The great irony is, you nit-picker, is that the current detainees would have less rights in a declared war, since they could be held indefinitely until the war is over.
What's ironic about that? War powers give government administration more flexibility than it has in peacetime! News at 11! (Hint: We already knew that).
But suddenly the internal political intricacies of a nation matter in judging an international action? By that standard, a dictator (Hitler, Saddam, whatever) "declaring war" on a neighbor has more legitimacy than the US did in Korea or the Persian Gulf liberation of 1991.
An unelected dictator doesn't have "legitimacy" in the same sense that a governance by and for the people does in the first place. That said -- why should this be judged as an international action? I'm perfectly happy to judge it from inside my own country, thank you very much, rather than from the perspective of an outside observer. (That said, outside observers certainly do tend towards being on one particular side of the fence).
I would like to know, should US soldiers be Mirandizing al Qaeda in Baghdad? Are we really going to this level of absurdity? War not cops and robbers for crissakes
If you think we shouldn't be using our military for police actions, I agree with you -- stop sending them out if you don't have a war.
Oh by the way, Osama bin Laden declared war on the US.
So what? I can go stand on a soapbox and say that I'm declaring war on the US too. Doesn't mean the US is in a war.
Instead, al Qaeda, flouting all the rules of warfare, get treated better than a POW would have been
Goes back to my earlier point: Administration has more powers during wartime! News at 11!
That's no surprise at all -- people mentally align themselves to support an enterprise they're a part of. That can be a force for good as well as ill -- following the US Civil War, returning Northern soldiers were far more anti-slavery than their countrymen who didn't go to war.
An unfair contract is still valid and enforceable. Especially if you go into it eyes open which you admit you would be.
Depends on just how unfair that contract is. "Selling" a product but then preventing the paid customer from enjoying its use without cause borders on unjust enrichment.
Large companies also have a tendency to simply not show up for small claims cases, resulting in default judgements -- or to decide that refunding the customer their money (or otherwise providing a reasonable remedy) costs less than sending someone to attend.
My distinct impression was that most of the corruption in the Chinese government was closer to the local level. Do you have any solid information to the contrary?
I live in a district/circuit where said licenses have been court tested.
Just because some shrinkwrap licenses pass doesn't mean that ones which allow the product you purchased to be made unusable after-the-fact without cause do. It's not the post-purchase implicit agreement, here, that I'm intending to test -- which isn't on-point anyhow, since the Steam license agreement is presented before purchases can be made.
Second: Why would you purchase something when you admit that you'd have to go to court to resolve any problems?
Because I don't expect problems so long as the other party acts in good faith -- and I see no reason to anticipate otherwise.
Look -- even if the contract didn't purport to allow them to remote-disable software, they could still do that as a practical matter and it'd still go to court. There's always a level of trust in purchasing or using any software product, and this case is no different.
The Moka pot is extremely fast, and most importantly very easy to clean, which is the downfall of many coffee makers.
The aeropress does well on those criteria also. I haven't tried a Moka pot -- since starting work for an employer with a Grimac in the kitchen, I've used little else.
If the folks in question were selling very specific tests, I would agree that this would be of concern. They're not -- they're selling fairly broad partial sequencing, and bundling services which allow their customers to stay up-to-date with regard to new research related to the outcome of those tests; explicit in the offer of those services is a statement that interpretation of the results is not fully a known quantity and continues to develop.
"Tests for disease genes" would be a problem -- but that's a strawman here. Broad sequencing, marketed as informational, is quite a different matter.
Steam-tied games run in offline mode if I've been connected to Steam recently. In the aforementioned hypothetical future where Steam is obsolete and the Valve team has retired and is swimming in their wealth, that prerequisite isn't going to be met.
"My dream" already does occur, inasmuch as I regularly play 20-year-old games today. Yes, it involves virtualization (or, when said games were written to a bytecode-based virtual machine, newer VMs written to the same bytecode spec). No, it's not hard.
Need I also note that there already exist VMs capable of emulating present operating systems, and that there's going to be plenty of financial incentive for those to continue to exist in the future?
No, I'm not concerned at all about being able to play my games in 20 years... except for the DRM.
