Not if you let education lapse too long (say... 40 yrs). Then, as they say, you're fucked. It's in society's best interest to not only allow education to happen, but indeed mandate it.
To put it differently, since you appear to care about semantics: The public good is not the education itself, but rather the insurance that a certain level of education will be maintained.
Why aren't they fighting to stock Hustler? Not because they don't think they'd win, but because they actually aren't succubi/inccubi.
Libraries are a bastion of "I'm okay, you're okay", but this doesn't include wanting guys jerking to porn in the middle of a large public room. If there were a device that magically read a user's mind, and blocked them from getting what, to them, would be pornography, then I'm pretty sure the library would love it.
But let's not forget that one man's porn is another man's reading material: Take Maxim for example... it's not allowed to be sold in Wal-Mart anymore, because they call it porno. If you've never seen it, Maxim is basically random stereotypical things men enjoy, one of which is scantily-clad women. All the 'naughty' bits are covered, and you're more likely to see something scandelous on MTV than in its pages.
Right now your tax dollars are going to seedy organizations with no government oversight, who can block anything they damn well please, knowing that it at least makes it less likely for people to read it. Check out Peacefire and find out some of the things your tax dollars have been doing for you.
Legitimatly provide items to the public which are "public goods", eh?
How about: 'public education'... a state has a compelling interest in having knowledge freely accessible to the people, rather then end up in the Dark Ages again.
Therefore, libraries are a implementation to fulfill a need for a public good, and should therefore be funded by the government.
Disease: A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.
I, for instance, have a condition known as Crohn's Disease. It can't be passed onto others, except perhaps genetically, is not deadly except in extremely rare cases, and there is no cure. Sorry, but your definition is wrong.
I assume we're thinking of different UDs. I go to University of Delaware, and laptops are certainly not required. I believe they might say something about having to have a computer, but there are enough computing labs scattered all over campus that you could easily get by without one.
This would be a good troll except that: Not picture books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the technical.
This is combined with craptacular sentence structure and spelling. Content-wise, it was quite nice, though.
I hope that Apple sees the chance to pull in some extra revenue, and ports this to PC. I doubt anyone would switch to a Mac just because of iTunes, but it'd give them an extra stream of cash if they let PC users share in the goodness.
While $10 is still higher than I'd spend for most craptacular CDs, it is a reasonable fee. I'd love to be able to just download the new Metallica CD as soon as it comes out, legitimately.
Yes... those people do exist. I am not one of them, but many of my friends are.
Why? Many people simply cannot both read quickly enough to enjoy a subtitled movie. Yes, the subtitled version is better. But if you have the choice between enjoying a classic movie that has been dubbed, or missing out on the experience, I think you and I both know the better of the two options.
I know what you're talking about with the original voices though. The longest subbed thing I've watched is the entire first season of Slayers. What interests me is that when I remember watching it, I replace the dialog with the subbed words, with the same intonation and inflection. It's kinda cool.
Word to that. The only people I talked to who were genuinely intrigued by the philosophical questions that the matrix set forth were, to be blunt, stupid and uneducated. I didn't say that to their faces though cause they were also violent gun-loving types. The rest of us dealt with the question of "what is reality" in highschool english class cause we were paying attention when they talked about Plato. We didn't find it that interesting, though, cause there weren't any guns or robots.
If the matrix was the first thing to make you ponder these types of questions then either you're very young or you just don't think much.
Assuming your viewpoint is formulated logically, I can come up with plenty of counter-arguments. I will refrain from using myself (there'd be some obvious bias), but I can come up with a few people off the top of my head.
The one that immediately springs to mind is my brother, an IR major at a prestigious university. He also worked as a gun control advocate. I guess, if you work from a logical point of view, you'll be renouncing your idea that only uneducated, stupid gun-nuts enjoyed the Matrix for more than being the equivalent of pop music.
