someone who practices patent trolling to kill their competitors, but who eventually makes a real product.
Sure, it's good to do good things. But putting it forth as some kind of excuse is just lame. Call me when they actually repent of their patent trolling and promise to discontinue it, then we'll see if their reform is real or not. Otherwise, you might as well be selling indulgences.
> No problem, I'll just put the movie up on the class website." It's not exactly shocking that someone objected to that.
Actually, it's still pretty unreasonable, because the videos on the class website are only available on campus and not (easily) saved (unless you have a stream ripper for media furnace or something). That link is in the submission, but it seems like people are busy pointing out that the videos in question are commercial videos that are class assignments (rather than videos of lectures) while ignoring the fact that they're not just distributing these videos to all and sundry. They're only letting students watch them.
> Why? She illegally shared a huge number of songs. When caught, she tried to frame her kids for it. She tried to destroy evidence. She lied repeatedly under oath.
Do you have reliable sources for that, or are you merely engaging in defamation? Because I'm pretty sure she wasn't found guilty of destruction of evidence (and I do know about the hard drive--it broke down and she forgot the date she took it in to get it repaired according to what I read). The other stuff is less clear. The main evidence it was her is a username, but in my family, many of us have shared the same usernames in the past, so I'm not willing to say that she lied because I don't know.
And if she just wanted to settle, she could have gotten out of it for maybe ~$5k before fighting it out legally, based on what I've heard about other settlement offers. $25k still doesn't fit my idea of "reasonable" though. If she sole 2 CDs from a record store (with the 24 songs she was actually convicted of copying), she'd be looking at something like a $500 fine and probation. Even if you make that 4 or 8 or 10 CDs, it wouldn't change much, and Bittorrent shows that multiplying that by anything more than 10 (to give us 20 CDs) is ridiculous. No one has share ratios that high and they have no business collecting for the same losses over and over (which they are, giving that they've filed 30,000 lawsuits or so).
I think Pat Robertson ought to reread the book of Job sometime (paying special attention to Job's so-called "friends") and I agree with the other person who pointed out that most Christians are trying to get all those Hatian orphans adopted and working with the relief efforts, not worrying about legends and whatnot.
But that aside, he did not invent this story. There is an actual legend concerning this pact that existed long before this disaster.
I only wish that were true. They've managed to exempt themselves and their families (and a few foreign dignitaries) from this indignity. I'm pretty sure you can find most of that in that screening manual that was leaked or improperly redacted or whatever. It was on Slashdot a while back, among other places.
You didn't actually think they'd put up with being treated like that, did you?