I really don't know why the robot cannot palm-mute, it wouldn't have been that difficult to add a palm-muting mechanism.
It does do some palm-muting (sort of). Just behind the "pick hand" there is a little thingy that attempts to mute the strings. The problem is that it's not fleshy, like a palm, and therefore does a really piss poor job of muting the strings the way a palm would. It also probably only has two settings, muted and not muted, whereas with a real palm you can go from heavily muted, for a really crunchy sound, to just slightly muted.
It would also help if it could play a guitar with more than one string. Or if it could cover more than just half the neck. It really is quite limited.
The thing is playing a one-string guitar. It does attempt to do some virtual palm-muting, but does so poorly, as there is no substitute for a fleshy palm when muting. It does do hammer-ons and pull-offs— in fact, that's most of what it does, since it's playing riffs entirely on one string.
In short, it's a neat gimmick, but not particularly useful or revolutionary.
The law states that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
So many people misunderstand this concept.
The idea of being "presumed innocent until proven guilty" is a concept that applies in a court of law. The idea is that it is the prosecution's job to prove that you're guilty, not the defense's job to prove that you're innocent. It does not apply outside of the courtroom, as it would make no sense. How could the police ever arrest anyone if they always presumed everyone to be innocent? The police arrest you because they think you're guilty. They hold you in jail because they think you're guilty. But when it comes to the trial, the prosecutor has to prove your guilt, and if they fail to do that, then you're set free as an innocent person.
To make that super extra secure, forget the random uppercase, just convince them to hold down the SHIFT key in an alternating pattern. Then your password becomes Ch#vY8#l$1R, which is pretty rock solid and no more difficult to remember.
If you advertise that $1 from each sale will be donated, then you are using the donation as a selling point, and therefore putting the decision to donate on the buyer. It's a sneaky way to profit off of another's desire to donate, and also to get the tax incentive from what is effectively someone else's donation.
If you make no mention of donation at sale time, then at the end of the day decide to donate the equivalent of $1 from each sale, then the decision to donate is entirely your own.
This article doesn't state which of the these is true in this case, but other articles do point out that they explicitly mention the donation in the app description. Not only that, but they use the words "(b)y purchasing the Wikileaks app, you donate 1 dollar of the purchase price towards organizations that work to promote the future of online democracy" (emphasis mine).
No. No it is not. This is the kind of thinking that our lawmakers are using "it is different if it involves a computer!" They are wrong, and so are you.
I expected a response similar to this. And, to be clear, I am not in any way advocating legislation here. Also, the fact that "it involves a computer" is irrelevant. What matters here is the fact that "public, but not on the Internet" means that a handful of people can and will see it, while "on the public Internet" means that potentially millions of people can and will see it.
I'm talking entirely about culture here. I don't think that we should accept the idea that anything not securely locked up in a secret underground vault is fair game for being transmitted everywhere in the entire world. I think that we as a society need to decide that just because something is in a public, but non-digital place, that it's socially unacceptable for us to just assume that we can take that and plaster it on the Internet for the whole world to see.
The advent of the Internet does not give us all permission to be assholes.
It seems hard to imagine that the woman expected her delicates to stay completely private when she hung them up for the entire world to see.
This is the part that really stands out. What makes you think she hung them up "for the entire world to see"? I mean, what we have today is kind of a whole new level in the public vs. private continuum. There's "private". Then there's "public". But then there's "on the Internet", which is a whole different ball of wax.
There is a shift that needs to happen in how we view things. Obviously, the moment you step out of a private residence, you can no longer expect privacy. But perhaps there is a reasonable expectation of something that falls somewhere between "private" and "on the Internet".
The initial claim in this thread was that Java was supposed to eliminate all memory management entirely. Shayde responded that this was never claimed, but rather that it would remove most of the memory management responsibility from the programmer. You quoted him as saying (emphasis mine):
Java at no point specified that there wasn't going to be any memory management at all.
You responded to that quote with a quote from Gosling that actually stated exactly what he had said, which is (again, emphasis mine):
Java technology completely removes the memory management load from the programmer.
I explained that the point of Gosling's comment, and likely Shayde's comment as well, is that the programmer does not need to worry about memory management, because it is handled by the JVM and therefore configured at deployment time by an administrator.
So, now I'm confused. Are you agreeing with Shayde, or disagreeing with Shayde? Because your quote from Gosling agrees with him, yet you use it to argue against him. And I agree with him, yet you seem to not disagree with any point I've made. So what exactly is your point? Do you believe that it was ever claimed that Java would eliminate all memory management entirely?
