Well IANAL but I can come up with a quick defence. The telephone system was subsidized by the government. The cable system is wholly private. The government has no power over cable operators like they do over telephone operators.
The agenda isn't hidden. We would like to keep our fucking jobs, or for those of us just out of college, we would like jobs to begin with. Selfish? Perhaps. Hidden? No.
I would much rather carry my odd electronics through, and have it checked out in my presence, rather than subject it to the black hole of checked luggage.
It is not illegal for you to own a digitial cable box. However, the manufacturers of digitial boxes do not sell to consumers, and cable companies have so far only been renting boxes to customers. Therefore, it is very difficult to own a digital cable box legally, but the act itself is not illegal.
Well the analogy kind of falls apart. The "piped" water companies do not really care about people no longer drinking tap water. Drinking accounts for less than 5% of all tap water usage. The record companies are losing much larger margins, and cannot afford to just take the hit.
I am taking exception to the fact that you imply basketball skills are natural born, not your overall argument. It's not so much that Shaq has natural talent. He has natural size, which is commonly misperceived as talent. Due to this fact, Shaq most likely began training as a basketball player from a young age.
Perhaps if the FBI started going after network admins for doing such a crappy job we might start seeing less of these incidents.
Yeah, and when are they going to lock up those pesky women for getting raped? Tired analogy, I know, but your point is ridiculous. Blaming the victim is not going to fix anything. There will always be holes, and there will always be poor admins, penalties or not. Though if the FBI did start to charge admins, we might see network admin salary and job requirements rise significantly, as they would be taking a personal responsibility like that of a professional engineer or accountant. This would also require some sort of certification program, which in the computing field is impossible to maintain.
Car companies make obscene amounts of profit selling parts to cars.
While in general this is true, it really depends on the make/model and part. Parts from makers like GM and Chrysler are much cheaper because they try to use the same parts across all of their products. They have a large variety of models, and a large amount of vehicles sold, so this results in a lot of spare parts hanging around. Also, some parts can be refurbished and resold, such as starter motors. Even further, many parts are duplicated by 3rd party manufacturers, taking the auto companies out of the equation (unless the 3rd parties are licencing from the makers, but I don't think this occurs).
While analogies are not supposed to be exactly the same (if they were the same, what's the point), a majority of analogies used are incorrect. The problem is not analogies, or the authors. The problem is that we are always trying to break things down to something easier, or something we are familiar with. So we say, "Look at it this way, say I took your car and..." The thing is, we act differently in different situations, and we feel differently in different situations. Attempting to reduce everything down to an analogy about cars (or anything) leads to us attempting to view every situation in the same light. This isn't a realistic way to discuss or think.
Yes, I have been guilty of shitty analogies. That is the other problem with analogies. They are so damn easy. Joe is downloading music, why that's just like Bill stealing a car, and just like Adam performing securities fraud! In reality, however, all of these situations are different, and are covered by different laws, terminology and practices. Instead of talking about the actual issues, we end up debating semantics because of analogies that attempt to convert everything to the lowest common denominator.
The example you provide is a total strawman. Please do not use such arguments again in this debate.
They do it all the time by using a loophole which allows laws to be enforced UNTIL they are proven unconstitutional.
While this practice can result in unconstitutional laws being used as threats until they are challenged, it is the proper course of action, and is not a loophole. If Congress was required to show constitutionality of a law before its passage, lawmaking would not occur. It is not the job of the legislature to determine constitutionality. The judiciary is already busy enough with cases which concern existing, in-practice, laws. They do not have the resources to even begin to hear debate on hypothetical laws. This debate occured during Congressional hearings on the McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan campaign finance laws. The right action occured: pass the law and see what SCOTUS does. What happened? SCOTUS heard 4 hours (!) of oral arguments on the case the other day. They will return a decision in a few months.
Why was campaign finance challenged immediately, and the DMCA has yet to be challenged? A few reasons:
1. Standing. One must be affected by the law to challenge it. This means that those truly against the DMCA must wait until those gray provisions are used to be able to do anything about it. While this has occurred, few have yet to seriously challenge it.
