We non-USians do it just to piss of those (mostly USians) who think it's a retarded term. Thank you for giving us our reward.
You're welcome. But it's still a term best suited for use by mental defectives, and if you insist on referring to the citizens of a country in a way that irritates them, you're just being an ass. Really, you are. As an American, when discussing issues relevant to people of other countries, I use the name of their choosing when referring to them. That's only reasonable. Do you have to right to decide what citizens of another country should call themselves? I mean, should I call the French "Frenchians"? The Germans "Germanians"? How about "Greenies" for people from Greenland? No? Then why is it okay to refer to Americans as "USians", when it's clearly NOT how we refer to ourselves?
I will make an exception in your case, however, if you'll let me know what country you are from, I'll happily do my utmost to annoy the Hell out of you in the same way. That's only fair... or maybe I shouldn't be so non-specific and risk offending the decent people in your country, and just call you "dickian" instead.
No, it isn't. The establishment clause is one way. The government must stay out of church, that doesn't mean that church must stay out of government.
Historically, that's not true. Whenever religion is allowed to interfere in government operations, you usually end up one becoming dominant, i.e. a State Church. And that's what the Framers were trying to avoid. Best to just keep them at arm's length.
What amuses me is how America's system of 'trickle down economics', whereby they keep average wages down whilst all the proceeds of growth are sucked up by a largely non-producing elite, has left it in such dire economic straits that only reckless borrowing (both private and government) keeps the whole house of cards propped up
I find it endlessly more amusing that all of Europe's own house of cards is propped up by Germany.
I mean, annoying Germans - historically that always ends well.
Europeans are the last people who should be proclaiming the wonders of higher taxes with the state of spending and the economy there.
This doesn't exactly count as a troll, folks, especially since the parent was definitely trolling and yet got modded insightful for tarring all Americans with the same insipid brush. I suspect that if "drsquare" actually lived here and was in the middle of this, and was fully cognizant of the situation (as most Americans are) and yet felt as helpless as we do to bring about any meaningful improvements, he'd be less cavalier.
And as SuperKendall pointed out, Europe isn't exactly swimming in prosperity at the moment: "drsquare" would be better off tending to his own knitting. Europe has big problems too.
The only problem with thinking that giving the government more tax dollars to fix something always ends in them wanting even more monies to fix the same thing just a little while later.... sad but true.
Yes, and you need look no further than our public education system to realize just how true that is. Hell, over half of my real estate taxes go towards whatever passes for "education" around here. The rest goes for police, EMS, roads, public utilities, courts, and everything else the county spends money on. That schools were allowed to soak up more money than everything else combined is truly remarkable. The fact that quality of education is deteriorating in spite of continual increases in spending just goes to prove your point.
I also have an interesting past of colorful experimentation
That's an interesting turn-of-phrase there. Still, I wouldn't let it get you down... Clinton apparently had some colorful experimentation in his past, and he still got elected President. Of course... maybe you inhaled.
And before you get too cocky about that restricted air gap
This is the fundamental problem right here. The kind of mind that thinks airgap and be done with it is usually the kind of mind that doesn't think about security, and will fall for exactly the likes of Stuxnet. This illusion that everything is fine because there's no internet can often be worse than a well designed remote access system built from the ground up with security in mind. They do exist and the ability to remotely see what is going on can pull you out of the shit, or put you in the shit depending on how it's implemented.
The fundamental problem is that good security is a process, not a state, and you cannot have good security by any fire-and-forget solution.
But but but.... I have the god given, constitution granted inalienable right to play Farmville, have my desktop covered with widgets and surf the web while at work! By god, I'm an 'merican!! What the hell do you expect me to do while I'm at work, WORK?!? I don't get paid to stare at those blinking pixels and dial thingamabobs all damn day.
I think you're confusing us "'mericans" (people residing on the American landmass) with a uniquely retarded subset of those people called 'Government Employees'.
Nah, he's just in denial that the government functionaries in his country are just as damaged.
If she's a native American, living on an Indian Reservation the RIAA may not be able to enforce a judgment against her. After all don't only certain federal agency's have jurisdiction on Indian Reservations? Isn't that why they can have their own Casino's regardless of the laws in the rest of the state about gambling?
