I've read through some of the comments made here and frankly I am little afraid for freedom of speech given the mamby-pamby attitudes represented here.
First, parody or satire requires some element of imitation and the website in question can't parody Paul Martin's website without copying or imitating in part the design, fonts or insignia of the original.
Second, our fair dealing doctrine, analagous to fair use in the U.S., allows for criticism and comment without infringement. I would argue that fair dealing protection extends to this website on those grounds, regardless of the displeasure of the Liberal Party.
As to the "cybersquatting" of the domain paulmartintime.ca, the issue of using domain names to direct web surfers to critial websites has a long past. What exactly is the concern here? No one is asking for money, no demands have been made by the owners of paulmartintime.ca to paulmartintimes.ca and the content of the website is protected speech. If some waylaid Liberal Party supporter happens to come across the critical website and is offended, too bad for him. That's the price of democracy.
Of course, IANAL and this was gleaned from the web:
It's been mentioned here before, but a patent holder has to make reasonable efforts to secure their patent in the marketplace. If a patent holder neglects enforcement of their patent when an infringement occurs, the patent holder may be guilty of a "submarine patent", where the patent holder specifically withholds action on infringement to maximize allowable damages. The defense to such ocurrences is termed the doctrine of laches and was laid out in a Supreme Court ruling.
The doctrine of laches defense has two elements:
- The alleged infringer will suffer serious harm to their business if the patent were enforced or if the period of time before action was such that important evidence or witnesess were lost.
- The patent holder delayed action for an unreasonable and inexcusable period of time.
Typically, six years is held to be a reasonable amount of time before the doctrine of laches may be used as a defense. Note that the burden of proof rests with the infringer and that both elements must be proven on the proponderance of the evidence and any further infringement is actionable.
Am I the only person that thinks "music" and "dancing" games are just not entertaining? On top of that, you don't make any real music or do any real dancing. To me they are nothing more than a computer controlled version of Simon Says.
Mario Party is an example of a game that everyone loves, even those not playing. I remember I once threw Parappa the Rappa into the PS at one of our parties (it came on a demo disc). Five minutes in everyone was asking, "Is that all you do? Um, something else please". It didn't really seem like a "party" game like Mario, although I didn't mind Parappa for a while by myself. Perhaps it was our 25+ demographic.
No offense intended to those that love these games, but it's just not my cup of tea.
I remember the original PS specifications never quite measured up with the actual hardware, the same with the PS2 and now the PSX. Given this track record, should we ever trust the features and specifications given by Sony?
The PSP and PS3 are coming and while I am sure they will be fantastic machines, I don't think they will be as fantastic as the numbers spun by Sony.
First, there is overwhelming evidence that the dipole component of the magnetic field has diminshed, reversed and strengthened only to diminish and reverse again many times.
Second, the measured dipole field strength is only one component of the total field strength. Extrapolating the age of the earth based on the dipole field strength alone is not based on any accepted science.
"Scientific" Creationists like to believe that they're using science to support their theist assertions, but that is just the problem. Science does not presuppose any conclusion and is effectively neutral any subject until logic, reason and experimentation point the way.
Reading through the comments here my mind was immediately drawn to the antitrust settlement reached with various record companies for setting minimum prices on CDs. Why is Apple any different?
Before someone argues that Apple would have to conspire with ALL MP3 player manufacturers, I should point out the music companies all carry different music catalogues, so I fail to see a comparison there. Was this a case of outright collusion among the various music companies and music retailers and does this have any bearing on enforcing minimum pricing in other sectors?
Something about a global computer network, called the Intersomething and then there was his crazy idea about putting objects in space to bounce communication signals off of, called them saddlelights or some such.
First, the commissions are made up of three people:
A judge, chosen by the Chief Justice of each Province or Territory, who acts as chairperson and two civil servants chosen by the Speaker of the House. In practice, many commission members, aside from the chairpersons, have been university professors or non-elected officials of legislative assemblies. N.B. Sitting members of Parliament, the Provincial Legislatures or the Senate are not permitted by law to be members.