The philosophy retold in the Matrix, alone, would be sparse. However, the artful way it is expressed was what made it a good movie. I admit, I have not read as much philosophy as I would like to (I'm more of a mythology buff). However, the Wachowski(sp?) brothers created quite a world, with quality characterization, to retell the philosophy. Speaking of mythology, I feel that the religious undertones and allegory have been neglected in favor of the philosophical interpretations.
Whatever you think of the movies, the Wachowski brothers put a lot of work into it. There's an absolutely amazing backstory to it. And you know what? I honestly don't care if some of the ideas (Battery critics, I'm looking at you) are impractical, because it didn't break the suspension of disbelief. I hesitate to compare their work to Tolkien's, because it's obviously not on the same level, but their world has the same depth to it to me.
I don't know. Maybe I'm one of those blunt, stupid, uneducated gun-loving types.
You bring a good point. In that case, you could argue (from an ethical point, rather than a legal one) that Windows 98 is abadonware, and thus there is nothing unethical in making a copy of it.
I do believe you have missed the joke, while simultaneously making a similar joke.He was calling George W. a retard (making fun of his intelligence). It's called a pun.Wikipedia: Pun.
Damn... I thought they were 48 bits -> 6 bytes... dumb dumb dumb mistake. This transforms the number of addresses per person to 56,713,727,820,156,410,577,229,101,238.628. I'm not even sure what to call a number that large.
You wouldn't have perhaps done the math to figure out how many IPs IPv6 creates?
I'll give you a hint: 256^6 = 281,474,976,710,656. Yes, 281.474 trillion addresses. To put this in perspective, there are about 6 billion people on earth. The ratio of addresses to people is 46,912.50:1. So unless people start having 45 thousand different addresses referring to their devices, I think we're OK for a while.
I know exactly what you're talking about. The first time it happened, it was 2 or 3 in the morning, and the lights were off. All of a sudden I got jumped by those god-damned flying pirates (I didn't have the ice beam or infra visor at this point). My heart rate probably doubled when that happened.
Metroid Prime is probably the most immersive FPS I've ever played... creepy as hell too, because it's not constant action. You can ambling through a maze, and all of a sudden run into a Shoggoth (Oh shit! Oh shit! No Missles!)
So would be the landlord of a place where illegal CDs were sold.
That's not a bad analogy: Let's say I'm renting a house from you, and I use that house as a front for my pirate organization. Should you be sued by the RIAA? I say no.
If a file has a copyright notice -- presumably a machine-readable one -- don't return it as a hit. If you personally find out, e.g. because you get a nasty letter from the RIAA, that a particular file is likely infringing, don't return it as a hit.
And I still don't see how this would work. Then again, I'm not familiar with the spidering program that is at issue. I'm assuming it's mostly like the spiders that your average search engine uses. The only way I see of doing it would be to flag that entry in the database, after you've verified it's not legit. Let's not forget that the BSA thought that copies of OpenOffice were pirated.
I don't agree that these SMB share search engines were responsible for contributory infringement. It smacks of ridiculousness that a programmer can be sued for creating an index of files that end users shared out.
Did they possibly create the program to infringe copyright? Could be. Does it matter? Not really. If they were sharing out files over their own service, then they should have been sued as actually infringing copyright. None of this "creating a new method of infringing copyright" bullshit.
Unless you could selectively make copies with a single device that a) complied with SCMS, but still b) switch that off and make unlimited copies BUT take the chance that it might be illegal.
And then there are those of us that earned scholarships and yet aren't bitter about it.
These are pampered rich kids taking a bullshit course called "Gothic Imagination".
This is a public school in Georgia. Last I heard, Georgia has a policy that any students that graduate high school with a B+ average get scholarships to in-state schools. So I'm sure that it's just *packed* with snobby rich kids who wipe their ass with money.
Especially since the school is so damn expensive. I know I wouldn't be able to afford out-of-state tuition. $5,484 a semester. I don't know what you were expecting, but that's fucking low for tuition. So to rack up the kind of bills you claim 'daddy' would have to pay, he or she would have to take 5 years.
