Most of our "fair use" has been decided by the courts, not laid out explicitly in the law itself. It's impossible to know what will be OK and what will be infringing. I find that to be a burden that an ordinary citizen should not have to bear. I'd rather the law be simpler - or even better, become a commercial-only imposition.
Probably not. I actually have a non-infringing (I think) use for these tools. My old Mac G5 has no Flash updates anymore - it's not supported. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but every once in a while I have to download the video so that I can view it with VLC.
Agreed. Work on something that you can show off in an interview (or to link to on a resume). It would be impressive to have a project with you on your smartphone that you could show off, or something you could pull up on the interviewer's computer.
It could do a lot to make up for the typical sparse resume you have when you are first starting out.
Even if it isn't something that you can show off, it will give you something interesting to talk about.
Well, they also wrote their own obituary with the way they handled the release. The main thing that sticks out is breaking "Plays for Sure", which pretty much told the consumer how much they could trust MS.
I guess we'll just have to disagree. The Cuban-American relationship is so different from the American-Pakistani or American-Yemeni relationship that I'm not even really sure how to respond.
On the broader issue of "rights" - any country has a right to self defense. If another country is harboring a dangerous enemy and will not help you deal with the problem, of course you have the "right" to use force. I honestly have no idea whether the US is harboring Cuban terrorists or not, but it would be extremely foolish for Cuba to carry out an attack on American soil. Whether they have a "right" to do so or not is academic.
The only "secret" part of my number is the last 4 digits. There are a finite number of area codes and 3-digit extensions, all nicely indexed by area. If someone wants to spam me with security system ads, pulling the do-not-call list is just about the hardest way to cold-call 10,000 numbers that I've ever heard. Much easier to just dial 0000-9999. At a penny per call, that whole list would only cost $100.
If I were just getting into evil calling, I'd approach it like this: 1. Find the geographic area that I'm interested in. 2. Get the area code and 3-digit extensions for that region and build a list with all the numbers from 0000-9999. 3. Suck in the Yellow Pages and blacklist those numbers so that I don't bother with commercial numbers. 4. Profit!
Most of the Do Not Call list numbers would already be on my list, so it wouldn't really help to have them. The exchanges (especially the older ones) are already quite full, so there won't be many numbers that aren't occupied.
My strategy is to answer the calls and waste as much time as they will give me. This upsets their cost basis a little tiny bit. Wish everyone would do it.
So the US gets to "agree to the request", but the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. have no say in the matter.
Who says they have no say? I thought we were talking drone strikes, which are endorsed by Yemen. Pakistan won't publicly endorse them, but someone in Pakistan is letting the US fly drones out of bases there (or at least was).
Any particular day you can sit outside and watch known terrorists enter and leave the building.
We're back to Cuba again? Look, Cuba may be your pet cause but it ain't mine. Cuba-US relations are nothing like Yemeni-US relations, or Pakistani-US relations for that matter.
Cuba is much closer to the ideal of a representative democracy than the US has been for quite some time.
That is so detached from reality that I wonder if I am wasting my time.
Not that this has anything at all to do with your hypothetical situation or whether innocent people deserve to get massacred because they happen to be in the same building as someone who speaks badly of the Untied States.
No one deserves to get massacred - war is hell. And it was not MY hypothetical, it was yours.
I'm a big fan of pragmatism. Our ideals should guide us, but we shouldn't let them get in the way of reality.
I think that Clinton and (especially) Bush II hurt us internationally, and I think that Obama is probably over-using drones... not that I object to their use, but I think they are a propaganda loss for us.
People seem to romanticize the US of the past. Perhaps I'm just old and cynical, but I look at US history and see all sorts of things that are at least as bad as drone strikes: basically our entire Native American policy until very recently, our "pacification" of the Philippines, our involvement in post-WWII China, Vietnam, Iran, Panama, Cuba, Grenada, Jim Crow, interment of Japanese citizens during WWII, the KKK, use of military and police to put down labor strikes, etc. I'm sure you get the idea. People craft this narrative in their heads where the US is becoming less free, less neighborly, and more aggressive...
