Tuition of the students attending should be sufficient to pay for the CS department. If it's not, they shouldn't have a CS department.
UF is a public school. Public schools are heavily taxpayer subsidized. That means that NONE of the programs at a public school are paid for solely through tuition. Under your criteria, there would be no classes at all.
Compare the tuition for public vs. private and you'll see the difference. Even then, private schools are subsidized by donations to some extent, and tuition still does't pay the full cost.
I know many are desperate for uniformity, but it's really OK if not every single institution offers exactly the same programs of study.
I agree. Students who care about getting the best will seek the college with the best program in their field, not the best "party school". As long as one state school in a state does have a program, I have no problem with specialization. (One school per state so there is still an opportunity for in-state tuition levels for those who can't afford "the best".)
Schools also do a ridiculous bunch of things that I, as a former tuition paying student, don't want them spending my money on. Stop that.
And as both a current taxpayer and former tuition paying student, I say amen to that, brother.
Exactly, the current lecture based model is so antiquated it hurts.
And yet, some people learn better that way. You can ask a question as soon as it occurs to you and get an immediate answer instead of having to email something off and wait for a reply or post something in an online chat and hope there is someone there with an answer. Asking that question in a lecture can actually improve the lecture for other people, because if YOU have a question someone else probably has the same one, and the lecturer can actually deal with everyone at the same time. And he can expand or modify the course of the lecture to cover the material you've let him know is confusing, right there and then. Immediate feedback to the lecturer that he can use for the next time he gives it.
A video "lecture" offers none of that. The video is the video. If the video doesn't explain it the way you need it explained, too bad. The cost of making the video will limit the options for changing the video to cover the material more clearly or in a different way. Just hope that your email or chat request gets you the answer you need.
Yes, for some people, watching a video or online course is great. I am particularly fond of the online material from FEMA that covers the Incident Command System (ICS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS). These are courses that are being mandated for emergency service personnel (including volunteers) before you can get much of anything in the way of other qualifications. ICS100, 200, 700 are a standard set of courses, all online. It's easy to step through all the boring crap and go almost directly to the test at the end. You don't learn much, but you have the ticket punched.
Just for fun, and to gather ticket punches, every so often I'll go to the online course site and take something. It makes me look smart and well qualified, on paper. On paper is what FEMA wants, so they get it.
It's rather unlikely. Servers get rebooted all the time. There is a much simpler method: utilize full-drive encryption.
Adding a step to the shutdown process is simple, it's trivial to install, and it's trivial to turn off if you need to reboot. You can install something like that remotely -- you don't even have to have physical access to the system, and you can do it to a virtual machine without causing any harm to any other user of the physical hardware. You can't be forced to turn over a key to an encrypted file or disk if there is no file to decrypt, and there is no incriminating encrypted data to make the cops curious.
The point is there are millions of possible methods of a server containing a data "self-destruct" mechanism,
Yes, there are, but just like everday life where there are millions of possible things you could have for lunch, there is a much more limited number of highly likely possibilities. It is extremely unlikely that anyone will install a system in a datacenter that contains explosive devices to turn the system into shrapnel if a network cable is disconnected. The triviality of a shutdown-based 'shred' command makes it much more likely.
If the server has unknown secured mechanisms for destroying the data, such as carefully attuned exploding charges/break the drive, or douse the disks in destructive acid, or logical methods, there's very little that can be done about that.
Oh, well then. Since it is very hard to defeat an explosive self-destruct, lets not bother doing anything to try to keep any other means of deleting data from happening. We might as well do a clean shutdown and let what happens happen. Or we might as well just ask the owner to pretty please make us a backup copy of all his files so we can look at them, right?
actually, the 911 people call back to make sure it's not an accidental call before they send a police to check.
I know. That's why I talked about the caller trying to dodge the problem by turning his cell phone off or not answering the phone. If he turns his phone off or doesn't answer, the dispatcher can't deal with the call without sending an officer.
This can be done by installing an interposer circuit in between disk drives and the drive controller with an independent power supply.
This requires a bit more work than simply putting code in one file in/etc/init.d under the "stop" function, called by one of the K-files in rc3.d, that deletes any incriminating files. Shutdown code is a lot less dangerous than having to deal with explosive charges. And if triggered by accident, doesn't leave a slag heap or shrapnel.
When explosive charges in confiscated servers becomes a significant issue, cops will start treating every confiscated server like it has explosive charges. "Modify disk on shutdown" is so easy to do that they have to assume it will be, and thus treat the server like it will do that. Pull the plug instead of clean shutdown, e.g..
Since, obviously, the data cares very much what medium it's on, and bits may start looking all worried at you if you copy them.
Stop being deliberately silly.
You get the original drive,
Which you will have to preserve in its original state as closely as possible, to the point that you might not even bother with a "clean shutdown" because the shutdown code could be rigged to wipe evidence. Yes, you perform the analysis on a signed copy, but you still need to keep the original to provide to the defense experts who will do their own imaging/signing/analysis.
If the prosecution cannot prove to the court that their analysis was on the actual data, it will be thrown out. So, yes, in very real terms, it's not the same data if it isn't on the original medium.