Nevermind the fact that you don't know what the fuck they're studying. For all you know, this 'Gothic Imagination' class could be an Art History / Conservation class.
It pisses me off that I busted my ass for a scholarship, and then to pay back student loans, when the shools give the same degree and preferential treatment to mentally deficient trust fund babies because they're the ones who can donate to the alumni fund down the road.
Good for you; you got a scholarship. Instead of being grateful to whatever organization gave it to you (I won't assume that it was the school), you instead get mad at people who, by an accident of birth, happened to have rich parents. What do you expect? I'm all for dissing the rich, but seriously - what do you want? Should rich people be banned from higher education because they don't have to earn scholarships to get into school?
Bah. Higher learning my ass. What a waste of time and money University was.
So you're actually not bitter that other people didn't have to pay, but are just having a bit of buyer's remorse?
One other thing I just thought of... how do you know that a person doesn't have rights to that particular song? If I've got, say, an Offspring CD, why shouldn't I be able to pull down high quality.ogg files from a friend, instead of having to rip it myself. Or, say I lose my CD on a cross-country plane trip (This one's actually happened). Since I don't own the content, but rather have a liscense to it, why can't I replace it with burned mp3s?
This all goes back to my original point: computers don't understand the nuance of the legal system.
No, you can avoid contributory infringement merely by stopping your contribution to it. You don't have to stop the infringement itself.
True. But these guys weren't sued as end users. They were sued as software developers. If they were sued as end users, that'd be a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
By not returning results they know or should know are infringing if they're aware of them. This includes files with copyright notices, files that you've been notified by the copyright holder to be infringing, files that could not possibly be shared per fair use, etc.
It can't be that hard to check all search results against a blacklist and not display them if they're on there.
How exactly would you suggest that be done? Should I block all files containing key phrases like "Britney" "Spears" "mp3"? That blocks "Britney Spears sucks.mp3". Until CPUs have a Legal Coprocessor, I don't see your plan as implementable.
Not via general purpose computers it's not. The AHRA only applies to noncommercial music copying if it is via analog devices, analog media, or CERTAIN, QUALIFYING digital devices or media. Computers don't qualify. DAT would. I think Minidisc might as well. Check my recent posts -- I've been discussing it as well in this thread.
Oh yeah... I remember that. If someone created an audio codec that restricted digital copying to one generation (share with friends, but your friends can't share) and allowed burning to CD, wouldn't that fall under the terms of the AHRA? I'd be cool with that... it's a healthy compromise.
The RIAA should not be able to sink any project that transfers bits between computers simply because it does not have DRM technology built in.
I agree. However, they can't.
Well, it sure seems that way when they can sue search engines.
These kids pretty likely did know of actual infringement; and they had the ability to stop their participation in it, at least, and did not.
My understanding was that they did *not* have the ability to stop the infringement. I don't even see how that'd be technically feasible from an automated standpoint. I could have missed something.
Well, as you say, you can often share mp3s legally. So there is no real difference; both can be used legally -- but here they were not. The providers knew this, could have done something about it so as to not contribute to the direct infringements, but didn't.
My point that 'Napster this is not' was simply that you cannot argue that there are not significant non-infringing uses for the software. Again, I still don't understand how the creators of the search spiders were expected to filter copyrighted material. Nevermind that sharing music between friends is generally considered legit, if I remember correctly.
The RIAA should not be able to sink any project that transfers bits between computers simply because it does not have DRM technology built in. If I wanted to create a better way to share directories in Windows or Unix, it shouldn't be my responsibility to police my users to make sure they aren't doing something blatently illegal. That's why, even though I strongly dislike guns, I think people who want to sue the gun manufacturers are sad, sad people.
Let's take down the inventors of the FTP protocol now too. After all, I know plenty of people who run pirate FTP servers. Therefore, the creators of the protocol must be to blame for contributory infringement.
WTF were they supposed to do? Ban all *.mp3 searches? That'd restrict substantial legitimite uses. Believe it or not, but the RIAA does not hold a copyright on every piece of audio that might be encoded as an mp3. I've got recorded mp3s from all sorts of random places that have nothing to do with the RIAA.
