Wow, a post not full of hate;). I think it's simply moderator inertia. My original post got mis(half)read by too many people so it got flames and so it got modded down from insightful to flamebait. This one got modded down by relation.
It's too bad. The topic of the social value and relative importance of a voter's vote is quite interesting, but apparently only makes me a troll / something-ish here on./
Did you really? Silly me. Perhaps the part where you picked discrete word sets and created your own inflammatory context for them thew me off.
I mean, I can't for the life of me see where I claimed that the US can or should implement a system where owning land makes your vote count more. Or using tax payer status, for that matter. I see where I _did_ allude to the "multiple votes" concept, which has been discussed, much like alternate voting systems, but that's kind of about it.
Now I'm off to figure out how "Perhaps because" is read "The Ohio state voting regulations say they can't vote because"
> This is the first time a comment on Slashdot almost made me puke
That's too bad. Maybe you could keep your lunch if you bothered to actually read the whole post? Or maybe you could have just bother to think that it was a hypothetical comment. I mean, is it still cool to talk about things to better understand them? Devil's advocate and such?
Apparently not... So, I'll just quote the part of the post you obviously didn't read:
"...that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote..." to rephrase: Despite what I just said, I do think these people should be allowed to vote.
Hell, given the absolutely ridiculously knee jerk reactions to my post I'd rather seem them vote than the people here. At least they're generally level-headed and open to discussion.
> I see nothing about paying taxes. Nothing about owning land. Nothing about having families.
> Basically, you're talking out your ass with no factual basis for doing so.
W... T... F...? Did you not even read my post? Or did you just ignore parts because you felt like replying? Don't worry, though, you've got a lot of company.
I was replying to a post asking "Why shouldn't a homeless person have the same right to vote as me?". (I even quite it, for convenience.) Ergo, my post contained some reasons why homeless people arguably oughtn't "have the same right vote". And then I concluded with: "...that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote..."
Maybe the verbage confused you? I'll put it another way: Despite what I just said, I do think these people should be allowed to vote.
> Your idea of "most laws" is "cars and copyright"
My apologies for not breaking my nicely formatted list to give you a vastly more complete list. I hoped that the examples would demonstrate my train of thought and I would thus not have to list every category of law that homeless people don't interact with, since, after all, it's one hell of a list. Property ownership, investments, taxes, corporate law... really anything that doesn't involve social welfare and physical stuff (e.g. violence). Let me be explicit this time: complete the list yourself.
> Homeless people have far more interaction with the actually important laws, and far more need for > those laws to be reasonable and just, than people whose idea of the "law" is limited to traffic > rules and copyright.
Right, because these laws are swinging around on a daily basis and threatening the future of our rights.
Oh wait, they're not! Sorry to be a dick, but the laws that affect most homeless are ones that have been around for a long time and generally not very far reaching (by which I mean both local and with few implications). Indeed, for the present context of the presidential campaign, there is likely very little that their vote will do to affect their daily lives, especially in comparison to a local election. (Health care is all I can think of ATM, but the changes probably won't affect them.)
The laws I'm talking about are things like wire tapping and other forms of illegal searches. And draconian 'IP' protections. And the war on terror. And maybe banking and investment regulations? You know, things that show up here on/. a lot? The shit hitting the fan?
> Maybe we need a country and people that believe in statements like: We hold these truths to > be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with > certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
We've already got one, and I just happen to live there. What I don't do, however, is blindly follow a inappropriately literal and blatantly false interpretation of one of our founding documents. The point of that line was to say that, born prince or peasant, we are all human and all have a right to live free. It is not some sort of blank check to enforce the lowest common denominator upon society.
I do feel sorry for the guy at the polling place (and his mother); such a birth defect is a terrible thing. However, I am not going to try to delude myself into believing that his vote is somehow magically just as beneficial to society as that of myself or anyone else.
> Why shouldn't a homeless person have the same right to vote as me?
<disclaimer>These, like all statements, are generalizations;)</disclaimer>
Perhaps because: A) They don't pay taxes B) They don't own land C) They don't have families D) They don't have any interaction with most laws (from cars to copyright)...and so on...
The fact is there are far more reasons they _shouldn't_ vote than should. Homeless people have little to no stake in society or the future so their votes will tend to go in the most short sighted, self serving direction possible. This is the same situation with extremely old/senile people (i.e. those who can't care for themselves). They don't care if social security comes crashing down in ten years because they want theirs and probably won't be alive then anyway. There are also mentally retarded people; this last primary I saw a lady was obviously leveraging her disabled son for a second vote (the son couldn't even answer when the poll worker asked him his name).
