We wouldn't be anywhere near the slippery slope if people didn't keep trying to scam the system. One of the reasons we need lawyers to understand laws is because the laws have gotten so complicated. And the laws have gotten so complicated because there's always a new loophole that needs closing. And there's always a new loophole because there's always some politician, businessman, tax cheat or other individual who thinks they have found a brilliant way to violate the spirit of the basic law without violating the letter of it.
And even if people haven't consciously tried to circumvent the law, if they get charged with something, they hire lawyers to prove that they didn't ACTUALLY violate the law, thus (if they win) creating a loophole via case law.
When this country dies it will be under the strangling weight of regulation caused by our fears of violent crime and terrorism, and by the idiots and scoundrels who tried to scam the system for their own gain.
I call flamebait. I disagree that Franklin was a "more minor founding father", but I'll stipulate that Franklin may not be as important in literature or politics as Marx, just to get to the stuff you completely left out of your analysis.
First of all, what did Marx do besides invent communism? And communism isn't exactly the most successful political system invented, is it? Can you name one country that is actually governed according to Marx's principles? Socialist dictatorships don't count. By comparison with Franklin, Marx was an ivory-tower academic.
In addition to Franklin's political accomplishments, which go far beyond anything you describe, he was a scientist and an inventor. Two of Ben Franklin's inventions are still in use throughout the world, and another is still in use in parts of it. Can you name them?
Also, Franklin transformed science in the 18th century when he proved that lightning and static electricity were the same phenomenon. This discovery gave him fame comparable to Isaac Newton's in Europe during his lifetime.
We'll see how important Marx still appears 75 years from now, when his distance from the present is similar to Franklin's. You can see how relevant Franklin still is here and here.
if you create your own 1'03" of silence. The copyright on recordings doesn't protect against you making your own recording of the same music.
The copyright on the music itself could take effect, however. So if John Cage could prove that your 1'03" of silence is a partial recording of his work, you could owe him royalties for the composition.
When you copy an existing recording, you owe royalties for the recording. I'm not sure about song-writer's royalties in this case. The RIAA (or the individual record companies) can sue you for copying recordings. Paul McCartney can sue you if you make a cover version of "Help!" (along with thousands of other works by other musicians).
Humor is in the eye of the beholder, so I won't debate which author is funnier. But I think you'll find that Pratchett has the best-integrated plot-lines of the three authors you mention.
I wish I could figure out why you think Aspirin is more sophisticated. To me, his writing is the weakest of the three. Characters are almost as flat as Isaac Asimov's. Asprin's great contribution was his ability to skewer genre-fantasy conventions with a sci-fi or real world twist, but he rarely works the other way around, skewering the real world with a fantasy twist. For Pratchett, anything is fair game.
The variety of characters that Pratchett has available, plus the fact that Ankh-Morpork allows him to introduce new characters with minimal fuss, allows him to take on stories that just don't fit into Asprin's universe. When did Asprin take on Hollywood (Moving Pictures), Rock 'n' Roll (Soul Music), Shakespeare (Wyrd Sisters), or Opera (Maskerade)? Or himself, for that matter?
Both Asprin and Pratchett put their characters into stock, satirical situations, but since the M.Y.T.H. stories revolve around a smaller set of characters, sometimes the characters don't fit the satire or the story line so well. Pratchett essentially runs two ongoing sets of primary characters, with several other personalities that appear less frequently: The Ankh-Morpork gang (primarily the Watch and the Wizards, with various other sub-groups that grow or fade in importance over parts of the series) and the Witches up in Lancre with their supporting cast. The Uberwald group may grow into an ongoing cast as well, but they seem to be more like some of the other ongoing characters like Casanunda the dwarf or King Verence.
Disclosure: I pretty much stopped re-reading Asprin in my late 20's, where I still reread many of Pratchett's works.
Adams and Pratchett are very similar, but if you look at the copyrights on their earliest novels, I think you'll see that they both started up at about the same time. So "Douglas Adams wannabe" isn't fair. It's more like Newton and Liebniz both inventing calculus at the same time. Or Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Or McDonalds and Burger King.