All they provided was a search engine for a Local Area Network. That's what it was created to be. This isn't Napster, and saying it's the same is disingenuous at best, and probably a flat out lie. The tech was to make Windows file sharing easier in general, rather than being created for the explicit purpose of sharing mp3s.
The fact that they got sued for this is absolutely ridiculous. It's a damn shame that they settled... it sets a horrible precedent and the RIAA really doesn't deserve the money.
God you're fun to goad. Just a big ball of agnst, aren't you?
Definitions for contradict from American Heritage Dictionary: 1. To assert or express the opposite of (a statement).
2. To deny the statement of. See Synonyms at deny.
3. To be contrary to; be inconsistent with.
I'll admit you might have a case that the two statements contradict one another under the third definition, and in that case you'd be right. However, the first and second definitions are far more common.
Going back to what the original guy said: For every good webpage, there should be a color scheme or at least 3 colors, but no more than 6 (6 is just too many, IMO).
Interpreted:
Absolute_Acceptable_Color_Num <= 6//no more than 6
Opinion_Color_Num != 6//6 is just too many, IMO
Granted, this is different than what I said before. This is because I went all the way back up to the parent and checked exactly how he set up his restrictions.
As a mathematical test, < is in fact more strict a test than <=. Similarly, the clause inside the parentheses simply strengthens the bounds of acceptable color. He allows 6 colors, then mentions that in an optimal situation, not even 6 colors would not be allowed.
On an unrelated note, I like how you assume that:
1) I would take Visual Basic classes, since that language is so painfully easy to learn that no one in their right mind would have to take classes to pick up. Also, had you read some of my previous posts, you would realize that I'm running Linux (MDK, working on Gentoo, & Debian), and therefore VB would be of little practical use to me.
2) That I would be at a community college, as I sit in my dorm room.
3) That I'm gay, even though I just got off the phone with my girlfriend of a year and 9 months.
There's an art to insulting someone without repeating words and phrases over and over again ('moron', 'faggot', etc). I suggest you learn it.
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Not if you let education lapse too long (say... 40 yrs). Then, as they say, you're fucked. It's in society's best interest to not only allow education to happen, but indeed mandate it.
To put it differently, since you appear to care about semantics: The public good is not the education itself, but rather the insurance that a certain level of education will be maintained.
Then there are companies that don't mention anything about a new release until it just about hits... *cough* GBA SP *cough*.
Why aren't they fighting to stock Hustler? Not because they don't think they'd win, but because they actually aren't succubi/inccubi.
Libraries are a bastion of "I'm okay, you're okay", but this doesn't include wanting guys jerking to porn in the middle of a large public room. If there were a device that magically read a user's mind, and blocked them from getting what, to them, would be pornography, then I'm pretty sure the library would love it.
But let's not forget that one man's porn is another man's reading material: Take Maxim for example... it's not allowed to be sold in Wal-Mart anymore, because they call it porno. If you've never seen it, Maxim is basically random stereotypical things men enjoy, one of which is scantily-clad women. All the 'naughty' bits are covered, and you're more likely to see something scandelous on MTV than in its pages.
Right now your tax dollars are going to seedy organizations with no government oversight, who can block anything they damn well please, knowing that it at least makes it less likely for people to read it. Check out Peacefire and find out some of the things your tax dollars have been doing for you.
Legitimatly provide items to the public which are "public goods", eh?
How about: 'public education'... a state has a compelling interest in having knowledge freely accessible to the people, rather then end up in the Dark Ages again.
Therefore, libraries are a implementation to fulfill a need for a public good, and should therefore be funded by the government.
Any place that Mother Nature decides to blight with a plague is somewhere I don't want to be... =D
Search for "Mormon Crickets" and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Disease: A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.
I, for instance, have a condition known as Crohn's Disease. It can't be passed onto others, except perhaps genetically, is not deadly except in extremely rare cases, and there is no cure. Sorry, but your definition is wrong.