However at the same time, can't the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburg police stop doing that and ignore the bomb threats, knowing that their leg is being pulled?
No. The next time it might not be a joke.
Universities are being sued for not doing enough to stop violence on campus when it happens, as rare as it is, and as much as they do. It's never enough for the lawyers and "grieving heirs".
It's a large "corporation" to start with, and state schools have the combined pockets of the taxpayer to pick. You can't sue a school for being too careful, only if something happens and you can convince a judge that they might not have done enough. Why make it a slam-dunk victory for millions by ignoring the last, valid threat?
This is the same reason that cops have to go check out 911 hangup calls. Most likely, it was someone who dialed by accident and then said "oh shit" and hung up. If they try to dodge the problem by turning their cell phone off, or not answering, the cops will show up to see if everything is ok. If the cops just ignored the call, they'd be sued by everyone involved when it turns out that the caller was forced to hang up, or the wire was ripped out of the wall, by her violent husband or vice versa, and someone wound up dead.
Your pizza example is a bad one because they specifically allow that now (as of like, decades ago actually).
No, they do not. Stop spreading such patently absurd information. Read the rules sometime. Like this one, 47CFR97.113(a)(2) and (3):
97.113 Prohibited Communications
(a) No amateur station shall transmit:
(2) Communications for hire or for
material compensation, direct or indirect, paid or promised, except as otherwise provided in these rules;
(3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a
pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer.
This wouldn't appear to prohibit you ordering the pizza, just the use of amateur radio to reply by the pizza dealer, but then there's this, same section:
(b) An amateur station shall not engage in any form of broadcasting, nor
may an amateur station transmit one-way communications except as specifically provided in these rules;
And gosh if I can find a specific exemption from this one-way communication prohibition for "pizza shop".
Now maybe the rules in YOUR country differ, but in the US of A the FCC rules apply, and the FCC rules still prohibit the use of amateur radio for commercial purposes -- with very few exceptions, none of which cover buying pizza.
If you're worried about privacy, with packet you can encrypt the data payload itself so long as the headers are not obfuscated and the transmission is properly identified.
Incorrect. Any use of ciphers or codes to obscure the meaning is prohibited, with the limited exception of control signals for space stations (47CFR97.113(a)(4)). That includes the bodies of packets sent via packet radio. That's the US law, perhaps you are referring to a different country?
Current software in common use compresses the bodies of email messages sent via packet and pactor systems, but software can be used to decompress the messages and is thus not considered encryption.
I have little interest trying to participate in a P2P communication system where encryption is explicitly forbidden.
Some encryption is allowed, and the prohibition is against the use of codes or ciphers to obscure the meaning, not explicitely against all encryption. HSMM (ham WiFi) uses WEP (maybe WPA, I don't know) and gets away with it.
What's more important is that amateur radio isn't supposed to be used for things that would really require encryption anyway. No commercial use. You can't order a pizza, so you don't need to send anyone your credit card number, for example. The HSMM folks need to keep non-hams from using amateur systems, so they've taken the steps to do that.
Also, the fact my country would prosecute me for communicating internationally with someone who lives under a repressive regime seems totally bogus.
You've got it backwards. It's not the US saying "thou shall not", it is the other country. Yes, it's against the US rules to do it, because we're part of the worldwide treaty organization ITU and we've agreed to those rules. According to The FCC, there are currently no banned countries. I'd think you would want to refrain from doing it, if there were any, not for your own protection, but to protect the hams in that country from prosecution there.
What is more restrictive are the rules about third party communications, which is sending messages for someone else into other countries. The same link convers that topic, and lists the countries that have third party agreements with the US. That's different than just communicating with someone there via ham radio, however.
They were plainly unethical, but were they plainly unlawful? They were judged to be unlawful by the victors of the war in a trial conducted by the victors under the laws imposed by the victors. Were they unlawful under the laws he was subject to at the time he did them? I don't know, I'm asking. And before you jump to answer, try to separate the "horrific" and "unethical" from the "legal" question.
You say the TSA is operating under orders that are currently lawful. (Ethical is another question.) What happens tomorrow if a couple of new SCOTUS appointees decide the laws being carried out aren't valid? The laws change. Can you prosecute TSA agents for their acts, as Eichmann was for his? There's a tiny problem doing so -- the US Constitution prohibits ex-post-facto laws. You can't prosecute someone for doing something yesterday that wasn't illegal until today.
The two scenarios are not equivalent.
Two things don't have to be equivalent for there to be useful comparisons between them. Everyone, including myself, has at times used the "only following orders" example from WWII, but maybe it is useful to look at what exactly is happening.
Being an asshat to someone struggling, when all he needs to do is just hang up or say "not interested" and hang up, is rather puerile.
That is not all he needs to do. He needs to order the caller explicitely to remove this number from his list and do not call again. If the telemarketer doesn't do that and you get another call, at least it is now clearly illegal. Just saying "not interested" means the dick can mark you as a failed contact and you WILL be called again. And again. And since they use predictive dialers, you will often get hung up on as soon as you say "hello".
TSA agents are doing their job.
Oh goody, I get to invoke Godwin.