Second, the commissions hold hearings that the public is entitled and encouraged to attend. There is a specific Parliamentary committee that forwards complaints and suggestions to the commissions, but the commission is under no obligation to consider them. The commssions are required to draw boundaries based upon population density, mainly, but other factors are considered.
After forty years of an independent commission, a certain amount of trial and error and fine tuning has resulted in a process that is indeed independent and effective. I cannot recall a single instance where boundary disputes were referred to a court for resolution.
"Politicians could design their ridings (districts in the U.S.) to ensure that they would be re-elected. They could move areas that voted against them out of their ridings, or divide areas that supported their party into more, smaller ridings. The process is called gerrymandering, after Massachusetts governor Eldridge Gerry, who pioneered the technique in the early 19th century."
In Canada, prior to 1951, Parliament was soley responsible for drawing the electoral boundaries. Of course, the boundaries shifted with the political motivations of the MPs. Suffice to say that enough MPs developed a moral sense that democracy was suffering from the personal motivations of some and a permanent independent commission was struck to alleviate those concerns. The following URL goes into some history and discussion:
I have no idea how the process works in U.S., but it would seem that an independent commission, with the proper structure and powers, would be the fairest and would further the needs of democracy the best.
Anyone know what process is used in the U.S.? I would assume that some states have a committee for that purpose, but is it independent?
Why not make "extra" billing illegal?
on
Stealth Inflation
·
· Score: 1
The law should at least require that taxes and government fees are itemized separately and identified as such. Many bills I receive do not separately itemize government manadated fees from those billed by the company.
Beyond that I wish that billed services were mandated by law to charge a monthly or per unit rate inclusive of all fees. It is absolutely impossible to shop for a lot of services because of additional, non-quoted fees. Electricity is a prime example here in my province, Alberta. There is no way to directly compare the prices of one company to another.
Part of the problem in the U.S. is that local and state authorities have taxation powers. In Canada that is not the case as most provinces restrict municipal taxing authority to property and school taxes only. Not that it has much effect, we still get taxed up the ass here by the provincal and federal governments.
According to friends that have been to Japan the trains are NEVER late and most lines have an accumlated schedule discrepancy of less than one minute over an entire year.
Proponents of intelligent design (read: God made it) argue that evolution is "just a theory". What they conveniently forget is that gravity, is also "just a theory" as are many ideas of science. It does not refute the fact of gravity that scientists have proposed a theory of its operation.
Similarly, the theory of evolution does not refute the fact that life on this planet has emerged, evolved and then disappeared leaving other life forms in its place. Confusing the fact of evolution with the theory of its mechanism is a common device among adherents to intelligent design.
Unfortunately, the colloqial use of the word "theory" has diluted its scientific standing. A scientific theory is one that has passed the intense scrutiny of the scientific process, has been accepted by peers in that field, and can be modified and improved through further science.
Yes, I know it has a "landing bar" that retracts at 20 Km/h and the wheel is wide and flat, but the braking and acceleration forces have to go somewhere...
You know, the board game that Starbucks sells in their coffee shops.
The rules are so pathetically thin that situations come up with no ready answers in the rules, so we make it up. Consequently, everyone I know plays the game a little diffently.
I had the inspiring idea during Sculptorades (where you sculpt your clues in plasticene) that I could spell the answer out in the clay. Of course, the rules say nothing about this.
People will always try to achieve the impossible or seemingly impossible.
Maybe this will be a Slashdot first -- read the article then post!
After reading the article, I still do not understand how Google could be sued for copyright infringement when they are the end user of a product produced by someone else; does copyright law not specify this? It would be like Eolas suing me for patent infringement after I installed an IE plugin.
If police in Canada want to tap your phone or place listening devices they must prove during the warrant process that the information gathered cannot be obtained by any other means.
The court's reasoning for this is that the privacy of individuals not under investigation must be considered.
An ex-girlfriend is in the RCMP communications team and she told me that you would be amazed at what you hear (no specifics of course) and that alleged criminals more often than not are very unconcerned about the content of their telephone coversations. Maybe they figure it will never happen to them.
What is most distressing is the attitude of most law enforcement agencies; it seems the prevailing opinion is that the end justifies the means. You will never hear law enforcement agencies ask for increased safeguards for privacy or to even question the constiutionality of their procedures. It seems that most police lack any impartiality and that everyone is guilty and it is simply a matter of collecting enough evidence. Where are the ethics?