Haven't you heard? The RIAA is a Federal Agency... at least in their own minds.
Yes, I understand all this, and I agree. But that wasn't the point I was making, which was to clarify the often-confused legal difference between downloading and uploading.
Okay. However, it's really the difference between receiving infringing materials, and distributing them.
A little more information for you. This editorial comment is from Ray Beckerman, regarding this decision:
"No surprises here, given the contents of the jury instructions and verdict form. The only surprises are that (a) the judge felt it necessary to have a predictably futile third trial, (b) the judge refused to instruct the jury that the statutory damages must bear a reasonable relationship to the actual damages, which is a fundamental tenet of the law regarding copyright infringement, and (c) the judge has so far declined to reach the constitutional issue which is staring him in the face. It also seems odd to me that the judge had not instructed the jury that plaintiffs had proved a copying -- i.e. a download -- but not a "distribution" as defined in the Copyright Act. -R.B.]" [italics mine]
According to this, it looks like the RIAA was unable to prove any actual damages, and so relied upon statutory damages. Since you seem well-informed, I'm sure you've already spent some time on Mr. Beckerman's site. If not, it's a good place to read up on the RIAA and it's (il)legal activities.
She was given those damages for sharing those downloaded files to potentially many thousands of other people.
Yes. Potentially. She is being severely punished because maybe she shared those files. Do you really understand what is going on here?
I understand the nature of statutory damages being enforced in place of provable actual damages. Herein lies the problem: the RIAA is not capable of proving that there were any significant actual damages, and is relying on provisions in copyright law that are designed to deter large-scale piracy of copyright materials for profit. That's clearly not the case here, so far as I'm aware Ms. Thomas doesn't have a CD duplicating machine in her home, isn't running a pirate music site with a Paypal link. She's being destroyed by a law meant to deter serious, honest-to-God pirates.
Yes, the law is out of date, and at some point it needs to be fixed (or the RIAA's wings clipped) before more lives are damaged in the same way.
I don't think any style book used in natural science has very clear provisions on how you would include such a thing. Most authors are so intimidated by the process of getting published, that they do not want to risk including content that may get it rejected (it is hard to argue the scientific merit of a photograph, it usually involves a lot of metadata that wouldn't be available to a field biologist post-hoc). I often drop some of my best sentences in an article, simply because they have a slight chance of being misinterpreted as off-topic or unscientific. Unfortunately journals are not in any way meant to be entertaining, which makes research boring but easier to carry out because of the distilled nature of the information.
So, what you're saying is that journals take the fun out of science.
IIRC he claimed that the hardest part of teaching certain fields was getting the students to stop looking in the books for the questions they were supposed to be answering.
Yes. To do that which schools are supposedly teaching their students to do: think. Most of us are born being able to breathe on our own, conversely most of us need some training to learn how to think for ourselves. I'm not convinced that our schools are doing that anymore (I haven't been in one for many years, but looking at the caliber of some of their recent graduates I'm concerned.)
To that end they do have right to safeguard their code and software design to keep anyone from knowing exactly what they are doing, and how they are doing.
They have the legal right to use any relevant copyrights and/or patents to protect themselves from illegal manufacture and sale of competing devices. They also have the right to use technological measures to keep their designs secret. But you have to realize that once someone figures out exactly how it works, the secret is out of the bag and that's that. So this is not, by definition, a "trade secrets" issue, because there are no secrets when you have a world of people just itching to reverse-engineer your product. What you have are the legal protections afforded you to prevent unauthorized competition and/or charge royalties. However, an individual who wants to hack or modify or re-purpose his purchase isn't in that category. So no, they don't have any right to tell me that I can't use that Kinect as a doorstop, a hat, or anything else for that matter. They may think they do, but then again Microsoft has always been a legend in its own collective mind.
The software is what makes Kinnect unique, and you're not licensed to use it except in specific and prescribed ways. The hardware (as many have pointed out) is not especially unique in-and-of-itself, and I would imagine that the software is fully covered by as many Copyright, Patent, and DMCA protections as Microsoft could figure out a way to apply....
