Most of the nominations have been on the bench for years doing a great job and continuously were re-elected (remember, only the United States Supreme Court is for life) so give me a break.
ALL federal judgeships are for life. State governments decide what happens with their judges according to their own constitutions.
I don't care what party you support, when you have two judges up for election to the supreme court and every single democrat on the election committe says something to the effect of "He's a loser and will not be a good judge" who are we kidding?
They don't say he's a loser or that he will not be a judge. They say he is "too radical" to represent mainstream America. "Too radical" translates roughly into "supports abortion rights" or "doesn't support abortion rights," depending on who nominated them and who is doing the complaining.
It's somewhat sad that our judiciary has been reduced to that level, but it's clearly an important issue to many Americans. It's one of the things people vote for their representatives based on, after all.
I don't understand what doing business has to do with spreading democracy
It's a little bit of a complicated argument (not so much in understanding, but following), but I'll do my best to explain it. You don't have to agree, incidentally, I'm just trying to explain.
First of all, it's predicated on the belief that democracy is the best form of government realistically available to us, that it is the best way to ensure and preserve human rights, and that it is what peoples gravitate towards if there are not obstacles (ie, oppressive regimes, etc) in their way.
The argument basically goes like this: If huge companies, or other countries, ignore a government because it is oppressive or is a human rights abuser or what have you, they have no sway over them. In other words, that oppressive government has nothing to lose and the others have no bargaining chips to hold over them. (Certainly, in the case of countries, there are always threats--of force, of sanctions, etc etc--but when you're talking about countries as big and powerful, economically and militarily, as China, those options are mostly hot air.)
Conversely, if you do business with them, they DO have something to lose -- your business. And while you're not likely to be able to turn around and say "so about all this unreasonable stuff you're doing" and expect results, you may be able to chip away at it. Losing a trillion dollars in trade is a heavy price to pay if all the other person is asking for is that you, say, enact some laws about right to free speech, or child labor laws, or what have you. And gradually, the argument goes, you can begin to change things.
As to how that leads to democracy, see point #1.
Couple lines from West Wing relating. It's all from one conversation, but I'm taking out the intermediate banter:
Trade is essential for human rights. Instead of isolating them we make them live by the same global trading rules as everyone else and gain 1.2 billion consumers for our products and strengthen the forces of reform.
"Free trade is essential for human rights"... the end of that sentence is "we hope," because nothing else has worked.
There's no "agreeing to disagree" with these people. You have to shut the hell up if you plan on passing the class. Meanwhile, there's nothing you can do.
You're vastly overgeneralizing.
Many--I daresay most--professors are going to exhibit some degree of bias in their teachings. And really, why shouldn't they? Personally I like it; I enjoy knowing where people, my professors included, stand on issues.
The vast majority of those exhibiting a bias are reasonable people. Many of them would enjoy nothing more than for students to stick their hands in the air and say "no, I don't agree." Many of them will ENCOURAGE it. I had a philosophy teacher who would provide topic options for papers, and there would always be at least one that said something like, "Dr. [suchandsuch] contends that [. ..] do you agree or disagree?" She WANTED you to challenge her. She undoubtedly feels the same way I do: That by arguing and debating your beliefs, one of two good things happen: Either you change your mind and now believe in something more strongly than what you believed in before, or you strengthen your current belief by being forced to examine your reasoning and how it stands up against the counter-reasoning.
The people who damage you grade-wise for disagreeing are a small minority. When you encounter them, you have options. For most classes, there are different options for instructors. You could always take the unfairly-graded work to... whoever the heck handles that sort of thing, I honestly don't know, and get some action on it. Or you could suck it up and tell them what they want to hear.
Let's be clear, only dumb people get "brainwashed." My conversative professors railing about their conservative viewpoints has not made me any more conservative; if anything, it has made me more LIBERAL by giving me new, elaborated positions on precisely why I disagree. After all, to disagree intelligently, you have to know what the opposing argument is first. If I needed to tell them that Ronald Reagan was my personal hero to get a decent grade in the class, that's fine. It's life. If you go through life without having one person in a position of power over you force you to do or think in certain ways to avoid trouble, you're a truly lucky or very indepenent soul. Take THAT as the lesson for that class that semester and move on.
Interestingly, most of the teachers I have had, when they have truly extreme viewpoints, have been conservative viewpoints. While I think most of my teachers have been liberal overall, they tended to be less extreme and less vocal about things.
He spends more time yapping about his current axe to grind, rather than teaching the subject... what do you do?
Depends. If he is the only option of a professor for that class, I ask myself: Is this material important to me because I have to graduate or because it's going to be relevant to my life after school? (Let's face it, not all classes are.) If it's actually important, I'll do the studying on my own.
