I don't call you cynical, I call you honest. Of course companies are expected to edit anything that affects their image. It's called "mitigation". If someone libels you by entering garbage about you into a wiki, if you are going to sue them effectively, you need to show how you mitigated the damage. If you don't do something simple that you can do, it looks like you really didn't care.
Before wiki-anything can be considered more than just another biased source of info, the attitude that it is unethical for people to edit information about themselves (including companies) will have to change.
No, she's charged with "illegally recording a motion picture". According to the original article, it is a felony crime.
The two examples I gave regarding breaking into the theater or stealing a DVD were not claims that she did either of those. They were a simple thought experiment to demonstrate that "fair use" under copyright law does not grant unlimited access to the material. Claiming that "fair use" means she is not guilty of breaking a law is incorrect because we know there are limits on how the "fair use" material is obtained. You cannot break the law to obtain material and then claim "fair use" allows it. It is explicitely against the law to record in a theater without the copyright owner's permission (and the THEATER is not the copyright owner and thus cannot give that permission.)
Just as you cannot claim legal protection from theft for stealing a book from a library to copy it because your copies meet the "fair use" provisions of copyright law (even if you later return the book, which mitigates but does not erase the crime), you cannot record a movie being shown in a theater without the copyright owner's permission and then claim "fair use". You CAN borrow the book (or get the copyright owner's permission), and then the only issue is if your use really is "fair use", because how you obtained the material is no longer, itself, the crime.
I'll also point out that the CFR refers to "theft", so calling it "theft" is hardly unreasonable. Whether you or the other respondent consider it theft is an opinion.
Are you serious? If that's the approach they're going to take, pretty soon they'll be showing their movies to empty theaters.
You missed the part about it being a preview. The value of taping a movie in the theater goes down the longer it is in the theater, because early birds in piracy really do get the worm.
If you tape a preview, you can get it out into distribution even before the movie is available to everyone else, maybe, or at least in the first few days. That's worth more than a movie that's been out for three weeks and everyone who's hot to see it has already.
By the time it's in open distribution, the policy against video devices isn't going to be as strictly enforced.
And we are going to lock a girl in a cage for making the wrong call on a FAIR USE OF COPYRIGHT question?
Nope. She's charged with theft. While fair use says she can use clips for certain purposes, fair use does not say she can do anything she wants to to get that clip. It should be obvious, but she is certainly not allowed to break into the theater after closing to make the copy for "fair use". She cannot steal a copy of the DVD from Blockbuster even though her use might be called "fair use" under copyright. Thus we know there are limits on the claim of "fair use" in obtaining the material.
The theater does not have the legal right to give people copies of the movie to use for "fair use". The contract the theater has with the distributor certainly doesn't allow them to give away copies. She took what they could not give her. The theater almost certainly DOES have available to them trailers that can be used to advertise the movie (I'm guessing; maybe they don't) that they could have given her, had she asked.
Perhaps it was overboard to call the cops on first contact, but it is arguable that it was appropriate. Someone who is actually trying to steal the movie for profit may not be polite and courteous when asked to leave. The manager could not know that the stolen clip was just twenty seconds without first reviewing the entire tape in the camera and then searching her and her companions to determine there was not another tape with more of the movie. I certainly don't want theater managers authorized to do such searches.
As for civil remedies, well, how is the theater manager supposed to know who to have sued without obtaining identification information, and do we want theater managers empowered to do THAT to the level they'd need to ensure they had correct information? That's something the cops do.
So, no, she's not being charged based on a "fair use" question, and yes, maybe it was the right thing to do to call the cops. Should she be taken all the way to court? Maybe not, but that's Regal's call. They may be using this incident to get publicity that they have a zero tolerance policy and yes, zero means zero, and they'll drop it after the Morally Outraged move on to other news. Should they lose all their customers if they continue to press charges? I don't think so.
And she was probably crunching popcorn loudly and didn't have her cellphone set to vibrate, so she deserves it anyway.
Having a national system for voting in which all ballots are the same and conducted in the manner is essential for elections to work properly.
That's an opinion masquerading as a fact. In fact, it is not necessary for every ballot to be the same and conducted in the same manner for elections to work properly. In fact, the only time this is an issue is in the presidential election, and in fact, the Constitution gives each state the right to select the electors in whatever manner they choose. The last time I checked, the states weren't even required to HAVE presidential elections, the electors could simply be appointed by the Governor. (And until relatively recently, I think one state did exactly that. I don't recall which one.)
... but when you're holding the election for President, the ballots should all be the same.
Why? By mandating identical voting systems for all 50 states for THAT election, you have, in effect, mandated it for all elections, since it would be too costly to try to run two different kinds of elections. You've also then mandated the means of selecting the electors for all fifty
states, which the Fathers of this country decided they did not want to do, and also mandated identical qualifications for being on the ballot.
You are aware, I hope, that the "sum total of votes for X across all the states" is actually a
meaningless value, aren't you? That having one means of selecting the electors in state A has no effect on the result of selecting electors in state B*? That the ignorant press' popularization of the idea of a "popular vote" for President is actually distracting from the real results and confusing people?