If you really don't like telemarketers or the TSA, protest the people that matter: the ones that hire them, or the onese that ignore do-not-call lists, or the ones that make the laws.
These actions are not mutually exclusive. I can harass the person who stoops to accepting a job breaking the law (by calling in defiance of the DNC list and explicit orders not to call again) AND complain to the FTC and the company that the dick claims he's working "on behalf of".
I had a dick call yesterday claiming to be calling "on behalf of" CenturyLink. He said he wanted to do an account review. We got to the point where he claimed I had given him permission to access my account data, and I realized that if he really worked FOR CenturyLink he'd already have access. (I hadn't given him permission to do anything, he had done it because I agreed to allow "an account review", which doesn't say anything about allowing a third party access to my CL account data.) He steadfastly refused to tell me who he actually worked for, repeating "WE work on behalf of CenturyLink", and even admitting that that's what he was told to say. That kind of dick deserves everything he gets from the people he harasses on the phone. He knows he'd doing something shady because he's being told to lie to people. He knows who pays him, and it isnt' CenturyLink. (This was all after he wanted to "save [me] money" by selling me a new package of features that included the one thing I did have but would cost $10 per month more. When a telemarketer lies he loses all protections normally afforded to other humans, IMNSHO.)
What happens when they go back to their boss and say "Some guy grabbed all my flyers and destroyed them." Think they're going to keep that job they desperately need?
If he says that, he shouldn't keep his job. If he is smart enough to be employable, he'll say "I handed them all out. Every one of them". You think the boss is going to canvas the area he sent the guy to see how many people got one? And technically, he did hand them all out -- to one guy who destroyed them all.
Birth control prevents ovarian cysts? Why don't they put that into the ads for Trojans? Why isn't ParaGard advertising that?
You responded to a statement about insurance paying for birth control with a question about ovarian cysts. Two different things. Very different things. One can object to coverage for birth control and still expect coverage for true medical issues.
Birth control pills also help control painful menstrual cycles and ovarian cysts. Yet they are not covered for these uses because in these cases: they also incidentally prevent pregnancy.
When they aren't being used for "birth control", then it is wrong to call them "birth control". There are too many other things that "birth control" includes to say that "birth control controls ovarian cysts". Specific hormone treatments do that. Specific birth control pills contain those hormones in a cheap and prepackaged form.
And yes, of course, when a drug is used to treat a disease or illness, there is a strong argument that it should be included in insurance coverage. I'd even say it SHOULD be included, but I don't know that the right answer is to force all insurance companies to cover it. After all, they already choose which conditions to cover and which medications they'll pay for to cover them. In other words, the insurance company I have will pay for some drugs to treat one condition, but not to treat another. Why would paying for hormones to treat one illness but not for a non-illness be different?
Pregnancy is not a disease. Stop treating it like one. If you want a condition covered under insurance, talk about the condition you want covered, not something else. Most people assume when you say you want "birth control" covered by insurance that you mean "birth control", not "ovarian cysts" or "irregular menstrual cycles" or any other medical condition. Call it what it is.
ask someone who got a STD if their body didn;t get sicker because they didnt have contraception
They didn't. They got sick because they had unprotected sex with someone who was already infected. There are some forms of "birth control" that might have limited the exposure. Many of the forms of "birth control", and ALL of the forms of birth control that are being talked about in off-license use (as hormone therapies for ovarian problems, e.g.), provide no STD protection at all.
If you licensed your work to distributers that license would typically include a prohibition on sale outside their designated market,
Yes. A license to distribute the work in that market.
Also, this kid is not licensing a work for reproduction, he's buying finished goods. He has no agreement with the copyright holder.
That's right, he has no agreement with the copyright holder to distribute the work anywhere. There is already a licensee in the US. That's why there is a problem. He's being a distributor. That's why it is a copyright violation.
In your first paragraph you admit that distribution means sales. In the second, you seem to think it means reproduction. You are right the first time. Reproduction isn't the issue. He's distributing the work in a market where there is already an exclusive licensee.
If all it took to get around an exclusive distribution contract under copyright law was to send someone overseas to buy a few thousand "finished product" to bring back to the US for sale, then what good is an exclusive distribution contract?
A measure is still scientifically testable as long as it's quantitative and repeatable.
Key word: quantitative. "Sweeter than" is not quantitative. "More than" is.
There are plenty of survey-based scientific measures in the soft sciences.
Yes, measuring opinions. Or reporting statistics. Had the suggested answer been "most people think orange blossoms smell sweeter than...", that's testable. "Is" is a statement of opinion itself, and that's why it isn't.
It may look like BS, but if anyone can do the same data collection and get the same result, it's a scientific measure.
What data are you collecting? Opinions, not facts. "More people like...". "People tend to...". Ok. None of that was in the possible answers.
Also, "sweet taste" is very well studied and quite quantifyable (it's the result of specific chemical reactions, after all);
As I already pointed out, saccharine is one of the proofs otherwise. People tell me it is sweet. I don't agree. It's my taste buds, I can tell you for a fact that it isn't. As I recall, it has a bad, metallic taste. I don't remember. I stay away from it specifically because it does taste bad.
