Unless of course your work is downtown, and suddenly "move closer to work" means "pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars more for a worse, smaller place."
Even IF you could show that it was cost-economical in the long run, the reality is that most people probably can't front an extra $150G's to save money decades down the road. And frankly it would be irresponsible to do so; if you can really get that much money to blow now, you'd be way better off to simply invest it anyway. Your break-even point wouldn't be 30 years down the road.
But I guess it's easier to simply be a douchebag than consider other peoples' situations.
I think the OP's problem with you is your headline and what seems to be your conclusion: That these services should be "spun off" because too much information in one company's hands is asking for trouble. The only logical way that makes a difference is if these new, spun-off companies/divisions can't talk to one another or share that data. If that weren't the case, it would be the same situation we have now that you're objecting to.
With that in mind, there's an argument to be made that Google couldn't offer the same level of service without the same level of information, due either to the fact that the information is the price they ask you to pay for their otherwise free services or because they actually need the information to make the service itself better. Thus while you claim you only speak for yourself, you're actually proposing a solution that would impact everybody. The OP's suggestion was, in my mind, the correct one: Rather than forcing your views on everybody in that manner, if you're uncomfortable with Google having so much information about you, you should just not give it to them by not using their services.
Your concerns about privacy are valid, the decisions should just be made by each individual for himself.
And a culture that was a bit smarter than it is today [. ..] Americans have gotten far less educated and far dumber between the 60s and now
I don't buy this. I think we're simply equally smart but in different ways. I remember back in high school, there was an older teacher--I only had him for a little homeroom sort of thing that lasted 15 minutes like once a week, so I'm not sure what he taught otherwise. Anyway, he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties and somehow ended up relating a story that when he was in high school, the highest level of mathematics that was available was basic algebra. Now I can't speak for other people or school districts, but in mine algebra was a freshman course for most students; if they weren't the brightest bulbs, they took a remedial math course first and then got to algebra in their sophomore year. Granted, course requirements and availability aren't a great measure of intelligence (which in itself is hard to define), but it seems to apply here.
I think the biggest differences between then and now is the shape our knowledge takes. Years ago I think it was a generally deeper amount of knowledge, but in a shallower pool of subjects. These days we know more things, but less about them. To be honest, I consider our method generally superior, though certainly there's room for argument there. But so far as grammar school or high school goes, I think that broad-strokes approach is better. The problem, in my eyes, is that college seems to just continue that trend with a lot of rather pointless general education courses, time I think better spent letting students dive deeply into their chosen fields of study. But I suppose that's not entirely relevant to the topic.
There are definitely some areas we're coming up shallow in these days though, reading and writing skills being paramount in my mind. Should be fairly easily fixed though, if anybody bothers to try.
Seriously, do you think a man landing on Mars today would get the same TV audience?
Of course not, but why should it? It's been done before. We'd definitely get better video these days, but there's not that same kind of allure. We've been there--not only have we been there, but having been there means we've already done the whole manned space flight thing. Combined with the fact that we've been routinely launching people and objects into space since those days and doing it again isn't nearly as exciting as it was 40 years ago. And let's be realistic: If we care about TV audience, we're talking about enthusiasm and excitement, not about the value of the missions or what we're learning, and certainly not whether or not people today are stupid for not getting excited about it. There was also a big heaping of patriotism wrapped around the whole thing in the past: "Look at us, we beat the Soviets! Suck it Communism!" Doesn't exist these days.
That said, you'd probably see better ratings for a mission to a different planet/moon/whatever, like Mars (since it's a hot topic lately). Still wouldn't reach the same audience, but that doesn't mean much.
It's a horrible stereotype but it's based in truth
A horrible stereotype, yes, but you haven't provided any evidence that would approach the level of truth. You're just begging the question.
The average American would be more interested in American Idol than steering their own country away from the road to irrelevance and obscurity.
So what? This is a free country; you can't MAKE people like science or math, and you can't make them be engineers and scientists. Even if you could, chances are that being forced to work in a field you care nothing about would produce really mediocre talent.
I took a quick glance at your webpage. Seems you want to be a game developer. So I take it that you'd rather screw around with video games than steer
Current copyright laws do not pass the test of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts; they are a burden on innovation and have systematically retarded the progress of science and technology, strangling many significant innovations, once again with internet radio.
I would agree if you changed that to read "patents" instead of copyrights. Internet radio is a technology; the creation of the technology is already complete, and there are still players in that market who will work on incremental improvements because they're still turning a profit, even if that profit is not as big as they would like. What's being retarded right now is their ability to make a buck on other peoples' copyrights.
Further, you've provided no evidence whatsoever that even if copyright were to completely strangle Internet radio to death that it is still not a net gain. Nowhere in "promote the progress of science and useful arts" does it say it has to uniformly promote the progress of ALL technologies and useful arts. Agree with the concepts of copyright or not, the idea behind music copyright is to encourage creation of music, not to encourage the creation of radio. Radio is an offshoot business of music, and as it piggybacks on the rights of those content creators it is and should be subject to their terms. In a sense, their business model is not unlike the vilified RIAA's: They essentially provide some equipment to get somebody else's work out, and as technology marches on their equipment is less and less necessary in that task.
I sympathize with the position of Intenret radio companies in this case, but the group I'm truly angry at is terrestrial radio. Do you really think they didn't slip some money around to kill off their competition? What other reasonable explanation is there that their rates are lower than Internet radio's, per listener, while Internet radio clearly has a less lucrative revenue stream?
He's implying--stating fairly clearly, in fact--that children think they know everything. I'm only 24, but in my experience, even looking back on my own actions, that tends to be true. I'd like to think I'm past it, but who knows if I'll think the same of myself a few more years down the road. Regardless of its truth, though, it's a societal meme in the same vein as "teenagers think they're invincible," so I wouldn't go so far as to ascribe anything to it specifically.