2. Money. The people that were affected by campaign finance have a lot of money to spend on legal proceedings
The problem is not Congress passing unconstitutional laws. The problem is that the cost of our legal system is very high. This results in many people choosing to take a safe bet on settlement, rather than challenge a law which may or may not be constitutional, where a loss would result in much more damage. However, we will be unable to fix this problem because the only logical fixes to it are considered socialist by American thinking. The fix I speak of is full, free, state provided legal defense. While public defender and pro bono lawyers exist, it is widely known that their quality of service leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, public defenders are only provided in criminal cases (I may be incorrect on that point). Proper legal research costs money. There is no way around it. However, proper legal research is what wins cases. Until we have a system where both parties are guaranteed near-equal legal representation, the abuses will continue.
If water is in your rent, it isn't free. It's part of your rent. That means while you have a flat rate for water, it isn't free.
Furthermore, the only reason bottled water has caught on in this country is public paranoia (thanks to the media) and, in some cases, poor water systems. Poor water systems lead to poor tasting water, which drives some people to buy bottled. In my hometown, the water is mostly well-collected, and is excellent. Few people use bottled or even filtered water for home use.
Yeah I suppose the difference between securities fraud and shoplifting is just a pesky detail to you as well. The "trivial technicality" has been ruled on by the Supreme Court. Please see my post above.
The sad thing is, he probably isn't. It is a common geek mentality to not consider certain types of music to be the same caliber as other types of music. I myself used to be guilty of it.
Your statements are an example of an argument about an arcane detail of the precise legal meaning of words.
Surprise, that's what law is. The words used in lawmaking are always carefully chosen to give a precise legal definition. In this case, words have been chosen to specifically differentiate between copyright and property ownership. In the same vein, different words exist in the law to describe the situations where these properties have been illegally used or taken. The Supreme Court has ruled that, "The history of the criminal infringement provisions of the Copyright Act indicates that Congress had no intention to reach copyright infringement when it enacted 2134[, the law against interstate transport of stolen goods]." From this link conveniently 'stolen' from a sibling post.
Shaq does something most people cannot EVER learn to do as well as he does it;
Not true. There are many, many basketball players with better skills than Shaq. The guy can barely shoot a free throw. Shaq's skills in combination with his size have contributed to his success.
Yeah, that's how all those state-by-state vote counts got around... by not counting votes. I dunno if you're trolling or are just stupid, but you're certainly wrong.
Simply put, yes. An e-mail reciever can publicly post their e-mail just as you could publicly post your phone bill or a letter from grandma. This assumes there are no prior agreements (such as NDAs) between the sender and reciever.
1. Apple is not doing this. Woz, no longer with Apple, gave permission to a 3rd party to build the machines.
2. This is hardware; Microsoft makes software. Software is much easier to preserve than hardware, simply due to space requirements. Much of Microsoft's software is still around. Some, like MS-DOS, have been replaced with similar products such as FreeDOS.
If one movie theatre in your area is not crowded when others are, there is a reason. That reason may be that the theatre is harder to get to, in a less dense area, more expensive, less comfortable, less selection, etc etc, but there is a reason. People aren't just going to theatre B instead of theatre A for fun. While not all theatres in one area will have the same exact saturation at any one point, if all things are equal, they should be equally crowded. Of course, all things are not equal. In your situation, however, if you went to the less crowded theatre, chances are you are making a sacrifice. If these things don't matter to you, then you would be able to benefit greatly from a camera system.
Off the top of my head, I would say your claims are greatly exaggerated. For the record, I live in the NY/NJ Metro Area, and while we do rank lower on traffic studies due to having perhaps the best region-wide transit systems in the nation, there is still plenty of traffic to go around. The PM peak period in this area is approximately 3:30 pm - 7:30 pm.
The thing is, a lot of business that goes on requires the services of another business. If I show up to work at 6 am, and a colleague at another company, or even a coworker, shows up at 11 am, that is 5 hours of my work day where I do not have access to their knowledge and/or decision making power. Likewise, if I leave at 3 pm, there may be workers who work later who then are shut out from me. By attempting to have everyone in and out at around the same time, you maximize the time that everyone is in the office together, theoretically maximizing the productivity of your office.
For a (slightly) more practical bus tracking application, check out Rutgers University's whereismybus.com
Beware: Site may not function on non-IE browers (I've had varied results). It can also take 30-60 seconds for bus locations to appear (In fact, I can't get any to appear right now, using IE). The system certainly hasn't been perfect since it started in Spring 2002, but when it does work, it's very handy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well IANAL but I can come up with a quick defence. The telephone system was subsidized by the government. The cable system is wholly private. The government has no power over cable operators like they do over telephone operators.