Java technology completely removes the memory management load from the programmer.
Do you not understand what the bolded words mean? Gosling never claimed that Java would turn memory into this magical unlimited resource. Memory management is handled by the JVM, as opposed to by the code. This means that developers do not need to deal with memory management, but administrators do. In other words, don't worry about memory management when you're writing the application, but do worry about it when you're deploying it.
Don't blame "butthurt Java weenies", as you so eloquently put it in multiple other posts, for the fact that you don't understand the difference between a programming task and a deployment/administrative task.
I didn't say that Mr. Assange didn't do something unethical. He may have. He may not have. I don't know, and neither do you, as these are only allegations at this point.
The point is that not every unethical act falls into the scope of WikiLeaks' stated purpose. If I punch you in the face, that's unethical. But a document detailing my act is not something that would get posted to WikiLeaks.
Basically, the point of WikiLeaks is to expose massive breaches of ethics that impact large populations, not the misconduct of one individual against one or two other individuals.
To put this another way, if there was documentation of unethical behaviour on the part of WikiLeaks as an organization, I would expect that documentation to end up on WikiLeaks, otherwise they would be hypocrites. But unethical behaviour in the private life of an individual who happens to be part of WikiLeaks is something that should not end up on WikiLeaks.
Shouldn't Assange have already posted it? There isn't any hypocrisy here, is there?
No, because this is not at all the kind of document that WikiLeaks posts. Their primary interest is stated as:
...exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations.
Contrary to popular belief, WikiLeaks is not about revealing any information that anyone might ever try to hide. WikiLeaks is about revealing unethical government/corporate behaviour.
FOX also makes sure to point out any 'controversy' in science stories.
Are you claiming that news shows giving both sides of a story is a _bad_ thing?
Any story can be portrayed as having an "other" side, but it's not necessarily worth reporting on. For example, if a plane crashes in Antarctica, should the reporters immediately point out that the whole story is in doubt because the Flat Earthers say that there's no such thing as Antarctica? If they spend two minutes interviewing a survivor, should they also give equal time to a Flat Earther denying that the crash could have even happened in the first place?
Just because some crackpot out there has an "other" side to a given story, doesn't make it automatically worth reporting on.
Hey samzenpus, if you're going to post a flamebait article anyway, why bother toning it down? The summary headline says "Fox News Makes You Less Informed", but the actual article comes right out and says "Fox News Makes You Stupid".
If you don't want to answer people's questions why are you in the office at all? Sounds like you should be working from home.
Because the boss said so. Lots of people would work from home if it was allowed. It is not always an option.
As far sharing information with coworkers, email and IM are wonderful tools. The beauty of IM is that you can ask me a question, and I can finish my thought before responding, thus getting you your answer relatively quickly, and allowing me to remain as productive as possible despite the interruptions.
A good work environment creates the right balance between "leave me alone so I can get things done" and "let's be a team". Offices with closed doors are heavily on the "leave me alone" side. Open concepts are heavily on the "let's be a team" side. Cubicles are an attempt to balance the two. Not perfect, but I like having walls.
Of course, I should point out that I do not currently work in a cubicle, but rather in a small room with two other people. It's not ideal, but we tend to keep to ourselves, so it's okay.
I just played against Watson. He beat me, but I'm not much of a trivia player. Most of the questions that he got wrong or didn't even attempt looked to me like the type of question that a moderate trivia buff would get. For example, Watson didn't know the name for a small briefcase named for a French diplomat. I only got it wrong because I misspelled it. There were other obvious ones that Watson couldn't get due to an inability to parse the question, as well as ones where the question was simple, and Watson simply didn't have the knowledge. I would consider all of the questions asked to be well within the limits of an average trivia buff. I probably would've beat Watson if I hadn't tried to guess so many of the answers I didn't know.
I suspect you'll be disappointed when the game actually happens, but I hope not.
Those laws are against libel. You can say bad things against food it those things are true, just as you can say bad things about people if they're true, but you can't publicly lie maliciously about someone without fear of being sued for slander.
There are a number of significant differences between normal libel laws and the food libel laws.
In normal libel, the plaintiff has to prove that the defendant's statement was false, that the statement caused harm, and that the defendant didn't try to verify the statement before making it. Additionally, if the plaintiff is a public figure, they must also prove that the defendant intended to cause harm.