And that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote, but is to say that there are people in this country that ought to vote more, if you will. There have been propositions that would offer additional votes to people that meet certain criteria (like owning land, etc), but like most voting reform they never even made it to a draft bill.
> But will it simply turn into a gambling chip against the RIAA to get a marginally better deal?
What do you mean "turn into"? It already _is_. You quit your job if you're fed up with it; you threaten to quit if you want something. The only real question here is how long the RIAA takes to meet their demands. Too slow and they'll quit for real.
Remember that there's a love-hate relationship between artists and the RIAA. Working in entertainment usually means giving up making good money (doing something else) to do something you love. The only time you make excellent money is when you become a superstar. If the RIAA didn't exist, that will almost never happen, while with it, you stand a pretty good chance (and basically no chance if you are against it). So artists put up with the RIAA because they'd otherwise probably be looking at flipping burgers and doing gigs on the weekends. The internet has made that not quite as true, but they'll still probably never be able to book a large venue.
The only sympathy I have is for people who turn 18 between now and then. People who are just registering now (again, unless then just came of age) are demonstrating a clear lack of interest in politics in general and are voting only because of the hyped campaign and the "get out the vote" efforts. Hell, they didn't even register to vote in primary. I registered to vote less than a month after I turned 18 because I care about these things (including primaries). Did you know that primaries frequently decide a large portion of local positions? Most people don't because they only vote every four years when the media tells them to. I'm not saying all late registrations are going to vote uninformed, but I'd be surprised if most didn't. Though luck to those who are so apathetic that they didn't bother to register by now.
Indeed. However, it is still very interesting news. This demonstrates an attack against encryption without actual decryption. While perhaps not exactly a first, the fact that it is exploitable under real world circumstances* makes it quite important. Indeed, this may be the first nail in the coffin of simple block cyphers.
*While most people don't store uncompressed bitmaps, I have to imagine that camera RAW files wouldn't be too uncommon, and the attack may be adaptable to include those (they usually use RLE though, IIRC).
> But copying, where the original owner still has a perfect and fully functional object.. is different.
Ah, but in this case, they didn't just copy it, they _patented_ it.
Contrary to popular believe, it is possible to steal IP rather than merely violate a legal stature (copyright, patent, etc.). While a copy is nothing more than a copy (and therefore only implies a loss of possible revenue rather than actually monetary loss), the right to produce those copies is a unique 'item' that has real value. If someone takes it, it's not yours anymore and they therefore stole it.
I suppose one could argue that IP isn't "real" because it's just your name on some paper, but then again, what's you deed? And hell, IP ownership is a lot clearer than, say, ownership of my wallet, as, after all, who's to say it my wallet anyway? It could be in my pocket 'cause I just stole it.
Point being: Don't confuse violation of IP rights (e.g. copying) with true theft of IP (a fraudulent patent in this case).
My understanding of the dating process of zircons (dunno how related this is; too late to RTFA) is that it isn't based on the material itself, but it's position within a crystal. Essentially, there is the (decent) assumption that when a crystal is formed the structure is (mostly) ideal. However, when radioactive decay occurs the element changes, but its position in the lattice does not. Ergo, decay products will be at warped points in the lattice, while identical elements (which would have been themselves at formation) will not. That allows one to count the relative quantity of decay vs. parent and, from the half life, deduce the age.
Again, that's zircon crystals, which are usually the things dated this old, but I'm not sure that's what it is in this case.
What really screws up this business is the fact that we seem to have observed several ways in which the fine structure constant is not, in fact, constant. (Well, that or something else that affects half-life.) Just recently (as posted here on./) scientists have observed a change that seemed to be related to the distance from the sun. Further, we have known for a while now about natural fission reactors in Africa that, while showing evidence of functioning at one time, could not have possibly ever worked given our current value of the FSC. In short: looks like radioactive decay isn't so constant.
It's not too far unlike the the reason why labor laws generally do not allow you to opt-out (minimum wage, lunch, etc). While it is understandable that workers may want to on their own accord, it becomes extremely difficult to prove that they weren't encouraged to by their employer.
Similarly, if we're allowed to harvest organ from people we killed on purpose, how can we be sure that the person was killed for legitimate reasons? So we look to legislation to minimize any positive side effects to a person's death.
And likewise, while embryos might not count as human life, they are human. By allowing people to harvest stem cells from them, you are putting utility in destroying human could-be-life. The end result is not awfully far from _farming_ human could-be-life since, as above, proving things like 'abandoned' is difficult. This doesn't sit well with a lot of people, and especially so with those that view embryos are full fledged human life.
