Strictly speaking, the OED is not an official institution for managing the English language. When they say that they are the "accepted authority" that's not entrenched anywhere in law; it is a de facto state of affairs. They are an authority on the English language in the same way that the Encyclopedia Britannica is considered an authority on...everything else. Thorough, detailed, voluminous--but not the only source on the issue.
Compare and contrast with French, to which words may be officially admitted only by l'Academie Francaise. (This has been official policy for centuries.) Even with French, the language tends to be quite flexible. In Montreal, French is a very different language than in Paris. Officially, the word 'email' is verboten in French; the accepted term is courriel electronique...and yet, somehow, one still finds 'email' in France.
Still, I have to agree-the notion that the word 'virii' or 'viri' is a proper plural is absurd, and founded in laziness.
They dont 'have to keep honest'. There is no law that says they have to keep a story in place forever..
True, but in this case the rest of the issue is apparently intact. Why would they decide that one column on foreign policy (written by a former President, no less!) isn't worth the space on their servers?
It hurts their reputation if they make edits after publication without marking them. That sort of thing is rightly seen as deeply dishonest. It's not like a paper publication where someone looking later can see: "Hello! Someone's cut out an article, and blacked out its entry in the table of contents, I wonder what happened here..." In online materials, one can seamlessly remove or edit a document, leaving no trace. "No, we never published an article condemning an invasion of Iraq. Check our website."
I am a researcher (physics, biology, and medicine) by trade and training; I work extensively with published materials. Being in a relatively new field, nearly all of the journal articles I need to consult have been published in the last ten years, and are available electronically from the publishers. It saves me hundreds of dollars in photocopying expenses, and hundreds of hours trudging back and forth to the library. I have to trust that the online version of a journal contains the same content as the print version. In some cases, my university doesn't subscribe to the paper versions any more.
If Time decides that they don't want to carry all their back issues online, that's one thing. Deleting an individual article--and editing the table of contents to conceal the deletion--is wholly inappropriate. I wouldn't be able to buy a subscription to a journal that did that. I can no longer trust any electronic version of any publication that they produce.
How wrong can one be. What makes you think so? In my profession (medicine), knowledge is completely unlicensed. If you are interested in a particular piece of knowledge, like how to operate a hernia - I am happy to share this with you. *snip* We certainly have no sympathy for putting people into jail for replicating an indefinite ressource. How can you steal what can be replicated indefinitely?
I think you may be stretching the analogy a bit. As a physician, you're welcome to tell all your friends how to operate on a hernia. However, it would not be appropriate for you to photocopy all of your med school textbooks and give those copies away, would it?
This is not to say that textbook publishers are not, as a species, utterly reprehensible in their practices--new editions annually, ugly markups, etc. However, If I were a textbook author, I still would legitimately feel I had been ripped off if someone were to copy my work.
Your point that concepts in intellectual property--open source, closed source, public domain--can (and should!) be explained to the layperson is well taken, but your comment is equally instructive on the dangers of analogies in law.
Combine that with the Socialist provisions of the UDHR, Articles 21-29, and you get a position wherein freedom of speech cannot be used as a basis for arguing against Socialist entitlements.
Well, that's the most paranoid possible reading of Article 30. Articles 21 through 29 guarantee the right to (and I paraphrase)
democratic elections conducted by secret ballot, in which any citizen may participate;
dignity and 'social security' (not the pension plan);
work without discrimination, and to form unions;
reasonable work hours;
medical care and social services, and support in the event of misfortune beyond one's control;
education--primary education will be compulsory (parents may decide the type of education that their children receive), higher education will be accessible on the basis of merit;
participate in culture, science, and the arts;
"... a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized";
Article 29 notes that all of the above must take place within a framework of just laws.
Article 30 forbids 'any activity' or the performance of 'any act' to deprive others of their rights and freedoms; it applies equally to 'State[s], group[s], and person[s]'. Its intent is to prevent the deliberate destruction of the aforementioned rights by a government or group. You're welcome to discuss changes to the Declaration all you want--Articles 18, 19, and 20 grant freedom of conscience, speech and the media, and assembly, respectively.
Two asides. One: The UDHC is 'Socialist' among Western democracies only when compared with current political thought in the United States. In many other nations--Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Germany--those dangerous ideals are centrist policy. The red menace is back--now it's Canada.