No idea about running with multiple computers -- I only own a single system spec'd appropriately for gaming. I have a GameTap subscription, and that works great with multiple concurrent subaccounts, but the games I buy on steam aren't things that anyone else in my household plays (wife isn't into the same style of games, brother-in-law doesn't have the hardware to run them).
It's possible to move games between accounts, but Valve charges a fee to do so. I agree that this is BS.
...and I'll take the "spyware". What do I care if it records me playing a game? That's not private -- everyone else in the game can see it too! My browsing history is (sorta) private; where I tend to camp in TF2 is not.
Also, it's not the five seconds to put the CD in the drive that bugs me -- it's the $50 to repurchase the game after the CD got lost or scratched or my "install counter" went over, or the time spent on the phone calling tech support to ask that they pretty please let me install the game I purchased on my new computer.
It may make more sense, but it's not good law. Should there be laws to prevent my boss or insurance agent from surreptitiously running a DNA test on me? Absolutely, and those laws should have teeth. Should I be prevented from getting a mail-order DNA test because of something someone else might do? Absolutely not.
What's that about "outcome"? If you're getting an informational test done -- without the intent or expectation that it will diagnose or treat any disorder, but in the interest of getting a CD with interesting statistical information (with the explicit understanding that that interesting information isn't to be used in relationship towards diagnosis or treatment, and that the relationship between the data provided and any expected implications thereof will evolve/change over time as the science improves)... WTF's wrong with that?
$1000 is not much money, and I'd find it interesting to have access to the data out of sheer intellectual curiosity -- and I find it offensive that anyone would find it to be their responsibility to "protect" me from doing that. What's next, "protecting" people from blowing their money on space tourism, or on visiting museums?
The known portion of my family tree doesn't go back very far; I'd also be interested to have an idea of what populations my ancestors came from. Why prevent me from finding out?
Yup -- that's why I'll put up with Steam, but not with SecuROM: Steam is convenient; it reinstalls my games for me if I replace my hardware, prevents me from needing to keep track of physical media and CD keys and whatnot, and (ever since I've had it, at least -- I didn't get on the bandwagon at first release) Just Works; the only thing I worry about is whether I'll be able to fire up my old games and go for a trip down nostalgia lane 20 years from now when the good folks at Valve have gone on to other things.
The content folk are, at best, highly suspicious of "the desktop". With good reason.
Old content, sure. New content embraces it. That said, old content isn't that wary -- they keep selling DVDs with bonus data-track content, after all.
Most people consume their content from standalone commodity appliances like DVD players and iPods.
Most people also tend to wait it out before adopting new technologies; being an early winner or an early loser can make a difference between being Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
All that said, my only relevant industry experience is new content.
Folks making proprietary use typically won't want to be subject to the GPL -- so they'll need to get a patent license, because they're certainly not covered. That limits the extent to which this patent can be reused, and thus to which having offered it can backfire on the licensor.
(That said, Red Hat was prepared to shoot them down hard if they didn't agree to settle -- lots of prior art dug up).
Slashdot Mirror
When was war declared?
If it's not a declared war, what are you doing with wartime powers? There was a congressional authorization of force, yes. Declaration of war, no.
That's no surprise at all -- people mentally align themselves to support an enterprise they're a part of. That can be a force for good as well as ill -- following the US Civil War, returning Northern soldiers were far more anti-slavery than their countrymen who didn't go to war.
Large companies also have a tendency to simply not show up for small claims cases, resulting in default judgements -- or to decide that refunding the customer their money (or otherwise providing a reasonable remedy) costs less than sending someone to attend.
My distinct impression was that most of the corruption in the Chinese government was closer to the local level. Do you have any solid information to the contrary?
Look -- even if the contract didn't purport to allow them to remote-disable software, they could still do that as a practical matter and it'd still go to court. There's always a level of trust in purchasing or using any software product, and this case is no different.
If they pull anything "unconscionable", I'll pull them into Small Claims. Just because it's in a contract doesn't mean it's enforceable.
Most of what I play when retrogaming is early x86. Parents frowned on game consoles (and, for that matter, TV) so there's not much nostalgia there.