> then wouldn't it be worse having them run the military, police, and writing laws?
Actually, that's bad enough really. The only reason it's hard to argue is that those are what governments are for in the first place (philosophically speaking). Everything else is extra.
> public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure
The thing about this list here is that they're run by different entities: Local: law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries State: public schools, roads Federal: post offices
Notice a trend? Things from the local level tend to be pretty solid, but the higher up you go the more corruption and bureaucracy you run into. It's also very much worth noting that the only thing from your list of no-so-bad things from the federal level is the USPS, which was established before the federal government became huge. It was also designed to work like a business (IIRC) because the fed didn't have gigabucks from income tax.
Also, I don't think I've seen public schools ever viewed as anything more than better than nothing, and the amount of corruption (kickbacks, cronyism, etc.) and bureaucracy in most states' DOT dwarfs that of many programs that didn't make your list. Again, little more than better than nothing.
So, for local things like public WiFi, I expect that socialization could be OK (depending on your locality). However, if it were to be adopted on a national level the federal government would step in and turn it into a nightmare. There'd probably be something about logging in / associating your MAC address to protect the children, massive log retention, and they'd probably try to sneak in a national ID too. No thanks.
> When your WHOLE COUNTRY is behind a firewall? NAT the hell out of that!
The firewall is more figurative than literal. My understanding is that it basically bans certain IPs/domains. That can be done with a stateless system, while a true NAT/firewall would need to track all packets of all connections of all users. Not impossible, but insanely expensive. Plus it would have the unpleasant side effect of actually firewalling China (i.e. no incoming connections), whereas now they just don't let you view certain things.
The whole point is largely moot anyway. First, as was pointed out above, the entire world is estimated to run out in about 780 days, so they've apparently got more time then the rest of use. Second, the primary usage of IPs comes from blocks assigned to institutions and businesses, with the latter _requiring_ incoming connections. Could a business have one public IP and NAT/load balance their servers and whatnot? Sure, but they could always switch to IP6, which is gonna be a lot cheaper than all these NATs
> No they don't. Everyone has a right to a public education in this country.
No they don't. It is in the public's best interests to educate everyone as much as reasonably possible (to a functional minimum, i.e. high school) so we have built a system of "free" education and go so far as to require children to attend. However, it wasn't so long ago that medically retarded children were not required to be educated, and were instead allowed to go to (read: the states provided funding for) a sort of community where they would live and work to sustain themselves by gardening, doing laundry, etc. This has, of course, been abolished.
The point being, though, that education is not a "right" in any way shape or form. Instead it is a _duty_ created to better society so that everyone(-ish) at least knows how to read along with some math, science, etc. If it is determined that a child is unfit to perform this duty due to delinquency, incompetence (not anymore, see above), or something else, then society will release them from this duty and thereby withdraw the related financial support. Think of suspension as a warning in this direction.
> Libel and slander are illegal, and for good reason. What this kid did was libel, and should be handled through the court system.
Well hey now, that's a bit more rough than simple suspension, don't you think?
People seem to forget two important issues regarding high school and below: A) Most students are less than 18 and therefore have (basically) no rights/freedoms. B) Schools are given the same rights as parents. (See "In loco parentis")
Point A is not so relevant to your comment, but is included for completeness. Point B basically says that schools can choose to largely ignore the law and do as they see fit, essentially acting as parents. So, I'm really not too surprised by this, and quite frankly wish things like it would stop coming up on Slashdot; it's just stupid. Before the internet, kids would do similar shit and get paddled, usually. Now that's out, so they get suspended. Big deal. Maybe we should stop bitching about the patent office considering the same old crap online novel, since here we apparently consider the same old events happening online as newsworthy.
You know context is great. Like if you want to pass a draconian law these days put it in the context of catching terrorists or pedophiles. Done, right? In the context of illegal (underage) drinking, looking through profiles is suddenly not a possible invasion of privacy?
Don't get me wrong, I certainly agree that doing illegal things is dumb and (knowingly) getting photographed doing them is even worse. However, you're forgetting that the USA isn't the world, and most places have significantly lower drinking ages. Are we to believe that these colleges are doing enough research to determine if these people were in the US at the time? I seriously doubt it.
The point of this discussion (or at the least, my previous post) was related to the general case. This includes, in particular, potential employers that will almost certainly be looking at your profile after all legal age requirements have been met. Trying to legitimize things in certain contexts is not usually a good thing to do...