And then, by creating one large unified system, you are making it easier to game and corrupt the system than by having fifty small ones. No, you don't have to corrupt more than a dozen or so large states to change the result, but by making it one system you make it a lot easier. You also make it harder to detect, since the one result would have nothing to be compared to.
No, thanks, I think the original founders did a good job designing our elections of the president, even if they don't always turn out the way I want. You see, I can accept that people vote for someone other than who I want and don't need to pretend that the only reason my guy lost is because there was massive cheating by the other guy.
On an aside, I'm alway facinated by the claims of some candidates that "absentee ballots" ought to be thrown out for various reasons (after they are counted and are why that guy lost), when I
live in a state where every ballot is an absentee ballot.
* Well, other than this ridiculous notion of staggering the closing of the polls across the country, so that the announcement of winners on the east coast does have an effect on the results from the west. The only change I would like to see is closing the polls at the same time everywhere for presidential elections. One election out of many, and no process changes other than how long people have to vote. Keep them all open until midnight PST. Nobody loses time. Everyone gains time to vote. Yes, that's 3AM in New York. So what?
The story isn't "this guy got caught violating a policy that he knew about," the story is "Look what a ridiculous policy the NCAA has."
Yes, the story actually is about some guy who got caught violating a policy he knew about that was a condition of him getting special access into the game. It's actually a pretty modern policy, attempting to incorporate modern technology into its licensing plans. If the NCAA allows everyone to do live broadcasting of game data for free, then why would anyone pay for it? If NBC is paying a buttload of money for TV rights, and people didn't watch because the NCAA allowed some local paper to do a live blog of the game, why would NBC pay a buttload of money for the next game?
What gives them the legal right to control access to live or recorded broadcasts of text accounts of games?
The fact that they are running the games. Do you think that everyone should have the right to go to a play and set up a camera with a live feed out to the world? The producers would be mighty upset and would have you hauled out. Why shouldn't the game producers do the same? Do you think it would be ok for someone to go to a play to transcribe the dialog, and then sell copies of the transcription?
I don't think they have those rights, though many sporting organizations try to claim them.
The courts have already ruled otherwise. It's contract law.
Witness the NFL's ridiculous disclaimer: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."
It's not a disclaimer, it is a legal statement of copyright. It's very upfront in telling you what you cannot do with the broadcast. You cannot, for example, show the telecast in a bar and charge admission. That's not "private use".
No law that I am aware of stops you from telling somebody what you think about the game, be it over the water cooler at work...
That's "private use of our audience". It's ok.
or on your blog.
That's called "public dissemination", and the copyright statement prohibits it. If you are a newspaper
or doing it for commercial purposes, expect a visit from NFL lawyers.
As an ex-employee of a pinball parlor, from the 80's, I can report that my absolute favorite pinball was Gorgar, whose lack of bilabial fricatives in it's early-gen speech generator had it endlessly calling "I'm Gorgar, eat me." Or perhaps it was deliberate?
That, and the golf game with the music that was just that much out of tune.
I'm one of those pro-gun folks who does (and did, after VA Tech) suggest that if everyone (or a non-trivial percentage) was packing on campus, that there may have been fewer deaths.
There was only one newspaper I saw that reminded us after the VT shootings that yes, indeed, armed students can prevent this from happening, because they already have. I recycled the paper so I don't have the details handy, but the campus was in the northeast, and there were two students, one of them armed, one who had to run to his car to get his "heat", who prevented a shooting spree. Most of the mass media who covered the event focussed on the students taking action and not that they felt secure taking action because they were, themselves, armed, and could shoot the bastard if he hadn't surrendered.
Cause god dammit, if someone did that shit to my country, you can be sure I would be deep in that shit, hurting them in any way i could,...
You mean, like, if you were living in, like, Germany in 1943, or Iraq in 1998, and some nutcase dictator was killing your friends because they were "the wrong kind of people" or because they were speaking up against the killing of "the wrong kind of people", and maybe killing you because you were friends with "the wrong kind of people", you'd actively fight against anyone who would come in and remove the nutcase and let you live your life without fear of being killed for being "the wrong kind of person"? Yes, I guess a lot of Germans and Iraqi did, so you'd not be alone.
No, that hatred is reserved for the bastards that initiated this travesty.
Well, Saddam's dead. I don't recall if his two kids are dead or not. But good, you're right to hate the dictator who spent ten years thumbing his nose at the UN and the UN mandates, which is why we had to go back and finish the job we didn't finish the first time. Remind me why we stopped the first time? Oh yeah, so we could "let peace have a chance."
You're assuming (possibly out of fear) the essay contained something worthy of law enforcement.
I don't know if you are attributing the fear to me or to the teacher. No, I am not afraid of the essay, even without knowing what it said. I don't know if the teacher and the panel that she met with was afraid, but that's irrelevant. I don't know what they thought about any of this. What I do know is that they contacted the police, which tells me that they probably thought the essay contained something worthy of contacting the police. Or that they simply didn't know if it did, and erred on the side of caution. Just what objective criteria do you apply to this kind of thing to know if you ought to call or not? That's what I mean when I say they just don't have the tools.