I had a teacher in high school, sophomore English teacher, who was a greatly insightful guy. I feel I learned more in that class than any other English class, and very little of it was about English. One day he found the words to say something that I had always believed but never articulated very well: "School is a game. All you have to do is learn the rules, and beat them at their own game." If a shitbag professor with an axe to grind wants things done a certain way, I'll do them that way. It's a game, and those are the rules. I intend to win either way.
Looking around the class room, I was shocked to see many students dutifully writing down that answer.
Slightly off topic, but as a college student today I am still shocked at how many people write down literally every word the professor says. It is even worse when they use a powerpoint presentation as a way of guiding themselves (and the class) through the topic. People will be busily writing down things they have absolutely no understanding of, and you just know most of them aren't listening to the professor actually, you know, explaining it, because they're just too busy writing.
I'm sure they feel quite good that they got the lecture outline on the title page jotted down--most won't be clever enough to leave space between the points for elaboration, it's just mindless copying--but I am also sure that many of these same people are going to be absolutely shocked when they study their notes for hours and still don't know what the hell they're talking about come test time. Naturally, they will blame the professor for not explaining the material well enough. They got his slides copied down verbatim, what more could there possibly be to know?
I'm just scratching my head at the number of "Bush is teh nazi" comments that don't seem to have any comprehension of who first trumpeted and signed this thing into existence in the first place.
That's because the issue is not COPA (hmm, isn't there two P's in there or is that something different?). It's only a pretext. If GWB was instead trying to subpoena the search results to see how many people search for The Anarchist's Cookbook or some such, the issue would be the same.
The issue is that it is overreaching for the government to violate the privacy of its citizens -- I don't care if that is in aggregate or not -- on the HOPE that their HUNCH turns out to be true. I frankly couldn't care less if the data proved them right or wrong on this. They are not alleging Google did anything wrong. Google is not party to their suit. They just think that maybe, Google might be able to prove their case for them so they issue a subpoena. Too damn bad, Bush Administration. Prove your own case. And if they got this information and found out they were wrong -- that's just a big oopsie I guess.
No, sorry. They are not entitled to Google's private data, and the browsing habits of their constituents, unless and until they accuse Google of wrongdoing. That is what the issue is. Not that they want the data to fight for COPA or who signed COPA or even whether COPA is a good idea. That they're trying to bully data out of somebody when they can't even possibly know what it is going to tell them.
A teacher in my old high school had a pretty good perspective on what some of that is. He was teaching both an MCSE course and a CCNA course that semester (I think both have since been canceled due to lack of enrollment:() and said something to the order of:
"A lot of the people in here think, 'Well, I like playstation or I like X-box, therefore I like computers, therefore I'll take this class.'" I think we would be surprised if we found out how many people truly don't understand that being able to turn on the computer, browse the 'net and do a little email stuff doesn't make you a computer guru, nor does it predestine you to a professional life in some area of computing.
That said, admittedly, there are a lot of topics covered in CS that aren't programming. Just looking over the course requirements for a CS major in my school, I'd say MOST of them are not programming. There's a lot of hardware things, operating systems, parallel processing, some database stuff, etc etc. You can argue that a lot of those subjects will touch upon programming to one degree or another, but it's unavoidable that not everybody going into CS is necessarily interested in programming. While I don't condone cheating, I am more understanding to somebody like that "outsourcing" their programming work than if it were somebody who actually wanted to be a programmer. Maybe it's as simple as the person should be in an IS-type major rather than a CS one; maybe their schools don't offer the distinction, maybe they think it's all pretty much the same material but CS > IS. *shrugs*
No longer will there be any doubt over whether the murder victim was strangled or beheaded, which has in the past been a cause of great difficulty in investigations due to the lack of any very obvious physical feature that might distinguish a decapitation victim from someone who has been hanged.
Funny, but to be fair, just because somebody's head is cut off doesn't necessarily mean it was the cause of death. They could have been shot or stabbed (or strangled) or anything else before hand and the head cut off later.
No. But they could ask the original court to reverse its ruling.
If memory serves, Microsoft settled. There was no court ruling.
That would only be possible if the patent(s) is/are actually invalidated, not just Apple and Burst reaching some new licensing agreement pursuant to the litigation.
Even if there were a court ruling in a case such as this, it's not likely that the court would reverse itself even if the patent was later invalidated. Microsoft would have had the same opportunity to ask the USPTO or the courts to invalidate the patents during their trial, and if they had lost, it would have meant they refused to do so. In reality, this would not be likely to happen; once a company tried and failed to invalidate patents, I doubt any other company would try again and succeed.
However, the morality of drinking really isn't that difficult to discern: It's not immoral to drink except where it would harm another person
How far do you take that, and who decides what "harm" is?