So are you trying to say that people shouldn't drink, have sex, or do anything else that others would consider inappropriate so as to ensure such actions could never be photographed and posted online? Or when you say "your own actions" you mean the actions of the person that's taking the picture and then posting it?
There are a lot of things that people can do very responsibly, like drinking and having sex, and I for one don't care (in principle) if the events are cataloged by photo or what have you. The trouble is, however, that other (such as these colleges) view such behavior as 'inappropriate'. That's why many people will not post such things on the internet. The problem here is that some people _will_ post pictures/accounts regardless of the wishes of those in the pictures/accounts. So unless your idea of taking responsibility involves a shotgun, I fail to see how it, in any way, helps the situation.
(Of course, the real problem lies in the hypocrisy of the admissions boards. I highly doubt that they never went to parties or had sex or did something that looked stupid for laughs. But for some reason the fact that these kids doing the same means that the will make shitty students? Give me a break. I've got a lot of respect for those boards that consider these pages to be personal and don't look as to avoid biasing themselves with information they know isn't relevant.)
> So, if the LHC really destroys the earth we'll keep observing it not functioning correctly.
Until it does, in fact, start working and destroy the earth. After all, while all the many-things ideas are fun to discuss, they only say that if the LHC necessarily destroys earth when it works, there will be branches that will have observed the LHC never working and that these will be the only ones with humanity intact.
We could very well observe the destruction of the world, but we can rest assured that some other versions of us will continue on, wondering how the LHC turned out to be a total piece of crap.
Politicians make laws in the same way that PHB's manage people. They make the laws and if you break them it's because you're a criminal. After all, they made the laws to protect you, don't you want to be protected?
The trouble is that they make the laws with (mostly) good (but very ignorant) intentions. When they see people frequently breaking the law they think it's more a matter of law enforcement not having the right tools to stop the crime. Therefore they increase law enforcement's power. It would be nice if they instead just figured that the law was unenforcible or otherwise bad, but again, since they wrote it and passed it in good faith, they believe the failing must be elsewhere...
Wow... Not to go too off-topic here, but I'm surprised people are still parroting that. It's been rather clearly shown that McCain understands and uses email he just can't type it himself. Here's an article from 2000; ctrl-f "Vietnam" to jump to the relevant paragraph.
Back on topic, age has nothing to do with it. The fact of the matter is that most Americans do not care about these copyright issues. Most are only barely aware of their existence. It's therefore not too surprising that most people in office don't really care either. If this became a hot issue than you can damn well expect that the politicians would start caring, but right now things like health care and what-have-you are what count.
> while squatting pisses me off, it would appear that this (and other domains like it) were > registered by someone who thought ahead, more than 12 years ahead in fact. He IS using the > domain, and what he's using it for doesn't matter
But what is squatting but thinking ahead and beating other people to a domain? The fact that the site is about the Olympics demonstrates that this guy registered the domain knowing that if Chicago were to bid on the 2016 Olympics that this would be the domain they wanted.
Do remember that trademark law is supposed to protect the consumer from confusion. Given that the has become a conventional naming scheme for the various Olympics, it is in the public's best interest that the name be the trademark of the committee rather than this guy. Sure, he registered this name first, but the whole bit could easily be viewed as a brand mark (for lack of a better term) of the Olympic Games, and designed far before he registered these names.
I do think it'll be an interesting case since I don't believe the concept of trademarked name formulations has come up before. Most naming patterns generally consist of a trademarked name and another term (e.g. Microsoft Toaster), so the case can be decided on the basis of the trademarked term. Since "Chicago" isn't trademarked (or, perhaps, it is?) then the ruling will depend on whether the pattern is a sort of branding or not.
Quite frankly I hope this guy loses since I don't really see any difference between this and good old domain squatting except for the page having fewer adds. If this was a page for a big party he was planning on holding in Chicago in 2016 I would feel otherwise, but he obviously knew what he was doing.
Hate to burst your bubble, but it is rather well known that Republicans are much more devout voters that Democrats. That is how Rs can win despite the larger quantity of Ds that show up in polls. I would therefore expect that actually this would end up at best a wash, but more likely to cement a McCain victory in Texas. However, I do expect that the 3rd parties on the ballot will be a bit better off for it. At least it'll teach the big two not to expect everyone to lick their boots.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, a post not full of hate ;). I think it's simply moderator inertia. My original post got mis(half)read by too many people so it got flames and so it got modded down from insightful to flamebait. This one got modded down by relation.