And two: UDHC is a statement of ideals and guiding principles. It doesn't have the force of law. If the UN were actually in a position to govern, there would no doubt be a great deal of negotiation. I notice also that the United States Constitution is up to twenty-seven amendments to its Constitution. Some of those have been repealed over the years, and the most recent change was made in 1992--more than two hundred years after the First Amendment was passed. Any sort of legal framework will need periodic renovation: the UDHC would be no exception.
Yes, I for the most part opposed the War in Iraq. I also think the UN opposed us not out of principle, but because it is too elitist to see that drawing an equivocation between the United States Government and the Ba'athist regime is absurd.
Well, parts of the Security Council opposed the invasion because they had selfish interests in Iraq. Others felt that the inspection process should be allowed to work. Still others supported the invasion. Some had a genuine belief that invasion would lead to more deaths and unrest than it would prevent. There are representatives from an entire world there--are differences of opinion a surprise? To suggest that all opposition to an invasion of Iraq is equivalent to seeing no difference between the governments of Iraq and the United States is not merely a gross oversimplification--it is utterly false.
Originally, the UN was developed largely to prevent another world war from taking place, a task at which it has been successful. However, because a Security Council consensus is required, it can also be hamstrung by a recalcitrant nation. The United States has blocked more than a few humanitarian interventions it its time, too. Cynically, I might also suggest that the United States would have been perfectly willing to ignore human rights abuses in Iraq, too, if there wasn't so damn much oil under the region.
If you think American courts are corrupt, try the UN. The so-called ICC makes a mockery out of due process of law. Secret witnesses, evidence, no right to trial by jury.
And from there, why not have that system running permanently? Direct democracy in action - do something stoopid one day, get instantly voted out of office.
Assuming you can guarantee security, integrity etc. But it would mean politicians had no choice other than to act according to the public's views.
Ah yes, mob rule. That's always healthy.
Nominally, our elected officials are chosen to act as agents to represent our needs and views. They are supposed to do the work of government full time. They often have access to more and better information, faster. We are supposed to choose people we can trust to represent us, and we in turn expect them to make reasoned decisions.
In many places, government officials poll on hot button issues nearly constantly anyway--if they choose to vote for an unpopular measure, maybe it is because they have a good reason for so doing.
What if CNN, or Fox News, or plain vanilla NBC decided that it didn't like a particular politician? One quick smear campaign could end a career. The spontaneous recall, without any sort of cooling-off period, without any sort of thought, without any sort of reasoned debate, is a recipe for chaos.
How would a nation govern itself if all the actors in government could be changed on a moment's notice? How would government agencies operate if their budget was set by a new administration every other week? How do you do long-range planning of any sort? How do you negotiate international treaties, when other countries know that you'll have a new President the day after tomorrow?
Then of course there is the expense. Every party, every candidate, every elected official, running in full campaign mode, all the time. Billboards. Television attack ads. Television counterattack ads. Full pages of the New York Times. The airwaves afire with angry and self-righteous soundbites. Incidentally, when would these people have time to govern if they were campaigning all the time? Would you dare to visit another country--for a trade mission, a treaty negotiation, even a humanitarian project--if you knew your office could be gone when you got back?
Damn right government doesn't always act according to the instantaneous whim of the majority--and I hope it never does.
You own two machines, one for the living room and one for your bedroom. Of course you want to play your recordings both places, so there's 2 of your three copies. One day your home is burglarized and your machines stolen; you never had a chance to check-out the recordings played thereon. You buy two new machines. You have one playback left, so where would you like to watch all your existing tapes forever more, living room or bedroom? Choose wisely. If that machine breaks or you are robbed again, your entire archive is now useless.
You buy a CD. You always have to carry it back and forth between the bedroom and the living room. One day your home is burglarized and your CD collection stolen.
Despite your request, BMG does not see fit to send you a new CD. Sorry.
Ah, you say, I could have made a copy of the CD--stored it on the hard drive (of the computer that our burglar also stole) or on a CD concealed in, say, the attic.
I have not used the Apple iTMS service, but I wonder--can you back up your hard drive offsite and restore it to your replacement computer? Alternately, can you use their site to revoke permissions on the other computer? I'm just curious. Maybe someone will get rich selling iTMS insurance, covering your costs if your collection is lost. I do know that you can burn the music to a physical CD and back it up that way. Yes, you have no recourse if they take the CD, but that's a problem with physical discs already.
When compact discs first became available, no home users had the ability to copy them digitally. You were SOL if it got scratched or stolen, unless you made a (slightly inferior) backup through the analog hole, and even then you could never recreate a CD. You had one--and only one--good copy of the disc. Now you're getting three, and with iTMS you're allowed to burn more.
