Christ, Slashdot, could this post have been any lazier? How about mentioning what it is? Why we should be interested? That's not just good journalism, it's actually likely to generate page views too. FFS.
The reluctance to classify Anders Breivik as mentally ill comes from the problem we'd then have differentiating people like him from, say, regular soldiers.
For me, it's simple: if you are prepared to kill voluntarily for an ideology, you're mentally ill.
If you violate my property rights (say, by trespassing), I can have you... punished
Actually in many jurisdictions (the UK and Australia, to name but two), you can't. You can ask someone to leave your property, and law enforcement will assist you if they refuse, but to punish someone for trespassing you will have to be able to prove damage.
In Scotland, if you own open land - moors, mountainsides and the like - then you're SOL because people have the right to roam over it.
As were lots of writers of the era. Robert Silverberg writes in his commentaries on his early work of cranking out 10,000 words per day, day in, day out.
"Copyright law does not distinguish, in defining "distribute", between copies paid for vs. copies given away for free"
You could argue that there's a good reason for that. When copyright law was developed, it was impossible to make large numbers of copies of something for negligible cost. Therefore, it was a reasonable assumption that anyone making multiple copies of a book or vinyl album or even a CD was doing so to sell them. Copyright law is all about stopping that from happening, which is why it appears to some to be so unjust when applied to free distribution.
"by dropping VBA you hinder cross platform compatibility."
Cross-platform compatibility has never been terribly good anyway. I'm a non-programmer Joe Schmoe user who knocks up Excel macros because it's a convenient platform - everyone in my office has it. When I started I had a hell of a job figuring out why my macros worked in - if memory serves - Office 2000 for Win but not Mac Office 2001. Turned out there were functions that were simply missing from the Mac version, even though it was released later.
That I hit this problem for the very simple stuff I was doing suggests to me that cross-platform development of Excel macros has always been a pain in the bum. Does anyone out there actually bother? Wouldn't you just pick an Excel version and stick with it to reduce development headaches?
If you're a Windows user, what you need is Boldfinger, which changes the caps lock keystroke to ALT-CAPS LOCK so it's there if you need it but much harder to hit by accident.
Mini Mazzer. You can always pass it down to your kids.
Oh, hang on, this is Slashdot, there's a prerequisite missing to having kids...
Re:slightly off-topic - general post on AI
on
Marvin Minsky On AI
·
· Score: 1
> Accessing the data to feed in is a big problem
Never fear, Douglas Adams has already thought about it:
Ford Prefect: I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically. Frankie Mouse: Oh yes, but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared. Benjy Mouse: Treated. Frankie Mouse: Diced.
Safety is one of the reasons given for the weight limit, but it's brought into disrepute when riders are allowed to add lead weights to their frames in order to make the limit. Where's the structural improvement there? A better reason is to try and keep the bike technology sufficiently affordable that smaller teams at levels below the Tour de France can still attract bike sponsors who can afford to supply competitive bikes.
The weight thing has gotten rather out of hand. It's now easy - though hardly cheap - to build a bike that weighs about a kilogram less than the limit (6.8kg), yet even the guys who make these bikes are admitting that you need your head read if you are prepared to spend an extra $1000 saving 200g on a frame.
On the other hand, all this superlight stuff does mean that riders can add heavy but useful equipment to the bikes and remain competitive because everyone has to be over 6.8kg. When Floyd landis had a bad day at the Tour, and followed it up with the most amazing comeback since Charly gaul in 1948, his coaches were then able to get detailed physiological data on his ride from the power-measuring hub on his bike. That's valuable data. Lighter bikes means that riders now use these instruments in racing where they were previously considered too heavy and kept for training.
"MS has made a few things that 'work'... MS Word and MS Excel"
Say what? One of the greatest mysteries in the history of computing is that the same company makes both Word and Excel. While both undeniably have their faults, Excel is very successfully geared toward enabling *you* to Do Stuff while Word constantly tries to Do Stuff For You and gets in the blasted way all the time as a result. Word is also packed with half-assed implementations of things that have no place in a writing tool, like its foul, kludgy attempts to be a (very) poor man's DTP app, and its excruciating html generation. Excel is data analysis tool that anyone can start to use and that reveals its power with deeper exploration. Attempts to use Word's 'power' features just reveal their many weaknesses.