It's too bad. The topic of the social value and relative importance of a voter's vote is quite interesting, but apparently only makes me a troll / something-ish here on ./
Did you really? Silly me. Perhaps the part where you picked discrete word sets and created your own inflammatory context for them thew me off.
I mean, I can't for the life of me see where I claimed that the US can or should implement a system where owning land makes your vote count more. Or using tax payer status, for that matter. I see where I _did_ allude to the "multiple votes" concept, which has been discussed, much like alternate voting systems, but that's kind of about it.
Now I'm off to figure out how "Perhaps because" is read "The Ohio state voting regulations say they can't vote because"
Cheers
> This is the first time a comment on Slashdot almost made me puke
That's too bad. Maybe you could keep your lunch if you bothered to actually read the whole post? Or maybe you could have just bother to think that it was a hypothetical comment. I mean, is it still cool to talk about things to better understand them? Devil's advocate and such?
Apparently not... So, I'll just quote the part of the post you obviously didn't read:
"...that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote..."
to rephrase:
Despite what I just said, I do think these people should be allowed to vote.
Hell, given the absolutely ridiculously knee jerk reactions to my post I'd rather seem them vote than the people here. At least they're generally level-headed and open to discussion.
> I see nothing about paying taxes. Nothing about owning land. Nothing about having families. > Basically, you're talking out your ass with no factual basis for doing so.
W... T... F...? Did you not even read my post? Or did you just ignore parts because you felt like replying? Don't worry, though, you've got a lot of company.
I was replying to a post asking "Why shouldn't a homeless person have the same right to vote as me?". (I even quite it, for convenience.) Ergo, my post contained some reasons why homeless people arguably oughtn't "have the same right vote". And then I concluded with: "...that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote..."
Maybe the verbage confused you? I'll put it another way: Despite what I just said, I do think these people should be allowed to vote.
Easy enough this time around?
> Your idea of "most laws" is "cars and copyright"
My apologies for not breaking my nicely formatted list to give you a vastly more complete list. I hoped that the examples would demonstrate my train of thought and I would thus not have to list every category of law that homeless people don't interact with, since, after all, it's one hell of a list. Property ownership, investments, taxes, corporate law... really anything that doesn't involve social welfare and physical stuff (e.g. violence). Let me be explicit this time: complete the list yourself.
> Homeless people have far more interaction with the actually important laws, and far more need for
> those laws to be reasonable and just, than people whose idea of the "law" is limited to traffic
> rules and copyright.
Right, because these laws are swinging around on a daily basis and threatening the future of our rights.
Oh wait, they're not! Sorry to be a dick, but the laws that affect most homeless are ones that have been around for a long time and generally not very far reaching (by which I mean both local and with few implications). Indeed, for the present context of the presidential campaign, there is likely very little that their vote will do to affect their daily lives, especially in comparison to a local election. (Health care is all I can think of ATM, but the changes probably won't affect them.)
The laws I'm talking about are things like wire tapping and other forms of illegal searches. And draconian 'IP' protections. And the war on terror. And maybe banking and investment regulations? You know, things that show up here on /. a lot? The shit hitting the fan?
> Maybe we need a country and people that believe in statements like: We hold these truths to
> be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
> certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
We've already got one, and I just happen to live there. What I don't do, however, is blindly follow a inappropriately literal and blatantly false interpretation of one of our founding documents. The point of that line was to say that, born prince or peasant, we are all human and all have a right to live free. It is not some sort of blank check to enforce the lowest common denominator upon society.
I do feel sorry for the guy at the polling place (and his mother); such a birth defect is a terrible thing. However, I am not going to try to delude myself into believing that his vote is somehow magically just as beneficial to society as that of myself or anyone else.
> Why shouldn't a homeless person have the same right to vote as me?
<disclaimer>These, like all statements, are generalizations ;)</disclaimer>
Perhaps because: ...and so on...
A) They don't pay taxes
B) They don't own land
C) They don't have families
D) They don't have any interaction with most laws (from cars to copyright)
The fact is there are far more reasons they _shouldn't_ vote than should. Homeless people have little to no stake in society or the future so their votes will tend to go in the most short sighted, self serving direction possible. This is the same situation with extremely old/senile people (i.e. those who can't care for themselves). They don't care if social security comes crashing down in ten years because they want theirs and probably won't be alive then anyway. There are also mentally retarded people; this last primary I saw a lady was obviously leveraging her disabled son for a second vote (the son couldn't even answer when the poll worker asked him his name).