To be honest, I'm not even sure the comment about bloggers should be considered more than a joke. It's two sentences at the end of a fairly long paragraph; twenty words out of two hundred--out of 3500 if we're counting the entire text of the speech. I checked out the link to the whole speech and while I didn't read it all, that wording is at the end of a paragraph with the next paragraph about him not being so sure of himself as an older man. It would have helped to hear the delivery, I think, but at the moment everything points to it simply being a joke.
I have major problems with his bill if it is as you described, but I have no problems whatosever with the quote. That is absolutely how most people on the Internet behave and I think he conveyed it in a mildly humorous, tongue-in-cheek manner. To call it a "contempt for citizens expressing their views" seems entirely too harsh to me, at least based on what you quoted. I don't like McCain (or Obama, really) and I GREATLY support EVERYBODY's right to express their individual viewpoints--but that doesn't mean that most of them aren't self-righteous or otherwise blathering idiots.
Really, the only shame here is that he singled out the blogosphere for any particular blame. Happens all over the Internet through many different mediums.
A McCain spokesman said the ad in question, which mocks Sen. Barack Obama, was put together by the Ohio GOP.
The article isn't even 100 words, could you not make it all the way through? I know/.'ers are notorious for not reading the article, but one would think they wouldn't link it as support for a dubious claim without giving it a once-over.
It isn't even being run by him or his campaign. Even if it were, it's entirely probable that he would have nothing to do with the ad other than a final "go ahead and run it." It would not be at all unreasonable to assume that even if he took note of the fact that they were using the song, that he assumed his staffers had done their job and obtained proper permission to do so. If I were a presidential candidate, I know I would have much more important things to do than micromanage my team.
I haven't seen the ad in question, but if it's anything like most political ads it runs about 30 seconds long, which in my mind would also bring up a fair use question even if the song ran the entire duration. The article also doesn't mention anything about whether or not anybody was contacted with a request to stop using the song or compensate the artist or if he just went straight to lawsuit town.
I'm not a McCain supporter by any stretch, but your post is just ridiculous. Then again it's patently obvious you made up your mind long ago and are inventing lame "issues" to try to lambast him with, so I suppose you'll just come back with a "zomg he's lying he's a politician lolerskatz."
[headline:] Prior Restraint is UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!
Usually, but not always. Gag orders are prior restraint, for example, and are not always unconstitutional. There are also clear exceptions for what the USSC refers to as "exceptional circumstances," and clearly defining that is up to the courts themselves. You are correct that there is a heavy bias against it in US jurisprudence, but it is important to note that no decision has yet been rendered. It MAY be prior restraint days from now, but now it is simply "keep your pants on a minute."
They have a RIGHT to speak [. ..] they can lack discretion and get themselves arrested for illegal speech
You are contradicting yourself. A right is something you can do free of legal consequence. If one can be arrested for something one says--and you are correct that one can--then it was not a right to begin with. It is a difficult distinction sometimes, but put it this way: Screaming "I KNOW MY RIGHTS!!!" does nothing but make you look stupid if it turns out you did not.
Whether or not they have a right to say these things in the face of the harm the other side claims it will do--and I am not making any judgments at this point about who I think is correct--is the very heart of the case. It is the reason a judge is involved at all. As somebody said in a post in the original discussion, this is a temporary restraining order: it is a judge telling you to stand still until he has time to hear the actual arguments on both sides and make an ACTUAL ruling. It is not only standard procedure, it is absolutely the right thing to do. Justice is not served if people are free to do things that make the judgments moot while it has its back turned.
Prior restraint amounts to a legal attempt to read someone's mind. Sorry, but "thought crimes" STILL do not exist in this country
Why? For starters, I do not think there's any doubt that these people were going to talk about this. It is entirely possible that they had already planned out every word of what they were going to say and made cute little PowerPoint presentations for them as well. If nothing else they had an idea well defined enough that a security convention slotted them time to speak about it. "We uh, may or may not have something to tell you about stuff?" does not cut it. To use your ridiculously bad example of crime, this has moved beyond what could be reasonably considered "thought crime" and into the "attempted ____" situation. They are going to do it. The only thing stopping them is, well, the fact that they have been stopped.
But more to the point, your statement is just logical fallacy. Prior restraint in this case is the equivalent of your parents glaring at you and saying "don't you even think about it!" Logically there are only two possibilities: One, you were going to do it and an authority figure just stopped you. Or two, you weren't, and you huff around in indignation at the accusation but nothing else in the world has changed. You can only be restrained from doing something that you planned on doing in the first place. Since the only "punishment" in a case such as this is that you not be allowed to say something, I find it difficult to label it as anything approaching a thought crime, regardless of how the decision ultimately comes down.
What are you forgetting that you have to start over and ruin days of work? I ran Gentoo for several years and I'm honestly having trouble figuring out what it could be.
True, you can spend a lot of time in a loop trying to figure out what kernel modules you need and which, for some unfathomable reason, only work when they're either compiled in or as modules, but that's not exactly "starting over" -- kernel compiles are actually one of the more painless parts of dealing with Gentoo, at least comparatively speaking. Certainly one of the scarier ones though.
Hypothetically, let's assume they are working on making fixes and want this talk enjoined until they're implemented. And that it would take several years. Reasonable?
This is a public transit card we're talking about. On top of being government contractors who would be designing new systems at ridiculous cost, there is a ton of equipment that would need to be re-programmed or replaced, as well as a massive outreach program that would have to be mounted in order to let citizens know that their transit cards are about to stop working if they don't get a new one. Assuming it would cost millions would be an underestimate, I'd think. And the fix would probably be on the order of months or years.