Oh, and if you don't like the restrictions of the online music service, you can still go out and buy a physical CD.
They should be at least perserved by automated OCR scanning and stored as compressed text on CD-R. Hundreds of thousands of pages can be stored on a 20 cent CD-R.
Good, archival-quality paper will last a couple of centuries, at least, under even moderately good storage conditions. I have been to libraries that have original journals going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century--stored in the open stacks.
CD-R often becomes unreadable after well under a decade. I have reservations about even the so-called "archival" quality discs. Maybe if we could develop a more permanent storage medium, good for a few hundred years, that would be held by an institution dedicated to the preservation of these documents. Perhaps warehouses managed by the Library of Congress aren't such a bad place for these books....
There are going to be a lot of people (if this actually goes through - and I don't know how to predict if it will or not) in January and February 2007 that are just going to be starring at that snowy TV screen and slowly but surely realize that , yes, TV is...gone.
Can we do this sooner, please?
My roommate owns a TV, but it's hardly ever on. I've watched a couple of televised political debates in the last two or three months, and that's about it. I can get better, more detailed news coverage on the internet and in good old-fashioned newspapers.
I can do all kinds of other things with time that isn't spent in front of the television. I live in a large city, and I can go out for a walk--in the park, for ice cream, window shopping, even just for exercise. There's theatres, museums, orchestras. Live jazz and comedy nights. Debating societies. Sports--both as a spectator and participant. I can cook. I can talk to fellow human beings about more than just what happened on Survivor last night.
Show me someone who rants about fair use, and I will show you someone who 99.9% of the time owns a ps2 hacked to play illegal copies, has gigs of non-fair use mp3's, or watches copied dvd's from friends.
How about I show you someone who doesn't like Windows Media Player? It's gotten too cruft-infested over the years. On my old Win98 box there was some sort of driver conflict (best guess) and about 50% of the time it would lock up my computer--hard--when I tried to start the program.
How about I show you someone who does research in an academic setting?
How about I show you someone who's pissed off that record labels make it difficult to listen to new CDs on my computer at work?
Agreed--copyright owners have the right to do whatever they want with their intellectual property. However, what that seems to boil down to in almost all cases is annoying the legitimate users and only temporarily inconveniencing the infringing users. Legislation already existed to protect copyrighted material; the DMCA was an unnecessary overreaction.
Some would say that viruses are God's nanotech. Small, self-replicating, non-living, and very very potent.
Viruses aren't self-replicating. The smallest things that can handle that task are bacteria.
A virus needs to hijack the synthesis machinery of a cell in order to make more viruses. As noted by someone else on this thread, a virus is more like a quine--code that generates another copy of itself as output, but you still need a compiler to execute it.
In the sense of independent self-replicating machinery, cells are God's nanotech.
I'm not sure that we have come to the point of understanding where we can control nanobots.
That's definitely true, given that we haven't come to the point where we can build self-replicating nanobots.
A more apt analogy would be the xbox. With billions of dollars, smart programmers, and the cooporation of the best hardware companies in the world, yes you can come from nowhere and compete with todays' top players.
...But the XBox hardware is still sold at a loss. They make up those losses on the sale of games--the razor blade revenue model.
If your device will play third-party music (including stuff that people rip for themselves) the razor blade model breaks down. If you sell the microPod for less than cost, people will adopt it rapidly, but you'll never see another dime from them.
The interesting thing about this, according to the article, is the IL-4 gene gives the virus its potency, but at the same time keeps it from being contagious. Apparently, they are not sure why. Sounds like the real scary part will be once they figure that out and someone figures out a work around.
I don't know--sounds like it might be really useful to know what tricks can be used to decrease the infectiousness of diseases. What biochemical pathway does IL-4 screw up that limits transmission? Can we make drugs that interfere in the same way? Why does IL-4 make the virus more potent? Can we interfere with that?
Sometimes it's necessary to work with apparently dangerous materials to perform useful research. In general, it's difficult to develop new drugs when you avoid working with infectious agents. Moreover, you can extract a great deal of information about the nature of infection itself by adding or removing single genes (for single proteins like IL-4) from a pathogen.
What bothers me most about this story is some of the reactions here, which reflect the worst sort of corporate thinking: "Someone makes a mistake - can him." Even if one concedes that Microsoft is within its legal rights, it was a senseless act on their part to fire him. Being right is no excuse for being stupid.