I recall an episode of Law and Order where the two detectives are questioning the owner of a car repair shop. The police wish to search a van on the premises, but they do not have a warrant. What do they do? They manufacture a story that they heard a woman scream and then search the van.
I recall that I went through the same problem with the original PlayStation when just over the one year warranty the drive stopped reading game discs. Surprise! The PS was notorious for disc errors and many people resorted to turning the unit upside down to get the unit to read discs again. I eventually sold the unit to a friend and he managed to repair it.
When the PlayStation 2 hit the market the first thing me and my gaming friends thought of was the unreliable drives on the original PS and the hope that Sony had rid themselves of that monkey on the new unit. My fears were confirmed when friends started to experience the dreaded disc read errors months after the purchase. I never did buy a PS 2.
Now, I work for an electronics repair company and we dabble with PS 2 repairs. By dabble I mean that it is not our main business, we focus more on DVDs, TVs, etc. We get three to five units a week to repair, in and out of warranty, and this fix works about 75% of the time (so far). We are able to save our customers time in the case of in-warranty and both time and money for out-of-warranty. You would think that Sony would have made this information available to us -- no, I stumbled upon it on-line and gave the information to the repair techs. We actually make more money now on PS 2 repairs since we do not have send units to Sony to replace drives and wait for their return. We turn far more units over than we did previously, all from one stupid fix.
I should note that we have had one Gamecube in for repair since the Gamecube was released and two Xboxen like wise. What a difference in hardware reliability.
That is one obvious solution. Simply ignore Quebec and sell you wares to the remaining 60% of North America that speaks English.
Of course, Quebec is the second most populous province of Canada, so you would certainly give up a large portion of the market. I would guess that the cost of translating the minimal amount of text to French (game package, manual) is more than offset by the profit generated by the Quebec market.
Game manufacturers obviously translate their games for other countries, so what is the big deal?
Never mind fingers, eyes, or arms my ego is seemingly destroyed after every new game purchase.
I picked up a second hand copy of Jedi Starfighter and have been playing that for a couple of weeks and I am feeling pretty good. My ten year old nephew comes over and utterly embarrasses me in the very first head to head battle we play. He, of course, has never played the game before and made it look like I needed video game special ed.
The entire process is transparent and more importantly, independant of the government through the agency known as Elections Canada.
If voting machines were introduced in Canada the same transparency and independance would have to be maintained. Automatic recounts are stipulated by law in close vote situations, that requires an auditable process. The Diebold machines are not auditable and would not conform to the law.
In all, it would be impossible not to mention insane, to move from a transparent, independant, auditable system to an inpenetrable, dependant, unauditiable one. I do not understand how these voting machines pass muster in the U.S.
I would assume that the black box data was only one link in the chain of evidence. The article did not make that clear.
Police have crash specialists that analyse crash sitations. All that expertise will not disappear simply because newer model cars are equipped with data collection devices. No credible professional investigator would rely completely on the black box data when recreating the crash scene. Any competent defense counsel would have a field day if a crash investigator relied soley on black box data if the physical evidence contradicted the data analysis alone.
When I first saw RS I was blown away, the graphics were outstanding. When I actually got to play I was less than impressed, having played through X-Wing and Tie Fighter I found the game quite confusing and almost impossibly difficult in the later missions. The issue is not the controls but the targeting system, of which there really isn't one. With X-Wing or Tie Fighter you could target fighter groups and pick them off one by one, with RS the targeting system makes this a hit or miss affair, much like an arcade game.
I really enjoyed Jedi Starfighter for this reason, it played very much like X-Wing -- intuitive targeting, systematic approach to missions, etc. Much more playable game.
Slashdot Mirror
What is illegal about proxying network connections to another Xbox/Gamecube over the Internet? Damn ingenious if you ask me.
I've read through some of the comments made here and frankly I am little afraid for freedom of speech given the mamby-pamby attitudes represented here.
First, parody or satire requires some element of imitation and the website in question can't parody Paul Martin's website without copying or imitating in part the design, fonts or insignia of the original.