I simply don't see "we were idiots" as a justifiable reason to delay exposing somebody's idiocy for that long involuntarily.
This simply isn't true. It is a lawyer's legal responsibility to inform the court of any decisions or other litigation that might influence or direct their own decisions -- ie, related litigation, direct precedent from a higher court or even non-binding "precedent" from lateral courts or higher courts outside their jurisdiction. In other words, everything. Lawyers can be sanctioned or disbarred for failing to do so, regardless of if the court is civil or criminal.
The problem is it's almost impossible to prove whether or not somebody knows something if they're trying to hide the fact that they do, and even if you could somehow prove it you'd need to show whether or not they hid the information deliberately or it was simply an oversight. We all forget things we should know from time to time, after all. This makes it essentially free to get away with, but it doesn't at all mean it is encouraged.
Legally? It's tough to say. But it's rather easy to spot a number of important differences between somebody buying Kazaa and expecting that they can download things and using a knife to kill somebody.
For starters:
1. Steak knives can be used to kill people, but their primary purpose is to cut meat, and that's what they are used for the vast majority of the time. Even if we include the statistics of people who go on to kill people with those knives, chances are they used them for their intended purposes far more often. I highly doubt that's true with a program like Kazaa. P2P technologies may have many legitimate uses, but I'd bet huge gobs of money that most people use them to download things they shouldn't be downloading. Their practical usefulness outside of that is... quite limited.
2. Add to the above the public perceptions. "How did you get all that music, Little Johnny?" "I used Kazaa, grandma!" Grandma googles Kazaa and finds it's something they can pay for. It legitimizes it in their mind, as the OP pointed out. And given this scenario, it's not even clear whether Little Johnny knew what he was doing.
3. With something tangible, it's usually easy to tell what you're doing is different from something else. All obvious jokes aside, cutting a steak is a vastly different action from killing a person. Using a P2P app to download a song illegally and using it to download a song legally are the exact same actions -- they type something into the search box and click on their results.
4. In a more obscure sense, killing somebody is a criminal act--you're guilty or you're not guilty--while copyright infringement is a civil tort. Civil torts can assign liability among different parties, I believe even parties not in the suit. So it's entirely germane for a jury to decide that, say, $10,000 worth of damages are called for and that the blame for what happened is 25% on the RIAA for lack of education, 50% on the neighbor next door who told her it was perfectly fine and 25% on the person who actually did it, meaning the person who got sued actually pays out $2,500. If nothing else, in both civil and criminal cases, mitigating circumstances can almost certainly be considered when it comes down to determining the appropriate punishment. (The areas where it is not permitted, or only narrowly so, tends to be a political controversy.)
There's probably more as well, but it's 4am and I'm tired.
The point is, we can argue all day about whether or not these things should excuse them from the consequences of their actions, or even reduce the damages if they're found liable in court; or if any given case is a legitimately innocent case or just somebody masquerading as ignorant--but there's definitely a subset of people out there who fall into this camp. There is no direct correlation to your example because the only way people would believe that somebody in the US didn't know that murder was wrong or illegal is if they're clinically insane--a viable defense, but much more extreme than the claims here.
Erm. Your UID is low enough that you're almost certainly of voting age, so I have to assume you're either not from the US or have never voted.
Maybe you live in some place where that's anything approaching a viable solution, but in the last presidential election I probably made in the vicinity of 70 different votes, everything from US President, senator and congressman to state senator/congressman to sanitation department to "retain/remove" for judgeships to local government jobs to various different policy questions. These people can't seem to get the counts correct when using automated solutions, they're certainly not going to do so when they need to manually verify 70 different votes per ballot.
Obama is a media darling. The only way McCain can get some air time these days is to say something controversial, which risks losing him voters for a few seconds of air time. And in typical biased fashion, the media typically just responds to that sort of thing by calling up Obama and putting him on TV to respond.
If McCain has to continue to create silly, controversial paid-for television ads and the result is just getting Obama more free air time, he's doomed. What can he do about that?
Maybe as the election draws closer and more Americans start to pay more attention to it, the coverage will balance out a bit. Until then, "ZOMG OBAMA!" is the story.
I was going to reply with something similar until I realized that in the same breath he said a missile from a US fighter plane couldn't down this thing, he also said that a terrorist could simply grab an old stinger and blow the wing off a plane.
If somebody can't even maintain a semblance of logical consistency through a relatively short post, they're certainly not worth wasting time on with facts and figures.
I wish someone could explain how it is that countries everywhere are moving towards stricter and stricter IP laws
Well, let's clarify: It's Western nations that are moving toward stricter and stricter IP laws.
Why? Because we can't compete with cheap labor from other countries, at least not while maintaining anything near the standard of living we're accustomed to. For better or worse, we didn't really try to (though likely couldn't even if we did); we were content to let those "old economy" jobs go away in favor of "new economy" jobs, like computer programming and our content creators.
Many of these things don't work at all without IP laws, but even those that do work much better--from a western perspective--the stronger the laws are and the more rigorously they are enforced.
In short, countries keep pushing for stricter and stricter laws, and try to force similar laws on other countries via trade agreements and such, because they're the underpinnings of our economy these days. It's one of the few things we export.
The court didn't make any findings because they can't. They found that they lack jurisdiction to hear the case at all. Its commentary on the DMCA's language is simply in the vein of "the government is immune and this bill didn't provide consent from the government to be sued, therefore they remain immune." The only news here is that an appeals court just agreed with that assessment.
I use linux, I like the idea of OSS, and I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I do try to give everybody a fair shake. As far as I can tell, this is essentially one word removed from things that other open source advocates say themselves. Swap out "Linux" with "GPL" and you're about a half step away from "the GPL is viral." Right or wrong (and I'm not trying to start a philosophical OSS license debate.)