I just don't think that is true. I contend that, especially for minorities, the US is a much better place to live than ever before in terms of freedom. There was some movement in the wrong direction shortly after 9/11, but I believe that was a one-time overreaction, and it seems to have largely abated. I see a troubling trend in local police using disproportionate/inappropriate force to control peaceful protesters, but nothing that would indicate that it is a concerted national effort. And while Occupy Oakland went horribly wrong, Occupy Philly was resolved without any violence at all.
I think the US is far more neighborly than it has been in a long, long time - for about 100 years the US treated everything in the Western Hemisphere as it's own domain. We finally stopped the overt interference in internal conflicts, and if we could chill out on the whole "war on drugs", we'd be almost benign.
Aggression is still a problem - Iraq? Though I've long contended that it is hard to go through history and find an example of such overwhelming military power that was as restrained as the US has been. There have been no territory grabs, for example, despite about 20 years of uncontested military dominance.
But then instead of a cast-in-place reinforced concrete core you'd have a bunch of big reinforced blocks that you'd need to attach together somehow. Certainly still possible, but I'm not sure how much time you'd save. You wouldn't need the cure time and you'd save the setting up the molds.
I'd be concerned about performance in an earthquake, but that seems like a solvable engineering problem.
The newer skyscrapers in the US have a core that consists of 3 or 4-foot thick reinforced concrete. You simply can't do that with pre-fab. Then again, I'm no civil engineer...
So as long as the Cuban congress gives Raul Castro the authorization you have no problem with Cuba sending a drone to attack the headquarters of the Gusano terrorists living in Miami?
Nice straw man. The two situations are not analogous and you know it.
Let's pretend for a moment that your scenario were analogous... Cuba has a terror suspect hiding in a specific Miami hotel and they ask the US to get him. The US agrees to the request, but says that they have no capacity to get into a Miami hotel and make an arrest/kill. Instead the US authorizes a drone strike and Cuba uses a missile to blow up the hotel.
That actually does not seem unreasonable. The problem with your analogy is that Cuba is not a representative democracy and the US is not Yemen. And of course, the sour US-Cuban relations add a whole extra layer to the situation.
Where in the Constitution or the Legal Code does it say that the president is above the law?
It doesn't - it provides a framework where congress can give him that authority. Specifically, congress set up and funds the CIA and the various branches of the US military - and those institutions fall under his oversight.
If he's allowed to murder with impunity,
He is not allowed to "murder with impunity". Try a drone strike inside the US and see where that gets him. There certainly are limits.
Where do you draw the line?
Holder laid it out like this: 1. Geography: congress must authorize the use of force in the area, and in his opinion they have done that. 2. Does the country in question have the will and/or capacity to capture/kill a suspect. In his opinion, Yemen did not have the capacity to capture or kill Awlaki itself.
I think that is a pretty reasonable standard. Provision 1 means you can't do this in peacetime and without congressional approval and provision 2 means you can't do this when there is an alternative involving some kind of justice system somewhere. We are in a shooting war with loosely defined boundaries, and Yemen has no control over much of it's territory, let alone the ability to bring a suspect living in those areas to justice.
It's not the "end of story" just because you say it is.
I think it is quite reasonable to allow the President - who presides over both the CIA and the military - to make these kinds of decisions. If Yemen had a functioning government that could actually arrest and try or deport a wanted criminal in a known location, this would be a whole different conversation.
Wha? I added myself to that list and it cut my sales calls down considerably. Now I only get obviously fraudulent calls from spoofed caller ids, and far fewer of them.
Well, sure - in a European democracy that would not be good... they usually aren't supposed to have such powers. In the US, the President is also the head of the military (but in turn not connected to the legislature like a typical Prime Minister) - so naturally he would have final say over anyone the military is trying to kill, and in general this list should be restricted to people outside of the US courts' various jurisdictions (i.e. Yemen).
In the US, I'd be a lot more concerned if the President were not the one with final say over what the military is up to.
Slashdot Mirror
But I'm a pretty good troll.
Yes. I think we're kind of famous for that.
Most of our "fair use" has been decided by the courts, not laid out explicitly in the law itself. It's impossible to know what will be OK and what will be infringing. I find that to be a burden that an ordinary citizen should not have to bear. I'd rather the law be simpler - or even better, become a commercial-only imposition.
Your the best.
Is it fair use for me to download a Flash video so that I can view it with VLC on my non-Flash equipped computer or device? I certainly think it is.