You gave a few examples where I don't think you'd get much of an argument from most people about it being wrong to get drunk in those situations. But it's easy to take another step, and another. For example, the purpose of DUIs being wrong is that it could harm others -- no guarantees. And the purpose of not getting drunk enough to interfere with supporting a family is to protect the family. However, there are few people in the world who are truly alone. Is it wrong if I, as a single male with no children, drink myself to death? It could happen. My family would be devastated. Clear emotional harm would be done. So was my drinking immoral? Clearly it would be simple to say "fine, drinking yourself to death is immoral" -- but I do not believe there is a purpose to a system of morality that offers no real guidance. I can get good and drunk, and impair my judgment (making it harder to know when to stop), but it would be immoral to die? Err... helpful.
What about the "lesser of two evils" cases? What if I know my neighbor is planning on killing people, but I don't have any proof such that I would be able to get the police involved as anything more than a delay tactic? Is it moral to kill the neighbor to protect others? What if I don't KNOW he's going to commit murders, but I have a very strong suspicion? A moderately-strong suspicion? Where is the line? If I am 51% sure, does that mean it's moral? What about 50%? Remember now, we're not talking legality, we're talking morality. Regardless of legality, would it be the right thing to do?
How about things that are less easy to quantify? If god descended from the heavens right now and told me if I killed every last Arab in the world, peace would reign for the remainder of the history of the world, would it be moral to do it?
How does friendship play in to morality? If I am friends with somebody who committed a crime and he calls me for bail, should I pay it even if I know that he's going to skip out and never come back? If my friend confesses murder to me, is it my moral imperitive to rat him out or keep his secret? After all, I am causing harm regardless of which I choose. Does it matter if I knew--magically or just by virtue of knowing my friend well--that whatever he did would never be done again?
Are "selfish" things immoral? If I own a business, is it immoral to close it and lay off my employees because I am no longer interested in running it? (Yes, in reality, the chances are good that I would sell it in that situation -- but assume for the sake of argument that I am unwilling or unable to do so.) That could cause a ton of harm to them, particularly if they themselves have families, and it's not like I'm closing it because it's hemhorraging money or anything.
I don't expect you or anybody else to actually answer these questions -- in fact I hope nobody takes the time to do so, they're nothing but hypotheticals. I pose them all in order to make one simple comment: Morality is not always as simple as you make it out to be and (at least) in the case of friendships, I do not think it can be wholly logical either. That emotional part you acknowledge can't always be tossed away.
(I realize as I preview this that the argument is somewhat tangent to your statement about the morality of laws, but it seems like you took a tangent of your own. That and it took me a long time to type and I'll be damned if I'm going to close the window now.:P)
I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million.
That's misleading. Their RESEARCH budget for CYBERSECURITY is cut to $16 million, and that's only down 7% from last year, which means under $2 million in cuts.
You can argue it should be higher if you wish, but don't make it sound like the entire DHS--or even cybercrime enforcement in general--is funded that sparsely.
How does saying that federal agents didn't act like assholes deserve the bitchy, sarcastic response it got from you? He said nothing about supporting any of these laws, so just grow up and leave your snide remarks at the door.
Erm -- when did freedom of speech EVER cover slander or libel? And I really don't see how sharing copyrighted material without permission is a freedom of speech issue.
Very possibly. I don't recall a lyrics site I've been to thus far that didn't have some form of advertising on it.
That said, though, I think a fair trade would be to permit the lyrics to be posted as long as a link to a site where the song can be purchased is included.
That's what online music buyers have decided, en masse, they'll pay for legal music downloads.
I, personally, don't find $0.99/song to be a reasonable price. If I wanted to buy an entire album, we're still talking largely the same cost as had I gone to the store to buy it, and they can't claim retail markup, or cost of CD production or cases or inserts or any of that is driving the cost up.
Why should I pay the same cost for digital media that I pay for a better-quality physical disc with protective case and inserts?
I think you make a good point, but I will say that my fear is if companies have to fear unreasonable lawsuits, it might have an effect on their ability to make new products, or increase the price consumers have to pay for these products.
Definitely. It is, unfortunately, a very real concern. That's why I mentioned the Reasonable Man Standard. I think if it was just applied more readily, and at the outset of cases, it would boot a lot of unreasonable stuff off before it got expensive to defend (even successfully).
I think personally my opinion would depend almost entirely on whether or not microsoft was eager/happy to replace the damaged xbox units without hesitation.
That seems mostly fair, in most circumstances. Personally, I think that would be my first call if something like this happened to me. As long as a company was being fair with me, I wouldn't trot off as quickly as I could to file suit.
But that said, I think it's a slightly different scenario here. It's not like I bought an XBox, plugged it in and found it to be broken ("I" in a hypothetical sense here, I didn't buy an Xbox at all). Rather, during regular use of the product it overheats, prevents me from playing it for some time, and likely returns to normal after it cools. Repeat process ad naseum. In other words, it's not that the units are DAMAGED and can be easily replaced with working units, the complaint is that the units are DEFECTIVE and even getting a replacement would not solve the problem. Unless of course Microsoft fixes the issue and replaces old units with fixed ones.
