It's getting to the point, at least for me, where I automatically disbelieve and distrust every law enforcement official on every single statement they make. I view them all as worthless scum first, and leave it up to them to prove otherwise.
A late uncle of mine who served as a U.S. Marshal for many, many years once told me basically the same thing.
My grandmother was married to my grandfather when she was fifteen (she died at twenty eight) and he was in his thirties, his second wife was seventeen at the time of his marriage to her (he died at seventy nine).
Similar situation here - my paternal grandmother was 15 when she married a 19-year old (IIRC) in 1936, and she and my grandfather remained married until his death in 2000. They were probably two of the happiest and well-adjusted people I've known, and to my knowledge she's had few regrets about marrying as young as she did. It wasn't a planned or forced marriage by any means, and marrying that young was quite common for the area (east Alabama/west Georgia). Interestingly, both her family and his were two of the most dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptist families one could ever meet (as were most families in that area), and everyone at the time was just fine with the union.
Nowadays my grandfather would be labeled a "pedophile" by the public, be thrown in jail, and live the rest of his life with the law calling him a child molester.
I just don't understand why shareholders of the major record companies don't revolt.
They're probably content to believe the pablum being fed to them by the executives of the RIAA members instead of actually researching the market for themselves.
Basically, with no capability to use a cablecard (much less switched digital video), MythTV is growing increasingly irrelevant in the DVR world.
Is it now? I find that my 2-tuner system works just wonderfully on the analog signal I get from the cable company. HDTV still has quite a long ways to go before it supplants regular ol' NTSC video on the local cable providers' offerings, and there are plenty of us out there that still don't think it's worth the premium being charged.
IBM clones required a reverse engineered BIOS as a result of the decision in that case.
It wasn't reverse-engineered so much as it was rewritten from scratch, following a very detailed requirements document. The original BIOS source was easily obtainable from IBM itself.
one group disassembling the code and documenting what it does in English
That part wasn't necessary, as IBM provided fully commented source for the BIOS in the PC Technical Reference Manual, which was available to anyone that wanted to fork over the cash for it. I still have a copy somewhere around here.
The basic issue in IP discussions always seems to boil down to whether IP rights are granted with society's consent, or are inherent properties of being human.
What bothers me is that we continue to have this debate in the United States, when the U.S. Constitution is crystal clear on the subject. Where we keep getting tripped up is on the "limited times" part - it's ridiculous that it's been construed to mean "a period of time far in excess of the average person's lifetime".
Of course they do. Let's look at World of Warcraft. The open source project MaNGOS provides a reasonable facsimile of the WoW backend, and a couple of other open source projects provide decent content for that backend. It's all free, one can easily customize their server to allow players to do all sorts of interesting things that Blizzard's servers won't, and one can fix bugs they come across if they've a mind to. Yet Blizzard continues to maintain a paid monthly user base of 10 million or so.
Why is that? Mostly, it's because Blizzard continues to make a product that's perceived to be better than the alternatives. The MaNGOS servers tend to be sparsely populated, somewhat glitchy, and don't have all the quests and other content implemented correctly, and having that consistency is worth money to a lot of people. I would tend to believe that whether copyright was involved or not, the company would still continue to make money simply by providing the superior product.
I, personally, am an adherent to the principle of jury nullification.
As was John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. The really sad thing is that all jurors should already be aware of their absolute rights as arbiters of facts *and* the law, but peoples' knowledge of how their own government works is a joke nowadays.
You'd think the space marines would take a cue from ancient technology and just stick a damn Picatinny rail with a weapon light on the shotgun. They're widely available today, so it totally blows any shred of realism that it wouldn't be available then.
but to set aside a jury's verdict is fairly unamerican
Not when the judge in question gave an incorrect interpretation regarding a point of law to the jury that almost certainly affected the verdict. I think it's a sign of a pretty good judge when he has the balls to say he made a mistake big enough to warrant a do-over.
WoW with more than 120ms lag wouldn't be THAT much fun
It depends. Between about 200 and 900 ms, the lag is annoying as hell, but once it gets above that, it's kind of entertaining since what will happen is largely unpredictable. Firefights in Alterac Valley when everyone is severely lagged are kind of like slapstick comedy. Players fall down and die for no apparent reason at all.:-)
Big time. Since the Sunwell quests started and they raised the limit to 25 daily quests, there's no excuse for someone to not be able to easily pull in tons of gold. I'm not a hardcore player by any means, but I've still been able to make in excess of 1100g in a single day between doing the Sunwell quests, a bit of farming, and some judicious use of the auction house.
The court said that making modifications to WoW as loaded in memory was copyright infringement, and that consequently anyone using Glider was thus in fact infringing Blizzard's copyrights.
I don't agree with it. I think it's an incredibly stupid ruling. Unfortunately though, it means that for now at least, Glider is a piece of software that facilitates copyright infringement as its primary purpose in the court's eyes.
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It's getting to the point, at least for me, where I automatically disbelieve and distrust every law enforcement official on every single statement they make. I view them all as worthless scum first, and leave it up to them to prove otherwise.
A late uncle of mine who served as a U.S. Marshal for many, many years once told me basically the same thing.
And for better or worse, this is exactly why Supreme Court justices serve for life.
My grandmother was married to my grandfather when she was fifteen (she died at twenty eight) and he was in his thirties, his second wife was seventeen at the time of his marriage to her (he died at seventy nine).