What you or I think about the essay is irrelevant, too, since neither you nor I will be called upon the carpet for ignoring the warning signs of a future mass murderer by ignoring the essay.
That's the point. It's not fear. It's CYA. Cover your ass. It's what happens when the press goes crazy tracking down every potential warning sign that anyone ever overlooked after a nutcase shoots a dozen people, trying to find the "cause" for "this horrible tragedy". They MUST find the cause. It's not good enough to say that an irrational nutcase decided to shoot a bunch of people. It cannot be his fault, there must have been someone else to blame. Let's investigate his school life and friends and especially teachers!
If this student eventually, through failure to intervene with counselling or whatever, went over the line and shot 83 people, the press would be waving this essay around demanding to know why this teacher who saw this obvious warning sign did NOTHING.
Ok, maybe it is fear, but not fear of the student shooting anyone, but fear of being blamed for his spree, and maybe fear of lawsuits from victim's families when they point out that this teacher should have seen and heeded the obvious warning signs, and was negligent because she did nothing.
If it's proven that teacher overreacted out of fear...
You will never prove that. You can assume it was fear, but it could just as easily have been CYA. And it doesn't matter, it will never be her fault that Cho did anything.
Not a state of fear, a state of CYA. Would you want to be the teacher who saw this kid's essay and didn't do anything, after he goes on a shooting spree? DIYD, DIYD. If you don't do anything and it happens, you are skewered because you didn't. If you do something, you are skewered because you "overreacted" to someone who "would never do that kind of thing". Unfortunately, you have no tools to determine who would and would not actually do "that kind of thing", so you are left to guess. And you cannot tell after you act if he would have done it, because it was prevented by your actions, maybe.
The more we blame people who have no means of preventing the problems other than calling the police for every unhappy person they come across, the more we will have people calling the police for every unhappy person they come across. It wasn't Cho's teachers or TAs or parents who shot a bunch of people, it was Cho. Put the blame where it belongs.
Is Vista in trouble? You bet. Add to all of the above the competition that it faces from various Linux distributions that are easier than ever to install and use,...
I have two HP laptops with Vista Home. When they were bought, the concept was that it was ok, I'd just install linux and they'd be productive.
I have yet to find a Linux that runs properly on them. Fedora Core 6 won't start X. Neither Ubuntu nor Knoppix nor SuSE see the full resolution of the screen or the wireless adapter. The 'Beryl' version of Knoppix doesn't run Beryl at all. Mandriva? no.
If I were paranoid, I'd suspect that the advanced hardware requirements for Vista were a ploy to force hardware changes faster than Linux can react, thus removing Linux as an option.
I'd like to hear suggestions for a good distro for these systems.
... many people (and companies!) have gotten comfortable with XP...
I think many people and companies are uncomfortable with this Reduced Functionality Mode threat that results when a copy of Vista hasn't been able to re-authorize itself by contacting Microsoft for permission to keep running. I wonder what will happen when a travelling exec for a fortune 500 company cannot use his laptop because it decided it had been just too long without checking?
...by selling cracked software, only this time people are not going to come to them to get the newest software but will want the "good old XP"...
I use computers in locations that are GASP not connected to the Internet. I use them for search and rescue activities. It would be negligent for me to use an operating system that I know is going to want to "call home to papa" or shut itself down when it cannot. Unfortunately, some of the apps that I need are not available on Linux. Also unfortunately, I am not the only user, so there is a training issue with trying to run them under Wine, if they ran in the first place.
The local college bookstore used to display student XP upgrades for $25. I tried to buy 4. "Sorry, Microsoft rules, you can only buy one." As if students only have one computer?
...but wifi runs the same interference risks as cell phones.
No. Wi-fi is at 2.4GHz. Cell phones are 800-900MHz or 1900MHz (PCS). A 100MHz signal mixing with a 2.4GHz one results in -- 2.5GHz and 2.3GHz. A 100MHz signal mixing with a 900MHz one results in 800MHz and 1000MHz (the latter in the middle of the ILS glideslope band.) Those numbers are general, but in the right neighborhood to the specific ones in use.
Since users and flight attendants would be incabapble of knowing which band each phone was on, and it would be interesting, to say the least, for a flight attendant to tell one person to shut his phone (800MHz) off while allowing someone else (PCS) to use theirs, the only reasonable ban is all of them.
As for the "technical" reasons. Completely bunk. Modern airplanes have all their signal wires twisted pair and shielded (very RF immune). While it IS possible for cell phones to create considerable interference (particularly GSM), airline systems are VERY well shielded.
PERHAPS, maybe when they first leave the assembly line, but after thousands of hours in use the shielding is not so good anymore, if it really is that good to start with.
The Mythbusters episode did not prove anything, other than perhaps that a specific set of conditions did not result in interference. It certainly did not prove that all possible conditions will not cause interference ever.
The thought that it would interfere with ground based systems is simply rediculous. What ground based systems? Other cell networks? No.