Second, our fair dealing doctrine, analagous to fair use in the U.S., allows for criticism and comment without infringement. I would argue that fair dealing protection extends to this website on those grounds, regardless of the displeasure of the Liberal Party.
As to the "cybersquatting" of the domain paulmartintime.ca, the issue of using domain names to direct web surfers to critial websites has a long past. What exactly is the concern here? No one is asking for money, no demands have been made by the owners of paulmartintime.ca to paulmartintimes.ca and the content of the website is protected speech. If some waylaid Liberal Party supporter happens to come across the critical website and is offended, too bad for him. That's the price of democracy.
Of course, IANAL and this was gleaned from the web:
It's been mentioned here before, but a patent holder has to make reasonable efforts to secure their patent in the marketplace. If a patent holder neglects enforcement of their patent when an infringement occurs, the patent holder may be guilty of a "submarine patent", where the patent holder specifically withholds action on infringement to maximize allowable damages. The defense to such ocurrences is termed the doctrine of laches and was laid out in a Supreme Court ruling.
The doctrine of laches defense has two elements:
- The alleged infringer will suffer serious harm to their business if the patent were enforced or if the period of time before action was such that important evidence or witnesess were lost.
- The patent holder delayed action for an unreasonable and inexcusable period of time.
Typically, six years is held to be a reasonable amount of time before the doctrine of laches may be used as a defense. Note that the burden of proof rests with the infringer and that both elements must be proven on the proponderance of the evidence and any further infringement is actionable.
That's as much as I could find.
Am I the only person that thinks "music" and "dancing" games are just not entertaining? On top of that, you don't make any real music or do any real dancing. To me they are nothing more than a computer controlled version of Simon Says.
Mario Party is an example of a game that everyone loves, even those not playing. I remember I once threw Parappa the Rappa into the PS at one of our parties (it came on a demo disc). Five minutes in everyone was asking, "Is that all you do? Um, something else please". It didn't really seem like a "party" game like Mario, although I didn't mind Parappa for a while by myself. Perhaps it was our 25+ demographic.
No offense intended to those that love these games, but it's just not my cup of tea.
I remember the original PS specifications never quite measured up with the actual hardware, the same with the PS2 and now the PSX. Given this track record, should we ever trust the features and specifications given by Sony?
The PSP and PS3 are coming and while I am sure they will be fantastic machines, I don't think they will be as fantastic as the numbers spun by Sony.
Just my thoughts.
First, there is overwhelming evidence that the dipole component of the magnetic field has diminshed, reversed and strengthened only to diminish and reverse again many times.
Second, the measured dipole field strength is only one component of the total field strength. Extrapolating the age of the earth based on the dipole field strength alone is not based on any accepted science.
"Scientific" Creationists like to believe that they're using science to support their theist assertions, but that is just the problem. Science does not presuppose any conclusion and is effectively neutral any subject until logic, reason and experimentation point the way.
Reading through the comments here my mind was immediately drawn to the antitrust settlement reached with various record companies for setting minimum prices on CDs. Why is Apple any different?
Before someone argues that Apple would have to conspire with ALL MP3 player manufacturers, I should point out the music companies all carry different music catalogues, so I fail to see a comparison there. Was this a case of outright collusion among the various music companies and music retailers and does this have any bearing on enforcing minimum pricing in other sectors?
Anyone?
Something about a global computer network, called the Intersomething and then there was his crazy idea about putting objects in space to bounce communication signals off of, called them saddlelights or some such.
What hokey ideas.
First, the commissions are made up of three people:
A judge, chosen by the Chief Justice of each Province or Territory, who acts as chairperson and two civil servants chosen by the Speaker of the House. In practice, many commission members, aside from the chairpersons, have been university professors or non-elected officials of legislative assemblies. N.B. Sitting members of Parliament, the Provincial Legislatures or the Senate are not permitted by law to be members.
Second, the commissions hold hearings that the public is entitled and encouraged to attend. There is a specific Parliamentary committee that forwards complaints and suggestions to the commissions, but the commission is under no obligation to consider them. The commssions are required to draw boundaries based upon population density, mainly, but other factors are considered.