-AC
Yes, but if your intention is to replace said software (actually, firmware) then that really doesn't apply.
Actually, not a bad recommendation. Do an analysis of how many copies were made as a result of this woman's file sharing. If it exceeds grand theft level, she gets jail time for grand theft, otherwise petty theft.
Nice try though, attempting to equate copyright infringement with a criminal behavior like grand theft. Still, if you're going to shill for the media companies you need to be more subtle about it.
Actually, not a bad recommendation. Do an analysis of how many copies were made as a result of this woman's file sharing. If it exceeds grand theft level, she gets jail time for grand theft, otherwise petty theft.
TERRIBLE recommendation. There's absolutely no way to "analyze" how many copies were made, especially if the client used encryption. And, whose "analysis" would you use? The RIAA's? The Internet Service Provider's? The infringer's? Please. Any such analysis would depend entirely upon automated computer records, of unknown reliability and accuracy: the fact that a log file says something was transferred does not mean it did. Talk about humanity fading in the shadow of the machine.
Not to mention that this is a civil matter. Why do people insist believing that criminal proceedings are appropriate?
Star Trek's technobabble wasn't science fiction. The words they used were tangentally related to science which was tangentally related to the events onscreen, but it may as well have been luminiferous ether for all it was coupled to the plot. Star Trek rarely dealt with issues of science*, it was very much a "space show".
*When it did, it was often excellent
You might want to give this a read. A lot of what Harry Harrison, D.C. Fontana and the rest of Roddenberry's stable of scriptwriters came up with was more than loosely based upon the scientific consensus of the day. It's an interesting book, in any event.
No, that was the amount after the amount of damages was reduced after the second trial. This is the result of the third trial.
What I want to know is: is the RIAA stuffing the jury boxes or what? What kind of moron (much less twelve of them) could possibly turn out such a verdict? Don't they have computers? Don't they have Internet connections? Don't they have children? Do they not understand that they are targets just as much as Jammie Thomas? I sincerely hope that one of those fine, upstanding humanoid asses finds themselves on the receiving end of an RIAA "settlement offer." Poetic justice at its finest.
I just cannot understand how a jury of anyone's peers could think this rational, much less reasonable. I'm more than a little concerned for our future, if this is what our legal system has been reduced to delivering instead of justice. I don't know: maybe her lawyers were just less than competent, but even so this just seems way over the top.
Furthermore, how can a woman that downloaded a mere 26 music tracks be so demonized in court that such a travesty could result? Are the RIAA's attorneys gifted with Satanic powers? This just boggles the mind. Makes me want to run down to the local Best Buy and pocket a couple of CDs, just to demonstrate what stealing music actually means. "Yes, Your Honor, I stole that music. I didn't infringe anyone's copyright, however." Hell, a shoplifting charge wouldn't hold a candle to this "verdict".
I think it is only a matter of time before they push the wrong file-sharer too far with these outrageous lawsuits before someone snaps and goes postal at 1025 F St. NW, Washington D.C., not that I would ever condone such a thing, because that would be wrong.
That was the funniest thing I've read all day. Thanks for that.
Ever spoken to an academic? You might be surprised how poorly your stereotypes stand up to reality.
Very true. Much of my early career as a software developer (late seventies, early eighties) was spent working with senior medical researchers at a couple of local Universities. I had time time of my life, actually... it was some pretty cool stuff for the time, and those guys were great. Always willing to take the time to explain something, never tried to make anyone feel stupid, nothing like the stereotypical "ivory tower" types that many people seem to believe inhabit our institutes of higher learning. Oh, it takes all kinds, but having an advanced education doesn't make you any less of a human being. It may make you harder to fool
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Stop using the retarded term "USian".
We non-USians do it just to piss of those (mostly USians) who think it's a retarded term. Thank you for giving us our reward.