Is his quote too simplistic? Yes. Strongly worded to appear to put Microsoft on the "right" side? Yup. Was it intentional, or just a bastardization of the quote above that might happen when somebody tries to speak too intimately about things he doesn't really have much information on? Hard to tell.
Regardless, that's also his job. He's not a programmer, nor is it likely that he's even particularly involved in the day-to-day stewardship of the company. He's basically a glorified salesman, and his clients are stockholders and potential stockholders. He's giving you one reason that, in his mind, what you can get from Microsoft is better than an open source alternative.
Distrust them on past actions if you wish, but trotting out this tired quote like it proves anything at all is ridiculous at best.
Perhaps, if what we're talking about was a random e-mail I found floating in my inbox. I certainly don't click those unsubscribe links for exactly the reason you describe.
If, on the other hand, it's from a mailing list I deliberately went through a several step process to sign up for... yeah, I'll click the link if I want to unsubscribe, so long as it looks like it's coming from the right place.
So until you stop voting for the Republicrats, you get what you deserve.
Well, you're getting close to the reality of the situation. The second half of that sentence is spot-on.
There is little doubt in my mind that both parties have done whatever they can to entrench themselves in their power. To a large degree this is successful; they have succeeded in stacking the deck against true third parties. However, over the last few years in particular I've come to firmly believe we get exactly the government we deserve.
The reality is that voters can not be trusted to make educated decisions. We have people who vote on the basis of the best hair, or on relatively inconsequential issues. We have people who vote for their political parties because there are too many candidates on a ballot and not nearly enough interest--even at the presidential level--to thoroughly investigate any of them. These facts were known hundreds of years ago; they are the entire reasoning behind the original concept of the electoral college (though its current implementation fails at this). The only difference today compared to then is the availability of information. It's still up to people to digest and weigh this new information, and most simply don't.
Politicians want to get elected. They'll tell you anything to make that happen. That is supposed to be our leverage over them--both in getting them to better represent our opinions by altering the stances of current politicians and in choosing those who do. But as a nation we're chronically disinterested in politics (outside of scandals!). Our exposure is the 15 second sound bites and the 45 second campaign commercials, which the vast majority of us simply do not bother to investigate. We overwhelming believe that politicians lie to us and twist the truth, but we don't bring the skepticism to what they actually say.
A couple examples, to hit on some/. pet issues:
1. Do you truly believe anybody could get (re-)elected if they so much as mentioned that they think sex crime legislation and sentencing has gotten out of hand? The very next day ads would be running from every side "Senator Jones would support legislation to let convicted child rapist out of prison to live in YOUR neighborhood," with a cute little picture of children playing on swings. "Are you willing to gamble your children's lives on Senator Jones' belief that criminals are more important than children?" Jones is dead meat. Dead. It doesn't matter what his ACTUAL position on the matter is, or, hell, even if he may be right. He's simply dead meat, politically. Why? Because nobody is willing to dig into the issue to see what he actually said, or consider whether or not he's right.
2. The United States spends nearly as much or more on defense than the rest of the world combined, depending on the sources you find. (Google "world defense spending" for some examples.) Let's assume we're not at war just to make things easier. If I say I support cuts in defense spending to use on, say, education or health care, ads are running the next day about how I refuse to give the soldiers the equipment they need--even if I've laid out a comprehensive alternative proposal that in no way cuts equipment, training, recruitment, pay, etc spending and only cuts, say, research spending or which eliminates waste. (For the record I tend to like military research, it's led to lots of really cool and useful things for the private sector; I'm only using this as an example.) Maybe--maybe--I can survive this, but it's an uphill battle and it's going to cost me lots of money to try to refute. Why again? Because of the disinterest of people in investigating claims for themselves.
I'm sure I could go on and on and anybody reading this probably could find some I've missed even then, but I think it's safe to simply move to the point: Polticians do these things because they work. They work because people r
I for sure know then when I see somebody in an emergency, I will think twice before I call and most likely decide my privacy is more worth then the life of some kid.
You, sir, are an idiot. I know Slashdotters love worthless hyperbole, but if you would seriously even THINK about letting somebody DIE because you--what, don't want people to hear your voice?--then you're simply a worthless human being. Period.
This particular slime-ball obviously uses some definition of "off the record" that I am unaware of.
Personally, I suspect he did exactly what Steve Jobs wanted him to do. If you're truly keeping your health situation completely secret, and don't want any non-specific but somewhat calming details flittering out, you don't tell a reporter "oh sure, let's talk about it! Just don't print it!" You simply say "I'm sorry, that's personal and I'm not interested in discussing it." I'm sure he's said that a million times before to other people wondering about his health for whatever reasons.
This is a situation which benefits everybody: The reporter, clearly; Steve Jobs, by not actually having to disclose exactly what IS going on with him; and investors and other parties with a vested interest in his health, who get to find out that whatever's wrong isn't cancer and doesn't appear to be life-threatening.
Politicians do this with reporters all the time (and yeah, the reporters almost certainly know it)--I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's exactly what happened here.
Excuse the hyperbole, but every time a patent lawsuit is filed, a lot of people are harmed. How long will we allow this to go on?
Sort of. The "harm" occurs against people or corporations who were profiting illegally from another person's ideas. It's akin to (not identical too,/. nazis!) claiming a thief is hurt if he's caught, convicted and forced to give restitution for what he stole.
Whether or not you agree with the a particular patent, or the patent system, is largely irrelevant. We have the system we have, and the courts rule on all of these patent lawsuits you mention. "Harm" occurs to those who are, by the definition of the systems we've established, liable for acting unlawfully, such as Nintendo is in this case. Put simply: They dun' wrong, and now they have to pay.