In food libel, the plaintiff merely has to prove that the defendant's statement was false, or at least not definitively true. In some states the onus is reversed, making it up to the defendant to prove that the statement is true.
It is much easier to lose a food libel suit than a regular libel or defamation suit. If I have good reason to believe that you put shit in your hot dogs, and I communicate this, but it turns out I was wrong, that's not libel. If I have good reason to believe that Oscar Mayer hot dogs have shit in them, and I communicate this, but it turns out I was wrong, that is libel.
The whole point of the food libel laws is to make it easier for plaintiffs to win a libel case, and to make it more costly for defendants to lose.
For anyone else who was wondering about the "Bill Gates 3.0" part, the Bill we know and love/hate is William Henry Gates III. In case you were going to confuse him for the other Bill Gates'.
Except really he's Bill Gates 4.0 (or maybe 3.1?). His dad was William Gates III, but he dropped the "III" suffix, and gave it to his son, who was actually the fourth Bill Gates in the family line.
Perhaps this helps to explain the Windows version numbering system.
I think the point the GP and the GGGP was making was that, while what you've described might be a violation of various Intellectual Property (the thing that encompasses trademarks, patents, and copyrights), the particular brand of Intellectual Property that may (or may not) be violated is not copyrights. Trademarks, probably. Patents, maybe. Copyrights, definitely not.
You can't copyright a name, or a character. Those would be trademarks. So, while there may be an IP infringement case, there is not a copyright infringement case. Since the "C" in "DMCA" stands for "Copyright", there can be no DMCA violation if there is no copyright violation.
IANAL*, IDNRTFA**, and IOIOPCH***.
*IANAL: I Am Not A Lawyer **IDNRTFA: I Did Not Read The Frickin' Article ***IOIOPCH: I'm Only Interpreting Other People's Comments Here
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Wow. That's some crazy cool stuff he's doing. Thanks for the link!
I really don't know why the robot cannot palm-mute, it wouldn't have been that difficult to add a palm-muting mechanism.
It does do some palm-muting (sort of). Just behind the "pick hand" there is a little thingy that attempts to mute the strings. The problem is that it's not fleshy, like a palm, and therefore does a really piss poor job of muting the strings the way a palm would. It also probably only has two settings, muted and not muted, whereas with a real palm you can go from heavily muted, for a really crunchy sound, to just slightly muted.
It would also help if it could play a guitar with more than one string. Or if it could cover more than just half the neck. It really is quite limited.
The thing is playing a one-string guitar. It does attempt to do some virtual palm-muting, but does so poorly, as there is no substitute for a fleshy palm when muting. It does do hammer-ons and pull-offs— in fact, that's most of what it does, since it's playing riffs entirely on one string.
In short, it's a neat gimmick, but not particularly useful or revolutionary.
The law states that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
So many people misunderstand this concept.
The idea of being "presumed innocent until proven guilty" is a concept that applies in a court of law. The idea is that it is the prosecution's job to prove that you're guilty, not the defense's job to prove that you're innocent. It does not apply outside of the courtroom, as it would make no sense. How could the police ever arrest anyone if they always presumed everyone to be innocent? The police arrest you because they think you're guilty. They hold you in jail because they think you're guilty. But when it comes to the trial, the prosecutor has to prove your guilt, and if they fail to do that, then you're set free as an innocent person.
To make that super extra secure, forget the random uppercase, just convince them to hold down the SHIFT key in an alternating pattern. Then your password becomes Ch#vY8#l$1R, which is pretty rock solid and no more difficult to remember.
If you advertise that $1 from each sale will be donated, then you are using the donation as a selling point, and therefore putting the decision to donate on the buyer. It's a sneaky way to profit off of another's desire to donate, and also to get the tax incentive from what is effectively someone else's donation.
If you make no mention of donation at sale time, then at the end of the day decide to donate the equivalent of $1 from each sale, then the decision to donate is entirely your own.
This article doesn't state which of the these is true in this case, but other articles do point out that they explicitly mention the donation in the app description. Not only that, but they use the words "(b)y purchasing the Wikileaks app, you donate 1 dollar of the purchase price towards organizations that work to promote the future of online democracy" (emphasis mine).
Exactly. "Big Brother" is us, and has been for some time. And we are accountable to no one. Some seem to think this is inevitable, and even desirable.
No. No it is not. This is the kind of thinking that our lawmakers are using "it is different if it involves a computer!" They are wrong, and so are you.