Cell networks have a limited number of channels that they can use. Cell towers are coordinated so that neighboring towers don't use the same channels. They can do this based on knowledge of the terrain that each tower covers, with predictions of signal strength. This also assumes a land-based transmitter. Take a land-based transmitter into the air and its range extends immensely. Move that same transmitter along at 500MPH and it suddenly not only covers a lot of space on the ground but comes in contact with a lot of towers (and loses contant with a lot of towers) very quickly. Sorting out which tower a cell phone is talking to is much harder under such conditions, and consumes many more resources than a static ground-based caller.
There is no difference between being on the ground or in the air.
Explain that to the pilot who cannot contact ATC via radio while parked on the airport ramp but can easily do so once airborne. (There are many airports where there are no ATC facilities but from which pilots must communicate with ATC prior to taking off. Sometimes there are remoted radio facilities installed to deal with this, but in many places, it's the payphone at the FBO that solves the problem.)
Examples of interference? Well, I know my cell phone is about to ring when I'm watching TV and see the interference. The GPS unit in my car, which lives in a small aluminum box under the back seat, throws a VERY strong birdie right on top of the local police frequency when it is on, making it impossible to scan the cops.
The fact that passengers on an airplane are not told when the guys in front are having interference issues does not mean those issues never happened, just that you weren't told about it.
Vonage was upfront about this when I got their service. It shouldn't be a surprise -- and it only affects those alarm services that use copper to monitor the system. If your alarm system is independent of the phone lines (i.e., doesn't need Daddy watching it all the time) there is no problem.
Let's say I already have a GPS navigation system in my car which records my progress.
Let's say you live in the state of Oregon, and it is a few years from now, when the general gas tax is replaced by a road usage tax.
You WILL have a GPS system in your car.
Since the road usage tax amount will depend on which roads you use and what time you use them (e.g. I-5 in downtown Portland at noon is 15 cents per mile, at 3AM is 5 cents per mile), your GPS will record everyplace you drive and at what time. This data will be uploaded when you buy gas, and you will be taxed based on that data.
The proponents of this nonsense claim that there will be no possible misuse of this data. In fact, they DENY that there will be any location and time data recorded, but cannot say how the road/time based usage will be calculated without it.
Yes, this is a real idea being really considered in Oregon. I know one of the people who developed the proof-of-concept hardware and even she won't admit that collecting data will be necessary.
It does not render properly using xpdf, at least on my system. It is missing
fonts used for chapter, section, and subsection headings, as well as URLs. acroread
does a better job; I can't tell if it is "right" without knowing what "right"
is supposed to look like.
They apparently have a deal with inkjet and toner manufacturers, since more
than 25% of each page is a solid cyan color block. If you print out the pages, you
will be wasting a LOT of toner and paper.
Chapter 1 prints without any DRM limitations as far as I can see.
Whether any of the diagrams in later chapters print with the black block overlaying
the graphics that I've seen acroread do so often, I don't know.
Have you given a thought to what discharging a firearm on an airplane at 30,000 feet might do if you puncture the hull of the plain and depressurize the cabin?
Yes.
So has MythBusters.
Not much happens with a hole as small as a bullet hole.
On the other hand, the people trying to take over the airplane don't do
very well with bulletholes in them. They won't "massacre everyone on the plane"
before they get shot full of bulletholes.
And, if we want to count the costs, if only half the people on the plane survive
the attempt, that's half more than survived 9/11.
Personally, I'd feel much safer carrying my pocketknife (and knowing
that others had theirs) than I do now, knowing that any motivated
terrorist can get whatever weapons onto a plane that he wants and the
rest of us are unarmed completely.
If your girlfriend doesn't fly, why does she care if you get upgrades
or not?
You do know that you can apply your miles to her ticket if you buy
them together, don't you? I wound up paying for a co-worker's upgrade
because I DIDN'T know that. I asked for an upgrade, and they upgraded
her too, because our tickets were tied together in the system. I though
they were being nice to her -- until I saw my milage statement a month
later.
Don't you get it? Real crimes are copyright infringements.
Came back from Europe recently. Picked up bag at destination. TSA lock
had been ripped off the bag, taking two zipper pulls with it. (Bag is
now unlockable.)
Looked inside. Contents rearranged, but on the top of the pile were...
the two DVDs and a CD I bought in Amsterdam. No TSA notice that they'd
vandalized my bag. No apology. No lock. Nothing missing, so it wasn't a thief who did it.
From all appearances, they pried open my bag in a desperate rush to
check that the DVDs and CD were not pirated material. I know of
no current danger to aircraft from DVD or CD shaped objects that
would have justified the deliberate vandalism of my property.
On a side note, Minnesota bomb squad blows up scientific instruments.
A scientist returning from MN left her stream-bed temperature sensors
in the trunk of the rental car. Instead of paging her while she was
still in the airport, the rental company called the police, the
police called the FBI, the FBI called the bomb squad, and the bomb
squad destroyed all of her data. PVC pipes with holes drilled in
them, end caps, and gravel inside. Boom!
No, but additional googleing usualy shows what information is reliable and what isn't.