If you want to try to change the system, go ahead -- but I can guarantee you'll need a better approach than most Slashdotters ("get rid of the patent system!@") to even be taken seriously. Beyond that, I don't think it's fair to claim that people who courts agreed with are in any way terrorists, even if I were inclined to support the term otherwise. (And I'm not.)
All DBAs worth respecting understand this simple fact.
Damn those Google idiots and their inability to hire competent employees. It's a good thing they only use it for Adwords and not something important to their business.
Meh, doesn't matter, I just won't respect them. They're clearly just a bunch of paranoid children over there anyway. I'll take my cues from randoms on Slashdot, thank-you-very-much.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless of course your work is downtown, and suddenly "move closer to work" means "pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars more for a worse, smaller place."
Even IF you could show that it was cost-economical in the long run, the reality is that most people probably can't front an extra $150G's to save money decades down the road. And frankly it would be irresponsible to do so; if you can really get that much money to blow now, you'd be way better off to simply invest it anyway. Your break-even point wouldn't be 30 years down the road.
But I guess it's easier to simply be a douchebag than consider other peoples' situations.
I think the OP's problem with you is your headline and what seems to be your conclusion: That these services should be "spun off" because too much information in one company's hands is asking for trouble. The only logical way that makes a difference is if these new, spun-off companies/divisions can't talk to one another or share that data. If that weren't the case, it would be the same situation we have now that you're objecting to.
With that in mind, there's an argument to be made that Google couldn't offer the same level of service without the same level of information, due either to the fact that the information is the price they ask you to pay for their otherwise free services or because they actually need the information to make the service itself better. Thus while you claim you only speak for yourself, you're actually proposing a solution that would impact everybody. The OP's suggestion was, in my mind, the correct one: Rather than forcing your views on everybody in that manner, if you're uncomfortable with Google having so much information about you, you should just not give it to them by not using their services.
Your concerns about privacy are valid, the decisions should just be made by each individual for himself.
I don't buy this. I think we're simply equally smart but in different ways. I remember back in high school, there was an older teacher--I only had him for a little homeroom sort of thing that lasted 15 minutes like once a week, so I'm not sure what he taught otherwise. Anyway, he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties and somehow ended up relating a story that when he was in high school, the highest level of mathematics that was available was basic algebra. Now I can't speak for other people or school districts, but in mine algebra was a freshman course for most students; if they weren't the brightest bulbs, they took a remedial math course first and then got to algebra in their sophomore year. Granted, course requirements and availability aren't a great measure of intelligence (which in itself is hard to define), but it seems to apply here.
I think the biggest differences between then and now is the shape our knowledge takes. Years ago I think it was a generally deeper amount of knowledge, but in a shallower pool of subjects. These days we know more things, but less about them. To be honest, I consider our method generally superior, though certainly there's room for argument there. But so far as grammar school or high school goes, I think that broad-strokes approach is better. The problem, in my eyes, is that college seems to just continue that trend with a lot of rather pointless general education courses, time I think better spent letting students dive deeply into their chosen fields of study. But I suppose that's not entirely relevant to the topic.
There are definitely some areas we're coming up shallow in these days though, reading and writing skills being paramount in my mind. Should be fairly easily fixed though, if anybody bothers to try.
Of course not, but why should it? It's been done before. We'd definitely get better video these days, but there's not that same kind of allure. We've been there--not only have we been there, but having been there means we've already done the whole manned space flight thing. Combined with the fact that we've been routinely launching people and objects into space since those days and doing it again isn't nearly as exciting as it was 40 years ago. And let's be realistic: If we care about TV audience, we're talking about enthusiasm and excitement, not about the value of the missions or what we're learning, and certainly not whether or not people today are stupid for not getting excited about it. There was also a big heaping of patriotism wrapped around the whole thing in the past: "Look at us, we beat the Soviets! Suck it Communism!" Doesn't exist these days.
That said, you'd probably see better ratings for a mission to a different planet/moon/whatever, like Mars (since it's a hot topic lately). Still wouldn't reach the same audience, but that doesn't mean much.
A horrible stereotype, yes, but you haven't provided any evidence that would approach the level of truth. You're just begging the question.
So what? This is a free country; you can't MAKE people like science or math, and you can't make them be engineers and scientists. Even if you could, chances are that being forced to work in a field you care nothing about would produce really mediocre talent.
I took a quick glance at your webpage. Seems you want to be a game developer. So I take it that you'd rather screw around with video games than steer
I would agree if you changed that to read "patents" instead of copyrights. Internet radio is a technology; the creation of the technology is already complete, and there are still players in that market who will work on incremental improvements because they're still turning a profit, even if that profit is not as big as they would like. What's being retarded right now is their ability to make a buck on other peoples' copyrights.
Further, you've provided no evidence whatsoever that even if copyright were to completely strangle Internet radio to death that it is still not a net gain. Nowhere in "promote the progress of science and useful arts" does it say it has to uniformly promote the progress of ALL technologies and useful arts. Agree with the concepts of copyright or not, the idea behind music copyright is to encourage creation of music, not to encourage the creation of radio. Radio is an offshoot business of music, and as it piggybacks on the rights of those content creators it is and should be subject to their terms. In a sense, their business model is not unlike the vilified RIAA's: They essentially provide some equipment to get somebody else's work out, and as technology marches on their equipment is less and less necessary in that task.
I sympathize with the position of Intenret radio companies in this case, but the group I'm truly angry at is terrestrial radio. Do you really think they didn't slip some money around to kill off their competition? What other reasonable explanation is there that their rates are lower than Internet radio's, per listener, while Internet radio clearly has a less lucrative revenue stream?