Why are they being stupid? The guy was a temp (and evidently readily replaceable) who probably had about the same level of commitment to Microsoft that Microsoft had to him. He was willing to violate Microsoft's policies on security--perhaps he also trod upon an NDA of some sort, too.
Why would a company want to go out of its way for an employee that's not particularly special, who has a lax attitude towards the company's security policy (is this someone you want on your corporate LAN?) and who is willing to go to some trouble to take a cheap shot at the company in his blog? While we're on the subject of excuses--or lack thereof--for stupidity, what are this guy's?
...I'm sure the people of Iraq would have loved to vote a new leader when Saddam Hussein was in power, but couldn't. People have died for the right to vote.
Absolutely. Thousands of Iraqis have died for the right to vote--because Americans thought they needed it, and were willing to kill them for it.
Yep, it's a good thing that the United States had democracy forcibly thrust upon it a couple of centuries ago, by an outside power that was mostly interested in access to its natural resources.
Oh.
Voting by an informed electorate is very important in a democratic society. Also, the regime in Iraq was responsible for some truly appalling actions. But...these two points taken together do not lead to the inevitable conclusion that invading a nation and installing a new government is an excercise in populist democracy.
Since the linked-to content is out of the control of the linker, it is too easy "become guilty" as a result of your innocent act when a target page changes.
On the other hand, if your link says "Download Copyrighted Music Here -- the RIAA can kiss my ass" then making a guess about intent might not be too farfetched. Civil court decisions are generally based on the notion of a balance of probabilities--what is the most reasonable and likely explanation for what has taken place?
Allowing prosecutors and complaining parties to "posit theroies[sic]" about your intent is always a bad thing.
Why? Let's say that I just ran over someone with an SUV. Did I do it on purpose or not? Was it raining? Did I owe this person money? Were they having an affair with my significant other? Did the voices in my head tell me to do it? Did I think the guy was waving a gun at me? Depending on the circumstances surrounding the case, it might be an accident, manslaughter, insanity, self-defense, or murder. Intent is very important, and not always inappropriate to consider.
Is it such a hardship to live in a country that counts its votes slowly?
Is 'No' a good answer?
In Canada we conduct federal and provincial elections using old-fashioned paper ballots. The ballots are black, with each candidate's name block printed in white next to an open white circle (names in alphabetical order by surname). To vote, put a mark in one--and only one--circle. Easy to count, easy to use. In principle, I suppose ballots marked in such a way could be counted mechanically, too, but we don't do that.
The last time I worked during an election, the counting was done in about two hours, and the provincial results were announced essentially in their entirety before midnight. Even for people hung up on the horse race aspect of elections, there's lots of counts available to the networks starting from about a half hour after the close of voting. Yes, more people are required to hand count, but it's worth the price--and completely auditable.
Incidentally, how do the blind vote with a touch screen? In Canada, we have available Braille cards that slide over top of the ballot; open holes are left in the template that correspond to the white circles on the ballot. The blind can mark their vote, remove the template, and fold the ballot so that their right to a secret vote is preserved.
IANAL, but apparently ignorance of the law is then an excuse in civil court?
IANAL eiher, but here's roughly how it works. Ignorance that you're infringing on someone else's copyright is an excuse, if...
you didn't know the material was copyrighted (or that you weren't allowed to use the copyrighted material); and
when notified of the infringement, you immediately make every reasonable effort to stop doing so.
Presumably, one must show some sort of due diligence with respect to the first point. Further, you're not let off the hook completely--you still have to cough up any money that you made from sale or distribution of infringing material. What the "innocent actor" defense provides is a shield against assessment of treble damages and punitive damages that are the consequence of willful infringment.
The plantiffs claim to have over 400 articles about the harmful effects of radiation such as WiFi, yet cite 0.
Indeed. How many of those 400 articles (give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they exist) are publications in peer-reviewed journals?
I've heard variations on this theme for years (non-ionizing radiation from source X will kill your children/cause brain tumours/make you vote Republican.) Someone, somewhere, publishes an obscure paper in an obscure journal on the effects of massive doses of radio waves on cell culture, and draws a cautious conclusion about possible risk (they have to say this--you don't get more funding if you say that everything is fine and you don't need to do more research).
After the publication of this journal article, so-called journalists descend on the unsuspecting researcher, and result in a flurry of media attention. Presto! The other 399 articles--none peer-reviewed and which all cite (usually inaccurately) the original paper.