I assume we're thinking of different UDs. I go to University of Delaware, and laptops are certainly not required. I believe they might say something about having to have a computer, but there are enough computing labs scattered all over campus that you could easily get by without one.
This would be a good troll except that:
Not picture books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the technical.
This is combined with craptacular sentence structure and spelling. Content-wise, it was quite nice, though.
My understanding is that the mean is roughly 950 or so, which means that a lot of people are very tightly packed between there and 1250.
I hope that Apple sees the chance to pull in some extra revenue, and ports this to PC. I doubt anyone would switch to a Mac just because of iTunes, but it'd give them an extra stream of cash if they let PC users share in the goodness.
While $10 is still higher than I'd spend for most craptacular CDs, it is a reasonable fee. I'd love to be able to just download the new Metallica CD as soon as it comes out, legitimately.
Yes... those people do exist. I am not one of them, but many of my friends are.
Why? Many people simply cannot both read quickly enough to enjoy a subtitled movie. Yes, the subtitled version is better. But if you have the choice between enjoying a classic movie that has been dubbed, or missing out on the experience, I think you and I both know the better of the two options.
I know what you're talking about with the original voices though. The longest subbed thing I've watched is the entire first season of Slayers. What interests me is that when I remember watching it, I replace the dialog with the subbed words, with the same intonation and inflection. It's kinda cool.
If the matrix was the first thing to make you ponder these types of questions then either you're very young or you just don't think much.
Assuming your viewpoint is formulated logically, I can come up with plenty of counter-arguments. I will refrain from using myself (there'd be some obvious bias), but I can come up with a few people off the top of my head.
The one that immediately springs to mind is my brother, an IR major at a prestigious university. He also worked as a gun control advocate. I guess, if you work from a logical point of view, you'll be renouncing your idea that only uneducated, stupid gun-nuts enjoyed the Matrix for more than being the equivalent of pop music.
The philosophy retold in the Matrix, alone, would be sparse. However, the artful way it is expressed was what made it a good movie. I admit, I have not read as much philosophy as I would like to (I'm more of a mythology buff). However, the Wachowski(sp?) brothers created quite a world, with quality characterization, to retell the philosophy. Speaking of mythology, I feel that the religious undertones and allegory have been neglected in favor of the philosophical interpretations.
Whatever you think of the movies, the Wachowski brothers put a lot of work into it. There's an absolutely amazing backstory to it. And you know what? I honestly don't care if some of the ideas (Battery critics, I'm looking at you) are impractical, because it didn't break the suspension of disbelief. I hesitate to compare their work to Tolkien's, because it's obviously not on the same level, but their world has the same depth to it to me.
I don't know. Maybe I'm one of those blunt, stupid, uneducated gun-loving types.
You bring a good point. In that case, you could argue (from an ethical point, rather than a legal one) that Windows 98 is abadonware, and thus there is nothing unethical in making a copy of it.
I do believe you have missed the joke, while simultaneously making a similar joke.He was calling George W. a retard (making fun of his intelligence). It's called a pun.Wikipedia: Pun.
You've got a license for the software. Go see the local neighborhood pirate, and get a normal CD. It's really that simple.
Damn... I thought they were 48 bits -> 6 bytes... dumb dumb dumb mistake. This transforms the number of addresses per person to 56,713,727,820,156,410,577,229,101,238.628. I'm not even sure what to call a number that large.
I apologize for my naivete.
You wouldn't have perhaps done the math to figure out how many IPs IPv6 creates? I'll give you a hint: 256^6 = 281,474,976,710,656. Yes, 281.474 trillion addresses. To put this in perspective, there are about 6 billion people on earth. The ratio of addresses to people is 46,912.50:1. So unless people start having 45 thousand different addresses referring to their devices, I think we're OK for a while.
I know exactly what you're talking about. The first time it happened, it was 2 or 3 in the morning, and the lights were off. All of a sudden I got jumped by those god-damned flying pirates (I didn't have the ice beam or infra visor at this point). My heart rate probably doubled when that happened.