The agenda isn't hidden. We would like to keep our fucking jobs, or for those of us just out of college, we would like jobs to begin with. Selfish? Perhaps. Hidden? No.
I would much rather carry my odd electronics through, and have it checked out in my presence, rather than subject it to the black hole of checked luggage.
IIRC from the book, the only reason the plane crashed in that situation was the pilots' blindness due to the flash.
It is not illegal for you to own a digitial cable box. However, the manufacturers of digitial boxes do not sell to consumers, and cable companies have so far only been renting boxes to customers. Therefore, it is very difficult to own a digital cable box legally, but the act itself is not illegal.
I couldn't tell you if they work or not, because all the music I play is in MP3 format.
Look, you're l33t, we get it. But are you implying you don't have a CD drive to test these things on?
Well the analogy kind of falls apart. The "piped" water companies do not really care about people no longer drinking tap water. Drinking accounts for less than 5% of all tap water usage. The record companies are losing much larger margins, and cannot afford to just take the hit.
I am taking exception to the fact that you imply basketball skills are natural born, not your overall argument. It's not so much that Shaq has natural talent. He has natural size, which is commonly misperceived as talent. Due to this fact, Shaq most likely began training as a basketball player from a young age.
Perhaps if the FBI started going after network admins for doing such a crappy job we might start seeing less of these incidents.
Yeah, and when are they going to lock up those pesky women for getting raped? Tired analogy, I know, but your point is ridiculous. Blaming the victim is not going to fix anything. There will always be holes, and there will always be poor admins, penalties or not. Though if the FBI did start to charge admins, we might see network admin salary and job requirements rise significantly, as they would be taking a personal responsibility like that of a professional engineer or accountant. This would also require some sort of certification program, which in the computing field is impossible to maintain.
There is a very basic flaw in this car theft = file trading.
Yeah, the flaw is that car theft != file trading.
QED
Car companies make obscene amounts of profit selling parts to cars.
While in general this is true, it really depends on the make/model and part. Parts from makers like GM and Chrysler are much cheaper because they try to use the same parts across all of their products. They have a large variety of models, and a large amount of vehicles sold, so this results in a lot of spare parts hanging around. Also, some parts can be refurbished and resold, such as starter motors. Even further, many parts are duplicated by 3rd party manufacturers, taking the auto companies out of the equation (unless the 3rd parties are licencing from the makers, but I don't think this occurs).
While analogies are not supposed to be exactly the same (if they were the same, what's the point), a majority of analogies used are incorrect. The problem is not analogies, or the authors. The problem is that we are always trying to break things down to something easier, or something we are familiar with. So we say, "Look at it this way, say I took your car and..." The thing is, we act differently in different situations, and we feel differently in different situations. Attempting to reduce everything down to an analogy about cars (or anything) leads to us attempting to view every situation in the same light. This isn't a realistic way to discuss or think.
Yes, I have been guilty of shitty analogies. That is the other problem with analogies. They are so damn easy. Joe is downloading music, why that's just like Bill stealing a car, and just like Adam performing securities fraud! In reality, however, all of these situations are different, and are covered by different laws, terminology and practices. Instead of talking about the actual issues, we end up debating semantics because of analogies that attempt to convert everything to the lowest common denominator.
The example you provide is a total strawman. Please do not use such arguments again in this debate.
They do it all the time by using a loophole which allows laws to be enforced UNTIL they are proven unconstitutional.
While this practice can result in unconstitutional laws being used as threats until they are challenged, it is the proper course of action, and is not a loophole. If Congress was required to show constitutionality of a law before its passage, lawmaking would not occur. It is not the job of the legislature to determine constitutionality. The judiciary is already busy enough with cases which concern existing, in-practice, laws. They do not have the resources to even begin to hear debate on hypothetical laws. This debate occured during Congressional hearings on the McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan campaign finance laws. The right action occured: pass the law and see what SCOTUS does. What happened? SCOTUS heard 4 hours (!) of oral arguments on the case the other day. They will return a decision in a few months.
Why was campaign finance challenged immediately, and the DMCA has yet to be challenged? A few reasons:
1. Standing. One must be affected by the law to challenge it. This means that those truly against the DMCA must wait until those gray provisions are used to be able to do anything about it. While this has occurred, few have yet to seriously challenge it.