Word ended up dominant because businesses buy Office to get Excel, not because it works.
From the article you cite: "AllofMP3.com cannot be charged for piracy, prosecutors ruled, under the current criminal law."
That's not a technicality, that means what they're doing is not illegal, unless some other definition of illegal is in force than "acts you can be prosecuted for."
If it's legal for allofmp3.com to sell digital goods in Russia, then it would appear to be legal to import those digital goods to many jurisdictions. Under what US legislation is it illegal to buy an mp3 file in Russia and import it to the US?
As for other issues, according to this site allofmp3.com pays licence fees to the Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS) for the files it distributes. Rightsholders can collect remuneration through ROMS.
allofmp3.com appears on all the available evidence to be legal, and no amount of ranting about technicalities and "stupidly paying allofmp3.com [for] the privilege" negates that.
So buy from allofmp3.com. It works with Firefox; gives you a wide choice of DRM-free encoding formats including - for most recent releases - FLAC and Ogg; and it appears to be sufficiently legal that the Russian authorities have declined to let the international RIAA equivalents go after it.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone should ask the judge if he'd be happy to have a trillion grains of sand dropped on him.
Assuming spherical sand grains 1mm across with a density of 2,2g/cm^2, I make that over 1,100 tonnes of sand.
I only came here to snark about the incomprehensible summary, but I see everyone else has beaten me to it.
Added after I put the boot in. At least someone's paying fucking attention.
Christ, Slashdot, could this post have been any lazier? How about mentioning what it is? Why we should be interested? That's not just good journalism, it's actually likely to generate page views too. FFS.
I'd have got away with it if it wasn't for you pesky kids.
I think you mean:
Lbh unir gur evtug gb erznva fvyrag. Lbh unir gur evtug gb erznva rapelcgrq. Nalguvat lbh fnl, qb, be qrpelcg pna naq jvyy or uryq ntnvafg lbh va n pbheg bs ynj. Lbh unir gur evtug gb fcrnx gb na nggbearl. Vs lbh pnaabg nssbeq na nggbearl, bar jvyy or nccbvagrq sbe lbh. Qb lbh haqrefgnaq gurfr evtugf nf gurl unir orra ernq gb lbh?
None of that stops him from being crazy.
The reluctance to classify Anders Breivik as mentally ill comes from the problem we'd then have differentiating people like him from, say, regular soldiers.
For me, it's simple: if you are prepared to kill voluntarily for an ideology, you're mentally ill.
Because that worked so well to stop unauthorised sharing of music files.
"I sincerely hope we get to see the Olympics hosted on every continent."
Antarctica might be tricky.
Dogs are domesticated wolves so this isn't in the least bit surprising.
If you violate my property rights (say, by trespassing), I can have you ... punished
Actually in many jurisdictions (the UK and Australia, to name but two), you can't. You can ask someone to leave your property, and law enforcement will assist you if they refuse, but to punish someone for trespassing you will have to be able to prove damage. In Scotland, if you own open land - moors, mountainsides and the like - then you're SOL because people have the right to roam over it.
And we suffer the corollary every day: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Insufficiently advanced technologies include mobile phones, computer operating systems, GPS...
As were lots of writers of the era. Robert Silverberg writes in his commentaries on his early work of cranking out 10,000 words per day, day in, day out.
"Copyright law does not distinguish, in defining "distribute", between copies paid for vs. copies given away for free"
You could argue that there's a good reason for that. When copyright law was developed, it was impossible to make large numbers of copies of something for negligible cost. Therefore, it was a reasonable assumption that anyone making multiple copies of a book or vinyl album or even a CD was doing so to sell them. Copyright law is all about stopping that from happening, which is why it appears to some to be so unjust when applied to free distribution.
"by dropping VBA you hinder cross platform compatibility."