Metroid Prime is probably the most immersive FPS I've ever played... creepy as hell too, because it's not constant action. You can ambling through a maze, and all of a sudden run into a Shoggoth (Oh shit! Oh shit! No Missles!)
That's not a bad analogy: Let's say I'm renting a house from you, and I use that house as a front for my pirate organization. Should you be sued by the RIAA? I say no.
If a file has a copyright notice -- presumably a machine-readable one -- don't return it as a hit. If you personally find out, e.g. because you get a nasty letter from the RIAA, that a particular file is likely infringing, don't return it as a hit.And I still don't see how this would work. Then again, I'm not familiar with the spidering program that is at issue. I'm assuming it's mostly like the spiders that your average search engine uses. The only way I see of doing it would be to flag that entry in the database, after you've verified it's not legit. Let's not forget that the BSA thought that copies of OpenOffice were pirated.
I don't agree that these SMB share search engines were responsible for contributory infringement. It smacks of ridiculousness that a programmer can be sued for creating an index of files that end users shared out.
Did they possibly create the program to infringe copyright? Could be. Does it matter? Not really. If they were sharing out files over their own service, then they should have been sued as actually infringing copyright. None of this "creating a new method of infringing copyright" bullshit.
Unless you could selectively make copies with a single device that a) complied with SCMS, but still b) switch that off and make unlimited copies BUT take the chance that it might be illegal.That's exactly what I was thinking.
And then there are those of us that earned scholarships and yet aren't bitter about it.
These are pampered rich kids taking a bullshit course called "Gothic Imagination".This is a public school in Georgia. Last I heard, Georgia has a policy that any students that graduate high school with a B+ average get scholarships to in-state schools. So I'm sure that it's just *packed* with snobby rich kids who wipe their ass with money.
Especially since the school is so damn expensive. I know I wouldn't be able to afford out-of-state tuition. $5,484 a semester. I don't know what you were expecting, but that's fucking low for tuition. So to rack up the kind of bills you claim 'daddy' would have to pay, he or she would have to take 5 years.
Nevermind the fact that you don't know what the fuck they're studying. For all you know, this 'Gothic Imagination' class could be an Art History / Conservation class.
It pisses me off that I busted my ass for a scholarship, and then to pay back student loans, when the shools give the same degree and preferential treatment to mentally deficient trust fund babies because they're the ones who can donate to the alumni fund down the road.Good for you; you got a scholarship. Instead of being grateful to whatever organization gave it to you (I won't assume that it was the school), you instead get mad at people who, by an accident of birth, happened to have rich parents. What do you expect? I'm all for dissing the rich, but seriously - what do you want? Should rich people be banned from higher education because they don't have to earn scholarships to get into school?
Bah. Higher learning my ass. What a waste of time and money University was.So you're actually not bitter that other people didn't have to pay, but are just having a bit of buyer's remorse?
One other thing I just thought of... how do you know that a person doesn't have rights to that particular song? If I've got, say, an Offspring CD, why shouldn't I be able to pull down high quality .ogg files from a friend, instead of having to rip it myself. Or, say I lose my CD on a cross-country plane trip (This one's actually happened). Since I don't own the content, but rather have a liscense to it, why can't I replace it with burned mp3s?
This all goes back to my original point: computers don't understand the nuance of the legal system.
True. But these guys weren't sued as end users. They were sued as software developers. If they were sued as end users, that'd be a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
By not returning results they know or should know are infringing if they're aware of them. This includes files with copyright notices, files that you've been notified by the copyright holder to be infringing, files that could not possibly be shared per fair use, etc.It can't be that hard to check all search results against a blacklist and not display them if they're on there.
How exactly would you suggest that be done? Should I block all files containing key phrases like "Britney" "Spears" "mp3"? That blocks "Britney Spears sucks.mp3". Until CPUs have a Legal Coprocessor, I don't see your plan as implementable.