Now, let's see if I can tell you that five is more than ten. You'd laugh. Ten and five are well-defined quanitites. "More than" translates into every language and culture. "Y is sweeter smelling than X" doesn't. It's an opinion.
The problem is that it's hard to construct a hypothesis that isn't testable except for hypotheses that they can't list on a test, e.g. God created the universe.
SCIENTIFICALLY testable. You can ask 100 people their opinions about whether A smells "sweeter" than B, but that's not measuring anything but the opinions of 100 people. The actually "sweetness" is still an opinion. You can't take those results and tell people they are wrong when they think B smells sweeter than A. It is their nose, and their nose may be different than yours.
"More" is objective. All you need to do is count. Ten is more than five. Everywhere. It's defined by the number system. There is no opinion involved in comparing the two items in question 4. You count bees. End of story.
Now, you might argue that the statement "more people think A smells sweeter than B" is scientifically testable, but that's not the statement in the question. Using scientific apparatus (chromatograph, e.g.) to measure the amount of certain chemicals in A and B isn't a scientific test of sweet smell, it's only pushing the opinion down one level.
Once you have defined a measurement system that correlates with your opinion of "soft". Most readings on the mineral hardness scale are hardly what a normal person would call "soft". A number 2 pencil is "soft", but you can stab someone with it. What scale do you use?
Sweetness when it comes to aromas is a chemical response.
For many decades, scientists have told us that sodium saccharine is a "sweetener". Sorry, not to me it isn't. It tastes horrible, not sweet. Women pay lots of money for perfumes that smell "sweet". To me, many of them smell bad and even repulsive. The only Axe version I ever thought smelled good was the chocolate one.
Yes, you can use a chromatograph to analyze the chemical makeup of something, and then say that "because it contains X it will smell sweet". That's based on someone actually smelling X at some point in time and saying "X smells sweet", and then smelling Y and saying "X smells sweeter than Y" -- an opinion. But the chromatograph cannot smell. If you give it a chemical that you've not analyzed before (and thus cannot identify), the chromatograph won't tell you how it will smell.
You MIGHT be able to use NMR or other methods to determine the chemical structure and say "because it has a structure similar to X, it should smell sweet", but the NMR isn't measuring "sweetness", it is measuring structure. And it certainly won't tell you "sweeter".
Ok, you get ten people together and have them smell orange blossoms. That's a scientific test for sweet smelling, right? No, it's still their opinion. Someone may like gardenia more than orange.
Now, if you are going to these extremes to attempt to get a scientificatlly testable answer to "soft" and "sweet", why not "pretty"? Feed the bird songs to a program that identifies music (SoundHound, e.g.) and see which misidentified commercial product is higher on the charts -- it must be "prettier" than the other, right? Well, that's how I'm defining "pretty" so I can test it scientifically.
And size vs bee attraction is also testable.
That's the only one. "More bees" is objective. "Sweet" and "pretty" and "soft" are subjective. They need human input from the start. "More" is a well defined concept that doesn't have regional or social differences.
1 and 3 are right due to the way the question was asked.
One and three are wrong the way the question was asked, and because it takes some convoluted means to make them even close to testable ("smell" is a function of the nose; apply a chromatograph and you're using second best tools) four is still the best answer. That's the "right" answer for any test -- the most correct answer. By the time someone gets to fifth grade, "most correct answer" should be derigour.
WOW! So every time I go to Japan and buy a copy of the Yomiuri Shinbun and bring it with me to the US I am violating the law....
If you do it with the intent to distribute and not simply own. Copyright includes the ability to license distribution rights, and customs laws deal with personal use differently than commercial use.
I can license one company to distribute my work in England and another company altogether for the US. They've paid me for those rights. What good is that license if the British company can simply import my work into the US and sell it here? All licenses become, effectively, worldwide, despite differences in laws and regulations in different countries. Why would the US company pay me anything when some other company can sell my stuff here just by having a license for England?
The kid in question isn't a company, but he's importing for resale. He's distributing, not using.
For example, University of California schools won't even accept applications from people graduating from Tennessee high schools.
Citation required. Nothing on the UC website about admissions says that Tennessee people need not apply, or that their applications won't be accepted.
But your point is taken. It is a shame that the only way to become a biologist is to go to a UC school. If it were only possible to convince some of those other colleges around the planet to offer some kind of degree in biology. Maybe just a couple of years worth.
The poor students in Tennesse who had dreams of becoming biologists or much worse women in Afghanistan.
Why would poor students in Tennessee have dreams of becoming worse women in Afghanistan? (And no, the new law in Tennessee won't prevent them from becoming biologists. That's just FUD.)
Good luck controlling the car with the steering wheel locked. Sound like a sure fire way to roll the vehicle to me.
So don't turn it all the way to lock, just turn the engine off. I'm also pretty sure that running into a bridge abutment at 100 MPH and bursting into flames is a more certain death than rolling the car at 30 MPH.
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Tuition of the students attending should be sufficient to pay for the CS department. If it's not, they shouldn't have a CS department.