Being able to determine what is and is not valid on the internet requires
a background set of information against which to compare. Setting kids loose
on the internet and telling them, in essence, "you go figure out what's correct
and what isn't", is sending them out completely unprepared.
That's not saying that everything taught in the schools is correct, but the
percentage is much higher than what one finds using google.
I wonder if someone can provide a link between reality TV and violent crime.
I can. If I ever run into Nikki from UKBB7 I'd have to slap her
a few times to get her to stop whinging.
NO! NO! Nikki, I didn't mean it! I love you. Will you marry me?
I'll give you an award for being just you, I'll keep the house
at 28C, I'm richer than Pete and I can pretend to randomly emit
profanity! I'll give you FIVE bottles of wine at a time! Oh, please. Please? I'd never make you sit in a locked room silently!
Now, Dr. Rob and Will Boogie are another story. They are simply
amoral and need some humanity leveraged into them, the hard way.
They save energy, last longer, and lower your electic bill...
I started using CFLs, and I found that they do not last longer
than normal incandescents. There are incandescents I have never
changed in my house (since I bought it), but I've had to replace
every CFL I've installed at least once.
They also stick out above the lampshade on smaller lamps and
look really ugly when they do. Plus they have an odd coloration.
And don't dim.
A) If you read the fine article, it tells us that the usual resolution being used for images was 320 lines, and the 1280
lines was possible but seldom used. A VHS VCR does about 320
line resolution. It is doubtful that all the missing tapes,
or even any large number of them, were "high quality" recordings.
B) What the heck is a "high quality slow-scan tape" anyway? SSTV is done using AUDIO, so all you need is a standard audio tape and you've got as high a quality as you need. There is no way anyone mistakenly recorded The Simpsons over these, unless you
recorded just the audio track.
Slashdot Mirror
Before wiki-anything can be considered more than just another biased source of info, the attitude that it is unethical for people to edit information about themselves (including companies) will have to change.
No, she's charged with "illegally recording a motion picture". According to the original article, it is a felony crime.
The two examples I gave regarding breaking into the theater or stealing a DVD were not claims that she did either of those. They were a simple thought experiment to demonstrate that "fair use" under copyright law does not grant unlimited access to the material. Claiming that "fair use" means she is not guilty of breaking a law is incorrect because we know there are limits on how the "fair use" material is obtained. You cannot break the law to obtain material and then claim "fair use" allows it. It is explicitely against the law to record in a theater without the copyright owner's permission (and the THEATER is not the copyright owner and thus cannot give that permission.)
Just as you cannot claim legal protection from theft for stealing a book from a library to copy it because your copies meet the "fair use" provisions of copyright law (even if you later return the book, which mitigates but does not erase the crime), you cannot record a movie being shown in a theater without the copyright owner's permission and then claim "fair use". You CAN borrow the book (or get the copyright owner's permission), and then the only issue is if your use really is "fair use", because how you obtained the material is no longer, itself, the crime.
I'll also point out that the CFR refers to "theft", so calling it "theft" is hardly unreasonable. Whether you or the other respondent consider it theft is an opinion.
You missed the part about it being a preview. The value of taping a movie in the theater goes down the longer it is in the theater, because early birds in piracy really do get the worm.
If you tape a preview, you can get it out into distribution even before the movie is available to everyone else, maybe, or at least in the first few days. That's worth more than a movie that's been out for three weeks and everyone who's hot to see it has already.
By the time it's in open distribution, the policy against video devices isn't going to be as strictly enforced.
Nope. She's charged with theft. While fair use says she can use clips for certain purposes, fair use does not say she can do anything she wants to to get that clip. It should be obvious, but she is certainly not allowed to break into the theater after closing to make the copy for "fair use". She cannot steal a copy of the DVD from Blockbuster even though her use might be called "fair use" under copyright. Thus we know there are limits on the claim of "fair use" in obtaining the material.
The theater does not have the legal right to give people copies of the movie to use for "fair use". The contract the theater has with the distributor certainly doesn't allow them to give away copies. She took what they could not give her. The theater almost certainly DOES have available to them trailers that can be used to advertise the movie (I'm guessing; maybe they don't) that they could have given her, had she asked.
Perhaps it was overboard to call the cops on first contact, but it is arguable that it was appropriate. Someone who is actually trying to steal the movie for profit may not be polite and courteous when asked to leave. The manager could not know that the stolen clip was just twenty seconds without first reviewing the entire tape in the camera and then searching her and her companions to determine there was not another tape with more of the movie. I certainly don't want theater managers authorized to do such searches.
As for civil remedies, well, how is the theater manager supposed to know who to have sued without obtaining identification information, and do we want theater managers empowered to do THAT to the level they'd need to ensure they had correct information? That's something the cops do.
So, no, she's not being charged based on a "fair use" question, and yes, maybe it was the right thing to do to call the cops. Should she be taken all the way to court? Maybe not, but that's Regal's call. They may be using this incident to get publicity that they have a zero tolerance policy and yes, zero means zero, and they'll drop it after the Morally Outraged move on to other news. Should they lose all their customers if they continue to press charges? I don't think so.