In all truth, that's probably how this lawsuit will play out. Microsoft will likely settle and agree to either replace or repair defective units. Sounds fair to me. Just takes a piece of string, after all. *grins*
The kid wasn't put in jail. His rights haven't been infringed in any way.
You're right, because he doesn't have a legal right to free speech in a private university. Which is a shame.
But that said, what are we? Six years old? Some immature student levels a couple of insults at professors and students he doesn't think much of and they suspend him for the rest of the year (no doubt, this will cause him to fail a number if not all of his classes and I'm sure he won't be getting that money back either). It's not like he disrupted the learning environment because it wasn't done in a forum that anybody was forced to look at. If there was libel or any other civil matter involved, let the parties take it to court if they're so inclined.
The university's response may have been 100% legal, but I would not call it 100% correct. I find their response to be as immature and overbearing as the issue they say they're addressing.
As a side rant, am I the only one who thinks that, public or private, universities should ensure themselves to be a bastion of free speech and discussion? It seems like that is the point in a person's life where free speech can be the most effective, as young minds are being shaped and civic responsibilities start to loom large in their minds. (It's no coincidence that most college/university campuses tend to be highly liberal.) That just makes Marquette's response all the more disgusting in my mind.
I'll close with a quote that I've used on here a number of times before. I think he says it better than I can:
The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others who claim that if such things are to be allowed their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty. -- Lord Chief Justice Halisham
It has nothing to do with "free association." It has to do with the fact that the Constitution, where we derrive our (legal) right of free speech from, is a document that limits the power of government. Being as a private institution is not the government, there is no guarantee there. Public schools, on the other hand, are considered to be essentially government agents since they are supported by public tax dollars, both state/local and federal.
That said, the piece you quoted was very much correct: It sets a standard that private universities (Marquette, at the very least) is not necessarily going to extend free speech rights to you voluntarily. I hope we can agree that while they are not legally bound to do so, at least at present, that it is certainly something that a university, of all places, ought to do.
I don't recall microsoft promising that the xbox would not overheat, and there have yet to be any cases of the system starting a fire or some such thing, so If its not dangerous, then there is no legal case.
I would disagree. I like to base my legal musings on what's called the "Reasonable Man Standard," because if it were actually applied to lawsuits, I think we'd see much more fair outcomes. Anyway, it has a few questions it asks and if at any time the answer is "no," then the respondent in the suit is believed to be acting reasonably and should not be liable for negligence. (Incidentally, I am not a lawyer--this is from my recollection of a Constitutional Law class I took a number of years ago in high school.)
1. Was there a duty--that is, an obligation to act such that nobody is harmed or exposed to unreasonable risks?
I hope we can agree that manufacturers do have a duty not to release products that fail during regular use. The fact that better ventilation may solve the problem is interesting and should definitely be brought up during any lawsuit, but I don't think it lets them off the hook just yet.
2. Was there a failure of the duty?
Covered above. It seems like there is at least reason to believe there was a failure of the duty.
3. Proximate cause. A direct connection between the act and the injury or damage.
Clearly, if the duty is to produce working merchandise, then failing in that duty is the direct cause of the failed merchandise. No-brainer here.
4. Actual loss or damage.
There is indeed actual loss; ie, the ability to play the console you just shelled out between two and three hundred bucks for. Interestingly, this may get worse after the holidays as children unwrap their brand-new Xboxes and find them overheating. Then you'll see a slew of enraged parents hopping on board.
So to me, this lawsuit is completely reasonable and at the very least we shouldn't be complaining about it being filed; let the courts decide the actual merits. I also don't understand when or why we have come to the point where we think this is acceptable. I don't understand attitudes like yours that we somehow accept risks of our box being crappy if we buy them right away. Companies should not release shoddy products, and customers should be permitted a reasonable assurance that what they pay hundreds of dollars for something, it is going to work as advertised and not flake out.
I mean really, can you think of any industry other than computers/software where we accept this sort of shit from companies as the norm? If my TV randomly turned itself off because it was one of the first ones manufactured, there would be a shit storm from consumers! If my car randomly died on the road because hey, it's the first of its kind, peopl would be enraged!
Lawsuits in the US have indeed gotten out of hand, but I'm glad to see somebody being pissed about things like this. Maybe if Microsoft gets spanked hard enough, companies will do a better job. Probably not, but we can hope.
Apple has a history of mediocre 1.0 releases, and I am sure Aperature is the same. I will bet that over the next few years, this will become a good app.
So they're trying to do what by releasing mediocre 1.0 releases? Take your money in advance of giving you a good product?
Do you at least get free upgrades to whatever point the apps start being good (2.x maybe)?
Slashdot Mirror
Bah! Who needs the Pope. If god wants to talk to me, he'll send a flaming shrubbery. A nice one. But not too expensive.