UF is a public school. Public schools are heavily taxpayer subsidized. That means that NONE of the programs at a public school are paid for solely through tuition. Under your criteria, there would be no classes at all.
Compare the tuition for public vs. private and you'll see the difference. Even then, private schools are subsidized by donations to some extent, and tuition still does't pay the full cost.
I know many are desperate for uniformity, but it's really OK if not every single institution offers exactly the same programs of study.
I agree. Students who care about getting the best will seek the college with the best program in their field, not the best "party school". As long as one state school in a state does have a program, I have no problem with specialization. (One school per state so there is still an opportunity for in-state tuition levels for those who can't afford "the best".)
Schools also do a ridiculous bunch of things that I, as a former tuition paying student, don't want them spending my money on. Stop that.
And as both a current taxpayer and former tuition paying student, I say amen to that, brother.
Exactly, the current lecture based model is so antiquated it hurts.
And yet, some people learn better that way. You can ask a question as soon as it occurs to you and get an immediate answer instead of having to email something off and wait for a reply or post something in an online chat and hope there is someone there with an answer. Asking that question in a lecture can actually improve the lecture for other people, because if YOU have a question someone else probably has the same one, and the lecturer can actually deal with everyone at the same time. And he can expand or modify the course of the lecture to cover the material you've let him know is confusing, right there and then. Immediate feedback to the lecturer that he can use for the next time he gives it.
A video "lecture" offers none of that. The video is the video. If the video doesn't explain it the way you need it explained, too bad. The cost of making the video will limit the options for changing the video to cover the material more clearly or in a different way. Just hope that your email or chat request gets you the answer you need.
Yes, for some people, watching a video or online course is great. I am particularly fond of the online material from FEMA that covers the Incident Command System (ICS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS). These are courses that are being mandated for emergency service personnel (including volunteers) before you can get much of anything in the way of other qualifications. ICS100, 200, 700 are a standard set of courses, all online. It's easy to step through all the boring crap and go almost directly to the test at the end. You don't learn much, but you have the ticket punched.
Just for fun, and to gather ticket punches, every so often I'll go to the online course site and take something. It makes me look smart and well qualified, on paper. On paper is what FEMA wants, so they get it.
It's rather unlikely. Servers get rebooted all the time. There is a much simpler method: utilize full-drive encryption.
Adding a step to the shutdown process is simple, it's trivial to install, and it's trivial to turn off if you need to reboot. You can install something like that remotely -- you don't even have to have physical access to the system, and you can do it to a virtual machine without causing any harm to any other user of the physical hardware. You can't be forced to turn over a key to an encrypted file or disk if there is no file to decrypt, and there is no incriminating encrypted data to make the cops curious.
The point is there are millions of possible methods of a server containing a data "self-destruct" mechanism,
Yes, there are, but just like everday life where there are millions of possible things you could have for lunch, there is a much more limited number of highly likely possibilities. It is extremely unlikely that anyone will install a system in a datacenter that contains explosive devices to turn the system into shrapnel if a network cable is disconnected. The triviality of a shutdown-based 'shred' command makes it much more likely.
If the server has unknown secured mechanisms for destroying the data, such as carefully attuned exploding charges/break the drive, or douse the disks in destructive acid, or logical methods, there's very little that can be done about that.
Oh, well then. Since it is very hard to defeat an explosive self-destruct, lets not bother doing anything to try to keep any other means of deleting data from happening. We might as well do a clean shutdown and let what happens happen. Or we might as well just ask the owner to pretty please make us a backup copy of all his files so we can look at them, right?
actually, the 911 people call back to make sure it's not an accidental call before they send a police to check.
I know. That's why I talked about the caller trying to dodge the problem by turning his cell phone off or not answering the phone. If he turns his phone off or doesn't answer, the dispatcher can't deal with the call without sending an officer.
This can be done by installing an interposer circuit in between disk drives and the drive controller with an independent power supply.
This requires a bit more work than simply putting code in one file in /etc/init.d under the "stop" function, called by one of the K-files in rc3.d, that deletes any incriminating files. Shutdown code is a lot less dangerous than having to deal with explosive charges. And if triggered by accident, doesn't leave a slag heap or shrapnel.
When explosive charges in confiscated servers becomes a significant issue, cops will start treating every confiscated server like it has explosive charges. "Modify disk on shutdown" is so easy to do that they have to assume it will be, and thus treat the server like it will do that. Pull the plug instead of clean shutdown, e.g..
Since, obviously, the data cares very much what medium it's on, and bits may start looking all worried at you if you copy them.
Stop being deliberately silly.
You get the original drive,
Which you will have to preserve in its original state as closely as possible, to the point that you might not even bother with a "clean shutdown" because the shutdown code could be rigged to wipe evidence. Yes, you perform the analysis on a signed copy, but you still need to keep the original to provide to the defense experts who will do their own imaging/signing/analysis.
If the prosecution cannot prove to the court that their analysis was on the actual data, it will be thrown out. So, yes, in very real terms, it's not the same data if it isn't on the original medium.
However at the same time, can't the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburg police stop doing that and ignore the bomb threats, knowing that their leg is being pulled?
No. The next time it might not be a joke.