And that's not to say these people shouldn't be allowed to vote, but is to say that there are people in this country that ought to vote more, if you will. There have been propositions that would offer additional votes to people that meet certain criteria (like owning land, etc), but like most voting reform they never even made it to a draft bill.
> But will it simply turn into a gambling chip against the RIAA to get a marginally better deal?
What do you mean "turn into"? It already _is_. You quit your job if you're fed up with it; you threaten to quit if you want something. The only real question here is how long the RIAA takes to meet their demands. Too slow and they'll quit for real.
Remember that there's a love-hate relationship between artists and the RIAA. Working in entertainment usually means giving up making good money (doing something else) to do something you love. The only time you make excellent money is when you become a superstar. If the RIAA didn't exist, that will almost never happen, while with it, you stand a pretty good chance (and basically no chance if you are against it). So artists put up with the RIAA because they'd otherwise probably be looking at flipping burgers and doing gigs on the weekends. The internet has made that not quite as true, but they'll still probably never be able to book a large venue.
The only sympathy I have is for people who turn 18 between now and then. People who are just registering now (again, unless then just came of age) are demonstrating a clear lack of interest in politics in general and are voting only because of the hyped campaign and the "get out the vote" efforts. Hell, they didn't even register to vote in primary. I registered to vote less than a month after I turned 18 because I care about these things (including primaries). Did you know that primaries frequently decide a large portion of local positions? Most people don't because they only vote every four years when the media tells them to. I'm not saying all late registrations are going to vote uninformed, but I'd be surprised if most didn't. Though luck to those who are so apathetic that they didn't bother to register by now.
Indeed. However, it is still very interesting news. This demonstrates an attack against encryption without actual decryption. While perhaps not exactly a first, the fact that it is exploitable under real world circumstances* makes it quite important. Indeed, this may be the first nail in the coffin of simple block cyphers.
*While most people don't store uncompressed bitmaps, I have to imagine that camera RAW files wouldn't be too uncommon, and the attack may be adaptable to include those (they usually use RLE though, IIRC).
> But copying, where the original owner still has a perfect and fully functional object.. is different.
Ah, but in this case, they didn't just copy it, they _patented_ it.
Contrary to popular believe, it is possible to steal IP rather than merely violate a legal stature (copyright, patent, etc.). While a copy is nothing more than a copy (and therefore only implies a loss of possible revenue rather than actually monetary loss), the right to produce those copies is a unique 'item' that has real value. If someone takes it, it's not yours anymore and they therefore stole it.
I suppose one could argue that IP isn't "real" because it's just your name on some paper, but then again, what's you deed? And hell, IP ownership is a lot clearer than, say, ownership of my wallet, as, after all, who's to say it my wallet anyway? It could be in my pocket 'cause I just stole it.
Point being: Don't confuse violation of IP rights (e.g. copying) with true theft of IP (a fraudulent patent in this case).
> If the report is factual...
So, like, that's kinda the point of the trial... Determining if the plaintiff is right and all that.
Good catch! I suppose that'll teach me to not be too lazy to look up my sources!
My understanding of the dating process of zircons (dunno how related this is; too late to RTFA) is that it isn't based on the material itself, but it's position within a crystal. Essentially, there is the (decent) assumption that when a crystal is formed the structure is (mostly) ideal. However, when radioactive decay occurs the element changes, but its position in the lattice does not. Ergo, decay products will be at warped points in the lattice, while identical elements (which would have been themselves at formation) will not. That allows one to count the relative quantity of decay vs. parent and, from the half life, deduce the age.
Again, that's zircon crystals, which are usually the things dated this old, but I'm not sure that's what it is in this case.
What really screws up this business is the fact that we seem to have observed several ways in which the fine structure constant is not, in fact, constant. (Well, that or something else that affects half-life.) Just recently (as posted here on ./) scientists have observed a change that seemed to be related to the distance from the sun. Further, we have known for a while now about natural fission reactors in Africa that, while showing evidence of functioning at one time, could not have possibly ever worked given our current value of the FSC.
In short: looks like radioactive decay isn't so constant.
It's not too far unlike the the reason why labor laws generally do not allow you to opt-out (minimum wage, lunch, etc). While it is understandable that workers may want to on their own accord, it becomes extremely difficult to prove that they weren't encouraged to by their employer.
Similarly, if we're allowed to harvest organ from people we killed on purpose, how can we be sure that the person was killed for legitimate reasons? So we look to legislation to minimize any positive side effects to a person's death.