This sort of journalism is also very popular in reporting on cancer research. I've lost track of the number of times we've cured cancer in the last ten or twenty years. At least this usually doesn't lead to lawsuits. Don't get me started on the measles/autism legal vultures.
The Word you use today is like the Word you used half-a-decade ago.
The Word I use today is the Word of a half decade ago. Office 97 still does everything I need, without adding cruft to slow down my machine. It's actually fast, now. I still don't use 90% of the features of 97, so why should I upgrade to XP? (Actually, I have the same question about the OS--as long as MS continues to patch Win2K, why do I need to "upgrade" to the slowness and Fisher-Price interface styling of XP?)
Unlimited" used to mean "under 2000 tracks a month". For $10, it was a good deal. Now I'm being told as a subscriber, I have the privilege of paying $50/month to be able to download 300 tracks. That's more than a thirty-fold price increase!
True enough. Before, you were paying as little as one half of one cent per track. Now your minimum price has risen to a shade under seventeen cents per track. The next available service (iTunes) charges ninety-nine cents per track. Granted, they serve a different market and carry a different range of artists, but don't you think that maybe you were being grossly undercharged before? Note that many people will pay a dollar or more for a bottle of branded tap water...perhaps Emusic has just been acquired by someone with some business sense.
Your point about used CDs is well made, however. They are a different combination of quality, convenience, and price point that will no doubt appeal to some soon-to-be-former Emusic customers, and they are probably not a bad way to try out new music.
Slashdot Mirror
Compare and contrast with French, to which words may be officially admitted only by l'Academie Francaise. (This has been official policy for centuries.) Even with French, the language tends to be quite flexible. In Montreal, French is a very different language than in Paris. Officially, the word 'email' is verboten in French; the accepted term is courriel electronique...and yet, somehow, one still finds 'email' in France.
Still, I have to agree-the notion that the word 'virii' or 'viri' is a proper plural is absurd, and founded in laziness.
Indeed. If you want to spend the full $3000, build two of your $1500 boxen, and then you have a complete backup.
True, but in this case the rest of the issue is apparently intact. Why would they decide that one column on foreign policy (written by a former President, no less!) isn't worth the space on their servers?
It hurts their reputation if they make edits after publication without marking them. That sort of thing is rightly seen as deeply dishonest. It's not like a paper publication where someone looking later can see: "Hello! Someone's cut out an article, and blacked out its entry in the table of contents, I wonder what happened here..." In online materials, one can seamlessly remove or edit a document, leaving no trace. "No, we never published an article condemning an invasion of Iraq. Check our website."
I am a researcher (physics, biology, and medicine) by trade and training; I work extensively with published materials. Being in a relatively new field, nearly all of the journal articles I need to consult have been published in the last ten years, and are available electronically from the publishers. It saves me hundreds of dollars in photocopying expenses, and hundreds of hours trudging back and forth to the library. I have to trust that the online version of a journal contains the same content as the print version. In some cases, my university doesn't subscribe to the paper versions any more.
If Time decides that they don't want to carry all their back issues online, that's one thing. Deleting an individual article--and editing the table of contents to conceal the deletion--is wholly inappropriate. I wouldn't be able to buy a subscription to a journal that did that. I can no longer trust any electronic version of any publication that they produce.
a) Blowjobs.
b) Reaganomics, Star Wars, massive deficits.
I know which I prefer.
*snip*
We certainly have no sympathy for putting people into jail for replicating an indefinite ressource. How can you steal what can be replicated indefinitely?
I think you may be stretching the analogy a bit. As a physician, you're welcome to tell all your friends how to operate on a hernia. However, it would not be appropriate for you to photocopy all of your med school textbooks and give those copies away, would it?
This is not to say that textbook publishers are not, as a species, utterly reprehensible in their practices--new editions annually, ugly markups, etc. However, If I were a textbook author, I still would legitimately feel I had been ripped off if someone were to copy my work.
Your point that concepts in intellectual property--open source, closed source, public domain--can (and should!) be explained to the layperson is well taken, but your comment is equally instructive on the dangers of analogies in law.
Well, that's the most paranoid possible reading of Article 30. Articles 21 through 29 guarantee the right to (and I paraphrase)
democratic elections conducted by secret ballot, in which any citizen may participate;
dignity and 'social security' (not the pension plan);
work without discrimination, and to form unions;
reasonable work hours;
medical care and social services, and support in the event of misfortune beyond one's control;
education--primary education will be compulsory (parents may decide the type of education that their children receive), higher education will be accessible on the basis of merit;
participate in culture, science, and the arts;
"... a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized";
Article 29 notes that all of the above must take place within a framework of just laws.