Another big advantage of Pratchett is he's still writing Discworld novels. Adams and Asprin have stopped their series (for various reasons). And Asprin can't seem to write without help. Every story he starts seems to evolve from or to some sort of shared world where other authors do most of the work. Thieve's World anyone? Actually, I found Thieve's World a more interesting series than the MYTH series over the long haul. MYTH should've stopped at a trilogy.
...among others: Most of Florida will be under water, too. No more Everglades, South Beach, or Redneck Riviera. Even if there was enough money to build a sea wall around the whole state, the beaches will be gone and there won't be any drinking water due to salt-water intrusion.
They'll probably build a dike around Disney World though, so don't panic.
I see potential conflicts between NSA's security mentality and the right of the public to access data, but as long as they are restricted to network security and provide appropriate access points for public data this could work.
It would also give a central point of accountability for federal network security, which is sorely lacking in the current environment.
I doubt it. I think the only reason the California people were even notified was because of state law. Consumers in other states aren't being notified because those states don't have laws requiring notification.
In fact, depending on the license published on the outside of the DVD box, the library is probably obligated to sell the DVDs to individuals (although there is probably a fair-use defense if they don't). The DVDs you buy in the store are typically licensed for personal use only, with lending/sharing expressly prohibited. When you give the library the DVD, what you are doing is transferring the license. Although it would be interesting to see the public reaction if the RI/MP/AA started going after libraries, I don't think the average library system could afford the defense unless backed by the ALA, EFF or a similar organization.
It could be worse, there could be a non-transferability clause on the wrapper.
Fraud? If the content and the aggregation he's doing add value for his visitors, why the hell NOT make a profit on it? Do you think any commercial media company really cares about the content they purvey? They want to sell as much ad time/space as possible without alienating their viewers/readers. For an extreme example, look at the old "Computer Shopper" magazine. While the authors and some of the editorial staff may have loved the technology they got to work with every day, the publisher certainly didn't care. And they were able to publish a magazine with 900 pages of Ads and 100 pages of content and people PAID TO READ IT!
This guy is just applying large-scale media techniques to the web. While that may be painful to accept for the die-hard Open Source programmers of the Happy Valley commune (as opposed to the Open Source community at-large), it isn't unethical to display content that doesn't pertain to you personally.
His site will succeed or fail on how many viewers he attracts, and that in turn depends on the value and scope of the content he aggregates. So if he succeeds it proves he IS providing a valuable service, even if it's just simplifying access to information available in other places.
It also explains whey they "needed" to go to Germany to perform simple static load tests that could be done with a multimeter and a few hiwatt potentiometers.
And I wonder how much "assistance" they got from the Maxpoint/Nanopoint/Tagan engineers when they were testing competitors' products, like the ones that blew up.
Actually, now that I think about it, they'd probably just incorporate DRM and RFID into the implant and charge a fee based on any downloads of material from the implant.
And even if it isn't a war of attrition, do you REALLY want to get into an Intellectual Property pissing contest with IBM?? The largest holder of US patents for the last umpteen years? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The GPL IS an EULA. They both grant the user specific rights beyond those granted by copyright law. The only difference is that the GPL grants you many more rights than a typical EULA.
For example: Both the GPL and typical EULAs disclaim liability for patent liability incurred by use of the product. That's why SCO was suing end users and spreading FUD.
Where a typical EULA prohibits redistribution, GPL sets conditions for redistribution. But they both subject the user to contractual obligations related to redistribution.
The L in both cases is for "LICENSE" which is the type of agreement/contract you enter into by clicking on the "I agree" button. Just because most users won't edit or redistribute the source code doesn't mean that the user isn't subject to the terms of the GPL when using the software.
The reason they look so different to most people is because from an end-user perspective, the GPL is completely non-restrictive, while a typical EULA has numerous restrictions. Only when you get into source code and redistribution does the GPL start to restrict your behavior, and even then it is still much less constraining than a commercial EULA.