And likewise, while embryos might not count as human life, they are human. By allowing people to harvest stem cells from them, you are putting utility in destroying human could-be-life. The end result is not awfully far from _farming_ human could-be-life since, as above, proving things like 'abandoned' is difficult. This doesn't sit well with a lot of people, and especially so with those that view embryos are full fledged human life.
> then wouldn't it be worse having them run the military, police, and writing laws?
Actually, that's bad enough really. The only reason it's hard to argue is that those are what governments are for in the first place (philosophically speaking). Everything else is extra.
> public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure
The thing about this list here is that they're run by different entities:
Local: law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries
State: public schools, roads
Federal: post offices
Notice a trend? Things from the local level tend to be pretty solid, but the higher up you go the more corruption and bureaucracy you run into. It's also very much worth noting that the only thing from your list of no-so-bad things from the federal level is the USPS, which was established before the federal government became huge. It was also designed to work like a business (IIRC) because the fed didn't have gigabucks from income tax.
Also, I don't think I've seen public schools ever viewed as anything more than better than nothing, and the amount of corruption (kickbacks, cronyism, etc.) and bureaucracy in most states' DOT dwarfs that of many programs that didn't make your list. Again, little more than better than nothing.
So, for local things like public WiFi, I expect that socialization could be OK (depending on your locality). However, if it were to be adopted on a national level the federal government would step in and turn it into a nightmare. There'd probably be something about logging in / associating your MAC address to protect the children, massive log retention, and they'd probably try to sneak in a national ID too. No thanks.
> When your WHOLE COUNTRY is behind a firewall? NAT the hell out of that!
The firewall is more figurative than literal. My understanding is that it basically bans certain IPs/domains. That can be done with a stateless system, while a true NAT/firewall would need to track all packets of all connections of all users. Not impossible, but insanely expensive. Plus it would have the unpleasant side effect of actually firewalling China (i.e. no incoming connections), whereas now they just don't let you view certain things.
The whole point is largely moot anyway. First, as was pointed out above, the entire world is estimated to run out in about 780 days, so they've apparently got more time then the rest of use. Second, the primary usage of IPs comes from blocks assigned to institutions and businesses, with the latter _requiring_ incoming connections. Could a business have one public IP and NAT/load balance their servers and whatnot? Sure, but they could always switch to IP6, which is gonna be a lot cheaper than all these NATs
> No they don't. Everyone has a right to a public education in this country.
No they don't. It is in the public's best interests to educate everyone as much as reasonably possible (to a functional minimum, i.e. high school) so we have built a system of "free" education and go so far as to require children to attend. However, it wasn't so long ago that medically retarded children were not required to be educated, and were instead allowed to go to (read: the states provided funding for) a sort of community where they would live and work to sustain themselves by gardening, doing laundry, etc. This has, of course, been abolished.
The point being, though, that education is not a "right" in any way shape or form. Instead it is a _duty_ created to better society so that everyone(-ish) at least knows how to read along with some math, science, etc. If it is determined that a child is unfit to perform this duty due to delinquency, incompetence (not anymore, see above), or something else, then society will release them from this duty and thereby withdraw the related financial support. Think of suspension as a warning in this direction.
> Libel and slander are illegal, and for good reason. What this kid did was libel, and should be handled through the court system.
Well hey now, that's a bit more rough than simple suspension, don't you think?
People seem to forget two important issues regarding high school and below:
A) Most students are less than 18 and therefore have (basically) no rights/freedoms.
B) Schools are given the same rights as parents. (See "In loco parentis")
Point A is not so relevant to your comment, but is included for completeness. Point B basically says that schools can choose to largely ignore the law and do as they see fit, essentially acting as parents. So, I'm really not too surprised by this, and quite frankly wish things like it would stop coming up on Slashdot; it's just stupid. Before the internet, kids would do similar shit and get paddled, usually. Now that's out, so they get suspended. Big deal. Maybe we should stop bitching about the patent office considering the same old crap online novel, since here we apparently consider the same old events happening online as newsworthy.
> The context here is...
You know context is great. Like if you want to pass a draconian law these days put it in the context of catching terrorists or pedophiles. Done, right? In the context of illegal (underage) drinking, looking through profiles is suddenly not a possible invasion of privacy?
Don't get me wrong, I certainly agree that doing illegal things is dumb and (knowingly) getting photographed doing them is even worse. However, you're forgetting that the USA isn't the world, and most places have significantly lower drinking ages. Are we to believe that these colleges are doing enough research to determine if these people were in the US at the time? I seriously doubt it.