I expected a response similar to this. And, to be clear, I am not in any way advocating legislation here. Also, the fact that "it involves a computer" is irrelevant. What matters here is the fact that "public, but not on the Internet" means that a handful of people can and will see it, while "on the public Internet" means that potentially millions of people can and will see it.
I'm talking entirely about culture here. I don't think that we should accept the idea that anything not securely locked up in a secret underground vault is fair game for being transmitted everywhere in the entire world. I think that we as a society need to decide that just because something is in a public, but non-digital place, that it's socially unacceptable for us to just assume that we can take that and plaster it on the Internet for the whole world to see.
The advent of the Internet does not give us all permission to be assholes.
It seems hard to imagine that the woman expected her delicates to stay completely private when she hung them up for the entire world to see.
This is the part that really stands out. What makes you think she hung them up "for the entire world to see"? I mean, what we have today is kind of a whole new level in the public vs. private continuum. There's "private". Then there's "public". But then there's "on the Internet", which is a whole different ball of wax.
There is a shift that needs to happen in how we view things. Obviously, the moment you step out of a private residence, you can no longer expect privacy. But perhaps there is a reasonable expectation of something that falls somewhere between "private" and "on the Internet".
The initial claim in this thread was that Java was supposed to eliminate all memory management entirely. Shayde responded that this was never claimed, but rather that it would remove most of the memory management responsibility from the programmer. You quoted him as saying (emphasis mine):
Java at no point specified that there wasn't going to be any memory management at all.
You responded to that quote with a quote from Gosling that actually stated exactly what he had said, which is (again, emphasis mine):
Java technology completely removes the memory management load from the programmer.
I explained that the point of Gosling's comment, and likely Shayde's comment as well, is that the programmer does not need to worry about memory management, because it is handled by the JVM and therefore configured at deployment time by an administrator.
So, now I'm confused. Are you agreeing with Shayde, or disagreeing with Shayde? Because your quote from Gosling agrees with him, yet you use it to argue against him. And I agree with him, yet you seem to not disagree with any point I've made. So what exactly is your point? Do you believe that it was ever claimed that Java would eliminate all memory management entirely?
Java technology completely removes the memory management load from the programmer.
Do you not understand what the bolded words mean? Gosling never claimed that Java would turn memory into this magical unlimited resource. Memory management is handled by the JVM, as opposed to by the code. This means that developers do not need to deal with memory management, but administrators do. In other words, don't worry about memory management when you're writing the application, but do worry about it when you're deploying it.
Don't blame "butthurt Java weenies", as you so eloquently put it in multiple other posts, for the fact that you don't understand the difference between a programming task and a deployment/administrative task.
I didn't say that Mr. Assange didn't do something unethical. He may have. He may not have. I don't know, and neither do you, as these are only allegations at this point.
The point is that not every unethical act falls into the scope of WikiLeaks' stated purpose. If I punch you in the face, that's unethical. But a document detailing my act is not something that would get posted to WikiLeaks.
Basically, the point of WikiLeaks is to expose massive breaches of ethics that impact large populations, not the misconduct of one individual against one or two other individuals.
To put this another way, if there was documentation of unethical behaviour on the part of WikiLeaks as an organization, I would expect that documentation to end up on WikiLeaks, otherwise they would be hypocrites. But unethical behaviour in the private life of an individual who happens to be part of WikiLeaks is something that should not end up on WikiLeaks.
Shouldn't Assange have already posted it? There isn't any hypocrisy here, is there?
No, because this is not at all the kind of document that WikiLeaks posts. Their primary interest is stated as:
...exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations.
Contrary to popular belief, WikiLeaks is not about revealing any information that anyone might ever try to hide. WikiLeaks is about revealing unethical government/corporate behaviour.
Celebrate COBOL? Why? Ewwwww...
Coming up next, celebrations of MS-DOS, Lotus Notes, and the Mac?
Because, unlike those other things, businesses are still using COBOL. ;)
FOX also makes sure to point out any 'controversy' in science stories.
Are you claiming that news shows giving both sides of a story is a _bad_ thing?
Any story can be portrayed as having an "other" side, but it's not necessarily worth reporting on. For example, if a plane crashes in Antarctica, should the reporters immediately point out that the whole story is in doubt because the Flat Earthers say that there's no such thing as Antarctica? If they spend two minutes interviewing a survivor, should they also give equal time to a Flat Earther denying that the crash could have even happened in the first place?
Just because some crackpot out there has an "other" side to a given story, doesn't make it automatically worth reporting on.