BTW has anyone considered that the heat being absorbed and re-radiated by the particles in the atmosphere could actually be CAUSING global warming by causing more heat to appear in the upper atmosphere rather than further down?
A lot of people had addressed dust and heat issues, but this is the first comment I've seen that mentions the risks of cold. Most chips are specified to operate approximately between 0 and 70 degrees Celsius (some may go to 100 C), which is roughly 32 to 126 Fahrenheit. So much of North America will be too cold during the winter to cold-start the computer in an unheated building. In fact, if you get below 0 F, you might break a processor even without running it (kind of like freezing your pipes, but with silicon vs. water).
The operating temperatures refer to the on-chip temperature, so once the CPU warms up it's probably safe to run the computer in the cold, but you probably should invest in a space heater for the coldest days. Or as the parent suggests, buy a laptop, power it up indoors and take it out with you.
With digital, the problem isn't SNR it's THD (Total Harmonic Distortion). A square wave at n Hz sampled at 2n Hz will be converted to a sine wave on playback even with a perfect timebase system. The 96kHz sampling is needed to reduce the THD by getting more sample points in the audible range under 22 kHz so that a square wave comes out as a square wave even at high frequencies.
You forgot to mention Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Not commenting on the validity of their cause or the morality of their tactics, but they certainly qualify as an underdog having success against an 800-lb gorilla.
For all you know she had the money to buy the software and equipment. The article mentioned TWO prior businesses that she was successful at (race car customization and PC sales), so while she isn't Bill Gates, she probably has enough cash to finance appropriate equipment for her current profession.
Well maybe a little bit to do with copyright laws. Walmart is presuming you're guilty of burning a copy of the the disc if you attempt to return the original after it has been opened.
Slashdot Mirror
We wouldn't be anywhere near the slippery slope if people didn't keep trying to scam the system. One of the reasons we need lawyers to understand laws is because the laws have gotten so complicated. And the laws have gotten so complicated because there's always a new loophole that needs closing. And there's always a new loophole because there's always some politician, businessman, tax cheat or other individual who thinks they have found a brilliant way to violate the spirit of the basic law without violating the letter of it.
And even if people haven't consciously tried to circumvent the law, if they get charged with something, they hire lawyers to prove that they didn't ACTUALLY violate the law, thus (if they win) creating a loophole via case law.
When this country dies it will be under the strangling weight of regulation caused by our fears of violent crime and terrorism, and by the idiots and scoundrels who tried to scam the system for their own gain.
First of all, what did Marx do besides invent communism? And communism isn't exactly the most successful political system invented, is it? Can you name one country that is actually governed according to Marx's principles? Socialist dictatorships don't count. By comparison with Franklin, Marx was an ivory-tower academic.
In addition to Franklin's political accomplishments, which go far beyond anything you describe, he was a scientist and an inventor. Two of Ben Franklin's inventions are still in use throughout the world, and another is still in use in parts of it. Can you name them?
Also, Franklin transformed science in the 18th century when he proved that lightning and static electricity were the same phenomenon. This discovery gave him fame comparable to Isaac Newton's in Europe during his lifetime.
We'll see how important Marx still appears 75 years from now, when his distance from the present is similar to Franklin's. You can see how relevant Franklin still is here and here.
if you create your own 1'03" of silence. The copyright on recordings doesn't protect against you making your own recording of the same music.
The copyright on the music itself could take effect, however. So if John Cage could prove that your 1'03" of silence is a partial recording of his work, you could owe him royalties for the composition.
When you copy an existing recording, you owe royalties for the recording. I'm not sure about song-writer's royalties in this case. The RIAA (or the individual record companies) can sue you for copying recordings. Paul McCartney can sue you if you make a cover version of "Help!" (along with thousands of other works by other musicians).
Humor is in the eye of the beholder, so I won't debate which author is funnier. But I think you'll find that Pratchett has the best-integrated plot-lines of the three authors you mention.