The point of this discussion (or at the least, my previous post) was related to the general case. This includes, in particular, potential employers that will almost certainly be looking at your profile after all legal age requirements have been met. Trying to legitimize things in certain contexts is not usually a good thing to do...
> take responsibility for your own actions?
So are you trying to say that people shouldn't drink, have sex, or do anything else that others would consider inappropriate so as to ensure such actions could never be photographed and posted online? Or when you say "your own actions" you mean the actions of the person that's taking the picture and then posting it?
There are a lot of things that people can do very responsibly, like drinking and having sex, and I for one don't care (in principle) if the events are cataloged by photo or what have you. The trouble is, however, that other (such as these colleges) view such behavior as 'inappropriate'. That's why many people will not post such things on the internet. The problem here is that some people _will_ post pictures/accounts regardless of the wishes of those in the pictures/accounts. So unless your idea of taking responsibility involves a shotgun, I fail to see how it, in any way, helps the situation.
(Of course, the real problem lies in the hypocrisy of the admissions boards. I highly doubt that they never went to parties or had sex or did something that looked stupid for laughs. But for some reason the fact that these kids doing the same means that the will make shitty students? Give me a break. I've got a lot of respect for those boards that consider these pages to be personal and don't look as to avoid biasing themselves with information they know isn't relevant.)
> So, if the LHC really destroys the earth we'll keep observing it not functioning correctly.
Until it does, in fact, start working and destroy the earth. After all, while all the many-things ideas are fun to discuss, they only say that if the LHC necessarily destroys earth when it works, there will be branches that will have observed the LHC never working and that these will be the only ones with humanity intact.
We could very well observe the destruction of the world, but we can rest assured that some other versions of us will continue on, wondering how the LHC turned out to be a total piece of crap.
Politicians make laws in the same way that PHB's manage people. They make the laws and if you break them it's because you're a criminal. After all, they made the laws to protect you, don't you want to be protected?
The trouble is that they make the laws with (mostly) good (but very ignorant) intentions. When they see people frequently breaking the law they think it's more a matter of law enforcement not having the right tools to stop the crime. Therefore they increase law enforcement's power. It would be nice if they instead just figured that the law was unenforcible or otherwise bad, but again, since they wrote it and passed it in good faith, they believe the failing must be elsewhere...
> John McCain, who has never used email,
Wow... Not to go too off-topic here, but I'm surprised people are still parroting that. It's been rather clearly shown that McCain understands and uses email he just can't type it himself. Here's an article from 2000; ctrl-f "Vietnam" to jump to the relevant paragraph.
Back on topic, age has nothing to do with it. The fact of the matter is that most Americans do not care about these copyright issues. Most are only barely aware of their existence. It's therefore not too surprising that most people in office don't really care either. If this became a hot issue than you can damn well expect that the politicians would start caring, but right now things like health care and what-have-you are what count.
> while squatting pisses me off, it would appear that this (and other domains like it) were
> registered by someone who thought ahead, more than 12 years ahead in fact. He IS using the
> domain, and what he's using it for doesn't matter
But what is squatting but thinking ahead and beating other people to a domain? The fact that the site is about the Olympics demonstrates that this guy registered the domain knowing that if Chicago were to bid on the 2016 Olympics that this would be the domain they wanted.
Do remember that trademark law is supposed to protect the consumer from confusion. Given that the has become a conventional naming scheme for the various Olympics, it is in the public's best interest that the name be the trademark of the committee rather than this guy. Sure, he registered this name first, but the whole bit could easily be viewed as a brand mark (for lack of a better term) of the Olympic Games, and designed far before he registered these names.
I do think it'll be an interesting case since I don't believe the concept of trademarked name formulations has come up before. Most naming patterns generally consist of a trademarked name and another term (e.g. Microsoft Toaster), so the case can be decided on the basis of the trademarked term. Since "Chicago" isn't trademarked (or, perhaps, it is?) then the ruling will depend on whether the pattern is a sort of branding or not.
Quite frankly I hope this guy loses since I don't really see any difference between this and good old domain squatting except for the page having fewer adds. If this was a page for a big party he was planning on holding in Chicago in 2016 I would feel otherwise, but he obviously knew what he was doing.
Hate to burst your bubble, but it is rather well known that Republicans are much more devout voters that Democrats. That is how Rs can win despite the larger quantity of Ds that show up in polls. I would therefore expect that actually this would end up at best a wash, but more likely to cement a McCain victory in Texas. However, I do expect that the 3rd parties on the ballot will be a bit better off for it. At least it'll teach the big two not to expect everyone to lick their boots.