2. Money. The people that were affected by campaign finance have a lot of money to spend on legal proceedings
The problem is not Congress passing unconstitutional laws. The problem is that the cost of our legal system is very high. This results in many people choosing to take a safe bet on settlement, rather than challenge a law which may or may not be constitutional, where a loss would result in much more damage. However, we will be unable to fix this problem because the only logical fixes to it are considered socialist by American thinking. The fix I speak of is full, free, state provided legal defense. While public defender and pro bono lawyers exist, it is widely known that their quality of service leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, public defenders are only provided in criminal cases (I may be incorrect on that point). Proper legal research costs money. There is no way around it. However, proper legal research is what wins cases. Until we have a system where both parties are guaranteed near-equal legal representation, the abuses will continue.
If water is in your rent, it isn't free. It's part of your rent. That means while you have a flat rate for water, it isn't free.
Furthermore, the only reason bottled water has caught on in this country is public paranoia (thanks to the media) and, in some cases, poor water systems. Poor water systems lead to poor tasting water, which drives some people to buy bottled. In my hometown, the water is mostly well-collected, and is excellent. Few people use bottled or even filtered water for home use.
Yeah I suppose the difference between securities fraud and shoplifting is just a pesky detail to you as well. The "trivial technicality" has been ruled on by the Supreme Court. Please see my post above.
The sad thing is, he probably isn't. It is a common geek mentality to not consider certain types of music to be the same caliber as other types of music. I myself used to be guilty of it.
Your statements are an example of an argument about an arcane detail of the precise legal meaning of words.
Surprise, that's what law is. The words used in lawmaking are always carefully chosen to give a precise legal definition. In this case, words have been chosen to specifically differentiate between copyright and property ownership. In the same vein, different words exist in the law to describe the situations where these properties have been illegally used or taken. The Supreme Court has ruled that, "The history of the criminal infringement provisions of the Copyright Act indicates that Congress had no intention to reach copyright infringement when it enacted 2134[, the law against interstate transport of stolen goods]." From this link conveniently 'stolen' from a sibling post.
Shaq does something most people cannot EVER learn to do as well as he does it;
Not true. There are many, many basketball players with better skills than Shaq. The guy can barely shoot a free throw. Shaq's skills in combination with his size have contributed to his success.
Yeah, that's how all those state-by-state vote counts got around... by not counting votes. I dunno if you're trolling or are just stupid, but you're certainly wrong.
Simply put, yes. An e-mail reciever can publicly post their e-mail just as you could publicly post your phone bill or a letter from grandma. This assumes there are no prior agreements (such as NDAs) between the sender and reciever.
1. Apple is not doing this. Woz, no longer with Apple, gave permission to a 3rd party to build the machines.
2. This is hardware; Microsoft makes software. Software is much easier to preserve than hardware, simply due to space requirements. Much of Microsoft's software is still around. Some, like MS-DOS, have been replaced with similar products such as FreeDOS.
If one movie theatre in your area is not crowded when others are, there is a reason. That reason may be that the theatre is harder to get to, in a less dense area, more expensive, less comfortable, less selection, etc etc, but there is a reason. People aren't just going to theatre B instead of theatre A for fun. While not all theatres in one area will have the same exact saturation at any one point, if all things are equal, they should be equally crowded. Of course, all things are not equal. In your situation, however, if you went to the less crowded theatre, chances are you are making a sacrifice. If these things don't matter to you, then you would be able to benefit greatly from a camera system.
Off the top of my head, I would say your claims are greatly exaggerated. For the record, I live in the NY/NJ Metro Area, and while we do rank lower on traffic studies due to having perhaps the best region-wide transit systems in the nation, there is still plenty of traffic to go around. The PM peak period in this area is approximately 3:30 pm - 7:30 pm.
Management, of course.
The thing is, a lot of business that goes on requires the services of another business. If I show up to work at 6 am, and a colleague at another company, or even a coworker, shows up at 11 am, that is 5 hours of my work day where I do not have access to their knowledge and/or decision making power. Likewise, if I leave at 3 pm, there may be workers who work later who then are shut out from me. By attempting to have everyone in and out at around the same time, you maximize the time that everyone is in the office together, theoretically maximizing the productivity of your office.
For a (slightly) more practical bus tracking application, check out Rutgers University's whereismybus.com
Beware: Site may not function on non-IE browers (I've had varied results). It can also take 30-60 seconds for bus locations to appear (In fact, I can't get any to appear right now, using IE). The system certainly hasn't been perfect since it started in Spring 2002, but when it does work, it's very handy.