And she was probably crunching popcorn loudly and didn't have her cellphone set to vibrate, so she deserves it anyway.
That's an opinion masquerading as a fact. In fact, it is not necessary for every ballot to be the same and conducted in the same manner for elections to work properly. In fact, the only time this is an issue is in the presidential election, and in fact, the Constitution gives each state the right to select the electors in whatever manner they choose. The last time I checked, the states weren't even required to HAVE presidential elections, the electors could simply be appointed by the Governor. (And until relatively recently, I think one state did exactly that. I don't recall which one.)
Why? By mandating identical voting systems for all 50 states for THAT election, you have, in effect, mandated it for all elections, since it would be too costly to try to run two different kinds of elections. You've also then mandated the means of selecting the electors for all fifty states, which the Fathers of this country decided they did not want to do, and also mandated identical qualifications for being on the ballot.
You are aware, I hope, that the "sum total of votes for X across all the states" is actually a meaningless value, aren't you? That having one means of selecting the electors in state A has no effect on the result of selecting electors in state B*? That the ignorant press' popularization of the idea of a "popular vote" for President is actually distracting from the real results and confusing people?
And then, by creating one large unified system, you are making it easier to game and corrupt the system than by having fifty small ones. No, you don't have to corrupt more than a dozen or so large states to change the result, but by making it one system you make it a lot easier. You also make it harder to detect, since the one result would have nothing to be compared to.
No, thanks, I think the original founders did a good job designing our elections of the president, even if they don't always turn out the way I want. You see, I can accept that people vote for someone other than who I want and don't need to pretend that the only reason my guy lost is because there was massive cheating by the other guy.
On an aside, I'm alway facinated by the claims of some candidates that "absentee ballots" ought to be thrown out for various reasons (after they are counted and are why that guy lost), when I live in a state where every ballot is an absentee ballot.
* Well, other than this ridiculous notion of staggering the closing of the polls across the country, so that the announcement of winners on the east coast does have an effect on the results from the west. The only change I would like to see is closing the polls at the same time everywhere for presidential elections. One election out of many, and no process changes other than how long people have to vote. Keep them all open until midnight PST. Nobody loses time. Everyone gains time to vote. Yes, that's 3AM in New York. So what?
Yes, the story actually is about some guy who got caught violating a policy he knew about that was a condition of him getting special access into the game. It's actually a pretty modern policy, attempting to incorporate modern technology into its licensing plans. If the NCAA allows everyone to do live broadcasting of game data for free, then why would anyone pay for it? If NBC is paying a buttload of money for TV rights, and people didn't watch because the NCAA allowed some local paper to do a live blog of the game, why would NBC pay a buttload of money for the next game?
What gives them the legal right to control access to live or recorded broadcasts of text accounts of games?
The fact that they are running the games. Do you think that everyone should have the right to go to a play and set up a camera with a live feed out to the world? The producers would be mighty upset and would have you hauled out. Why shouldn't the game producers do the same? Do you think it would be ok for someone to go to a play to transcribe the dialog, and then sell copies of the transcription?
I don't think they have those rights, though many sporting organizations try to claim them.
The courts have already ruled otherwise. It's contract law.
Witness the NFL's ridiculous disclaimer: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."
It's not a disclaimer, it is a legal statement of copyright. It's very upfront in telling you what you cannot do with the broadcast. You cannot, for example, show the telecast in a bar and charge admission. That's not "private use".
No law that I am aware of stops you from telling somebody what you think about the game, be it over the water cooler at work...
That's "private use of our audience". It's ok.
or on your blog.
That's called "public dissemination", and the copyright statement prohibits it. If you are a newspaper or doing it for commercial purposes, expect a visit from NFL lawyers.
That, and the golf game with the music that was just that much out of tune.
There was only one newspaper I saw that reminded us after the VT shootings that yes, indeed, armed students can prevent this from happening, because they already have. I recycled the paper so I don't have the details handy, but the campus was in the northeast, and there were two students, one of them armed, one who had to run to his car to get his "heat", who prevented a shooting spree. Most of the mass media who covered the event focussed on the students taking action and not that they felt secure taking action because they were, themselves, armed, and could shoot the bastard if he hadn't surrendered.
You mean, like, if you were living in, like, Germany in 1943, or Iraq in 1998, and some nutcase dictator was killing your friends because they were "the wrong kind of people" or because they were speaking up against the killing of "the wrong kind of people", and maybe killing you because you were friends with "the wrong kind of people", you'd actively fight against anyone who would come in and remove the nutcase and let you live your life without fear of being killed for being "the wrong kind of person"? Yes, I guess a lot of Germans and Iraqi did, so you'd not be alone.
No, that hatred is reserved for the bastards that initiated this travesty.
Well, Saddam's dead. I don't recall if his two kids are dead or not. But good, you're right to hate the dictator who spent ten years thumbing his nose at the UN and the UN mandates, which is why we had to go back and finish the job we didn't finish the first time. Remind me why we stopped the first time? Oh yeah, so we could "let peace have a chance."