ALL federal judgeships are for life. State governments decide what happens with their judges according to their own constitutions.
I don't care what party you support, when you have two judges up for election to the supreme court and every single democrat on the election committe says something to the effect of "He's a loser and will not be a good judge" who are we kidding?
They don't say he's a loser or that he will not be a judge. They say he is "too radical" to represent mainstream America. "Too radical" translates roughly into "supports abortion rights" or "doesn't support abortion rights," depending on who nominated them and who is doing the complaining.
It's somewhat sad that our judiciary has been reduced to that level, but it's clearly an important issue to many Americans. It's one of the things people vote for their representatives based on, after all.
It's a little bit of a complicated argument (not so much in understanding, but following), but I'll do my best to explain it. You don't have to agree, incidentally, I'm just trying to explain.
First of all, it's predicated on the belief that democracy is the best form of government realistically available to us, that it is the best way to ensure and preserve human rights, and that it is what peoples gravitate towards if there are not obstacles (ie, oppressive regimes, etc) in their way.
The argument basically goes like this: If huge companies, or other countries, ignore a government because it is oppressive or is a human rights abuser or what have you, they have no sway over them. In other words, that oppressive government has nothing to lose and the others have no bargaining chips to hold over them. (Certainly, in the case of countries, there are always threats--of force, of sanctions, etc etc--but when you're talking about countries as big and powerful, economically and militarily, as China, those options are mostly hot air.)
Conversely, if you do business with them, they DO have something to lose -- your business. And while you're not likely to be able to turn around and say "so about all this unreasonable stuff you're doing" and expect results, you may be able to chip away at it. Losing a trillion dollars in trade is a heavy price to pay if all the other person is asking for is that you, say, enact some laws about right to free speech, or child labor laws, or what have you. And gradually, the argument goes, you can begin to change things.
As to how that leads to democracy, see point #1.
Couple lines from West Wing relating. It's all from one conversation, but I'm taking out the intermediate banter:
There's no "agreeing to disagree" with these people. You have to shut the hell up if you plan on passing the class. Meanwhile, there's nothing you can do.
You're vastly overgeneralizing.
Many--I daresay most--professors are going to exhibit some degree of bias in their teachings. And really, why shouldn't they? Personally I like it; I enjoy knowing where people, my professors included, stand on issues.
The vast majority of those exhibiting a bias are reasonable people. Many of them would enjoy nothing more than for students to stick their hands in the air and say "no, I don't agree." Many of them will ENCOURAGE it. I had a philosophy teacher who would provide topic options for papers, and there would always be at least one that said something like, "Dr. [suchandsuch] contends that [. . .] do you agree or disagree?" She WANTED you to challenge her. She undoubtedly feels the same way I do: That by arguing and debating your beliefs, one of two good things happen: Either you change your mind and now believe in something more strongly than what you believed in before, or you strengthen your current belief by being forced to examine your reasoning and how it stands up against the counter-reasoning.
The people who damage you grade-wise for disagreeing are a small minority. When you encounter them, you have options. For most classes, there are different options for instructors. You could always take the unfairly-graded work to... whoever the heck handles that sort of thing, I honestly don't know, and get some action on it. Or you could suck it up and tell them what they want to hear.
Let's be clear, only dumb people get "brainwashed." My conversative professors railing about their conservative viewpoints has not made me any more conservative; if anything, it has made me more LIBERAL by giving me new, elaborated positions on precisely why I disagree. After all, to disagree intelligently, you have to know what the opposing argument is first. If I needed to tell them that Ronald Reagan was my personal hero to get a decent grade in the class, that's fine. It's life. If you go through life without having one person in a position of power over you force you to do or think in certain ways to avoid trouble, you're a truly lucky or very indepenent soul. Take THAT as the lesson for that class that semester and move on.
Interestingly, most of the teachers I have had, when they have truly extreme viewpoints, have been conservative viewpoints. While I think most of my teachers have been liberal overall, they tended to be less extreme and less vocal about things.
He spends more time yapping about his current axe to grind, rather than teaching the subject... what do you do?
Depends. If he is the only option of a professor for that class, I ask myself: Is this material important to me because I have to graduate or because it's going to be relevant to my life after school? (Let's face it, not all classes are.) If it's actually important, I'll do the studying on my own.
I had a teacher in high school, sophomore English teacher, who was a greatly insightful guy. I feel I learned more in that class than any other English class, and very little of it was about English. One day he found the words to say something that I had always believed but never articulated very well: "School is a game. All you have to do is learn the rules, and beat them at their own game." If a shitbag professor with an axe to grind wants things done a certain way, I'll do them that way. It's a game, and those are the rules. I intend to win either way.
Looking around the class room, I was shocked to see many students dutifully writing down that answer.