You're welcome. But it's still a term best suited for use by mental defectives, and if you insist on referring to the citizens of a country in a way that irritates them, you're just being an ass. Really, you are. As an American, when discussing issues relevant to people of other countries, I use the name of their choosing when referring to them. That's only reasonable. Do you have to right to decide what citizens of another country should call themselves? I mean, should I call the French "Frenchians"? The Germans "Germanians"? How about "Greenies" for people from Greenland? No? Then why is it okay to refer to Americans as "USians", when it's clearly NOT how we refer to ourselves?
... or maybe I shouldn't be so non-specific and risk offending the decent people in your country, and just call you "dickian" instead.
I will make an exception in your case, however, if you'll let me know what country you are from, I'll happily do my utmost to annoy the Hell out of you in the same way. That's only fair
Confessing to puffing a blunt once isn't exactly colorful.
Yes, well ... where there's smoke, there's fire. I suspect that Slick Willy didn't tell the whole truth there, which wouldn't exactly be a surprise.
"conventional advertising"? Hi, my name is the Internet, have we met?
I think he means channels such as regular broadcast TV and traditional periodicals. The Internet is far too new to be considered "conventional" yet.
No, it isn't. The establishment clause is one way. The government must stay out of church, that doesn't mean that church must stay out of government.
Historically, that's not true. Whenever religion is allowed to interfere in government operations, you usually end up one becoming dominant, i.e. a State Church. And that's what the Framers were trying to avoid. Best to just keep them at arm's length.
What amuses me is how America's system of 'trickle down economics', whereby they keep average wages down whilst all the proceeds of growth are sucked up by a largely non-producing elite, has left it in such dire economic straits that only reckless borrowing (both private and government) keeps the whole house of cards propped up
I find it endlessly more amusing that all of Europe's own house of cards is propped up by Germany.
I mean, annoying Germans - historically that always ends well.
Europeans are the last people who should be proclaiming the wonders of higher taxes with the state of spending and the economy there.
This doesn't exactly count as a troll, folks, especially since the parent was definitely trolling and yet got modded insightful for tarring all Americans with the same insipid brush. I suspect that if "drsquare" actually lived here and was in the middle of this, and was fully cognizant of the situation (as most Americans are) and yet felt as helpless as we do to bring about any meaningful improvements, he'd be less cavalier.
And as SuperKendall pointed out, Europe isn't exactly swimming in prosperity at the moment: "drsquare" would be better off tending to his own knitting. Europe has big problems too.
The only problem with thinking that giving the government more tax dollars to fix something always ends in them wanting even more monies to fix the same thing just a little while later.... sad but true.
Yes, and you need look no further than our public education system to realize just how true that is. Hell, over half of my real estate taxes go towards whatever passes for "education" around here. The rest goes for police, EMS, roads, public utilities, courts, and everything else the county spends money on. That schools were allowed to soak up more money than everything else combined is truly remarkable. The fact that quality of education is deteriorating in spite of continual increases in spending just goes to prove your point.
I also have an interesting past of colorful experimentation
That's an interesting turn-of-phrase there. Still, I wouldn't let it get you down ... Clinton apparently had some colorful experimentation in his past, and he still got elected President. Of course ... maybe you inhaled.
And before you get too cocky about that restricted air gap
This is the fundamental problem right here. The kind of mind that thinks airgap and be done with it is usually the kind of mind that doesn't think about security, and will fall for exactly the likes of Stuxnet. This illusion that everything is fine because there's no internet can often be worse than a well designed remote access system built from the ground up with security in mind. They do exist and the ability to remotely see what is going on can pull you out of the shit, or put you in the shit depending on how it's implemented.
The fundamental problem is that good security is a process, not a state, and you cannot have good security by any fire-and-forget solution.
But but but.... I have the god given, constitution granted inalienable right to play Farmville, have my desktop covered with widgets and surf the web while at work! By god, I'm an 'merican!! What the hell do you expect me to do while I'm at work, WORK?!? I don't get paid to stare at those blinking pixels and dial thingamabobs all damn day.
I think you're confusing us "'mericans" (people residing on the American landmass) with a uniquely retarded subset of those people called 'Government Employees'.
Nah, he's just in denial that the government functionaries in his country are just as damaged.