Hey samzenpus, if you're going to post a flamebait article anyway, why bother toning it down? The summary headline says "Fox News Makes You Less Informed", but the actual article comes right out and says "Fox News Makes You Stupid".
Now let the flames begin.
If you don't want to answer people's questions why are you in the office at all? Sounds like you should be working from home.
Because the boss said so. Lots of people would work from home if it was allowed. It is not always an option.
As far sharing information with coworkers, email and IM are wonderful tools. The beauty of IM is that you can ask me a question, and I can finish my thought before responding, thus getting you your answer relatively quickly, and allowing me to remain as productive as possible despite the interruptions.
A good work environment creates the right balance between "leave me alone so I can get things done" and "let's be a team". Offices with closed doors are heavily on the "leave me alone" side. Open concepts are heavily on the "let's be a team" side. Cubicles are an attempt to balance the two. Not perfect, but I like having walls.
Of course, I should point out that I do not currently work in a cubicle, but rather in a small room with two other people. It's not ideal, but we tend to keep to ourselves, so it's okay.
The place I worked had an open plane.
Let me guess... you got fired because everyone could see that you spent all your time surfing Slashdot at work.
That, my friend, is why people like cubicles.
(Of course, I'm only kidding. People don't like cubicles, they just hate them less than open plans.)
...but 42 isn't a digit...
It is in base 43.
I just played against Watson. He beat me, but I'm not much of a trivia player. Most of the questions that he got wrong or didn't even attempt looked to me like the type of question that a moderate trivia buff would get. For example, Watson didn't know the name for a small briefcase named for a French diplomat. I only got it wrong because I misspelled it. There were other obvious ones that Watson couldn't get due to an inability to parse the question, as well as ones where the question was simple, and Watson simply didn't have the knowledge. I would consider all of the questions asked to be well within the limits of an average trivia buff. I probably would've beat Watson if I hadn't tried to guess so many of the answers I didn't know.
I suspect you'll be disappointed when the game actually happens, but I hope not.
Those laws are against libel. You can say bad things against food it those things are true, just as you can say bad things about people if they're true, but you can't publicly lie maliciously about someone without fear of being sued for slander.
There are a number of significant differences between normal libel laws and the food libel laws.
In normal libel, the plaintiff has to prove that the defendant's statement was false, that the statement caused harm, and that the defendant didn't try to verify the statement before making it. Additionally, if the plaintiff is a public figure, they must also prove that the defendant intended to cause harm.
In food libel, the plaintiff merely has to prove that the defendant's statement was false, or at least not definitively true. In some states the onus is reversed, making it up to the defendant to prove that the statement is true.
It is much easier to lose a food libel suit than a regular libel or defamation suit. If I have good reason to believe that you put shit in your hot dogs, and I communicate this, but it turns out I was wrong, that's not libel. If I have good reason to believe that Oscar Mayer hot dogs have shit in them, and I communicate this, but it turns out I was wrong, that is libel.
The whole point of the food libel laws is to make it easier for plaintiffs to win a libel case, and to make it more costly for defendants to lose.
For anyone else who was wondering about the "Bill Gates 3.0" part, the Bill we know and love/hate is William Henry Gates III. In case you were going to confuse him for the other Bill Gates'.
Except really he's Bill Gates 4.0 (or maybe 3.1?). His dad was William Gates III, but he dropped the "III" suffix, and gave it to his son, who was actually the fourth Bill Gates in the family line.
Perhaps this helps to explain the Windows version numbering system.
I think the point the GP and the GGGP was making was that, while what you've described might be a violation of various Intellectual Property (the thing that encompasses trademarks, patents, and copyrights), the particular brand of Intellectual Property that may (or may not) be violated is not copyrights. Trademarks, probably. Patents, maybe. Copyrights, definitely not.
You can't copyright a name, or a character. Those would be trademarks. So, while there may be an IP infringement case, there is not a copyright infringement case. Since the "C" in "DMCA" stands for "Copyright", there can be no DMCA violation if there is no copyright violation.
IANAL*, IDNRTFA**, and IOIOPCH***.
*IANAL: I Am Not A Lawyer
**IDNRTFA: I Did Not Read The Frickin' Article
***IOIOPCH: I'm Only Interpreting Other People's Comments Here
So... in the event that the advertisement is less than five seconds in length, you can't skip them.
Having unskippable < 5 sec ads is a significant improvement over having unskippable 30+ sec ads.
And not even that. More like 49% of the folks who bothered to vote.
Which, in the case of Bush in 2000, actually equates to roughly 18% of all Americans.