Cross-platform compatibility has never been terribly good anyway. I'm a non-programmer Joe Schmoe user who knocks up Excel macros because it's a convenient platform - everyone in my office has it. When I started I had a hell of a job figuring out why my macros worked in - if memory serves - Office 2000 for Win but not Mac Office 2001. Turned out there were functions that were simply missing from the Mac version, even though it was released later.
That I hit this problem for the very simple stuff I was doing suggests to me that cross-platform development of Excel macros has always been a pain in the bum. Does anyone out there actually bother? Wouldn't you just pick an Excel version and stick with it to reduce development headaches?
If you're a Windows user, what you need is Boldfinger, which changes the caps lock keystroke to ALT-CAPS LOCK so it's there if you need it but much harder to hit by accident.
I for one welcome our new dead horse off-beating overlords.
Mini Mazzer. You can always pass it down to your kids.
Oh, hang on, this is Slashdot, there's a prerequisite missing to having kids...
> Accessing the data to feed in is a big problem
Never fear, Douglas Adams has already thought about it:
Ford Prefect: I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically.
Frankie Mouse: Oh yes, but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared.
Benjy Mouse: Treated.
Frankie Mouse: Diced.
Safety is one of the reasons given for the weight limit, but it's brought into disrepute when riders are allowed to add lead weights to their frames in order to make the limit. Where's the structural improvement there? A better reason is to try and keep the bike technology sufficiently affordable that smaller teams at levels below the Tour de France can still attract bike sponsors who can afford to supply competitive bikes.
The weight thing has gotten rather out of hand. It's now easy - though hardly cheap - to build a bike that weighs about a kilogram less than the limit (6.8kg), yet even the guys who make these bikes are admitting that you need your head read if you are prepared to spend an extra $1000 saving 200g on a frame.
On the other hand, all this superlight stuff does mean that riders can add heavy but useful equipment to the bikes and remain competitive because everyone has to be over 6.8kg. When Floyd landis had a bad day at the Tour, and followed it up with the most amazing comeback since Charly gaul in 1948, his coaches were then able to get detailed physiological data on his ride from the power-measuring hub on his bike. That's valuable data. Lighter bikes means that riders now use these instruments in racing where they were previously considered too heavy and kept for training.
"MS has made a few things that 'work' ... MS Word and MS Excel"
Say what? One of the greatest mysteries in the history of computing is that the same company makes both Word and Excel. While both undeniably have their faults, Excel is very successfully geared toward enabling *you* to Do Stuff while Word constantly tries to Do Stuff For You and gets in the blasted way all the time as a result. Word is also packed with half-assed implementations of things that have no place in a writing tool, like its foul, kludgy attempts to be a (very) poor man's DTP app, and its excruciating html generation. Excel is data analysis tool that anyone can start to use and that reveals its power with deeper exploration. Attempts to use Word's 'power' features just reveal their many weaknesses.
Word ended up dominant because businesses buy Office to get Excel, not because it works.
Weight? If someone belts you round the head with an EOS 1 you are going down like a sack of spuds, whether it's the analog or digital version.
Agreed it's not a troll, but "well-thought out"? It's barely coherent.
From the article you cite: "AllofMP3.com cannot be charged for piracy, prosecutors ruled, under the current criminal law."
That's not a technicality, that means what they're doing is not illegal, unless some other definition of illegal is in force than "acts you can be prosecuted for."
If it's legal for allofmp3.com to sell digital goods in Russia, then it would appear to be legal to import those digital goods to many jurisdictions. Under what US legislation is it illegal to buy an mp3 file in Russia and import it to the US?
As for other issues, according to this site allofmp3.com pays licence fees to the Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS) for the files it distributes. Rightsholders can collect remuneration through ROMS.
allofmp3.com appears on all the available evidence to be legal, and no amount of ranting about technicalities and "stupidly paying allofmp3.com [for] the privilege" negates that.
So buy from allofmp3.com. It works with Firefox; gives you a wide choice of DRM-free encoding formats including - for most recent releases - FLAC and Ogg; and it appears to be sufficiently legal that the Russian authorities have declined to let the international RIAA equivalents go after it.