Not via general purpose computers it's not. The AHRA only applies to noncommercial music copying if it is via analog devices, analog media, or CERTAIN, QUALIFYING digital devices or media. Computers don't qualify. DAT would. I think Minidisc might as well. Check my recent posts -- I've been discussing it as well in this thread.Oh yeah... I remember that. If someone created an audio codec that restricted digital copying to one generation (share with friends, but your friends can't share) and allowed burning to CD, wouldn't that fall under the terms of the AHRA? I'd be cool with that... it's a healthy compromise.
The RIAA should not be able to sink any project that transfers bits between computers simply because it does not have DRM technology built in.I agree. However, they can't.
Well, it sure seems that way when they can sue search engines.
My understanding was that they did *not* have the ability to stop the infringement. I don't even see how that'd be technically feasible from an automated standpoint. I could have missed something.
Well, as you say, you can often share mp3s legally. So there is no real difference; both can be used legally -- but here they were not. The providers knew this, could have done something about it so as to not contribute to the direct infringements, but didn't.My point that 'Napster this is not' was simply that you cannot argue that there are not significant non-infringing uses for the software. Again, I still don't understand how the creators of the search spiders were expected to filter copyrighted material. Nevermind that sharing music between friends is generally considered legit, if I remember correctly.
The RIAA should not be able to sink any project that transfers bits between computers simply because it does not have DRM technology built in. If I wanted to create a better way to share directories in Windows or Unix, it shouldn't be my responsibility to police my users to make sure they aren't doing something blatently illegal. That's why, even though I strongly dislike guns, I think people who want to sue the gun manufacturers are sad, sad people.
Let's take down the inventors of the FTP protocol now too. After all, I know plenty of people who run pirate FTP servers. Therefore, the creators of the protocol must be to blame for contributory infringement.
WTF were they supposed to do? Ban all *.mp3 searches? That'd restrict substantial legitimite uses. Believe it or not, but the RIAA does not hold a copyright on every piece of audio that might be encoded as an mp3. I've got recorded mp3s from all sorts of random places that have nothing to do with the RIAA.
All they provided was a search engine for a Local Area Network. That's what it was created to be. This isn't Napster, and saying it's the same is disingenuous at best, and probably a flat out lie. The tech was to make Windows file sharing easier in general, rather than being created for the explicit purpose of sharing mp3s.
The fact that they got sued for this is absolutely ridiculous. It's a damn shame that they settled... it sets a horrible precedent and the RIAA really doesn't deserve the money.
Definitions for contradict from American Heritage Dictionary:
1. To assert or express the opposite of (a statement).
2. To deny the statement of. See Synonyms at deny.
3. To be contrary to; be inconsistent with.
I'll admit you might have a case that the two statements contradict one another under the third definition, and in that case you'd be right. However, the first and second definitions are far more common.
Going back to what the original guy said:
For every good webpage, there should be a color scheme or at least 3 colors, but no more than 6 (6 is just too many, IMO).
Interpreted: //no more than 6 //6 is just too many, IMO
Absolute_Acceptable_Color_Num <= 6
Opinion_Color_Num != 6
Granted, this is different than what I said before. This is because I went all the way back up to the parent and checked exactly how he set up his restrictions.
As a mathematical test, < is in fact more strict a test than <=. Similarly, the clause inside the parentheses simply strengthens the bounds of acceptable color. He allows 6 colors, then mentions that in an optimal situation, not even 6 colors would not be allowed.
On an unrelated note, I like how you assume that:
1) I would take Visual Basic classes, since that language is so painfully easy to learn that no one in their right mind would have to take classes to pick up. Also, had you read some of my previous posts, you would realize that I'm running Linux (MDK, working on Gentoo, & Debian), and therefore VB would be of little practical use to me.
2) That I would be at a community college, as I sit in my dorm room.
3) That I'm gay, even though I just got off the phone with my girlfriend of a year and 9 months.
There's an art to insulting someone without repeating words and phrases over and over again ('moron', 'faggot', etc). I suggest you learn it.