After forty years of an independent commission, a certain amount of trial and error and fine tuning has resulted in a process that is indeed independent and effective. I cannot recall a single instance where boundary disputes were referred to a court for resolution.
First, what gerrymandering is (from the web):
e /r ed/readjusting_e.htm
"Politicians could design their ridings (districts in the U.S.) to ensure that they would be re-elected. They could move areas that voted against them out of their ridings, or divide areas that supported their party into more, smaller ridings. The process is called gerrymandering, after Massachusetts governor Eldridge Gerry, who pioneered the technique in the early 19th century."
In Canada, prior to 1951, Parliament was soley responsible for drawing the electoral boundaries. Of course, the boundaries shifted with the political motivations of the MPs. Suffice to say that enough MPs developed a moral sense that democracy was suffering from the personal motivations of some and a permanent independent commission was struck to alleviate those concerns. The following URL goes into some history and discussion:
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/fedrep/federal_
I have no idea how the process works in U.S., but it would seem that an independent commission, with the proper structure and powers, would be the fairest and would further the needs of democracy the best.
Anyone know what process is used in the U.S.? I would assume that some states have a committee for that purpose, but is it independent?
The law should at least require that taxes and government fees are itemized separately and identified as such. Many bills I receive do not separately itemize government manadated fees from those billed by the company.
Beyond that I wish that billed services were mandated by law to charge a monthly or per unit rate inclusive of all fees. It is absolutely impossible to shop for a lot of services because of additional, non-quoted fees. Electricity is a prime example here in my province, Alberta. There is no way to directly compare the prices of one company to another.
Part of the problem in the U.S. is that local and state authorities have taxation powers. In Canada that is not the case as most provinces restrict municipal taxing authority to property and school taxes only. Not that it has much effect, we still get taxed up the ass here by the provincal and federal governments.
of Japan's train system.
According to friends that have been to Japan the trains are NEVER late and most lines have an accumlated schedule discrepancy of less than one minute over an entire year.
Very impressive.
Proponents of intelligent design (read: God made it) argue that evolution is "just a theory". What they conveniently forget is that gravity, is also "just a theory" as are many ideas of science. It does not refute the fact of gravity that scientists have proposed a theory of its operation.
Similarly, the theory of evolution does not refute the fact that life on this planet has emerged, evolved and then disappeared leaving other life forms in its place. Confusing the fact of evolution with the theory of its mechanism is a common device among adherents to intelligent design.
Unfortunately, the colloqial use of the word "theory" has diluted its scientific standing. A scientific theory is one that has passed the intense scrutiny of the scientific process, has been accepted by peers in that field, and can be modified and improved through further science.
Yeah, that sounds safe.
Yes, I know it has a "landing bar" that retracts at 20 Km/h and the wheel is wide and flat, but the braking and acceleration forces have to go somewhere...
How about a game graph?
Place excitement on the horizontal axis and skill on the vertical.
S
k
i
l
l
-------------------
Excitement
Forget it, I got nothing.
You know, the board game that Starbucks sells in their coffee shops.
The rules are so pathetically thin that situations come up with no ready answers in the rules, so we make it up. Consequently, everyone I know plays the game a little diffently.
I had the inspiring idea during Sculptorades (where you sculpt your clues in plasticene) that I could spell the answer out in the clay. Of course, the rules say nothing about this.
People will always try to achieve the impossible or seemingly impossible.
Maybe this will be a Slashdot first -- read the article then post!
After reading the article, I still do not understand how Google could be sued for copyright infringement when they are the end user of a product produced by someone else; does copyright law not specify this? It would be like Eolas suing me for patent infringement after I installed an IE plugin.
I will go back into my little hole now.
If police in Canada want to tap your phone or place listening devices they must prove during the warrant process that the information gathered cannot be obtained by any other means.
The court's reasoning for this is that the privacy of individuals not under investigation must be considered.
An ex-girlfriend is in the RCMP communications team and she told me that you would be amazed at what you hear (no specifics of course) and that alleged criminals more often than not are very unconcerned about the content of their telephone coversations. Maybe they figure it will never happen to them.