If the folks in question were selling very specific tests, I would agree that this would be of concern. They're not -- they're selling fairly broad partial sequencing, and bundling services which allow their customers to stay up-to-date with regard to new research related to the outcome of those tests; explicit in the offer of those services is a statement that interpretation of the results is not fully a known quantity and continues to develop.
"Tests for disease genes" would be a problem -- but that's a strawman here. Broad sequencing, marketed as informational, is quite a different matter.
Steam-tied games run in offline mode if I've been connected to Steam recently. In the aforementioned hypothetical future where Steam is obsolete and the Valve team has retired and is swimming in their wealth, that prerequisite isn't going to be met.
"My dream" already does occur, inasmuch as I regularly play 20-year-old games today. Yes, it involves virtualization (or, when said games were written to a bytecode-based virtual machine, newer VMs written to the same bytecode spec). No, it's not hard.
Need I also note that there already exist VMs capable of emulating present operating systems, and that there's going to be plenty of financial incentive for those to continue to exist in the future?
No, I'm not concerned at all about being able to play my games in 20 years... except for the DRM.
I said "surreptitiously", you know.
No idea about running with multiple computers -- I only own a single system spec'd appropriately for gaming. I have a GameTap subscription, and that works great with multiple concurrent subaccounts, but the games I buy on steam aren't things that anyone else in my household plays (wife isn't into the same style of games, brother-in-law doesn't have the hardware to run them).
It's possible to move games between accounts, but Valve charges a fee to do so. I agree that this is BS.
...and I'll take the "spyware". What do I care if it records me playing a game? That's not private -- everyone else in the game can see it too! My browsing history is (sorta) private; where I tend to camp in TF2 is not.
Also, it's not the five seconds to put the CD in the drive that bugs me -- it's the $50 to repurchase the game after the CD got lost or scratched or my "install counter" went over, or the time spent on the phone calling tech support to ask that they pretty please let me install the game I purchased on my new computer.
It may make more sense, but it's not good law. Should there be laws to prevent my boss or insurance agent from surreptitiously running a DNA test on me? Absolutely, and those laws should have teeth. Should I be prevented from getting a mail-order DNA test because of something someone else might do? Absolutely not.
What's that about "outcome"? If you're getting an informational test done -- without the intent or expectation that it will diagnose or treat any disorder, but in the interest of getting a CD with interesting statistical information (with the explicit understanding that that interesting information isn't to be used in relationship towards diagnosis or treatment, and that the relationship between the data provided and any expected implications thereof will evolve/change over time as the science improves)... WTF's wrong with that?
$1000 is not much money, and I'd find it interesting to have access to the data out of sheer intellectual curiosity -- and I find it offensive that anyone would find it to be their responsibility to "protect" me from doing that. What's next, "protecting" people from blowing their money on space tourism, or on visiting museums?
The known portion of my family tree doesn't go back very far; I'd also be interested to have an idea of what populations my ancestors came from. Why prevent me from finding out?
Yup -- that's why I'll put up with Steam, but not with SecuROM: Steam is convenient; it reinstalls my games for me if I replace my hardware, prevents me from needing to keep track of physical media and CD keys and whatnot, and (ever since I've had it, at least -- I didn't get on the bandwagon at first release) Just Works; the only thing I worry about is whether I'll be able to fire up my old games and go for a trip down nostalgia lane 20 years from now when the good folks at Valve have gone on to other things.
SecuROM, on the other hand...
Now, now -- by the time DNF comes out, JVMs will run faster than hand-optimized assembler.
All that said, my only relevant industry experience is new content.
Microsoft owns the desktop. Content creation and delivery folks want the desktop. What does their (lack of) position in the content market matter?
Do you really think anyone could sell video content that wouldn't play on Vista?
Smaller companies can get away with saying "the studios require it". Microsoft can't.
Folks making proprietary use typically won't want to be subject to the GPL -- so they'll need to get a patent license, because they're certainly not covered. That limits the extent to which this patent can be reused, and thus to which having offered it can backfire on the licensor.
(That said, Red Hat was prepared to shoot them down hard if they didn't agree to settle -- lots of prior art dug up).
I see your "58 states" Obama and raise you one "Vladimir Putin is doing a fine job as President of Germany" McCain.