Article 30 forbids 'any activity' or the performance of 'any act' to deprive others of their rights and freedoms; it applies equally to 'State[s], group[s], and person[s]'. Its intent is to prevent the deliberate destruction of the aforementioned rights by a government or group. You're welcome to discuss changes to the Declaration all you want--Articles 18, 19, and 20 grant freedom of conscience, speech and the media, and assembly, respectively.
Two asides. One: The UDHC is 'Socialist' among Western democracies only when compared with current political thought in the United States. In many other nations--Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Germany--those dangerous ideals are centrist policy. The red menace is back--now it's Canada.
And two: UDHC is a statement of ideals and guiding principles. It doesn't have the force of law. If the UN were actually in a position to govern, there would no doubt be a great deal of negotiation. I notice also that the United States Constitution is up to twenty-seven amendments to its Constitution. Some of those have been repealed over the years, and the most recent change was made in 1992--more than two hundred years after the First Amendment was passed. Any sort of legal framework will need periodic renovation: the UDHC would be no exception.
Yes, I for the most part opposed the War in Iraq. I also think the UN opposed us not out of principle, but because it is too elitist to see that drawing an equivocation between the United States Government and the Ba'athist regime is absurd.
Well, parts of the Security Council opposed the invasion because they had selfish interests in Iraq. Others felt that the inspection process should be allowed to work. Still others supported the invasion. Some had a genuine belief that invasion would lead to more deaths and unrest than it would prevent. There are representatives from an entire world there--are differences of opinion a surprise? To suggest that all opposition to an invasion of Iraq is equivalent to seeing no difference between the governments of Iraq and the United States is not merely a gross oversimplification--it is utterly false.
Originally, the UN was developed largely to prevent another world war from taking place, a task at which it has been successful. However, because a Security Council consensus is required, it can also be hamstrung by a recalcitrant nation. The United States has blocked more than a few humanitarian interventions it its time, too. Cynically, I might also suggest that the United States would have been perfectly willing to ignore human rights abuses in Iraq, too, if there wasn't so damn much oil under the region.
If you think American courts are corrupt, try the UN. The so-called ICC makes a mockery out of due process of law. Secret witnesses, evidence, no right to trial by jury.
Assuming you can guarantee security, integrity etc. But it would mean politicians had no choice other than to act according to the public's views.
Ah yes, mob rule. That's always healthy.
Nominally, our elected officials are chosen to act as agents to represent our needs and views. They are supposed to do the work of government full time. They often have access to more and better information, faster. We are supposed to choose people we can trust to represent us, and we in turn expect them to make reasoned decisions.
In many places, government officials poll on hot button issues nearly constantly anyway--if they choose to vote for an unpopular measure, maybe it is because they have a good reason for so doing.
What if CNN, or Fox News, or plain vanilla NBC decided that it didn't like a particular politician? One quick smear campaign could end a career. The spontaneous recall, without any sort of cooling-off period, without any sort of thought, without any sort of reasoned debate, is a recipe for chaos.
How would a nation govern itself if all the actors in government could be changed on a moment's notice? How would government agencies operate if their budget was set by a new administration every other week? How do you do long-range planning of any sort? How do you negotiate international treaties, when other countries know that you'll have a new President the day after tomorrow?
Then of course there is the expense. Every party, every candidate, every elected official, running in full campaign mode, all the time. Billboards. Television attack ads. Television counterattack ads. Full pages of the New York Times. The airwaves afire with angry and self-righteous soundbites. Incidentally, when would these people have time to govern if they were campaigning all the time? Would you dare to visit another country--for a trade mission, a treaty negotiation, even a humanitarian project--if you knew your office could be gone when you got back?
Damn right government doesn't always act according to the instantaneous whim of the majority--and I hope it never does.
You buy a CD. You always have to carry it back and forth between the bedroom and the living room. One day your home is burglarized and your CD collection stolen.
Despite your request, BMG does not see fit to send you a new CD. Sorry.
Ah, you say, I could have made a copy of the CD--stored it on the hard drive (of the computer that our burglar also stole) or on a CD concealed in, say, the attic.