What is most distressing is the attitude of most law enforcement agencies; it seems the prevailing opinion is that the end justifies the means. You will never hear law enforcement agencies ask for increased safeguards for privacy or to even question the constiutionality of their procedures. It seems that most police lack any impartiality and that everyone is guilty and it is simply a matter of collecting enough evidence. Where are the ethics?
I recall an episode of Law and Order where the two detectives are questioning the owner of a car repair shop. The police wish to search a van on the premises, but they do not have a warrant. What do they do? They manufacture a story that they heard a woman scream and then search the van.
I recall that I went through the same problem with the original PlayStation when just over the one year warranty the drive stopped reading game discs. Surprise! The PS was notorious for disc errors and many people resorted to turning the unit upside down to get the unit to read discs again. I eventually sold the unit to a friend and he managed to repair it.
When the PlayStation 2 hit the market the first thing me and my gaming friends thought of was the unreliable drives on the original PS and the hope that Sony had rid themselves of that monkey on the new unit. My fears were confirmed when friends started to experience the dreaded disc read errors months after the purchase. I never did buy a PS 2.
Now, I work for an electronics repair company and we dabble with PS 2 repairs. By dabble I mean that it is not our main business, we focus more on DVDs, TVs, etc. We get three to five units a week to repair, in and out of warranty, and this fix works about 75% of the time (so far). We are able to save our customers time in the case of in-warranty and both time and money for out-of-warranty. You would think that Sony would have made this information available to us -- no, I stumbled upon it on-line and gave the information to the repair techs. We actually make more money now on PS 2 repairs since we do not have send units to Sony to replace drives and wait for their return. We turn far more units over than we did previously, all from one stupid fix.
I should note that we have had one Gamecube in for repair since the Gamecube was released and two Xboxen like wise. What a difference in hardware reliability.
I wonder if they translate games to Spanish for the Mexican market or release them in English?
Considering how much Spanish I see on packages in the U.S. alone, I would assume they do.
That is one obvious solution. Simply ignore Quebec and sell you wares to the remaining 60% of North America that speaks English.
Of course, Quebec is the second most populous province of Canada, so you would certainly give up a large portion of the market. I would guess that the cost of translating the minimal amount of text to French (game package, manual) is more than offset by the profit generated by the Quebec market.
Game manufacturers obviously translate their games for other countries, so what is the big deal?
Never mind fingers, eyes, or arms my ego is seemingly destroyed after every new game purchase.
I picked up a second hand copy of Jedi Starfighter and have been playing that for a couple of weeks and I am feeling pretty good. My ten year old nephew comes over and utterly embarrasses me in the very first head to head battle we play. He, of course, has never played the game before and made it look like I needed video game special ed.
I am back to Tetris for a while to heal my ego.
The entire process is transparent and more importantly, independant of the government through the agency known as Elections Canada.
If voting machines were introduced in Canada the same transparency and independance would have to be maintained. Automatic recounts are stipulated by law in close vote situations, that requires an auditable process. The Diebold machines are not auditable and would not conform to the law.
In all, it would be impossible not to mention insane, to move from a transparent, independant, auditable system to an inpenetrable, dependant, unauditiable one. I do not understand how these voting machines pass muster in the U.S.
I would assume that the black box data was only one link in the chain of evidence. The article did not make that clear.
Police have crash specialists that analyse crash sitations. All that expertise will not disappear simply because newer model cars are equipped with data collection devices. No credible professional investigator would rely completely on the black box data when recreating the crash scene. Any competent defense counsel would have a field day if a crash investigator relied soley on black box data if the physical evidence contradicted the data analysis alone.
When I first saw RS I was blown away, the graphics were outstanding. When I actually got to play I was less than impressed, having played through X-Wing and Tie Fighter I found the game quite confusing and almost impossibly difficult in the later missions. The issue is not the controls but the targeting system, of which there really isn't one. With X-Wing or Tie Fighter you could target fighter groups and pick them off one by one, with RS the targeting system makes this a hit or miss affair, much like an arcade game.
I really enjoyed Jedi Starfighter for this reason, it played very much like X-Wing -- intuitive targeting, systematic approach to missions, etc. Much more playable game.
My two cents.