Universities are being sued for not doing enough to stop violence on campus when it happens, as rare as it is, and as much as they do. It's never enough for the lawyers and "grieving heirs".
It's a large "corporation" to start with, and state schools have the combined pockets of the taxpayer to pick. You can't sue a school for being too careful, only if something happens and you can convince a judge that they might not have done enough. Why make it a slam-dunk victory for millions by ignoring the last, valid threat?
This is the same reason that cops have to go check out 911 hangup calls. Most likely, it was someone who dialed by accident and then said "oh shit" and hung up. If they try to dodge the problem by turning their cell phone off, or not answering, the cops will show up to see if everything is ok. If the cops just ignored the call, they'd be sued by everyone involved when it turns out that the caller was forced to hang up, or the wire was ripped out of the wall, by her violent husband or vice versa, and someone wound up dead.
Your pizza example is a bad one because they specifically allow that now (as of like, decades ago actually).
No, they do not. Stop spreading such patently absurd information. Read the rules sometime. Like this one, 47CFR97.113(a)(2) and (3):
97.113 Prohibited Communications
(a) No amateur station shall transmit:
(2) Communications for hire or for material compensation, direct or indirect, paid or promised, except as otherwise provided in these rules;
(3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer.
This wouldn't appear to prohibit you ordering the pizza, just the use of amateur radio to reply by the pizza dealer, but then there's this, same section:
(b) An amateur station shall not engage in any form of broadcasting, nor may an amateur station transmit one-way communications except as specifically provided in these rules;
And gosh if I can find a specific exemption from this one-way communication prohibition for "pizza shop".
Now maybe the rules in YOUR country differ, but in the US of A the FCC rules apply, and the FCC rules still prohibit the use of amateur radio for commercial purposes -- with very few exceptions, none of which cover buying pizza.
If you're worried about privacy, with packet you can encrypt the data payload itself so long as the headers are not obfuscated and the transmission is properly identified.
Incorrect. Any use of ciphers or codes to obscure the meaning is prohibited, with the limited exception of control signals for space stations (47CFR97.113(a)(4)). That includes the bodies of packets sent via packet radio. That's the US law, perhaps you are referring to a different country?
Current software in common use compresses the bodies of email messages sent via packet and pactor systems, but software can be used to decompress the messages and is thus not considered encryption.
I have little interest trying to participate in a P2P communication system where encryption is explicitly forbidden.
Some encryption is allowed, and the prohibition is against the use of codes or ciphers to obscure the meaning, not explicitely against all encryption. HSMM (ham WiFi) uses WEP (maybe WPA, I don't know) and gets away with it.
What's more important is that amateur radio isn't supposed to be used for things that would really require encryption anyway. No commercial use. You can't order a pizza, so you don't need to send anyone your credit card number, for example. The HSMM folks need to keep non-hams from using amateur systems, so they've taken the steps to do that.
Also, the fact my country would prosecute me for communicating internationally with someone who lives under a repressive regime seems totally bogus.
You've got it backwards. It's not the US saying "thou shall not", it is the other country. Yes, it's against the US rules to do it, because we're part of the worldwide treaty organization ITU and we've agreed to those rules. According to The FCC, there are currently no banned countries. I'd think you would want to refrain from doing it, if there were any, not for your own protection, but to protect the hams in that country from prosecution there.
What is more restrictive are the rules about third party communications, which is sending messages for someone else into other countries. The same link convers that topic, and lists the countries that have third party agreements with the US. That's different than just communicating with someone there via ham radio, however.
Eichmann's orders were plainly unlawful.
They were plainly unethical, but were they plainly unlawful? They were judged to be unlawful by the victors of the war in a trial conducted by the victors under the laws imposed by the victors. Were they unlawful under the laws he was subject to at the time he did them? I don't know, I'm asking. And before you jump to answer, try to separate the "horrific" and "unethical" from the "legal" question.
You say the TSA is operating under orders that are currently lawful. (Ethical is another question.) What happens tomorrow if a couple of new SCOTUS appointees decide the laws being carried out aren't valid? The laws change. Can you prosecute TSA agents for their acts, as Eichmann was for his? There's a tiny problem doing so -- the US Constitution prohibits ex-post-facto laws. You can't prosecute someone for doing something yesterday that wasn't illegal until today.
The two scenarios are not equivalent.
Two things don't have to be equivalent for there to be useful comparisons between them. Everyone, including myself, has at times used the "only following orders" example from WWII, but maybe it is useful to look at what exactly is happening.
Being an asshat to someone struggling, when all he needs to do is just hang up or say "not interested" and hang up, is rather puerile.
That is not all he needs to do. He needs to order the caller explicitely to remove this number from his list and do not call again. If the telemarketer doesn't do that and you get another call, at least it is now clearly illegal. Just saying "not interested" means the dick can mark you as a failed contact and you WILL be called again. And again. And since they use predictive dialers, you will often get hung up on as soon as you say "hello".
TSA agents are doing their job.
Oh goody, I get to invoke Godwin.
If you really don't like telemarketers or the TSA, protest the people that matter: the ones that hire them, or the onese that ignore do-not-call lists, or the ones that make the laws.