He's implying--stating fairly clearly, in fact--that children think they know everything. I'm only 24, but in my experience, even looking back on my own actions, that tends to be true. I'd like to think I'm past it, but who knows if I'll think the same of myself a few more years down the road. Regardless of its truth, though, it's a societal meme in the same vein as "teenagers think they're invincible," so I wouldn't go so far as to ascribe anything to it specifically.
To be honest, I'm not even sure the comment about bloggers should be considered more than a joke. It's two sentences at the end of a fairly long paragraph; twenty words out of two hundred--out of 3500 if we're counting the entire text of the speech. I checked out the link to the whole speech and while I didn't read it all, that wording is at the end of a paragraph with the next paragraph about him not being so sure of himself as an older man. It would have helped to hear the delivery, I think, but at the moment everything points to it simply being a joke.
I have major problems with his bill if it is as you described, but I have no problems whatosever with the quote. That is absolutely how most people on the Internet behave and I think he conveyed it in a mildly humorous, tongue-in-cheek manner. To call it a "contempt for citizens expressing their views" seems entirely too harsh to me, at least based on what you quoted. I don't like McCain (or Obama, really) and I GREATLY support EVERYBODY's right to express their individual viewpoints--but that doesn't mean that most of them aren't self-righteous or otherwise blathering idiots.
Really, the only shame here is that he singled out the blogosphere for any particular blame. Happens all over the Internet through many different mediums.
Right from the article you linked:
The article isn't even 100 words, could you not make it all the way through? I know /.'ers are notorious for not reading the article, but one would think they wouldn't link it as support for a dubious claim without giving it a once-over.
It isn't even being run by him or his campaign. Even if it were, it's entirely probable that he would have nothing to do with the ad other than a final "go ahead and run it." It would not be at all unreasonable to assume that even if he took note of the fact that they were using the song, that he assumed his staffers had done their job and obtained proper permission to do so. If I were a presidential candidate, I know I would have much more important things to do than micromanage my team.
I haven't seen the ad in question, but if it's anything like most political ads it runs about 30 seconds long, which in my mind would also bring up a fair use question even if the song ran the entire duration. The article also doesn't mention anything about whether or not anybody was contacted with a request to stop using the song or compensate the artist or if he just went straight to lawsuit town.
I'm not a McCain supporter by any stretch, but your post is just ridiculous. Then again it's patently obvious you made up your mind long ago and are inventing lame "issues" to try to lambast him with, so I suppose you'll just come back with a "zomg he's lying he's a politician lolerskatz."
Usually, but not always. Gag orders are prior restraint, for example, and are not always unconstitutional. There are also clear exceptions for what the USSC refers to as "exceptional circumstances," and clearly defining that is up to the courts themselves. You are correct that there is a heavy bias against it in US jurisprudence, but it is important to note that no decision has yet been rendered. It MAY be prior restraint days from now, but now it is simply "keep your pants on a minute."
You are contradicting yourself. A right is something you can do free of legal consequence. If one can be arrested for something one says--and you are correct that one can--then it was not a right to begin with. It is a difficult distinction sometimes, but put it this way: Screaming "I KNOW MY RIGHTS!!!" does nothing but make you look stupid if it turns out you did not.
Whether or not they have a right to say these things in the face of the harm the other side claims it will do--and I am not making any judgments at this point about who I think is correct--is the very heart of the case. It is the reason a judge is involved at all. As somebody said in a post in the original discussion, this is a temporary restraining order: it is a judge telling you to stand still until he has time to hear the actual arguments on both sides and make an ACTUAL ruling. It is not only standard procedure, it is absolutely the right thing to do. Justice is not served if people are free to do things that make the judgments moot while it has its back turned.
Why? For starters, I do not think there's any doubt that these people were going to talk about this. It is entirely possible that they had already planned out every word of what they were going to say and made cute little PowerPoint presentations for them as well. If nothing else they had an idea well defined enough that a security convention slotted them time to speak about it. "We uh, may or may not have something to tell you about stuff?" does not cut it. To use your ridiculously bad example of crime, this has moved beyond what could be reasonably considered "thought crime" and into the "attempted ____" situation. They are going to do it. The only thing stopping them is, well, the fact that they have been stopped.
But more to the point, your statement is just logical fallacy. Prior restraint in this case is the equivalent of your parents glaring at you and saying "don't you even think about it!" Logically there are only two possibilities: One, you were going to do it and an authority figure just stopped you. Or two, you weren't, and you huff around in indignation at the accusation but nothing else in the world has changed. You can only be restrained from doing something that you planned on doing in the first place. Since the only "punishment" in a case such as this is that you not be allowed to say something, I find it difficult to label it as anything approaching a thought crime, regardless of how the decision ultimately comes down.
What are you forgetting that you have to start over and ruin days of work? I ran Gentoo for several years and I'm honestly having trouble figuring out what it could be.
True, you can spend a lot of time in a loop trying to figure out what kernel modules you need and which, for some unfathomable reason, only work when they're either compiled in or as modules, but that's not exactly "starting over" -- kernel compiles are actually one of the more painless parts of dealing with Gentoo, at least comparatively speaking. Certainly one of the scarier ones though.
Hypothetically, let's assume they are working on making fixes and want this talk enjoined until they're implemented. And that it would take several years. Reasonable?
This is a public transit card we're talking about. On top of being government contractors who would be designing new systems at ridiculous cost, there is a ton of equipment that would need to be re-programmed or replaced, as well as a massive outreach program that would have to be mounted in order to let citizens know that their transit cards are about to stop working if they don't get a new one. Assuming it would cost millions would be an underestimate, I'd think. And the fix would probably be on the order of months or years.
I simply don't see "we were idiots" as a justifiable reason to delay exposing somebody's idiocy for that long involuntarily.