If she's a native American, living on an Indian Reservation the RIAA may not be able to enforce a judgment against her. After all don't only certain federal agency's have jurisdiction on Indian Reservations? Isn't that why they can have their own Casino's regardless of the laws in the rest of the state about gambling?
Haven't you heard? The RIAA is a Federal Agency ... at least in their own minds.
Yes, I understand all this, and I agree. But that wasn't the point I was making, which was to clarify the often-confused legal difference between downloading and uploading.
Okay. However, it's really the difference between receiving infringing materials, and distributing them.
A little more information for you. This editorial comment is from Ray Beckerman, regarding this decision:
"No surprises here, given the contents of the jury instructions and verdict form. The only surprises are that (a) the judge felt it necessary to have a predictably futile third trial, (b) the judge refused to instruct the jury that the statutory damages must bear a reasonable relationship to the actual damages, which is a fundamental tenet of the law regarding copyright infringement, and (c) the judge has so far declined to reach the constitutional issue which is staring him in the face. It also seems odd to me that the judge had not instructed the jury that plaintiffs had proved a copying -- i.e. a download -- but not a "distribution" as defined in the Copyright Act. -R.B.]" [italics mine]
According to this, it looks like the RIAA was unable to prove any actual damages, and so relied upon statutory damages. Since you seem well-informed, I'm sure you've already spent some time on Mr. Beckerman's site. If not, it's a good place to read up on the RIAA and it's (il)legal activities.
She was given those damages for sharing those downloaded files to potentially many thousands of other people.
Yes. Potentially. She is being severely punished because maybe she shared those files. Do you really understand what is going on here?
I understand the nature of statutory damages being enforced in place of provable actual damages. Herein lies the problem: the RIAA is not capable of proving that there were any significant actual damages, and is relying on provisions in copyright law that are designed to deter large-scale piracy of copyright materials for profit. That's clearly not the case here, so far as I'm aware Ms. Thomas doesn't have a CD duplicating machine in her home, isn't running a pirate music site with a Paypal link. She's being destroyed by a law meant to deter serious, honest-to-God pirates.
Yes, the law is out of date, and at some point it needs to be fixed (or the RIAA's wings clipped) before more lives are damaged in the same way.
I don't think any style book used in natural science has very clear provisions on how you would include such a thing. Most authors are so intimidated by the process of getting published, that they do not want to risk including content that may get it rejected (it is hard to argue the scientific merit of a photograph, it usually involves a lot of metadata that wouldn't be available to a field biologist post-hoc). I often drop some of my best sentences in an article, simply because they have a slight chance of being misinterpreted as off-topic or unscientific. Unfortunately journals are not in any way meant to be entertaining, which makes research boring but easier to carry out because of the distilled nature of the information.
So, what you're saying is that journals take the fun out of science.
Whatever.
Now I am off to make some religious offerings to my Roach killer.
Big mistake if those roaches were made in God's image.
IIRC he claimed that the hardest part of teaching certain fields was getting the students to stop looking in the books for the questions they were supposed to be answering.
Yes. To do that which schools are supposedly teaching their students to do: think. Most of us are born being able to breathe on our own, conversely most of us need some training to learn how to think for ourselves. I'm not convinced that our schools are doing that anymore (I haven't been in one for many years, but looking at the caliber of some of their recent graduates I'm concerned.)
To that end they do have right to safeguard their code and software design to keep anyone from knowing exactly what they are doing, and how they are doing.
They have the legal right to use any relevant copyrights and/or patents to protect themselves from illegal manufacture and sale of competing devices. They also have the right to use technological measures to keep their designs secret. But you have to realize that once someone figures out exactly how it works, the secret is out of the bag and that's that. So this is not, by definition, a "trade secrets" issue, because there are no secrets when you have a world of people just itching to reverse-engineer your product. What you have are the legal protections afforded you to prevent unauthorized competition and/or charge royalties. However, an individual who wants to hack or modify or re-purpose his purchase isn't in that category. So no, they don't have any right to tell me that I can't use that Kinect as a doorstop, a hat, or anything else for that matter. They may think they do, but then again Microsoft has always been a legend in its own collective mind.