I don't know if you are attributing the fear to me or to the teacher. No, I am not afraid of the essay, even without knowing what it said. I don't know if the teacher and the panel that she met with was afraid, but that's irrelevant. I don't know what they thought about any of this. What I do know is that they contacted the police, which tells me that they probably thought the essay contained something worthy of contacting the police. Or that they simply didn't know if it did, and erred on the side of caution. Just what objective criteria do you apply to this kind of thing to know if you ought to call or not? That's what I mean when I say they just don't have the tools.
What you or I think about the essay is irrelevant, too, since neither you nor I will be called upon the carpet for ignoring the warning signs of a future mass murderer by ignoring the essay.
That's the point. It's not fear. It's CYA. Cover your ass. It's what happens when the press goes crazy tracking down every potential warning sign that anyone ever overlooked after a nutcase shoots a dozen people, trying to find the "cause" for "this horrible tragedy". They MUST find the cause. It's not good enough to say that an irrational nutcase decided to shoot a bunch of people. It cannot be his fault, there must have been someone else to blame. Let's investigate his school life and friends and especially teachers!
If this student eventually, through failure to intervene with counselling or whatever, went over the line and shot 83 people, the press would be waving this essay around demanding to know why this teacher who saw this obvious warning sign did NOTHING.
Ok, maybe it is fear, but not fear of the student shooting anyone, but fear of being blamed for his spree, and maybe fear of lawsuits from victim's families when they point out that this teacher should have seen and heeded the obvious warning signs, and was negligent because she did nothing.
If it's proven that teacher overreacted out of fear ...
You will never prove that. You can assume it was fear, but it could just as easily have been CYA. And it doesn't matter, it will never be her fault that Cho did anything.
The more we blame people who have no means of preventing the problems other than calling the police for every unhappy person they come across, the more we will have people calling the police for every unhappy person they come across. It wasn't Cho's teachers or TAs or parents who shot a bunch of people, it was Cho. Put the blame where it belongs.
I have two HP laptops with Vista Home. When they were bought, the concept was that it was ok, I'd just install linux and they'd be productive.
I have yet to find a Linux that runs properly on them. Fedora Core 6 won't start X. Neither Ubuntu nor Knoppix nor SuSE see the full resolution of the screen or the wireless adapter. The 'Beryl' version of Knoppix doesn't run Beryl at all. Mandriva? no.
If I were paranoid, I'd suspect that the advanced hardware requirements for Vista were a ploy to force hardware changes faster than Linux can react, thus removing Linux as an option.
I'd like to hear suggestions for a good distro for these systems.
I think many people and companies are uncomfortable with this Reduced Functionality Mode threat that results when a copy of Vista hasn't been able to re-authorize itself by contacting Microsoft for permission to keep running. I wonder what will happen when a travelling exec for a fortune 500 company cannot use his laptop because it decided it had been just too long without checking?
I use computers in locations that are GASP not connected to the Internet. I use them for search and rescue activities. It would be negligent for me to use an operating system that I know is going to want to "call home to papa" or shut itself down when it cannot. Unfortunately, some of the apps that I need are not available on Linux. Also unfortunately, I am not the only user, so there is a training issue with trying to run them under Wine, if they ran in the first place.
The local college bookstore used to display student XP upgrades for $25. I tried to buy 4. "Sorry, Microsoft rules, you can only buy one." As if students only have one computer?
No. Wi-fi is at 2.4GHz. Cell phones are 800-900MHz or 1900MHz (PCS). A 100MHz signal mixing with a 2.4GHz one results in -- 2.5GHz and 2.3GHz. A 100MHz signal mixing with a 900MHz one results in 800MHz and 1000MHz (the latter in the middle of the ILS glideslope band.) Those numbers are general, but in the right neighborhood to the specific ones in use.
Since users and flight attendants would be incabapble of knowing which band each phone was on, and it would be interesting, to say the least, for a flight attendant to tell one person to shut his phone (800MHz) off while allowing someone else (PCS) to use theirs, the only reasonable ban is all of them.
As for the "technical" reasons. Completely bunk. Modern airplanes have all their signal wires twisted pair and shielded (very RF immune). While it IS possible for cell phones to create considerable interference (particularly GSM), airline systems are VERY well shielded.
PERHAPS, maybe when they first leave the assembly line, but after thousands of hours in use the
shielding is not so good anymore, if it really is that good to start with.
The Mythbusters episode did not prove anything, other than perhaps that a specific set of conditions did not result in interference. It certainly did not prove that all possible conditions will not cause interference ever.
The thought that it would interfere with ground based systems is simply rediculous. What ground based systems? Other cell networks? No.
Cell networks have a limited number of channels that they can use. Cell towers are coordinated so that neighboring towers don't use the same channels. They can do this based on knowledge of the terrain that each tower covers, with predictions of signal strength. This also assumes a land-based transmitter. Take a land-based transmitter into the air and its range extends immensely. Move that same transmitter along at 500MPH and it suddenly not only covers a lot of space on the ground but comes in contact with a lot of towers (and loses contant with a lot of towers) very quickly. Sorting out which tower a cell phone is talking to is much harder under such conditions, and consumes many more resources than a static ground-based caller.