I wish I could figure out why you think Aspirin is more sophisticated. To me, his writing is the weakest of the three. Characters are almost as flat as Isaac Asimov's. Asprin's great contribution was his ability to skewer genre-fantasy conventions with a sci-fi or real world twist, but he rarely works the other way around, skewering the real world with a fantasy twist. For Pratchett, anything is fair game.
The variety of characters that Pratchett has available, plus the fact that Ankh-Morpork allows him to introduce new characters with minimal fuss, allows him to take on stories that just don't fit into Asprin's universe. When did Asprin take on Hollywood (Moving Pictures), Rock 'n' Roll (Soul Music), Shakespeare (Wyrd Sisters), or Opera (Maskerade)? Or himself, for that matter?
Both Asprin and Pratchett put their characters into stock, satirical situations, but since the M.Y.T.H. stories revolve around a smaller set of characters, sometimes the characters don't fit the satire or the story line so well. Pratchett essentially runs two ongoing sets of primary characters, with several other personalities that appear less frequently: The Ankh-Morpork gang (primarily the Watch and the Wizards, with various other sub-groups that grow or fade in importance over parts of the series) and the Witches up in Lancre with their supporting cast. The Uberwald group may grow into an ongoing cast as well, but they seem to be more like some of the other ongoing characters like Casanunda the dwarf or King Verence.
Disclosure: I pretty much stopped re-reading Asprin in my late 20's, where I still reread many of Pratchett's works.
Adams and Pratchett are very similar, but if you look at the copyrights on their earliest novels, I think you'll see that they both started up at about the same time. So "Douglas Adams wannabe" isn't fair. It's more like Newton and Liebniz both inventing calculus at the same time. Or Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Or McDonalds and Burger King.
Another big advantage of Pratchett is he's still writing Discworld novels. Adams and Asprin have stopped their series (for various reasons). And Asprin can't seem to write without help. Every story he starts seems to evolve from or to some sort of shared world where other authors do most of the work. Thieve's World anyone? Actually, I found Thieve's World a more interesting series than the MYTH series over the long haul. MYTH should've stopped at a trilogy.
...among others: Most of Florida will be under water, too. No more Everglades, South Beach, or Redneck Riviera. Even if there was enough money to build a sea wall around the whole state, the beaches will be gone and there won't be any drinking water due to salt-water intrusion.
They'll probably build a dike around Disney World though, so don't panic.
You mean like abortion? Does abortion cause global warming?
That would explain a lot.
Remember that one?
How many times do we have to hit ourselves over the head with a hammer before we realize that it hurts?
Where are my mod points when I need them?
Like hiring a hacker as a security consultant.
I see potential conflicts between NSA's security mentality and the right of the public to access data, but as long as they are restricted to network security and provide appropriate access points for public data this could work.
It would also give a central point of accountability for federal network security, which is sorely lacking in the current environment.
I doubt it. I think the only reason the California people were even notified was because of state law. Consumers in other states aren't being notified because those states don't have laws requiring notification.
In fact, depending on the license published on the outside of the DVD box, the library is probably obligated to sell the DVDs to individuals (although there is probably a fair-use defense if they don't). The DVDs you buy in the store are typically licensed for personal use only, with lending/sharing expressly prohibited. When you give the library the DVD, what you are doing is transferring the license. Although it would be interesting to see the public reaction if the RI/MP/AA started going after libraries, I don't think the average library system could afford the defense unless backed by the ALA, EFF or a similar organization.
It could be worse, there could be a non-transferability clause on the wrapper.
Fraud? If the content and the aggregation he's doing add value for his visitors, why the hell NOT make a profit on it? Do you think any commercial media company really cares about the content they purvey? They want to sell as much ad time/space as possible without alienating their viewers/readers. For an extreme example, look at the old "Computer Shopper" magazine. While the authors and some of the editorial staff may have loved the technology they got to work with every day, the publisher certainly didn't care. And they were able to publish a magazine with 900 pages of Ads and 100 pages of content and people PAID TO READ IT!