Probably not. I actually have a non-infringing (I think) use for these tools. My old Mac G5 has no Flash updates anymore - it's not supported. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but every once in a while I have to download the video so that I can view it with VLC.
Agreed. Work on something that you can show off in an interview (or to link to on a resume). It would be impressive to have a project with you on your smartphone that you could show off, or something you could pull up on the interviewer's computer.
It could do a lot to make up for the typical sparse resume you have when you are first starting out.
Even if it isn't something that you can show off, it will give you something interesting to talk about.
Well, they also wrote their own obituary with the way they handled the release. The main thing that sticks out is breaking "Plays for Sure", which pretty much told the consumer how much they could trust MS.
It's an apples-to-apples comparison.
I guess we'll just have to disagree. The Cuban-American relationship is so different from the American-Pakistani or American-Yemeni relationship that I'm not even really sure how to respond.
On the broader issue of "rights" - any country has a right to self defense. If another country is harboring a dangerous enemy and will not help you deal with the problem, of course you have the "right" to use force. I honestly have no idea whether the US is harboring Cuban terrorists or not, but it would be extremely foolish for Cuba to carry out an attack on American soil. Whether they have a "right" to do so or not is academic.
You misunderstand, or I was not clear - Yemen and Pakistan are complicit in the drone strikes.
I really have no knowledge about these Cuban matters, not sure why you keep bringing them up.
I suspect their budget is ridiculous given their mandate. I also suspect that it is filled with government employees :)
The only "secret" part of my number is the last 4 digits. There are a finite number of area codes and 3-digit extensions, all nicely indexed by area. If someone wants to spam me with security system ads, pulling the do-not-call list is just about the hardest way to cold-call 10,000 numbers that I've ever heard. Much easier to just dial 0000-9999. At a penny per call, that whole list would only cost $100.
If I were just getting into evil calling, I'd approach it like this: 1. Find the geographic area that I'm interested in. 2. Get the area code and 3-digit extensions for that region and build a list with all the numbers from 0000-9999. 3. Suck in the Yellow Pages and blacklist those numbers so that I don't bother with commercial numbers. 4. Profit!
Most of the Do Not Call list numbers would already be on my list, so it wouldn't really help to have them. The exchanges (especially the older ones) are already quite full, so there won't be many numbers that aren't occupied.
My strategy is to answer the calls and waste as much time as they will give me. This upsets their cost basis a little tiny bit. Wish everyone would do it.
So the US gets to "agree to the request", but the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. have no say in the matter.
Who says they have no say? I thought we were talking drone strikes, which are endorsed by Yemen. Pakistan won't publicly endorse them, but someone in Pakistan is letting the US fly drones out of bases there (or at least was).
Any particular day you can sit outside and watch known terrorists enter and leave the building.
We're back to Cuba again? Look, Cuba may be your pet cause but it ain't mine. Cuba-US relations are nothing like Yemeni-US relations, or Pakistani-US relations for that matter.
Cuba is much closer to the ideal of a representative democracy than the US has been for quite some time.
That is so detached from reality that I wonder if I am wasting my time.
Not that this has anything at all to do with your hypothetical situation or whether innocent people deserve to get massacred because they happen to be in the same building as someone who speaks badly of the Untied States.
No one deserves to get massacred - war is hell. And it was not MY hypothetical, it was yours.
I'm a big fan of pragmatism. Our ideals should guide us, but we shouldn't let them get in the way of reality.
I think that Clinton and (especially) Bush II hurt us internationally, and I think that Obama is probably over-using drones... not that I object to their use, but I think they are a propaganda loss for us.
People seem to romanticize the US of the past. Perhaps I'm just old and cynical, but I look at US history and see all sorts of things that are at least as bad as drone strikes: basically our entire Native American policy until very recently, our "pacification" of the Philippines, our involvement in post-WWII China, Vietnam, Iran, Panama, Cuba, Grenada, Jim Crow, interment of Japanese citizens during WWII, the KKK, use of military and police to put down labor strikes, etc. I'm sure you get the idea. People craft this narrative in their heads where the US is becoming less free, less neighborly, and more aggressive...
I just don't think that is true. I contend that, especially for minorities, the US is a much better place to live than ever before in terms of freedom. There was some movement in the wrong direction shortly after 9/11, but I believe that was a one-time overreaction, and it seems to have largely abated. I see a troubling trend in local police using disproportionate/inappropriate force to control peaceful protesters, but nothing that would indicate that it is a concerted national effort. And while Occupy Oakland went horribly wrong, Occupy Philly was resolved without any violence at all.