Similar situation here - my paternal grandmother was 15 when she married a 19-year old (IIRC) in 1936, and she and my grandfather remained married until his death in 2000. They were probably two of the happiest and well-adjusted people I've known, and to my knowledge she's had few regrets about marrying as young as she did. It wasn't a planned or forced marriage by any means, and marrying that young was quite common for the area (east Alabama/west Georgia). Interestingly, both her family and his were two of the most dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptist families one could ever meet (as were most families in that area), and everyone at the time was just fine with the union.
Nowadays my grandfather would be labeled a "pedophile" by the public, be thrown in jail, and live the rest of his life with the law calling him a child molester.
I just don't understand why shareholders of the major record companies don't revolt.
They're probably content to believe the pablum being fed to them by the executives of the RIAA members instead of actually researching the market for themselves.
And there are no binding contracts or such associated with the visa.
In your case, perhaps. It's not universally true, however.
Basically, with no capability to use a cablecard (much less switched digital video), MythTV is growing increasingly irrelevant in the DVR world.
Is it now? I find that my 2-tuner system works just wonderfully on the analog signal I get from the cable company. HDTV still has quite a long ways to go before it supplants regular ol' NTSC video on the local cable providers' offerings, and there are plenty of us out there that still don't think it's worth the premium being charged.
IBM clones required a reverse engineered BIOS as a result of the decision in that case.
It wasn't reverse-engineered so much as it was rewritten from scratch, following a very detailed requirements document. The original BIOS source was easily obtainable from IBM itself.
one group disassembling the code and documenting what it does in English
That part wasn't necessary, as IBM provided fully commented source for the BIOS in the PC Technical Reference Manual, which was available to anyone that wanted to fork over the cash for it. I still have a copy somewhere around here.
I don't like choice WRT Ethernet cables
:-)
Hope you never lay eyes on a 3Com 3C-509 combo card then....
If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black
I'll see your amber-on-black, and raise you with 132 columns and smooth scrolling.
Better yet, when you find the device, go down to the local Denny's or iHOP and stick it to the first police car you find there.
There is no Sanctuary.
/. seems to be more of a loose tech news aggregation site to me, but even then it seems most readers are here for the comments.
The basic issue in IP discussions always seems to boil down to whether IP rights are granted with society's consent, or are inherent properties of being human.
What bothers me is that we continue to have this debate in the United States, when the U.S. Constitution is crystal clear on the subject. Where we keep getting tripped up is on the "limited times" part - it's ridiculous that it's been construed to mean "a period of time far in excess of the average person's lifetime".
Oh, wait, people already do that sort of thing.
Of course they do. Let's look at World of Warcraft. The open source project MaNGOS provides a reasonable facsimile of the WoW backend, and a couple of other open source projects provide decent content for that backend. It's all free, one can easily customize their server to allow players to do all sorts of interesting things that Blizzard's servers won't, and one can fix bugs they come across if they've a mind to. Yet Blizzard continues to maintain a paid monthly user base of 10 million or so.
Why is that? Mostly, it's because Blizzard continues to make a product that's perceived to be better than the alternatives. The MaNGOS servers tend to be sparsely populated, somewhat glitchy, and don't have all the quests and other content implemented correctly, and having that consistency is worth money to a lot of people. I would tend to believe that whether copyright was involved or not, the company would still continue to make money simply by providing the superior product.
provided that you have a license to own a gun
No such thing in most states.
I wonder if the source's name was Simone?
I, personally, am an adherent to the principle of jury nullification.
As was John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. The really sad thing is that all jurors should already be aware of their absolute rights as arbiters of facts *and* the law, but peoples' knowledge of how their own government works is a joke nowadays.
You'd think the space marines would take a cue from ancient technology and just stick a damn Picatinny rail with a weapon light on the shotgun. They're widely available today, so it totally blows any shred of realism that it wouldn't be available then.
but to set aside a jury's verdict is fairly unamerican
Not when the judge in question gave an incorrect interpretation regarding a point of law to the jury that almost certainly affected the verdict. I think it's a sign of a pretty good judge when he has the balls to say he made a mistake big enough to warrant a do-over.
WoW with more than 120ms lag wouldn't be THAT much fun
:-)
It depends. Between about 200 and 900 ms, the lag is annoying as hell, but once it gets above that, it's kind of entertaining since what will happen is largely unpredictable. Firefights in Alterac Valley when everyone is severely lagged are kind of like slapstick comedy. Players fall down and die for no apparent reason at all.
It is easy enough to make money in WOW
Big time. Since the Sunwell quests started and they raised the limit to 25 daily quests, there's no excuse for someone to not be able to easily pull in tons of gold. I'm not a hardcore player by any means, but I've still been able to make in excess of 1100g in a single day between doing the Sunwell quests, a bit of farming, and some judicious use of the auction house.
I for one would love to try to program a bot to Warlock as well as I do, to try to distill my techniques into code, etc.
You could visit a trainer to learn Curse of Automation.
Care to show me how this software is illegal?
The court said that making modifications to WoW as loaded in memory was copyright infringement, and that consequently anyone using Glider was thus in fact infringing Blizzard's copyrights.
I don't agree with it. I think it's an incredibly stupid ruling. Unfortunately though, it means that for now at least, Glider is a piece of software that facilitates copyright infringement as its primary purpose in the court's eyes.
Why is that acceptable, but erasing the penalty via the use of a bot is "cheating"?
Because if it takes you longer to get that epic world drop, it translates directly into more money in Blizzard's pocket.