Virtually NO-ONE SELLS software anymore. Whereas virtually EVERYONE licenses software.
The software is what makes Kinnect unique, and you're not licensed to use it except in specific and prescribed ways. The hardware (as many have pointed out) is not especially unique in-and-of-itself, and I would imagine that the software is fully covered by as many Copyright, Patent, and DMCA protections as Microsoft could figure out a way to apply....
-AC
Yes, but if your intention is to replace said software (actually, firmware) then that really doesn't apply.
And by doing what I please, I mean "make the ultimate anime girlfriend experience"
I don't see a problem here.
Actually, not a bad recommendation. Do an analysis of how many copies were made as a result of this woman's file sharing. If it exceeds grand theft level, she gets jail time for grand theft, otherwise petty theft.
Nice try though, attempting to equate copyright infringement with a criminal behavior like grand theft. Still, if you're going to shill for the media companies you need to be more subtle about it.
Actually, not a bad recommendation. Do an analysis of how many copies were made as a result of this woman's file sharing. If it exceeds grand theft level, she gets jail time for grand theft, otherwise petty theft.
TERRIBLE recommendation. There's absolutely no way to "analyze" how many copies were made, especially if the client used encryption. And, whose "analysis" would you use? The RIAA's? The Internet Service Provider's? The infringer's? Please. Any such analysis would depend entirely upon automated computer records, of unknown reliability and accuracy: the fact that a log file says something was transferred does not mean it did. Talk about humanity fading in the shadow of the machine.
Not to mention that this is a civil matter. Why do people insist believing that criminal proceedings are appropriate?
Star Trek's technobabble wasn't science fiction. The words they used were tangentally related to science which was tangentally related to the events onscreen, but it may as well have been luminiferous ether for all it was coupled to the plot. Star Trek rarely dealt with issues of science*, it was very much a "space show".
*When it did, it was often excellent
You might want to give this a read. A lot of what Harry Harrison, D.C. Fontana and the rest of Roddenberry's stable of scriptwriters came up with was more than loosely based upon the scientific consensus of the day. It's an interesting book, in any event.
No, that was the amount after the amount of damages was reduced after the second trial. This is the result of the third trial.
What I want to know is: is the RIAA stuffing the jury boxes or what? What kind of moron (much less twelve of them) could possibly turn out such a verdict? Don't they have computers? Don't they have Internet connections? Don't they have children? Do they not understand that they are targets just as much as Jammie Thomas? I sincerely hope that one of those fine, upstanding humanoid asses finds themselves on the receiving end of an RIAA "settlement offer." Poetic justice at its finest.
I just cannot understand how a jury of anyone's peers could think this rational, much less reasonable. I'm more than a little concerned for our future, if this is what our legal system has been reduced to delivering instead of justice. I don't know: maybe her lawyers were just less than competent, but even so this just seems way over the top.
Furthermore, how can a woman that downloaded a mere 26 music tracks be so demonized in court that such a travesty could result? Are the RIAA's attorneys gifted with Satanic powers? This just boggles the mind. Makes me want to run down to the local Best Buy and pocket a couple of CDs, just to demonstrate what stealing music actually means. "Yes, Your Honor, I stole that music. I didn't infringe anyone's copyright, however." Hell, a shoplifting charge wouldn't hold a candle to this "verdict".
I think it is only a matter of time before they push the wrong file-sharer too far with these outrageous lawsuits before someone snaps and goes postal at 1025 F St. NW, Washington D.C., not that I would ever condone such a thing, because that would be wrong.
That was the funniest thing I've read all day. Thanks for that.
Ever spoken to an academic? You might be surprised how poorly your stereotypes stand up to reality.
Very true. Much of my early career as a software developer (late seventies, early eighties) was spent working with senior medical researchers at a couple of local Universities. I had time time of my life, actually ... it was some pretty cool stuff for the time, and those guys were great. Always willing to take the time to explain something, never tried to make anyone feel stupid, nothing like the stereotypical "ivory tower" types that many people seem to believe inhabit our institutes of higher learning. Oh, it takes all kinds, but having an advanced education doesn't make you any less of a human being. It may make you harder to fool