I have not used the Apple iTMS service, but I wonder--can you back up your hard drive offsite and restore it to your replacement computer? Alternately, can you use their site to revoke permissions on the other computer? I'm just curious. Maybe someone will get rich selling iTMS insurance, covering your costs if your collection is lost. I do know that you can burn the music to a physical CD and back it up that way. Yes, you have no recourse if they take the CD, but that's a problem with physical discs already.
When compact discs first became available, no home users had the ability to copy them digitally. You were SOL if it got scratched or stolen, unless you made a (slightly inferior) backup through the analog hole, and even then you could never recreate a CD. You had one--and only one--good copy of the disc. Now you're getting three, and with iTMS you're allowed to burn more.
Oh, and if you don't like the restrictions of the online music service, you can still go out and buy a physical CD.
Good, archival-quality paper will last a couple of centuries, at least, under even moderately good storage conditions. I have been to libraries that have original journals going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century--stored in the open stacks.
CD-R often becomes unreadable after well under a decade. I have reservations about even the so-called "archival" quality discs. Maybe if we could develop a more permanent storage medium, good for a few hundred years, that would be held by an institution dedicated to the preservation of these documents. Perhaps warehouses managed by the Library of Congress aren't such a bad place for these books....
Can we do this sooner, please?
My roommate owns a TV, but it's hardly ever on. I've watched a couple of televised political debates in the last two or three months, and that's about it. I can get better, more detailed news coverage on the internet and in good old-fashioned newspapers.
I can do all kinds of other things with time that isn't spent in front of the television. I live in a large city, and I can go out for a walk--in the park, for ice cream, window shopping, even just for exercise. There's theatres, museums, orchestras. Live jazz and comedy nights. Debating societies. Sports--both as a spectator and participant. I can cook. I can talk to fellow human beings about more than just what happened on Survivor last night.
Please, can we kill broadcast television now?
How about I show you someone who doesn't like Windows Media Player? It's gotten too cruft-infested over the years. On my old Win98 box there was some sort of driver conflict (best guess) and about 50% of the time it would lock up my computer--hard--when I tried to start the program.
How about I show you someone who does research in an academic setting?
How about I show you someone who's pissed off that record labels make it difficult to listen to new CDs on my computer at work?
Agreed--copyright owners have the right to do whatever they want with their intellectual property. However, what that seems to boil down to in almost all cases is annoying the legitimate users and only temporarily inconveniencing the infringing users. Legislation already existed to protect copyrighted material; the DMCA was an unnecessary overreaction.
Viruses aren't self-replicating. The smallest things that can handle that task are bacteria.
A virus needs to hijack the synthesis machinery of a cell in order to make more viruses. As noted by someone else on this thread, a virus is more like a quine--code that generates another copy of itself as output, but you still need a compiler to execute it.
In the sense of independent self-replicating machinery, cells are God's nanotech.
I'm not sure that we have come to the point of understanding where we can control nanobots.
That's definitely true, given that we haven't come to the point where we can build self-replicating nanobots.
If your device will play third-party music (including stuff that people rip for themselves) the razor blade model breaks down. If you sell the microPod for less than cost, people will adopt it rapidly, but you'll never see another dime from them.
I don't know--sounds like it might be really useful to know what tricks can be used to decrease the infectiousness of diseases. What biochemical pathway does IL-4 screw up that limits transmission? Can we make drugs that interfere in the same way? Why does IL-4 make the virus more potent? Can we interfere with that?
Sometimes it's necessary to work with apparently dangerous materials to perform useful research. In general, it's difficult to develop new drugs when you avoid working with infectious agents. Moreover, you can extract a great deal of information about the nature of infection itself by adding or removing single genes (for single proteins like IL-4) from a pathogen.
Of course, Clarica's name is the result of a rebranding of their own. Until 1999, they were Mutual Life of Canada.
Why are they being stupid? The guy was a temp (and evidently readily replaceable) who probably had about the same level of commitment to Microsoft that Microsoft had to him. He was willing to violate Microsoft's policies on security--perhaps he also trod upon an NDA of some sort, too.
Why would a company want to go out of its way for an employee that's not particularly special, who has a lax attitude towards the company's security policy (is this someone you want on your corporate LAN?) and who is willing to go to some trouble to take a cheap shot at the company in his blog? While we're on the subject of excuses--or lack thereof--for stupidity, what are this guy's?
Absolutely. Thousands of Iraqis have died for the right to vote--because Americans thought they needed it, and were willing to kill them for it.
Yep, it's a good thing that the United States had democracy forcibly thrust upon it a couple of centuries ago, by an outside power that was mostly interested in access to its natural resources.