These actions are not mutually exclusive. I can harass the person who stoops to accepting a job breaking the law (by calling in defiance of the DNC list and explicit orders not to call again) AND complain to the FTC and the company that the dick claims he's working "on behalf of".
I had a dick call yesterday claiming to be calling "on behalf of" CenturyLink. He said he wanted to do an account review. We got to the point where he claimed I had given him permission to access my account data, and I realized that if he really worked FOR CenturyLink he'd already have access. (I hadn't given him permission to do anything, he had done it because I agreed to allow "an account review", which doesn't say anything about allowing a third party access to my CL account data.) He steadfastly refused to tell me who he actually worked for, repeating "WE work on behalf of CenturyLink", and even admitting that that's what he was told to say. That kind of dick deserves everything he gets from the people he harasses on the phone. He knows he'd doing something shady because he's being told to lie to people. He knows who pays him, and it isnt' CenturyLink. (This was all after he wanted to "save [me] money" by selling me a new package of features that included the one thing I did have but would cost $10 per month more. When a telemarketer lies he loses all protections normally afforded to other humans, IMNSHO.)
What happens when they go back to their boss and say "Some guy grabbed all my flyers and destroyed them." Think they're going to keep that job they desperately need?
If he says that, he shouldn't keep his job. If he is smart enough to be employable, he'll say "I handed them all out. Every one of them". You think the boss is going to canvas the area he sent the guy to see how many people got one? And technically, he did hand them all out -- to one guy who destroyed them all.
And zero sympathy for people with ovarian cysts?
Birth control prevents ovarian cysts? Why don't they put that into the ads for Trojans? Why isn't ParaGard advertising that?
You responded to a statement about insurance paying for birth control with a question about ovarian cysts. Two different things. Very different things. One can object to coverage for birth control and still expect coverage for true medical issues.
Birth control pills also help control painful menstrual cycles and ovarian cysts. Yet they are not covered for these uses because in these cases: they also incidentally prevent pregnancy.
When they aren't being used for "birth control", then it is wrong to call them "birth control". There are too many other things that "birth control" includes to say that "birth control controls ovarian cysts". Specific hormone treatments do that. Specific birth control pills contain those hormones in a cheap and prepackaged form.
And yes, of course, when a drug is used to treat a disease or illness, there is a strong argument that it should be included in insurance coverage. I'd even say it SHOULD be included, but I don't know that the right answer is to force all insurance companies to cover it. After all, they already choose which conditions to cover and which medications they'll pay for to cover them. In other words, the insurance company I have will pay for some drugs to treat one condition, but not to treat another. Why would paying for hormones to treat one illness but not for a non-illness be different?
Pregnancy is not a disease. Stop treating it like one. If you want a condition covered under insurance, talk about the condition you want covered, not something else. Most people assume when you say you want "birth control" covered by insurance that you mean "birth control", not "ovarian cysts" or "irregular menstrual cycles" or any other medical condition. Call it what it is.
ask someone who got a STD if their body didn;t get sicker because they didnt have contraception
They didn't. They got sick because they had unprotected sex with someone who was already infected. There are some forms of "birth control" that might have limited the exposure. Many of the forms of "birth control", and ALL of the forms of birth control that are being talked about in off-license use (as hormone therapies for ovarian problems, e.g.), provide no STD protection at all.
Why should birth control be special from antibiotics when it comes to healthcare.
Because pregnancy isn't a disease that needs to be eradicated to keep the public as a whole safe?
If you licensed your work to distributers that license would typically include a prohibition on sale outside their designated market,
Yes. A license to distribute the work in that market.
Also, this kid is not licensing a work for reproduction, he's buying finished goods. He has no agreement with the copyright holder.
That's right, he has no agreement with the copyright holder to distribute the work anywhere. There is already a licensee in the US. That's why there is a problem. He's being a distributor. That's why it is a copyright violation.
In your first paragraph you admit that distribution means sales. In the second, you seem to think it means reproduction. You are right the first time. Reproduction isn't the issue. He's distributing the work in a market where there is already an exclusive licensee.
If all it took to get around an exclusive distribution contract under copyright law was to send someone overseas to buy a few thousand "finished product" to bring back to the US for sale, then what good is an exclusive distribution contract?
A measure is still scientifically testable as long as it's quantitative and repeatable.
Key word: quantitative. "Sweeter than" is not quantitative. "More than" is.
There are plenty of survey-based scientific measures in the soft sciences.
Yes, measuring opinions. Or reporting statistics. Had the suggested answer been "most people think orange blossoms smell sweeter than...", that's testable. "Is" is a statement of opinion itself, and that's why it isn't.
It may look like BS, but if anyone can do the same data collection and get the same result, it's a scientific measure.
What data are you collecting? Opinions, not facts. "More people like...". "People tend to...". Ok. None of that was in the possible answers.
Also, "sweet taste" is very well studied and quite quantifyable (it's the result of specific chemical reactions, after all);
As I already pointed out, saccharine is one of the proofs otherwise. People tell me it is sweet. I don't agree. It's my taste buds, I can tell you for a fact that it isn't. As I recall, it has a bad, metallic taste. I don't remember. I stay away from it specifically because it does taste bad.