Slightly off topic, but as a college student today I am still shocked at how many people write down literally every word the professor says. It is even worse when they use a powerpoint presentation as a way of guiding themselves (and the class) through the topic. People will be busily writing down things they have absolutely no understanding of, and you just know most of them aren't listening to the professor actually, you know, explaining it, because they're just too busy writing.
I'm sure they feel quite good that they got the lecture outline on the title page jotted down--most won't be clever enough to leave space between the points for elaboration, it's just mindless copying--but I am also sure that many of these same people are going to be absolutely shocked when they study their notes for hours and still don't know what the hell they're talking about come test time. Naturally, they will blame the professor for not explaining the material well enough. They got his slides copied down verbatim, what more could there possibly be to know?
I'm just scratching my head at the number of "Bush is teh nazi" comments that don't seem to have any comprehension of who first trumpeted and signed this thing into existence in the first place.
That's because the issue is not COPA (hmm, isn't there two P's in there or is that something different?). It's only a pretext. If GWB was instead trying to subpoena the search results to see how many people search for The Anarchist's Cookbook or some such, the issue would be the same.
The issue is that it is overreaching for the government to violate the privacy of its citizens -- I don't care if that is in aggregate or not -- on the HOPE that their HUNCH turns out to be true. I frankly couldn't care less if the data proved them right or wrong on this. They are not alleging Google did anything wrong. Google is not party to their suit. They just think that maybe, Google might be able to prove their case for them so they issue a subpoena. Too damn bad, Bush Administration. Prove your own case. And if they got this information and found out they were wrong -- that's just a big oopsie I guess.
No, sorry. They are not entitled to Google's private data, and the browsing habits of their constituents, unless and until they accuse Google of wrongdoing. That is what the issue is. Not that they want the data to fight for COPA or who signed COPA or even whether COPA is a good idea. That they're trying to bully data out of somebody when they can't even possibly know what it is going to tell them.
A teacher in my old high school had a pretty good perspective on what some of that is. He was teaching both an MCSE course and a CCNA course that semester (I think both have since been canceled due to lack of enrollment :() and said something to the order of:
"A lot of the people in here think, 'Well, I like playstation or I like X-box, therefore I like computers, therefore I'll take this class.'" I think we would be surprised if we found out how many people truly don't understand that being able to turn on the computer, browse the 'net and do a little email stuff doesn't make you a computer guru, nor does it predestine you to a professional life in some area of computing.
That said, admittedly, there are a lot of topics covered in CS that aren't programming. Just looking over the course requirements for a CS major in my school, I'd say MOST of them are not programming. There's a lot of hardware things, operating systems, parallel processing, some database stuff, etc etc. You can argue that a lot of those subjects will touch upon programming to one degree or another, but it's unavoidable that not everybody going into CS is necessarily interested in programming. While I don't condone cheating, I am more understanding to somebody like that "outsourcing" their programming work than if it were somebody who actually wanted to be a programmer. Maybe it's as simple as the person should be in an IS-type major rather than a CS one; maybe their schools don't offer the distinction, maybe they think it's all pretty much the same material but CS > IS. *shrugs*
You do realize that announcements written by the Sanger Institute are not written for Slashdot readers, right?
It's a quote. Deal with it.
Given this track record, I expect he will next claim that he will eliminate corruption in Congress.
Ironically, to get such legislation passed he would have to buy himself more than a few congressmen.
No longer will there be any doubt over whether the murder victim was strangled or beheaded, which has in the past been a cause of great difficulty in investigations due to the lack of any very obvious physical feature that might distinguish a decapitation victim from someone who has been hanged.
Funny, but to be fair, just because somebody's head is cut off doesn't necessarily mean it was the cause of death. They could have been shot or stabbed (or strangled) or anything else before hand and the head cut off later.
No. But they could ask the original court to reverse its ruling.
If memory serves, Microsoft settled. There was no court ruling.
That would only be possible if the patent(s) is/are actually invalidated, not just Apple and Burst reaching some new licensing agreement pursuant to the litigation.
Even if there were a court ruling in a case such as this, it's not likely that the court would reverse itself even if the patent was later invalidated. Microsoft would have had the same opportunity to ask the USPTO or the courts to invalidate the patents during their trial, and if they had lost, it would have meant they refused to do so. In reality, this would not be likely to happen; once a company tried and failed to invalidate patents, I doubt any other company would try again and succeed.
However, the morality of drinking really isn't that difficult to discern: It's not immoral to drink except where it would harm another person
How far do you take that, and who decides what "harm" is?
You gave a few examples where I don't think you'd get much of an argument from most people about it being wrong to get drunk in those situations. But it's easy to take another step, and another. For example, the purpose of DUIs being wrong is that it could harm others -- no guarantees. And the purpose of not getting drunk enough to interfere with supporting a family is to protect the family. However, there are few people in the world who are truly alone. Is it wrong if I, as a single male with no children, drink myself to death? It could happen. My family would be devastated. Clear emotional harm would be done. So was my drinking immoral? Clearly it would be simple to say "fine, drinking yourself to death is immoral" -- but I do not believe there is a purpose to a system of morality that offers no real guidance. I can get good and drunk, and impair my judgment (making it harder to know when to stop), but it would be immoral to die? Err... helpful.