This simply isn't true. It is a lawyer's legal responsibility to inform the court of any decisions or other litigation that might influence or direct their own decisions -- ie, related litigation, direct precedent from a higher court or even non-binding "precedent" from lateral courts or higher courts outside their jurisdiction. In other words, everything. Lawyers can be sanctioned or disbarred for failing to do so, regardless of if the court is civil or criminal.
The problem is it's almost impossible to prove whether or not somebody knows something if they're trying to hide the fact that they do, and even if you could somehow prove it you'd need to show whether or not they hid the information deliberately or it was simply an oversight. We all forget things we should know from time to time, after all. This makes it essentially free to get away with, but it doesn't at all mean it is encouraged.
Legally? It's tough to say. But it's rather easy to spot a number of important differences between somebody buying Kazaa and expecting that they can download things and using a knife to kill somebody.
For starters:
1. Steak knives can be used to kill people, but their primary purpose is to cut meat, and that's what they are used for the vast majority of the time. Even if we include the statistics of people who go on to kill people with those knives, chances are they used them for their intended purposes far more often. I highly doubt that's true with a program like Kazaa. P2P technologies may have many legitimate uses, but I'd bet huge gobs of money that most people use them to download things they shouldn't be downloading. Their practical usefulness outside of that is... quite limited.
2. Add to the above the public perceptions. "How did you get all that music, Little Johnny?" "I used Kazaa, grandma!" Grandma googles Kazaa and finds it's something they can pay for. It legitimizes it in their mind, as the OP pointed out. And given this scenario, it's not even clear whether Little Johnny knew what he was doing.
3. With something tangible, it's usually easy to tell what you're doing is different from something else. All obvious jokes aside, cutting a steak is a vastly different action from killing a person. Using a P2P app to download a song illegally and using it to download a song legally are the exact same actions -- they type something into the search box and click on their results.
4. In a more obscure sense, killing somebody is a criminal act--you're guilty or you're not guilty--while copyright infringement is a civil tort. Civil torts can assign liability among different parties, I believe even parties not in the suit. So it's entirely germane for a jury to decide that, say, $10,000 worth of damages are called for and that the blame for what happened is 25% on the RIAA for lack of education, 50% on the neighbor next door who told her it was perfectly fine and 25% on the person who actually did it, meaning the person who got sued actually pays out $2,500. If nothing else, in both civil and criminal cases, mitigating circumstances can almost certainly be considered when it comes down to determining the appropriate punishment. (The areas where it is not permitted, or only narrowly so, tends to be a political controversy.)
There's probably more as well, but it's 4am and I'm tired.
The point is, we can argue all day about whether or not these things should excuse them from the consequences of their actions, or even reduce the damages if they're found liable in court; or if any given case is a legitimately innocent case or just somebody masquerading as ignorant--but there's definitely a subset of people out there who fall into this camp. There is no direct correlation to your example because the only way people would believe that somebody in the US didn't know that murder was wrong or illegal is if they're clinically insane--a viable defense, but much more extreme than the claims here.
Erm. Your UID is low enough that you're almost certainly of voting age, so I have to assume you're either not from the US or have never voted.
Maybe you live in some place where that's anything approaching a viable solution, but in the last presidential election I probably made in the vicinity of 70 different votes, everything from US President, senator and congressman to state senator/congressman to sanitation department to "retain/remove" for judgeships to local government jobs to various different policy questions. These people can't seem to get the counts correct when using automated solutions, they're certainly not going to do so when they need to manually verify 70 different votes per ballot.
A quote from West Wing that I've always particularly liked: "Republicans want to make government just small enough to fit inside our bedrooms."
Obama is a media darling. The only way McCain can get some air time these days is to say something controversial, which risks losing him voters for a few seconds of air time. And in typical biased fashion, the media typically just responds to that sort of thing by calling up Obama and putting him on TV to respond.
If McCain has to continue to create silly, controversial paid-for television ads and the result is just getting Obama more free air time, he's doomed. What can he do about that?
Maybe as the election draws closer and more Americans start to pay more attention to it, the coverage will balance out a bit. Until then, "ZOMG OBAMA!" is the story.
I was going to reply with something similar until I realized that in the same breath he said a missile from a US fighter plane couldn't down this thing, he also said that a terrorist could simply grab an old stinger and blow the wing off a plane.
If somebody can't even maintain a semblance of logical consistency through a relatively short post, they're certainly not worth wasting time on with facts and figures.
Well, let's clarify: It's Western nations that are moving toward stricter and stricter IP laws.
Why? Because we can't compete with cheap labor from other countries, at least not while maintaining anything near the standard of living we're accustomed to. For better or worse, we didn't really try to (though likely couldn't even if we did); we were content to let those "old economy" jobs go away in favor of "new economy" jobs, like computer programming and our content creators.
Many of these things don't work at all without IP laws, but even those that do work much better--from a western perspective--the stronger the laws are and the more rigorously they are enforced.
In short, countries keep pushing for stricter and stricter laws, and try to force similar laws on other countries via trade agreements and such, because they're the underpinnings of our economy these days. It's one of the few things we export.
The court didn't make any findings because they can't. They found that they lack jurisdiction to hear the case at all. Its commentary on the DMCA's language is simply in the vein of "the government is immune and this bill didn't provide consent from the government to be sued, therefore they remain immune." The only news here is that an appeals court just agreed with that assessment.
*dons flameproof suit*
I use linux, I like the idea of OSS, and I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I do try to give everybody a fair shake. As far as I can tell, this is essentially one word removed from things that other open source advocates say themselves. Swap out "Linux" with "GPL" and you're about a half step away from "the GPL is viral." Right or wrong (and I'm not trying to start a philosophical OSS license debate.)
Is his quote too simplistic? Yes. Strongly worded to appear to put Microsoft on the "right" side? Yup. Was it intentional, or just a bastardization of the quote above that might happen when somebody tries to speak too intimately about things he doesn't really have much information on? Hard to tell.