I think the US is far more neighborly than it has been in a long, long time - for about 100 years the US treated everything in the Western Hemisphere as it's own domain. We finally stopped the overt interference in internal conflicts, and if we could chill out on the whole "war on drugs", we'd be almost benign.
Aggression is still a problem - Iraq? Though I've long contended that it is hard to go through history and find an example of such overwhelming military power that was as restrained as the US has been. There have been no territory grabs, for example, despite about 20 years of uncontested military dominance.
Wow, I'm full of hot air - I'll stop.
But then instead of a cast-in-place reinforced concrete core you'd have a bunch of big reinforced blocks that you'd need to attach together somehow. Certainly still possible, but I'm not sure how much time you'd save. You wouldn't need the cure time and you'd save the setting up the molds.
I'd be concerned about performance in an earthquake, but that seems like a solvable engineering problem.
The newer skyscrapers in the US have a core that consists of 3 or 4-foot thick reinforced concrete. You simply can't do that with pre-fab. Then again, I'm no civil engineer...
North American's, and Europeans partially are not yet used to prefab houses.
Hey, don't lump us N. Americans in with the Europeans! We love us some trailer park! If you don't believe me, just watch any tornado report.
Impeachment.
You mean like how Apple only uses Apple-branded electricity?
you would be ok with the South Americans just sending a drone into Florida to get them?
That's a whole extra layer that we don't have to deal with in this situation - here the governments of Yemen and Pakistan are complicit.
Now perhaps we should shift to the operation to fetch Osama Bin Laden... :)
So as long as the Cuban congress gives Raul Castro the authorization you have no problem with Cuba sending a drone to attack the headquarters of the Gusano terrorists living in Miami?
Nice straw man. The two situations are not analogous and you know it.
Let's pretend for a moment that your scenario were analogous... Cuba has a terror suspect hiding in a specific Miami hotel and they ask the US to get him. The US agrees to the request, but says that they have no capacity to get into a Miami hotel and make an arrest/kill. Instead the US authorizes a drone strike and Cuba uses a missile to blow up the hotel.
That actually does not seem unreasonable. The problem with your analogy is that Cuba is not a representative democracy and the US is not Yemen. And of course, the sour US-Cuban relations add a whole extra layer to the situation.
Where in the Constitution or the Legal Code does it say that the president is above the law?
It doesn't - it provides a framework where congress can give him that authority. Specifically, congress set up and funds the CIA and the various branches of the US military - and those institutions fall under his oversight.
If he's allowed to murder with impunity,
He is not allowed to "murder with impunity". Try a drone strike inside the US and see where that gets him. There certainly are limits.
Where do you draw the line?
Holder laid it out like this: 1. Geography: congress must authorize the use of force in the area, and in his opinion they have done that. 2. Does the country in question have the will and/or capacity to capture/kill a suspect. In his opinion, Yemen did not have the capacity to capture or kill Awlaki itself.
I think that is a pretty reasonable standard. Provision 1 means you can't do this in peacetime and without congressional approval and provision 2 means you can't do this when there is an alternative involving some kind of justice system somewhere. We are in a shooting war with loosely defined boundaries, and Yemen has no control over much of it's territory, let alone the ability to bring a suspect living in those areas to justice.
Consider me slightly less ignorant - didn't know that about France...
It's not the "end of story" just because you say it is.
I think it is quite reasonable to allow the President - who presides over both the CIA and the military - to make these kinds of decisions. If Yemen had a functioning government that could actually arrest and try or deport a wanted criminal in a known location, this would be a whole different conversation.
Wha? I added myself to that list and it cut my sales calls down considerably. Now I only get obviously fraudulent calls from spoofed caller ids, and far fewer of them.
Well, sure - in a European democracy that would not be good... they usually aren't supposed to have such powers. In the US, the President is also the head of the military (but in turn not connected to the legislature like a typical Prime Minister) - so naturally he would have final say over anyone the military is trying to kill, and in general this list should be restricted to people outside of the US courts' various jurisdictions (i.e. Yemen).
In the US, I'd be a lot more concerned if the President were not the one with final say over what the military is up to.