What about the "lesser of two evils" cases? What if I know my neighbor is planning on killing people, but I don't have any proof such that I would be able to get the police involved as anything more than a delay tactic? Is it moral to kill the neighbor to protect others? What if I don't KNOW he's going to commit murders, but I have a very strong suspicion? A moderately-strong suspicion? Where is the line? If I am 51% sure, does that mean it's moral? What about 50%? Remember now, we're not talking legality, we're talking morality. Regardless of legality, would it be the right thing to do?
How about things that are less easy to quantify? If god descended from the heavens right now and told me if I killed every last Arab in the world, peace would reign for the remainder of the history of the world, would it be moral to do it?
How does friendship play in to morality? If I am friends with somebody who committed a crime and he calls me for bail, should I pay it even if I know that he's going to skip out and never come back? If my friend confesses murder to me, is it my moral imperitive to rat him out or keep his secret? After all, I am causing harm regardless of which I choose. Does it matter if I knew--magically or just by virtue of knowing my friend well--that whatever he did would never be done again?
Are "selfish" things immoral? If I own a business, is it immoral to close it and lay off my employees because I am no longer interested in running it? (Yes, in reality, the chances are good that I would sell it in that situation -- but assume for the sake of argument that I am unwilling or unable to do so.) That could cause a ton of harm to them, particularly if they themselves have families, and it's not like I'm closing it because it's hemhorraging money or anything.
I don't expect you or anybody else to actually answer these questions -- in fact I hope nobody takes the time to do so, they're nothing but hypotheticals. I pose them all in order to make one simple comment: Morality is not always as simple as you make it out to be and (at least) in the case of friendships, I do not think it can be wholly logical either. That emotional part you acknowledge can't always be tossed away.
(I realize as I preview this that the argument is somewhat tangent to your statement about the morality of laws, but it seems like you took a tangent of your own. That and it took me a long time to type and I'll be damned if I'm going to close the window now. :P)
I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million.
That's misleading. Their RESEARCH budget for CYBERSECURITY is cut to $16 million, and that's only down 7% from last year, which means under $2 million in cuts.
You can argue it should be higher if you wish, but don't make it sound like the entire DHS--or even cybercrime enforcement in general--is funded that sparsely.
Wait a second, why don't the credit bureaus offer free lifetime credit fraud monitoring to everyone in the first place?
Because they are not not-for-profit's?
How does saying that federal agents didn't act like assholes deserve the bitchy, sarcastic response it got from you? He said nothing about supporting any of these laws, so just grow up and leave your snide remarks at the door.
Erm -- when did freedom of speech EVER cover slander or libel? And I really don't see how sharing copyrighted material without permission is a freedom of speech issue.
More than likely, DirecTV can be sued for it, but they can then turn around and sue the company they contracted in an attempt to recover the damages.
Are they profiting off of this?
Very possibly. I don't recall a lyrics site I've been to thus far that didn't have some form of advertising on it.
That said, though, I think a fair trade would be to permit the lyrics to be posted as long as a link to a site where the song can be purchased is included.
That's what online music buyers have decided, en masse, they'll pay for legal music downloads.
I, personally, don't find $0.99/song to be a reasonable price. If I wanted to buy an entire album, we're still talking largely the same cost as had I gone to the store to buy it, and they can't claim retail markup, or cost of CD production or cases or inserts or any of that is driving the cost up.
Why should I pay the same cost for digital media that I pay for a better-quality physical disc with protective case and inserts?
I think you make a good point, but I will say that my fear is if companies have to fear unreasonable lawsuits, it might have an effect on their ability to make new products, or increase the price consumers have to pay for these products.
Definitely. It is, unfortunately, a very real concern. That's why I mentioned the Reasonable Man Standard. I think if it was just applied more readily, and at the outset of cases, it would boot a lot of unreasonable stuff off before it got expensive to defend (even successfully).
I think personally my opinion would depend almost entirely on whether or not microsoft was eager/happy to replace the damaged xbox units without hesitation.
That seems mostly fair, in most circumstances. Personally, I think that would be my first call if something like this happened to me. As long as a company was being fair with me, I wouldn't trot off as quickly as I could to file suit.
But that said, I think it's a slightly different scenario here. It's not like I bought an XBox, plugged it in and found it to be broken ("I" in a hypothetical sense here, I didn't buy an Xbox at all). Rather, during regular use of the product it overheats, prevents me from playing it for some time, and likely returns to normal after it cools. Repeat process ad naseum. In other words, it's not that the units are DAMAGED and can be easily replaced with working units, the complaint is that the units are DEFECTIVE and even getting a replacement would not solve the problem. Unless of course Microsoft fixes the issue and replaces old units with fixed ones.