Regardless, that's also his job. He's not a programmer, nor is it likely that he's even particularly involved in the day-to-day stewardship of the company. He's basically a glorified salesman, and his clients are stockholders and potential stockholders. He's giving you one reason that, in his mind, what you can get from Microsoft is better than an open source alternative.
Distrust them on past actions if you wish, but trotting out this tired quote like it proves anything at all is ridiculous at best.
Perhaps, if what we're talking about was a random e-mail I found floating in my inbox. I certainly don't click those unsubscribe links for exactly the reason you describe.
If, on the other hand, it's from a mailing list I deliberately went through a several step process to sign up for... yeah, I'll click the link if I want to unsubscribe, so long as it looks like it's coming from the right place.
Well, you're getting close to the reality of the situation. The second half of that sentence is spot-on.
There is little doubt in my mind that both parties have done whatever they can to entrench themselves in their power. To a large degree this is successful; they have succeeded in stacking the deck against true third parties. However, over the last few years in particular I've come to firmly believe we get exactly the government we deserve.
The reality is that voters can not be trusted to make educated decisions. We have people who vote on the basis of the best hair, or on relatively inconsequential issues. We have people who vote for their political parties because there are too many candidates on a ballot and not nearly enough interest--even at the presidential level--to thoroughly investigate any of them. These facts were known hundreds of years ago; they are the entire reasoning behind the original concept of the electoral college (though its current implementation fails at this). The only difference today compared to then is the availability of information. It's still up to people to digest and weigh this new information, and most simply don't.
Politicians want to get elected. They'll tell you anything to make that happen. That is supposed to be our leverage over them--both in getting them to better represent our opinions by altering the stances of current politicians and in choosing those who do. But as a nation we're chronically disinterested in politics (outside of scandals!). Our exposure is the 15 second sound bites and the 45 second campaign commercials, which the vast majority of us simply do not bother to investigate. We overwhelming believe that politicians lie to us and twist the truth, but we don't bring the skepticism to what they actually say.
A couple examples, to hit on some /. pet issues:
1. Do you truly believe anybody could get (re-)elected if they so much as mentioned that they think sex crime legislation and sentencing has gotten out of hand? The very next day ads would be running from every side "Senator Jones would support legislation to let convicted child rapist out of prison to live in YOUR neighborhood," with a cute little picture of children playing on swings. "Are you willing to gamble your children's lives on Senator Jones' belief that criminals are more important than children?" Jones is dead meat. Dead. It doesn't matter what his ACTUAL position on the matter is, or, hell, even if he may be right. He's simply dead meat, politically. Why? Because nobody is willing to dig into the issue to see what he actually said, or consider whether or not he's right.
2. The United States spends nearly as much or more on defense than the rest of the world combined, depending on the sources you find. (Google "world defense spending" for some examples.) Let's assume we're not at war just to make things easier. If I say I support cuts in defense spending to use on, say, education or health care, ads are running the next day about how I refuse to give the soldiers the equipment they need--even if I've laid out a comprehensive alternative proposal that in no way cuts equipment, training, recruitment, pay, etc spending and only cuts, say, research spending or which eliminates waste. (For the record I tend to like military research, it's led to lots of really cool and useful things for the private sector; I'm only using this as an example.) Maybe--maybe--I can survive this, but it's an uphill battle and it's going to cost me lots of money to try to refute. Why again? Because of the disinterest of people in investigating claims for themselves.
I'm sure I could go on and on and anybody reading this probably could find some I've missed even then, but I think it's safe to simply move to the point: Polticians do these things because they work. They work because people r
You, sir, are an idiot. I know Slashdotters love worthless hyperbole, but if you would seriously even THINK about letting somebody DIE because you--what, don't want people to hear your voice?--then you're simply a worthless human being. Period.
Privacy my ass.
Personally, I suspect he did exactly what Steve Jobs wanted him to do. If you're truly keeping your health situation completely secret, and don't want any non-specific but somewhat calming details flittering out, you don't tell a reporter "oh sure, let's talk about it! Just don't print it!" You simply say "I'm sorry, that's personal and I'm not interested in discussing it." I'm sure he's said that a million times before to other people wondering about his health for whatever reasons.
This is a situation which benefits everybody: The reporter, clearly; Steve Jobs, by not actually having to disclose exactly what IS going on with him; and investors and other parties with a vested interest in his health, who get to find out that whatever's wrong isn't cancer and doesn't appear to be life-threatening.
Politicians do this with reporters all the time (and yeah, the reporters almost certainly know it)--I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's exactly what happened here.
Sort of. The "harm" occurs against people or corporations who were profiting illegally from another person's ideas. It's akin to (not identical too, /. nazis!) claiming a thief is hurt if he's caught, convicted and forced to give restitution for what he stole.
Whether or not you agree with the a particular patent, or the patent system, is largely irrelevant. We have the system we have, and the courts rule on all of these patent lawsuits you mention. "Harm" occurs to those who are, by the definition of the systems we've established, liable for acting unlawfully, such as Nintendo is in this case. Put simply: They dun' wrong, and now they have to pay.
If you want to try to change the system, go ahead -- but I can guarantee you'll need a better approach than most Slashdotters ("get rid of the patent system!@") to even be taken seriously. Beyond that, I don't think it's fair to claim that people who courts agreed with are in any way terrorists, even if I were inclined to support the term otherwise. (And I'm not.)
Damn those Google idiots and their inability to hire competent employees. It's a good thing they only use it for Adwords and not something important to their business.
Meh, doesn't matter, I just won't respect them. They're clearly just a bunch of paranoid children over there anyway. I'll take my cues from randoms on Slashdot, thank-you-very-much.