Oh.
Voting by an informed electorate is very important in a democratic society. Also, the regime in Iraq was responsible for some truly appalling actions. But...these two points taken together do not lead to the inevitable conclusion that invading a nation and installing a new government is an excercise in populist democracy.
On the other hand, if your link says "Download Copyrighted Music Here -- the RIAA can kiss my ass" then making a guess about intent might not be too farfetched. Civil court decisions are generally based on the notion of a balance of probabilities--what is the most reasonable and likely explanation for what has taken place?
Allowing prosecutors and complaining parties to "posit theroies[sic]" about your intent is always a bad thing.
Why? Let's say that I just ran over someone with an SUV. Did I do it on purpose or not? Was it raining? Did I owe this person money? Were they having an affair with my significant other? Did the voices in my head tell me to do it? Did I think the guy was waving a gun at me? Depending on the circumstances surrounding the case, it might be an accident, manslaughter, insanity, self-defense, or murder. Intent is very important, and not always inappropriate to consider.
So, did you use this software to prepare your comment, too?
Is 'No' a good answer?
In Canada we conduct federal and provincial elections using old-fashioned paper ballots. The ballots are black, with each candidate's name block printed in white next to an open white circle (names in alphabetical order by surname). To vote, put a mark in one--and only one--circle. Easy to count, easy to use. In principle, I suppose ballots marked in such a way could be counted mechanically, too, but we don't do that.
The last time I worked during an election, the counting was done in about two hours, and the provincial results were announced essentially in their entirety before midnight. Even for people hung up on the horse race aspect of elections, there's lots of counts available to the networks starting from about a half hour after the close of voting. Yes, more people are required to hand count, but it's worth the price--and completely auditable.
Incidentally, how do the blind vote with a touch screen? In Canada, we have available Braille cards that slide over top of the ballot; open holes are left in the template that correspond to the white circles on the ballot. The blind can mark their vote, remove the template, and fold the ballot so that their right to a secret vote is preserved.
Then why on earth are you reading Slashdot?
IANAL eiher, but here's roughly how it works. Ignorance that you're infringing on someone else's copyright is an excuse, if...
you didn't know the material was copyrighted (or that you weren't allowed to use the copyrighted material); and
when notified of the infringement, you immediately make every reasonable effort to stop doing so.
Presumably, one must show some sort of due diligence with respect to the first point. Further, you're not let off the hook completely--you still have to cough up any money that you made from sale or distribution of infringing material. What the "innocent actor" defense provides is a shield against assessment of treble damages and punitive damages that are the consequence of willful infringment.
Indeed. How many of those 400 articles (give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they exist) are publications in peer-reviewed journals?
I've heard variations on this theme for years (non-ionizing radiation from source X will kill your children/cause brain tumours/make you vote Republican.) Someone, somewhere, publishes an obscure paper in an obscure journal on the effects of massive doses of radio waves on cell culture, and draws a cautious conclusion about possible risk (they have to say this--you don't get more funding if you say that everything is fine and you don't need to do more research).
After the publication of this journal article, so-called journalists descend on the unsuspecting researcher, and result in a flurry of media attention. Presto! The other 399 articles--none peer-reviewed and which all cite (usually inaccurately) the original paper.
This sort of journalism is also very popular in reporting on cancer research. I've lost track of the number of times we've cured cancer in the last ten or twenty years. At least this usually doesn't lead to lawsuits. Don't get me started on the measles/autism legal vultures.
The Word I use today is the Word of a half decade ago. Office 97 still does everything I need, without adding cruft to slow down my machine. It's actually fast, now. I still don't use 90% of the features of 97, so why should I upgrade to XP? (Actually, I have the same question about the OS--as long as MS continues to patch Win2K, why do I need to "upgrade" to the slowness and Fisher-Price interface styling of XP?)
True enough. Before, you were paying as little as one half of one cent per track. Now your minimum price has risen to a shade under seventeen cents per track. The next available service (iTunes) charges ninety-nine cents per track. Granted, they serve a different market and carry a different range of artists, but don't you think that maybe you were being grossly undercharged before? Note that many people will pay a dollar or more for a bottle of branded tap water...perhaps Emusic has just been acquired by someone with some business sense.
Your point about used CDs is well made, however. They are a different combination of quality, convenience, and price point that will no doubt appeal to some soon-to-be-former Emusic customers, and they are probably not a bad way to try out new music.