In all truth, that's probably how this lawsuit will play out. Microsoft will likely settle and agree to either replace or repair defective units. Sounds fair to me. Just takes a piece of string, after all. *grins*
The kid wasn't put in jail. His rights haven't been infringed in any way.
You're right, because he doesn't have a legal right to free speech in a private university. Which is a shame.
But that said, what are we? Six years old? Some immature student levels a couple of insults at professors and students he doesn't think much of and they suspend him for the rest of the year (no doubt, this will cause him to fail a number if not all of his classes and I'm sure he won't be getting that money back either). It's not like he disrupted the learning environment because it wasn't done in a forum that anybody was forced to look at. If there was libel or any other civil matter involved, let the parties take it to court if they're so inclined.
The university's response may have been 100% legal, but I would not call it 100% correct. I find their response to be as immature and overbearing as the issue they say they're addressing.
As a side rant, am I the only one who thinks that, public or private, universities should ensure themselves to be a bastion of free speech and discussion? It seems like that is the point in a person's life where free speech can be the most effective, as young minds are being shaped and civic responsibilities start to loom large in their minds. (It's no coincidence that most college/university campuses tend to be highly liberal.) That just makes Marquette's response all the more disgusting in my mind.
I'll close with a quote that I've used on here a number of times before. I think he says it better than I can:
It has nothing to do with "free association." It has to do with the fact that the Constitution, where we derrive our (legal) right of free speech from, is a document that limits the power of government. Being as a private institution is not the government, there is no guarantee there. Public schools, on the other hand, are considered to be essentially government agents since they are supported by public tax dollars, both state/local and federal.
That said, the piece you quoted was very much correct: It sets a standard that private universities (Marquette, at the very least) is not necessarily going to extend free speech rights to you voluntarily. I hope we can agree that while they are not legally bound to do so, at least at present, that it is certainly something that a university, of all places, ought to do.
I don't recall microsoft promising that the xbox would not overheat, and there have yet to be any cases of the system starting a fire or some such thing, so If its not dangerous, then there is no legal case.
I would disagree. I like to base my legal musings on what's called the "Reasonable Man Standard," because if it were actually applied to lawsuits, I think we'd see much more fair outcomes. Anyway, it has a few questions it asks and if at any time the answer is "no," then the respondent in the suit is believed to be acting reasonably and should not be liable for negligence. (Incidentally, I am not a lawyer--this is from my recollection of a Constitutional Law class I took a number of years ago in high school.)
1. Was there a duty--that is, an obligation to act such that nobody is harmed or exposed to unreasonable risks?
I hope we can agree that manufacturers do have a duty not to release products that fail during regular use. The fact that better ventilation may solve the problem is interesting and should definitely be brought up during any lawsuit, but I don't think it lets them off the hook just yet.
2. Was there a failure of the duty?
Covered above. It seems like there is at least reason to believe there was a failure of the duty.
3. Proximate cause. A direct connection between the act and the injury or damage.
Clearly, if the duty is to produce working merchandise, then failing in that duty is the direct cause of the failed merchandise. No-brainer here.
4. Actual loss or damage.
There is indeed actual loss; ie, the ability to play the console you just shelled out between two and three hundred bucks for. Interestingly, this may get worse after the holidays as children unwrap their brand-new Xboxes and find them overheating. Then you'll see a slew of enraged parents hopping on board.
So to me, this lawsuit is completely reasonable and at the very least we shouldn't be complaining about it being filed; let the courts decide the actual merits. I also don't understand when or why we have come to the point where we think this is acceptable. I don't understand attitudes like yours that we somehow accept risks of our box being crappy if we buy them right away. Companies should not release shoddy products, and customers should be permitted a reasonable assurance that what they pay hundreds of dollars for something, it is going to work as advertised and not flake out.
I mean really, can you think of any industry other than computers/software where we accept this sort of shit from companies as the norm? If my TV randomly turned itself off because it was one of the first ones manufactured, there would be a shit storm from consumers! If my car randomly died on the road because hey, it's the first of its kind, peopl would be enraged!
Lawsuits in the US have indeed gotten out of hand, but I'm glad to see somebody being pissed about things like this. Maybe if Microsoft gets spanked hard enough, companies will do a better job. Probably not, but we can hope.
Apple has a history of mediocre 1.0 releases, and I am sure Aperature is the same. I will bet that over the next few years, this will become a good app.
So they're trying to do what by releasing mediocre 1.0 releases? Take your money in advance of giving you a good product?
Do you at least get free upgrades to whatever point the apps start being good (2.x maybe)?
In that situation, just unzipping your pocket to remove the iPod can be a challenge...
I've never had any problems unzipping my "pocket" to get to my "iPod," regardless of weather!
They may have pills for that though.