There is no difference between being on the ground or in the air.
Explain that to the pilot who cannot contact ATC via radio while parked on the airport ramp but can easily do so once airborne. (There are many airports where there are no ATC facilities but from which pilots must communicate with ATC prior to taking off. Sometimes there are remoted radio facilities installed to deal with this, but in many places, it's the payphone at the FBO that solves the problem.)
Examples of interference? Well, I know my cell phone is about to ring when I'm watching TV and see the interference. The GPS unit in my car, which lives in a small aluminum box under the back seat, throws a VERY strong birdie right on top of the local police frequency when it is on, making it impossible to scan the cops.
The fact that passengers on an airplane are not told when the guys in front are having interference issues does not mean those issues never happened, just that you weren't told about it.
Vonage was upfront about this when I got their service. It shouldn't
be a surprise -- and it only affects those alarm services that use
copper to monitor the system. If your alarm system is independent of
the phone lines (i.e., doesn't need Daddy watching it all the time) there
is no problem.
Let's say you live in the state of Oregon, and it is a few years from now, when the general gas tax is replaced by a road usage tax.
You WILL have a GPS system in your car.
Since the road usage tax amount will depend on which roads you use and what time you use them (e.g. I-5 in downtown Portland at noon is 15 cents per mile, at 3AM is 5 cents per mile), your GPS will record everyplace you drive and at what time. This data will be uploaded when you buy gas, and you will be taxed based on that data.
The proponents of this nonsense claim that there will be no possible misuse of this data. In fact, they DENY that there will be any location and time data recorded, but cannot say how the road/time based usage will be calculated without it.
Yes, this is a real idea being really considered in Oregon. I know one of the people who developed the proof-of-concept hardware and even she won't admit that collecting data will be necessary.
Whether any of the diagrams in later chapters print with the black block overlaying the graphics that I've seen acroread do so often, I don't know.
Yes.
So has MythBusters.
Not much happens with a hole as small as a bullet hole.
On the other hand, the people trying to take over the airplane don't do very well with bulletholes in them. They won't "massacre everyone on the plane" before they get shot full of bulletholes.
And, if we want to count the costs, if only half the people on the plane survive the attempt, that's half more than survived 9/11.
Personally, I'd feel much safer carrying my pocketknife (and knowing that others had theirs) than I do now, knowing that any motivated terrorist can get whatever weapons onto a plane that he wants and the rest of us are unarmed completely.
You do know that you can apply your miles to her ticket if you buy them together, don't you? I wound up paying for a co-worker's upgrade because I DIDN'T know that. I asked for an upgrade, and they upgraded her too, because our tickets were tied together in the system. I though they were being nice to her -- until I saw my milage statement a month later.
Came back from Europe recently. Picked up bag at destination. TSA lock had been ripped off the bag, taking two zipper pulls with it. (Bag is now unlockable.)
Looked inside. Contents rearranged, but on the top of the pile were ...
the two DVDs and a CD I bought in Amsterdam. No TSA notice that they'd
vandalized my bag. No apology. No lock. Nothing missing, so it wasn't a thief who did it.
From all appearances, they pried open my bag in a desperate rush to check that the DVDs and CD were not pirated material. I know of no current danger to aircraft from DVD or CD shaped objects that would have justified the deliberate vandalism of my property.
On a side note, Minnesota bomb squad blows up scientific instruments. A scientist returning from MN left her stream-bed temperature sensors in the trunk of the rental car. Instead of paging her while she was still in the airport, the rental company called the police, the police called the FBI, the FBI called the bomb squad, and the bomb squad destroyed all of her data. PVC pipes with holes drilled in them, end caps, and gravel inside. Boom!
Being able to determine what is and is not valid on the internet requires a background set of information against which to compare. Setting kids loose on the internet and telling them, in essence, "you go figure out what's correct and what isn't", is sending them out completely unprepared.
That's not saying that everything taught in the schools is correct, but the percentage is much higher than what one finds using google.
Two fish were in a tank. One asks the other "do you know how to drive this thing?"
I can. If I ever run into Nikki from UKBB7 I'd have to slap her a few times to get her to stop whinging.
NO! NO! Nikki, I didn't mean it! I love you. Will you marry me? I'll give you an award for being just you, I'll keep the house at 28C, I'm richer than Pete and I can pretend to randomly emit profanity! I'll give you FIVE bottles of wine at a time! Oh, please. Please? I'd never make you sit in a locked room silently!
Now, Dr. Rob and Will Boogie are another story. They are simply amoral and need some humanity leveraged into them, the hard way.
I started using CFLs, and I found that they do not last longer than normal incandescents. There are incandescents I have never changed in my house (since I bought it), but I've had to replace every CFL I've installed at least once.
They also stick out above the lampshade on smaller lamps and look really ugly when they do. Plus they have an odd coloration. And don't dim.
That's why I don't.
B) What the heck is a "high quality slow-scan tape" anyway? SSTV is done using AUDIO, so all you need is a standard audio tape and you've got as high a quality as you need. There is no way anyone mistakenly recorded The Simpsons over these, unless you recorded just the audio track.