Now, let's see if I can tell you that five is more than ten. You'd laugh. Ten and five are well-defined quanitites. "More than" translates into every language and culture. "Y is sweeter smelling than X" doesn't. It's an opinion.
The problem is that it's hard to construct a hypothesis that isn't testable except for hypotheses that they can't list on a test, e.g. God created the universe.
SCIENTIFICALLY testable. You can ask 100 people their opinions about whether A smells "sweeter" than B, but that's not measuring anything but the opinions of 100 people. The actually "sweetness" is still an opinion. You can't take those results and tell people they are wrong when they think B smells sweeter than A. It is their nose, and their nose may be different than yours.
"More" is objective. All you need to do is count. Ten is more than five. Everywhere. It's defined by the number system. There is no opinion involved in comparing the two items in question 4. You count bees. End of story.
Now, you might argue that the statement "more people think A smells sweeter than B" is scientifically testable, but that's not the statement in the question. Using scientific apparatus (chromatograph, e.g.) to measure the amount of certain chemicals in A and B isn't a scientific test of sweet smell, it's only pushing the opinion down one level.
Softness is a physical property you can test.
Once you have defined a measurement system that correlates with your opinion of "soft". Most readings on the mineral hardness scale are hardly what a normal person would call "soft". A number 2 pencil is "soft", but you can stab someone with it. What scale do you use?
Sweetness when it comes to aromas is a chemical response.
For many decades, scientists have told us that sodium saccharine is a "sweetener". Sorry, not to me it isn't. It tastes horrible, not sweet. Women pay lots of money for perfumes that smell "sweet". To me, many of them smell bad and even repulsive. The only Axe version I ever thought smelled good was the chocolate one.
Yes, you can use a chromatograph to analyze the chemical makeup of something, and then say that "because it contains X it will smell sweet". That's based on someone actually smelling X at some point in time and saying "X smells sweet", and then smelling Y and saying "X smells sweeter than Y" -- an opinion. But the chromatograph cannot smell. If you give it a chemical that you've not analyzed before (and thus cannot identify), the chromatograph won't tell you how it will smell.
You MIGHT be able to use NMR or other methods to determine the chemical structure and say "because it has a structure similar to X, it should smell sweet", but the NMR isn't measuring "sweetness", it is measuring structure. And it certainly won't tell you "sweeter".
Ok, you get ten people together and have them smell orange blossoms. That's a scientific test for sweet smelling, right? No, it's still their opinion. Someone may like gardenia more than orange.
Now, if you are going to these extremes to attempt to get a scientificatlly testable answer to "soft" and "sweet", why not "pretty"? Feed the bird songs to a program that identifies music (SoundHound, e.g.) and see which misidentified commercial product is higher on the charts -- it must be "prettier" than the other, right? Well, that's how I'm defining "pretty" so I can test it scientifically.
And size vs bee attraction is also testable.
That's the only one. "More bees" is objective. "Sweet" and "pretty" and "soft" are subjective. They need human input from the start. "More" is a well defined concept that doesn't have regional or social differences.
1 and 3 are right due to the way the question was asked.
One and three are wrong the way the question was asked, and because it takes some convoluted means to make them even close to testable ("smell" is a function of the nose; apply a chromatograph and you're using second best tools) four is still the best answer. That's the "right" answer for any test -- the most correct answer. By the time someone gets to fifth grade, "most correct answer" should be derigour.
WOW! So every time I go to Japan and buy a copy of the Yomiuri Shinbun and bring it with me to the US I am violating the law....
If you do it with the intent to distribute and not simply own. Copyright includes the ability to license distribution rights, and customs laws deal with personal use differently than commercial use.
I can license one company to distribute my work in England and another company altogether for the US. They've paid me for those rights. What good is that license if the British company can simply import my work into the US and sell it here? All licenses become, effectively, worldwide, despite differences in laws and regulations in different countries. Why would the US company pay me anything when some other company can sell my stuff here just by having a license for England?
The kid in question isn't a company, but he's importing for resale. He's distributing, not using.
For example, University of California schools won't even accept applications from people graduating from Tennessee high schools.
Citation required. Nothing on the UC website about admissions says that Tennessee people need not apply, or that their applications won't be accepted.
But your point is taken. It is a shame that the only way to become a biologist is to go to a UC school. If it were only possible to convince some of those other colleges around the planet to offer some kind of degree in biology. Maybe just a couple of years worth.
The poor students in Tennesse who had dreams of becoming biologists or much worse women in Afghanistan.
Why would poor students in Tennessee have dreams of becoming worse women in Afghanistan? (And no, the new law in Tennessee won't prevent them from becoming biologists. That's just FUD.)
Heh. I think that a person is allowed two irrational beliefs per lifetime, if only because it makes them more interesting.
What's your second one?
Good luck controlling the car with the steering wheel locked. Sound like a sure fire way to roll the vehicle to me.
So don't turn it all the way to lock, just turn the engine off. I'm also pretty sure that running into a bridge abutment at 100 MPH and bursting into flames is a more certain death than rolling the car at 30 MPH.