This guy is just applying large-scale media techniques to the web. While that may be painful to accept for the die-hard Open Source programmers of the Happy Valley commune (as opposed to the Open Source community at-large), it isn't unethical to display content that doesn't pertain to you personally.
His site will succeed or fail on how many viewers he attracts, and that in turn depends on the value and scope of the content he aggregates. So if he succeeds it proves he IS providing a valuable service, even if it's just simplifying access to information available in other places.
It also explains whey they "needed" to go to Germany to perform simple static load tests that could be done with a multimeter and a few hiwatt potentiometers. And I wonder how much "assistance" they got from the Maxpoint/Nanopoint/Tagan engineers when they were testing competitors' products, like the ones that blew up.
Actually, now that I think about it, they'd probably just incorporate DRM and RFID into the implant and charge a fee based on any downloads of material from the implant.
And watch the countersuit under the ADA for denial of fair access to faciilties by disabled person.
And even if it isn't a war of attrition, do you REALLY want to get into an Intellectual Property pissing contest with IBM?? The largest holder of US patents for the last umpteen years? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I loved that XT technical reference manual. It helped me ace my microprocessor system design class back in the 80's.
I bet IBM regrets ever producing the thing though. It probably accelerated the development of PC clones by a couple of years or more.
The GPL IS an EULA. They both grant the user specific rights beyond those granted by copyright law. The only difference is that the GPL grants you many more rights than a typical EULA.
For example:
Both the GPL and typical EULAs disclaim liability for patent liability incurred by use of the product. That's why SCO was suing end users and spreading FUD.
Where a typical EULA prohibits redistribution, GPL sets conditions for redistribution. But they both subject the user to contractual obligations related to redistribution.
The L in both cases is for "LICENSE" which is the type of agreement/contract you enter into by clicking on the "I agree" button. Just because most users won't edit or redistribute the source code doesn't mean that the user isn't subject to the terms of the GPL when using the software.
The reason they look so different to most people is because from an end-user perspective, the GPL is completely non-restrictive, while a typical EULA has numerous restrictions. Only when you get into source code and redistribution does the GPL start to restrict your behavior, and even then it is still much less constraining than a commercial EULA.
I hate when scientific issues get politicized.
BTW has anyone considered that the heat being absorbed and re-radiated by the particles in the atmosphere could actually be CAUSING global warming by causing more heat to appear in the upper atmosphere rather than further down?
And just look at the size of the heatsink on that thing!
A lot of people had addressed dust and heat issues, but this is the first comment I've seen that mentions the risks of cold. Most chips are specified to operate approximately between 0 and 70 degrees Celsius (some may go to 100 C), which is roughly 32 to 126 Fahrenheit. So much of North America will be too cold during the winter to cold-start the computer in an unheated building. In fact, if you get below 0 F, you might break a processor even without running it (kind of like freezing your pipes, but with silicon vs. water).
The operating temperatures refer to the on-chip temperature, so once the CPU warms up it's probably safe to run the computer in the cold, but you probably should invest in a space heater for the coldest days. Or as the parent suggests, buy a laptop, power it up indoors and take it out with you.
With digital, the problem isn't SNR it's THD (Total Harmonic Distortion). A square wave at n Hz sampled at 2n Hz will be converted to a sine wave on playback even with a perfect timebase system. The 96kHz sampling is needed to reduce the THD by getting more sample points in the audible range under 22 kHz so that a square wave comes out as a square wave even at high frequencies.
You forgot to mention Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Not commenting on the validity of their cause or the morality of their tactics, but they certainly qualify as an underdog having success against an 800-lb gorilla.
For all you know she had the money to buy the software and equipment. The article mentioned TWO prior businesses that she was successful at (race car customization and PC sales), so while she isn't Bill Gates, she probably has enough cash to finance appropriate equipment for her current profession.
Well maybe a little bit to do with copyright laws. Walmart is presuming you're guilty of burning a copy of the the disc if you attempt to return the original after it has been opened.